The Liberal Coalition

Former Bush Admin Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, who I already mentioned here, has got something to say about how the Bush administration works.

The Bush Administration began making plans for an invasion of Iraq, including the use of American troops, within days of President Bush's inauguration in January of 2001 -- not eight months later after the 9/11 attacks, as has been previously reported.

This radically changes the previous statement by the same network (CBS) that the attack of Iraq was planned a whole five hours after 9/11:

"CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks."

Or, for that matter, a letter from the Project for a New American Century written to Bill Clinton in 1998 that advocated the exact plan that Bush later adopted "after 9/11".

But an anonymous senior administration official is quoted (this week) as calling the idea that the invasion was planned before 9/11 "laughable." Those guys sure have a great sense of humor.

Yours Truly, And Then...

posted by Eryk @ 11:17 PM |

Matthew Yglesias at Tapped looks at the contortions the right wing is going through to get the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) into the Constitution.

There's nothing remotely democratic about a constitutional amendment barring state legislatures from allowing gay and lesbian couples to get married. What's really going on here is that conservatives know they're losing this fight. Gay marriage remains unpopular, but on all other fronts support for gay rights has been growing strongly in recent years. Meanwhile, young people are far more supportive of gay marriage than are our elders, putting time firmly on the side of the left. A constitutional amendment today, however, would lock the public opinion of 2004 in stone for decades to come, as amendments are incredibly hard to repeal. If you'd passed a Federal Anti-Miscegenation Amendment back in 1956, interracial unions might still be illegal today.

Every time there is some sort of cultural activity that "shocks and outrages" the right wing, the first thing they do is propose a constitutional amendment. The anti-flag burning amendment pops up every so often to quash the wide-spread epidemic of flag-burning that rages across the country. [Trolls - that was sarcasm.]

As I've pointed out in a previous post, the FMA would be the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution since Prohibition that would specifically limit the rights of citizens. I'm also slightly curious as to what would happen if there was an amendment that was at odds with another amendment, such as the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Wouldn't they cancel each other out?

Regardless of the legal microscopy, the idea of the FMA is just plain un-American for one simple reason. It codifies a religious doctrine into the fabric of American law. After all, according to the 1977 edition of The Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church:

The union of a husband and wife in heart, body, and mind is intended by God for their mutual joy; for the help and comfort given one another in prosperity and adversity; and, when it is God's will, for the procreation of children and their nuture in the knowledge and love of the Lord. Therefore marriage is not to be entered into unadvisedly or lightly, but reverently, deliberately, and in accordance with the purposes for which it was instituted by God.

The word "marriage" is the catch. It's loaded with both religious and secular meaning. Marriage has the same legal impact if it happens in St. Patrick's Cathedral with all the trappings of sacraments and ritual or if the couple goes down to the county clerk's office on their lunch hour and has a judge perform the ceremony with all the formality of a real estate closing. The result is the same - a formal promise and commitment on the part of each person to care for each other. That's it. (Note, by the way, that having children comes in third on the list of reasons for getting married - at least according to the Episcopalians.) To me, that transcends religious and legal obligation. It empowers and enriches the basic human decency that we or any civilized society aspire to. We don't need an amendment for that, and if we did, we are in far more trouble than any law - or church - can repair.

[Reprinted in full from Bark Bark Woof Woof]

posted by Mustang Bobby @ 12:22 PM |

The Washington Post has produced what appears to be the final, definitive report on Saddam Hussein's weapons capability and weapons development programs. After reading it, I realize that we all owe a huge debt of thanks to President George Bush for invading Iraq and destroying all of Hussein's WMD stockpiles, and for making it impossible for his weapons programs to ever be effectively revived.

Let me clarify: we owe a huge debt of thanks to President George H. W. Bush for his 1991 invasion of Iraq, which, in addition to permanently insuring that Saddam Hussein would never again be a serious threat to anyone, also had broad international support. But I digress.

According to the Post's report, current-day Iraq has no WMD. What WMD Hussein had were destroyed during or shortly after the first Gulf War. Hussein did have a driving ambition to replenish his chemical and biological weapons supply, and even to build his own nukes, but thanks to the sanctions and inspections regime, none of these ambitions were ever more than wishful thinking. The most dangerous weapon Hussein had in 2002 was a handful of conventional missiles whose range was a bit longer than UN sanctions allowed, and which inspectors destroyed.

More at edwardpig.
(Note: I hate to be posting something which I'm many of the other Coalition members have already written about, but hey, I got here first)

posted by David Bailey @ 12:50 AM |

It's unlikely that the CEO of Hewlett-Packard will ever have to worry about her job being transplanted to India or China or Pakistan. But she's not worried about her own people's high-tech jobs either. Not worried at all. In fact, she could care less. Here's Ms. Fiorina on the subject of American jobs:

"There is no job that is America's God-given right anymore," said Carly Fiorina, chief executive for Hewlett-Packard Co. "We have to compete for jobs."

In fact, it seems that CEOs of technology companies are of one mind on the subject - although in truth they are no different from the CEOs of other companies.

Intel chief executive Craig Barrett said the United States "now has to compete for every job going forward. That has not been on the table before. It had been assumed we had a lock on white-collar jobs and high-tech jobs. That is no longer the case."

The vague unease felt by many who don't know someone who's lost their job because the work was sent overseas or whose job is not at risk is starting to spread; starting to become less vague. I'm certainly no policy expert, so I'm in no position to say whether "protectionist" policies would work or not, but I do know - see my previous posts at The Fulcrum on the insidious effects of Wal*Mart on the economy and jobs - that in a so-called jobless recovery, the loss of more jobs to low-wage, low-benefit, off-shore locations is not a good thing.

Dr. Dean has a slightly different take on this practice:

Democratic front-runner Howard Dean said during a debate last month that America needs a president "who doesn't think that big corporations who get tax cuts ought to be able to move their headquarters to Bermuda and their jobs offshore."

Republicans, on the other hand, continue to hand out tax breaks to their corporate backers regardless of their employment policies.

The article on MSNBC that prompted this post (and from which I got all the quotes above) set me to thinking about some of the effects of "offshoring." The article was specifically about high-tech jobs, which got me thinking about the products that these companies make: computer chips and peripherals, primarily. The jobs moving off-shore are "white-collar" jobs, meaning that those losing their paychecks are those most likely able to afford to buy the latest products of their own companies.

Meaning... follow me here, it's really not that hard... demand for high-tech items drops, meaning lower profits for H-P and Intel. See, making that logical leap wasn't all that hard, was it? Amazing that Carly Fiorina and Craig Barrett seem to have completely missed it. But then so have so many other CEOs.

Makes you wonder why they are paid so much doesn't it?

posted by Charles Perez @ 4:14 PM |

How funny is it when the first thing Ed Gillespie says includes the phrase "political hate speech?" What could have Mr. Gillespie so angry this time?

It would have to be the 7000th inane Hitler = X comparison since 1945. Has there been a single world leader since 1945 who has not had a little moustache painted on his face by some junior agitprop club, left or right?

But in all fairness, it's not like anyone on the right ever compared Clinton to Hitler. Or did it a second time. Or a third time. Or a fourth. Or a fifth time.

That said, I also want to briefly mention my nomination for Most Incoherently Angry Right Wing Media Pundit. I am sure that Ed Gillespie will take his precious civility and strike down this "stray" right winger with lightning from God, who, as we all know, is a great fan of Republicans and absolutely despises Howard Dean and Jews.

Yours Truly, And Then...

posted by Eryk @ 2:02 AM |

Fox News is saying that the Dean campaign has been calling Iowa Kerry supporters stating that John Kerry's cancer has returned. I hope this isn't true: recall the Bush team saying in South Carolina that McCain's cancer was terminal? And that he fathered an illegitimate black child?

If this isn't true, the Dean team may be in trouble. Unless, of course, it's tied to the Republicans...which is likely. Why would Dean be attacking Kerry in Iowa, where Gephardt is runner-up? In fact, why would dean be messing with the first few primaries at all? He's set. What DOES make sense is that Republicans, knowing Dean's victory is close to certain, are setting him up for a scandal that could tarnish him through the primaries.

Posted at Kick the Leftist

posted by Peter @ 7:27 PM |