The Daily Outrage

A startling report from an esteemed Pentagon advisory council sharply rebukes President Bush’s belief that freedom is on the march. “American direct intervention in the Muslim World has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the United States to single-digits in some Arab societies,” the report found. “Muslims do not ‘hate our freedom,’ but rather they hate our policies.”

Again Bush achieves the opposite of his goals, much as he has with the rising abortion rate. mjh

ABQjournal: Readers Say Keeping America Safe Isn’t Only About Money

THE RAVINGS of John Dendahl illustrate why he was demoted by his own party. He says that “the Left refuses to expel” those who suggest “America had it coming on Sept. 11, 2001.” Give me a break.
Is “the Left” some organization that can expel people? Did anyone ever say “America had it coming”? I never heard anyone say it. However, it is true that the CIA trained Osama bin Laden and unleashed him on the Soviets. Then, when the Soviets left Afghanistan, the U.S. abandoned the Afghans, providing fertile ground for the growth of the Taliban.
One thing leads to another. Is it traitorous to say so? Sept. 11 was one tragic day in a sequence of tragic U.S. policy decisions.
George Bush’s victory was the slimmest by a sitting president since 1916. Bush ran a fear-mongering and smearing campaign just as he did against John McCain four years ago. He fooled a lot of honest people into hating and fearing John Kerry. He has nothing for which to be proud.
Bush has never done “the people’s work.” He is child of privilege, the “folksiest” of the Bush Dynasty but not one of us folks who work for a living. The rich will get richer during the next four years and the poor will die in Iraq.
B.W. THOMPSON
Albuquerque

Threat of theocracy: Will one religious outlook dominate U.S. secular policy? by VB Price

The prospect of one religious outlook dominating secular policy in America deeply worried the founders of our Constitution. While most founders professed religious faith, they understood that the tyranny of one religion over all others constituted a pernicious form of oppression, as anyone familiar with the religious brutalities of European history would attest. That’s why the Constitution’s First Amendment has what is known as the “establishment clause,” which forbids an official, or unofficial, state religion in America.

Nowhere in the Constitution are the words “separation of church and state” found. They are unnecessary. The establishment clause states “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

When one religious point of view has political dominance in lawmaking circles, it threatens the free exercise of all other religions and spiritual points of view. The founders wanted nothing to do with such a theocratic setup, in which one religion or coalition of religious persuasions made laws favorable only to that point of view.

Hastert Launches a Partisan Policy (washingtonpost.com) By Charles Babington

In scuttling major intelligence legislation that he, the president and most lawmakers supported, Speaker J. Dennis Hastert last week enunciated a policy in which Congress will pass bills only if most House Republicans back them, regardless of how many Democrats favor them.

Hastert’s position, which is drawing fire from Democrats and some outside groups, is the latest step in a decade-long process of limiting Democrats’ influence and running the House virtually as a one-party institution. Republicans earlier barred House Democrats from helping to draft major bills such as the 2003 Medicare revision and this year’s intelligence package. Hastert (R-Ill.) now says such bills will reach the House floor, after negotiations with the Senate, only if “the majority of the majority” supports them. …

In a little-noticed speech in the Capitol a year ago, Hastert said one of his principles as speaker is “to please the majority of the majority.”

“On occasion, a particular issue might excite a majority made up mostly of the minority,” he continued. “Campaign finance is a particularly good example of this phenomenon. The job of speaker is not to expedite legislation that runs counter to the wishes of the majority of his majority.” …

Some congressional scholars say Hastert is emphasizing one element of his job to the detriment of another. As speaker, said Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute, “you are the party leader, but you are ratified by the whole House. You are a constitutional officer,” in line for the presidency after the vice president. At crucial times, he said, a speaker must put the House ahead of his party.

Vast Borrowing Seen in Altering Social Security By RICHARD W. STEVENSON

The White House and Republicans in Congress are all but certain to embrace large-scale government borrowing to help finance President Bush’s plan to create personal investment accounts in Social Security, according to administration officials, members of Congress and independent analysts …

Borrowing by the government could be necessary to establish the personal accounts because of the way Social Security pays for benefits. Under the current system, the payroll tax levied on workers goes to benefits for people who are already retired. Personal accounts would be paid for out of the same pool of money; they would allow workers to divert a portion of their payroll taxes into accounts invested in mutual funds or other investments.

The money going into the accounts would therefore no longer be available to pay benefits to current retirees. The shortfall would have to be made up somehow to preserve benefits for people who are already retired during the transition from one system to the other, and by nearly all estimates there is no way to make it up without relying at least in part on government borrowing.

Mr. Bush and Republicans in Congress have paid little political price in the last four years for the swing from budget surpluses to deficits. But some polls show that Americans consider reducing the deficit to be a higher priority than many other goals, including cutting taxes, and embracing a new round of borrowing could pose political as well as economic risks. …

Mr. Bush has vowed to push hard to remake Social Security. Republicans in Congress say the White House has signaled to them that Mr. Bush will put the issue at the top of his domestic agenda in the coming year.

But the White House has never answered fundamental questions about Mr. Bush’s plan. In particular, it has not explained how it would deal with the financial quandary created by its call for personal accounts.

Christian-Republican alliance: Faustian bargain? – American Press Institute

Growing numbers of Christians are alarmed by the hijacking of their faith. In an editorial last week, Robert Parham of the moderate Baptist Center for Ethics vowed to “take on the religious right more forcefully — critiquing its false religion and anointment of the GOP as God’s Only Party.”

Meanwhile, emboldened by the perception that evangelicals decided the election, Jerry Falwell, James Dobson and other evangelical leaders close to the White House are already lining up to claim the spoils. They expect to have the power to shape the Republican agenda on everything from constitutional amendments to Supreme Court appointments.

But before conservative Christians get too comfortable with this church-state alliance, they would do well to remember a bit of familiar wisdom: Those who seek power by riding the back of the tiger end up inside.

Colorado Luis

Rocky Mountain Progressive Network got hold of an e-mail from soon-to-be-ex-Colorado Senate President John Andrews (R-Centennial). It’s very revealing to see how Republicans deal with electoral disaster, so check it out. Andrews does not engage in any handwringing whatsoever about getting trounced at the polls for promoting an out-of-touch right wing social agenda. Instead, he’s getting a radio show and he’s going to promote that agenda tirelessly. I think there is a lesson for progressives here. It’s ridiculous to think we should retreat from what we stand for in order to win an election. What we need to do is get out there in the media and keep selling our own ideas. The advantage is more people agree with our values to begin with.