IS McCAIN SANE? * OBAMA'S AMAZING SPEECH
Award Winning Foreign Correspondent Guests on Basham & Cornell Radio Show...
On Thursday March 20, 2008, Martin Fletcher will be the guest on the Basham & Cornell Radio Show, heard weekday mornings at 8 a.m. on 1230 AM KLAV in Las Vegas.
Martin Fletcher is one of the most respected foreign correspondents in television news. He has covered almost every conflict and natural disaster in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East for thirty-five years, winning five Emmys, a Columbia University Dupont Award, several Overseas Press Club awards, and a cameraman’s award from Britain’s Royal Society of television. Fletcher and his wife, Hagar, have raised three sons. He is currently based in Israel, where he is NBC News bureau chief in Tel Aviv.
Fletcher describes his growth from clueless adventurer to grizzled veteran of the world’s battlefields. His working philosophy of “Get in, get close, get out, get a drink,” put him repeatedly in harm’s way, but he never lost sight of why he did it. In a world obsessed with celebrities, leaders, and wealth, Fletcher took a different route: he focused on those left behind, those paying the price. He answers the question: Why should we care?
These extraordinary, real-life adventure stories each examine different dilemmas facing a foreign correspondent. Can you eat the food of a warlord, who stole it from the starving? Do you listen politely to a terrorist threatening to blow up your children? Do you ask the tough questions of a Khmer Rouge killer, knowing he is your only ticket out of the Cambodian jungle? And above all, how do you stay sane faced with so much pain?
“Martin Fletcher has given us a stunning and memorable account of the risks, rewards, complexities, and enduring lessons of reporting from some of the most dangerous places in the world. His family’s Holocaust history frames his own eloquent insights and questions about the madness of the world that followed. I’ve known and admired Martin for more than thirty years, and this book makes me proud to call him friend and colleague.” - Tom Brokaw
IS McCAIN SANE? John McCain claims to be an expert on one thing: war. And yet he told an outright lie three times, and finally Joe Lieberman had to correct him. McCain said that Al Qaeda forces in Iraq were going to Iran to obtain weapons and training, and then Iran would send them back to fight U.S. troops in Iraq. THIS IS A LIE. Either McCain has dementia or he is repeating the lies of the Bush administration. And this man is running for President of the United States? I wonder if the torture and captivity he suffered through in Vietnam, can be attributed to his brain malfunction. Or is lying simply a prerequisite for running on a McCain-Bush ticket?
How to Use the Rebate
As you may have heard the Bush Administration said each and every one of us would now get a nice rebate. If we spend that money at Wal-Mart, all the money will go to China. If we spend it on gasoline it will all go to the Arabs, if we purchase a computer it will all go to India, if we purchase fruit and vegetables it will all go to Mexico, Honduras, and Guatamala, if we purchase a good car it will all go to Japan, ifwe purchase useless crap it will all go to Taiwan and none of it will
help the American economy , which is the whole purpose of the rebate.
We need to keep that money here in America, so the only way to keep that money here at home is to buy prostitutes and beer, since those are the only businesses still in the US.
>
I was blown away by Obama's beautiful, uniting speech today. In every adversity is the seed of healing, or out of every bad thing can come something good. In his comments about Reverend Wright's hateful statements, he acted as a true Christian would: hate the sin, but love the sinner. The redemptive value of Obama's humility teaches us all to stop focusing on mistakes, petty minutiae and the foibles of mere humans — and instead focus on how to heal the hurt underlying all of our anger: Black, White, Asian, Hispanic, male, female. I especially loved that he brought up the "glass cieling" that women cannot seem to break through.
FROM BARACK OBAMA'S SPEECH ON RACE:
"I am the son of a black man from Kenya and a white woman from Kansas. I was raised with the help of a white grandfather who survived a Depression to serve in Patton’s Army during World War II and a white grandmother who worked on a bomber assembly line at Fort Leavenworth while he was overseas. I’ve gone to some of the best schools in America and lived in one of the world’s poorest nations. I am married to a black American who carries within her the blood of slaves and slaveowners – an inheritance we pass on to our two precious daughters. I have brothers, sisters, nieces, nephews, uncles and cousins, of every race and every hue, scattered across three continents, and for as long as I live, I will never forget that in no other country on Earth is my story even possible.
It’s a story that hasn’t made me the most conventional candidate. But it is a story that has seared into my genetic makeup the idea that this nation is more than the sum of its parts – that out of many, we are truly one."
THIS WILL MAKE YOU LAUGH
Labels: jibjab, KID IMPERSONATING BUSH, Obama, RACE, WRIGHT
posted by Lydia Cornell at
11:11 AM
146 Comments:
Happy Palm Sunday, St. Patty's Day, Maundy Thursday, Easter and Passover
xoxo
Let's stop watching the news for awhile and send good vibes toward our Party -- and let's remember John McCain is on a taxpayer funded trip to London with Lindsay Graham, where he is having a $2300 a plate luncheon to FUNDRAISE FOR HIS CAMPAIGN!!
Isn't this illegal?
By
Lydia Cornell, at 10:30 AM
BAAWAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHHAHHAAAHA
damn....that kid was funny.
holy crap
By
BARTLEBEE, at 12:42 PM
That kid is AWESOME!!!!!!!!!!!!
Close your eyes and listen to that and tell me it doesnt sound just like the "Idiot in Chief"
By
Mike, at 3:29 PM
yea cept the kid sounds smarter.
By
BARTLEBEE, at 3:45 PM
JPMorgan to Buy Bear for $2 a Share
By JOE BEL BRUNO and MADLEN READ,
AP
Posted: 2008-03-17 01:22:37
NEW YORK (AP) - Just four days after Bear Stearns Chief Executive Alan Schwartz assured Wall Street that his company was not in trouble, he was forced on Sunday to sell the investment bank to competitor JPMorgan Chase for a bargain-basement price of $2 a share, or $236.2 million.
The stunning last-minute buyout was aimed at averting a Bear Stearns bankruptcy and a spreading crisis of confidence in the global financial system sparked by the collapse in the subprime mortgage market. Bear Stearns was the most exposed to risky bets on the loans; it is now the first major bank to be undone by that market's collapse.
The Federal Reserve and the U.S. government swiftly approved the all-stock buyout, showing the urgency of completing the deal before world markets opened. The Fed also essentially made the takeover risk-free by saying it would guarantee up to $30 billion of the troubled mortgage and other assets that got the nation's fifth-largest investment bank into trouble.
"This is going to go down in very historic terms," said Peter Dunay, chief investment strategist for New York-based Meridian Equity Partners. "This is about credit being overextended, and how bad it is for major financial institutions and for individuals. This is why we're probably heading into a recession."
JPMorgan Chase & Co. said it will guarantee all business - such as trading and investment banking - until Bear Stearns' shareholders approve the deal, which is expected to be completed during the second quarter. The acquisition includes Bear Stearns' midtown Manhattan headquarters.
JPMorgan Chief Financial Officer Michael Cavanagh did not say what would happen to Bear Stearns' 14,000 employees worldwide or whether the 85-year-old Bear Stearns name would live on after surviving the Great Depression, World War II and a slew of recessions. He told analysts and investors on a conference call that JPMorgan was most interested in buying Bear Stearns' prime brokerage business, which completes trades for big investors such as hedge funds.
At almost the same time as the deal for control of Bear Stearns was announced, the Federal Reserve said it approved a cut in its lending rate to banks to 3.25 percent from 3.50 percent and created another lending facility for big investment banks. The central bank's official meeting is on Tuesday. Before the emergency move to lower the discount rate, which is the rate at which banks lend each other money, the Fed was widely expected to again cut its headline rate by as much as a full point to 2 percent.
"Having taking Bear Stearns out of the problem category, and the strong action by the Federal Reserve, we would anticipate the market will behave quite differently on Monday than it was Thursday or Friday," Cavanagh said.
Some analysts expected it to be a brutal day for global stocks, nevertheless. Shortly after the news broke, Japan's benchmark Nikkei stock index plunged more than 3 percent in morning trading.
A bankruptcy protection filing of Bear Stearns could have heightened anxiety in world financial markets amid a deepening credit crunch. So far, global banks have written down some $200 billion worth of securities slammed amid the credit crisis - more write-downs could come. Last week, a bond fund controlled by private equity firm Carlyle Group faltered near collapse because of investments linked to mortgage-backed securities.
JPMorgan's acquisition of Bear Stearns represents roughly 1 percent of what the investment bank was worth just 16 days ago. It marked a 93.3 percent discount to Bear Stearns' market capitalization as of Friday, and roughly a 98.8 percent discount to its book value as of Feb. 29.
"The past week has been an incredibly difficult time for Bear Stearns," Schwartz said in a statement. "This represents the best outcome for all of our constituencies based upon the current circumstances."
Wall Street analysts say the bid to rescue Bear Stearns was more than just saving one of the world's largest investments banks - it was a prop for the U.S. economy and the global financial system. An outright failure would cause huge losses for banks, hedge funds and other investors to which Bear Stearns is connected.
After days of denials that it had liquidity problems, Bear was forced into a JPMorgan-led, government-backed bailout on Friday. The arrangement, the first of its kind since the 1930s, resulted in Bear getting a 28-day loan from JPMorgan with the government's guarantee that JPMorgan would not suffer any losses on the deal.
This is not the first time Bear Stearns has earned a place in Wall Street history. A decade ago, Bear Stearns refused to help bail out a hedge fund that was deemed "too big to fail." On Friday, the tables had turned, with the now-struggling investment bank in need of the same kind of aid.
Bear Stearns was founded in 1923 and in recent years was best known for its aggressive investing in mortgage-backed securities - and what was once a cash cow turned into the investment bank's undoing.
In June, two Bear-managed hedge funds worth billions of dollars collapsed. The funds were heavily invested in securities backed by subprime mortgages. Until that point, subprime mortgage-backed securities were immensely popular with investors because of their profitability.
The funds' demise and subsequent problems in the credit markets called into question Bear Stearns' ability to manage its own risk and the leadership ability of then-Chief Executive James Cayne. Critics of the company said Cayne spent too much time away from the office last year playing golf and bridge as the problems unfolded.
Cayne is the same executive who refused to let Bear Stearns provide support as part of a Federal Reserve-led plan to rescue Long-Term Capital Management in 1998. His reticence was said to deeply anger some of his fellow Wall Street CEOs, and the episode came up every time Bear was reported to be in trouble in recent months.
By
Mike, at 10:56 PM
Do you think the U.S. economy is in a recession?
Yes 83%
No 12%
I don't know 5%
Total Votes: 21,463
By
Mike, at 10:58 PM
Consider this Bear Stearns was just sold for about a 99% discount to book value..........about a year ago bear's stock price was around $170 a share today it was sold for $2 a share with what appears to be essentially no regulatory oversite.
Now dont get me wrong here, i've been saying for a while now the economy could fall off the edge of a cliff and we could very well have another Great Depression if the financial and economic system becomes unstable and collapses or implodes, so i'm not neccessarily saying what they did is right or wrong................but at the same time i HAVE to call the repugs and wall Street elites on their hippocrissy for saying they dont beleive in bailouts and reckless speculators should be punished not bailed out at tax payer expense...........a few short months ago GWB was parroting this very talking point before flip flopping to bail out the Wall Street elites...........Bear Stearns CEO also parroted this mantra before accepting a bailout today.
By
Mike, at 11:09 PM
Where oh where are the trolls babbling how GREAT the economy and stock market are doing.
adjusted for inflation the Dow is down around like 30% from 2000 and adjusted for the REAL rate of inflation and not the governments bogus hedonic manipulated phony stats you wouldnt even wanna KNOW how much the market is down from the inflation adjusted high of 2000.
By
Mike, at 11:14 PM
I also find it amusing that Paulson and Bush keep babbling that they have a "Strong Dollar" policy yet the dollar has fallen like a stone the last 6 years so i guess either Bush and his Administration are liars or they are COMPLETELY incompetent........my guess is ALL OF THE ABOVE................ BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!
By
Mike, at 11:19 PM
Soft Shoe in Hard Times
By MAUREEN DOWD
Everyone here is flummoxed about why the president is in such a fine mood.
The dollar’s crumpling, the recession’s thundering, the Dow’s bungee-jumping and the world’s disapproving, yet George Bush has turned into Gene Kelly, tap dancing and singing in a one-man review called “The Most Happy Fella.”
“I’m coming to you as an optimistic fellow,” he told the Economic Club of New York on Friday. His manner — chortling and joshing — was in odd juxtaposition to the Fed’s bailing out the imploding Bear Stearns and his own acknowledgment that “our economy obviously is going through a tough time,” that gas prices are spiking, and that folks “are concerned about making their bills.”
He began by laughingly calling the latest news on the economic meltdown “a interesting moment” and ended by saying that “our energy policy has not been very wise” and that there was “no quick fix” on gasp-inducing gas prices.
“You know, I guess the best way to describe government policy is like a person trying to drive a car in a rough patch,” he said. “If you ever get stuck in a situation like that, you know full well it’s important not to overcorrect, because when you overcorrect you end up in the ditch.”
Dude, you’re already in the ditch.
Boy George crashed the family station wagon into the globe and now the global economy. Yet the more terrified Americans get, the more bizarrely carefree he seems. The former oilman reacted with cocky ignorance a couple of weeks ago when a reporter informed him that gas was barreling toward $4 a gallon.
In on-the-record sessions with reporters — and more candid off-the-record ones — he has seemed goofily happy in recent weeks, prickly no more but strangely liberated and ebullient.
Even though he ordinarily hates being kept waiting, he made light of it while cooling his heels for John McCain, and did a soft shoe for the White House press. Wearing a cowboy hat, he warbled a comic Western ditty at the Gridiron Dinner a week ago — alluding to Scooter Libby’s conviction, Saudis getting richer from our oil-guzzling, Brownie’s dismal Katrina performance, and Dick Cheney’s winsome habit of withholding documents.
At a dinner on Wednesday, the man who is persona non grata on the campaign trail (except for closed fund-raisers) told morose Republican members of Congress that he was totally confident that “we can retake the House” and “hold the White House.”
“I think 2008 is going to be a fabulous year for the Republican Party!” he said, sounding like Rachael Ray sprinkling paprika on goulash. That must have been news to House Republicans, who have no money, just lost the seat held by their former speaker, and are hemorrhaging incumbents as they head into a campaign marked by an incipient recession and an unpopular war.
If only they could see things as the president does. Bush, who used his family connections to avoid Vietnam, told troops serving in Afghanistan on Thursday that he is “a little envious” of their adventure there, saying it was “in some ways romantic.”
Afghanistan is still roiling, as is Iraq, but W. is serene. “Removing Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision now, and it will be the right decision ever,” he said, echoing that great American philosopher Dan Quayle, who once told Samoans, “Happy campers you are, happy campers you have been and, as far as I am concerned, happy campers you will always be.”
W. bragged to Republicans about his “considered judgment” in sending more troops to Iraq and again presented himself as an untroubled instrument of divine will. “I believe there’s an Almighty,” he said, “and I believe a gift of that Almighty to every man, woman and child is freedom.”
Although the president belittled the Democrats for their policy of “retreat,” his surge has been a temporary and expensive place-holder for what Americans want: a policy to get us out of Iraq.
“Has it allowed us to reduce troop levels to below where they were when it started?” Michael Kinsley wrote recently. “The answer is no.” Gen. David Petraeus told The Washington Post last week that no one in the U.S. and Iraqi governments “feels that there has been sufficient progress by any means in the area of national reconciliation.”
Maybe the president is just putting on a good face to keep up American morale, the way Herbert Hoover did after the crash of ’29, when he continued to dress in a tuxedo for dinner.
Or maybe the old Andover cheerleader really believes his own cheers, and that prosperity will turn up any time now, just like the W.M.D. in Iraq.
Or perhaps it’s a Freudian trip. Now that he’s mucked up the world and the country, he can finally stop rebelling against his dad and relax in the certainty that the Bush name will forever be associated with crash-and-burn presidencies.
Whatever the explanation, it’s plumb loco.
By
Larry, at 5:36 AM
Iraq war's cost: Loss of U.S. power, prestige, influence
Warren P. Strobel
WASHINGTON — It was a decision that only President Bush had the power to make: At about 9 a.m. on March 19, 2003, in the Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing of the White House, he gave the "execute order" to begin Operation Iraqi Freedom, the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.
Now, five years later, the consequences of that act will soon be beyond Bush's grasp. In 10 months, they'll land on the desk of his successor.
Thanks in part to the Iraq war, the next U.S. president — Republican or Democrat, black or white, man or woman — will take office with America's power, prestige and popularity in decline, according to bipartisan reports, polls and foreign observers.
"The winner of the 2008 elections will command U.S. forces still at war in Iraq, Afghanistan and against elusive terrorists with a deadly reach. The U.S. economy will remain burdened. ... America's moral leadership and decision-making competence will continue to be questioned," begins a study of foreign-policy choices for the next president, which a Georgetown University task force released last month.
"Restored respect will come only with fresh demonstrations of competence," the study said.
The numbers don't inspire confidence: Oil prices are at an all-time high, the dollar at new lows against the euro. Surveys find the United States' popularity and respect slipping in every part of the globe except Africa. A poll of 3,400 active and retired U.S. military officers by Foreign Policy magazine found that 88 percent agreed with the statement that "The war in Iraq has stretched the U.S. military dangerously thin."
Not all of the challenges facing Bush's successor can be blamed on the invasion and the failure of civilian leadership to plan for what would happen next in Iraq.
There are other forces at work, foreign-policy specialists say, including an increasingly globalized economy with new centers of wealth and power, China's rise and the growth of Islamic extremism.
The federal government's inept response to Hurricane Katrina dealt another blow, causing some prominent U.S. allies to question not America's intentions or its wisdom, but its competence, a prominent Arab ruler once told a top U.S. diplomat.
But because of the invasion of Iraq, "America's strategic position in the world has worsened," said Josef Joffe, the editor and publisher of Die Zeit, a German weekly that's sympathetic to United States. "From a coldly realist perspective, Iraq was the wrong war against the wrong foe at the wrong time."
The removal of Saddam Hussein strengthened Iran and "by entangling itself in an interminable civil war, the U.S. has lost power to spare," Joffe said.
Bush has never wavered in defending the most fateful choice of his presidency.
"The decision to remove Saddam Hussein was the right decision early in my presidency, it is the right decision at this point in my presidency and it will forever be the right decision," he told religious broadcasters earlier this month.
With improvements in security in much of Iraq over the last year, it still seems possible that the country could someday experience stability and even prosperity, thanks to its vast oil deposits.
"The prognosis in Iraq is potentially a lot more promising than it's been in a long time," said Stephen Biddle of the Council on Foreign Relations, who was in Iraq in March and April 2007 as part of commander Gen. David Petraeus' staff.
But even under the best of circumstances, tens of thousands or more U.S. troops may be needed to stabilize Iraq throughout the next president's first term — and beyond.
That could limit the next president's options, even as he or she deals with more basic questions about how to restore the United States' standing in the world.
U.S. credibility also has been undermined, at home and abroad, by the administration's false claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction and ties to al Qaida prior to the Iraq war.
Several recent blue-ribbon panels recommended that the next president make major changes in how the United States deals with the world.
He or she, they said, should rely more on "soft" or "smart " power, such as diplomacy, promoting U.S. values and rebuilding alliances; use persuasion rather than coercion to achieve goals when possible; and invest more in non-military tools such as public diplomacy and foreign aid.
More provocatively, they advocate replacing the "war on terrorism" — which has colored virtually every aspect of Bush's foreign policy — as the focus of American security strategy. Instead, they say, the United States should be the leader in advancing peace, liberty and prosperity worldwide.
"Since 9/11, the United States has been exporting fear and anger rather than the more traditional values of hope and optimism. Suspicions of American power have run deep," Richard Armitage, deputy secretary of state under Bush, and Joseph Nye, a Pentagon official under President Clinton, wrote in a December report published by the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
"At the core of the problem is that America has made the war on terrorism the central component of its global engagement," they wrote.
That doesn't mean going soft on terrorists, said Chester Crocker, the co-chairman of the separate Georgetown University report, which also called for a new guiding principle for U.S. foreign policy.
But Crocker, an assistant secretary of state for Africa under President Reagan, said the war on terrorism has inflamed suspicions of U.S. motives, forced Washington to look the other way when its counterterrorism allies engage in bad behavior themselves, and led to an over-focus on the Middle East.
"Obviously, we can't ignore these hotspots," he said. But "if all we really care about is what's going on in the struggle within the Islamic world, we're not a world power anymore."
Many specialists also advise a more subtle, patient and less hectoring approach when it comes to advancing global democracy, which was one of the justifications Bush gave for invading Iraq.
Instead, the invasion "set it back in multiple senses," said Larry Diamond, a Stanford University expert on democracy promotion and author of the new book, "The Spirit of Democracy."
"Number one, it didn't go well," he said. U.S. efforts to spread democracy "were equated with insecurity, violence, refugees." Arab autocrats then used the specter of instability to argue against political liberalization.
"We have to approach the whole thing on fresh terms," Diamond said, with a strategy that "is incremental, that is more gradual, that doesn't over-reach."
Crafting a new foreign policy may not be easy, even for a new president making a fresh start.
Said Crocker: "We are substantially leveraged or mortgaged by legacies" such as Iraq. "The next president has to figure out a way to dig out of this hole."
By
Larry, at 5:40 AM
Through Bush-Colored Glasses
President Bush admitted on Friday that times are tough. So much for the straight talk.
Mr. Bush went on to paint a false picture of the economy. He dismissed virtually every proposal Congress is working on to alleviate the mortgage crisis, sticking to his administration’s inadequate ideas. And despite the rush of serious problems — frozen credit markets, millions of impending mortgage defaults, solvency issues at banks, a plunging dollar — he said that a major source of uncertainty today is whether his tax cuts, scheduled to expire in 2010, would be extended.
This was too far afield of reality to be dismissed as simple cheerleading. It points to the pressing need for a coherent plan to steer through what some economists are now predicting could be a severe downturn. Mr. Bush’s denial of the economic truth underscores the need for Congress to push forward with solutions to the mortgage crisis — especially bankruptcy reform to help defaulting homeowners. Lawmakers also must prepare to execute, in case it is needed, a government rescue of people whose homes are now worth less than they borrowed to buy them.
Mr. Bush said he was optimistic because the economy’s “foundation is solid” as measured by employment, wages, productivity, exports and the federal deficit. He was wrong on every count. On some, he has been wrong for quite a while.
Mr. Bush boasted about 52 consecutive months of job growth during his presidency. What matters is the magnitude of growth, not ticks on a calendar. The economic expansion under Mr. Bush — which it is safe to assume is now over — produced job growth of 4.2 percent. That is the worst performance over a business cycle since the government started keeping track in 1945.
Mr. Bush also talked approvingly of the recent unemployment rate of 4.8 percent. A low rate is good news when it indicates a robust job market. The unemployment rate ticked down last month because hundreds of thousands of people dropped out of the work force altogether. Worse, long-term unemployment, of six months or more, hit 17.5 percent. We’d expect that in the depths of a recession. It is unprecedented at the onset of one.
Mr. Bush was wrong to say wages are rising. On Friday morning, the day he spoke, the government reported that wages failed to outpace inflation in February, for the fifth straight month. Productivity growth has also weakened markedly in the past two years, a harbinger of a lower overall standard of living for Americans.
Exports have surged of late, but largely on the back of a falling dollar. The weaker dollar makes American exports cheaper, but it also pushes up oil prices. Potentially far more serious, a weakening dollar also reduces the Federal Reserve’s flexibility to steady the economy.
Finally, Mr. Bush’s focus on the size of the federal budget deficit ignores that annual government borrowing comes on top of existing debt. Publicly held federal debt will be up by a stunning 76 percent by the end of his presidency. Paying back the money means less to spend on everything else for a very long time.
By
Larry, at 5:41 AM
There's no room for real life in Bush's world
Leonard Pitts
Here's how it is out there. Awhile back, I was at the self-checkout counter of a hardware store. A young man approached and offered to put my $20 purchase on his store gift card if I would give him $10 in cash. He said he had no money for gas.
I let him put my purchase on his card, but I gave him the full amount back. It was the second time in a week I'd been asked by a stranger for help in filling the tank. And this was before last week's prediction of a spike in gas prices to $4 a gallon.
So I am intrigued by the following exchange between President Bush and CBS News reporter Peter Maer at a recent news conference. "What is your advice," Maer began, "to the average American who is hurting now, facing the prospect of $4-a-gallon gasoline, a lot of people facing ..."
The president stopped him. "Wait, what did you just say? You're predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline?"
Well, it wasn't him personally, Maer explained. "A number of analysts are predicting $4-a-gallon gasoline," he said.
The president was stunned. "Oh, yeah?" he said. "That's interesting. I hadn't heard that."
Headline news all over the country, but he hadn't heard it. And it's "interesting."
It will come as a surprise to no one that many, if not most, of our leaders are out of touch with the realities of everyday American life. One is reminded of the president's father pronouncing himself "amazed" back in 1992 when he encountered a simple bar code scanner. And of candidate Bill Clinton scoring debate points because he knew the price of a gallon of milk. The Beltway crowd wondered why that mattered.
We are used to them being disconnected. But this particular disconnect is telling.
When it comes to our national leaders, we have historically required two incongruous things. We want them to be one of us, but we also want them to be better than us. That is, we want them to have gravitas and smarts and yet, be just one of the guys or girls. That's why every election season finds millionaires and Ivy League alumni hanging out at county fairs, pleading for votes while eating fried Oreos.
With George W. Bush, one of those requirements -- gravitas, smarts -- was taken off the table. He was, we were told, just an everyman, a simple, God-fearin' guy guided not by pointy-headed intellectuals with their pie charts and prognostications, but rather by his feelings, his instincts, his gut. So he didn't need, for instance, to consult a bunch of State Department eggheads about Vladimir Putin because he'd seen Putin's soul.
It is perhaps no coincidence that Bush has said he regards his presidency as a vindication of the C student. Even the editorial page editor of The Wall Street Journal, as reliably conservative a newspaper as exists in the English language, once described him as having "no intellectual pretensions." It was meant as a compliment.
Bush is the perfect president for an era wherein the nation seems increasingly disdainful of intellectualism, where it turns out many of us are, indeed, not smarter than a 5th grader, and educators and politicians can breezily dismiss the theory of evolution and not be hooted off the public stage.
George W. Bush, Average Joe, fits right in. Except that seven years, a useless war and a disastrous presidency later, the price of gas is headed for a ruinous record and President Average Joe hasn't even heard. Yeah, yeah, I know. Cut him some slack. It's not like he has to gas up the presidential limousine himself.
But I see nothing unfair in judging the president on the terms he himself has chosen. He may not have gravitas, the thinking went. He may not have piercing intelligence. But he's one of us.
Think again. Apparently, he's not even that.
By
Larry, at 5:44 AM
Many voting for Clinton to boost GOP
Seek to prolong bitter battle
By Scott Helman
For a party that loves to hate the Clintons, Republican voters have cast an awful lot of ballots lately for Senator Hillary Clinton: About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.
A sudden change of heart? Hardly.
Since Senator John McCain effectively sewed up the GOP nomination last month, Republicans have begun participating in Democratic primaries specifically to vote for Clinton, a tactic that some voters and local Republican activists think will help their party in November. With every delegate important in the tight Democratic race, this trend could help shape the outcome if it continues in the remaining Democratic primaries open to all voters.
Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.
"It's as simple as, I don't think McCain can beat Obama if Obama is the Democratic choice," said Kyle Britt, 49, a Republican-leaning independent from Huntsville, Texas, who voted for Clinton in the March 4 primary. "I do believe Hillary can mobilize enough [anti-Clinton] people to keep her out of office."
Britt, who works in financial services, said he is certain he will vote for McCain in November.
About 1,100 miles north, in Granville, Ohio, Ben Rader, a 66-year-old retired entrepreneur, said he voted for Clinton in Ohio's primary to further confuse the Democratic race. "I'm pretty much tired of the Clintons, and to see her squirm for three or four months with Obama beating her up, it's great, it's wonderful," he said. "It broke my heart, but I had to."
Local Republican activists say stories like these abound in Texas, Ohio, and Mississippi, the three states where the recent surge in Republicans voting for Clinton was evident.
Until Texas and Ohio voted on March 4, Obama was receiving far more support than Clinton from GOP voters, many of whom have said in interviews that they were willing to buck their party because they like the Illinois senator. In eight Democratic contests in January and February where detailed exit polling data were available on Republicans, Obama received, on average, about 57 percent of voters who identified themselves as Republicans. Clinton received, on average, a quarter of the Republican votes cast in those races.
But as February gave way to March, the dynamics shifted in both parties' contests: McCain ran away with the Republican race, and Obama, after posting 10 straight victories following Super Tuesday, was poised to run away with the Democratic race. That is when Republicans swung into action.
Conservative radio giant Rush Limbaugh said on Fox News on Feb. 29 that he was urging conservatives to cross over and vote for Clinton, their bête noire nonpareil, "if they can stomach it."
"I want our party to win. I want the Democrats to lose," Limbaugh said. "They're in the midst of tearing themselves apart right now. It is fascinating to watch. And it's all going to stop if Hillary loses."
He added, "I know it's a difficult thing to do to vote for a Clinton, but it will sustain this soap opera, and it's something I think we need."
Limbaugh's exhortations seemed to work. In Ohio and Texas on March 4, Republicans comprised 9 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, more than twice the average GOP share of the turnout in the earlier contests where exit polling was conducted. Clinton ran about even with Obama among Republicans in both states, a far more favorable showing among GOP voters than in the early races.
Walter Wilkerson, who has chaired the Republican Party in Montgomery County, Texas, since 1964, said many local conservatives chose to vote for Clinton for strategic reasons.
"These people felt that Clinton would be maybe the easier opponent in the fall," he said. "That remains to be seen."
Wilkerson added, "We have not experienced any crossover of this magnitude since I can remember."
In the Mississippi primary last Tuesday, Republicans made up 12 percent of voters who took a Democratic ballot - their biggest proportion in any state yet - and they went for Clinton over Obama by a 3-to-1 margin.
John Taylor, the GOP chairman in Madison County, said he toured various precincts and witnessed Republican voters taking Democratic ballots to vote for Clinton.
"Some people there that I recognized voting said, 'Hey, I'm going to vote in this primary this year, right now. But don't worry, in November I'll be back,' " Taylor said. "They were going to do some damage if they could."
Another popular conservative radio host, Laura Ingraham, who had also encouraged voters to cast ballots for Clinton, crowed about her apparent success the day after Ohio and Texas voted.
"Without a doubt, Rush, and to a lesser extent me, had some effect on the Republican turnout," Ingraham told Fox News. "When you look at those exit polls, it is really quite striking."
Some political blogs have suggested that the influx of Clinton-voting Republicans prevented Obama from winning delegates he otherwise would have, by inflating Clinton's totals both statewide and in certain congressional districts. A writer for the liberal blog Daily Kos estimated that Obama could have netted an additional five delegates from Mississippi.
It is also possible, though perhaps unlikely, that enough strategically minded Republicans voted for Clinton in Texas to give her a crucial primary victory there: Clinton received roughly 119,000 GOP votes in Texas, according to exit polls, and she beat Obama by about 101,000 votes.
Not everyone casting ballots for Clinton did so primarily to sink her, however. Brent Henslee, 33, a Republican who works at a radio station in Waco, Texas, wanted to keep Clinton in the race to expose more about Obama, whom he sees as more "fluff than substance."
"I'm not buying into all the Obama-mania, is the main reason I did it," he said. "A lot of these people don't know a thing about this guy and they're crazy about him. And I thought that maybe keeping Hillary alive will just shed some more light on the guy."
Of the nine remaining major contests, four - Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Oregon, and South Dakota - have "closed" primaries, which means only Democrats can participate.
If Republicans and conservative independents continue their tactical voting, it may be more likely in Indiana, Montana, and Puerto Rico, which allow anyone to vote, and possibly in North Carolina and West Virginia, which open their primaries to Democrats and independent voters.
"If you are a Republican you could pull a Democrat ballot and vote for the Democrat presidential candidate you think will stand the least chance of beating McCain in the fall general election," the assistant editor of the Greene County Daily World, in southwestern Indiana, wrote in a blog post earlier this month.
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Larry, at 5:46 AM
This is the third of three excerpts from Slate Editor Jacob Weisberg's new book, The Bush Tragedy.
If Bush's theology is free of content, his application of it to politics is sophisticated and artful. Evangelical politics is a subject on which he has exercised his intellect, and perhaps the only one on which he qualifies as an expert. Bush began his study in 1985 on behalf of his father's effort to become president. George H.W. Bush regarded televangelists like Pat Robertson as snake handlers and swindlers. Reflecting his parents' attitude, Neil Bush referred to evangelical Christians in a speech for his father in Iowa as "cockroaches" issuing "from the baseboards of the Bible-belt." For their part, the evangelicals felt no affinity for Bush Sr. They found his patrician background off-putting and suspected the sincerity of his conversion to the pro-life cause.
To help him with this problem, Bush Sr. brought in Doug Wead as his evangelical adviser and liaison. Wead had been involved in a group called Mercy Corps International, doing missionary relief work in Ethiopia and Cambodia, and gave inspirational speeches at Amway meetings. He was also a prolific memo writer. The most important of his memos is a 161-page document he wrote in the summer of 1985 and a long follow-up to it known as "The Red Memo." Wead argued for "an effective, discreet evangelical strategy" to counter Jack Kemp, who had been courting the evangelicals for a decade, and Pat Robertson, whom he accurately predicted would run in the 1988 primaries. Wead compiled a long dossier on the evangelical "targets" he saw as most important for Bush. ("If Falwell is privately reassured from time to time of the Vice President's personal friendship, he will be less likely to demand the limelight," he wrote.) Wead made a chart rating nearly 200 leaders for various factors, including their influence within the movement, their influence outside of it, and their potential impact within early caucus and primary states. Billy Graham received the highest total score, 315, followed by Robert Schuller, 237; Jerry Falwell, 236; and Jim Bakker, 232.
Unbeknownst to Wead, Vice President Bush gave the Red memo to his oldest son. After George Jr. pronounced it sound, George Sr. closely followed much of its advice. For instance, Wead recommended that the vice president read the first chapter of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, a book that had become a popular evangelical device for winning converts. "Evangelicals believe that this book is so effective that they will automatically assume that if the Vice President has read it, he will agree with it," Wead wrote. Vice President Bush made sure that religious figures saw a well-worn copy on top of a stack of books in his office when they visited the White House and cited Lewis' condemnation of the sin of pride as one of the reasons "we haven't been inclined to go around proclaiming that we are Christians." He also took Wead's advice on how to answer the born-again question; in courting the National Religious Broadcasters with three speeches in three years; in inviting Falwell, James Dobson, and others to the White House; in cooperating with a cover story in the Christian Herald, the largest-circulation evangelical magazine at the time; and in producing a volume for the Christian book market.
George W. Bush became the campaign's semiofficial liaison to the evangelical community in March 1987. "Wead, I'm taking you over," he said at their first meeting, over Mexican food in Corpus Christi, telling him to ignore Lee Atwater, whom Wead had been reporting to. Wead recalls how anxious George W. was in political conversations with his dad. "He was a nervous wreck," Wead told me. "He wanted his father to be proud of him." Wead also recalled the son's expressions of his own political interest. The campaign had prepared state-by-state analysis of the primary electorate in advance of Super Tuesday in 1988. "When he got the one on Texas, his eyes just bugged out," Wead remembered. "This is just great! I can become governor of Texas just with the evangelical vote."
The crucible of the campaign forged a close relationship between the two men. Wead, whom George W. called "Weadie," says the candidate's son spent an inordinate amount of time talking about sex. But he was so anxious to avoid any whiff or rumor of infidelity that he asked Wead to stay in his hotel room one night when he thought a young woman working on the campaign might knock on his door. "I tried to read to him from the Bible, because by that time he was sending me these signals," Wead told me. "But he wasn't interested. He just rolled over and went to sleep."
Having Wead put him to bed was a way to advertise his marital fidelity, and to reinforce a distinction with his father, who was facing rumors about the Big A. Wead said Bush also liked having him around as an alternative to the company of drinking buddies from his pre-conversion period. But Bush resisted religious overtures as firmly as sexual ones. "He has absolutely zero interest in anything theological—nothing," Wead said. "We spent hours talking about sex … who on the campaign was doing what to whom—but nothing about God. And I tried many, many times."
The Wead-George W. effort yielded spectacular political results: Poppy beat back the primary challenge from Pat Robertson and won 81 percent of the evangelical vote in 1988, exceeding the 78 percent share Ronald Reagan won in 1984. After the election, George W. turned to his evangelical friend for advice about how to handle having a father in the White House. Wead returned with a 44-page memo entitled All the Presidents' Children, which he later developed into a book of the same title. The precedents were not encouraging. Burdened by impossibly high expectations, many sons of presidents struggled unsuccessfully to "complete" the work of their fathers. As a group, they disproportionately fell prey to various forms of failure, alcoholism, divorce, and early death. Bush, who was planning to move back to Texas and run for office, groaned when Wead told him that no presidential child had ever been elected governor of a state.
With the various roles he played in Bush's life—life counselor, political adviser, spiritual companion—Wead became in the late 1980s the first in a series of what might be described as surrogate family members to George W. Like Karl Rove and Dick Cheney, the two others who subsequently played this kind of role, Wead originally worked for the old man before transferring loyalties to his son. Like them, he aided Bush with a crucial transition in relation to his father. What Rove would do in helping Bush launch his political career in Texas, and Cheney in helping him define his presidency, Wead did in Bush helping him assert and establish his independent identity as a person of faith. But the experience left Wead troubled about the sincerity of Bush's beliefs. "I'm almost certain that a lot of it was calculated," he says. "If you really believed that there's some accountability to life, wouldn't you have Billy Graham come down and have a magic moment with your daughters? Are you just going to let them go to hell? You have all these religious leaders coming through. If it changed your life, wouldn't you invite them to sit down in the living room and have a talk with your daughters? Or is it all political?"
Envy over Rove's closer relationship with Bush may have pushed Wead toward an act of betrayal he tried to portray as a service to history, his secretly tape-recording nine hours of his private phone conversations with Bush in 1999 and 2000. Wead played portions of these tapes for the New York Times and a few other journalists at the time his book All the Presidents' Children was published in 2003. He later apologized and signed a legal agreement to turn the tapes over to Bush's lawyers and not discuss their content. These tapes, of which I've obtained a partial copy (not from Wead), provide a glimpse of the man behind the public mask. They capture Bush thinking aloud and rehearsing answers to questions he expected to get on the campaign trail. On one, he acknowledges illegal drug use decades back: "Doug," Bush says, "it doesn't just matter [about] cocaine—it'd be the same with marijuana. I wouldn't answer the marijuana question. You know why? Because I don't want some little kid doing what I tried. … I don't want any kid doing what I tried to do [pause] 30 years ago."
But the more interesting revelation is how politically Bush thinks about religion. Speaking of an upcoming meeting with evangelical leaders, he notes: "As you said, there are some code words. There are some proper ways to say things and some improper ways. I am going to say that I've accepted Christ into my life. And that's a true statement." On another tape, he rehearses his dodges. He goes over with Wead what he plans to tell James Robison, an evangelical minister in Texas who wanted him to promise not to appoint homosexuals in his administration: "Look, James, I got to tell you two things right off the bat. One, I'm not going to kick gays, because I'm a sinner. How can I differentiate sin?" For those interested in the details about what kind of sinner he was, Bush has another line: "That's part of my shtick, which is, look, we have all made mistakes."
The tapes reveal how calculated George W. Bush's projection of faith is. Wead said that during the countless hours the two spent talking about religion over a dozen years, they discussed endlessly the implications of attending services at different congregations, how Bush could position himself in relation to various tricky questions, and how he should handle various ministers and evangelical leaders. But the substance of Bush's own faith never came up. Wead told me he now struggles with the question of how sincere Bush's expressions of devotion ever were. He often goes over their conversations from 1987 and 1988 in his mind, having grown more skeptical about what Bush was doing. "As these memos started flowing to him, he started feeding back to me what his faith was," Wead said. "Now what is interesting for me, and I'm trying to understand, is, was I giving him his story?"
To say that Bush's religious persona is a calculated projection does not mean that it is fraudulent. For practiced politicians, the question of whether any behavior is genuine can seldom be answered. For them, calculation and sincerity are not opposites. The skillful leader harmonizes them, coming to truly believe in what he needs to do to succeed. Piety, like any other political mask, tends to become the genuine face over time.
The secular misunderstanding of Bush is that his relationship with God has turned him into a harsh man, driven by absolute moral certainty and attempting to foist his evangelical views onto others. Many of those who know Bush best see the religious influence in his life cutting in precisely the opposite direction. As one of the evangelical staff members in the White House told me over lunch near the White House in the summer of 2007, Bush's religion has made him more genuinely humble and less absolutist in the way he defends his views. Believing that he too is a lowly sinner, Bush learned to be more tolerant of the faults of others.
But if his eternal perspective improves Bush's personality, it diminishes any ability he might otherwise have to take in ambiguity or complexity. Early in his presidency, Bush told Sen. Joe Biden, "I don't do nuance." That line was probably spoken with irony, but it captures a truth about the intellectually constricting lens of his faith. Bush rejects nuance not because he's mentally incapable of engaging with it but because he has chosen to disavow it. Applying a crude religious lens that clarifies all decisions as moral choices rather than complicated trade-offs helps him fend off the deliberation and uncertainty he identifies with his father.
But closing one's mind to complexity isn't mere intellectual laziness; it's a fundamental evasion of freedom, God-given or otherwise. A simple faith frees George W. from the kind of agonizing and struggles his father went though in handling the largest questions of his presidency and helps him cope with the heavy burden of the job. But it comes at a tragic cost. A too-crude religious understanding has limited Bush's ability to comprehend the world. The habit of pious simplification has undermined The Decider's decision-making.
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Larry, at 5:49 AM
Empire on the Brink
Republicans and "Free Market" Zealots Bring Disaster to America
By PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Crude oil for April delivery hit $110 per barrel. The US dollar fell to a new low against the Euro. It now takes $1.55 to purchase one Euro.
These new highs against the dollar are the ongoing story of the collapse of the US dollar as world reserve currency and corresponding collapse of American power.
Each new decision from the insane Bush regime pushes the dollar a little further along to oblivion. The same Fed announcement that boosted the stock market on March 11 sent the dollar reeling and the price of oil up. The Fed’s announcement that it and other central banks are going to deal with the derivative crisis by monetizing $200 billion of the troubled instruments signaled more dollar inflation.
Of course, something needed to be done to forestall an implosion of the financial system, but a less costly alternative was at hand. The mark-to-market rule could have been suspended in order to halt the forced sale and write down of assets and to provide time in which to sort out derivative values, which are higher than the fire sale prices.
More pressure on the dollar resulted from the decision to award the European company, Airbus, a $40 billion contract that could reach $100 billion to build US Air Force tankers. In simple terms, that means another $40 to $100 billion added to the US trade deficit, and a loss of $40 to $100 billion in US Gross Domestic Product and associated jobs.
Of course, the Bush regime had to award the contract to Europe as a payoff for Europe’s support of the Bush regime’s wars of aggression in the Middle East. Europe is not going to provide Bush with diplomatic cover for his wars and NATO troops for his war in Afghanistan without a payoff.
Here is the picture: The US economy, which has been kept alive by enormous debt expansion that has over-reached its limit, is falling into recession. The traditional way out by expanding the supply of money and credit is blocked by the impaired banking system, the levels of consumer debt, the collapsing value of the US dollar, and rising inflation.
The Bush regime is attempting to bypass the stalled credit expansion by sending Americans $600 checks, money that will mainly be used to reduce existing credit card debt and not to fund new consumption.
The US is dependent on foreigners not only for energy but also for manufactured goods and advanced technology products. The US is dependent on foreigners to finance our consumption of $800 billion annually more than the US produces. The US is dependent on foreigners to finance its red ink wars, and the US government’s budget deficit is now expanding as tax revenues decline with the declining economy.
The bottom line: US power is enfeebled. US power depends on the willingness of foreigners to finance our wars and on the willingness of foreigners to continue to accumulate depreciating dollar assets.
The US cannot close its trade deficit. Oil prices are rising, and offshore production of goods and services for US markets results in a dollar-for-dollar increase in imports, while reducing the supply of domestic goods available for export.
The US cannot close its budget deficit while it is squandering vast sums on wars that serve no US purpose, handing out $150 billion in red ink rebates, and falling into recession.
US living standards, which have been stagnant for years, will plummet once dollar decline forces China off the dollar peg. So far prices of the Chinese-made goods on Wal-Mart shelves have not risen, because the Chinese currency, pegged to the dollar, falls in value with the dollar. In a word, tottering US living standards are being supported by China’s willingness to subsidize US consumption by keeping its currency grossly undervalued.
The US is overextended economically and militarily, just as was Great Britain with the fall of France in the opening days of World War II. The British had the Americans to bail them out. After the chewing gum and bailing wire patch-ups are exhausted, who is going to bail us out?
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Larry, at 5:50 AM
New Hope for the Rich
Americans are getting poorer. In 2007, home equity fell below 50 percent for the first time on record since 1945. Total equity also fell for three straight quarters through last December. Adjusted for inflation, the annual income of the typical working household is still below its peak before the last recession, in 2001. That means the Bush-era expansion is on track to be the first since the government began keeping records in the 1960s in which household income fails to hit a new high.
And yet, in the Senate, Republicans are ready to do battle on behalf of America’s wealthiest families.
Starting in 2009, the estate tax will apply to Americans with property at death worth more than $7 million per couple, or $3.5 million for individuals — a whopping 0.3 percent of people who die each year. As part of the 2009 budget resolution, Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana and chairman of the Finance Committee, has proposed to keep the tax at those levels, with annual adjustments for inflation. The proposal is expected to pass, as early as Thursday.
Everyone knows that the Baucus proposal is better than the status quo: under current law, the estate tax will be eliminated in 2010 then revert in 2011 to the far higher levels that applied in 2001, before the Bush tax cuts. Republicans, however, think that Mr. Baucus’s more-than-generous fix does not do enough to shield the wealthy. After it passes, Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, is expected to propose further cutting the estate taxes of those still covered by the 2009 rules.
That would give the wealthiest Americans an additional $200 billion in tax cuts over 10 years, with most of that largess going to estates valued at more than $10 million per person, the top 0.1 percent. The government would have to borrow to make up for the $200 billion giveaway to rich heirs, worsening the deficit and adding about $100 billion in interest to the nation’s tab.
The Kyl proposal needs a simple majority to pass. So if every Republican voted in favor, only one Democrat would have to join them for the proposal to pass. It is not a given that will happen. What is certain is that a yes vote, by whoever casts one, would be a triumph of let-them-eat-cake obliviousness.
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Larry, at 5:51 AM
The Rise of American Incompetence
We used to be the world's most skillful entrepreneurs and managers. Now we're laughingstocks. What happened?
By Daniel Gross
The dollar plunged to new lows against foreign currencies this week. There are plenty of reasons for its plunge, but at the most basic level, the dollar's weakness reflects the world's collective, two-thumbs-down verdict about the ability of the United States—businesses, individuals, the government, the Federal Reserve—to manage the global financial system and the world's largest economy. Countries that outsourced their monetary policy by pegging domestic currencies to the dollar are having second thoughts. Kuwait last year detached the dinar from the dollar, and Qatar government officials last week said they were considering doing the same with their currency. International financiers are unnerved by the toxic combination of "misplaced assumptions about housing, a lack of necessary regulation and irresponsible use of debt with sophisticated financial instruments," said Ashraf Laidi, currency strategist at CMC Markets.
Dissing American financial management is an affront to national pride tantamount to standing in Rome and asking, loudly, if Italians are able to make pasta. The United States invented the concept and practice of running large, complex systems. Along with baseball and deep-frying, management is one of our great national pastimes. The world's first MBAs were awarded by pioneering yuppie factories such as the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. (Wharton's founding in 1881 was quickly followed by the world's first time-share summer houses in the Hamptons.) Henry Ford's revolutionary assembly line was the gold standard in global manufacturing for decades. Contemporary American institutions stand for excellence in managing everything from supply chains (Wal-Mart) to delivery services (Federal Express and UPS).
Americans' ability to manage complex systems has been the ultimate competitive advantage. It has allowed the United States to enjoy high growth and low inflation—a record we haven't hesitated to lord over our foreign friends. The shelves in the business section of a bookstore in a mall in Johannesburg, South Africa, are stocked with the same volumes you'll find in a Barnes & Noble in Pittsburgh, Pa.: memoirs by cornfed paragons of capitalism like Jack Welch, wealth-building advice from American money managers, large tomes on how Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller built global businesses from scratch.
But now, thanks to widespread incompetence, American management is on its way to becoming an international laughingstock. Faith in American financial sobriety has been widely undermined by the subprime mess. The very mention of the strong-dollar policy now elicits raucous bouts of knee-slapping in even the most sober Swiss banks. (How do you say schadenfreude in German?) Earlier this month, as oil hovered near $100 a barrel, President Bush complained to OPEC about high oil prices. OPEC President Chakib Khelil responded acidly that crude's remarkable run had nothing to do with the reluctance of Persian Gulf nations to pump oil, and everything to do with the "mismanagement of the U.S. economy." Since Bush's plea, oil has gushed to $110 per barrel. (How do you say schadenfreude in Arabic?)
Americans abroad are constantly taunted by perceived failings of American management. America's aviation system is now the butt of jokes because 9-year-olds have become accustomed to removing their Heelys before boarding a plane. As my family and I passed through the snaking security line in Cancún, Mexico's airport last month, we were harangued by a security guard who encouraged tourists to sing along with him: "Please. Do not. Remove. Your shoes."
The concern extends beyond airlines to America's industrial complex. Doubtful of the ability of provincial American executives, with their limited language skills, to negotiate today's global business environment, the boards of massive U.S. firms like Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, Alcoa, and insurer AIG have hired foreign-born CEOs. Carl Icahn, the 1980s corporate raider, has reinvented himself as a borscht-belt comedian/activist investor, who delights conferences and reporters with jokes at CEOs' expense. On a recent 60 Minutes, Icahn complained to Lesley Stahl about the incompetence of American management. "I see our country going off a cliff, and I feel bad about it."
Icahn is moping all the way to the bank. The market's recognition of management failures gives him the opportunities to acquire companies on the cheap. But those of us who aren't billionaire corporate raiders—which is to say pretty much all of us—must manage through this management crisis on our own.
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Larry, at 5:53 AM
Two of a Kind?
By Peter Baker
It took the Democrats all of about a minute and a half to turn President Bush's endorsement of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) last week into an attack ad. The Democratic National Committee posted a 49-second online video that shows Bush playfully tap-dancing for reporters as he waited for McCain to arrive at the White House, then flashes some pointed captions:
"Why Is This Man So Happy?"
"Because he found someone to promise a Third Bush Term."
The ad then splices together similar-sounding comments from Bush and McCain on Iraq, Social Security and tax cuts, concluding with a clip of Bush mangling the aphorism "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
Expect a lot of the "third Bush term" theme over the next eight months, as Democrats make his 2000 campaign rival into his fraternal twin. The McCain camp recognizes the problem of being associated too closely with a president whose approval ratings are in the low 30s. But at the moment, the presumptive Republican nominee needs to rally a skeptical conservative base behind him, and Bush can help.
In the weeks since McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination, a fiery debate has ensued on the Internet and elsewhere about whether he and Bush really offer the same prescription for the country. For now, Bush and McCain find themselves on the same side of that debate as their fiercest liberal opponents, albeit from different perspectives. Just as activists on the left find it advantageous to link Bush and McCain, so for the moment do they.
White House press secretary Dana Perino denied last week that Bush and McCain had been longtime rivals. "Absolutely not," she said on Fox News.
"And while I think that might be a good story line for some people to say, to try, it's simply not true. And I would say that hasn't been true ever, but certainly after they were competitors, then, in 2000 and 2004, Senator McCain went on to work his tail off to help this president."
Yet, at the same time, McCain has also been a strong Bush ally, most especially in the battle to liberalize immigration laws and to create a path to citizenship for people living illegally in the United States. He has reversed himself on the tax cuts, saying they should be made permanent; he has become the biggest supporter of Bush's troop buildup in Iraq; and he sided with the president against a bill -- vetoed this weekend -- that would have banned waterboarding by the CIA. Congressional Quarterly reports that McCain supported Bush 90 percent of the time in five of the first six years of his presidency.
The open question is which side of this equation McCain chooses to emphasize come fall, when he is reaching out to moderates and independents. And whether Bush will still be dancing.
The Front-Door Campaign
The White House, meanwhile, says there is controlling legal authority allowing Bush to host what certainly seemed like a campaign event on federal property.
Remember how Bill Clinton and Al Gore got in trouble in the 1990s when it came to campaign activities in the White House? Clinton hosted coffees for donors and allowed some to sleep in the Lincoln Bedroom. Gore made fundraising calls from his office and declared there was "no controlling legal authority" prohibiting it. The question became: When is the executive mansion a federal office and when is it the president's home?
Bush's team said it consulted with lawyers before inviting McCain to the White House for last week's endorsement. "The president was pleased today to invite Senator John McCain to his home, and invited him in through the front door," Dana Perino said Tuesday. Bush and McCain then had lunch before appearing together in the Rose Garden. "I can tell you that, in checking with the counsel's office, all of these events and activities were thoroughly evaluated and approved," Perino said.
Spies Like Us
The White House continues to reshape the intelligence board that is supposed to give the president independent, nonpartisan advice about the effectiveness of the nation's spy agencies. Bush last week appointed to the panel his former homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend.
The appointment came days after Bush signed a little-noticed executive order reconstituting the 16-member panel. First formed under President Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1956, it was renamed the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board under President John F. Kennedy. Bush renamed it the President's Intelligence Advisory Board and switched around the duties of the Intelligence Oversight Board, a committee of the broader panel.
The White House said the new order was intended to clarify lines of authority by splitting the oversight board's duties with the director of national intelligence, a position created by Congress in 2004 after intelligence failures in Iraq.
Critics say that the new order is intended to gut independent oversight and that Townsend's appointment indicated the president wanted another loyalist on the panel.
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Larry, at 5:57 AM
Republicans See Storm Clouds Gathering
Week of Bad News Highlights Difficult Challenges for GOP in Fall Elections
By Jonathan Weisman
While all eyes were on the presidential campaign and the demise of New York Gov. Eliot L. Spitzer (D) last week, Republicans on Capitol Hill were suffering a run of bad news that could hold dire implications for the campaign season.
It started with the loss last weekend of the seat held for two decades by former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.). It got worse when Republicans lost potentially strong challengers to Democratic senators in South Dakota and New Jersey, and failed to field anyone to oppose the reelection bid of Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.).
The latest blow came with the revelation that the former treasurer of the National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) had allegedly diverted hundreds of thousands of dollars -- and possibly as much as $1 million -- from the organization's depleted coffers to his own bank accounts.
If Republicans needed any more evidence of how difficult this fall may be, the past week had it all, analysts said. The Illinois race demonstrated new levels of disaffection, the party's efforts to go on offense elsewhere were thwarted by recruiting failures, and the NRCC scandal will divert campaign resources and could frighten off badly needed contributors, they said.
"It's no mystery," said Rep. Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.). "You have a very unhappy electorate, which is no surprise, with oil at $108 a barrel, stocks down a few thousand points, a war in Iraq with no end in sight and a president who is still very, very unpopular. He's just killed the Republican brand."
Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan analyst of congressional politics, said: "The math is against them. The environment is against them. The money is against them. This is one of those cycles that if you're a Republican strategist, you just want to go into the bomb shelter."
The loss of Hastert's seat in a special election in the far suburbs of Chicago was particularly painful, Republicans conceded. GOP campaign aides contended that the victory of Democratic physicist Bill Foster, a political neophyte, was more a reflection of the unpopularity of his Republican opponent, Jim Oberweis, than a tectonic political shift in a district that once exemplified the GOP's stranglehold on the nation's outer-ring suburbs.
But that's not how Foster sees it. Voters "had a pretty clean choice between a candidate who had aligned himself with George Bush's policies and one who felt we needed a change of course," he said.
Presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain (Ariz.) helped Oberweis raise money, and the NRCC pumped more than $1.2 million into the district -- using more than 20 percent of its cash on hand -- to no avail.
"Even if it was mostly about Jim Oberweis, it's a terrible sign," Rothenberg said. "It adds to Democratic energy and further depresses the Republicans. And you can't dismiss the idea that there is an atmospheric advantage for the Democrats."
Two days after the Illinois election, South Dakota's former lieutenant governor, Steve Kirby, announced he will not challenge Sen. Tim Johnson, one of the few Democratic senators seeking reelection in a swing state.
On the same day, Arkansas Republican Party Chairman Dennis Milligan said his party has no candidate to challenge Pryor, another swing-state Democrat, and in Minnesota, wealthy trial lawyer Michael Ciresi dropped out of the Democratic primary. That cleared the way for comedian Al Franken, the remaining Democratic candidate, to spend the next eight months focusing on Sen. Norm Coleman (R).
After suffering a minor stroke, wealthy Republican developer Anne Evans Estabrook this month dropped her challenge to 84-year-old Democratic Sen. Frank Lautenberg in New Jersey. On Wednesday, New Jersey state Sen. Christopher "Kip" Bateman (R) announced that he will not run, either.
On Thursday, the nonpartisan Cook Political Report updated its congressional race outlooks to list nine Republican House seats -- and one Democratic seat -- as tossups. Foster's reelection prospects shifted from a tossup to his advantage.
Cook now lists the Senate seats of Republicans Ted Stevens (Alaska) and John E. Sununu (N.H.) as tossups, along with the seats being vacated by Republicans Wayne Allard (Colo.) and Pete V. Domenici (N.M.). Former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner, a Democrat, is listed as likely to claim the seat of retiring Republican Sen. John W. Warner.
In the House, Republicans have largely failed to recruit credible candidates for the swing-district seat of retiring Rep. Jerry Weller (R-Ill.) or to challenge several Democratic freshmen who took GOP seats in 2006. They include Zack Space of Ohio, Joe Courtney of Connecticut, Chris Carney and Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, John Hall of New York, Joe Donnelly of Indiana and Heath Shuler of North Carolina.
"We've had a difficult time with candidate recruitment this entire cycle," said Neil Newhouse, a GOP pollster who works closely with congressional Republicans.
The disappearance of hundreds of thousands of dollars from the NRCC, the House GOP's campaign arm, may not have a direct political impact, but it will not help, Republicans conceded. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee ended January with $35.5 million in cash. The NRCC had $5.7 million before an annual fundraising dinner Wednesday raised $8.6 million.
Rep. Tom Cole (Okla.), chairman of the NRCC, said the committee has turned a corner and, after almost a year in the red, has a positive cash balance and has rooted out internal corruption.
"We're pretty confident we'll be where we need to be," Cole predicted of the NRCC's financial standing later this year. "Is this a challenge? Sure, you'd rather not have to do it. But you do."
But some of that NRCC cash, instead of bolstering Republican candidates, will go to lawyers and accountants as officials try to unravel the damage they said has been done by former treasurer Christopher J. Ward. They already have spent $370,000.
Cole said his most important financial constituency -- GOP lawmakers, whose cash transfers and other fundraising efforts provide the largest chunk of money -- are supportive of his efforts.
But other Republicans worried that news of what could become one of the largest political frauds in recent history may dampen fundraising as donors question the committee's controls on their money.
"It's not helpful; it doesn't attract donors," Davis said.
Still, Republicans are not without hope. Thursday night, Rep. Robert E. "Bud" Cramer (D-Ala.) announced his retirement from a district that Bush carried with 60 percent of the vote in 2004, giving Republicans their clearest shot yet at a Democratic seat.
The GOP has pummeled swing-district Democrats for refusing to back President Bush's update of counterterrorism surveillance laws and for last week's budget agreements that will allow most, if not all, of Bush's tax cuts to expire in 2011. Davis said the issues are not getting political traction now, but they could before November.
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Larry, at 6:00 AM
Why George W. Bush Should Stand Trial for Capital Crimes
Len Hart
There is probable cause now to try George W. Bush for capital crimes in connection with the US program of torture at Abu Ghraib as well as the war of aggression against Iraq. There is evidence that George W. Bush ordered this program which most certainly resulted in numerous violations of the Geneva Conventions and the Nuremberg Principles.
(a) Offense.— Whoever, whether inside or outside the United States, commits a war crime, in any of the circumstances described in subsection (b), shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for life or any term of years, or both, and if death results to the victim, shall also be subject to the penalty of death.
-US Codes, TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 118 > § 2441; How Current is This?
Certainly, the Bush regimes has sought to make 'legal' Bush's but only after they had already been committed. The argument that Bush, as 'President', may pardon himself or grant himself retroactive immunity from prosecution is just silly. If that were the case, every President might have tried to get away with it by simply making it all up as one goes along --the very anti-thesis of the 'rule of law', indeed, 'Due Process of Law', guaranteed by the Bill of Rights. If mere Presidents were allowed this kind of power, they might as well rule by decree. As I have pointed out not even European monarchs were permitted to get away with that [See: Why Bush Made Plans to Invade the Netherlands; Bush's Unitary Executive Ends the Rule of Law, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and the Separation of Powers ].
George W. Bush has never denied that 'torture' was conducted upon his order. Abu Ghraib was not only about 'waterboarding' it was about a panoply of torture procedures --all of them perpetrated upon Bush's order. Bush has never denied that he ordered any procedure that we associate with Abu Ghraib. He has merely tried to justify it, as he tried to do in the following interview with Matt Lauer of the Today Show.
Bush: Bully and War Criminal
Bush does not deny. He merely tries to justify 'alternative procedures' --in English: torture and murder. We are supposed to conclude that because he has an 'obligation to protect the American people', he is above laws that make his actions punishable by death. I suppose that anyone, having committed crimes for which death is the penalty, might try the same thing. Less privileged criminals, however, should not even think about trying to make their capital crimes legal by decree. Even so, I have bad news for Bush. Even if his regime were 'legitimate' his various decrees bypassing both Congress and the Constitution are, therefore, unlawful. Bush is not above the law, though he may think he is. Likewise, King Charles I of England may have thoughtful himself above the authority of Parliament. Charles found out to late to keep his head attached to his body that he most certainly was not.
Photos from Abu Ghraib document that these procedure resulted in death. Bush's effort to exempt himself from that law are themselves unconstitutional. Those Federal laws make Bush's orders to torture capital offenses. Let's cut to the chase; George W. Bush has committed capital crimes. I say let's get on with the trial.
As an expert witness in the defense of an Abu Ghraib guard who was court-martialed, psychologist Philip Zimbardo had access to many of the images of abuse that were taken by the guards themselves. For a presentation at the TED conference in Monterey, California, Zimbardo assembled some of these pictures into a short video.
Wired.com obtained the video from Zimbardo's
talk, and is publishing some of the stills from that video here.
Many of the images are explicit and gruesome, depicting nudity, degradation,
simulated sex acts and guards posing with decaying corpses. Viewer discretion is advised.
--Awful New Photos from Abu Ghraib
Bush is in violation of specific US Codes with respect to torture procedures that Bush, significantly, has never denied. Rather, he attempts to justify his torture policies because he claims that he has an obligation to protect the American people. His case is not convincing. When all the stats are analyzed, I am confident that it will be proven that by giving presumed enemies a cause celebre to wage war upon the US and its people, terrorism will have increased and the American people put in increased jeopardy and danger. Certainly, official FBI stats, compiled and published by the Brookings Institution, proved conclusively that while Ronald Reagan waged his equally absurd 'war on terrorism', terrorism, in fact, got much, much worse. Americans are endanger by these reckless right wing, GOP policies.
Bush's torture policies are not only counter-productive, they are, in fact, capital crimes for which Bush must answer personally. Federal Judges may convene Grand Juries of their own motions. I urge a courageous and honorable Federal Judge to do precisely that. I would encourage such a judge to charge this panel with a full investigation of the capital crimes for which there is probable cause against Bush. Bush should be subpoenaed to appear before such a panel and prosecuted for obstruction of justice if he refuses.
Bush's decrees designed to place himself above the law are null and void,themselves unlawful. Bush should be compelled under oath to tell the truth or risk an indictment for perjury. Should he perjure himself, he thus risks prosecution for capital crimes, and, likewise, should he decide to confess his complicity in war crimes for which the penalty is death. Bush must stand trial now for having committed capital crimes.
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Larry, at 6:02 AM
The AP Reports that global markets are tumbling today on the news that Bear Stearns is being bailed out by JP Morgan Chase:
Global markets plunged Monday on news that JPMorgan Chase, backed by the U.S. government, had to rescue troubled Bear Stearns, with investors struggling to gauge how much worse financial markets could get.
"Its difficult to call where the bottom is," said Richard Hunter, a broker at Hargreaves Lansdown in London.
The New York Times is reporting that Bear Stearns has agreed to be bought out by JPMorgan Chase:
Bear Stearns, pushed to the brink of bankruptcy by what amounted to a run on the bank, agreed late Sunday to sell itself to JPMorgan Chase for a mere $2 a share, narrowly averting a collapse that threatened to cascade through the financial system.
The price represents a startling 93 percent discount to Bear Stearns' closing stock price on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.
The share price represents a huge fall from what Bear Stearns stock fetched on year ago:
Reflecting Bear Stearns's dire straits, JPMorgan agreed to pay just $236 million for the firm, a figure that includes the price of Bear's soaring headquarters on Madison Avenue in Manhattan. At $2 a share, JPMorgan is buying Bear Stearns for a third of the price at which the troubled firm went public in 1985. Only a year ago, Bear's shares fetched $170. The cut-rate price reflects deep misgivings about the firm's prospects.
Alan Greenspan writes in the Financial Times that this current financial crisis is likely the worst since WWII:
The current financial crisis in the US is likely to be judged in retrospect as the most wrenching since the end of the second world war. It will end eventually when home prices stabilise and with them the value of equity in homes supporting troubled mortgage securities.
Home price stabilisation will restore much-needed clarity to the marketplace because losses will be realised rather than prospective. The major source of contagion will be removed. Financial institutions will then recapitalise or go out of business. Trust in the solvency of remaining counterparties will be gradually restored and issuance of loans and securities will slowly return to normal. Although inventories of vacant single-family homes - those belonging to builders and investors - have recently peaked, until liquidation of these inventories proceeds in earnest, the level at which home prices will stabilise remains problematic.
Wall Street is waiting for what might come next:
A big Bear Stearns-shaped cloud will be hanging over Wall Street this week.
As investment banks including Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley kick off the first quarter reporting season, investors' already-frayed nerves have been strained to breaking point by the crisis surrounding Bear.
Bankers say last week's near-collapse of one of the most feared and influential US brokerage firms could not have come at a worse time for a sector battered by bad news and huge losses.
"Banks were going to report bad results anyway, but the Bear situation will put further pressure on share prices and management," says a senior Wall Street banker.
The Fed took more steps Sunday to ease the crisis:
Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said new steps announced by the central bank Sunday should help squeezed financial institutions get cash infusions_ a fresh effort to provide relief to a spreading credit crisis that threatens to plunge the economy into recession.
The central bank approved a cut in its lending rate to financial institutions to 3.25 percent from 3.50 percent, effective immediately, and created another lending facility for big investment banks to secure short-term loans.
"These steps will provide financial institutions with greater assurance of access to funds," Bernanke told reporters in a brief conference call Sunday evening.
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Larry, at 6:05 AM
Los Angeles Times:
In the three years after she left her post at "Dateline NBC," Maria Shriver collected hundreds of thousands of dollars from the network as part of an exit deal, even as she pondered whether she could continue her journalism career while her husband was governor of California.
Shriver, who relinquished her role at "Dateline" in February 2004, three months after Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn into office, continued to receive paychecks from NBC into 2007, according to statements of economic interest the governor is required to file in Sacramento.
The documents indicate that NBC paid her between $100,000 and $1 million during each of the last three years. Daniel Zingale, Shriver's chief of staff, declined to specify the exact amount. NBC had no comment.
The payments to Shriver were part of an "exit agreement" she arranged with the network in April 2004 after executives became uncomfortable with her working as a journalist while she was the state's first lady, Zingale said.
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Larry, at 6:06 AM
BAGHDAD — Sometime soon, the U.S. military will suffer the 4,000th death of the war in Iraq.
When the 1,000th American died in September 2004, the insurgency was just gaining steam. The 2,000th death came as Iraq held its first elections in decades, in October 2005. The U.S. announced its 3,000th loss on the last day of 2006, at the end of a year rocked by sectarian violence.
Are you happy Bush?
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Larry, at 6:07 AM
On April 1, 2007, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) strolled through the open-air Shorja market in Baghdad in an effort to prove that Americans are “not getting the full picture” of what’s going on in Iraq. In a press conference after his Baghdad tour, McCain told a reporter that his visit to the market was proof that people could “walk freely” in parts of Baghdad.
What McCain failed to mention was that he was accompanied by “100 American soldiers, with three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships overhead.” He also appeared to be wearing a bulletproof vest during his visit.
Since that trip, McCain has claimed that the situation in Iraq has improved even more. A few months ago, McCain claimed that “we’ve succeeded militarily” in Iraq. Things, of course, are going so well, that he wants to keep U.S. troops there for at least 100 years.
McCain is now back in Iraq for a “surprise visit with Iraqi and American diplomatic and military leaders.” He is joined by fellow Iraq war defenders Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC). But it’s unlikely they will be visiting the Shorja market again. Today, CNN reported that they tried to visit the Shorja market, but it was too unsafe and they were unable to go:
We got close to that marketplace today, Jim, but our own security advisers here in Iraq did not want us to go there. They didn’t believe it was safe for an American to be in that area. We were in a thriving marketplace nearby.
But when you show up, the local Iraqis, while it is clear security is better on the street — it is clear there are more markets open, just the traffic jams alone tell you that things are better on the streets of Baghdad — it’s also a very sensitive potential neighborhoods.
That one marketplace, as a matter of fact, you do see Iraqi police, you do see the Iraqi army, but in truth, that area is controlled by the radical cleric Moqtada al Sadr’s Mahdi army.
Civilian deaths per day in Iraq are up to 39 from a low of 20 last January, while at the same time, there has been “a sharp increase in attacks resulting in the deaths of U.S. soldiers.” Twelve Americans were killed last week over a period of four days, “bringing the overall U.S. military death toll since the start of the war near 4,000.”
ANOTHER MCCAIN LIE!
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Larry, at 6:10 AM
When Senator Obama's preacher thundered about racism and injustice Obama suffered smear-by-association. But when my late father -- Religious Right leader Francis Schaeffer -- denounced America and even called for the violent overthrow of the US government, he was invited to lunch with presidents Ford, Reagan and Bush, Sr.
Every Sunday thousands of right wing white preachers (following in my father's footsteps) rail against America's sins from tens of thousands of pulpits. They tell us that America is complicit in the "murder of the unborn," has become "Sodom" by coddling gays, and that our public schools are sinful places full of evolutionists and sex educators hell-bent on corrupting children. They say, as my dad often did, that we are, "under the judgment of God." They call America evil and warn of immanent destruction. By comparison Obama's minister's shouted "controversial" comments were mild. All he said was that God should damn America for our racism and violence and that no one had ever used the N-word about Hillary Clinton.
Dad and I were amongst the founders of the Religious right. In the 1970s and 1980s, while Dad and I crisscrossed America denouncing our nation's sins instead of getting in trouble we became darlings of the Republican Party. (This was while I was my father's sidekick before I dropped out of the evangelical movement altogether.) We were rewarded for our "stand" by people such as Congressman Jack Kemp, the Fords, Reagan and the Bush family. The top Republican leadership depended on preachers and agitators like us to energize their rank and file. No one called us un-American.
Consider a few passages from my father's immensely influential America-bashing book A Christian Manifesto. It sailed under the radar of the major media who, back when it was published in 1980, were not paying particular attention to best-selling religious books. Nevertheless it sold more than a million copies.
Here's Dad writing in his chapter on civil disobedience:
If there is a legitimate reason for the use of force [against the US government]... then at a certain point force is justifiable.
And this:
In the United States the materialistic, humanistic world view is being taught exclusively in most state schools... There is an obvious parallel between this and the situation in Russia [the USSR]. And we really must not be blind to the fact that indeed in the public schools in the United States all religious influence is as forcibly forbidden as in the Soviet Union....
Then this:
There does come a time when force, even physical force, is appropriate... A true Christian in Hitler's Germany and in the occupied countries should have defied the false and counterfeit state. This brings us to a current issue that is crucial for the future of the church in the United States, the issue of abortion... It is time we consciously realize that when any office commands what is contrary to God's law it abrogates it's authority. And our loyalty to the God who gave this law then requires that we make the appropriate response in that situation...
Was any conservative political leader associated with Dad running for cover? Far from it. Dad was a frequent guest of the Kemps, had lunch with the Fords, stayed in the White House as their guest, he met with Reagan, helped Dr. C. Everett Koop become Surgeon General. (I went on the 700 Club several times to generate support for Koop).
Dad became a hero to the evangelical community and a leading political instigator. When Dad died in 1984 everyone from Reagan to Kemp to Billy Graham lamented his passing publicly as the loss of a great American. Not one Republican leader was ever asked to denounce my dad or distanced himself from Dad's statements.
Take Dad's words and put them in the mouth of Obama's preacher (or in the mouth of any black American preacher) and people would be accusing that preacher of treason. Yet when we of the white Religious Right denounced America white conservative Americans and top political leaders, called our words "godly" and "prophetic" and a "call to repentance."
We Republican agitators of the mid 1970s to the late 1980s were genuinely anti-American in the same spirit that later Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both followers of my father) were anti-American when they said God had removed his blessing from America on 9/11, because America accepted gays. Falwell and Robertson recanted but we never did.
My dad's books denouncing America and comparing the USA to Hitler are still best sellers in the "respectable" evangelical community and he's still hailed as a prophet by many Republican leaders. When Mike Huckabee was recently asked by Katie Couric to name one book he'd take with him to a desert island, besides the Bible, he named Dad's Whatever Happened to the Human Race? a book where Dad also compared America to Hitler's Germany.
The hypocrisy of the right denouncing Obama, because of his minister's words, is staggering. They are the same people who argue for the right to "bear arms" as "insurance" to limit government power. They are the same people that (in the early 1980s roared and cheered when I called d