October 28, 2006
October 26, 2006
Republican Lies and Fear tactics
Advertising Terrorism
The key to terrorism is not the act — but the fear of the act
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
Tonight, a special comment on the advertising of terrorism – the commercial you have already seen.
It is a distillation of everything this administration and the party in power have tried to do these last five years and six weeks.
It is from the Republican National Committee;
It shows images of Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri;
It offers quotes from them—all as a clock ticks ominously in the background.
It concludes with what Zawahiri may or may not have said to a Pakistani journalist as long ago as 2001: His dubious claim that he had purchased “suitcase bombs.”
The quotation is followed (by sheer coincidence no doubt) by an image of a massive explosion.
“These are the stakes,” appears on the screen, quoting exactly from Lyndon Johnson’s infamous nuclear scare commercial from 1964.
“Vote—November 7th.”
There is a cheap “Texas Chainsaw Massacre” quality to the whole thing, and it also serves to immediately call to mind the occasions when President Bush dismissed Osama bin Laden as somebody he didn’t think about—except, obviously, when elections were near.
Frankly, a lot of people seeing that commercial for the first time, have laughed out loud.
But—not everyone.
And therein lies the true threat to this country.
The dictionary definition of the word “terrorize” is simple and not open to misinterpretation:
“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”
Note please, that the words “violence” and “death” are missing from that definition.
The key to terror, the key to terrorism, is not the act—but the fear of the act.
That is why bin Laden and his deputies and his imitators are forever putting together videotaped statements and releasing virtual infomercials with dire threats and heart-stopping warnings.
But why is the Republican Party imitating them?
Bin Laden puts out what amounts to a commercial of fear; The Republicans put out what is unmistakable as a commercial of fear.
The Republicans are paying to have the messages of bin Laden and the others broadcast into your home.
Only the Republicans have a bigger bank roll.
When, last week, the CNN network ran video of an insurgent in Iraq, evidently stalking and killing an American soldier, the Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Mr. Hunter, Republican of California, branded that channel, quote, “the publicist for an enemy propaganda film” and that CNN used it “to sell commercials.”
Another California Republican, Rep. Brian Bilbray, called the video “nothing short of a terrorist snuff film.”
If so, Mr. Bilbray, then what in the hell is your Party’s new advertisement?
And Mr. Hunter, CNN using the video to “sell commercials”?
Commercials!
You have adopted bin Laden and Zawahiri as spokesmen for the Republican National Committee!
“To fill or overpower with terror; terrify. To coerce by intimidation or fear.”
By this definition, the people who put these videos together—first the terrorists and then the administration—whose shared goal is to scare you into panicking instead of thinking—they are the ones terrorizing you.
By this definition, the leading terrorist group in this world right now is al Qaida.
But the leading terrorist group in this country right now is the Republican Party.
Eleven Presidents ago, a chief executive reassured us that “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.”
His distant successor has wasted his administration insisting that there is nothing we can have but fear itself.
The vice president, as recently as this month, was caught campaigning with the phrase “mass death in the United States.”
Four years ago it was the now-Secretary of State, Dr. Rice, rationalizing Iraq with “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”
Days later Mr. Bush himself told an audience that “we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun, that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
And now we have this cheesy commercial—complete with images of a faked mushroom cloud, and implications of “mass death in America.”
This administration has derived benefit and power from terrorizing the very people it claims to be protecting from terror.
It may be the oldest trick in the political book: scare people into believing they are in danger and that only you can save them.
Lyndon Johnson used it to bury Barry Goldwater.
Joe McCarthy leaped from obscurity on its back.
And now the legacy has come to President George Bush.
Of course, the gruel of fear is getting thinner and thinner, is it not, Mr. President?
And thus more and more of it needs to be made out of less and less actual terror.
After last week’s embarrassing Internet hoax about ‘dirty bombs’ at football stadiums, the one your Department of Homeland Security immediately disseminated to the public, a self-described “former CIA operative” named Wayne Simmons, cited the fiasco as “the, and I mean the, perfect example of the President’s Military Commissions Act of 2006 and the NSA terrorist eavesdropping program - how vital they are.”
Frank Gaffney, once a respected assistant secretary of defense and now the president of something called the Center for Security Policy, added, “one of the things that I hope Americans take away from this, is not only that they’re gunning for us not just in a place like Iraq—but truly, worldwide.”
Of course, the “they” to which Mr. Gaffney referred, turned out to be a lone 20-year-old grocery bagger from Wisconsin named Jake—a kid, trying to one-up some other loser in an Internet game of chicken.
His “threat,” referenced seven football stadiums at which dirty bombs were to be exploded yesterday. It began with the one in New York City - even though there isn’t one in New York City. And though the attacks were supposed to be simultaneous, four of the games were scheduled to start at 1 p.m. ET and the others at 4 p.m. ET.
More over, the kid said he’d posted the identical message on 40 websites since September.
We caught him in “merely” about six weeks, even though the only way he could have been less subtle, less stealthy, and less of a threat was if he’d bought an advertisement on the Super Bowl broadcast.
Mr. Bush, this is the—what? – 100th plot your people have revealed, that turned out to be some nonsensical misunderstanding, or the fabrications of somebody hoping to talk his way off a water board in Eastern Europe?
If, Mr. President, this is the kind of crack work that your new ad implies that only you and not the Democrats can do, you, sir, need to pull over and ask for directions.
The real question of course, Mr. Bush, is why did your Department of Homeland Security even release this information in the first place?
It was never a serious threat. Even the first news accounts quoted a Homeland spokesman as admitting “strong skepticism”—the kind of strong skepticism which most government agencies address before telling the public, not afterwards.
So that leaves two options, Mr. President.
The first option: you and your department of Homeland Security don’t have the slightest idea what you’re doing. Thus, contrary to your flip-flopping between saying “we’re safe” and saying “but we’re not safe enough,” and contrary to the vice president’s swaggering pronouncements about the lack of another attack since 9/11, the last five years has been just an accident.
Or there’s the second option: your political operatives leaked this nonsense for the same reason your political operatives put out that commercial—to scare the gullible.
Obviously the correct answer, Mr. Bush, is all of the above.
There are some of us who could forgive you for trying to run your candidates on the coattails of the Grim Reaper, for reducing your party’s existence to “Death and Attacks Us.”
It’s cynical and barbaric.
But, after all, it may be merely the natural extension of the gutter politics to which you have subscribed since you sidled over from baseball, and the business world of other people’s money.
But to forgive you for terrorizing us, we would have to believe you somehow competent in keeping others from doing so.
Yet, last week, construction workers repairing a subway line in New York City, were cleaning out an abandoned manhole on the edge of the World Trade Center site, when they stumbled on to the impossible: human remains from 9/11.
Bones and fragments.
Eighty of them.
Some as much as a foot long.
The victims had been lying, literally in the gutter, for five years and five weeks.
The families and friends of each of the 2,749 dead—who had been grimly told in May of 2002 that there were no more remains to be found—were struck anew as if the terrorism of that day had just happened again.
And over the weekend they’ve found still more remains.
And now this week will be spent looking in places that should have already been looked at a thousand times five years ago.
For all the victims in New York, Mr. Bush—the living and the dead—it’s a touch of 9/11 all over again.
And the mayor of this city, who called off the search four-and-a-half years ago is a Republican.
The governor of this state with whom he conferred is a Republican.
The House of Representatives, Republican.
The Senate, Republican.
The President, Republican.
And yet you can actually claim that you and you alone can protect us from terrorism?
You can’t even recover our dead from the battlefield—the battlefield in an American city—when we’ve given you five years and unlimited funds to do so!
While signing a Military Commissions Act so monstrous that it has been criticized by even the John Birch Society, you told us, Mr. Bush, “there is nothing we can do to bring back the men and women lost on September 11th, 2001. Yet we’ll always honor their memory, and we will never forget the way they were taken from us.”
Except, of course, for the ones who’ve been lying under a manhole cover for five years.
Setting aside the fact that your government has done nothing else for those five years but pat yourselves on the back about terror, while waging pointless war on the wrong enemy in Iraq, and waging war on the cherished freedoms in America;
Just on this subject of counter-terrorism, sir, yours is the least competent government, in time of crisis, in this country’s history!
“These are the stakes,” indeed, Mr. President.
You do not know what you are doing.
And the commercial—the one about which Zawahiri might say “hey, pretty good—we love your choice of font style”?
All that need further be said is to add three words to Shakespeare.
Mr. President, you, and that advertisement of terror, are full of sound and fury—signifying (and competent at) nothing.
© 2006 MSNBC Interactive
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15392701/
October 22, 2006
'Beginning of the end of America'
'Beginning of the end of America'
Olbermann addresses the Military Commissions Act
By Keith Olbermann
Anchor, 'Countdown'
MSNBC
We have lived as if in a trance.
We have lived as people in fear.
And now—our rights and our freedoms in peril—we slowly awaken to learn that we have been afraid of the wrong thing.
Therefore, tonight have we truly become the inheritors of our American legacy.
For, on this first full day that the Military Commissions Act is in force, we now face what our ancestors faced, at other times of exaggerated crisis and melodramatic fear-mongering:
A government more dangerous to our liberty, than is the enemy it claims to protect us from.
We have been here before—and we have been here before, led here by men better and wiser and nobler than George W. Bush.
We have been here when President John Adams insisted that the Alien and Sedition Acts were necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use those acts to jail newspaper editors.
American newspaper editors, in American jails, for things they wrote about America.
We have been here when President Woodrow Wilson insisted that the Espionage Act was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that Act to prosecute 2,000 Americans, especially those he disparaged as “Hyphenated Americans,” most of whom were guilty only of advocating peace in a time of war.
American public speakers, in American jails, for things they said about America.
And we have been here when President Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that Executive Order 9066 was necessary to save American lives, only to watch him use that order to imprison and pauperize 110,000 Americans while his man in charge, General DeWitt, told Congress: “It makes no difference whether he is an American citizen—he is still a Japanese.”
American citizens, in American camps, for something they neither wrote nor said nor did, but for the choices they or their ancestors had made about coming to America.
Each of these actions was undertaken for the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.
And each was a betrayal of that for which the president who advocated them claimed to be fighting.
Adams and his party were swept from office, and the Alien and Sedition Acts erased.
Many of the very people Wilson silenced survived him, and one of them even ran to succeed him, and got 900,000 votes, though his presidential campaign was conducted entirely from his jail cell.
And Roosevelt’s internment of the Japanese was not merely the worst blight on his record, but it would necessitate a formal apology from the government of the United States to the citizens of the United States whose lives it ruined.
The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.
In times of fright, we have been only human.
We have let Roosevelt’s “fear of fear itself” overtake us.
We have listened to the little voice inside that has said, “the wolf is at the door; this will be temporary; this will be precise; this too shall pass.”
We have accepted that the only way to stop the terrorists is to let the government become just a little bit like the terrorists.
Just the way we once accepted that the only way to stop the Soviets was to let the government become just a little bit like the Soviets.
Or substitute the Japanese.
Or the Germans.
Or the Socialists.
Or the Anarchists.
Or the Immigrants.
Or the British.
Or the Aliens.
The most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.
And, always, always wrong.
“With the distance of history, the questions will be narrowed and few: Did this generation of Americans take the threat seriously, and did we do what it takes to defeat that threat?”
Wise words.
And ironic ones, Mr. Bush.
Your own, of course, yesterday, in signing the Military Commissions Act.
You spoke so much more than you know, Sir.
Sadly—of course—the distance of history will recognize that the threat this generation of Americans needed to take seriously was you.
We have a long and painful history of ignoring the prophecy attributed to Benjamin Franklin that “those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
But even within this history we have not before codified the poisoning of habeas corpus, that wellspring of protection from which all essential liberties flow.
You, sir, have now befouled that spring.
You, sir, have now given us chaos and called it order.
You, sir, have now imposed subjugation and called it freedom.
For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.
And — again, Mr. Bush — all of them, wrong.
We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has said it is unacceptable to compare anything this country has ever done to anything the terrorists have ever done.
We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who has insisted again that “the United States does not torture. It’s against our laws and it’s against our values” and who has said it with a straight face while the pictures from Abu Ghraib Prison and the stories of Waterboarding figuratively fade in and out, around him.
We have handed a blank check drawn against our freedom to a man who may now, if he so decides, declare not merely any non-American citizens “unlawful enemy combatants” and ship them somewhere—anywhere -- but may now, if he so decides, declare you an “unlawful enemy combatant” and ship you somewhere - anywhere.
And if you think this hyperbole or hysteria, ask the newspaper editors when John Adams was president or the pacifists when Woodrow Wilson was president or the Japanese at Manzanar when Franklin Roosevelt was president.
And if you somehow think habeas corpus has not been suspended for American citizens but only for everybody else, ask yourself this: If you are pulled off the street tomorrow, and they call you an alien or an undocumented immigrant or an “unlawful enemy combatant”—exactly how are you going to convince them to give you a court hearing to prove you are not? Do you think this attorney general is going to help you?
This President now has his blank check.
He lied to get it.
He lied as he received it.
Is there any reason to even hope he has not lied about how he intends to use it nor who he intends to use it against?
“These military commissions will provide a fair trial,” you told us yesterday, Mr. Bush, “in which the accused are presumed innocent, have access to an attorney and can hear all the evidence against them.”
"Presumed innocent," Mr. Bush?
The very piece of paper you signed as you said that, allows for the detainees to be abused up to the point just before they sustain “serious mental and physical trauma” in the hope of getting them to incriminate themselves, and may no longer even invoke The Geneva Conventions in their own defense.
"Access to an attorney," Mr. Bush?
Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift said on this program, Sir, and to the Supreme Court, that he was only granted access to his detainee defendant on the promise that the detainee would plead guilty.
"Hearing all the evidence," Mr. Bush?
The Military Commissions Act specifically permits the introduction of classified evidence not made available to the defense.
Your words are lies, Sir.
They are lies that imperil us all.
“One of the terrorists believed to have planned the 9/11 attacks,” you told us yesterday, “said he hoped the attacks would be the beginning of the end of America.”
That terrorist, sir, could only hope.
Not his actions, nor the actions of a ceaseless line of terrorists (real or imagined), could measure up to what you have wrought.
Habeas corpus? Gone.
The Geneva Conventions? Optional.
The moral force we shined outwards to the world as an eternal beacon, and inwards at ourselves as an eternal protection? Snuffed out.
These things you have done, Mr. Bush, they would be “the beginning of the end of America.”
And did it even occur to you once, sir — somewhere in amidst those eight separate, gruesome, intentional, terroristic invocations of the horrors of 9/11 -- that with only a little further shift in this world we now know—just a touch more repudiation of all of that for which our patriots died --- did it ever occur to you once that in just 27 months and two days from now when you leave office, some irresponsible future president and a “competent tribunal” of lackeys would be entitled, by the actions of your own hand, to declare the status of “unlawful enemy combatant” for -- and convene a Military Commission to try -- not John Walker Lindh, but George Walker Bush?
For the most vital, the most urgent, the most inescapable of reasons.
And doubtless, Sir, all of them—as always—wrong.
October 20, 2006
Election Update: Key Issues
US mid-terms: Key issues
Several key issues are likely to influence the way undecided voters turn
in the US mid-term elections on 7 November.
Here, we look at what could play big in the Democrats' efforts to wrest control
of the House of Representatives and Senate from the Republicans.
in the US mid-term elections on 7 November.
Here, we look at what could play big in the Democrats' efforts to wrest control
of the House of Representatives and Senate from the Republicans.
WAR IN IRAQ
Opinion polls this summer suggested more than half of Americans were pessimistic about US strategy in Iraq, with concern focused on rising death tolls and the war's indefinite duration.
HAVE YOUR SAY
I'm looking for bold, creative ideas on the issues of Iraq, improving foreign relations, investments in alternative energy and health care -
Steve L, New York, US
I'm looking for bold, creative ideas on the issues of Iraq, improving foreign relations, investments in alternative energy and health care -
Steve L, New York, US
Many Republicans fear the issue could affect their party's standing in the mid-terms. Some have joined Democrat calls for an immediate withdrawal.
The release of parts of a US intelligence report suggesting that America's involvement in the Iraq conflict has fuelled global terrorism is unlikely to reassure Republicans.
However, the White House has stressed elements in the report that conclude victory in Iraq would be a big blow to the enemy in the "war on terror".
President George W Bush has recently repeated a promise that the US will not leave Iraq until victory is achieved.
The Iraq issue may already have claimed one scalp: Senator Joe Lieberman's support for the Iraq war was a big factor in his defeat in a Democratic Party primary by anti-war challenger Ned Lamont.
NATIONAL SECURITY
President Bush has launched a vigorous defence of his security strategy ahead of the mid-term elections - and used it to attack the opposition.
In an unexpectedly political address on the fifth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, he urged Americans to unite behind what he described as "the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st Century" - in his opinion, the "war on terror" against Islamist "fascists".
The approval by Congress of a controversial bill setting rules for the questioning and trial of foreign terror suspects is being seen as a political victory for the Republicans.
Although Mr Bush had to compromise to overcome a rebellion within his own party, he achieved most of what he wanted and will use the issue to accuse the Democrats of being soft on terror.
The legislation was opposed by Democrats, who argued it would deny terror suspects fundamental legal rights.
The House of Representatives has passed a bill that would grant legal status to the Bush administration's warrantless wiretapping programme - ruled unconstitutional by a judge in August - but the Senate has been unable to reach agreement on the legislation.
ECONOMY
The Democrats are hoping to capitalise on concerns over the state of the US economy, which may be slowing down after a long period of growth.
The biggest popular concern has been high petrol prices, which reached $3 (£1.60) per gallon on the back of rising oil prices this summer before falling back.
Another worry has been the state of the housing market, which looks like going into reverse after a huge boom in house prices in major cities, especially on the coasts.
The uncertainty about the state of the housing market and inflation has led the US central bank, the Federal Reserve, to pause after raising interest rates 16 times.
But the higher rates have not yet filtered through to consumers, many of whom have borrowed heavily against the value of their home.
In the longer term, there are bigger problems facing the US economy.
The strong growth in the past few years, fuelled by tax cuts, has led to a big increase in imports and a huge trade deficit with the rest of the world.
And the row continues over whether the tax cuts, which have mainly benefited the better-off, have helped economic growth and should be made permanent.
One reason why the average American does not feel better off is that real wages have barely risen over the past five years, with a growing inequality of incomes.
And although unemployment is down, it has not fallen as fast as in previous recoveries.
Some Democrats blame unfair foreign competition, especially from China, for exacerbating these trends.
ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION
The thorny issue of illegal immigration dominated political debate earlier this year, with emotions running high on all sides.
There is a general feeling that the US immigration system is failing but opinions differ widely, even within Republican and Democrat camps, on how to make it work.
Hundreds of thousands of people - many of them Hispanic - have marched in California and elsewhere to protest against plans to criminalise undocumented workers and to call for recognition of immigrants' contribution.
At the same time, anti-immigration groups have been patrolling US borders and confronting illegal workers in cities around the country.
Debate continues on how to reconcile contrasting immigration bills passed by the House of Representatives and Senate.
Both seek to tighten border security, but while the Senate bill includes a guest-worker programme and offers illegal immigrants a "path to citizenship" - ideas backed by Mr Bush - the House's "enforcement-only" bill seeks to deport illegal immigrants and make it a felony to remain in the US illegally.
The issue is politically awkward for the Republican party because it brings into conflict two of its core constituencies - social conservatives and the business lobby, who argue that immigrants provide much-needed labour.
Many Democrats, especially in states where immigration is a hot topic, have been taking a tough stance. Both parties must bear in mind the risk of alienating the Hispanic vote if they appear too strongly anti-immigration.
BUSH'S LEADERSHIP
Another undeniable factor ahead of the mid-terms is the popularity - or not - of President George W Bush, even though his name appears on no ballot.
For months, the president's approval ratings have been low, buffeted by public disillusion over the Iraq war and concerns over rising energy prices. Criticism of his administration over Hurricane Katrina and a series of domestic political scandals have not helped.
However, more recent polls, some conducted since Mr Bush launched his political offensive on the war in Iraq and security in September, show a modest rise.
Some observers suggest Mr Bush's standing with the voters may have been helped by a drop in fuel prices.
Polls suggest there has also been a climb in the president's approval rating among Republicans - welcome news for candidates eager to ensure their supporters turn out to vote.
All sides will be watching the figures closely, since history shows that the governing party often suffers big losses in congressional elections even when the president is popular. This holds especially true in a second presidential term.
SCANDALS
The actions of disgraced Republican ex-Congressman Mark Foley, who sent lurid e-mails to teenage boys, are dominating political discussion in Washington.
The top Republican in the House of Representatives, Dennis Hastert, is also under scrutiny, amid allegations his office covered up the scandal.
It remains to be seen whether a series of corruption scandals which have dogged the Republicans will hurt them at the polls.
Democrats have sought to portray figures like disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff and former House Majority leader Tom DeLay as the faces of a "culture of corruption" within the ranks of their political opponents.
Yet analysts say the scandal is unlikely to influence results across the country.
Congressional elections tend to pivot on local issues. So, while polls suggest just a quarter of Americans trust Congress as a institution, a large majority have faith in their own elected officials.
Nevertheless, there are a clutch of key races where corruption is very much a live issue.
In Montana - crucial to Democrats' hopes of winning control of the Senate - incumbent Republican Conrad Burns has been hit by claims that Abramoff had close ties with his office.
And there are fears the lingering taint of corruption may affect Republicans running for seats abandoned by figures like Mr DeLay or Ohio's Robert Ney.
One early casualty of the "Abramoff effect" was former US Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed, who lost the race for the Republican nomination for Georgia's lieutenant-governor.
HEALTH CARE
The escalating costs of health care figured high on the list of voter concerns in polls earlier this year.
Over the past five years, the number of US citizens without health insurance has grown from about 40 million to about 46 million.
Meanwhile, tens of millions more have very real concerns about their employers' ability or willingness to continue paying their health costs.
Mr Bush has proposed a more portable health insurance scheme and tax-friendly health savings accounts.
His other big health initiative, the Medicare Prescription Drug bill, suffered some serious teething problems as it came into effect.
The Democrats will hope to gain ground with swing voters who are feeling the pinch of low wage growth and think a new administration might do more to bring down health care costs.
The Washington Post newspaper predicts those it terms "mortgage moms" - that is, "voters whose sense of well-being is freighted with anxiety about their families' financial squeeze" - may well play a big role in deciding the mid-term results.
SOCIAL ISSUES
As ever, both Republican and Democratic Parties will seek to capitalise on social and ideological differences to mobilise their respective supporters.
The legislatures of a number of states have attached ballot initiatives to the vote for House and Senate candidates, in a bid to bring to the polls electors who might otherwise have stayed at home.
As in 2004, proposals to ban same-sex marriage are being used to appeal to religious conservatives. Voters in six states - Idaho, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Virginia and Wisconsin - will be balloted on the issue.
The abortion debate may also galvanise South Dakota, where the legislature passed a law banning almost all abortions in March this year. Pro-choice campaigners collected enough signatures to put a referendum on the ballot, giving voters the option to repeal the ban - or back it.
Meanwhile, in Missouri, Democrats are hoping that ballot measures to finance embryonic stem cell research and increase the minimum wage will play in favour of their Senate candidate.
But Republicans could benefit if conservatives and anti-abortion groups come out to oppose the stem cell initiative.
Smoking bans or higher tobacco taxes are on the ballot for California, Florida, Nevada, Idaho and South Dakota; an initiative on tax-limitation measures will be put to voters in Florida, Maine and Rhode Island.
Meanwhile the issue of eminent domain - or the government's right to take private property for public use - is a ballot initiative in several states. Its inclusion is in part a response to a controversial Supreme Court ruling last year.
October 18, 2006
The Death of Habeas Corpus
October 15, 2006
Bush Aides: Christians are 'Nuts' and 'Goofy'
Bush Aides
Called Evangelicals
'Nuts'
White House advisors sought the support of Christians
but mocked them in private, writes administration official.
By Peter Wallsten
Times Staff Writer
WASHINGTON — A new book by a former White House official says that President Bush's top political advisors privately ridiculed evangelical supporters as "nuts" and "goofy" while embracing them in public and using their votes to help win elections.
The former official also writes that the White House office of faith-based initiatives, which Bush promoted as a nonpolitical effort to support religious social-service organizations, was told to host pre-election events designed to mobilize religious voters who would most likely favor Republican candidates.
The assertions by David Kuo, a top official in the faith-based initiatives program, have rattled Republican strategists already struggling to persuade evangelical voters to turn out this fall for the GOP.
Some conservatives lamented Thursday that the book, "Tempting Faith: An Inside Story of Political Seduction," also comes in the midst of the scandal involving former Rep. Mark Foley, another threat to conservative turnout in competitive House and Senate races.
The book is scheduled to be in stores Monday, but the White House responded to its assertions Thursday.
In the book, Kuo, who quit the White House in 2003, accuses Karl Rove's political staff of cynically hijacking the faith-based initiatives idea for electoral gain. It assails Bush for failing to live up to his promises of boosting the role of religious organizations in delivering social services.
White House strategists "knew 'the nuts' were politically invaluable, but that was the extent of their usefulness," Kuo writes, according to the cable channel MSNBC, which obtained an advance copy.
"Sadly, the political affairs folks complained most often and most loudly about how boorish many politically involved Christians were…. National Christian leaders received hugs and smiles in person and then were dismissed behind their backs and described as 'ridiculous' and 'out of control.' ''
It is unclear whether Kuo identifies any specific official as having used the dismissive language.
The book says that before the 2002 elections, then-White House political director Ken Mehlman issued "marching orders" to use the faith-based initiative in 20 House and Senate races, according to MSNBC. To avoid appearing overtly political, Mehlman said his staff would arrange for congressional offices to request visits from the faith-based program officials.
Throughout the 2002 and 2004 campaigns, faith-based officials would meet with lawmakers in some places in an effort to generate publicity for them, while also hosting conferences in battleground states attracting hundreds of pastors and community activists eager to learn how to apply for federal grants.
A spokeswoman for Mehlman, who is now chairman of the Republican National Committee, said he did not recall the directives mentioned by Kuo. As political director, she said, "it was Mehlman's job to both engage outside groups and inform decision makers in the White House about support for the president's agenda."
Kuo is scheduled to appear Sunday on CBS' "60 Minutes" as part of a rollout arranged by his publisher, Simon & Schuster, which shares a corporate parent with CBS.
Despite a publisher-enforced embargo, a copy of the book was purchased early at a Manhattan bookstore by a producer for MSNBC's "Countdown," a spokesman for the cable channel said. Program host Keith Olbermann began reading excerpts on his Wednesday show.
Kuo's descriptions could do political damage to a Republican Party that has staked its formula for success on motivating the conservative base.
"Here we go again," said Paul M. Weyrich, a leading religious conservative with close ties to the White House, referring to the avalanche of negative factors that he predicted would keep "embarrassed Republicans" from voting, just as the Watergate scandal did in the 1970s. "If Republicans win, it will prove God is a Republican, since it will take a miracle."
Weyrich said Kuo, while still a White House official, told him of frustrations that the faith-based program had become entangled in politics. The initiative had been a signature proposal by Bush in the 2000 campaign but lost momentum amid partisan battles on Capitol Hill and the intense focus on security after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Weyrich said that Bush and many of his aides were genuinely interested in the program. But, he added, "I don't have any illusions about Rove. I think that he advocates conservatism because he believes it's the way to win."
The White House denied Kuo's account with help Thursday from two former officials popular among evangelicals — former speechwriter Michael Gerson and former faith-based initiative director Jim Towey.
Gerson called Kuo's account "laughable," while Towey cited a December 2002 e-mail from Kuo expressing positive feelings about the program's progress in promoting "compassionate conservatism."
"He doesn't seem to have been working at the same White House where I worked," Towey said. "I had marching orders from the president to keep the faith-based initiative nonpolitical, and I did."
Still, neither Gerson nor Towey denied Kuo's assertion that politics did factor into the initiative.
"Ken Mehlman was doing his job, which was to worry about races," said Towey, who is currently president of St. Vincent College, a Catholic school in Pennsylvania.
Towey's travel took him to a number of battleground states in 2002, but he said that he also visited places such as Boston that were not important to the GOP's electoral goals.
And in addition to meetings with Republicans, he said he appeared in public with Democrats such as former Sen. Tom Daschle of South Dakots, who was running for reelection, and Rep. Harold E. Ford Jr. of Tennessee, who is running this year for the Senate.
Kuo is not the first insider to accuse the White House of politicizing the faith-based program. John J. DiIulio Jr., the first director of the Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives, resigned after seven months and was quoted as saying that the White House was run by "Mayberry Machiavellians" who sometimes put politics ahead of other causes.
While many Democrats opposed the initiative as a violation of church-state separation, the White House used the program to build alliances with prominent African American ministers, some of whom switched political allegiances to back Bush. It was part of a larger minority outreach program designed by Rove and other conservative activists to slice off pieces of the traditional Democratic coalitions in order to build a lasting GOP majority.
Copyright 2006 LA Times
October 10, 2006
Goyette Interviews the Bendermans
Charles Goyette
Interviews
Kevin and Monica
Benderman
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2006-09-12KevinandMonicaBenderman.mp3
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October 05, 2006
Out of Iraq, Out with Bush
The Arrogant, the Misguided and the Cowards
Out of Iraq,
Out with Bush
By Sean Penn
The arrogant, the misguided, the cowards would argue that an immediate pull-out of our troops from Iraq would inspire lack of confidence and the lost credibility of the United States. President Bush and his functionaries indeed have lost enormous credibility for the perception of our country internationally. Perhaps more damaging than that, they have created the greatest cultural, religious, and political divide domestically since our own Civil War.
We the people of the United States have a unique opportunity. We can show each other and the world that what the Bush administration claims is their mission is not ours. And, by leading our country as a citizenry and demanding of our government an immediate end to our own military and profit investments in Iraq, display for the entire world that democracy is a government of the people. What more powerful message to send the world than that we ourselves can choose in policy, in peace, and in humanitarian support.
In fascism, one serves the State. Let's show the world that with democracy, we can make the State do our bidding, and that such bids would not be the blind ones, given exclusively to the friends of power. But rather, the domain of the people of freedom everywhere. This is an administration that advocates torture, deceives the public, spends billions of dollars on a failed war. This is an administration where in the year of Katrina, Exxon Mobil claimed the highest profit margin in the history of world business. It is an administration that belittles, demeans, deceives, and indeed kills our brothers, our sisters, our sons, and our daughters.
At the U.S./Mexico border, we panic at the notion of illegal entry, without blinking an eye as our elderly line up every Saturday morning with wheelchairs, walkers, canes and joint pain, queued up in the desert heat to enter Mexico where they can purchase affordable medication. In the human family, this President is indeed pushing his wheelchair-bound grandmother down the stairs with a smile on his face. Everyone knows that these are true statements. Everyone. Some are ashamed of where they've put their support in the past, their passivity in the present, with the courage of their minds and hearts at bay. What an exciting thing to reverse this as one America and show the world who wears the pants in this house.
Stand up as an American and join World Can't Wait and those demonstrating this Thursday, October 5th.
Out of Iraq. And out with Bush.
Sean Penn issued this statement on October 2, 2006 at the Great Hall of Cooper Union, New York City. It was read by Mark Ruffalo (his co-star in "All the King's Men") at an emergency meeting of World Can't Wait"Drive Out the Bush Regime held in response to passage of the Torture Bill and in preparation for protests happening on Thursday, October 5 in over 190 cities nationwide.
CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK
CHOICE AMERICA NETWORK
October 01, 2006
Grow Up America
GROW UP AMERICA
By Monica Benderman
When our children were young they seemed to believe they had the right to have everything they asked for, and they deserved to have it on demand. Self-discipline and the understanding that rights were earned were not ideas they were able to comprehend.
As with most children – they were the center of their world and everything worked as long as their demands were met.
Our children could not see the system of discipline in place that had existed for ages between those who had become adults and those they were meant to guide until they became adults.
Sometimes the system worked – when children were focused and adults patiently remembered lessons from their past and used them to dictate the manner in which they handled their present.
The benefits of following a system of discipline established by generations of wise souls who had learned the value of maintaining peace through order in an environment responsible for ensuring that the next generation continued to build on the foundations they created rather than losing that order by reliving past mistakes; is something all good parents understand.
Today – I wonder how many generations ago we forgot what it meant to learn from what had come before. And I wonder -- when are the children going to finally become adults?
Long ago this country was founded on the blood of strong men willing to lay down their lives for the freedom they desired. Iintent on doing everything possible to avoid such action as they asked for nothing more than the right to live by the laws of humanity – a gift we all were given but few have managed to deserve.
At the end of the day, freedom for our nation was achieved but not without resorting to the greatest sacrifice --- those selfish enough to believe they had the power to control others were willing to go to any length to keep that control. Our founding fathers, cognizant of the depth of their personal sacrifice, having fought for their own freedom rather than relying on the volunteerism of others to defend them, gave great thought to the laws by which future generations would have to live in order to maintain this freedom for themselves. As these great leaders signed their name to the Constitution they worked so hard to create, they spoke of their fear that the significance of their work would someday be unrecognized as greed, lust for power and forgotten history all gave rise to an unkempt skeleton of their once proud vision.
Here we are, the children of our parents. What our founding fathers gave us has been lost in the greed and lust for power --- history forgotten, lessons never learned for the lessons never were studied.
GROW UP, America.
I am embarrassed to think that this great country is now so limited in its choices of leadership. We can choose those with so little respect for life that they are willing to send our military to war on a whim, throwing billions of hard earned AMERICAN dollars to the wind as we watch our education, medical and security resources dwindle to nothing OR we can follow those who believe the way to accomplish needed change is by laying on the floor of our nation’s capitol building and stamping their feet until someone decides to act – most likely action designed merely to get them all to shut up.
Now demanding that a war be stopped is serious business – just as I would have thought making the decision to initiate that war would have been considered the same. And yet what I see everyday as leadership exhibiting their solution to our growing nation’s problems is far from serious behavior.
On the one side we have our administration -- grown men and women believing so much in what they are saying about the need for war that they foolishly believe they can manipulate a nation to believe the same – but wait – they did manipulate a nation – magical sleight of hand - child’s play.On another side we have the self-proclaimed peacemakers – grown men and women who believe that by sitting against a gate at the West entrance to the White House and refusing to leave until the “boys” inside decide to stop playing war, they can actually make peace – play time is over, it is time for the players to go home.
And the world watches as our soldiers die while the games of the overgrown children are played out before their very eyes.
How fitting --- childish leadership for a country which prides itself on an image of responsibility, charity and selfless service – all covers for the reality of its immaturity, selfishness and greed.
Congress has recessed and our representatives have returned home leaving the work of our nation unfinished while they campaign for re-election on promises of sound leadership and powerful change. We pay these people to give themselves raises while the citizens of our nation’s heartland are learning that corporate interests are more valuable than the livelihood of real human beings.
For me – the only candidate I would vote for is the one who refused to leave the capitol building until the work was done. I guess I won’t be voting for a while.
Our administration pretends to care as our soldiers die. Our peaceful demonstrators claim to support the troops wasting money on images of crosses in the sand, flag-draped coffins on the capitol building steps, and posters saying “STOP WAR” waving before the blind eyes of indifferent passers-by looking for the nearest movie theater to hide from the reality they don’t want to see.
At every turn another United States citizen stands demanding their right to demand that others hear their demands – jacked-up hotrods race down neighborhood streets bouncing to the sound of heavy bass, plastic testicles dangling from the rear bumper – fake bullet holes, fake mud, fake body parts and fake relationships all part of our wonderfully fake nation of melodramatic participants in lives that must keep moving so reality doesn’t have time to catch up.
While civilians call each other on cell phones designed to keep us close and yet still maintain our distance, or email each other with screen names designed to impress and yet conceal the truth, all exercising their right to choose the images they project --- soldiers are being sent to prison for exercising their right to no longer take lives to defend the freedoms of a civilian nation which hasn’t a clue what freedom really means or what those soldiers have truly done for them.A soldier is now being charged with violating the military code for having told soldiers to simply stop fighting to protest this “illegal war.” I agree – soldiers should simply stop fighting, but not because of an “illegal war.” Until the war has been proven illegal in a court of law, we can say it is immoral, which it is, unethical, which all wars must inevitably be, and unjust as well, but legally, we cannot use an illegal defense to define this war without a fair and impartial trial of the war.
Soldiers should simply stop fighting, however --- because the people who claim it is for their freedom that our soldiers fight – simply haven’t earned the right to be free – and most assuredly have not earned the right to expect that the blood of our soldiers should be shed defending their lives.My husband did not put his life on the line to defend the right of a nation of civilians to never have to grow up, nor did he spend a year in prison for conscientiously refusing to further participate in war simply because a group of self-proclaimed peace activists stamped their feet in the capitol building.
Grow Up, America. Please. It is what our nation’s forefathers had hoped for, and the sacrifices of our active duty military and veterans deserve nothing less.
Copyright 2006 The Benderman Foundation
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