The Perfect Financial Storm

Yesterday the Federal Reserve decided to effectively lend $200 Billion to primary dealers (investment banks) to ease the credit crunch caused by the sub-prime mortgage mess. In response, the beleaguered stock market soared over 400 points, its third best day ever. Traders apparently decided that the Fed move, designed to be open-ended, would put a floor beneath an otherwise downward spiraling bond market.

It might, but they're overlooking a larger and more ominous reality.

Yes, the Fed move will provide investment banks greater liquidity and free up capital to lend and commit to transactions, but it won’t solve all their problems. The sub-prime crisis has spread into other asset classes, including “Alt-A” loans and asset-backed paper, whose underlying instruments are not easy to value. This uncertainty, rather than an actual material decrease in value, caused a panic that effectively froze these multi-multi-billion dollar markets. Basically, every institution holding these bonds tried to sell them at the same time, and without buyers to take them, their values plummeted. In the best scenario, it will take continued Fed support to gradually restore order to these markets and allow rating agencies to reaffirm or adjust their views. The market will slowly re-price these instruments and buyers will eventually emerge, but it will take time.

Meanwhile, few new financings will take place, merger activity will slow to a trickle and lending will remain greatly diminished. Wall Street earnings will plummet, as will the earnings of most hedge funds, money managers, builders, brokers and the like.

More importantly, the Fed action will do nothing to mitigate broader forces crushing the economy. First quarter earnings will be coming soon, and it’s hard to imagine they will be anything but dismal. Real estate has been hammered, and everything connected with housing will be down significantly. Meanwhile, heating costs are way up. Gasoline is heading toward four dollars a gallon (yes Dubya, FOUR), and oil just passed $110 a barrel with no ceiling in sight. Consumption will have to suffer.

But the real harbinger of bad times ahead is employment. As last month’s shocking employment report demonstrated, jobs are getting hammered, with additional layoff announcements coming daily. Thousands more will be booted from the financial and real estate sectors soon, and retail and manufacturing will surely follow. We’ve seen this pattern before. Communities lay people off, retail stores begin to sag, inventories begin to rise, earnings go down, expansion stops, ad budgets are slashed, all in succession.

The stock market downturn has almost certainly not reached a bottom. The recent Fed-prompted rally was merely a bear rally, a “sucker’s rally”, a positive distraction from a much more pernicious and cyclical bear market. Last month’s shocking employment numbers were just the tip of an iceberg that will slowly emerge over the course of the coming year. In the short run, it’s hard to imagine where any good news will come from. With gasoline, heating oil, medical and other basic costs skyrocketing, consumption and retail sales won’t rebound any time soon. With credit tight, housing and finance won’t rebound any time soon. The weak dollar will help our balance of trade, but that will take time to add to our bottom line. And with the impotent and incompetent Bush Administration at the helm, we can expect no meaningful leadership to soften the blow.

In short, things are going to get worse before they get better. A few of my friends wonder if this could be the beginning of a second great depression. I doubt things will get that bad, but with the national debt soaring, Iraq draining our treasury, oil prices and medical costs skyrocketing, lending in a slump, we could be facing the perfect financial storm. At least the next President, whoever it is, can’t possibly be as hideously incompetent and lacking credibility as Bush, and this alone may help lift the markets and consumer confidence once the November election is settled. As a wise friend was fond of saying in the face of catastrophe, more will be revealed.

- JT Compton
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Bhutto, Bush and Buffoonery

The assassination of Pakistani presidential hopeful Benazir Bhutto was a sad, tragic reminder of how blindly absurd President Bush’s policies have been toward Bhutto's homeland and its liar-in-chief, Pervez Musharraf.

In recent years, along with giving billions of dollars in military aid, Bush has consistently praised and defended President Musharraf. According to Dubya, “[Musharraf has] been an absolute reliable partner.” But as anyone with a brain and a pair of eyes can see, the actions of his regime stand in lethal opposition to his claims.

Despite glowing statements and assertions coming from Musharraf’s mouth, his military has consistently partnered with and protected Afghan Taliban refugees living in Pakistan’s Tribal Areas, radicals who were initially funded and urged on by Pakistan itself. It’s not a stretch to imagine our billions going to buy better arms for those extremists despite Musharraf’s hollow assurances to the West that he stands against terrorism. Sadly, nothing he and his troops have done to stop radicals amounts to anything beyond window dressing. Asking the Pakistani military to wage war against Al Qaeda and the Taliban would be like asking our Army to wage war against the Marines. They are really part of the same outfit. And they continue to breed hatred of women, modernity and plurality with virtually no governmental restraint, effectively creating a new Taliban nation within Pakistan.

Moreover, Musharraf and his military have repeatedly put off fair and free elections, jailing opponents—judges, lawyers, politicians, journalists—and declaring martial law to suit their purposes. Calling him a dictator, and labeling him and his party anti-democracy, would be more than fair and accurate.

But Bush, as stubborn, stupid and incapable of diplomacy as ever, refuses to put any public pressure on Musharraf, much less place conditions on our billions in aid. Bush clings to his beer-buddy instinct, which told him early-on that Musharraf, like Russian Premiere Vladimir Putin, was a “good guy.” Tragically, once Bush decides that you’re a “good guy”, you can break any law, destroy any nation, commit any crime, and remain in Dubya’s good graces without consequence.

May the moderate, democratic spirit of Bhutto live on in Pakistan.

And may the blind stupidity, arrogance, incompetence, hypocrisy, stubbornness and dishonesty of the Bush Administration cease to further damage our nation and world before it crawls out of office in disgrace a little more than a year from now.

- JT Compton
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The Gore Reminder

Al Gore was interviewed on a CNN Global Warming special today, and yet again, it proved to be a heartbreaking reminder of how different our nation and place in the world would be if George Bush had not been given the Presidency by the Supreme Court.

Critics love to mock Gore because he’s not a blustering redneck-wannabe like Bush, because he doesn’t strut and smirk and pretend to be a working-class good-ol’ boy. They make fun of his intellect and deride his claim—which proves to be accurate—that he had a hand in starting the Internet, painting him as an annoying know-it-all. But recent history has demonstrated that a know-nothing President like Bush can do immense and lasting damage to our treasury, reputation, environment and democracy.

How utterly sad that instead of the dignified, articulate Gore—as wise, learned and measured a politician as I have seen in my lifetime—we have a ridiculous, obtuse, rude, ignorant, narrow-minded, angry and defiant loser in George Bush.

Bush has done virtually nothing constructive as President—increased AIDS funding to Africa (with strings attached to curtail use of condoms!)—and has done a thousand things to weaken and degrade a broad array of institutions and communities here and abroad. Watching Bush is like watching a sick joke, a phony cowboy with a phony accent trying desperately to distance himself from his blue-blooded, patrician, wimpy Yale-cheerleader past.

A Gore Presidency would have completely avoided the historic mess in Iraq, would have likely got the job done in Afghanistan, would have jump-started bold and broad initiatives to combat Climate Change, would have done a significantly better job in New Orleans (not the least of which because he would have given the FEMA job to someone capable instead of an inept crony), would never have put two extremist-revisionist judges on the Supreme Court, would never have allowed Big Business to write energy policy and rape the land (like the hideous mountaintop mining that has ruined vast areas of land in the Virginias), would never have encouraged torture or secret prisons or indefinite detention, would never have allowed unlimited spying on citizens, would never have made gaffe after gaffe on the world stage, would never have become an embarrassing international icon of ridicule and hatred.

How sad that cynical, dark-hearted hate mongers, neo-cons and wimps-trying-to-be-tough-guys like Charles Krauthammer (whose pathetic smear of Gore was featured on the same CNN show) would rather have as President a fool like Bush than a sage like Gore. How sad that so many Americans would rather vote for a beer buddy than a scholar. They get what they pay for—a President with wet brain, and policies and staff to match.

- JT Compton
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They Keep Getting Crazier

This has been a weird, angry week in America. And it’s only Wednesday.

After shredding the Oval Office, heard shouting “I’ll waterboard those spooks if it’s the last thing I do,” tossing lamps and framed pictures against the walls, President Bush dragged himself in front of the press and declared, in his own words, (these are mine), “Any nation that wishes to produce or possess a nuclear weapon in the future should be bombed and invaded and retrofitted to protect us. The recent report that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons program is exactly what I’ve been saying all along. They want to have one, which makes them the most dangerous and immoral pack of blood-thirsty terrorists in the history of the world. And by the way, I’m an incurious idiot convinced that the only people dumber than me are you, American Citizens, which gives me license to lie, twist and deceive you as long as it allows my infallible, all-knowing handlers, Dick and Josh, as well as my equity shareholders, the Oil Lobby, the Wealthy Pricks for Tax Fairness, the NRA and the Coalition for Raping our Natural Resources, to do whatever will enrich them and their CEO buddies. After all, we know that CEOs are the most important people around. If you’re not a CEO, then you’re a lazy communist who doesn't deserve to vote, much less live, unless you live to serve the CEO class, carrying their golf clubs, polishing their Bentleys, mowing their lawns, and so forth. Heck, if we prevent CEOs from trading in their ninety-foot yachts and buying the hundred-and-forty-foot models, they might lose face with their international peers, which would be your fault entirely. So I say again, bomb Iran, believe everything I say, and kiss the feet of any God-like CEO you might be lucky enough to meet before you disappear forever into a secret prison.”

Meanwhile, Presidential Candidate Mike Huckabee bristled at the question asked by so many reporters, “Do you not believe in evolution?” Standing, looking toward heaven and lifting his arms in a grand, celestial arc, Huckabee replied, “Like any true Christian believer, I know the mind of the bearded man who created the Universe and now sits on a cloud, watching our every move, keeping track of who has been naughty or nice. Ignoring the horrible collision occurring in the Praxis constellation, and despite the murderous rampages of the Janjaweed in Darfur, I know God is very concerned that if we allow certain microscopic Stem Cells to be used to cure disease and decrease suffering, our race will soon be worshipping Satan, dancing naked under the full moon, having sex with multiple partners and taking His glorious name in vain. Further, He is concerned that we, his special children, have allowed our minds to be corrupted by the maggot infested, hunchbacked scientists and polluted by their logic and testing and reason and common sense. God has often whispered into my ear, ‘I made the Earth six-thousand-thirty-six years ago, just for you, my worshipers, to rape and pillage as you please, as long as the only people you kill, molest, enslave or ignore are non-Christians. And just use your eyes—it is flat. Duh.’ This I say unto you.”

You can’t make this stuff up.

- JT Compton
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Hillary Battles Rove's Ghost

When will pundits get the joke? Republicans are blabbering about wanting to face Hillary in the general election precisely because they don’t want to face her. Their Rovean logic goes like this: If we keep screaming, on every news show and campaign stop, that we want to run against Witch Hillary, we might be able to scare Democrats into voting for someone else, because in truth, she would kick out butts. We would much rather face someone else. If we can bully Democrats into thinking Hillary can’t win, we've won.

Duh.

Hillary Clinton is the GOP’s worst nightmare, not just because she would undo so many of the egregious, unconstitutional and un-American alterations made by Emperor Bush and his conservative incompetents, but because she is a stronger, more capable candidate than any of the Republicans. Her policies are much more congruent with the sentiments of Main Street America, her presentation is more balanced and considered, and her persona is, quite frankly, less toxic. I mean, what could be more hideous and lamentable than an enraged, bile-spewing Rudy Giuliani in the White House, or a moralizing, pompous Mitt Romney? Most of the GOP field can’t even bring themselves to acknowledge that global warming is a scientific reality. Can anyone say Deranged Creationists?

When critics talk about breaking the Bush-Clinton-Bush chain, they ignore several simple facts. First, that while Dubya is a Bush, like his Daddy, Hillary is not a Clinton, like her husband. She is a Rodham. So in reality, her candidacy is less a continuation of dynasty than a partnership among co-equal geniuses. Second, when it comes to change, nothing the Republicans can offer comes close to the historic, momentous change represented by a female President. Which is why so many Americans would simply refuse to cast a vote for Jeb Bush, but would be quite happy to vote for Hillary.

Voters aren’t sick of Bushes and Clintons. They’re sick of Bush. They’re sick of incompetence, secrecy, lies, cronyism, division, fear-mongering, superstition, irresponsibility, excess, stubbornness and stupidity. They’re looking for a new direction only if it’s a better direction, like the direction we were heading when Hillary’s husband left office.

- JT Compton

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Kicking A.S.S.

Congressional hearings on Iraq this week, featuring the report by General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker on the Surge, became a showcase for Democrats to rake the Bush Administration over the coals for its grotesque bungling and mismanagement of the Iraq occupation.

President Bush, speaking in Australia, claimed that his Surge was “kicking ass.” But given the level of violence, which even under the most optimistic assessment has only receded to its 2006 level, Bush’s “kicking ass” comment was used repeatedly as a point of ridicule. If a slight reduction in horrific violence can be called “kicking ass”, then it’s hard to imagine how much lower the bar for success in Iraq can be set.

The most important question of today’s Senate hearings came from Barack Obama, and it went unanswered. In essence, he wanted to know under what circumstances the Ambassador and General would recommend that we withdraw our forces without our goals being met.

It’s more than a fair question. And the absence of an answer tells us that the Bush Administration and its minions want to meet their “goals” under any circumstances, suffering any losses.

But their “goals” have always been wildly unattainable and misguided. They wanted to kill every individual in Iraq who fit the description of a terrorist, as if this were a finite number. They wanted to impose order and security, apparently in the fashion that we enjoy here in America. And they wanted an American-style democracy to flourish, absent any notion of ethnic or tribal identity. Now, as then, these goals are tragically laughable, deranged and effectively impossible.

The latest goal, facilitated by the Surge, has been to provide better security while the government, military and police "stand up". But the Surge has done little to change the facts on the ground in Iraq. Other developments unrelated to the Surge have given small glimmers of hope. That the Sunnis have grown sick of Al Qaeda and kicked them to the curb is the most important of these. But the long-running and deep-seated conflicts and resentment among tribes and clans is not going to go away any time soon.

Thus, it is becoming clear that we remain faced with two hideous choices. Stay the course without any end in sight, with mounting casualties and with no guarantee of success, or begin a phased withdrawal and hope that Iraq doesn’t fully implode.

The only thing getting its ass kicked these days is President Bush and his policies.

- JT Compton

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It's About A Failed Presidency, Stupid

The recently scrapped Senate bill requiring a timeline for withdrawal from Iraq was ridiculed by conservatives as an attempt by Congress to micro-manage the “war” in Iraq. But their scorn misses a much larger and more ominous point, eclipsing mere policy disputes.

How should America deal with a President who is incompetent, corrupt and holds the actions of his administration above the law?

Even Republicans are increasingly conceding that President Bush mismanaged the invasion of Iraq, often using the phrase “mistakes were made” to substitute for a more realistic, catastrophic and lamentable description.

But beyond Iraq, Bush has done deliberate and entirely avoidable harm to a broad range of important institutions and policies at home.

He turned governmental agencies and departments – Justice, Interior, Energy, Environmental Protection, etc. – into extensions of the Republican party, in some cases clearly violating the law.

He staffed those same institutions with unqualified cronies or with partisan members of the industries those institutions were supposed to regulate, resulting in tragedy ("Heck of a job, Brownie!").

He supported and sustained immoral policies such as torture and rendition that shattered our credibility in the world community and put our troops at risk.

He held no high official responsible for the outrageous abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo, which further damaged our international standing.

He held none of his cabinet responsible for the illegal and disgraceful outing of a covert CIA officer despite clear supporting evidence.

He failed to respond adequately to the ravages of Hurricane Katrina, and continues to fail to provide adequate, much less competent, support for the victims of that disaster.

He failed to respond effectively and continues to ignore the genocide in Darfur.

And so on.

When a President botches a war we shouldn’t trust that same person to clean up the mess. Yet we’ve been forced to wait almost five years for President Bush to come up with a plan to sort out what many now call the worst foreign policy disaster in our nation’s history.

Republicans acknowledge that “mistakes have been made” but they still can’t embrace what so many Americans have already concluded – that the real issue has little to do with military strategy and everything to do with our national response to a failed and catastrophic Presidency.

Do we have to wait until a President gets caught on tape covering up a robbery or lying about adultery before we can act to limit his power or remove him from office? The Constitution allows for impeachment when the President commits “high crimes and misdemeanors”. A misdemeanor, in modern usage, could mean a traffic violation or drunk and disorderly.

Certainly the failures and scandals of the Bush White House are more egregious than drunk and disorderly.

If the actions of President Bush and his cabinet aren't excellent and proper candidates for impeachment, much less outrage, it’s hard to imagine what would be.

- JT Compton

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Michael Moore, Patriot

Nothing makes me happier than seeing Michael Moore banging his fists and dressing down CNN’s Wolf Blitzer. Somebody’s got to do it. Not that I have anything against Blitzer specifically, but as an iconic member of the news media it took Blitzer and his counterparts years to finally ask the hapless, incompetent Bush Administration the hard questions that might have prevented the Iraq war in the first place.

As Moore pointed out to Blitzer in yesterday’s interview, they never asked “why”. Why were we going to Iraq? Why was there no plan to secure the country? Why was there no international support? And on and on.

At this point, the Bush Administration couldn’t find it’s way out of a cardboard box. And all but the most frightened, reticent, inflexible conservatives have concluded that Bush and his team are the most lame, corrupt and disastrous leaders of a lifetime.

But Moore and others knew this long ago, and their criticisms were either ignored or trivialized by Blitzer and his peers for the sake of political access while at the same time sacrificing truth and journalistic integrity.

Those who criticize Moore usually miss his point. Moore isn’t trying to be “fair and balanced” in his documentaries. He’s not a newsman - he’s a truth teller. Truth doesn’t always have or need two sides, despite the typical talk-show debate format we’ve all become accustomed to. There are issues that are so screamingly obvious and so tragically critical that it becomes imperative to place them squarely in front of the public and put them into sharp focus. Sure, he’s also an entertainer, but that’s what makes him such an effective communicator.

It’s almost comical to listen to the shrill, whiny voices of the status quo criticizing Moore. They almost always attack his appearance or label him with vague generalizations like “liberal nut job,” but seldom do they actually address his issues. Even CNN consultant Dr. Sanjay Gupta, who recently produced a critical piece on Moore, eventually had to admit that Moore got the overwhelming majority of his facts right in his recent movie “Sicko.”

For those who are too wealthy to use insurance, too poor to afford it, or too healthy to have yet needed it, “Sicko” exposes what the rest of us already know. That our health care system is a disastrous, disgraceful scam. It is hopelessly bloated and ineffective, except when it comes to making its top industry executives grotesquely rich. It delivers one of the worst care products among developed nations at the highest price. In other words, the system is horribly broken.

As a progressive visionary, Moore has put this truth into sharp focus. We don’t need to hear from executives from Big Pharma or the HMO industry to understand why the system is a mess, just as we don’t need to hear from the hijackers to know that 9-11 was an abominable slaughter.

If more Americans questioned the status quo, if more Americans held their politicians accountable, if more Americans denounced lobbyists and influence peddling, if more Americans were critical of the authorities and institutions that have such a direct impact on our lives, we would have a higher quality of life, greater liberties and a safer world.

Michael Moore has always known this, and has always put his money where his mouth is. I challenge his detractors to make their own films. They might be able to find a few people who like our health care system. They might be able to find a few citizens who think that Bush has done a good job. They might even be able to find a unicorn. But the fact that nothing has been done along these lines – that no compelling counterpoint exists to Michael Moore – tells us all we need to know. Michael Moore is telling us something extremely important. If that’s not patriotism, I don’t know what is.

- JT Compton

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Justice Bush

God forbid a wealthy white man be forced to go to prison. At least, that’s what President Bush seemed to be saying with his commutation of Scooter Libby’s prison sentence today. It’s okay to throw Blacks and Hispanics in jail for life in Texas on the flimsiest of charges, even when it can be shown that the state's legal system is fatally flawed. They’ve been charged with crimes and they're not white, so they're probably guilty.

But in the twisted mess of today’s conservative mind, Libby’s misdeeds are trivial—covering up potential crimes of the Vice President, crimes like outing a CIA officer in order to bolster lies that led us into the most costly and bungled war in our nation’s history. Why should anyone go to jail for that?

Bush left Libby’s felony conviction and $250,000 fine in place but commuted his 30 month sentence after the court announced that Libby would be required to serve time in jail while waiting for his appeal. In a lengthy statement, Bush declared that, in his judgment, Libby’s jail sentence was too harsh, and it was punishment enough that he will lose his license to practice law. After all, Libby has a family, he's been a loyal Republican soldier and he’s white. Cut the poor guy a break!

But this “punishment” is of minor consequence to Libby, who will now be handed a seven-figure job with a Republican think-tank, defense contractor, HMO or any number of other businesses controlled by conservatives whose profits depend on the greed and loyalty of conservative politicians.

Equally disturbing, the commutation was based on Bush’s judgment—as though that fact should impress anyone with a measurable IQ. This is the same Bush judgment that took us to war prematurely, failed to plan for the occupation, failed to hold anyone accountable for the abominations of Guantanamo, Abu Ghirab, rendition and torture, failed to find consensus on our Social Security mess, failed to rebuild New Orleans, failed to staff government agencies with qualified professionals and failed to uphold constitutional protections when it came to wiretapping and surveillance.

For a President and party who accused everyone else of lacking values, who laced speech after speech with words like evil and immoral, who scolded their adversaries for being soft on crime, the Libby commutation stinks. It has little to do with justice and everything to do with partisan politics. It is perfectly legal, but like so many actions of the Bush Administration, it is utterly unethical.

Sadly, the world would be a much better place without the judgments of President Bush and his corrupt, misguided, incompetent team.

- JT Compton

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Conservatives in Wonderland

If the conservative movement were a mental patient, it would surely be diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic.

At this week’s Republican Presidential Debate on CNN, the dominant emotion was self-righteous anger, along with a strong dose of indignation. Anger at President Bush, anger at the Democrats and anger at the nation for parting ways with the conservative agenda. For example, the candidates wailed about how our troops needed to stay in Iraq until the mission was complete. Rudy Giuliani even shouted about the good things that would fall into place “if we can get this right.”

But on this and virtually every other issue, the responses made it clear that these conservatives live in a fantasyland built from the ashes their own failures. Not a single candidate acknowledged the generally accepted fact that the mission in Iraq has reached the point of a zero chance for "success." Providing security and stability to the Iraqi people in the face of a multi-faceted civil war is something our military is not capable of “getting right.”

And counter to what the candidates profess, withdrawal won’t unleash chaos because chaos has already been the rule of life in Iraq for years. Only a delusional mind would believe that a nation we already have virtually no control over would “burst into flames” once we leave. We provide a modicum of security for government officials, but little more. Terrorists and death squads already operate with impunity. Once we leave, politicians will simply get security from their own tribal factions. And while progress, such as it is, may go from a trickle to a stop, it’s an arrogant fantasy to think that our presence is a magic glue holding things together.

But Rudy Giuliani didn’t limit his arrogant fantasies to the subject of Iraq. He also screamed about the health-care mess, bitterly claiming that the system is broken because it’s “government dominated.” That’s right, the multi-billion dollar for-profit industry isn’t dominated by the greedy health care providers or the pharmaceutical industry—it’s dominated by our very own government.

Is he insane?

We should be so lucky for our government to take control of health care, which it clearly has no control over outside of Medicare despite Giuliani’s delusions. But hey, according to conservatives, “the government has never gotten anything right!” Well, under the Bush Administration the government has gotten a lot of important things wrong. But we trust the government to get a lot of life and death enterprises right. The military. The police. The fire department. The coast guard. The forest service. So why not health care? Are the other industrialized nations that much more capable than we are? Or are their politicians just much more capable than our very own Republicans? I don’t hear any mainstream conservatives talking about privatizing law enforcement.

Going on to achieve the Lunacy Trifecta, Giuliani later echoed the sentiments of many Bush conservatives by commenting on the jail sentence handed to convicted felon Scooter Libby, saying he thought Libby was a good candidate for a pardon. As Rudy resentfully pointed out, “a man’s life is at stake.” But Rudy seems unconcerned that the integrity of the Presidency is also at stake. That the outing of a covert CIA officer is also at stake. That the lives of that officer and her husband were at stake, and were damaged by Libby’s lies. That ethics were at stake because the office of the Vice President waged an unethical smear campaign to cover its lies about Iraq’s nuclear capabilities and then tried to cover tracks by lying to a special prosecutor.

Stakes like those don’t seem to register in conservative fantasyland. Because they don’t serve the cause of making conservatives look like capable heroes. And darn it, conservatives have to look perfect in order to feel good about themselves. That’s their fantasy—that they can do no wrong, just like America itself.

But the more conservatives try to push fantasies and delusions and wishful thinking, the more transparent and pitiful they become. Consider the new show on Fox News, “The 1/2 Hour News Hour”, which is meant to be a conservative version of “The Daily Show.” Its mere existence tells us three things about Fox. One, that it is desperately trying not to wither into complete and total irrelevance. Two, that Fox has never really been about news or journalism. And three, that it doesn’t get the joke—Jon Stewart doesn’t skewer Bush and Cheney and the others because they are conservatives—he makes fun of them because they are so damned dangerously ridiculous! And when moderates, progressives and liberals become as idiotic and incompetent, The Daily Show will make fun of them, too.

Conservatives choose to live in a fantasy world to avoid confronting the realities of their own failures, many of which have been egregious and calamitous of late. But the longer they spew wishful thinking and ignore hard facts, the further away they get from the electorate.

If “Angry and Deluded” describes the bulk of the conservative platform, 2008 is going to be a really bad year for Republicans. And a good year for America.

- JT Compton

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Bullying Works

As historians look back on the Bush Mess, one of the great lessons will be that bullying works. Using lies, smears and misinformation, the Bush administration demonstrated that bullying is an extremely effective method of manipulating the political process and public opinion.

For example, when the Bush crew used the anguish and trauma of 9/11 to gain support for a nation-building scheme in Iraq, members of the media and Congress who questioned the policy were quickly accused of being unpatriotic, which shut many of them up. It was classic school-yard bullying.

When a seasoned diplomat exposed as fraudulent claims by the Bush administration that Iraq had been trying to buy Uranium from Niger, the Bush crew smeared his reputation and in the process exposed his wife as a CIA operative. Again, classic bullying.

When elections neared, the Bush crew pushed U. S. Attorneys across the nation to pursue voter-fraud cases against Democrats despite a lack of evidence, threatening the attorneys with termination for non-compliance. First rate bullying.

Further examples are legion. On virtually every issue, in virtually every instance, when faced with hard questions, the Bush administration went on the offensive using distorted accusations, character assassination, misinformation and personal innuendo rather than address the substance of the policy or decision being questioned.

If you attack the question or the critic, you’ll never have to give a straight answer!

Even today, their bullying tactics infect the national discourse. For example, when Congress recently voted to authorize funds for the continuing occupation of Iraq, the final compromise bill excluded a timeline for withdrawal. Pundits asked whether the bill would hurt Democrats, since, as CNN White House Correspondent Ed Henry put it, the “left wing of the Democratic party” was against the war.

His comment, however, was a reflection of the lies and distortions the Bush crew and their minions have successfully bullied our media into accepting.

The “left wing of the Democratic party” is a smear phrase intended to trivialize and marginalize an issue or critic. Yet mainstream journalists use it ad nauseam because it creates a sense of conflict, and conflict generates ratings, even when the assertion is wildly inaccurate. In this instance, a large majority of Americans from both sides of the political spectrum want our troops withdrawn from Iraq immediately, not just “left wing” Democrats.

Here’s a note I wrote to CNN's Wolf Blitzer (Late Edition, 5-27-07) in response to Ed Henry’s remark:

Dear Mr. Blitzer,

Several times on today's show, your guests characterized the "left wing" of the Democratic party as being against the war in Iraq.

That characterization is stale, inflammatory and entirely false. The middle of the nation, both left and right, is against the war, and polls show that a large majority of our fellow citizens want our troops withdrawn beginning immediately. You, yourself, have mentioned polls which reflect this undisputed fact.

It would be accurate to say that a majority of Americans are against the war and want us out, spanning both Democrats and Republicans, left and right.

Until journalists stop using divisive, infotainment language like "left wing of the Democratic party" and use, instead, the FACTS, our nation will not get news, but rather a distorted editorial. Shame on your guests for skewing the national mood and keeping the dialog bound by distinctions that have become irrelevant to the issue. CNN should be better than that.

Bullying, by its nature, is divisive and polarizing. It creates dialog based on insinuation and stereotype, rather than on substance and logic.

Unless we reduce the infection bullying has produced, our political landscape will continue to be littered with distortions and divisions while the real issues remain on the sidelines, tragically unaddressed.

- JT Compton

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Shifting The Failure

Suddenly, benchmarks are making a lot of sense.

Yes, President Bush has seen the light again, and it is telling him to accept benchmarks. Forget that the Democrats and the American public have been screaming for tangible benchmarks in Iraq for years. The grey matter inside the President’s head finally wrapped itself around the necessity of creating solid criteria for success or failure in our effort to police the civil war in Iraq.

Forget also that eleven Republican congress members came to the President this week and told him that their constituents are so sick and tired of the mismanagement of the occupation that they are willing to throw in the towel and call our soldiers home. The President's new willingness to consider benchmarks is unrelated, nor does it have anything to do with his ever-worsening approval rating, now lower than any President in the last 30 years. (In one of the eleven’s home district, Bush’s approval rating is a mere five percent!)

No, the President's decision to consider benchmarks is part of a larger plan to make small, incremental concessions to Democratic lawmakers while forestalling the inevitable withdrawal from Iraq. If the President can just hang on and keep our troops from coming home, he can pass his historic catastrophe to the next administraion—almost certainly run by a Democrat—and blame them for “losing the war” when they bring the troops home.

Despite the grotesque toll in lives and treasure, it’s fatally important to Bush and his dishonest, scheming advisors Karl Rove and Dick Cheney that they not take the blame for losing a war that, in reality, was never winnable in the first place. The main thing that gives away their plan to shift the blame to the next President involves language. They are desperately trying to keep their operatives talking about the Iraq mess in conventional terms.

In other words, they are trying to maintain the fiction that Iraq is a “war” that we can still “win” or at least achieve something close to “victory”. But alas, this sham stopped working months ago. Americans have come to understand that there is no possibility of conventional victory in Iraq. It is quite literally impossible to “kill all the terrorists,” and it is equally impossible to force two tribes to set aside centuries of hatred fueled by fundamentalist dogma to live together in peace.

Supporting our troops should mean getting our remaining soldiers home safely. Winning should mean putting an end to the massive, almost incomprehensible cost of this bungled occupation. Victory should mean putting an end to the biggest terrorist recruiting tool of a lifetime.

And the public understands this. Only now—years too late—does the President seem to be seeing a glimmer of the light of reason when it comes to benchmarks. But not because he wants to put an end to his horrific blunder. Because he wants to play politics until he can pass the buck to someone else.

- JT Compton

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Ten White Men

The Republicans held their first debate Thursday in California, moderated by Chris Matthews of MSNBC. The ten candidates found themselves crammed on a stage, and it became quickly clear that they were each going to grab as much air time as possible to recite their rehearsed campaign pitches.

More significantly, the candidates did everything they could to look like Real Conservatives. Again and again, they defined themselves by the worn, calcified clichés Americans have grown tired of, mouthing the same slogans made monotonous by the Bush spin machine.

While the Democratic candidates looked like tomorrow, the Republicans looked like yesterday. While the Democrats felt like a breath of fresh air, the Republicans felt like more of the same. While the Democrats appeared confident and passionate, the Republicans seemed frightened and defensive.

Americans need forward thinking leaders, not moralizing preachers. Until the GOP and its candidates stop telling Americans how to live their lives and passing judgment, the voting public will refuse to send ideologues to the White House just because they claim to be holier than thou. If recent history is any gauge, the more stridently candidates claim to be virtuous, the more likely they are to be dangerously incompetent and wrong on the issues that matter.

Sadly, the Republican candidates spent most of their debate trying to out-holy each other while doing virtually nothing to reassure Americans that they are anything but stay the course.

The same, disastrous course we’ve suffered for six years.

If that’s their best, the GOP is in real trouble next election cycle. Which is great news for America.

- JT Compton

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Bush to America: Go To Hell

George Bush refuses to accept the will of the American people. Despite polls showing overwhelming support for a timetable for phased withdrawal from Iraq, the President and his embattled, scandal-scarred inner circle continue to defend the course of their grotesquely mismanaged war by implying that their fellow citizens are traitors.

Every day, whether from the floor of Congress or TV talk-shows, the few remaining Bush dead-enders continue to question the patriotism of the Democrat’s plan, including anyone who supports it, labeling the entire enterprise “defeatist” while claiming it impossible to support both the troops and withdrawal. But the divisiveness of this tactic smacks of McCarthyism and its logic seems blatantly disingenuous.

It’s a plain fact that soldiers who disagree with our mission in Iraq—or aren’t even sure what the real mission is nowadays—feel supported knowing that their fellow citizens are trying to bring them home. In the view of many, a timetable for withdrawal is supporting our troops.

And calling withdrawal “defeatist” ignores another sad fact. We have already been defeated. Not just by bombs or terrorists, but by the historic blunders of our own civilian leadership. By ignoring the cultural realities of Iraq and invading without a robust plan to secure the country, Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and others all but ensured the outcome we now face. Their ignorance and incompetence let the Chaos Genie out of the bottle, and an extra twenty thousand troops won’t come close to putting it back.

We may never know what it would take to restore order in Baghdad because we have never been able to maintain order in Baghdad. If securing Baghdad has been the objective, we have been failing almost from day one. And Americans understand this. They understand that asking a few hundred thousand soldiers who don’t speak the language and don’t understand the customs or culture to police an entire nation is a recipe for failure, especially when that “nation” is actually an artificial fusion of three radically different tribal communities with long-standing hatreds and grievances.

A new zenith of Presidential arrogance and defiance will occur this evening when George Bush vetoes broadly supported legislation that ties further Iraq war funding to a phased withdrawal. His administration’s bruised but stubborn ego will continue to cling to a failed policy, even if he has to tell the vast majority of voting citizens, including our soldiers, to go to hell.

- JT Compton

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