The Kerry Inaugural

A Stoical Kerry on Bush's Day (washingtonpost.com)

Let Freedom Thud

Before we pull up our socks and bring freedom to the world, let's review how we're taking freedom to Iraq. We bombed them, to the tune of four Hiroshimas. We made several hundred thousand homeless. Then we invaded them, and occupy their country. We killed a hundred thousand people, put most of the formerly employed out of work, destroyed their electricity and water supplies. We completely leveled one of their cities, starting with the hospitals, until it was a stinking pile of rubble and rotting corpses. The capital city is now a free-fire zone, and the most powerful military in the world can't even protect the highway to the airport.

We rounded up people randomly, put them in prison without charge, and tortured them in the most specifically humilating ways for Islamic cultures, and circulated photos of the torture around the world. We invaded a country with no terrorists to speak of, and transformed it into the most popular terrorist recruiting and training center in the world.

Our armed forces are depleted, our reserves are in a shambles, and nobody in their right mind will sign up for the National Guard anymore. U.S. deaths in Iraq approach 1500, with thousands more wounded, and thanks to modern medicine a lot of them will be maimed for life. Our few allies in Iraq are getting out as fast as they can, and even some of the contractors making billions from pretending to repair what we destroyed are leaving.

But we're holding free elections just like we said we would, though six months late. Parts of the country are so hostile that polling won't even be attempted, polling places in the rest of the country are being kept secret, as are the names of candidates. Election rallies are held in secret, and the people who appear on the stage refuse to admit whether they are candidates or not. Election monitors aren't even in the country. They're going to monitor from somewhere else. Government officials are being blown up, and the country may or may not already be in a civil and/or religious war, depends on your definition.

The march of freedom in Iraq is so clear that a clear majority in the U.S. think the whole thing was a mistake, and the rest of the world is convinced U.S. policy and leadership are dangerous.

In the meantime, the climate crisis is becoming increasingly obvious, and millions of children are dying of easily preventable diseases or vitamin deficiences. We've in hock to China, the health care situation is so dire than even major corporations and insurance companies are calling for some kind of government program before the economy implodes.

That's how the eagle is soaring. So our course is clear: let's do it again real soon in as many other places as possible.

While obscene decadence rules in Washington, there are some who won't be invited to the parties.  

four more years, dude 

Boxer Rebellion Continues, Condi Must Wait Until After Coronation

In the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday, Senator Barbara Boxer voted against confirmation of Condi Rice for Secretary of State, and her forceful request for full Senate debate was granted.

The only other Senator to vote against Rice was John Kerry. The SF Chronicle:
Kerry voted not to confirm Rice on the grounds that she is "the principal architect, implementer and defender of a series of administration policies that have not made our country as secure as we should be and have alienated much-needed allies in our common cause of winning the war against terrorism."

Dems seek Senate debate on Rice / Panel votes approval, but Boxer pushes to extend discussion

Our Quadrennial Day of Mourning

According to the results of the latest U.S. polls on GW as Prez, January 20 should be Why the Hell Did They Vote For Him Day.

Add to that the following unsurprising finding of the BBC survey: "On average across all countries, 58% of people - and 16 out of 21 countries polled - said they believed Mr Bush's re-election to the White House made the world more dangerous."

So while the Bushies spend their millions on their apocalyptic festivities, opposition organizations are holding rallies and marches, and a Counter-Inaugural Ball. Haven't heard much about the stealth plan for thousands of people to stand up during Bush's address and turn their backs, but then it wouldn't be very stealthy if we had. For more information on Washington doings, try the ReDefeat Bush site.

January 20 is also NOT ONE DAMN DIME DAY, a consumer boycott "to remind the people in power that the war in Iraq is immoral and illegal... and they are responsible for stopping it."

We're not sure who is sponsoring this, but an email on the subject came from a trusted source. The idea is action without going to Washington. Let your non-spending do the protesting.

Bad Barbara Boxer Blisters Contradictory Condi

Though the brand new Senator from Illinois, Barack Obama was especially impressive at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearings on the nomination of Condi Rice for Secretary of State, it was Senator Barbara Boxer who was the most aggressive in questioning Rice's actions, statements and credibility.

Boxer went after Rice principally on Iraq and torture. She blistered Rice on her contradictory statements on weapons of mass destruction, such as saying that no one had suggested that Saddam could use a nuclear weapon in a year's time, just nine months after President Bush had said exactly that.

Particularly effective was the way Boxer zeroed in on the Bushie pre-war hype as a product roll-out, using chief of staff Andy Card's words that you don't roll out a new product in summer, as a rationale for how they were scheduling Iraq. This is an image that people immediately understand, and it explains in a single image why the Bushies offered all those rationales that weren't true. Everybody understands a sales job.

Boxer was passionate on the effects of the war, pointing out that a quarter of the American casualties in Iraq were soldiers from California. She caught Rice in an obvious contradiction over her action in getting removed from a bill on intelligence agencies a statement forbidding such agencies from using torture that contravened the Constitution and international laws to which the U.S. is a party. Rice said the statement was unnecessary because intelligence agencies were covered by a similar statement in the Defense authorization bill, yet she also claimed that the statement would allow terrorists protections they weren't entitled to.

Though media coverage of Boxer's questioning and anti-war stance was to treat it as an embarrassment (just as anti-war talk was treated in the Vietnam era, although with more disdain then and in a more dismissively patronizing tone today) it was a much better image for the cameras to catch this face-off between two women rather than old white men browbeating the small woman of color.

But Rice of course knew that all she had to do was survive the day without saying something soundbiteable and embarrassing, while providing a couple of positive sound bites for the news. Still, the minority is there to make noise and trouble, while defining themselves and their issues, letting the American people see what they believe in. If Democrats show up for only fights they can win in this Congress, they'll be spending a lot of time at home.

All those emails and calls generated by the Internet that Senator Boxer received on the vote fraud issue are still having an effect. She solicited and got thousands of signatures on a petition in support of her questioning today, and granted interviews to a couple of prominent bloggers for their report on dkos.

Senator Obama engaged in questioning with a calm demeanor---Condi even looked a little smitten at times---and with his easy grasp of foreign policy issues, he seemed to have been on the Foreign Relations committee for years. Everyone knows he gives a great speech, but his questioning showed the same precision of language and attention to the essentials. He honed in immediately on two words in Rice's opening statement (terrorism and tyranny) and used them to frame his probing inquiries on a coherent policy for deciding when the U.S. will use its military---why in Irag and not the Sudan?

John Kerry returned to the cameras for his questioning as a committee member. We missed his first round, but his afternoon round was relatively detailed on nuclear proliferation issues. However, Kerry also issued a call to supporters via email to sign his petition in favor of demanding the resignation or firing of Donald Rumsfeld as Secretary of Defense.

what to wear for the inaugural

Eat, Drink and be Merry, for Tomorrow...

A few numbers for Bushies to chew on while they choke on their champagne at their obscene Inaugural parties, courtesy of the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll:

GW Bush has the lowest approval rating of any returning president since Nixon.

Only 44% believe his invasion of Iraq was a good idea.

They DISAPPROVE
on Bushies handling of Iraq 58%
of the economy 52%
of budget deficit 58%
of health care 51%
of social security 55%


Political Divisions Persist After Election (washingtonpost.com)

In other news...

Books on work and a Marquez memoir reviewed at Books In Heat

Notes on the Future of Star Trek at Soul of Star Trek

MLK