The other day, Rep. Jim McDermott, a Washington Democrat, led the House in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance and left out the words "under God."
Yesterday, the House Democratic leader, Nancy Pelosi, chastised him.
She said she thinks that won’t happen again.
Also yesterday the nation inaugurated the World War II Memorial on the Washington mall, with thousands of surviving veterans attending.
Since the phrase was added in the 1950s, not one World War II soldier, sailor or flier had pledged allegiance to the nation "under God."
Yet, somehow, they did what they had to so well that we call them the "Greatest Generation." The dead and the living both.
May God save us from the religious.
In these tough times, we really need to laugh, so I pass along this AP story:
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia says judges have become too much like politicians, trying to "do what the people want" instead of what the Constitution actually commands.
Sinclair Broadcast Group, owner of six ABC affiliates, said none of its stations would air tonight’s edition of "Nightline," during which Ted Koppel will read the names of US military personnel killed in Iraq. Sinclair said the program "appears to be motivated by a political agenda designed to undermine the efforts of the United States in Iraq."
Also, a Sinclair spokesman said the program was "trying to stir up negative emotions in our involvement in the war…"
That’s in a Newsday story picked up by the Albuquerque Journal this morning.
Terrible, isn’t it? First, the pinkos show photographs of the coffins of dead American soldiers. Now they want to name them! Hey, if this goes on, we may get fewer young Americans to die for …for…well, freedom.
The freedom of TV owners to censor news, that is.
PS The Albuquerque Journal’s Op-Ed offerings today are from Charles Krauthammer, John Dendahl and one Gene Healy of the CATO Institute - a Washington, DC rightist, a Santa Fe rightist and a libertarian.
(Actually, the CATO guy is arguing for individual liberties of the Constitutional kind, but you get my drift. The Journal, like Sinclair Broadcasting, believes deeply in its first Amendment right to create an unbalanced marketplace of ideas.)
President Bush likes describing himself as a "war president." No wonder - as Commander-in-Chief, he enjoys a huge advantage in the campaign.
If Sen. Kerry has any edge, it’s that he fought in Vietnam while Bush ducked the war. So if you are Karl Rove or the Republican National Committee, your job is to counter that.
How? Well, you cannot change the facts but you can make the contrast less sharp. Dull it. Reduce its impact. Move it off center-stage.
The RNC is doing that, first, by suggesting that Kerry’s stand against the Vietnam War after he returned undermined the troops still in harm’s way. (As if bringing them home was not in the best way to save them.)
Secondly, it is raising questions about whether he really did throw away his medals.
I suspect they hope to fog and confuse the issue to the point where voters say, "Hey, that’s history. Who cares about Vietnam? Let’s talk about today’s issues."
That would effectively blunt the issue, taking off the table the contrast between Kerry’s meritorious service and Bush’s …well, Bush’s flight from the possibility of Vietnam combat, his use of his father’s influence to jump the line to enroll in the "champagne" unit of the Texas Air National Guard.
And the strategy seems to be working.
A few weeks ago, the Albuquerque Journal’s favorite Hispanic columnist, Texan Ruben Navarrette Jr., wrote a piece saying Vietnam era stuff is irrelevant.
Today, Trever’s Journal cartoon makes the same point. In doing so, it contrasts Kerry’s medals with Bush’s Guard attendance. No mention of George’s Vietnam-dodging.
Also today, in the AP report that Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D, NJ) called VP Cheney the "lead chickenhawk," there’s a reference to whether George W. fulfilled his Guard responsibilities. But no reference to the President’s evasion of Vietnam.
If I were Rove or the RNC, I’d be pleased.
Albuquerque’s Mayor, Martin Chavez, told the Albuquerque Journal he’s getting along with the City Council, even though the Council is "a lot further left than I am."
The words were not uttered carelessly. Mayor Marty believes his political health depends on never being perceived as a liberal.
That’s Governor Richardson’s approach, too.
And, of course, the Democratic candidate for President, Sen. John Kerry, recently declined to say he was a liberal.
As intelligent men, each understands the political penalty attached to the word "liberal."
They may not understand, however, the penalties involved in ducking. One is that you are perceived as a waffler. Right now, that’s what is happening to Kerry even as George W. Bush is seen as a straight-talker.
Further, they may not understand how easy it would be to defend liberalism.
If it were up to conservatives, for example, there might be no United States of America. Known as Tories then, they sided with the King, remember?
If not for liberals, we might not have survived Hitler. Conservatives – Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh and major industrial leaders - thought we could get along with him. The radical right of the time – Father Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith, the German-American Bund - found him congenial.
Or the Depression. The free market folks who got us into the Depression had no idea how to get us out. FDR’s New Deal didn’t succeed either, but softened the blow for millions of middle-class and poor Americans until World War II revived the economy. (Roosevelt described himself, remember, as "a little left of center.)
Mind you, conservatives are not, need not be the enemy, for the folks in the White House have no right to that term. They are big government folks, claiming all kinds of power for the Executive, lying to the Congress, ignoring State’s rights and individual liberties.
Also, in their passion to reward the rich and the corporate elite, they have given liberals a gift.
A liberal candidate can say today, "If a balanced budget is liberal, that’s me."
He could go on to say, "If considering war a last resort is liberal, that’s me, too."
"If sharing some of the wealth this country produces with its middle-class is liberal," hey, you got me.
You get the idea. Don’t let the opposition win the language wars. And remember, the best defense is a good offense.
The death of an NFL star who thought fighting for his country was more important than football makes me sad for reasons I have not yet seen in the press.
First, it's a reminder that society doesn't change its ancient, murderous habits. Old men still send young men to die in war.
It's a reminder, too, that young men - and now, women - are prone to fall in love with good causes. Love, of course, is blind.
I was struck by where and how the young man died. In Afghanistan, by ambush. Didn't we win that war?
Richard Romero says he will be a better candidate against Heather Wilson this time around.
I think he's right, thanks to Miles Nelson.
Dr. Nelson, competing with Romero for the Democratic nomination, is airing radio commercials that hit the Congresswoman hard.
You will remember that Romero spent much of the last campaign demonstrating that he is a reasonable guy. I think that's true, but nice guys finish last when they tussle with tough women with big bankrolls.
Dr. Nelson is going after Wilson on her support for the Medicare prescription drug bill. That's the bill that may help some Medicare recipients but will definitely enrich the pharmaceutical and health insurance industries.
Romero, too, should highlight Wilson's dedication to corporate welfare. (Of course, her record means she will get have all the dollars she needs from the drug barons, countless other corporations and the national GOP.)
I hope both Democrats remind voters that Vice-President Chaney, in Albuquerque a few months ago, praised Wilson for her support for the President's economic policies.
Is there anything more damning?
Bob Woodward’s book, "Bush at War", written with the help of the White House, made George W. Bush look like a hero for doing what any President would do in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.
So the President helped Woodward write his new book, too.
I gather that "Plan of Attack" makes it perfectly clear that Bush had a thing about Iraq before 9/11 and started planning the preemptive attack on Iraq shortly after 9/11. This confirms what former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill told us. It suggests, too, that Richard Clarke was accurate in saying the White House had its eye on Saddam Hussein, not al Qaeda.
So why isn’t the White House raging mad at Woodward?
I have now read two or three articles suggesting it’s because Woodward once again portrays Bush as a strong leader.
If so, we have a new insight into George W. Bush - namely, that he needs to see himself that way.
Who says politics cannot be fun?
George Buffett of Albuquerque wants to replace Mickey Barnett as the New Mexico GOP’s national committeeman. Noting that Barnett is a lobbyist for Santa Ana Pueblo and Correction Corporation of America, among others, Buffett recently wrote:
"The Republican Party should not be for sale."
Funny? But wait, here’s more proof of the joy of politics:
The Sandoval County Republican Central Committee censured Victoria Dunlap, the Republican County Clerk, for bringing "disgrace" to the party…"
Dunlap is the loose cannon who has tried to marry gay couples in defiance of state law.
GOP County Chairman Richard Gibbs said "Other than assassination, all we can do is censure her."
Wheee! A sense of humor. Give the guy a hand.
Of course, the Albuquerque Journal chastised Gibbs in an editorial this morning. Talk about political correctness.
PS There is nothing funny, of course, in the Sandoval GOP’s stand against gay marriage.
George Will's latest Newsweek column (April 28) expresses great doubt about the chances of planting democracy in Iraq or anywhere else.
A week earlier, Fareed Zakaria wrote a Newsweek story, "Our Last Real Chance", listing US "mistakes" in Iraq and explaining what should be done now.
While not quite a doubting Thomas, Tom Friedman of the NY Times also has been critical of the implementation of US policy in Iraq.
These three "experts" favored the premptive strike on Iraq. Now they have doubts.
Why didn't they understand from the get-go that the war on Iraq was a distraction from the war on terrorism? That it was likely to create more terrorists, not fewer. That unilateralism is dangerous and costly. That it was undertaken because a handful of ideologues with a Wilsonian dream persuaded an ignorant President. (You remember Woodrow Wilson, the guy who got us into World War I for questionable reasons, then helped produce Versailles, which led to Hitler and WWII.)
And that nobody knows how to create democracy.
Lord save us from experts, in government and outside. Not just because they are so often wrong, but because they do not believe in American democracy. Iraq is a perfect example of policy determined by a tiny cabal whose penchant for secrecy and duplicity makes the Nixon White House, by contrast, look open.
And neither Will, Zakaria nor Friedman beefed.
PS I suspect none of them has complained either about George W. Bush's ban on pictures of GI coffins. Hey, they're above politics.
Reading about reactions to Mel Gibson's "Passion", I was inspired to write a short item.
Gibson's film, a reflection of his faith, has clearly struck a nerve with believers, I would say. But "faith" is not what's needed these days. We need "good works."
This morning I picked up the latest Newsweek, which reports that George W. Bush "leads and runs unapologetically on faith."
That moves the subject - faith - from the religious to the societal. in that context, Americans have much too much faith and much too little doubt.
I think Louis Auchincloss is a lawyer who once dealt in the bond market. That is what I remember, vaguely. I am certain he comes from the WASP elite and has written a great number of novels about his class in New York and Boston, about Wall Street and "prestigious" law firms. "The Rector of Justin" probably is his best known work.
Years ago I read one Auchincloss novel that so impressed me, I arranged to interview him on the air at Financial News Network. My recollection is that he was quiet, pleasant, understated, somber. Sort of Nantucket walking.
All this by way of recommending "Scarlet Letters," (Houghton Mifflin, 2003), which I have just read. Once again, it’s about his class, but since it begins on Wall Street in the 1950s, it is also about the evolution of law from a profession to a business. It touches, too, on "insider trading" and market manipulation.
Still Auchincloss is most interested in the behavior of American Protestant men and women born to wealth and tradition in the Northeast. And this latest mural, a painting of how they marry and compete and maintain themselves individually and as a class, just took my breath away.
If you read it, let me know what you think.
Here is my monthly Albuquerque Tribime column, New Wrinkles on Aging, published April 15:
Sneaky Labels, Slow Drivers - They Burn My Bacon
by Arthur Alpert
You do not have to be old to have peeves, but we ancient ones have had time to compile long lists. And time to feel more deeply about each vexation.
That is how my dictionary defines "peeve" - a vexation or grievance. So I will omit serious idiocies, those that boil the blood, and, of course, the "go postal" variety.
Ready? What kind of blankety-blanks leave their supermarket carts just where I want to pull in and park.
Inside the store, I find juice bottles so labeled as to move lots of sugary water off the shelves. I have a word for the marketing executives who affix those deceptive tags. The word is "Slimeball."
Too harsh? One brand of "juice cocktail" reads "100%." Ah, but look closely and it says, "100% vitamin," not 100% juice. Bet those labelers go to church Sundays, too.
I asked friends for favorite peeves. The eminently dignified Miriam Stucker cannot stand drivers who poke along at "two miles an hour" on major roadways. Because, she says, they provoke road rage in her.
Yeah. Me, too. And you know what? Those drivers often are – I cannot tell a lie – seniors.
My friend the Hispanic dentist (he likes anonymity) fears our fellow citizens who drive and talk on cell phones simultaneously. "They can’t be paying full attention," he says.
We had better get off the road. New Mexico driving could fill several columns.
Advertisers and newspapers bug me when they give only the store address. Say 456002 Menaul NE. Moriarty? Further east, in Hackensack, New Jersey? Where is it written that God will punish you for giving me a cross-street.
Speaking of the deity, I wish folks would quit telling me they’re Christian, Muslim , Orthodox Jewish, Mormon or born again, as if that tells me something about their behavior.
Ooops! That may be a blood-boiler. As another friend told me, "I don’t have peeves anymore. I have rages." Let us return to smaller stupidities.
Ever squeezed a plastic bottle from which the mustard flowed easily? Me, neither.
Then there is the 20-something store clerk of the female persuasion who calls me "Arthur." We have just met, don’t know each other, I am wearing my white hair and this Debbie person calls me "Arthur!"
Speaking of ignorance, please quit promising me "free gifts" that are "very unique."
Ah, language. I love huge corporations that call their mammoth divisions "our corporate family." Gag. Worse yet, some pretend to be human. How dare CBS tell me it "cares!"
I resent unpaid labor, too. Lately, I get to swipe my credit card myself (oh, joy), punch buttons and then sign my name on a receipt too skimpy to write on. Free.
Hey, all I ask is minimum wage.
Incidentally, the next clerk who looks at my credit card and asks for ID may get a knuckle sandwich. For my protection? How many thieves will use my card to get away with $3.85? And if there’s any cheating going on here, it’s the discount store (supermarket? gas station?) fibbing to Wall Street about its earnings and the IRS about its profits.
OK. I have vented. It is time now to think positively.
Or should I? If there’s anything I hate, it’s Pollyannas.
Let Alpert know what peeves you via ArthurAlpert@swcp.com.
His column appears the third Thursday of the month.
Why the war on Iraq? There are many justifications, but it is worth repeating that war – with its flags, martial music, heroes and invocations of our love for patria – has always worked for President-magicians anxious to take our eyes away from where they're doing the trick.
George W. Bush and Dick Chaney just paid a lot less in income taxes than they would have before the Administration’s tax "reforms."
So did their friends in the top two percent.
You didn’t notice?
George W. Bush can take a licking and keep on ticking.
Last night, he repeated the same old justifications for attacking Iraq and the heck with the facts – no WMDs? No ties to 9/11? No problem. New story: we did it to free the Iraqis.
On 9/11, if only he had known it was coming! No admission that he and his top advisers were focused on Iraq and missile defenses against North Korea. Despite a stream of alarming reports on al Qaeda’s intentions – the 9/11 Commission has just released the info – going back to the beginning of 2001 and culminating in the August 6 PDB.
He said things are improving in Iraq. This despite the bloodiest month since the fall of Baghdad - 83 dead American soldiers (the total is nearing 700), more than 560 wounded, plus the murders of several American civilians, ongoing hostage-taking and an uncertain number of Iraqi casualties.
He said whatever Gen. Abizaid wants, he gets. Like 10,000 more troops. As if that we always give the Generals what they need. In fact, the last military leader to say we needed more soldiers in Iraq was slapped down by Paul Wolfowitz, then by his boss, Donald Rumsfeld. That was General Shinseki. (Republican as well as Democratic Senators have been urging reinforcements for many months.)
I do not know if he was questioned on the post-war chaos, but everything that went wrong was predicted.
The Administration was told not to dismantle the Iraqi army. To impose order quickly so as to avoid looting and instability. That Chalabi, the exile crooked banker, had no popular base of support. Etc., etc.
It was all in State Department reports. It was all ignored by the ignorant and arrogant – Chaney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice and their leader, Bush.
And, like Timex, he just ignores it all.
Responding to questions last night, President Bush said he couldn’t cite any mistakes or failures of his as President.
Separately, Attorney-General John Ashcroft blamed the Clinton Administration for counter-terrorism failures, despite his having rejected extra funding for anti-terrorism on 9/10/04. Louis Freeh blamed inadequate budget. Janet Reno blamed the FBI.
Last week, Condoleeza Rice said it wasn’t the Bush Administration’s fault.
Perfect.
The only witness to take any responsibility at all has been Richard Clarke. I think I will re-read his book a little less sceptically.
I just heard President Bush's statement on Iraq. Well-written, I thought, and well-delivered. To the extent that it was an argument for staying the course. I mostly agree.
Then, in answer to the first couple of questions from reporters, the President retailed the same old fabrications. Once again, he wrapped his preemptive strike on Iraq into 9/11/01 and came up with a "war on terrorism." Once again, he asserted with no evidence that Iraq was a clear and present danger to us. Once again, the bold, probably untrue statement that we are safer with Saddam gone.
He even revived WMDs; well, I suppose ya oughta dance with the fable that brung ya.
But what got me was Bush's strong words, nearly eloquent, on the sacrifices of the US troops doing his bidding.
This from a President who won't allow TV to shoot pictures of those troops coming home from Iraq in coffins.
What a straight-talker. What a fine human is our President.
We say that, don’t we? "That’s history." Or, "He’s history." We mean, of course, that "that" or "he" are gone and may be forgotten.
And we are dead wrong.
I have been thinking about "history" ever since listening to Condoleeza Rice testify the other day that the August 6 PDB was mostly historical. And today a reader’s email helped me crystallize my ideas.
It is human nature to dismiss the past. Human nature is flawed. The past is never past, it is here and now, if only in the sense that we evaluate people and events in terms of what we have learned over the years.
Smart folks bring history to the fore, the better to see connections (or lack of) between yesterday and today, the better to be ready for the future. Thus, the CIA mined old and recent intelligence to brief the President.
I do not blame him for not screaming "Eureka!" after reading the material. But it’s plausible that he'd demand more from the briefer, pressure the CIA and FBI to review what they had and alert their troops and, maybe, review anti-hijack procedures, too.
In fact, Richard Clarke says Bush did pressure him to review his work and look for an Iraqi hand in 9/11.
If he didn’t do so after that August 6 briefing, the problem may have been "mind set." The new Administration was focused on Iraq (Clarke details that), not terrorism.
That’s all history, of course. Today’s problem is how to extricate ourselves from the Iraq debacle. To do so, we had better not forget how we got in.
It began when the Bush crowd, having failed to focus on terrorism, decided to use 9/11 to pursue a pre-existing agenda – war on Iraq. Thus, a "war on terrorism."
As if you can war on a tactic.
As if we had not already lost a "war on poverty" and a "war on drugs."
That’s history. Really useful, if you want to think.
The National Security Advisor said two things in her public testimony that grabbed me.
First, that President Bush wanted a comprehensive plan to go after al Qaeda. No more "swatting flies." The swatting of flies represents, I think, not just a condemnation of the Clinton record on terrorism, but the arrogance of the Bush team. There's a hint of "what did they do?" and "we'll do it right."
Without defending the Clinton record on terrorism, it's fair to say that Bush's arrogant rejection of other Clinton policies has been deadly. I'm thinking of the decision to disengage from the effort to knock Israeli and Palestinian heads. Result: more bloodshed. And of the decision to attack Iraq, a rejection of Clinton and Daddy Bush. Result: well, you know.
Secondly, Rice said the Presidential Brief of August 6 was mostly "historic."
We shall see. Perhaps I should say, we may see. The White House has delayed declassifying the PDB. My guess is they are editing it carefully. To make it more..er... historic?
Anybody here old enough to remember when the Nixon crowd did their own version of the uncriminating tapes?
Alan Varela of the State Workers Comp Administration wanted training in how to talk on TV. He got it. The State – that is, you and me – paid $1,270 for his lessons.
That is the gist of today’s Albuquerque Journal story.
Annoying, yes. But what gets my goat is this – a Workers Comp Administration superior, one George Lane, defended the expenditure!
They do lose touch, don’t they.
What’s New?
The papers are making a lot of the Presidential Daily Brief of August 6, 2001, that alerted George W. Bush to the chatter suggesting al Qaeda might be planning an attack in the US, an attack using hijacked airplanes. Also, that they planned an attack with explosives.
Boy, this bugs me. It’s not new. I read about that PDB a long time ago.
I understand that not many Americans pay as much attention as I do, but isn’t it the role of a free press to grab them by the shoulder and say, ":Listen, this is important"?
Oh, well. They know now that the President and his advisers knew something was up well before 9/11 and did little to stop it.
Fine. I still think Bush will survive politically unless and until there are big revelations on the Saudi Arabian front. I look forward to reading a book that goes deeply into the Saudi connection, "Ghost Wars", by Steve Coll, as well as the previously mentioned "House of Saud, House of Bush".
Alan Varela of the State Workers Comp Administration wanted training in how to talk on TV. He got it. The State – that is, you and me – paid $1,270 for his lessons.
That is the gist of today’s Albuquerque Journal story.
Annoying, yes. But what gets my goat is this – a Workers Comp Administration superior, one George Lane, defended the expenditure!
They do lose touch, don’t they.
In a column on jobs, right-winger and Bush apologist Charles Krauthammer attacks the Democrats again, writing that the "anti-outsourcing vogue is part of a larger assault on free trade…"
There he goes again. It’s either-or. If you do not favor losing jobs to India and China, you must be a -gasp! - protectionist.
Question – is Krauthammer an honest knee-jerk moralist who cannot see complexity? Or does he know that reality is rarely simple, but would rather put it aside to better clobber the Democrats.
I hope it is the first, that he’s not a cynical s-o-b. But I may be wrong.
"I’m not confiscatory," Kerry said, defending himself against charges he is a tax-and-spend liberal.
Not that and not an English speaker, either.
Trever’s cartoons in the Albuquerque Journal are often superior, even those with which I disagree. But cartoons, like news reports, need to be accurate and today’s is not.
Specifically, Trever credits Richard Nixon with getting us out of Vietnam. No, not so. Nixon campaigned on getting us out of Vietnam, won election and then kept us in Vietnam for years at the cost of many lives, Vietnamese and American.
We never got out of Vietnam. Eventually, the Vietnamese threw us out.
A funny thing happened to me when I did my regular chore at the Newsline for the Blind this morning. The reading was easy.
Let me explain. We volunteers read the daily paper into a computer, so New Mexicans who are blind can phone in and hear the news.
Generally I make a lot of mistakes when I read. (Happily, the system permits me to go back and correct them.) Today, though, I rarely stumbled. And today I was reading the USA Today Weekend insert for the first time.
Later, in conversation with Mike Santullo, boss of the Newsline, I realized that the insert is better written. "Better" means, first, that it lacks the daily paper's traditional impediments. Those attributions at the end of a sentence, for example. And the difficult words used because the writer doesn't work at finding simpler equivalents.
Putting it another way, USA Today Weekend is written and re-written with the reader in mind. You sure can't say that about most daily newspapers.
This is not to say that it's always worth reading; Lord save us from these dopey celebrity profiles. But today's issue did contain an interesting story suggesting that young people do, in fact, read newspapers.
I wonder how many more kids would pick up papers if they were readable.
As expected, Condoleeza Rice denied that the Bush Administration was slow to recognize the al Qaeda threat. She may, in fact, believe that.
She also testified today that Saudi Arabia is now a full partner in the war on terrorism. That is not true and probably a lie.
It is a reminder, too, that we, the people, still know almost nothing of the Saudi role in 9/11. It is not paranoid to suspect there is a smoking gun hidden in the Saudi connection.
I am not optimistic that we will learn much more before Election Day. Prince Bandar buddies up to Democrats, too. Remember his visit to Santa Fe to lunch with Bill Richardson?
Incidentally, the White House is lucky. Rice’s testimony on 9/11 coincides with further deterioration of the situation in Iraq, where a descent into civil war is an imminent danger. So the past obscured the present.
Too bad the 9/11 Commission is not probing the origins of our war on Iraq, the illusions and delusions of the cabal that pushed it and their failure, even today, to admit mistakes.
Clarke apologized to the 9/11 widows. Will Secretary Rumsfeld ever apologize to Gen. Shinseki, who made the mistake of telling Congress we would need lots more soldiers in Iraq?
The Albuquerque Tribune carried the following stories in its late edition Tuesday, April 6:
1. Most American corporations paid no income tax between 1996 and 2000, the GAO reported.
2. Murdoch said he’ll re-incorporate News Corporation in the US.
3. Bank of America said it will cut 12,500 jobs following its merger with FleetBoston Financial.
4. American workers’ share of the increase in national income since November 2001 is the lowest on record. For the first time ever, corporate profits got a larger share of the growth. The money from increased productivity was used to "boost profits, lower prices or increase CEO compensation." (This from a report by the Center for Labor Market Studies, Northeastern University, quoted by Bob Herbert of the NY Times.)
What a fascinating picture of the US economy! Too bad, though, that the Tribune did not have one more story – Allan Sloan’s Newsweek cover on the Bush tax policy.
Sloan writes "...if Bush gets what he wants, the income tax will be a misnomer – it will really be a salary tax.
Almost all income taxes would come from paychecks …meanwhile taxpayers receiving dividends, interest and capital gains…would have a much lighter burden than salary earners – or maybe none at all."
Get the picture?
One Llewellyn King, writing on media in today’s Albuquerque Journal, tells us that Al Franken "is Ann Coulter’s counterpoint."
Amazing.
Ann Coulter is so far out that she’s written that liberals are not just wrong but traitors. Franken enjoys taking on the right, but he isn’t very liberal. He likes Bill Clinton, fer gosh sakes.
But this fits beautifully with the Journal’s editorial and OpEd tastes.
They have a bunch of far right columnists and a few mildly liberal ones (Reeves, Raspberry). The Journal lacks a single liberal voice as strong on the left as say, Krauthammer is, on the right.
That's as I see it, of course.
I frequently make a presentation to civic groups around town that I call "How the News Gets Shaped". It contains observations on the differences between print and broadcast journalism and a brief history of TV news.
I always make the point that today’s TV writers, producers and reporters didn’t learn from reading the way their parents did. They grew up on pictures. However, I soon shut up, because I do not fully understand the deepest differences between the linear and the pictorial.
Now, the April issue of "Pediatrics" tells us that researchers at Children’s Hospital in Seattle heard from 1345 children and their parents on viewing habits and behavior. They concluded that the more TV watching the youngest kids did, the more likely they would have attention deficit problems by age 7. And beyond the over-stimulation, the researchers worry that TV watching might permanently "rewire" the developing brain.
This reinforces, says an AP story, the recommendation of the American Academy of Pediatrics that children under 2 not watch TV.
Different "wiring"?
Maybe this explains why the journalism young people offer is so lacking in content, coherence and depth.
Mind you, "different" does not always mean backward. I sense that younger Americans are miles ahead of my generation on issues like racial prejudice, for example. And the personhood of women.
Still, if I had children, I would keep them from television until they were deep into reading.
What’s going on here? The Bush Administration is treating Richard Clarke the way the Godfather deals with capos who cooperate with the DA, all to persuade us of what? Of a small point, that’s what.
I have read Clarke’s book and it doesn’t tell us much we didn’t already know. Clarke says that when the President and his men took power they had their own agenda and terrorism wasn’t a priority. Earlier, Paul O’Neill said that. Still earlier, George W. Bush said it.
From "Bush at War", by Bob Woodward, page 39:
"He acknowledged that bin Laden was not his focus or that of his national security team. 'There was a significant difference in my attitude after September 11. I was not on point, but I knew he was a menace and I knew he was a problem….
"I have no hesitancy about going after him . But I didn’t feel that sense of urgency, and my blood was not nearly as boiling.'"
So why not admit that?
The answer is obvious. They will then have to admit they came in with disdain for what Clinton had done and not just on terrorism. But, you say, Bush didn't invent that. All new administrations arrogantly sneer at their predecessors. That’s hardly a crime.
Ah, but if the Whiite House admits they were not focused on terrorism and preferred their own agenda to picking up where Clinton left off, what’s next?
Probably a new focus on how Bush reversed Clinton’s approach to Israel and the Palestinians – decided to adopt a hands-off posture - and sent that miserable situation spiraling into more hate and death.
And so on. Eventually, the picture of Bush as a straight-talking patriot, strong on terrorism, competent, will darken and peel and reveal itself to be painted on, a false representation of the man.
This could endanger his re-election. Too risky. Better to destroy Richard Clarke.
Driving back from my accountant – where I got the happy news that this year, unlike last, my income taxes will not support the entire US government – I heard ABC Radio News reporting that Colin Powell says he might have been wrong. He referred to that address before the UN where he supplied what he thought was solid evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.
All credit to Powell for admitting that. But it’s clear that he has been used, misused, by the President, Vice-President and Secretary of Defense. That is sad because Powell clearly is not a thug.
But it is just as clear that he is not a hero, either. Nobody gets used who doesn’t agree to it. When the chips were down, Powell followed orders. A real patriot would have put the country first, before its leaders, and quit.