The NY TIMES Sees it as I Do

December 30, 2004
EDITORIAL
Are We Stingy? Yes

President Bush finally roused himself yesterday from his vacation in Crawford, Tex., to telephone his sympathy to the leaders of India, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Indonesia, and to speak publicly about the devastation of Sunday's tsunamis in Asia. He also hurried to put as much distance as possible between himself and America's initial measly aid offer of $15 million, and he took issue with an earlier statement by the United Nations' emergency relief coordinator, Jan Egeland, who had called the overall aid efforts by rich Western nations "stingy." "The person who made that statement was very misguided and ill informed," the president said.

We beg to differ. Mr. Egeland was right on target. We hope Secretary of State Colin Powell was privately embarrassed when, two days into a catastrophic disaster that hit 12 of the world's poorer countries and will cost billions of dollars to meliorate, he held a press conference to say that America, the world's richest nation, would contribute $15 million. That's less than half of what Republicans plan to spend on the Bush inaugural festivities.

The American aid figure for the current disaster is now $35 million, and we applaud Mr. Bush's turnaround. But $35 million remains a miserly drop in the bucket, and is in keeping with the pitiful amount of the United States budget that we allocate for nonmilitary foreign aid. According to a poll, most Americans believe the United States spends 24 percent of its budget on aid to poor countries; it actually spends well under a quarter of 1 percent.

Bush administration officials help create that perception gap. Fuming at the charge of stinginess, Mr. Powell pointed to disaster relief and said the United States "has given more aid in the last four years than any other nation or combination of nations in the world." But for development aid, America gave $16.2 billion in 2003; the European Union gave $37.1 billion. In 2002, those numbers were $13.2 billion for America, and $29.9 billion for Europe.

Making things worse, we often pledge more money than we actually deliver. Victims of the earthquake in Bam, Iran, a year ago are still living in tents because aid, including ours, has not materialized in the amounts pledged. And back in 2002, Mr. Bush announced his Millennium Challenge account to give African countries development assistance of up to $5 billion a year, but the account has yet to disperse a single dollar.

Mr. Bush said yesterday that the $35 million we've now pledged "is only the beginning" of the United States' recovery effort. Let's hope that is true, and that this time, our actions will match our promises.

Bravo NY Times for having the balls to speak the truth! And while we're at it, does Colin Powell know no limit to how low he will grovel to Bush, even at this late date? How could he look the world in the eye and get indignant about our pathetic reaction?

I Am Ashamed to be an American

When 3,000 Americans died in the attacks of 9/11/01, there was an outpouring of sympathy, and outrage, and support from all over the world. By sunset of that terrible day, there was probably not a single nation that failed to weigh in with expressions of horror and solidarity.

When probably hundreds of thousands of human beings died and perhaps millions were displaced in an unspeakable horror, the President of the United States, the leader of the free world, the spokesman for all Americans cleared brush and rode his bicycle on his ranch, not showing his face or saying a word for three days.

German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder rushed back to Berlin from his vacation to address the disaster. The only American voice heard was that of Bill Clinton who expressed horror and appealed for international relief on the BBC. The administration's response was to trash Clinton.

Explaining the about-face, a White House official said: "The president wanted to be fully briefed on our efforts. He didn't want to make a symbolic statement about 'We feel your pain.' [Washington Post]"

"Actions speak louder than words," a top Bush aide said, describing the president's view of his appropriate role.

So true! And what action spoke louder than Bush's absence of words? The Americans pledged $15 million! 15 million dollars! Bush is probably going to spend more than that on his inauguration. He then reacted indignantly when the United Nations called America stingy. What else can one call it? In a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, $15 million? This is America? I am ashamed.

There was an international outpouring of support after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, and even some administration officials familiar with relief efforts said they were surprised that Bush had not appeared personally to comment on the tsunami tragedy. "It's kind of freaky," a senior career official said.

These are Bush's true colors.

But here's the real tragedy. Indonesia is the largest Islamic nation in the world, and one of the hardest hit. What better way to show to the Islamic world, to show to the entire world, that America is a nation of compassion and of caring, and not a selfish, resource-gobbling, exploiting, war mongering people?

Why are we hated in the world, Mr. Bush? Because they hate us for our freedoms, as you so cynically love to say? No. Because of your inexcusable treatment of the rest of the world. You are the ugliest of ugly Americans. Your contempt for your own people is exceeded only by your contempt for the people of the rest of the world.

Instead of all the propoganda efforts, instead of all the infiltration and espionage, instead of all the disinformation campaigns, you should be leading the world in the effort to help these poor people.

You call yourself a Christian, Mr. Bush? Shame on you.

All are urged to read this story. See who you elected to lead us and lead the world.

Magnificent Poetry

And through the window in the wall
Comes streaming in on sunlight wings
A million bright ambassadors of morning

Anyone care to identify that sublime snippet?


An equally beautiful evocation of an almost identical image:

...And the sun poured in like butterscotch and stuck to all my senses

I'm sure you all know that one.

How the fuck would he know?

"It takes over your mind."

Senator Orrin Hatch, in The Washington Times, speaking about pornography, 12.20.04


Well, now that I think about it, it DID take over the mind of the best man available to be a Supreme Court justice when little Georgie's daddy nominated Clarence Thomas. It must have taken over Orrin's mind too.That must be why he destroyed the reputation of Anita Hill in order to save the ass of Mr. Justice Monkey Spanker. Not that there's anything wrong with being a pervert. As long as you cop to it, rather than smearing an innocent person who stepped forward to do right by her country, giving them the information they needed to make an informed judgement as to whether they wanted a sexual harrasser on the Court, right Clarence?

How DID your wife feel about your porn jones and your repeated clumsy attempts to bed Ms. Hill? ("How did this pubic hair get on my Coke can?" Jesus Christ, why didn't I ever try that line when I tried to bag babes?)

FULL DISCLOURE: I, like most American males, (even you Christian choirboys) have a porn monkey on my back. My life is all the richer for it. God bless porn. And when I'm nominated for Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, I will proudly admit it to Mr. Hatch and the Senate Judiciary Committee.

How much influence peddling money do you take from porn purveyors like your good friend Rupert Murdoch, Orrin? I'll bet he shtups you good.

[POSTSCRIPT: Well wouldja look at this:

Contributor
MURDOCH, KEITH RUPERT
WASHINGTON, DC 20001
NEWS CORPORATION
Recipient:
HATCH, ORRIN G (R)
Senate - UT
HATCH ELECTION COMMITTEE INC $1,000
primary 09/29/98]

Stale

There's nothing more stale than Christmas music the day after Christmas.

Merry Christmas

washingtonpost.com

The True Values of The Day

By E. J. Dionne Jr.

Friday, December 24, 2004; Page A17

No one can celebrate a genuine Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who, because they have everything, look down on others, those who have no need even of God -- for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God-with-us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.

-- the late Archbishop Oscar

Romero of El Salvador

This is supposed to be the year when moral values dominated politics. On the eve of Christmas, let's talk about values.

In any given city this Christmas, homeless people will not be looking forward to opening presents. They will be lucky to have a place to go at all. They will, by Archbishop Romero's radical and demanding definition, be the true participants in Christmas. But it's unlikely that the rest of us will think much about them. Isn't that a question of values?

Unemployed parents who love their children as much as the rest of us love ours won't have the same chance to show them materially the love they feel in their hearts. God willing, their kids will understand. But some kids, watching other kids in the television ads, might wonder: Why can those parents give their kids all that stuff that my parents can't give me? Isn't that a question of values?

In the fall, I got the chance to moderate a post-election panel at Fordham University's Center on Religion and Culture in New York. Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska noted that on Jan. 1, the quotas protecting what's left of the U.S. textile and apparel industry will end. "Over a 12-month period," he said, "three or four million jobs that are currently paying $8 to $10 an hour are going bye-bye unless those jobs are protected.

"Now, I hazard to guess that most of those individuals will move into the ranks of poverty," Kerrey went on. "They'll move to minimum-wage jobs, which is 20 or 30 percent under poverty today. . . . If it's a young woman who gets pregnant and says, 'I don't have health insurance anymore. I can't -- it's expensive to raise a baby right today' -- that they're more likely to choose an abortion even if Bush appoints anti-Roe v. Wade justices that overturn it, because they're going to make what I consider to be a tragic choice out of economic necessity."

Whatever you think of abortion or, for that matter, free trade, who can argue with Kerrey's central assertion: that the abortion rate is more likely to go up when economic opportunities for the poor are curtailed? (As Mark W. Roche of Notre Dame noted in the New York Times this fall, the abortion rate dropped by 11 percent during the prosperous years of the Clinton presidency.) Shouldn't all who care about abortion be passionately committed to changing the economic circumstances in which women make their choices? Isn't that a question of values?

In many parts of our country, parents who lack health insurance are wondering if they will be around for their children next Christmas. A mother has a lump on her breast and worries about the cost of having it checked out. A father has chronic chest pains but decides that seeing a cardiologist would be too expensive. They ought to get help. Isn't that a question of values?

In Iraq, young men and women serving their country complain of equipment shortages and wonder why their leaders didn't send enough troops in the first place. Could it be that acknowledging the true cost of the Iraqi invasion at the outset might have endangered all those tax cuts -- and might have reduced support for the war? Isn't that a question of values?

Archbishop Romero was murdered on March 24, 1980, because he chose to stand with El Salvador's poor against a repressive regime. "Brothers, you came from our own people," Romero told soldiers in El Salvador's army. "You are killing your own brothers. . . . In the name of God, in the name of this suffering people whose cry rises to heaven more loudly each day, I implore you, I beg you, I order you: Stop the repression."

How many among the cardinals and bishops and pastors and preachers and televangelists who now enjoy favor in high places would have the courage to do what Archbishop Romero did? In fairness, how many of the rest of us would? Isn't that a question of values?

A child was born in a manger because there was no room for his family anywhere else. Wasn't that a question of values?

postchat@aol.com

Bob Herbert

December 24, 2004
NY TIMES OP-ED COLUMNIST
Families Pay the Price
By BOB HERBERT

"It's like watching your son playing in traffic, and there's nothing you can do." - Janet Bellows, mother of a soldier who has been assigned to a second tour in Iraq.

Back in the 1960's, when it seemed as if every other draftee in the Army was being sent to Vietnam, I was sent off to Korea, where I was assigned to the intelligence office of an engineer battalion.

Twenty years old and half a world away from home, I looked forward to mail call the way junkies craved their next fix. My teenage sister, Sandy, got all of her high school girlfriends to write to me, which led some of the guys in my unit to think I was some kind of Don Juan. I considered it impolite to correct any misconceptions they might have had.

You could depend on the mail for an emotional lift - most of the time. But there were times when I would open an envelope and read, in the inky handwriting of my mother or father or sister, that a friend of mine, someone I had grown up with or gone to school with, or a new friend I had met in the Army, had been killed in Vietnam. Just like that. Gone. Life over at 18, 19, 20.

I can still remember the weird feelings that would come over me in those surreal moments, including the irrational idea that I was somehow responsible for the death. In the twisted logic of grief, I would feel that if I had never opened the envelope, the person would still be alive. I remember being overwhelmed with the desire to reseal the letter in the envelope and bring my dead friend back to life.

This week's hideous attack in Mosul reminded me of those long ago days. Once again American troops sent on a fool's errand are coming home in coffins, or without their right arms or left legs, or paralyzed, or so messed up mentally they'll never be the same. Troops are being shoved two or three times into the furnace of Iraq by astonishingly incompetent leaders who have been unable or unwilling to provide them with the proper training, adequate equipment or even a clearly defined mission.

It is a mind-boggling tragedy. And the suffering goes far beyond the men and women targeted by the insurgents. Each death in Iraq blows a hole in a family and sets off concentric circles of grief that touch everyone else who knew and cared for the fallen soldier. If the human stakes were understood well enough by the political leaders of this country, it might make them a little more reluctant to launch foolish, unnecessary and ultimately unwinnable wars.

Lisa Hoffman and Annette Rainville of the Scripps Howard News Service have reported, in an extremely moving article, that nearly 900 American children have lost a parent to the war in Iraq. More than 40 fathers died without seeing their babies.

The article begins with a description of a deeply sad 4-year-old named Jack Shanaberger, whose father was killed in an ambush in March. Jack told his mother he didn't want to be a father when he grew up. "I don't want to be a daddy," he said, "because daddies die."

Six female soldiers who died in the war left a total of 10 children. This is a new form of wartime heartbreak for the U.S.

We have completely lost our way with this fiasco in Iraq. The president seems almost perversely out of touch. "The idea of democracy taking hold in what was a place of tyranny and hatred and destruction is such a hopeful moment in the history of the world," he said this week.

The truth, of course, is that we can't even secure the road to the Baghdad airport, or protect our own troops lining up for lunch inside a military compound. The coming elections are a slapstick version of democracy. International observers won't even go to Iraq to monitor the elections because it's too dangerous. They'll be watching, as if through binoculars, from Jordan.

Nobody has a plan. We don't have enough troops to secure the country, and the Iraqi forces have shown neither the strength nor the will to do it themselves. Election officials are being murdered in the streets. The insurgency is growing in both strength and sophistication. At least three more marines and one soldier were killed yesterday, ensuring the grimmest of holidays for their families and loved ones.

One of the things that President Bush might consider while on his current vacation is whether there are any limits to the price our troops should be prepared to pay for his misadventure in Iraq, or whether the suffering and dying will simply go on indefinitely.

E-mail: bobherb@nytimes.com

Like Charlie Brown and the Football

Iraq Reality Check
By Molly Ivins
AlterNet.org

Wednesday 22 December 2004

Since the season should require us to do at least some thinking about the killing being done in our name, let's do a reality check.

It's hard to make Iraq into a suitable Christmas topic, unless one bears news of Our Boys getting home-knit socks and home-baked cookies from Lard Lake or Fluterville. Mere mention is enough to drive full-grown adults to doctored eggnog. Nevertheless, since the season should require us to do at least some thinking about the killing being done in our name, let's do a reality check.

The Sabbath gasbags, as The Nation's Calvin Trillin calls our Sunday TV news commentators, distinguished themselves yet again. They're trying to gang up on Donald Rumsfeld on the theory that the entire Iraq war would have worked out just dandy if it hadn't been for Rumsfeld's mistakes.

This shark attack was precipitated by blood in the water ­ to wit, Rumsfeld's dismissive answer to a soldier inquiring as to why his unit's vehicles weren't armored. Rumsfeld treated the soldier exactly the way he treats members of the press or anyone else who raises questions about the war: as though he were an impertinent fool. It didn't look good on television.

For those now waxing indignant about Rumsfeld and the whole situation concerning armor, I remind you that when "60 Minutes" carried exactly this story in October, as did other news outlets, the right wing promptly pounced on it as further evidence of supposed liberal bias in the media.

Rumsfeld's mistakes may constitute an impressive list, but is there any evidence that this war could ever have worked out well? I know, anyone who asks that question is promptly denounced by the right wing, insisting, as the media watchdog group FAIR puts it, "that the war is going well and anyone who feels otherwise is a defeatist liberal uninterested in bringing democracy to the Middle East."

So far, we have not brought democracy to Iraq. We have brought blood, killing and death. Our so-called liberal media do a pathetically inadequate job of telling us about the war because, first, it is too dangerous to cover most of the country, and second, reporters who are critical of the endeavor are blacklisted by our military. The few American reporters who speak Arabic are sending hair-raising reports.

For evidence that the whole enterprise needed to be rethought from the beginning, I cite the Los Angeles Times story from June about the iconic image of this war ­ the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein in the great square in Baghdad. It was actually a U.S. Army psy-ops stunt staged to look like a spontaneous action by Iraqis.

"It was a Marine colonel ­ not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images ­ who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking."

From then 'til this past election, when Bush kept insisting no more troops were necessary, we have been treated like mushrooms. On Dec. 1, the administration announced 12,000 more troops would be added, mostly by extending the tours of those due to come home and drafting very surprised National Guardsmen.

It's hard to imagine any group more credulous than the American media in relation to this administration. It's like Charlie Brown and the football.

The latest talking point is that all the nay-sayers will be proven wrong and the elections in Iraq will work a treat. Well, OK, we all hope so. But what is the evidence? The attacks go up day after day ­ they're coming from all over the country.

The U.S. response is that these attacks are the last gasp of a desperate insurgency trying to buffalo Iraqis before the elections, and it will all collapse after that. That is exactly what the administration told us before the "handover" to the puppet Iraqi government last June. The attacks went up from 20 to 30 to 50 and now to 100 a day.

Meanwhile, we keep bombing Iraqis. I sometimes think Americans don't realize that. This is not "precision," "pinpoint" bombing ­ it's bombing. It kills innocent people. The best we can hope for from this election is that the Shiite slate endorsed by al-Sistani wins. That would be the slate pledged to ask the United States to leave the minute it gets in. With any luck, they'll ask politely.

Elsewhere on our suffering orb, genocide proceeds in Darfur. The United States won't act. The United Nations won't act. We're all... just letting it happen. Again.

The new film "Hotel Rwanda" has come to remind us all of the moral complicity of those who do nothing but sit and watch. The least we can do in honor of the season is send money to the relief organizations. And you might, if you don't have hand-cramp from writing all your cards wishing for peace on earth, write your congressman as well.

I Did Not Choose to Live in a Theocracy-But Here I Am

Christmas Eve of Destruction
By MAUREEN DOWD

Published: December 23, 2004, New York Times


In Iraq, as Yogi Berra would say, the future ain't what it used to be.

Now that the election's over, our leaders think it's safe to experiment with a little candor.

President Bush has finally acknowledged that the Iraqis can't hack it as far as securing their own country, which means, of course, that America has no exit strategy for its troops, who will soon number 150,000.

News organizations led with the story, even though the president was only saying something that everybody has known to be true for a year. The White House's policy on Iraq has gone from a total charade to a limited modified hangout. Mr. Bush is conceding the obvious, that the Iraqi security forces aren't perfect, so he doesn't have to concede the truth: that Iraq is now so dire no one knows how or when we can get out.

If this fiasco ever made sense to anybody, it doesn't any more.

John McCain, who lent his considerable credibility to Mr. Bush during the campaign and vouched for the president and his war, now concedes that he has no confidence in Donald Rumsfeld.

And Rummy admitted yesterday that his feelings got hurt when people accused him of being insensitive to the fact that he arrogantly sent his troops into a sinkhole of carnage - a vicious, persistent insurgency - without the proper armor, equipment, backup or preparation.

The subdued defense chief further admitted that despite all the American kids who gave their lives in Mosul on the cusp of Christmas, battling an enemy they can't see in a war fought over weapons that didn't exist, we're not heading toward the democratic halcyon Mr. Bush promised.

"I think looking for a peaceful Iraq after the elections would be a mistake," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

His disgraceful admission that his condolence letters to the families of soldiers killed in Iraq were signed by machine - "I have directed that in the future I sign each letter," he said in a Strangelovian statement - is redolent of the myopia that has led to the dystopia.

The Bushies are betting a lot on the January election, even though a Shiite-dominated government will further alienate the Sunnis - and even though Iraq may be run by an Iranian-influenced ayatollah. That would mean that Iraq would have a leadership legitimized by us to hate us.

International election observers say it's too dangerous to actually come in and monitor the vote in person; they're going to "assess" the vote from the safety of Amman, Jordan. Isn't that like refereeing a football game while sitting in a downtown bar?

The administration hopes that once the Iraqis understand they have their own government, that will be a turning point and they will realize their country is worth fighting for. But this is the latest in a long list of turning points that turn out to be cul-de-sacs.

From the capture of Saddam to the departure of Paul Bremer and the assault on Falluja, there have been many false horizons for peace.

The U.S. military can't even protect our troops when they're eating lunch in a supposedly secure space - even after the Mosul base commanders had been warned of a "Beirut-style" attack three weeks before - because the Iraqi security forces and support staff have been infiltrated by insurgency spies.

Each milestone, each thing that is supposed to enable us to get some traction and change the basic dynamic in Iraq, comes and goes without the security getting any better. The Los Angeles Times reported yesterday that a major U.S. contractor, Contrack International Inc., had dropped out of the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild Iraq, "raising new worries about the country's growing violence and its effect on reconstruction."

The Bush crowd thought it could get in, get out, scare the Iranians and Syrians, and remove the bulk of our forces within several months.

But now we're in, and it's the allies, contractors and election watchdogs who want out.

Aside from his scintilla of candor, Mr. Bush is still not leveling with us. As he said at his press conference on Monday, "the enemies of freedom" know that "a democratic Iraq will be a decisive blow to their ambitions because free people will never choose to live in tyranny."

They may choose to live in a theocracy, though. Americans did.

E-mail: liberties@nytimes.com

Right on the Nose

Social Security Slam-Dunk

By Richard Cohen
Washington Post, Tuesday, December 21, 2004; Page A25

Why do I think that the Social Security crisis -- "the crisis is now," President Bush said recently -- is the domestic version of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? Could it be that I am hearing the same sense of false urgency? Could it be that the predicted insolvency of the Social Security system is something other than -- yes -- "a slam-dunk"? I wonder.

My cynicism -- like yours -- has been earned the hard way. George Bush has a charming tendency to make up his mind first and then seek the evidence for his decision. This is how he went about deciding to go to war in Iraq -- telling Don Rumsfeld to produce a war plan in the days right after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, even though there was no evidence Iraq was responsible. It did not matter. Bush wanted war with Iraq, Bush got it -- and now we're stuck with it.

Read the rest here.

We've Turned the Corner and We're Not Going Back?

White House Predicts Slower Growth in 2005

-New York Times, December 18, 2004

You've got what you voted for, America.

So Many Mothers' Children Dead for Pigheaded Ideology

Our 'Best Equipped' Army? Baloney!

By Mark Shields
Washington Post, Saturday, December 18, 2004

In the three years immediately after Pearl Harbor, the United States, a nation of 132 million people with a gross domestic product of less than $100 billion, produced the following to win World War II:

• 296,429 aircraft.

• 102,351 tanks.

• 87,620 warships.

• 372,431 artillery pieces.

• 2,455,694 trucks.

Compare those heroic achievements with the current dismal supply record as the U.S. war in Iraq is fast approaching its third year and the United States, now a nation of nearly 300 million with defense spending in excess of half a trillion dollars:

• Only 5,910 of the 19,584 Humvees that U.S. troops in Iraq depend on are protected with factory-installed armor.

• More than 8,000 of the 9,128 medium and heavyweight trucks transporting soldiers and supplies in that war zone are without armor.

Because of the incompetence or indifference of this nation's civilian leadership of the war, Americans in Iraq are living with an increased risk of death.

All the official transcripts of White House signing ceremonies for every defense spending bill, all the presidential proclamations for Veterans Day and every prepared statement by the secretary of defense before a congressional committee include the same stock phrase. U.S. troops are invariably referred to as "the best trained, best equipped" ever. Best equipped? To call today's American troops in Iraq the "best equipped" is more than an exaggeration; it is bilge, baloney and cruel.

An America coming out of the Great Depression somehow found the leadership and the will to build and deploy around the globe 2.5 million trucks in the same period of time that the incumbent U.S. government has failed to get 30,000 fully armored vehicles to Iraq.

The Bush administration has appropriated $34.3 billion on a theoretical missile defense system -- which proved again this week to be an expensive dud in its first test in two years, when the "kill vehicle" never got off the ground to intercept the target missile carrying a mock warhead -- but has been able up to now, according to congressional budget authorities, to spend just $2 billion to armor the vehicles of Americans under fire.

Nobody has been more persistent in holding the Pentagon and the White House accountable than maverick Rep. Gene Taylor (D-Miss.), who serves on the House Armed Services Committee. "When I visit Iraq," says Taylor, "I ride around in an armored vehicle, and I am sure the secretary [of defense] does as well. That should be the single standard: If it is good enough for the big shots, it is good enough for every American soldier."

The armor is truly a matter of life and death, as the Mississippi congressman explains: "Half of all our casualties, half of all our deaths and half of all our wounded are the direct result of improvised explosive devices [IEDs, or homemade bombs]." But when Washington officials visit Iraq, their traveling security includes not only heavily armored vehicles but also radio-signal jammers, which can disable the IEDs.

What makes Taylor authentically angry is the inexcusable failure of the U.S. brass -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, he names -- to provide radio jammers (which cost $10,000 each) to the fewer than 30,000 U.S. military vehicles in Iraq.

How many U.S. vehicles are now equipped with jammers? The Pentagon insists the figure is classified. According to Taylor, the number is "minuscule." But because he is offended by visiting corporate chief executives and deputy assistant secretaries of weights and measures getting better protection than Marine lance corporals and Army privates, Taylor would not appreciate the fact that funds for the jammers have probably already been dedicated to underwriting the next failed missile defense test.

"A jammer costs about $10,000, and it probably costs about $10,000 to bury a dead GI. I believe Americans would rather spend the $10,000 to prevent the GI's funeral being held." Gene Taylor is right. Every American has a moral obligation to make certain that the nation's troops truly are the world's "best equipped."

For shame, America.

Wisdom

"Everyone is entitled to their own opinion but not their own facts."
- Daniel Patrick Moynahan

Borborygmy

As a lover of language, I carry around in my crowded skull a list of words that make me laugh or just strike me as strange. For example, I learned the word eelymosynary from the great senator from North Carolina, Sam Ervin, the man who helped save America (so we could have Bush?) by chairing the Senate Watergate Committee and beginning the end of the personality disordered Nixon (whom I look back upon with a certain amount of nostalgia now that America is being systematically destroyed).

And who can forget borborygmy, a delightfully descriptive word?

Can any of the one of you who read this thing step forward and tell us what these words mean (without resorting to the dictionary!)?

Here, lady and gentleman, is the strangest word in the English language. A word that I find myself saying over and over, rolling it about on the tongue of my mind.

The strangest word in the English language:

lunch

To All You Mothers with Children in Iraq...

...Look how much your beloved commander-in-chief cares about the lives of your beloved children. When John Kerry told you over and over that your children were sent to war without armor, he was ridiculed. All the while your commander-in-chief knew your children were dying because they were naked in the face of insurgents' explosives. He had a blank check. Money was no object. Production was NOT maxed out. HE DID NOTHING. Not until Rummy, whose genius idea it was to go to war unprepared, publicly humiliated himself in front of those he sent to die, 1000 combat deaths later, did your commander-in-chief do anything. Once again, your commander-in-chief's policy is, if confronted with the truth, and you don't give a shit, give 'em the back of your hand, lie!

Here, have a look:

Army orders increase in armor production

By Bryan Bender, Boston Globe Staff | December 11, 2004

WASHINGTON -- The Army yesterday ordered the main supplier of armored Humvees to ramp up production from 450 to 550 vehicles per month after coming under intense criticism in recent days that it has not utilized all its manufacturing capacity to protect soldiers in Iraq from roadside bombs.

After meeting with Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld -- who faced tough questioning from troops on Wednesday about the lack of armored vehicles in Iraq -- Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey called the CEO of Armor Holdings in Jacksonville, Fla., and asked the company to increase production as soon as it can.

So Moms, why now and not before March, 2003? Anyone care to venture an answer?

OK, Sheep, Get With the Herd!

All together now, you sheep, who fill your snouts so willingly at the trough of Bushian propoganda:

There is a problem and we need to gut social security.

Have a look at what your handlers will be drumming into your malleable little heads, courtesy of Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post:

The word of the day at the White House yesterday was "problem" -- as in, the Social Security problem.

If you only heard a sound bite or two from President Bush's brief comments after a meeting with the Social Security Trustees yesterday, you really missed the bruising lack of subtlety with which he -- and then his spokesman -- pounded away at this one message.

"We had a good discussion about the problems that face the Social Security system," Bush told the press, "and there is a recognition among the experts that we have a problem. And the problem is America is getting older and that there are fewer people to pay into the system to support a baby boomer generation which is about to retire.

"Therefore, the question is, does this country have the will to address the problem. I think it must. I think we have a responsibility to solve problems before they become acute. . . . [W]e must be willing to address this problem. . . . [T]he time is ready for us to solve this problem. . . . I think what's really important in the discussions is to understand the size of the problem. . . . What's important, Steve, is before we begin any discussion is to understand the scope of the problem. And that's why these trustees are vital in helping educate the American people, and Congress, as to the size of the problem. And I will not prejudge any solution. I think it's very important for the first step to be a common understanding of the size of the problem. . . .

"We have got a member of what was called the Moynihan Commission with us. They studied this problem in detail. They made some suggestions about how to move forward in solving the problem. Much of my thinking has been colored by the work of the late Senator Moynihan and the other members of the commission who took a lot of time to take a look at this problem, and who came up with some creative suggestions."

And, Bush said in closing: "We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem."

A couple hours later, press secretary Scott McClellan took to the podium for his press briefing. And in case anyone missed it: "We all need to agree that this is a real problem," he said. Over and over again.

It's like I wrote in my Tuesday column: An essential part of the Bush campaign to add private accounts to Social Security is getting the public to believe that there is in fact an imminent crisis.

That's step one; step two is to getting people to believe private accounts will help; step three is to getting people to believe that borrowing another $2 trillion or so right now to pay for them is a good idea.

And in pretty much all of today's coverage, as the White House surely hoped, the existence of some sort of amorphous, alarming Social Security problem was taken as a given. Step one seemingly accomplished.

See how it works, sheepies? You ate it up during the election. Now you will be obedient little sheep nodding earnestly as you walk to your slaughter. "Bahhhhhh we have a prahhhhhhblem! Bahhhhhhhhrow a couple of trillion dahhhhhhhlers! Cut my benefits! Raise my age of retahhhhhhhhrment! Enrich the brokers with lots of fees! The federal government is bahhhhhhhd and we need to cripple and kill it forever. Bahhhhhhhh, we sure do have a prahhhhhhhhhblem." There's a good little robot!

Now, why don't you automata go ahead and see what the truth is. Need more? Here, have some. Isn't that amazing? There is no problem! You're being lied to again to further their ultra-ideological agenda which is entirely antithetical to your interests. Go figure.

Bless you, Paul Krugman. And all of you friends who are not sheep, why don't you share this with your congressheep. If you act like sheep, they will treat you like sheep.

Playing Soldier

The brilliant Maureen Dowd is hip to this guy. Go read the full column, "Lost in a Masquerade," at www.nytimes.com. Meanwhile:

The president loves dressing up to play soldier. To rally Camp Pendleton marines facing extended deployments in Iraq, he got gussied up in an Ike D-Day-style jacket, with epaulets and a big presidential seal on one lapel and his name and "Commander in Chief" on the other.

When he really had a chance to put on a uniform and go someplace where the enemy was invisible and there was no exit strategy and our government was not leveling with us about how bad it was, W. wasn't so high on the idea. But now that it's just a masquerade - giving a morale boost to troops heading off someplace where the enemy's invisible and there's no exit strategy and the government's not leveling with us about how bad it is - hey, man, it's cool.

So It Wasn't Just Me

Dan Froomkin, the excellent columnist from the Washington Post can also see that the emperor has no clothes. Or in this case, embarrassing clothes. From today's column:

What's With the Jacket?

Bush wore a specially embroidered sand-colored military-style jacket yesterday, raising many eyebrows.

The jacket, complete with epaulets, appears to be a Marine tanker jacket, an all-purpose, all-weather uniform regulation jacket.

Bush's was specially stitched with the inscription: "George W. Bush, Commander in Chief." It is also embroidered with the presidential seal and the American flag.


Here it is. 




In the immortal words of young Alvy Singer, "What an asshole!" 

Georgie Plays Dress Up!

What the fuck is Junior wearing?! 


I remember Eisenhower. Ike was the president. You're no Ike. 

In case you can't read it, the jacket reads, "Commander-in-Chief."
At long last, Georgie,have you no shame?

Why the Internet is Great

Just when you think you'll never come up with anything worth reading for this stupid thing, life throws you a gift. Thanks to Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post, I give you www.breakupnews.com !

Need a sample? Here, have this one:

Singh/Athanandh

Reshma Singh, 20, has broken up with “useless waste of space” Shaun Athanandh, 32, because having sex with him was less pleasurable than “masturbating with a stick.”

Enough said.

The Sage Advice of a Beloved Mentor

My mentor is a brilliant, successful professor, world reknowned in our field, and a wonderful man. I haven't seen him in at least 20 years. I left the field. His name is Jack Katz. Hi Jack!

This is a man who thrived in a life in academia. He knew a lot of things. Here is something he once told me:

"If you don't go right back to school for your Ph.D., you never will. You reach an age when you can't put up with this artificial bullshit anymore." (Sorry all you kids putting up with that artificial bullshit. I didn't mean to burst your bubble). (Sorry to my wife Janet, who is once again putting up with that artificial bullshit, and doing her usual great job of it).

Here is what my mentor once told me:

"Why do something today, if you can do it tomorrow, right?"