And sometimes, you realize that pure evil really does exist in this world ...

From CNN:

A woman angry with her 12-year-old daughter for having sex forced the girl to drink bleach and sat on her until the child died, a police detective said.

Jesus Christ. Sorry, but I don't have much to say about this one, either. It's just too massively awful that my expressive facilities lock up.

Pootie-Poot?

So, I'm browsing through the various news tabs I've opened up in Firefox, and I run across this in CNN:

Sen. Ben Nelson finally has succeeded in getting President Bush to stop calling him by the nickname "Nellie."

And:

He has called Vladimir Putin, the president of Russia, "Pootie-Poot," while aide Karen Hughes gets "High Prophet."

You know, there are days when the news is so bizarre that you really just can't top it with any additional commentary. I just kind of wonder when America suddenly became Pee-Wee's Playhouse.

Social Security-ABC helps spread the lies

Thanks to a tip from Make them Accountable.

I wasn't going to post anything on Social Security this weekend but I can't pass this up.
ABC Muddles the Social Security Debate

On World News Tonight, anchor Peter Jennings started off the distortions in the show's "A Closer Look" segment. Having allowed that there is "some argument" about whether Social Security would, as Bush argued recently, "go bankrupt" without congressional intervention, Jennings continued: "But there's no question that baby boomers will place great strain on Social Security as they retire. And by 2042, by some measures, the system may not have enough cash to pay full benefits."

Actually, there's plenty of question about the notion that baby boomers will strain the system; the whole point of amassing a surplus in the trust fund in the first place was to absorb the strain of their retirement. And if it's true that "by some measures" (i.e., the Social Security trustees) the system won't have enough cash in 2042, it's also true that by other, less pessimistic, measures, it will; for example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects payment of full benefits through at least 2052-- at which point the oldest boomers will be 106 and the youngest 88 (Economic Reporting Review, 1/10/05).

Some economists point out that the system, if the economy grows about as quickly in the future as it has in the past, will most likely never run short of cash. These projected dates of Social Security running out of cash have been pushed steadily into the future in recent years as the dramatic slowdown that the Social Security trustees forecast continues to fail to materialize.

And there is the "it's just paper" argument.

The segment continued with ABC's Robert Krulwich providing commentary over an animated cartoon purporting to explain the Social Security system and Bush's privatization proposal. According to Krulwich, despite the widespread belief that money paid in to Social Security is put "somewhere safe," that money is actually spent by the government, leaving "no money, just IOUs." Bush's proposal, Krulwich said, allows workers to have "a nest egg you can call your own and government can never take away."

The IOU argument is a favorite of pro-privatizers, but it has little basis in reality. Those trust fund "IOUs" exist in the form of U.S. government bonds, just like those held by private investors and foreign countries like Japan and China. Such bonds are considered among the safest investments one can make; there's never been a historical instance of the U.S. defaulting on a bond. To suggest that those bonds are not "somewhere safe" is to suggest that the U.S. government might default on its loans to its own retiring workers-- an event that is far less likely than a bank or other private investment institution defaulting on privately held retirement accounts. But both Jennings' and Krulwich's points were presented unopposed, leaving viewers with a very skewed picture of Social Security.

I wonder how all the foreign investors feel about their treasury bonds being "just paper". But ABC wasn't through shilling for Bush.

The same day, ABC's Good Morning America aired a segment that promised to "cut through some of the political rhetoric and look at the reality of what [Bush's Social Security plan] might mean." The show presented Bill and Vicki Wilson, a two-income couple with two kids and "retirement 20 years off," and turned to Michael Tanner of the pro-privatization Cato Institute for expert analysis of the Wilsons' situation.

Tanner told the Wilsons that under the current system, Bill should receive approximately $2,250 and Vicki $2,200 per month-- but that there's a "catch." ABC's Claire Shipman explained:

"One thing everyone agrees on, the Social Security system as it exists now won't be able to afford those payments for long after the Wilsons retire."
Not only doesn't "everyone agree" with this statement, it's patently untrue. Since the Wilsons will retire in about 20 years (or 2025), they would enjoy their full payments for nearly 20 years even under the pessimistic assumptions of the Social Security trustees, and nearly 30 years according to the CBO. Statistically, the Wilsons are quite likely to be dead before there is any question about Social Security's ability to pay their full promised benefits.

I guess that since ABC is owned by Disney they are allowed to do Fantasy News.

Even MSNBC says Bush is lying about Social Security

Steve Soto over at The Left Coaster points out that even MSNBC, usually Bush lapdogs, are saying Bush's warnings about a Social Security Crisis are nothing more than hype and political spin and often just out right lies.

Nancy Altman, who was an aide to Greenspan on the Social Security commission, remembers �exactly the same kind of hype� as we are seeing today. �It was exactly the same � the sky is falling,� said Altman.

The difference is that the problems facing the system in the 1980s were truly urgent. "It really was a crisis," said Mary Falvey, a member of the Greenspan commission. She remembers being told that Congress had to act by April 1983 to keep the Social Security checks from grinding to a halt two months later.

This time around, Social Security is years away from anything that honestly could be described as a financial crisis. But that has not stopped President Bush from trying to whip up enthusiasm for his proposed personal retirement accounts by warning of an imminent disaster.

And how about a flat out lie?

�In the year 2018, for the first time ever, Social Security will pay out more in benefits than the government collects in payroll taxes,� Bush said.

That is just plain wrong. In 14 of the past 47 years, including 1975 to 1983, Social Security paid out more in benefits than the government collected in payroll, with the gap reaching $10 billion in 1983. So the projected �crossover� point in 2018 is a relatively meaningless milestone, say opponents of Bush�s privatization plans, even as they acknowledge the system faces long-term problems.

Bush�s statements �appear designed to further a widespread perception, especially among younger people, that Social Security will entirely collapse and that there will be nothing for them when they retire,� said Bob Greenstein, executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Nothing really new here, the Bush administration has a history of distancing itself from the truth. This time though it's not sticking. The Hill reports that Centrists steer clear of Social Security plans.

"There is a sense that no one really wants to stick their head out at this point in time for fear they�re going to have their head cut off," one Senate Republican aide said.
[.....]
"There are some senators in both parties that want nothing to do with this, wish it would go away,� said Graham, who organized a bipartisan meeting with senators last week to talk about his reform plan, which includes among its options a potential increase in payroll taxes. �There�s more people like me than I thought."

The lawmakers of both parties are going to be looking out for their own hides and would prefer it if the issue would just go away.
Cross posted at Middle Earth Journal

The Lows and The Highs

No, I'm not talking about the weather, I'm talking Social Security and this piece from The Portland Press Herald.

• First the Lows, Bush continues with the same old crisis BS talk.

  "If we do nothing, which some are suggesting we do here in Washington, the system is broke - bust," he said at a roundtable meeting with 15 reporters from regional newspapers, including the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram.
  
  "Now is the time to address it," Bush said. "The longer Congress delays, the harder it is to solve the problem. Step one is to remind people we have a problem, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon."



• And now for the highs, one of Jazz's favorites, Sen. Olympia Snowe, says wait just a minute.

  U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, a member of the Finance Committee that will consider Social Security reform, questioned the extent of problems with the program and voiced caution about private accounts.
  
  "I don't think there's any consensus on what the problem is or the extent of the problem," Snowe said. "I have serious concerns about undermining the fundamental principles of the Social Security Trust Fund."

It's nice to see an island of sanity in the sea of madness known as Washington DC.

Link thanks to Josh Marshall

We don't need no damn human rights

It could be you next.

Kidnapping the Innocent in the War on Terror

Khaled el-Masri just wanted to go on a short holiday to Skopje, he says. He needed some time alone -- away from the clamor of his four young sons. A couple of days. But it turned out to be a longer trip than he had planned. And he didn't end up seeing much of the Macedonian capital, either. Rather, he spent months locked up in a dirty prison cell in Afghanistan.

El-Masri, a 41-year-old German citizen who lives in the western German city of Ulm, was kidnapped on the Macedonian border by secret service personnel -- he doesn't know what country they were from -- on Dec. 31, 2003. From there, he was brought to a hotel in Skopje where he was not allowed to leave his room for three weeks. His captors began interrogating him there: "They offered me a deal," he told the German daily Sueddeutsche Zeitung. "I should sign a confession that I was a member of al-Qaida and then they would let me go."

He refused. A short time later, a hood was placed over his head, he was brought to an airfield and his clothes were cut off of him with scissors. Then he was photographed naked, given a jump suit to wear and flown to Kabul. Interrogations -- three months of questioning from agents he claims were American -- followed. They wanted to know about the mosque where he worshipped in Ulm. They asked about fellow worshippers and about suspected extremists.

Apart from the bent of the questions, el-Masri had no indication, for the first three weeks in Afghanistan, why he was being held. And he was desperate to get out. He began a hunger strike and held out for 34 days before giving it up. In the meantime, he was told that he would be let free. The prison warden told him, says el-Masri, "From the very beginning I had the impression that you don't belong here." But the release took a long time.

While he was away, his wife and children didn't hear a word from him. He was not allowed to write, call or communicate with the outside world in any way. In desperation, she gave up and moved the family back to her home in Jordan. He was released in the early summer of 2004 and now he and his family are back in Germany. His captors -- which he continues to insist were American -- obviously realized they had the wrong man.

This should make you ashamed to be an American. When I read stories like this the only thing I can think is that al-Qaeda won. The US has become as bad as the horror stories we were told about the old Soviet Union. This is stuff that would make Stalin proud. Who knows, maybe reading Running Scared will be enough to flag you for a trip to Kabul before long.

Thanks for Nothing

Jazz is feeling melancholy, so that means it's the perfect time for me to jump in again with my ongoing persona of "angry Jewish woman".

Perhaps you've read my blog, and you recall my stance on the middle east. If not, learn this now - I think that the people there are too turbulent and unwilling to accept each other and live peacefully. I think that their elected leaders are a polite sham, because as long as there are so very many people committed so strongly to their own xenophobic ideas that they're willing to blow themselves up in crowded areas, there can be no "road map to peace". Yes, this is how I feel. And then, I see an article like this:

Israel Seals Off Gaza Strip After Border Attack

...Abbas, due to be sworn in as president on Saturday, condemned the assault and deadly raids Israel has mounted against militants.


Three militant groups said they jointly took part in the operation: Hamas, the Popular Resistance Committees and al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed wing of Abbas's Fatah movement.


Israel signaled it would weigh its response carefully to avoid weakening Abbas, a leader it has said it could do business with after shunning his predecessor Yasser Arafat for years.

To me, Abbas is starting to look about as sturdy as one of those paper shoji screens.

Friday poetry

A snippet of A. E. Housman:

The troubles of our proud and angry dust
Are from eternity, and shall not fail.
Bear them we can, and if we can we must.
Shoulder the sky, my lad, and drink your ale.

Social Security Privitization, British Experience

To see what happens when you privatize Social Security all you have to do is check out what happened in the number two country in the "Coalition of the Willing". Paul Krugman give us the details of the British disaster.

The U.S. news media have provided readers and viewers with little information about how privatization has worked in other countries. Now my colleagues have even fewer excuses: there's an illuminating article on the British experience in The American Prospect, www.prospect.org, by Norma Cohen, a senior corporate reporter at The Financial Times who covers pension issues.

Her verdict is summed up in her title: "A Bloody Mess." Strong words, but her conclusions match those expressed more discreetly in a recent report by Britain's Pensions Commission, which warns that at least 75 percent of those with private investment accounts will not have enough savings to provide "adequate pensions."

The British experience, the same and different:

The details of British privatization differ from the likely Bush administration plan because the starting point was different. But there are basic similarities. Guaranteed benefits were cut; workers were expected to make up for these benefit cuts by earning high returns on their private accounts.

The selling of privatization also bore a striking resemblance to President Bush's crisis-mongering. Britain had a retirement system that was working quite well, but conservative politicians issued grim warnings about the distant future, insisting that privatization was the only answer.

The main difference from the current U.S. situation was that Britain was better prepared for the transition. Britain's system was backed by extensive assets, so the government didn't have to engage in a four-decade borrowing spree to finance the creation of private accounts. And the Thatcher government hadn't already driven the budget deep into deficit before privatization even began.

Even so, it all went wrong. "Britain's experiment with substituting private savings accounts for a portion of state benefits has been a failure," Ms. Cohen writes. "A shorthand explanation for what has gone wrong is that the costs and risks of running private investment accounts outweigh the value of the returns they are likely to earn."

Many Britons were sold badly designed retirement plans on false pretenses. Companies guilty of "mis-selling" were eventually forced to pay about $20 billion in compensation. Fraud aside, the fees paid to financial managers have been a major problem: "Reductions in yield resulting from providers' charges," the Pensions Commission says, "can absorb 20-30 percent of an individual's pension savings."

The flip flop.

American privatizers extol the virtues of personal choice, and often accuse skeptics of being elitists who believe that the government makes better choices than individuals. Yet when one brings up Britain's experience, their story suddenly changes: they promise to hold costs down by tightly restricting the investments individuals can make, and by carefully regulating the money managers. So much for trusting the people.

The British realize they must go back.

Meanwhile, there is a growing consensus in Britain that privatization must be partly reversed. The Confederation of British Industry - the equivalent of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce - has called for an increase in guaranteed benefits to retirees, even if taxes have to be raised to pay for that increase. And the chief executive of Britain's National Association of Pension Funds speaks with admiration about a foreign system that "delivers efficiencies of scale that most companies would die for."

The foreign country that, in the view of well-informed Britons, does it right is the United States. The system that delivers efficiencies to die for is Social Security.

That's Right, the British want to reform their system so it looks like the current Social Security System in the United States. That should tell you all you need to know.
Other Social Security Posts

Martin Luther King Today

One of my favorite pundits, John Sugg of Atlanta's Creative Loafing, has a good commentary today on what has happened to the legacy of Martin Luther King, Remembering King by erasing him. I'm going to copy and paste the entire article because archiving at Creative Loafing is complex.
.................................................................................................

It's hard to imagine a more noxious despoiling of the memory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. than George Bush's butting in on the King Day celebration in Atlanta last year, while he was on his way to stuff his pockets with cash from the South's throngs of neo-cons -- that's neo-Confederates.

But it was fitting. Even a party that built its base by appealing to rancid racism can lay claim to King's legacy. The "how" is simple: The real MLK has been all but erased from our history. What's left is so anemic -- and so distorted -- that even George Wallace or Lester Maddox or, heaven help us, Zell Miller could claim kinship.

The culprits in this desecration aren't hard to find. Here's the surprise: It's not the green-toothed, Confederate flag-waving redneck bigots. Nor is it the more well-heeled racists in the Republican Party.

Rather, it's the liberal establishment, beginning with Democratic Party leaders who, just as they flee from the true King, ran in panic from men of principle, such as Howard Dean, to embrace the grand waffler, John Kerry. And the perps also include the "liberal" media, where scribes have obliterated the great man's true spirit.

Here's the story you aren't told.

As we celebrate King's birthday -- he'd be 76 this year -- we could do a lottery on guessing the number of times TV news shows depict his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech. You'll see plenty of footage from the Civil Rights marches in Selma and Birmingham. There will be the usual cacophony of chattering heads scratching their chins and ruminating on whether the Civil Rights Movement was a success.

Pay close attention to the broadcast reports and newspapers. You'll notice that discussion of King's life ends somewhere in 1966. Seldom, almost never will you view or read about his post-1966 days, other than a mention that King was murdered in Memphis on April 4, 1968.

Why?

Put another way, why do we ceaselessly hear "I Have a Dream," while we never are enlightened with the equally moving "Beyond Vietnam" speech King made at New York's Riverside Church a year before his death? The message King thundered was revolutionary -- a word I am very specific in choosing. He declared:

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam.' It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam" and King's words are as true now as 38 years ago.

Civil Rights leaders had been muted on the war -- and generally avoided the even more dangerous turf of questioning the basic inequalities in America's economic system. The reasons were simple: The movement needed Lyndon Johnson's support, so its strategists, including King, for many years were publicly neutral on LBJ's war. And the backbone of the movement, especially when it came to funds, was the liberal establishment, which might want to tweak capitalism a bit but certainly opposed any radical changes.King was a dynamic, growing and ever-changing force, a righteous rocket whose trajectory veered sharply left in his last days. He broke with many in the Civil Rights Movement and declared not only that he was opposed to Vietnam but that the conflict was anathema to the values and principles Americans cherish.

Much, much more important, King realized that racism was only a symptom, that the nation's true struggle was with pervasive economic disparities. He was busy organizing the Poor People's Campaign, a far-reaching movement that called for what amounted to Christian socialism, when he was gunned down in Memphis.

The campaign's wheels fell off under the post-King captaincy of Ralph David Abernathy, but the vision nonetheless had the potential of reshaping America. I'd argue that had King lived -- even realizing that weak-kneed liberals would have abandoned him -- the campaign's coalition of blacks, poor Appalachian whites, Chicanos, Native Americans and all who truly embraced religious and moral values could have reshaped the nation and world. It's conceivable that an America invested in human rights and economic justice would have quieted the world's suffering -- and prevented Sept. 11, 2001.

As Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, the closest thing to a revolutionary in Washington, observed to me: "To understand Dr. King, you have to understand the whole tapestry of his life. His message was peace abroad, justice at home. It was a message that was dangerous to many. The Poor People's Campaign was an economic bill of rights. We still need that bill of rights."

No doubt. Census figures show that unemployment for blacks is more than double than for whites -- and the gap is wider than in 1972. Black infant mortality, 146 percent higher than for whites, is greater than in 1970. Even more troubling, median income for black families was 60 percent that of whites in 1968. It had slipped to 58 percent in 2002.

King would have used taxes to redistribute wealth -- just as the Republicans are doing in reverse. He would have fought for housing, education, jobs.

"We're dealing in a sense with class issues," King said. "We're dealing with the problem of the gulf between the haves and the have-nots, between the privileged and the underprivileged. And we're taking on a mammoth job now, and it isn't going to be easy."

For the profiteers who run the shadowy war machine, for those who steal the wealth of the middle and working classes, and for their media shills, King was a very real threat.

Time magazine excoriated King's anti-war sentiments, stating that they "sounded like a script for Radio Hanoi." In 1968, Doreen Roy, a columnist for Atlanta's daily newspaper, sneered that Poor People's Campaign marchers would do better if they "marched to the nearest employment agency instead of our nation's capital."

With that economic picture -- and with Bush's imperial war machine making enemies of much of the world -- you'd think King's final messages on peace and a wholesale restructuring of economics would be offered to counter the administration's programs.

After all, Bush's regime thrives along with terrorism, much as drug cops need drug lords and vice versa to keep both sides in business. A world aflame is the tool Bush uses to keep a frightened America enthralled, and it's the justification for everything from conquest to torture.

King, in 1967 and 1968, offered an alternative.

But the media is out to lunch. The more liberal the journalist, the less likely you'll find mention of King's final days. The conservatives at least pick up on the issue in order to bash King.

AJC editorial page editor Cynthia Tucker, for example, is supposedly the liberal counterpoint to the Cox media empire's ultra-white-right demagogues such as columnist Jim Wooten and radio ranter Neal Boortz. Nowhere in any of the AJC's archives could I find a mention by Tucker of where King was headed when he died. No mention of his Vietnam speeches, no mention of the revolutionary concepts in the Poor People's Campaign.

Last year on King's birthday, the Atlanta paper ran an editorial on "King's vision for America" that completely skipped over his endgame passion. I had to go back more than a dozen years to find any significant mention in the AJC of King's radical economic and anti-war agenda.

Tucker may be a liberal, but her boss is 11-times-over billionaire Anne Cox Chambers, who certainly isn't interested in the downward distribution of wealth and whose company happily marquees its racists.

Remember that on Martin Luther King Day. Rereading his words and contemplating the symbiotic Bush-terrorism world, the evisceration of American workers' wealth, the regime's relentless attack on our liberties -- I'll march with the spirit of the real King. Not a liberal, but a revolutionary.

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Sugg points out that the real Martin Luther King has been lost to history. And who's responsible for this?

The culprits in this desecration aren't hard to find. Here's the surprise: It's not the green-toothed, Confederate flag-waving redneck bigots. Nor is it the more well-heeled racists in the Republican Party.

Rather, it's the liberal establishment, beginning with Democratic Party leaders who, just as they flee from the true King, ran in panic from men of principle, such as Howard Dean, to embrace the grand waffler, John Kerry. And the perps also include the "liberal" media, where scribes have obliterated the great man's true spirit.

That's right, it was the Democrats, the left and the so called liberal media. Another example of the cowardice of the "DC Democrats". So who was Martin Luther King? A man who's words about the war in Vietnam have a new application today.

Put another way, why do we ceaselessly hear "I Have a Dream," while we never are enlightened with the equally moving "Beyond Vietnam" speech King made at New York's Riverside Church a year before his death? The message King thundered was revolutionary -- a word I am very specific in choosing. He declared:

"If America's soul becomes totally poisoned, part of the autopsy must read 'Vietnam.' It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men the world over."

Substitute "Iraq" for "Vietnam" and King's words are as true now as 38 years ago.

Profound words we never hear. Read the entire article posted above and take Sugg's advice.

Remember that on Martin Luther King Day. Rereading his words and contemplating the symbiotic Bush-terrorism world, the evisceration of American workers' wealth, the regime's relentless attack on our liberties -- I'll march with the spirit of the real King. Not a liberal, but a revolutionary.

Reality...If they have freedom they won't like the US

In his piece in the Asia Times, Street-wise Washington backs off, Ashraf Fahim discusses the reality that is descending on the Bush administration; a truly democratically elected government in Iraq or anywhere else in the Middle East will not be pro-American.

"We hope, at some point in time, everybody is free."
- US President George W Bush , responding to a question about Iran during his December 20 press conference.

As the above quote indicates, the Bush administration's rhetorical zeal for democracy-making in the Middle East appears to be waning. While "freedom" is still spoken of as the desired end state, it isn't being suggested that its reign is imminent with the same fervor that preceded the Iraq war. As a recent op-ed in the Christian Science Monitor put it, after Iraq, "A crestfallen America seems to have abandoned its idealistic aspirations to the point that it now favors working with the same unsavory regimes that promise the chimera of stability."

To a degree, the return to realism is a reaction to the sheer trauma of the ongoing bloodbath in Iraq. But it may also reflect heightened uncertainties about what will emerge in Iraq and the wider Middle East as a result of democracy's promotion or imposition. In Iraq, the United States is now caught between an insurgency and a theocracy, and both are broadly anti-US, because most Iraqis oppose US policies. The potency of Iraqi nationalism, which fuels the insurgency, has been a stultifying reminder to US policymakers that the popular will won't necessarily comport to US strategic interests, especially in the narrow and one-sided way they are currently defined.

As we are all painfully aware the Iraq war was based on a multitude of faulty assumptions.

The US neo-conservatives had built their campaign for instantaneous democratization on two erroneous assumptions: that the nationalist, anti-US policies of such states as Ba'athist Iraq, Syria and Iran defied the popular will; and that regional violence is the product of tyranny and failed societies more than unpopular US policies. Bush has swallowed the second assumption whole. "The root causes of terror and hatred ... is frustration caused by tyranny," he said last Friday.

Those two assumptions have unraveled in Iraq, where the US is, for once, up close and personal with the mythical "Arab street" and discovering both that it is just as nationalistic as the former Iraqi regime, and that wariness of US intentions is destabilizing Iraq more than the dysfunctional nature of Iraqi society - a microcosm of the regional dynamic.

The results of a poll by Zogby International conducted in November in five Arab countries on the subject of reform confirmed that people in the region are far more interested in a change in US policies, such as unequivocal support for Israel, than US assistance in democratizing. In fact, the Arab-Israeli conflict ranked second in issues of importance, while such issues as expanding democracy ranked near the bottom. In no country polled did a majority want US help democratizing (in Saudi Arabia, only 1% did).

So there is little interest in "democracy" and a great deal of interest in the Arab-Israeli conflict. I think many of this knew this a long time ago, unfortunately the delusional neo-cons in charge did not. But as much as they may hate it "reality" is intruding. The experience in Iraq has resulted in a re-evaluation of policy towards Syria and Iran and less bellicose rhetoric from the administration. The Iranian gas deal by a Halliburton subsidiary may be a part of this new policy.

Analysts say that the agreement may be more than just business and part of a larger diplomatic effort to convince Iran to abandon plans it may have to develop nuclear weapons.

Sean Murphy, a law professor at George Washington University, told RFE/RL that US laws that prohibit firms from working in certain countries usually allow for exceptions to serve diplomatic ends. He said the US may be using the Halliburton deal to send a positive signal to the Iranians.

The President of Fabricated Crises

Jim VandeHei of the Washington Post had a commentary last Saturday where he explained to us that Bush Paints His Goals As "Crises" and Steve Soto at the Left Coaster had a good analysis of that piece. Today Harold Meyerson of the Post tells us Bush is the President of Fabricated Crises.

Some presidents make the history books by managing crises. Lincoln had Fort Sumter, Roosevelt had the Depression and Pearl Harbor, and Kennedy had the missiles in Cuba. George W. Bush, of course, had Sept. 11, and for a while thereafter -- through the overthrow of the Taliban -- he earned his page in history, too.

But when historians look back at the Bush presidency, they're more likely to note that what sets Bush apart is not the crises he managed but the crises he fabricated. The fabricated crisis is the hallmark of the Bush presidency. To attain goals that he had set for himself before he took office -- the overthrow of Saddam Hussein, the privatization of Social Security -- he concocted crises where there were none.

Just like the WMD "crisis" in Iraq the Social Security "crisis" has been manufactured out of necessity. The American people and a majority of lawmakers would not have agreed to the war without a crisis. Bush knows that the lawmakers won't touch Social Security unless they and the American people can be convinced there is a crisis. It's not working this time. The American people and the lawmakers of both parties know the truth.

In fact, Social Security is on a sounder footing now than it has been for most of its 70-year history. Without altering any of its particulars, its trustees say, it can pay full benefits straight through 2042. Over the next 75 years its shortfall will amount to just 0.7 percent of national income, according to the trustees, or 0.4 percent, according to the Congressional Budget Office. That still amounts to a real chunk of change, but it pales alongside the 75-year cost of Bush's Medicare drug benefit, which is more than twice its size, or Bush's tax cuts if permanently extended, which would be nearly four times its size.

In short, Social Security is not facing a financial crisis at all. It is facing a need for some distinctly sub-cataclysmic adjustments over the next few decades that would increase its revenue and diminish its benefits.

The only Social Security Crisis is a political one.

For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history, who would have voted against establishing the program had they been in Congress in 1935. But Bush doesn't need Karl Rove's counsel to know that repealing Social Security for reasons of ideology is a non-starter.

So it's time once more to fabricate a crisis. In Bushland, it's always time to fabricate a crisis. We have a crisis in medical malpractice costs, though the CBO says that malpractice costs amount to less than 2 percent of total health care costs. (In fact, what we have is a president who wants to diminish the financial, and thus political, clout of trial lawyers.) We have a crisis in judicial vacancies, though in fact Senate Democrats used the filibuster to block just 10 of Bush's 229 first-term judicial appointments.

With crisis concoction as its central task -- think of how many administration officials issued dire warnings of the threat posed by Saddam Hussein or, now, by Social Security's impending bankruptcy -- this presidency, more than any I can think of, has relied on the classic tools of propaganda. Indeed, it's almost impossible to imagine the Bush presidency absent the Fox News Network and right-wing talk radio.

Meyerson gets right to the meat with this statement."For the first time in its history, it is confronted by a president, and just possibly by a working congressional majority, who are opposed to the program on ideological grounds, who view the New Deal as a repealable aberration in U.S. history,...". That of course is the key, they quite simply want to reform Social Security out of existence. There are two reasons that they really hate Social Security, it works and it's efficient and there is that nasty little fact that the system has been buying treasury bonds to build up a needed surplus and about 2018 the system will start cashing those bonds in. Those pesky New Deal programs are bad enough but one you owe money to is abhorrent. Make no mistake, that's what "Social Security Reform" is all about. Not paying back the money owed to the Social Security system. Meyerson ends by explaining what Bush's place in history will be.

We've had plenty of presidents, Richard Nixon most notoriously, who divided the media into friendly and enemy camps. I can't think of one, however, so fundamentally invested in the spread of disinformation -- and so fundamentally indifferent to the corrosive effect of propaganda on democracy -- as Bush. That, too, should earn him a page in the history books.

The creator of crisis and the propaganda chief, that's George W. Bush.

"Bigger, Madder, and Full of Dangerous Debris ... "

Read this. You need to. Suddenly the icy rain hitting Chicago today looks like child's play. Just ... damn.

Partying Hard on the Homeland Security Dime

The Bush Administration has refused to reimburse the city of Washington D.C. for $11.9 million in expenses related to Bush's upcoming 2005 inauguration. (Lest you think this is an unusual request, it is traditional for the government to reimburse Washington for expenses relating to the Inauguration.)

They've instructed Washington to take it out of the $240 million earmarked for the city's homeland security.

Let's just clarify that, shall we? They're saying, "Pay for the President's party out of money we gave you to make your city safer."

You know, it's this kind of news story that we seem to hear time and time again about the Bush Administration. And it's this kind of news story that just continually blows my mind.

L'etat, c'est moi.

Republicans tell Bush "Not So Fast"

We have been telling you that many Republican lawmakers are less than enthusiatic about Bush's plan to privatize Social Security. Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen tell us the number of republicans in the House that won't support it is at least 40.

Most alarming to White House officials, some congressional Republicans are panning the president's plan -- even before it is unveiled. "Why stir up a political hornet's nest . . . when there is no urgency?" said Rep. Rob Simmons (Conn.), who represents a competitive district. "When does the program go belly up? 2042. I will be dead by then."

Simmons said there is no way he will support Bush's idea of allowing younger Americans to divert some of their payroll taxes into private accounts, especially when there are more pressing needs, such as shoring up Medicare and providing armor to U.S. troops in Iraq.

Rep. Jack Kingston (Ga.), a member of the GOP leadership, said 15 to 20 House Republicans agree with Simmons, although others say the number is closer to 40.

Conservative columnist Bill Kristol doesn't think it makes any sense.

William Kristol, editor of the conservative Weekly Standard, is challenging the president's assertions that Social Security is in crisis and that Republicans will be rewarded for fixing it. Republicans are privately "bewildered why this is such a White House priority," he said. "I am a skeptic politically and a little bit substantively."
[......]
"I don't buy the partisan argument that Republicans benefit by somehow carving up this Democratic program," Kristol said. He contended it could undermine other GOP initiatives, such as making Bush's tax cuts permanent, because it would sap money and the president's political capital.

The Republican Lawmakers look at the polls and don't like what they see.

Some Republicans question whether Bush's victories had anything to do with Social Security. A post-election survey by Pew found that Social Security was named by 1 percent of voters as the most important or second most important issue in deciding their vote.

A Washington Post-ABC News poll in late December found that 1 in 4 Americans thinks the Social Security system is in crisis, and the percentage that says the country is facing a Social Security crisis has gone down, not up, since 1998.

Many predicted that Bush would overstep his bounds in a second term. It would appear that the spin and lies on this pig aren't sticking.

More on Social Security

Who to blame?

Teresa Nielsen Hayden has the flu.

I�ve never had what you�d call a robust immune system. Normally I�d have gotten my regular flu shot last fall. We all know what happened there. This isn�t the first time I�ve had the flu, but it�s the first time I�ve known who to blame.

Well put.

Read a banned book.

Libraries in Mississippi are banning America the Book.

Yeah, I know. I was delighted to hear they have libraries in Mississippi too.

Seriously though, some of the better reads out there are books that have been banned some where and when. Exercise your mind. Read a banned book.

Iraq exit strategy-have them ask us to leave?

In the Washington Post David E. Sanger and Eric Schmitt report that there is talk among lawmakers and the Pentagon that perhaps we need an exit strategy in Iraq.

So far it is mostly talk, not planning. The only thing resembling a formal map to the exit door is a series of Pentagon contingency plans for events after the Jan. 30 elections. But a senior administration official warned over the weekend against reading too much into that, saying "the Pentagon has plans for everything," from the outbreak of war in Korea to relief missions in Africa.

The rumblings about disengagement have grown distinctly louder as members of Congress return from their districts after the winter recess, and as military officers try to game out how Sunni Arabs and Shiites might react to the election results. The annual drafting of the budget is a reminder that the American presence in Iraq is costing nearly $4.5 billion a month and putting huge strains on the military. And White House officials contemplate the political costs of a second term possibly dominated by a nightly accounting of continuing casualties.

Of course the Denier in Chief is not involved, he thinks everything is just peachy in Iraq. Dubya may be in a bubble but not everyone is.

But all over Washington, there is talk about new ways to define when the mission is accomplished - not to cut and run, but not to linger, either. Several administration officials acknowledge that Mr. Bush will face crucial decisions soon after Jan. 30, when it should become clearer whether the election has resulted in more stability or more insurgency.

Already, the president found himself in a rare public argument last week with one of his father's closest friends and advisers, Brent Scowcroft, the former national security adviser. The election "won't be a promising transformation, and it has great potential for deepening the conflict," Mr. Scowcroft declared Thursday, adding, "We may be seeing incipient civil war at this time."

But Bush remains in his bubble of denial.

Mr. Bush, asked Friday whether he shared Mr. Scowcroft's concerns about "an incipient civil war," shot back, "Quite the opposite."

"I think elections will be such an incredibly hopeful experience for the Iraqi people," he said.

But even in the administration not everyone is wearing rose colored glasses.

But the president's optimism is in sharp contrast, some administration insiders say, to some conversations in the White House Situation Room, the Pentagon and Congress. For the first time, there are questions about whether it is politically possible to wait until the Iraqi forces are adequately trained before pressure to start bringing back American troops becomes overwhelming.

So what's the exit plan, easy, they will ask us to leave.

One possibility quietly discussed inside the administration is whether the new Iraqi government might ask the United States forces to begin to leave - what one senior State Department official calls "the Philippine option," a reference to when the Philippines asked American forces to pull out a decade ago.

Few officials will talk publicly about that possibility. But in a speech on Oct. 8, Lt. Gen. James T. Conway, who had just completed a tour as commander of all marines in Iraq, said, "I believe there will be elections in Iraq in January, and I suspect very shortly afterward you will start to see a reduction in U.S. forces - not because U.S. planners will seek it, rather because the Iraqis will demand it."

Sunday Evening Mix 'n' Match

Just a couple of Sunday evening politically themed tidbits.

Framing in Action: A couple of days ago, I posted to Running Scared about the concept of framing, as expressed by cognitive linguist George Lakoff. A great example of that is this thread on Daily Kos, where Kos talks about the framing of abortion terms. Notice how conservatives call themselves pro-life and anti-abortion, which is great for them, because it immediately paints their opponents with the opposite terms: anti-life and pro-abortion, neither of which is true. Discussion in the linked Kos thread centers around how they can be framed differently to highlight neocons' hypocrisy on this issue. Kos suggests "pro-birth" (or, rather, passes along a Benedictine nun's suggestion!), which to me is an awful choice, because it implies proponents are "anti-birth." In the thread, terms bandied about for those who are against abortion but also against financial support for pre-natal visits, post-birth care, etc.,"pro-criminalization" and "forced birth." (I think the latter sounds worse, and thus would be more effective.) It's an interesting framing discussion, and is a perfect example of what I was discussing earlier, if you'd like to see the theories in action.

Democracy in Virginia, Indeed: A bill in the Virginia legislature as phrased would have required women to report a miscarriage to the government within the first 12 hours of their miscarriage (assuming it happened outside of medical attention) or face a Class I misdemeanor charge -- punishable by 12 months in jail and $2,500. Given the immense emotional trauma people experience surrounding a miscarriage, this was a horrific concept that raised hackles all across the country after a blogger brought it to people's attention. The representative in question promptly received about five metric tons of e-mails that were, in his words, "extremely abusive, condescending, and mean-spirited," so language quickly found its way into the bill that clarified the legislation's (supposed) original intent, which was to discourage those women who would abandon their children in trashcans after delivery. ("If a coroner could not determine if the child was born alive," Conyers wrote, "the person responsible for abandoning the child could only be charged with is the improper disposal of a human body.") The blogosphere had a substantive effect in this one, and it's thanks to someone who was both a blogger and who was introduced to activist politics by her volunteer work for Dean. Gotta tip my hat to her on this one.

An interesting moment on TalkLeft: The mother of the youngest inmate on Texas' death row leaves a comment in a thread there about the juvenile death penalty. Her comment is heartwrenching, even after you learn what her son did.

Another interesting thread on TalkLeft: Speaking of the death penalty, defendants who are facing the death penalty in a case may plead guilty just to avoid death, even if they are innocent. If you've got the equivalent of a gun to your head (in other words, your life is being threatened), it's going to alter the defense you're going to put up and the choices you make for that defense. So if the death penalty is ruled unconstitutional in your state (as it was in Kansas), can you then withdraw your guilty plea? Interesting discussion there.

Jack Chick: Do you know who Jack Chick is? Have you ever been somewhere (highway rest stop bathroom, subway/train platform, etc.) and found a fundie Christian tract that was in the form of a comic? Then most likely you've found one of his tracts. (Here's the Wikipedia article on him.) His world's a fascinating if scary one. Everything is in extremely contrasting shades of black and white -- no shades of gray -- with everyone going to hell except for a select few, which doesn't evidently include Wiccans, gays, Catholics, Jews, or Muslims, or even people who've done good but aren't born again. (And if you play Dungeons & Dragons, supposedly you're already hellbait. Don't even think about trick or treating, either. And I saved the most offensive tract for last.) I suppose I blog about this for two reasons. For one, I find his stuff peculiarly fascinating, that insanely regimented and conspiracy-filled worldview. I've always been interested in strange conspiracy worldviews, but Chick beats the pants off of must of them. (Hey, someone decided to make an extremely tongue-in-cheek game campaign based on it.) The other reason is that I really wouldn't be too surprised if the halls of Washington have quite a few of these tracts scattered about here and there. Chick's worldview is, in many respects, right up a lot of the neocons' alleys. I will find myself shaking my head over some really particularly twisted fundie moment in a tract, and then suddenly realize, complete with cold chill, "You know, this isn't funny to a lot of people -- and at least some of those are in Washington." Eep. Then I go read the "Cthlulu Tract" parody and stop shivering.

Anyway -- this particular paragraph wasn't meant to be a uber-insightful analysis of Chick. But a lot of people don't realize who he is, just like a lot of people don't know who Fred Phelps is. I suppose I speak of these guys as a heads-up, because I think it's important to know the forces of hate that are out there working in this world.

P.S. On an entirely off-topic note, I love Ireland -- not only are they sensible enough to elect a woman as their President, but she even dresses comfortably for her official portrait.

Index of posts on Social Security

Edit
The links are fixed.

Here at Running Scared and at Middle Earth Journal we have tried to keep you up to date on the hoax known as the Social Security "Crisis". I have collected all of the posts on Social Security on both sites and the links are below. I will keep this post updated and I will place a link to it over on the right sidebar at MEJ.

• Crisis?(RS)



• David Brooks on Social Security Reform(RS)



• Key Democrat says NO to Bush Social Security Reform(MEJ)



• Specter Jumps(RS)



• Social Security "Crisis" Cliffs Notes(RS)



• MSM, Not everybody gets it!!!!(MEJ)



• More on Social Security(RS)



• Social Security Privitization, DOA?????(MEJ)



• Republicans, a party divided(MEJ)



• Policy, two words and some lies(MEJ)



• The Social Security "Crisis"(MEJ)



• Another good reason to oppose the Bush Social Security Reform(MEJ)



• Democrats and Social Security(MEJ)



• Social Security, even conservatives see through the lies(RS)



• More Social Security Lies from the MSM(RS)



• How not to fix Social Security(MEJ)



• The MSM, idiots, liars or both?(MEJ)



• Harry Reid on Social Security(MEJ)



• Krugman on Social Security(RS)



• Social Security Facts and Myths (RS)



• The truth about Social Security(MEJ)

As you can probably figure out on your own an (RS) on the end indicates it is from Running Scared and a (MEJ) is Middle Earth Journal. They are arranged approximately by date with the most recent at the top.

NOTE
I didn't check all the links so if you find a bad one let me know in the comments section.

Fallujah, the press and the new tyranny

We have a corporate media and a government that wants to control what we see and hear. I don't know about you but that sounds a lot like the old Soviet Union to me. Over at The Left Coaster soccerdad tells us how the siege of Fallujah resulted in untold civilian death and suffering and how the press either willingly or by coercion made sure we didn't hear about it.

Mike Whitney asks what happened to the media after the battle?

The role of the media in the siege of Falluja has been nearly as extraordinary as the battle itself. The siege began on November 8, but by Nov. 15 the military had declared "victory" and the story disappeared from all the major media. It was as if the Pentagon had simply issued an edict forbidding any further coverage of the conflict, and the press left without protest.

Mr Whitney claims that the behavior of the media can be attributed to the fact that they are now, for the most part, a �corporate media� rather than the free press we all desire. Corporate media operates by the same standard as other businesses. My interpretation is that their motivation is profits. To maintain profits you must be able to attract viewers/readers and to do that you must have access to the events of the days. I believe there is an unspoken fear that getting on the wrong side of the administration will lead to reduced access. Thus, there has been little in the way of reports concerning the effects of the siege on Fallujah and its former inhabitants.

It is clear that the US wanted as little publicity and information as possible to be disseminated from Fallujah. One of the early targets in the attack was a hospital. Apparently the military was angry about the reports from Fallujah concerning casualties from the previous attack on Fallujah 6 months earlier and attributed the reports to doctors at the hospital. The military considered the hospital as a center of propaganda. So there would be no casualty reports from the hospital and we know the military does not count dead or injured civilians. Everyone killed is an �insurgent�.

It would appear that the Iraqi �government� also threatened the media. On Nov 12, 4 days after the start of the siege Iraq's media regulator warned news organizations Thursday to stick to the government line on the U.S.-led offensive in Fallouja or face legal action.

The US military refused to let the International Red Cross into Fallujah. And this is the mindset of those in charge:

Many think that the brutal nature of the siege of Fallujah was retaliation for the failed operations the previous April. The thinking behind this tactic was summed up by New York Post columnist and former military officer Ralph Peters.

�We must not be afraid to make an example of Fallujah. We need to demonstrate that the United States military cannot be deterred or defeated. If that means widespread destruction, we must accept the price... Even if Fallujah has to go the way of Carthage, reduced to shards, the price will be worth it.�

This makes me hide my head in shame. And they keep insisting that Iraq is nothing like Vietnam. They did learn one lesson from Vietnam, don't let the American people see or hear what's really going on.