mjh's blog

‘he talk so smart’

I Just Love Hearing It

Two jokes from MHS (gracias!). mjh

One sunny day in 2005, an old man approached the White House from across Pennsylvania Avenue, where he’d been sitting on a park bench. He spoke to the U.S. Marine standing guard and said, ”I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine looked at the man and said, ”Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.”

The old man said, ”Okay,” and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same Marine, ”I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine again told the man, ”Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here.” The man thanked him and, again, just walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same U. S. Marine, saying, ”I would like to go in and meet with President Bush.”

The Marine, understandably agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, ”Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I’ve told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer the president and no longer resides here. Don’t you understand?”

The old man looked at the Marine and said, ”Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it.”

The Marine snapped to attention, saluted, and said, ”See you tomorrow.”

*****************************************************************
Subject: The GOP Told Us So

The GOP warned us what would happen if Gore was elected in 2000:

1. We would go to war.
2. The national debt would soar.
3. The US economy would plummet.
4. The stock market would plunge.
5. Unemployment would be rampant.
6. The US dollar would quickly decline in value.
7. We would have a huge budget deficit.

They were right. Gore won, and all those things happened.

New Mexico Poll

New Mexico Politics with Joe Monahan

New Mexico is going Kerry, if a new interactive poll from the Zogby group has it right. The poll, conducted May 18 thru the 23, shows the Prez losing his grip fast on our swing state. Kerry pulls 48.4% to Bush’s 43.3. Independent Ralph Nader grabs 2.9% and just a slim 5.4% are undecided. The margin of error in the poll is pegged at 4.6%. …

Among men the Prez garners 55% of the vote, but only 32% of the females. Kerry gets a whopping 62% of the women, but falls to 35% of the men.

Here’s pollster Zogby’s analysis of the Prez race here with Kerry leading by about five points:

”While President Bush predictably lags here in the state’s big cities, the good news for his re-election campaign is that there aren’t many of them. Instead, this southwestern state shoehorned between the vacation mecca of Arizona and the president’s home state of Texas is dotted with small towns and rural life, which treat him better, the poll shows. While Democrat John Kerry leads in the big cities, 54% to 33%, Mr. Bush leads in small cities, 50% to 45%, and by an even greater margin, 56% to 40%, in rural New Mexico.”

Duhbya Mangles Everything

Bush trips over Abu Ghraib pronunciation Reuters.com

Two rehearsals for his prime-time speech were not enough to keep U.S. President George W. Bush from mangling the name of the Abu Ghraib prison that brought shame to the U.S. mission in Iraq.

During the half-hour televised address, Bush mispronounced Abu Ghraib each of the three times he mentioned it while announcing U.S. plans to tear down the infamous jail and replace it with a new facility.

The prison, the scene of torture under Saddam Hussein and the setting for the Iraqi prison abuse scandal under the U.S. military, has a name that English speakers usually pronounce as ”abu-grabe.”

But the Republican president, long known for verbal and grammatical lapses, stumbled on the first try, calling it ”abugah-rayp”. The second version came out ”abu-garon”, the third attempt sounded like ”abu-garah”.

White House aides, who described the speech as an important address on the future of Iraq, said Bush practised twice on Monday before boarding his helicopter for his trip to the speaking venue at the U.S. Army War College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

Bush’s Remarks on Iraq at the Army War College (washingtonpost.com)

I’ve come here tonight to report to all Americans, and to the Iraqi people, on the strategy our nation is pursuing in Iraq and the specific steps we’re taking to achieve our goals.

‘daily, desperate improvisation’

Five Points of Reality That Bush Overlooked (washingtonpost.com)By Jim Hoagland

Dear Mr. President:

I write as someone who has supported regime change in Iraq far longer than you or your aides. I have given your policies the benefit of the doubt….

[Your recent speech shows] a willingness to see the world as you would like it to be rather than as it is, and a readiness to hope that the gap goes unnoticed or unexamined. With all respect, sir, that is not leadership. …

This steadily wavering image is at the core of the decline in your approval ratings. Americans stop supporting wars not because of body counts alone but because they become convinced their leaders do not know what they are doing. They then stop supporting the leaders. …

Most important, move away from the obsession with secrecy that is a cancer at the center of your administration.

Polls

washingtonpost.com: Bush Approval Ratings

CBS News | Poll: Iraq Taking Toll On Bush | May 24, 2004 23:51:30

The President’s approval rating has dropped to a new low of 41 percent, and more than six in ten say the country is heading in the wrong direction. …

DIRECTION OF THE COUNTRY
Right direction
30%

Wrong track
65%

The last time the percentage that said the country was on the wrong track was as high as it is now was in November 1994, as Republicans swept into control of both houses of Congress for the first time in decades. …

WAS U.S. INVOLVEMENT IN IRAQ A MISTAKE?
Yes 50%
No 46%

Lots more figures in this poll (see link above; link below it to a separate Washington Post poll). mjh

Washington Post/ABC News poll

Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?

Approve STRONGLY 31%
Approve SOMEWHAT 17%
Disapprove SOMEWHAT 14%
Disapprove STRONGLY 36%
DK/No opinion 3%

Thanks, Duhbya!

Report: al-Qaida Ranks Swelling Worldwide By BARRY RENFREW

[International Institute of Strategic Studies said in its annual survey of world affairs] that the two military centerpieces of the U.S.-led war on terror — the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq — may have boosted al-Qaida.

Driving the terror network out of Afghanistan in late 2001 appears to have benefited the group, which dispersed to many countries, making it almost invisible and hard to combat, the story said.

And the Iraq conflict ”has arguably focused the energies and resources of al-Qaida and its followers while diluting those of the global counterterrorism coalition that appeared so formidable” after the Afghan intervention, the survey said.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq brought al-Qaida recruits from across Islamic nations, the study said. Up to 1,000 foreign Islamic fighters have infiltrated Iraqi territory, where they are cooperating with Iraqi insurgents, the survey said. …

The London-based institute is considered the most important security think tank outside the United States. Its findings on al-Qaida’s expanding structure and growing support by allied terrorist networks around the world track with similar assessments from governments and other experts.

Are you safer than you were 4 years ago? Of course not! Given unprecedented power and money, Bush has made things far worse. You want 4 more years of this? mjh

The Heaven of Animals, by James Dickey

The Heaven of Animals

Here they are. The soft eyes

open.
If they have lived in a wood
It is a wood.
If they have lived on plains
It is grass rolling
Under their feet forever.

Having no souls, they have come,
Anyway, beyond their knowing.
Their instincts wholly bloom
And they rise.
The soft eyes open.

To match them, the landscape flowers,
Outdoing, desperately
Outdoing what is required:
The richest wood,
The deepest field.

For

some of these,
It could not be the place
It is, without blood.
These hunt, as they have done
But with claws and teeth grown perfect,

More deadly than they can believe.
They stalk more silently,
And crouch on limbs of trees,
And their descent
Upon the bright

backs of their prey

May take years
In a sovereign floating of joy.
And those that are hunted
Know this as their life,
Their

reward: to walk

Under such trees in full knowledge
Of what is in glory above them,
And to feel no fear,
But acceptance,

compliance.
Fulfilling themselves without pain

At the cycle’s center,
They tremble, they walk
Under the tree,
They fall, they

are torn,
They rise, they walk again.

– James Dickey

My Droogie, Robert, sent me this poem for my birthday. Dickey

has long been a favorite of mine. mjh

my poem

for Dickey

May 19, 1955

Today is my birthday (note to identity thieves: I am lying). I am starting my

50th year (which makes me 49 for the math-impaired). 50 can scarcely be considered middle-aged; odds indicate that my life is 2/3rds over

(or, more cheerfully, I still have 1/3 left).

According to Social Security Administration statistics (Popular baby names), in the 1950′s, Mark was the 9th most popular

name for male babies; several of my oldest friends had even more popular names (James, Robert, John and David; Steven is right behind me

but Fred is way off; my first girlfriend — a 4th ranked Susan — called me Michael, #1 in the 50′s and 60′s). In the ’60′s my name

had risen to 6th place. But, for the last 30 years, it has fallen steadily in popularity (I blame the rise of the Radical Right); just

look at the 90′s (Popularity of the name Mark) — not

even in the top 100 anymore. My Mom told me Mark meant ”hammer or strength” — I don’t know where that came from.

The day I was

born was the wettest 24-hour period in New Mexico’s recent history (and that was during the last great drought). Not that I was born in

New Mexico. I was born in Hawaii, where the wettest 24-hour period was probably wetter than 24 years in New Mexico. I was born in the

middle of the ocean, where Anglos (Haolies) were late-comers and a cultural minority, a truly multi-ethnic, multi-lingual paradise, a

place of ancient cultures and traditions. For 20 years, as of July, I have lived in the middle of the desert, where Anglos (Billigaana,

etc) were late-comers and are a cultural minority, a truly multi-ethnic, multi-lingual paradise, a place of ancient cultures and

traditions. Some might say I haven’t come very far; seems just far enough for me. I remain grateful and hopeful.

I had a long and

complex dream this morning, which I should have written down immediately. A few things have stayed with me. In particular, I remember an

old(er) man, saying, ”I refuse to train people to serve a machine that is indifferent to them.” Then, he said, ”There is no

higher calling than to foster social interaction.”

I assume this old man is me. I like to think it is future-Mark once again trying

to reach back to younger-Mark across time. More simply, we are the same person who was a baby and will be old. The ‘rage against the

machine’ message clearly resonates with me. But the ‘social interaction’ message isn’t so clear to me. Is this it — the moment you

are reading this? mjh

Feminists and Gays to Blame for Abu Ghraib

Question: who has more responsibility for the horrors of Abu Ghraib? Duhbya Bush or Gloria Steinem? mjh

Nightmare of Iraq prison abuse is rooted in coed basic training by Cal Thomas

From the ”don’t ask, don’t tell” policy pertaining to homosexuals in the military, to the politically correct assignment of women at the most sensitive levels, politicians, military and civilian commanders pretend that the powerful sex drive can be controlled and made irrelevant in the pursuit of military objectives. …

Congress and the Pentagon need to do something about coed basic training and the assignment of women to certain jobs that put them and what should be the military’s primary goals at risk. If they do, they are likely to find a connection between the disciplinary breakdown at the jail of ill repute in Iraq and the sexual politics of people who think the military is just one more sociological playground which can be changed into something it isn’t.

I knew gays and feminists were to blame for 9-11. Now, thanks to the deep thinking of Calcified Cal, we know Abu Ghraib is also their fault.

Suddenly, I’m reminded of the General Turgidson in Dr Strangelove, with his obsession over the purity of his personal bodily fluids. Cal Thomas’s column must actually be written by Al Franken — surely a conservative can’t be such an idiot. mjh

The Mother of Invention

I got these images as an email attachment from a friend and decided to turn them into a rotating display.mjh

Bush Bumper Stickers

Add this code to your own page:
<iframe src="http://www.RooftopRevolt.com/stickers/index.htm" width="405" height="105" scrolling="no"><a href="http://www.RooftopRevolt.com/stickers/index.htm">Bush Bumper Stickers</a></iframe>

(just select the blue text and copy and paste into your own webpage or blog) or link directly to these scrolling bumper stickers.

Bush Bumper Stickers, part of my Rooftop Revolt — Overthrow Bush

Fair and Balanced? Yeah, Right.

I watched the local news at noon the day John

Kerry came to town. The top story was the arrest of a murderer, then coverage moved to Kerry. Kerry was shown standing around the airport

waiting for something to happen. No on-the-scene sound was included, just a voice-over reading his schedule.

After Kerry’s two

minutes, coverage shifted to Duhbya. Bush was shown, as he always is, in front of a crowd, giving a speech. We heard him speak: ”a

certain senator who has been around a while. He’s been around so long he has taken about both sides of every issue.” Re-read that

stunningly inarticulate dig (after so many opportunities to rehearse it). This same clip appeared on a later local broadcast on a

different station.

The TV programmers will insist they fairly showed equal time for both candidates. One was silenced — the other

delivered precisely the message he wants us to beLIEve, however ineptly.

”The Press” we used to count on has long be replaced by

”The Media,” which exists to fatten its shareholders. The duty to inform has been replaced by the desire to sell. We have given

away the public airwaves (which used to belong to the People) and now our airwaves and our money are being used to steal our freedom to

choose wisely. We are being sold the product that benefits the shareholders the most. Forget about what’s good for America. mjh

”Blow up your TV.” — John Prine.

Repeating Ashcroft’s Blame Game

Civil Libertarians Created ‘The Wall’ That Aided 9-11 By Heather Mac Donald, LATimes

It’s time to connect the dots: Decades of unjustified and unnecessary restrictions — pushed through by hysterical civil libertarians — paralyzed U.S. counterterrorism capacities before 9/11. And despite the terrible price we paid for it on that day, the nation appears poised to repeat those mistakes….

As the recent 9/11 commission hearings showed, no impediment to national security was more deadly or nonsensical than the ”wall” separating intelligence and criminal terrorism investigators.

The wall grew out of the post-Watergate belief that U.S. citizens face no greater enemy than their own government. …

But getting a terrorism wiretap against a U.S. citizen requires virtually the same level of evidence as a criminal wiretap. …

Before 9/11, the specter of civil-liberties violations reliably defeated sound national-security policy. We are heading in that dangerous direction again.

[Heather Mac Donald is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.]

So, who is to blame for 9-11? Civil libertarians, that’s who! Democracy is too hard to defend; it will be easier under fascism.

The 9/11 hearings have shown no such thing about this already destroyed ‘wall.’ That was merely the contention of John Ashcroft, who went beyond shirking responsibility to putting it all on others — the craven coward was as asleep as the rest of us; once awakened, he has rushed to bar the door and blame others. By parroting AssKraft without mentioning him, Mac Donald uses a classic tactic: a lie told many times becomes the truth.

The post-Watergate fears seem to have been justified. Remember that Republican President who won re-election by campaigning on fear (and an enemies list). Remember also the shame in which he resigned.

Finally, to the lie and nonsense that terrorism wiretaps are in any way difficult to obtain, read the following piece. mjh

Use of secret surveillance warrants soars By Shannon McCaffrey, NIGHT RIDDER

The government’s use of secret surveillance warrants to track spies and terrorists surged to a record high in 2003, surpassing for the first time the number of wiretaps sought by law enforcement in traditional criminal cases. …

Federal agents sought 1,727 warrants from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court for electronic eavesdropping and physical searches last year, said a Justice Department filing with Congress. Four applications were rejected [mjh: .2%], although two of them were later revised and approved.

The number of so-called FISA warrants jumped by 500 from 2002 and has almost doubled since 2001 when 934 applications were approved.

By comparison, there were 1,442 wiretap petitions in federal and state courts for crimes related to drugs and racketeering, according to a separate report from the Administrative Office of U.S. Courts. …

Passed by Congress in 1978 [mjh: Jimmy Carter's Democratic Presidency], the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) created a new court to oversee highly sensitive law enforcement activities related to espionage or terrorism. The Patriot Act, passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, broadened the government’s ability to seek warrants through the secretive 11-member court by essentially knocking down the once-sacrosanct wall that divided intelligence and law enforcement.

Question: do you think there are more drug crimes or acts of terrorism going on in America at this moment? How can there be so many terrorism warrants? Fewer than a dozen Saudis (not Iraqis) perpetrated the 9-11 crimes. Are there really thousands of terrorists in the country biding their time? Well, maybe, if you call a ”terrorist” anyone who opposes this right-wing power grab. mjh

When Did Conservative Come to Mean ‘Changing Everything’?

href="http://www.abqjournal.com/opinion/1OP5-02.HTM">ABQjournal Opinion

[A] simple majority of the Senate doesn’t cut it

anymore on the more partisan issues.

The standard these days is the supermajority of 60 votes require to stave off a

filibuster. …

Democrats have escalated the use of a parliamentary tactic previously used only rarely: the

filibuster. …

No one is surprised by the harsh and ugly tones coming from the right or the left these days. However, we

all have an obligation to recognize fact and to avoid blatant distortion. The Journals fails in that obligation in the editorial on the

”super-majority” guidelines (also known as Rule XXII or the Cloture rule).

Trusting that readers will simply accept its

pronouncement, the Journal makes no effort to inform, and, in fact, clouds the issue with words like ”anymore,” ”rarely” and

”these days.” These days extend back nearly 100 years. These rules have evolved over a very long time and have seen the influence

of people of diverse views. Indeed, the rules of order are ratified every session by a simple majority.

There was a time when

”conservative” meant favoring tradition and opposing unnecessary change. Now, it means little. It takes 5 minutes on the Web to

learn some history; does the Right assume we are all too lazy or ignorant to care? mjh

Senate Floor Procedures — Establishment of the

Cloture Rule

These practices led to the marathon filibusters by debate that remained characteristic of the Senate into the 1960s.

Virtual Reference Desk > Cloture” href=”http://www.senate.gov/reference/reference_index_subjects/Cloture_vrd.htm”>U.S.

Senate: Reference Home > Virtual Reference Desk > Cloture

The cloture rule — Rule 22 — is the only formal procedure that

Senate rules provide for breaking a filibuster. A filibuster is an attempt to block or delay Senate action on a bill or other matter.

Under cloture, the Senate may limit consideration of a pending matter to 30 additional hours of debate.

U.S. Senate: Filibuster

and Cloture

Standing Rules of The Senate: RULE

XXII

http://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/98-

425.pdf

href="http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/minute/The_American_Senate_Published.htm">U.S. Senate: Historical Minutes > 1921-

1940 > “The American Senate” Published

[I]n 1925…, Vice President Charles Dawes, a conservative Republican, unleashed

a blistering attack on a small group of progressive Republican senators who had filibustered legislation at the end of the

previous session.

Eight years earlier, the Senate had adopted its first cloture rule, which allowed two-thirds of the senators

present and voting to take steps to end debate on a particular measure. Dawes thought the Senate should revise that rule, making it

easier to apply by allowing a simple majority to close debate. The existing two-thirds rule, he thundered, ”at times enables Senators

to consume in oratory those last precious minutes of a session needed for momentous decisions,” thereby placing great power in the

hands of a few senators. Unless Rule 22 were liberalized, it would ”lessen the effectiveness, prestige, and dignity of the

United States Senate.” Dawes’ unexpected diatribe infuriated senators of all philosophical leanings, who believed that the chamber’s

rules were none of the vice president’s business.

On June 1, 1926, Columbia University professor Lindsay Rogers published a book

entitled The American Senate. His purpose was to defend the Senate tradition of virtually unlimited debate, except in times of

dire national emergency. Professor Rogers fundamentally disagreed with Vice President Dawes. In his memorably stated view, the

”undemocratic, usurping Senate is the indispensable check and balance in the American system, and only complete freedom of debate

allows it to play this role.” ”Adopt [majority] cloture in the Senate,” he argued, ”and the character of the

American Government will be profoundly changed.”

Written in a breezy journalistic style, Rogers’ American Senate

encompassed issues beyond debate limitation. Rogers, Lindsay. The American Senate. New York: A.A. Knopf, 1926

Notice,

that 80 years ago a conservative republican was making the same arguments — against the last of the ”progressive” republicans (now

an oxymoron). mjh

href="http://slate.msn.com/id/2078519/">Filibusted – Pirating the Senate. By Brandt Goldstein

Filibustering was rare until the

late 1800s. It then became steadily more common, leading to reform in 1917 when the Senate passed Rule XXII, the procedure for invoking

”cloture,” or closure. According to the original Rule XXII, a vote by two-thirds of the Senate could kill a filibuster, a process

first successfully used in 1919 to ensure a vote on the Treaty of Versailles. An amendment in 1975 reduced to 60 the number of senators

necessary to halt a filibuster. In practical terms, therefore, a filibuster today is possible only if at least 41 senators support it.

Historical Minutes > 1964-Present > Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment”

History Home > Historical Minutes > 1964-Present > Filibuster Derails Supreme Court Appointment

[Republican

Minority Leader Everett] Dirksen and others withdrew their support. Although the committee recommended confirmation, floor consideration

sparked the first filibuster in Senate history on a Supreme Court nomination.

On October 1, 1968, the Senate failed to invoke

cloture. Johnson then withdrew the nomination….