Al Gore Pressured to Run

Al Gore got the shaft in 2000 from the Media Whores. Called a liar when even barely adequate reporting revealed the truth, he showed up on TV with weird red hair and very odd make up and snorted his way through one of the debates. I was in SFO, at a bar, for one of the debates and watched the crowd reaction very closely. I was not alone in being embarrassed for him. Still it took the Political Crime of the Century to deprive him of his rightful Office. He would have made a great President and should have been sworn in right after the Clinton Impeachment Hearings were concluded and Clinton did the honorable thing and resigned. As an incumbent he would have coasted to re-election. GWB would be a footnote and I wager that 9-11 would never have happened.

I see a similar parallel in the California Recall. Davis is road kill, has been since the "energy crisis", he should have seized all the assets of PG&E and gone "public power" all the way, let the courts sort it out, possession is 90% of the Law...Instead he did what Gray always does, he triangulated his way into political oblivion. Anything short of "no" means "yes"...you can't negotiate with these people, they are taking no prisoners. It is particularly galling to me that these tactics, both from the opposition and the Gov, actually work and we wind up with chaos.

GWB draws much of his approval rating from the mere fact that he at least pretends to stand for principle. I know that the Potemkin cover he rigs up for his most egregious actions should provide little protection, but he has a facade that appears to be based on principles, not expedience. And you really can fool some of the people all the time, about 20% or so, based on national IQ testing and the sales of Ann Coulter's books.

Lies and juvenile slander seem to be hot properties these days...

This sort of principled stand is what is fueling Howard Dean's incredible rise. When you examine his stands on the issues you will not agree with many of them. He is no Liberal, not even close. But there is a consistency of thought behind his positions that is not poll driven but comes from his heart and mind, let the chips fall where they may.

At a recent event, with Gov Dean in attendance, I had a long talk with a woman who was not happy with his gun control stance, believing that we need stronger handgun laws. I argued that no single issue, with the possible exception of War and Peace, should dominate an important political choice. Conversely I pointed out that the pro gun folks were every bit as committed to their ideas (cold dead hands and all of that...) and that had Al Gore the same gun control stance, essentially local option, in 2000, he would have carried Tennessee and West Virginia and been elected. Is any single issue worth electing or re-electing GWB and the neocons? Not! I hope the Greens can see this clearly in 2004, I would encourage the Demo nominee to seek their nomination as well, ala the New York Lib-Dems and Con-Reps.

This is the most important election since the Civil War. No doubt.

Gregg


I wonder if Al would like another shot at VP, he has some experience with the Office...Dean-Gore? Dean-Kerry? We elected two Texans last time, in violation of the Constitution, so why not a Yankee ticket? How 'bout Dean-Feinstein, or Dean-Clarke (as in Genl. Wesley)? Or Dean-Clinton, either one...dynamite!


RGJ  ¶ 6:53 PM

  This is very good...

Privatization and neo-feudalism

by Bill Willers

Rightwing strategist Grover Norquist, famous for his stated aim to shrink government so that he can drown it in a bathtub, is en route to having his way.

Recently, and within a brief time span, observers in many quarters have expressed their understanding that an unstated strategy behind the huge Republican tax cut has been to bring the U.S. government to its financial knees, thereby making it unable to cover the Right’s hated social programs - e.g., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid - and the administration of our public domain.

Paul Krugman, in a May 27 article in the New York Times titled “Stating the Obvious,” wrote that “the gimmicks used to make an $800-billion-plus tax cut carry an official price tag of only $320 billion are a joke, yet the cost without the gimmicks is so large that the nation can’t possibly afford it while keeping its other promises; ... The people now running America aren’t conservatives: they’re radicals who want to do away with the social and economic system we have, and the fiscal crisis they are concocting may give them the excuse they need.”

Two days later, Peronet Despeignes, reporting in the Financial Times of London, wrote, “The Bush administration has shelved a report commissioned by the Treasury that shows the US currently faces a future of chronic federal budget deficits totaling at least $44,200 trillion (the deficit is currently at about $6 trillion) in current US dollars.”

That’s trillion with a T. To put that terrifying figure in perspective, Despeignes reported it to be the rough equivalent of four years of U.S. economic output or 94 percent of all U.S. household assets, and that “closing the gap would require the equivalent of an immediate and permanent 66 per cent across-the-board income tax increase.”

The next day, on his public television show “Now,” Bill Moyers was blunt. The Bush administration, he said, kept news of this impending debt from the public “lest it throw the fear of God into Congress and the financial markets and cost them the tax cut for the rich.” Moyers went on to say that “we are watching the country’s future slip deeper and deeper into a black hole of red ink.”

And two days after that, Noam Chomsky, in an interview on C-Span televised on June 1, stated flatly that the tax cut was calculated to lead to a “fiscal train wreck.”

“At some point,” Krugman wrote, “Bond markets will balk - they won’t lend money to a government, even that of the United States, if that government’s debt is growing faster than its revenues, and there is no plausible story about how the budget will eventually come under control.”

But that’s the very point of massive tax cuts: breaking the bank so as to kill social programs. It was a point made very well by Press Secretary Ari Fleisher when pressed on the issue. Congress, Fleisher said, would have to reform programs accordingly. He didn’t say “kill,” which would have been more appropriate.

Corporate America has spent billions lobbying for deregulation of its activities and for privatization of everything from the health system to education to national parks and forests to Social Security - a situation that would lead to ownership and control by the corporate sector and a tiny handful of the super rich of virtually every aspect of society.

With no cash in the federal till - due to massive tax cuts along with huge deficits, and ultimate inability of the government to borrow further - there would no longer be much to argue about. The corporate sector would win by default, so that everything needed by the masses would have to be obtained through them at any price they would want to charge.

As the deficit balloons, the rightist program to privatize public lands is also moving right along. Free marketeer Terry Anderson, whose published plan to give each citizen “shares” of the public domain, said shares being sellable on the open market to those with the wealth to scoop them up, has been made President Bush’s adviser on public lands issues.

Late last year, fellow free marketeer and Interior secretary, Gale Norton, a product of the anti-environmental “Wise Use Movement,” revealed plans to “outsource” to the private sector 3,500 jobs in the U.S. Park Service. This raised no eyebrows, and by January 2003 the estimate had risen to more than 11,000 positions - an eyebrow-raising 72 percent. Soon thereafter, President Bush revealed that as many as 850,000 positions, now federal, could become privatized. It was a declaration of war on public ownership and government by the people, framed as an argument for fiscal efficiency.

With country and culture in the hands of a very few, democracy perishes. The great American Experiment would end not through internal weakness, but via carefully crafted “neoconservative” strategy from without, to be replaced by something resembling, more than anything else, medieval feudalism, only set in a high tech world. According to the plan now in place, “we the people” are to be the new serfs. As Thom Hartmann noted: “We’re entering a new and unknown but hauntingly familiar era.”

Mass media have been eager to keep ramifications of the tax cut and the loss of federal programs and public domain off of what they like to call their “radar screen.” Simply look at the power brokers of the private sector who are the owners: giants in defense contracting, advertising and industrial entertainment and recreation. All of them stand to be big winners in a system controlled by wealth.

Following 9-11, a mourning public and their congressional representatives too quickly handed the keys to the Kingdom to ideologues dedicated to killing government of, by and for the people. If we do not waken soon from our collective daze, our descendants will surely feel a deep rage at our having given up their birthright without a struggle.

Bill Willers is a contributing writer for Liberal Slant, www.liberalslant.com, where this story first appeared.
  ¶ 9:45 PM

  Very Odd....funny, but odd, beware the ad for some cybercasino but very funny,,,

Go to google.com and type in the words "weapons of mass destruction" (without the quotation marks). Then click I'M FEELING LUCKY right under the entry line.

Thanks to Juanita..

http://www.brazosriver.com/happenins.htm

Great stuff from the Great State of Texas....it really is another country
RGJ  ¶ 12:22 AM

  Ah, now I Recall...
7/24/03
Dispatch from Northern California,

Politics has been described as War by physically nonviolent means, but War nonetheless. The quality of American politics since 1968 is a mean reflection of this axiom, for in the last 35 years the issues that divide of our society have become more important than the values that have bound us together as one of the oldest functioning democratic Republics on Earth.

The California Recall is just the latest episode, the most recent outrage to be perpetrated on our electorate and our Constitution. It smells a lot like the Florida Recount ( and NO, I'm never gonna "get over it", and neither are 40 million other Americans! ) and my greatest fear is that the Elite Media (what we refer to as the "Paid Press") will treat it as they did the Florida Fiasco, as a sort of horserace, a sporting event to be handicapped and hyped, slipped between Laci Petersen, the Baylor Murder and color photos of dead Iraqis who might be sons of Saddam ( so we have bagged the sons of scum, when will we bag Dad ? Sorry, couldn't help myself. ). My greatest hope is that it is a wake up call to all Americans, that it points to the lengths that the Right will go to achieve total political dominance. Hopefully we can spotlight it as one more example of the many attempts to upend the voting rights of the people. Add it to the successful Colorado Redistricting Raid and the so far unsuccessful Texas Power Play by Team Bush, with an assist from Mad Dog DeLay and a pattern emerges that demonstrates one of the means by which the Rabid Right intends to achieve One Party Rule. It is ironic that most of these efforts will come cloaked as democratic tonics for real problems, problems which will be exploited and distorted for political gain and then placed back on the shelf for next time. I think I will do a little research on Hiram Johnson and the Progressive Republicans (whew...1910, ancient history and Progressive Republicans in California? Farms in Berkeley? Mooo....), could be some fertile fields to sow, some pearls. I am very concerned about the apparent ostrich strategy of the Democrats, stick our collective heads in the sand and kick dirt wildly at the noise to our rear. Please recall the most prominent feature of the prone ostrich is a very large target sticking up in the air. Time to fish or cut bait. Life, War and politics are not fair, they just are.

Question A, "Shall the Governor be recalled?" NO!
Question B, "Who is your choice for the Office if the recall is successful? Choose one of these Republicans"

What! I don't know...if we run no candidate and lose Question A then we abdicate without a fight. We are forced to defend Gray Davis, not a bad guy, not incompetent, but what is Plan B?. I supported him early on in '98 and I see him as a victim of his own success ( with an assist from Team Bush and the oily boys from Texas ) and a perfect example of those Democrats who fail to understand the nature of political War, he still believes that we can compromise with them, that they even want to reason with us. His lack of passion and his pale technocratic, triangulated approach to policy combine with the real perception of "pay to play" politics on his part to present the Right with this cheap shot, at 2 million a pop expect to see more recalls! So we have more irony, more pot and kettle stuff, just proving that you can't beat them at their own game, you have to redefine the game, change the rules. You have to make the tent bigger, you have to reach out to the people and grow the grassroots. It is just one of those things, a Republican can be bought and paid for by Industry and still be perceived as honest, while a Democrat who takes their money and supports them on occasion is a crook, go figure...But we don't need their money, Gov. Howard Dean proved that last quarter by raising $7.5 million dollars, topping the field, from over 60,000 people, mostly in amounts less than $250.00.

The latest Field Poll was very good news to all of us early adopters of Gov. Dean. He is now a contender, among a group that will boil down to three men, most likely Lieberman, the choice of the DLC and other elements of the Party who fail to understand the nature of Politics as War , Kerry, who is everybody's second choice and in a large field this is not a bad thing, little depth to his support but surprising breadth and Dean, who will consolidate the left and move rapidly to the center, where he is naturally more comfortable, and shed the perception of insurgency by winning early primaries and engineering a change of the guard at the DNC before the Convention. He will dominate the Convention machinery even as most of the "superdelegates" support Lieberman and push Kerry as a compromise. In the end the grassroots, grown to a forest by careful cybertending, will make the choice inevitable. We need a fighter, we need someone who can take Bush on at every level. Something no sitting Senator, compromised as they are by the nature of the Legislative process, can do. They have simply taken too many contradictory positions, over the years, to be credible as national candidates. While stranger things have happened, today in fact, I just don't see Americans electing a Lincolnesque Massachusetts Senator, with the initials JFK, to the Presidency in 2004. No sitting Senator has been elected to the Office since the last guy named JFK, in 1960, by a hair. I like Kerry, he is my second choice also, but I really don't see him as President. While any Democrat would be preferable to GWB, Gov. Dean is the kind of leader we need, he can hold their feet to the fire and roll back the tide of oppression, War and crushing debt that threatens our Posterity.
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer

RG Johnson
San Jose CA
http://rgjsoapboxblog.blogspot.com/
  ¶ 11:21 PM

  Prompted by news article at the one year mark...

Native born US Citizen, Jose Padilla, has been in solitary confinement, UNABLE TO SPEAK AT ALL WITH ANY LAWYER, for one year. If this man is a terrorist, if he had plans to kill hundreds of Americans, he should be confined for the rest of his natural life. But we should, at the very least, have the trial...before we put him in the Hole. And then there is this little matter of the President's power to do this to any American Citizen, without any sort of Due Process, by fiat he has stripped this man of his rights, indeed his citizenship. Supposedly on the say so of a captured terrorist. As every fan of TV cop shows knows, this is always a reliable source...

http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/6036095.htm

I would also like to weigh in on this Fourth of July discussion...I don't think I need to...but,

I will always get chills and goosebumps from our Flag. I grew up learning our history and to me the Flag will always be wrapped around that history. The blood and sacrifice of generations of Americans provide those colors. This ever evolving fabric, a symbol of our Freedom and Unity that has flown as a beacon to all the peoples of the world for over two hundred years, belongs to no Party. It cannot be co-opted, adopted, conscripted or stolen. It can be used as a political prop, burned, torn, dirtied or sullied by the lies of men we elect to carry it. But this only dishonors those who misuse it, it does not dishonor or make irrelevant that history or the Flag. To the contrary, the Flag serves as the needed reminder of who Americans are, what we believe in and stand for. I can think of no other time in my life when we have needed it more. Long may it wave...

Gregg
PS...this is great...personally I have always felt that GWB was a consummate liar, and Clinton too, for that matter. It is in the nature of the lie that the story lies...when publicly accused of adultery a gentleman must always maintain a denial, whether true or not. To do otherwise is to expose others to harm, again whether innocent or not. And it is none of anyone's business...But to lie, purposely lie, to bring about War is not just a gentleman's lie, it approaches treason, it is a violation of the President's Oath of Office and an impeachable offense.
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html
Cheney and Rummy too! Hassert can caretake for 18 months...  ¶ 8:24 PM

  This was sent to Mr. Kurtz of the Washington Post
No response...

Sir...

You profess to write critically about your own craft. I have read your stuff and seen some very embarrassing stuff on TV, but I think, in the long run you may show more insight into the rot that infects your trade than most of your "peers".

At least you can question why we are all transfixed on the echo chamber, at least you have acknowledged the process by which the "daily line" is disseminated and relentlessly drummed by White House and Congressional "sources", picked up by Talk Radio so it can be simplified for Red State consumption, spun for the financial boys on Cable and in the WSJ, given legs by "editorials" in subsidized "newspapers" such as the Washington Times. Finally turned into "truth", complete with fancy graphics and staged photo ops running 24hrs a day on the cable "news" cycle.

I charge that if a significant sector of the American electorate believes that Sadaam Hussein was even partially responsible for 9-11, then the craft of journalism in this nation has completely failed in its mission, that it no longer speaks truth because truth is to be spoken, it simply lies because the liars have more money. They have the power, and the money, and you and your fellow craftsmen have become professionals.

Journalism is a craft, not a profession. A professional gets paid for his best effort, regardless of outcome. A craftsman deals exclusively in guaranteed outcomes, no one pays for projects not completed. This is the difference between "professionals" and tradesmen and craftsmen. You pay the lawyer, in advance, whether or not you go to jail or she gets the house. That is a professional, but a journalist is not a professional, a journalist is a craftsman. If his product does not rise from the mundane to inform and enlighten the reader, if indeed his reader is instead misinformed, then he has failed.

First, we rely on them to get the facts straight, to be accurate or be quiet. Was Pvt. Lynch rescued by heroic American soldiers after emptying her weapon on advancing Iraqi thugs or was she lost, ambushed, and her vehicle rocketed, rolled and she injured in the wreck, taken to a hospital and adequately cared for. Which was it? We may never know, due to the secrecy of this "Administration" and the timidity and spinelessness of a media always ready to lap up a well prepared "storyline", if it has good pictures. Never mind where the footage came from...never mind who, what, where, when and sometimes why. No good footage of that...not compared with "embedded" cameras racing across the desert or video of cavalry coming to the rescue. How 'bout a few shots of those WMDs while we wait for Sadaam's DNA to show up? You folks are like a mark who just realized he got scammed, first comes denial...no, they wouldn't lie to get America to attack Iraq? They wouldn't lie on TV, to the UN, to make a case for War, not the same guys who brought you Election 2000? Not those guys...must have been some other guys, like the armchair generals or the "neo-cons". We, the Elite Media, cannot be taken in so crudely. And so it goes, unreported, so as not to embarrass another professional journalist.

Second, we rely on the journalist to be objective, tell us who is telling you this and then tell us who they are. I just love these talking head shows, I do a Google on each person and get a little background while I watch, see where they've been, who writes their check, that sort of thing. You know, what journalists do....but you rarely see any journalists on these shows, the guests on these shows are like the "expert witnesses" who postulate and pontificate in our courtrooms, hired guns for large fees who peddle only their own wares. The really slick part is that they are never identified as shills, much less challenged prove their points. I recently watched an interview with a writer from the National Enquirer, on a major cable network, in which he was lauded for being on the front lines of important stories like "Jon Benet", "Monica", "Juanita" and "what'shernamewiththenose"...Softball questions like "how does it feel to be leading the major media on these hot stories?" are not only disgusting but they also endorse by the mere asking. I mean this a supermarket rag that has claimed to have located Adolf Hitler in at least a dozen different countries since 1945 and has Elvis living in several different states. They make the Rev. Moon seem normal.

No, you folks have become professionals, not mere tradesmen or craftsman anymore...but what do you call a professional journalist?

I call him a propagandist, a copywriter at best. A stooge, a shill, a liar, a salesman, maybe an entertainer, like Rush...I wouldn't call him a reporter or a journalist.

Better stuff on the Blogs, more honest, better researched. I may disagree with the Freepers, I may find them distasteful and misguided. But at least I know exactly where they come from, I can't say that about Russert, Crawford, King and that ilk, hiding behind the cloak of "journalistic objectivity" while shilling for their masters, conducting political operations on the air. They don't even try to hide it on Fox, CNN is spineless and rudderless and the competition is owned by Microsoft...need I say more?

This next year is a test. A test of the soul of American journalism. If we see a repeat of the lies and deceit of Election 2000, then you will see ratings fall off the charts for all the untrusted media. As the great speaker of the California Assembly, Jess Unruh, once said "if you can't drink their booze, eat their food, screw their women and still vote against 'em, you don't belong in Sacramento.". If you can't meet that standard as journalists then you should quit. All of you. Show the world how the deck is stacked by voting with your feet, hit the pavement, you won't be unemployed very long, Americans hunger for the truth.

RG Johnson
San Jose CA

The doctor is in, Rx: Dean 2004  ¶ 8:20 PM

  Ah,Hillary...

The book is out, the knives are sharpened...

Ok....Hillary...

First, we white males between 18 and, say 55 are the last of the unprotected
interest groups, if you would like to discriminate against us, go right
ahead. No law against it, open season....until we can claim age
discrimination, that is...so watch out...we are all getting older...

But no matter, the group which controls over 60% of all financial assets is
overwhelmingly female and over 60 years of age...simple demographics, they,
females, live longer than do males. The meek may inherit the earth, but it
is a lead pipe cinch that she will be female and someone's grandmother.

Hillary Clinton will seek the Presidency, or it will be thrust upon her. I
don't think she will be a candidate in this coming election cycle or even,
perhaps, depending, in 2008, but she is a very young Senator, and very
effective in the role and popular in New York. She has attained the best of
all worlds, she is the wife of a former President, but she has managed to
divorce Bill Clinton. She stands or falls as Hillary, not Mrs. Clinton. Bill
could wake up naked on the White House lawn tomorrow morning and no one
would even bother to ask her if she knew he was in town...they wouldn't
dare.

As to the fixation on Hillary among the so called "conservatives" (Goldwater
rolls twice in his grave...), this is obvious, they want to discuss anything
other than GWB, Iraq, the economy, Gov Dean, WMD's, 9-11 etc...they have
made Hillary the latest "boogeyman", the results of their fundraising
efforts confirms that this garbage sells...Hillary is the newest "bloody
shirt" of American politics. They wave her around to get the yahoos in the
peanut gallery warmed up, before the next big lie, er..., policy, is
discussed and they put down the bite..."The Great Liberal Boogey Monster", a
veritable fundraising slot machine, NewsMax even has a "Deck of Hillary", 52
cards...ala the Deck of Traitors, you know the Hollywood Crowd, the Dixie
Chicks, Al Gore...those traitors, or the Pentagon's solution to
semi-illiterate privates and confusing Iraqi/Arabic names, the ingenious
Iraqi "55 Most Wanted Deck". NewsMax actually boasts they will sell more
decks of Hillary Cards than she sells books...

Wanna bet...

I think, with the exception of the health care initiative of '93, a product
of inexperience and a measure of hubris, she has made all of the right
choices, she was loyal, while being independent, she was mother and wife and
bore burdens gracefully that would have broken most. She has emerged as the
lightning rod of American politics, and as Gov. Dean has demonstrated, it is
time for leadership not endless empty platitudes during "photo ops" with the
expensive props of patriotic jingoism...Americans are not quite that
gullible, that pliant, not yet the sheep that can be led quietly to
dictatorship, with a whimper and not a bang, betrayed by enemies within. No,
we will be at the polls and barring electronic, mechanical or administrative
fraud, we will be allowed to vote, for perhaps the last time as free
Americans, and if we make sure those votes are counted, this incredible
mistake can be ended, before it extinguishes the greatest light that free
people have ever beheld.

Gregg
Why not the best?
Dean 2004, last station...!
  ¶ 8:17 PM

  An Unreasonable Search,

Our Constitution, in Amendment, IV states:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Provisions of the new Patriot Act are, by definition, unconstitutional in that they allow the Government to conduct searches of library, bank, ISP, credit card, indeed any record or database on the mere suspicion of terrorist involvement or conspiracy. They merely write in a little book that so and so is a terrorist suspect and we are going to do whatever it is we are going to do. And they do it...no judge, no court, no Fourth Amendment. And if you are the keeper of any records, and they ask you for them, you cannot refuse, no warrant is needed to search your records and you are legally prevented from saying anything to anybody about the search, or you will go to jail.

This is what is known as a "fishing expedition", and we now have an army of newly licensed anglers, without a limit on the catch and no rules on the method of taking. Moreover these fishermen can fish in secret and at night using whatever bait and lighting they chose, most of the time they will prefer the dark, of course. And they can fish in your back yard and if noticed by the neighbors they will swear them to secrecy under penalty of law, you won’t even know they were poaching. These guys can also ignore the Game Warden, he and the others, like the lawyers and the judges, have no authority here, this is "Fishing for Terrorists", this is War! Why can’t people just see that?

Well I do see it, we are at War...with the American People and the Constitution. And the People are losing.

RG Johnson

San Jose. CA

5/9/03
  ¶ 8:13 PM