The Awful Truth — again and again

Op-Ed Columnist: The Awful Truth By PAUL KRUGMAN, NYTimes

People are saying terrible things about George Bush. They say that his officials weren’t sincere about pledges to balance the budget. They say that the planning for an invasion of Iraq began seven months before 9/11, that there was never any good evidence that Iraq was a threat and that the war actually undermined the fight against terrorism.

But these irrational Bush haters are body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freaks who should go back where they came from: the executive offices of Alcoa, and the halls of the Army War College. …

The point is that the credentials of the critics just keep getting better. How can Howard Dean’s assertion that the capture of Saddam hasn’t made us safer be dismissed as bizarre, when a report published by the Army War College says that the war in Iraq was a “detour” that undermined the fight against terror? How can charges by Wesley Clark and others that the administration was looking for an excuse to invade Iraq be dismissed as paranoid in the light of Mr. O’Neill’s revelations? …

More important, having a few months of good news doesn’t excuse a consistent pattern of dishonest, irresponsible leadership. And that pattern keeps getting harder to deny.

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John Edwards

John EdwardsChallenging Bush: A Journey From a Mill Town Ends With a Run for President By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr., NYTimes

Senator Edwards’s campaign for president, which won the coveted endorsement of The Des Moines Register yesterday, hinges on the notion that he has not forgotten where he comes from. He usually arrives at his events to the blaring sound of John Cougar Mellencamp singing “I was born in a small town.” And it never takes him long to tell his audience he was reared by working-class parents in mill towns of the Carolinas and was the first in his family to go to college.

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No Room for Moderates in GOP

Op-Ed Contributor: The Vital Republican Center By CHRISTIE WHITMAN

Now … many moderate Republicans feel even less certain of their place in the party. When President Bush, arguably one of the more conservative presidents in recent history, is under attack from the right wing of the party for his proposal regarding immigration and migrant workers, is it any wonder moderates feel out of sync?
It doesn’t seem to matter to conservatives that moderates share their views on the vast majority of those bedrock principles that have always been the foundation of Republicanism: smaller government, the power of free markets, a strong national defense. Because we disagree on a few issues, most notably a woman’s right to choose, many conservatives act as if they wish we moderates would just disappear. …

I also often had to battle extremists within my own party. I remember a Republican leader in Congress telling me not to use the word “balance” when talking about environmental policy — it implied that we were giving too much away to the environmentalists. Moderate voters who are concerned about the environment were often left frustrated.

Former New Jersey governor and EPA head, Christie Whitman is writing about the trouble moderate Republicans have getting acceptance from the Radical Right (whom she incorrectly identifies as conservatives). Tell us about it, Christie. mjh

See also: Conservatives Against Bush
GOP Wins the Hypocrisy Trophy

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These People are Nasty

CNN.com – Cabinet members defend Bush from O’Neill – Jan. 12, 2004

In the book, ”The Price of Loyalty,” by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, scheduled for publication Tuesday, O’Neill says administration officials discussed plans to go to war with Iraq as early as their first weeks in office.

He also compares Bush’s presence at Cabinet meetings to ”a blind man in a room full of deaf people.” …

An interview with O’Neill aired Sunday night on the CBS program “60 Minutes.”

In it, O’Neill said the Bush administration was eyeing an invasion of Iraq “from the very beginning” — months before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, that administration officials said changed their strategic perspective. …

“For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the U.S. has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap,” O’Neill said in the interview.

“We didn’t listen to [O’Neill’s] wacky ideas when he was in the White House, why should we start listening to him now,” said a senior official. The official said he informed Bush of O’Neill’s comments but declined to describe the president’s reaction.

Suskind said he interviewed hundreds of people for the book, including several Cabinet members who gave him their accounts of meetings with the president, their notes and documents. …

O’Neill also told Time magazine he never saw evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq –Bush’s primary justification for the U.S.-led invasion of the country in March.

None have been found, although searches have turned up evidence of continuing research on banned weapons.

O’Neill predicted that his former colleagues — one of whom has already tried to paint him as a disgruntled former employee with a “tin ear” for politics — would hit back.

“These people are nasty and they have a long memory,” O’Neill told Time.

More apt would be that Bush is a deaf man in a country full of blind people. mjh

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Deference or Acquiescence to the Executive?

Justices Refuse to Review Case on Secrecy and 9/11 Detentions

The case that the justices declined today to review, Center for National Security Studies v. Justice Department, 03-472, pitted two fundamental values against each other — the right of the public to know details of how its government operates versus the government’s need to keep some information secret to protect national security.

With today’s refusal by the justices, the last word in the case apparently belongs to Judge David B. Sentelle of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In his opinion for the 2-to-1 majority on June 17, he noted that courts had always shown deference to executive branch officials in the field of national security.

“The need for deference in this case is just as strong as in earlier cases,” Judge Sentelle wrote in the opinion that was joined by Judge Karen LeCraft Henderson and reversed a lower court finding. “America faces an enemy just as real as its former cold war foes.”

Judge David S. Tatel offered a blistering dissent last June. “By accepting the government’s vague, poorly explained allegations, and by filling in the gaps in the government’s case with its own assumptions about facts absent from the record, this court has converted deference into acquiescence,” he asserted.

Notice a court stacked with Republicans said we should trust the President and the Supreme Court, which appointed this President, agrees. Checks and balances? mjh

Judges
* Judge Sentelle was appointed United States Circuit Judge in October 1987. [by Reagan]
* Judge Henderson was appointed United States Circuit Judge in July 1990. [by Bush’s dad]
* Judge Tatel was appointed to the United States Court of Appeals in October 1994. [by Clinton]

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Uptown Art

Here is my

proposal for artwork in the Uptown Area.

On the south side of the Louisiana overpass, let’s erect a larger than life Coronado en

la Entrada crossing the Rio Grande (represented by the concrete ditch down the middle of I-40). Enjoy the irony that Coronado will never

reach his mall.

Before you get out your hacksaws, wait! Look to the North. Here we will place some representation of the Pueblo

peoples (no, not a slot machine). I leave it to the many fine Native American artists in New Mexico to decide what is fitting. I do

recommend the Marriott acquire a Chacoan facade, like the Homeland Court downtown (Bless the Homeland!).

This memorial will

perpetually represent the gulf between the First Immigrants, for even the Indians came from somewhere else — though I have no cognitive

dissonance from the notion that they came from someplace else AND have always been here (I feel that way myself).

What about the

Anglos (not to mention Blacks, Asians, everyone else — which is par for the course)? We already have our memorial in the two malls,

where we seek new bargains and homogeneity. I can’t wait until they build more stores between the two malls, finally putting to use that

idle open space! [Updated 2006: they’re here!]

Most fitting to

our age would be large digital screens which would perpetually flash advertisements and security alerts. We’ll take as our inspiration

the rape of the National Mall in DC by NFL and Pepsi, featuring Brittany Spears, stripped of all decency (huh?). Maybe these screens

could occasionally show photos of the Sandias, which soon will not be visible from Uptown. mjh

The

Background

ABQjournal: Locals Split on Uptown Art Plan By Lloyd Jojola, AbqJournal.com

City residents had a chance to weigh in on

the proposed design concept for two sculptures to be installed as part of the planned Louisiana Boulevard and Interstate 40 interchange

reconstruction project.
The contemporary, cone-shaped public art pieces are influenced by desert geographical forms. The 36-feet-

tall-by-64-feet-wide cone shapes would, among other things, allow rain to be captured and used to water the landscape.

ABQjournal: Bowled Under:

Proposed Uptown Art Criticized By Lloyd Jojola, AbqJournal.com

Everyone’s an art critic. The design for two Uptown sculptures

costing about $300,000 and resembling “giant coffee filters” or “urns” has already received some colorful criticism, and it has yet to be

the focal point of a public meeting.

ABQjournal: Letters to the Editor

Louisiana

‘Cones’ Don’t Fit In

The reason the proposed volcanoes stand out is because they are modernist kitsch— statements about

the ideal, circa 1945. I don’t care if the project makes an arcane reference to the idea of “Uptown,” so long as it incorporates an

appropriate degree of complexity. At present moment, it strikes me as a “one liner” that has a $300,000 price tag.
JOSHUA ARNOLD

Tijeras

Arthur Alpert’s take on this:
Alpert’s Truth: I Become a Know-Nothing

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Open Source Politics

A progressive/liberal blog with a lot of writers and content. Could take a long time to

graze this one. mjh

Open Source Politics

Open Source

Politics was founded to promote active discourse among progressives. We firmly believe that the strength of every democratic nation comes

from government of, by, and for its people.

Open Source Politics is an open exchange of ideas. In the true spirit of Open Source, we

believe that government can best be improved through community dialogue. We are diverse; we are determined; we talk about everything that

affects our lives.

The ongoing renewal necessary for the health of democracy is not achieved by the election of politicians, but in

discussion and debate among citizens, in the triumph of reason and research over ideology, and, most importantly, in your participation.

These are our guiding principles. Join us.

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"It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds." — Sam Adams