Politics

I live in NYC, and I worry about what might happen that could destroy this city. Our “leaders” are doing nothing to make this world a safer place. It’s stupid to spend $400 billion a year on defense. We now spend more on our military budget than the rest of the world combined. In fact, the $48 billion increase requested for this year is larger than the total budget of any other country. Is it making us safer? Is having huge military budgets the way to protect what we believe in? I don’t think so. Look at the Cessna scare — the Reuters headline is US Fighters Arrived Too Late to Guard White House.

It’s some kind of scary Old Testament belief. America has always been about deterrence and punishment to prevent bad things from happening, rather than prevention. How else can we explain the war on drugs? Why do we prefer to spend money on prisons and police rather than education?

Maybe the “Old Testament” thing is more of an excuse than we deserve? One could argue that we prefer punishment because there is more money to be made that way. It’s hard to measure the profitability of foreign aid (and we’re at the bottom of industrialized nations for our foreign aid budget). It’s easier to measure what the defense contractors are making.

Bush’s handlers claim his speeches are influenced by his knowledge of the great thinkers:

On the morning of June 14, on the way to a college commencement address in Columbus, Ohio, Bridgeland, director of USA Freedom Corps, briefed reporters on a speech President Bush was about to give. It would be, according to Bridgeland, based on the works of George Eliot, Alexis de Tocqueville, Cicero, Adam Smith, Emily Dickinson, William Wordsworth, Pope John Paul II, Benjamin Rush, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington.

“And we’ve actually discussed [Aristotle’s] ‘Nicomachean Ethics’ together,” Bridgeland said, apparently with a straight face. “Yesterday, he was talking in the Oval Office about how Lincoln had completed or addressed the concern that the founding fathers had when — Madison in particular, when he rejected Patrick Henry’s request to include a declaration of rights in addition, because of the concern that future generations would not remember that there are duties associated with protecting the country we love so much. He made that very case yesterday in the Oval Office.”

The article is worth reading for the comparison of Bush’s speeches with the words of Jefferson, de Tocqueville, etc.

Found via cursor.org:

In a press conference with Rumsfeld, the Georgian defense minister tells the press that there are basically no al-Qaeda in his country, and that the USA has been pumping huge sums of money into the country:

it’s very difficult to me to say how much billions were spent by the U.S. I wish to assure you that what was done during these years, and especially since 1998 up to this day, is much bigger than any millions you can count.

House Passes Mormon Land Deal

The House quietly passed legislation yesterday allowing the Mormon Church to buy more than 900 acres of federal land in Wyoming to commemorate a religious site.

Then this is the weird part. What’s up with the House? A secret Mormon cabal?

Despite the controversy surrounding the bill, just two lawmakers — Hansen and Rep. Dale E. Kildee (D-Mich.) were present to say “aye” when the measure came up to a vote. The legislation will face a tougher time in the Senate, where both of Wyoming’s Republican senators, Craig Thomas and Mike Enzi, oppose the bill.

“The Martin’s Cove area is public land in Wyoming, and I feel that decisions regarding our public lands ought to reflect the will of our people,” Thomas said.

Covering Bush’s commencement address at Ohio State Univeristy, The Washington Post tells us:

The commencement addresses of George W. Bush serve as guideposts to a presidency first troubled, then revived.

A year ago, he received an honorary degree from his alma mater, Yale University, where he was booed, heckled and greeted with a sea of protest signs. Scores of professors boycotted the ceremony because they thought Bush undeserving, an image Bush himself indulged. “To the C students, I say, ‘You, too, can be president of the United States,’ ” he said then.

Today, at Ohio State University, Bush basked in the adulation of 55,000 people who treated him to waves of standing ovations in Ohio Stadium as he received an honorary doctorate. University officials bestowing the ceremonial hood on the president hailed him as “the most sought-after commencement speaker in the nation” and praised his “common-sense approach,” his “unwavering faith in the nation” and his overall leadership since Sept. 11, which “comforted and inspired us all.”

According to FAIR, protesters were threatened with arrest for so much as turning their backs on the President during his speech:

According to the Columbus Dispatch (6/15/02), students were warned ahead of time they faced arrest if they showed any signs of dissent: “Graduates had been warned during rehearsal on Thursday that they faced arrest if– as was rumored– some stood up and turned their backs on Bush during his speech.” The warning continued on the day of the event as well, according to the Associated Press (6/14/02): “Immediately before class members filed into the giant football stadium, an announcer instructed the crowd that all the university’s speakers deserve to be treated with respect and that anyone demonstrating or heckling would be subject to expulsion and arrest. The announcer urged that Bush be greeted with a ‘thunderous’ ovation.”

What a beautiful lesson in patriotism. The students from OSU have a web site covering the event, and the followup, including statements by protesters at www.turnyourbackonbush.com.

New Tom Tomorrow

Tom the Dancing Bug – Bush insists “Up is down”

Doug Marlette

Under Mayor Giuliani, municipal workers were forbidden to talk to the press without permission. Not surprisingly, the city lost a lawsuit over this. Now that we have a mayor who has heard of the Bill of Rights, the city won’t appeal the decision.

As I’ve heard Ann Northrop say more than once, “How do they sleep at night?”.

Bob Barr, Georgia Republican and the House impeachment manager during the Clinton impeachment travesty, is suing Clinton, James Carville and Larry Flint for $30 million, claiming “loss of reputation and emotional distress”. (This is a Salon Premium article, so unless you’re a subscriber you’ll only see the beginning.)

Barr has quietly filed a suit against Clinton, Carville and Flynt for “participating in a common scheme and unlawful on-going conspiracy to attempt to intimidate, impede and/or retaliate against [Barr]” for his role as an impeachment manager in 1999.

At the same time, he’s championing a bill that would limit non-economic medical damages to $250,000, saying “a national liability insurance crisis is ravaging the nation’s healthcare system.”

There’s a mention of the lawsuit in the Washington Post, but not the bill limiting damages.

Speaking of Bob Barr… here is a nice little anecdote that was reported on the local NBC affiliate, plus the Alanta Journal and Constitution, about him calling an airport guard an “idiot little nigger”.

Actual AP headline: Bush pledges fight against evil:

“Evil is evil, and we will fight it with all our might,” the president said.