Ciao Baby!

I will be taking a break from this blog for a while while Beth and I celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary in Italy. Toward the end of October we will be in Nevada helping to send George Bush back to Crawford. But for the moment reflect on the patterns evident in the Bush Administration.

The tax cuts were billed as a job creation program. But the job market has not responded as promised. In fact there are one million fewer jobs than when Bush took office and 4 million additional Americans have sunk into poverty. On the other hand, Bush has turned a $236 Billion annual surplus into a $520 billion deficit and created the largest national debt in history. Heed Pete Peterson's warning that Bush has not cut taxes but rather transferred them to our children and grandchildren.

The war in Iraq was billed as a necessary step in the war on terror. But Iraq posed no gathering threat, had no ties to Al Qaeda and had no weapons of mass destruction - zero. On the other hand, Osama Bin Laden got away, Saddam's torturers at Abu Gareb were replaced by American torturers, Iraq has become an increasingly dangerous quagmire and $151 billion has been diverted away from real programs to help secure the world from terrorists and away from pressing needs at home. To be fair, The Office of Homeland Security did nab Cat Stevens.

The President's health plan was billed as a way to help all Americans "have access to affordable, high-quality health care." But there are 6.3 million fewer Americans insured now than when Bush took office and drug prices have risen 3 times faster than inflation. On the other hand, Bush did pass a law prohibiting Medicare from negotiating lower prices with drug companies and prohibiting Americans from purchasing lower priced drugs in Canada.

Is there a pattern here or not?

Baghdad's George Bush Square

One year ago today, September 22, 2003, Richard Perle, noted neocom and advisor to the Bush Administration gave a speech to the American Enterprise Institute. In it he scolds the government of Turkey for not having the foresight to join the coalition of the willing. And he provides his own assessment of the Bush policy in Iraq. You should read the whole piece to get acquainted with the Bush Administraton policy of sugar coating the facts. Here are some priceless nuggets:

"It's a pity that Turkey wasn't alongside us going into Iraq, not least of all because there are such important Turkish interests next door. I think it might have been different if it had been understood in Turkey that this was a war that would be over in three weeks with hardly any casualties, hardly any Iraqi casualties."

"...basic infrastructure was carefully protected."

And the topper:

"And a year from now, I'll be very surprised if there is not some grand square in Baghdad that is named after President Bush. There is no doubt that, with the exception of a very small number of people close to a vicious regime, the people of Iraq have been liberated and they understand that they've been liberated. And it is getting easier every day for Iraqis to express that sense of liberation."

Getting the Message Out

Here is a clever site from Udecide.org that provides printable flyers about "critical facts on the key issues facing America today." Post a couple of these on a bulletin board near you!

Progressive Peer Directory

Here is a directory of progressive blogs organized by state. Check it out.

Unintended Consequences

The Christian Science Monitor reports on Iraq losing its best and brightest. It seems that Bush's plan to impose democracy with force has proved very dangerous to professors, educated people in general, business leaders, government workers and Christians.

Unemployment Since March 2001

Unemployment Patterns Since March 2001
Originally uploaded by johneaton.

This graphic is from JobWatch.org. Blue states have reduced unemployment since March of 2001. Yellow states have the same unemployment level and red states have higher unemployment. It doesn't look like those tax cuts are working to me.

Into The Abyss

Last week, Newsweek reported on the disaster in Iraq. This week things got much worse. This report is by Patrick Cockburn in Baghdad reporting in The Independent.

Quagmire

MoveOn PAC has a new ad called Quagmire up now. Check it out.

Illegal and a Failure

The Christian Science Monitor has more on the current situation in Iraq (and Afghanistan) here. The article links to very negative appraisals of the future of Iraq including a link to "a recent report by a prestigious British foreign affairs think tank, known as Chatham House ...(stating)... that civil war was the 'default scenario' for Iraq."

Iraq: Disaster

Sidney Blumenthal writing in today's Guardian reports that "according to the US military's leading strategists and prominent retired generals, Bush's war is already lost." This is depressing stuff but I recommend the entire article.

'General Odom remarked that the tension between the Bush administration and the senior military officers over Iraqi was worse than any he has ever seen with any previous government, including Vietnam. "I've never seen it so bad between the office of the secretary of defence and the military. There's a significant majority believing this is a disaster. The two parties whose interests have been advanced have been the Iranians and al-Qaida. Bin Laden could argue with some cogency that our going into Iraq was the equivalent of the Germans in Stalingrad. They defeated themselves by pouring more in there. Tragic."'

Worse Than You Think

Newsweek looks at the insurgency in Iraq here. "Sixteen months after the war's supposed end, Iraq's insurgency is spreading...It's not only that U.S. casualty figures keep climbing. American counterinsurgency experts are noticing some disturbing trends in those statistics. The Defense Department counted 87 attacks per day on U.S. forces in August—the worst monthly average since Bush's flight-suited visit to the USS Abraham Lincoln in May 2003. Preliminary analysis of the July and August numbers also suggests that U.S. troops are being attacked across a wider area of Iraq than ever before. And the number of gunshot casualties apparently took a huge jump in August. Until then, explosive devices and shrapnel were the primary cause of combat injuries, typical of a "phase two" insurgency, where sudden ambushes are the rule. (Phase one is the recruitment phase, with most actions confined to sabotage. That's how things started in Iraq.) Bullet wounds would mean the insurgents are standing and fighting—a step up to phase three."

And the article has this to say about the January Elections in Iraq: 'U.S. officials publicly insist that Iraq will somehow hold national elections before the end of January. The appointed council currently acting as Iraq's government under interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi is to be replaced by an elected constitutional assembly—if the vote takes place. "I presume the election will be delayed," says the Iraqi Interior Ministry's chief spokesman, Sabah Kadhim. A senior Iraqi official sees no chance of January elections: "I'm convinced that it's not going to happen. It's just not realistic. How is it going to happen?"'

Wrong-Way Bush

William Saletan has a good metaphor for Bush's Iraq policy at Slate. "Seventy-five years ago in the Rose Bowl, a University of California football player named Roy Riegels picked up a fumble by the opposing team, spun around, and started running for the end zone. Unfortunately, he was heading the wrong way. He ran with such purpose that people in the stands, including the play-by-play announcer, doubted their own sanity. When a teammate tried to stop him, Riegels—who would go down in history as "Wrong-Way Riegels"—shook him off. He was a man on a mission.

This is what's now happening in Iraq and the presidential campaign. President Bush and Vice President Cheney are framing the election as a choice between playing "defense" and going on "offense" in the war on terror. The attacks of 9/11 presented the United States with a grave new challenge. Bush picked up this football and started running with it—toward Iraq. But Iraq wasn't among the states closely linked to 9/11 or al-Qaida. Nor did it have the weapons of mass destruction Bush advertised. We've spent more than 1,000 American lives and close to $200 billion running the wrong way."

Pattern Recognition: Dick Cheney

Rolling Stone has a great profile of Dick Cheney. "The Cheney jinx first manifested itself at the presidential level back in 1969, when Richard Nixon appointed him to his first job in the executive branch. It surfaced again in 1975, when Gerald Ford made Cheney his chief of staff and then -- with Cheney's help -- lost the 1976 election. George H.W. Bush, having named Cheney secretary of defense, was defeated for re-election in 1992. The ever-canny Ronald Reagan was the only Republican president since Eisenhower who managed to serve two full terms. He is also the only one not to have appointed Dick Cheney to office.

This pattern of misplaced confidence in Cheney, followed by disastrous results, runs throughout his life -- from his days as a dropout at Yale to the geopolitical chaos he has helped create in Baghdad. Once you get to know his history, the cycle becomes clear: First, Cheney impresses someone rich or powerful, who causes unearned wealth and power to be conferred on him. Then, when things go wrong, he blames others and moves on to a new situation even more advantageous to himself."

Riding for a Fall

This is my second post about Pete Peterson's warning concerning the financial irresponsibility of the Bush Administration. Go here for the complete article in Foreign Affairs Magazine. Here is the summary: "Three long-term trends are threatening to bankrupt America: the burgeoning costs of waging the war on terrorism, the U.S. economy's increasing reliance on foreign capital, and rapid aging throughout the developed world. Washington must understand that committing the United States to a broader global role while ignoring the financial costs of doing so is deeply irresponsible."

Failed Job Policy

Check out JobWatch for an illuminating visual of actual job creation versus Bush's goals. Like the other Bush policies the facts make clear that goals have not been achieved.

"Job growth was a modest 144,000 in August, enough to absorb the increase in working-age population but, in the long-term, too small to actually lower unemployment (unless the labor force shrinks again, as it did last month). August's job growth follows two months of very weak growth of 73,000 in July and 96,000 in June and is substantially slower than the 295,000 jobs created monthly (on average) in March, April, and May. This pace of job creation is far slower than what the Bush Administration said would follow as a result of its 2003 tax cuts.

The Bush Administration called the tax cut package, which took effect in July 2003, its "Jobs and Growth Plan." The president's economics staff, the Council of Economic Advisers, projected that the plan would result in the creation of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004 — 306,000 new jobs each month starting in July 2003. The CEA projected that the economy would generate 228,000 jobs a month without a tax cut and 306,000 jobs a month with the tax cut.  Thus, it projected that 4,284,000 jobs would be created over the last 14 months. In reality, since the tax cuts took effect, there are 2,668,000 fewer jobs than the administration projected would be created by enactment of its tax cuts. The August job growth of 144,000 fell 162,000 jobs short of the administration's projection. As can be seen in the chart below, job creation failed to meet the administration's projections in 12 of the past 14 months."

Daily Show Bush Campaign Film

Here is the best campaign film of the year - from the Daily show...naturally.

We're Not in Lake Wobegon Anymore

A number of folks have sent me this "In These Times" piece by Garrison Keillor. He first explores what Republicans used to stand for. "Something has gone seriously haywire with the Republican Party. Once, it was the party of pragmatic Main Street businessmen in steel-rimmed spectacles who decried profligacy and waste, were devoted to their communities and supported the sort of prosperity that raises all ships." And then he decries today's Republican Party.

"The party of Lincoln and Liberty was transmogrified into the party of hairy-backed swamp developers and corporate shills, faith-based economists, fundamentalist bullies with Bibles, Christians of convenience, freelance racists, misanthropic frat boys, shrieking midgets of AM radio, tax cheats, nihilists in golf pants, brownshirts in pinstripes, sweatshop tycoons, hacks, fakirs, aggressive dorks, Lamborghini libertarians, people who believe Neil Armstrong’s moonwalk was filmed in Roswell, New Mexico, little honkers out to diminish the rest of us, Newt’s evil spawn and their Etch-A-Sketch president, a dull and rigid man suspicious of the free flow of information and of secular institutions, whose philosophy is a jumble of badly sutured body parts trying to walk. Republicans: The No.1 reason the rest of the world thinks we’re deaf, dumb and dangerous."

US-Election.org: The world's voice, the world's vote

US-election.org is a brand new web site "designed to permit people throughout the world to cast a ballot in the US election." Certainly the results will be illuminating if not entirely unexpected. You can review the running tally by individual country. And you can help spread the word by emailing your friends and acquaintances particular those outside the U.S.

Bush's 2000 War Promises

CBS spotlights George W. Bush's war promises made when accepting his nomination in 2000 at the last Republican convention here. "When America uses force in the world, the cause must be just, the goal must be clear, and the victory must be overwhelming.'' Clearly things did not work out the way he planned. His cause may have been just in Afghanistan but his goal was not achieved. In Iraq the goals kept changing and victory has not been achieved. Finally, as Jessica Tuchman Mathews of the Carnegie Endowment For International Peace points out, "You have to conclude that the war, so far, has made us substantially less safe."