"As you can no doubt tell, I am extremely stingy on links. As a marketing tactic, that's not very smart -- link exchanges are a great way to promote one's site. It's also not the best way to be a good blogosphere citizen -- I should be helping promote new up-and-coming blogs and playing nice with the established ones as well."

Ethically, however, I have one quibble. I think being a good blogosphere citizen means putting up only links to sites you read and enjoy. There's a lot wrong with publishing, but it does have one virtue: it filters. There's no such mechanism in the blogosphere. Anyone who wishes can start a blog--and millions have. It's as if John Updike had no special status over any of the other millions of writers in the world. From a consumer's perspective, that's not a good system--we have to wade through a half million John Smiths before we randomly happen across Updike's book.

Therefore, ethically, I think bloggers are duty bound to constrain themselves to listing only the bloggers they like. Otherwise, the blogosphere will become to chaotic and too thin to function as an independent medium.


Asking for Linkage
If the blogroll is supply-side, then what about demand? That is to say: what's the etiquette regarding the practice of emailing other bloggers and requesting that they link to a post of yours? As blogs proliferate, this is going to become an increasingly pressing question.

My suspicion is that those who have traffic in the thousands or tens of thousands have a different attitude than those with traffic in the tens or hundreds. I think there are some rules of thumb, though, that make good, common sense.

1. Emailing someone a link is fine, but once you've sent the request, your job is done. The reason we mail the links to the more prominent bloggers is that we wish to be seen more broadly. It seems only reasonable to expect that you'll get the link if your post warrants it.

2. Keep it short. For folks receiving buckets of emails every day, keeping it short and to the point is nice.

3. Reciprocity is fair play. Part of being a good blog citizen is noticing good content and referring your audience there.

4. I also think it's a nice gesture to send links out that don’t promote your own site. People have learned that I'm interested in the theocracy meme, and so I often get links from folks who've discovered some source material there. That's great, too.

5. Don't over-email. Sending out a link when you hit on something especially interesting is one thing, but spamming with every post is another.

6. I don't know if this is relevant or not, but I'll mention it: if someone has a commenting feature, use it. That's a nice way of supporting someone's site.

[Update: In an email, Kos suggested a seventh point: "I would add one more item -- if you ask for a link, make sure your subject matter is relevant to the topic of the blog you are approaching. While I can be broadly characterized as a "political" blogger, I consider myself a specialist in elections (despite my notoriety as a "warblogger"). I am far more likely, thus, to link to those who have particular emphasis on elections."]


On Anonymity
If we wish blogging to be a useful and usable medium, don't we have a right to know whose words we're reading? It's a good question. For obvious reasons, I think anonymity has its virtues.

The chief function of a pseudonym is to separate the blogger from the blog. The benefit is that the reader can judge the material on its own merit, without having to take into account the writer's history, biology, or personality. The downside is that there's no context.

I originally started using the Emma Goldman pseudonym when I posted regularly on the Atlantic Monthly message boards. They were at that time dominated by slightly dim conservatives (I haven't been back much since starting the blog). I chose the name to let people know where I was coming from, just by looking at my name. A secondary benefit was that I noticed people tended to speak to me as if I were Jewish and female, exposing their own assumptions. (If I had chosen Che Guevara, as I considered, would they have thought me male and Latino?)

Interestingly, I've discovered that so far, readers in the blogosphere don't tend to hold such solid assumptions going in. If I were to do it all over again, I'd probably just use my real name.

Most bloggers who use pseudonyms do tend to include many facts of their lives. When this happens, we don't have any way of verifying them. I think that after blogging goes through a few more stages, this might create some problems. (Raed, for example, might be an office manager from Topeka.) If it does, I guess we can come out of the dark. Until then, sign me--

Emma Goldman

(Oh, there's also that Ashcroft's America thing, but with the Total--err, Terrorist--Information Awareness thing, I figure there's a dossier in Langley with my real name on it already.)

"'There was a feeling that the White House was being mocked,' an individual who worked closely with the National Security Council was quoted as telling the Financial Times.

"'A tinpot dictator (Saddam Hussein) was mocking the president (George W Bush). It provoked a sense of anger inside the White House,' the individual said. 'After that point, there was no prospect of a diplomatic solution.'"

This is, of course, not an incidental revelation. The President repeatedly told anyone who'd listen that he was committed to a diplomatic solution and that "no decision has been made." Moreover, many of us were chilled by the President's language of revenge. He used WMD as a pretext for invasion, but his words belied this justification. Writing on May 7th (because I assume that earlier link is bloggered), I noted:

For Bush, the problem's personal--it's Saddam. In the course of the news conference, the President used the word Saddam or Saddam Hussein 39 times; add to that 6 times he referred to him not by name (though personally) as "dictator." Throughout the entire news conference, the word "Iraq" or its variants only appeared 36 times together--and many of these referred to the "Iraqi people" and so on.

Despite all the talk of disarmament, the danger of the Iraqi regime's weapons and their availability on the open terrorist market, the President will be satisfied if Saddam (not Iraq) disarms or leaves the country. Leaves the country? That's not consistent with anything we've heard from the White House. But it is consistent with getting back at Saddam personally. Which, when you read the transcript, is the unmistakable tell the President gives about his real intention.

If the Financial Times is right, the President lied about WMD to support a war because a "tin-pot dictator" had offended his vanity.

In the second article, the Financial Times reports that Bush buried a key report that the US is facing deficits of $44 trillion. That's right: trillion.

"The study, the most comprehensive assessment of how the US government is at risk of being overwhelmed by the "baby boom" generation's future healthcare and retirement costs, was commissioned by then-Treasury secretary Paul O'Neill.

"But the Bush administration chose to keep the findings out of the annual budget report for fiscal year 2004, published in February, as the White House campaigned for a tax-cut package that critics claim will expand future deficits....

"The study's analysis of future deficits dwarfs previous estimates of the financial challenge facing Washington. It is roughly equivalent to 10 times the publicly held national debt, four years of US economic output or more than 94 per cent of all US household assets. Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve chairman, last week bemoaned what he called Washington's "deafening" silence about the future crunch."

This doesn't fit the garden-variety definition of a lie--it's a more sophisticated form of deception. But the effect is the same: the President has failed to tell the truth about his policies, which, one assumes, would be wildly unpopular. The worst part is that the results of these misdeeds won't be felt until years from now, when responsible leaders will have to clean up the mess. By then, Bush will be sipping Budweiser in Crawford.

(And now details about the tax cut are starting to emerge. In order to pay the corporate robber barons, Bush had to cut services to the poor--no tax benefit for children if you're too poor, that's just for the middle class [who vote]. Another jewel: if you are willing to buy an SUV, Bush is willing to let you write it off.)

An experience like reading three copies of the same book at once. Put your cursor over the text to stop it from scrolling. Click on the text to advance to the next one of the 47 sections.

It's a very long narrative--he's not kidding about the 47 sections. I encourage you to read it for at least five minutes, longer if you can manage it. It's literature as experience. It's possible to focus on one narrative and read it as you would any other (which has its own pleasures). But the intent of the installation, if I understand it, is to use the triptych to encourage the brain into a more free-flowing, dreamlike state. (The story itself helps with this.)

The second is even more abstract, and I'll let the artist speak for himself:

TEXT.URE synthesizes literary fiction, visual abstraction, and user interaction. It uses a transcendent interface to a non-linear narrative and by encouraging users to explore the visual space it mystifies and subverts the reading process. In the process of investigating the interface [see diagram 01], the user learns how to reveal their version of the story.

The work is inspired by the textural white on white paintings of Kasimir Malevich [see diagram 04]. In TEXT.URE, the relationship between the altitudes traversed by the path and the shape of the story is straightforward. But that simplicity is mitigated by the rugged and unpredictable terrain of the texture [see diagram 02]. Expect difficult browsing.

With the advent of technology we have the ability to develop an interactive system of rules by which a storyline may be produced. Each storyline is different from the next creating a unique experience for each user. We wanted to empower the user to build their own narrative using the words and phrases that the author assembled into a jagged grid with the authoring tool [see diagram 03]. The user doesn't know what each passage is until they trace over the texture. An association is quickly established between the physical motion of the user's drawn path and the words shown in the text display. The user is left to synchronize their actions and the words generated. If they trace over a peak they get a different string of text than they would if they explore a valley. In essence TEXT.URE is an exploration in nonlinear browsing. The user is NOT aware of what words come next but what we do provide them are the tools needed to infer in certain respects how the system opperates.

If narrative fiction is a two-dimensional process, then Texture and Dispatched seem to have three dimensions, as if the car we were driving shot out into space. In order to process the fiction, the brain has to let go of a familiar kind of cognition and embrace a new one. None of the material on Steve's website--nor the installations linked by the Whitney--are likely to be read by a wide audience. Literary fiction and poetry are waning in popularity, so it seems unlikely that the challenges of three-dimensional fiction are likely to be more appealing. But the experiments do suggest that the structure of narration may not be finite. According to the Whitney timeline, the earlies explorations were made less than a decade ago. In another decade, we'll have a better idea.

Was it because at last I cleaned the window that he threw himself against the glass? I thought, poor crow--he doesn't know the evergreens and blue sky are behind him. I turned back to my page but whumpp--the bird attacked the glass again.

This prosification of poetry has been an ongoing phenomenon since, I suspect, free verse. (Which is not to condemn the style. Rhyme's time is done, or almost. In the age of text messaging, it's hard to expect people to relate to "When by my solitary hearth I sit/ When no fair dreams before my mind's eye flit….") But it's gotten far worse over the past few years.

I had intended to link to an article that the poet David Alpaugh wrote in the March Poets and Writers magazine called "The Professionalization of Poetry, Part II" (but unfortunately, it's not posted). In it, he discusses this recent trend of poetry that is absolutely indistinguishable from pure prose, save that it's been (apparently) retroactively chopped up into lines and stanzas. I had especially wanted to show you some of the examples he found to illustrate the point. You'll just have to take my word for it.

So: first poetry became unpopular because people couldn't relate to its form, and then its form changed to something other than poetry. Things look dire indeed.

Who Cares?
The question arises: why not let poetry slide into irrelevance?--after all, I've got my Lara Croft.

The short answer, clarified the moment we saw the tangle of steel ribbon and cloud of dust where the World Trade Center used to be, is that we still need it. Poetry's irrelevance to the post-sincere pre-9/11 world was as nearly complete. But events have changed that. Confronted with 9/11 and the world we've inherited (with war, terrorism, and fear), poetry suddenly seems important.

This is poetry's place--to create meaning of chaos. Of course, what I've written here today is a wholly American analysis. The place of poetry was probably not so tenuous in other cultures. One would imagine not in Poland, for example, where Wislawa Szymborska wrote:

After every war
someone has to tidy up.
Things won't pick
themselves up, after all.

Someone has to shove
the rubble to the roadsides
so the carts loaded with corpses
can get by.

Someone has to trudge
through sludge and ashes,
through the sofa springs,
the shards of glass,
the bloody rags.

Someone has to lug the post
to prop the wall,
someone has to glaze the window,
set the door in its frame.

No sound bites, no photo opportunities,
and it takes years.
All the cameras have gone
to other wars.

The bridges need to be rebuilt,
the railroad stations, too.
Shirtsleeves will be rolled
to shreds.

Someone, broom in hand,
still remembers how it was.
Someone else listens, nodding
his unshattered head.
But others are bound to be bustling nearby
who'll find all that
a little boring.

From time to time someone still must
dig up a rusted argument
from underneath a bush
and haul it off to the dump.

Those who knew
what this was all about
must make way for those
who know little.
And less than that.
And at last nothing less than nothing.

Someone has to lie there
in the grass that covers up
the causes and effects
with a cornstalk in his teeth,
gawking at the clouds.

(Yes, it's prosified verse, too--I don't deny it. Goes to show: poetry's a delicate thing. And who among us who opposed the war could read this without being moved? Incidentally, I have a nice Sharon Olds, too, just to show Americans can write relevant poetry. Things are running on awfully long here, so if you wish to see it, email me.)

Michael Getler Discovers Anonymous Sourcing

He's shocked to discover the Post's own standards for sourcing aren't being followed.

Maybe someone should send him a copy of Marvin Kalb's One Scandalous Story.

Atrios is to blogging what haiku is to poetry--economy and efficiency. In this example he uses the title to communicate information, then builds upon it with the first sentence, then builds upon that with the second. And so, in 32 words, he’s covered a fairly substantial subject.

The style accentuates immediacy. There’s an immediacy in the regularity with which Atrios posts, and this is reflected in his prose. It’s quick and pithy. The speed of news and communication is palpable on Eschaton, and he treats his readers with a prose style that underscores this ethos.

Essayists
After the ur-blog/news-digest model of Eschaton, the essayist form is the most common (not, of course, that there are hard barriers). Among the more famous practitioners are Jeanne D’Arc (Body and Soul) and the Daily Howler. I’m going to highlight One Man’s Opinion, a blog deserving more attention.

One Man (or Dustin, as he signs himself in his comments) writes essays ranging in length from a couple hundred words to a recent treatise on the Matrix that ran 1,500 (it will come as no surprise that he’s a grad student). Let’s have a look at one paragraph from his Matrix essay:

If Zion is simply matrix writ in cruder code, then there truly is no escape from the matrix. Or at least that's what the disappointed commentors seem most worried about. Two interlocked dicta of Foucault's thought address the issue of resistance. The first is that power is not only destructive--the power of the sentinels, of the Agents, of society as a whole to grind down, wear out, and ultimately destroy non-compliance--but is also constructive--the power to build coalitions, to create, to imagine and to reimagine. This is the One's power, to reach into the code of the world and to rewrite its rules. The second, trickier dictum is that even the subversive can be subverted. This is the principle of the matrix--that the subversive elements can be isolated and contained in the subverts paradise, Zion--but it is also the principle of Morpheus--to challenge, even to destroy, the nascent hierarchies of Zion if doing so can produce the conditions for real freedom. (And suddenly it dawns on me: Foucault defined "power"--mysteriously, mystically--as "polymorphous perversity"; I just defined it as poly-Morpheus subversity...)

This is, admittedly, one of the more dense passages I might have selected. But despite that, there’s a playfulness that characterizes it. Dustin takes what he’s saying seriously, but not too seriously. The blog gives one the opportunity to say what he wishes to say, but to hold it lightly--as if to emphasize the human behind the thesis. In fact, the blogosphere provides a safe haven where one can actually make a very serious argument, but make it in a way that abandons the neutrality of commercial speech. We read this dense paragraph and don’t perceive an arrogance because, after all, it’s just One Man’s Opinion. It’s offered purely for consideration. The style of this prose is academic, but it’s not pedantic. It’s complex, but it’s not obtuse.

Another practitioner of the essay is Big Air Fred, whose Rantavation site is also under-appreciated. Coincidentally, he’s posted a treatise today that shows the relevance of blogs.

Currently we are in a serious crisis of our leadership. We have a democracy that continues to bypass its constituency, the people, for the corporations and special-interest groups that shoulder the enormous costs of elections. The need for election funding reform is pressing, as is Instant Run-off Voting and any other number of changes to the system. The efforts to correct all of these problems at one time are overwhelming, but carving out a chunk at a time is within our grasp. In this outline, I try to respond to the feeling of "unattachment" between the constituency and their representatives.

"Anyone" can get in contact with their elected officials and let those officials know how they feel about the issues "near and dear" to them. Certain "anyones" just get much quicker and more responsive contact than others do. Most "anyones" just don't have the time in the day, or the money in the budget, to contact their officials via fax, phone, US Postal Service or most privileged at all, in person. It's not necessarily that any real physical barriers exist, but many non-physical ones--money, time, knowledge, social barriers, do. What happens, then, is that the dialog between the representatives of the demos (the voting public) and the demos itself gets monopolized by those that have the easiest path to access. Those "dialog monopolizers" include, but are not limited to, lobbyists and current/potential big campaign contributors. Hardly the stuff of democracy.

The language here is in the rare third-person, out of which Fred rarely slips. But despite that, it seems like personal communication. There’s nothing neutral about it. It feels like a rough draft (rare is the blog subjected to an even informal editor), more like the transcription of a speech than a polished piece of prose. (If he ran it through another edit, Fred my choose to use some different words, craft more clearly declarative sentences, and switch to the more orthodox “dialogue.”) If Fred submitted this to a magazine, the editor would want to make some changes. (I’m incredibly sloppy myself. If someone wishes to subject this essay to a rigorous analysis, I’ll hide my head in shame.)

But in terms of clarity and effect, there’s something about the style that communicates passion and authenticity. We get the point. We also feel the import and urgency of his words. It’s a very effect passage.

Activist
If the ur-blog promotes awareness, and the essayist promotes understanding, then there is a third kind of blogger who wishes to promote action. Or at least to suggest it. Take for example, a section from This Modern World:

Through its GOP Team Leader site, the Republican Party officially encourages people to cut-and-paste Republican talking points, sign their own names, and email them to news media as letters to the editor purportedly written by average, concerned citizens. There's a word for this. Actually there are several: deception, fraud, deceit, sham, hoax--take your choice. And it gets better: for partaking in this act of officially-sanctioned deception, GOP Team Leaders are awarded points which can be redeemed for swag such as tote bags and caps and so on. . . .

And in their May 26 issue, Time magazine fell for it. I noted it here, suggested you (politely, always politely) write them and let them know they'd been, well, snookered, and over 180 of you did, at last count. . . .

So I want to keep the pressure on. Politely. This site gets an average of about 15,000 unique visitors a day, which means there are some 14,820 of you who will read this today, give or take, who haven't sent a note to Time yet. So let's get on that. I want to turn over the rock and expose the deceptive practices of the GOP Team Leader site to the light of day. (To avoid the inevitable cheap editorializing on Time's part, let's make sure we're not fighting astroturf with astroturf. Write them in your own words, explaining the situation and why it concerns you. Don't just cut-and-paste my entries.)

This is a rare exhortation. Generally, author Tom Tomorrow merely nudges you through your own outrage to the point of action. Jeralyn Merritt of TalkLeft (I’ll admit I’m annoyed that this isn’t two words, but that’s hardly an issue of prose) gives us an example of this method:

The Washington Post reports that Bush judicial nominee Charles Pickering was so upset that he had to sentence a convicted cross-burner to 7 years that he tried to get the Justice Department to intervene. Reportedly, he threatened to overturn the jury's verdict even though he agreed it was legal. He demanded Janet Reno personally review the case. Of the cross-burner, he said, ""They're wanting seven years for a young man that got drunk."

Sure, we are glad the Judge opposes mandatory minimum sentences. But given his overall record, that's a drop in the bucket and hardly enough. This is a lifetime position we are talking about--a seat on the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals which includes the states of Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas. Like Miguel Estrada and Priscilla Owen, Charles Pickering has no place on the federal appeals court bench.

Here again, Tom and Jeralyn might make some changes if their blogs were going into the New Yorker. But that’s not really the point. Their directness and candor speak volumes. The posts are more like personal emails mailed out to friends than official publications. We understand that it’s more important for the posts to get posted than it is for them to be posted error-free.

And speaking of getting things posted . . .

Reports claimed that she had stab and bullet wounds and that she had been slapped about on her hospital bed and interrogated.

"There was no [sign of] shooting, no bullet inside her body, no stab wound - only road traffic accident. They want to distort the picture. I don't know why they think there is some benefit in saying she has a bullet injury."

What was the US up to, you ask? The BBC has a theory:

The American strategy was to ensure the right television footage by using embedded reporters and images from their own cameras, editing the film themselves.

The Pentagon had been influenced by Hollywood producers of reality TV and action movies, notably the man behind Black Hawk Down, Jerry Bruckheimer.

Bruckheimer advised the Pentagon on the primetime television series "Profiles from the Front Line", that followed US forces in Afghanistan in 2001. That approached was taken on and developed on the field of battle in Iraq.

Although this story was reported more than a week ago, I hadn't heard about it until I read Cohen's editorial about it today in the Post. Now, I'm willing to allow the possibility that this was big blog news over the past week and that I missed it. But in general, I read a lot of news, and let me tell you--this wasn't burning up the front pages.

Right now, the FCC is deliberating a plan that will grant sweeping rights to media megacorps to futher consolidate media outlets. (In fact, it's really a done deal--they just haven't rubber-stamped it with the 3-2 vote that everyone knows is coming.) On the pages and broadcasts of those megacorp-owned newspapers and stations, analysts have argued that there's really no threat here--the market will take care of things (which the reporters for the megacorp-owned media outlets then duly report). Can there be a better example than this case that this view is seriously innacurate? When the news media are owned by a few, and those few are spoon feeding government-generated lies, it's a little hard to swallow the notion that "the market will sort things out."

No matter how prettily that message is packaged by a Bruckheimer-esque production.

Why not buy?
As we all know, the purchase of African Americans was outlawed many years ago. As times have changed the need for black people in your life has changed but not diminished. The presence of black people in your life can advance business and social reputation. These days those who claim black friends and colleagues are on the cutting edge of social and political trends. As our country strives to incorporate the faces of African.

How do I rent a negro?
It's simple. Just fill out and submit the Rental Request. Within 2-3 weeks you will receive a rental agreement and price quote. Then just submit your deposit and plan your event. Simple tip: Submit your rental request with rent-a-negro before you finalize your event date. Make sure she's available!

(And before I get a lot of hate mail: it's satire. Read more about it here.)

Bush's total confidence that his interpretation of religion, politics, baseball, what-have-you is correct reveals an oddly selective reading of biblical history. Instead, Bush combines a much more pedestrian sort of arrogance with the language of religious calling. But when he talks about being on a "path" or feeling "called," he's not granting himself special historical status -- he is simply describing his life in religious terms.

Furthermore, Sullivan argues, criticizing the President for his religious beliefs directs attention away from his much more obvious and dangerous beliefs.

Why should we even care about how we criticize Bush? Because taking him on over the wrong points neutralizes our ability to lodge legitimate complaints. John Ashcroft’s critics made the same mistake during his confirmation hearings when they spent time guffawing over the story that his father anointed him with vegetable oil before he was sworn into the Senate. There are many reasons to be concerned about Ashcroft – his opposition to a desegregation plan in Missouri and his involvement in legislation to criminalize abortion come to mind – but his private religious observance is not one of them. The more we rely on intellectually lazy arguments that ridicule religion, the more vulnerable we are to charges of being “anti-religion,” even when we raise valid concerns.

In fact, if the criticism aimed at the President is merely a secular-humanist pot shot, then I agree with Sullivan. Among liberals, there's certainly a tendency toward smugness about religious faith. Keller even betrays himself on this score (or so it seems to me): "This kind of born-again epiphany is common in much of America -- the red-state version of psychotherapy -- and it creates the kind of faith that is not beset by doubt because the believer knows his life got better in the bargain."

But there's a reason to have legitimate concern about the President's (and John Ashcroft's) beliefs: they may supercede an allegiance to the rule of law. We have elected George W. Bush to uphold the laws of the nation and the constitution. If his allegiance is first to his belief in God, and this belief causes him to make decisions on the nation's behalf, then his religious belief does become a legitimate issue. I've spent some time identifying some actions by the President which make me think this may be the case. Maybe it's not. Either way, it isn't anti-religious nor anti-Christian to raise the question.

It is, however, great to find another blogger out there who’s pushing these questions around.

"The first week of the invasion proved every assertion false. In place of Hitler or Stalin, the American armies found the remnants of a dictator more accurately compared to a psychotic prison warden, a brutal but almost comic figure, so enslaved to the dream of his omnipotence that he apparently had trusted the defense of his kingdom to histrionic press releases and gigantic portraits of himself armed with a shotgun and a porkpie hat.

"No Iraqi shock troops appeared in the field against the American infantry divisions; no Iraqi aircraft presumed to leave the ground; no allied combat unit met with, much less knew where to find, the fabled weapons of mass destruction. The desultory shows of resistance at the river crossings constituted ragged skirmish lines of young men for the most part barefoot and lightly armed, so many of them out of uniform that it wasn’t worth the trouble to distinguish between the civilian and the military dead.

"The weakness of the Iraqi target made ridiculous Washington’s propaganda poster of Saddam as the second coming of Adolf Hitler, and the useful lesson to be learned presented itself on April Fool’s Day. Here was the American army in the sinister landscape of Iraq, equipped to fight the Battle of Normandy or El-Alamein but conducting a police action in the manner of Israeli assassination teams hunting down Palestinian terrorists in the rubble of the Gaza Strip. Would it be possible to hide in plain sight the false pretext of Operation Iraqi Freedom? The Bush Administration answered the question with its customary mendacious aplomb, simply by changing the mission statement. The American army had not come to Iraq to remove the totalitarian menace threatening all of Western civilization--absolutely not; the American army had come briefly eastward out of Eden to “liberate” the long-suffering Iraqi people from the misery inflicted upon them by and evil-doer with the habit of cutting out tongues. One excuse for war as good as any other."

That's merely the section on "The moral splendor of American empire can be made to stand on a pedestal of lies." Additional gems can be found in "The American news media can be relied upon to sell the spectacle and leave the story to the government" and "Package the imperialist agenda as instructive entertainment, and the American public will come to know and love the product."

It's not online, but well worth the buck you'll spend each month if you get a subscription.

"The dollar sank to a four-year low Monday after the Bush administration, in an apparent policy reversal, indicated over the weekend that it might accept a weaker dollar relative to other currencies.

"In a sequel to his remarks from the previous week about the positive aspects of the dollar's devaluation, U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow brought the case a step further by saying that the definition of the 'strong-dollar policy' has shifted. The dollar is currently down more than 20% against the euro in the past year."

Recall that in 2001, the President argued that tax cuts were warranted because of the strength of the American ecomomy. But then the economy tanked. So then in 2002 and this year, tax cuts are needed for stimulus. It's actually a pretty good strategy: adjust your rhetoric to fit the news of the day. That way, you're always in step with whatever arises.

Of course, the Dow is currently tanking (with an hour and a half to go, it's down almost 200 points). No worries, though! Tomorrow, the President will simply explain how a tanking stock market is one of the main reasons we need to cut taxes. See how easy it is?

[Update: Good news! The dollar also got hammered today in currencies across Asia, despite those countries' weak SARS-slowed ecomonies. Soon our products will be the cheapest in the world.]

"One, I think your choice of words is inappropriate when you refer to President Bush's militarism. The President is seeking a way to provide peace and to protect the American people from a growing, gathering threat at the hands of Saddam Hussein and the weapons he has collected." (2/11/03)

"[D]uring the campaign the president did not express, as you put it, disdain for nation-building. What the president has said is, the military should be used for the purpose of fighting and winning wars, exactly as we did in Afghanistan." (2/27/03)

"Again, the President has not made any decisions about military action or what military option he might pursue. And so I think it's impossible to speculate. I can only say that the cost of a one-way ticket is substantially less than that. The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less than that. The cost of war is more than that. But there are many options that the President hopes the world and people of Iraq will exercise themselves of that gets rid of the threat. But it's impossible to say what the President options are militarily from a price tag, because he's made no decisions." (10/1/02)

"I have not seen the actual transcript of the show itself. But assuming the press reports are right, it's a terrible thing to say, and it unfortunate. And that's why -- there was an earlier question about has the President said anything to people in his own party -- they're reminders to all Americans that they need to watch what they say, watch what they do. This is not a time for remarks like that; there never is." (Responding to Bill Maher's comments on Politically Incorrect, 9/26/02.)

The wave of suicide attacks in an arc that stretches from Morocco and Algeria through Israel ­ where seven were killed yesterday ­ to Saudi Arabia, Chechnya and Pakistan have been mounted by different violent groups for different reasons. Yet they stand as testimony to the inaccuracy of President George Bush's view that America is winning the "war on terror". They also fortify the position of those who say the war in Iraq was not so much part of that war as a diversion from it ­ and that it has fuelled anti-Western attacks rather than reduced them.

And despite the arrest of four men in Saudi Arabia yesterday, the authorities in Riyadh admit that the masterminds of last Monday's bomb attacks are still on the loose.

Only days ago, Mr Bush declared that "al-Qa'ida is on the run" and that "about half of all the top al-Qa'ida operatives are either jailed or dead". In either case, he said, "they are not a problem any more".

Yet they are a problem. Some of their elements may have been badly dented by the US campaign against them, notably in Afghanistan. But last week's calculated and carefully planned anti-Western attacks, coupled with a new alleged tape from Osama bin Laden, have proved that they are still in business, and that significant numbers of their operatives are willing to destroy themselves in the name of their beliefs.

Sometimes you just don't want to hear the next newscast.

"We have let Al Qaeda off the hook," Mr. Graham said, as members of the municipal workers union here rose in applause. "We had them on the ropes close to dismantlement, and then we we moved resources out of Afghanistan and Pakistan to fight the war in Iraq. We let them regenerate."

Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont, called the war in Iraq a diversion that had not left the United States any safer. "We have a president who talks tough on homeland security but is strangling the city and the towns and not giving them the money that is necessary to protect them," Dr. Dean said.

Representative Richard A. Gephardt of Missouri said, "We are vulnerable to future attacks because this administration has not done its job and has not increased our ability to have homeland security."

On the one hand, it's good someone's calling the President on his policies (as it seems the media won't). But really, without a serious plan, this is going to start to ring very hollow very soon. Terrorism is a serious issue, and I think everyone would be interested to hear solutions to it. If the Dems have any hope of winning the presidency (and I've said I don't think they do), they'll have to come up with more than just empty condemnation.

More promising it the fight brewing about how best to address health care. Gephardt's already proposed a plan, and now Dean has responded. Gephardt's plan would require employers to pick up the tab (and be reimbursed 60%), and Dean's would expand current systems and add incentives for employers. Gephardt's in particular seems unworkable and fairly lame--but neither gets at the heart of the issue, which is skyrocketing costs associated with health care. Their plans treat the symptoms, but the disease goes untouched.

Still, it's a step in the right direction. The proposals are positive and concrete, and give the candidates something real to talk about.

"'If we don't find weapons of mass destruction in a week....allright?...and tons of them...I'll apologize to the American people...hell, I'll resign.'

"(not 100% on this quote, so if anyone can verify it that'd be great. He has said he'd have to apologize if no WMDS are found, but I can't find the 'resign' part.)"

No sooner posted than his intrepid readers were on the case. Jim E. struck first. Quotoing from transcripts of an April 22 show:

O'REILLY: Colonel, if weapons of mass destruction aren't found, your reputation, my reputation -- because I will have to apologize because I bought into it, I bought into it -- and out of a scale 1 to 10, 10 is the best, how certain are you that we're going to find these weapons of mass destruction?
MAGINNIS: There's a 10 there, Bill.

[A little later in the conversation]:
O'REILLY: Real fast, Colonel, any prediction of when something is going to happen on your part? Real fast.

MAGINNIS: In the next two weeks, we are going to have many hundreds of people in there. I would say within a month, we will have a lot of..

O'REILLY: All right, a month from today, we'll do this story again, and then we have it on tape. Gentlemen, thanks very much. Very interesting

Next was Elvis56, who's started a website to track O'Reilly's backtracks. Next, it was Mbrolio who sussed out a transcript of O'Reilly's vanity column Talking Points Memo, with this nice quote:

"But the leaders of those organizations have to be held accountable. If no weapons of mass destruction are found in Iraq, President Bush must fire the men and women who misled him. There's no spinning this. Americans have a right to know exactly why we went to war and the entire WMD scenario. Talking Points believes the President should address the issue in the next few weeks and lay it all on the line."

Thi big winner so far, though, is Jim E, returning with quotes culled from Lexis-Nexus (March 18, 2003).

BILL O'REILLY:
"Here's, here's the bottom line on this for every American and everybody in the world, nobody knows for sure, all right? We don't know what he has. We think he has 8,500 liters of anthrax. But let's see. But there's a doubt on both sides. And I said on my program, if, if the Americans go in and overthrow Saddam Hussein and it's clean, he has nothing, I will apologize to the nation, and I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right? But I'm giving my government the benefit of the doubt. . . .

[And later in the interview]:
BILL O'REILLY:
". . . if he has 8,500 liters of anthrax that he's not going to give up, even though the United Nations demanded that he do that, we are doing the right thing. If he doesn't have any weapons, then we are doing the wrong thing. So, we'll see."

There you have it folks: "I will not trust the Bush Administration again, all right?" Welcome to the club, Bill. (Oh, and we'll gather around the TV when you're ready to apologize.)

"The US commander in Iraq, Gen Tommy Franks, was accused of war crimes on Wednesday in a Belgian lawsuit that has provoked stern warnings from Washington. Nineteen plaintiffs filed the suit under Belgium's controversial "universal competence" law, which allows charges to be brought regardless of where the alleged crimes took place."

"The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Richard Myers, said on Tuesday the impending lawsuit was very serious and could have an effect on the travel arrangements of US officials. 'It's looked upon by the US government as a very, very serious situation,' he said during a visit to NATO headquarters in Brussels. The alliance itself sought to downplay the affair. 'We're not considering moving NATO, or anything like that,' said an official.

This story is in the Times as well, but this particular citation comes from Jihad Unspun, which is in itself worth a look.

These aren't the first charges of war crimes. Earlier this month, Bush and Blair were both charged in Switzerland. Obviously, these aren't going to pose serious difficulties for the President or the Prime Minister. But it is indicative of the rising level of antipathy abroad for US and British leadership.

And of course, the administration is only adding fuel to anger's fire. For example, the Washington Times recently published a story about France aiding fleeing Baathists, citing an anonymous "American intelligence source." Aside from that source (Rove?, Rumsfled?), not a single intelligence agency would confirm it. But what did Rummy himself say about it? "France has historically had a very close relationship with Iraq. My understanding is that it continued right up until the outbreak of the war. What took place thereafter, we'll find out."

This stuff plays great at home with the anti-Bordeaux set, but abroad (and not just in France), this is the kind of rhetoric that makes people consider war crimes suits.

"I set aside money in our budget over a 10 year period, the 10-year budget, for contingencies. So there is $1 trillion over 10 that's not spent, just in case something comes up. What I'm trying to do is to lay out exactly what we've got planned for the country. We increase discretionary spending by 4 percent. That's greater than the rate of inflation. That's greater than most people's paychecks have risen by.

"We pay down debt by $2 trillion. We set aside a trillion debt of contingencies -- I mean, $1 trillion of contingency money. And the debate is what to do with the rest. Because, you see, incredibly enough, as a result of your hard work and the tax burden on the American people, there is still money left over. And so what do we do?

"And by the way, before I tell you what I think we ought to do, I want you to know the assumptions in the plan are conservative assumptions. For example, over the 10 year period it is assumed our economy will grow at 3.2 percent. We can do better than that in America. We don't have to have such a pessimistic view of the productivity of the American people and the ingenuity of the entrepreneurs, and the hard work of small business people. We'll do better than that."

(Washington, March 2001)

George W. Bush, 2003:

"And we had an emergency and a recession, which affected the revenue growth of the U.S. Treasury. I mean, the stock market went down. Some of the pie-in-the-sky projections didn't make, and the investors said, oops. The numbers weren't real. The investors said, well, it looks like the days of everything is going up may end. And so people started selling, and the markets went down. That affected the revenues coming into the U.S. Treasury. Recession -- negative growth means less revenues. And so, of course, we've got a deficit. But I know we can grow out of the deficit with wise policy."

(Canton, Ohio, April 2003)

> Ordered the removal of all Indians to west of the Mississippi, the first example of concentration camps and genocide;

> Burned many Creek Indian villages in a six month massacre, 1813 – 1814;

> Destroyed "Negro Fort" and its inhabitants, a community of free Blacks on the Apalachicola River in Spanish Florida that served as a haven for runaway slaves;

> Executed Arbuthnot and Armbrister, two British traders at St. Marks, Florida. Although there was no evidence, Jackson believed they were plotting with the native Indians;

> Executed Creek Indian Chief Francis the Prophet at St. Marks, Florida even though he was no threat to anyone;

> Started the First Seminole War during his invasion of Florida.

Old Hickory's given a pass on these actions because of the different times. Fair enough. If we held all presidents to the standards of modern morality, we'd have trouble finding anyone before Lincoln who wasn't responsible for crimes against humanity. But there's bad and then there's Old Hickory. His actions are tantamount to an attempted genocide on Native Americans. Although American history is a rap sheet of crimes committed against the continent's native people, none was as egregious as Jackson. For many people in the country, Jackson's an embarrassment or a monster. Surely there's a president more worthy of our veneration than Jackson.

(It's not like I'm asking anyone to repudiate Jackson; though even the Soviets did so with Stalin.)

Wisconsin's welfare-to-work program and its related services are expected to cost $276.9 million more this year than the program they replaced, though the number of families on cash assistance has dropped by more than half, a legislative report says.

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"Bush took another preemptive strike yesterday during a speech in Albuquerque when he told a small-business audience, 'Oh, you'll hear the talk about how this plan only helps the rich people. That's just typical Washington, D.C., political rhetoric, is what that is. That's just empty rhetoric.'

But much of the rhetoric on the issue has actually been the president's -- and polls suggest it has worked.... Peter R. Orszag, a Brookings Institution economist and critic of White House tax policy, gave Bush credit for what he called 'a spin job' that used selective examples of lower-income families to convince many lower- and middle-income Americans that they have a stake in the tax cut's passage. Last week, a USA Today/CNN/Gallup poll found that 52 percent of Americans now think the tax cuts are 'a good idea,' an increase of 10 percentage points in two weeks.

To me, this is a perfect example of how the President constantly remains on message and the Democrats, lacking their own vision, remain on (his) message as well. Bush has successfully sold America on the idea that these tax cuts will benefit everyone. Never mind that this is refuted by all available data and nearly every economist in the country (including Greenspan). He's successful because the Dems lined up behind him on the first tax cut, granting him the argument: tax cuts are great. So now, when the President offers more tax cuts, the Democrats are in a weak position--they've already granted the argument that tax cuts are good, they have no vision of their own, and can only offer griping complaints. Of course polls are favoring Bush.

Until the Democrats offer their own vision, Bush will remain on message, and the hangdog Democrats will trail behind, "yeah butting" their way to yet another failure.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Attackers shot their way into three housing compounds in synchronized strikes in the Saudi capital and then set off multiple suicide car bombs, killing 91 people, including seven Americans, officials reported Tuesday....

"The bombings, which took place about 11:30 p.m. Monday, constituted one of the deadliest terror attacks on Americans since Sept. 11, 2001, and Secretary of State Colin Powell said the coordinated strike had 'the earmarks of al-Qaida.'"

I was both sickened and unsurprised by this news when it greeted me in my half sleep this morning. Although I regard Washington's foreign policy as one more likely to create terror than stop it, I nevertheless have the normal human hope that somehow, some way, it will actually stop these kinds of attacks.

But now I fear the worst--Bush will react predictably (he's already poured gasoline on the smouldering fire, itentifying "killers whose only faith is hate," who will "learn the meaning of American justice"), ratcheting up the divisive rhetoric, cracking down on dubious threats, and further enraging enemies of the US. (More: "Anytime anybody attacks our homeland, or our fellow citizens, we will be on the hunt. We will bring them to justice.")

Of course, I will still hope for the best. Except for the extreme fringe, no one is on the side of terrorists. Terror is an international problem, so the world will come together to adress it. I have a great deal more faith in the unity of nations who will try to solve this complex problem (through something more than a "hunt"). On days like this one, when our thoughts are of the dead and suffering, our hearts are more open. We think less of our petty interests and see more clearly what matters. Looking at the wreckage in Saudi Arabia, one hopes that clear thinking and a spirit of unity lead an international response.

"The Bush presidency might well be the Jerry Bruckheimer presidency — after the hugely successful producer of 'Armageddon,' 'Black Hawk Down' and 'Top Gun,' the movie re-enacted by Mr. Bush in his flyboy landing on the Abraham Lincoln.

Notes on the Atrocities, April 16, '03 (long before the Lincoln landing--and sorry, the archive is bloggered):

FDR is to David O. Selznick as George W. Bush is to _____?

The White House is absolutely spectacular at filling the seats. They promise amazing spectacle. Tax cuts: great for a bull market, even better for a bear market. Invasion of Iraq: regime change, freedom for Iraqis, abated risk from WMD and terrorism, and peace and democracy in the Middle East. Man, that's a helluva trailer. Trouble is, the movie stinks. We were promised adoring crowds--we got the finger. We were promised cooperation and order--we got looting and revenge. Not that anyone expected it to go smoothly (well, no one outside the administration, anyway)--but man, is this ever a half-assed exercise, or what?

(The answer, for those playing at home, is of course Jerry Bruckheimer.)

All right, it's true that he took the idea in a different direction, but hey, he no doubt got the idea reading "Notes," right?

"The former international development secretary, Clare Short, took a vitriolic parting shot at the prime minister as she bowed out of government today, accusing Mr Blair of being 'increasingly obsessed with his place in history'.

"The Liberal Democrat leader, Charles Kennedy, said: 'Ever since she described the prime minister as "reckless", it has been obvious to all that she was deeply worried by the government's policy in Iraq."

"'The fact that one of Tony Blair's own cabinet ministers believes so passionately that he has failed to secure this vital role for the UN, in spite of assurances to her, is deeply revealing.'"

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"Sen. Bob Graham on Sunday accused the Bush administration of engaging in a 'coverup' of intelligence failures before and after the Sept. 11 attacks to shield it from embarrassment, and said the war with Iraq has allowed Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups to become a greater threat to Americans than ever before.

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But it could as easily backfire: if the Dems are wrong, it will give firepower to neo-cons who publicly question their patriotism. Of course, Graham's making the claim to gain traction on the other Democratic presidential candidates--not to beat Bush. It's exactly the kind of thing that could play into Bush's hands, though--if the Democrats aren't willing to play as hard as Karl Rove (and no one has yet been).

"The group directing all known U.S. search efforts for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is winding down operations without finding proof that President Saddam Hussein kept clandestine stocks of outlawed arms, according to participants.

"The 75th Exploitation Task Force, as the group is formally known, has been described from the start as the principal component of the U.S. plan to discover and display forbidden Iraqi weapons. The group's departure, expected next month, marks a milestone in frustration for a major declared objective of the war."

This is both a major news story and a story about the news. The implications of not finding WMD are staggering--if not for the Bush White House at home, then for the stature of America internationally. While Americans yawned through the whole affair, it turns out it was a pretty big deal elsewhere. Even if Americans won't remember Colin Powell waving the vial, or President Bush using WMD as his very tenuous argument for a "self defence" invasion, I'm gonna go ahead and wager that the average, say, French person, will.

I spent the day with my Mom, and in the passing contact I had with the news (NPR), I didn't hear the report. Naturally, I assumed it was in error. But a search on Google finds a few news sources picking up the story. So apparently, it's true. What's really fascinating--or revealing is that in modern America, this ain't news. To tie it in to the whole election-strategy thing, it's a perfect example of how there's no accountability left in American politics. Everything is defined by an increasingly short half-life of news cycles. The President can lie to the public, invade a country on the basis of the lie, and when the lie is exposed...nothing. This is what the Democrats are up against in next year. They fail to include it in their strategy at their own peril.

"Shulsky’s work has deep theoretical underpinnings. In his academic and think-tank writings, Shulsky, the son of a newspaperman—his father, Sam, wrote a nationally syndicated business column—has long been a critic of the American intelligence community. During the Cold War, his area of expertise was Soviet disinformation techniques. Like Wolfowitz, he was a student of Leo Strauss’s, at the University of Chicago. Both men received their doctorates under Strauss in 1972. Strauss, a refugee from Nazi Germany who arrived in the United States in 1937, was trained in the history of political philosophy, and became one of the foremost conservative émigré scholars. He was widely known for his argument that the works of ancient philosophers contain deliberately concealed esoteric meanings whose truths can be comprehended only by a very few, and would be misunderstood by the masses. The Straussian movement has many adherents in and around the Bush Administration. In addition to Wolfowitz, they include William Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard, and Stephen Cambone, the Under-Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, who is particularly close to Rumsfeld. Strauss’s influence on foreign-policy decision-making (he never wrote explicitly about the subject himself) is usually discussed in terms of his tendency to view the world as a place where isolated liberal democracies live in constant danger from hostile elements abroad, and face threats that must be confronted vigorously and with strong leadership.

"Strauss’s idea of hidden meaning, Shulsky and Schmitt added, 'alerts one to the possibility that political life may be closely linked to deception. Indeed, it suggests that deception is the norm in political life, and the hope, to say nothing of the expectation, of establishing a politics that can dispense with it is the exception.'

Robert Pippin, the chairman of the Committee on Social Thought at Chicago and a critic of Strauss, told me, 'Strauss believed that good statesmen have powers of judgment and must rely on an inner circle. The person who whispers in the ear of the King is more important than the King. If you have that talent, what you do or say in public cannot be held accountable in the same way.' Another Strauss critic, Stephen Holmes, a law professor at New York University, put the Straussians’ position this way: 'They believe that your enemy is deceiving you, and you have to pretend to agree, but secretly you follow your own views.' Holmes added, 'The whole story is complicated by Strauss’s idea—actually Plato’s—that philosophers need to tell noble lies not only to the people at large but also to powerful politicians.'”

"More than half the President’s tax cuts would come in the form of abolishing the taxation of corporate dividends. The primary recipients would be rich people and senior citizens, since they own most of the dividend-yielding stocks. For example, Sanford Weill, the chairman of Citigroup, would get a tax cut of about six million dollars. Based on 2001 figures, Vice-President Dick Cheney would save about a hundred thousand dollars. The dividend plan might persuade yacht builders and assisted-living communities to hire some extra help, but it won’t do much for the rest of the nearly nine million unemployed.

"...[E]ach new job would cost the government five hundred and fifty thousand dollars in lost revenues, which is about seventeen times the salary of the average American worker. It would be far cheaper for the federal government to give private firms subsidies to hire more people, or to give money to the states, which are facing their worst financial crisis since the Second World War, and which at this moment are being forced to fire teachers, troopers, and health workers. Parks, museums, and libraries are closing; cultural programs are being cut. College-tuition fees are rising, and scholarships are vanishing. Hundreds of thousands of people stand to lose their state-provided health-care coverage. (Meanwhile, taxpayers will be laying out billions of dollars to reconstruct Iraq.)"

To underscore the three-point strategy, what should good lefties do with this information? To begin with, it seems clear America is pretty well aware of these data (or roughly aware): when polled, they say they believe his economic policies are unsound. This makes Democrats pull their hair out. And then they lamely point it out again, hoping that might do some good: the tax cuts are going to the rich; aren't you incensed? But of course, they're not.

It's because the paradigm hasn't shifted. This is where the slow uphill battle begins. Lefties have to take this information and put it aside. Whether or not to cut taxes is staying on-point for the President (or god forbid, whether the tax cut is $350 billion or $550 billion!). Instead, Democrats would be wise to follow a strategy of promoting the ideas that would be good for the economy. These are, as everything needs to be, delivered on message as part of the positive, hopeful future-approach of the new Dems. Simply vote no on the legislation and begin moving forward. Then the question of why you voted no on the legislation leads you squarely back onto your message and your policies.

Ruby, who is Jewish, criticized the religious event for appearing to be sanctioned by the city because of its name. In addition, he noted that sponsors acknowledge the event is limited to Christian participation.

"The identification of the mayor's office with this program is wrong, and bad public policy, for several reasons," Ruby wrote Drake in March.

Using the word "mayors" to promote the breakfast violates the spirit if not the letter of the Constitution's separation of church and state, argued Ruby, a lawyer. The mayor, he said, should insist that any community program include the religions of all Beaverton residents. Oregonian, May 6, ’03

I’ve written about the Prayer Breakfasts before (here and here), but this is the first I’ve seen of someone taking issue with them. In this case, the group has planned to go ahead with the breakfast, noting that no public funds are being used. In a similar case in Georgia last year, a federal court ruled the same thing.

“On Jan. 7, U.S. District Judge Thomas Thrash ruled that East Point, Ga., can proceed with the community’s five-year tradition of having a prayer breakfast featuring local civic and religious leaders. Local officials, however, must not use city funds, employees, facilities or supplies to subsidize the events.”

The ruling seems appropriate, and I expect nothing more to be made of the case in Oregon. But as I’ve mentioned in the past, while these things may be legal, they’re still a bit creepy—particularly when the government is sanctioning faith-based discrimination described in the blog below.

The prayer breakfast program is designed specifically to convert politicians and lobby them to craft Christian policy. From the prayer breakfast website: “Our purpose is to reach leaders for Jesus Christ.” Politicians involved in the movement—the organizers—make it clear that the fidelity to Christ comes before the fidelity to nation.

And the parent group, the Full Gospel Business Men’s Fellowship International, is a full-on missionizing group. From its mission and doctrinal statements:

• To reach men in all nations for Jesus Christ

• We believe in the Bible, in its entirety, to be the inspired Word of God and the only infallible rule of faith and conduct.

• We believe in intensive world evangelization and missionary work in accordance with the Great Commission, with signs following.

And if that’s not enough to demonstrate what kind of mental model this group works from, there’s this (from the mission preamble): “We see a vast global movement of laymen being used mightily by God to bring in this last great harvest through the outpouring of God’s Holy Spirit before the return of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I think Fred Ruby was right to question the prayer breakfast in Washington County. I think it’s also fair to ask leaders who attend this question: based on the mission of the groups who organize these events, do you craft your legislation to serve your god, or the people of Washington County? If it’s not the people of Washington County, they have a right to know.

"The Workplace Investment Act is how America funds job training efforts. President Bush and his pals want to ensure that a religious charity can decide it won't hire, say, Muslims, and that's OK, even if it receives taxpayer money -- some of which may actually come from actual, non-bigots who may be concerned about this -- to do its work." Tarek, May 8, '03

The author cites a couple of articles describing the legislation. From the Washington Post:

"The $4 billion Workforce Investment Act, the country's main job training legislation, is the latest battleground in President Bush's effort to channel more government funds to religious charities without forcing them to change their policies and practices.

Last month, Senate Republicans bowed to Democratic pressure and removed references to faith and religion from legislation originally designed to make it easier for religious charities to receive federal funds. Now, Republicans are pressing on another front. They say religious organizations -- regardless of whether they receive federal funds -- must be free to preserve their essential character by hiring people who share their beliefs."

More troubling is a report from the Boston Globe that identified changes already made by the White House.

"The Bush administration has quietly altered regulations for the nation's leading job training program to allow faith-based organizations to use ''sacred literature,'' such as Bibles, in their federally funded programs. Civil liberties activists say the new rules blur the line between religion and government.

"The change, made by the US Labor Department last month, could allow faith-based groups to use religious books as historical texts or as inspirational stories for job seekers, as long as organizations do not proselytize or conduct prayer sessions....

"In guidelines published on April 4, the Labor Department said the job training grants 'may not be used for instruction in religion or sacred literature, worship, prayer, proselytizing, or other inherently religious practices.'

'''The services provided under these grants must be secular and nonideological,' the guidelines said then.

"But in amended guidelines published in the Federal Register on April 18, the words 'sacred literature' were removed, along with the sentence saying that the services provided must be secular and nonideological."

I suppose it bears mentioning that if the law passes and the guidelines remain, the court may still have a role to play. I’m not convinced that the increasingly conservative courts would find this a First Amendment violation. They might well argue that because the grants are given to all religious groups, they can’t be said to represent an establishment of religion.

In any case, it is further evidence that policy decisions are increasingly being guided by faith. That almost all our elected officials happen to hail from a single religion is troublesome indeed. (If a few more of these grants were going to Muslim organizations, we might see a different attitude.)

Foreign Policy: F. In his first two years in office, the President has invaded two countries, offended the world, fomented hatred and fundamentalism throughout the Middle East, neglected the Israel situation, created a nuclear situation in North Korea, avoided participation on several world treaties and initiatives, isolated himself in the UN and NATO, alienated both North American partners, and lied to the country about the justification for toppling a sovereign nation. In two years!

Environment: F. This was expected, as most of the Bush appointees have strong ties to big oil. Bush’s policies regarding the environment have, without exception, reduced protection and regulation. Where policy is needed to protect the environment, Bush was absent.

Economy: D-. He came into office at the beginning of a recession and worsened it.
He has presided over two bull markets, the collapse of the tech sector, and scandals involving under-regulated corporations (including his buddies in the oal bidnez). More jobs have been lost than any time since the start of the depression. He’s cut taxes to the benefit of the wealthy, who have returned the favor by not investing, and now the country’s looking at record deficits (which will get worse as the war effort thunders on—though at least it will benefit his buddies at Halliburton!). I guess he did appoint Greenspan again, though.

Crime: D. Although the President really rocks at the punishment side of things (John Ashcroft continues to impress as being just slightly right of Joe McCarthy in his approach to civil liberties), he’s been pretty mediocre on the crime side. By bankrupting the states, he’s ensured local police’s continued erosion. But hey, as long as the crime rate stays low….

Education: C-. This might have been the President’s greatest domestic success. The “No Child Left Behind” initiative, though mildly controversial, was an impressive piece of policy. Too bad the President’s greatest weakness—his distractibility—intervened. After it became law, he failed to fund it at the state level, where in now withers on the vine. Oh yeah, and there was that business of taking the lunches out of kiddies mouths.

Social Services: F. The only folks getting money from this administration arrive to lobby the President in limos. If you’re poor, female, a parent, or unmarried, you’re out of luck with Bush. If you wanted his help, you should have been in the Skull and Crossbones.

Leadership: F. Bush strikes quite a pose. He fancies himself a conquering hero, complete with flyboy jumpsuit (macho for the camera, not so macho when he was hiding out in the 60s). But there has never been a more secretive, dishonest president than George W. It may take decades to sort out the deception he’s foisted on an unsuspecting electorate.

Ecumenicalism: F. I think my documentation here is well-established.

Terrorism: D. Although he’s released the hounds to go after Muslim- and Arab-Americans, implemented a handy color-coded alarm system, tried to get TIPS up and running, and invaded Iraq, there’s no real evidence that we’re any safer now than two years ago. (There’s ample evidence that we have fewer rights, though!)

Of course, this report card, though I think historically accurate, is not the one given by the majority of Americans, nor the press. It doesn’t seem to matter what the President does—the coverage is generally positive, no hard questions are asked, and the public gives a toothy smile and a big thumbs up.

The reason is because this president understands at least one part of history very well: Americans are a deeply fearful people, and under threat, they will willingly support whomever looks the most likely to keep them safe, at whatever cost. And for those who can remember back to the post-Carter rhetoric of the Republicans, there’s only one party who can do that. Barring some unforeseen catastrophe, George W. Bush will ride the fear of terrorism back into office, no matter what his policies are.

”Nevertheless, beyond all these more obvious anti-environmental motivations there lies a more deep-seated inspiration. Difficult as it may be to believe, many of the conservatives who have great influence in the Bush administration and now in Congress are governed by a Higher Power….

“Some true believers, interpreting biblical prophecy, are sure they will be saved from the horrific destruction brought by ecosystem collapse. They'll be raptured: rescued from Earth by God, who will then rain down seven ghastly years of misery on unbelieving humanity. Jesus' return will mark the Millennium, when the Lord restores the Earth to its green pristine condition, and the faithful enjoy a thousand years of peace and prosperity.”

But wait, there’s more. In a competing interpretation of ecological pillaging, the “reconstructionists”

”Reconstructionists believe the Lord will provide, and their view is laid out in ‘America's Providential History,’ a religious right high school history textbook: ‘The secular or socialist has a limited resource mentality and views the world as a pie... that needs to be cut up so everyone can get a piece,’ write authors Mark Beliles and Stephen McDowell. ‘In contrast, the Christian knows that the potential in God is unlimited and that there is no shortage of resources in God's Earth. The resources are waiting to be tapped.’

“In another passage, the writers explain: ‘While many secularists view the world as overpopulated, Christians know that God has made the Earth sufficiently large with plenty of resources to accommodate all of the people.’ Fossil fuels and forests are like the loaves and fishes, Reconstructionists say, miraculously multiplying for true believers.”

You must read the article to believe it. The only thing more bizarre than these beliefs are the possibility that they’re dictating policy in the White House and on the hill. The article’s convincing enough to scare you to death. For example:

“In the early days of the current administration, the news was full of Bush appointments of foxes to guard the hen house. Gale Norton, a mining industry lobbyist, became Secretary of the Interior. Steven Griles, a lobbyist for Big Coal, was appointed Norton's second-in-command. Now, the Washington Post reports an even more disturbing trend: Bush ‘has begun a broad restructuring of the scientific advisory committees that guide federal policy.’ These largely anonymous committees of scientists, lawyers and academics make recommendations vital to determining health and environmental risk.

“Replaced, for example, were 15 members of a 17-person Department of Health and Human Services committee that assesses the impacts of low-level exposure to environmental chemicals on human health. New Bush-imposed panel appointees include chemical industry advocates and a California scientist who helped defend Pacific Gas and Electric Company against the real-life Erin Brockovich.

“More troubling is the case of W. David Hager, one of Bush's nominees to the influential Food and Drug Administration panel on women’s health policy. Hager, says the New York Times, has a resume ‘more impressive for theology than gynecology.’ Hager emphasizes the restorative power of Jesus Christ in one's life and recommends specific Scripture readings to treat headaches, eating disorders and premenstrual syndrome.”

I know, I know, I’m an alarmist. But I’ll tell you what—I’m alarmed!

"The Environmental Protection Agency has been privately negotiating with large industrial livestock farms to offer them amnesty from the Clean Air Act and existing Superfund laws, people involved in the talks say.

"Instead of enforcing these environmental laws, the agency would monitor pollution levels at 30 or so large hog and chicken operations, under a plan circulated between agency officials and the industry."

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From the Raping the Worker Division:

"A bill pending in the House of Representatives would allow businesses with union workers to reduce their company pension obligations by billions of dollars, because statistics show that most blue-collar workers do not live as long as other Americans.

"The provision, which has gone largely unnoticed in a broad pension bill, is being supported by the United Auto Workers and manufacturing companies whose pension funds now have assets far short of what they are projected to need under previous assumptions about worker longevity.

"The measure would allow companies to assume that their blue-collar workers will on average die sooner than pension plans now assume they will. So companies, not having to plan to pay future blue-collar pensions as long as they now do, would not be required to put aside as much pension money as government regulations now require them to do."
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From the Presidential Mendacity Division:

"When I raised the Mystery of the Missing W.M.D. recently, hawks fired barrages of reproachful e-mail at me. The gist was: 'You *&#*! Who cares if we never find weapons of mass destruction, because we've liberated the Iraqi people from a murderous tyrant.'

"But it does matter, enormously, for American credibility. After all, as Ari Fleischer said on April 10 about W.M.D.: 'That is what this war was about.'

"I rejoice in the newfound freedoms in Iraq. But there are indications that the U.S. government souped up intelligence, leaned on spooks to change their conclusions and concealed contrary information to deceive people at home and around the world.

"Let's fervently hope that tomorrow we find an Iraqi superdome filled with 500 tons of mustard gas and nerve gas, 25,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 29,984 prohibited munitions capable of delivering chemical agents, several dozen Scud missiles, gas centrifuges to enrich uranium, 18 mobile biological warfare factories, long-range unmanned aerial vehicles to dispense anthrax, and proof of close ties with Al Qaeda. Those are the things that President Bush or his aides suggested Iraq might have, and I don't want to believe that top administration officials tried to win support for the war with a campaign of wholesale deceit."
--Nicholas Kristoff, today

From the Emperor-Has-no-Clothes Division:

"Mind you, it was funny. At first the White House claimed the dramatic tail-hook landing was necessary because the carrier was too far out to use a helicopter. In fact, the ship was so close to shore that, according to The Associated Press, administration officials 'acknowledged positioning the massive ship to provide the best TV angle for Bush's speech, with the sea as his background instead of the San Diego coastline.'

"A U.S.-based British journalist told me that he and his colleagues had laughed through the whole scene. If Tony Blair had tried such a stunt, he said, the press would have demanded to know how many hospital beds could have been provided for the cost of the jet fuel.

"But U.S. television coverage ranged from respectful to gushing. Nobody pointed out that Mr. Bush was breaking an important tradition. And nobody seemed bothered that Mr. Bush, who appears to have skipped more than a year of the National Guard service that kept him out of Vietnam, is now emphasizing his flying experience. (Spare me the hate mail. An exhaustive study by The Boston Globe found no evidence that Mr. Bush fulfilled any of his duties during that missing year. And since Mr. Bush has chosen to play up his National Guard career, this can't be shrugged off as old news.)"
--Paul Krugman, today

$20 to 30k - $199
$40 to 50k - $482
$100-200k - $2,646
$500-1 mil - $18,047
1 mil+ $89,509

These require little analysis. Safe to say they clarify why the Bush is concerned about talk of a class war.

All right, enough for tonight.