Being Unpopular Has Its Advantages

Sure, everyone around the world continues to hate America the Bush Administration more and more by the moment. As we lose our credibility from Austria to Zimbabwe, there are certain advantages to being hated so much, especially in Iraq. For instance, when U.S. troops stage a fake raid on Iraqis, it can actually increase their street credibility.

Colbert gives his take on the matter in last night's 'Word':

What Middle Class?

A strong middle class has what has made our democracy so successful in the past. In fact many political scientists say it is essential for emerging nations to have in order to make democracy work. The problem here in the United States is that the middle class is shrinking at an alarming rate. Yesterday, the Drum Major Institute held a conference here in New York City to address the issue about our own declining middle class. The fireworks came out when the potential mayoral candidates sparred over what to do about it.

From The Empire Zone:

Diane Cardwell reports today that Representative Anthony D. Weiner, who represents parts of Queens and Brooklyn, called for a tax increase on New Yorkers who make more than $1 million a year, an idea that Adolfo Carrión Jr., the Bronx borough president, derided as “a small, fractional, lunch-money income tax break.”

(snip)

Of course, worry about a shrinking middle class is nothing new. Indeed, a quick search of our archives reveals that anxiety about the economy has long been tied up with concerns about the fate of the middle class. In 1984, as the United States recovered from a recession, the economist Lester C. Thurow warned [TimesSelect] that the middle class was essential for social stability. He reasoned:

Marx’s predicted revolution did not occur because he did not foresee the rise of the middle class. The middle class had an interest in preserving capitalism and voted to alleviate the worst excesses of capitalism with social welfare programs. Their very presence gave the poor hope that they too could escape from poverty.

Do those concerns still hold true today?

You bet they do. Kudos to DMI for holding the conference and allowing the next potential mayor to say what they plan to do to help save NYC's middle class. If a winning idea can come to fruition here in the City, we might just find a plan that can work nation-wide.

Newsflash! Greenhouses Gases Are Pollutants

Aren't you shocked at the revelation? For all this time I thought it was healthy to inhale the fumes coming out of the cars on the street. All snarking aside, this is good news because it was the Supreme Court that realized this and made a ruling forcing the EPA to re-examine their refusal to regulate greenhouses gases. The 5-4 decision did not mandate regulations (this is the Roberts court ya know?) but at least it is a step in the right direction.

From The Boston Globe:

The case, brought by 12 states and 13 environmental groups and argued by the Massachusetts Attorney General's office, is the high court's first decision on global warming and is expected to have far-reaching implications for regulating greenhouse gases in the United States.

"In short, EPA has offered no reasoned explanation for its refusal to decide whether greenhouse gases cause or contribute to climate change," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

The EPA had argued that the Clean Air Act did not give it authority to regulate greenhouse gases in part because of "substantial scientific uncertainty" about its harm to human health and the environment.

The EPA and the Bush Administration may try to live in a state of forced delusion over the moral debate over climate change, but this is no longer a political debate. Even the Supreme Court sees it as such, despite its heavy conservative leanings. It is time for the EPA to do their job and help cut greenhouses gas emissions.

What We Need To See More Of

This lucky pair were reunited at the son's classroom. Now multiply that by 150,000 and imagine what that would do for the national conscience.

"Dan Quayle In Cowboy Boots"

I wish I could claim credit for that definition of George Bush. It sounds like something created by the gurus of the anti-Bush movement (there are so many afterall) but interestingly enough, it comes from within. The author, Victor Gold, is actually a close friend of George H.W. Bush and the Cheney family. His new book has a lot to say about the President and his allies and none of it is good.

From The Washington Post:

"For all the Rove-built facade of his being a 'strong' chief executive, George W. Bush has been, by comparison to even hapless Jimmy Carter, the weakest, most out of touch president in modern times," Gold writes. "Think Dan Quayle in cowboy boots."

Gold is even more withering in his observations of Cheney. "A vice president in control is bad enough. Worse yet is a vice president out of control."

For Gold, Cheney brings to mind the adage of Swiss writer Madame de Stael, who wrote, "Men do not change, they unmask themselves." Cheney has a deep streak of paranoia and megalomania, Gold suggests -- but he says he did not see it at first.

"He was hiding who he really was," Gold says. "He was waiting for an opportunity."

In many ways, Gold's tale of disillusionment is a familiar one. There are plenty of veterans of Reagan and Bush 41 around town who believe Bush and Cheney trashed the institutions and party they helped build from the wreckage of the Goldwater campaign.

But there aren't many who have been on a first-name basis with those they believe are doing the trashing. There aren't many like Vic Gold.

Vic Gold may have been disillusioned, but we here in the reality-based community saw this coming all along. There was nothing to be unmasked, it was just waiting to come out and wreak havoc on our country. To be fair to Victor, it is great to see that he discovered who he was truly working for.

His new book, "Invasion of the Party Snatchers: How the Holy-Rollers and the Neo-Cons Destroyed the GOP" is a cleverly titled expose for his fellow Republicans to read and absorb. I am afraid that despite his status, this will just be another member of the old GOP falling off the speeding train with no brakes. So many former confidantes have been scorned after coming clean by the right. Although their numbers are shrinking, they continue driving that train straight towards the cliff.

Diagnosing Our Pill-Popping Culture

It seems these days there is a pill for every health problem imaginable. Even for problems that can be imagined, thanks to carefully crafted commercials made by the drug industry. Popping pills for our troubles perfectly encapsulates our easy-way-out culture. Most people can't see the big picture unfortunately, perhaps they can only see a glimmer of false light at the end of the drug culture tunnel.

Well feast your eyes on this brand new play and maybe you can catch a ray of sunlight not created in a pharmaceutical lab. "Distortion" is making its primiere at the Mark Taper Theater in Los Angeles. The play sets out to show our society that maybe, just maybe, pills aren't always the answer.

From The Huffington Post:

The madness of the pill-popping phenomenon is nicely summed up in this exchange from the play:

Doctor: People with untreated ADD are three times more likely to abuse drugs. Mama: And by "untreated" you mean --? Doctor: Unmedicated. Mama: So, if my son takes a drug, he's less likely to take...drugs?

And later, the Doctor has this to say about the potential side effects of Ritalin: "The most common are loss of appetite, delayed growth, and insomnia, but we can always add another drug like Clonidine to help the insomnia. Some children develop tics, but we can add a little Tenex to control that."

Paging Joseph Heller!

The play also effectively raises a mirror to the parents in the crowd, forcing us to question how much our Blackberry-and-cell-phone-driven, multi-tasking, media overloaded ways are impacting our kids. As Rita Wilson's character puts it at the end of the play: "What if the best thing I can give my son for Attention Deficit Disorder is my... attention?"

To be fair, the play does balance the issue out by saying that drugs can help where they are needed. However the amount of drugs that are dispensed today, especially for our children is highly out of whack. Every parent facing a 'disorderly' child should see this play and ask themselves if the pills are really worth it.

Newspapers Are A Bunch Of Sluts

I don't know about them being sluts, perhaps in some instances maybe. I would never make that assertion like former President Nixon did a while back. Who the media are sluts to is another difference between Nixon and myself. Today I would say they are beholden to their corporate masters by and large. Thirty-five years ago the only thing that mattered was Nixon's enormous ego.

This information and more was brought to light by Vanity Fair's Robert Dallek. In addition to writing an article for the magazine, he is writing a book on the power struggle between Nixon and Kissinger. While both men agreed on the newspapers being sluts, the two sparred against each other in their own quests for power of the Nixon Administration.

From RawStory:

In next month's Vanity Fair, Robert Dallek illustrates how President Richard Nixon "was losing his epic power struggle with Henry Kissinger," a thesis drawn out in his upcoming book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. He describes the two similarly as "paranoid and insecure, deceitful and manipulative, ruthless and strangely vulnerable."

Dallek bases his argument on a new analysis of Nixon administration archives -- what he calls a "real-time rendering of events often at variance with official portrayals" -- which includes diary entries, transcripts, tapes, records and official papers. "Henry Kissinger never wanted the 20,000 pages of his telephone transcripts made public," writes Dallek, "not while he was alive, at any rate. And for good reason."

The historian highlights "moments of high drama" and depicts Kissinger as "a man whose growing power derived from Nixon's deepening incapacity." Dallek also discusses how the archives "reveal Kissinger's troubling personality and methods across a broad front."

There'll be plenty more in the article and the upcoming book. Be sure to check it out, the pages should be exciting, even if you aren't a Presidential historian. The battle between these two paranoid and egocentric men is one for the ages.

Show PhRMA The Money!

Who cares about the welfare of the American people? The old Congress certainly didn't. They let the pharmaceutical industry write legislation which increased profits by several billion dollars. The winners of this action was the industry and 15 members of Congress and their aides who got lucrative job offers to lobby for PhRMA. The losers however, are the rest of us.

The 'Surge' In Death

President Bush and his sycophants have been touting the surge in troops because of a deluded feeling that Iraq is getting safer. John McCain made a heavily protected appearance yesterday in order to back up that misbegotten belief. Unfortunately, along with the escalation of our troop numbers in Iraq, the death toll for Iraqis continues to climb higher.

From Juan Cole:

For all those journalists and politicians who keep insisting that there are new "glimmers" of "hope" in Iraq because of the new security plan started 6 weeks ago, here is a sobering statistic from the Iraqi government. (I'm looking at you, John McCain. See below for more on McCain).

Iraqis killed in February: 1806 (64.5/day)
Iraqis killed in March: 2078 (67/day)

As the wire services report, that is a 15% increase if figured by the month. I provided the figures, above, to show that it is an increase even if figured by the day (4%). (I should have, in the earlier version of this post, highlighted the latter in the exposition rather than getting carried away by the wire service headline, as some readers have kindly or sometimes acerbically insisted.)

The reality on the ground is, as usual, far different from what many Republicans are trying to claim. No matter how many troops we put in harm's way, the killing will continue. Sunnis will terrorize Shias and vice-versa. This civil war is beyond repair for our soldiers to fix. We need to pull out and look for a diplomatic solution. It is not our place to be caught in the crossfire.

McCain Takes A Stroll Around Baghdad

McCain has claimed Iraq is so safe and that the American people aren't getting the full story about all the progress in the occupied country. Many in the reality-based community have scolded him for his ridiculous views but McCain has other plans. He tried to show that Baghdad was actually safe by risking a walk around town.

From Crooks and Liars:

Saint McCain is in Iraq this week and proving the "three-months-late" media wrong. Last week he said that the surge is so promising that you can walk the streets of Baghdad safely. He reaffirmed that point at a press conference today, only he forgot to mention that you need 100 US soldiers, three blackhawk helicopters and two apache gunships watching your back. Oops. Must have slipped his mind.

Download (814) | Play (711) Download (332) | Play (475)

Of course McCain has to blame the media again. Newsweek reminds us just how "safe" Baghdad really is:

[I]t didn't take the insurgents long to send their reply. Less then 30 minutes after McCain wrapped up, a barrage of half a dozen mortars peppered the boundaries of the Green Zone, where the senators held their press conference.

Now that is definitely a place where I would feel safe. Nothing like a ton of troops and 5 helicopters watching over me. If only every American serving over there had protection like that. I'm sure I could walk around Baghdad like Johnny Boy. Oh wait, what do mortars do again?

Snoop Dogg Has Some Choice Words For Bill O'Reilly

While Snoop was overseas in Europe one interview went awry and the focus went on none other than Bill O. Apparently it isn't just the political community on the left that hates this guy. Snoop wants to go on the O' Falafel Factor but not at the Fox studios, this exchange would have to take place in the Dogg Pound.

Monty Python Strikes Back

The satirical wit of Terry Jones is beyond compare. If you aren't a fan of Monty Python, you should definitely check it out because it is not to be missed. However there is a serious side to the creator of Monty Python and he took the U.S. and the U.K to task over the treatment of prisoners by the two countries in an Op Ed today.

From The Guardian:

I share the outrage expressed in the British press over the treatment of our naval personnel accused by Iran of illegally entering their waters. It is a disgrace. We would never dream of treating captives like this - allowing them to smoke cigarettes, for example, even though it has been proven that smoking kills. And as for compelling poor servicewoman Faye Turney to wear a black headscarf, and then allowing the picture to be posted around the world - have the Iranians no concept of civilised behaviour? For God's sake, what's wrong with putting a bag over her head? That's what we do with the Muslims we capture: we put bags over their heads, so it's hard to breathe. Then it's perfectly acceptable to take photographs of them and circulate them to the press because the captives can't be recognised and humiliated in the way these unfortunate British service people are.

It is also unacceptable that these British captives should be made to talk on television and say things that they may regret later. If the Iranians put duct tape over their mouths, like we do to our captives, they wouldn't be able to talk at all. Of course they'd probably find it even harder to breathe - especially with a bag over their head - but at least they wouldn't be humiliated.

So the commentary cannot be done without humor, we are talking about Terry Jones after all. Like all comedians out there, the amount of material that is made available to make light of is almost insurmountable. Of course I'd rather laugh at something meaningless like Will Ferrell's "Blades of Glory" than the torture of captives held by Britain and the United States. I definitely recommend that movie if you are looking to have your mind numbed from all of our governments' insanity for an hour and a half.