It's morning in America

I'm not usually one to paraphrase both Gerald Ford and Spiro Agnew (or their speechwriters really) in the same sentence, but my fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over - the nattering nabobs of negativity have been outmatched.

The "he'll raise your taxes" canard

Do you make more than $227,000 a year? Well if you are among the 95% of us who do not, then OBAMA WILL CUT YOUR TAXES. In fact, you have to make over $600,000 to get your taxes raised. Even those numbers will bring taxes back to Reagan levels and God we all know how much those moneyed folks love themselves some Reagan. CNN provides a pretty good analysis.

McCain will cut across the board, but the highest percentage of cuts will go overwhelmingly to that fortunate 0.1% - at a severe cost in budget deficits to the rest of us. If McCain truly believes that greatly extending the Bush tax cuts he voted against is the right thing to do, I'd just like to know his reasoning. Trickle down, supply side, voodoo economics actually work?



and again...



don't let 'em fool ye

On methods for fighting terrorism:

Ask is it effective? And only if the answer is yes, should we ask the second question - at what cost? Because ultimately our democracy can never be derailed by people planting a bomb in our midst, it can only be derailed if we conclude that it is inadequete to defend us.
Louise Richardson - Radcliff Institute, Harvard University

check out more great Berkeley lectures...

Bush's War

PBS is running a 4-hour Frontline entitled "Bush's War." Given the lengthy running time, it is the most exhaustive and definitive explanation about why "we are where we are." Of the relatively few people who will actually watch it, some will likely dismiss it as yet another partisan salvo from the left-wing media. They would perhaps be surprised to find how riveting it is to watch current and former senior administration officials candidly describe how Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld pushed for war in Iraq, literally from September 12, 2001 until the invasion. Bush himself comes across more as a rubber stamper who recognized at least some of the political if not human consequences of a war manufactured on a foundation that was shaky at best, but ultimately decided during a December 2002 consultation with then National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice that invasion of Iraq was the right course of action. Once that fateful decision had been made, there was no turning back and all the UN posturing by the sacrificed but compliant Colin Powell was mere window dressing. If ever there was a field guide for the impeachment of Dick Cheney, the details are contained within these primary accounts of the devastation that can be wrought by an imperial presidency.

Clinton Uses Dirty Trick To Warn Obama About Dirty Tricks

Could Hillary be getting any more desperate? A chief Clinton adviser, Bill Shaheen, floated the possibility that Obama would face tough questions about his past if he becomes the Democratic nominee. Then Shaheen regretted even bringing it up and Hillary claimed he had no authorization to bring up Obama's teenage years. Apparently they haven't taken the time to read Obama's book where he talks much more candidly about his drug days than Bush bothered to address his years of snorting anything that came into the frat house. Could they be that naive to think that somehow there are no Republican dirty tricks in the works for Hillary? Vince Foster anyone?

Statues, as well as living politicians, often have a short life in Iraq.

The assassination of Sheik Abdul-Sattar Abu Risha is a sad asterisk to last night's Bush speech about our next several years in Iraq. The leader of the Anbar Awakening Council, was on a mission to unite all the Arab peoples of the world. A rather lofty if not completely unattainable goal, but it sure made for good "trust the surge" PR.

Abu Risha's death underlines the degree to which the White House and General Petraeus have cherry-picked evidence to prove that it is possible to turn the tide in Iraq. They have, for instance, given the impression that some Sunni tribal leaders turning against al-Qa'ida in Anbar and parts of Diyala and Baghdad is a turning point in the war.

In reality al-Qa'ida is only a small part of the insurgency, with its fighters numbering only 1,300 as against 103,000 in the other insurgent organisations according to one specialist on the insurgency. Al-Qa'ida has largely concentrated on horrific and cruel bomb attacks on Shia civilians and policemen and has targeted the US military only as secondary target.

The mass of the insurgents belong to groups that are nationalist and Islamic militants who have primarily fought the US occupation. They were never likely to sit back while the US declared victory in their main bastion in Anbar province.

But just who was this Sheik? Two filmmakers seeking the truth about Anbar progress interviewed him recently in Jordon. This fascinating story, which aired on Al Jazeera English and Democracy Now, once again proves that what you're getting from the mainstream media and their overlords in the Administration is not a particularly accurate picture.

Bush presents case for staying in Vietnam

Or is he just lashing out at war critics again? Either way, he seems to think that we should still be in Vietnam decades later due the havoc that was wreaked after we left so gracefully in 1975. He mentions the "tens of thousands" of Vietnamese who perished in prison camps. He doesn't mention the *millions* of civilians who were killed during our 25 year stay. He does mention that millions were killed in Cambodia but we weren't supposed to be fighting a war there. Perhaps he wishes Nixon would have dropped a few more illegal bombs there and the whole thing could have been prevented anyway? Talk about rewriting history...