Bailout Has Been Changed to 'Rescue'

The White House has changed 'bailout' to 'rescue.' So, instead of bailing out the crooks on Wall Street, we're going to rescue the crooks on Wall Street. Hope everyone feels better now.

I doubt any decent bill that addresses our systemic problems as well as providing help for those who really need it can be passed in the current environment. However, some sort of stopgap bill is probably going to have to be passed just to get us to the first week in February. Obviously, the less spent the better.

Not surprisingly, the current crisis is bringing out the bottom feeders: Newt Gingrich is back in the news and is as eager as ever to dominate right wing authoritarians, too many of whom occupy seats in Congress. They seem to remember who got them there. Here's the Huffington Post:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich was working aggressively behind the scenes to defeat the Wall Street rescue plan minutes before he himself released a public statement in support of the package, NBC's Andrea Mitchell reported on Tuesday.

Yep, the same M.O. as usual—one has to give him that. Gingrich is one of the many reasons why we can't expect much seriousness from the House Republicans, though we still have to wait to see what the Senate Republicans will do.

A reader asked if there is a relationship between the credit crisis and the price of oil. The answer is yes and no. Because so many politicians, economists, bankers and corporate people don't fully understand the energy situation, the answer is largely no. These people do understand that large sums of money have been pulled out of the American housing market and its many faulty subsidiary investment schemes largely because overseas investors, mainly from Asia, need oil and are not just buying oil but trying to secure long-term sources which requires sizable investment in Africa and Asia. They do get that much. And they get that high oil prices are slowing down various sectors of the world economy (some understood it well enough to speculate dangerously and recklessly on oil). But they think of the current situation as temporary. And, in one sense, perhaps it is, but in the next twenty years we are likely to have an increasing number of these 'temporary situations' unless we recognize we have a problem and start dealing with it. So the answer is yes, but not according to those anesthetized by the usual market ideology.

In the meantime, the energy we need to run our economy still comes from oil. The oil industry, like any major business sector (well, more than most), has always had problems: oil spills, dry wells, production delays, refinery fires, financing problems etc. But we're entering an era where every problem is magnified much more than in the past. That is because the easy days of oil are over. We're in the hard days now. Here's the first of two stories from Rigzone:

As of September 29, 2008, 52 of the 3,800 offshore oil and gas production platforms have been confirmed as destroyed. Initial estimates are that the 52 destroyed production platforms produced a total of 13,300 barrels of oil per day and 90 million cubic feet of gas per day. Currently, MMS has no information on whether any of the destroyed platforms will be rebuilt by any operator.

Rebuilding platforms can be very expensive. Here's the other story:

From the operators' reports, it is estimated that approximately 57.1% of the oil production in the Gulf is shut-in. This shut-in figure for oil increased from yesterday’s figure due to operators’ errors in reporting for September 29, 2008. As of June 2008, estimated oil production from the Gulf of Mexico is 1.3 million barrels of oil per day. It is also estimated that approximately 45.7% of the natural gas production in the Gulf is shut-in.

Although it's not as bad as 2005 after Katrina, that's still a serious drop in oil production until everything gets back up (minus most of the 52 platforms). But I wouldn't want to guess whether oil prices will continue rising, falling or staying flat. Falling production usually means higher prices. But if the economy is sagging, that means lower prices. We're in an era of turbulence and turbulence at any moment is not easy to predict.

In the meantime, Washington has become a lunatic asylum so I'm not going to criticize the few sane people, almost all Democrats, who are trying to deal with an impossible situation. A real solution to the current crisis would require enough votes to overcome Bush's veto. Since a sizable proportion of House Republicans are stark raving mad and are perfectly willing to hold our economy hostage out of sheer spite, or because Gingrich said so or because Pelosi hurt their feelings, the Democrats are probably going to have to hold their nose on a ugly compromise of some sort just so we can reach next February with the economy reasonably intact. Here's some useful perspective from The Mahablog:

...from what I have read a large majority agree that the Administration’s basic approach is deeply flawed.

However, Congress more or less tweaked Paulson’s approach rather than try something completely different. They improved it mightily, according to many. But my understanding is that the smarter people in Congress figured the more conservative members would dismiss the smart approach outright. So instead of the best bill, they put together the best bill they thought they could sell to the right-wing troglodytes in the House.

And it still didn’t pass.

(snip)

As Paul Krugman and others say, probably all that can be done now is to patch something together that will keep the economy limping along until a new administration and Congress is sworn in. And pray that will be an Obama administration, because McCain clearly is out of his depth on this issue and will be no better, possibly worse, than Bush.

No one should forget that this is Bush's bill offered just weeks before an election. Bush is, after all, the leader of the Republican Party and ought to be able to get his party to go along. His heir-apparent, John McCain also supports the bailout, or so he says when he isn't talking about how strong the economy is or how he needs to suspend his campaign so he can get his photo op at the White House. And needless to say McCain too is having trouble getting his party to go along. Do we really want these same Republicans back in January with McCain as president? S.W. Anderson of Oh!Pinion summarizes the situation rather well:

So, the feeling among Pelosi and House Democrats yesterday was that if Republicans wanted a bailout, they should vote in substantial numbers to pass it, making the effort clearly bipartisan.

As the vote was held, Democrats saw many Republicans weren’t up for that. So, seeing no reason to stick their own necks out when Republicans wouldn’t, more and more Democrats voted against the bill as well. Thus, the defeat.

Today, House Democrats and Republicans are said to be working for a revised version of the bill, one that will attract the dozen or more additional votes needed to pass it.

House Democrats should explain their refusal to go out on a limb to benefit the Bush administration and Republican colleagues unwilling to do their own part.

House Republicans should put up or shut up.

The Failures of Bush and the Republican Leadership

The revelations just keep on coming. We are in an election season to see if our nation will change course and recover the principles our nation was founded on or whether Bush will have a de facto third term through Senator John McCain. The situation is grim. In their final year in office, President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have still not come clean with the American people. They lied their way into a war our nation did not need. They have committed crimes or encouraged the committing of crimes by others that have damaged the reputation of the United States and that have violated the U.S. Constitution. They have engaged in a level of cronyism not seen since the 1920s.

The character of the president and the vice president are well enough known in their eighth year in office that we know they are incapable of accepting responsibility for their actions and incapable of telling the American people the truth. Most of the leadership of the Republican Party has also turned away from principles that have often guided our nation for over two hundred years. In fact, some Republicans who have been in leadership positions at some point in the last few years are now more concerned about lobbying for major corporations or foreign governments and soaking the American people for every penny they can get (the bigger the favor they do for their client, the bigger the fee).

Even if Barack Obama gets elected, our nation will have a chance if, and only if, a large number of progressive Democrats win this fall. The Democratic Party is not without its problems. The same crooked business interests that have been recruiting and cultivating the members of the new Republican Party over the last thirty years have also been doing their best to find friendly Democrats in states and districts where Republicans are not likely to win. We can see a small number of these 'friendly' Democrats in the House and Senate. The real question is whether Americans understand what is at stake.

The new Scott McClellan, who doesn't squirm, twist and equivocate like he did when he was Bush's press secretary, has said the Bush Administration used propaganda to get us into the war in Iraq and the American press did not do nearly enough to question the premises for war. Think back a couple of weeks. Here's the response the Bush Administration had to McClellan's revelations (from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution):

White House aides seemed stunned by the scathing tone of [McClellan's] book, and Bush press secretary Dana Perino issued a statement that was highly critical of their former colleague.

"Scott, we now know, is disgruntled about his experience at the White House," she said. "For those of us who fully supported him, before, during and after he was press secretary, we are puzzled. It is sad - this is not the Scott we knew."

Perino said the reports on the book had been described to Bush, and that she did not expect him to comment. "He has more pressing matters than to spend time commenting on books by former staffers," she said.

The president has more pressing matters than telling the American people the truth. Sad indeed. For those Americans paying attention, we got a dose of the truth this week in Congressional testimony by Larry Wilkerson, former chief of staff to Colin Powell (his testimony can be found at The Gavel and through Think Progress); he spoke about Abu Ghraib, torture and the particular failures of Cheney and Rumsfeld:

Mr. Chairman, let me back up for a moment and tell you why this was a particularly important effort for me and I believe for Secretary Powell as well. Clearly, we were—we are—both soldiers. Moreover, we are both veterans of the war in Vietnam and we are both students of military history. We both know how soldiers go astray in the heat of battle, with buddies being killed and wounded all around—particularly in wars that seem to have no end, no light at the end of the tunnel.

In Vietnam, as a first lieutenant and a captain of Infantry, on several occasions I had to restrain my soldiers, even one or two of my officers. When higher authorities took such actions as declaring free fire zones—meaning that anything that moved in that zone could be killed—and you came upon a 12-year old girl on a jungle path in that zone, it was clear you were not going to follow orders. But some situations were not so black and white and you had to be always on guard against your soldiers slipping over the edge. As their leader, it was incumbent upon me to set the example—and that meant sometimes reprimanding or punishing a soldier who broke the rules. In all cases, it meant that I personally followed the rules and not just by "breaking" the so-called rules of engagement, as in the designated free fire zone, but by following the rules that had been ingrained in me by my parents, by my schools, by my church, and by the U.S. Army in classes about the Geneva Conventions and what we called the law of land warfare. I had been taught and I firmly believed when I took the oath of an officer and swore to support and defend the Constitution, that American soldiers were different and that much of their fighting strength and spirit came from that difference and that much of that difference was wrapped up in our humaneness and our respect for the rights of all.

So, Mr. Chairman, when I saw the first photographs from the prison at Abu Ghraib, I had two immediate reactions. First, I knew such things could happen. Second, I knew such things were wrong and I knew that leadership had failed. What I did not know, was on what level that leadership had failed. So I set out to find the answer.

(snip)

...echoing the President and the Vice President's own words, the word went out that the gloves were off, and we were going to have to work "sort of the dark side". That same day at Camp David, September 16, 2001, when the Vice President referred to the dark side, he also told Tim Russert: "...it's going to be vital for us to use any means at our disposal, basically, to achieve our objective."

These words reminded me of what Undersecretary of Defense Robert Lovett had argued as the Cold War was heating up, after the Soviets had developed and tested a nuclear weapon in 1949. Lovett argued in 1950 that the nation was "in a war worse than any we have ever experienced" and that this meant doing away with the "sharp line between democratic principles and immoral actions...." Lovett considered such distinctions as a "dangerous and unnecessary handicap" in the struggle with communism. He said he wanted to fight the Soviets “with no holds barred....". In my view, it was fortunate for the nation that Truman did not follow Lovett's advice.

But many in the Pentagon, and eventually the armed forces, did seem to follow the advice, however implicit, of Lovett's reincarnation in 2001, Vice President Cheney. In short, the Pentagon needed intelligence; people should go out and get it. And the usual rules were not going to apply; new rules would be forthcoming. Even as a result of my early investigations at the State Department, this overriding reality was clear. But somewhere in that early part of 2002, some of the principals also began to worry about legalities. It was likely earlier even but I could find nothing in late 2001. Perhaps someday others will.

(snip)

It's my strong view that the legal proceedings were led by David Addington, who turned to Jay Bybee and John Yoo at the Department of Justice, and Alberto Gonzales in the White House, then counselor to the President.

These were the lawyers who set the legal background against which other-than-standard interrogation methods would be explained away as "in accord with the Geneva Conventions", "not constituting torture", "fully within the Article II powers of the Commander-in Chief", and so forth. At Defense, Jim Haynes and Douglas Feith would adapt these views to their needs at the Pentagon. Indeed, in the recent book Torture Team by English barrister Philippe Sands, in extended interviews Mr. Feith appears to express no small degree of pride in having helped make the Geneva Conventions adaptable to the needs of the new interrogation regime. In my view, this was done largely through artifice not unlike the angels sitting on the pinhead. Such artifice may appeal to certain lawyers but I assure you soldiers have no use for it for they know how dangerous such arguments are when put to the hard act of execution in the field.

Meanwhile, the operational end of this affair was orchestrated by the Secretary of Defense and his subordinates, Haynes, Feith, Stephen Cambone and I'm quite certain others. Certain of these individuals, including Addington, even visited the prison at Guantánamo Bay in September 2002 to get a better grip on what was happening to acquire actionable intelligence and to inform their own views about what was possible.

There has been an argument that U.S. Southern Command queried the Defense Department with respect to interrogation procedures for GITMO, and thus the impetus for the new procedures came from the field. There is a paper trail that seems to have been laid down to support that. What I found, however, was that Southern Command's query was expected (set up perhaps?) and that OSD General Counsel, in league with the others in the legal group, had already worked up what the legal position was going to be. In short, there were people in DOD at the highest level who knew what they wanted: actionable intelligence. They also knew, or thought they knew, that the only way they were going to get it from battle-hardened al Qa'ida operatives was to use harsh interrogation methods. And that's the bottom line.

Depressingly to me, these men also seemed to have the cavalier disregard for any innocents who might be caught up in this process that one often finds in men safely to the rear of the real action. Soldiers call such men "REMFs". I won’t elaborate on that acronym.

(snip)

Moreover, this was a man—and these were men—who could not bring the challenge he thought he was confronting to the legislative branch and ask for relief. To come to the people's representatives, and through them to the people, was beneath this group. They would not deign to ask the legislature to change the rules for the Armed Forces—a legislature vested by our Constitution with the power to "make Rules concerning Captures on land and water" and "To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces." Instead, they made the rules all by themselves in secret.

This is damning testimony. And yet, if anything, I believe Wilkerson lets Bush off too easily. And he could have been harder on Cheney and Rumsfeld. But Wilkerson is restricting himself to documentation that he has been able to accumulate. It is certainly more documentation than Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld ever hoped that anyone would acquire.

Major General Antonio Taguba was the lead investigator for the army into the Abu Ghraib scandal. He is an honest man who paid for his honesty with his career when he failed to participate in a coverup. Last year, Sy Hersh interviewed Taguba for the New Yorker; here are some excerpts:

In a series of interviews early this year, the first he has given, Taguba told me that he understood when he began the inquiry that it could damage his career; early on, a senior general in Iraq had pointed out to him that the abused detainees were “only Iraqis.” Even so, he was not prepared for the greeting he received when he was finally ushered in.

“Here . . . comes . . . that famous General Taguba—of the Taguba report!” Rumsfeld declared, in a mocking voice. The meeting was attended by Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld’s deputy; Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence; General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (J.C.S.); and General Peter Schoomaker, the Army chief of staff, along with Craddock and other officials.

(snip)

[Major General Mike] Myatt followed Taguba’s involvement in the Abu Ghraib inquiry, and said, “I was so proud of him. I told him, ‘Tony, you’ve maintained yourself, and your integrity.’ ”

Taguba got a different message, however, from other officers, among them General John Abizaid, then the head of Central Command. A few weeks after his report became public, Taguba, who was still in Kuwait, was in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan with Abizaid. Abizaid’s driver and his interpreter, who also served as a bodyguard, were in front. Abizaid turned to Taguba and issued a quiet warning: “You and your report will be investigated.”

“I wasn’t angry about what he said but disappointed that he would say that to me,” Taguba said. “I’d been in the Army thirty-two years by then, and it was the first time that I thought I was in the Mafia.”

(snip)

Taguba came to believe that Lieutenant General Sanchez, the Army commander in Iraq, and some of the generals assigned to the military headquarters in Baghdad had extensive knowledge of the abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib even before Joseph Darby came forward with the CD. Taguba was aware that in the fall of 2003—when much of the abuse took place—Sanchez routinely visited the prison, and witnessed at least one interrogation. According to Taguba, “Sanchez knew exactly what was going on.”

Recently Sanchez offered a choice quotation from the president (quote highlighted by Michael Abramowitz of The Washington Post):

Among the anecdotes in "Wiser in Battle: A Soldier's Story" is an arresting portrait of Bush after four contractors were killed in Fallujah in 2004, triggering a fierce U.S. response that was reportedly egged on by the president.

During a videoconference with his national security team and generals, Sanchez writes, Bush launched into what he described as a "confused" pep talk:

"Kick ass!" he quotes the president as saying. "If somebody tries to stop the march to democracy, we will seek them out and kill them! We must be tougher than hell! This Vietnam stuff, this is not even close. It is a mind-set. We can't send that message. It's an excuse to prepare us for withdrawal."

"There is a series of moments and this is one of them. Our will is being tested, but we are resolute. We have a better way. Stay strong! Stay the course! Kill them! Be confident! Prevail! We are going to wipe them out! We are not blinking!"

A White House spokesman had no comment.

But Sanzchez knew what was going on. As did many others. No doubt Abu Ghraib was toxic and endangered more careers than just that of the lead investigator.

In a preface to Broken Laws, Broken Lives, a report by Physicians for Human Rights that details torture by the U.S., Taguba writes about the torture that took place in Iraq and elsewhere:

In order for these individuals to suffer the wanton cruelty to which they were subjected, a government policy was promulgated to the field whereby the Geneva Conventions and the Uniform Code of Military Justice were disregarded. The UN Convention Against Torture was indiscriminately ignored. And the healing professions, including physicians and psychologists, became complicit in the willful infliction of harm against those the Hippocratic Oath demands they protect.

After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts, and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes. The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.

Lt. Col Larry Wilkerson speaks eloquently about what is right and what is wrong. Major General Antonio Taguba understood his duty to the constitution and the law. The John McCain of 2000 seemed to understand. I do not know where John McCain stands in this important election year. But the signs are not good. A Commander-in-Chief who doesn't know the difference between Shiites or Sunnis is worrisome. And McCain talks of staying in Iraq for a hundred years. He totally backs Bush on the war. He is unable to acknowledge the lies that got us into this war.

In short, John McCain is incapable of holding George W. Bush accountable and that in itself suggests it is time for change in Washington.

The Real Appeasers: Bush and Company

George W. Bush went to a foreign land to launch a political attack against the Democrats. Any number of news sources have broken the story. Here's Think Progress commenting on a CNN story:

While delivering an address before the Israeli parliament commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel, President Bush said that Sen. Barack Obama and Democrats favor a policy of appeasement toward terrorists. CNN reports that Bush was comparing Obama to “other U.S. leaders back in the run-up to World War II who appeased the Nazis.”

In his speech, Bush said, “As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

The guy who called himself a uniter, not a divider, has broken every bipartisan rule of the last seventy years. The Decider in Chief has led us into a war we did not need in Iraq and failed to prosecute effectively the war in Afghanistan. He is now itching to start a third war to cover up his incompetence. It's too bad there isn't someone at the White House who puts up a new mirror every time a president tries to blame someone else for his blunders; by now the White House would have a thousand images of Bush pointing back at himself. Personally, given his behavior in recent days, I don't think Bush cares anymore. His arrogant and useless behavior will continue until January. The American people should have impeached Bush four years and ten months ago when it not only became obvious that there were no WMDs in Iraq but when it became obvious that the White House had deliberately lied about the evidence. Republicans in Congress failed to apply the US Constitution to a law-breaking president. Sorry, but I would call that appeasement.

Here's the Merriam-Webster definition of 'appease' that applies here: "pacify, conciliate: esp : to buy off (an aggressor) by concessions usu. at the sacrifice of principles." The Republican leaders of Congress in the last eight years have had no principles. If Bush wanted something, no matter how wrong it was, torture, multiple wars, privatization contracts for cronies, the Republicans appeased him.

But the reality gets even worse. In America, there are good responsible businesses and there are bad businesses that are not only greedy but bad for America's democracy and America's long term interests. Bush and his Republican friends in Congress have appeased the worst of American business. I'm talking about guys who could care less about their workers, their customers or their neighbors. Bush and Cheney have both appeased the most anti-social corporations in America: the Enrons, the Halliburtons, the Blackwaters and so on.

The way I see it appeasement is turning your back on the most urgent problems of our era. Those two oil guys, Bush and Cheney, have turned their backs on doing anything about the energy problem. We've known for thirty years that we have a problem. We've known for the last ten years that the problem is getting worse. And Bush and Cheney are too busy appeasing the oil and coal companies to think about tomorrow. Appeasement is about procrastination. It is about putting off until tomorrow what you know has to be done today.

When it comes to global warming, Bush finally admits there's a problem, after seven long years. And his solution? More studies, vague goals, more procrastination. More appeasement of the worst of American business. Time is running out and Bush will end up wasting eight years.

Some may say appeasement is only about foreign policy threats. In other words, don't give in to foreign aggression. But Bush ran away from his foreign policy obligation to pursue Osama bin Laden and instead pursued a personal obsession about Iraq (McCain isn't far behind. He still obsesses about Vietnam). Seven years later, Osama bin Laden is still free. The sad truth is that appeasement is more often a Republican buzz word to cover up incompetence, corruption and flawed policies.

The reality is that Bush has done enormous harm to our national interests. He has alienated our allies and created new enemies. He has refused to talk when diplomacy could have had real value. During the Cold War, diplomacy saved this country from all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And the Soviet Union eventually fell. But the president has done harm in other areas. Above all else, Bush has damaged our economy, making it more difficult to pursue any number of policies. Bush has even outsourced a certain percentage of our national defense requirements to companies in foreign countries. Outsourcing undermines American jobs and American know-how and in a time of crisis it could jeopardize our national defense. Heavy dependence on foreign oil and a lack of a sound energy policy also puts our nation at risk.

Bush's failed presidency and leadership have much to do with perpetuating the worst of American business because—it can't be said often enough—the worst players around are willing to pay for political favors. We used to call it bribery and corruption. The leaders of the Republican Party now call it 'free speech' and 'campaign contributions' even as they exploit every loophole in the law and then more.

Here's a little dose of reality: if elected, John McCain will not be as bad as George W. Bush. He will give us less nonsense. His wars might be more competently fought. His social policies might not be as draconian. His tax policies will not be as ruinous. He may slow down the outsourcing of jobs overseas a touch. And his fantasies will not be as onerous. But our country does not need a little less of George W. Bush. We need a clean break. And we need to put behind us the hysterical claims of right wing Republican politicians in Congress. Look, there's nothing wrong with a little flag waving—we do it every Memorial Day, Fourth of July and Veterans Day. But what is it with right wing politicians and their flag pins while their business friends show what they think of patriotism by overcharging the Pentagon, making shoddy products and putting their obscene profits in offshore accounts? I think most Americans are getting tired of the disconnect.

We need a Washington that belongs to all the people again and not just the loud and the few. The next president is going to have to pay as much attention to Appalachia as New Orleans, as much attention to children as seniors, as much attention to small towns as big cities, as much attention to small businesses as major corporations. Those companies that create the most quality jobs in America should get lots of attention. We're at a point where big business needs to rejoin America and turn its back on the most anti-social elements of the business community.

George W. Bush will go down as the most failed president in American history. He has turned his back repeatedly on opportunities to reform his behavior. I don't know who John McCain really is. Suffice to say that John McCain has three positions for every issue, loves his lobbyists and loves telling TV pundits what they want to hear before going off and doing something else. Americans need much more than that. Hillary Clinton, for one, would make a fine president. But I believe Barack Obama would be a better one. He's a pragmatist, and like John Edwards, he understands the times. Like many of us, he sees what's coming and knows that if we are to have a future, we need to move on.

Americans Know Something Is Wrong But Have Not Connected All the Dots

Bush's poll ratings are the worst for any president since modern polling began. CNN Political Ticker has the story:

A CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Thursday indicates that 71 percent of the American public disapprove of how Bush his handling his job as president.

"No president has ever had a higher disapproval rating in any CNN or Gallup poll; in fact, this is the first time that any president's disapproval rating has cracked the 70 percent mark," said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.

The astonishing thing is that 28 percent still believe Bush is doing a good job (if nothing else, at least every American has an opinion these days).

That 71% of the American people know something is wrong and that President Bush is part of the problem is a good sign. However, when I look at the polls and realize Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton each hold only a somewhat insignificant 2 to 10 percent lead over John McCain, it tells me that too many Americans are unable to acknowledge the failures of the Republican Party over the last 27 years. You would never guess from the talk of Republican politicians and pundits that Democrats have been in charge for only 2 of those 27 years and in those two years the Democrats held only a small margin under Bill Clinton. That Congress got some useful things done but it could not undo more than a small part of the damage already done or forestall the damage that would come in the following fourteen years. The three biggest failures—just to name a few—of those 27 years was the failure to develop a serious energy policy, a serious policy to combat global warming and the failure to keep more jobs in the United States.

The Republican philosophy of the last 27 years is not hard to figure out: never take on a responsibility if a profit can be made for wealthy Republicans by doing nothing. We're now paying the price.

The nonsense, however, continues. This time the pandering and nonsense of John McCain is joined by Hillary Clinton who is pushing for a gas tax holiday that will do nothing for the American people except put more money in the pockets of the oil companies and hasten the inevitable. The Gristmill summarizes the ridiculousness of the gas tax holiday:

The gas tax holiday proposed by McCain and Clinton is indefensible. That, of course, is why just about every independent observer has criticized it. The Washington Post and, separately, Huffington Post have catalogued an impressive list of serious critiques, starting with the rather obvious point that in a demand-driven price shock, a gas tax holiday probably won't even save consumers a penny -- it will just enrich the poor, suffering oil companies...

(snip)

NYT's Paul Krugman calls the idea "pointless" and "disappointing." Tom Friedman labeled the plan "so ridiculous ... it takes your breath away." ...

If Barack Obama falters, John McCain or Hillary Clinton will be the next president of the United States. If Hillary wins the nomination and the election, one can only hope that she and Bill will set aside the nonsense and pandering of the election season and get real. Given McCain's increasing conservatism and rigidity, there is no hope of anything useful getting done in the next four years if he is elected. Time is becoming an issue as the worst president in American history sits on his hand during a series of world crises, one or two of which have been aggravated by his actions or failures to do anything useful.

There are so many big and small crises going on that I got flummoxed the other day when someone asked me about the rice shortage crisis. I knew rice futures were going through the roof but I didn't know exactly why. So I did my homework. Here's one article from Businessweek:

As farmers in the U.S. and Europe plant more corn in place of wheat to produce ethanol, the price of wheat has risen as supplies have tightened. Faced with higher wheat prices, people are substituting rice in their diets, particularly so in Africa. And, of course, the demand for ethanol as an alternative fuel is linked directly to the soaring price of oil. Moreover, the cost of rice production has increased significantly because fertilizer, transportation, and processing costs have shot up along with skyrocketing oil prices...

(snip)

The majority of rice farmers consume most of what they grow already and plant rice on every available acre of land. What's more, rapid urbanization and, in China, desertification has led to a decrease in the available supply of farmland. The increase in biofuels has encouraged palm oil plantations instead of rice paddies. Also, as incomes rise in the region, people substitute more meat for rice in their diet, which requires more land to raise livestock and produce the same amount of calories.

The story also mentions hoarding and speculation as additional factors. We're discovering everything is interlinked. If we're not careful as we solve a problem with a supposed solution, the repercussions can come around from behind and bite us in the ass. Most people don't understand concepts like ecology which is what a lot of this is about. The young are catching on and ecology will be a big subject for decades to come. We need to be very smart these days and we need people in Washington who are even smarter and are loyal to the American people more than they are to their campaign donors (who insist that they're worth 300 times the annual average income of Americans instead of 250 or even 299).

Tim F. of Balloon Juice puts things into a larger perspective on the food shortages and price hikes around the world. He discusses the connections to the major problems: oil, climate, greater demand for food, the growing taste for meat in new economies and one of the major canaries in the mine: the collapsing fish stocks worldwide. Here's what he says about the oil connection to rising food prices:

We have hit the point where oil stops being an elastic commodity (e.g., production can be upped to meet demand) and switches to a catch-as-catch can resource. Atrios had a post a few days back about how that shift will necessarily make the price of gas go crazy. We won’t see cheap gas again unless the entire planet stops driving or we find a magic spell that turns CO2, water and soot back into light sweet crude. Since modern agriculture has been described as the process by which petroleum is converted into food (fertilizers, harvesting, packaging, transport and most of the other steps depend on hydrocarbons) that can be a real problem.

Read the whole article; he says much more. If articles like these seem depressing, here's something useful the reader can do for a little peace of mind: buy some seeds for a vegetable garden or, if not that, buy some seeds for three or four potted plants on a balconey. There are things that can be done, even if it's on a small scale.

But we're not done here. Truthout had an article by Marie-Beatrice Baudet a few days ago about six crises that we're facing at the moment and several of them are not likely to improve in the near future. Her take is mildly academic and is tied more to economics than the resource problems that are clearly getting worse but one could read her article as a series of warning signs:

Where will history situate the global crisis - the symptoms of which are simultaneously financial, monetary, economic, environmental, and food- and energy-related - which the planet has been undergoing since mid-2007 and which has accelerated this first half of 2008? What will its amplitude on the Richter scale of economic and social earthquakes be? Stronger than that of the Great Depression of 1929? Similar to that of the 1970s, when, just before the first oil shock of 1973 and the second-half-1974 recession, the scientists, industrialists and economists who founded the Club of Rome in 1968 called for an end to growth in the 1972 Meadows Report in order to avoid the exhaustion of the planet's resources between now and the end of the twenty-first century?

I'm fond of the quick picture that graphs can provide and there are six excellent graphs in the story. One point in the article that is obviously on the mark is that many of the problems we now face are driven by noncooperation among the major governments of the world. Just a few years ago there was much more cooperation in world affairs and the leadership for that cooperation came from the United States. But the last seven years have been a debacle. The arrogant attitude of the current White House is harming Americans and harming the world.

As I said, there are things that can be done. Fighting wars we do not need is not one of those things. Electing officials who look like deer in the headlights while they sit on their hands is also not a solution. Even if we foolishly elect another Republican to the White House, there are things individual Americans can do. And the young are beginning to understand it better than most. We need reform. And we need it soon.

Nuclear Weapons and the Gang That Can't Shoot Straight

A sign of poor judgment in recent years are the number of conservatives who think nuclear weapons ought to be used in war. Not only have Cheney and others talked about using nuclear weapons in such places as Iran (to strike its nonexistant nuclear program) but they appear at times to have also encouraged Israel to act as a proxy. The Bush Administration even tried to start a nuclear bunker buster program and although it was reportedly taken off the table, we have no real proof that some sort of nuclear bunker buster program did not go forward. Given the secrecy of the Bush Administration, this is an issue that has never been satisfactorily resolved.

The real issue is that the Bush Administration has been trying to lower the threshold for using nuclear weapons. To lower the threshold may require removing certain civilian controls. We don't know if that's what has happened, but last year the air force transported what they thought were unarmed missles to Louisiana (see Washington Post story). Today, we learn fuses for nuclear weapons were sent to Taiwan; here's an excerpt from the Los Angeles Times:

Pentagon officials said the material sent to Taiwan consisted of four electrical fuses for the ICBM nose cones. The fuses, used to trigger nuclear weapons, do not contain nuclear material.

But experts on nuclear security said the mistaken transfer showed a serious deterioration in the safeguards and controls that the U.S. military has over its nuclear warheads.

"This is really unbelievable," said Joseph Cirincione, president of the Ploughshares Fund, which advocates reducing the number of nuclear weapons. "If the Russians had shipped triggers to Tehran, we would be going nuts right now."

The gang that can't shoot straight still occupies the White House. We know that former Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, eased rules on special missions using conventional missiles to take out terrorists. One or two of those missions have succeeded. Several, on the other hand, have rained death and terror on wedding ceremonies or family gatherings in Iraq, Afghanistan and the border area of Pakistan in cases of mistaken intelligence. America's 'good guy' image has been severely damaged by such incidents which have involved the killing of women, children and other innocent civilians.

Nuclear weapons, of course, are in an entirely different league and need to be tightly controlled but it is clear that rules regarding nuclear safeguards have broken down. What is not clear is why.

Americans need to think about these issues. Presidential candidate John McCain has talked about staying in Iraq for a hundred years. He has also talked about expanding America's wars (though it's unclear how he's going to pay for them or what advantage these wars offer the American people). McCain also gets confused about al Qaida and Iran. A president following in the footsteps of George W. Bush is not what our country needs.

Bush's Economic Fiasco

Bush's presidency is becoming a spectacular level-five disaster. He denies global warming or tries to ignore it on the days when he acknowledges that it might be true. His environmental policy is a joke. He has no energy policy unless one wants to include the invasion of Iraq. Iraq is a war we did not need but it's making Bush's campaign contributors and friends fairly wealthy. Bush's economic performance has been mediocre at best and has partly depended on playing with various economic indicators. For example, inflation was somewhat low last year because the average price of homes was collapsing (Yes, anything to define 'success').

Bush, of course, has had help from a compliant Republican Congress in his first six years and an obstructionist Repubican bloc in Congress now that the Democrats have been trying to deal with various problems. Then there's Alan Greenspan who has recently lost all credibility despite years of being treated as some kind of economic guru. The current Fed Chairman, Ben Bernanke, is in a deep funk because he knows he screwed up and is a year late in dealing with his screwups. It was his responsibility to keep the president's irrresponsible economic policies from getting out of hand.

The fundamental problem besides corruption, ideological nonsense, privatization, deregulation and a few other examples of greed and stupidity is debt. No one has contributed more to the nation's private and public debt than George W. Bush. First, the president's tax cuts, insane build up of the Pentagon budget and the war in Iraq has burdened Americans with debt for at least a generation or two. Then, there is Bush's hands off attitude toward business which translates all too often into hands off corporate corruption, greed, crime, fraud and general antisocial behavior. During the Bush years, the rule in an administration without rules has been to ignore corporate misbehavior except when business leaders are too stupid to keep their problems off the front pages. Even then, many executives have walked away with a hundred million dollars in the bank.

Bush's friends on Wall Street have done very well for themselves without actually contributing much to the economy. Chris Farrell of Businessweek wonders if the government will hold these Wall Street robber barons accountable; he puts the current situation into perspective (well, not entirely, but we'll get to that further down):

"The Federal Reserve continues to bail out major financial institutions without imposing meaningful conditions to improve their conduct and performance," complains Peter Morici, professor at the Smith Business School at the University of Maryland.

Here's a staggering figure to contemplate: New York City securities industry firms paid out a total of $137 billion in employee bonuses from 2002 to 2007, according to figures compiled by the New York State Office of the Comptroller. Let's break that down: Wall Street honchos earned a bonus of $9.8 billion in 2002, $15.8 billion in 2003, $18.6 billion in 2004, $25.7 billion in 2005, $33.9 billion in 2006, and $33.2 billion in 2007.

Those years were the heyday of the hedge fund pirate, the private equity buccaneer, the 9- and 10-figure-salary quant jock, and other financial creatures who created all kinds of complex securities and highly leveraged transactions....

Many of those complex securities and highly leveraged transactions were crooked as hell. This has created a financial crisis based partly on a very simple fact: a lot of these Wall Street types are no longer trusted to handle other people's money. They have lied and, if they were smart enough to squirrel away their money before the meltdown, they have gotten away with it. At least so far.

Without referring to Wall Street crookedness and administration neglect, Steve Waldman of Interfluidity has a simple analogy to explain the essence of the current crisis:

Alice, Bob, and Sue have ten marbles between them. Whenever one kid wants another kid to take over a chore, she promises a marble in exchange. Alice doesn't like setting the table, so she promises Bob a marble if he will do it for her. Bob hates mowing the lawn, but Sue will do it for a marble. Sue doesn't like broccoli, but if she says pretty please and promises a marble, Bob will eat it off her plate when Mom isn't looking.

One day, the kids get together to brag about all the marbles they soon will have. It turns out that, between them, they are promised 40 marbles! ....

But then Alice, who is smart and foolish all at the same time, points out a curious fact. There are only 10 marbles! Sue says, "That cannot be. I have earned 20 marbles, and I have only promised to give away three! There must be 17 just for me."

But there are still only 10 marbles.

A good part of the problem is that too many people were borrowing money either with little money down on the expectation that real estate would continue to rise (shades of the 1929 crash!) or by using collateral that turned out to be worthless (subprime mortgage derivatives that were given mysterious triple A ratings when they should have gotten ratings reflecting their low and precarious worth). There's the added factor, of course, that overseas money has been pouring into American real estate for years, thus driving up real estate values. But sooner or later, money that isn't really earned has a tendecy to bite back, either through inflation or a major economic stumble. We may be facing both inflation and economic hard times. Not that the last seven years have been particularly bountiful for most Americans.

For twenty-seven years, going back to Reagan's mythological and misremembered presidency, Republicans have been undermining America's economic future with games that favor the few. Those few who are growing wealthier and more powerful have a straightforward set of rules: heads I win, tails you lose. These few are the same clowns who pay for focus groups and political consultants who know how to push people's buttons so that they're too angry to notice they've been bamboozled and manipulated against their own good sense.

John McCain, who admits not knowing much about the economy, may become the next president of the United States. Can we survive four more years of Bush economics?

Even if a Democrat wins, Americans may be facing many adjustments in the next few years to come.

State of the Union: Reality Disconnect

The fantasies of Washington Republicans continue. They cheered Bush at the State of the Union despite the fact that privately they know Bush is a failed president. I listened to Bush's speech and kept looking at my wife asking, "Am I missing something?" Bush gave us an exercise in some sort of alternate reality. It's the president's job to tell us where we are and where we may need to go. All we got was a smirk and rope-a-dope.

Fred Kaplan of Slate puts the spotlight on part of the problem with Bush's last State of the Union speech:

The sad thing about President George W. Bush's final State of the Union address is that he seems to have learned so little about the crises in which he's immersed his nation so deeply.

(snip)

Maybe the president believes that saying something makes it close to true. (Some of his former aides have told me they suspect this is the case.) For instance, toward the end of the address, he said that protecting the nation's security "requires changing the conditions that breed resentment and allow extremists to prey on despair. So America is using its influence to build a freer, more hopeful, and more compassionate world." The first sentence is true, the second encouraging. What's his follow-up—what are some examples of America using its influence to this end? "America is opposing genocide in Sudan," he said. (That's nice. What are we doing?) ....

I listened to Andy Card last night on MSNBC make a pretentious and self-righteous defense of Bush as some kind of idealist. Yeah. Sure. Bush gave us a costly war we didn't need. Wealthy people count on Bush to make them richer without having to work for it. Privatization contracts go to his cronies. Conservative compassion is offered but turns out to be a con to entice the religious right. And our economy is in trouble because deregulation has gone stark raving mad to the point that bankers and investment houses are so uncontrolled that midlevel people are stealing companies blind, sometimes their own and sometimes others, with phony derivatives and shabby unsecured loans while essentially defrauding thousands of homeowners (let's not pretend too hard that high level executives didn't know what was going on as they dig for the $100 million bonuses so freely handed out; it's Enron all over again). There's an effort out there, by the way, to blame homeowners for their bad business judgment but did anyone really expect real estate prices to drop 25% or more in some areas? The real estate bubble was insane and yet an idiot (we know he's an idiot now and not a guru) like Alan Greenspan was unconcerned. Bernake was asleep at the wheel. And Bush? When has he made himself useful in the last seven years?

America is weaker today than we were seven years ago. I don't like saying that but it's the truth. We need new sources of energy. We cannot hand the problems of global warming to future generations when the best solutions, the cheapest solutions, exist now. We cannot act like the bully of the world and expect people to take us seriously when we talk about democracy and human rights. We need to create jobs and we need incentives for American companies that create jobs at home. We do not need to make corporations more powerful and more arrogant than they already are. The problems go on because our country has spent more than a generation believing Republican happy talk that our only problem is high taxes, communists, and now in this era, 'Islamofascists.' Outright gibberish does not lead to greatness.

In the coming decade, confronting the world as it really is, without the fantasies, but with a much healthier respect for what individual Americans can do together, is the only way we're going to move forward. That may sound like a campaign slogan but it was the philosophy that guided our country most of the time in its first two hundred years. It wasn't a perfect philosophy and it wasn't perfectly executed, but it gave us a great deal more year after year than anything Bush and his cronies have done.


***********************************

Campaign Note: I still plan on voting for John Edwards. Maybe he'll be the broker at the convention that makes sure we'll see real change if a Democrat is elected. I still plan on supporting any Democratic nominee. Here's the order of my preferences:

1. John Edwards
2. Barack Obama
3. Christopher Dowd
4. Hillary Clinton

Yeah, I know, Dodd's out of the race. But he's still my third choice. If Hillary wins, I'll support her, but she and Bill will need to mend some fences and prove to us that they're not still the candidates of the 1990s. We are very much in a different era now. If by chance a Republican gets elected president, hunker down. It's going to be a very rough ride.

The Dangerous Games of Bush and Company

I sometimes suspect that President Bush is quietly trying to back away from and clean up the worst of his crimes in an effort to stay out of jail when he leaves office and the records of his tenure are exposed for the next president to see. Who knows? But the signs continue to grow that Bush will go down as the worst president in American history. And the most dishonest.

We already know that Bush and his White House colleagues lied their way into a war with Iraq. There were no weapons of mass destruction despite the claims of Bush and a host of neoconservatives. Other claims about Iraq were also proven false. For two years now, Bush and company, with the paranoid Dick Cheney being the loudest voice, have been making claims about Iran that also turn out—surprise!—to be false. Iran apparently discontinued its barely begun nuclear weapons program back in 2003. Oops.

Now some of the same neoconservative clowns who were screaming for war in Iraq in 2002 and couldn't understand why so many analysts in the CIA and State Department were so reluctant to see weapons of mass destruction that we now know did not exist are now claiming the CIA is again botching the intelligence. If neoconservatives don't hear what they want to hear, they are nevertheless adept at blaming the messenger. Think Progress has the story:

Norman Podhoretz, widely reputed to be the “godfather” of neoconservatism, has been one of the most aggressive hawks clamoring for war with Iran. Podhoretz laid out the “The Case For Bombing Iran” in a June cover story in the right-wing Commentary Magazine. He insisted that the Iranians were very close to developing a nuclear weapon...

(snip)

Yesterday’s NIE proved Podhoretz’s claims were false. Rather than modify his views on Iran, Podhoretz — who was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004 — aired a nasty conspiracy theory yesterday, attacking the authors of the NIE and accusing the intelligence community of deliberately “leaking material calculated to undermine George W. Bush:”

Podhoretz is one of those fellows who insisted Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and that the situation required an American invasion. He has no evidence to back up his current claims about Iran but obviously the CIA is lying. It's a strange world many of these right-wingers live in.

As for Bush and Cheney, how long have they known their claims about Iran have been, to put it politely, somewhat off the mark? Obviously Bush is being less than truthful when he says he didn't know. The president of the United States doesn't know what his own intelligence agencies are saying? Now that's embarrassing, criminal or just plain weird.

Lying, however, is not unknown to Bush and his advisers. Even out of office, Karl Rove still runs interference for his boss. Think Progress has that story too:

With an appearance on Fox News Sunday this weekend and an op-ed in the Financial Times on Sunday, former Bush political adviser (and new Newsweek contributor) Karl Rove has been busy injecting himself into the public discourse this week. Rove drew “a range of protesters” to a speech at Duke University last night, where he claimed “the United States has nothing to apologize in its conduct in the world."

These are the words of a man who led the White House Iraq Group whose purpose it was to sell a war the United States did not need based on justifications that were false. If nothing else, Karl Rove, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush owe an apology to the American people.

Rove only last week claimed that the Bush Administration did not pressure Congress to back him up on Iraq just prior to the 2002 election. A number of Democrats who were in on the discussions and even some Republicans dismiss Rove's fabrication. Rove, of course, is a serial liar and a calculating one at that. He believes that if you lie often enough and loud enough, a fair number of foolish people may believe you. He also noticed a long time ago that the Washington press corps loves controversial lies, even if it is too lazy in this era to correct those lies. Rove's methods certainly worked in the beginning. But most of America has caught on to Karl Rove and the many other lies emanating from the Bush White House.

The election is a year away and it's not certain how the American people will vote. There is a new set of Republican presidential candidates who are just as right-wing as Bush, but several have an advantage over the current president: as wrong as they are for America, three or four of them are a bit more competent than Bush and would quite ably continue the damage that has been done to our nation in the last seven years.


**Personal Note. I haven't posted much lately because of a large and very interesting editing project I've been working on. I will try to do better.

Bush and Neocons Still Obsessed with Iran

The most dangerous development in the last few months has been the failure of Congress to hold President Bush accountable; given Bush's litany of failures, it's also been alarming that Congress has been unable, once and for all, to rein in his reckless behavior. I'm perfectly aware of the slim majority that Democrats hold and how counterproductive the obstructionist behavior of even the more reasonable Republicans can be; and yet, while there's a realistic limit on what Democrats can do, there's no doubt in my mind that much more can be done and would be done by the majority of Democrats. Unfortunately, weathervane Democrats, like Senator Schumer, talk a good game but seem to believe it's more important to lay low and play safe until the 2008 elections. I don't know what's going to happen between now and January 2009, but it's time to restore some sanity to our nation before the compound blunders of the Bush Administration do more damage to our nation than they already have.

More than likely, the war in Iraq is going to blunder along until next year when possibly Bush will reduce troop numbers in Iraq to help Republicans in the elections. But this is not Bush's only option. Major military action against Iran remains on the table if Bush feels he can get away with it.

Truthout has an important and powerful article by Scott Ritter, the former American arms inspector who knew a long time ago that Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction and was no imminent threat to the United States. It is still a fact that our war in Iraq was fraudelently sold to the American people and that fact has still not been dealt with by the legal mechanisms of Congress (and may never be, which shows the dangerous state of our nation). Read the whole article but I offer this excerpt:

...This, of course, brings us back full circle to the immediate period after the attack in [the Iraqi city of] Karbala, when U.S. military sources speculated that such an attack had to have been planned by Iran given its complexity. Nothing else is directly attributed to [the Lebanese Hezbollah member Ali Musa] Daqduq, leaving open the question of sourcing and authenticity of the information being cited by the U.S. military.

From speculation to speculation, the case against the [Iranian] Quds Force by the Bush administration continues to lack anything in the way of substance. And yet the mythological Daqduq has become a launching platform for even graver speculation, fed by the media themselves, that the highest levels of leadership in Iran were aware of the activities of Daqduq and the Quds Force, and are thus somehow complicit in the violence. Not one shred of evidence was produced to sustain such serious accusations, and yet national media outlets such as The New York Times and The Washington Post both ran stories repeating these accusations. ....

(snip)

.... Unlike the lack of evidence brought to bear by the U.S. to sustain its claims of Iranian involvement inside Iraq, the Iranian government has captured scores of MEK and Jundallah operatives, along with supporting documents, which substantiate that which the U.S. openly admits: The United States is waging a proxy war against Iran, inside Iran. This mirror imaging of its own terror campaign against Iran to manufacture the perception of a similar effort being waged by Iran inside Iraq against the U.S. has been very effective at negating any Iranian effort to draw attention to the escalation of war-like activities inside its borders. After all, who would believe the Iranians? They are only trying to divert attention away from their own actions inside Iraq, or so the story goes.

(snip)

Continued war in Iraq is a tragedy. Having the conflict spread to Iran would be a disaster. No one can claim to possess a crystal ball showing the future. There are many who, when confronted with the potential for conflict with Iran, choose to brush these warnings aside, noting that such a conflict would be madness, and that the United States currently lacks the resources to fight a war with Iran. Such wishful thinking borders on irresponsible foolishness. If the headlines from this month tell us anything, it is that war with Iran is very much a possibility. The Bush administration has been actively planning war with Iran since the fall of 2004. Since that time, several windows of opportunity have presented themselves (most recently in spring 2007), but the Bush administration found itself unable to pull the trigger for one reason or another (the Navy's rejection of the presence of a third carrier battle group in the Persian Gulf scuttled the spring 2007 plans).

The administration always heeded the justifications for aborting an attack, primarily because there was time still left on the clock, so to speak. But time is running out. Israel has drawn a red line across the calendar, indicating that if Iran has not pulled back from its nuclear ambitions by the end of 2007, military action in early spring 2008 will be inevitable. The attack on Syria by Israel sent a clear message that attacks are feasible. The continued emphasis by the Bush administration on Iran as a terror state, combined with the fact that the administration seems inclined to blame its continuing problems in Iraq on Iran, and not failed policy, means that there is no shortage of fuel to stoke the fire of public opinion regarding war with Iran. Add in the "reality" of weapons of mass destruction, and war becomes inevitable, regardless of the veracity of the "reality" being presented.

The antiwar movement in America must make a strategic decision, and soon: Contain the war in Iraq, and stop a war from breaking out in Iran. The war in Iraq can be contained simply by letting war be war. There is no genuine good news coming out of Iraq. There won't be as long as the United States is there. As callous as it sounds, let the war establish the news cycle, and let the reality of war serve to contain it. The surge has failed. Congress may not act decisively to bring the troops home, but it is highly unlikely that Congress will idly approve any massive expansion of an unpopular war that continues to fail so publicly.

Iran, however, is a different matter. Congress has already provided legal authority for the president to wage war in Iran through its existing war powers authority (one resolution passed in 2001, the other in 2002). Likewise, Congress has allowed the Bush administration to forward deploy the infrastructure of war deep into the Middle East and neighboring regions, all in the name of the "global war on terror." The startup costs for a military strike against Iran would therefore be greatly diminished. Sustaining such a conflict is a different matter, but given current congressional reticence to stand up to a war-time president, it is highly unlikely any meaningful action would be taken to stop an Iranian war once the bombs start falling. And we should never forget that Iran has a vote in how this would end; once it is attacked, Iran will respond in ways that are unpredictable, and as such set in motion a string of cause-effect military actions with the United States and others that spins any future conflict out of control.

The highest priority for the antiwar movement in America today must be the prevention of a war with Iran. ...

We are already engaging in military activity against Iran. The level of our activity in Iran would provoke war in many places around the world. Because of the size of our military strength, the Iranians have shown restraint but there should be no doubt that any country, including the Iranians, would have a line in the sand that will lead to war if any particular nation, including ourselves, cross that line.

The Iraqis fought us when we invaded their country and they have less than half the population of Iran. Already, we have no clear purpose for being in Iraq except perhaps to clean up Bush's mess. Once again, if Bush and Cheney can get away with it, their possible attack on Iran would also have no particular purpose, at least in terms consistent with our history and democracy. It will be a disgrace if Bush leaves the White House while handing three wars to his successor. The war in Afghanistan, which should have been finished a long time ago, is now beginning it's seventh year.

One should note that the existence and possible progress of the Iran nuclear weapons program is far from proven and Iran may in fact be more or less in compliance with international law ('more or less' is the reality but also the wriggle room that right wingers seem anxious to use to justify war; just about every nation that has nuclear power (or nuclear weapons) can fall under the ambiguity of 'more or less' when it comes to adherence to the rules that govern such situations (the recent 'accident' that allowed armed nuclear weapons to be mistakenly transported by air to Louisiana were clearly a violation of US rules but they may also have been a violation of international rules as well). The neocons have not been straight with the American people on why we're in Iraq and they're clearly not being straight with us about their promotion of a war with Iran. Scott Ritter is right. The critical issue at this time is Iran.

One last note. This is unconfirmed and I wish I knew someone who could confirm the story or put it to rest; apparently there was a woman who called in to the Ed Schultz radio program and mentioned that there was considerable increased activity at Moffett's Field, located south of San Francisco. If true, we may be seeing an alarming buildup of supplies reserved for a potential conflict with Iran (though I should add that Ritter happens to point out that most materiel that might be used against Iran is already in the Middle East). Moffett Field in recent years has developed multiple uses but is still used by the military. In the fall of 1990, my wife and I were living in the Santa Cruz mountains about fifteen miles west of Moffett Field and watched dozens of planes at night, one after another, as they carried supplies to the Middle East for the buildup for the Gulf War. The woman who called in said there was similar activity at Moffett Field in the months before the current war in Iraq. Something may be afoot.

Republicans Get Shrill As Their Party Implodes

As some readers know, I grew up in and around Orange County, California. The hysteria over the visit by the president of Iran is similar to the hysteria at the time over Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev's visit to the US just a year or two before the Cuban Missile Crisis. In Orange County, the John Birchers led the way in protesting the visit by Khrushchev to the United States and claimed victory when Khrushchev was unable to visit Disneyland. Khrushchev, of course, was his own public relations nightmare just as Ahmadinejad is. The Iranian president is clueless about history and the effect of his words on the public. In foreign policy, however, letting idiots speak in public can have the effect of defanging them. Suppressing them is more likely to make heroes of them and to make hypocrites of America's long-standing support of diplomacy and dialogue.

I mention Khrushchev because there are some weird historical parallels. In the early 1960s, the John Birchers and other right wingers liked to spout the nonsense: better dead than red. There seemed to be a fear of the Soviet Union far out of proportion to the reality; that fear ignored the considerable strength of the United States. The Soviet Union was a dangerous foe, far more dangerous in fact than Iran, but it is fortunate at the time than right wing conservatives did not dominate our government.

During the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a real danger of nuclear war and there were calls from the far right, if you'll pardon the expression, to bring it on. President Kennedy, in fact, had a couple of advisers advocate action that would likely have led quickly to such a war. Cooler heads prevailed, the Cuban Missile Crisis was resolved, and Kennedy later eased out the hot heads. In the end, despite a number of mistakes, including Vietnam, the United States won the Cold War, largely because there existed for most of that period a bipartisan policy on dealing with the Soviet Union.

Iran would not do well if there was a war with the United States. But given how overextended our own military is, given the high price of oil, given our own credit crunch caused by Bush's dismal economic policies and given the growing impatience of the world with Bush's wars, the damage to the United States would be considerable. In the war with Iraq, we are doing nothing more at this point than cleaning up Bush's two trillion dollar folly. Potentially, in a war with Iran, we risk losing a great deal. Potentially, we could knock Iran back into the stone age but it will not be a three-day war or a seven-day war or, like the Israel's war with Hezbollah, a summer campaign, or anything of the sort despite nonsense coming out of neoconservative think tanks. There will be more killing and casualties on all sides. People will be killed who today are not at war with us. The price of oil will soar out of sight. Inflation, always the bane of war, will begin to bite. The value of the dollar will continue to fall and we'll begin to find it difficult to acquire essential goods and resources that are no longer made or found in our country. And the Middle East will erupt, not because we have left, but because we will be insisting on staying. And the same incompetent gang will be in charge at the White House.

Bush's unending fiasco in Iraq has created a strange and dangerous situation. Right wingers sometimes refuse to pack it in when their more boneheaded ideas explode in their faces. I believe a risk of war with Iran still exists but only under one condition: if Bush and his right wing colleagues think they can get away with it. Hence, the environment is getting very shrill. It is up to Congress and the American people to head off any war with Iran that may be instigated by the right wingers. Americans should also keep in mind that this would be another war that Bush would start and not finish.

It is unfortunate but there is a real possibility that the future of our country is now in the hands of a few Republicans in the Senate and House who must decide whether to join the Democrats in a return to sanity or join wholeheartedly the right wingers who would lead our country to the abyss. In times of crisis, it's those with cooler heads that lead the way back to sanity, not the shrill voices of either the right or left. Even America's business community better think long and hard about the consequences of a war with Iran: such a war would not be good for business. India stopped short of a potential war with Pakistan when its business community spoke up. That's an important lesson to remember.

It's time for a lot of people to speak up. But firmly. And without fear.

Iran and Iraq: Reality Check Update

The possibility of a military attack against Iran seems to be on the table again despite many experts who agree it would be a strategic blunder. After nearly five years, it is still an effort to get it into the heads of the mainstream media that Iraq itself was a strategic blunder . One could qualify that statement by saying the Iraq fiasco was a strategic blunder made worse by ineptitude. But at this late date it is sheer stubbornness to say it was only ineptitude that was the problem (and let the media please stop pretending that the war in Iraq had anything to do with the war on terror or 9/11 and acknowledge how ridiculously convoluted neocon arguments have been about Iraq for ten years).

We have a right-wing president with the classic flaws of a reactionary: stubbornness, an inflated sense of one's abilities (or intuition) and a tendency to respond to failure by blaming others and demanding more power. President Bush may also be looking at his lame duck status as an excuse to do as he pleases. A military attack on Iran would still be an uphill battle for Bush and Cheney to pull off but the seriousness of such a blunder requires once again watching Cheney and Bush closely.

Steve Clemons of The Washington Note has a post on the renewed possibility of a strike against Iran. What I get out of his quick though thoughtful asssessment is a sobering view of a White House that continues to be largely clueless about the president's failed foreign policy and the dangers his policies pose to our economy and our national security. At this late date, given all that we know, why is President Bush and Vice President Cheney still taken seriously? And why are so many neocons, in general, still signing off on policies that make no sense? In industry, when people utter nonsense to the media, it's usually a sign those same people are receiving large sums of money from somewhere. Is this the problem? If so, who is the source of that money? I don't know the answer.

In another post, Clemons also talks about Ken Adelman, a neocon whose ideas have done much damage to our country but who seems to be rethinking some of his positions in retrospect and in reference to Iran; here's part of an interview Clemons quoted:

MORTMAN: Should we invade Iran?

ADELMAN: I would not use the military in Iran. I would squeeze the sanctions as hard as we can. I would go to the Saudis and the Persian Gulf countries, and have them pressure the Europeans, saying they just have to crack down. I don't think the Bush Administration has done anything with the Saudis that's worthwhile.

MORTMAN: Your thoughts on the presidential race?

ADELMAN: I've been disappointed. It seems that there are no new ideas coming out of the presidential race. 1980 we had the Reagan Doctrine, supply side economics, SDI -- all these were ideas, they were new ideas. I haven't heard anything new from either side. I'm disappointed.

MORTMAN: Your thoughts on the Bush legacy?

ADELMAN: Bush is a person who had good ideas but could not implement them. The first MBA president was the worst administrative leader, the most un-MBA-ish president. He didn't set goals, he didn't hold people accountable. He just engaged in happy talk. He thought words were all people needed, instead of a realistic approach. A failed presidency based on that.

Adelman makes a couple of useful points but he is still very much behind the curve. The notion that Bush 'had good ideas' is a bit ludicrous. Bush had little interest in foreign policy until somewhere around late 1998 when he started considering a presidential run and received tutorials from various neocons and others (if he listened to these 'experts' the way he apparently listens to other experts, it's unclear what exactly he absorbed). The agenda of the neocons was never very clear to me and I doubt they were ever really willing to explain their agenda to the American people but, neverthess, I suspect the neocons were largely used by the Bush inner circle who were even less forthright when it came to explaining their real objectives. It's unacceptable at this late date to believe that democracy was ever high on the agenda for the likes of Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney or Karl Rove.

In the end, Bush and Cheney's foreign policy is hardly distinguishable from the kind of reactionary nonsense that was pushed by the John Birch Society back in the 50s and 60s during the Cold War. It's worth remembering that the John Birchers considered Chiang Kai Shek a 'democratic leader.' Chiang was about as democratic as Franco or Mussolini. Absent the Soviets, a vaguely defined threat from the Middle East was used by today's Republicans to justify a long series of foreign policy nonsense. It's become obvious that 9/11 was used to justify poorly considered ideas that were already in the cooker when Bush became president.

Most Democrats in Congress understand the Bush problem but it's not certain that they have the votes despite a slim majority. It would behoove Republicans and the small number of Democrats overly impressed with the Bush's foreign policy to look long and hard at the consequences of an attack on Iran. The shakiness of Wall Street in recent weeks and the fact that its shakiness may well be a function of bad Republican economic policies over the last twenty-six years, is a sign, in my view, that it's time for our country to grasp the terms of the 21st century and start moving in a different direction.

Congress must get its act together. Failing that, the American voters need to send people to Washington willing to tackle reality rather than embracing reactionary fantasies. The United States is slipping. In the end, only the voters can save this country. For the moment, the Democrats remain the best bet, if the best candidates can be found. But the future still comes down to the American people and whether they are willing to engage the future and reform a Washington clearly dominated by a right wing machine that is adept at public relations and very short on everything else.

Some Thoughts on Impeachment

One of the disturbing things about Bush's lawyers is the irritating habit they have of combing through history to look for precedents to justify the president's and vice president's actions. Of course, some of the precedents that Bush's lawyers use were made unlawful a long time ago and in other cases they have to do some fancy topological pretzel-twisting to make their precendents fit the current era, but that doesn't seem to stop them. And it's disturbing that there are so many people in the media that take the Bush Administration's convoluted arguments seriously. So everything I say about impeachment should be taken with a grain of salt. In fact, we are, as a nation, in very dangerous, uncharted territory.

We as a nation do not like to see our laws broken, even by very powerful politicians. In particular, we do not like to see anyone set themselves above the law. But the tools for holding the president and vice president accountable to the American people are damaged. Most of those tools ultimately require the cooperation of the Bush Administration in one way or another. In the past, there were enough officials with integrity to see to it that the law was observed to its fullest. When President Nixon tried to sabotage the investigation of his White House, there was enough integrity in the Justice Department and enough pressure from both parties in Congress to resist Nixon and to continue the investigations, but it was a near thing at the time.

There are other legal alternatives (see John Dean's latest article) that do not require relying on Bush's Justice Department but the means of accountability mentioned the most often in recent months is impeachment. But impeachment carries a bad taste these days because of its association with political motivations, Congressional grandstanding and even vengeance. We are in uncharted waters and there aren't many places to look for leadership on the issue of accountability. But there are some if one cares to look around and think about these things. Two who come to mind, at least in terms of discussing impeachment, democracy, and the law, are John Dean and Bill Moyers. Crooks and Liars has a video on a Moyers' discussion of impeachment; below the video is a quick summary that quickly gets to the issue that concerns so many of us:

In this clip PBS’ Bill Moyers sits down with The Nation’s John Nichols and conservative constitutional attorney Bruce Fein from the American Freedom Agenda to discuss the crimes and abuse of power by George Bush and Dick Cheney and the need to impeach them both. While Nichols and Fein come from different ends of the political spectrum, they are in total agreement on this issue. Congress must put impeachment on the table because if they do nothing to stop Bush and Cheney now, we will see future presidents follow in their footsteps which would be a disaster for our country.

Maybe our next president will undo much of the damage that Bush and Cheney have done. But in 2012 or 2016, if we allow the nonsense of the last six years to go unchallenged, we could elect a resentful Republican or an over-zealous Democrat who might dangerously take things further than Bush and Cheney. It's not an abstraction. These kind of things have happened in other countries.

I don't know if impeachment is going to happen or not. I don't even know if it's wise for the Democrats to pursue impeachment in terms of what may happen in November 2008—and that has to be a consideration because if Congress is returned to the Republicans without the Republicans reforming themselves, we can only expect more trouble. The Republican Noise machine is alive and well and an impeachment proceeding might be just the thing to rejuvenate sympathy for Bush, Cheney and the Republicans. On some serious abuses of the US Constitution and violations by the Bush Administration, the mainstream media has been irresponsibly slow to acknowledge what is happening and the media stars, in particular, have often done a poor job of informing themselves. Clearly, there are obstacles. But, if it's possible to do impeachment proceedings right, it would be the responsible thing to do.

Impeachment, however, would not be easy to pull off. It's up to the House to indict or impeach a government official and that requires a simple majority. To convict a government official (and thereby remove that official from office), however, would require two-thirds of the Senate. The Senate is where the key problem would be. Even if the Democrats can get all their members and two independents to go along with conviction, it's very difficult to imagine getting 17 Republicans to vote for conviction. These are not the Republicans of thirty years ago. Republicans in the Senate had six years to hold Bush and Cheney accountable when they had the majority but they refused to do so. It would have taken only a dozen or so joining the Democratic minority to hold the president and vice president accountable simply in terms of legislation and oversight; but a dozen responsible and courageous Republicans could not be found. Political courage, in fact, is not in abundance in either party these days.

I'm in sympathy with people pushing for impeachment and it's clear the momentum for impeachment, in fact, is going to have to come from the people. I know when she first became Speaker of the House that Nancy Pelosi said impeachment is not on the table, but we've been learning a lot since then. It heartens me that Senator Barbara Boxer said recently that impeachment, in fact, is on the table. That doesn't mean it will happen.

One thing to keep in mind is that the Bush Administration has had plenty of time in the last six years to cover its tracks. Even when Democrats knew something was going very wrong over at the White House, they didn't have the authority and the power to gather real information and real evidence with the subpoena and oversight powers needed to properly gather the needed material. The Republicans in Congress did everything they could to impede and obstruct investigations and oversight, both traditional and perfectly normal functions of Congress. Give a couple of criminals four or five years to cover up their crimes, as the Congressional Republicans appear to have done, and they just may get away with it, particularly if they have a rather large retinue of lawyers. And there's another issue involving the duties of Congress. Clearly, the Bush Administration has broken any number of specific laws, including those involving habeas corpus and domestic surveillance. But again, without the kind of Congressional hearings that can clearly explain to the public what the problem is and why these things matter, it is difficult to pursue these issues along lines of impeachment (and in the current environment, we can't necessarily expect much clarification from the media). If impeachment is to take place in the next six to eight months, there's a lot of ground to cover. The public, at long last, knows something is very wrong with the Bush Administration but articulating what is wrong is going to take some doing even at this late date. And just because the public is having difficulty trusting Bush and Cheney, that does not mean the public will trust those bringing impeachment proceeding against the president and vice president.

I've been browsing some discussions on impeachment that one can find on blogs. Keep in mind that I fully believe the president and vice president are liars, that they launched a campaign of deliberate deception and that they lied their way into a war in Iraq, a war we did not need, a war, in fact, that seems to have no particular purpose (at least one that Bush will admit) after four years of White House recklessness and incompetence. If the evidence can be found and presented, the campaign of deliberate deception is clearly the most impeachable offense. But there's the catch. I suspect finding concrete evidence of deliberate deception is not as easy as it sounds (the Nixon tapes, for example, were vitally important as far as evidence that the public could understand and accept). I have spent probably hundreds of hours poring over various materials and there's no question in my mind that the president and vice president actively deceived the American people. But there's very little that is concrete. No matter what issue is used to bring charges against Bush and Cheney, impeachment will require more concrete and understandable evidence that we have seen so far.

Dennis Kucinich has offered documentation for the impeachment of Cheney but much of the 'evidence' consists of press briefing transcripts. Impeachment will require much stronger material than that. Being wrong is not impeachable. Being incompetent is not impeachable. I worry that all Bush and Cheney need to do when it comes to the deceptive statements they made about Iraq is say that it's what they believed at the time, and that in 'their judgment,' what they said was reasonably true. Even Cheney's aggressive assertions of things he supposedly knew with certainty would require nothing more than a simple apology from Cheney to get him off the hook (one of the reasons the impeachment of Clinton was such a fiasco is that once Clinton apologized for his perjury, the impeachment proceeding had no real justification). Impeachment proceedings are going to require powerful evidence and very coherent arguments. And above all else, the proceeding have to be convincing to a majority of Americans. If impeachment is to succeed, there's a great deal of work to do.

I hope to say more on this in the coming weeks. My blogging time is limited these days but I think about these things all the time and there's a great deal more to discuss.

Two Americas, Two Systems of Justice

George W. Bush just commutted Scooter Libby's sentence. There is one set of rules for powerful or wealthy Republicans and another set of rules for the rest of us. If Americans continue to put up with this, we lose our democracy and we lose our greatness.

President Bush is illegally using the government to increase the power of the Republican Party. He has started a war based on lies. He has broken treaties and laws. Bush and Cheney have flouted the US C0nstitution. Every Republican senator who continues to back George W. Bush is responsible for the disaster that is this presidency. Bush must be held accountable or precendence will be established for any number of undemocratic and authoritarian behavior by any future president regardless of whether they are Republican or Democrat.

Congress can restore order. Only a large number of obstructionist Republican senators are preventing the return to sanity. Democrats and and a handful of Republicans are making progress but Americans need to speak up loud and clear.

Jules Witcover on George W. Bush

Veteran reporter, Jules Witcover, is, among other things, a student of the Nixon era and was one of the first to notice the Nixonian qualities of Bush and his inner circle, particularly Cheney and Rumsfeld. Recently he wrote a book on the strange relationship between Spiro Agnew and Richard Nixon; here's a review from Charles Trueheart of Bloomberg:

What neither Nixon nor Agnew could have imagined, as Jules Witcover tells us in his highly readable new account, ``Very Strange Bedfellows,'' is that within five years the two would become ``the only case in American political history of back-to- back political suicides of a vice president and the president under whom he served.''

Witcover is a seasoned political columnist who has been fascinated by the bizarre Agnew case from the outset. The tale remains engrossing to this day. He's especially keen-eyed about the lack of chemistry between the two men, who didn't know each other before and, thanks to Nixon's pathological discomfort with his fellow human beings, never got past formalities.

Yet somehow Agnew, an intellectual and political pipsqueak, appealed to Nixon's insecurities. ``[Nixon] seemed to question his own manliness and was overly impressed by big, handsome, and commanding males, almost to the point of envy for their presence, their confidence, and their easy assertiveness,'' Witcover says.

To be honest, the above sounds more like Blair's relationship to Bush; Tony Blair was more than happy to have President Bush's star power rub off on him. But Bush has real insecurities like Nixon did, though they are of a different type and have more to do with a fundamental lack of ability to understand the world or the purpose of government; Bush often uses P.R. to cover up his inadequacies but he also is obsessed with political gamemanship and executive power in exactly the same way as Nixon was. And Bush's relationship with his father is as strange and neurotic as anything we ever saw with Nixon. Without the senior Bush, junior would never have been president and deep down he knows it. And his staff knows it and are often behind the pathetic comparisons of Bush to other presidents and even to Winston Churchill.

I'm glad to see Jules Witcover doing well. He was one of those reporters early on who criticized President Bush as well as his war in Iraq. He had a regular column in the Baltimore Sun but apparently was let go during budget cuts; one suspects the political hysteria of four years ago might have had something to do with Witcover losing his column and job.

As the failure of the Bush presidency becomes more apparent, it seems we're hearing a little more reality in our newspapers these days; the print media, as is often the case, are considerable ahead of the TV news, particularly the cable guys. Truthout has a recent New York Times column by Jules Witcover on Bush and the challenges facing the next president:

More than three decades ago, Nixon White House Counsel John Dean called the Watergate cover-up "a cancer on the presidency." Another one exists today, posing a challenge for the next president to restore the office as a credible voice in foreign policy.

President Bush's detour in Iraq off the multilateral track adhered to throughout the Cold War years has caused a deep drop in American prestige abroad, requiring extensive repair by his successor regardless of which party wins in 2008.

While Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq has been the immediate trigger for the decline of American influence, just as significant was his original failure to capitalize on the terrorist attacks of 9/11 to mobilize a truly collective global response.

Jules Witcover is nobody's network poodle earning seven figures; he's a pro. Give him a read.