Hoods

Version A



Version B

GOP Senate Hypocrisy

Remember when the Democrats threatened to filibuster the nomination of Samuel Alito to the Supreme Court? The Republicans went nuts, calling the Democrats every name in the book, and basically saying that everything wrong in America was the fault of those obstructionist Democrats.

Well, it turned out that everything wrong with America was actually the fault of the Republicans, including invading and occupying a country that posed no threat to us, totally botching the occupation, letting Afghanistan slide back into the hands of the Taliban, letting Osama bin Laden escape, letting our nation torture and detain indefinitely its prisoners, letting the President subvert the Constitution by stoking our fears, letting New Orleans rot in the aftermath of hurricane Katrina, letting mortgage brokers run amok, letting our national debt balloon to nightmare proportions, letting the dollar slide to new lows, letting hundreds of thousands of jobs evaporate, giving oil companies billions in tax rebates during a time of record oil profits, doing nothing to address our pathetic and disgraceful health care system, and doing absolutely nothing to confront the potentially devastating effects of climate change.

Oh, and that Alito guy turned out to be the exact Judicial distaster the Democrats were trying to avoid.

Now, with Democrats finally holding a slim majority in Congress, who is keeping them from finally addressing and trying to correct these grave problems? The Republicans! THEY'VE DONE MORE FILIBUSTERING IN THE PAST YEAR-AND-A-HALF THAN IN ANY OTHER TIME IN OUR NATION'S HISTORY.

Like babies banging their fists on high-chair trays, Republican Senators just refuse to allow the Democrats to move forward with agendas that the bulk of Americans desperately want, because they still feel bound to small but vocal clusters of radical conservatives unable to grasp or acknowledge what the rest of our citizens understand - that the best way to move forward is to do exactly the opposite of what Republicans have done for six years.

So the next time you hear about a good bill stalling in the Senate, chances are it's the filibustering Republicans, kicking and screaming, railing against a more just and sensible future that they can't keep from us forever. What a disgrace.

Equality, Yes or No?

Q: What stops a state from putting a referendum on the ballot which, if passed, would alter the state constitution to prohibit interracial marriage?

A: The courts. Such legislation would be ruled unconstitutional, in clear violation of our bedrock principle of equality.

Q: What stops a state from putting a referendum on the ballot which, if passed, would prohibit same-sex marriage?

A: Nothing. It is not clear that our courts recognize gay and lesbian Americans as human beings.


Until our "justice" system gets this equality no-brainer right, perhaps we should refrain from recognizing certain Judges as human. Or at least, as people who can apply logic and common sense to the administration of justice without prejudice, superstition or hypocrisy.

Attempts to prohibit interracial marriage in the nineteenth century seem grotesquely absurd today. And a century from now, people will view current attempts to prohibit gay marriage the same way.

Those who contend that marriage is fixed and unchanging haven't studied history. For centuries, in many parts of the world, marriages were arranged and had nothing to do with romantic love as we have come to define it and cherish it in the West. Many societies were built around polygamy, and some still encourage plural marriage today. In present-day Bhutan, not only may a man take more than one wife, but a woman may take more than one husband. Even in America, thousands of plural marriages hide in plain sight.

During some periods of history, middle-aged men married teenage women because teenage men, as a general rule, could not afford to support a family. In other periods, it was commonplace for thirteen and fourteen year-olds to marry each other. And so on.

The nature, format and definition of marriage have been in constant flux since the beginning of recorded history. Those who want to deny this fact are wasting their time, and the future will prove them wrong when it comes to same-sex marriage as well. They may be aided by our current Supreme Court, stuffed by George W. Bush with ideological activists diguised as judges. But eventually, if America and the Constitution stand for anything, they stand for liberty. And thus, trying to prohibit same sex marriage is about as unequal and un-American as you can get.

- JT Compton
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Climate Denial

Here's an email I wrote to Joe Nocera of the NY Times in response to his article about the Rockefeller family's attempts to push Exxon in a new direction. You can almost count on business writers to be antagonistic toward global warming, perhaps because their audience (wealthy corporate types) remain in denial about the science supporting climate change, and the liklihood of catastrophic damage likely to result from climate change. What a shame...

Dear Joe,

You write, "Expecting Exxon Mobil to move the world to an oil-free future is a little like expecting buggy-whip manufacturers to invent the automobile." This is a poor analogy. A better one would have been "expecting buggy manufacturers to begin making automobiles." Which is exactly what some buggy manufacturers did. Exxon doesn't just define itself as an oil and gas company. It also states as its mission, "To help meet the world’s growing energy needs...and explore emerging energy sources and technologies." By any definition or standard, Exxon is failing to adequately or meaningfully explore emerging energy sources and technologies. And to assume that the worlds growing energy needs can only be met by fossil fuels is foolhardy. Exxon should be reinvesting billions in solar nano-tech. It should be developing long-term strategies to address the growing global desire to shift away from fossil fuels. But it's not. Their main discipline, it would seem, is to make short term profits with little or no regard for the long-term direction of energy.
Also, to characterize climate change as something that might not cause much harm, or be cheap to fix, is misleading. Yes, those assertions are possible, but a stunning majority of scientists are giving them a very low probability. By any reasonable reading of the scientific literature, catastrophic consequences of climate change are a high probability. So please, stop writing about remote, pie-in-the-sky possibilities and start looking at the future in terms of likelihoods. That would qualify as a disciplined approach.

Sincerely,

- JT Compton
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Anton Scalia, Supreme Court (In)Justice

The recent Supreme Court decision affirming Indiana’s right to require its voters to buy burdensome government ID’s was a slap in the face of court precedent, going squarely against the spirit of prior voting rights decisions. It used to be that the Supreme Court protected citizens (in this case, the poor, mostly minorities) from those who wanted to shut them out of the polls (in this case, Republicans) and keep them from voting for the opposition (in this case, Democrats).

By contrast, the Supreme Court had no problem handing the Presidency to George Bush in 2000 on an election technicality, favoring his individual claim over those of the Florida election system and the majority of voters.

To summarize the court's positions:

In 2000, protect the individual from the state.
In 2008, protect the state from the individual.

When asked about this glaring and blatant contradiction, Justice Anton Scalia, in typically coarse and malicious fashion, said to the American public, “Get over it.”

What exactly does “get over it” mean?

In this case, he’s really saying, “We, the conservative majority of the Supreme Court, care less about the public and justice than about using our position to promote our own personal, conservative agendas, even if they subvert long-standing precedent, the constitution or the rights and liberties of individuals. Furthermore, my pride is so rigid and my ego so overweening and fragile that I cannot admit hypocrisy nor inconsistency even when it is as plain as the sun in the sky, especially because I'm smart enough to understand the futility of trying to justify the unjustifiable. So instead, I’ll shift the blame to you, the person asking the question, by saying 'get over it,' suggesting that the failing is not my lack of scruples nor dishonesty, but rather your inability to accept the injustice my toxic agenda helped foster.”

The next time you see a smirking, bloated man wearing a robe, sitting in a grand chair in a large courtroom, speaking in a condescending manner to the serfs that have come begging for a few crumbs of justice, it is likely Anton Scalia, the “Justice” who told us all, in his own snide way, to go screw ourselves.

- JT Compton

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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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Nader Nonsense

Is Ralph Nader kidding?

The fragmented Republicans, going against thirty years of history, seem poised to nominate John McCain, despised by much of “the conservative base,” whose image as a Maverick, though largely mythologized and undeserved, appeals mostly to moderates and party outsiders.

The Democrats, meanwhile, have narrowed their choice to a woman and an African American man. Despite being married to Bill, Hillary Clinton’s gender would represent a radical departure from our nation’s presidential history, and Barack Obama’s success has been powered by an appeal for a dramatic change in the way our leaders practice politics. Both have gathered massive crowds and generated record turnout in Presidential primaries, including large numbers of independent and first-time voters.

In other words, to differing extents, all three candidates represent radical, transformational change, and their success is a measure of the voter’s desire to alter the status quo.

Recently, however, Ralph Nader has decided to throw his hat into the ring and run for president, saying on MSNBC’s Meet The Press, “You go from Iraq, to Palestine to Israel, from Enron to Wall Street, from Katrina to the bumbling of the Bush administration, to the complicity of the Democrats in not stopping him on the war, stopping him on the tax cuts." He concluded, "In that context, I have decided to run for president."

Never has Nader’s egomaniacal arrogance been more starkly displayed. Despite a high probability that our next President will be an African American Democrat, Nader somehow sees Barack Obama as an undesirable insider. And yet Obama seems to embody so many of the principles Nader claims for himself. Obama was always against the Iraq war. Obama is a Washington newcomer, not yet entrenched in the culture of payola and cronyism. Obama is a champion of the little guy. Obama’s entire campaign has been crafted around the notion that the political process must change.

So when Nader starts whining and spewing his distaste for the presidential field, only two conclusions can be drawn. He is either incredibly stupid or wildly arrogant. Given his history of intelligent consumer advocacy, the only possible conclusion is the latter. By running for president, and hopefully appearing in debates alongside nominees who had to work hard to get there, Nader can stroke his own ego and insert himself into the political dialog regardless of the cost to the nation. Indeed, Nader is incapable of taking responsibility for the consequeces of his actions. His presidential bids in 2000 and 2004 likely cost the Democrats the presidency in at least one of those cycles.

And yet Nader sees no harm in this because he seems to see both parties as twin sons of different mothers. In other words, the world would be no different now if a Democrat had been president the last eight years.

This flawed and thoroughly absurd notion lies at the heart of the Nader deception. The truth is, our nation would be radically different in a host of significant and life-changing ways if George Bush had not been elected president. But for Nader to acknowledge this would also require him to acnowledge the part he played in getting Bush elected. And it would also rob his presidential aspirations of any weight.

The fact is, America has already been voting for radical change for months now, and Nader’s presidential bid will only serve to illuminate his vast insecurity and bottomless need for relevancy. This time, his candidacy will not be a deciding factor in the election, and the voters will once again recognize that Ralph Nader is, in fact, irrelevant.

We can only hope that no organization is spineless enough to allow him on stage for any of the debates.

- JT Compton
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Huckabee's Hate Flag

Mike Huckabee, campaigning recently in South Carolina, declared that the federal government should have no opinion on decisions about state flags, claiming the matter "has no business from the president of the United States." Speaking specifically about the Confederate Flag, Huckabee said, "You don't like people from outside the state coming in and telling you what to do with your flag. In fact, if somebody came to Arkansas and told us what to do with our flag, we'd tell 'em what to do with the pole, that's what we'd do." In other words, our nation's leader should remain silent about a long-recognized icon of hatred and injustice.

That's moral leadership?

Despite Minister Huckabee’s Christian faith, his inability to reject the Confederate Flag sent a coded message to the Conservative base meant to suggest, “I’m a bigot like you!”

Some Southerners remain incapable of accepting the defeat of the Civil War. Visit a hundred diners in the Northeast and you will never hear mention of the Civil War. But put hidden tape recorders in a hundred diners south of the Mason Dixon Line and you will capture regular comments on the “War of Northern Aggression.”

Despite the immorality of slavery, the humiliation of the South remains a smoldering insult, and some fly the Confederate Flag to vent their anger. Rather than speak about what the flag really means to them, they claim the flag represents the lost “Southern way of life” or is a "symbol of lost heritage." But what do those phrases mean - that Southerners have lost the right to sip mint juleps? Of course not. They're euphemisms for lost slavery. Southern life revolved around the economic bounty of enslaving and the social lift of belittling kidnapped Africans.

Wealthy Southerners needed slavery to maintain their wealth. And poor white Southerners needed slavery to maintain their social status. They may have been poor, but at least they weren’t slaves. So the Emancipation Proclamation and the ensuing, bitter, devastating military defeat placed poor Southern whites on a par with people previously denigrated and looked down upon, an adjustment still apparently taking place.

For decades now, the Confederate Flag has represented injustice, racism, discrimination, segregation, lynching, intolerance and inhumanity, the apparent core values of the old “Southern way of life” and "heritage." Mike Huckabee’s coded embrace of it was a grotesque and un-Christian gesture, and reveals much about his character, or lack of it.

- JT Compton
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The Hillary Anger Mystery

“Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back To The White House?” That’s the question Maureen Dowd asked in her New York Times column today. And as much as I revere Maureen’s abilities as a writer and cultural observer, her take on the Clinton candidacy mirrors the current position of the rest of the media establishment; they despise Hillary Clinton and seem willing to go to any length to eviscerate her.

For the life of me, I can’t figure out why.

Sure, I understand why narrow-minded conservative rednecks dislike her after hearing decades of demonizing smears and conspiracy theories from losers like Rush Limbaugh. He’s blamed her for everything bad under the sun. But for people with more than two brain cells to rub together, why do some bear such an intense rage against her?

The same journalists (and some moderates, for that matter) who spit while saying her name still want to treat convicted felons like Scooter Libby with a modicum of respect, and they continue to approach demonstrably despicable public officials like Dick Cheney and Alberto Gonzales within the framework of decency. But not Hillary.

I’m sure it’s been psychoanalyzed to death, but it still amazes me, the dismissive, flash-anger response to her. I’ve never heard anyone give a well-considered, meaningful account of their negative feelings. All I’ve heard are vagaries and superficial annoyances.

“She’ll do anything to get elected.” And the others won't? To suggest that any candidate won't do anything more or less than Hillary to get elected is entirely bogus. They’ve all equivocated and calculated and strategized—that’s what modern politics require.

“She’s secretive and conniving and mean.” Really? In what ways that are materially different than any other politician running? Please. Rudy can be as mean as a snake, and Huckabee's attacks on Romney were schoolyard nasty. The current Bush administration is the most secretive and opaque and mean-spirited in our lifetime, even worse than the disgraceful and un-American presidency of Richard Nixon. It bends credulity to think that Hillary will relinquish her party’s history of greater presidential transparency than the Republicans. This entire criticism is a hollow dodge.

“She’s crying her way to the White House.” So far, she’s only teared up once. Meanwhile, Rudy is 9-11-ing his way to the White House, Huckabee is Jesus-ing his way to the White House, and Obama is rhetoric-ing his way to the White House. How many more times will Obama shout “We’re changing the world!” before people realize it’s just a hollow slogan.

To be sure, I like Barack Obama. He’s a magnificent orator and would make a better President than any of the Republicans. But then any of the Democrats would. The Republican field is a mostly backward looking, militaristic, small-government-obsessed group of old-school white country-club types. Just like George W. Bush, more of the same. But though Obama talks a good talk, he’s done nothing to convince me that he will be able to translate his pie-in-the-sky rhetoric, his new paradigm, into actual results.

And everything in my experience tells me that new paradigms are usually a recipe for disappointment. Remember the Internet bubble? It was supposed to be a new financial paradigm, and legions of tech weenies spread across the corporate landscape scolding non-believers who questioned the new model of the dot com boom. Yet after the tech bubble burst, it turned out there was no new paradigm. The rules of finance were just as valid then as ever.

Remember the Iraq invasion? The post 9-11 world requires a new paradigm, a new way of deterring enemies from striking us. Or does it? Turns out, the same old rules still apply. When you break it, you own it. When you invade, you become the monster your enemies have always accused you of being. When you kill innocent civilians, no matter what your intentions, you create legions of new enemies. When you force Democracy at the point of a gun you get something worse. No new paradigm here.

So whatever new paradigm Obama is touting, I remain a skeptic. Meanwhile, I know that Hillary is a hard worker and a shrewd coalition builder. She’ll choose good people for the important roles in her administration, not for the Bush reason that they gave a lot of money, but because they can do a good job. She’ll reverse so many of the grotesque and lamentable policy disasters of the Bush mess. And talk about change--Obama’s mantra--a woman president represents just as revolutionary a change as an African American male president.

Meanwhile, I’ll continue to wait for the bile-spewers to put their bitterness of Hillary into a meaningful and beyond-hearsay rationale. So far, they haven’t come close. They've simply spun stories that create controversy and drama to sell "news" but are unsupported by facts. Don't be hatin'!

- 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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This Is Not Justice

In a curious editorial in the Times today, Jena prosecutor Reed Walters wants the world to know that he had no choice but to follow his solemn duty and prosecute Mychal Bell and a half-dozen other African American teens for beating up a white fellow student. But as many readers will quickly notice, Mr. Walters conspicuously fails to detail whether the initial blow allegedly struck by Mychal Bell to Justin Barker was with a fist or a deadly weapon. Nor does he describe why Bell might have intended permanent harm or death. His use of subjective words like "vicious" merely inflame.

If every person who ever delivered a sucker punch were guilty of attempted murder, then there were at least a dozen such felons in my high school alone. While not a fight, the Jena incident was the result of an ongoing conflict among kids. No, not hardened adult criminals, but children. Doesn't every childhood prank have an instigator? Instigation should have no bearing on whether the perpetrator is given the status of an adult. I would wager that the mistakes of white teens are dismissed far more often than those of black teens, so I have to wonder, what principle other than bias led to that initial adult charge? Indeed, why were the severe charges of attempted murder initially brought? One could easily argue that hanging nooses on a tree is tantamount to conspiring to commit murder. What message does it send other than "we want to kill you!"? And yet, no charges could be found for this so-called prank?

Hiding behind "just doing my job" doesn't change the fact that Mr. Walters has discretion over the cases he chooses to prosecute, and how he chooses to prosecute them. Why were no African Americans on Mychal Bell's jury? So many questions persist, and given the checkered history of justice in Dixie, the system there remains guilty until proven innocent.

- 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 Meltdown Time Again

How odd that so many business-news pundits are “shocked” by the recent credit crunch affecting investors in mortgage-backed derivative securities.

To be sure, the situation is a disaster. The equity and credit markets have been hammered almost daily by announcements of financial institutions closing or suspending operations of funds invested in securities backed by sub-prime loans. And despite falling treasury yields, mortgage rates have risen dramatically for non-conforming borrowers, further damaging the ability of shaky homeowners to refinance out of expensive ARM and Interest Only loans into something with a lower fixed rate.

But what caused the problem? Nothing new—it happens on a regular basis. Financial institutions with little oversight take ever-increasing risks and eventually pay a steep price when the markets become volatile. Remember the Savings and Loan crisis? Remember the Junk Bond meltdown? Remember the mortgage REIT disaster? Remember the Long Term Capital fiasco? All the same, and all tied to the mispricing of options.

During periods of low volatility, money managers tend to increasingly minimize the risks they are taking. The longer markets stay calm, the longer participants assume they will remain calm into the future, building those assumptions into their pricing models. And what instruments depend heavily on such predictions for their value? Options.

For example, the S&L crisis occurred because poorly regulated savings banks were motivated to take larger and larger risks with their investment portfolios to compensate for dwindling loan volume in the face of a cooling real estate market. But as interest rates fell to support the real estate market, the investment portfolios lost billions because they were stuffed with highly risky securities with embedded options, such as IO’s and Inverse Floaters backed by mortgages—the same instruments that had burned several mortgage REITs years earlier.

Long Term Capital collapsed because award-winning finance gurus bet the firm’s money on option-pricing models that failed to properly assess real-world risks. And the Junk Bond fiasco occurred because investors failed to properly value the risk of default on sub-investment-grade paper.

In other words, instruments that rely on sophisticated predictive models for pricing are notoriously difficult to manage. And hedge funds have become the S&L’s of the present moment. They are virtually unregulated, and many have invested heavily in the most risky and volatile securities, mortgage and/or credit derivatives. How else could they achieve their stellar results? Reward, after all, is commensurate with risk.

In many ways, however, hedge funds are a scam. Their managers have little direct investment themselves, usually something nominal to give the appearance of a stake but nothing compared to the fees they can earn, and they are compensated lavishly. Their fees come from a percentage of the size of the fund, usually 1-2%, as well as a huge portion of the fund’s appreciation in any given year, usually 20% of the gain.

This scheme motivates the managers to take enormous risks and thereby reap enormous rewards…until the fund fails, whereupon the managers lose their income streams while the investors lose their equity. If you’ve made tens or hundreds of millions in management fees, you only sacrifice your reputation if the fund goes belly up. So you sit on the beach in front of your Hamptons mansion and wait a few years until the market forgets about you. Then you try your luck again.

Some managers are clever enough to get out of the way of a pending disaster, but many are not. And as the credit crunch continues to send ripples through the financial markets, we should continue to see further fund closures and red ink.

A federal bail-out of any of these gamblers would be an insult to ordinary Americans, adding to the greater insult of the recently changed bankruptcy laws that make it virtually impossible for individuals to escape financial catastrophe while insulating giant corporations from relatively insignificant losses.

If the feds want to help, they should police unscrupulous lenders and force them to disclose in a plain and understandable way the risks of today’s mortgage products. They should also regulate the hedge fund industry and find ways to keep managers from rolling the dice with other people’s money.

Until then, nobody should be surprised by the latest market meltdown. It’s just another chapter in a long, growing history of the market for derivative securities and the people who fail to manage them.

- 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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Cheney's Family Jewels

While lying media whore Ann Coulter dragged Chris Matthews and Hardball into the gutter today on MSNBC, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer was busy tackling serious issues.

Giving Coulter a platform to spew her hateful rancor – thinly and disingenuously disguised as “humor” – is as inappropriate as allowing Noah Wiley to speak about heart disease on a panel sponsored by the American Medical Association. Shame on Chris Matthews.

Meanwhile, Blitzer showcased one of the most fascinating and historically important developments in Washington since the Pentagon Papers: the publishing by the CIA of an internal expose entitled “Family Jewels.” Prompted in large part by Freedom Of Information Act requests, Jewels is a detailed accounting of cold-war era CIA excesses from the ‘50s through the ‘70s.

Though many details are still forthcoming, such excesses included employing the Mafia to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro, providing materials and assistance to domestic law enforcement, spying on domestic anti-war demonstrators and spying on domestic journalists who published sensitive government data.

Recall that the CIA is prohibited from operating domestically - the exclusive turf of the FBI.

Significant about this publication is the weight it gives those who have been screaming for decades that the CIA was involved in dirty and illegal deeds, and the shadow it casts over those increasingly ridiculous deniers who all along claimed that the CIA was a lily-white tower of patriotic virtue.

In other words, this tome is yet another example of how our nation does wrong while trying to maintain the illusion of doing right. This alone should underscore how crucial it is for dissent and criticism to play a central role in government and politics, because sadly, denying citizens their constitutional rights by placing them under illegal surveillance isn’t a thing of the past. The recent warrantless wiretapping scandals are proof. So is Dick Cheney.

As recently as this week Vice President Cheney claimed he was not subject to laws governing how the Executive Branch compiles and stores official communications…because he does not consider himself part of the Executive Branch! At least not today.

Setting aside the fact that Dick Cheney doesn’t want investigators and historians to read his emails and memos because they would reveal damning evidence of his blatant dishonesty, malicious temperament and disastrous incompetence, Cheney would rather insult the intelligence of the American public by claiming that he is above the law rather than complying with it.

While the CIA's Jewels are a chilling confirmation of the excesses of power and the ease with which the institutions of government can be co-opted into actions that are un-American, unpatriotic and against everything we say we stand for, Cheney’s malevolent authorizations of surveillance, rendition, unconditional detention and torture (the very same dirty laundry that the CIA is now admitting) are the most recent embodiments of power run amok.

The CIA did a great service to the nation by releasing this unflattering information. Hopefully it will motivate Congress to hold the Executive Branch accountable for its actions. Because until we hold our so-called leaders accountable for their misdeeds, nothing will change. Thanks to Cheney, the first step will be forcing the Bush Crew to comply with the law instead of holding themselves above it. Because few things are more disgraceful than leaders who hold themselves above the law. And as history confirms, few things are more dangerous.

- JT Compton

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Mayor Mike Madness

I met Michael Bloomberg in the late ‘80s, when his company was gaining traction mainly because it provided high-powered analytics to bond traders. He was already a legendary figure, both for his prior success at Salomon Brothers and his willingness to roll the dice by starting a company that provided technical data on little yellow screens.

Unlike many moguls from that period, I still admire Michael Bloomberg and appreciate the job he’s done as Mayor of New York City. While the city isn’t run as tightly as it was under Giuliani – Subway panhandlers appeared almost overnight after Rudy left office – Bloomberg has been a solid steward. He’s done a great job with the finances and he’s been sensitive to the needs of the most vulnerable.

Nonetheless, what is Mayor Mike thinking?

Perhaps it’s just the hubris that comes with being a billionaire, or the myopia that comes with living in a bubble of constant praise and adulation, but from a real-world perspective, Bloomberg doesn’t have a chicken’s chance in a gator farm of becoming the next president.

Very simply, few people outside the tri-state area know who he is. And even if he’s able to get onto their radar screens, several important cards are stacked against him. He’s a Harvard MBA geek. He's a divorced bachelor. He's been sued for sexual harassment. He’s Jewish. He's switched parties twice. And he has no political experience on a national or international level.

Sure, as an Independent he might be able to avoid the primary process and wind up in debates with the Republican and Democratic nominees, but when it comes to charisma, Mike makes Hilary look like Princess Di. As a public speaker, he’s deadly dull.

I’d be happy for him to run since he would likely steal more votes from the Republicans than the Democrats in states where it mattered. But it would be a fantastic waste of time and effort. Maybe he’s trying to set the stage for a stronger run four or eight years from now, however he would still have significant hurdles to overcome.

It’s hard to imagine a greater insult to the intelligence of the voting public than term limits, and sadly, Bloomberg is prohibited from running for Mayor again. But I’m sure he can find other ways to contribute to public life once his office is up. Rather than spending a hundred and fifty million on a Presidential campaign, he might be better off investing the money in scholarships for disadvantaged teens. At least they would have a chance to succeed. His Presidential bid has none.

- 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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Fundamentally Crazy

This week offered several horrifying reminders of how our nation has been infected by the mental cancer of fundamentalism.

The recent death of Reverend Jerry Falwell produced scores of obituaries and televised summaries of his career, including clips of his infamous, bigoted rants against a wide variety of people he judged to be of lesser spiritual worth.

But it also demonstrated that his views were not a thing of the past, but an ongoing phenomenon in places like Liberty University, the religion-based institution he founded and whose graduates now serve by the dozens in places like the White House and the Justice Department.

His acolytes and followers filled the airwaves yesterday confessing that they, like Falwell, were convinced that the “second coming” of Jesus would happen soon, that the "end days" were finally approaching.

Despite the presence of highly advanced, science-based technology in virtually every facet of life, it's astonishing that many evangelicals and members of other religious brands continue to ridicule science while embracing the medieval superstitions of books written thousands of years ago, claiming that those books were authored not by men but by the creator of the universe.

Their religion is more than a way to truth or enlightenment or peace.

It is The Way, while all others are wrong, bankrupt and of lesser worth.

This distinction separates fundamentalists from the sensible, sane and rational among us. Their certainty and conviction are actually the grave symptoms of people living in an intellectual black hole.

No matter how you slice it, believing that the Bible, Torah or Koran are literally true (rather than figuratively or metaphorically true) requires a grotesque suspension of judgment and reason in favor of powerful fantasy and fairy tales.

Take the “second coming” myth. It predicts, among other things, that Satan, in the form of a dragon, will be cast into a bottomless pit by an angel.

How is this tale any different than the Odyssey, which uses historical fact—the Trojan war—as a starting point for a fable that includes a Cyclops and Sirens? Other than words on a page, we have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anybody walked on water or that any virgin gave birth to a child. Dragons and Miracles, like Sirens, are the fantastical imaginings of early writers hoping to imbue history with magic powerful enough to influence their intended readership.

Likewise, today’s fundamentalists want to frighten and control their communities using crazy stories like the End Days. Or by claiming, as several Republican presidential hopefuls have, that a fetus or embryo is actually a wide-eyed, innocent child. Indeed, Governor Mike Huckabee claimed in last night’s GOP debate that a fetus was a “person”.

But a fetus is most certainly not a person. Just look in the Dictionary. Among other things, a person has a moral sense, as well as an awareness and comprehension of the world around it. Thus a fetus might be a potential person, but it is clearly not an actual person.

Ultimately, fundamentalists care little about facts. They want to sprinkle magic fairy dust on anything they deem sacred or important. Then need to claim divine license in order to give their superstitions weight while forcing the world to conform to the lunacy of their sacred texts.

For example, even though a vast, overwhelming majority of scientists believe that life on Earth has been developing for millions of years, fundamentalists argue that God created the world six thousand years ago. Why? Because the Bible says so. (Or at least some believe it implies so.)

Three of the Republican presidential candidates don’t even believe in evolution. They’ve chosen instead to elevate superstition above science and reason.

I don’t know how many Americans qualify as fundamentalists. But I’m sure the number is large. And every time their particular religious leader decides to alter an interpretation of holy scripture, they seem distressingly happy to go along with it.

How long until one of those leaders decides that the Constitution is immoral? How long before one of those leaders decides Democracy is against God? How long until one of those leaders decides that citizens who sin should be stoned to death?

As long as a person is infected with the cancer of fundamentalism, anything is possible. And as Muslim fundamentalists have demonstrated, that means anything.

- 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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Reject Guns

Want to get death threats?? It’s easy. Write something negative about guns or gun ownership.

Several years ago I urged individuals to pledge not to own guns and received several angry emails including a threatening note from a gun fan calling himself—surprise, surprise—Wotanbornprince.

But my attitude toward guns hasn’t changed and this week’s massacre at Virginia Tech only confirms what many Americans already understand.

Guns are an abomination.

So said Richard Nixon in a rare flash of clearheaded brilliance. The debate about whether guns kill or people kill is an irrelevant dodge. Guns are, quite fundamentally, instruments of death. They fascinate the powerless. They attract the weak. They seduce the frightened.

Guns are a necessary evil, but necessary only insofar as they are critical to the conduct of the military and law enforcement.

It’s no coincidence that the more insecure, fearful and paranoid, the more likely a person is to own a gun. We often see images of children and teens wielding guns, playing soldier or gangster—because they often feel afraid and powerless in the face of a complex and intimidating adult world.

But it’s safe to say that a secure, emotionally mature person lacking the need to kill animals has no reason to own a tool designed solely to produce death. Indeed, such a person would understand that the presence of a gun in their household increases the risk of death by gun accident. The number of people who successfully defend themselves with a gun from a gun-wielding attacker is insignificant compared to the thirty-thousand or so gun-related deaths each year in America.

Forgetting that the Constitution only addresses gun ownership within the context of a well regulated state militia (which is why supremacist hate groups call themselves militias—to ensure they can safely own guns), the laws of any given state still have no bearing on the notion that guns are an abomination. After all, laws fail to restrict plenty of things that are wrong. It’s not against the law to hate, but that doesn’t make hating right.

Since virtually none of our citizens need to hunt to stay alive, why do people still hunt? In the vast majority of cases, people hunt to satisfy an urge to feel powerful, to feel a certain rush and vitality lacking in their lives. How sad. And how unsportsmanlike. It’s virtually impossible to respect hunting with a gun. Any child can pull a trigger and kill something. And while it may take skill to track an animal and aim well, killing it with a gun is antithetical to sport—it’s no contest, just a one-sided slaughter.

So the question begs itself: How many gun hunters are emotional children trying to feel big and macho by killing things? More broadly, how many gun owners are compensating for a lack of something?

Which brings me back to death threats. When you take toys away from children, they often go into a rage and throw a tantrum. And likewise, gun people are often so insecure that any threat to their unfettered access to guns fills them with rage and fear. They lack the maturity, intelligence or character to navigate the perils of life without deadly weapons nearby.

In the hate mail I received, gun nuts consistently portrayed themselves as strong and tough versus the weak, “limp-wristed” liberals opposing their guns. How ironic that gun fanatics who strive to project a macho façade are actually fueled by fear and inadequacy. By using slurs like “limp-wristed” and worse, they tell the world a lot about themselves.

And by owning a gun, they tell the world they feel scared, insecure and impotent. By owning a gun, they demonstrate immaturity, bad judgment and/or malignant priorities.

Regardless of what our laws allow, in modern-day America there is simply no good reason to own a gun. Though gun ownership will likely remain legal, until more citizens take a personal stand and reject gun ownership, until more of us reject the childish glorification of gun culture, we will continue to live in a nation plagued by gun violence.

- JT Compton

Bush Screwed Us Again

Just when you thought the Bush Administration couldn’t do any worse, just when their approval rating hit an all-time low, just when it made the most sense for them to reach out to Congress and mend fences, what does the President do? He uses a recess appointment to make a Swift Boat supporter Ambassador to Belgium. In other words, he told Congress to go to hell.

And thus, he told the American people to go to hell.

When Sam Fox appeared at a confirmation hearing before Congress, it became clear that he was either being dishonest or had remarkably poor judgment when it came to his rationale for giving $50,000 to the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a smear group that spread malicious lies about Presidential hopeful John Kerry.

Fox’s performance at the hearing was so dreadful and embarrassing that the Bush Administration withdrew his candidacy. A few days later, when Congress broke for Easter recess, Bush appointed Fox to the ambassadorship using a recess appointment, meant to allow the President to appoint crucial operatives under emergency circumstances when Congress was unable to convene.

But there was no emergency. Bush used the recess appointment to blatantly thwart the will of Congress, and by direct extension, the will of the people.

It marked another low point in the worst Presidency in our nation’s history. Bush is so isolated, so insecure and yet so arrogant, he can only appoint his own cronies, no matter how inept or incompetent, to ensure they don’t turn against him down the road. Because when your presidency is wildly incompetent and operates on lies, secrecy, deception and dirty tricks, you run the risk that minions will become disgusted with your so-called “values” and go public.

It has happened many times to the Bush regime, and each time the turncoat is deemed a lunatic or an opportunist by Karl Rove and other Bush spinmeisters. But the public is no longer fooled by their accusations and stale rhetoric.

And in this case, we all have reason to be outraged. Our government, yet again, is being staffed by a person who paid big money to get Dubya elected—often through unethical means—but who offers little to his post. “Heck of a job, Brownie.”

How much damage can this loser of a President and his pompous, bumbling team do to our nation before their disastrous term ends? Sadly, more will be revealed.

I’m on vacation next week. Happy Easter…

- JT Compton

Unwise And Inappropriate

Responding today to Congressional legislation setting a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq, Vice President Dick Cheney said "Democrats think they can impose unwise and inappropriate restrictions on our commanders."

It was a moment of breathtaking, almost laughable hypocrisy.

No elected leader in recent memory has been so utterly wrong on any number of judgments and predictions than Cheney, and no administration in the past hundred years has made more "unwise and inappropriate" decisions than the Bush team.

But don’t take my word for it. Matthew Dowd, a former advisor to President Bush, ripped his ex-boss in an interview this weekend in the New York Times. Dowd left the White House disillusioned by the handling of the Iraq war and claimed Bush was increasingly out of touch with average Americans.

But recent examples of glaring incompetence extend far beyond Bush and Company. Senator McCain visited Baghdad hoping to confirm troop surge "progress", but was instead confronted by hostile journalists wondering if he had been living in an alternate universe. Despite whines and moans from conservative pundits, the journalistic disdain was justified and well within the bounds of a critical media. Past heroism doesn’t absolve McCain from painting a picture of Iraq that amounts to a lie. Though the weekly civilian death toll falling from 100 to 99 might be technically termed "progress" it amounts to little more than a band-aid on a gaping wound. Of note, McCain never took a lone, leisurely stroll outside the green zone. He would likely have been killed.

And let’s not overlook the smack-down given by the Supreme Court today to the EPA. By failing to enforce the law under the Clean Air Act, said the Supremes, the EPA failed to do its job. Why would the EPA drag its feet on something as important as enforcing environmental law? To help the energy industry, which gave mountains of money to the candidacy of George Bush. His cronies at the agency were the foxes in the proverbial hen-house, helping the EPA to sprinkle glaring incompetence with sleaze.

The media isn’t immune from blunders, either. They’ve been reporting all day about the implications of huge first-quarter money raised by the 2008 Presidential candidates. But they have entirely missed a major point: the Democrats out-raised the Republicans. In past years the GOP had a substantial fundraising edge thanks to ties with big business. But that paradigm has changed, in part because of the ineptitude of the Bush regime and in part because of the Internet’s ability to reach grass-roots activists who were relegated to the sidelines in years past.

Finally, we were reminded this week of the most audacious of the glaringly incompetent—Middle Eastern Governments. The seizure of 15 British sailors by Iran underscores the need by theocrats to obscure their own incompetence by demonizing the West, in this ridiculous case by forcing prisoners to parrot incriminating statements to reporters. Without an enemy to blame for their problems, states like Iran, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon would have to explain to citizens why their unemployment rates are obscenely high, why their economies have been left behind by the rest of the world, why their societies are hopelessly stratified and filled with inequality, and why their cultures remain brutally tribal, stale and myopic.

If only our own leaders understood this dynamic enough to avoid playing into it. But alas, elite-sissy-turned-wannabe-tough-guys like Dick Cheney are convinced that bullying and threats succeed while diplomacy fails. We’ll still be paying for this misjudgment generations from now.

- JT Compton