I started this page
Editorials and letters to the editor,
mostly from the Berkshire Eagle in Pittsfield Mass.
If you like President Pinocchio, you
should read this, pay attention to the vast variety of media available and
think again.
No matter what, we’re all going to pay
the terrible price having George W. Bush for our president.
And so will future generations.
I personally don’t think the future of
the
http://www.thefourreasons.org/
Some
great, to the point t-shirts!
A Bush supporter will interpret the above photo as
pro-Bush, as the posters are inverted…. And ambivalent about
Ryan…
A thinking person pays attention to the information
available and knows better.
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I attended the Peace March on Washington DC
Sept 24, 2005.
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I must say, I
think this is extremely well written. I don't agree with what he says
about the Democrats (I think some people on the right have unfairly demonized
Democratic candidates in order to trivialize their message-but that's no
surprise to any of you).
Bob G
--------
Doug's apology
AN APOLOGY FROM A BUSH VOTER
By Doug McIntyre
Host, McIntyre in the Morning
Talk Radio 790 KABC
There’s nothing harder in public life than admitting you’re wrong. By the way,
admitting you’re wrong can be even tougher in private life. If you don’t
believe me, just ask Bill Clinton or Charlie Sheen. But when you go out on the
limb in public, it’s out there where everyone can see it, or in my case, hear
it.
So, I’m saying today, I was wrong to have voted for George W. Bush. In historic
terms, I believe George W. Bush is the worst two-term President in the history
of the country. Worse than Grant. I also believe a
case can be made that he’s the worst President, period.
In 2000, I was a McCain guy. I wasn’t sure about the Texas Governor. He had
name recognition and a lot of money behind him, but other than that? What?
Still, I was sick of all the
For the first few months he was just flubbing along like most new Presidents,
no great shakes, but no disasters either. He cut taxes and I like tax cuts.
Then September 11th happened. September 11th changed everything for me, like it
did for so many of you. After September 11th, all the intramural idiocy of
American politics stopped being funny. We had been attacked by a vicious and
determined enemy and it was time for all of us to row in the same direction.
And we did for the blink of an eye. I believed the President when he said we
were going to hunt down Bin Laden and all those responsible for the 9-11
murders. I believed President Bush when he said we would go after the
terrorists and the nations that harbored them.
I supported the President when he sent our troops into
And I cheered when we quickly toppled the Taliban government, but winced when we
let Bin Laden escape from Tora-Bora.
Then, the talk turned to
I thought the connection to 9-11 was sketchy at best. But Colin Powell
impressed me at the UN, and Tony Blair was in, and after all, he was a
But the President shifted the argument to WMDs and
the urgent threat of
I grew up in
But in the months and years since shock and awe I have been shocked repeatedly
by a consistent litany of excuses, alibis, double-talk, inaccuracies, bogus
predictions, and flat out lies. I have watched as the President and his
administration changed the goals, redefined the reasons for going into
I have watched the President say the commanders on the ground will make the
battlefield decisions, and the war won’t be run from
I watched and tried to justify the looting in
It was the wrong course. All of it was wrong. We are not on the road to
victory. We’re about to slink home with our tail between our legs, leaving
civil war in Iraq and a nuclear armed Iran in our wake.
Most historians believe it takes 30-50 years before we get a reasonably
accurate take on a President’s place in history. So, maybe 50 years from now
But we don’t live fifty years in the future. We live now. We have to make
public policy decisions now. We have to live with the consequences of the votes
we cast and the leaders we chose now.
After five years of carefully watching George W. Bush I’ve reached the
conclusion he’s either grossly incompetent, or a hand puppet for a gaggle of
detached theorists with their own private view of how the world works. Or both.
Presidential failures. James Buchanan, Franklin Pierce,
Jimmy Carter, Warren Harding-— the competition is fierce for the worst of the
worst. Still, the damage this President has done is enormous. It will take
decades to undo, and that’s assuming we do everything right from now on. His
mistakes have global implications, while the other failed Presidents mostly
authored domestic embarrassments.
And speaking of domestic embarrassments, let’s talk for a minute about
President Bush’s domestic record. Yes, he cut taxes. But tax cuts combined with
reckless spending and borrowing is criminal mismanagement of the public’s
money. We’re drunk at the mall with our great grandchildren’s credit cards.
Whatever happened to the party of fiscal responsibility?
Bush created a giant new entitlement, the prescription drug plan. He lied to
his own party to get it passed. He lied to the country about its true cost. It
was written by and for the pharmaceutical industry. It helps nobody except the
multinationals that lobbied for it. So much for smaller
government. In fact, virtually every tentacle of government has grown
exponentially under Bush. Unless, of course, it was an agency
to look after the public interest, or environmental protection, and/or worker’s
rights.
I’ve talked so often about the border issue, I won’t
bore you with a rehash. It’s enough to say this President has been a
catastrophe for the wages of working people; he’s debased the work ethic
itself. “Jobs Americans won’t do!” He doesn’t believe in the sovereign borders
of the country he’s sworn to protect and defend. And his devotion to cheap
labor for his corporate benefactors, along with his worship of multinational
trade deals, makes an utter mockery of homeland security in a post 9-11 world.
The President’s
Katrina, Harriet Myers, The Dubai Port Deal, skyrocketing gas prices, shrinking
wages for working people, staggering debt, astronomical foreign debt,
outsourcing, open borders, contempt for the opinion of the American people, the
war on science, media manipulation, faith based initives,
a cavalier attitude toward fundamental freedoms-- this President has run the
most arrogant and out-of-touch administration in my lifetime, perhaps, in any
American’s lifetime.
You can make a case that Abraham Lincoln did what he had to do, the public be
damned. If you roll the dice on your gut and you’re right, history remembers
you well. But, when your gut led you from one business failure to another, when
your gut told you to trade Sammy Sosa to the Cubs, and you use the same gut to
send our sons and daughters to fight and die in a distraction from the real war
on terror, then history will and should be unapologetic in its condemnation.
None of this, by the way, should be interpreted as an endorsement of the
opposition party. The Democrats are equally bankrupt. This is the second crime
of our age. Again, historically speaking, its times like these when
Tragically, the Democrats have allowed crackpots, leftists and demagogic
cowards to snipe from the sidelines while taking no responsibility for
anything. In fairness, I don’t believe a Democrat president would have gone
into
The two party system has always been clumsy and
imperfect, but it has only collapsed once, in the 1850s, and the result was
civil war.
I believe, as I have said countless times, the two party system is on the brink
of a second collapsed. It’s currently running on spin, anger, revenge, and pots
and pots and pots of money.
We’re being governed by paper-mache patriots;
brightly painted red, white and blue, but hollow to the core. Both parties have
mastered the cynical arts of media manipulation and fund raising. They’ve
learned the lessons of Watergate and burn the tapes. They have learned to
divide the nation for their own gain. They have demonstrated the willingness to
exploit any tragedy for personal advantage. The contempt they have for the
American people is without parallel.
This is painful to say, and I’m sure for many of you, painful to read. But it’s
impossible to heal the country until we’re willing to acknowledge the truth no
matter how painful. We have to wean ourselves off sugar coated partisan lies.
With a belated tip of the cap to Ralph Nader, the
system is broken, so broken, it’s almost inevitable it
pukes up the Al Gores and George W. Bushes. Where are the Trumans
and the Eisenhowers? Where are the men and women of
vision and accomplishment? Why do we have to settle for recycled hacks and
malleable ciphers? Greatness is always rare, but is basic competence and simple
honesty too much to ask?
It may be decades before we have the full picture of how paranoid and
contemptuous this administration has been. And I am open to the possibility
that I’m all wet about everything I’ve just said. But I’m putting it out there,
because I have to call it as I see it, and this is how I see it today. I don’t
say any of this lightly. I’ve thought about this for months and months. But
eventually, the weight of evidence takes on a gravitational force of its own.
I believe that George W. Bush has taken us down a terrible road. I don’t
believe the Democrats are offering an alternative. That means we’re on our own
to save this magnificent country. The
So, accept my apology for allowing partisanship to blind me to an obvious
truth; our President is incapable of the tasks he is charged with. I almost
feel sorry for him. He is clearly in over his head. Yet, he doesn’t generate
the sympathy Warren Harding earned. Harding, a spectacular mediocrity, had the
self-knowledge to tell any and all he shouldn’t be President. George W. Bush
continues to act the part, but at this point whose
buying the act?
Does this make me a waffler? A
flip-flopper? Maybe, although I prefer to call it
realism. And, for those of you who never supported Bush, its also fair
to accuse me of kicking Bush while he’s down. After all, you were kicking him
while he was up.
You were right, I was wrong.
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Voices of reason
By Milton Bass
In 1979, our son encountered
three freshmen roommates at college, but only one of them became special in his
life and remained close after graduation.
His name is Daniel Benjamin and
he is now a key figure among the pundits in this country who are trying to
point ways to protect the American public from both internal and external
enemies.
A
He left this in 1994 to become a
special assistant to President Bill Clinton, who named him the National
Security Council director for speechwriting. In 1998, he was named director for
Transnational Threats where his major responsibility was counterterrorism.
Following his government service, Danny was named a Jennings Randolph Senior
Fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, and in January 2001 he became a Senior
Fellow in the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and
International Studies in
In 2002, Danny co-wrote with
colleague Steven Simon a book titled "The Age of Sacred Terror,"
which told the story of the birth of al-Qaida and
religiously inspired terrorism. This book won the Arthur Ross Book Award of the
Council on Foreign Relations, the premier award for a book on international
affairs.
Last October a new book by the
duo, "The Next Attack: The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for
Getting It Right," was published by Henry Holt/Times Books, and
immediately received highest praise from such commentators as Frank Rich of The
New York Times, Walter Isaacson, Richard A. Coll and
several experts who have written books on al-Qaida
and the war in Iraq.
In their prologue, the authors
start off by saying "We are losing." They then go on to demonstrate
how the Bush administration has no clear conception of what they are facing in
the threat posed by the jihadists and, by their Iraq
attack, have turned that nation into a "country-sized training
ground" for terrorists. They show that we are not facing any kind of
threat by nations, but by "independent cell-based terrorist groups"
that have spread throughout the world and can erupt at any moment from any
direction.
Benjamin and Simon have no
doubts that there will be another terrorist attack inside the continental
They also warn about
"self-starting" terrorist groups without links to al-Qaida who have already caused such devastation in
The writers are devastating in
their assessment of the capabilities of President Bush, Vice President Dick
Cheney (the Rasputin of the present administration) and Secretary of Defense
Donald Rumsfeld. When Benjamin and Simon left
government, they also left behind explicit warnings about the terrorists for
their successors, all of which information was disregarded by the Bush
administration as it started its already-determined attack against
Benjamin and Simon, despite
their experience and brain power, can only point out possible means of
rectifying the mistakes that have been made, are being made and will be made.
It is one thing to talk of defeating terrorists and quite another to root them
out. It is great to monitor the Internet for possible dangers but we all know
that the hackers, and this includes terrorists, are usually one jump ahead of
the authorities.
And most difficult of all is how
are we going to create a dialogue with the Islamic
world when we have built up such a wall of hatred and distrust that it will be
eons before hands might be proffered to shake rather than kill.
However, of all the books I have
read about
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Dangerous times
Editorial
Sunday, January 29
With Osama bin Laden still sending tapes more than four years after
These are dangerous times for
On Wednesday, the president
raised the convenient specter of Mr. bin Laden,
suggesting that those opposed to his domestic spying program don't believe
there are "still people willing to attack." In truth, people opposed
to the president's violation of the Constitution don't doubt that terrorists
are still willing to attack
The all-but-forgotten 9/11
Commission, comprised of both Republicans and Democrats, found that the federal
apparatus had the information and the resources it needed to anticipate the
attacks of September 11 but failed to do so, largely because of communication
problems and institutional lethargy. An intelligence report labeled "Bin
Laden Determined to Attack Within the United
States" was shrugged off by the White House. Specific warnings about the
dangers presented by al-Qaida left by the
In short, to paraphrase a
favorite statement of the National Rifle Association, there is no need for new
laws to fight terrorism, we just have to enforce the laws we have.
In that regard, the Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 enables an administration to quickly get a
court order permitting domestic wiretapping. The White House could go that
route but prefers a large-scale domestic spying program that fits in snugly
with its efforts to stretch executive powers to unprecedented extremes.
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales argued last week that Congress authorized
this surveillance program when it signed on to the president's efforts to fight
terrorism. Congress has done many foolish things, such as back in the war in
The president, with the
assistance of a Republican congressional leadership apparently determined to
make the body it heads irrelevant, has launched an assault against the very
foundations of our system of government. Worse, it is doing so in the name of a
fight against enemies of
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I laid off for a while, there’s too much going on against the
present administration now, it’s overwhelming!
But Milton
Bass hits the nail on the head again, so here is his opinion
Why can't they see?
By Milton Bass
Sunday, January 15
WHY SO many million Americans do
not see through President George W. Bush's inability to comprehend the havoc he
has caused in the world is beyond my understanding. Are they so taken in by the
smirking piousness he tries to project that they fail to see the chinks, the
cracks, the ruptures in the Republican con game that is leading this country
down such a bleak and forbidding road? It is our children and grandchildren who
will have to try to crawl out of the pit into which they are being dumped.
The latest outrage might seem
small potatoes to some, but to me it perfectly illustrates the obliviousness of
this person to what he has done to all Americans. On one of the final days of
his Christmas vacation where he spent the days mountain biking and clearing
brush on his Crawford, Texas, ranch, Bush took a few hours to visit wounded
military personnel at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He pinned
Purple Hearts on seven soldiers and thanked them for their service to their
country, and then lightened the atmosphere with one of his usual jokes.
According to New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd, Bush "kidded in a way that again showed his
jarring lack of empathy with the amputees from
Even though I wasn't there, I am
sure that the audience, wounded and hospital personnel alike,
responded to this joke by their commander in chief with hearty laughter. That
is why Bush speaks only to captive audiences — military personnel and
Republican fund-raisers — because their counted-on reactions to whatever he
says range from politely thrilled to enthusiastically affirmative.
It has long been public
knowledge that many of the wounds suffered in
That's what you see in a
military hospital. What you don't see are the actual situations in which these
horrors occur. Many great writers have tried to re-create the situations that
occur in a war but no one has ever really succeeded. You have to go through it
in order to get an inkling of the terror that ensues and even then there is the
feeling that you are only on the edge of the precipice, that you have no idea
what it is like at the bottom of the hellhole.
So President Bush thought he was
lightening the seriousness of the moment, that he was giving "his"
troops a respite from their daily tasks of possible rehabilitation. He knew
that the scratch he received from the recalcitrant cedar tree was nothing to
what these people are undergoing and which may remain with them for the rest of
their young lives. But he did not make the connection between his scratch and
their loss of limbs or internal injuries or mental damage. There is no depth to
his thinking.
What he said was as ignorant as
his compliment of former FEMA director Michael Brown during the Katrina
disaster: "You're doing a heck of a job, Brownie."
What do we do with those who do
not see through this transparency of a man? Who are the people who think he is
the one protecting them from the terrorists when in reality he is running this country
straight into the bog? Do they care that the war in
To me, the core support for Bush
in this country is from the single-issue voters who are focused on only one
particular consequence. Foremost among these is abortion. Secondly, comes gay marriage. Thirdly, comes
just plain homosexual rights. Fourthly, comes
security. And lastly come everything else. If a
politician is for any of the above, these voters don't care what he or she does
on any other matters no matter how vital they might be. These are the people
who can't tell the difference between a scratch and a grievous wound, the
people who are supporting the Republicans right down the wire and are helping
to bleed the American heritage into insignificance.
How can their blinders be
removed? How can they be made to practice the values they continually bleat
about?
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A joke?
George Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld
are flying on Air Force One.
The President looks at the Vice President, chuckles and says,
"You know, I could throw a $1,000.00 bill out the window right now and
make somebody very happy." The Vice President shrugs and says,
"Well, I could throw ten $100.00 bills out the window and make 10 people
very happy."
Not to be out done, the Secretary of Defense says, "Of course then, I
could throw one-hundred $10.00 bills out the window and make a hundred people
very happy."
The pilot rolls his eyes and says to his co-pilot, "Such big shots back
there... hell, I could throw all of them out the window and make 56 million
people very happy".
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God save America
By Milton Bass
Sunday, October 09
AMERICANS HAVE always believed
the United States was the greatest country in the world — in size, in wealth,
in technology, in health care, in comfort, in pride, in can-do, in
peace-loving, in war, in innovation, in manufacturing, in agriculture, in
safety, in cars, in planes, in generosity, in democracy, in common sense, in
charity, in good will, in fairness, and a host of other great things that just
don't spring forth from the mind of a geezer.
For the past four and half years
we have had a president who keeps reassuring us about these qualities, and
tells the world that we are also nobody to mess with because we are straight
shooters who will beat you in the long run, and also blow your house down even
with the pig in it and solid brick construction. These threats are being made
by who our media constantly refer to as "the most powerful man in the
world."
Right now George W. Bush holds
not only the title of omnipotence, but he also believes it religiously. As many
of his followers have claimed and as Bush has not denied, God wanted him to be
president of the
A person who has this thought in
his head is not helped by what has become the cult of the White House. The
presidential bureaucracy has become so stylized that it matches the ridiculous
behavior of the French kings who at one point moved their bowels in the midst
of all the grandees of the court.
It reached the point where there
was even a noble who was rewarded with the clean-up detail. The president of
the
When you think back on his
immediate reactions, or non-reactions, to the tragedies of 9/11 and Hurricane
Katrina, you realize that he has learned nothing in his four and a half years
in office. He is still playing political games with human lives and the future
of his country.
It is hard to understand why so
many people in this country do not hold the man and his party responsible for
all the terrible things that have happened during his terms in office.
It is true that we have an
outstanding military force even though it has been brutally splintered in the
past three years. It is true that we have weapons of mass destruction that
could be launched against any country in the world. It is true that our economy
is so large that it keeps rolling along despite record deficits that keep
piling up every second of every day. The Chinese and South Koreans hold more
paper on us than the mills in Lee and
Meanwhile the war in
And meanwhile we are facing
God's outrage at what his chosen candidate and president persists in doing. It
has to be that God wanted all United States citizens to know how miserably the
country has been treating its poor ethnic groups, because why else would he
have roiled up Katrina to wreak such havoc. It has to be that God wanted all of
us to know how bungled this administration is when it comes to waging war and
supervising organizations like FEMA and Homeland Security. Why else would he
have plunked in Hurricane Rita as an exclamation point?
It is pointless to blame George
W. Bush for what has happened in the past four years and what is happening to
this country right now. He is an ordinary man caught in extraordinary
circumstances, and is able only to generate problems rather than solutions. The
blame lies with the people who elected him twice, and are continuing to support
him even though he has more than aptly demonstrated how inept he is in
governing and government.
God save the people of the
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Bush's muddled priorities
Friday, October 14
To the Editor of THE EAGLE:-
In responding to Jack Murphy's
letter published in The Eagle on Oct. 6 about the unfairness of blaming
President Bush for Hurricane Katrina, let me say this: The only reason we have
a government is to protect the American citizenry. Otherwise, there would be no
point in having a federal government at all.
The federal government has
focused for years on three likely catastrophes: a terrorist attack in
The military should have been in
there before the storm struck with whatever heavy machinery was necessary in
order to evacuate those people too old, too weak, and too poor to reach safety
on their own.
And where was Bush this time?
Not in the school house, but flying out to
Avian flu has been a disaster in
the making for almost two years. Why is Bush just now starting to talk about
the threat of a catastrophic pandemic capable of killing more than 100 million
people? Why wasn't his administration out in front of this problem when it
first became known? Once again Bush &
Instead of spending most of the year
trying to privatize social security (which is just round one in their long-term
goal of eliminating all entitlement programs), George Bush should have had his
priorities on straight. A vaccine to protect Americans and the rest of the
world from the deadly avian flu virus would be far more worthy of a leader than
trying to undo the safety net for people near the end of their lives.
President Bush has been a great
embarrassment to this country, and his administration has done incredible
damage both here and abroad in such a brief period of time. It is hard to
believe that we have another three years to endure this ongoing fiasco.
CHARLES STEINHACKER
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Co-opting
the penguins
By Clellie Lynch
Thursday,
September 22
CLIP, CLOP, plip,
plop, whooosh, whoosh, whoosh. . . the long line of
emperor penguins marches and bellyskates inland
across crusty snow fields surrounded by etched mountains glistening in the
fading sun. It is late March and it is once again breeding time at Terre Adelie in the fierce, cold Antarctic.
This time, though, the
plumped-up penguins are followed and photographed by Luc Jacquet,
the French biologist, and his intrepid team. The result. . . the second
grossing documentary of all time: "The March of the Penguins."
We watch enthralled as the
spiffy-looking birds burst from a water hole and comically teeter onto land,
one after another, until there are hundreds ready to begin the annual trek to
the colony's breeding ground. For this colony, the trek is 70 miles, 70 miles
across rough terrain which takes them about a week, not bad for flightless
birds who are prepared to spend the next few months intent on the propagation
of the species.
Once inland, the birds mate. The
female produces a hefty egg which she immediately and awkwardly rolls from
between her feet to between her mate's.
As soon as the egg roll off is
completed, she returns to the open water to gorge on fish and krill.
While she is feasting on food,
papa is standing with his male comrades, each of whom harbors an egg. When a
bitter winter storm rages across the bottom of the world, the males huddle
closer together. After a few weeks the eggs hatch and the chicks start to grow;
the mamas, the babies main source of food, return. The hungry men, relieved of
familial duties for the time being, flee to the sea for their own feeding
frenzy.
The chicks grow, chirp like
plovers, bond with parents and each other until spring comes when they stare
perplexedly at the departing adults. Gradually the instinct bulb lights up and
the chicks follow. The fuzzy gray youngsters waddle along until they come to
the sea which by this time is only a few miles from the breeding ground. They
stare at the water for a bit before plopping in and swimming away looking like
a flock of fat, furry murres or auks. It is a
powerful, beautiful film about nature.
The film's narration tells the
story of these magnificent creatures in quite general and gentle terms. It is
not an outwardly scientific film as it does not mention — though it certainly
does depict — evolution, natural selection, adaptation, climate changes or
global warming. Yet it has become a favorite of the religious right, co-opted
by the evangelical Christians as a "moral tale." Their magazines,
newspapers and Web sites rejoice that here is a family film, one that
represents excellent family values, in particular monogamy, sacrifice and child
rearing. Take the kids, make notes, go to a "March of the Penguins"
Leadership Workshop.
Did they see the same film I
did? Did they even listen to the narration? Let's take monogamy. These birds
are only seasonally monogamous, which is not unlike having a different lover
every summer. Not sure this is what you would want your children to emulate.
And sacrifice. . . doesn't sacrifice implies choice? Do the penguins choose to
breed in the winter, in the dark, without food? Perhaps they are referring to
the penguin's natural protective instincts of caring for the egg during
adversity.
And child rearing. . . penguin
parents do go to extraordinary efforts to produce young, but again this is
instinctual and determined over the years as the best possible way for insuring
that the next generation will reach adulthood. But if these birds represent
steadfast parenting, why didn't the adult penguins protect the youngsters from
the hungry Southern Giant Petrel? Now there's a bird that monogamous, that
believes in marital fidelity!
There is a brief mention that
Other reviews claim that the
film could be a treatise for Intelligent Design, that penguin life is too
complex to have arisen through random selection. . . therefore must be
God-given. . . that the film does not focus on the birds' history or the
instinctive adaptations to environment. In fact, that is exactly what is
depicted by the film, the right once again just chooses to ignore what is
presented in front of their blinkered eyes.
If "March of the
Penguins" is Christian film, was Winged Migration an INS film?
The religious right picks and
chooses which portions of the film to highlight for inspiration without
understanding the film as a whole. The Christian Spotlight at the Movies Web
site not only reviews the film but also discusses the penguin values of love,
perseverance, friendship/ camaraderie) in terms of the Bible, chapter and verse
given.
Didn't know there were penguins
in the bible, now did you? Personally I think the penguin colony represents
socialist values. . . they may follow the leader to the land of loving, but do
have minds and lives of their own. . . they work in concert to keep warm and
protect the young. . . the young are given food and direction and then are
trusted to fend for themselves. Hmmm. It is a grand epic of a working commune,
of communal living. Maybe penguins are (gasp!) communist?
Clellie Lynch is a regular Eagle contributor.
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SCOT LEHIGH
Meehan's message
on extremism
By Scot Lehigh |
© Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper
Company.
REPRESENTATIVE Martin Meehan
recently returned from a 10-day fact-finding trip to the
Meehan, who met with
political and government leaders from Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, and Israel as
well as US officials there, says his take-away impression is that the United
States needs to do much more to stop the spread of radical Islam.
''We are not rising to meet
the long-term challenges we face in the region," Meehan says. ''We need an
approach that uses every tool we have. The military is part of it, but it also
has to be political, diplomatic, economic, and educational."
This is hardly the first
venture into foreign policy for Meehan, the ranking Democrat on the House
subcommittee on terrorism, unconventional threats, and capabilities.
Earlier this year, after his
second trip to
''If the Democrats could
unite behind a proposal like that, I think we'd have a stronger rationale for
opposing the president's policy in
Now the Fifth District
congressman has a new policy paper on nonmilitary measures the
The Bush administration has
not done nearly enough to counter that or to advance our values and our image
in the region, the Lowell Democrat says.
''We talk a good talk about
freedom, but we really aren't doing what's necessary to make it work," he
says. ''We have the rhetoric, but not the resources."
The
''Our enemies seek to
exploit ideas that have unfortunately gained in resonance: suspicion of the
West, fear of modernity, hatred of the
To combat that poisonous
mix,
The difficult question , of course, is how the
The
The battle against extremism
won't be won until Middle Eastern economies hold real opportunities for their
people, the congressman says.
To that end, Meehan says,
the region needs a central development bank like the European Bank for
Reconstruction and Development -- started in 1991 to promote private enterprise
in the former communist countries of
There's no quick fix, the
congressman says. Instead, we face a long struggle, but it's one we must
engage. Before Sept. 11, he says, we failed to comprehend the threat we faced
from radical Islam.
''In the war on terror, we
can't afford another failure by doing too little in the struggle against
violent extremism," he concludes. ''This is a critical moment in history,
and it demands a comprehensive strategy to deal with the threat of radical
Islam."
Scot
Lehigh's e-mail address is lehigh@globe.com.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A joke?
Three
One of them
said, "I'm the best surgeon in
One of the others said, "That's nothing. A young man lost both arms and
legs in an accident. I reattached them, and 2 years later he won a gold medal
in field events in the Olympics."
The third surgeon said, "You guys are amateurs. Several years ago a cowboy
who was high on cocaine and alcohol rode a horse head-on into a train traveling
80 miles an hour. All I had left to work with was the horse's ass and a cowboy
hat. Now he's president of the
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
by Maureen Dowd
Stuff happens.
And when you combine limited government with
incompetent government, lethal stuff happens.
W. drove his budget-cutting Chevy to the
levee, and it wasn't dry. Bye, bye, American lives. "I don't think anyone
anticipated the breach of the levees," he told Diane Sawyer.
Shirt-sleeves rolled up, W. finally
landed in Hell yesterday and chuckled about his wild boozing days in "the
great city" of N'Awlins. He was clearly moved.
"You know, I'm going to fly out of here in a minute," he said on the
runway at the
Why does this self-styled "can
do" president always lapse into such lame "who could have
known?" excuses.
Who on earth could have known that Osama
bin Laden wanted to attack us by flying planes into buildings? Any official who
bothered to read the trellis of pre-9/11 intelligence briefs.
Who on earth could have known that an
American invasion of
Who on earth could have known that
In June 2004, Walter Maestri,
emergency management chief for Jefferson Parish, fretted to The Times-Picayune
in
Not only was the money depleted by the
Bush folly in
Ron Fournier of The Associated Press
reported that the Army Corps of Engineers asked for $105 million for hurricane
and flood programs in
Just last year, Federal Emergency
Management Agency officials practiced how they would respond to a fake
hurricane that caused floods and stranded
Michael Brown, the blithering idiot in
charge of FEMA - a job he trained for by running something called the International
Arabian Horse Association - admitted he didn't know until Thursday that there
were 15,000 desperate, dehydrated, hungry, angry, dying victims of Katrina in
the New Orleans Convention Center.
Was he sacked instantly? No, our
tone-deaf president hailed him in
It would be one thing if President Bush
and his inner circle - Dick Cheney was vacationing in Wyoming; Condi Rice was
shoe shopping at Ferragamo's on Fifth Avenue and
attended "Spamalot" before bloggers chased her back to Washington; and Andy Card was
off in Maine - lacked empathy but could get the job done. But it is a chilling
lack of empathy combined with a stunning lack of efficiency that could make
this administration implode.
When the president and vice president
rashly shook off our allies and our respect for international law to pursue a
war built on lies, when they sanctioned torture, they shook the faith of the
world in American ideals.
When they were deaf for so long to the
horrific misery and cries for help of the victims in New Orleans - most of them
poor and black, like those stuck at the back of the evacuation line yesterday
while 700 guests and employees of the Hyatt Hotel were bused out first - they
shook the faith of all Americans in American ideals. And made us ashamed.
Who are we if we can't take care of our
own?
© Copyright
2005 New York Times
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bush
defenders can only attack
Thursday,
September 22
To the Editor of
THE EAGLE:-
I'm writing this letter in
response to the Sept. 12 letter "Hopelessly lost in miasma" by
Frederick Austin.
Over the years, I've read
countless letters to the editor regarding politics written by people both for
and against the Bush administration. Some are well thought out, and some
aren't, from both perspectives.
The writers who are against Bush
almost always demand accountability. These people want answers to questions
about the war, the economy, the environment, and government policies regarding
such issues. These people focus their dissatisfaction exclusively on the
government 99 percent of the time.
The pro-Bush writers, on the
other hand, rarely address the issues or concerns raised such as WMDs, no-bid contracts, the skyrocketing deficit, and so forth.
They simply attack those who question and dissent. Mr. Austin's letter is
perfect example of this.
In it, he refers to any liberal
as a "left-wing extremist," and writes about how "lies,"
"tax breaks for the rich," "all about oil," and others are
code words to recognize these "extremists." At one point in his
letter, he pounds on his intellectual drum by calling for "civility,
original intellectual thought, respect for differing opinions, and omit the
name-calling, insults, and Web-site drivel." This contrasts greatly with
what he writes two paragraphs earlier when he states "personal rancor
drips from the pens of an otherwise insignificant cadre of pathetic souls,
masquerading as political analysts who feel compelled to write their odious
gibberish to the newspaper's editor."
You'd think that someone with
such writing skill would be aware of his own hypocrisy. As for his own
"original intellectual thought," he didn't convey anything that I
haven't heard on conservative-talk radio. In essence, Mr. Austin wrote a letter
attacking the opinions of a large segment of society, and disguised it with his
own self-righteous mumbo jumbo. His letter is heavy with contempt toward, and
intolerance of, those who question the powers that have control over our taxes,
economy, military and global standing.
As a staunch member of the
hold-our-government-accountable-for-its-actions crowd, I felt compelled to
retaliate for Mr. Austin's thinly veiled swipe at us. Unlike him, it makes me
feel that there's hope for our country whenever I read a letter from someone
who doesn't buy the garbage being sold to us. I derive a certain measure of
satisfaction knowing that some people in this country still hold truth,
fairness, compassion, and government responsibility in high regard. They
understand what makes democracy work.
MARC TAYLOR
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Impeach
Clueless George
Monday,
September 19
To the Editor of
THE EAGLE:-
I did not take well the alleged
re-election of King George the Compassionate Smirker.
It took four years to recover from his appointment to the throne by the less
than Supreme Court. I was, however, hopeful that the pathetic performance of
George the Inept would inspire the peasantry to banish him back to
I console myself by reading the
many excellent letters to the editor published in The Eagle on a daily basis. I
have been tempted to join in the fray, but the volume and the quality of the
letters left me with little to say except that they have my complete respect
and admiration. That being said, I have been inspired to join in a hopefully
growing chorus to call for the impeachment and removal from office of George
the Strutter. For someone who cloaks himself in a
flight suit of self-righteous patriotism, he has proven that he is no patriot.
The damage he and his band of unmerry men have inflicted on this great nation is
monumental and unforgivable! They have destroyed in a few years what took us
centuries to develop. We have lost the respect and admiration of most of the
world and have become hated and despised. Many Americans who are able to travel
abroad no longer admit they are American and pretend to be from anywhere else.
The worst thing that Clueless
George and his team have done, however, is to get us as a nation involved in
the needless quagmire of
Some of the loudest critics of
George the Tongue Tied are a few prominent Republicans. They should be joined
by all elected representatives of like minds, especially the spineless
Democrats who have been cowering in the shadows like Dick the Artful Draft
Dodger and get the job done. The sooner the better!
Realistically, any move toward
impeachment would probably result in failure. The attempt should at least be
made if for no other reason than to make those in power squirm and give at
least half the nation a badly needed morale boost!
THOMAS M. BENSON
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Blame
it on reign of Bush
Tuesday,
September 20
AMAZINGLY, PRESIDENT Bush has
finally taken responsibility for at least one of the many mistakes of his
administration. He publicly bore the blame for the bungling of the immediate
response to Hurricane Katrina.
The refusal to admit a mistake,
or take responsibility for a mistake, has become a cardinal rule for
politicians. The political wisdom is that such an admission only encourages
critics and does nothing for the official's approval ratings or his or her
chances for re-election. And many officials get away with passing the buck,
because they are not involved in a series of serious, high-profile mistakes.
But Bush is an exception. He has been mistaken about more serious national
matters than any president or other high-office holder in my memory.
His bungled policies include an
economically disastrous tax cut that is now coming to roost with a large budget
deficit that will be exacerbated by the high cost of rebuilding after the
hurricane; an equally disastrous occupation of Iraq in terms of national
resources and American lives; an inadequate policy to address the poverty of
minority groups in America, which was exposed in part by the storm; a so-called
Medicare reform providing little for senior Americans while lining the pockets
of pharmaceutical companies; a divisive style of governance tearing America
into two politically warring camps, and now the failure of a national policy
dealing with a disaster like Hurricane Katrina, which even in Bush's words
raises the question: "Are we capable of dealing with a severe attack or
another severe storm?"
Most elected officials only take
responsibility for a failure if they are forced into it. And that is what
occurred in Bush's case. He first publicly praised his former head of FEMA,
Michael D. Brown, for "doing a heck of a job" in responding to the
hurricane. But the public knew better because of the firsthand coverage by the
American media, and the television pictures of the devastation and the human
misery. Bush's administration could not control the press coverage and hide
what was really going on like it did in
And what Americans saw was an
appalling lack of adequate and quick response, which led to unnecessary
suffering by too many people. This caused a sharp drop in the public's approval
of Bush's leadership. Bush's administration and right-wing talk show hosts
tried to stem the falling poll numbers by first discrediting critics by saying
they were playing an unfair "blame game," rather than trying to help
the victims of the storm. That ploy failed to stop Bush's plunging approval ratings.
The next political cover was the forced resignation of Brown, but that did
nothing to halt the still falling approval ratings. And equally futile was the
administration's attempt to blame local and state governments for what
happened.
So Bush's handlers told him that
he had to be honest and take responsibility (something he should have done at
the outset) for the lack of preparedness for this disaster. The obvious
political benefit to Bush's move is that Americans tend to be forgiving when a
political leader or high-profile individual takes responsibility for his or her
action. For example, Harry Truman was admired for his often repeated quote:
"The buck stops here!"
The lesson of taking
responsibility seems to escape politicians and others. Former President Clinton
was subjected to impeachment in part because of his refusal to admit his sexual
involvement with Monica Lewinsky. Martha Stewart had little public sympathy for
her prosecution and incarceration, because she refused to admit any mistake.
It remains to be seen whether
Bush's reversal from the buck-stops-everywhere-but-here attitude will improve
his approval rating.
Now that Bush has finally owned
up to a mistake, maybe he will begin to admit some of his other mistakes and
take steps to correct them, such as creating an exit strategy from Iraq, and
calling for the repeal of his tax cuts for the wealthy to make resources
available not only for the cleanup and the rebuilding of the destruction caused
by Hurricane Katrina, but to address the issue of poverty in this country.
But on the other hand perhaps
hell has not yet sufficiently frozen over for such a complete reversal of
policies by Bush.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
A
White House built upon empty slogans
Thursday,
September 15
PROBABLY THE biggest legacy the
Bush administration will leave to history is its plethora of advertising
slogans. In response to their mistakes, the White House slogan team has come up
with some of the most blatant misrepresentations of truth ever presented to a
semi-gullible public in history.
The slogan of the month was
"blame game." President Bush and his people kept telling everybody
they were not going to play "the blame game." The irony was that they
were the ones being blamed. The White House press secretary, the bumbling Scott
McClellan, reportedly used the term "blame game" 22 times as
reporters hammered him on where the federal government had gone wrong in its
response to the damage wrought by Hurricane Katrina.
And then when the president
himself was asked the tough questions, he replied that he, too, was not going
to play the "blame game." It has to be presumed that presidential
adviser
Karl Rove was the one who came
up with the solution to this problem: Make believe you are taking the
blame."
Last week the president
announced "I take responsibility." And then he went on to say,
"I am going to defend the people saving lives." Apples and oranges.
Nobody was attacking the people saving lives. The ones being attacked are the people
who didn't adequately send in the people who could save lives.
Rove sent Bush down to the
devastated areas three times so there could be all kinds of photo ops of the
president looking grave as he listened to relief officials, smiling as he
thanked relief workers, shaking hands with the military, hugging black people
and kissing them on the cheek.
On his first trip down he
thanked FEMA chief Mike Brown for the great job he was doing: "Brownie,
you're doing a heck of a job." Then the bewildered Brownie was given the
heave-ho.
Bewildered is the perfect word
for Brown. He had no idea what he was doing as head of FEMA and he still cannot
understand why he was fired. The problem is that Bush stuffed FEMA with a whole
group of political hacks and those people are still screwing things up if they
are not smart enough to stay out of the way of real workers.
How many lives were lost because
of the political hacks? It's one of those intangibles.
On his second trip down the
president pointed to where Trent Lott's house was washed away and said:
"We got a lot of rebuilding to do — the good news is and it's hard for
some to see it now but out of this chaos is going to come a fantastic Gulf
Coast — out of the rubbles of Trent Lott's house — the guy lost his entire
house — there's going to be a fantastic house. I look forward to sitting on the
porch."
Meanwhile, the television
cameras were showing the pictures of the black people who had lost everything,
everything, and didn't have a shot in hell of ever getting back any of the
little they had. There is also enough blame to go around for state and local
authorities in the disaster areas, but what they could have done is trifling
compared to the powers of the federal government.
The Bush administration has been
lucky in that under their so-called governance new disasters keep pushing the
old ones under Trent Lott's rug (the one in his house, not the one on his
head).
In the same manner, when the
president was asked whether the reaction to Katrina indicated this country was not
prepared for another terrorist attack, he said: "Are we capable of dealing
with a severe attack? That's a very important question and it's in the national
interest that we find out what went on so we can better respond."
One of the big pluses with the
people who voted for and still back Bush is that he is a "Can do" guy
who can best protect this country from terrorists. This is especially true
among the frightened women who feel he has this quality and the macho young men
who like his gung ho style.
But the only thing his group has
come up with in the past four years are those platitudes that sound zippy to
him and enrage those of us who find his policies and statements phony. Think of
all those slogans to justify
Weapons of
mass destruction. The
capability and desire to manufacture and use weapons of mass destruction. Shock
and awe. Is the world better off without Saddam in charge? We are fighting the
terrorists over there so we don't have to deal with them here. We are spreading
democracy all over the globe. Bring 'em on. Dead or
alive? Come to think of it, where is that man who is 6 feet, 4 inches tall and
requires dialysis? And the best one of all:
When you think of that
flight-suited figure striding around the deck of that aircraft carrier, you
think of all the things that have happened to this country since then and you
ask yourself why the most important matter in the world for this man is to keep
cutting the taxes of the very, very rich? Why? Why? Why?
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
When
politics trumps science
Tuesday,
September 13
STOCKBRIDGE
POLITICAL DELAYS seem to be par
for the course these days. No one is unaware of how local, state and federal officials'
slowness in response to what they knew was guaranteed disaster in
According to Elliott Millenson who used to be president and CEO of Direct Access
Diagnostics, a company that applied to the F.D.A. to sell an at-home drug test
for HIV infection in the '80s and '90s, "On sensitive issues, politics are
business as usual at the F.D.A."
Like a broken levee,
business-as-usual politics does not hold much water these days. As the House
and Senate begin to investigate what went wrong with the recovery effort in
But elected officials have a
responsibility to the law — even when it conflicts with their personal
ideologies. An article in the New York Times last week mentioned Susan P Koniak, a professor of legal ethics at
When the law comes first, basic
human rights also come first. The F.D.A.'s on-going
and deliberate delays in making over-the-counter sales of the
morning-after-pill available is jeopardizing the health and psychological
well-being of many women as well as the proper use of scientific evidence.
The pill, called Plan B,
includes a high dose of the hormone progestin and can prevent pregnancy if
taken within 72 hours after intercourse. It works by either delaying ovulation
or blocking fertilization of an egg. It can also hinder the implantation of a
fertilized egg into the uterus. But if the fertilized egg is already implanted
into the uterus — in other words, if a woman is already pregnant — the pill has
no effects.
Scientific facts show that those
standing on moral high ground by insisting on including the pill in the
abortion debate are simply wrong.
A week after the agency
announced the latest delay, the director of the F.D.A's
office of women's health resigned in protest. "I feel very strongly that
this shouldn't be about abortion politics," said Susan F. Wood in an
interview in the New York Times. "This is a way to prevent unwanted
pregnancy and thereby prevent abortion. This should be something that we should
all agree on."
Approving the drug sales would
certainly let those moral judges off the hook. It would also put politics where
it belongs — working to improve the lives of Americans, women and poor people
included.
Senators Hillary Clinton of
Susan F. Wood explained her
resignation in an e-mail to her staff saying she could no longer serve the
agency "when scientific and clinical evidence fully evaluated and
recommended for approval by the professional staff here, has been
overruled." The social, health, and environmental issues we are wading
through of late are becoming more and more contaminated by politics. As
ideology increasingly undermines science and political agendas delay and
diminish our rights there seem to be fewer ports in the storm that offer
protection.
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
The disaster that is Bush
Saturday, September 17
To the Editor of THE EAGLE:-
The Bush administration's lack of
planning, and its inept and derelict response to Hurricane Katrina is no
surprise.
What is shocking, if you can believe
polls, is that the pathetically feeble response has a 46 percent approval
rating. Who are those people? What news are they watching and reading? What are
their standards? What wouldn't merit their approval?
By his own standard, Bush's response was
an abysmal failure.
Bush set the standard himself during the
2004 campaign assuring that he would protect and keep
And, this was with plenty of advanced
warning. But then again, Bush had plenty of advanced warning to plan for, and
ward off, the attack of 9/11.
The similarities between
Barbara Bush's comments in the Houston
Astrodome in reference to American refugees who lost everything, including
family, was both disgusting and inhumane. ("Many of the people in the
arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well
for them.")
Just wait until these poor refugees, and
the thousands who lost small businesses, encounter the harsh new personal bankruptcy
laws enacted by the Bush compassionate conservatives.
Just wait until they permanently do away
with the estate tax!
What we are experiencing is dereliction
of duty. The irresponsible and reprehensible self-serving policies enacted by
this administration are exacting a mighty toll on the American people and our
world.
The national debt continues to increase
an average of $1.66 billion per day since September 2004. Concerned? Just wait
until the impact of their failed economic policy hits! And, Bush gets to pick
two Supreme Court justices, including the chief justice. As frightening as all
that has gone before, herein lies Bush's greatest opportunity to do long-term
harm.
The crawl on a recent British television
news program sums it all up: "Bush: One Of The Worst Disasters To Hit The
U.S." And, he is a category 5. We, the people, are being left with the
cleanup and the bill while they rake in their windfall profits.
What we need is a 51 percent impeachment
rating.
PETER MAY
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Bush and his sorry sycophants
Saturday, September 17
To the Editor of THE EAGLE:-
Frank Mahan's letter (Sept. 9) was a cry
from the aggrieved GOP fraternity that cannot understand why the rest of us
don't think that W. is just about the finest president we have ever had. Mr.
Mahan's statement that Bush has lowered his taxes immediately places him in the
affluent segment of the community, and what follows is entirely in keeping with
that group's Pollyanna outlook. He is also a firm believer that we are winning
the war in
The writer suggests that all who disagree
with current policies are bereft of all rational thought. This strikes me as
being a little odd since most of us had that same feeling about the oddballs
who comprise the administration. What a sinister collection they are — Karl
Rove, Tom DeLay, John Bolton (shooed into office
while the Congress was on vacation), Rummy, Richard Myers, Chertoff
(the Screaming Skull), and the ludicrously under-qualified Michael Brown. The
last person named has been removed for his appalling mishandling of Hurricane
Katrina and the abrupt canceling of the debit card distribution.
Scott McClellan insists that he has not
been canned, because that would suggest that the president made a mistake. The
president, of course, never makes mistakes. It is reported that Brown's résumé
contained a number of false statements. This ought to assure him of some other
appointment since the administration features some of the most accomplished
liars that we have witnessed for decades.
In addition they have displayed a classic
study in mismanagement, and these high-ranking sycophants owe their continuing
existence to judicious boot-licking. Karl Rove's
careful study of Joseph Goebbel's techniques of
"The Big Lie" provided Bush with some of the most astounding
propaganda statements ever to have emanated from the White House — any White
House.
George W. Bush, who tries tirelessly to come
across as a Texan, gained the presidency twice, once by appointment by the
Supreme Court and the second time courtesy of Ohio and some creatively
accomplished vote rigging. By now it is generally recognized that he has become
the laziest president in
PETER DEACON
Lanesborough,
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
End of the Bush Era
By E. J. Dionne Jr.
The Bush Era did not
begin when he took office, or even with the terrorist attacks of
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
September 14, 2005 New York Times
Singapore and Katrina
Singapore
There
is something troublingly self-indulgent and slothful about America today -
something that Katrina highlighted and that people who live in countries where
the laws of gravity still apply really noticed. It has rattled them - like
watching a parent melt down.
That
is certainly the sense I got after observing the Katrina debacle from half a
world away here in Singapore - a city-state that, if it believes in anything,
believes in good governance. It may roll up the sidewalks pretty early here,
and it may even fine you if you spit out your gum, but if you had to choose
anywhere in Asia you would want to be caught in a typhoon, it would be
Singapore. Trust me, the head of Civil Defense here is not simply someone's
college roommate.
Indeed,
Singapore believes so strongly that you have to get the best-qualified and
least-corruptible people you can into senior positions in the government,
judiciary and civil service that its pays its prime minister a salary of $1.1
million a year. It pays its cabinet ministers and Supreme Court justices just
under $1 million a year, and pays judges and senior civil servants handsomely
down the line.
From
Singapore's early years, good governance mattered because the ruling party was
in a struggle for the people's hearts and minds with the Communists, who were
perceived to be both noncorrupt and caring - so the
state had to be the same and more.
Even
after the Communists faded, Singapore maintained a tradition of good governance
because as a country of only four million people with no natural resources, it
had to live by its wits. It needed to run its economy and schools in a way that
would extract the maximum from each citizen, which is how four million people
built reserves of $100 billion.
"In
the areas that are critical to our survival, like Defense, Finance and the
Ministry of Home Affairs, we look for the best talent," said Kishore Mahbubani, dean of the
Lee Kwan Yew School of Public Policy. "You lose New Orleans, and you have
100 other cities just like it. But we're a city-state. We lose Singapore and
there is nothing else. ... [So] the standards of discipline are very high.
There is a very high degree of accountability in Singapore."
When
a subway tunnel under construction collapsed here in April 2004 and four
workers were killed, a government inquiry concluded that top executives of the
contracting company should be either fined or jailed.
The
discipline that the cold war imposed on America, by contrast, seems to have
faded. Last year, we cut the National Science Foundation budget, while
indulging absurd creationist theories in our schools and passing pork-laden
energy and transportation bills in the middle of an energy crisis.
We
let the families of the victims of 9/11 redesign our intelligence organizations,
and our president and Congress held a midnight session about the health care of
one woman, Terri Schiavo, while ignoring the health
crisis of 40 million uninsured. Our economy seems to be fueled lately by either
suing each other or selling each other houses. Our government launched a war in
Iraq without any real plan for the morning after, and it cut taxes in the
middle of that war, ensuring that future generations would get the bill.
Speaking
of Katrina, Sumiko Tan, a columnist for the Sunday edition
of The Straits Times in Singapore, wrote: "We were shocked at what we saw.
Death and destruction from natural disaster is par for the course. But the
pictures of dead people left uncollected on the streets, armed looters
ransacking shops, survivors desperate to be rescued, racial divisions - these
were truly out of sync with what we'd imagined the land of the free to be, even
if we had encountered homelessness and violence on visits there. ... If America
becomes so unglued when bad things happen in its own backyard, how can it
fulfill its role as leader of the world?"
Janadas
Devan, a Straits Times columnist, tried to explain to
his Asian readers how the U.S. is changing. "Today's conservatives,"
he wrote, "differ in one crucial aspect from yesterday's conservatives:
the latter believed in small government, but believed, too, that a country
ought to pay for all the government that it needed.
"The
former believe in no government, and therefore conclude that there is no need
for a country to pay for even the government that it does have. ... [But] it is
not only government that doesn't show up when government is starved of
resources and leached of all its meaning. Community doesn't show up either,
sacrifice doesn't show up, pulling together doesn't show up, 'we're all in this
together' doesn't show up."
-=-=-=-=-=-=-
September 14, 2005 New York Times
A Fatal Incuriosity
By MAUREEN DOWD
I
hate spending time in hospitals and nursing homes. I find them to be some of
the most depressing places on earth.
Maybe
that's why the stories of the sick and elderly who died, 45 in a New Orleans hospital
and 34 in St. Rita's nursing home in the devastated St. Bernard Parish outside
New Orleans, haunt me so.
You're
already vulnerable and alone when suddenly you're beset by nature and betrayed
by your government.
At
St. Rita's, 34 seniors fought to live with what little strength they had as the
lights went out and the water rose over their legs, over their shoulders, over
their mouths. As
Gardiner Harris wrote in The Times, the failed
defenses included a table nailed against a window and a couch pushed against a
door.
Several
electric wheelchairs were gathered near the front entrance, maybe by patients
who dreamed of evacuating. Their drowned bodies were found swollen and
unrecognizable a week later, as Mr. Harris reported, "draped over a
wheelchair, wrapped in a shower curtain, lying on a floor in several inches of
muck."
At
Memorial Medical Center, victims also suffered in 100-degree heat and died,
some while waiting to be rescued in the four days after Katrina hit.
As
Louisiana's death toll spiked to 423 yesterday, the state charged St. Rita's
owners with multiple counts of negligent homicide, accusing them of not
responding to warnings about the hurricane. "In effect," State
Attorney General Charles Foti Jr. said, "I think
that their inactions resulted in the death of these people."
President
Bush continued to try to spin his own inaction yesterday, but he may finally have
reached a patch of reality beyond spin. Now he's the one drowning, unable to
rescue himself by patting small black children on the head during photo-ops and
making scripted attempts to appear engaged. He can keep going back down there,
as he will again on Thursday when he gives a televised speech to the nation,
but he can never compensate for his tragic inattention during days when so many
lives could have been saved.
He
made the ultimate sacrifice and admitted his administration had messed up,
something he'd refused to do through all of the other screw-ups, from phantom
W.M.D. and the torture at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo to the miscalculations on the Iraq occupation
and the insurgency, which will soon claim 2,000 young Americans.
How
many places will be in shambles by the time the Bush crew leaves office?
Given
that the Bush team has dealt with both gulf crises, Iraq and Katrina, with the
same deadly mixture of arrogance and incompetence, and a refusal to face
reality, it's frightening to think how it will handle the most demanding act of
government domestic investment since the New Deal.
Even
though we know W. likes to be in his bubble with his feather pillow, the
stories this week are breathtaking about the lengths the White House staff had
to go to in order to capture Incurious George's attention.
Newsweek reported
that the reality of Katrina did not sink in for the president until days after
the levees broke, turning
The
aides were scared to tell the isolated president that he should cut short his
vacation by a couple of days, Newsweek said, because he can be "cold and
snappish in private." Mike Allen wrote in Time about one "youngish aide"
who was so terrified about telling Mr. Bush he was wrong about something during
the first term, he "had dry heaves" afterward.
The
president had to be truly zoned out not to jump at the word
"hurricane," given that he has always used his father's term as a
reverse playbook and his father almost lost Florida in 1992 because of his
slow-footed response to Hurricane Andrew. And W.'s
chief of staff, Andy Card, was the White House transportation secretary the
senior President Bush sent to the rescue after FEMA bungled that one.
W.
has said he prefers to get his information straight up from aides, rather than
filtered through newspapers or newscasts. But he surrounds himself with weak
sisters who don't have the nerve to break bad news to him, or ideologues with
agendas that require warping reality or chuckleheaded cronies like Brownie.
The
president should stop haunting New Orleans, looking for that bullhorn moment.
It's too late.