Category: Politics (2002-2004)

Taxing Times.

Despite the administration’s attempt to use the war to promote tax cuts, the Senate does the right thing and slashes Dubya’s tax giveaway in half. As I said last week, it’s almost obscene to even consider this type of deficit-busting sop for the rich when America’s fighting men and women are laying their lives on the line. In times of war, even (gasp!) the affluent must bear their share of sacrifice.

Freedom of the…oh, never mind.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia accepts a free speech award…while muzzling the press. War or no, the blatant examples of conservative doublethink lately are getting outrageous. In loosely related news, the FBI track down a long-lost copy of the Bill of Rights. Think they could let Ashcroft take a gander before they return it to NC? The Attorney General seems to have gotten caught up somewhere around the Second Amendment.

Unfortunate Sons and daughters..

The party of sacrifice? Get your priorities straight. As Ari Fleischer warns America to expect American casualties in the coming conflict, the Republican Congress promises the Iraq war will have no bearing on tax cuts. As CCR put it, Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Well, they help themselves, yeah. Then as now, the poor may lose their sons and daughters, but the rich will get their rebates.


Regarding another recent facet of GOP hysteria, I know it’s fun to pick on the French, what with the Maginot Line and the Rainbow Warrior and all that. But next time you hear some idiot like Tom DeLay say the French are good-for-nothing, remember Lafayette. The fact of the matter is, we would never have gained our freedom (or our freedom fries) without the aid of the French during our Revolution. Something to consider before our former Gallic friends are written out of the history books in a fit of revisionist patriotism.

How did it come to this?

Well, that’s that, then. Thanks to the not-insubstantial blunders of Dubya’s crack diplomatic team, it looks like we’ll be going to war WITHOUT UN approval. True, I’ve always approached this venture in Iraq with a good deal of skepticism, particularly after its success in sucking all the news out of the room during the summer of Enron. And I was disgusted by the capitulation of Congress last fall in washing their hands of the matter and ceding their constitutionally-mandated authority to declare war over to Dubya. But I still think I could have been sold on the necessity of this conflict if a clear case had ever been made by the Bushies. And, frankly, that case has not been made. Instead we’ve gotten a series of half-truths and rhetorical flourishes attempting to conflate Iraq and Al Qaeda in the American mind, despite the fact that the two despise each other (Saddam is a secular despot while Bin Laden is a fundamentalist freakshow.) And whatsmore, Dubya has now managed in two short years to squander virtually all of America’s once-considerable reservoir of international goodwill in order to prosecute a war for which the rationale still remains blurry.

The Pentagon tells us that we will win a war against Iraq with minimal difficulty, and I think they’re probably right (although obviously there are a number of Saddam-unleashing-WMD-upon-troops and/or Israel scenarios that are almost too horrifying to contemplate.) But I hold very little optimism for our handling of the post-war world — when much of the international community considers us a rogue nation and the Middle East suspects us of imperialistic intentions — given that our actions up to this point only prove that it’s currently Amateur Hour in the White House and State Department.

Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder.

March Madness? With even Bush Sr. now calling out his son’s unilateralism (Bully for him, via Looka), Pat Buchanan (and, to be fair, Dem Congressman Jim Moran) decrying his fellow conservatives as being dupes for an Israeli conspiracy, and the Republicans renaming the french fries as “freedom fries” in the House cafeteria, it appears the Grand Old Party has been reduced to mass hysteria by the looming war in Iraq. Add these bizarre episodes to the assault on civil liberties mentioned below and the nation’s growing economic woes (which the Bushies are now responding to by hiding information), and I’m now starting to think the 2004 election might just be the Dems to lose.

Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God.

Nat Hentoff recoils at the provisions of the Domestic Security Enhancement Act of 2003, Attorney General Ashcroft’s next salvo in the war on civil liberties. Meanwhile, Dubya’s bean counters at the White House OMB try to ascertain the monetary value of lost privacy and freedom. Sigh…you know it’s gotten bad when even GOP apparatchiks like Dick Armey are calling out the Justice Department.

Running Scared.

Two choice nuggets from Follow Me Here: 1) Frantically afraid of even remotely tough questions, the Bushies have declared war on Helen Thomas (and the Washington Post.) 2) A new poll has Dubya losing to a theoretical Democrat in 2004. Of course, it’s putting this theory in practice that will be the main problem for the Dems next year.

Bugs not Bombs.

Ethel the Blog recently posted this old article reaffirming the fact that GOP House Majority Leader Tom DeLay is a freak show. Worth perusing on the eve of an Iraq war, as DeLay calls Dems the “appeasement party”, is this choice nugget – DeLay on Vietnam: “He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself.“