Tag: George W. Bush

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JAGged Little Pill

According to the New York Times (March 31, 2002), the television program “JAG” (I’ve never watched it) has become a mouthpiece for the Pentagon, lovingly rendering noble soldiers and officers wisely and bravely enacting foreign policy on behalf of an adoring citizenry.

Star David Elliot says, “we send our scripts to our liaison and they weigh in on it,” he said, referring to Paul Strub, the Pentagon’s liaison with the entertainment industry. Mr. Elliott said the show hesitated to anger its Pentagon contacts, “because they certainly lend a great deal of production value that we couldn’t buy.” That “production value” is government funded military installations and equipment that are used in the series.

“JAG” reflects the pro-military sensibility of Mr. Bellisario, 66, a former staff sergeant in the Marines. He said that he believed military tribunals, not an international court, were the best way to mete out justice to terrorists, and that he wanted to show that such tribunals would not be kangaroo courts.

“I want to show people that the tribunals are not what many people feared they would be, which is that they would be nothing more than a necktie party, that they would have no foundation in law, that this was a way of taking these people and killing them,” Mr. Bellisario said. “I wanted to show that we still have a system of justice.” Personally, though, he said he believed “they should all be taken out and blown up.”

The JAG episode thrills viewers with a tribunal lynching party of a real Qaeda implicated in the WTC bombing. In real life, we haven’t caught a single suspect yet. Not one. Most of them, apparently, escaped into Pakistan where General Musharraf (98% approval rating in the latest “poll”) pretends to be trying to round them up, while testing nuclear missiles to use on India.

At $62 billion, the most expensive fruitless prosecution in history.

But what really concerns me is this. Bush is the Republican President, a member of the party that believes that welfare is a corrosive handout that increases lassitude and dependency, and that the government should stay out of business let the free enterprise system work it’s magic unencumbered.

So why are they subsidizing Hollywood movies and television programs like JAG? It’s a bailout. It’s propaganda. It’s a government handout. It’s created dependencies and laziness and lassitude. Make those entertainment moguls get off their fat butts and build their own sets and special effects! Stop these massive government hand-outs and subsidies immediately, so that the taxpayer’s money can be used for legitimate purposes. Like building more prisons.

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War With Iraq: Quagmire Awaits

Do you think George Bush is smart? No, you don’t. Even his conservative, Republican, oil executive supporters don’t think he is smart. But that’s okay. He is surrounded by smart people and he relies on their judgment.

That is logically ridiculous of course. Americans are suspicious of intellect– we know. They somehow think that a down-home country guy with a little cunning surrounded by competent managers is the ideal leader. He won’t get confused by details or messed up by the subtleties or ambiguities of complex realities. He’ll just go with his instincts. Instincts are always better than closely reasoned judgments. Aren’t they? They are in the movies.

Well, actually, less than 50% of the voters seemed to think that Bush was smart enough to be President. And, of course, a decisive majority of all the conservative Republicans on the Supreme Court, including the acute Clarence Thomas.

The trouble is, if you aren’t very smart yourself, how do you know your managers and advisors are smart? And when they give you conflicting advice, as surely Colin Powell and Donald Rumsveld and John Ashcroft have been doing, how do you sort out who is right? You kind of feel for it, right?

Is that good enough in 2002? Is that good enough for the world’s only remaining superpower, other than Europe, China, or India?

So you have this fixation on Iraq. Iraq is a crisis point for America right now because, well, George Bush Jr. decided Iraq is a dangerous threat. He seems to have made up his mind that he must invade Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein and set up a new government, so that oil can be extracted and sold by large American corporations, or democracy can be restored, or Americans can feel safe once again from all those Iraqi Scud missile attacks we’ve been experiencing lately.

Dick Cheney was so prescient about Iraq that while he was in charge of Halliburton, as recently as 1998-99, he did more than $23 million of business with Iraq. Didn’t he know that Saddam was a monster? Not until George Bush Jr. announced the “axis of evil”, apparently.

Do you think these men in charge of the White House have given thoughtful, intelligent consideration to these issues:

  • what if the Kurds, who are already itching to join the attack, decide, as they are likely to, to set up their own little country in Northern Iraq, right on the Turkish border? How would Turkey like that? Or Iran, which also has a substantial Kurd population that it is struggling to keep in check. Neither Turkey nor Iran would tolerate a breakaway Kurd republic on their borders.

Bush has extracted promises from the Kurds not to seek an independent state. And these guys are smart enough to believe them….

  • what if the hardline Moslems react to the war by tossing President Pervez Musharraf and setting up a hardline Islamic republic? With a bomb. And with an incendiary situation in Kashmir?
  • what if the same thing happens in Saudi Arabia or Yemen? What if hard-liners in Iran come to believe that the U.S. won’t be satisfied with deposing just one pole of the “axis of evil”?
  • what if the Shiite Moslems in the South of Iraq decide they would be happier united with their brethren in Iran than with Baghdad’s Sunni minority, whatever form that leadership might take in a post-Saddam Iraq?
  • what if the overthrow of Saddam doesn’t stop terrorism? (It won’t– it will probably increase it.) Who’s next?
  • can the officials of this administration name a single instance in which concerted military action (as opposed to negotiation and compromise) put an end to terrorist activities, anywhere in the world?

After Iraq, terrorists hiding out in Yemen, Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and elsewhere will continue to target U.S. military installations, diplomatic buildings, and the U.S. itself.

Since the U.S. seems incapable of actually tracking down and capturing real terrorists, it will have to find someone else readily available for a good bashing. Iran? North Korea? Somalia?

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National Hysterical Orgasm

We are safe.

This is probably the least popular opinion I’ve ever posted here but I think the whole continent has gone nuts. And I mean really nuts. This is not just a case of the public or politicians getting a little carried away with paranoia and hysteria. It’s just a matter of idiocy on a grand scale. The world has not changed. We are safe.

What’s really going on? There was a massively successful terrorist attack on New York City. A lot of people were killed and a lot of property was damaged. That, folks, is about all we know so far. That’s it. That’s the whole thing. You think I’m nuts? What about the anthrax? What about the new threats? What about Saddam—isn’t he pointing his Scud missiles at us right now?

Everything aside from the initial attack is hype. CNN, which packages news about war, death, and destruction as entertainment, talks about nothing else. The only real news here is that otherwise rational people have completely lost their senses.

How often, for example, do you hear the actual number of dead? 10,000? 8,000? 5,000? It is closer to 4,000. That’s a big number, but it’s not 30,000, which is the number of body bags New York officials initially requested. Who made that judgment? Why hasn’t he been sacked?

It is getting comical. President Bush attends a ballgame in New York and we are given to understand that the holy and sacred Vice-President is being safely stowed away, in a Tupperware container somewhere near Camp David, I presume. It is an “undisclosed” location. Cheney himself probably doesn’t know where it is. Are we supposed to be reassured that the deputy sidekick of the unelected president of the United States is safe? For what? Comic relief? We’re supposed to be relieved that if something happens to George W., Dick Cheney will be in charge???

The anthrax? Do you know how many people have died from anthrax? Four. But we are going to spend about a billion dollars preventing a fifth victim.

What the hell does anyone really know about the anthrax attacks? The government is trying to set the all-time record in dissimulation and disinformation, but the bottom line is that nobody has brought forward even the slightest evidence that the anthrax letters came from anyone other than your usual all-American crackpot. I’m not saying that it’s not possible that some Islamic fundamentalist is behind it. I don’t think it’s likely, myself, but, unlike our noble leaders, I’m willing to admit that I don’t know. Until the FBI has some kind of proof, it is not only stupid but actually irresponsible to go around pointing the finger at anyone.

Every year, tens of thousands of people die at work and on the highway. But what is everyone terrified of now? Anthrax. Nobody is organizing massive numbers of safe-driving clinics, but everyone’s putting on rubber gloves when they handle the mail! How many people get injured or killed in hunting accidents, or accidents involving all-terrain vehicles, or fires, or incorrectly prescribed medicines? Way, way more than will be killed by terrorists in the foreseeable future.

According to the United Nations, 11 million children die every year of preventable causes. [NY Times, March 14, 2002] Nobody, yet, has sounded the alarm.

An actress– whom I never heard of– stated that she no longer opened her mail because of the anthrax scare. Aside from the absurdity of Osama Bin Laden targeting some second-rate unknown Hollywood actress, instead of, for example, Fort Benning, you have to realize that she didn’t say that her mail wasn’t being opened. In other words, good heavens, I’ll have my secretary risk her life instead…

President Bush and other officials have publicly linked the anthrax letters to Osama Bin Laden, while admitting there is no proof. This has the effect of focusing American anger even more intensely on a subject who seems more credibly linked to other terrorist acts. You get a muddying of emotions and intellect here. You get arguments in favor of harsh action against Afghanistan linked to vague feelings of hysteria towards the anthrax threat.

And what on earth is going on in Afghanistan? I thought there was a plan? The trouble is that most of the terrorists who crashed the planes into the World Trade Centre come from Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. According to Seymour Hersh and others, the Saudi Royal Family has been less than cooperative.

What’s really going on here? Not much, since the attack itself. But there are a lot of people with a lot of reasons why they want this “crisis” to be hyped as much as possible. From the cop putting in over-time guarding buildings that are absurdly unlikely to be targets of anyone, to the generals and the military suppliers who have enormous profits and power at stake.

I just watched a press conference in Washington at which the Mayor and various cronies discussed their response to the possibility of anthrax contamination at the local postal sorting stations. They are modeling their presentation on Giuliani’s highly regarded press conferences in New York. The people behind the mayor all look so very self-important and responsible. They’d like us to believe they are our noble leaders and fully in charge and competent. I’m starting to think there’s a bit of a contest here to get on TV and get your five minutes of fame and maybe get more funding and more staff for your department.

CNN, at this very moment, is using talcum powder to demonstrate that anthrax spores can leak through an envelope. Highly scientific. You go, oh my god, the powder is getting out! It’s everywhere! Run, run for your lives!

In London, Ontario, officials are searching the bags of three-year-olds attending the Children’s Museum. I’m sorry—with all due respect, I think these officials are idiots. Do they imagine Osama Bin Laden sitting in his cave in the mountains of Afghanistan and wondering if the suicide bomber he sent to the Children’s Museum in London, Ontario made it through yet?

In Peterborough, Ontario, an idiot school board cancelled a class trip to Holland to take part in a United Nations Conference.

Why? Because of the terrorism! What terrorism? What terrorism!? Are you mad! It’s everywhere. Planes are falling out of the sky! Bombs exploding everywhere! Anthrax in all the postal outlets…..

No. It’s hysteria, plain and simple, and God keep us out of the hands of hysterics. When a group of parents– with better sense than most–decided to send their children to the conference anyway (with proper chaperones and liability insurance) the school board, in a snit, decided to punish them by ordering teachers to give these students zeros for all assignments and tests missed.  How dare you make us look hysterical and paranoid?!

Well, you could argue that it’s simply good and wise to have more security than we used to have. The problem is that if you convince everyone to get hysterical, they lose all sense of reasonableness and proportion. Thousands of people die every year in this country, of disease, accident, neglect, and murder. We have accrued a widely shared body of wisdom about the relative immediacy and causes of these deaths. In a few short weeks, we have thrown all this common sense out the window. We go home and watch the cheesy and disreputable CNN and come to the conclusion that Osama Bin Laden is after us.

Now CNN is bringing on a professional “headhunter” to tell us which vocations are most at risk from terrorist attack.

I am getting roundly sick of idiot conservatives who see this whole crisis as an excuse to get rid of civil liberties and engorge the defense department with new high-tech toys. And I’m really getting fed up with conservatives who regard anyone who disagrees with their own personal views on how the war against Bin Laden should be run as patsies. “Oh, so you want to do nothing!” I don’t know of any liberal who wants to do nothing, but if you don’t go along with the current incoherent policies, conservatives can’t stand the thought that something not involving big explosions and blood-letting should even be considered.

The festering sore of the administration’s current policies is Saudi Arabia. It is becoming increasingly obvious to some that the Saudi’s may not only have provided 15 of the 19 hijackers, but they may actually have been paying off Osama Bin Laden for years.

Look, it’s not that complicated. Osama Bin Laden’s terrorists are not standing outside in Afghanistan waiting for American bombs to fall on them. Most of them are probably not even in Afghanistan. So you have the U.S. bombing one of the poorest and most unfortunate nations on earth. And you have the U.S. snuggling up to authoritarian leaders in Syria, Jordan, Iran, and Pakistan, all of whom faced potential insurgencies in their own nations.

Real police work…. How come the FBI can’t trace those letters? When they talk about funding needs for the agency, the bravado about how new, expensive technologies will enable them to magically apprehend criminals before they even commit a crime is invigorating. The reality, obviously, is more like Inspector Clouseau.

Some people have questioned the idea of bombing a country that is already in a state of near-collapse. Some conservatives have angrily retorted, basically, “how dare you?” Regardless of the strategic value of the bombing runs, and regardless of the fact that we are probably created an entire new generation of suicide-bombers among those very angry victims, you can’t ignore the fact that we have an immense military-industrial complex in the U.S. that is absolutely in lust with power and money. There hasn’t been a good war in a decade, while the military has been stockpiling weapons and delivery systems with unbridled but frustrated passion. This opportunity, for them, is a godsend, and I would wager that the desire of the military to use up as many bombs as possible and make frantic pitches for new weapons systems and more money, is without restraint.

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Bush – WTC II

So what exactly is George Bush Jr. going to do?

He’s already made a couple of major mistakes here. He declared that an act of criminal terrorism was actually an act of war. He has vowed to eradicate terrorism from the face of the earth. He has promised the American people that he will destroy evil in the world.

We’re all getting carried away here. It sounds ridiculous, considering the scale of the disaster, the World Trade Centre attack, but we are getting carried away.

First of all, it was not an act of war. You have to have two parties for an act of war and both parties have to be nations in some form or another. So far, what we have, is a tightly bound group of conspirators. We have about 20 men against the entire military and industrial might of the United States of America. If this was a war, it would have been over before it started.

Bush has yet to show the world any evidence of complicity of any sovereign nation.

By calling it an “act of war”, Bush actually diminishes the horror of what the fanatics did. If it’s an act of war, it falls into the category of Dresden and London during World War II, or Hiroshima, or My Lai, or any of dozens of other wartime atrocities that history tends to excuse because it regards them as examples of excess, not criminality.

On this issue, I consider myself harsher than Bush: it was an act of criminal terror. It was mass murder.

By calling it an “act of war”, Bush probably hoped to justify a vigorous and powerful U.S. response. The next question, of course, is what is that response going to be?

It seems to me that there are three major options.

  1. He can blame a particular nation and launch a full-scale attack and invasion of that nation.
  2. He can blame a particular person or group and launch a limited attack with the aim of killing or apprehending that person or group. Or…
  3. He can blame a network of organizations and political entities and launch numerous limited attacks on their bases and hideouts.

Is there some other viable option I missed? I can’t think of it. I tried to think of it because these three options aren’t really very good.

With his grandiose rhetoric, Bush has created high expectations. Americans are waiting to see a big development. Can he deliver?

Option 1 is hopeless. There are good reasons why the U.S. would not want to invade or occupy Afghanistan or Iraq or Yemen or whoever. It would take a long time, and there would be an enormous cost in lives. It would likely introduce instability into a potentially volatile region. It would create a large pool of new, future terrorists. It would create alarm and concern in China and Russia and Pakistan. If the U.S. occupied the nation, it would have to constantly contend with terrorists and insurrectionists.

It would result in disaster.  [2022-04-27: Looks like I was right about that.]

The Soviets couldn’t take Afghanistan. It is a nation of mountains and deserts, with no infrastructure left, after the Soviet Occupation, to destroy. An invasion would unite the fractious forces that are currently at each other’s throats, as well as recruit tens of thousands of Islamic volunteers from other nations, some of whom will try to bring the war home to America. Most importantly, it would destabilize Pakistan.

Pakistan has a bomb.

I can’t believe the U.S. will adopt this insane strategy.  [They did.]

Option 2 is a more attractive, viable option, but won’t be effective. It’s too easy for the targets to move and hide and avoid interdiction. If it is the option Bush chooses, expect a ton of spin on the results. We got them. We got most of them. We got a lot of them. But nobody is going to be able to pretend we got all of them, and the ones we miss will strike back with a vengeance. Two, three years down the road, someone is going to ask an embarrassing question: do you feel safer today than you did in 2000?

Option 3 will look the most impressive with a new CNN logo and theme music. Lots of maps and diagrams, showing a combination of missiles, bombs, and paratroops, taking out numerous targets, and making a mighty impression on the global reach of the all-powerful U.S. military.

Once again, I doubt it will be particularly effective, but it will look effective, and when terrorists continue to strike back, it can be made to look more like the results of having intractable enemies than foolish foreign policy. American allies in the region– Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt– can breathe a big sigh of relief as the Americans pack up their carriers and rush home.

What should they do?

They should launch a new era of activism abroad with a concerted effort to broker peace in Israel, and to promote economic development in democratic third world nations. The U.S. should sign the Kyoto accord and law of the sea treaties, and ease up on it’s demands in the areas of trade and intellectual property rights.

It should forgive huge amounts of global debt.

That last item would cost it a lot less than most of the military options.

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Violent Extremist Tree-Huggers

Only the shameless hooligans behind George Bush Jr. could have the effrontery to try to paint Bill Clinton, the moderately right-leaning president who killed welfare, as an environmental “extremist”.

In the past thirty years, the average wage of the top executives in the United States has risen by several hundred percent. At the same time, the average wage of people who actually work for a living, has stagnated. Only those same shameless hooligans would foist upon us the idea that those over-paid fat-cat executives need more money, and the average working stiff needs less roads, less education, less health-care, and a poorer quality of life.

What a tax cut does, of course, is remove government services that benefit everyone and reward people who have the least need of financial assistance.

But that’s not really what Bush is up to. Do you think Exxon and Bristol-Myers and Dupont would be content with being taxed less? By God, you have no idea. The real goal of this Republican administration is not only to reduce the tax liabilities of the rich, but to get them government subsidies, in the form of additional tax breaks, reduction of liabilities, and tort law reform. You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. And Mr. Bush is going to be in a big hurry to get this agenda through because conventional wisdom is that the Democrats will retake Congress in the 2002 elections.

One example: there used to be a rule that the government would not contract with companies that were in violation of environmental laws, or work-place health and safety regulations. Well, no more! Why on earth should the government hold these private corporations to such onerous and expensive obligations such as not dumping toxic wastes into your drinking water or cutting back on safety equipment, at the expense of a few mutilations, just so they can get some of that government largesse?

The Republicans seem to believe that allowing corporations to not spend money on cleaning up the toxic wastes that helped them make enormous profits– which means that you and I, brothers and sisters, get to pay for it– is what is known as “tax fairness”. Anyone who thinks otherwise is, of course, an “extremist”.

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Republican Deficits

Some critics of the George W. Bush Jr. tax cut don’t understand one simple but important thing about Republican economics. They allege that this $1.2 trillion tax cut, which primarily benefits the very rich, will drive the government back into a deficit within ten years. They think that Bush Jr. and his cronies don’t know this.

They know it very well. The cronies know it, absolutely. Bush Jr. himself may only be dimly aware of it, because he really isn’t all that bright.

The purpose of the tax cut is to accomplish exactly what the critics say it will: restore the budget to a deficit position. Why? Because the budget deficit was quite simply the best tool the conservatives had for transferring as much wealth from the poor to the rich as possible. Jimmy Carter left the presidency with most social programs intact and a relatively modest $45 billion deficit. President Reagan, unable politically to slash the social programs he wanted to slash, simply ran up the deficit by cutting taxes without cutting spending. He was the most fiscally irresponsible president in the history of the United States and left, as his legacy to the nation, a $450 billion deficit.

Mr. Do-Nothing Senior, George Bush, did nothing. The deficit suited Republicans just fine. Military spending continued at its usual hysterical pace, squandered left, right, and centre on madcap schemes, over-priced hammers, obsolete aircraft, and bizarre futuristic technologies that never worked. But even George Bush Sr. realized that he couldn’t let the deficit spiral too far out of control: he raised taxes. That is why, some think, he lost the next election to Bill Clinton.

Enter President Clinton. Clinton cut spending and left most existing taxes intact. Within five years, he had eliminated the annual deficit. The economy, spurred by low interest rates (caused by the fact that the government was no longer competing as heartily for loaned money), grew spectacularly.

The Republicans lost the election to Al Gore, but were awarded the Oval Office by the Republican appointees on the Supreme Court. Bush’s first significant act is to set the government on the path towards deficits again. His trillion dollar tax cut, combined with the downturn in the economy, (which will lower projected tax revenues) will almost guarantee that the government will once again be in a deficit position within ten years.

And then, once again, the Republicans will raise a hue and cry: we must cut spending!

Is it really all that subtle?

As you will know when you read this, all of the predictions here came true: Trump entered office January 2017 and by January 2018 the projected annual deficit of the United States will be about 4 times the size of Obama’s largest deficit (it was declining, slowly, before Trump).

[2018-05-08]

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Bush

George Bush Jr. belongs that peculiar school of American politician who doesn’t understand the rest of the world, isn’t curious about it, and doesn’t give a damn about the possibility that they might like to do things a bit differently out “there”.

Why does Europe even care? All the better if the evil American imperialists decide to stay out of things and mind their own business, right? The trouble is, that’s just not possible, nor likely. Bush’s attitude is that the rest of the world is not worth knowing, but it is certainly worth exploiting. American corporations throw a lot of weight around even when the U.S. government and military does not. And when the interests of Coca Cola are at stake, you can bet Bush Jr. will get interested in hurry. But he won’t get interested enough to try to learn anything. He’ll only get interested enough to figure out just how much weight American can throw around out there in order to get their way. Trade impediments? Let’s cut off their credit at the World Bank. Regulations to protect indigenous cultural expressions? Demand that they be removed so American trinkets can be sold at cut-rate prices! Laws preventing tobacco advertising aimed at children? Hell, that discriminates against R. J. Reynolds! Threaten to jack up their interest rates!

Bush will oppose every effort to make America play by the same rules as everyone else. Clinton could not persuade Congress to sign international agreements on land mines and chemical weapons and exploitation of the world’s oceans. Clinton couldn’t persuade the Republicans to show the slightest concern over global warming.

The only mitigating circumstance in sight is that the Republicans must be aware of the danger of losing both houses of Congress in the next election two years from now. Bush can’t afford to antagonize everyone no matter what Tom Delay thinks.

And another thought… had Gore won, you can bet the Republicans would already have picked out their Special Prosecutors and Investigative Committee chairs. It doesn’t matter whether there is anything to investigate or not: something could always be found.

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Gush Bore: The 2000 Election

The Difference Between Al Gore and George Bush Jr….

As everybody seems to know, this election is about purity, innocence, and fidelity. God knows, we could have 15% unemployment, a –4% growth in GDP, riots in the streets, and war in the Middle East, but what we really care about is whether the President loves his wife.

So Al Gore kisses Tipper passionately on stage at the Democratic National Convention. The steam hissed from both their ears as the astounded press corp dropped their pens and microphones and gasped.

Clever, don’t you think. Instead of saying, “I will never screw around with any interns, no matter how doe-eyed and lovely and naïve”, which sounds like, “No, I don’t still beat my wife”, Al Gore plants a passionate kiss on his wife. Message: hey, I don’t need to fool around. I’m passionate about my wife.

Well, the Republicans could not let that stand, by golly, no. They had to be equally subtle, equally insidious. So they leak this story about George Bush Jr. dealing with a flirtatious staff member during his father’s 1988 presidential campaign. It seems that the stalwart George Bush Jr. got sick and tired of all this flirtation so he just marched right up to this woman and told her off, right then and there. When another staff member remonstrated with him about treating a loyal staff member so harshly, George Junior barked out, “Good. I’m a married man!”

There. This proves that George Bush Jr. is just as honorable and faithful as Al Gore.

Maybe this is a good illustration of the difference between the two candidates. Gore believes that marriage is a good thing because you get to spend your whole life with a beautiful sexy person that you really care about. Bush believes that marriage is a good thing because the Bible darn well tells us that it is and you just better get that straight.

Now I understand.

Well, I thought I did. The trouble is… can you tell me which candidate supports which position on any of the following issues?

  • Military build up
  • Less regulation and government intervention
  • Lower taxes
  • Capital punishment
  • Spending billions on the war on drugs
  • Persuading Hollywood—with logic instead of laws—to tone down the sex and violence
  • Improving education
  • Campaign Finance Reform
  • Welfare “Reform” (read “slash welfare programs”)

You’re right. They both have pretty well the same positions. So what’s the difference?

Well, in all fairness, Gore probably won’t set out to break all records for executions the way George Bush Jr. did in Texas. Of course that is at least partly because the Federal Government in the U.S. has very little responsibility for capital punishment: that is a state issue. But I can see Gore saying something like, “by golly, we ought to make sure these guys are guilty before we execute them,” whereas George Jr. would probably say something like, “if they weren’t guilty, what the heck were they doing on death row?”

Gore is probably a little more environment-friendly than Bush, but probably not very much. Like Bush, he tends to give business interests, including the oil and forestry industries, pretty well everything they want.

Gore claims to be serious about campaign finance reform. We have not seen a leader yet, however, who is dumb—or smart—enough to cut off the very branch upon which he is sitting. Will Gore bring in serious campaign finance reform and cut off the very moneyed interests that have sponsored his campaign to an unimaginable degree? Not very likely.

Gush/Bore. Take your choice.

Chromehorse.net officially endorses Ralph Nader for President.

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Elian – Call Home

Well, well. Isn’t it reassuring– if you’re a Democrat– to know that Al Gore is quite capable of getting down and dirty when necessary to win votes. Makes you feel all fuzzy and warm about his prospects for the November presidential election.

Al Gore, don’t you know, would like to win the state of Florida in November. The state of Florida consists largely of crime-ridden urban vacuum Miami and Disneyland. With George Bush Jr. as the Republican nominee, Disneyland is sewn up, but, hey, Miami is still up for grabs. And Miami is populated with ex-Cubans still seething with hatred for Fidel Castro, forty years after he nationalized the casinos and bordellos of Havana.

Enter Elian Gonzalez and his mom. Elian’s parents were divorced, and his father had custody of Elian. His mom, ever the responsible parent, and a non-swimmer, decided to abduct him– that’s what we call it when a dad does the same thing– and hop into a flimsy home-made aluminum boat and defect to America. The boat departed at night, over-loaded by two with a couple of last-minute adventurers, and almost sank shortly after it left the beach. Elian, terrified, didn’t want to go when they tried again a few days later.

He had more sense than the rest of them: out in open water, the boat sank. Elian stayed afloat on an inner tube and saw his mother and almost all of the others drown.

Elian drifted for several days until he was picked up by a fisherman and brought to Miami. He was placed in the custody of some distant relatives of rather distinctive all-American enthusiasms. They decided that rather than send Elian to live with his own father in Cuba, they would make Elian a symbol of their festering obsessive compulsive hatred of Castro. They would Americanize him.

A whole cartload of conservative Republicans supports this disgraceful effort to remove a child from the custody of his father. They support this brazen and cynical attempt to exploit the child for craven political ends.  The party, supposedly, of family values, wants to exploit a child.

How low can you sink?

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McCaine Mutiny

There is a lot to be learned about the Republican Party from the failed candidacy of John McCain.

First of all, there is the bizarre logic of the primary process. The object of the primaries is to nominate a candidate who can represent the values of the Republican Party and win an election against the nominee from the Democrats. But you wouldn’t know it from this primary.

There is a certain percentage of the electorate who will vote upon party lines regardless of who the nominee is. But in order to win the election, you must appeal to more of the undecided, moderate voters than your opponent does. It was rather hysterical, in this context, to hear George Bush Jr. complain bitterly about John McCain appealing to Democrats and independents in order to win the Michigan primary. In other words, the outrageous John McCain actually positioned himself well to win the general election. Is that the kind of candidate you want??? Well… it is, sort of.

But the larger lesson is that the Republican Party really is, baldly and absolutely, the party of Big Money. Bush and McCain did not disagree on any major policy issue except what to do with the budget surplus (Bush wants to give it to the rich in the form of a tax break, while McCain wants to use it to pay down the debt and fortify Medicare) and campaign finance reform. McCain wants to eliminate the notorious “soft money” from election campaigns; Bush doesn’t.

The fundamental difference between the two men is that George Bush Jr. understands and likes the symbiotic relationship between the wealthy and Republican politics, and McCain does not. Bush understands that, in exchange for the millions of dollars in campaign financing he has received, he will enact certain policies and agendas that will generously benefit his rich sponsors, including, especially, his mammoth proposed tax break for the rich. McCain sees that relationship as something that essentially corrupts the political process. Instead of making decisions based on what is best for all Americans, Bush Jr. will be making decisions based on the best interests of his generous buddies.

The Republicans would have you believe that the Democrats do the same thing. But even the Republicans admit that the special interests that the Democrats are generally beholden to are groups, like the labor unions and the NAACP and teachers’ associations and so on. So at least the Democrats are beholden to large numbers of people, instead of a small minority of wealthy capitalists.

Gore has smartly positioned himself right behind McCain. He has offered to forego the use of all “soft” money if Bush Jr. also agrees.

Fat chance, and Gore knows it, and Bush knows it.