"Be my guest. . .(worker)
Friday, March 31, 2006
Krugman's take on the "Immigration Problem" *
* Uke Man comments at the end.
March 31, 2006
The Road to Dubai
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
For now, at least, the immigration issue is mainly hurting the Republican Party, which is divided between those who want to expel immigrants and those who want to exploit them. The only thing the two factions seem to have in common is mean-spiritedness.
But immigration remains a difficult issue for liberals. Let me say a bit more about the subject of my last column, the uncomfortable economics of immigration, then turn to what really worries me: the political implications of a large nonvoting work force.
About the economics: the crucial divide isn't between legal and illegal immigration; it's between high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants. High-skilled immigrants — say, software engineers from South Asia — are, by any criterion I can think of, good for America. But the effects of low-skilled immigration are mixed at best.
True, there are large benefits for the low-skilled migrants, who may find even a minimum-wage U.S. job a big step up. Immigration also raises the total income of native-born Americans, although reasonable estimates suggest that these gains amount to no more than a fraction of 1 percent.
But low-skilled immigration depresses the wages of less-skilled native-born Americans. And immigrants increase the demand for public services, including health care and education. Estimates indicate that low-skilled immigrants don't pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of providing these services.
All of these effects, except for the gains for the immigrants themselves, are fairly small. Some of my friends say that's the point I should stress: immigration is a wonderful thing for the immigrants, and claims that immigrants are undermining American workers and taxpayers are hugely overblown — end of story.
But it's important to be intellectually honest, even when it hurts. Moreover, what really worries me isn't the narrow economics — it's the political economy, the effects of having a disenfranchised labor force.
Imagine, for a moment, a future in which America becomes like Kuwait or Dubai, a country where a large fraction of the work force consists of illegal immigrants or foreigners on temporary visas — and neither group has the right to vote. Surely this would be a betrayal of our democratic ideals, of government of the people, by the people. Moreover, a political system in which many workers don't count is likely to ignore workers' interests: it's likely to have a weak social safety net and to spend too little on services like health care and education.
This isn't idle speculation. Countries with high immigration tend, other things equal, to have less generous welfare states than those with low immigration. U.S. cities with ethnically diverse populations — often the result of immigration — tend to have worse public services than those with more homogeneous populations.
Of course, America isn't Dubai. But we're moving in that direction. As of 2002, according to the Urban Institute, 14 percent of U.S. workers, and 20 percent of low-wage workers, were immigrants. Only a third of these immigrant workers were naturalized citizens. So we already have a large disenfranchised work force, and it's growing rapidly. The goal of immigration reform should be to reverse that trend.
So what do I think of the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposal, which is derived from a plan sponsored by John McCain and Ted Kennedy? I'm all in favor of one provision: offering those already here a possible route to permanent residency and citizenship. Since we aren't going to deport more than 10 million people, we need to integrate those people into our society.
But I'm puzzled by the plan to create a permanent guest-worker program, one that would admit 400,000 more workers a year (and you know that business interests would immediately start lobbying for an increase in that number). Isn't institutionalizing a disenfranchised work force a big step away from democracy?
For a hard-line economic conservative like Mr. McCain, the advantages to employers of a cheap work force may be more important than the violation of democratic principles. But why would someone like Mr. Kennedy go along? Is the point to help potential immigrants, or is it to buy support from business interests?
Either way, it's a dangerous route to go down. America's political system is already a lot less democratic in practice than it is on paper, and creating a permanent nonvoting working class would make things worse.
The road to Dubai may be paved with good intentions.
* * *
Hey Folks,
Krugman sounds a lot like me. I'd go even further with the bit about "America's political system is already a lot less democratic in practice than it is on paper."
He also makes the same point (from a different angle) that I did in an earlier posting. This "guest worker" crap is bad for immigrants and bad for America. The only ones helped are the exploitating few.
This is what the British used to do to the Irish; it's similar to the treatment of the Chinese we brought in to build our railroad. It's crap!
And again, the point Krugman makes about institutionalizing a disenfranchised work force goes beyond the "non-voting" block he mentions (i.e. the "guest workers"). It includes most of America's present, "legal" workers - and that is true whether they vote or not! America's workers are simply not represented - even by people like Kennedy. Labor law is a joke. The Democrats do want big labor unions behind them, but don't do any more for laborers than the Republicans do for "fiscal conservatives." Workers, whether they vote or not, are invisible.
Think about it. There are a lot of programs on TV and radio dedicated to "business." Every major paper has a "business" section. We hear constantly (at least here in Ohio) how we must all do such and so to encourage (i.e. kiss the ass of) business.
When have you ever viewed or heard a weekly or daily "labor" program? Does your paper have a "labor" section? Have you ever experienced any media gink suggesting we kiss labor's ass?
I learned a long time ago that the notion of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is more than just some goodie-two-shoes clap-trap; and more than just some nice thing we ought to attempt; and even more than a responsibility every decent human being owes his fellow man.
It is wisdom, a wise dictum that serves us as well as those to whom we apply it. As Krugman points out, mistreating immigrants is destructive of ourselves and of the things we value in our own social context.
If we go along in fucking immigrants, we fuck ourselves; which is exactly what Dick Cheney told us to do.
- Uke Man
March 31, 2006
The Road to Dubai
By PAUL KRUGMAN
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
For now, at least, the immigration issue is mainly hurting the Republican Party, which is divided between those who want to expel immigrants and those who want to exploit them. The only thing the two factions seem to have in common is mean-spiritedness.
But immigration remains a difficult issue for liberals. Let me say a bit more about the subject of my last column, the uncomfortable economics of immigration, then turn to what really worries me: the political implications of a large nonvoting work force.
About the economics: the crucial divide isn't between legal and illegal immigration; it's between high-skilled and low-skilled immigrants. High-skilled immigrants — say, software engineers from South Asia — are, by any criterion I can think of, good for America. But the effects of low-skilled immigration are mixed at best.
True, there are large benefits for the low-skilled migrants, who may find even a minimum-wage U.S. job a big step up. Immigration also raises the total income of native-born Americans, although reasonable estimates suggest that these gains amount to no more than a fraction of 1 percent.
But low-skilled immigration depresses the wages of less-skilled native-born Americans. And immigrants increase the demand for public services, including health care and education. Estimates indicate that low-skilled immigrants don't pay enough in taxes to cover the cost of providing these services.
All of these effects, except for the gains for the immigrants themselves, are fairly small. Some of my friends say that's the point I should stress: immigration is a wonderful thing for the immigrants, and claims that immigrants are undermining American workers and taxpayers are hugely overblown — end of story.
But it's important to be intellectually honest, even when it hurts. Moreover, what really worries me isn't the narrow economics — it's the political economy, the effects of having a disenfranchised labor force.
Imagine, for a moment, a future in which America becomes like Kuwait or Dubai, a country where a large fraction of the work force consists of illegal immigrants or foreigners on temporary visas — and neither group has the right to vote. Surely this would be a betrayal of our democratic ideals, of government of the people, by the people. Moreover, a political system in which many workers don't count is likely to ignore workers' interests: it's likely to have a weak social safety net and to spend too little on services like health care and education.
This isn't idle speculation. Countries with high immigration tend, other things equal, to have less generous welfare states than those with low immigration. U.S. cities with ethnically diverse populations — often the result of immigration — tend to have worse public services than those with more homogeneous populations.
Of course, America isn't Dubai. But we're moving in that direction. As of 2002, according to the Urban Institute, 14 percent of U.S. workers, and 20 percent of low-wage workers, were immigrants. Only a third of these immigrant workers were naturalized citizens. So we already have a large disenfranchised work force, and it's growing rapidly. The goal of immigration reform should be to reverse that trend.
So what do I think of the Senate Judiciary Committee's proposal, which is derived from a plan sponsored by John McCain and Ted Kennedy? I'm all in favor of one provision: offering those already here a possible route to permanent residency and citizenship. Since we aren't going to deport more than 10 million people, we need to integrate those people into our society.
But I'm puzzled by the plan to create a permanent guest-worker program, one that would admit 400,000 more workers a year (and you know that business interests would immediately start lobbying for an increase in that number). Isn't institutionalizing a disenfranchised work force a big step away from democracy?
For a hard-line economic conservative like Mr. McCain, the advantages to employers of a cheap work force may be more important than the violation of democratic principles. But why would someone like Mr. Kennedy go along? Is the point to help potential immigrants, or is it to buy support from business interests?
Either way, it's a dangerous route to go down. America's political system is already a lot less democratic in practice than it is on paper, and creating a permanent nonvoting working class would make things worse.
The road to Dubai may be paved with good intentions.
* * *
Hey Folks,
Krugman sounds a lot like me. I'd go even further with the bit about "America's political system is already a lot less democratic in practice than it is on paper."
He also makes the same point (from a different angle) that I did in an earlier posting. This "guest worker" crap is bad for immigrants and bad for America. The only ones helped are the exploitating few.
This is what the British used to do to the Irish; it's similar to the treatment of the Chinese we brought in to build our railroad. It's crap!
And again, the point Krugman makes about institutionalizing a disenfranchised work force goes beyond the "non-voting" block he mentions (i.e. the "guest workers"). It includes most of America's present, "legal" workers - and that is true whether they vote or not! America's workers are simply not represented - even by people like Kennedy. Labor law is a joke. The Democrats do want big labor unions behind them, but don't do any more for laborers than the Republicans do for "fiscal conservatives." Workers, whether they vote or not, are invisible.
Think about it. There are a lot of programs on TV and radio dedicated to "business." Every major paper has a "business" section. We hear constantly (at least here in Ohio) how we must all do such and so to encourage (i.e. kiss the ass of) business.
When have you ever viewed or heard a weekly or daily "labor" program? Does your paper have a "labor" section? Have you ever experienced any media gink suggesting we kiss labor's ass?
I learned a long time ago that the notion of "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is more than just some goodie-two-shoes clap-trap; and more than just some nice thing we ought to attempt; and even more than a responsibility every decent human being owes his fellow man.
It is wisdom, a wise dictum that serves us as well as those to whom we apply it. As Krugman points out, mistreating immigrants is destructive of ourselves and of the things we value in our own social context.
If we go along in fucking immigrants, we fuck ourselves; which is exactly what Dick Cheney told us to do.
- Uke Man
Thursday, March 30, 2006
Howard Zinn - a reason for optimism
Hey Folks,
Perhaps you know of Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States." He is a deep and inspiring thinker on the scene today.
Believe me, I know how difficult it is to keep on keeping on when every way we turn we confront stupidity, craven fear, greed, prejudice, scapegoating, lies, self-advancement, hypocrisy, and you-name-it.
Zinn gives us an argument for optimism.
- Uke Man
The Optimism of Uncertainty
by Howard Zinn; November 06, 2004
In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population. The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
Perhaps you know of Howard Zinn, author of "A People's History of the United States." He is a deep and inspiring thinker on the scene today.
Believe me, I know how difficult it is to keep on keeping on when every way we turn we confront stupidity, craven fear, greed, prejudice, scapegoating, lies, self-advancement, hypocrisy, and you-name-it.
Zinn gives us an argument for optimism.
- Uke Man
The Optimism of Uncertainty
by Howard Zinn; November 06, 2004
In this awful world where the efforts of caring people often pale in comparison to what is done by those who have power, how do I manage to stay involved and seemingly happy?
I am totally confident not that the world will get better, but that we should not give up the game before all the cards have been played. The metaphor is deliberate; life is a gamble. Not to play is to foreclose any chance of winning. To play, to act, is to create at least a possibility of changing the world.
There is a tendency to think that what we see in the present moment will continue. We forget how often we have been astonished by the sudden crumbling of institutions, by extraordinary changes in people's thoughts, by unexpected eruptions of rebellion against tyrannies, by the quick collapse of systems of power that seemed invincible.
What leaps out from the history of the past hundred years is its utter unpredictability. A revolution to overthrow the czar of Russia, in that most sluggish of semi-feudal empires, not only startled the most advanced imperial powers but took Lenin himself by surprise and sent him rushing by train to Petrograd. Who would have predicted the bizarre shifts of World War II--the Nazi-Soviet pact (those embarrassing photos of von Ribbentrop and Molotov shaking hands), and the German Army rolling through Russia, apparently invincible, causing colossal casualties, being turned back at the gates of Leningrad, on the western edge of Moscow, in the streets of Stalingrad, followed by the defeat of the German army, with Hitler huddled in his Berlin bunker, waiting to die?
And then the postwar world, taking a shape no one could have drawn in advance: The Chinese Communist revolution, the tumultuous and violent Cultural Revolution, and then another turnabout, with post-Mao China renouncing its most fervently held ideas and institutions, making overtures to the West, cuddling up to capitalist enterprise, perplexing everyone.
No one foresaw the disintegration of the old Western empires happening so quickly after the war, or the odd array of societies that would be created in the newly independent nations, from the benign village socialism of Nyerere's Tanzania to the madness of Idi Amin's adjacent Uganda. Spain became an astonishment. I recall a veteran of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade telling me that he could not imagine Spanish Fascism being overthrown without another bloody war. But after Franco was gone, a parliamentary democracy came into being, open to Socialists, Communists, anarchists, everyone.
The end of World War II left two superpowers with their respective spheres of influence and control, vying for military and political power. Yet they were unable to control events, even in those parts of the world considered to be their respective spheres of influence. The failure of the Soviet Union to have its way in Afghanistan, its decision to withdraw after almost a decade of ugly intervention, was the most striking evidence that even the possession of thermonuclear weapons does not guarantee domination over a determined population. The United States has faced the same reality. It waged a full-scale war in lndochina, conducting the most brutal bombardment of a tiny peninsula in world history, and yet was forced to withdraw. In the headlines every day we see other instances of the failure of the presumably powerful over the presumably powerless, as in Brazil, where a grassroots movement of workers and the poor elected a new president pledged to fight destructive corporate power.
Looking at this catalogue of huge surprises, it's clear that the struggle for justice should never be abandoned because of the apparent overwhelming power of those who have the guns and the money and who seem invincible in their determination to hold on to it. That apparent power has, again and again, proved vulnerable to human qualities less measurable than bombs and dollars: moral fervor, determination, unity, organization, sacrifice, wit, ingenuity, courage, patience--whether by blacks in Alabama and South Africa, peasants in El Salvador, Nicaragua and Vietnam, or workers and intellectuals in Poland, Hungary and the Soviet Union itself. No cold calculation of the balance of power need deter people who are persuaded that their cause is just.
I have tried hard to match my friends in their pessimism about the world (is it just my friends?), but I keep encountering people who, in spite of all the evidence of terrible things happening everywhere, give me hope. Especially young people, in whom the future rests. Wherever I go, I find such people. And beyond the handful of activists there seem to be hundreds, thousands, more who are open to unorthodox ideas. But they tend not to know of one another's existence, and so, while they persist, they do so with the desperate patience of Sisyphus endlessly pushing that boulder up the mountain. I try to tell each group that it is not alone, and that the very people who are disheartened by the absence of a national movement are themselves proof of the potential for such a movement.
Revolutionary change does not come as one cataclysmic moment (beware of such moments!) but as an endless succession of surprises, moving zigzag toward a more decent society. We don't have to engage in grand, heroic actions to participate in the process of change. Small acts, when multiplied by millions of people, can transform the world. Even when we don't "win," there is fun and fulfillment in the fact that we have been involved, with other good people, in something worthwhile. We need hope.
An optimist isn't necessarily a blithe, slightly sappy whistler in the dark of our time. To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places--and there are so many--where people have behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in a different direction. And if we do act, in however small a way, we don't have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.
! Viva Latinos !
Hey Folks,
George Will is an aristocratic twit and in desperate need of a thrashing, but he did us a service in his column today, inadvertently betraying the true nature of the “immigration problem.”
The “problem” as I’ve been saying for years is that the few who benefit from abusing the rest of us have run into themselves – something that happens when you work both sides of the street and talk out of both sides of your mouth.
One priority of the ruling class is to keep us under control, to keep us divided, to keep us distracted, to keep us isolated by selfishness. Racism has always been a helpful tool in this regard; hence prejudice and scapegoating (of Latinos in this case) is to be encouraged.
Another priority of the swells, however, is the degradation of the status of workers, thereby increasing profits for the non-working class. Illegal immigration has always been a helpful tool in this regard; hence real steps to stop such immigration aren’t taken.
For years, politicians have ranted against “illegal immigration” while laughing all the way to the bank. Now, for a number of reasons, the train racing North and the train racing South have smashed into one another, aggravating ruling twits like Will.
Presently the government is working overtime to solve the problem – not the problem faced by hard-working Latinos, not the “problem” imagined by xenophobic Americans, but the control/profit problem of the ruling class.
Will urges “unlimited immigration by educated persons with math, engineering, technology or science skills.” Why? There is no shortage in these areas. What Will and his ilk are after is a SURPLUSS, so that the wages of even these highly educated professionals can be suppressed, thus increasing profits.
As for the less-educated, Will favors “a guest-worker program to supply what the U.S. economy demands: immigrant labor for entry-level jobs.” Yeah, let ‘em in to do the ever-increasing number of shit jobs, but don’t let them stay and move up the ladder.
So, Will has a start on untangling the wrecked loco-motives. With his sly plan, nothing important really changes. The xenophobes can back off – "we’ve put those wet-backs on notice." And the entremanures can celebrate too – cheap, exploitable labor will be not only still available, but actually encouraged.
It’s “win-win” – nobody loses. Except for millions of Latino Americans.
As to any ridiculous objection these folks might make, Will says, “Large rallies of immigrants . . . reveal that many immigrant have, alas, assimilated: They have acquired the entitlement mentality spawned by America’s welfare state, asserting an entitlement to exemption from the laws of the society they invited themselves into.”
Stupid immigrants. Who do they think they are, the “unitary executive,” George Bush? They can't make "signing statements"! And where do they get the notion that in the U.S.of A. anyone is entitled to protest injustice? George Will’s government isn’t here to create injustice; the government is here to preserve injustice.
Well, Senor Will es un pendejo.
Power to the people! However they got here.
- Uke Man
George Will is an aristocratic twit and in desperate need of a thrashing, but he did us a service in his column today, inadvertently betraying the true nature of the “immigration problem.”
The “problem” as I’ve been saying for years is that the few who benefit from abusing the rest of us have run into themselves – something that happens when you work both sides of the street and talk out of both sides of your mouth.
One priority of the ruling class is to keep us under control, to keep us divided, to keep us distracted, to keep us isolated by selfishness. Racism has always been a helpful tool in this regard; hence prejudice and scapegoating (of Latinos in this case) is to be encouraged.
Another priority of the swells, however, is the degradation of the status of workers, thereby increasing profits for the non-working class. Illegal immigration has always been a helpful tool in this regard; hence real steps to stop such immigration aren’t taken.
For years, politicians have ranted against “illegal immigration” while laughing all the way to the bank. Now, for a number of reasons, the train racing North and the train racing South have smashed into one another, aggravating ruling twits like Will.
Presently the government is working overtime to solve the problem – not the problem faced by hard-working Latinos, not the “problem” imagined by xenophobic Americans, but the control/profit problem of the ruling class.
Will urges “unlimited immigration by educated persons with math, engineering, technology or science skills.” Why? There is no shortage in these areas. What Will and his ilk are after is a SURPLUSS, so that the wages of even these highly educated professionals can be suppressed, thus increasing profits.
As for the less-educated, Will favors “a guest-worker program to supply what the U.S. economy demands: immigrant labor for entry-level jobs.” Yeah, let ‘em in to do the ever-increasing number of shit jobs, but don’t let them stay and move up the ladder.
So, Will has a start on untangling the wrecked loco-motives. With his sly plan, nothing important really changes. The xenophobes can back off – "we’ve put those wet-backs on notice." And the entremanures can celebrate too – cheap, exploitable labor will be not only still available, but actually encouraged.
It’s “win-win” – nobody loses. Except for millions of Latino Americans.
As to any ridiculous objection these folks might make, Will says, “Large rallies of immigrants . . . reveal that many immigrant have, alas, assimilated: They have acquired the entitlement mentality spawned by America’s welfare state, asserting an entitlement to exemption from the laws of the society they invited themselves into.”
Stupid immigrants. Who do they think they are, the “unitary executive,” George Bush? They can't make "signing statements"! And where do they get the notion that in the U.S.of A. anyone is entitled to protest injustice? George Will’s government isn’t here to create injustice; the government is here to preserve injustice.
Well, Senor Will es un pendejo.
Power to the people! However they got here.
- Uke Man
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
Response to the 3-29-06 Dispatch Editorial
To the Editor,
Your prejudices are showing in the "Try something different" editorial (March 29). You suggest that the Columbus teacher union's insistence on using union teachers in the district's charter schools has "the appearance of intimidation." Logically, such insistence is no more intimidating than the superintendent's proposal to use non-union employees.
You also write, "Hopes for the school's success depend on the union keeping that promise [to be flexible]." While, perhaps, flexibility can play a part, you seem to assume that flexibility on the part of the union is the crucial factor. The Dispatch recently ran a story about non-union charter schools - which are apparently as flexible as you could hope for - that seem far from successful academically. If the Columbus experiment fails, will you blame the union?
You say, "Old-fashioned schooling has failed to reach those students. District administrators and teachers should look for new ways to engage them." Besides the fact that teachers and administrators are always looking for ways to engage students, and that it is true that more can always be done, attempting more does not guarantee success. If the Columbus experiment fails, will you blame the union?
You point out that "Ohio parents are flocking to charter schools because they want something different." You do not explain whether this search for something “different” results from academic, political, religious, cultural, security or other concerns. Many non-public charter schools I've read about seem to have attracted parents for other than academic reasons. Is this satisfactory? Does it help you overlook these schools’ academic failure because they are non-union schools or because, in a number of instances, voucher-supporting entrepreneurs like David Brennan are accruing millions of dollars in profit as a result of the scheme?
Finally, by concentrating in your editorial on the teachers, their union, and their administrators; you – intentionally or unintentionally – avoid dealing with the real problem. Teachers and their unions – and even administrators – didn’t invent racism, classism, poverty, and segregation. Society did.
The same quality of teachers and administrators, and the same union extant in Columbus all exist in suburban schools as well, where luckier families CAN “afford private schools” but where the vast majority are content that THEIR “old-fashioned” public schools have NOT “failed to reach” the students. The Dispatch, however, does not recommend that vouchers be provided in sufficient denomination to move everyone to the suburbs or even - less expensively - to make “private school” affordable to anyone who wants it.
I don’t expect that you ever will. It’s a lot easier to blame those trying to address the problem than it is to challenge the system which caused it.
- Uke Man
Your prejudices are showing in the "Try something different" editorial (March 29). You suggest that the Columbus teacher union's insistence on using union teachers in the district's charter schools has "the appearance of intimidation." Logically, such insistence is no more intimidating than the superintendent's proposal to use non-union employees.
You also write, "Hopes for the school's success depend on the union keeping that promise [to be flexible]." While, perhaps, flexibility can play a part, you seem to assume that flexibility on the part of the union is the crucial factor. The Dispatch recently ran a story about non-union charter schools - which are apparently as flexible as you could hope for - that seem far from successful academically. If the Columbus experiment fails, will you blame the union?
You say, "Old-fashioned schooling has failed to reach those students. District administrators and teachers should look for new ways to engage them." Besides the fact that teachers and administrators are always looking for ways to engage students, and that it is true that more can always be done, attempting more does not guarantee success. If the Columbus experiment fails, will you blame the union?
You point out that "Ohio parents are flocking to charter schools because they want something different." You do not explain whether this search for something “different” results from academic, political, religious, cultural, security or other concerns. Many non-public charter schools I've read about seem to have attracted parents for other than academic reasons. Is this satisfactory? Does it help you overlook these schools’ academic failure because they are non-union schools or because, in a number of instances, voucher-supporting entrepreneurs like David Brennan are accruing millions of dollars in profit as a result of the scheme?
Finally, by concentrating in your editorial on the teachers, their union, and their administrators; you – intentionally or unintentionally – avoid dealing with the real problem. Teachers and their unions – and even administrators – didn’t invent racism, classism, poverty, and segregation. Society did.
The same quality of teachers and administrators, and the same union extant in Columbus all exist in suburban schools as well, where luckier families CAN “afford private schools” but where the vast majority are content that THEIR “old-fashioned” public schools have NOT “failed to reach” the students. The Dispatch, however, does not recommend that vouchers be provided in sufficient denomination to move everyone to the suburbs or even - less expensively - to make “private school” affordable to anyone who wants it.
I don’t expect that you ever will. It’s a lot easier to blame those trying to address the problem than it is to challenge the system which caused it.
- Uke Man
Eric Idle sings
Hey Folks,
This has been around a while, but it still applies, and you may have missed it!
(just today the Dispatch has a story on profanity and the "F-word," and a day or two ago Fudge Judge Scalia gave a photographer the finger - and there's always Darth "Go fuck yourself" Cheney who shot ducks with Scalia before he switched to shooting people)
- Uke Man
Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song. "Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge… It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."
http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3
This has been around a while, but it still applies, and you may have missed it!
(just today the Dispatch has a story on profanity and the "F-word," and a day or two ago Fudge Judge Scalia gave a photographer the finger - and there's always Darth "Go fuck yourself" Cheney who shot ducks with Scalia before he switched to shooting people)
- Uke Man
Eric Idle presents... The FCC Song. "Here’s a little song I wrote the other day while I was out duck hunting with a judge… It’s a new song, it’s dedicated to the FCC and if they broadcast it, it will cost a quarter of a million dollars."
http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3
Tuesday, March 28, 2006
Has the Rapture Begun?
Hey Folks,
Did you read “Yahoo News” this morning? Here’s the headline:
“Afghan Convert Vanishes After Release”
Gosh ! Immediately I asked myself, “Has the rapture begun?”
I thought, “Maybe it HAS. I’m still here aren’t I ?”
But then I read on (see below), and I think it’s all turned out pretty well – especially for our president. Think about it.
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he didn’t care whether some scofflaw had found Jesus – tough tonails!!!
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he didn’t care whether the perpetrator was mentally unfit – too bad, so sad!!!
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he gave a deaf ear to other nations when they advised clemency – we saved your ass from Hitler and . . . and . . . Remember the Alamo !!!
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he wouldn’t listen to the Pope either !!!
But now!! Praise Jesus, the boy has seen the light. Now, finding Jesus counts for something; mental illness IS a mitigating factor, what other nations think about things is important, and the Pope’s not a dope.
Halleluiah !!!!
Of course, I COULD be wrong about this. Ron “the Gipper” Regan loved unions IN POLAND but broke them here at home. Still, how could a President who is a man of character and values, who regularly talks with God – how could he show Americans less interest, compassion, understanding, and clemency than he would a foreigner in Afghanistan?
- Uke Man
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity quickly vanished Tuesday after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death.
Italy's Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said he would ask his government to grant Abdul Rahman asylum. Fini was among the first to speak out on the man's behalf.
Rahman, 41, was released from the high-security Policharki prison on the outskirts of Kabul late Monday, Afghan Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish told The Associated Press.
"We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to," he said. "His family was there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken."
Deputy Attorney-General Mohammed Eshak Aloko said prosecutors had issued a letter calling for Rahman's release because "he was mentally unfit to stand trial." He also said he did not know where Rahman had gone after being released.
He said Rahman may be sent overseas for medical treatment.
On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest the court decision Sunday to dismiss the case. Several Muslim clerics threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.
"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."
Rahman was arrested last month after police discovered him with a Bible during a custody dispute over his two daughters. He was put on trial last week for converting 16 years ago while he was a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws.
The case set off an outcry in the United States and other nations that helped oust the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 and provide aid and military support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
President Bush and others had insisted Afghanistan protect personal beliefs.
Did you read “Yahoo News” this morning? Here’s the headline:
“Afghan Convert Vanishes After Release”
Gosh ! Immediately I asked myself, “Has the rapture begun?”
I thought, “Maybe it HAS. I’m still here aren’t I ?”
But then I read on (see below), and I think it’s all turned out pretty well – especially for our president. Think about it.
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he didn’t care whether some scofflaw had found Jesus – tough tonails!!!
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he didn’t care whether the perpetrator was mentally unfit – too bad, so sad!!!
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he gave a deaf ear to other nations when they advised clemency – we saved your ass from Hitler and . . . and . . . Remember the Alamo !!!
When GWB was the execution-governor of Texas, he wouldn’t listen to the Pope either !!!
But now!! Praise Jesus, the boy has seen the light. Now, finding Jesus counts for something; mental illness IS a mitigating factor, what other nations think about things is important, and the Pope’s not a dope.
Halleluiah !!!!
Of course, I COULD be wrong about this. Ron “the Gipper” Regan loved unions IN POLAND but broke them here at home. Still, how could a President who is a man of character and values, who regularly talks with God – how could he show Americans less interest, compassion, understanding, and clemency than he would a foreigner in Afghanistan?
- Uke Man
KABUL, Afghanistan - An Afghan man who had faced the death penalty for converting from Islam to Christianity quickly vanished Tuesday after he was released from prison, apparently out of fear for his life with Muslim clerics still demanding his death.
Italy's Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini said he would ask his government to grant Abdul Rahman asylum. Fini was among the first to speak out on the man's behalf.
Rahman, 41, was released from the high-security Policharki prison on the outskirts of Kabul late Monday, Afghan Justice Minister Mohammed Sarwar Danish told The Associated Press.
"We released him last night because the prosecutors told us to," he said. "His family was there when he was freed, but I don't know where he was taken."
Deputy Attorney-General Mohammed Eshak Aloko said prosecutors had issued a letter calling for Rahman's release because "he was mentally unfit to stand trial." He also said he did not know where Rahman had gone after being released.
He said Rahman may be sent overseas for medical treatment.
On Monday, hundreds of clerics, students and others chanting "Death to Christians!" marched through the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif to protest the court decision Sunday to dismiss the case. Several Muslim clerics threatened to incite Afghans to kill Rahman if he is freed, saying that he is clearly guilty of apostasy and deserves to die.
"Abdul Rahman must be killed. Islam demands it," said senior Cleric Faiez Mohammed, from the nearby northern city of Kunduz. "The Christian foreigners occupying Afghanistan are attacking our religion."
Rahman was arrested last month after police discovered him with a Bible during a custody dispute over his two daughters. He was put on trial last week for converting 16 years ago while he was a medical aid worker for an international Christian group helping Afghan refugees in Pakistan. He faced the death penalty under Afghanistan's Islamic laws.
The case set off an outcry in the United States and other nations that helped oust the hard-line Taliban regime in late 2001 and provide aid and military support for Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
President Bush and others had insisted Afghanistan protect personal beliefs.
Once there was a way ************** ********* to get back homeward
Hey Folks,
Paul is not dead!! Neither is the Beatles' great music.
Juggling is alive too.
Check this out:
http://s158645047.onlinehome.us/video_5290_10558.html?sid=5290&aid=10558
- Uke Man
a ukethanks to John
Paul is not dead!! Neither is the Beatles' great music.
Juggling is alive too.
Check this out:
http://s158645047.onlinehome.us/video_5290_10558.html?sid=5290&aid=10558
- Uke Man
a ukethanks to John
Monday, March 27, 2006
Reality Left Behind
Hey Folks,
Before some of you were born, there was a largely-held belief circulating that “Paul is dead!” – Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
There was plenty of “evidence” that "proved" it, such as : Paul’s bare feet and closed eyes on the Abbey Road album cover - representing a corpse (supposedly “an Irish practice” of burying folks without shoes and socks), and Revolution #9’s “number nine, number nine,” when played backward says, “turn me on, dead man, turn me on dead man” (see
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/3674/pid.html for the whole story).
I didn’t buy it, and as far as I can tell, Paul still isn’t dead.
Last night I watched a DVD, “Left Behind II, Tribulation Force” (the sequel to - can you guess - “Left Behind”). I didn’t believe IT either. In fact, the “Paul is dead” theory made a lot more “sense” than this.
Desmond Ryan of the Philadelphia Inquirer said of “Left Behind,” that it was “Piously acted, stiffly directed, and infused with a view of world politics that might charitably be described as delusional.”
Here is what Scott Weinberg of DVD Talk http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=19339
had to say about both movies:
Left Behind (2000) -- Movie #1 focuses on the early section of the Book of Revelation, the one that says half the world's population will instantaneously ascend into the heavens, leaving those "left behind" to deal with the mysteries of God's will and the arrival of a particularly hard-working anti-Christ.
Sounds like the plot of a potentially compelling fantasy flick, right? Wrong. Because none of the Bible authors were wise enough to comment about things like half-decent production values, intelligent screenwriting, or talented actors, the true believers are now stuck with a flagship flick that looks amazingly chintzy, sounds like it was written by a 9-year-old Sunday schooler, and is littered with some of the most hilariously inert acting performances of the new millennium.
Not so much a cautionary tale for the uninitiated as it is a corny tongue-bath for those who are already flock-members, Left Behind doesn't work as drama, science-fiction, or theology. It's a flick that's content to ponderously preach at its own congregation, secure in the knowledge that "the message" is what will allow its intended audience to overlook the myriad flaws in pacing, production value, dialogue, and simple common sense.
As a movie, Left Behind is an abject failure, and as religious propaganda it's even worse. Were I a staunch believer in the Evangelical teachings, I'd absolutely cringe at the way my beliefs were carried across in this laughable film. But I suppose you have to take the bad with the good when you truly believe you're one of God's "chosen angels." These folks get eternity in heaven, while I'm stuck here watching the Left Behind trilogy. The one that stars Kirk Cameron. I'm calling my rabbi.
Left Behind 2: Tribulation Force (2002) poses the question: What happens after half the world's people vanish in a cloud of God's love, leaving behind the confused and bereaved to deal with the anti-Christ's nefarious plans to mess with Israel, the United Nations, and the world's monetary structure? And the answer is this:
More Kirk Cameron.
Tribulation Force plays out like some sort of Evangelical "What if we were right??" party game. Our world is about to be taken over by the devilish diplomacy of Nicolae Carpathia, a man seen as a savior by millions ... but he's really the devil says the Tribulation Force! Composed of a whiny news reporter, a blockheaded Air Force pilot, a forever sermonizing preacher man, and a few hundred extras, the Tribulation Force is committed to spreading the word about Carpathia. And that word is this: Only those who accept Jesus Christ will escape this Earth-bound hell-hole. All others will be left to rot. How nice.
The meandering plot is interrupted every few minutes so that lead actors Kirk Cameron and Brad Johnson can convert a non-believer, preach about the short-sightedness of non-Christians, or get all moon-eyed when discussing Jesus this and Jesus that. Again, I mean no disrespect to the religious folks, but heck, movies like these just make Christianity seem more weird.
Anyway, the reporter heads to Israel to look into some trouble at the Wailing Wall while the pilot gets a gig jetting the anti-Christ across the globe. Both are acting as Jesus' undercover operatives, searching for clues to the Devil's unpleasant plan while converting a few souls along the way. Not a whole lot of anything actually happens in LB2: T-Force, because every time we think the plot is about to advance somewhere interesting, we take a chat-laden detour into Preachville. All we need to know is that the true believers are on the case against the Auntie Christ, and their mission can only be completed by converting a rabbi into a devout Christian on worldwide television ... or something.
***
So, what’s the point, Uke Man?
Well. The “Paul is dead” hoax may have been believed by millions, but no one believed it for long, and everyone knows better now.
This religious mumbo-jumbo, on the other hand is based on “faith” and is not subject to challenge by reality. The millions who believed Paul was dead HAD to deal with the fact of his continued corporeal presence. The millions who think these movies (and the books upon which they are based) are sensible, realistic, and in keeping with the Bible – in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – cannot back off of their position without destroying most of their psychological foundation and, at the same time, exposing their own fears, naïveté, and ignorance.
No, instead, they will pound relentlessly on the rest of us to anoint their misguided stupidity as the vision of God. They seem to be increasingly bent on doing just that, and seem to be increasingly successful in that regard.
More on this soon.
- Uke Man
Before some of you were born, there was a largely-held belief circulating that “Paul is dead!” – Paul McCartney of the Beatles.
There was plenty of “evidence” that "proved" it, such as : Paul’s bare feet and closed eyes on the Abbey Road album cover - representing a corpse (supposedly “an Irish practice” of burying folks without shoes and socks), and Revolution #9’s “number nine, number nine,” when played backward says, “turn me on, dead man, turn me on dead man” (see
http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/3674/pid.html for the whole story).
I didn’t buy it, and as far as I can tell, Paul still isn’t dead.
Last night I watched a DVD, “Left Behind II, Tribulation Force” (the sequel to - can you guess - “Left Behind”). I didn’t believe IT either. In fact, the “Paul is dead” theory made a lot more “sense” than this.
Desmond Ryan of the Philadelphia Inquirer said of “Left Behind,” that it was “Piously acted, stiffly directed, and infused with a view of world politics that might charitably be described as delusional.”
Here is what Scott Weinberg of DVD Talk http://www.dvdtalk.com/reviews/read.php?ID=19339
had to say about both movies:
Left Behind (2000) -- Movie #1 focuses on the early section of the Book of Revelation, the one that says half the world's population will instantaneously ascend into the heavens, leaving those "left behind" to deal with the mysteries of God's will and the arrival of a particularly hard-working anti-Christ.
Sounds like the plot of a potentially compelling fantasy flick, right? Wrong. Because none of the Bible authors were wise enough to comment about things like half-decent production values, intelligent screenwriting, or talented actors, the true believers are now stuck with a flagship flick that looks amazingly chintzy, sounds like it was written by a 9-year-old Sunday schooler, and is littered with some of the most hilariously inert acting performances of the new millennium.
Not so much a cautionary tale for the uninitiated as it is a corny tongue-bath for those who are already flock-members, Left Behind doesn't work as drama, science-fiction, or theology. It's a flick that's content to ponderously preach at its own congregation, secure in the knowledge that "the message" is what will allow its intended audience to overlook the myriad flaws in pacing, production value, dialogue, and simple common sense.
As a movie, Left Behind is an abject failure, and as religious propaganda it's even worse. Were I a staunch believer in the Evangelical teachings, I'd absolutely cringe at the way my beliefs were carried across in this laughable film. But I suppose you have to take the bad with the good when you truly believe you're one of God's "chosen angels." These folks get eternity in heaven, while I'm stuck here watching the Left Behind trilogy. The one that stars Kirk Cameron. I'm calling my rabbi.
Left Behind 2: Tribulation Force (2002) poses the question: What happens after half the world's people vanish in a cloud of God's love, leaving behind the confused and bereaved to deal with the anti-Christ's nefarious plans to mess with Israel, the United Nations, and the world's monetary structure? And the answer is this:
More Kirk Cameron.
Tribulation Force plays out like some sort of Evangelical "What if we were right??" party game. Our world is about to be taken over by the devilish diplomacy of Nicolae Carpathia, a man seen as a savior by millions ... but he's really the devil says the Tribulation Force! Composed of a whiny news reporter, a blockheaded Air Force pilot, a forever sermonizing preacher man, and a few hundred extras, the Tribulation Force is committed to spreading the word about Carpathia. And that word is this: Only those who accept Jesus Christ will escape this Earth-bound hell-hole. All others will be left to rot. How nice.
The meandering plot is interrupted every few minutes so that lead actors Kirk Cameron and Brad Johnson can convert a non-believer, preach about the short-sightedness of non-Christians, or get all moon-eyed when discussing Jesus this and Jesus that. Again, I mean no disrespect to the religious folks, but heck, movies like these just make Christianity seem more weird.
Anyway, the reporter heads to Israel to look into some trouble at the Wailing Wall while the pilot gets a gig jetting the anti-Christ across the globe. Both are acting as Jesus' undercover operatives, searching for clues to the Devil's unpleasant plan while converting a few souls along the way. Not a whole lot of anything actually happens in LB2: T-Force, because every time we think the plot is about to advance somewhere interesting, we take a chat-laden detour into Preachville. All we need to know is that the true believers are on the case against the Auntie Christ, and their mission can only be completed by converting a rabbi into a devout Christian on worldwide television ... or something.
***
So, what’s the point, Uke Man?
Well. The “Paul is dead” hoax may have been believed by millions, but no one believed it for long, and everyone knows better now.
This religious mumbo-jumbo, on the other hand is based on “faith” and is not subject to challenge by reality. The millions who believed Paul was dead HAD to deal with the fact of his continued corporeal presence. The millions who think these movies (and the books upon which they are based) are sensible, realistic, and in keeping with the Bible – in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary – cannot back off of their position without destroying most of their psychological foundation and, at the same time, exposing their own fears, naïveté, and ignorance.
No, instead, they will pound relentlessly on the rest of us to anoint their misguided stupidity as the vision of God. They seem to be increasingly bent on doing just that, and seem to be increasingly successful in that regard.
- Uke Man
Does Tony Blair secretly hate Bush?
News Update from Citizens for Legitimate Government
26 March 2006
http://www.legitgov.org/
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
Bush Proposed Assassinating Hussein
to Provoke War With Iraq: Memo
During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, President [sic] Bush made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second United Nations resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times...
Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation [with Iraq]. "The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.
A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein.
Address to receive newsletter: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries. lrp/mdr
CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, General Manager. Copyright © 2006, Citizens For Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.
26 March 2006
http://www.legitgov.org/
http://www.legitgov.org/index.html#breaking_news
Bush Proposed Assassinating Hussein
to Provoke War With Iraq: Memo
During a private two-hour meeting in the Oval Office on Jan. 31, 2003, President [sic] Bush made clear to Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain that he was determined to invade Iraq without the second United Nations resolution, or even if international arms inspectors failed to find unconventional weapons, said a confidential memo about the meeting written by Mr. Blair's top foreign policy adviser and reviewed by The New York Times...
Without much elaboration, the memo also says the president raised three possible ways of provoking a confrontation [with Iraq]. "The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 reconnaissance aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq, painted in U.N. colours," the memo says, attributing the idea to Mr. Bush. "If Saddam fired on them, he would be in breach."
It also described the president as saying, "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give a public presentation about Saddam's W.M.D," referring to weapons of mass destruction.
A brief clause in the memo refers to a third possibility, mentioned by Mr. Bush, a proposal to assassinate Saddam Hussein.
Address to receive newsletter: http://www.legitgov.org/#subscribe_clg
Please write to: signup@legitgov.org for inquiries. lrp/mdr
CLG Newsletter editor: Lori Price, General Manager. Copyright © 2006, Citizens For Legitimate Government ® All rights reserved. CLG Founder and Chair is Michael Rectenwald, Ph.D.
Sunday, March 26, 2006
the TRUTH about John McCain
PAUL KRUGMAN
It's time for some straight talk about John McCain.
He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.
Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his
former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."
But now - at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive
war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger - Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.
When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never
moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of "rogue state rollback," anticipating the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea.
Mr. McCain's aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.
Would Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, have found some pretext for
invading Iraq? We'll never know. But Mr. McCain still thinks the war was a good idea, and he rejects any attempt to extricate ourselves from the quagmire. "If success requires an increase in American troop levels in 2006," he wrote last year, "then we must increase our numbers there." He didn't explain where the overstretched U.S. military is supposed to find these troops.
When it comes to social issues, Mr. McCain, who once called Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," met with Mr. Falwell late last year. Perhaps as a result, he is now taking positions friendly to the religious right. Most notably, Mr. McCain's spokesperson says that he would have signed South Dakota's extremist new anti-abortion law.
The spokesperson went on to say that the senator would have
taken "the appropriate steps under state law" to ensure that cases of rape and incest were excluded. But that attempt at qualification makes no sense: the South Dakota law has produced national shockwaves precisely because it prohibits abortions even for victims of rape or incest.
The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man
of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr.McCain's recent voting record, available at <http://www.voteview.com/> , ranks him
as the Senate's third most conservative member.
What about Mr. McCain's reputation as a maverick? This comes
from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Guantánamo.
President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.
And I'm sorry to say that this is typical of Mr. McCain. Every once in a while he makes headlines by apparently defying Mr. Bush, but he always returns to the fold, even if the abuses he railed against continue unabated.
So here's what you need to know about John McCain.
He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around the legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.
He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate
votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.
And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the
cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.
It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign
George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter. As Mr. Bush has said, "Fool me once, shame on - shame onyou. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
It's time for some straight talk about John McCain.
He isn't a moderate. He's much less of a maverick than you'd think. And he isn't the straight talker he claims to be.
Mr. McCain's reputation as a moderate may be based on his
former opposition to the Bush tax cuts. In 2001 he declared, "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us."
But now - at a time of huge budget deficits and an expensive
war, when the case against tax cuts for the rich is even stronger - Mr. McCain is happy to shower benefits on the most fortunate. He recently voted to extend tax cuts on dividends and capital gains, an action that will worsen the budget deficit while mainly benefiting people with very high incomes.
When it comes to foreign policy, Mr. McCain was never
moderate. During the 2000 campaign he called for a policy of "rogue state rollback," anticipating the "Bush doctrine" of pre-emptive war unveiled two years later. Mr. McCain called for a systematic effort to overthrow nasty regimes even if they posed no imminent threat to the United States; he singled out Iraq, Libya and North Korea.
Mr. McCain's aggressive views on foreign policy, and his expressed willingness, almost eagerness, to commit U.S. ground forces overseas, explain why he, not George W. Bush, was the favored candidate of neoconservative pundits such as William Kristol of The Weekly Standard.
Would Mr. McCain, like Mr. Bush, have found some pretext for
invading Iraq? We'll never know. But Mr. McCain still thinks the war was a good idea, and he rejects any attempt to extricate ourselves from the quagmire. "If success requires an increase in American troop levels in 2006," he wrote last year, "then we must increase our numbers there." He didn't explain where the overstretched U.S. military is supposed to find these troops.
When it comes to social issues, Mr. McCain, who once called Pat
Robertson and Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," met with Mr. Falwell late last year. Perhaps as a result, he is now taking positions friendly to the religious right. Most notably, Mr. McCain's spokesperson says that he would have signed South Dakota's extremist new anti-abortion law.
The spokesperson went on to say that the senator would have
taken "the appropriate steps under state law" to ensure that cases of rape and incest were excluded. But that attempt at qualification makes no sense: the South Dakota law has produced national shockwaves precisely because it prohibits abortions even for victims of rape or incest.
The bottom line is that Mr. McCain isn't a moderate; he's a man
of the hard right. How far right? A statistical analysis of Mr.McCain's recent voting record, available at <http://www.voteview.com/> , ranks him
as the Senate's third most conservative member.
What about Mr. McCain's reputation as a maverick? This comes
from the fact that every now and then he seems to declare his independence from the Bush administration, as he did in pushing through his anti-torture bill.
But a funny thing happened on the way to Guantánamo.
President Bush, when signing the bill, appended a statement that in effect said that he was free to disregard the law whenever he chose. Mr. McCain protested, but there are apparently no hard feelings: at the recent Southern Republican Leadership Conference he effusively praised Mr. Bush.
And I'm sorry to say that this is typical of Mr. McCain. Every once in a while he makes headlines by apparently defying Mr. Bush, but he always returns to the fold, even if the abuses he railed against continue unabated.
So here's what you need to know about John McCain.
He isn't a straight talker. His flip-flopping on tax cuts, his call to send troops we don't have to Iraq and his endorsement of the South Dakota anti-abortion legislation even while claiming that he would find a way around the legislation's central provision show that he's a politician as slippery and evasive as, well, George W. Bush.
He isn't a moderate. Mr. McCain's policy positions and Senate
votes don't just place him at the right end of America's political spectrum; they place him in the right wing of the Republican Party.
And he isn't a maverick, at least not when it counts. When the
cameras are rolling, Mr. McCain can sometimes be seen striking a brave pose of opposition to the White House. But when it matters, when the Bush administration's ability to do whatever it wants is at stake, Mr. McCain always toes the party line.
It's worth recalling that during the 2000 election campaign
George W. Bush was widely portrayed by the news media both as a moderate and as a straight-shooter. As Mr. Bush has said, "Fool me once, shame on - shame onyou. Fool me - you can't get fooled again."
Saturday, March 25, 2006
The Wizard of Oil
Hey Folks,
You MUST give this a look:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4559
(a big ukethanks to Phyll)
- Uke Man
You MUST give this a look:
http://www.myleftwing.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=4559
(a big ukethanks to Phyll)
- Uke Man
The Day that Superman Died
a son of the Greatest generation
***a father of the Alphabet
******a John the Baptist of the Big Boom
***********living under the gilded “W”
Watching . . .
. . . . . . & Wishing:
**********I wish I may,
**************I wish I might
*****************find a chunk
*****************************of . . .
*********************************Kryptonite
****Superman has died .
****and he is not the same.
****Clark Kent is dead
****and Bizarro clark
****stands there in his stead.
****Lois is a trollop
****Perry works for Fox
****and Jimmy fancies signing up
****to come home in a box.
****And the Super one,born again,
****according to god’s plan,
****cannot speak the language –
****says, “Hi, I’m Stuporman.”
****Yes, he’s still a man of steel,
****but a smirking super fool
****who would destroy the world itself
****to fit it to his rule.
**********I wish I may,
**************I wish I might
*****************find a chunk
*****************************of . . .
*********************************Kryptonite
- Uke Man
***a father of the Alphabet
******a John the Baptist of the Big Boom
***********living under the gilded “W”
Watching . . .
. . . . . . & Wishing:
**********I wish I may,
**************I wish I might
*****************find a chunk
*****************************of . . .
*********************************Kryptonite
****Superman has died .
****and he is not the same.
****Clark Kent is dead
****and Bizarro clark
****stands there in his stead.
****Lois is a trollop
****Perry works for Fox
****and Jimmy fancies signing up
****to come home in a box.
****And the Super one,born again,
****according to god’s plan,
****cannot speak the language –
****says, “Hi, I’m Stuporman.”
****Yes, he’s still a man of steel,
****but a smirking super fool
****who would destroy the world itself
****to fit it to his rule.
**********I wish I may,
**************I wish I might
*****************find a chunk
*****************************of . . .
*********************************Kryptonite
- Uke Man
Friday, March 24, 2006
"Spam Eatin' Blues - live in Boston with the whole damned BAND!!
Hey Folks,
Here's a highlight of my life!!
What a band!!!!
Check it out!
http://www.ukuleledisco.com/spamlive?PHPSESSID=63b6784cf9f0ae687c21038e667c16ef
- Uke Man
Here's a highlight of my life!!
What a band!!!!
Check it out!
http://www.ukuleledisco.com/spamlive?PHPSESSID=63b6784cf9f0ae687c21038e667c16ef
- Uke Man
Real Religion !
Hey Folks,
This is long, but a lot shorter than the book
AND
It tells it like it is!!! What religion in America used to be.
Listen to Jimmy Carter before it's too late!!!
- Uke Man
Jimmy Carter & the Culture of Death
By Garry Wills
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
by Jimmy Carter
Simon and Schuster, 212 pp., $25.00
In 1972, I was asked by New York magazine to survey Southern reactions to the attempted assassination of George Wallace. On my list of people to call was Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. When I called his press secretary, Jody Powell (a name I had never heard before), I was told it would be better for me to come to Atlanta than to talk on the phone. (Powell was drumming up attention for his man, with a view to his running for president.) When I arrived there, Powell had arranged for me to fly with Carter in his little state prop plane to Tifton, a small South Georgia town where there was a meeting with local sheriffs. The sheriffs were unhappy with Carter's liberal racial policies, and Powell obviously thought it would be good for his reputation nationally to be seen as standing up against regional prejudice.
Carter used all his local ties to defang the critics—the sheriffs did not openly turn against him—and I was impressed. On the flight back, he said he wanted to drop off in the town of Plains and see how his peanut business was doing—a homey touch the press would be treated to ad nauseam over the next two years. I do not remember any mention of his local church while we were in Plains. In fact, I cannot recall that religion was brought up in all our hours together. Perhaps he thought that was not something New York magazine readers would respond to. At any rate, I was surprised when, four years later, so much was made of his religion as he ran for president. It began when he was asked, while visiting Baptist friends, if he thought of himself as "born again." He answered yes—not surprisingly, since the Gospel of John (3:5) says that one must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Saint Paul says that baptism is being reborn into Christ (Romans 6:4). Reporters did not know this as a basic belief of Christians—they treated it as an odd cult claim.
That led to his second-most-famous remark of the 1976 campaign. Carter was asked in a Playboy interview if he thought he was a holier-than-thou person because he was born again. He answered that, no, in fact he had committed lust in his heart—again quoting the New Testament (Matthew 5:28). That did it. For much of the Carter presidency, the line of some in the press (and, as I know well, in the academy) was that he was a religious nut. I followed him in the 1976 race and heard a reporter ask Carter why he constantly brought up religion. He replied that he had made a determination never to bring up religion in the campaign. But the reporters kept asking him about it, and he had to answer them or be criticized for dodging the issue.
His attendance at church was not announced; we reporters had to ferret that out by ourselves. Carter is an old-fashioned Baptist, the kind that follows the lead of the great Baptist Roger Williams—that is, he is the firmest of believers in the separation of church and state. Unlike most if not all modern presidents, he never had a prayer service in the White House. His problem, back then, was not that he paraded his belief but that he believed. All this can seem quaint now when professing religion is practically a political necessity, whether one believes or not. There is now an inverse proportion between religiosity and sincerity.
Carter rightly says in Our Endangered Values that the norms of religion and politics are different. His religion, at any rate, places its greatest priority on love, of God and one's neighbor, even to the point of self-sacrifice. But a president cannot make his nation sacrifice itself—that would be dereliction of duty. The priority of politics is justice, and love goes beyond that. But love can help one find out what is just, without equating the two. That is why none of us, even those who believe in the separation of church and state, professes a separation of morality and politics. Insofar as believers—the great majority of Americans—derive many if not most of their moral insights from their beliefs, they must mingle religion and politics, again without equating the two.
In his new book, Carter addresses religion and politics together in a way that he has not done before, because he thinks that some Americans, and especially his fellow Baptists, have equated the two in a way that contradicts traditional Baptist beliefs in the autonomy of local churches, in the opposition to domination by religious leaders, and in the fellowship of love without reliance on compulsion, political or otherwise. In 2000, these tenets were expressly renounced by the largest Baptist body, the Southern Baptist Convention, which removed a former commitment to belief that "the sole authority for faith and practice among Baptists is Jesus Christ, whose will is revealed in the Holy Scriptures." What was being substituted, Carter writes, was "domination by all-male pastors." As a leading spokesman, W.A. Criswell, put it: "Lay leadership of the church is unbiblical when it weakens the pastor's authority as ruler of the church." The Southern Baptists, Carter laments, have become as authoritarian as their former antitype, the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Southern Baptist Convention has severed its ancient ties with the Baptist World Alliance.
The marks of this new fundamentalism, according to Carter, are rigidity, self-righteousness, and an eagerness to use compulsion (including political compulsion). Its spokesmen are contemptuous of all who do not agree with them one hundred percent. Pat Robertson, on his 700 Club, typified the new "popes" when he proclaimed: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." Carter got a firsthand taste of such intolerance when the president of the Southern Baptist Convention visited him in the White House to tell him, "We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion."
Such attitudes are far from the ones recommended by Jesus in the gospels as Carter has studied and taught them through the decades, and their proponents have brought similar attitudes into the political world, where a matching political fundamentalism has taken over much of the electoral process. Such dictatorial attitudes defeat the stated goals of the fundamentalists themselves. On abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a "pro-life" dogmatism defeats human life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy "brought about by a combination of human errors." But the "pro-life" forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.
Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the "pro-life" movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:
Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany.... It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs.
The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can be seen where the law forbids abortion:
In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].
A New York Times article that came out after Carter's book appeared further confirms what he is saying: "Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions."[*] This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as the only form of contraception—demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of that kind of program.
By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 1990s. Yet the ironically named "pro-life" movement would return the United States to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the fundamentalists try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign aid to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive knowledge. They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research. With friends like these, "life" is in thrall to death. Carter finds these results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).
Carter finds the same rigid and self-righteous—and self-defeating—policies at work across the current political spectrum. The pro-life forces have no problem with a gun industry and capital punishment legislation that are, in fact, provably pro-death. Carter, a lifelong hunter, does not want to outlaw guns and he knows that Americans would never do that. But timorous politicians, cowering before the NRA, defeat even the most sensible limitations on weapons useful neither for hunting nor for personal self-defense (AK-47s, AR-15s, Uzis), even though, as Carter shows, more than 1,100 police chiefs and sheriffs told Congress that these weapons are obstacles to law enforcement. The NRA opposed background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists and illegals, and then insisted that background checks, if they were imposed, had to be destroyed within twenty-four hours. The result of such pro-death measures, Carter writes, is grimly evident: "American children are sixteen times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, eleven times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from firearms accidents." Where are the friends of the fetus when children are dying in such numbers?
Carter observes that "the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research reports that the rate of firearms homicide in the United States is nineteen times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined" (emphasis added). In the most recent year for which figures are available, these are the numbers for firearms homicides:
Ireland 54
Japan 83
Sweden 183
Great Britain 197
Australia 334
Canada 1,034
United States 30,419
[emphasis added]
Once again, Carter finds no support for the policies that make such a result possible in the US, in terms of either a loving religion or a just society.
Capital punishment is also a pro-death program. It does not protect life. It aligns us with authoritarian regimes: "Ninety percent of all known executions are carried out in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia—and the United States" (emphasis added). Execution does not deter, as many studies have proved. In states that abolished it, Carter writes, capital crimes did not increase:
The homicide rate is at least five times greater in the United States than in any European country, none of which authorizes the death penalty. The Southern states carry out over 80 percent of the executions but have a higher murder rate than any other region. Texas has by far the most executions, but its homicide rate is twice that of Wisconsin, the first state to abolish the death penalty. It is not a matter of geography or ethnicity, as is indicated by similar and adjacent states: the number of capital crimes is higher, respectively, in South Dakota, Connecticut, and Virginia (all with the death sentence) than in the adjacent states of North Dakota, Massachusetts, and West Virginia (without the death penalty).
How can a loving religion or a just state support such a culture of death? Only a self-righteous and punitive fundamentalism, not an ethos of the gospels, can explain this.
It is in foreign affairs that Carter finds the most self-righteous, rigid, and self-defeating effects of a religio-political fundamentalism. It is the gap between rich and poor in the world that presents the main threat to our future, yet American policies increase that gap, at home and abroad. We give proportionally less money in foreign aid than do other developed countries, and our ability to give is being decreased by our growing deficit, incurred to reward our own wealthy families with disproportionate tax cuts. Carter points out that much of the aid announced or authorized never reaches its targets. This reflects a general smugness about America's privileged position. We are dismissive of other countries' concern with the world environment, with nuclear containment, and with international law. Carter gives specifics gathered from his world travels and from the experts' forums he regularly assembles at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
We have, for example, declared our right to first use of nuclear weapons. We have used aid money to bribe people against holding us accountable to international law. We have run secret detention centers where hundreds of people are held without formal charges or legal representation. We have rewarded with high office men who, like Alberto Gonzales, say that the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners are "obsolete" or even "quaint," or who, like John Bolton, say that it is "a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so."
The result, as Carter writes, has been to turn a vast fund of international good will accruing to us after September 11 into fear of and contempt for America unparalleled in modern times. We undermine the inspection teams of the UN and the IAEA with the result that we blunder into Iraq on bad information gathered from self-serving hacks buttering up our officialdom. On the eve of our attack on Iraq, Carter published an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times arguing in terms of the just war tradition that a preemptive and unilateral invasion was unjustified. Going to war was not a last resort (inspections could have continued to contain Saddam until the proof of WMDs, or the lack of them, could be established). War was not authorized by international authorities for eliminating nuclear weapons, but was an opportunity seized in order "to achieve regime change and to establish a Pax Americana in the region." It did not promise proportional violence with a clear hope of providing better conditions than the ones it was remedying. Carter's was a calm and moral judgment about the war, which most Americans now believe was the right one. In retrospect, a majority think the war was a mistake. We should have listened to Carter.
We pretend we are against nuclear proliferation, yet we spur it on when others see our disregard for the very international agreements that promote it:
The end of America's "no first use" nuclear weapons policy has aroused a somewhat predictable response in other nations. Chinese major general Zhu Chenghu announced in July 2005 that China's government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy: "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons."
We attack terrorism not by cooperation with other countries' security teams, which often have better information on worldwide terrorist activities than we do, but with unilateral and preemptive uses of force that just increase terrorism. This is a new culture of death: "The US National Counterterrorism Center," Carter writes, "reported that the number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled in 2004. 'Significant' attacks grew to more than 650, up from the previous record of 175 in 2003."
We claim to be spreading democracy in the Middle East, but a Zogby international poll in 2005 showed that an overwhelming majority of Arabs did not believe that US policy in Iraq was motivated by the spread of democracy in the region, and believed that the Middle East had become less democratic after the Iraq war. The approval rating of America plummeted at the very time we were supposedly bringing the blessings of freedom there—it stood, Carter notes, at "2 percent in Egypt, 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, 11 percent in Morocco, 14 percent in the United Arab Emirates, 15 percent in Jordan, with a high of only 20 percent in [our friend] Lebanon." These developments have taken place as America enacted a retreat from earlier commitments, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, that parallels what Carter describes as the retreat of evangelicals from earlier fidelity to gospel values such as life, compassion, tolerance, and inclusiveness.
Carter is a patriot. He lists all the things that Americans have to be proud of. That is why he is so concerned that we are squandering our treasures, moral even more than economic. He has come to the defense of our national values, which he finds endangered. He proves that a devout Christian does not need to be a fundamentalist or fanatic, any more than a patriotic American has to be punitive, narrow, and self-righteous. He defends the separation of church and state because he sees with nuanced precision the interactions of faith, morality, politics, and pragmatism. That is a combination that once was not rare, but is becoming more so. We need a voice from the not-so-distant past, and this quiet voice strikes just the right notes.
This is long, but a lot shorter than the book
AND
It tells it like it is!!! What religion in America used to be.
Listen to Jimmy Carter before it's too late!!!
- Uke Man
Jimmy Carter & the Culture of Death
By Garry Wills
Our Endangered Values: America's Moral Crisis
by Jimmy Carter
Simon and Schuster, 212 pp., $25.00
In 1972, I was asked by New York magazine to survey Southern reactions to the attempted assassination of George Wallace. On my list of people to call was Georgia governor Jimmy Carter. When I called his press secretary, Jody Powell (a name I had never heard before), I was told it would be better for me to come to Atlanta than to talk on the phone. (Powell was drumming up attention for his man, with a view to his running for president.) When I arrived there, Powell had arranged for me to fly with Carter in his little state prop plane to Tifton, a small South Georgia town where there was a meeting with local sheriffs. The sheriffs were unhappy with Carter's liberal racial policies, and Powell obviously thought it would be good for his reputation nationally to be seen as standing up against regional prejudice.
Carter used all his local ties to defang the critics—the sheriffs did not openly turn against him—and I was impressed. On the flight back, he said he wanted to drop off in the town of Plains and see how his peanut business was doing—a homey touch the press would be treated to ad nauseam over the next two years. I do not remember any mention of his local church while we were in Plains. In fact, I cannot recall that religion was brought up in all our hours together. Perhaps he thought that was not something New York magazine readers would respond to. At any rate, I was surprised when, four years later, so much was made of his religion as he ran for president. It began when he was asked, while visiting Baptist friends, if he thought of himself as "born again." He answered yes—not surprisingly, since the Gospel of John (3:5) says that one must be born again to enter the kingdom of heaven, and Saint Paul says that baptism is being reborn into Christ (Romans 6:4). Reporters did not know this as a basic belief of Christians—they treated it as an odd cult claim.
That led to his second-most-famous remark of the 1976 campaign. Carter was asked in a Playboy interview if he thought he was a holier-than-thou person because he was born again. He answered that, no, in fact he had committed lust in his heart—again quoting the New Testament (Matthew 5:28). That did it. For much of the Carter presidency, the line of some in the press (and, as I know well, in the academy) was that he was a religious nut. I followed him in the 1976 race and heard a reporter ask Carter why he constantly brought up religion. He replied that he had made a determination never to bring up religion in the campaign. But the reporters kept asking him about it, and he had to answer them or be criticized for dodging the issue.
His attendance at church was not announced; we reporters had to ferret that out by ourselves. Carter is an old-fashioned Baptist, the kind that follows the lead of the great Baptist Roger Williams—that is, he is the firmest of believers in the separation of church and state. Unlike most if not all modern presidents, he never had a prayer service in the White House. His problem, back then, was not that he paraded his belief but that he believed. All this can seem quaint now when professing religion is practically a political necessity, whether one believes or not. There is now an inverse proportion between religiosity and sincerity.
Carter rightly says in Our Endangered Values that the norms of religion and politics are different. His religion, at any rate, places its greatest priority on love, of God and one's neighbor, even to the point of self-sacrifice. But a president cannot make his nation sacrifice itself—that would be dereliction of duty. The priority of politics is justice, and love goes beyond that. But love can help one find out what is just, without equating the two. That is why none of us, even those who believe in the separation of church and state, professes a separation of morality and politics. Insofar as believers—the great majority of Americans—derive many if not most of their moral insights from their beliefs, they must mingle religion and politics, again without equating the two.
In his new book, Carter addresses religion and politics together in a way that he has not done before, because he thinks that some Americans, and especially his fellow Baptists, have equated the two in a way that contradicts traditional Baptist beliefs in the autonomy of local churches, in the opposition to domination by religious leaders, and in the fellowship of love without reliance on compulsion, political or otherwise. In 2000, these tenets were expressly renounced by the largest Baptist body, the Southern Baptist Convention, which removed a former commitment to belief that "the sole authority for faith and practice among Baptists is Jesus Christ, whose will is revealed in the Holy Scriptures." What was being substituted, Carter writes, was "domination by all-male pastors." As a leading spokesman, W.A. Criswell, put it: "Lay leadership of the church is unbiblical when it weakens the pastor's authority as ruler of the church." The Southern Baptists, Carter laments, have become as authoritarian as their former antitype, the Roman Catholic hierarchy. The Southern Baptist Convention has severed its ancient ties with the Baptist World Alliance.
The marks of this new fundamentalism, according to Carter, are rigidity, self-righteousness, and an eagerness to use compulsion (including political compulsion). Its spokesmen are contemptuous of all who do not agree with them one hundred percent. Pat Robertson, on his 700 Club, typified the new "popes" when he proclaimed: "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist." Carter got a firsthand taste of such intolerance when the president of the Southern Baptist Convention visited him in the White House to tell him, "We are praying, Mr. President, that you will abandon secular humanism as your religion."
Such attitudes are far from the ones recommended by Jesus in the gospels as Carter has studied and taught them through the decades, and their proponents have brought similar attitudes into the political world, where a matching political fundamentalism has taken over much of the electoral process. Such dictatorial attitudes defeat the stated goals of the fundamentalists themselves. On abortion, for instance, Carter argues that a "pro-life" dogmatism defeats human life and values at many turns. Carter is opposed to abortion, as what he calls a tragedy "brought about by a combination of human errors." But the "pro-life" forces compound rather than reduce the errors. The most common abortions, and the most common reasons cited for undergoing them, are caused by economic pressure compounded by ignorance.
Yet the anti-life movement that calls itself pro-life protects ignorance by opposing family planning, sex education, and informed use of contraceptives, tactics that not only increase the likelihood of abortion but tragedies like AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. The rigid system of the "pro-life" movement makes poverty harsher as well, with low minimum wages, opposition to maternity leaves, and lack of health services and insurance. In combination, these policies make ideal conditions for promoting abortion, as one can see from the contrast with countries that do have sex education and medical insurance. Carter writes:
Canadian and European young people are about equally active sexually, but, deprived of proper sex education, American girls are five times as likely to have a baby as French girls, seven times as likely to have an abortion, and seventy times as likely to have gonorrhea as girls in the Netherlands. Also, the incidence of HIV/ AIDS among American teenagers is five times that of the same age group in Germany.... It has long been known that there are fewer abortions in nations where prospective mothers have access to contraceptives, the assurance that they and their babies will have good health care, and at least enough income to meet their basic needs.
The result of a rigid fundamentalism combined with poverty and ignorance can be seen where the law forbids abortion:
In some predominantly Roman Catholic countries where all abortions are illegal and few social services are available, such as Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Colombia, the abortion rate is fifty per thousand. According to the World Health Organization, this is the highest ratio of unsafe abortions [in the world].
A New York Times article that came out after Carter's book appeared further confirms what he is saying: "Four million abortions, most of them illegal, take place in Latin America annually, the United Nations reports, and up to 5,000 women are believed to die each year from complications from abortions."[*] This takes place in countries where churches and schools teach abstinence as the only form of contraception—demonstrating conclusively the ineffectiveness of that kind of program.
By contrast, in the United States, where abortion is legal and sex education is broader, the abortion rate reached a twenty-four-year low during the 1990s. Yet the ironically named "pro-life" movement would return the United States to the condition of Chile or Colombia. And not only that, the fundamentalists try to impose the anti-life program in other countries by refusing foreign aid to programs that teach family planning, safe sex, and contraceptive knowledge. They also oppose life-saving advances through the use of stem cell research. With friends like these, "life" is in thrall to death. Carter finds these results neither loving (in religious terms) nor just (in political terms).
Carter finds the same rigid and self-righteous—and self-defeating—policies at work across the current political spectrum. The pro-life forces have no problem with a gun industry and capital punishment legislation that are, in fact, provably pro-death. Carter, a lifelong hunter, does not want to outlaw guns and he knows that Americans would never do that. But timorous politicians, cowering before the NRA, defeat even the most sensible limitations on weapons useful neither for hunting nor for personal self-defense (AK-47s, AR-15s, Uzis), even though, as Carter shows, more than 1,100 police chiefs and sheriffs told Congress that these weapons are obstacles to law enforcement. The NRA opposed background checks to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and terrorists and illegals, and then insisted that background checks, if they were imposed, had to be destroyed within twenty-four hours. The result of such pro-death measures, Carter writes, is grimly evident: "American children are sixteen times more likely than children in other industrialized nations to be murdered with a gun, eleven times more likely to commit suicide with a gun, and nine times more likely to die from firearms accidents." Where are the friends of the fetus when children are dying in such numbers?
Carter observes that "the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research reports that the rate of firearms homicide in the United States is nineteen times higher than that of 35 other high-income countries combined" (emphasis added). In the most recent year for which figures are available, these are the numbers for firearms homicides:
Ireland 54
Japan 83
Sweden 183
Great Britain 197
Australia 334
Canada 1,034
United States 30,419
[emphasis added]
Once again, Carter finds no support for the policies that make such a result possible in the US, in terms of either a loving religion or a just society.
Capital punishment is also a pro-death program. It does not protect life. It aligns us with authoritarian regimes: "Ninety percent of all known executions are carried out in just four countries: China, Iran, Saudi Arabia—and the United States" (emphasis added). Execution does not deter, as many studies have proved. In states that abolished it, Carter writes, capital crimes did not increase:
The homicide rate is at least five times greater in the United States than in any European country, none of which authorizes the death penalty. The Southern states carry out over 80 percent of the executions but have a higher murder rate than any other region. Texas has by far the most executions, but its homicide rate is twice that of Wisconsin, the first state to abolish the death penalty. It is not a matter of geography or ethnicity, as is indicated by similar and adjacent states: the number of capital crimes is higher, respectively, in South Dakota, Connecticut, and Virginia (all with the death sentence) than in the adjacent states of North Dakota, Massachusetts, and West Virginia (without the death penalty).
How can a loving religion or a just state support such a culture of death? Only a self-righteous and punitive fundamentalism, not an ethos of the gospels, can explain this.
It is in foreign affairs that Carter finds the most self-righteous, rigid, and self-defeating effects of a religio-political fundamentalism. It is the gap between rich and poor in the world that presents the main threat to our future, yet American policies increase that gap, at home and abroad. We give proportionally less money in foreign aid than do other developed countries, and our ability to give is being decreased by our growing deficit, incurred to reward our own wealthy families with disproportionate tax cuts. Carter points out that much of the aid announced or authorized never reaches its targets. This reflects a general smugness about America's privileged position. We are dismissive of other countries' concern with the world environment, with nuclear containment, and with international law. Carter gives specifics gathered from his world travels and from the experts' forums he regularly assembles at the Carter Center in Atlanta.
We have, for example, declared our right to first use of nuclear weapons. We have used aid money to bribe people against holding us accountable to international law. We have run secret detention centers where hundreds of people are held without formal charges or legal representation. We have rewarded with high office men who, like Alberto Gonzales, say that the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners are "obsolete" or even "quaint," or who, like John Bolton, say that it is "a big mistake for us to grant any validity to international law even when it may seem in our short-term interest to do so."
The result, as Carter writes, has been to turn a vast fund of international good will accruing to us after September 11 into fear of and contempt for America unparalleled in modern times. We undermine the inspection teams of the UN and the IAEA with the result that we blunder into Iraq on bad information gathered from self-serving hacks buttering up our officialdom. On the eve of our attack on Iraq, Carter published an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times arguing in terms of the just war tradition that a preemptive and unilateral invasion was unjustified. Going to war was not a last resort (inspections could have continued to contain Saddam until the proof of WMDs, or the lack of them, could be established). War was not authorized by international authorities for eliminating nuclear weapons, but was an opportunity seized in order "to achieve regime change and to establish a Pax Americana in the region." It did not promise proportional violence with a clear hope of providing better conditions than the ones it was remedying. Carter's was a calm and moral judgment about the war, which most Americans now believe was the right one. In retrospect, a majority think the war was a mistake. We should have listened to Carter.
We pretend we are against nuclear proliferation, yet we spur it on when others see our disregard for the very international agreements that promote it:
The end of America's "no first use" nuclear weapons policy has aroused a somewhat predictable response in other nations. Chinese major general Zhu Chenghu announced in July 2005 that China's government was under internal pressure to change its "no first use" policy: "If the Americans draw their missiles and position-guided ammunition on to the target zone on China's territory, I think we will have to respond with nuclear weapons."
We attack terrorism not by cooperation with other countries' security teams, which often have better information on worldwide terrorist activities than we do, but with unilateral and preemptive uses of force that just increase terrorism. This is a new culture of death: "The US National Counterterrorism Center," Carter writes, "reported that the number of serious international terrorist incidents more than tripled in 2004. 'Significant' attacks grew to more than 650, up from the previous record of 175 in 2003."
We claim to be spreading democracy in the Middle East, but a Zogby international poll in 2005 showed that an overwhelming majority of Arabs did not believe that US policy in Iraq was motivated by the spread of democracy in the region, and believed that the Middle East had become less democratic after the Iraq war. The approval rating of America plummeted at the very time we were supposedly bringing the blessings of freedom there—it stood, Carter notes, at "2 percent in Egypt, 4 percent in Saudi Arabia, 11 percent in Morocco, 14 percent in the United Arab Emirates, 15 percent in Jordan, with a high of only 20 percent in [our friend] Lebanon." These developments have taken place as America enacted a retreat from earlier commitments, under both Republican and Democratic presidents, that parallels what Carter describes as the retreat of evangelicals from earlier fidelity to gospel values such as life, compassion, tolerance, and inclusiveness.
Carter is a patriot. He lists all the things that Americans have to be proud of. That is why he is so concerned that we are squandering our treasures, moral even more than economic. He has come to the defense of our national values, which he finds endangered. He proves that a devout Christian does not need to be a fundamentalist or fanatic, any more than a patriotic American has to be punitive, narrow, and self-righteous. He defends the separation of church and state because he sees with nuanced precision the interactions of faith, morality, politics, and pragmatism. That is a combination that once was not rare, but is becoming more so. We need a voice from the not-so-distant past, and this quiet voice strikes just the right notes.
Thursday, March 23, 2006
Uke Man Videos !!! -
(this is an updated posting from January 19, 2005)
Hey Folks!!!
WHAT have I been thinking!!! For some time now, wild and crazy Uke Man Videos have been available to my millions of adoring fans !!!
All you have to do is go to: http://www.ukuleledisco.com/ a part of: http://www.sonicuke.com/, Sonic Uke, the website of my good friends Ted and Jason, the inhabitants of Manhattan’s one and only “Murray’s Space Shoe” emporium
( http://www.sonicuke.com/nytimes.php ) and the members of SONIC UKE (they are in my “links” – for your easy access at a later date).
Anyway, you can view many, many, many wonderful performances from the Midnight Ukulele Disco show at the site; among these, you can check out the Uke Man’s efforts on the following songs (at http://www.ukuleledisco.com/ ):
Green Card – Brand New Season
---Jesus Chrysler
---Monster in the Whitehouse
---Father Culliton (Long Ago)
---King of the World
---Pee Wee Where Have You Gone?
---Spam Eatin' Blues (the whole damned band)
---Crazy Over You
---Love Is Something
---Paintin' Them Toes
Orange Card – 2005/2004 – Season 2
---God Bless America
Gray Card – 2004
---I’ve Got a Booger in My Nose
---Pumpkin Fest Ferris Wheel (ad lib ditty)
---Pea Green Boat
---Eldorado
---Sittin’ Down at Shifty’s
---Dubya’s Ukulele Nightmare Café
If you’d like, tune in every other Tuesday at 9:00 (EST) to Midnight Ukulele Disco via your computer. Call up http://www.mnn.org/ ; then click on “Ch. 57.” You will arrive at Manhattan Neighborhood Network and enjoy the show. You can also usually get the program by tuning in to http://www.ukuleledisco.com/live , as the show gets close to going on.
Enjoy!!
- Uke Man
Hey Folks!!!
WHAT have I been thinking!!! For some time now, wild and crazy Uke Man Videos have been available to my millions of adoring fans !!!
All you have to do is go to: http://www.ukuleledisco.com/ a part of: http://www.sonicuke.com/, Sonic Uke, the website of my good friends Ted and Jason, the inhabitants of Manhattan’s one and only “Murray’s Space Shoe” emporium
( http://www.sonicuke.com/nytimes.php ) and the members of SONIC UKE (they are in my “links” – for your easy access at a later date).
Anyway, you can view many, many, many wonderful performances from the Midnight Ukulele Disco show at the site; among these, you can check out the Uke Man’s efforts on the following songs (at http://www.ukuleledisco.com/ ):
Green Card – Brand New Season
---Jesus Chrysler
---Monster in the Whitehouse
---Father Culliton (Long Ago)
---King of the World
---Pee Wee Where Have You Gone?
---Spam Eatin' Blues (the whole damned band)
---Crazy Over You
---Love Is Something
---Paintin' Them Toes
Orange Card – 2005/2004 – Season 2
---God Bless America
Gray Card – 2004
---I’ve Got a Booger in My Nose
---Pumpkin Fest Ferris Wheel (ad lib ditty)
---Pea Green Boat
---Eldorado
---Sittin’ Down at Shifty’s
---Dubya’s Ukulele Nightmare Café
If you’d like, tune in every other Tuesday at 9:00 (EST) to Midnight Ukulele Disco via your computer. Call up http://www.mnn.org/ ; then click on “Ch. 57.” You will arrive at Manhattan Neighborhood Network and enjoy the show. You can also usually get the program by tuning in to http://www.ukuleledisco.com/live , as the show gets close to going on.
Enjoy!!
- Uke Man
Bush Enablers Awake (or start storing food and water)
March 23, 2006
Op-Ed Columnist
George Bush's Trillion-Dollar War
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Call it the trillion-dollar war.
George W. Bush's war in Iraq was never supposed to be particularly expensive. Administration types tossed out numbers like $50 billion and $60 billion. When Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, said the war was likely to cost $100 billion to $200 billion, he was fired.
Some in the White House tried to spread the fantasy that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war. Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk, told Congress that Iraq was "a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
The president and his hot-for-war associates were as wrong about the money as they were about the weapons of mass destruction.
Now comes a study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, that estimates the "true costs" of the war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly more than $2 trillion.
"Even taking a conservative approach and assuming all U.S. troops return by 2010, we believe the true costs exceed a trillion dollars," the authors say.
The study was released earlier this year but has not gotten much publicity. The analysis by Professors Stiglitz and Bilmes goes beyond the immediate costs of combat operations to include other direct and indirect costs of the war that, in some cases, the government will ha
Op-Ed Columnist
George Bush's Trillion-Dollar War
By BOB HERBERT
(a ukethanks to Phyll)
Call it the trillion-dollar war.
George W. Bush's war in Iraq was never supposed to be particularly expensive. Administration types tossed out numbers like $50 billion and $60 billion. When Lawrence Lindsey, the president's chief economic adviser, said the war was likely to cost $100 billion to $200 billion, he was fired.
Some in the White House tried to spread the fantasy that Iraqi oil revenues would pay for the war. Paul Wolfowitz, the former deputy defense secretary and a fanatical hawk, told Congress that Iraq was "a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."
The president and his hot-for-war associates were as wrong about the money as they were about the weapons of mass destruction.
Now comes a study by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel Prize-winning economist at Columbia University, and a colleague, Linda Bilmes of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, that estimates the "true costs" of the war at more than $1 trillion, and possibly more than $2 trillion.
"Even taking a conservative approach and assuming all U.S. troops return by 2010, we believe the true costs exceed a trillion dollars," the authors say.
The study was released earlier this year but has not gotten much publicity. The analysis by Professors Stiglitz and Bilmes goes beyond the immediate costs of combat operations to include other direct and indirect costs of the war that, in some cases, the government will ha