Category: Politics, Policy & Culture

This Wesley Clark commercial is… well, bad doesn’t even begin to describe it.
I wonder if he knows enough to be embarrassed.

President Bush yesterday tried to pass blame to the Navy for the boastful Mission Accomplished banner that trumpeted what Bush then called the end of major combat in Iraq.

This is a load of crap, and yet another in a long line of untruths to come from Bush and his administration.

Back when things were looking a bit rosier for the Bush Administration, White House officials weren’t so shy in taking credit for the Hollywood stagecraft that provides a cover for the emperor with no clothes.

In an article last May, the New York Times covered the efforts of the Bush White House to put a positive visual spin on presidential events.

Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights
The most elaborate — and criticized — White House event so far was Mr. Bush’s speech aboard the Abraham Lincoln announcing the end of major combat in Iraq. White House officials say that a variety of people, including the president, came up with the idea, and that Mr. Sforza embedded himself on the carrier to make preparations days before Mr. Bush’s landing in a flight suit and his early evening speech.

What I find tragic is that it takes a disaster in Iraq to begin prying people’s eyes open to the fast and loose manner with which Bush and his administration play with the truth. This administration has been misleading the American people from the very start on a wide range of issues. But it takes a mistake that’s costing American lives, hundreds of billions of dollars and attention that should be focused elsewhere to shock people out of their stupor. Maybe.

Bush ‘not paying attention’ to Democratic race
Associated Press

Bush said he insulates himself from the “opinions” that seep into news coverage by getting his news from his own aides. He said he scans headlines, but rarely reads news stories. “I appreciate people’s opinions, but I’m more interested in news,” the president said. “And the best way to get the news is from objective sources, and the most objective sources I have are people on my staff who tell me what’s happening in the world.”

Found on Kottke

I’ve been thinking in recent weeks about how former President Clinton developed a reputation as a liar. And how President Bush has taken lying to a whole new level, and yet maintains a reputation as an honest, “straight-shooter.” (There’s likely a puritanical ethic mixed up in there somewhere.)

The Bush White House is clever at lying, but a bigger problem seems to be two-fold. First, for the most part, the press in this country plays the role of lap-dog. Second, the American people apparently really, really want to believe that Bush is an honest, decent President, despite ample evidence to the contrary.

Whether or not the President will be able to continue tossing out outrageous whoppers is not clear. Despite what the President says, things are not getting any better either in this country or in those parts of the world the U.S. now occupies.

To help catalog the divide between reality and Bush-speak, the folks at MoveOn.org have started Misleader.org: A daily chronicle of Bush Administration distortion.

Misleader.org will provide an accurate daily chronicle for journalists of mis-representations, distortions and downright misleading statements by President Bush and the Bush Administration.

The site just started, so it’s a little light on content now. I figure they could build a pretty impressive archive section if they set their minds to it.

Cranky contrarian Christopher Hitchens takes a refreshing — if somewhat scattered — whack at the Ten Commandments.

The Commandments and immorality
msnbc.com

It’s obviously too much to expect that a Bronze Age demagogue should have remembered to condemn drug abuse, drunken driving, or offenses against gender equality, or to demand prayer in the schools. Still, to have left rape and child abuse and genocide and slavery out of the account is to have been negligent to some degree, even by the lax standards of the time. I wonder what would happen if secularists were now to insist that the verses of the Bible that actually recommend enslavement, mutilation, stoning, and mass murder of civilians be incised on the walls of, say, public libraries?
There are many more than 10 commandments in the Old Testament, and I live for the day when Americans are obliged to observe all of them, including the ox-goring and witch-burning ones. (Who is Judge Moore to pick and choose?) Too many editorialists have described the recent flap as a silly confrontation with exhibitionist fundamentalism, when the true problem is our failure to recognize that religion is not just incongruent with morality but in essential ways incompatible with it.

What better way for the American government to mark the 58th anniversary this week of the bombing of Hiroshima than to hold a secret meeting to plan for expansion of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

To paraphrase the always-colorful, ever-diplomatic North Korean Foreign Ministry:

“We know that there are arrogant bastards within the present U.S. administration but have not yet found out such rude human scum as those who would so insensitively dismiss victims of U.S. weapons of mass destruction. This meeting is no more than rubbish which can be let loose only by beastly men bereft of reason.”

As America continues along on its clumsy, reactionary path to the future, its northern neighbor quietly and confidently charts a different course.

Another plus for living in Seattle — it’s close to the border. Of course, any day now Canada is likely to be included on the U.S. government’s Axis of Evil list, and Bush will create jobs for the ailing economy through construction of a border wall that’ll put all others to shame.

When the emperor has no clothes, stagecraft is very important.
Keepers of Bush Image Lift Stagecraft to New Heights
The New York Times on the Web

On Tuesday, at a speech promoting his economic plan in Indianapolis, White House aides went so far as to ask people in the crowd behind Mr. Bush to take off their ties, WISH-TV in Indianapolis reported, so they would look more like the ordinary folk the president said would benefit from his tax cut.

Salon has a piece on the increasing powers of secrecy wielded by the U.S. government, and the deterioration of important checks and balances in the system. The situation is bad enough now, but it will get worse if planned legislation is passed.
The secret society
Salon.com News

In the war on terror — and outside of it — the Bush administration is finding increasing latitude to operate with secrecy as the norm, and accountability the exception. Congress has handed the administration broad new powers without requiring it to account for their use, while courts have repeatedly granted the government the right to operate outside the public view and — at times — without any possibility of judicial review.
And if Attorney General John Ashcroft and Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch have their way, the situation may soon get much worse. Ashcroft’s Justice Department is apparently eyeing legislation — dubbed PATRIOT Act II — that would further expand the administration’s powers to act in unilateral silence. Meanwhile, Hatch is working to make PATRIOT Act I permanent now — it is currently set to expire in 2005 — before Congress can consider whether the Justice Department is making appropriate use of the broad surveillance powers provided by it.
Steven Aftergood, a researcher who monitors government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists, calls Hatch’s proposal a “direct assault” on Congress’ ability to monitor the Justice Department. “If it goes through, we might as well go home,” he told Salon. “The administration will have whatever authority it wants, and there won’t be any separation of powers at all.”

The article doesn’t really cover much new, but it does offer a reminder that there is still time for Congress to temper the excesses of the Bush administration. This will only happen if members of Congress have the support of their constituents. Now is the time to contact your representatives to let them know how you feel about the direction Bush is taking the country.
(To read Salon’s content, you’ll need to either be a member or watch a short commercial.)

Over at Antipixel, Jeremy vents about the destruction of the Koranic library in Baghdad. See also his post on the ransacking of Iraq’s National museum.