Journalists are playing into the hands of George Bush when they unthinkingly insist that everything is different since Sept. 11.

By: Matt Smith  

It's no accident that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney are the most faithful propagators of the "Changes" theme, intoning whenever they can that America will never be the same. They and their wealthy right-wing backers have always believed America should transform, and become the sort of country that existed 100 years ago, before we actually did change in myriad, profound ways. This has been George W. Bush's agenda from the moment he entered government.

Most of the last century was distinguished by events that provoked profound shifts in our national sensibilities, much to the consternation of wealthy conservatives.

The turn-of-the-19th-century corporate scandals and the muckraking journalism that followed inspired a permanent, widespread suspicion toward corporate behemoths. The Great Depression forged a national consensus about government's responsibility to care for the poor, aged, and infirm. The civil rights movement transformed the way the state was permitted to treat racial minorities. In Vietnam, Chile, Guatemala, and El Salvador, we found that putting blind faith in our armed forces can turn us into a nation of savages. After Watergate we learned to be suspicious of secretive politicians. And after the Watts riots, the Knapp Commission hearings, and Rodney King's televised beating, we concluded, as a people, that criminal justice must be exposed to public scrutiny.

"Cut down the last redwood for chopsticks, harpoon the last blue whale for sushi, and the additional mouths fed will nourish additional human brains, which will soon invent ways to replace blubber with olestra and pine with plastic. Humanity can survive just fine in a planet-covering crypt of concrete and computers." (p.81)

"The destruction of nature is an aesthetic disaster, but not a utilitarian one. Modern man can, in all likelihood, go it alone." (p.161)

"...we have risen above nature. Not just to the point where we can destroy nature where we chose, but to the point where we can probably survive just fine in the ecological rubble." (p.169)

- Peter Huber, from Hard Green: Saving the Environment From the Environmentalists, Basic Books, 2000

By: Faun Otter  

I had always suspected that the extremist branch of the Republican herd carried out intentional word abuse in the media channels they own. Yesterday I saw a copy of a memo confirming this theory. It was promulgated by Newt Gingrich's GOPAC.

It seems the GOP have learnt the Marketing 101 lesson that meaning can be distorted by context...

By: Robert Scheer  

The Bush family ties to Kenny Boy Lay are just too intimate and lucrative to ignore.

There also are at least four Enron consultants and executives who hold high positions within the Bush White House, and some of them may be drawn into the investigations that cannot be avoided, despite the distractions of the war on terror.

As John Dean once famously said of the Nixon administration, there is a cancer growing on the presidency, but in this case it's name is Enron, and it won't go away by being ignored.

By: Birdman  

When you think of Catherine the Great you essentially think of two things about her. The first is the untrue assertion that Catherine was killed while getting it on with a horse. While she is known to have had numerous lovers they were apparently all of the two-legged variety (she wasn't THAT enlightened). The other famous story, of course, involves one of her actual lovers, Prince Potemkin. In an effort to show the Empress that her policies were improving the lot of the Russian people Potemkin arranged for the Empress to take boat tours on the Volga to see the lives of ordinary Russians. At each stop the Empress saw happy, productive people living and working in clean, safe little villages.

Unfortunately the villages were fake; Potemkin had created them. Each night as the Imperial party rested (and Potemkin presumably got laid) the cute little village was moved down the river to the next stop on the Empress' itinerary. Whether Catherine was actually aware of the deception is unknown but the phrase "Potemkin Village" came to mean a false façade, something that was created solely to look good for a particular audience.

We are living through the Potemkin War.

The public is basically being given the war that it wants to see...

Bush to Ignore Rule on Written Notices of Intelligence Actions

By: Heidi Przybyla  

President George W. Bush said he'll use presidential authority to sidestep a rule requiring his administration to provide Congress with written notice of U.S. intelligence activities.

Bush made the announcement in signing the intelligence authorization act for fiscal year 2002, which includes an amendment stating that reports to Congress should "always be in written form".

Requires (free D/L)

"Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.

If there is any fixed star in our constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein."

- Justice Robert Jackson, in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette, 1943

By: Kathleen Parker  

Anyone who says there's nothing funny about war hasn't been watching Geraldo Rivera live from Afghanistan.

At my house, we have a "Geraldo Watch". We take turns monitoring the TV, summoning the rest of the household when Geraldo appears. His war coverage for Fox News has breathed new life into what was beginning to feel like just another conflict that wasn't going anywhere.

By: Jack Point  

Does anyone remember the good old days of America? We had a stable, thriving, economy, we led the free world by cooperating with other countries, and we had a strong, capable, intelligent leader in the White House? It should not be too hard to remember these days since they were still occurring just over a year ago. Since that time, Bush has trashed all of this and has become EXACTLY the kind of "leader" that the ajority of Americans thought he would be - which is precisely WHY we voted for President Gore.

By: Joe Conason  

It was perfectly predictable that in the aftermath of terror attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the search for political scapegoats would be as intense as the hunt for Osama bin Laden. It was just as obvious that Bill Clinton would quickly become the favorite quarry of this quest - particularly among the former President's old adversaries in the national media and the Republican Party (two entities which often seem to be locked in a mind-meld these days).

There's another convenient place where these worthies might look for culprits but never do: the mirror. Whatever the various failures and flaws of Mr. Clinton's tenure may have been, his efforts against terrorism compare favorably with the frivolous preoccupations of his critics.

By: John F. Borowski  

Florida's Orange County Convention Center is big. Big enough to hold the Sears Tower, if you laid it on its side. So big you could walk ten miles and never leave the cement behemoth. Its electric bill is $325,000 per month.

This hulking structure in Orlando seemed appropriate for the carnival-like setting of the National Science Teachers Convention, the largest gathering of educators in the nation: more than 14,000 science teachers and hundreds of exhibitors passing out armloads of pamphlets, packets, books, stickers, posters, and other educational goodies.

Though there were a handful of conservation groups at the event, those of us sitting at the Native Forest Council booth were clearly in the minority.

When I started teaching 20 years ago, I could never have imagined such a perverse display: industries and their front groups trying to justify everything from deforestation to extinction of species. Worse yet, they were targeting America's teachers and, ultimately, our children...

"...all in all, it's been a fabulous year for Laura and me."

- pResident Weak & Stupid, revealing just how self-centered he truly is (12/21/01)

By: Thomas L. Friedman  

The most obvious bold national project that Mr. Bush could launch now - his version of the race to the moon - would be a program for energy independence, based on developing renewable resources, domestic production, and energy efficiency. Not only would every school kid in America be excited by such a project, but it also would be Mr. Bush's equivalent of Richard Nixon going to China - the Texas oilman weaning America off of its dependence on Middle East oil. That would be a political coup!

It would also be Mr. Bush's best response to foreigners who are enraged by America's refusal to join the Kyoto Treaty to stop global warming. Mr. Bush could say that by weaning America away from oil gluttony he would be doing more for the environment than Kyoto ever would, which would greatly improve America's standing as a global good citizen.

"And so one of the areas where I think the average Russian will realize that the stereotypes of America have changed is that it's a spirit of cooperation, not one-upmanship, that we now understand one plus one can equal three, as opposed to us and Russia we hope to be zero."

- pResident Weak & Stupid, using 'fuzzy math' (11/15/01)

Free-market ideologues said the energy titan's triumphs proved them right. Now they should admit its humiliating collapse proves they were wrong.

By: Thomas Frank  

"I believe in God and I believe in free markets", Enron CEO Kenneth Lay told the San Diego Union-Tribune back in February. What's more, continued this titan of the energy business, Jesus himself was something of a 90's-style libertarian: "He wanted people to have the freedom to make choices."

Maybe, then, it was the Lord's work Enron was doing as it pushed electricity deregulation through the 1990's, and transformed itself from a gas pipeline company into an energy trader designed to provide choices and maximize profits in the freewheeling aftermath. After all, what better sign of the Almighty's favor could there be than Lay's compensation for the 'Year of Our Deregulated Lord' 2000: $141.6 million, a full 184% increase over 1999. Blessed indeed are the market makers! "We're on the side of angels", the company's former CEO Jeff Skilling told Business Week a little while ago. "In every business we've been in, we're the good guys."

Fortunately for the rest of us, though, Enron didn't inherit the earth...

"Texas Sen. Phil Gramm announced his retirement earlier this year and everybody said nice things, especially about the fact that he was walking away from his Senate seat while still in his prime. Now congressional committees investigating Enron’s collapse are wondering whether his decision to leave the Senate had anything to do with potential conflicts of interest. Gramm’s wife, Wendy, was on Enron’s board of directors while her husband chaired the Senate Banking Committee, whose oversight responsibilities should have caught Enron’s troubles."

- Eleanor Clift

By: Paul Krugman  

Although images of the riots in Argentina have flickered across our television screens, hardly anyone in the U.S. cares. It's just another disaster in a small, faraway country of which we know nothing - a country as remote and unlikely to affect our lives as, say, Afghanistan.

I don't make that comparison lightly. Most people here may think that this is just another run-of-the-mill Latin American crisis - hey, those people have them all the time, don't they? - but in the eyes of much of the world, Argentina's economic policies had "made in Washington" stamped all over them. The catastrophic failure of those policies is first and foremost a disaster for Argentines, but it is also a disaster for U.S. foreign policy.

Here's how the story looks to Latin Americans: Argentina, more than any other developing country, bought into the promises of U.S.-promoted "neoliberalism" (that's liberal as in free markets, not as in Ted Kennedy). Tariffs were slashed, state enterprises were privatized, multinational corporations were welcomed, and the peso was pegged to the dollar. Wall Street cheered, and money poured in; for a while, free-market economics seemed vindicated, and its advocates weren't shy about claiming credit.

Then things began to fall apart...

By: George McGovern  

I don't claim to be an expert on anything. But having walked and worked among the world's poor for 40 years, I have learned something about the sense of powerlessness that millions feel.

Modern communications have spread the word to these masses that the privileged few who rule them are living in luxury that exceeds all measure. Across the seas, the poor observe others with wealth, military might, comfort and pleasure that overwhelm the imagination. Is it possible that the cruel and fanatical upstarts who strike at symbols of wealth and power are heroes in the eyes of some of the downtrodden? Is it possible that desperate young men rebelling against their powerlessness saw in the collapse of American skyscrapers a sign that they are not wholly powerless?

Church Rejects 'Harry Potter' Spell

From:  

An Evangelical Protestant group held a book-burning Sunday (12/30/01), singing hymns as they consigned the "Harry Potter" series and other "satanic" works to the flames.

Hundreds of protesters chanted, "stop burning books", and were ignored.

Jack Brock, pastor of the Christ Community Church, said the books destroyed were "a masterpiece of satanic deception".

Editorial from:  

The urgency of the investigation is undiminished even if the probe has faded from the headlines, and Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge isn't briefing every day on its progress. The anthrax attacks claimed innocent lives, exposed grave weaknesses in the public health system and delivered a body blow to some essential government operations. As long as those responsible remain unidentified and at large, the most critical question hasn't been answered - and the deadly threat carries over into the new year.

Egos are sympton of greater problem with our airwaves.

By: Eric Alterman  

It is easy to laugh at Geraldo Rivera. The man is, as New York Times columnist Frank Rich deemed him, "a clown". He pretends to duck bullets overhead while delivering his stand-ups. He claims to say the Lord’s Prayer over the "hallowed ground" where U.S. troops were killed by friendly fire, but misses his mark by a mere 200 miles.

When nailed for it, instead of an abject apology, Rivera blames the "fog of war" and explains he mixed up two friendly fire sites. This turns out to be a lie. The second friendly fire incident he claims to have mixed up with the first had not happened yet at the time of his report.

By: Michael O'Hanlon  

Just over a year ago, George Bush and Dick Cheney were campaigning hard on the theme that Bill Clinton and Al Gore had run down the United States military. Picking up a traditional Republican refrain, they claimed that defense cuts under President Clinton had gone too far, that the armed forces had been overused badly, that readiness was poor.

But now President Bush stands on the verge of winning a war with the military that Bill Clinton bequeathed him. Just as in NATO's 1999 war against Serbia, the United States military has led coalition forces to a decisive victory while suffering very few casualties in the process.

By: John Chuckman  

But the letter that meant the most to me was the one commenting on a front-page picture of a Special Forces soldier. The writer went into paroxysms of admiration for this shining, clean-living model for America's youth, obviously unaware that this was the bunch of thugs that unquestioningly assassinated at least 20,000 civilian village leaders in Project Phoenix during the Viet Nam War. Ah yes, I thought, might this letter not easily, with a few names changed, be that of a middle-aged German in, say, 1940 praising the pressed uniform and smart attitude of a young SS officer as an example to all German youth.

"We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people."

- John F. Kennedy

By: Lew Rockwell  

In those days following Thanksgiving when the Taliban fell, the War Party enjoyed their greatest successes, and they didn't hesitate to rub our noses in it. Ha, ha, ha, they chortled, the people who warned of quagmire and failure were wrong. The Taliban was not invulnerable after all. The vaunted Islamic warriors fled for the hills for fear of the mighty air war waged by the US, and so victory is ours, with very few casualties of the kind that matter (meaning US casualties). It turns out, however, that the War Party was too smug too soon. None of the top officials of the Taliban have been captured.

Al-Qaidah is still on the loose. Above all, bin Laden and his coterie got away. Even the Pentagon admits that it is "anyone's guess" where he is. If the goal was to hammer the parties said to be guilty for 9-11, it hasn't worked. Even by their own standards, the war has not exacted justice but has only destroyed. True, the Taliban no longer runs Afghanistan. But no one claims that the Taliban was directly responsible for any events of 9-11.

Happy New Year from the Doofus-In-Chief!

Courtesy of: 'The Wizard of Whimsy'

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