What is happening? What has happened to our education system? College graduates who can't read and comprehend? Even one of my own children, a college graduate, declared last night at a family dinner, "I don't read".
My children were read to from the very beginning of their lives and encouraged to read thereafter. They were always showered with children's books and our home had more meaningful books than a small school library, yet to this day each of my children are limited readers. No time for it I would guess.
Video games and movies seem to be a curse. They not only blur the lines of reality they sometimes shatter them. They rob our children of their imagination. In stead of creating their own imaginary world they rely on someone else to create it for them. They live vicariously and act out violence towards others through games meant to entertain by blowing others away with blasts from weapons and by unleashing bombs and monsters.
Whatever the reasons for this decline in reading skills reported below, the one thing that is capable of robbing us of our freedom, of our democracy, of our country's economic and world status and insure destruction of the earth - it is this - the dumbing down of our children. Educated people demand freedom and self-government. Uneducated people fall victim to dictators and those that eagerly profit from the destruction of earth's environment - the life-support system that maintains our lives.
At this point in the advancement of technology there is no quick way to become educated, no magic pill, no electronic implant. God forbid there ever comes a time when people can be forcefully programmed in that way.
The art of concentration, contemplation, reasoning and the dissemination of ideas and knowledge is still best served by reading books. Those who profit from taking advantage of poorly educated people no longer need to burn books - they have successfully replaced them with an unending supply of drivel and dross.
Gary
College graduates' reading skills drop
An adult literacy assessment has shown an alarming trend: the reading proficiency of college graduates is declining, and experts don't know why.
http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13491148.htm
Tuesday, December 27, 2005
Friday, December 23, 2005
The Magic Medallion
I recall hearing a story years ago about a man in New York City who always wore a large medallion on a chain around his neck. A friend of his became very curious since he never saw the man without the medallion dangling outside his clothes. So, one day when they met on the street he politely expressed his curiosity and asked if this was some type family crest or memento.
The man replied."No, this is a powerful amulet given to me by a spiritual master from my native home in India. It has the specific power to protect me from Tiger attacks."
Examining the medal closely his friend asked, "Does it really work?"
The man replied, "I should say so. I have lived in New York now for four years and in all that time not one Tiger attack."
This story reminds me of George Bush's attempts to justify his much criticized attack on Iraq, the torture incidents, violations of civil rights, illegal spying on US citizens and the trampling of civil liberties by his administration.. He and his administration claim their "war on terroristssss" has been effective and the evidence is we haven't been attacked since 9/11.
The man replied."No, this is a powerful amulet given to me by a spiritual master from my native home in India. It has the specific power to protect me from Tiger attacks."
Examining the medal closely his friend asked, "Does it really work?"
The man replied, "I should say so. I have lived in New York now for four years and in all that time not one Tiger attack."
This story reminds me of George Bush's attempts to justify his much criticized attack on Iraq, the torture incidents, violations of civil rights, illegal spying on US citizens and the trampling of civil liberties by his administration.. He and his administration claim their "war on terroristssss" has been effective and the evidence is we haven't been attacked since 9/11.
Critcs point out that this administration and its actions cannot easily take credit for the absense of another attack. Everyone knows how porous our borders are and how easily our ports of entry can be compromised. Critics additionally point out there are more determined terrorists now as a result of the Bush invasion of Iraq than before and that eight years passed beween the first attack on the World Trade Center and the second on 9/11. Most authorities agree that under the present conditions another attack is all but certain. Just when is anyone's guess.
Read the essay below to get a better idea of just how serious this latest breach of our laws and constitution is viewed.
Uncivil Liberties
By Dahlia Lithwick Slate.com
Wednesday 21 December 2005
Why won't the Bush administration obey the law? In the days after Sept. 11, everyone agreed that we needed to recalibrate the delicate balance that had been struck between security and civil liberties. It now appears, however, that while the American people thought they were bargaining in good faith with their president, he was nodding and smiling and taking what he wanted in secret.
At the start of this "war," Congress thought it was authorizing the use of force in Afghanistan. But now we've learned that in so doing it also gave the president limitless powers to break the law. Congress thought it was passing the Patriot Act. But it was actually giving the government broad and seemingly open-ended new surveillance authority. We believed the executive branch to be bound by the rule of law - by the Constitution and the Geneva Conventions and the ancient writ of habeas corpus. But the president was redefining torture, disregarding international conventions, and granting himself broad discretion to name and imprison enemy combatants for years on end.
Americans believed they were bargaining in good faith with their government over the original deal struck in 1978 when Congress enacted the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. FISA was supposed to represent a compromise between security and civil liberties, by making it illegal to spy on Americans without judicial oversight but setting the bar for such oversight quite low. Even as amended by the Patriot Act - which further lowered the standards for a FISA warrant - the statute still purported to adhere to the fundamental bargain: Americans would not be spied upon by their government without basic constitutional checks in place.
The Bush administration is forever quick to point out the flaws in all these bargains we have struck. The Patriot Act didn't go far enough, so the administration pushed for Patriot II. The Geneva Conventions afforded prisoners too many rights, so those rights were suspended. The statutory definition of torture precluded intelligence-gathering, so new definitions were invented. FISA was too cumbersome in a crisis, so it doesn't bind the president. Perhaps it's naive to think we had these negotiations in public because this delicate allocation of rights and powers is fundamental to a democracy. It's not shocking that the Bush administration sought to expand its powers. It's shocking that the president unfailingly refuses to ask.
There are two explanations for the Bush administration's failure to stay within the boundaries of the legal structures for which it's bargained: One is that the administration believes it is fighting this war on its own; the courts, the Congress, and the American people are all standing in its way. The other is that the administration is convinced that none of our statutes or policies or systems will actually work in a pinch. Our laws aren't just broken. They are unfixable.
The former argument was offered this week by Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who defended the secret spy program with the astonishing claim that Congress wasn't told because Congress would not have passed it. Gonzales said the administration considered asking Congress to authorize the program but was "advised that that was not something we could likely get." (This, even though Congress just about sold off the farm after 9/11, granting the president every extra power he requested.) That just can't be right. And it isn't. As Chief Justice John Roberts explained so eloquently at his recent confirmation hearings, the Youngstown case, decided by the Supreme Court in 1952, stipulated that "where the president is acting contrary to congressional authority ... the president's authority is at its lowest ebb." The courts have expressly said that if Congress wouldn't sign off on the deal, executive-branch authority is lesser, not greater.
The other argument for consistently reneging on bargains about civil liberties was put forth by President Bush this week when he insisted that we are facing a "new threat requiring us to think and act differently." The existing laws that govern his conduct are helping the terrorists and hurting us. Bush's admission - that he authorized a program four years ago that is secretly monitored and reauthorized by himself - is astonishing. His admission that he intends to continue to do so masks a darker truth: He believes that FISA can't be fixed. Like the judicial system for Americans or the courts-martial system for prisoners of war, FISA can't be modified to protect us; it must be overridden by fiat and in secret.
Over the past several days, Bush's weary supporters have begun to publish defenses of his conduct. They argue, in effect, that the president has the authority to conduct warrantless searches for foreign intelligence because no courts have ever held that his office does not have that inherent authority. This assumes there is a war on. But that isn't the most galling argument. The most reckless argument is that FISA is either outdated - as Condoleezza Rice has suggested - or too slow, or demands too much in the way of proof. Never mind that experts say warrants can be verbally authorized in a matter of hours and proved retroactively and that the FISA court has, as of today, approved 5,200 applications and rejected four. To Bush it is broken, and rather than fix it he'll just make up his own law.
The system sucks, Bush's champions argue. Possibly. The bureaucracy is crippling. Indeed. And so what is the solution? Byron York argues - mind-bendingly - that with his order allowing the National Security Agency to conduct warrantless searches, Bush "was trying to shake the bureaucracy into action." Somehow, the bureaucracy would be galvanized into coordinating better investigations by a secret spy program operating without its knowledge.
So, which is it? Does the Bush administration refuse to honor its legislative and constitutional bargains with Congress, the courts, and the American people because it believes we are all just getting in its way? Or does it sidestep us because it believes that all these trappings of a democracy - the courts and the laws and public accountability are broken and unfixable? The first possibility is grandiose and depressing. The latter is absolutely breathtaking.
Tuesday, December 20, 2005
Life Of The Party
If you are a Democrat are you not quite sure the Democrats have a decent candidate for president in 2008, someone the average Democrat can relate to? Are you fed up with the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) and the Washington insiders picking the candidate and telling you who to vote for? Are you sick and tired of Democrat representatives, beholden to corporations who speak through mouths full of mush and who are afraid to speak candidly for fear they'll offend some conservative voters? Do you want a Democratic candidate who speaks the truth to power and who will clearly win in 2008 and not just come close which assures the election will be stolen by the corrupt Republican-corporate machine? Is that what's troubling you son? Is that what's bothering you sister?
Well, stand up and be full of cheer because there's a bright ray of sunshine coming from the west. Actually there are two rays of sunshine - one being Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana and the second Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. These two men have the potential to handily win the nomination and then soundly defeat whichever corporate lackey and forked-tounged, hypocritical, nefarious, imperialistic party hack the Republicans (or the Democrats) come up with.
In case you previously missed it, the April, 2005, interview below by Salon.com will help give you a good feel for why I think Schweitzer is the man. I'll post more on Schweitzer and Richardson soon. For additional info go to the links listed in the article below and www.schweitzerforpresident.com
What a breath of fresh air!
Gary
Life of the Party
Brian Schweitzer, the blue governor of the red state of Montana, may just have the answer to the Democrats' woes.
- By Tim Grieve - Reprinted from Salon.com
April 19, 2005 HELENA, Mont. -- The future is wearing a turquoise bolo tie wrapped around the open collar of a blue-and-white-striped button-down dress shirt. And if that doesn't sound quite right, then you haven't considered the mismatched gray suit coat or the blue jeans and boots down below. Meet Brian Schweitzer, the soil sciences major who grew up to be the governor of Montana -- and may be the next best hope of the Democratic Party.
On Nov. 2, George W. Bush beat John Kerry in Montana by 20 percentage points. On the same day, Montana voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- and elected as their governor a populist, pro-choice Democrat. Are Montana voters as schizophrenic as the governor's fashion sense, or is Brian Schweitzer just that good?
A lot of folks say it's the latter. Everyone from the Washington Monthly to the American Spectator has taken note of the rancher from Whitefish, Mont., and what the Wall Street Journal called his "well-spoken, gun-owning, dog-loving, native-ritual-doing, shot-of-whiskey-drinking true-west style." Democrats hungry for hope in the dark days after 2004 find themselves wondering whether another little-known governor from a small red state can somehow help them find their way back to the White House.
Ask Schweitzer about 2008, and he ticks off the names of Democratic governors who've proved they can appeal to red-state voters. What about him? "You know, all these people are saying, 'To be governor of Montana, he must have it figured out,'" Schweitzer says. "I'm telling you, I've broken more colts than there are days that I've been in office. I'm just a regular guy, getting things done in Montana. I don't know if that works nationally, but I don't care."
But it's clear that he does care. In an hour-long interview, Schweitzer gave impassioned advice on how Democrats can win back the rural West by "leading with their hearts" and recognizing that a one-size-fits-all platform on gun control won't play in hunting and fishing states like Montana.
A native Montanan who spent time in the Middle East before returning to start his own business, Schweitzer espouses a political philosophy that combines the class-based populism of a John Edwards with the budgetary pragmatism of a Howard Dean, all wrapped up in shit-kicking Western dialect that the Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zúniga calls "a genuine version of Bush's fake ranch."
Salon spoke with Schweitzer late last week in his office in Helena. To get to the governor, you park your car on the curb out in front of the State Capitol -- there are no parking meters here -- and walk straight into the governor's office, unmolested by bureaucratic gatekeepers or security personnel. Helena is a long way from Washington, but maybe not for long: Before I can even compose a question, Schweitzer is offering his prescription for what ails the Democratic Party.
"You know who the most successful Democrats have been through history?" he asks. "Democrats who've led with their hearts, not their heads. Harry Truman, he led with his heart. Jack Kennedy led with his heart. Bill Clinton, well, he led with his heart, but it dropped about 2 feet lower in his anatomy later on.
"We are the folks who represent the families. Talk like you care. Act like you care. When you're talking about issues that touch families, it's OK to make it look like you care. It's OK to have policies that demonstrate that you'll make their lives better -- and talk about it in a way that they understand. Too many Democrats -- the policy's just fine, but they can't talk about it in a way that anybody else understands."
That sounds like a not-so-veiled criticism of John Kerry.
Oh, Washington, D.C. The problem is, they get to Washington, they drink that water, they get Washington-speak. This is not a criticism of John Kerry. It's the reason that people keep saying, "Oh, [the next Democratic president is] likely to be a governor." It's because governors are faced with this all the time: Their language has to be the language that is clear enough for Joe or Mary Six-Pack to understand. When you speak on the Senate floor or on the House floor or in a Cabinet meeting, you don't even have to use the words that we use. It's a new language -- you know, "budget reconciliation, blah blah blah blah."
No. When you're out visiting with folks in a way that touches their heart, you tell them, "We're going to find the money to do the right thing." Well, when a senator stands on the Senate floor, it'd take him two hours to explain that.
But is winning back the White House really just a matter of learning to say things in a clearer way?
A whole lot of it's visual. I heard somebody say, very early in the last presidential campaign, that they turned the volume off on their television and just watched the two candidates, and they said, "Bush is going to win." You know, when Bush walked in the room, he'd say, "Oh, hey, how ya doin' there?" giving somebody a high-five right there, giving somebody a thumbs up. When Kerry walked in, he found his way to the podium, and he described in painful detail -- with big words, in a strong way -- all the things that he was going to make right for the American people.
Please.
You need to have good solid policy -- that's important. But you've got to touch people. They've got to know you; they've got to know that you believe in what you're saying. And that's probably more important when people vote than your policies. Because how the hell are they going to raise their families, maybe work two jobs, go hunting on the weekend, bowl and drink beer with the boys on Tuesday night, and still have enough time to figure out who's telling the truth about the budget, about healthcare, about education?
So it's about the candidate himself -- about coming across as authentic and as someone voters will say is "one of us"?
They look up there and say, "That guy's a straight shooter. If I wasn't so busy bowling and working and fishing, and if I had time to spend on these issues, I bet I'd come to the same conclusions that that guy would. But it's a good thing that he's doing all that studying and stuff, because I'm busy fishing and bowling."
How do you build that kind of affinity? Do you have to show the voters that you're a regular guy -- the "who would you most want to have a beer with?" test -- or is it a matter of building some kind of link with voters on political or social issues?
You're asking me? Hell, I'm out here in Montana. I don't have any idea what the big shots in Washington, D.C., are doing. I don't think I've got any great solutions for the rest of the world, but I think I understand Montanans.
OK, let's talk about Montanans then. Did 53 percent of them vote for you because they thought you were a stand-up guy, or was it because they thought you shared their values and their positions on issues?
Both. They think I'm a stand-up guy and I'm a straight shooter. I'm plain-spoken, but the things that I say make sense.
But you've got to get people to listen in the first place. In a lot of the country -- in the South, in the rural West -- folks aren't particularly receptive to hearing what a Democrat has to say. They've made up their minds already, and they're not going to trust many Democrats on something like gun control, for example.
Maybe. But you know, when they see you pick up a gun, they know you've used one before. When you pick up a gun and you put in a round and you fire one off, they know that you know what it's all about.
In my Senate campaign [Schweitzer ran unsuccessfully in 2000], I had a great campaign ad. I stood in front of one of my barns, and I said: "Montana is not New York City. We don't need a bunch of new gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we already have." And then we moved to a shot where I was with one of my sons and my daughter, and I was holding a .270, which is a fairly good-size rifle. As I'm talking, I lifted the bolt, shoved in a bullet, put the safety on and handed it to my son as my daughter watched, and he touched one off. And as I was doing that, I was saying, "In Montana, we understand that passing responsibility from one generation to another with gun safety is part of who we are."
So it wasn't about guns, necessarily; it wasn't about family, necessarily; it wasn't about responsibility, necessarily. But it was the nexus of those. But we didn't run it enough. What happened was -- consultants. "Oh, this issue, that issue, some other issue." They're all talking about the issues. And I just kept pushing them in the Senate race: "Why don't we just run the gun ad and nothing else?" And they said, "No, no we've got all these issues."
So this time around, when we started shooting ads, they had some polling data, and they knew what pushed the buttons of the people in Montana. And I said, "No. This is the way this campaign is going to work: The more times that we run ads with me on a horse or carrying a gun -- it's better if I'm doing both -- the more likely it is that we'll call me a governor at the end of the day. Because what those ads said is, "I'm a real Montanan."
Does that kind of personal authenticity trump everything else in the minds of voters?
There's more that the big shots from big cities will never understand. I probably shook hands with at least half of the people who voted for me, maybe two-thirds. You can do that in a place where there's only 920,000 people.
But you can't do that when you're running for president. How would you translate that sort of personal appeal into a national campaign?
You're asking me about a national campaign? What the heck would I know about a national campaign?
Look, I started this out by saying that Democrats can win if they lead with their hearts. Let people feel you! Don't try to verbalize. Let them feel you first. If you're not a passionate person -- I happen to be. If I'm for something, you're gonna know it pretty quick. And if I'm agin it, you're gonna know it too. I'm straight about those things. Some people can't do that. Maybe they've had a lot of time in politics, or they're lawyers, or it's just their makeup. And they have all these highfalutin pollsters and media people, and they say, "Well, there's this demographic that kind of bleeds into this demographic, and you don't want to lose these over here because you were on this." I don't believe any of it.
I think most people will support you if they know that you'll stand your ground.
Even if they don't stand on the same ground?
That's right.
Is that why Bush won Montana by 20 percentage points -- because people thought he was the kind of guy who'd stand his ground?
Well, that, and he's a Republican. Wasn't he on the ballot with an "R" next to his name?
If that "R" is so important -- and if the West is where Democrats have to win to begin turning things around nationally -- then the party is going to have to figure out a way to overcome it. How can Democrats close the gap in places like Montana?
I understand that the Democrats in the big cities, on the East and the West coasts, have a grave concern about gun control. Frankly, as it turns out, so do Republicans. [California Gov.] Schwarzenegger supports gun control, I think. [New York Gov.] Pataki certainly does, [former New York Mayor] Giuliani does, most of these East Coast Republicans do. So I can appreciate that they've got a problem in their inner cities. But that's not what we have out here in the flyover zone. We have guns because we like them. We have guns because in some ways it just kind of defines who we are. We like having guns around. It's not necessarily that you're out shooting -- it's knowing that you could if you wanted to.
When you crowd a bunch of people together, when you've got people living on top of each other, they're likely to have run-ins. So you need a whole bunch more laws. When you've got more cattle than people and you've got blue sky that goes on almost forever, people have got room to roam without bothering each other. Live and let live.
Are there Democrats who can make that sort of appeal on a national level?
Sure, there's bunches of them. I'm not going to start naming names. I don't know who all the national Democrats are. I can tell you that my pal Billy Richardson is a good guy, a good governor, a big shot. Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas. You know, they still have the Democratic Caucus in a phone booth in Kansas, and she gets elected. So there's two.
Of course, my good friend in Michigan [Jennifer Granholm] -- she can't run unless they do the Schwarzenegger thing, which is unlikely. Ed Rendell, I wish I could do his voice; he's got the greatest voice in the world. Janet Napolitano in Arizona has been very, very successful. And let's not forget Tom Vilsack. He's a wonderful individual.
Howard Dean, who earned an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association as governor, has said almost exactly what you've just said about guns. But people in Montana probably don't think of him as a friend to rural gun owners.
Most people that matter in Montana have never heard of Howard Dean or anybody else we've talked about today. People who are into politics -- they've already decided how they're going to vote not only in 2008 but in 2012. They're not persuadable. The more people follow this, the less persuadable they are. Anybody that knows the names I just talked about is either a hard "R" or a hard "D." They already know how they're going to vote for the rest of their lives.
So Joe and Mary Six-Pack, they don't have time to watch "Hardball With Chris Matthews." They haven't any idea who Pat Buchanan is, or Robert Novak. They don't watch that stuff. They don't read about it. They open the newspaper; they read a couple of headlines on the front page to see if they know anybody that got in a pickle, and then they go right to the sports page or the comics. And if they see something about politics in there -- hoo, they're not reading that.
Don't you think any of it seeps through? The Republicans' involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, for example?
Sure it does. Maybe a little [on] Terri Schiavo because it was blasted on the national news. But I don't think anybody figured out what was going on there, except that it looked to them like it was a big political move by some rascals in Washington.
Do they make any distinction about which "rascals" those were?
You know, Joe and Mary Six-Pack, they don't disassociate. They're pretty much all in the same box.
They may not differentiate among Democrats, either. Again, Howard Dean has a record that's not at all unlike what you're trying to pull off in Montana, but it's hard to imagine Dean as the kind of national candidate who would do well here.
The first time people heard of Howard Dean, they heard of him as some guy from Vermont -- and people vaguely know where that is, but it sounds like it's where lots of hippies live -- and that he was against the war. So even before they saw him on TV, they figured he had a ponytail and a nose ring. Turns out, if they had gone three or four pages deep, they would have found out that the guy was a well-respected, moderate Democrat. But in the course of national politics, you've got about a blink or two to make up your mind whether you like somebody.
And then it was "electability." Democrats were thinking, "Oh gosh, we've just got to win. Let's get somebody that's electable." And they thought, "This guy Kerry, he's a smart guy, a senator; he served in the war, so they can't ding him for that; he voted for the war." So they started making it into a thinking thing rather than using the heart. Now, Kerry may have been the best candidate, but he wasn't selected because he was the best candidate from the heart. He was selected because in Iowa and New Hampshire people intellectualized it. They said -- and remember, this wasn't Joe and Mary Six-Pack making this decision -- "I love Howard Dean, but I think I'll marry John Kerry because Mom and Dad are going to like him better."
You're Catholic, but religion didn't play much of a role in your election.
I went to high school in a monastery. I understand Catholicism. But I don't have a need to carry my religion on my sleeve. It's something I have in my heart. Twenty-five percent of Montana is Catholic. Twenty-four percent are Lutheran. Eighteen to 20 percent are Episcopalian. This is not Baptist country -- I think it's a few percent Baptists. We have pretty mainline religions in Montana.
That's different from the South, where born-again evangelicals can dominate the political debate.
God, guns and gays.
But it's different here, politically?
I think that guns are probably preeminent in a place like Montana. When it comes to religion, people respect your own opinion. If the question is, Is it important in the flyover areas, the Midwest and the West, to understand something about God, I think it is. I think people are likely to be more God-fearing. Are they in church on Sunday necessarily? No. They might be fishing. People have different ways of getting close to their maker. In Montana, lots of time that means getting out.
But what about the political issues that go along with religion?
Gays and choice, you mean? When you simply say, like I do, "I'm pro-choice -- I just think that's an intensely private decision that every woman and her physician can and should be able to make, period" -- what else is there? That's certainly not someplace for government to be sticking its nose.
When it comes to gay marriage, folks in Montana, they're pretty traditional about who ought to be marrying who. They're not thinking that men ought to be marrying men and women ought to be marrying women. I think that's pretty consistent across the country, except for a few enclaves on the East and West Coast.
John Kerry opposes gay marriage, too. But if you took a poll of Montanans today, I'll bet 85 percent of them would say that he supports it.
Oh, they'd probably think that he married some guy. But understand that the Bush-Kerry race [didn't] matter in Montana because there was never an ad run in Montana -- not a single ad. It wasn't in play. Kerry didn't come here, Bush didn't come here, no ads were run. People didn't know who the heck they were. The things they heard about Kerry they didn't like from the very beginning, because the things they heard about him were what Karl Rove told them about him.
Many Democrats believe that the determining factor in the election was the war -- and the thought that George W. Bush was the one that would keep Americans safest. Was national security the driving issue in Montana?
No. Most people in Montana have never been to New York City. The twin towers are something they've only seen on television. And Montanans have served in much higher numbers as a percent of our population in every conflict we've ever had. Part of that is the large number of Indians -- Indians are warriors, some of the greatest warriors in modern times and in ancient times -- and part of it is the rural nature of who we are. And it's one way to demonstrate that you're a stand-up guy, and I respect that.
But were Montanans outraged at the same level as folks in New York City or in other vulnerable cities? Frankly, is al-Qaida coming to Montana?
It would be a bad idea for them to come here. To start with, if they show up here and start making some trouble, somebody's just going to shoot their asses and ask questions later.
But the point is, when you live in big cities, you see how many people can be killed by a single event, like flying into a building or a dirty bomb. I just don't believe that Montanans were so touched as they were on the East and West coasts about this. I mean, we were outraged that we were attacked, of course. But I will never know the feeling that somebody who is from New York had to have watching that happen.
How does the Iraq war play in Montana?
Oh, about 50-50, right now.
How does it play with you?
As you know, I lived in the Middle East, and I learned to speak Arabic. I had misgivings from the very beginning. We were told that this incursion was going to make the world a safer place. But that didn't square with me because I knew, in the Middle East, the days of the Crusades are like they happened just a few years ago. Any incursion of the West into Islamic cultures is going to be met with resistance. So now we say that, really, the reason we [went] there was to create democracies, and democracies will spring up [throughout the region].
But here's the problem. Our closet allies in the Middle East would be? Saudi Arabia, with a functional king; Kuwait, with a functional king; Jordan, with a functional king; Egypt, with a -- I don't know -- president for life. Israel, it does have a democratic republic. But what do you think our allies are saying when we're standing there saying, "We are going to let democracy rise up"? Well, that's pretty threatening to them. So I don't know what the endgame is here.
You know, I've had people say to me, "But when you're attacked, you've got to respond." I agree. I think we should have gone to Afghanistan and turned over every single rock until we got Osama bin Laden. And I would personally put his head on a stick; I would do that.
That's the place we needed to be. The problem is that somehow we got diverted along the way and we went into Iraq. Now, we had Iraq tamed better than any other country in the world. They couldn't even take off or land a plane or even move a truck in the desert. We had airplanes over Iraq, 24/7, for years. We don't over Iran. So why Iraq? I haven't got the answer yet. I'm still asking the question.
We're there. I support our troops; I support the families. You know what? In Montana, we don't make the decision to go. We just answer when called. This is for the big shots in Washington, D.C. I'm just a rancher from Montana.
And you have the luxury of not having to deal with foreign policy from Helena. You're working instead on domestic issues with Montana's Legislature.
We've gotten just about everything I've wanted: a scholarship program, a healthcare program, a prescription drug program. We passed five [medical malpractice] bills -- five med-mals! -- no tax increases, some economic development bills that are very cool, and a "best and brightest" scholarship program, so every middle-class family in Montana finally can attain the dream to send the next generation to college.
Can the Democrats use an issue like that in a play for "moral values" voters?
Hell, yes. When every mother and father knows that there will be support if they have a kid that deserves the opportunity to make it to the top ... Education is the equalizer. It doesn't matter if you were on third base or were in the dugout when the game started -- you have an opportunity to make it to home plate with education.
And healthcare. You know, in Montana, 20 percent of the people don't have health insurance. They're not indigent, living under bridges someplace or in a culvert with a sleeping bag. Maybe Mom and Dad both work. They say prayers with their kids when they tuck 'em into bed, and then they close the door and they walk down the hall, and they get on their knees and they pray one more time that nobody gets sick because they don't have health insurance. They just can't imagine having a sick child and not being in a position to be able to get the help that they need.
That's something that we've got to fix, and we're fixing it in Montana. We've got a targeted tax credit for small businesses to buy insurance for themselves and their employees. We passed five med-mal bills. If that helps, we'll do it. If making [insurance] more affordable by pooling people together so they can buy insurance will help, we'll do it. We've put significantly more resources into something called the Child Health Insurance Program to get more matching funds from the federal government so that lower-middle-class kids up to 18 will get a healthy start. We're doing it.
And how do you persuade the most conservative voters -- the ones for whom abortion and gay marriage are be-all, end-all issues -- that they should think about education and healthcare as important "moral values" too?
The most conservative voters? The beauty is that I only need about 50 percent to win. The most conservative voters will not even give me a shot. I don't need 100 percent of the vote. Just do the right thing, for God's sake. And if that means I'm only going to be governor for the next three and a half years, so be it. Just tell 'em who are you are, tell 'em what you believe in, and tell 'em in a way that they're gonna believe you.
The Democrats spend a lot of time worrying about how to finesse these social issues.
Please. Please. Just tell 'em what you are. You know, this polling stuff, having to go out and figure out which way the wind's blowing -- do you believe in something? Did you have something when you started? If you do, tell 'em what it is. You'll be all right. If you're a kook, you're not going to get elected. But if you're real, you're normal, you're halfway bright, and you're willing to stand up -- that's the most important thing.
Well, stand up and be full of cheer because there's a bright ray of sunshine coming from the west. Actually there are two rays of sunshine - one being Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana and the second Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico. These two men have the potential to handily win the nomination and then soundly defeat whichever corporate lackey and forked-tounged, hypocritical, nefarious, imperialistic party hack the Republicans (or the Democrats) come up with.
In case you previously missed it, the April, 2005, interview below by Salon.com will help give you a good feel for why I think Schweitzer is the man. I'll post more on Schweitzer and Richardson soon. For additional info go to the links listed in the article below and www.schweitzerforpresident.com
What a breath of fresh air!
Gary
Life of the Party
Brian Schweitzer, the blue governor of the red state of Montana, may just have the answer to the Democrats' woes.
- By Tim Grieve - Reprinted from Salon.com
April 19, 2005 HELENA, Mont. -- The future is wearing a turquoise bolo tie wrapped around the open collar of a blue-and-white-striped button-down dress shirt. And if that doesn't sound quite right, then you haven't considered the mismatched gray suit coat or the blue jeans and boots down below. Meet Brian Schweitzer, the soil sciences major who grew up to be the governor of Montana -- and may be the next best hope of the Democratic Party.
On Nov. 2, George W. Bush beat John Kerry in Montana by 20 percentage points. On the same day, Montana voters overwhelmingly approved a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage -- and elected as their governor a populist, pro-choice Democrat. Are Montana voters as schizophrenic as the governor's fashion sense, or is Brian Schweitzer just that good?
A lot of folks say it's the latter. Everyone from the Washington Monthly to the American Spectator has taken note of the rancher from Whitefish, Mont., and what the Wall Street Journal called his "well-spoken, gun-owning, dog-loving, native-ritual-doing, shot-of-whiskey-drinking true-west style." Democrats hungry for hope in the dark days after 2004 find themselves wondering whether another little-known governor from a small red state can somehow help them find their way back to the White House.
Ask Schweitzer about 2008, and he ticks off the names of Democratic governors who've proved they can appeal to red-state voters. What about him? "You know, all these people are saying, 'To be governor of Montana, he must have it figured out,'" Schweitzer says. "I'm telling you, I've broken more colts than there are days that I've been in office. I'm just a regular guy, getting things done in Montana. I don't know if that works nationally, but I don't care."
But it's clear that he does care. In an hour-long interview, Schweitzer gave impassioned advice on how Democrats can win back the rural West by "leading with their hearts" and recognizing that a one-size-fits-all platform on gun control won't play in hunting and fishing states like Montana.
A native Montanan who spent time in the Middle East before returning to start his own business, Schweitzer espouses a political philosophy that combines the class-based populism of a John Edwards with the budgetary pragmatism of a Howard Dean, all wrapped up in shit-kicking Western dialect that the Daily Kos' Markos Moulitsas Zúniga calls "a genuine version of Bush's fake ranch."
Salon spoke with Schweitzer late last week in his office in Helena. To get to the governor, you park your car on the curb out in front of the State Capitol -- there are no parking meters here -- and walk straight into the governor's office, unmolested by bureaucratic gatekeepers or security personnel. Helena is a long way from Washington, but maybe not for long: Before I can even compose a question, Schweitzer is offering his prescription for what ails the Democratic Party.
"You know who the most successful Democrats have been through history?" he asks. "Democrats who've led with their hearts, not their heads. Harry Truman, he led with his heart. Jack Kennedy led with his heart. Bill Clinton, well, he led with his heart, but it dropped about 2 feet lower in his anatomy later on.
"We are the folks who represent the families. Talk like you care. Act like you care. When you're talking about issues that touch families, it's OK to make it look like you care. It's OK to have policies that demonstrate that you'll make their lives better -- and talk about it in a way that they understand. Too many Democrats -- the policy's just fine, but they can't talk about it in a way that anybody else understands."
That sounds like a not-so-veiled criticism of John Kerry.
Oh, Washington, D.C. The problem is, they get to Washington, they drink that water, they get Washington-speak. This is not a criticism of John Kerry. It's the reason that people keep saying, "Oh, [the next Democratic president is] likely to be a governor." It's because governors are faced with this all the time: Their language has to be the language that is clear enough for Joe or Mary Six-Pack to understand. When you speak on the Senate floor or on the House floor or in a Cabinet meeting, you don't even have to use the words that we use. It's a new language -- you know, "budget reconciliation, blah blah blah blah."
No. When you're out visiting with folks in a way that touches their heart, you tell them, "We're going to find the money to do the right thing." Well, when a senator stands on the Senate floor, it'd take him two hours to explain that.
But is winning back the White House really just a matter of learning to say things in a clearer way?
A whole lot of it's visual. I heard somebody say, very early in the last presidential campaign, that they turned the volume off on their television and just watched the two candidates, and they said, "Bush is going to win." You know, when Bush walked in the room, he'd say, "Oh, hey, how ya doin' there?" giving somebody a high-five right there, giving somebody a thumbs up. When Kerry walked in, he found his way to the podium, and he described in painful detail -- with big words, in a strong way -- all the things that he was going to make right for the American people.
Please.
You need to have good solid policy -- that's important. But you've got to touch people. They've got to know you; they've got to know that you believe in what you're saying. And that's probably more important when people vote than your policies. Because how the hell are they going to raise their families, maybe work two jobs, go hunting on the weekend, bowl and drink beer with the boys on Tuesday night, and still have enough time to figure out who's telling the truth about the budget, about healthcare, about education?
So it's about the candidate himself -- about coming across as authentic and as someone voters will say is "one of us"?
They look up there and say, "That guy's a straight shooter. If I wasn't so busy bowling and working and fishing, and if I had time to spend on these issues, I bet I'd come to the same conclusions that that guy would. But it's a good thing that he's doing all that studying and stuff, because I'm busy fishing and bowling."
How do you build that kind of affinity? Do you have to show the voters that you're a regular guy -- the "who would you most want to have a beer with?" test -- or is it a matter of building some kind of link with voters on political or social issues?
You're asking me? Hell, I'm out here in Montana. I don't have any idea what the big shots in Washington, D.C., are doing. I don't think I've got any great solutions for the rest of the world, but I think I understand Montanans.
OK, let's talk about Montanans then. Did 53 percent of them vote for you because they thought you were a stand-up guy, or was it because they thought you shared their values and their positions on issues?
Both. They think I'm a stand-up guy and I'm a straight shooter. I'm plain-spoken, but the things that I say make sense.
But you've got to get people to listen in the first place. In a lot of the country -- in the South, in the rural West -- folks aren't particularly receptive to hearing what a Democrat has to say. They've made up their minds already, and they're not going to trust many Democrats on something like gun control, for example.
Maybe. But you know, when they see you pick up a gun, they know you've used one before. When you pick up a gun and you put in a round and you fire one off, they know that you know what it's all about.
In my Senate campaign [Schweitzer ran unsuccessfully in 2000], I had a great campaign ad. I stood in front of one of my barns, and I said: "Montana is not New York City. We don't need a bunch of new gun laws. We need to enforce the ones we already have." And then we moved to a shot where I was with one of my sons and my daughter, and I was holding a .270, which is a fairly good-size rifle. As I'm talking, I lifted the bolt, shoved in a bullet, put the safety on and handed it to my son as my daughter watched, and he touched one off. And as I was doing that, I was saying, "In Montana, we understand that passing responsibility from one generation to another with gun safety is part of who we are."
So it wasn't about guns, necessarily; it wasn't about family, necessarily; it wasn't about responsibility, necessarily. But it was the nexus of those. But we didn't run it enough. What happened was -- consultants. "Oh, this issue, that issue, some other issue." They're all talking about the issues. And I just kept pushing them in the Senate race: "Why don't we just run the gun ad and nothing else?" And they said, "No, no we've got all these issues."
So this time around, when we started shooting ads, they had some polling data, and they knew what pushed the buttons of the people in Montana. And I said, "No. This is the way this campaign is going to work: The more times that we run ads with me on a horse or carrying a gun -- it's better if I'm doing both -- the more likely it is that we'll call me a governor at the end of the day. Because what those ads said is, "I'm a real Montanan."
Does that kind of personal authenticity trump everything else in the minds of voters?
There's more that the big shots from big cities will never understand. I probably shook hands with at least half of the people who voted for me, maybe two-thirds. You can do that in a place where there's only 920,000 people.
But you can't do that when you're running for president. How would you translate that sort of personal appeal into a national campaign?
You're asking me about a national campaign? What the heck would I know about a national campaign?
Look, I started this out by saying that Democrats can win if they lead with their hearts. Let people feel you! Don't try to verbalize. Let them feel you first. If you're not a passionate person -- I happen to be. If I'm for something, you're gonna know it pretty quick. And if I'm agin it, you're gonna know it too. I'm straight about those things. Some people can't do that. Maybe they've had a lot of time in politics, or they're lawyers, or it's just their makeup. And they have all these highfalutin pollsters and media people, and they say, "Well, there's this demographic that kind of bleeds into this demographic, and you don't want to lose these over here because you were on this." I don't believe any of it.
I think most people will support you if they know that you'll stand your ground.
Even if they don't stand on the same ground?
That's right.
Is that why Bush won Montana by 20 percentage points -- because people thought he was the kind of guy who'd stand his ground?
Well, that, and he's a Republican. Wasn't he on the ballot with an "R" next to his name?
If that "R" is so important -- and if the West is where Democrats have to win to begin turning things around nationally -- then the party is going to have to figure out a way to overcome it. How can Democrats close the gap in places like Montana?
I understand that the Democrats in the big cities, on the East and the West coasts, have a grave concern about gun control. Frankly, as it turns out, so do Republicans. [California Gov.] Schwarzenegger supports gun control, I think. [New York Gov.] Pataki certainly does, [former New York Mayor] Giuliani does, most of these East Coast Republicans do. So I can appreciate that they've got a problem in their inner cities. But that's not what we have out here in the flyover zone. We have guns because we like them. We have guns because in some ways it just kind of defines who we are. We like having guns around. It's not necessarily that you're out shooting -- it's knowing that you could if you wanted to.
When you crowd a bunch of people together, when you've got people living on top of each other, they're likely to have run-ins. So you need a whole bunch more laws. When you've got more cattle than people and you've got blue sky that goes on almost forever, people have got room to roam without bothering each other. Live and let live.
Are there Democrats who can make that sort of appeal on a national level?
Sure, there's bunches of them. I'm not going to start naming names. I don't know who all the national Democrats are. I can tell you that my pal Billy Richardson is a good guy, a good governor, a big shot. Kathleen Sebelius in Kansas. You know, they still have the Democratic Caucus in a phone booth in Kansas, and she gets elected. So there's two.
Of course, my good friend in Michigan [Jennifer Granholm] -- she can't run unless they do the Schwarzenegger thing, which is unlikely. Ed Rendell, I wish I could do his voice; he's got the greatest voice in the world. Janet Napolitano in Arizona has been very, very successful. And let's not forget Tom Vilsack. He's a wonderful individual.
Howard Dean, who earned an "A" rating from the National Rifle Association as governor, has said almost exactly what you've just said about guns. But people in Montana probably don't think of him as a friend to rural gun owners.
Most people that matter in Montana have never heard of Howard Dean or anybody else we've talked about today. People who are into politics -- they've already decided how they're going to vote not only in 2008 but in 2012. They're not persuadable. The more people follow this, the less persuadable they are. Anybody that knows the names I just talked about is either a hard "R" or a hard "D." They already know how they're going to vote for the rest of their lives.
So Joe and Mary Six-Pack, they don't have time to watch "Hardball With Chris Matthews." They haven't any idea who Pat Buchanan is, or Robert Novak. They don't watch that stuff. They don't read about it. They open the newspaper; they read a couple of headlines on the front page to see if they know anybody that got in a pickle, and then they go right to the sports page or the comics. And if they see something about politics in there -- hoo, they're not reading that.
Don't you think any of it seeps through? The Republicans' involvement in the Terri Schiavo case, for example?
Sure it does. Maybe a little [on] Terri Schiavo because it was blasted on the national news. But I don't think anybody figured out what was going on there, except that it looked to them like it was a big political move by some rascals in Washington.
Do they make any distinction about which "rascals" those were?
You know, Joe and Mary Six-Pack, they don't disassociate. They're pretty much all in the same box.
They may not differentiate among Democrats, either. Again, Howard Dean has a record that's not at all unlike what you're trying to pull off in Montana, but it's hard to imagine Dean as the kind of national candidate who would do well here.
The first time people heard of Howard Dean, they heard of him as some guy from Vermont -- and people vaguely know where that is, but it sounds like it's where lots of hippies live -- and that he was against the war. So even before they saw him on TV, they figured he had a ponytail and a nose ring. Turns out, if they had gone three or four pages deep, they would have found out that the guy was a well-respected, moderate Democrat. But in the course of national politics, you've got about a blink or two to make up your mind whether you like somebody.
And then it was "electability." Democrats were thinking, "Oh gosh, we've just got to win. Let's get somebody that's electable." And they thought, "This guy Kerry, he's a smart guy, a senator; he served in the war, so they can't ding him for that; he voted for the war." So they started making it into a thinking thing rather than using the heart. Now, Kerry may have been the best candidate, but he wasn't selected because he was the best candidate from the heart. He was selected because in Iowa and New Hampshire people intellectualized it. They said -- and remember, this wasn't Joe and Mary Six-Pack making this decision -- "I love Howard Dean, but I think I'll marry John Kerry because Mom and Dad are going to like him better."
You're Catholic, but religion didn't play much of a role in your election.
I went to high school in a monastery. I understand Catholicism. But I don't have a need to carry my religion on my sleeve. It's something I have in my heart. Twenty-five percent of Montana is Catholic. Twenty-four percent are Lutheran. Eighteen to 20 percent are Episcopalian. This is not Baptist country -- I think it's a few percent Baptists. We have pretty mainline religions in Montana.
That's different from the South, where born-again evangelicals can dominate the political debate.
God, guns and gays.
But it's different here, politically?
I think that guns are probably preeminent in a place like Montana. When it comes to religion, people respect your own opinion. If the question is, Is it important in the flyover areas, the Midwest and the West, to understand something about God, I think it is. I think people are likely to be more God-fearing. Are they in church on Sunday necessarily? No. They might be fishing. People have different ways of getting close to their maker. In Montana, lots of time that means getting out.
But what about the political issues that go along with religion?
Gays and choice, you mean? When you simply say, like I do, "I'm pro-choice -- I just think that's an intensely private decision that every woman and her physician can and should be able to make, period" -- what else is there? That's certainly not someplace for government to be sticking its nose.
When it comes to gay marriage, folks in Montana, they're pretty traditional about who ought to be marrying who. They're not thinking that men ought to be marrying men and women ought to be marrying women. I think that's pretty consistent across the country, except for a few enclaves on the East and West Coast.
John Kerry opposes gay marriage, too. But if you took a poll of Montanans today, I'll bet 85 percent of them would say that he supports it.
Oh, they'd probably think that he married some guy. But understand that the Bush-Kerry race [didn't] matter in Montana because there was never an ad run in Montana -- not a single ad. It wasn't in play. Kerry didn't come here, Bush didn't come here, no ads were run. People didn't know who the heck they were. The things they heard about Kerry they didn't like from the very beginning, because the things they heard about him were what Karl Rove told them about him.
Many Democrats believe that the determining factor in the election was the war -- and the thought that George W. Bush was the one that would keep Americans safest. Was national security the driving issue in Montana?
No. Most people in Montana have never been to New York City. The twin towers are something they've only seen on television. And Montanans have served in much higher numbers as a percent of our population in every conflict we've ever had. Part of that is the large number of Indians -- Indians are warriors, some of the greatest warriors in modern times and in ancient times -- and part of it is the rural nature of who we are. And it's one way to demonstrate that you're a stand-up guy, and I respect that.
But were Montanans outraged at the same level as folks in New York City or in other vulnerable cities? Frankly, is al-Qaida coming to Montana?
It would be a bad idea for them to come here. To start with, if they show up here and start making some trouble, somebody's just going to shoot their asses and ask questions later.
But the point is, when you live in big cities, you see how many people can be killed by a single event, like flying into a building or a dirty bomb. I just don't believe that Montanans were so touched as they were on the East and West coasts about this. I mean, we were outraged that we were attacked, of course. But I will never know the feeling that somebody who is from New York had to have watching that happen.
How does the Iraq war play in Montana?
Oh, about 50-50, right now.
How does it play with you?
As you know, I lived in the Middle East, and I learned to speak Arabic. I had misgivings from the very beginning. We were told that this incursion was going to make the world a safer place. But that didn't square with me because I knew, in the Middle East, the days of the Crusades are like they happened just a few years ago. Any incursion of the West into Islamic cultures is going to be met with resistance. So now we say that, really, the reason we [went] there was to create democracies, and democracies will spring up [throughout the region].
But here's the problem. Our closet allies in the Middle East would be? Saudi Arabia, with a functional king; Kuwait, with a functional king; Jordan, with a functional king; Egypt, with a -- I don't know -- president for life. Israel, it does have a democratic republic. But what do you think our allies are saying when we're standing there saying, "We are going to let democracy rise up"? Well, that's pretty threatening to them. So I don't know what the endgame is here.
You know, I've had people say to me, "But when you're attacked, you've got to respond." I agree. I think we should have gone to Afghanistan and turned over every single rock until we got Osama bin Laden. And I would personally put his head on a stick; I would do that.
That's the place we needed to be. The problem is that somehow we got diverted along the way and we went into Iraq. Now, we had Iraq tamed better than any other country in the world. They couldn't even take off or land a plane or even move a truck in the desert. We had airplanes over Iraq, 24/7, for years. We don't over Iran. So why Iraq? I haven't got the answer yet. I'm still asking the question.
We're there. I support our troops; I support the families. You know what? In Montana, we don't make the decision to go. We just answer when called. This is for the big shots in Washington, D.C. I'm just a rancher from Montana.
And you have the luxury of not having to deal with foreign policy from Helena. You're working instead on domestic issues with Montana's Legislature.
We've gotten just about everything I've wanted: a scholarship program, a healthcare program, a prescription drug program. We passed five [medical malpractice] bills -- five med-mals! -- no tax increases, some economic development bills that are very cool, and a "best and brightest" scholarship program, so every middle-class family in Montana finally can attain the dream to send the next generation to college.
Can the Democrats use an issue like that in a play for "moral values" voters?
Hell, yes. When every mother and father knows that there will be support if they have a kid that deserves the opportunity to make it to the top ... Education is the equalizer. It doesn't matter if you were on third base or were in the dugout when the game started -- you have an opportunity to make it to home plate with education.
And healthcare. You know, in Montana, 20 percent of the people don't have health insurance. They're not indigent, living under bridges someplace or in a culvert with a sleeping bag. Maybe Mom and Dad both work. They say prayers with their kids when they tuck 'em into bed, and then they close the door and they walk down the hall, and they get on their knees and they pray one more time that nobody gets sick because they don't have health insurance. They just can't imagine having a sick child and not being in a position to be able to get the help that they need.
That's something that we've got to fix, and we're fixing it in Montana. We've got a targeted tax credit for small businesses to buy insurance for themselves and their employees. We passed five med-mal bills. If that helps, we'll do it. If making [insurance] more affordable by pooling people together so they can buy insurance will help, we'll do it. We've put significantly more resources into something called the Child Health Insurance Program to get more matching funds from the federal government so that lower-middle-class kids up to 18 will get a healthy start. We're doing it.
And how do you persuade the most conservative voters -- the ones for whom abortion and gay marriage are be-all, end-all issues -- that they should think about education and healthcare as important "moral values" too?
The most conservative voters? The beauty is that I only need about 50 percent to win. The most conservative voters will not even give me a shot. I don't need 100 percent of the vote. Just do the right thing, for God's sake. And if that means I'm only going to be governor for the next three and a half years, so be it. Just tell 'em who are you are, tell 'em what you believe in, and tell 'em in a way that they're gonna believe you.
The Democrats spend a lot of time worrying about how to finesse these social issues.
Please. Please. Just tell 'em what you are. You know, this polling stuff, having to go out and figure out which way the wind's blowing -- do you believe in something? Did you have something when you started? If you do, tell 'em what it is. You'll be all right. If you're a kook, you're not going to get elected. But if you're real, you're normal, you're halfway bright, and you're willing to stand up -- that's the most important thing.
Monday, December 19, 2005
The Times They Are a' Changin' for Our Southern Neighbors
How about the socialist democratic revolution going on in South America? Guess whose heavy imperial hand, attempts at assassination and subversion of democracy have helped instigate this popular backlash in Venezuela, Argentina and now Bolivia? Evo Morales, an indigenous "Indian" was elected yesterday as Bolivia's president despite every effort by wealthy corporatists to defeat him. It will be interesting to see how Bush and our CIA (Corporate Intelligence Agency) responds to this current "threat to our national security". Evo might not survive to take office if our CIA has anything to do with it. He better consult with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela on how to survive.
The definition for "national security" under the Bush regime is more appropriately defined as the opportunity for wealthy people and corporations to exploit a nation's resources, the working poor and less educated. This exploitation is not new, but it has been evolving throughout history and is reaching the point that mass revolutions will be the only means to stop it. Truth and justice cannot be denied. Sooner or later they will prevail.
I support this move by Bolivia towards a more true democracy. Bush, his gang of pirates, and the corporate puppet regimes that previously reigned supreme in these countries, don't. Why are they against the people of these countries democratically choosing there own leaders and having a say in the actions of their governments? What do you suspect?
Don't tell me Bush, Cheney and the rest of the corporatists are not dangerous to our country, to other nations, and a serious threat to freedom, justice and world peace. Corporations have slowly pushed democracy and people's rights aside and have taken over almost every nation's government - most prominently our own. Corporate greed and corruption have reached a fever pitch that threatens the freedom of all people and of every nation. Oppressed people everywhere are beginning to come together to reject imperial power and demand social equity.
This spiraling cycle of oppression and exploitation by the powerful and the rising up of people against fascist and dictatorial tyranny is inherit throughout the history of man but has never reached the mass potential of today's modern world due largely to the spread of industrialization and the supporting technology and weaponry. Globalization not only spreads economic development and pollution to all corners of the globe but also spreads greed, corruption, human rights violations, corporate crime, tyranny and war.
In other news, President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina announced yesterday they will pay off their entire $9.8 billion dollar debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whose interference and unfair policies contributed to Argentina's failed economy in 2001. Also soon to be free of the corporatist IMF is Brazil who pledges to quickly pay their IMF debt of $15.5 Billion. These moves are considered not only economic but political. This will free these countries from IMF and US control. Kirchner thanked Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for his assistance, prompting applause from government officials listening to the speech at the presidential palace. Venezuela this year has purchased almost $1 billion of Argentine bonds. Kirchner also lauded his own government for helping sustain an economic recovery by ignoring IMF advice. Argentina was the third-largest debtor to the IMF after Brazil and Turkey and has had a loan agreement with the fund since 1983.
In South America "the times they are a ' changin'" could become the theme song for a new coalition of nations bent on coming of age and freeing themselves from imperial control. Mexico could be the next nation to oust the puppet Vincente Fox in favor of a socialist leaning president. I'm sure Chavez and Kirchner will be willing to offer assistance.
Leftist Appears to Be Winner in Bolivia
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Evo Morales, a former coca farmer who has pledged to torpedo U.S. anti-drug efforts here and be a "nightmare" for Washington, appeared set to become Bolivia's first Indian president after a surprisingly strong showing in Sunday's election.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bolivia19dec19,0,4927055.story?track=tothtml
Argentina to Repay IMF Debt Four Years After Default (Update3) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aqmy9waeK_A0&refer=latin_america
The definition for "national security" under the Bush regime is more appropriately defined as the opportunity for wealthy people and corporations to exploit a nation's resources, the working poor and less educated. This exploitation is not new, but it has been evolving throughout history and is reaching the point that mass revolutions will be the only means to stop it. Truth and justice cannot be denied. Sooner or later they will prevail.
I support this move by Bolivia towards a more true democracy. Bush, his gang of pirates, and the corporate puppet regimes that previously reigned supreme in these countries, don't. Why are they against the people of these countries democratically choosing there own leaders and having a say in the actions of their governments? What do you suspect?
Don't tell me Bush, Cheney and the rest of the corporatists are not dangerous to our country, to other nations, and a serious threat to freedom, justice and world peace. Corporations have slowly pushed democracy and people's rights aside and have taken over almost every nation's government - most prominently our own. Corporate greed and corruption have reached a fever pitch that threatens the freedom of all people and of every nation. Oppressed people everywhere are beginning to come together to reject imperial power and demand social equity.
This spiraling cycle of oppression and exploitation by the powerful and the rising up of people against fascist and dictatorial tyranny is inherit throughout the history of man but has never reached the mass potential of today's modern world due largely to the spread of industrialization and the supporting technology and weaponry. Globalization not only spreads economic development and pollution to all corners of the globe but also spreads greed, corruption, human rights violations, corporate crime, tyranny and war.
In other news, President Nestor Kirchner of Argentina announced yesterday they will pay off their entire $9.8 billion dollar debt to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) whose interference and unfair policies contributed to Argentina's failed economy in 2001. Also soon to be free of the corporatist IMF is Brazil who pledges to quickly pay their IMF debt of $15.5 Billion. These moves are considered not only economic but political. This will free these countries from IMF and US control. Kirchner thanked Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez for his assistance, prompting applause from government officials listening to the speech at the presidential palace. Venezuela this year has purchased almost $1 billion of Argentine bonds. Kirchner also lauded his own government for helping sustain an economic recovery by ignoring IMF advice. Argentina was the third-largest debtor to the IMF after Brazil and Turkey and has had a loan agreement with the fund since 1983.
In South America "the times they are a ' changin'" could become the theme song for a new coalition of nations bent on coming of age and freeing themselves from imperial control. Mexico could be the next nation to oust the puppet Vincente Fox in favor of a socialist leaning president. I'm sure Chavez and Kirchner will be willing to offer assistance.
Leftist Appears to Be Winner in Bolivia
LA PAZ, Bolivia — Evo Morales, a former coca farmer who has pledged to torpedo U.S. anti-drug efforts here and be a "nightmare" for Washington, appeared set to become Bolivia's first Indian president after a surprisingly strong showing in Sunday's election.
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-bolivia19dec19,0,4927055.story?track=tothtml
Argentina to Repay IMF Debt Four Years After Default (Update3) http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=10000086&sid=aqmy9waeK_A0&refer=latin_america
Saturday, December 17, 2005
Bush Has It His Way - The Orwellian Way
In response to the revelation of Bush's "secret" program allowing the National Security Agency to spy on American citizens, Bush angrily said, "Yesterday the existence of this secret program was revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result our enemies have learned information they should not have. And the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemy and endangers our country."
Let me see here. Correct me if I'm wrong. Valerie Plame was an undercover agent for the CIA. Her name and fictitious fronting company were ". . . revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result our enemies have learned information they should not have. And the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemy and endangers our country."
Oh, the hypocrisy, the dichotomy and the arrogance.
Bush also claims in clear down-the-rabbit-hole White Rabbit-speak, by spying on Americans he is protecting our freedoms.
Bush arrogantly and defiantly says to congress and the American people that he will not cease spying on American citizens. "That's exactly what I will continue to do - as long as I am president of the United States", he stated in closing.
Maybe there is something we can do about the "as long as" factor.
Gary
For a video of the full 8 minute address click here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10505574/
Let me see here. Correct me if I'm wrong. Valerie Plame was an undercover agent for the CIA. Her name and fictitious fronting company were ". . . revealed in media reports after being improperly provided to news organizations. As a result our enemies have learned information they should not have. And the unauthorized disclosure of this effort damages our national security and puts our citizens at risk. Revealing classified information is illegal, alerts our enemy and endangers our country."
Oh, the hypocrisy, the dichotomy and the arrogance.
Bush also claims in clear down-the-rabbit-hole White Rabbit-speak, by spying on Americans he is protecting our freedoms.
Bush arrogantly and defiantly says to congress and the American people that he will not cease spying on American citizens. "That's exactly what I will continue to do - as long as I am president of the United States", he stated in closing.
Maybe there is something we can do about the "as long as" factor.
Gary
For a video of the full 8 minute address click here: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10505574/
Thursday, December 15, 2005
Bush Is No Houdini
I'm so tired of Bush and his administration lying about his failed invasion of a sovereign nation that did not attack us and about the reasons Bush went to war. We know the reason. We are not fools. Bush and his administration have lied themselves into a deep hole from which there is no ladder out and they keep digging it deeper with each additional lie. Now Bush, after morphing through a whole series of lies about why he invaded Iraq, is finally saying, well, if I'm a fuck-up, then so are the Democrats who voted to give me the authority to invade Iraq. But that itself is another lie.
The 1998 legislation Bush refers to gave the president authority "to support efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein" by providing assistance to Iraqi opposition groups, including arms, humanitarian aid and broadcasting facilities, not a green light to go to war. Although by giving Bush that authority those Democrats who voted for it knew full well that Bush would indeed invade. They are culpable in that regard despite what they are now saying.
Quite frankly, there were a number of our elected representatives, millions of US citizens and many millions of people from other nations that did not accept the evidence that was provided and hyped by Bush as proof that Saddam had secret stockpiles of WMD and all of the various other charges. Saddam in fact was on his way to becoming another Qudaffi, a dictator on his way down - not up. Gore himself, if he had been allowed to take his rightful seat in the White House, had agreed that Saddam needed to be removed but I doubt seriously that Gore would have lied to the American people, manipulated and fabricated intelligence and preemptively invaded a sovereign nation. Gore has a good heart and an intelligent mind - he also is a man of great integrity and a sense of morality that would have not allowed him to violate the principles upon which this nation was founded.
The first reason Bush gave was because Iraq had not complied with UN Resolutions to disarm. But the UN was not convinced and would not sanction the invasion. Instead they recommended further inspections and continuing sanctions. Then Bush said it was because Iraq was developing nuclear weapons to provide to terrorists and that he was manufacturing stockpiles of biological weapons. So after he invaded and no weapons of mass destruction were found Bush said it was because Saddam had cooperated with the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. When that was disproved Bush said it was because Saddam was an evil dictator who tortured his people and was a threat to peace in the middle east. Then after that reason wasn't accepted by the American public Bush now claims the reason he invaded Iraq was to establish the seeds of Democracy in the region that would soon spread to all the middle east.
How ironic that the US invasion of Iraq has created an ongoing conflict, unrest and has been the catalyst for greatly increased terrorist activity not only in the middle east but around the world. It was not Saddam but Bush who has caused the escalation of conflict, death and suffering. How ironic that although Saddam was a brutal dictator who coldheartedly murdered and tortured his own countrymen, he kept a lid on conflict between the feuding Muslim factions within Iraq's borders. Add to that irony the fact that in Washington's eyes, Saddam was not always an enemy. In fact, three Presidents counted on him to keep Iran's brand of Islamic radicalism in check, Reagan, Bush I and Bill Clinton.
What's amazing is that historians and all of our middle east experts knew that the ruling faction, the Sunnis to which Saddam belonged, represented only 25% of all Iraqi's, the Shiites representing the most at about 64%, and the Kurds the remaining percentage. They knew the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were historic enemies of each other and were thrown together by the British back in 1918 as they drew a border around three distinct tribal territories and called them a nation state. They knew the Kurds in the north have always wanted their own state as did the Sunnis of the central section and the Shiites of the south which are political and religious kin of the Iranians. Bush and his warlords should have realized that establishing a democracy and forming a government from the same group hated by the other two factions would be no simple task and might possibly never work. Shiite control would mean an alliance with Iran - our sworn enemy and also Sunni Saddam's enemy. If you allow unimpeded voting in an Iraqi democracy who is going to control it - the Shiites, the Sunni's or the Kurds? The Shiites, who were persecuted by the ruling Sunnis under Saddam, are sure to gain control and how do you expect them to react to the decades of persecution by Sunnis? How do you expect the Kurds to act towards both Sunni's and Shiites?
Under this scenario Bush apparently fantasized about how he would be received as a great liberator by the Iraqi's just as the French received American troops who liberated Paris. With no plan for how we would control this mess that only a brutal dictator had been able to keep a lid on, Bush and his band of greedy pirates blundered their way into the biggest mess since Viet Nam. Why does it appear the people who gain power seem to be the most stupid and screwed up?
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Hans Blix who headed up the UN's WMD inspection team, and Scott Ritter, UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, all disagreed with Bush and his gang of warhawks that were searching for any excuse to invade Iraq. Anyone who thinks this was not about controlling Iraq's oil and gaining a powerful military foothold in the middle east is as wrong-headed as Bush and his corporate profiteers. This is an arrogant and brazen attempt to extend empire and to stake a claim on the world's largest oil reserve and none of the other nations on this earth think otherwise.
Unless we find a way to remove Bush and Cheney from office between now and 2008 our nation is going to suffer more lies and a deeper hole of debt and world turmoil. Short of Bush and his nefarious cabal orchestrating a serious terrorist attack on the United States or instigating a threat of greater proportions than now exists, there is no way I can see that the Iraq situation will disappear or be mitigated with Bush in office. It is reasonable to fear the election just held in Iraq will not even come close to solving the problems of the middle east and instead may lead to increased civil strife and war. Bush will spend the rest of his presidency trying to lie his way out of this mess with the goal of salvaging the Bush family name (impossible, it's already tarnished by Bush's father and his father before him.) and of receiving favorable treatment by historians. This will take a cooperative deception like none we've ever seen. I seriously doubt Bush can find a way to accomplish this or that America's and the world's historians would ever cooperate. It would take the creation of an illusion of grand proportions - and despite the illusionary world Bush lives in - Bush is no Houdini.
The 1998 legislation Bush refers to gave the president authority "to support efforts to remove the regime of Saddam Hussein" by providing assistance to Iraqi opposition groups, including arms, humanitarian aid and broadcasting facilities, not a green light to go to war. Although by giving Bush that authority those Democrats who voted for it knew full well that Bush would indeed invade. They are culpable in that regard despite what they are now saying.
Quite frankly, there were a number of our elected representatives, millions of US citizens and many millions of people from other nations that did not accept the evidence that was provided and hyped by Bush as proof that Saddam had secret stockpiles of WMD and all of the various other charges. Saddam in fact was on his way to becoming another Qudaffi, a dictator on his way down - not up. Gore himself, if he had been allowed to take his rightful seat in the White House, had agreed that Saddam needed to be removed but I doubt seriously that Gore would have lied to the American people, manipulated and fabricated intelligence and preemptively invaded a sovereign nation. Gore has a good heart and an intelligent mind - he also is a man of great integrity and a sense of morality that would have not allowed him to violate the principles upon which this nation was founded.
The first reason Bush gave was because Iraq had not complied with UN Resolutions to disarm. But the UN was not convinced and would not sanction the invasion. Instead they recommended further inspections and continuing sanctions. Then Bush said it was because Iraq was developing nuclear weapons to provide to terrorists and that he was manufacturing stockpiles of biological weapons. So after he invaded and no weapons of mass destruction were found Bush said it was because Saddam had cooperated with the terrorists who attacked the World Trade Center. When that was disproved Bush said it was because Saddam was an evil dictator who tortured his people and was a threat to peace in the middle east. Then after that reason wasn't accepted by the American public Bush now claims the reason he invaded Iraq was to establish the seeds of Democracy in the region that would soon spread to all the middle east.
How ironic that the US invasion of Iraq has created an ongoing conflict, unrest and has been the catalyst for greatly increased terrorist activity not only in the middle east but around the world. It was not Saddam but Bush who has caused the escalation of conflict, death and suffering. How ironic that although Saddam was a brutal dictator who coldheartedly murdered and tortured his own countrymen, he kept a lid on conflict between the feuding Muslim factions within Iraq's borders. Add to that irony the fact that in Washington's eyes, Saddam was not always an enemy. In fact, three Presidents counted on him to keep Iran's brand of Islamic radicalism in check, Reagan, Bush I and Bill Clinton.
What's amazing is that historians and all of our middle east experts knew that the ruling faction, the Sunnis to which Saddam belonged, represented only 25% of all Iraqi's, the Shiites representing the most at about 64%, and the Kurds the remaining percentage. They knew the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were historic enemies of each other and were thrown together by the British back in 1918 as they drew a border around three distinct tribal territories and called them a nation state. They knew the Kurds in the north have always wanted their own state as did the Sunnis of the central section and the Shiites of the south which are political and religious kin of the Iranians. Bush and his warlords should have realized that establishing a democracy and forming a government from the same group hated by the other two factions would be no simple task and might possibly never work. Shiite control would mean an alliance with Iran - our sworn enemy and also Sunni Saddam's enemy. If you allow unimpeded voting in an Iraqi democracy who is going to control it - the Shiites, the Sunni's or the Kurds? The Shiites, who were persecuted by the ruling Sunnis under Saddam, are sure to gain control and how do you expect them to react to the decades of persecution by Sunnis? How do you expect the Kurds to act towards both Sunni's and Shiites?
Under this scenario Bush apparently fantasized about how he would be received as a great liberator by the Iraqi's just as the French received American troops who liberated Paris. With no plan for how we would control this mess that only a brutal dictator had been able to keep a lid on, Bush and his band of greedy pirates blundered their way into the biggest mess since Viet Nam. Why does it appear the people who gain power seem to be the most stupid and screwed up?
Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency who was recently awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Hans Blix who headed up the UN's WMD inspection team, and Scott Ritter, UN Chief Weapons Inspector in Iraq, all disagreed with Bush and his gang of warhawks that were searching for any excuse to invade Iraq. Anyone who thinks this was not about controlling Iraq's oil and gaining a powerful military foothold in the middle east is as wrong-headed as Bush and his corporate profiteers. This is an arrogant and brazen attempt to extend empire and to stake a claim on the world's largest oil reserve and none of the other nations on this earth think otherwise.
Unless we find a way to remove Bush and Cheney from office between now and 2008 our nation is going to suffer more lies and a deeper hole of debt and world turmoil. Short of Bush and his nefarious cabal orchestrating a serious terrorist attack on the United States or instigating a threat of greater proportions than now exists, there is no way I can see that the Iraq situation will disappear or be mitigated with Bush in office. It is reasonable to fear the election just held in Iraq will not even come close to solving the problems of the middle east and instead may lead to increased civil strife and war. Bush will spend the rest of his presidency trying to lie his way out of this mess with the goal of salvaging the Bush family name (impossible, it's already tarnished by Bush's father and his father before him.) and of receiving favorable treatment by historians. This will take a cooperative deception like none we've ever seen. I seriously doubt Bush can find a way to accomplish this or that America's and the world's historians would ever cooperate. It would take the creation of an illusion of grand proportions - and despite the illusionary world Bush lives in - Bush is no Houdini.
Monday, December 12, 2005
Hugo Chavez - Can He Survive Corporate Assassins?
Why did Pat Robertson, that icon of compassionate American Christianity, recently call for the assassination of Hugo Chavez, president of Venezuela? Is it because Chavez is persecuting Christians and attempting to create a Godless nation? Is it because Chavez is a brutal dictator, a madman who is abusing his nation's people, imprisoning them and murdering them? Is it because Chavez grabbed power by means of violent military takeover and is threatening his neighbors? Why does Pat Robertson hate Hugo Chavez and want him out of power? What is Robertson's "Christian" motive?
Why has George W Bush become an enemy of Chavez and wants to see him taken down? What is it that is so threatening to the US concerning Chavez's presidency and brand of government? Is it because Chavez has a nuclear program and is attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction? Is it because Chavez is building an army and threatening his neighbors with war and annihilation? Is Chavez a threat to democracy and is he trying to establish a communistic government? Is it because 20% of US oil consumption is provided by Venezuela, our number one largest provider, and Chavez is attempting to cut off that supply? Is it because Chavez is robbing his nation and its people of Venezuela's oil wealth?
The amazing answer is that it is none of these things. Instead the reasons seem to be rooted in the fact that Chavez, instead of bending to the will of Bush and corporate interests both in Venezuela, in the US, and internationally, stands in their face and defies them. Also, Chavez refuses to condemn Castro and instead befriends him supplying Cuba cheap oil for their energy needs in trade for doctors. All the other reasons seem to be rooted in Chavez's refusal to be a lackey to Bush, big money and corporate powers. It could also be a profound fear that Chavez's populist, honestly democratic, truth telling, people powered, socialist-leaning philosophy could gain momentum in South America taking the power away from corrupt politicians, ruthless corporations and the wealthy elite and giving it to the people. This power grab might spread to Mexico and then - God forbid - the US!
Venezuela's legitimately elected and popular president, Hugo Chavez, was a former military colonel imprisoned in 1992 in a failed coup to take over Venezuela's corrupt government. He is enormously popular with the common working class but despised by the rich for interfering with their corrupt pursuit of obscene wealth and power. He apparently doesn't just talk the talk but walks the walk. Consider the following:
A full 60% of Venezuela's land is held by 2% of the nations wealthiest citizens while 75% of Venezuelans live in stark poverty. Chavez is enacting land reform that limits the amount of land that can be owned by individuals to 12,000 acres and is distributing idle land to peasant cooperatives. The military is buying fresh vegetables and meat in the countryside and trucking it to poor neighborhoods for sale at subsidized markets.
Chavez has set the stage for a fundamental shift in economic and educational opportunity by banning school entrance registration fees for students which previously served as a barrier to the majority of Venezuela's children. “Bolivarian” schools have opened in poor neighborhoods, often maintained and run by parents and volunteers, but supported by the government. The government now provides breakfast and lunch to children at school, which helped boost enrollment by one million over the last year. Literacy is increasing rapidly as millions of new students have entered school. An educational revolution is underway.
Chavez has established a health plan setting up clinics in the poorest communities, often staffed by respected Cuban doctors and nurses who are on loan to a society that in return provides cheap oil to Cuba. New state run pharmacies are selling medicine at a 30% discount. Some of the better new Venezuelan students, previously unable to even dream of college, have found themselves enrolled in Cuban medical schools.
Chavez is also trying to trim the fat of corruption and graft within the government by restructuring bodies ranging from the Judiciary to the Constituent Assembly. And Chavez initiated the recent rewriting of the Constitution which now includes such provisions as civil rights for Venezuela's indigenous population.
And he has openly defied Major oil companies by supporting OPEC production limits and not over-pumping as was previously done. This has allowed Venezuela to get a higher price for their oil from major producers and refiners to support the reforms in his country. At the same time, if you can imagine this, gasoline in Chavez's Venezuela sells for 24 cents per gallon!
Most Americans don't know it but Venezuela owns Citgo here in the US which consists of 13,500 gas stations and eight refineries all in the United States that produce almost 900,000 barrels a day in gasoline and other products. In the third quarter Citgo obtained profit of $94 million on sales of $12 billion. Not bad, but small change next to the $33 billion earned by top five oil firms over the same period. Politicians have been demanding that oil companies share their wealth more with citizens most affected by high energy prices but only Hugo Chavez has answered their call. He has previously offered to sell American gasoline at about half the present cost but was rebuked by our government which is controlled to a large degree by major oil. Now he has instructed CITGO to offer cheap heating oil to America's most neediest citizens to help them through the winter and a few of our political representatives are taking him up on this latest offer. See Miami Herald report link below.
Mildly stated, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, dislikes George W Bush and the Bush administration - and with apparent good reason. Bush has positioned himself as an enemy of Chavez. In 2002 during the last open election, our CIA openly attempted to orchestrate a coup - an overthrow of Chavez and his government - although Chavez, a populist hero was fairly elected by a huge majority in South America's oldest democracy. That is astounding! Additionally, there is irrefutable evidence the CIA in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, major oil companies, corporations and the wealthy elite of his own country, are trying to have Chavez assassinated or at the very least driven from office. Even Coca Cola along with other brand industries have helped organize protests, some violent, against Chavez. What is their fear? It's simple, Chavez is looking out for the interests of his people, not the powerful corporatists who live off the sweat and blood of the poor working class. Chavez represents justice and fairness, the enemy of uncompassionate, corrupt and greedy corporate profiteers.
So what is the defense of Pat Robertson for calling for Chavez to be assassinated? In my mind, Pat Robertson is a corrupt whore and an evil hypocrite. George W Bush is not far behind. Furthermore, what is Bush's defense for attempting to overthrow a legitimate democracy?
Capitalism is not God and corporate officers are not his high priests. Although Chavez is not perfect and without sin, Hugo Chavez is apparently working on behalf of all the people of Venezuela not just the wealthy elite. He is a visionary - a modern day Simon Bolivar. If Jesus were here to give his blessings, which of the three men, Bush, Robertson, or Chavez would he most likely smile upon?
Gary
For more insight into Chavez and his populist movement and his offers to supply cheap oil to America's poor go here:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1143 and http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13386277.htm and http://bad.eserver.org/reviews/2001/2001-7-12-2.20PM.html or just go Google: Chavez Venezuela Citgo
Why has George W Bush become an enemy of Chavez and wants to see him taken down? What is it that is so threatening to the US concerning Chavez's presidency and brand of government? Is it because Chavez has a nuclear program and is attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction? Is it because Chavez is building an army and threatening his neighbors with war and annihilation? Is Chavez a threat to democracy and is he trying to establish a communistic government? Is it because 20% of US oil consumption is provided by Venezuela, our number one largest provider, and Chavez is attempting to cut off that supply? Is it because Chavez is robbing his nation and its people of Venezuela's oil wealth?
The amazing answer is that it is none of these things. Instead the reasons seem to be rooted in the fact that Chavez, instead of bending to the will of Bush and corporate interests both in Venezuela, in the US, and internationally, stands in their face and defies them. Also, Chavez refuses to condemn Castro and instead befriends him supplying Cuba cheap oil for their energy needs in trade for doctors. All the other reasons seem to be rooted in Chavez's refusal to be a lackey to Bush, big money and corporate powers. It could also be a profound fear that Chavez's populist, honestly democratic, truth telling, people powered, socialist-leaning philosophy could gain momentum in South America taking the power away from corrupt politicians, ruthless corporations and the wealthy elite and giving it to the people. This power grab might spread to Mexico and then - God forbid - the US!
Venezuela's legitimately elected and popular president, Hugo Chavez, was a former military colonel imprisoned in 1992 in a failed coup to take over Venezuela's corrupt government. He is enormously popular with the common working class but despised by the rich for interfering with their corrupt pursuit of obscene wealth and power. He apparently doesn't just talk the talk but walks the walk. Consider the following:
A full 60% of Venezuela's land is held by 2% of the nations wealthiest citizens while 75% of Venezuelans live in stark poverty. Chavez is enacting land reform that limits the amount of land that can be owned by individuals to 12,000 acres and is distributing idle land to peasant cooperatives. The military is buying fresh vegetables and meat in the countryside and trucking it to poor neighborhoods for sale at subsidized markets.
Chavez has set the stage for a fundamental shift in economic and educational opportunity by banning school entrance registration fees for students which previously served as a barrier to the majority of Venezuela's children. “Bolivarian” schools have opened in poor neighborhoods, often maintained and run by parents and volunteers, but supported by the government. The government now provides breakfast and lunch to children at school, which helped boost enrollment by one million over the last year. Literacy is increasing rapidly as millions of new students have entered school. An educational revolution is underway.
Chavez has established a health plan setting up clinics in the poorest communities, often staffed by respected Cuban doctors and nurses who are on loan to a society that in return provides cheap oil to Cuba. New state run pharmacies are selling medicine at a 30% discount. Some of the better new Venezuelan students, previously unable to even dream of college, have found themselves enrolled in Cuban medical schools.
Chavez is also trying to trim the fat of corruption and graft within the government by restructuring bodies ranging from the Judiciary to the Constituent Assembly. And Chavez initiated the recent rewriting of the Constitution which now includes such provisions as civil rights for Venezuela's indigenous population.
And he has openly defied Major oil companies by supporting OPEC production limits and not over-pumping as was previously done. This has allowed Venezuela to get a higher price for their oil from major producers and refiners to support the reforms in his country. At the same time, if you can imagine this, gasoline in Chavez's Venezuela sells for 24 cents per gallon!
Most Americans don't know it but Venezuela owns Citgo here in the US which consists of 13,500 gas stations and eight refineries all in the United States that produce almost 900,000 barrels a day in gasoline and other products. In the third quarter Citgo obtained profit of $94 million on sales of $12 billion. Not bad, but small change next to the $33 billion earned by top five oil firms over the same period. Politicians have been demanding that oil companies share their wealth more with citizens most affected by high energy prices but only Hugo Chavez has answered their call. He has previously offered to sell American gasoline at about half the present cost but was rebuked by our government which is controlled to a large degree by major oil. Now he has instructed CITGO to offer cheap heating oil to America's most neediest citizens to help them through the winter and a few of our political representatives are taking him up on this latest offer. See Miami Herald report link below.
Mildly stated, Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela, dislikes George W Bush and the Bush administration - and with apparent good reason. Bush has positioned himself as an enemy of Chavez. In 2002 during the last open election, our CIA openly attempted to orchestrate a coup - an overthrow of Chavez and his government - although Chavez, a populist hero was fairly elected by a huge majority in South America's oldest democracy. That is astounding! Additionally, there is irrefutable evidence the CIA in cooperation with the International Monetary Fund, major oil companies, corporations and the wealthy elite of his own country, are trying to have Chavez assassinated or at the very least driven from office. Even Coca Cola along with other brand industries have helped organize protests, some violent, against Chavez. What is their fear? It's simple, Chavez is looking out for the interests of his people, not the powerful corporatists who live off the sweat and blood of the poor working class. Chavez represents justice and fairness, the enemy of uncompassionate, corrupt and greedy corporate profiteers.
So what is the defense of Pat Robertson for calling for Chavez to be assassinated? In my mind, Pat Robertson is a corrupt whore and an evil hypocrite. George W Bush is not far behind. Furthermore, what is Bush's defense for attempting to overthrow a legitimate democracy?
Capitalism is not God and corporate officers are not his high priests. Although Chavez is not perfect and without sin, Hugo Chavez is apparently working on behalf of all the people of Venezuela not just the wealthy elite. He is a visionary - a modern day Simon Bolivar. If Jesus were here to give his blessings, which of the three men, Bush, Robertson, or Chavez would he most likely smile upon?
Gary
For more insight into Chavez and his populist movement and his offers to supply cheap oil to America's poor go here:
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/articles.php?artno=1143 and http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/13386277.htm and http://bad.eserver.org/reviews/2001/2001-7-12-2.20PM.html or just go Google: Chavez Venezuela Citgo
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Whose Rights Are Being Served?
I am one among many who feel our immigration laws and policies have been too lax for too long. Removing the birthright citizenship policy is an issue that might receive bi-partisan support. At least it should be carefully considered.
Political whores (most elected representatives) will be quick to denounce this proposal for fear of losing any Latino support they may now enjoy. These whores think first and foremost of themselves. Their number one priority is holding on to office and they spend almost 100% of their time running for reelection rather than representing the American people whose interests they are supposed to represent. Nobel Prize winner, Harold Pinter, said it clearly, ""Politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power."
That's why I'm surprised it's Republicans (corporatists) who are pushing this proposal and not Democrats. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised at all if a large segment of legitimate Latino citizens were in favor of this change if it would cut down on the incentive to enter this country illegally as suggested. And that's even if the now legitimate Latinos originally came in to this country illegally themselves. I would guess that now-working Latino-American citizens who have established themselves and gained legal citizenship would want to protect their turf against an influx of illegals who would compete for their jobs -despite the fact they may share ethnicity. Ross Perot made the point during his campaign for the presidency that " a lifeboat can only hold so many people before it becomes overloaded and begins to sink".
First, I think it's interesting that the US is one of only a few countries that allow "birthright citizenship". No European countries do. I'm not sure of my position on this issue but at first blush I'd say we need to study it, consider the ramifications and determine if "birthright citizenship" is a good thing for legal citizens and for the nation as a whole. Those who support the status quo say it is no encouragement for illegal immigration as charged pointing out that a "natural born" citizen born in this country of illegal immigrants must wait until they are 18 before they can petition the government to allow other family members to be brought in.
But, the majority of citizens may think differently. A national poll last month by the non-partisan Rasmussen Reports found that 49 percent favored denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, with 41 percent opposing such a proposal. One thing is certain, illegal immigrants drive down wages. Those a-holes who like to point out that illegal immigrants take only those jobs that Americans don't want are playing with the truth. The truth is the average American can't afford to live on the wages they pay illegals. Many of these illegal immigrants live 20 to a 2-bedroom house and ride 10 to a vehicle. Is that the living standard corporate pirates expect the average American to adopt? How many people do we want in our lifeboat? At what point is one more too many?
GOP Faction Wants to Change 'Birthright Citizenship' Policy
By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — For nearly 140 years, any child born on U.S. soil, even to an illegal immigrant, has been given American citizenship. Now, some conservatives in Congress are determined to change that.A group of 92 lawmakers in the House will attempt next week to force a vote on legislation that would revoke the principle of "birthright citizenship," part of a broader effort to discourage illegal immigration.The push to change the citizenship policy is backed by some conservative activists and academics. But it could cause problems for the White House and the Republican Party, which have been courting Latino voters. GOP officials fear the effort to eliminate birthright citizenship will alienate a key constituency, even if the legislation ultimately is rejected by Congress or the courts.The principle at issue rests on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to guarantee the rights of emancipated slaves: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."Some lawmakers advocating tougher immigration laws contend that the amendment has been misinterpreted for decades. Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors — and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection.Those who want to change the interpretation acknowledge that illegal immigration is largely driven by the hunger for jobs at U.S. wages. But they also say that for some immigrants, automatic citizenship provides another compelling incentive to cross the border. They note that the United States is one of few major industrialized nations that grant birthright citizenship with no qualifications."Illegal immigrants are coming for many different reasons," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), one of the lawmakers pushing for the House measure. "Some are coming for jobs. Some are coming to give birth. Some are coming to commit crimes. Addressing this problem is needed if we're going to try to combat illegal immigration on all fronts."But the proposal may rankle Latino voters."This is about attempting to deal with a serious policy problem by going after people's babies…. It doesn't have to become law for this kind of proposal to offend people," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group. "This one really hits a nerve." The 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), wants to attach an amendment revoking birthright citizenship to a broader immigration bill scheduled to be taken up sometime next week. Although several revocation bills have been introduced in the House, the most likely one to move forward would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.There is no official tally of the number of children born to illegal immigrants; unofficial estimates range from 100,000 to 350,000 a year. Smith and other critics of current immigration law say that 1 in 10 U.S. births — and 1 in 5 births in California — are to women who have entered the country illegally.Upon reaching the age of 18, a U.S.-born child of illegal immigrants can petition to obtain permanent legal residency for his or her parents and siblings. Although it generally takes years for such requests to be approved or rejected, parents who receive visas then can begin the process of applying for full citizenship.Because of the length of time involved, some immigration experts say that birthright citizenship is not a major incentive for the vast majority of illegal entrants."No, absolutely not," said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "It's something that a few middle-class professional people do. I have never met a poor person who has his wife walk across the desert at eight months pregnant so they can wait 21 years to be sponsored by their child."Harry Pachon, executive director of USC's Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, said there were undoubtedly some immigrants for whom birthright citizenship was a significant incentive. "But is it in the hundreds of thousands? I don't think so, and there's no evidence to support that," Pachon said.Still, opinion polls suggest that many Americans consider it a major problem. A November survey by independent pollster Scott Rasmussen found that 49% of those surveyed favored ending birthright citizenship, while 41% were opposed to any change.Such sentiments appear to reflect growing ambivalence on the part of many Americans about the economic and social impact of immigration, which appears likely to become a major issue in many 2006 congressional races.President Bush and many GOP lawmakers are pressing for a broad rewrite of U.S. immigration laws, including steps to crack down on illegal border crossings and to create a temporary guest worker program open to many of the 8 million to 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.But some House conservatives, including those in Tancredo's caucus, want to vote before year's end on a bill that mainly contains tough enforcement measures. They are fighting to include revocation of birthright citizenship among its provisions.Some opponents of birthright citizenship have assumed that revoking the right would require a constitutional amendment. But others argue that it could be revoked by passing legislation to delineate who is entitled to citizenship and who is not, while leaving the Constitution alone.John C. Eastman, director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at Chapman University in Orange, told the House immigration panel in September that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" suggests that the 14th Amendment does not apply to children of undocumented immigrants because their parents are living in the United States illegally.In an interview, Eastman said that members of Congress who introduced the 14th Amendment made it clear in floor debate that they did not intend for it to apply to children of noncitizens temporarily residing in the United States. There were no illegal immigrants then, Eastman said, because there were no laws on the books addressing the issue."You didn't have a massive immigration of people who were retaining allegiance to another nation and maybe coming here temporarily and then going back," Eastman said. "In 1868, you didn't make that trip across the Atlantic twice."Advocates for immigrants contend that the revocation debate is designed to pander to public anxiety about immigration, despite what they say is a lack of evidence that it would have a significant effect on illegal entries. Some of them also say that if birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants were revoked, it could create a large population of "stateless" children whose futures had been compromised because of the actions of their parents. Their citizenship would be determined by their parents' countries of origin; some children might be required to petition another government to establish their legal status.Supporters of birthright citizenship expressed hope that they could head off the revocation measure in the House, or failing that, on the other side of Capitol Hill."There is no support for the concept in the Senate," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). "There are certain things that we have done as a nation for a long time that I don't think we're going to change. Rolling back the clock is not going to solve the problem of immigration.
Political whores (most elected representatives) will be quick to denounce this proposal for fear of losing any Latino support they may now enjoy. These whores think first and foremost of themselves. Their number one priority is holding on to office and they spend almost 100% of their time running for reelection rather than representing the American people whose interests they are supposed to represent. Nobel Prize winner, Harold Pinter, said it clearly, ""Politicians, on the evidence available to us, are interested not in truth but in power and in the maintenance of that power."
That's why I'm surprised it's Republicans (corporatists) who are pushing this proposal and not Democrats. On the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised at all if a large segment of legitimate Latino citizens were in favor of this change if it would cut down on the incentive to enter this country illegally as suggested. And that's even if the now legitimate Latinos originally came in to this country illegally themselves. I would guess that now-working Latino-American citizens who have established themselves and gained legal citizenship would want to protect their turf against an influx of illegals who would compete for their jobs -despite the fact they may share ethnicity. Ross Perot made the point during his campaign for the presidency that " a lifeboat can only hold so many people before it becomes overloaded and begins to sink".
First, I think it's interesting that the US is one of only a few countries that allow "birthright citizenship". No European countries do. I'm not sure of my position on this issue but at first blush I'd say we need to study it, consider the ramifications and determine if "birthright citizenship" is a good thing for legal citizens and for the nation as a whole. Those who support the status quo say it is no encouragement for illegal immigration as charged pointing out that a "natural born" citizen born in this country of illegal immigrants must wait until they are 18 before they can petition the government to allow other family members to be brought in.
But, the majority of citizens may think differently. A national poll last month by the non-partisan Rasmussen Reports found that 49 percent favored denying citizenship to U.S.-born children of illegal immigrants, with 41 percent opposing such a proposal. One thing is certain, illegal immigrants drive down wages. Those a-holes who like to point out that illegal immigrants take only those jobs that Americans don't want are playing with the truth. The truth is the average American can't afford to live on the wages they pay illegals. Many of these illegal immigrants live 20 to a 2-bedroom house and ride 10 to a vehicle. Is that the living standard corporate pirates expect the average American to adopt? How many people do we want in our lifeboat? At what point is one more too many?
GOP Faction Wants to Change 'Birthright Citizenship' Policy
By Warren Vieth, Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — For nearly 140 years, any child born on U.S. soil, even to an illegal immigrant, has been given American citizenship. Now, some conservatives in Congress are determined to change that.A group of 92 lawmakers in the House will attempt next week to force a vote on legislation that would revoke the principle of "birthright citizenship," part of a broader effort to discourage illegal immigration.The push to change the citizenship policy is backed by some conservative activists and academics. But it could cause problems for the White House and the Republican Party, which have been courting Latino voters. GOP officials fear the effort to eliminate birthright citizenship will alienate a key constituency, even if the legislation ultimately is rejected by Congress or the courts.The principle at issue rests on the first sentence of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 to guarantee the rights of emancipated slaves: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."Some lawmakers advocating tougher immigration laws contend that the amendment has been misinterpreted for decades. Conservatives maintain that although illegal immigrants are subject to criminal prosecution and are expected to abide by U.S. laws and regulations, they are not "subject to the jurisdiction" of the United States in the full sense intended by the amendment's authors — and their children therefore fall outside the scope of its protection.Those who want to change the interpretation acknowledge that illegal immigration is largely driven by the hunger for jobs at U.S. wages. But they also say that for some immigrants, automatic citizenship provides another compelling incentive to cross the border. They note that the United States is one of few major industrialized nations that grant birthright citizenship with no qualifications."Illegal immigrants are coming for many different reasons," said Rep. Lamar Smith (R-Texas), one of the lawmakers pushing for the House measure. "Some are coming for jobs. Some are coming to give birth. Some are coming to commit crimes. Addressing this problem is needed if we're going to try to combat illegal immigration on all fronts."But the proposal may rankle Latino voters."This is about attempting to deal with a serious policy problem by going after people's babies…. It doesn't have to become law for this kind of proposal to offend people," said Cecilia Muñoz, vice president for policy of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group. "This one really hits a nerve." The 92-member House Immigration Reform Caucus, headed by Rep. Tom Tancredo (R-Colo.), wants to attach an amendment revoking birthright citizenship to a broader immigration bill scheduled to be taken up sometime next week. Although several revocation bills have been introduced in the House, the most likely one to move forward would amend the Immigration and Nationality Act to deny automatic citizenship to children born in the United States to parents who are not citizens or permanent resident aliens.There is no official tally of the number of children born to illegal immigrants; unofficial estimates range from 100,000 to 350,000 a year. Smith and other critics of current immigration law say that 1 in 10 U.S. births — and 1 in 5 births in California — are to women who have entered the country illegally.Upon reaching the age of 18, a U.S.-born child of illegal immigrants can petition to obtain permanent legal residency for his or her parents and siblings. Although it generally takes years for such requests to be approved or rejected, parents who receive visas then can begin the process of applying for full citizenship.Because of the length of time involved, some immigration experts say that birthright citizenship is not a major incentive for the vast majority of illegal entrants."No, absolutely not," said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank. "It's something that a few middle-class professional people do. I have never met a poor person who has his wife walk across the desert at eight months pregnant so they can wait 21 years to be sponsored by their child."Harry Pachon, executive director of USC's Tomás Rivera Policy Institute, said there were undoubtedly some immigrants for whom birthright citizenship was a significant incentive. "But is it in the hundreds of thousands? I don't think so, and there's no evidence to support that," Pachon said.Still, opinion polls suggest that many Americans consider it a major problem. A November survey by independent pollster Scott Rasmussen found that 49% of those surveyed favored ending birthright citizenship, while 41% were opposed to any change.Such sentiments appear to reflect growing ambivalence on the part of many Americans about the economic and social impact of immigration, which appears likely to become a major issue in many 2006 congressional races.President Bush and many GOP lawmakers are pressing for a broad rewrite of U.S. immigration laws, including steps to crack down on illegal border crossings and to create a temporary guest worker program open to many of the 8 million to 11 million illegal immigrants in the country.But some House conservatives, including those in Tancredo's caucus, want to vote before year's end on a bill that mainly contains tough enforcement measures. They are fighting to include revocation of birthright citizenship among its provisions.Some opponents of birthright citizenship have assumed that revoking the right would require a constitutional amendment. But others argue that it could be revoked by passing legislation to delineate who is entitled to citizenship and who is not, while leaving the Constitution alone.John C. Eastman, director of the Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence at Chapman University in Orange, told the House immigration panel in September that the phrase "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" suggests that the 14th Amendment does not apply to children of undocumented immigrants because their parents are living in the United States illegally.In an interview, Eastman said that members of Congress who introduced the 14th Amendment made it clear in floor debate that they did not intend for it to apply to children of noncitizens temporarily residing in the United States. There were no illegal immigrants then, Eastman said, because there were no laws on the books addressing the issue."You didn't have a massive immigration of people who were retaining allegiance to another nation and maybe coming here temporarily and then going back," Eastman said. "In 1868, you didn't make that trip across the Atlantic twice."Advocates for immigrants contend that the revocation debate is designed to pander to public anxiety about immigration, despite what they say is a lack of evidence that it would have a significant effect on illegal entries. Some of them also say that if birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants were revoked, it could create a large population of "stateless" children whose futures had been compromised because of the actions of their parents. Their citizenship would be determined by their parents' countries of origin; some children might be required to petition another government to establish their legal status.Supporters of birthright citizenship expressed hope that they could head off the revocation measure in the House, or failing that, on the other side of Capitol Hill."There is no support for the concept in the Senate," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.). "There are certain things that we have done as a nation for a long time that I don't think we're going to change. Rolling back the clock is not going to solve the problem of immigration.
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