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Out on the Web: Articles Worth Reading

Vol. 2, No. 3--April 13, 2005

Closing the Credibility Gap
While attending an antiwar rally Saturday, March 19, I had profoundly mixed feelings. From an organizer's standpoint, the rally was a success: 5,000 people came out in the rain to hear speeches and music and march around town. The turnout was the largest for an antiwar rally in Seattle in the two years since the war in Iraq began. Moreover, it was part of an international day of more than 700 protests in the U.S. alone. Yet I couldn't shake the feeling that this was not the way to get our troops home, although the germ of an idea was present. [read more]

DeLay Tactics
Tom DeLay lost a big ally this morning when he opened what is normally the very friendly Wall Street Journal editorial page. Headlined "Smells Like The Beltway," the editorial page ticks through every charge being leveled against DeLay of late: "Taken separately, and on present evidence, none of the latest charges directly touch" DeLay. "At worst, they paint a picture of a man who makes enemies by playing political hardball and loses admirers by resorting to politics-as-usual. The problem, rather, is that Mr. DeLay, who rode to power in 1994 on a wave of revulsion at the everyday ways of big government, has become the living exemplar of some of its worst habits." [read more]

Democracy Redefined!
If George W. Bush were to hold up a carrot and call it a watermelon, the American news media would immediately begin calling carrots watermelons. That's an undeniable fact. Equally undeniable is the fact that we have long passed the point when we can trust the American corporate media to report the news. But even more distressing is the fact that we now have reached the point when we cannot even trust them with the English language. [read more]

Entries for a Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era
For the last few years we have been ruled by lexicographers. Never has an administration spent so much time creating, defining, or redefining terms, perhaps because no one (since George Orwell) has grasped the power and possibility that lay hidden in plain sight in the naming and renaming of words. In a sense, our post-9/11 moment began with two definitions: The Bush administration named our global enemy "terrorism" and called the acts that followed a "war," which was soon given the moniker "the global war on terror" (later reduced to the acronym GWOT, also known as World War IV), which was then given an instant future -- being defined as a "generational struggle" that was still to come. All this, along with "war" itself, was simply announced rather than officially "declared." [read more]

Dictators, Tyrants and Fools
The greatest strength of the Republican majority in Congress and their allies in the White House is their unfailing ability to say and do anything, no matter how hypocritical or brazen or wrong, in order to win. The second greatest strength of the Republican majority in Congress and their allies in the White House is the simple fact that the news media almost never calls them on this, but that is an essay for another time. [read more]

Energy insanity
As a general rule about Bush & Co., the more closely a policy is associated with Dick Cheney, the worse it is. Which brings us to energy policy -- remember his secret task force? In the long history of monumentally bad ideas, the Cheney policy is a standout for reasons of both omission and commission. Dumb, dumber, and dumbest. [read more]

Feeding Tubes for the Third World
In an attempt to call the attention of the United States Congress to the plight of poorer countries, a coalition of anti-poverty organizations has launched a new campaign called "Feeding Tubes for the Third World." "A light bulb went off," said Michael Freeman of Stop International Hunger. "We needed to get people into comas and insert feeding tubes." [read more]

Goodbye to All That
With conservatism dominant in every branch of government, it is clear that liberals are an opposition party. We have to think, act, and strategize like an opposition party. That means figuring out ways to articulate what we stand for while not alienating those who may disagree with us but can be persuaded to see things our way. [read more]

In the Name of Politics
By JOHN C. DANFORTH
By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians. The elements of this transformation have included advocacy of a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, opposition to stem cell research involving both frozen embryos and human cells in petri dishes, and the extraordinary effort to keep Terri Schiavo hooked up to a feeding tube. The problem is not with people or churches that are politically active. It is with a party that has gone so far in adopting a sectarian agenda that it has become the political extension of a religious movement. [read more]

Living Will is the Best Revenge
Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

• In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.
• I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

[read more]

Montana House Condemns Patriot Act
Montana lawmakers overwhelmingly passed what its sponsor called the nation's most strongly worded criticism of the federal Patriot Act on Friday, uniting politicians of all stripes. [read more]

Rumsfeld Gets Grilled at Truth & Reconciliation Hearing
It was several years after the Bush Administration had left office, in what has been called the period of "Restoration of Constitutional rule." Criminal indictments were about to be unsealed, naming the architects of the former regime's foreign wars/torture policy and martial law-type domestic rule. Those individuals had one chance to escape likely incarceration: appearances before the recently-instituted Truth & Reconciliation Commission. Here is a partial transcript from Donald Rumsfeld's testimony. [read more]

Schiavo Case Proves Dems are Starving for Leadership
This column is not about Terri Schiavo and the wrenching spectacle that has surrounded her tragic fate. May she rest in peace. It is about Congressional Democrats and how they once again pathetically misread what moral values mean in a political context. May they miraculously wake from their persistent vegetative state--or it won't be long before they are receiving their political last rites. [read more]

The Darkness Drops Again
The list of appalling and abominable and flatly criminal acts perpetrated by this administration is literally becoming too long to manage. I suppose this is what happens when the entire government is owned by one party. I suppose this is what happens when that one party is owned lock, stock and barrel by a cancerous combination of oil companies, weapons manufacturers and Rapture-happy fundamentalist Christians who think God put dinosaur bones in the ground to mess with our heads. [read more]

To err on the side of life?
This week's phrase: "to err on the side of life." It's a Bush-ism that frames an important and complex ethical debate in simplistic terms of black-and-white absolutes; a variation of the either-you're-with-us-or-against-us philosophy. The phrase ingeniously plays off a commonly accepted bit of wisdom -- "to err on the side of caution." Take out "caution" and insert the politically charged word "life" as in "pro-life," and the GOP base is energized while putting the evil "liberals" on the defensive. [read more]

Water wars: Bottling up the world's supply of H2O
Fortune magazine has touted water as the "best investment sector for the century." The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development has said that "water is the last infrastructure frontier for private investors." The Toronto Globe & Mail has stated that "water is fast becoming a globalized corporate industry." This news should send shivers down the spine of any concerned American. [read more ]

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