Sunday, August 19, 2007

On the Autobahn



The Russians have renewed routine flights of nuclear bombers; the new surveillance law passed by the Democratic-controlled Congress apparently gives the Bush administration more snooping powers than was intended; and I still don't fully understand the whole sub-prime mess (or scandal). But on Monday, I'll be cruising on a German highway to look at public art in the land of beer. Look for postings at a later time.

Posted by David Corn at August 20, 2007 12:00 PM

5 comments:

capt said...

"We are the ruling race of the world... We will not renounce our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of the civilization of the world... He has marked us as his chosen people... He has made us adept in government that we may administer government among savage and senile peoples." : Sen. Alfred Beveridge

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"I firmly believe that when any territory outside the present territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary for our defense or essential for our commercial development, we ought to lose no time in acquiring it." : Sen. Orville Platt of Connecticut 1894.

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"Between 1898 and 1934, the Marines invaded Cuba 4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice, Mexico 3 times and Columbia 4 times," Washington has intervened militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times."

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"If the people are not convinced (that the Free World is in mortal danger) it would be impossible for Congress to vote the vast sums now being spent to avert danger. With the support of public opinion, as marshalled by the press, we are off to a good start. It is our Job - yours and mine -- to keep our people convinced that theonly way to keep disaster away from our shores is to build up America's might." -- Charles Wilson, Chairman of the Board of General Electric and Truman appointee to head the Office of Defence Mobilization, in a speech to the Newspaper Publishers Association, 1950


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Thanks ICh Newsletter!

David B. Benson said...

Bier!

capt said...

Bush is now the embarrassing uncle the Republicans just can't hide



With the departure of Karl Rove, the stench of failure hangs over the president - and his party wants to ignore the smell


George Bush likes his sleep. While campaigning for the presidency in 2000 his prize possession was a feather pillow. On the night that Saddam Hussein was executed he went to bed at 9pm with strict orders not to be woken. When the then CIA director, George Tenet, tried to alert him to news of the first night's bombing of Iraq he was sent away. "He is the type of person who sleeps at 9.30pm after watching the domestic news," Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Abdullah told Okaz, a Saudi newspaper.

But one can't help wondering if Karl Rove's resignation might not disturb his slumber for his remaining months in the White House. Rove, Bush's consigliere for the past 30 years, left last week in much the same manner as he had stayed: misleading the public. He told the nation that he wanted to spend more time with his family. Maybe he should have checked with his family first. His only son leaves for college in just a few days.

Rove is leaving because there is nothing more for him to do; Bush is letting him go because he no longer has any use for him. His departure effectively marks the end of the Bush presidency - from hereon in Bush's tenure is about keeping the troops in Iraq and as many of his administration out of handcuffs as possible. Last week Fox News asked the neocon commentator Charles Krauthammer how much time Bush had to promote his agenda. "None," said Krauthammer. "It's over. There is no agenda."

But while the left loves to revel in Bush's woes, it invariably revels in the wrong woes. Bush's problem is not that he has failed on our terms - humanism, equality, peace and democracy - but that he has failed on his own.

True, his low approval ratings reveal a president approaching Nixonian lows. But then, unlike Nixon, Bush has never craved popularity. He pushed through most of his most pernicious legislation after having lost the popular vote in 2000. This is a man who understood 51% of the vote in 2004 as an overwhelming mandate. "I'll reach out to everyone who shares our goals," Bush said. "I earned capital in the campaign, political capital. And now I intend to spend it. It is my style."

True, too, that the Iraq war is going badly. But then it has never been going well, and that has never seemed to bother him either. He has described himself as "the decider", but never "the contemplator". This too is his style.

In any case the Bush agenda was always more far-reaching than anything that can be accounted for by mere polls, war, or the loss of human life. The ultimate aim of his presidency was to realign American politics to cement a conservative electoral majority for a generation. The cornerstone of his domestic agenda was to build on the Republicans' traditional base of evangelists, southerners, white men and the wealthy, by winning over Catholics, married white women and a sizable minority of Latinos with a mixture of policies and pronouncements on immigration, homophobia, abortion and social security.

Bush did not create the partisan split in America; he inherited it, just as Al Gore would have if he had won the supreme court case in 2000. But while the split was broad (the difference was less than 5% in 13 states from New Mexico to New Hampshire), it was Bush who made it deep and rancorous.

For unlike Thatcher or Reagan he sought to achieve his ends not by exploiting division in order to forge a new, more rightwing consensus but rather to exploit new divisions in order to crush a growing consensus. The majority of the country was, for example, pro-choice and in favour of granting equal rights to gay couples in almost all areas. So the Bush administration chose to leverage gay marriage and late-term abortion - two issues that could act as a wedge - to rally his base. Crude in execution and majoritarian in impulse, it sought not to win over new converts but simply to mobilise dormant constituencies. His legacy will be rightwing policies - but not a more rightwing political culture.

That his agenda should have failed so completely should come as no surprise. The project was always, at root, a faith-based initiative. Following the Republican congressional victory in 2002 Rove was asked to comment on the fact that the nation seemed evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. "Something else is going on out there," he said. "Something else more fundamental ... But we will only know it retrospectively. In two years, or four years or six years, [we may] look back and say the dam began to break in 2002."

With no discernible material basis on which to build, this new majority at home and new world order abroad had to be fashioned from whole cloth. A Bush aide once ridiculed a New York Times reporter for belonging to "the reality-based community", which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality". "That's not the way the world really works any more," he said. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality - judiciously, as you will - we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

So here we are studying. The coalition crumbled. In 2006 Catholics backed the Democrats; white women broke even. According to a Wall Street Journal poll, Americans would prefer the next president to be a Democrat by 52% to 31%. Meanwhile, the presumptive standard bearer for this new majority is treated like a pariah. As the Republican hopeful Mitt Romney pressed flesh in a restaurant in Manchester, New Hampshire, a few weeks ago, Muriel Allard said: "We need someone like him. They don't care about us over there." At a town hall meeting a couple of hours away in Keene, another Republican contender, John McCain, was asked last month if it wasn't time to put a "warrior in chief" in the White House rather than these "draft dodgers". Bush's name never came up. "Friends who were obnoxious in their praise for him just don't mention him any more," says Rick Holmes from Derry. "He's like the embarrassing uncle you just don't want to talk about."

A sense of doom among Republicans is palpable. A growing number of Republican congressmen - most recently the former house speaker Dennis Hastert - have announced they are to retire, or are considering it. "Democrats will win the White House [and] hold their majority in the house and in the Senate in 2008," the retiring congressman Ray Lahood told the New York Times.

There is even talk that Republicans might not invite Bush to their convention. "If they're smart, no," the Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio told Newsweek. "Especially if things don't change in Iraq, we'll have the problem the Democrats had in 1968 with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam. The question becomes: where do we hide the president?"

Bush could run, but he can't now hide. Rove showed Bush how to win elections, but he couldn't show him how to govern. For the next year and a half he may need more than a feather pillow to get him to sleep.


More HERE

capt said...

Iraq's Elite Fleeing in Droves



One in ten Iraqis has left the country. Baghdad's elite are trying to make ends meet in neighboring Jordan and Syria. Washington wants the United Nations to address the refugee crisis. In the meantime, the country is losing its best minds -- the very people needed to rebuild Iraq.


The first stage on the road to safety is a $20 taxi ride. It takes the future refugee past nervous soldiers, through dangerous checkpoints and along streets with nicknames -- like "Grenade Alley" and "Sniper Boulevard" -- that bespeak the perils of travel in Iraq.

Stage one ends at the curb in front of Samarra Terminal at Baghdad Airport, where travelers are so overcome with relief that they hardly even notice the gruff way guards treat them. Before they are even allowed to enter the terminal, security officers order them to deposit their suitcases and carry-on bags next to a yellow line painted on the asphalt and flanked by two sets of six-foot-tall concrete barriers. While police dogs sniff the luggage for explosives, the travelers -- men, women, grandparents and grandchildren -- stand to the side in the heat, parents wearing stiff-looking travel clothes and a few children in brightly colored wind-breakers.

"We are flying to Amman," says one mother, smiling as she hands her whining son his stocking cap, "and then to Prague and on to Stockholm. The children think it's snowing there."


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

I bet the money is leaving as well.



capt

capt said...

What Will Clueless and Hopeless Do Next?




Karl Rove’s long-awaited departure from the White House makes sense, and not just because he really does need to spend more time with his family. Rove is a strange guy. And I say that not because of the rapping he has taken his critics, but because of his own rapping.

But that’s just my opinion. Fact is, we are now Roveless.

Despite his unusual pasty whiteness and the political angst Rove created, George W. Bush benefited greatly from Rove’s hard work and intellect. Affectionately known as "Turd Blossom," we do know Rove was a trusted inner circle guy.

But there is another Rove – perhaps a bit less trusted within the inner circle. Three things come to mind, and I believe they matter when we consider Rove’s departure and what it means to the country.

More HERE