Condi's Evil Ones

"At her confirmation hearings last week, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice offered a little more information, naming six countries as "outposts of tyranny" that would get special attention from the U.S. in the next four years: Cuba, Myanmar, North Korea, Iran, Belarus and Zimbabwe. But how was this unsavory sextet chosen — with a dartboard? She could just as easily have snapped off the names of six of our allies — Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Russia, Kuwait, Uzbekistan and Egypt — equally undemocratic, but which have arguably done more to increase the threat of global terrorism than Rice's squad of baddies."

-Robert Scheer, in his article in the Los Angeles Times, Jan. 25, 2005

The 23rd Sigh

Bush is my shepherd; I shall dwell in want.
He maketh logs to be cut down in national forests.
He leadeth trucks into the still wilderness.
He restoreth my fears.
He leadeth me in the paths of international
disgrace for his ego's sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of
pollution and war,
I will find no exit, for thou art in office.
Thy tax cuts for the rich and thy media control,
they discomfort me.
Thou preparest an agenda of deception in the
presence of thy religion.
Thou anointest my head with foreign oil.
My health insurance runneth out.
Surely megalomania and false patriotism shall
follow me all the days of thy term,
And my jobless child shall dwell in my basement
forever.

"In the end, the problem in Iraq is not this "election" but a profoundly flawed U.S. policy that relies exclusively on the use of force. Despite its awesome power and the spending of billions of dollars to win over impoverished Iraqis, the United States has won little popular support in the country.

"Even if it were possible under the Bush administration, a change in the American approach would accomplish little, so completely discredited is the superpower within Iraq (and in the Middle East and the Islamic world).

"The only hope for peace in Iraq now is the United States agreeing to exit Iraq in exchange for an international force and mission under UN auspices, which would from the very outset indicate to Iraqis that its sole purpose was to help them become genuinely democratic.

"Even then, peace after the bloodbaths will take years to achieve. Which is why a beginning must be made now for the United States to extricate itself from Iraq."

-- from "This Election is a Sham" - by Salim Lone in the International Herald Tribune, Jan. 27, 2005. Lone was an adviser to Sergio Vieira de Mello, the UN envoy to post-invasion Iraq who was killed in 2003 in a bomb attack on the UN compound in Baghdad

From a dead-serious humorist

 Monty Python's Terry Jones :

" I just read a piece in the Guardian this week, in which the writer asked why people were getting so distressed and putting up so much money to help the victims of the tsunami disaster - which I applaud, by the way - when the same number of people have been killed in Iraq and nobody's making a fuss about them. No one's running fundraisers or aid programs to help the victims of the West in Iraq, but there have been at least 100,000 killed by U.S. and British bombs and artillery fire, according to the Lancet [a British medical journal], which is the only scientific estimate we've got. That's a huge number of people being killed. You can't say those people are better off than they would have been under Saddam Hussein."

From an interview by Laura Miller - Salon.com - Fri. Jan. 21, 2005

Coronation spending

$40 million: Cost of Bush inaugural ball festivities, not counting security costs.

$2,000: Amount FDR spent on the inaugural in 1945 - about $20,000 in today's dollars.

$20,000: Cost of yellow roses purchased for inaugural festivities by D.C.'s Ritz Carlton.

$10,000: Price of an inaugural package at the Fairmont Hotel, which includes a Beluga caviar and Dom Perignon reception, a chauffeured Rolls Royce and two actors posing as "faux" Secret Service agents, complete with black sunglasses and cufflink walkie-talkies.

$1: Amount per guest President Carter spent on snacks for guests at his inaugural parties. To stick to a tight budget, he served pretzels, peanuts, crackers and cheese and had cash bars.

$200,500: Price of a room package at D.C.'s Mandarin Oriental, including presidential suite, chauffeured Mercedes limo and outfits from Neiman Marcus.

$6.3 million: Amount contributed by the finance and investment industry, which works out to be 25 percent of all the money collected.

$17 million: Amount of money the White House is forcing the cash-strapped city of Washington, D.C., to pony up for inauguration security.

 9: Percentage of D.C. residents who voted for Bush in 2004.

 66: Percentage of Americans who think this over-the-top inauguration should have been scaled back.
 
22 million: Number of children in regions devastated by the tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.

 1,160,000: Number of girls who could be sent to school for a year in Afghanistan with the amount of money lavished on the inauguration.

(from "Progress Report")

Casualty numbers

As the inauguration approaches, here are the casualty numbers as of Jan. 15, 2005:

Since Bush started the Iraq war (3/19/03), 1363 American troops have been killed, 1077 of them in combat.
Since "Mission Accomplished" (5/1/03), 1226 American troops have been killed, 967 of them in combat.
Since the Handover (6/29/04), 499 American troops have been killed, 445 of them in combat.

The official number of American wounded is 10252. The estimated number is 15000-20000.

160 other "coalition" troops have been killed in Iraq.

The highly respected Lancet (UK) reports that the war has killed about 100,000 Iraqis.

153 American troops have been killed in Afghanistan.

Which side were they on?

This is from a letter my friend Jack McGarvey just wrote to his daughter:

On which side were "conservatives" when --

The Bill of Rights was authored?
Universal education became an obligation of the state?
The right to vote was divorced from property ownership?
Slavery was ended?
Anti-trust laws were enacted to curb the Robber Barons?
Women received the right to vote?
Child labor laws were enacted?
The length of a reasonable working week was established?
Workers' compensation was created?
A minimum wage was established?
Overtime pay was legalized?
The right to fire a worker was governed by "reasonable cause."
Social Security was enacted?
Safe conditions were legislated in the working place?
The right to remain silent under the 5th Amendment was formalized by the Miranda Case?
The Civil Rights legislation passed in the 1960's guaranteed equal protection under the law, regardless of race, religion, or creed?
Medicare was enacted to affirm a basic right to the elderly to medical care?

All of these advances were brought about by (shudder!) liberals (like you and me.)

Bushite clarity

Molly Ivins, today:

"I wouldn't go calling anyone a liar, but as we say in our quaint Texas fashion, this administration is stuffed with people who are on a first-name basis with the bottom of the deck. They've been telling us only four out of the 18 provinces in Iraq will be too unsafe to vote in. Doesn't sound that bad, does it? Unless you happen to know that about 50 percent of the population lives in those four provinces."

Bush's paper bag

From Maureen Dowd in today's NY Times:

The president's still got a paper bag over his head, claiming that the daily horrors out of Iraq reflect just a few soreheads standing in the way of a glorious democracy, even though his commander of ground forces there concedes that the areas where more than half of Iraqis live are not secure enough for them to vote - an acknowledgment that the insurgency is resilient and growing. It's like saying Montana and North Dakota are safe to vote, but New York, Philadelphia and L.A. are not. What's a little disenfranchisement among friends?

"I know it's hard, but it's hard for a reason," Mr. Bush said on Friday, a day after seven G.I.'s and two marines died. "And the reason it's hard is because there are a handful of folks who fear freedom." If it's just a handful, how come it's so hard?

Tsunami and God

"Christians cannot go on speaking about prayer as if it were an alternative way of getting things done in the world, or about divine power as if God were the puppet master of the universe. What is so terrifying about the Christmas story is that it offers us nothing but the protection of a vulnerable baby, of a God so pathetic that we need to protect Him. The idea of an omnipotent God who can calm the sea and defeat our enemies turns out to be a part of that great fantasy of power that has corrupted the Christian imagination for centuries. Instead, Christians are called to recognise that the essence of the divine being is not power but compassion and love. And it's this love, and this love only, that whispers to me in defiance of the darkness: all will be well, all manner of things will be well."

--From a Jan. 8, 2005, Guardian (UK) article, "God is not the Puppet Master," by Rev Dr Giles Fraser, Vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at Wadham College, Oxford.

The emperor's cave

Should we be surprised at what Paul Krugman notes in today's New York Times?

"The Nelson Report, a respected newsletter, reports that Mr. Bush has made it clear to his subordinates that he doesn't want to hear bad news about Iraq."

I suppose he has also banned reports with information about global warming, secret detentions, torture, worldwide disgust with the U.S., national poverty rates and deteriorating schools. Also scientific articles on evolution and history books on the Roman Empire. Perhaps he is spending all his reading time on the Rapture novels.

In the wake of electoral hypnosis...

Let's not worry about offending that 22 percent of the country (we don't know the exact number but it is certainly a minority) who are religious and political fundamentalists, who invoke God in the service of mass murder and imperial conquest, who ignore the Biblical injunctions to love one's neighbor, to beat swords into plowshares, to care for the poor and downtrodden.
Most Americans do not want war. Most want the wealth of this country to be used for human needs-health, work, schools, children, decent housing, a clean environment--rather than for billion dollar nuclear submarines and four billion dollar aircraft carriers.

--from a 12/30/04 article by H. Zinn in The Progressive