PERRspectives: June 2005 Archives

June 2005 Archives

	Markets, Public Goods and Military Recruiting During Thursday's hearings of the Armed Services Committee, several Republican Senators blamed the usual suspects for the shortfalls in Army and Marine recruiting. James Inhofe (R-OK) lambasted unnamed Senate colleagues, adding the potential recruits are being discouraged "because of all the negative media that's out there." Kansan Pat Roberts chimed in, "with the deluge of negative news that we get daily, it's just amazing to me that anybody would want to sign up." But while these conservative Senators predictably pointed... more Posted on June 30, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Bush's Iraq Report Card President Bush delivered his much awaited speech on Iraq to an audience of soldiers assembled at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. As theater, the President's was a confident rhetorical performance. But if the intent was to rebuild American support for the Iraq war by showing accountability for the missteps to date, providing a plan for success and asking for needed sacrifices, George W. Bush failed miserably: Bush's half-hour address showed the same story-telling and disingenuousness that has characterized his presidency and... more Posted on June 29, 2005 \| Comments (5)

	Bush Iraq Speech Sneak Peak Yesterday, I offered a lengthy preview of tonight's nationally televised address on Iraq by President Bush. In the Perrspectives Guide to the Bush Address, I highlighted the Five Things Bush Must Do to rebuild public support for the conflict in Iraq. In that Guide, I also pointed out the rhetorical warning signs that Bush's rhetoric is unchanged, his plans unaltered and the prospects for American victory dimmed. Sadly, a preview of the Bush speech seems to contain them the most... more Posted on June 28, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	A Guide to the Bush Address on Iraq On Tuesday night, President Bush will take to the stage at Fort Bragg, North Carolina in a nationally televised address aimed at rebuilding public support for the war in Iraq. And well he should. Recent polls (from Gallup and Rasmussen, respectively) show that only 39% of Americans approve of the war in Iraq and that more people in the United States blame Bush (49%) than Saddam (44%) for the conflict. The torrent of revelations in 2002 pre-war British documents confirm... more Posted on June 27, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Unrepentant: Rick Santorum and the Clergy Sex Abuse Scandal It has often been said that a gaffe is what happens when a politician speaks the truth. In Senator Rick Santorum's case, the Catholic Crusader of the Keystone State he has spoken the truth about what he believes. For Santorum, liberalism, the Enlightenment and the scientific method are apparently a far greater crime in America than the thousands of children raped and sodomized by priests in his beloved Catholic Church. As noted by the CapitolBuzz and Atrios, Santorum in a... more Posted on June 27, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	Getting Drafty: The Hybrid Model of National Service Ronald Reagan once famously said that presidents should "never say never" But when it comes to the reinstatement of the military draft, recent public opinion polls seem to suggest that the American people think "never" would be a fine idea, indeed. A recent AP/Ipsos poll showed only 27% of Americans favored conscription, with a whopping 70% opposed. As the casualties mount and recruiting woes build from the Iraq crisis, both political parties continue to make this issue moot for the... more Posted on June 26, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Did Editor & Publisher Plagiarize Perrspectives? Question: What would be more ironic than George W. Bush's 2000 promise to to "uphold the honor and dignity" of the White House? Answer: For Editor & Publisher magazine, "America's Oldest Journal Covering the Newspaper Industry", to publish a column possibly plagiarized from a one-year old blog. That may be exactly what has happened to Perrspectives. On Monday, June 20, 2005, Perrspectives published a piece titled "DC Dick and Baghdad Bob", comparing the Dick Cheney's statements on Iraq to those... more Posted on June 24, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Mississippi Wounds Still Unhealed In Mississippi, where Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen was convicted today of manslaughter in the 1964 civil rights murders, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal asks its readers a simple question: Do you think the Edgar Ray Killen trial and guilty verdict will mend the old wounds of the 1964 slayings? The simple answer? No. No, the dark cloud hanging over Philadelphia, the state of Mississippi and the South won't be lifted by this single compromise verdict. The wounds certainly... more Posted on June 21, 2005 \| Comments (2)

	DC Dick and Baghdad Bob While President Bush's statements on Iraq have entered the realm of the hallucinatory, Vice President Dick Cheney's chutzpah and mendacity in the just the last few weeks hasn't gone unnoticed, either. Cheney, the same man said who instructed Senator Pat Leahy "go f**k yourself" on the Senate floor, criticized Illinois Senator Dick Durbin for his Gitmo comments. "For him to make those comparisons was one of the most egregious things I'd ever heard on the floor of the United States... more Posted on June 20, 2005 \| Comments (4)

	Bush on Iraq: That Was Then, This Is Now The Downing Street Memo and a host of new British documents are increasingly focusing national attention on the duplicity and incompetence of President Bush�s Iraq war planning. With criticism building, poll numbers plummeting and facing defections from his own party, the President used today�s weekly radio address to begin a new PR offensive to bolster support for Iraq policies. If that performance is any indication, George Bush has moved from profound deception and deep denial to outright fantasy. In one... more Posted on June 19, 2005 \| Comments (16)

	The Culture of Strife Across the nation this week, the Republican Party and its amen corner unleashed a tidal wave of dangerously irresponsible interventions into the most personal and intimate aspects of Americans' private lives. Whether they will pay a political price for their increasingly extreme - and unpopular - positions remains to be seen. Let's begin in Madison, Wisconsin, where the state assembly voted to ban the distribution and use of the "morning after" pill on state campuses. By a 49-41 vote, the... more Posted on June 17, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	Banning True Flag Desecration In Washington, Congressional Republicans are waging yet another battle in their never-ending culture war. This time, the focus is on a constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag. But if these hypocrites really want to honor and protect the symbols of the United States, they shouldn't be talking about Old Glory, but the Confederate Stars and Bars. In the Senate, Bill Frist and the GOP leadership, aided by a few weak-kneed Democrats, are preparing for a very close... more Posted on June 15, 2005 \| Comments (3)

	Ghosts of Mississippi There's an old saying that justice delayed in justice denied. Well, we're about to find out in Mississippi. Finally, 41 years after the fact, reputed Ku Klux Klansman Edgar Ray Killen will be tried for the infamous killings in Philadelphia, Mississippi of three Chicago civil rights workers. The three, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, were murdered while in Mississippi to register black voters as part of "Freedom Summer." With the complicity of the segregationist Neshoba County populace, no... more Posted on June 13, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	Dean's List Back in December, I wrote a piece about the DNC chairman's race called "Dr. Dean: Wrong Prescription for Democrats." Six months and several Howard Dean gaffes later, many of the leading lights of the Democratic Party are apparently now having the same misgivings. Dean's counterproductive if statistically correct labeling of the GOP as "pretty much a white, Christian party" is only the latest cause of damage control in Democratic circles. In the Senate, Joe Biden, Joe Lieberman, Dick Durbin and... more Posted on June 13, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	Bush's British Invasion On the heels of Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to the U.S. and the growing furor over the Downing Street Memo, a new British document promises to further highlight the Bush administration's deception and incompetence in preparing for the Iraq war. The Washington Post reports that just two days before the Downing Street meeting, a July 21, 2002 intelligence briefing ("Iraq: Conditions for Military Action") showed British officials incredulous with the lack of planning for post-war Iraq by the Bush... more Posted on June 12, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Bill O'Reilly's Videogate Over the years, Fox's Bill O'Reilly has accumulated an impressive record of distortions, lies, and even falafel lust. Now, it would seem, he's finally committed what should be a firing offense, even for Fox. Less than a year after savaging Dan Rather over his use of dubious documents in the Bush National Guard case, The O'Reilly Factor massively - and without disclosure - doctored video to distort comments by Senator Joe Biden. As reported on The Al Franken Show, O'Reilly... more Posted on June 8, 2005 \| Comments (59)

	The White House Passes Gas Today offers yet another chapter in the ongoing attempt by the Bush White House to sell its policy program through manufactured news and faux science. The New York Times reports that a White House official, a former oil industry lobbyist, modified U.S. government climate reports in order to downplay the linkage between greenhouse gases and global warming: Philip Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality, made changes to descriptions of climate research that had already... more Posted on June 8, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	U.S. BS at the OAS The President and Secretary of State Rice took their Bush Doctrine cure-all to the meeting of the Organization of American States (OAS) in Miami this week. Unfortunately for them, the assembled OAS delegates showed no interest in drinking the Bush Kool-Aid. While President Bush touted the benefits of his troubled Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA), Condoleezza Rice tried the make the case for democracy promotion and fighting against instability in countries like Bolivia, Ecuador and Haiti: "We must act... more Posted on June 7, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	One Man, One Vote, One Time? Over the past two months, much of the euphoria over the supposed success of the Bush Doctrine has dissipated. Freedom may be "God's gift to humanity," as President Bush likes to say. In the Middle East, though, it just may not be the gift that keeps on giving. In the wake of its spectacularly successful elections in January, Iraq took three months to form a government and is engulfed by an ever-bloodier insurgency. In Lebanon, despite the Syrian pull-out, political... more Posted on June 6, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	Confederacy of Dunces This weekend, the disgusting spectacle of the Confederate flag reared its ugly head once again, this time in Missouri. Republican Governor Matt Blunt ordered the flag to be flown for a day during a memorial service attended at the Confederate Memorial State Historic Site in Higginsville. The 400 people in attendance didn't just lay roses and sing "Dixie." They raised the question as to whether the national Republican leadership is just whistling Dixie when it comes to celebrating the... more Posted on June 5, 2005 \| Comments (7)

	The Great Pretender The truth, the saying goes, will set you free. Not so for Massachusetts governor and certain 2008 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In this week's National Review, Michael Murphy (Romney's version of Karl Rove) for once offered veracity to the public. About Mitt, Murphy said, "He's been a pro-life Mormon faking it as a pro-choice friendly." As a former resident of the Bay State, I can attest to the truthfulness of Murphy's admission and to the dissembling of his recantation.... more Posted on June 3, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Chris Cox and the Harken Test The Center for American Progress has put together a devastating critique of Representative Chris Cox, President Bush's choice to succeed William Donaldson as chairman of the SEC. Cox's support for curtailing shareholder lawsuits, bill providing cover for Enron and his own checkered past show that Bush was never serious about his demand for corporate accountability. Cox's confirmation seems assured, especially with the broad support he enjoys from the financial services industry. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist said of Cox, "with... more Posted on June 3, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	French Twist The rejection of the EU constitution by French and Dutch voters this week has raised a host of questions about the future of the European project. But while Euro-optimism absorbed a body blow, Americans may be just waking up to the prospect of a transformed alliance. Perrspectives has written repeatedly about the rise of the European Union as a economic and strategic counterweight to the United States. That development is tranforming the trans-Atlantic partnership, as growing economic competition (for example,... more Posted on June 3, 2005 \| Comments (0)

	Deep Throat Irony Watch: Linda Tripp Edition As I wrote yesterday in "Gagging on Deep Throat", the mouthpieces of the conservative ascendancy have had two predictable responses to the revelation that former FBI #2 man Mark Felt was Watergate's "Deep Throat." First, they rushed to Nixon's defense, seeking to rewrite history by calling his crimes no different in kind or degree than those supposedly committed by Kennedy, Johnson or Clinton, and his downfall the result of the perfidy of liberal media. (More on this topic in a... more Posted on June 2, 2005 \| Comments (13)

	Bob Woodward Comes Clean Bob Woodward has just published in the Washington Post an account of how the FBI's #2 man Mark Felt became Deep Throat. A key sound bite from Woodward's account, "There is little doubt Felt thought the Nixon team were Nazis." For more on the demonization of Mark Felt by both Nixon and Bush apologists, see "Gagging on Deep Throat."... more Posted on June 2, 2005 \| Comments (1)

	Gagging on Deep Throat Karl Marx once remarked that historical events occur twice, the first time as tragedy and the second time as farce. When it comes to the scandal machines in the Nixon and Bush administrations, he could not have been more wrong. The reactions of Nixon contemporaries and today's Bush sycophants to yesterday's Deep Throat revelations are predictably - and eerily - similar. But the Bush team's own overt war against anonymous single sources and brutal retribution against whistle-blowers is no joke.... more Posted on June 1, 2005 \| Comments (5)