Category: Politics (2005-2006)

Hard Times.

With the Dubya deficit looming over the second term agenda (and it’s not going anywhere anytime soon) and the proposed Social Insecurity PSAs now costing trillions (per Vice-President Cheney), the administration releases a $2.57 trillion budget which “eliminates dozens of politically sensitive domestic programs, including funding for education, environmental protection and business development” and doubles the prescription drug copay for veterans. (America’s children and Armed Forces — our nation’s richest 1% thank you again for your sacrifice.)

Causing Deprivation.

I was at the movies during Dubya’s State of the Union address — I tried to watch it online this evening after my Radicalism sections, but Quicktime died in mid-sentence, so I just ended up reading it. And, while I thought it was very well-written as per the norm, my thoughts on the address have been colored even more than usual by the punditocracy. So, with that in mind, I’ll avoid being derivative and just direct y’all to the following:

  • Fred Kaplan: “Some of the president’s statements on national security were simply puzzling. Again on Iran, he said, ‘We are working with European allies to make clear to the Iranian regime that it must give up its uranium-enrichment program and any plutonium reprocessing.’ This is just false.“

  • Chris Suellentrop: “You could call Bush’s idea the Screw Your Grandchildren Act…This was the Greatest Love of All speech, in which Bush asserted that The Children Are Our Future. But before you sign on to Bush’s proposal, be aware that what he’s offering is pretty tough love.“

  • Will Saletan: “Tonight’s State of the Union Address demonstrated again that President Bush is a man of very clear principles. He’s just flexible about when to apply them.“

  • Joe Conason: “Although George W. Bush and the White House aides who craft these public spectacles become increasingly adept at manipulating the feelings of his audience every year, their underlying method remains the same: to shade inconvenient realities with rhetorical vagueness and outright deception.“

  • E.J. Dionne: “Our country could profit from an honest debate about the future of Social Security. Judging from President Bush’s State of the Union address, that is not the kind of debate we are about to have.“

Freaks of the NSA.

“The sources of this anarchism [the Columbine massacre] are 30 years of liberal social policy that has put our children in day care, taken God out of the schools, taken Mom out of the house, and banished Dad as an authority figure from the family altogether.” Slate‘s Fred Kaplan introduces us to J.D. Crouch, conservative freakshow and, naturally, the new deputy national security adviser. In case you were wondering about his foreign policy inclinations, Crouch also appears to be against missile treaties and, er, pro-chemical weapons.

Out with the old, in with the…old.

“To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve.” After outgoing Attorney General John Ashcroft showed his true colors one last time, incoming Homeland Security head (and former admin torture guru) Michael Chertoff promises to keep an eye to civil liberties at his confirmation hearings. Hmm…I’d have more faith in his espoused concern if he hadn’t already ignored the in-house Justice Dept. ethics office (and lied about it) in the past.

Dean-N-C.

With the exit (Stage Right) of Martin Frost and multiple endorsements (including that of Clinton consigliere Harold Ickes), it now seems to most observers that Howard Dean has the DNC chair in the bag. (For their part, the GOP were already relentlessly on message: Said Rich Bond, “I think it’s a scream.“) While I’ll admit that I can’t speak knowledgably about all of the candidates’ positions, to my mind Dean seems like a great choice for the post, one that will stir enthusiasm among the grass roots and move the party where it needs to go: towards an independent and progressive message that doesn’t reek of Republican-lite, and a take-no-prisoners feistiness in every political race across the country. So, congrats to the Governor and his supporters — now, the real work begins…

Gutting Gitmo.

In a boon for civil liberties, federal judge Joyce Hens Green declares that the incarcerations at Guantanamo are illegal, since the military tribunals set up by the Bushies violated due process. “In today’s decision, Green said the hearings, called Combatant Status Review Tribunals, are stacked against the detainees, and deny them crucial rights. She said some detainees may indeed be guilty and pose a danger to the United States, but the government must first give them a lawful hearing on the evidence against them.” The judge also called out the Gitmo Gulag on its torture policies and excessively broad definition of “enemy combatant.”

Send back the blood-stained money.

“‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said to me. ‘I’m sorry for what she’s done.” As pointed out in lecture this afternoon, today’s NY Times includes an editorial on the corporate divulging of ties to Antebellum slavery, spurred by this recent letter of apology at JP Morgan-Chase: “We all know slavery existed in our country, but it is quite different to see how our history and the institution of slavery were intertwined. Slavery was tragically ingrained in American society, but that is no excuse. We apologize to the American public, and particularly to African-Americans, for the role that Citizens Bank and Canal Bank played during that period.” Interesting…research projects into corporate complicity such as this one will hopefully add further impetus for the creation of a National Slavery Museum in the relatively near future — As a whole, we Americans should do a better job in recognizing and remembering our national Original Sin, and I think such a museum would be a great step in that direction. (In fact, the museum really should be on the Mall, not in Fredericksburg, VA.)

Delusions of Grandeur.

As if all the talk of Scalia being our next Chief Justice wasn’t bad enough, it seems the power has really gone to his head of late. “Lamenting his inability to stop the Supreme Court’s slide away from the principles of judicial restraint he espouses, Scalia said he felt like ‘Frodo in “The Lord of the Rings,” soldiering on.’” Excuse me? You, Sir, resemble in no way the Shire-folk, and you’re definitely no Frodo. Perhaps one of the Nine, garbed in black?

Check it with Chertoff.

Rick Perlstein’s recent comparison of Dubya and The Sopranos is given more credence with the revelation that Homeland Security nominee Michael Chertoff also vetted torture law for the Bushies in 2002-2003. “While the details remain classified, one method that he opposed appeared to violate a ban in the law against using a ‘threat of imminent death’…But Mr. Chertoff left the door open to the use of a different set of far harsher techniques proposed by the C.I.A.” Hmmm…and you thought Tom Ridge knew some crazy uses for duct tape.