THE LIES OF BUSH VS THE LIES OF CLINTON

This was written on June 3. Since I made the comparison between Clinton's and Bush's lies back then, many others have done so. But I was first, and still best.

Interestingly, since then, the formerly spineless press has discovered vestiges of a nerve network, a few more Democratics have had their mouthclamps removed, and as I predicted, more conservatives are getting concerned that W's gonna blow it.

W himself however has become even more snarky as he is pressed to explain the still-missing WsMD, and the basic failure of every initiative since 9/11. He doesn't handle criticism well when his polls are down, does he?

Here's the article:

"Below is a must-read article by Paul Krugman of the NYTimes. Thankfully, the article is shorter than what immediately follows.

I haven't ranted in a month or so, and, y'know, it gets backed up, like a Boston sewer in a heavy rain. OK, maybe that's not the best analogy, but the USA Patriot Act has imposed restrictions on analogies, and they are hard to find these days, as hard to find, in fact, as a progressive in Congress.

So, hmm, lessee, Clinton lies about sex, 0 people dead, Europe laughs at our priggishness, hypocracy, and self-righteous moral stance, and what happens? Clinton gets impeached.

Bush lies about the justification for war, 15,000 people are dead, many more maimed, Iraq is a disaster waiting to happen, the rest of the world is even more pissed off at this deceit (including supporters of the war), the world is much less safe than it was three months ago, and what happens? Well, nothing. Not a goddam thing. Except Europe is pissed of at our hypocracy, and self-righteous moral stance. At least were not priggish anymore. We would never drape a statue to cover up body parts, for instance.

Actually, Bush and his cabal have lied about every policy decision or event since he began his administration, from 9/11 itself to more recent actions--the AIDS money for Africa, both tax cuts, policies on health care, education, the environment--hell, you name it, these guys have lied about it. No child left behind? I can see how dismantling Head Start will help reach that goal, yep. (I could say he meant "No old-money white male child of Western European ancestry and Republican parents who were members of Skull & Bones except for an occasional Jew if they tow the line left behind, but that would be a cheap shot.)

The $15 billion AIDS money for Africa? Guess how much is allocated for abstinence programs?* Remember when they removed information about condoms from the CDC website regarding STD's and AIDS? Condoms cause promiscuity and of course are not safe, they said. Remember Global Warming? Not if they can help it. Santorum equates homosexuality with incest, bestiality, and child molestation, and Bush praises his record. Wonder what Mary Cheney's father thought about that.

How does he get away with these lies and distortions, and attacks on common sense, proven science and especially polysyllabic words?

Finally, much is being written about why and how they are getting away with it, some of it even in the very press that is itself complicit (except for any Rupert Murdoch entity, of course). I think it's because we aren't eating enough righteous whole grains and faith-based fruits and vegetables. You know--no moral fiber.

Regardless, it's time for everyone to follow the lead of Howard Beale in the movie "Network", lean out their windows and shout "I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore." Don’t lean too far. The Homeland Security people will be waiting just to push people like you all the way, since by that action you would clearly not be supporting the president and are thus of course a traitor who deserves to be splattered all over the sidewalk, like an Iraqi near a cluster bomb. Oh dammit, there go those analogies again.

Anyway, as Krugman says below, "It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable."

Even conservatives are upset about these revelations (though for ignoble reasons), and yesterday's expected FCC decision to relax major media ownership rules brought the left and the right together in an alliance to oppose the action, albeit, again, for different reasons. The NRA opposed the decision because, as Wayne R. LaPierre Jr., president of the NRA said, "If more media outlets are placed in fewer hands, "gun-hating media giants like AOL Time Warner, Viacom/CBS and Disney/ABC . . . could literally silence your NRA and prevent us from communicating with your fellow Americans by refusing to sell us television, radio or newspaper advertising at any price...I am all for citizens having the ability to express their views. Diversity is what America is all about." Or we'll shoot you. How much more frickin' weird can it get? Don’t ask, don’t tell.

As Krugman said in another article recently, "... the people now running America aren't conservatives: they're radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have." Hey, wait a minute--that was us in the 60's. Dammit, they co-opt everything. Oh, they're good, really good. You can hear Bush saying to the UN, "If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem."

So there's a possibility that the Bushies, or more accurately the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Cheney's, having been emboldened by their political coup in 2000 and empowered by 9/11, the Iraq "victory", and the most complacent government any emperor could ever hope for, will in their daily outrages go too far, and dig themselves into a hole. The late great Nikita Kruschev said to our leaders once, "We will bury you!" Well, now, let's consider that as prescient good advice for us towards our current leaders.

But remember, last time we thought they were dead and buried, when Clinton beat around the Bush (developing his style early on), and the Rumsfeld/Wolfowitz/Cheney/Perle faction of the Illuminati were quiescently frozen. But in fact they, like bears, only appeared to be hibernating, while fomenting their plans to subvert democracy to their will and eat our children. They emerged more powerful than ever, with a president that was much more malleable than their last leader--an empty vessel, if you will, and of course you will; a country more easily swayed to their agenda, distracted as it was by wondering if this was their final answer; and world events that seemed to conspire to give them hegemony and a whole lot of chutzpah.

And thus the plans they hatched back in the late 90's that Bush 1 summarily rejected were seen after 9/11 by Bush 2 as his path of glory. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree? This apple, watching Poltergeist while high on blow and booze, thought he heard Zelda Rubinstein (as the exorcist Tangina) tell Carol Ann to "come to the right--Come To The Right!" It was a born-again moment.

It's time to nuke the whole cabal, before they completely destroy 60 years of the greatest progress any nation has ever seen (except maybe Vanuatu).

And while we're at it, can we do something about Simon Cowell?


*1/3--that's right, one third. $5 Billion: "We now know what works: abstinence and marital fidelity," said Sandy Rios, president of Concerned Women for America. "The passage of this bill may prove to be one of the greatest events in the history of Africa." Well, it’s not actually that bad, not $5 billion, because this fiscal year the government is spending about $1.2 billion for international AIDS programs. Despite its support for the five-year, $15 billion plan, the administration is seeking only $1.7 billion in fiscal 2004, $2 billion if related programs for malaria and tuberculosis are included. Congressional aides said Congress would probably agree to around $2.4 billion, but finding more would be “tough in a year when the budget deficit is ballooning.” That last sentence was written before the passage of the tax cut. Anyone think there'll be any money left to fulfill this plan in the subsequent years?"


On to the point, with a preface:

"I can imagine no greater breach of public trust than to mislead a country into war... When a president lies or exaggerates in making an argument for war, when he spins the facts to sell his case, he betrays his public trust, and he diminishes the credibility of his office and our country." ----Mark Bowden, celebrated author of "Black Hawk Down" and a sincere supporter of the war. The full column is at http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/columnists/mark_bowden/5937888.htm.


Standard Operating Procedure
By PAUL KRUGMAN (NY Times)

The mystery of Iraq's missing weapons of mass destruction has become a lot less mysterious. Recent reports in major British newspapers and three major American news magazines, based on leaks from angry intelligence officials, back up the sources who told my colleague Nicholas Kristof that the Bush administration "grossly manipulated intelligence" about W.M.D.'s.

And anyone who talks about an "intelligence failure" is missing the point. The problem lay not with intelligence professionals, but with the Bush and Blair administrations. They wanted a war, so they demanded reports supporting their case, while dismissing contrary evidence.

In Britain, the news media have not been shy about drawing the obvious implications, and the outrage has not been limited to war opponents. The Times of London was ardently pro-war; nonetheless, it ran an analysis under the headline "Lie Another Day." The paper drew parallels between the selling of the war and other misleading claims: "The government is seen as having `spun' the threat from Saddam's weapons just as it spins everything else."

Yet few have made the same argument in this country, even though "spin" is far too mild a word for what the Bush administration does, all the time. Suggestions that the public was manipulated into supporting an Iraq war gain credibility from the fact that misrepresentation and deception are standard operating procedure for this administration, which — to an extent never before seen in U.S. history — systematically and brazenly distorts the facts.

Am I exaggerating? Even as George Bush stunned reporters by declaring that we have "found the weapons of mass destruction," the Republican National Committee declared that the latest tax cut benefits "everyone who pays taxes." That is simply a lie. You've heard about those eight million children denied any tax break by a last-minute switcheroo. In total, 50 million American households — including a majority of those with members over 65 — get nothing; another 20 million receive less than $100 each. And a great majority of those left behind do pay taxes.

And the bald-faced misrepresentation of an elitist tax cut offering little or nothing to most Americans is only the latest in a long string of blatant misstatements. Misleading the public has been a consistent strategy for the Bush team on issues ranging from tax policy and Social Security reform to energy and the environment. So why should we give the administration the benefit of the doubt on foreign policy?

It's long past time for this administration to be held accountable. Over the last two years we've become accustomed to the pattern. Each time the administration comes up with another whopper, partisan supporters — a group that includes a large segment of the news media — obediently insist that black is white and up is down. Meanwhile the "liberal" media report only that some people say that black is black and up is up. And some Democratic politicians offer the administration invaluable cover by making excuses and playing down the extent of the lies.

If this same lack of accountability extends to matters of war and peace, we're in very deep trouble. The British seem to understand this: Max Hastings, the veteran war correspondent — who supported Britain's participation in the war — writes that "the prime minister committed British troops and sacrificed British lives on the basis of a deceit, and it stinks."

It's no answer to say that Saddam was a murderous tyrant. I could point out that many of the neoconservatives who fomented this war were nonchalant, or worse, about mass murders by Central American death squads in the 1980's. But the important point is that this isn't about Saddam: it's about us. The public was told that Saddam posed an imminent threat. If that claim was fraudulent, the selling of the war is arguably the worst scandal in American political history — worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-contra. Indeed, the idea that we were deceived into war makes many commentators so uncomfortable that they refuse to admit the possibility.

But here's the thought that should make those commentators really uncomfortable. Suppose that this administration did con us into war. And suppose that it is not held accountable for its deceptions, so Mr. Bush can fight what Mr. Hastings calls a "khaki election" next year. In that case, our political system has become utterly, and perhaps irrevocably, corrupted.