The Rational Radical's Weblog

Friday, May 14, 2004

We Face A Fork in the Road

America, today, spends more on armaments and military than all the other nations of the world, combined. We refuse to join treaties to protect human rights and the environment that nearly all other nations endorse. UNDP indicates that but a small fraction of our present military expenditures could solve all the worst problems of human misery and poverty, on a global basis. Yet, our administration seems rather uninterested in this prospect. Identifying and pursuing enemies, instead, has captured their interest (terrorists versus communists, this time around).

Just imagine what GWB's favorite philosopher might have said about these priorities.

Jesus would send him and all the other right-wing pseudo-Christians to hell!

Jack Clark 9:20 PM [+]   
Post #108459481280072396

Let us Hope the Darkness has Passed

[E]conomists cheering from the pages of corporate newspapers inform us that the GDP growth rate is phenomenal, unprecedented. Shops are overflowing with consumer goods. Government storehouses are overflowing with grain. Outside this circle of light, the past five years have seen the most violent increase in rural-urban income inequalities since independence. Farmers steeped in debt are committing suicide in hundreds; 40% of the rural population in India has the same foodgrain absorption level as sub-Saharan Africa, and 47% of Indian children under three suffer from malnutrition.

But in urban India, shops, restaurants, railway stations, airports, gymnasiums, hospitals have TV monitors in which India's Shining, Feeling Good. You only have to close your ears to the sickening crunch of the policeman's boot on someone's ribs, you only have to raise your eyes from the squalor, the slums, the ragged broken people on the streets and seek a friendly TV monitor, and you will be in that other beautiful world. The

In India also, the war against the poor continues apace.

Jack Clark 9:10 PM [+]   
Post #108459425081195778

Lieberman: Why Rumsfeld Must Stay

Warning that forcing the resignation of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld "would delight foreign and domestic opponents of America's presence in Iraq," Connecticut Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman said only solid proof that Rumsfeld has a hand in the abuse of Iraqi prisoners would justify his removal from the president's Cabinet.

Why doesn't this jerk get it over with and become a Republican?

Jack Clark 9:05 PM [+]   
Post #108459393153580212

Bremer: U.S. Will Leave Iraq if Requested

The U.S. governor of Iraq told regional officials Friday that the United States would leave Iraq if requested to do so by the new Iraqi government...

Yeah, right.

Jack Clark 8:59 PM [+]   
Post #108459357602738795

Bishop: Bar communion for abortion-rights voters

A Colorado Bishop, in one of strongest stands yet taken by a U.S. Roman Catholic church leader, says communion should be denied to people who vote for candidates supporting such issues as abortion rights, gay marriage, euthanasia and stem cell research.

In a pastoral letter to the 125,000 parishioners in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Bishop Michael Sheridan also warned that politicians opposed to church teachings on such issues and those who vote for them jeopardize their salvation.

A typical right-wing pseudo-Christian, ranting and raving about issues Jesus never said a word about, but ignoring the life-and-death issues that Jesus explicitly linked to whether you will be blessed with salvation or not.

Jack Clark 8:51 PM [+]   
Post #108459306834323702

Detainees Suffer Terror at US Hands; Red Cross Says Torture Part of Deliberate Tactic  Read this if you want a litany of pictures yet to come.

Jack Clark 3:47 PM [+]   
Post #108457486427939313

Some Critics of Wal-Mart Joining Forces to Change It

Union leaders, academics and community activists plan to hold an unusual meeting in Washington today to begin mapping out a strategy to check Wal-Mart's growing power and to press the company to improve its wages and benefits.

The meeting was organized largely because union leaders fear that Wal-Mart Stores, the nation's largest company, is pushing down wages and benefits, not just among retailers but throughout the economy.

The Devil's-own corporation.

Jack Clark 3:43 PM [+]   
Post #108457463703113053

Chickenhawk Groupthink?

In a 1972 book, 'Victims of Groupthink: A Psychology Study of Foreign-Policy Decisions and Fiascoes', Irving Janis identified the Vietnam War and the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba as particularly compelling examples of how very smart people can collectively make very stupid decisions.

Very interesting as applied to the Bushians and Iraq. An alternative explanation: they're bloodthirsty assholes. A second alternative explanation: they're possessed by the devil.

Jack Clark 3:41 PM [+]   
Post #108457451183835809

A Double Ordeal for Female Prisoners  If there are any photos of sexual abuse of Iraqi women -- and I read somewhere there is a picture of a rape, and numberous photos of Iraqi women forced to expose their breasts -- then the you-know-what is really going to hit the fan.

Jack Clark 3:28 PM [+]   
Post #108457371590098635

Harsh C.I.A. Methods Cited in Top Qaeda Interrogations  Well, if we're going to use torture, we should just admit it. Denying it makes us look like hypocritical torturers, admitting it makes us look like honest torturers. I guess the latter is better?

Jack Clark 3:23 PM [+]   
Post #108457340639907452

Why Media Stood Silent When Torture Cases First Came To Light

Why are we hearing so few demands from media outlets that the Pentagon release ALL of its photos and VIDEOS?

Good question.

Jack Clark 9:46 PM [+]   
Post #108450999377831474

War Crimes Have Doomed the Occupation  For those with a taste for all the details, this article cites relevant specific provisions of the Geneva Conventions that the U.S. has violated in Iraq.

Jack Clark 9:42 PM [+]   
Post #108450973631857601

Jobs Down, Thumbs Up

More than 82 per cent of the jobs created in April were in service industries, including restaurants and retail, while the biggest new employers were temp agencies. Over the past year, 272,000 manufacturing jobs have been lost.

Not all jobs are created equal.

Jack Clark 9:20 PM [+]   
Post #108450845657760439

McDonald's Plans Slowed by Heart Disease and Cancer

McDonald's moved swiftly to name a chief executive when James R. Cantalupo died of a heart attack on April 19. But relief over the quick appointment of Charles H. Bell was followed by concern a short time later over the news that he had colorectal cancer.

Poetic justice? Heart attacks and colorectal cancer are linked to meat-eating!

Jack Clark 3:32 PM [+]   
Post #108448755179558922

Big Gap Found in Taxation of Wages and Investments

Americans are being taxed more than twice as heavily on earnings from work as they are on investment income, even though more than half of all investment income goes to the wealthiest 5 percent of taxpayers, a new study has estimated.

Those who make the rules make them to enrich themselves, not anyone else.

Jack Clark 3:30 PM [+]   
Post #108448744684362959

Senator Wants Higher Penalty for Tax Abuse

Arguing that the Bush administration's plan to crack down on tax shelters is too weak to deter abuses by accounting and legal firms, a leading Democratic senator plans to offer an amendment today that would triple the White House's proposed penalty for promoters of phony tax shelters.

Senator Carl Levin, Democrat of Michigan, said he would introduce the amendment, which would impose a 150 percent penalty on promoters rather than the 50 percent penalty in the administration's bill.

...The Bush administration, in a statement, defended the proposed 50 percent penalty, along with public sanctions, as enough to deter the practices.

But Senator Levin argued that simply raising the token penalties in the current law to 50 percent of the fees obtained from marketing abusive tax shelters "could provide an incentive for promoters to hike their fees and keep right on going.''

Could there ever be CLEARER PROOF that the Bushians WANT there to be tax fraud by the rich?! If a guy robs a bank, do you try to recover only 50% of what he stole? Of course not, you want it ALL back, and then some. So by what logic would you fine someone aiding tax fraud only 50% of what they made in the tax fraud scheme? ONLY if you don't really want to prevent the tax fraud.

Jack Clark 3:27 PM [+]   
Post #108448724476060730

If Affirmative Action Fails . . . What Then?

Mr. Anderson will surprise many with his reminder that the federal government did not commit itself to affirmative action until the Republican administration of Richard M. Nixon. Racial hiring preferences had been declared illegal after President Lyndon B. Johnson's brief experiment with them. Nixon revived them, Mr. Anderson says, partly from political calculations. Democratic liberals would be forced to defend and expand Nixon's affirmative action policy. Black hiring preferences would supersede white workers' hard-won seniority rights, thus driving a wedge between union members and black voters. Nixon was able to capitalize on the division by the end of his first term, turning against his own initiatives and other strong remedies, like court-ordered busing. As Nixon hoped, white rank-and-filers abandoned the Democrats in droves.

I hadn't realized this was also part of Nixon's Southern strategy.

And, as I never tire of saying, income and wealth distribution in this country is the intended result of the planning of those who make the rules:

Ms. Cashin presents historical evidence that America's unusual stratification does not result from individual choices or market forces. Laws have trapped a desperate underclass in ghettos and ferried a decadent overclass away. The Federal Housing Administration, created in 1937, underwrote one-third of all new housing construction in its first 35 years. Its manual required that all properties "continue to be occupied by the same social and racial classes." The Interstate Highway Act (1956), in addition to subsidizing oil barons in Texas and Saudi Arabia, directly displaced 330,000 poor families, mostly black. State laws made things worse. A combination of new town charters (which encourage creation of low-tax havens), zoning laws (which artificially concentrate both poverty and wealth) and local building codes (which make housing affordable to a select stratum) have sharply segregated, and to some extent created, social classes.

Jack Clark 3:19 PM [+]   
Post #108448676075940147

Findings from a New National Poll show support for Impeachment, Growing Opposition to War on Terrorism

Reporting from an ongoing survey of public knowledge and opinion, Berkeley based NGO Retro Poll released startling results suggesting that 39% of Americans favor impeachment of President Bush.

What's really startling is that 61% don't. They're the living (brain) dead of America.

Jack Clark 12:56 PM [+]   
Post #108447820909879472

Bush Approval Ratings Head Into Dangerous Territory  Nice summary of many sources.

Jack Clark 12:51 PM [+]   
Post #108447788094305147

I'm always criticizing Susan Estrich, but I must admit, aside from her opening frozen grin wooden dummy appearance, when she started talking the other night on Hannity & Colmes, she was kicking some ass.

Jack Clark 7:32 PM [+]   
Post #108441562499394656

O'Reilly hasn't been there all this week on his TV program. That's unusual for a sweeps month. Where's Bill? Hiding under his desk?

Jack Clark 5:00 PM [+]   
Post #108440662095490336

Mistreatment of Prisoners Is Called Routine in U.S.

The corrections experts say that some of the worst abuses have occurred in Texas, whose prisons were under a federal consent decree during much of the time President Bush was governor because of crowding and violence by guards against inmates. Judge William Wayne Justice of Federal District Court imposed the decree after finding that guards were allowing inmate gang leaders to buy and sell other inmates as slaves for sex.

Bush is exporting his Texas practices around the world.

And he picks lowlife scum to do his dirty bidding:

The experts also point out that the man who directed the reopening of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq last year and trained the guards there resigned under pressure as director of the Utah Department of Corrections in 1997 after an inmate died while shackled to a restraining chair for 16 hours. The inmate, who suffered from schizophrenia, was kept naked the whole time.

The Utah official, Lane McCotter, later became an executive of a private prison company, one of whose jails was under investigation by the Justice Department when he was sent to Iraq as part of a team of prison officials, judges, prosecutors and police chiefs picked by Attorney General John Ashcroft to rebuild the country's criminal justice system.

Jack Clark 4:51 PM [+]   
Post #108440586428454888

Texas Town Pays High Human Cost for Iraqi War

Latinos make up 8.2 percent of the work force qualified to join the military but represent 9.5 percent of the military's enlisted ranks, according to a study by the Pew Hispanic Center. Latinos are also overrepresented among soldiers who handle weapons on the front lines, accounting for 17.7 percent of that category.

Cannon fodder,anyone? Shameful.

Jack Clark 4:48 PM [+]   
Post #108440569267536536

Iraqi-Americans, Split on Prospects, See Little Progress

'The only way this feeling is going to be calmed is when I see Bush, Cheney and Wolfowitz naked with bags on their heads,' she said.

Ah, such justice is not likely, but the thought is sweet.

Jack Clark 4:45 PM [+]   
Post #108440554920585455

U.S. General Admits Using Torture

Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, said this week that several interrogation techniques used by American military intelligence since Sept. 11 will now be forbidden at all detention facilities in Iraq.

'We will no longer, in any circumstances, hood any of the detainees,' General Miller said. 'We will no longer use stress positions in any of our interrogations. And we will not use sleep deprivation in any of our interrogations.'

Let all those who pooh-pooh concern over such methods, answer the simple question: is it okay for others to use such methods on U.S. troops when captured? I somehow don't think the answer will be yes. See also this editorial: The Military Archipelago

Jack Clark 4:42 PM [+]   
Post #108440535934936481

Bill O'Reilly always says that he's not against adult material being broadcast, only that it not be accessible to children, especially those he calls "unsupervised", in other words, without parents to guide their viewing and listening. O'Reilly is on when kids are still up, and whenever he's having a segment about sexual stuff -- which is quite often, especially during sweeps months -- O'Reilly will warn that the next segment isn't for kids. Now I don't know how that helps with the "unsupervised" kids O'Reilly says he is especially concerned about, since such a teaser will make it completely certain that they will avidly watch that upcoming segment. But one night last week O'Reilly didn't even provide such a minimal warning before he launched into a segment where he played a graphic discussion on Oprah of what are in effect teenage blowjob parties. How was O'Reilly protecting the folks' kids then?

Jack Clark 11:34 PM [+]   
Post #108441619804796479

Tape of Air Traffic Controllers Made on 9/11 Was Destroyed

At least six air traffic controllers who dealt with two of the hijacked airliners on Sept. 11, 2001, made a tape recording a few hours later describing the events, but the tape was destroyed by a supervisor without anyone making a transcript or even listening to it, the Transportation Department said Thursday.

...A quality-assurance manager at the center destroyed the tape several months after it was made, crushing the cassette in his hand, cutting the tape into little pieces and dropping them in different trash cans around the building, according to the report.

This makes Rosemary Woods look like an amateur!

Jack Clark 9:12 PM [+]   
Post #108433515130930673

I.R.S. Gives Shelter Users a Deadline

The Internal Revenue Service yesterday gave thousands of wealthy investors until June 21 to disclose their use of an abusive tax shelter that cost the government billions of dollars in taxes. Those who do not turn themselves in will face bigger fines and, possibly, the agency in court.

Will the Bush IRS really get these cheating bastards? Let's wait and see.

Jack Clark 9:10 PM [+]   
Post #108433502579416710

70% to 90% of Iraq Prisoners 'Arrested by Mistake'  Oh, torture them anyway, it's a good way to build character.

Jack Clark 8:52 PM [+]   
Post #108433395768364735

Behemoth: Wal-Mart Steamroller

Wal-Mart's low wages make 'half their [employees'] families eligible for the federal food stamp program and government-funded health care for their children,' the San Francisco Chronicle reported this month.

Is it really free-market competition when taxpayers must pick up the tab for the public safety net needed by Wal-Mart workers?

 Wonderful Wal-Mart!

Jack Clark 8:48 PM [+]   
Post #108433368967610716

British Army 'Killing Civilians'  The last time around in Iraq, the British proved adept at killing Iraqi civilians, so I guess they haven't lost their touch.

Jack Clark 8:32 PM [+]   
Post #108433276297544437

Iraqis Report Deepening Doubts About Legitimacy of the US-led Occupation

For the first time, according to Dulame's poll, a majority of Iraqis said they'd feel safer if the U.S. military withdrew immediately.

A year ago, just 17 percent of Iraqis wanted the troops gone, according to Dulame's respected research center in Baghdad. Now, the disturbing new results mirror what most Iraqis and many international observers have said for months: Give it up. Go home. This just isn't working.

Dulame's grim poll doesn't even take in the prisoner scandal's effects. It was conducted in mid-April in seven Iraqi cities. A total of 1,600 people were interviewed and the margin of error is 3 per cent. The findings, which must go first to coalition authorities, have not yet been made public.

Are we in the top of the ninth already?

Jack Clark 9:09 PM [+]   
Post #108424856172848956

Rights Groups Demand That U.S. Open All Detention Facilities  You think the Bushians would ever allow this? How could they? Torture would be exposed all over the world.

Jack Clark 9:05 PM [+]   
Post #108424831190137274

An Ugly Prison Record: Given the Way it Treats its own Inmates, America Shouldn't be Shocked at the Abuse of Iraqis  I'm not, are you?

Jack Clark 8:58 PM [+]   
Post #108424791903548870

Bush Circles Wagons, But Cavalry Has Joined the Indians

Secretary of State (and former army general) Colin Powell compared the possible impact on U.S. foreign policy of the abuse photographs to the 1969 disclosure of the infamous My Lai Massacre in Vietnam.

The big news of the day was that the Army Times, which, along with the major dailies of the other armed services, is published by a private company, called for both Rumsfeld and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, to step down in light of the scandal surrounding the abuse of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad.

''This was not just a failure of leadership at the local command level'', said the Army Times lead editorial, which also appeared in the other service newspapers. ''This was failure that ran straight to the top. Accountability here is essential -- even if that means relieving top leaders from duty in a time of war''. It said Rumsfeld's moves from the outset of the ''war on terror'' had delivered the message to the U.S. troops that ''anything goes''.

Even the Army Times has gone commie. Where is Joseph McCarthy when you need him? Call Ann Coulter and ask her to raise McCarthy from the dead the next time she conducts one of her Satanic rituals.

Jack Clark 8:42 PM [+]   
Post #108424695604519739

Red Cross Report Describes Systemic Abuse in Iraq

'We were dealing here with a broad pattern, not individual acts. There was a pattern and a system.'

Inside the Cells of Abu Ghraib: The CIA Privatized Torture  And it's not just in Iraq: here's more on the long history of CIA-sponsored torture around the world.

Jack Clark 2:15 PM [+]   
Post #108422373832358232

Kurt Nimmo: Limbaugh and the Babes of Abu Ghraib  Limbaugh is deservedly slammed for his imbecilic comments.

Jack Clark 2:11 PM [+]   
Post #108422348870689289

Catholics Against Kerry Website  What a joke. There should be a Catholics against Bush website for all the right-wing pseudo-Christian actions he's taken.

Jack Clark 10:48 PM [+]   
Post #108416812035341380

Chavez Consolidates Power With Castro Agents  The Bushians apparently don't think they have their hands full enough with Iraq!

Jack Clark 10:22 PM [+]   
Post #108416655068628413

The Picture the World Sees

[S]ome people didn't even mind the pictures. Rush Limbaugh told his audience last week that the whole thing reminded him of a 'Skull and Bones initiation.' He argued that the torturers should be cut a little slack: 'You ever heard of emotional release? You heard of need to blow some steam off?'

I guess he'd say the same thing if U.S. troops had been treated like that by their captors?

Jack Clark 12:14 PM [+]   
Post #108413004998434489

Pentagon okayed tough questioning methods  What a euphemism. In other words, they ok'd illegal torture.

Jack Clark 12:31 AM [+]   
Post #108408789145172780