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December 11, 2004
Give 'em Helen!
One of the many tragedies of the Bush administration is the banishing of Helen Thomas from participation in Bush's televised press conferences. For more than 30 years, Helen had the honor of the first question and the last word -- the signature, "Thank you, Mr. President."
Her questions for the chief executive were always hard-hitting, rarely comfortable, and never easily blown off. But for George W. Bush, who bristles and smirks when challenged on anything, Helen Thomas quickly wore out her welcome, especially after a very public (and spot on) comment in which she described 43 as the "worst president in history". On March 6, 2003, for the first time in three decades, Helen Thomas was publicly snubbed by Mr. Bush in prime time.
Since then, her diminutive frame and biting remonstrations have been relegated to the back of the room and her voice has been silenced in Bush's presence (for such a tough "bring 'em on" cowboy to fear her so much provides further insight into the Bubble Boy's true personality), but she remains a voice of conscience in the White House press corp.
Yesterday, she gave Press Secretary Scott McClellan a taste of the fire for which we love her.
It was an important exchange about Guantanamo and (very obvious) Geneva Convention violations at the hands of the United States military and Justice Department. Despite the seriousness of the content, the fact that the inquiry came from Helen will make you want to stand up and cheer. Read on...
HELEN THOMAS: I asked you the other day and didn't get an answer and I'll ask you again, do we follow the Geneva Conventions at Guantanamo?
MR. McCLELLAN: The President has already answered that question. We've answered that question on numerous occasions, Helen. The President's most solemn obligation is to protect the American people, and in terms of -- in terms of Guantanamo, it's related to the war on terrorism that we're fighting. We're fighting a different kind of war and we face an enemy like we have never faced before. The President designated individuals again Guantanamo as unlawful enemy combatants who do not share -- they are people who do not share our values, who do not respect the rule of law, and who have no regard for innocent --
HELEN THOMAS: You haven't even charged them.
MR. McCLELLAN: Helen, I'm going to move on to other people if you're not going to let me answer the questions.
HELEN THOMAS: Go ahead.
MR. McCLELLAN: I would like to answer your question and I'm trying to do that. We can disagree on the war on terrorism, but I want to make my points, too.
But these are people who have no regard for innocent civilian life, and the military -- and in terms of the military and the detainees who are at Guantanamo Bay, the President expects them to be treated humanely and consistent with the Geneva Conventions. That's what he has said to the Pentagon, and that's what he expects to happen. We are a nation of values and laws, and we adhere to our values and laws.
HELEN THOMAS: Why are there so many reports, then, of abuses at Guantanamo?
MR. McCLELLAN: You should direct your questions to the Department of Defense if there are any allegations of abuse. They take them very seriously.
HELEN THOMAS: You're not aware of any?
MR. McCLELLAN: Okay, Helen, we can disagree on this, but --
HELEN THOMAS: It isn't a question of -- I'm asking you a very valid question.
MR. McCLELLAN: And you're not letting me respond to it, Helen. I would like to respond to it, but you're not letting me.
HELEN THOMAS: You said that we don't really have to obey the law in this case, in terms of not giving these people a fair trial and charging them --
MR. McCLELLAN: These are people that are -- that do not adhere to the Geneva Conventions. These are enemy combatants who were picked up on the battlefield trying to do harm to Americans, or plotting to carry out attacks against the American people.
HELEN THOMAS: How do you know that without charging them?
MR. McCLELLAN: John, go ahead. Helen you've got to let me have a chance to respond. Thank you.
Thank YOU, Helen Thomas.
Read her syndicated column here.
11:05 PM | Comments (3) | Posted By Bob Cesca
What political capital?
The operative question on everyone's mind is: "What political capital?" Sure, we all know Bush's mandate isn't a real mandate. No doubt, this week, we've seen substantive proof.
With the turbulence of Bernard Kerik and the Intelligence Bill, and, to a degree, the traction of Rumsfeld's Kuwait debacle, we’re directly witnessing (not just hypothesising about) a president with no mandate behave as if he has a mandate, but now failing miserably as a result. But what appears, on the surface, to be a well deserved list of scandals and failures, could actually be a smoke screen – a continuing "Quick! Look over there!" posture in order to accomplish other, more subversive ends.
In January, Bush, wearing his mandate dentures, aims to strap himself to a political third rail by championing Social Security, tort, and tax reform. His post-election record to date has been predictably poor, while these daunting reforms have yet to reach the table.
Despite massive political support, Bush couldn't push the Intelligence Reform bill past his own allies in Congress without a second vote. What member of Congress would oppose and obstruct the agenda of a president who has the "will of the people"? The only reason the "will of the people" would be denied is if it doesn’t truly exist in the first place.
What's next?
Rumsfeld, this week, was scathingly grilled by soldiers in the field. Despite the right wing motives of the press, the story just won't go away. It's a broadly damaging incident for the last remaining high profile cabinet member -- the guy who Bush is keeping while the rest of the president's men fall away -- who stumbled into a major PR disaster, publicly and visibly exposing massive flaws in the administration's war machine. This, of course, in addition to everything else that's wrong with the Iraq picture.
What else?
Bush nominated an apparent hero for DHS, but Bush's Karate Kid nominee bailed after scathing details of his past were revealed in Newsweek and on the internet.
Had Bush's mandate been real, the White House would've pushed Kerik through (to the chagrin of anyone familiar with his past). In fact, a White House with a self-proclaimed mandate doesn't feel it necessary to vet nominees as thoroughly as a White House still proving its political muscle. A real mandate buys a lot of Congressional ignorance. Congress would've eaten Kerik alive, and rightfully so. The "reality" isn't matching the reality.
At this juncture, the seasoned post-9/11 Bush, who (allegedly) won the 2004 election by 3 million votes, is beginning to look strikingly similar to the meager, marginalized Bush of '00 and '01. No mandate, no matter how often he crows about it.
If he can’t promote "heroes" or pass bills with massive bipartisan and public support, how does he expect to push an insanely expensive privatization and deconstruction of Social Security? How, too, could he possibly take on tax reform, which involves rearranging one of the most massive and entrenched bureaucracies in Washington, and ever imagine being successful doing so?
There’s two potential outcomes: 1) He'll be, predictably, a terminally stalled chief executive. His second term agenda will be a disastrous roster of high profile political failure, and his legacy will be nonexistent. Or, 2) He’ll find another boogie man – just like before – that will serve as a vessel for Bush to replicate a sequel to his 2002 high water mark.
The latter is too frightening to consider, but it has to be something we keep our eye on. If it’s the former, could overt failures be irrelevant to Bush/Rove’s overall strategy? In other words, if there's more subversive goals are afoot, does it really matter whether or not these big ticket items succeed? While we’re focusing on who’s confirmed by Congress and what bills are mired in political stalemates on the Hill, what will the Bushies be up to behind the scenes?
Who knows how many levels of justice will be obstructed in the back rooms and corridors of high powered neocon planning sessions. Who knows how much farther our nation’s democracy will be subverted while we wring our hands over more public fiascos.
As we saw the first time around, a political empty shirt who can’t achieve what he sets forth in the headlines can be infinitely more dangerous behind closed doors. Mandate or no mandate -- failures or successes be damned, we’d be well served to keep an eye on what’s really going on.
After all, they've shown a penchant for managing questionable strategy under the radar like, say, slipping the Patriot Act through Congress while the nation was blinded by the destruction and uncertainty of 9/11. For crying out loud, in the midst of Abu Ghraib, missing explosives, mounting casualties in Iraq, and pathetic debate performances, they were somehow re-elected. Historians will be trying to figure that one out for generations to come. (The moral values answer has been mostly disproven, but it's a great example of a cooked up lure serving as a distraction from, say, the more underhanded explanation of possible election fraud.)
So it's entirely possible that the chess move is: a fabricated mandate allows for an over-reaching agenda, and an over-reaching agenda provides a formidable cover -- a false lead -- while a covert agenda is pursued.
09:37 AM | Comments (2) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 10, 2004
Kerik withdraws from DHS consideration
Didn't the White House vet this guy?
MSNBC just announced that Bernard Kerik is withdrawing himself from consideration for Secretary of Homeland Security. It's likely this has to do with concerns over why he mysteriously bolted from his training duties in Iraq, or the the $6 million in Taser stock options he received, or the bronze busts he made of himself using police funds, or the $50,000 door fiasco, or forcing off duty prison guards to volunteer for the GOP, or his statement, "Political criticism is our enemies' best friend."
If only all Bush cronies would withdraw when caught in wrong-doings and scandal.
10:06 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Miller blasts the New York Times
Mark Crispin Miller is arguably one of the finest progressive authors and thinkers of our time. Today, he wrote an open letter to the New York Times regarding their conspicuously nonexistant coverage of Wednesday's House Judiciary Committee hearings on Ohio voting irregularities. As always, Miller nailed it. Read the whole letter at Buzzflash. An excerpt:
And yet the New York Times, our nation's "newspaper of record," did not even mention it, much less cover it. The hearings were on Wednesday. There was no word of it in Thursday's paper, nor any word, belatedly, in Friday's. (Thursday's Times did run a couple of long stories on the electoral situation in Ukraine, but none on the quite similar, and -- to Americans -- vastly more important story here at home.)
Such silence is bizarre. It's deeply wrong. In fact, it's un-American. For what public issue could there be that matters quite as much as the integrity of our elections? What, then, could possibly explain, or excuse, the Times's failure even to note Conyers' hearings? For that matter, what explains the Times's thorough indifference to this crucial subject? Like all American news outlets, the Times is obligated, by the First Amendment, to attempt to keep its readership informed about the government, so that the government is answerable to us, its ultimate custodians. Rather than deal squarely with the ever-mounting evidence of massive fraud by the Republicans, the Times instead has merely ridiculed those raising questions, as if such patriotic citizens were laughably insane.
The hearings were one of very few shining moments of modern day American democracy. Watch the hearings here (RealVideo only). Try time index 1:17:00 for a stunning speech by John Bonifaz of the National Voting Rights Institute. If you haven't done so, buy a copy of either of Miller's books: Cruel and Unusual or The Bush Dyslexicon.
09:43 PM | Comments (1) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Please don't go, Bill Moyers
I'm going out telling the story that I think is the biggest story of our time: how the right-wing media has become a partisan propaganda arm of the Republican National Committee. We have an ideological press that's interested in the election of Republicans, and a mainstream press that's interested in the bottom line. Therefore, we don't have a vigilant, independent press whose interest is the American people.
Bill Moyers' final episode of "Now" airs on December 17, 2004.
03:05 PM | Comments (1) | Posted By Bob Cesca
More Rush Limbaugh racism
The word "hypocrite" fails to fully encompass an adequate description for a thrice-divorced drug addict who continues to indict everyone else on equal or lesser charges every day in 250 radio markets nationwide. However, the word "racist" encapsulates a more reprehensible aspect of Rush Limbaugh. From Wednesday's broadcast (courtesy of Media Matters):
LIMBAUGH: You just gotta be who you are, and I think it's time to get rid of this whole National Basketball Association. Call it the TBA, the Thug Basketball Association, and stop calling them teams. Call 'em gangs. You have the Laker Gang, you have the Heat Gang, you have a Timberwolf Gang [distortions of official team names], and let 'em strap up out there, and let 'em market their CDs. Instead of selling concessions, sell CDs out there at the concession stand.
All the players get involved in this, and if a fight breaks out, hey, it's what happens! It's what happens with gangs, and if a cop gets bloodied, you know, that's a bonus for the gang member that pulls that off, and let the fans, you know, go in knowingly. They're going in to watch the Crips and the Bloods out there wherever the neighborhood is where the arena happens to be, and be who you are.
The only thing scarier than El Hemorrhoid's penchant for defaming African American athletes, is the legion of dittoheads who will be repeating the same invectives over dinner tonight. To their kids.
02:19 PM | Comments (6) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Hella rich, hella tax free: Hellaburton
Following up on this item posted here yesterday, Halliburton announced that it has surpassed the $10 billion mark (Reuters) in government checks from their no-bid Iraq contracts. Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root accounts for more than $8 billion of that total.
While some soldiers in Iraq have trouble simply being paid, an average Halliburton/KBR employee will earn twice the wage of a rank and file soldier. $70,000 - $100,000 a year to be exact. Find a high school teacher or a guardsman or a military police officer in Falluja who takes home that kind of dough.
It gets better for the KBR crews. According to the Richmond Times Dispatch, if a KBR employee sticks around longer than 330 days, $80,000 of their salary is TAX FREE. That stands repeating. If they stick around longer than 330 days, nearly their entire salary is TAX FREE.
Military servicemen who perform similar duties will earn, on average, only half of the average KBR salary. Around $40,000 per year.
That is... if they can actually collect their checks.
11:15 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 09, 2004
Right attempts to discredit soldier
Just over 24 hours after Donald Rumsfeld was grilled by soldiers stationed in Kuwait, news broke Thursday that a reporter coached Army Specialist Thomas Wilson before the soldier asked the famed "armor from landfills" question. Right wing shmendricks on talk radio and on the internet are already screeching, "Liberal media* plot! I knew it! Damn you, mainstream media! Damn you all to hell!"
The reporter in question is Edward Lee Pitts from the Chattanooga Times Free Press (mainstream media?) who, while not listed on the newspaper's masthead, is a military affairs reporter imbedded with the 278th Regimental Combat Team.
Sometime after the Rumsfeld event, Pitts sent an e-mail to, "...not the whole staff, just some friends," news editor Rick Moore told Reality Based Nation. In the e-mail, Pitts discussed helping Spc. Wilson with the question and described the resulting press swarm. (Moore had no further comment other than to forward any other questions to the publisher, who was unavailable.)
MORE...
Like flies on shit, the legitimacy and impact of the crucial "armor from landfills" question is being diminished by the right (and, most likely, the White House and Pentagon) simply because of an industrious reporter whose "friend" leaked his private e-mail to Drudge (for some reason). Pitts has a bastard for a friend, to be sure, because now the whole right wing online world is unleashing its fury on Pitts. But the feeding frenzy on Spc. Wilson's veracity is much more serious.
What does it matter if the question was given to Spc. Wilson? Of course it doesn't matter. At all. Were Bush's smarmy, ham-fisted quips in the presidential debates plucked out of thin air via his rapier-like wit? Of course not. Everything was scripted by aides and rehearsed. Speech writers and assistants have historically penned important addresses and talking points for presidents and VIPs, but it's conventional wisdom that the source of the words is irrelevant (Bush's worst moments come when he's brazen enough to believe he's able to improvise). It's all about the quality and impact of the scripted statement.
Everyone who knows Spc. Wilson has repeatedly verified that he'd ask a question like that one. (Some lesser reputed pundits have had the nerve to question Wilson's honesty -- to Wilson's family members.)
The right's enthusiasm for discrediting Spc. Wilson's question is shameful. Big surprise, the right doing something shameful. Their unwillingness to take the content of the question seriously is yet another example of their inability to embrace the truth.
The facts have not been disproved in the slightest. Spc. Wilson's concern was legitimate, as was, based on the applause, the mutual concern of every soldier in attendance.
Yet the right's predictably self-righteous audacity is now aimed squarely at a soldier who will have much more deadly ammunition pointed his way soon enough. It's so damn easy for wingnuts to sit in their bedrooms endorsing the war and beating their chests about their votes for Bush, but grand-standing seems to be the extent of their hawkishness. Here's a thought: enlist. Then, Herr Freep, while you're over there dumpster diving for supplies, scream all you want: "Damn you, liberal media!" But we all know you'll be screaming just one word: "Mommy!"
*There is no liberal media.
07:50 PM | Comments (3) | Posted By Bob Cesca
The well-paid and the well-screwed
Q: Mr. Secretary, Lieutenant Colonel Alan Kronolog (sp). I’m the Inspector General for the 116th Brigade Combat team. We’re helping – or trying to help about 150 soldiers get their contingency travel pay. We’ve gone through the chain of command; we’ve tried IG channels. These soldiers have gone – some since July – without getting travel pay. Thousands of dollars, they’re having creditors call them at home, call their spouses at home, threatening collection action. We have a big problem. There seems to be a problem with the Defense Finance Accounting Service. Can you help us to understand that problem, Mr. Secretary or even better, can you point us to a resource that will help us get these soldiers paid? [Applause]
SEC. RUMSFELD: Can someone here get the details of the unit he’s talking about? That’s just not right. Folks have earned money and are due money, ought to be able to get the money and they ought not to have to put their families under stress while they’re waiting for the money. Thank you. [Applause] We’ll take a note and see what we can do. Yes, sir.
See what we can do? Try, "My first priority will be making sure all of you are paid on time and compensated for all outstanding back pay -- and as a matter of fact, you'll all get raises to match the salaries of the well-paid contractors from Halliburton. After all, we lied to you guys so it's the least we can do."
Click here to ask Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz if they get paid on time. Call Zack E. Gaddy (real name) Director of the Defense Finance & Accounting Service at (703)607-0122 and ask him. Or even better, call David J. Lesar, CEO of Halliburton, at (713)759-2600 and ask if he has to beg for his checks.
05:39 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Crown Sizing
Yesterday, my colleague Bob Cesca wrote about the hideous-looking baseball-mitt sized ribbon-shaped magnets that adorn the cars of the unthinking across our nation.
They are indeed horrible, both aesthetically and ethically. If you know someone who is spending money on these trinkets, remind them that buying one of these DOESN'T support the troops, it supports USA Magnets, Inc. I know. I just talked to Janice, a nice woman at USA Magnets who cheerily told me that, while they don't give a percentage of profits to the troops, they do keep the costs low at the stores near Army bases that sell them. Idn't that great!
But if you go to the USA Magnets website, you'll see something even more disturbing. This magnet here. This "Pray for our President" magnet.
Is it me, or didn't a bunch of Americans go to war and die a little over 200 years ago so that we could rid ourselves of a monarchy? "Pray for our President"?! Sounds a little like "God Save the King/Queen," doesn't it? WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!? Folks, the President is an elected official. He works for US. We are his bosses.
More to the point, why should this elected official who lives in a mansion, has his own chopper and jumbo jet and two getaway estates (one paid for by us), be receiving our prayers any more than the over 100,000 Iraqis we've killed? Or the close to 1,500 Americans we've gotten killed? Or the tens of thousands of vets of this war who have lost arms or legs or eyes?
If you're going to pray for the president, pray that he gets a fucking clue.
12:42 PM | Comments (1) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
Enough, already!
Google News search results:
Pistons Pacers brawl: 14,100
9/11 intelligence bill: 3,670
Guantanamo torture: 2,010
Ohio voting irregularities: 1,190
Halliburton investigation: 924
Darfur ethnic cleansing: 344
Robert Novak Plame: 236
All together now... Shame on you, news media.
08:09 AM | Comments (1) | Posted By Bob Cesca
The realities of Darfur, 12.09.04
A civilian killed by the Sudanese Government backed Janjaweed militia in Farawyaiah, West Darfur. The soldiers in the background are from the Sudanese Liberation Army, one of many military factions in the region. Photographed August 24, 2004, by Lynsey Addario. This is the first in an on-going RBN series of photos from the east African nation.
12:00 AM | Comments (1) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 08, 2004
And it's going to get worse?
Jimmy Massey, a former marine staff sergeant, told an immigration and refugee board hearing in Toronto that he and his fellow marines shot and killed more than 30 unarmed men, women and children and even shot a young Iraqi who got out of his car with his arms in the air.
"We killed the man. We fired at a cyclic rate of 500 bullets per vehicle," testified Mr. Massey, a marine for 12 years who was honourably discharged last year. "The company gunnery sergeant came running over and began yelling, 'You just shot a guy with his hands up.'"
04:09 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Yellow magnets and homeless vets
Yellow ribbon car magnets sold in department stores, gas stations, and websites, adorn nearly every vehicle in the country. "Support our troops" or "Pray for our Troops" they say. A token gesture by a disengaged, sheltered public. Some of the more reputable magnet dealers give portions of their profits to troop-oriented funds, while many of the dealers pocket every cent. Where the money goes is mostly irrelevant. For gas station customers, impulse-buying the magnets while filling up their SUVs with the same petroleum the troops they support are dying for, it's the cool thing to do.
Proclaiming the words, "I support our troops," is close to meaningless without accompanying activism. Does trendy public sloganeering actually help our soldiers?
Evidently not if they're living in boxes and begging for food. UPI is reporting that veterans from Iraq are showing up in homeless shelters.
"When we already have people from Iraq on the streets, my God," said Linda Boone, executive director of the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans. "I have talked to enough (shelters) to know we are getting them. It is happening and this nation is not prepared for that."
This should NEVER be a problem in the first place. Those who are profiting from the thankless, deadly labor of these men and women should be mandated to fully finance the complete abolition of veteran homelessness. Now. Meanwhile, the boys need body armor, dammit. Slogans aren't shielding any tanks from insurgent RPGs in the Sunni Triangle, and $4 for a magnet is better spent on a donation to a homeless veterans organization.
Start here. Then write to your representative in Congress.
03:11 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 8, 1980
"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
"If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace."
John Lennon,
October 9, 1940 - December 8, 1980
01:59 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
'We don't need no steenkin' armor!'
Continuing the trend of the Bush Administration's policy of "Snippy Answers to Smart Questions", Rummy was on the defensive yesterday whilst fielding questions from field soldiers stationed in Camp Buehring, Kuwait. "Why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass to uparmor our vehicles?" posited Army Specialist Thomas Wilson, amidst loud cheers from his fellow soldiers. After dumbing down the question so that he could better understand it, a flustered Rumsfeld replied:
"You go to war with the Army you have," not the one you might want, and that any rate the Army was pushing manufacturers of vehicle armor to produce it as fast as humanly possible.(Translation: "We don't have what we need to get the job done, and if the equipment manufacturers can't meet the demands for producing the gear we require to fight a war for which we were obviously ill-prepared, then it's their fault, not ours.")
And, the defense chief added, armor is not always a savior in the kind of combat U.S. troops face in Iraq, where the insurgents' weapon of choice is the roadside bomb, or improvised explosive device that has killed and maimed hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops since the summer of 2003.(Translation: "Armor, schmarmor, there'll still be a whole heap o' killin' and maimin' in the days ahead.")
As if confirming that not only are the soldiers underequipped, but the situation is hopeless, Rumsfeld continued: "You can have all the armor in the world on a tank and it can (still) be blown up."
Of course, it's riding in those vehicles with the paper-thin fabrication that keeps the soldiers nervous. But it should also make the Board of Directors of the Aerospace & Defense Group at Armor Holdings, Inc. a little nervous too... since they're not only the "sole-source provider to the U.S. military of the armor and blast protection systems" for military humvees (with corporate earnings in 2003 reaching $92 million), but they're gearing up to have the blood of many a dead American soldier pinned on them by Rumsfeld and his crew.
08:51 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By
60 Minutes: 5,500 absent without leave
60 Minutes will report Wednesday night that 5,500 soldiers have deserted their units rather than to fight in Iraq.
"I was told in basic training that, if I'm given an illegal or immoral order, it is my duty to disobey it, and I feel that invading and occupying Iraq is an illegal and immoral thing to do," says [Specialist Jeremy] Hinzman.
Illegal and immoral thing to do. One of many reasons why the United States, up until Iraq, never engaged in a pre-emptive invasion of a sovereign state. There's a roster of American statesmen dating back to Jefferson and Washington who would agree with Spc. Hinzman's analysis.
01:10 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 07, 2004
That's telling 'em, George!
George Bush went into great detail during a speech at Camp Pendleton Tuesday about how specifically he intends to deal with the insurgency in Iraq. While decked out in a pseudo-military jacket*, Bush outlined the step-by-step strategy for winning the peace in Iraq. Ready for the plan?
"Free people will never choose their own enslavement," he began. "When Iraqis choose their leader in free elections, it will destroy the myth that the terrorists are fighting a foreign occupation and make clear that what the terrorists really are fighting is the will of the Iraqi people."
Wow. Free people will never determine their own enslavement. And elections. That's the... plan? So evidently, the insurgency will melt into the Black Gate precipice from what? Bush's rose-colored rhetoric? The soldiers can go home then, once the election is done.
Moreover, free people have historically chosen political oppression in elections. Here's just one example:
In 1932, Hitler ran for president against a Communist candidate and Hindenburg, the incumbent president. The election was a spirited one, in which 84 percent of all eligible voters cast ballots. Those voters had to decide which party offered the best solution to the nation's problems.
*Mark Crispin Miller, in "A Patriot Act", notes that Bush is the only president in American history to disregard the civilian office of the Executive by wearing a military uniform. Not even the accomplished Generals Washington, Eisenhower, Grant, Jackson... No other president has worn military garb while in office except a fortunate son who dodged the draft.
11:05 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Yushchenko was poisoned
Doctors have determined (Times Online UK) that Ukraine opposition candidate Victor Yushchenko was poisoned in an obvious assassination attempt. There has been widespread speculation that Yushchenko was either very ill or suffering the effects of a rare poison prior to the latter being confirmed. Medical experts in Vienna are determining the specific poison which was used.
Mr Yushchenko fell ill on September 6 and was rushed to Rudolfinerhaus four days later with severe abdominal pain and lesions on his face and trunk. His liver, pancreas and intestines were swollen and his digestive tract covered in ulcers, but doctors could not explain the symptoms.
He says he will prove that his opponent, Ukraine's prime minister Viktor Yanukovych, tried to assassinate him. Yushchenko supports joining NATO and lost the fraudulent Ukraine presidential election despite leading in the polls (sound familiar?).
What makes the situation extra tense is the possibility that a faction of the Russian government was behind the attempt. Pooty-Poot, who supports Yanukovych, has voiced his disgust with the re-vote process in the the former Soviet state.
And Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov (World Peace Herald) has accused Colin Powell and the United States of being hypocrites for backing the "Orange Revolution" and declaring the elections to be fraudulent. On that count, Lavrov has a point. Never-the-less, whether or not the poison is traced back to Moscow, there's some looming tensions between the U.S. and Russia.
Does anyone trust the Bush administration to handle utensils without corks on the forks, much less handling tensions with a hostile Moscow?
10:09 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
CIA on Iraq: 'We're screwed'
A classified CIA message from Baghdad says that the situation in Iraq is deteriorating and that security issues are getting worse (Reuters). A similar description, though more polished, was given by a returning agent.
Gen. George W. Casey, a top commander over there, hasn't disagreed with the content of the assessments. But John Negroponte, ambassador to Iraq, disagrees, but only to the extent that the language in the cable, in his opinion, was too harsh.
Perhaps Negroponte objected to the harsh words: "Dear Mr. Goss (stop) We're all fucking screwed over here! (stop) Game over, man! (stop)" while not disagreeing with the over-all message.
05:35 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
RUMMY: Four more years
Donald Rumsfeld said today, in his typically vague manner, that he "hopes" our troops will be out of Iraq by the end of Bush's second term. In other words, he wouldn't go on the record with a specific prediction, but only, "I would certainly expect that to be the case, hope that to be the case. But the answer to your question is not that. The answer is the president has said they'll stay as long as they are needed and not a day longer."
Obviously, there's still no strategy. No defined objective. How could there be when there's no defined enemy? Elections won't matter because the attacks will continue, the body count will rise, and a confirmed "we win" will never come. The administration will never simply say, "That's it. We're done," pull everyone out, and walk away. Given the political disaster of "Mission Accomplished", the administration won't walk away unless there's some sort of verifiable end. Do guerilla wars ever give us one of those?
So four years from now, what will the numbers look like? Let's figure the current average of 3 U.S. soldiers killed per day. That's 1,095 per year and 4,380 over four years, without really counting any more spiked months like November and April '04. Include the U.S. deaths so far and we're totalling 5,000+ dead. The ratio of wounded-in-action to dead is about 10 wounded for every one dead soldier. So we're looking at a total casualty count of about 60,000 between now and the November 4, 2008 regime change here.
And according to the Bushies, we're making progress and everything is going well. If 60,000 U.S. casualties by 2008 is considered good news...
04:28 PM | Comments (2) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Weren't these people vetted?
Atrios is reporting this story and it's, quite simply, confounding.
AP October 6, 2004: President Bush visited the swing state of Iowa on Monday to sign the Working Families Tax Relief Act of 2004, which he said would mean lower tax bills for 94 million Americans...
Bush introduced Mike and Sharla Hintz, a couple from Clive, whom he said benefited from his tax plan.
Last year, because of the enhanced the child tax credit, they received an extra $1,600 in their tax refund, Bush said. With other tax cuts in the bill, they saved $2,800 on their income taxes...
"Next year, maybe they'll want to come to Texas," Bush quipped.
Mike Hintz, a First Assembly of God youth pastor, said the tax cuts also gave him additional money to use for health care.
He said he supports Bush's values.
How cute! He supports Bush's values. But then again...
FROM KCCI: DES MOINES, Iowa -- A Des Moines youth pastor is charged with sexual exploitation by a counselor...
Rev. Mike Hintz was fired from the First Assembly of God Church, located at 2725 Merle Hay Road, on Oct. 30. Hintz was the youth pastor there for three years.
Police said he started an affair with a 17-year-old woman in the church youth group this spring.
Church officials fired Hintz immediately after hearing the allegations.
"They did acknowledge with their congregation that Mr. Hintz had made apparently some admissions to his inappropriate activity, and they took a proactive approach and immediately terminated him from his position," Johnston police Sgt. Lynn Aswegan said.
03:34 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
More from the Defense Science Board
Expect news of the purging of the Defense Science Board to come down any day now. This report is really bad news for the Bushies, and, more importantly, bad news for us all.
Download the report (Adobe Acrobat format) and read it over lunch and then photocopy it and pass it around to every Bush voter you know with the words, "Read this and let me know if we're winning."
Where to begin. Some excerpts.
Opinion surveys conducted by Zogby International, the Pew Research Center, Gallup (CNN/USA Today), and the Department of State (INR) reveal widespread animosity toward the United States and its policies. A year and a half after going to war in Iraq, Arab/Muslim anger has intensified. Data from Zogby International in July 2004, for example, show that the U.S. is viewed unfavorably by overwhelming majorities in Egypt (98 percent), Saudi Arabia (94 percent), Morocco (88 percent), and Jordan (78 percent). The war has increased mistrust of America in Europe, weakened support for the war on terrorism, and undermined U.S. credibility worldwide. Media commentary is consistent with polling data. In a State Department (INR) survey of editorials and op-eds in 72 countries, 82.5% of commentaries were negative, 17.5% positive.
Are we crazy to think that it's very, very bad to have 94% of Saudi Arabia pissed off? Or 78% of Jordan? Especially when our government is trying to "bring democracy to their region" with a shock & awe use of force? Our most powerful military display of might since Vietnam, and they're not blinking. Neither are they embracing us. They hate us more than ever. And they control a lot of money. A lot of weapons. A lot of men whose only goal in life is to achieve death.
It's worse...
A lot worse.
There is consensus in these reports that U.S. public diplomacy is in crisis. Missing are strong leadership, strategic direction, adequate coordination, sufficient resources, and a culture of measurement and evaluation. America's image problem, many suggest, is linked to perceptions of the United States as arrogant, hypocritical, and self-indulgent. There is agreement too that public diplomacy could be a powerful asset with stronger Presidential leadership, Congressional support, inter-agency coordination, partnership with the private sector, and resources (people, tools, structures, programs, funding). Solutions lie not in short term, manipulative public relations. Results will depend on fundamental transformation of strategic communication instruments and a sustained long term, approach at the level of ideas, cultures, and values.
Apart from taking the administration down many, many notches, the report seems to say in the last third of this passage is that the only way to accomplish anything at this point is to escalate to a level of national focus last seen in World War II. A complete effort utilizing much of our economic and industrial resources.
What was a marginal network is now an Ummah-wide (all of the Muslim world) movement of fighting groups. Not only has there been a proliferation of "terrorist" groups: the unifying context of a shared cause creates a sense of affiliation across the many cultural and sectarian boundaries that divide Islam. (parenthetical added)
There's a reason why the Middle East has been a third rail for many, many years. It's an ill-defined prospect. The worst thing we could've done was to have re-elected the one man least qualified to handle that state of affairs. A man without acumen for understanding the vast and deeply rooted complexities of the region. A man who interceded with nothing but the notion of one-upping the political and personal shortcomings of his father.
In final days of the Civil War, General Lee had an opportunity to disperse the Confederate Army and send them off into the mountains from which they'd stage guerilla warfare against the United States. Sensibly, he refused. The reason he cited is that a guerilla war would go on and on, generation after generation.
Refusing the lessons of history, the Bush regime has initiated an era of bottomless crisis by not planning for an insurgency (and by going to war in Iraq in the first place, but we know that).
What we should know too is that history will associate our generation of Americans with these mistakes, like it or not. 60 million of us endorsed the lot of them. Write to your local paper of record and tell them now that not all of us endorsed this regime and its war.
And if you're a Republican and you have some foreign policy experience, get your resume together. There's going to be some openings in the Defense Science Board.
01:14 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 06, 2004
Kerik cracks the glass house
The Korea Times reports that would-be Homeland Security secretary and former NYPD police commissioner Bernard Kerik fathered a South Korean girl, named Lisa, while stationed on the peninsula in the 1970s -- then abandoned the child and her mother when he returned to the States. But because the estranged family reunited and reconciled on the Oprah Winfrey show in 2001, all is well. Except for the 26 years in between.
There's more from Newsweek. Kerik, while NYPD commissioner, bought several $50,000 security doors which ended up being too heavy for the floors to support. Three of the four doors are collecting dust in storage. He was then hired by the door company as an advisor. He resigned when the company's president was indicted for defrauding the city.
Still more. Kerik was fined $2500 for using police officers to help him research his memoir.
Even more. He used $3000 of the Police Foundation fund to purchase 30 bronze busts -- of himself.
More, you ask? Of course. He was named in a civil suit in which a Democratic warden claimed that Kerik forced prison guards to work for Republicans in their off hours. The warden won.
Want one about Tasers? Taser sold stun guns to the NYPD during Kerik's term. Sometime after he left the department, he attained stock options in the company. Recently, Kerik cashed out those options to the tune of $5.8 million.
He sounds like, as Lynn Cheney would say, a bad man. Good material for a Michael Moore documentary, except there isn't a dubious connection with the Saudi royal family so-- oh crap. The Saudi Royals, who preside over the world's most heinous human rights violations, hired Kerik as a security coordinator.
He told Newsday in October, 2003: "Political criticism is our enemies' best friend." Before you take over, Bernie, can you clairfy who the enemy is? Is it the jihadists or is it those of us who criticize your party and their hypocritical posture on moral values -- a hypocrisy which includes your nomination to reign over Homeland Security?
08:18 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Operation Opposite Day
Last week, I wrote about the Defense Science Board, the branch within the Pentagon tasked with internal review. If these guys gave grades, the Pentagon would be getting an F. Minus.
As the Herald (that's a newspaper in England) reported yesterday (reporting is something they do in England), the U.S. is losing the "hearts and minds" war.
Here's what the non-partisan career military people from the DSB had to say of Operation Iraqi Freedom: "American efforts have not only failed, they may also have achieved the opposite of what they intended."
"The OPPOSITE of what they intended." What they intended was to make America -- and the world -- a safer place. The "opposite" means they made America and the world a more dangerous place. It was certainly more dangerous for the over 1,200 dead American soldiers and the over 100,000 dead Iraqis. But the DSB is telling us (I'm sorry, telling the English, who actually report on this stuff) that it's less safe for all of us living Americans. To wit: "American actions have elevated the authority of the jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. The result is that al-Qaeda has gone from being a marginal movement to having support across the entire Muslim world."
What happened to the "we are all Americans" sympathy of 9/12/2001?
George W. Bush happened. I guess the DSB report means Little Georgie's C student status is dropping. Kind of like a missile or a dead body.
06:16 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By John Christian Plummer
Putting food on your companies
From Saturday's photo-op with Bush and President Musharraf of Pakistan:
REPORTER: Thank you. Mr. President, what do you make of the warning sounded yesterday by Tommy Thompson that the American food supply may be at risk to terrorist attack?
PRESIDENT BUSH: Tommy was commenting on the fact that we're a large company -- country, with all kinds of avenues where somebody can inflict harm. And we're doing everything we can to protect the American people.
04:38 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
The disinforming of America continues
AP is reporting that Clear Channel Communications has just made Fox News Radio their primary top-of-the-hour "news" source for most of Clear Channel's 1,125 radio stations nationwide.
"Working this closely with a premiere national news provider for the majority of our news/talk stations makes overwhelming sense," said John Hogan, chief executive officer of Clear Channel Radio. "Because of the breadth of this relationship, our local news directors will get a more customized and higher quality national news product — and that's great for listeners."
By "higher quality", Hogan clearly means "brazenly one-sided and erroneous."
And now some old news that's worth repeating. According to the Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA):
67% of FNC viewers think there was a clear relationship between Saddam and Al Qaeda (16% for NPR/PBS viewers and listeners).
33% of FNC viewers think we've found WMD in Iraq (the largest percentage of all news sources, with NPR/PBS scoring the lowest at 11%).
Amongst Republicans surveyed, 45% were found to have misperceptions about the war. But 54% of Republicans who watch FNC have misperceptions about the war.
And finally, by overwhelming margins (3:1) the people with the greatest misperceptions about the war voted for George W. Bush.
It's nice to know that FNC's positive influence on the truth will be further disseminated via hundreds of Clear Channel radio outlets.
And what about Clear Channel...?
John Hogan personally gave nearly $9000 to Clear Channel's PAC this year, which in turn gave 77% of the PAC money to Republicans.
The New York Times discovered that when Tom Hicks, current Clear Channel vice chairman, was the head of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (Clear Channel's chairman Lowry Mays sat on the board), he clandestinely diverted a $13 billion endowment to private companies, including the Bush operated (and bin Laden financed) Carlyle Group, and Harken Energy's Bahrain oil drilling project.
The Times also reported that in 1998 Tom Hicks bought the Texas Rangers and made Bush a fortune.
In the 2002 election cycle, OpenSecrets.org reports that Clear Channel gave over $300,000 in soft money contributions to Republicans, while only $50,000 to Democrats.
Between News Corp and Clear Channel, it's staggering that the myth of a "liberal media" is still championed as reality. Then again, there were WMD in Iraq and Saddam/Osama pajama parties, so...
12:20 PM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
December 05, 2004
Tourist Bora: Bin Laden slept here
Looking for a place to visit with the kids this Summer? Forget Epcot. Nevermind the Grand Canyon. Visit Tora Bora! Afghan authorities are opening up Bin Laden's former hole in Tora Bora for tourists. From the Telegraph:
"We have plans to make a tourist site at the Tora Bora caves. Many Americans wish to go there," Dr Hamrah said.
"Our main problem is lack of budget so we are approaching the private sector. We request that anybody, any company, who is interested should contact us."
Another problem: when American tourists try to get to the hideout, they'll mysteriously end up in Iraq.
11:39 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Senator Frist doesn't know
On "This Week", while discussing the insanely false information in the government's abstinence education program, George Stephanopoulos asked Senator Bill Frist -- an MD and heart surgeon -- whether HIV and AIDS can be transmitted via tears and sweat, the hard right Senator replied:
"I don't know."
Don't laugh. How would he know? After all, he's a heart and lung transplant surgeon. It's not like he's -- oh crap. From Senator Frist's website:
Dr. Frist is particularly passionate about confronting the global AIDS pandemic. He frequently takes medical mission trips to Africa to perform surgery and care for those in need. As Senate Majority Leader, he continues to raise awareness about the HIV/AIDS crisis throughout the world.
10:50 AM | Comments (1) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Actual hardball question on Hardball
From Friday night's Hardball with guest: Stay-Puft Televangelist Jerry Falwell:
MATTHEWS: How old were you when you chose to be heterosexual?
FALWELL: Oh, I don't remember that.
MATTHEWS: Well, you must, because you say it's a big decision.
FALWELL: Well, I started dating when I was about 13.
MATTHEWS: And you had to decide between boys and girls. And you chose girls.
FALWELL: I never had to decide. I never thought about it. (CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: I think it's a ridiculous proposition that you actually sit down and decide. Let me see, boy or girl this week. Anyway...
FALWELL: I don't think anybody does that.
MATTHEWS: But let me ask you about this ad again. Do you worry that the networks are exercising a kind of reverse sort of liberal censorship, saying we are afraid that the conservatives will be mad at us?
FALWELL: I think it's a corny ad. I think it's a corny ad.
10:05 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Oil spill upgraded to 'Holy Fucking Shit!'
The Delaware River oil spill which was originally estimated to be a "minor" 30,000 gallons has now been upgraded to a "not so minor" 473,500 gallons. The lovely black ooze, courtesy of Tsakos Shipping, now graces 70 miles of shoreline and has killed scores of wildlife.
Federal law has protected oil shipping companies (yay!) with a major safeguard in the form of handy-dandy liability caps. Based on the tonnage of the Athos I, Tsakos will only have to pay a maximum of $45 million. A bargain at twice the price, especially for a company contaminating their way to record profits.
Enter New Jersey Senators Jon Corzine and Frank Lautenberg, both Democrats, who will be introducing a bill in Congress next week to destroy the caps. Write to the Senators and let them know we've got their backs as they take on Big Oil:
Contact Senator Corzine
Contact Senator Lautenberg
01:58 AM | Comments (0) | Posted By Bob Cesca
Amen, Sister Joan
It flew unnoticed under the radar in and amongst the frenzied post-election analysis of the so-called "moral values" mandate claimed by the Christian right and the Bushies. On November 12, Bill Moyers interviewed Sister Joan Chittister: a Benedictine nun from Erie Pennsylvania and columnist for The National Catholic Reporter. Sister Joan has earned a Ph.D and 11 honorary degrees; she's written 30 books; and, even though she hasn't indicated any political ambition, she could kick the crap out of Senator Rick Santorum in 2006.
More importantly, whether you're a Charlie Church or not, she represents an intelligent, sharp, and spot on counterpoint to the pasty white cavalcade of fire-and-brimstone neo-televangelists currently regurgitating Leviticus on the cable pundit shows.
While the right seems bent on creating a hard-lined theocracy, Sister Joan brings a view of the separation of church and state as refreshing as it is educated:
I believe that when, to have the voice of religion, to have the religious voice in the public arena, as far as I'm concerned, is very faithful to the intention of the founding fathers. Therefore no established church, no established church, no single church or tradition that monitors and weighs and measures everybody else's attitudes, approaches or moral decisions. I believe that that's absolutely essential especially in a pluralistic world where we're all looking for the voice of conscience in our hearts. But when you take the religious voice and you turn it into a religion in the center of the system, do it our way, there's something wrong with that.
Click through to the next page and read the interview. And if you're a strategist with the DNC and need direction for responding to the right's pulpit-thumping, note the section highlighted in bold.
BILL MOYERS INTERVIEW WITH
SISTER JOAN CHITTISTER
November 12, 2004
MOYERS: It's always surprising to discover that nuns look like you.
CHITTISTER: Yeah, that's right. Well, as in what does a nun look like?
MOYERS: I read a column you wrote a week before the election in which you said the election won't be over when it's over. Well, as we've just seen the Religious Right says it's over. And they say they've won. What do you think about that?
CHITTISTER: Well, I think the word religion is being used very loosely in this day and age. I don't think that is religion.
This whole notion that my truth is everybody's truth, there's something wrong with that in a world of differences.
MOYERS: I can hear them saying this. I can hear James Dobson and Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say, "I was called by God to do what I'm doing." You feel called by God.
CHITTISTER: I do. But I don't feel called by God to impose my life on yours. I believe that I'm called by God to keep God a constant question in the human heart. I believe that anything that isn't… that anything that uses God as an instrument of oppression on other people is not of God.
And I believe that their belief is a powerful witness. I just simply do not believe that it can be imposed on the beliefs of people who are witnessing to another face of God.
MOYERS: What do you mean impose?
CHITTISTER: Well, I believe that when, to have the voice of religion, to have the religious voice in the public arena, as far as I'm concerned, is very faithful to the intention of the founding fathers. Therefore no established church, no established church, no single church or tradition that monitors and weighs and measures everybody else's attitudes, approaches or moral decisions. I believe that that's absolutely essential especially in a pluralistic world where we're all looking for the voice of conscience in our hearts. But when you take the religious voice and you turn it into a religion in the center of the system, do it our way, there's something wrong with that.
MOYERS: But they are saying they're acting from moral concerns. That they are trying to carry their moral values into the public square.
CHITTISTER: And so did the Puritans and the Prohibitionists.
It was exactly... they believed that their moral values should be carried into the public arena. And we did it. When the Puritans did it, they burned witches all in the name of God. When the Prohibitionists did it, they decided what you could and couldn't discipline yourself to do.
MOYERS: But I don't hear these people talking as harshly as that. They're not going to burn you at the stake, although some of them might think you're a witch right?
CHITTISTER: Well, yeah…
MOYERS: Or pagan.
CHITTISTER: Listen carefully for the twigs.
MOYERS: They're not… do you see them as extremists like that?
CHITTISTER: I do, in many instances. When you begin to use that kind of religious criteria and translate it into law, into God's call for Armageddon, why are we in Iraq now? God apparently wants us there. Not my Jesus.
MOYERS: All right, then they would say, "We went to Iraq to overthrow a brutal dictator who was persecuting his own people and to prevent Iraq becoming a terrorist haven." You know what they say.
CHITTISTER: Sure and we have a terrorist haven in Iraq right now. We don't have the so-called dictator anymore. But if those are our criteria, then we're going to be, for religious reasons, in a lot of other countries in the next 12 months.
MOYERS: Depending on the sources, Sister Joan, there have been some 37,000 civilians killed in Iraq, or maybe a 100,000. Why is abortion a higher moral issue with many American Christians than the invasion of Iraq and the loss of life there?
CHITTISTER: Could I ask you that question? Because that is the moral question that brings me closest to tears. I do not understand that, Bill. You see, I'm absolutely certain that some of the people that we're killing over there are pregnant women. Now what do you do? Now what do you do? That's military abortion.
MOYERS: Somebody said to me… that's what?
CHITTISTER: That's military abortion. Why is that morally acceptable?
MOYERS: Somebody said to me the other day that Americans don't behead, but we do drop smart bombs that do it for us.
CHITTISTER: And that are not smart as we think they are.
MOYERS: What do you mean?
CHITTISTER: Well, what is this smart bomb stuff? We've still got a image in our head from 1991 of this little golf ball dropping down a furnace. It's not working that way.
MOYERS: Dobson, Falwell, Robertson and a lot of secular pundits and columnists are saying that this election was decided by moral issues. Do you think moral issues were that decisive in this campaign?
CHITTISTER: Well, I don't believe… I'm not exactly sure that they were as decisive in the end. And I'm not sure that there's any way we can measure that. But even if I say, "Yes, they were," the fact of the matter is that they are some moral issues, they're not all moral issues.
The fact of the matter is that they're all in contention with something else which is also a moral value and also equally important unless you put it completely out of your mind or your heart. For instance, let's look at the abortion question. I'm opposed to abortion.
But I do not believe that just because you're opposed to abortion that that makes you pro-life. In fact, I think in many cases, your morality is deeply lacking. If all you want is a child born but not a child fed, not a child educated, not a child housed and why would I think that you don't? Because you don't want any tax money to go there. That's not pro-life. That's pro-birth. We need a much broader conversation on what the morality of pro-life is.
MOYERS: This seems to me to be the dilemma of American democracy today and of American religion. That there are dogmatists who do not want to admit that the other side might have some claim to credibility.
CHITTISTER: Dogmatism will always get you there. Ask a Catholic. We've been there.
We do it well. It was dogmatism that split us in the first place in the 16th century. It's dogmatism, this whole notion that there is a truth, the truth. that is the eternal truth and the unquestionable truth means that whatever the holy spirit, whatever, whatever the impulses of a creating God goes on creating. We have to close our mind to those.
We learned at the end of a telescope that it got us nowhere. Galileo tried to tell us then scientifically, look at this. We didn't want to listen.
The religion threw Galileo into house arrest for two or three years. Why? Not because of his science, that's silliness. Because of his theology. The theology taught that we were the center of the universe. We were God's rational and best creatures. When the little telescope, when he handed the Pope a telescope and said, "Look, we're not the center," they wouldn't even pick up the telescope. That's dogmatism. And that's what we have to be very careful of.
MOYERS: Do you have anything in common with the Religious Right?
CHITTISTER: I have Jesus in common. That's enough for me provided that we're all allowed to talk about and to hold in our hearts that aspect of the Christ life that we really believe must be raised at this time.
MOYERS: And what are those? What are the moral issues that you would like to see us pursuing as a people, as a country right now?
CHITTISTER: Well, I believe we got the cue on the mountain. I think…
MOYERS: The sermon on the mount?
CHITTISTER: I do. I do. The Beatitudes, as far as I'm concerned are the most overlooked and underdeveloped aspect of Christian scripture.
MOYERS: Well, for all the people who are watching who don't know what the Beatitudes are, what are you talking about?
CHITTISTER: Well…
MOYERS: The sermon on the mount.
CHITTISTER: The sermon on the mount, Jesus gets up, faces a crowd who's saying to him, "What are we do now?"
And he said, "Remember the poor. Keep the poor as your criteria." We have 1 out of every 318 people on this planet this morning, Bill, are refugees. They're following garbage cans in the back of restaurants around the world. They're following the resources that we took from their countries that are now jobs in somebody else's country.
MOYERS: Blessed are the poor?
CHITTISTER: The poor, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. We've got somehow or other to recognize that when we go into a country and pay a little kid 20 cents an hour for a 70 hour week to make our shoes and our jeans, we have to ask ourselves how is it that we can export our industry but we can't export our Fair Labor Standard Act.
MOYERS: So, blessed are those who seek justice?
CHITTISTER: Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for justice. Blessed are those who mourn. Remember those who are in grief, those mothers with dry breasts in Africa right now are mothers. And we're pro-life? Where are we?
Where are we in Darfur? Why do we have an army in Iraq for killing other mothers when with the power of this country, if this is going to be a moral country. Blessed are the peacemakers, the peacemakers, not the war mongers who are simply planting seeds of war for the next generation. That's our criteria. The Beatitudes must be our criteria.
MOYERS: See, this is the issue. People read scripture and reach different conclusions.
CHITTISTER: That's what scripture's supposed to do. Scripture is not a driving test. Scripture is a challenge to the heart and this moment. Scripture is the whole scripture. But we don't believe it's frozen in time.
MOYERS: Why are you a Christian?
CHITTISTER: Well, because of the Jesus story is my story. There's nothing else that really touches my heart or my spirit the way Jesus does. There isn't any other answer for me. There's no question about that.
MOYERS: Why are you a Catholic? I mean, the Catholic Church is still a paternalistic hierarchy. You're never going be a Bishop, because doctrine forbids it. Your own Pope says, "Never." So why do you remain a Catholic?
CHITTISTER: Well, we've said "never" to a lot of things. We're very good at never, and then we say 400 years later, "as we have always taught." I'm a Catholic because I believe that the church is a treasure house of the Christian tradition.
MOYERS: You remember when the President called on the Pope earlier this year?
CHITTISTER: Yes.
MOYERS: You said something quite harsh. You said after the President's visit with the Pope that, quote, "This is not a President whose concern for life matches the life concerns of this Pope."
CHITTISTER: That's right.
MOYERS: How is that?
CHITTISTER: This Pope had said very clearly three times in a row that he disapproved of this incursion into Iraq, and that he did not accept the notion of a preemptive war. That's a major life concern. This was the biggest PR trick I had seen in American history maybe ever.
MOYERS: Great photo op. Lyndon Johnson did it when the Pope came to New York in…
CHITTISTER: Tell me about it. But, when Lyndon Johnson did it at least the Pope could be understood, and what he himself was saying physically. This man is suffering from Parkinson's. He said, if you read the text later, he said to the President, "Thank you very much for the medal, but you know that you and I disagree on this Iraq thing. I have told you three times." That's in the text.
MOYERS: The President went to present the Pope with America's highest honor, the Medal of Freedom…
CHITTISTER: That's right. And, it isn't that the Pope doesn't deserve it. He did. He does.
MOYERS: But in your eyes, Sister Joan, can the Pope be right about Iraq, and wrong about abortion?
CHITTISTER: The Pope can be right about anything, and wrong about another thing. Yes, I mean, we have a terrible misunderstanding about what infallibility is. We grow as a church from the Pope on down.
MOYERS: But the church does not grow on the issue of women.
CHITTISTER: This woman's question is a dangerous question.
MOYERS: Why?
CHITTISTER: Because they're trying to deny that it's a question. People… I have never said that I know the answer, but I know it's a question, and it ought to be allowed to be reviewed.
MOYERS: What is the question?
CHITTISTER: Bishops have called for that.
MOYERS: What is the question?
CHITTISTER: What is the role of women? What is the role of women in the church? Is there such a thing as a woman being called to priesthood? Those are questions. Cardinals have called for that. Bishops have called for that.
I'm in good company calling for that discussion. I have never insisted that I know the answer. I do know that it's a question, and the church isn't going to be… isn't going to come to fullness 'til it's addressed.
MOYERS: But, while you're contemplating, meditating, lecturing, writing these wonderful books, the religious right is going to be running the government of the United States.
CHITTISTER: Uh-huh. So will I.
MOYERS: What are you going to… how's that?
CHITTISTER: Oh, I'll write my letters. I'm doing my things. We have Sisters demonstrating at the School of the Americas every single year. I'm not going to stop that.
MOYERS: That's the school in the South where Americans have been training military officers from Latin America.
CHITTISTER: That's right. Yes. Yes.
MOYERS: So, you think more people should get out and protest. Take to the street with this?
CHITTISTER: I think each of us should become part of the conversation any way we can.
MOYERS: Let me read you and share with our audience something I read just this morning. Michael Feingold is a theater critic here in New York, playwright, spent 25 years in the theater. He said this, quote, "This is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself. Today the church is no longer a religion but a tacky political lobby with an obsessive concentration on…compel[ling] someone else's daughter to bear an unwanted child and depriv[ing] someone else's son of the right to file a joint income tax return with his male partner." Do you think he's right when he says this is the election in which American Christianity destroyed itself?
CHITTISTER: Well, I think American Christianity has brought itself to the brink. And I'll tell you why. There's a disconnect between our private morality, or private piety and the call of the Gospels, the call of Matthew, of the Beatitudes, to this public concern for a world that comes out of the mind and heart of God.
MOYERS: Her latest book is CALLED TO QUESTION, A SPIRITUAL MEMOIR by Joan Chittister. Thank you very much, Sister Joan, for being with us on NOW.
CHITTISTER: Thank you, Bill. And God bless you.
01:08 AM | Comments (2) | Posted By Bob Cesca
