Well to the Left Of Attila The Hun (W.LOATH):Jack Huberman’s Blog

My biggest laugh/cry of the week

"The secretary of state [Rice]’s visit [to Egypt] indicated that the United States has decided that stability, not democracy, is its priority in the region."--NY Times, 1/16/07

So, X00,000 deaths (in Iraq) and X,000 Bush speeches about spreading democracy later, seems they've gone back to our old foreign policy approach... (Damned if they do, damned if they don't? Damn right!)

I trust you caught the error in that last graph. "As though they ever really cared about democracy--in the Middle East or the U.S."

By the way, happy new year, welcome back, etc. (My several months of postlessness, as though you care, was due to a combination of an accident, a trip, a move, the usual laziness, and the usual wisdom and humility, which prevents my writing when I have nothing much to say.)

Dear Mr. Rove:

As a liberal and a Democrat, I beg you: Please keep instructing GOP candidates to base their campaigns on god, guns 'n gays and to keep calling their opponents "liberals" and supporters of the homosexual agenda. And please go on saying the Democrats are on the “terrorists’” side and vice-versa. These tactics have really become effective....Thank you!

(You're really a Democrat secret agent, aren't you? I thought so...)

GOP Demands Investigation of E-Voting Machines

Just kidding....Actually, I've figured it out: Rove didn't blow it--it went just as planned: Sacrifice GOP control for two years for the sake of restoring public confidence in e-voting technology; then rig it good in '08. (Especially for Jeb.) Who'd sound credible asserting a GOP-Diebold conspiracy after this election?

Diabolically clever, aren't they? (Rove and Dr. Moriarty.)

Ivins Not Jivin'

Loved Good Golly Miss Molly Ivins's election eve column. Highlights:

"Right to the end, this insane conversation between reality and Not Reality. The president of the United States STILL says we are reducing terrorism by fighting in Iraq; STILL says we are creating democracy; STILL says we’re preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and making Israel more secure; and, shoddiest of all, STILL not allowing that our fallen have died in vain."

"Meanwhile, in case you hadn’t noticed, Iraq is in a state of full collapse. And Afghanistan is not far from it. Baghdad is worse off for water, sewer, electricity and infrastructure than it was before the war. The R’s have taken care of the whole problem with the brilliance we have come to expect from them—they have decided to abolish the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (which has exposed bribery, contracts to cronies, shoddy work, the loss of billions of dollars, the failure to track hundreds of thousands of weapons shipped there, and more)....This is Karl Rove problem-solving at its best."

"...when Mark Foley turns out to be the chairman of the House Caucus on Missing and Exploited Children, you know you just have to sit down like a tired dog and scratch for a while."

"...Congress stands before us so hopelessly corrupt that the stench has washed all over the country. Perhaps my least favorite excuse for cheating is “Everybody does it.” NO, everybody DOESN’T do it. Nor does the system make you do it, or alcohol or drugs or Jack Abramoff. I do not want to hear one more excuse—apologize and go."

"Change"

"The American people has voted for change."--Nancy Pelosi et al. Now, there's an acute analysis...

I say the vote was against change--the radical, unmandated drive to the right effected by the Repugs over the past 6 years; the hijacking of our goverment by reactionaries; the stealth coup d'etat; the complete corrption of Congress; the wrecking of our regulatory infrastructure; the assaults on constitutional rights and on constitutional checks and balances......

As for all this "looking forward, not backward" shit: Is it really necessary to explain the principle of accountability? Although I'm much more disappointed to hear Dems like Pelosi say it, would the same Republicans who insist we "look forward, not back" apply that to criminals, and say, "let's not punish them, let's look forward--let's not hold them accountable, let's blame society"? Is it really necessary to explain that you have to lock criminals up so that everyone knows that if you fuck up you will pay a price (a principle that of course has never obtained in this administration)?

Media insult to our intelligence on Rumsfeld resignation

CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, FOX: "Bush has heard the American people..."

Consider how much worse it would be for Bush if he didn't do this, or delayed for weeks or months: The focus would remain on his intransigence, his denial of problems and deafness to criticism, and his refusal to hold any of his men to account. The logic of the Rove strategy of never admitting to error might at last begin to be understood by the public as a way to maintain an aura around Bush of quasi-papal, quasi-divine infallibility.

Instead, this move--on the very day after--steals the Dems' thunder, grabs the initiative back, AND helps preempt a renewed examination of the road to disaster in Iraq. Smart.

But the MS media thinks we're stupid.

The WSJ Explains

The Wall Street Journal's Washington Bureau Chief, Jerry Seib, explained the GOP defeat on CNBC this morning: It was all about Mark Foley. And maybe one or two other sex and ethics scandals.

I.e., not about the Repugs' policies/politics.

Now Steve Leesman is on, saying it was the economy, s. In a National Voters Exit Poll, the largest number cited the economy as their number one issue, followed by (2) the war on terror and (3) Iraq! "But why, when the economy is so strong?" asks CNBC anchor Liz Claiman. Duh. Leesman replies that economic growth has been slowing for a year now, and "there is an issue about the distribution of economic gains." Oh, really? You mean, the bottom three-quarters or more of households are no better off and indeed mostly worse off after six years of Bushism, while all the gains have gone to the richest few? .... (Nice try, Claiman. ANd by the way, go fuck yourself. And please convey my "GFY" to all your colleagues at CNBC.)

Imagine the Dem tsunami if the R's HADN'T rigged the voting machines!

(And if the Dems knew how to campaign!)

It's Not Just Iraq, Stupid

It's the overpowering stench of political and moral corruption and dishonesty rising from the Bush-Cheney-Rove party. The MS media doesn't get it that the people are beginning to get it.  It's very common for people to express unhappiness about one issue by citing another, even a completely unrelated one. When they began to tell pollsters they were unhappy about how the Iraq war was "being conducted," they meant they'd realized wewere duped into it and shouldn't have gone in in the first place. But I think the pathetically slow-on-the-uptake American people have gotten sick not just of the lies about and failure in Iraq but also of the Bushites' big-business-uber alles domestic policies, their cronysim, their anti-Constitutional power grab, their violations of U.S. and international law... I think they've even begun to get it about the hypocrisy of Republicans' religious and moral posturing.

The Dems make a big mistake to the extent that they go along with the "It's Iraq, stupid" story. They must claim a mandate for change in all areas. Right now (Tuesday night, 11:30 PM), 197 to 158 House seats? That's surely a truer mandate than Bush & Co. claimed to have when he got fewer votes than Gore in 2000 and especially when he won his 51% to 48% landslide in 2004.

My biggest laugh of the night so far has been hearing Repugs immediately start talking about the need for bipartisanship. We need to work together. Right...like the GOP House leaders have done for the past 6 years....Yet now they want the Democrats to be nice! Well, there's no denying the R's have chutzpah. ... Alas, I heard Pelosi use that B-word (bipartisanshit) too. I hope what she's really thinking is, "In your dreams, assholes." I say, shut the motherfuckers out, just as they did to the Dems.

If Webb wins the Virginia Senate race and there's a recount battle, we need only quote James Baker, December 2000: "The votes have been counted."

And to God-fearing racists, sexists and homophobes across the land, I say: Eat shit and die, scum.

It's time for something else to end: remarks about the Dems only being against this and that and not knowing what they're for. As though stopping the bleeding and repairing the Bushite damage to the fabric of our society, our public finances, our very democracy, etc., isn't a positive aim! (I keep waiting for Dem pols themselves to give that answer. It would end the whole canard immediately.)

As to both sides getting together to "find a solution" for iraq--fine, but first I want to hear the Republicans acknowledge their repsonsibility and apologize for creating the problem!! Hell, I'd settle for hearing Dems it out loud. But I won't stand for talk about solving the problem as though no one's to blame. Do you hear me?

By the way, the fall of Santorum alone made my day. Evening. Year.

I'm ba-ack

My, what is it, three-month absence, which is hereby ended, is inexcusable and inexplicable, and will therefore remain unexcused and unexplicated. The important thing is, I'm back, and there is once again reason for hope and reason to live.

An AP article today, "GAO Chief Warns Economic Disaster Looms," describes a nationwide tour by U.S. Comptroller General David M. Walker to warn whomever will listen that the federal goverment is heading for fiscal catastrophe:

If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion [which we owe to country's like Japan, China, and Mexico!] could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America....A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today....And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.

...And though the federal debt has grown in dollar terms since 2001, it hasn't grown dramatically relative to the size of the economy.... But that's about to change, thanks to the country's three big entitlement programs — Social Security, Medicaid and especially Medicare.

The projected increase in the annual cost of Medicare is indeed scary, and must be addressed. (I see nothing wrong with means-testing both Medicare, which covers seniors no matter how rich are, and Social Security, whose benefits are generally proportional to the retiree's income and wealth and, if I'm not mistaken, don't take into account income from other sources.)

I just wish the article had mentioned that at the end of the Clinton administration we had a budget surplus.

I wish it had mentioned another "entitlement program"--the "defense" budget, which rolls on and grows year after year--particularly the portion that goes to major defense contractors for new "weapons systems" for the defense secretary and the Pentagon brass to play with as tokens of their political clout and their virility.

I wish the article had mentioned a certain war which has already cost I'm not quite sure how many hundreds of billions--probably at least three--and may end up costing $2 trillion. But the war was absolutely necessary for our defense, wasn't it. BTW, the Bush administration continues to leave funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan ($120 billion more requested in Feb. '06) out of its official military budget figures. Also, what warresisters.org calls "past military spending," which includes veterans benefits and the share of interest on the national debt accrued by past military spending, is left out of the official military budget accounting.

Even according to White House figures, 19% of Bush's 2007 budget goes to "defense," compared to 21% for Social Security, 14% to Medicare, 7% to Medicaid, and 9% for interest on the federal debt. But as warresisters.org notes, Social Security and Medicare costs are paid out of their respective trust funds, not the general budget, and thus should not be included in general budget data. If those are omitted, "defense spending" is revealed to actually make up 49% of the budget: 30% for current, 19% for past military expenses.

As we sink into fiscal quicksand, the 2007 budget increases defense spending by 5% (Bush asked for 6.9%), or roughly $22 billion. (New weapons systems get an 8% increase.) Meanwhile, the Bush budget would reduce or eliminate 141 programs--including cuts to the education and energy budgets (who needs more research on alternative energy sources?), for a total saving of $14.5 billion. The National Institutes of Health budget is frozen, and some areas of medical research are cut. Bush wants to reduce Medicare spending by $105 billion over the next 10 years. In '06 he cut Medicaid, which after all serves the poor, by $10 billion.

These figures in the AP article also caught my eye: "Global war on terror": $50 billion. Hurricane response: $4.6 billion. Pandemic influenza preparedness (bird flu, anyone?): $3.8 bill. (The 1918-19 flu epidemic killed 40-50 million people--a figure beyond Al Qaeda's wildest dreams. Or maybe not.)