Archive: January 2004
Monday, January 26, 2004
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“Bush’s only serious (that is, expensive) domestic program, as always, is yet another mammoth tax entitlement for the rich and the superrich”
Unsteady State
Hendrick Hertzberg
The New Yorker, January 26, 2004 Polls . . . revealed a distinct lack of public enthusiasm for the President’s space proposal, and it will be surprising if he mentions it again anytime soon. But “Mars,” “the moon,” and “space” are not the only words missing in action from the State of the Union. So are “unemployment,” “aids,” and “the environment.” “Deficit” makes but a single appearance, as part of an utterly unconvincing, detail-free assertion that the gigantic budget shortfalls with which Bush has replaced the surpluses he inherited can be halved in five years if Congress would just “focus on priorities.”
The word “war,” on the other hand, makes a dozen appearances in the speech, while “terror” and its derivatives appear twenty times. The surrounding contexts suggest that Bush and his political handlers plan to use 9/11 and its aftermath every bit as ruthlessly this year as they did in 2002 . . .
Bush’s only serious (that is, expensive) domestic program, as always, is yet another mammoth tax entitlement for the rich and the superrich. The new plan would make permanent his earlier tax cuts, which, in a gimmick designed to make future deficits look less terrifying, were scheduled to expire in 2010. This new round of relief for the unneedy, like the previous three, is to be financed (though the President didn’t mention this part) by confiscating the Social Security “trust fund,” curtailing federal activities that benefit society at large, and borrowing more trillions—taking out a fourth mortgage on the future, payable to foreign creditors. The rest of Bush’s proposals were either ruinously expensive, socially poisonous non-starters (such as privatizing Social Security) or cheap cuts of wormy red meat for the conservative and evangelical base. Of the latter the cheapest was an exhortation to professional athletes to quit taking steroids, the wormiest a threat to deface the Constitution with anti-gay graffiti. . . . For unique insights into W’s psyche, as evidenced in the speech, see The Hidden State of the Union, by George Lakoff at AlterNet.org, January 22, 2004.
“The speech, like most right-wing discourse these days, is in a kind of code, based on a moral system that not all Americans share. . . .”
Two current noteworthy essays on how Bush will be beaten in November:
The States of Iowa and the Union Agree: Bush Can Be Beaten
Harvey Wassserman
The Free Press/truthout.org, January 23, 2004 George W. Bush and his puppetmaster Karl Rove tried to upstage the Democrats with a State of the Union Address full of tricks and gimmicks, martian distractions and rattling sabers.
It backfired. The stunning results from Iowa far overshadowed Bush's lame, malapropic stump speech. Space travel, gay marriage, steriods in baseball, these are the burning issues for a Republican Party smug enough to be certain they can steal any election. . . .
George W. Bush is still George W. Bush: ruthless, corrupt, untrustworthy, closed-minded, authoritarian, inarticulate, intellectually challenged, programmed, cynical, dishonest, violent, a draft dodger and a religious fanatic who believes he speaks to and for God.
Through the Christian Coalition the GOP has a solid activist base of fanatic puritan fundamentalists unparalleled in US history. They have unlimited money. And they have control of the mainstream media, whose endless gush of right-wing bloviaters has just one mantra: “Bush will win, Bush will win, Bush will win.”
But they can be beaten. . . .
Wasserman then offers a to-do list of 21 items that will assure Bush’s defeat.
Democrats have a key issue: Bush
Paul Krugman
Daily Breeze, January 26, 2004
The real division in the race for the Democratic nomination is between those who are willing to question not just the policies but also the honesty and the motives of the people running our country, and those who aren’t.
What makes Dean seem radical aren't his policy positions but his willingness—shared by Clark—to take a hard line against the Bush administration. . . .
A Democratic candidate will have a chance of winning only if he has an energized base, willing to contribute money in many small donations, willing to contribute their own time, willing to stand up for the candidate in the face of smear tactics and unfair coverage.
That doesn't mean that the Democratic candidate has to be a radical—which is a good thing for the party, since all of the candidates are actually quite moderate. In fact, what the party needs is a candidate who inspires the base enough to get out the message that he isn't a radical—and that Bush is.
Republican strategists turn focus on Kerry
Doyle McManus
LATimes, January 24, 2004
Saturday, January 17, 2004
Religious Left mobilizing against Bush—and so is the Religious Right!
Conservatives in general seem more and more to be reaching the point of had-all-they-can-take, accusing Congressional Republicans of “spending like drunken sailors” and noting that “President Bush has yet to issue a single veto,”—and this reported in the conservative Washington Times: Conservative Groups Break with Republican Leadership, by Ralph Z. Hallow, January 16, 2004.
Another must-read: America’s final wakeup call, Arianna Huffington’s commentary on the revelations in Paul O’Neill’s book, in Salon. If you’re not a Salon subscriber, painlessly get a 1-day pass and read what she has to say about “the deadly consequences of being governed by a disengaged dolt in the hands of a fanatical cabal.”
In case you missed it, here is a link to Senator Ted Kennedy’s January 14th speech to the Center for American Progress in Washington, D.C. on America, Iraq, and Presidential Leadership. He names names, skewering Wolfowitz, Cheney, and Rumsfeld—whom he calls “the Axis of War”—and sets the record straight on the Republican rumor/distortion that Clinton set the precedent for a policy of regime change in Iraq: [In 1998] Wolfowitz, Donald Rumsfeld and 16 others—10 of whom are now serving in or officially advising the current Bush Administration—wrote President Clinton, urging him to use military force to remove Saddam. They said, “The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction. In the near term, this means a willingness to undertake military action, as diplomacy is clearly failing. In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”
That was 1998. President Clinton was in office, and regime change in Iraq did become the policy of the Clinton Administration--but not by war.
The speech is an incredible summary and indictment of the whole process leading up to the invasion of Iraq: The decision on Iraq could have been announced earlier. Why time it for September? As White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card explained on September 7th, “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce new products in August.”
That was the bottom line. War in Iraq was a war of choice, not a war of necessity. It was a product they were methodically rolling out. There was no imminent threat, no immediate national security imperative, and no compelling reason for war.
In public, the Administration continued to deny that the President had made the decision to actually go to war. But the election timetable was clearly driving the marketing of the product. The Administration insisted that Congress vote to authorize the war before it adjourned for the November elections. Why? Because the debate in Congress would distract attention from the troubled economy and the troubled effort to capture bin Laden. The strategy was to focus on Iraq, and do so in a way that would divide the Congress. And it worked. A valuable, eloquent and well-crafted statement that needs to be printed out and shared with everyone you know—and those you don’t. Bottom line: No President of the United States should employ misguided ideology and distortion of the truth to take the nation to war. In doing so, the President broke the basic bond of trust between government and the people. If Congress and the American people knew the whole truth, America would never have gone to war. U.S. still holds children at Guantanamo
Sue Fleming
Reuters, January 17, 2004
Monday, January 12, 2004
“They discussed an occupation of Iraq in January or February of 2001”
Bush Sought ‘Way’ to Invade Iraq?
CBSNews.com, January 11, 2004 A year ago, Paul O’Neill was fired from his job as George Bush's Treasury Secretary for disagreeing too many times with the president’s policy on tax cuts.
Now, O’Neill—who is known for speaking his mind—talks for the first time about his two years inside the Bush administration. His story is the centerpiece of a new book being published this week about the way the Bush White House is run. . . . “From the very beginning, there was a conviction, that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go,” says O’Neill, who adds that going after Saddam was “topic A” 10 days after the inauguration—eight months before Sept. 11.
“From the very first instance, it was about Iraq. It was about what we can do to change this regime,” says Suskind. “Day one, these things were laid and sealed.” . . . Also at the same link, four videos of various interviews and documentaries about O’Neill and his relationship with and revelations about Bush—& White House reactions.
Bush knew that “sharp tax increases, massive spending cuts or a painful mix of both” would be necessary to balance the budget, as he campaigned for tax cuts—even though “the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 percent across-the-board income tax increase” would be necessary to correct the deficit, according to a report commissioned by O’Neill before he was fired for disagreeing with Bush one too many times about tax cuts: White House Shelved 44 Trillion Deficit Report?
Peronet Despeignes of the Financial Times, ChewinTheFat.com, May 30, 2003 Link: the actual Federal Reserve report documenting the $44 trillion. On December 13, 2003, Laurence J. Kotlikoff, Professor of Economics at Boston University, gave a 1-hour interview on The $44 Trillion Abyss on Financial Sense Online. Link to streaming real media or downloadable mp3. Failure of the Year 2003: The Bush Administration
Jason Zasky, Failure Magazine
See also Editor’s Column for a commentary on this year’s prestigious Failure of the Year award.
Bush is author of dark chapter for America
Haroon Siddiqui, Toronto Star, December 28, 2003
Thursday, January 1, 2004
Yes, 2004 is going to be a good year:
E. J. Dionne Jr. says in the Washington Post that “Democrats will not have to spend inordinate amounts of time or money in this election year “uniting their base.” Opposition to Bush has already done that. . . .”
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