“Older Investors Getting Burned” — AOL news hilite today. This past Saturday, August 28th, I denounced Republican efforts to destroy Social Security as we know it and substitute millions of individual investment accounts. I pointed out the dangers of the stock market and warned that people who could least afford it, the elderly, could lose their shirts. I didn’t know that four days earlier The New York Times had published a vivid picture of the terrible risks the elderly face. Today, America Online spotlited that story in one of the four sequential billboards you see when you log onto the AOL service and linger a few moments to see what’s new.

When Concetta McGrath, 76, a widow in Staten Island, sold the home she had shared with her husband for over 50 years, she took $90,000 of the proceeds and put it into the stock market. It was 2001 and she hoped that the gains generated by the investment would bolster her monthly Social Security benefits of $800.

But soon after she invested in an Oppenheimer mutual fund, its value began to drop. When the fund lost a third of its value, Ms. McGrath cashed out, spent $15,000 on living expenses and put the remaining $45,000 into banking institution stocks for safety.

Today, some two and a half years after her foray into the market, Ms. McGrath says her account is worth $28,000. Now, she worries about outliving her money.

$90,000 to $28,000. This is what George W. Bush and his party of plutocrats wants for the people of this country: millions of small investors giving the rich money to play with, and losing their shirts at a time when they can’t afford to replace the money they lose because they can’t work.
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The attempt to destroy Social Security as a government benefit and transform it into a three-card-Monte con on the elderly must be stopped..
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Yesterday, iWon.com’s daily survey of opinion gave these three pieces of economic news as leadup to its questions, under the heading “Poor Getting Poorer”:

The number of Americans living in poverty increased by 1.3 million people to 35.8 million in 2003, according to the U.S. Census. It is the third straight year that poverty levels have increased. [That is, the entire Bush term of office.] * * *
The report also showed that the number of citizens without healthcare had risen by 1.4 million to 45 million in 2003. It is the third straight year that these levels have risen as well. [Again, the entire Bush term of office. What a coinkydink!] * * *
The Census report also showed that salaries remained flat in 2003. [Which means many people actually lost money, given that inflation, tho low, still does exist. If your salary doesn’t rise but prices do, you lose money.]

What iWon did not report is that even as the poor (and middle class) are getting poorer, the rich are getting richer. The gap between the “haves” and “havenots” is growing ever wider and more obscene, not just here at home but around the world. And the Republican Party is in large part responsible, certainly at home, and contributorily abroad.
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It is urgently important that the Presidency and Congress be returned to Democratic control in November and that the people put enormous pressure on government to reverse the Plutocratic Revolution started by the Tax Reform Act of 1986, in which “The top tax rate was lowered from 50% to 28% [a 44% cut on the taxes on the wealthy!] while the bottom rate was raised from 11% to 15%.” The good features of that reform, tax simplification and an attempt to eliminate tax shelters — which, of course, the rich, with their expensive accountants and tax lawyers have found ways around — could not begin to equal the harm that massive reduction of taxes on the rich has produced. We have seen a stark reconcentration of wealth in fewer and fewer hands, and the rich are getting even greedier, demanding cuts on estate taxes — which affect only the wealthy, since estate tax does not apply to estates of less than $900,000 — even lower tax rates on earned income, and preferential treatment of capital gains (a type of income poor and middle class people do not get).
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John Edwards tried to raise some of these issues in his abortive campaign for the Presidency. He has let many of them go and submerged his campaign talk in the themes designated by Senator Kerry. That’s a mistake. Edwards AND Kerry MUST start talking about the hard and ugly economic injustice that is getting worse and worse under the Republicans. That way lies victory. And it’s what the Nation needs.
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Ignore all other issues, many of which are nonissues because the candidates both agree, or differ so little as to be in essential agreement, as on security, the war on terror, education — almost everything but a few social issues. Even there, they aren’t far apart on most. Kerry is against gay marriage almost as much as Dubya. So what really matters this election, is economic justice, reversing and destroying the Plutocratic Revolution; paying down the national debt; drastically reducing interest rates charged the poor and middle class, easing bankruptcy, and otherwise acting to remove the crushing burden of personal debt from scores of millions of Americans. That’s what this election must be about. And on that, you must vote Democratic, because the Republicans are doing everything in their power to make everyone but the rich into wage slaves and debt slaves who will take cuts in pay and benefits so the rich can become even richer and look down their nose at the rest of us.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:00 PM

 
Conning the Poor. The Republican National Convention begins tonite in very peculiar territory, arch-Democratic and Far Left New York City, which just barely qualifies as an American city and is in many ways, including demographically, very foreign. I know. I lived there for 35 years before moving to an American city, Newark, 13 miles away.
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The richest city in the world, the Capital of Capital, is also capital of the “Liberal Media” that the Republican Right so detests. So why on Earth are Republicans meeting there?
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Because, you see, New York was attacked by terrorists, so can be used to make Americans feel insecure. Never mind that New York was attacked ON GEORGE W. BUSH’S WATCH. We’re not to think about that, not to be worried that if he could allow something like this to happen once, he could allow it to happen twice, three times, a million times more. No, we are to put all our faith in the competence of a mental midget and the cabal of fools that pulls his strings.
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The Republican Party is the party of the arrogant rich, that is all. Every now and then it poses as the “Party of Lincoln”, but despite W’s unrepresentative cabinet with the prominent ‘black’ faces of Condoleeza Rice and the almost-white Colin Powell, the Republican Party is white. And rich. Did I mention that Republicans are rich — or want to be rich; or want to believe that they will someday be rich, even if they are nothing like rich now?
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The Republican Party’s entire program was best summarized in the eloquent phrase “trickle-down” that some unknown genius coined during the Reagan years that gave rise to the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which carried off a Plutocratic Revolution that is hurting us to this day, ever widening the gap between rich and poor. The public rationale of the Plutocratic Revolution (tho of course it has never used that name for itself) is "just let the rich get ever richer and they'll take care of everybody else. Their wealth will trickle down to raise everyone up." Yeah, sure it will, when every penny the rich own is being held in a death grip!
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The Republican program is the ultimate con, the ultimate infomercial on getting rich quick. ‘Anybody can be rich in this country. All you have to do is want it bad enuf and buy this program. Then, within a few short weeks — or years at most — you too will be rich as Bill Gates! As Jon Lovitz’s habitual-liar character on Saturday Night Live would say, “Yeah, that’s the ticket.”
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“And if you were rich you wouldn’t want the Democrats taking all your money in taxes, would you? NO, of course not! So you’ve got to keep taxes on the rich low, so that you can become rich too!” Yeah, that is the ticket indeed.
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There are a lot of fools willing to delude themselves that their miserable today can be followed by a magnificent tomorrow. All they have to do is catch a break, or learn the tricks. But there IS NO TRICK to becoming rich. No formula works for everyone. There’s a lot of luck in who becomes rich and who doesn’t, who is BORN rich and who isn’t. If you’re 30 or older and aren’t rich, you can pretty well kiss that dream goodbye. If you’re 30 and are indeed in debt, you can probably look forward to being in debt the rest of your life, paying over huge amounts over time in interest that goes to — the RICH!
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A colleague in Durham, England alerted me to a pointed Internet commentary on the willingness of many poor and middle-class people to be manipulated by the rich: “The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe’s”.
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I pointed out to him that what is going on today, with the exploitation of the aspirations and frustrations of the poor by the rich, is like the astounding achievement in the Civil War era, of Southern plantation- and slave-owners getting poor whites to fight and even die in large numbers for an institution, slavery, that caused poor whites eminent harm, by drastically reducing the demand, and thus the price, for white labor and white-produced goods. Today, poor Southern whites are again being mercilessly abused by the Radical Right to promote the interests of the rich in ways that actually hurt the very people who are the chief backers of the right wing's Plutocratic Revolution. Will they never wake up to see that they are being used by people who hate them?
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Poor whites in the South and everywhere else need to realize that it is in their interest to soak the rich, not turn the country over to them. If the rich won't pay higher taxes, who is going to pay for government? Well, who's left? The poor and middle class will pay higher taxes to make up for what the rich aren't paying. Isn't that obvious? So why on Earth do poor whites back the war against them now being waged by the rich?
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If nothing I can say will snap poor people out of the temptation to vote Republican, maybe “The Wrath of the Millionaire Wannabe’s” can shake them awake.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:03 PM

 
Dissension on the (Radical) Right. Ralph Peters, a supermilitarist, rightwing columnist for the New York Post, has recently embarked on a crusade against fellow rightwingers in the Bush defense establishment. Here are some intriguing quotes from his column two days ago.

If there were any justice in the world, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Doug Feith and Steve Cambone would be walking point in Najaf or Fallujah. But that's a sight you'll never see. When Wolfowitz went to Baghdad he had tighter security than Saddam Hussein ever did. He then accused journalists, more than two dozen of whom have died in Iraq, of cowardice.

Yeah, you're a hero, Paul. You should've been on that Swift boat with John Kerry. * * *

Ultimately, the blame [for the hideous Abu Ghraib scandal] leads back to Washington, to the Office of the Secretary of Defense. A hallowed military rule applies: A commander is responsible for everything his soldiers do or fail to do.

When the going was good, Rumsfeld reveled in the role of warlord. Now he needs to take his licks like a man.

The Rumsfelds, Wolfowitzes, and Feiths of the Bush Administration persuaded themselves that the Iraqi people would welcome their “liberators” with open arms, so made no plans for quelling a long-term, widely popular “insurgency”. Now some American militarists are indignant about the needless risks our men in uniform (and, of course women — in our social-Communist military, which is devoted to the pretense that sexual difference is meaningless, because individuals are meaningless) have been exposed to, with the result that almost daily Americans are being killed and the Bush defense leadership hasn’t a clue what to do about it.
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In addition, an underappreciated 1998 explanation for why President Bush the Elder refused to carry the First Gulf War to Baghdad has recently received the attention it deserves:

“Trying to eliminate Saddam, extending the ground war into an occupation of Iraq, would have violated our guideline about not changing objectives in midstream, engaging in "mission creep," and would have incurred incalculable human and political costs. Apprehending him was probably impossible. We had been unable to find Noriega in Panama, which we knew intimately. We would have been forced to occupy Baghdad and, in effect, rule Iraq. The coalition would instantly have collapsed, the Arabs deserting it in anger and other allies pulling out as well. Under the circumstances, there was no viable "exit strategy" we could see , violating another of our principles. Furthermore, we had been self-consciously trying to set a pattern for handling aggression in the post-Cold War world. Going in and occupying Iraq, thus unilaterally exceeding the United Nations' mandate, would have destroyed the precedent of international response to aggression that we hoped to establish . Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land . It would have been a dramatically different — and perhaps barren — outcome." — George H.W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (1998), pp. 489-90

Didn’t Dubya’s Daddy warn his baby about this? Or is Bush 41 (41st President) “out of the loop” in his son’s Administration? Perhaps Bush the Elder isn’t radical-enuf rightwing to be permitted input to the decisions of the cabal that is the Real President for which Bush the Younger is only the public face (or poster boy, puppet, or marionette — your choice).
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Let’s hope the Radical Right escalates its internal dissensions as to expose the profoundly dishonest arguments it has used to manipulate the public and the un-American principles that motivate it. Americans might then see that they have been played for fools by people who do not have their best interests at heart — not in Iraq, not at home. (Responsive to “Blame Reaches to the Pentagon’s Top”, column by Ralph Peters in the New York Post, August 27, 2004 (URL presently at http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/27549.htm, tho most items on the Post’s website are no longer accessible after a couple of weeks)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 2:22 PM

 
Social InSecurity. The New York Post published today a shameless pack of lies by one of Reagan’s “trickle-down” hacks advocating the destruction of Social Security as we know it by replacing a single government trust fund with millions of personally managed stock portfolios. The author actually had the nerve to claim that even in the worst of times, “the average rate of return on diversified stock portfolios [which, of course, is not defined] for any 35-year period was 6.4 percent and never below 2.7 percent” whereas “most young people entering the labor market can expect Social Security to deliver a rate of return below 2 percent.” Astonishing.
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Let’s examine these purportedly meaningful ‘statistics’. First, we are given an undefined term, “diversified stock portfolio” and are to accept on faith the claim that some, undefined level of diversification is a guarantor of long-term profit. How “diversified” a portfolio must a private investor have to sustain the ups and downs of various segments of the stock market? He doesn’t say. Can a modest investor get that kind of diversification, or is that the kind of thing only the rich, with professional investment advisors managing their money, have access to? What if a person, given the right to invest any way he chooses, decides NOT to diversify but puts all his eggs in the wrong basket? Well, then, if his life savings are destroyed, that’s his own fault, and society has no obligation to save people from their own stupidity, right? Wrong. He wouldn’t have been put in that position if we had just left Social Security alone!
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Even if a small investor were able to diversify adequately, will he ALWAYS do better with private investments than with Social Security managing the money for him or her?
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Well, let’s look at the period covered: 35 years! That 35 years has to include both the time the investment is put in and the period over which the proceeds are taken out.
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How many investors have LOST THEIR SHIRTS in the stock market in the past decade? A young person might be able to survive the loss of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars from a severe market drop, because s/he’s still working and still bringing in income. But how on EARTH is a retiree, old and feeble and in poor health, unable to work, going to survive the loss of thousands or tens of thousands of dollars from bad investments?
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If a loss is sustained at the time the investor needs those funds, it doesn’t matter that if he would just wait for 10 or 15 years, he’d make the money back. How many retirees can afford to suffer a huge stock loss during retirement? If they aren’t allowed to draw upon their investments until they’re 67 or older, and at that point their stocks take a nosedive, how are they supposed to wait the 10 or 15 years before their portfolio climbs back to profitability? They might be DEAD in 10 or 15 years, especially if they can’t afford to EAT right or pay for health insurance!
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The Radical Right really are callous, inhuman scum. Their attitude really is, “So, maybe 20% or 30% of retirees lose their shirts and have to eat cat food, so what? The stock market needs their money, for bold innovation that might benefit all mankind — and make their investors rich along the way! So what if some of those bold innovations crash to the ground in flames, burning everyone who invested in them? In the long run, an investor with a diversified portfolio will make it up.” But what if they don’t HAVE a “long run” in which to make up a catastrophic loss? “That’s their problem”, I guess.
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People must not be fooled. The stock market is NOT safe. If you gamble, you can lose. The Social Security system and Medicare CANNOT gamble. They MUST be there when we need them. All attempts to trick people into moving their Social Security funds to the stock market must be STOPPED, with all necessary force . (Responsive to “The Real Debt” by Clark S. Judge, New York Post, August 28, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:33 PM

 
Regis Reigns. This week, Regis Philbin took the Guinness World Record as the one person who has had more hours on television than any other. He deserves it. From his days as sidekick to Joey Bishop on ABC’s late-nite challenge to NBC’s Tonight Show thru various local news and talk shows to Who Wants To Be a Millionaire and, for 16 years, his almost always watchable morning fluff talkshow, LIVE (now “with Regis and Kelly”, formerly “with Regis and Kathie Lee”), to his many cameos on Letterman, Regis has been a familiar and fondly received presence in our homes for decades.
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His present co-host, Kelly Ripa, is an overexposed, youngish blonde woman, ‘perky’ and outgoing, whose one great virtue (from my Newark perspective) is that she is from New Jersey — tho now she is too hotsie-totsie to summer at the Jersey Shore, but hangs out in “The Hamptons” with the rich and famous. She also was a regular on the soap opera All My Children when she got the job on LIVE, and now is one of two female leads on the execrable ABC primetime “comedy” Faith and Hope. (Bizarrely, Faith Ford, the other female lead in that awful mess, plays “Hope”! What were they thinking? Well, what were they thinking (a) when they created that trash and (b) when they renewed it for next year?)
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Kelly Ripa is overemployed, in an industry in which underemployment or complete unemployment is more the rule. An uncountable host of talented, personable people can’t find so much as one job in entertainment, while the minimally talented and questionably personable Kelly Ripa gets job after job.
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Overmployment is not unique to Ms. Ripa, of course. Eddie Murphy, who is at least an extremely talented comedian and actor, has repeatedly endeavored to show off his ‘enormous gifts’ by playing multiple parts in black-oriented movies, in the process taking multiple jobs away from underemployed black actors and actresses who could really use the work and the chance to break out themselves. How many remarkable talents is Eddie Murphy keeping from being discovered by hogging so many roles? I ask the same question of other actors who hog multiple roles in one film or multiple jobs around the entertainment industry. For every actor you see in two shows or commercial campaigns, there's an actor who gets none, and not necessarily because s/he's not talented. It's just 'the breaks'.
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On today’s show, I discovered that Faith Ford is also stealing work away from others, because in addition to her role in the detestable Faith and Hope, she is starring in a Vin Diesel film, Pacifier! Odious. And that film is to be made in TORONTO!, as so many films are made in Toronto or Vancouver, ROBBING American bit players, extras, liting people, sound people, caterers, limo drivers, etc., of badly needed work. We really need to crack down on "runaway productions", and everyone who makes abroad movies or TV shows that could perfectly well be made in the United States should be shunned by media and public alike.
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Whoopi Goldberg was asked to star in a film she was co-producing, to be filmed in Toronto. She asked how much more it would cost to make in New York. When told, "a million dollars", she said, 'Take it from my share' and made the film in New York. That's an American.
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Regis Philbin has had more than one show-biz job at a time, but they were roles that others would have had trouble filling. Who else could have made Millionaire so big for so long?
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"Rege" is a unique talent, an easygoing conversationalist whose persona is an irritable Everyman with famous friends. He’s likable and busy, and the things he does are things that people in Middle America are happy to hear about, even if they wouldn’t be particularly comfortable doing them themselves. Regis lunches with the rich and famous; is on a first-name basis with "The Donald" (Trump), who has been known to call in during LIVE; and attends various roasts and benefits with hordes of celebrities, events that you and I might find ineffably boring but he manages to make seem diverting, at least in two minutes’ retelling. He also plays tennis, at age 73!, so is quite a role model for the ancient.
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When he hosted Millionaire, he was a perfect mix of the TV star we all know and someone we felt was really rooting for the little guy. Oddly, he almost ALWAYS intoned incorrectly the keynote question “Who wants to be a millionaire?” — stressing “wants” rather than "Who" and “millionaire”. He was told about that over and over again, but after saying it right once or twice, would quickly revert to his own idiosyncratic rendering. If anyone else did that, the audience would rebel with irritation. When Regis did it, we let it go.
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That Regis is likable and does his job well does not justify his being hugely overpaid. As Kelly Ripa observed today, in joking about how much it would cost to have guest Vin Diesel direct a film for them, ‘Regis is very wealthy.’ How did he get his money? Sitting on a stool and chatting, shmoozing with celebrities about nothing. Should this be rewarded with enormous wealth? I don’t think so. He shouldn’t mind paying a high rate on the upper portions of his ill-gotten gain so that people who work very hard at really difficult and sometimes unpleasant jobs, get to keep more of their well-earned pittance.
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Love ya, Regis, but you’re rich, and my motto is now and always will be, “Soak the rich!”
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:43 PM

 
National Conscience in Prison. Why is Abu Ghraib not seen as a wake-up call to American conscience? How can the President who established a culture of violence against the helpless not be held to account? Why is his Administration of criminal bullies not 40% behind in the polls?
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CNN reported today:

Abuses photographed at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq represented "deviant behavior and a failure of military leadership and discipline" at the facility, but direct and indirect responsibility for those acts and others elsewhere went higher up the chain of command, an independent panel reported Tuesday. * * *

Five detainees died from abuse during interrogations, it said. Many others died from natural causes and enemy mortar attacks. Twenty-three cases of detainee deaths were still under investigation -- three in Afghanistan and 20 in Iraq …. * * *

A Pentagon report by U.S. Maj. Gen. George Fay is expected to recommend up to 27 people once assigned to Abu Ghraib for referral to authorities for possible additional legal action, including as many as five private contractors, * * *

[The] lawyer [for a guard who pled guilty] said that a culture of humiliation existed "prior to Frederick and his company arriving on the scene."

This is the behavior of the "heroes" that the New Militarism wants us to praise to the skies. It includes PRIVATE CONTRACTORS committing violence against prisoners! That's Republican "privatization" at work! Ain't it wonderful?
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And note the prominent mention of (sexually) "deviant behavior" — that is, sado-masochistic behavior, which is actually smiled upon by the military. But we don't want no damned faggots in our morally pure military, no way! Jess good ol' boys who have a little fun beatin' furriners and humiliatin' them nekkid.
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How would we react if five American prisoners were stripped naked and beaten to death by Iraqi guards if positions were reversed? Too many Americans no longer ask questions like that. They have lost the ability to identify with the victims of U.S. violence, lost the ability to put themselves into other people's shoes. That is what is happening to us under the Bush Administration. We are becoming a Nation of cold, vicious bullies, fundamentally corrupted by power. Bush and his entire cabinet's culture of arrogance and callousness have GOT to go.
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This is not the United States I was born into, the U.S. that destroyed Nazism and liberated concentration camps, then rushed billions of dollars of aid in the Marshall Plan to save Europe from starvation and then Communist takeover.
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This is not the America of decent, Northern values, but Redneck America, a Nation of gun racks on pickup trucks flying the Confederate flag. I HATE that "Amurica" and want the North to retake control of our civilization while there's still time. Massachusetts, sí! Texas, no!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 4:35 PM

 
Scurrilous and Ludicrous. The Radical Right has rarely disgraced itself so flagrantly, in so hypocritical a fashion, as in the current ‘war’ against John Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Unable to content themselves with the fact that Kerry turned against the war after his service there — as, unfortunately, so did much of the Nation, under the impact of comsymps in media — they are now pretending that he never did the things for which THE MILITARY decorated him. Kerry didn’t bestow those medals on himself. The MILITARY GAVE THEM TO HIM. Don’t argue with Kerry. Argue with the MILITARY.
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And speaking of the military, what do the military’s own records show about our brave “war President”, George Bush? They show that he did NOT serve in Vietnam nor anywhere else dangerous, and didn’t even show up for alternative ‘service’ in Alabama! That should end this whole controversy. Kerry should simply say, “I didn’t decorate myself. The United States military decorated me, and that should be good enuf for anybody.” He should then move on to say, “The same military shows that George Bush EVADED service in Vietnam and didn’t even show up for National Guard service in safe, sweet Alabama.”
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And John Kerry didn’t withdraw from Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Richard Nixon, a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN, did that! John F. Kennedy and the Democratic Party put us into Vietnam to fight against Communist totalitarianism. Richard Nixon and the Republican Party pulled out, and cozied up to Communist China. George W. Bush presides over a trade relationship that is shipping $124 BILLION A YEAR to the Butchers of Beijing!
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(Sidebar: I had a pro-war letter published in the anti-war New York Times at the height of the Vietnam War that asked pointed questions such as “Which way do the refugees flee?” The answer, of course, is that the refugees always fled AWAY from Communist-controlled areas. But those pointed questions, all the answers to which confirmed the morality of defending the people of Southeast Asia from Communism, didn’t suffice to stop this Nation without honor from throwing them to the wolves, which cost some 5 million their lives. Using the same kinds of standards, I concluded, before the current war against Iraq began, that morality required us NOT to invade, but again, a dishonorable Nation did not heed. Now we are in a mess of Dubya’s creation, and Kerry doesn’t know how to get out of it any more than Dubya does. My own answer is there IS NO GETTING OUT. We’re in and must stay in. Annex Iraq. Make it a state. Reform the entire region for the benefit of the decent, moderate people of the Arab world. Bring millions of Arab votes into our domestic political process as will change our grossly unwise and unjust policy in the Middle East. Then we might just salvage something from this disaster.)
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Ralph Peters, a bloodthirsty, militarist psychopath who writes regularly for the New York Post, had the unbelievable gall to write today:

Real heroes (and I've been honored to know some) never portray their service in grandiose terms, telling TV cameras that they're reporting for duty. Real heroes may be proud of the sacrifices they offered, but they don't shout for attention.

May I remind Mr. Peters that George W. Bush, the guy who evaded service in Vietnam to fly planes at home (that is, when he chose to show up), dared to land a warplane on an aircraft carrier, as tho he were some kind of great war hero, and proclaim from that deck “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq! If that’s not “shout[ing] for attention” and bragging for the TV cameras, what the hell is? And, as Kerry needs pointedly to continue to ask, over and over and over till it sinks home, “What mission was accomplished? What mission?”
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Peters dares to go on to say:

I'm appalled by Bush's domestic policies. I believe that the Cheney-Halliburton connection stinks to high heaven. And I'm convinced that Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld & Co. have done colossal damage to our military and to our foreign policy.

But we're at war. And for all his faults, Bush has proven himself as a great wartime leader. Despite painful mistakes, he's served our security needs remarkably well. And security trumps all else in the age of terror.

Of what value is a war abroad — and by the way, it’s not a war without a declaration of war — if the Nation collapses at home? if we fight for “freedom” abroad — which, I say again, has NEVER been what this “war on terror” is about, but only about Zionism, the real reason we are under attack from mililtant Islam — but ravage the Constitution at home? How can you vote for a government that you yourself say has done “colossal damage to our military and to our foreign policy”?!? How much more damage can our military and foreign policy take?
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The “war for oil” that many people thought they saw, has resulted in the highest price for oil in 21 years! And what “security” do we have when even relatively small towns (I won’t say “backwaters”, of areas including my own city) like Newark, New Jersey are told they are targets for terror from thousands of miles away? How is that “serving our security needs well”?
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The attack on the World Trade Center, which I used to be able to see on my way to work but which ISN’T THERE ANYMORE, occurred ON GEORGE W. BUSH’S WATCH! Oh yeah, he’s doing a great job. Four more years of such great work and we won’t have a skyline left in this country.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:30 PM

 
Spirit of the Olympics. Reuters reports that:

Svetlana Khorkina, who was second to American Carly Patterson in the women's all-round gymnastics competition, accused the judges of robbing her of the gold medal. "Everything was decided in advance. I'm just furious," Khorkina said.

Khorkina somehow concluded that judges from different countries decided to award an undeserving American a medal based not on ability but nationality. Is that believable?
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Perhaps miss bitch has another basis for her feelings about judging today: "[Gymnastics] should be judged primarily on grace, elegance and beauty rather than simply on mechanical tumbling." Oh, so maybe the American girl was superior on "mechanical tumbling", while Khorkhina (according to herself) was superior on "grace, elegance and beauty". If you don't like the way judging is done, Your Loveliness, perhaps you shouldn't subject yourself to being judged by barbarians who can't appreciate how inexpressibly beautiful your athleticism is.
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President Putin should rebuke little miss bitch very publicly and say that she disgraces Russia. Russia is a great country, and deserves better representation abroad than little miss bitch has given it. She doesn't even have the excuse of extreme youth to explain her childish whining, since these are her third Olympics, so she is child no longer.
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I stopped watching the Olympics decades ago. The pretense that it brings out the best in people and promotes international cooperation is so much balderdash, and it's refreshing, in its way, to hear some athlete twit bitch and moan about unfairness. What's unfair, missy, is that while other people have to work for a living, you have spent your entire life doing nothing of any conceivable use, like the bulk of Olympic athletes. Working people are supposed to respect useless athlete parasites who waste hours a day on useless physical activity that accomplishes nothing, while they have to do the real work of society, building the housing, running the assembly lines, teaching children, nursing injured and sick people, tending to the elderly, chasing down criminals, and all the thousands of other occupations that useful people pursue? I don't think so. Society needs a purgative to rid itself of athletic parasites. We need to show our contempt for useless lives and worthless exertions for empty, fleeting glory. Shut down the Olympics. Permanently.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:29 PM

 
Item 1: Iraq's Dubious Future. George F. Will has cobbled together an uncharacteristically diffuse and confused hodgepodge of ideas that leaves the reader wondering what the heck his point is. He speaks of the U.S. pacification in 1901 of Philippine "insurgents" (and yes, he does use that word), at huge cost in blood, without speaking to the long-term benefits of the U.S.-Philippine relationship that emerged from that detestable horror. Likewise, he talks about the Mexican War without addressing the stark disparity in social mobility and prosperity today between the areas of Mexico we did annex as against those we left independent. And then he talks about our neither/nor ‘policy' in Iraq.
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If his intent was to show our inability to choose a policy by his inability to choose a topic, he has succeeded. If his intent was to urge Americans to take a stand and stick to it, he failed. The long-term prospects that Bush's hideous war of aggression will turn out well are dismal, unless we take the drastic step of accepting that the only way to make Iraq whole and extend the blessings of liberty to its present population and posterity is to annex it outright and make it into a Middle Eastern California. That would be worth fighting for. What else would? (Responsive to George F. Will column, "Iraq's Crossroads", New York Post, August 20, 2004)
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Item 2: Needless, Media-Induced Worry. When my clockradio went off today, 1010 WINS ("All news, all the time") out of Manhattan (13 miles away) reported the temperature as 70 degrees Fahrenheit, at 12:30pm on August 22nd. (I work swing-shift, so try not to get up too much before the time I have to get ready for work, even on the days I’m not working.) 70 degrees after noon on August 22nd! Have you any idea how COLD that is for the Newark/New York metropolitan area?
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We have had substantially subnormal temperatures, by some 10 degrees a day, most of this “summer”. We went over 90 perhaps twice this year. The most recent temperature reading was 77 degrees, at 4:51pm, 7 degrees below normal. The forecast calls for overnite temperatures to fall into the high 50s — 50s! in August! This isn’t Maine. We’re supposed to average 67 degrees at nite, and many nites in August are usually sweltering. Not anymore they’re not.
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For at least two and a half years the temperatures in this region have been starkly subnormal. Wintry weather began a month early in 2003 and lasted well into spring this year. On one day last summer the temperature was 23 degrees lower than the same date a year earlier.
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And the rain! We’ve had four and five days of rain in a row, several times this season. Jersey Shore businesses are taking a drubbing.
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That would be bad enuf, to suffer thru a miserably cold and wet summer. But what makes it ever worse is the constant, insistent drumbeat of claims by major media that planet Earth is about to burn into a cinder because of “Global Warming”.
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Global Warming is a fraud. It does not exist. What does exist is LOCAL warming and local COOLING. The Tristate New York Metropolitan Area is experiencing an obvious major cooling, of at least two or three years’ duration, and counting. But the major media of this country, headquartered HERE!, keep blaring alarums about Global Warming. Astounding.
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They go to Alaska and Canada’s Northwest Territories to point to shrinking ice sheets and glaciers, as tho that proves something about PLANETARY weather trends. It does not. If the Arctic becomes warmer but heavily populated areas become colder, is that “global” warming? No, it is not.
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Some scientists have speculated, indeed, that there could soon — within a few decades — be a huge drop in temperatures across Northern Europe. The asserted mechanism that would cause this is that "Global Warming" produces a weakening or cessation of the Gulf Stream, which in turn produces a mini-Ice Age in the British Isles and much of the rest of Europe, with temperatures dropping by 19 degrees Fahrenheit or more. (An explanation of the mechanics appeared in the British newspaper The Guardian this past November.)
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“Science” can’t seem to get its story straight. If uninhabited Arctic regions warm but densely populated Europe cools, that’s not Global Warming, is it?
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People who should know better than to talk about “global” warming, media people who are living in this starkly colder region, let “science” about far-away places of which they have no personal experience, overwhelm their own senses to make them think we are getting warmer when in this region we are actually getting colder, so it cannot be true that the entire planet is warming. Yet, rather than adjust the terminology to speak of “Patchwork Warming”, “Regional Warming”, “Arctic Warming” or something else, they continue to tell everyone we are experiencing “Global” Warming, even tho we know from our own skin that that is not true, because WE are COLDER.
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This is what an article in TV Guide decades ago spoke of as media-induced “diplopia”. Also called “double vision”, diplopia is “A disorder of vision in which a single object appears double.” In the TV Guide article, “diplopia” was used figuratively, to suggest that viewers of television are presented an alternative ‘reality’, a second society, that stands alongside a person’s actual reality and competes for belief with what his own senses and experience tell him.
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Sometimes the alternative reality portrayed by media overwhelms a person’s own experience and convinces him that what media tell him is real but what his own experience tells him cannot be relied upon.
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We must never make the mistake of letting someone else’s perceptions substitute for our own. Yes, it is sometimes necessary to check our own perceptions against those of others, but unless we are particularly phobic about something, we should rely upon our own senses and experience OVER what others, and especially MEDIA, tell us. (There are extreme cases in which that doesn’t hold. Some people are delusional, and must not rely upon their own senses over what others tell them. For instance, anorexics at the edge of death from starvation may perceive themselves as fat while all the world sees them as emaciated. But such exceptions are rare and pathological.)
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Check everything you are told by everybody, including even me, against your own perceptions and experience.
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Sometimes media can give you information you cannot otherwise get. Sometimes media distort reality by exaggerating one thing over others. For example, local TV news is filled with violent crime, fires, traffic accidents, and natural disasters. If you take that view of the world as indicative of what your own life holds, you will live a fear-driven, paranoid existence. Yes, crime, fire, accidents, and natural disasters do occur, and they might strike you. But you can’t live EXPECTING disaster. Most of us in fact will NOT be murdered; our house will NOT burn down; we will NOT be killed or maimed in an automobile accident; we will NOT have our house swept away by a flood or tornado or earthquake.
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A friend recently warned me to take measures to keep the neighborhood raccoons from invading my house because rabies had been found on Long Island, dozens of miles from me, across two wide rivers. There hasn’t been a single reported case of rabies in raccoons in New Jersey in at least 23 years! One New Jersey man did die of rabies in 1997 — seven years ago — from a variant of the disease carried by bats, not raccoons. I am not going to worry about rabid raccoons in New Jersey any more than I am about an asteroid plunging from the sky to destroy my city. Or just my house.
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In case you didn’t know, NASA has identified some 602 Near Earth Asteroids of more than 1km in diameter, capable of causing planet-wide damage, and thinks there are probably another 400 they haven’t yet found. NASA even has a website devoted to “Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards”.
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A few months ago, amateur astronomers detected what they thought was a substantial asteroid that might hit Earth within 36 hours, but didn’t know whom to notify. As it happens, one of them found a break in the clouds large enuf to enable him to establish that no collision would occur. But The Age, a newspaper in Australia, says: “No guidelines exist for who should have been informed and when and what emergency measures should have been taken if the threat had been real.” So an asteroid might plummet from the sky and wipe out all human life on this planet without your hearing so much as a word of warning!
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Now I’ve given you something else to worry about, if you’re so inclined. For my part, I’m not worrying about Global Warming, rabies, or asteroid impacts. You, however, should feel free to worry about anything you like.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:03 PM

 
Not-So-Pretty Polly. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, a self-admitted “fake news” show on cable station Comedy Central, regularly broadcasts excerpts from the Republican propaganda machine in full attack mode employing scripts and buzzwords sent out to all its agents to repeat and repeat endlessly on every news and talk show they can. When John Edwards was selected as the Vice Presidential nominee by John Kerry, the attack phrase was “out of the mainstream”, and The Daily Show regaled viewers with a half dozen or dozen different Republicans attacking both Kerry and Edwards as “out of the mainstream”, “out of the mainstream”, “so far out of the mainstream”, “out of the mainstream”, etc., etc. ad nauseam. It was good for a laf, but the technique really isn’t funny at all. Here’s one way to stop it.
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The next time a Democratic spokesman standing by on the same show hears one of these buzzwords/scripts parroted by a Republican, he should squawk, imitatively, “Awwwwwk. Polly want a cracker?” and explain that Democrats are very tired of the mindless parroting of scripts by the Republican attack machine. If the Republican continues to throw around buzzwords, Democrats should keep interrupting with “Awwwk. Polly want a cracker?” or variations on that theme, e.g., “Pretty Polly, pretty Polly!” until the Republican stops his crap and addresses real issues in his own words.
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Oh, Republicans might try to use the same tactic against Democrats, just as Rightwingers have taken up and thrown back at liberals Michael Moore’s recently coined term “hatriot”, even tho it plainly doesn’t fit liberals. Still, having both Democrats and Republicans squawking like parrots at each other would clarify for listeners that what they’re hearing is just rote repetition of scripted buzzwords, as might move people in media to decide that the electorate deserves better, so newstalk hosts and interviewers won’t accept canned remarks but demand real exposition, in their own words, of what political flaks really mean. If party spokesmen don’t do that but keep spouting buzzwords, the INTERVIEWER should interrupt, “Awwwwk. Polly want a cracker? Pretty Polly, pretty Polly!” until the flak stops mouthing mindless catchphrases.
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The public is entitled to information and reasoned argumentation, not scripted soundbites.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:37 PM

 
Taking Time for McGreevey. I’m having trouble meeting all my commitments due to lack of time and energy. I have a full-time job that is very demanding; maintain a Simpler Spelling Word of the Day website that I have kept up faithfully since June 1st; try to add to this blog almost every day; have a household and garden to run, and cats (eight — or seven if Marjorie has gone off somewhere and died) and fish to take care of (two 20-gallon tanks, one of goldfish and the other of swordtails); and I’m recovering from reconstructive knee surgery nine weeks ago, so my energy levels are not what they should be, and if I forget something on one floor of my house (three stories plus basement), I may just leave it there until the next day! (Ahhhh. Poor baby! Yes, I know.)
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But I did get around to sending the following message to embattled New Jersey Governor McGreevey via feedback form at his website:

DID you know that the man who coined the term "Gay Pride" is a New Jerseyan? (I was living in New York at the time, 1970, but subsequently returned to New Jersey.) You have a heavy moral duty to retract your resignation and serve your full four years, not just for the sake of the principles you enunciated in running at the time, but also to save other gay men and boys from the confusions you suffered. Like it or not, you are now a role model for homosexual men, and you MUST NOT BETRAY US.
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Your work is not done. Your term is not done. LET THE PEOPLE DECIDE in a regular election, next time, if they want you to serve another term.
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Republicans are trying to disrupt the fundamental political structure of this country, in which fixed terms play a major role, by ousting elected officials before their time, most notoriously in California. Democrats must not play along.
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You made a mistake. Who hasn't? Correct the mistake and move on. Be the role model you have been forced to be, and serve honorably. Apologize to your wife and children, get a divorce, and live as an open gay man searching for happiness in honorable and aboveboard relationships. That way lies happiness and your best purpose in political life.
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The past, in your particular life, is indeed prolog. You have now arrived at the launchpad for a life of major importance that transcends local, even provincial politics. Perhaps you could be the first openly gay President of the United States! Let your ambitions steer you right this time. Rescind your resignation; fight the Republican Right; serve the people of New Jersey and the underserved, underrepresented, and often profoundly oppressed constituency you are part of: gay men. This is no time to run. Turn and FIGHT!

I sent copy of this message to some family members and friends and got this reaction from a friend in Brooklyn:

My opinion of the McGreevey mess:
He didn't really resign because he's gay - he resigned because, not only did he engage in an adulterous affair, he engaged in patronage by giving his lover a government job he wasn't qualified for. Of course, straight politicians have engaged in this type of shenanigans for years, but when they are caught, they are brought down by it.

I truly believe that McGreevey did gays a disservice by cloaking himself and his resignation in the mantle of gay matyrdom, when it's not his gayness but his political misbehavior that is causing him to resign. He's giving gays a bad name!

What do you think?
-Michelle

I replied,

ALAS, McGreevey did resign because of sexual issues, and attempts by Republicans to distract people from this are as disingenuous as the claims they made that the Clinton scandal wasn't about sex but lying and betraying the public trust — except that Congress had no right to inquire into any President's sex life, and Clinton had every right to lie to anyone and everyone about his sex life — tho he should just have told them all to take a flying leap, mind their own sex lives, and keep out of his.
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McGreevey didn't do that, but 'fessed up and said he didn't want to put the state of New Jersey thru anything like what the country went thru with the Monica Lewinsky scandal. Oddly, both these affairs involved Christian men with Jewish partners. Not every 'mixed marriage' works out. Other similarities between the Clinton and McGreevey affairs exist, the main DIFFERENCE being that Clinton's affair was heterosexual, McGreevey's homosexual; Clinton dared to brazen it out, while McGreevey is still mired in the shame and guilt that have burdened his life, as it has burdened many men's lives.
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I'm more than a little disgusted with him, inasmuch as when I coined "Gay Pride" and we put together the first annual march to commemorate the Stonewall Riots, little Jimmy McGreevey was only 13 years old! I guess he didn't get the memo. His parents were also, I am told by someone who has worked closely with him, tuf as nails and pushed him hard. His own ambition for high public office did the rest.
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What matters now is what he salvages, not just of his life but of his political life and mission. He has done amazing things in his few short years as Governor, closing a $5 BILLION budget deficit without the kinds of painful dislocations Bloomberg has put New Yorkers thru, and something like tripling the number of affordable housing units started as against the prior, Republican administration.
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A certain number of jobs in our political system are "patronage" positions that a governor, or President, is free to distribute as he wishes in payment for favors past or anticipated. At the federal level, a host of big contributors are assigned ambassadorships and such. At the state level, any governor has a bunch of posts he can fill for any reason he wants, with anyone he wants, whether they are qualified or not. Everyone's in on it, so posturing that it is a scandal is fraudulent. Republicans do it as much as Democrats.
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In the case of Golan Cipel's appointment to an anti-terrorism position, however, that was properly challenged and stopped. He was then given some other government job for awhile, but left that for whatever reason and took a job in the private sector. Then he apparently tried to blackmail the Governor to the tune of $5 million! and that's when McGreevey called the FBI and decided to resign because it promised to become a tangled mess. All needless. Have the blackmailing bastard arrested and deported. New Jersey has quite enuf homegrown thugs without importing any.

Another of the people I sent to commented,

He has more problems [politically speaking] than "just" being gay and cheating on his wife; as I understand it, he's being charged with sexual harassment. He probably won't make it to the next regular election, whether he resigns or not.

I replied,

THE charge of sexual harassment has not been made, and will probably never be made because a judge and jury are likely to go very hard on the accuser in such murky circumstances, and [the threatened lawsuit] was apparently part of a BLACKMAIL plot in which McGreevey's accuser/boyfriend demanded as much as $5 million to keep quiet about their affair or he would ruin McGreevey. Nice fella, huh? Israelis are like that, eager to show their gratitude for all we do for them.
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Besides, sexual harassment is not a felony, so even if true would not disqualify McGreevey from retaining office. And it's certainly not true. A man doesn't come 6,000 miles to take a $110,000 a year job in a state GOVERNMENT of a country of which he is not a citizen without some kind of 'understanding' between him and the guy who offers him such an arrangement. Any man can defend himself from homosexual passes simply by saying "No!" and following up with "If you don't leave me alone, I'm going public, buddy. What will that do to your career, and your marriage?" He doesn't have to demand MONEY to keep quiet, and when his demand for millions is refused, he doesn't hesitate to file a lawsuit — if he has clean hands and can face a jury. Unlike "sexual harassment", which if it constituted only verbal approaches is probably an unconstitutional restriction on freedom of speech and association, blackmail IS a FELONY.

I have just finished sending, via feedback form at HIS website, the following message to New Jersey's senior U.S. Senator, Jon Corzine, to urge him to stick to his announced intention NOT to seek the governorship, but ask him to urge McGreevey to stay in office his full term. I intend to follow up on paper and can hand-deliver one copy to his Newark office, which is on the other half of one of the floors my firm occupies, and mail the other to his Washington office.

[After reminding him that we sort-of met at a function at my firm, I said]
I saw on News 12 New Jersey Wednesday nite that you have said you are not interested in running for Governor in a special election, and I urge you to stand by that decision.
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I have, by feedback form to his website Thursday, urged Governor McGreevey to rescind his resignation and stay to fight the good fight for all the causes he has to date championed, plus one more of great personal importance to himself: [I inserted the text of my message to McGreevey given in the first indented quote shown toward the top of this blog entry. I then continued:]
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Senator, if you have any influence with Governor McGreevey, please urge him to stay in office his full term.
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And please stay in the Senate. We cannot risk losing your seat in November, nor in having you distracted from your efforts for Democratic Senate candidates more generally. Your work is cut out for you this election: winning the Senate back for progressives. The New Jersey governorship is not your concern right now. We have a good man there already. Let’s keep him there.

That should do it!
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 3:34 AM

 
Have Neo-Cons No Shame? I read thru Amir Taheri's entire column to see if the headline applied to it ("Kerry Wins the Arab Vote") was misleading or reflected an actual attempt by Taheri to smear Kerry by implying he is pro-terrorist. The column certainly does start that way, and though it ends by saying that neither Kerry nor Bush is really pro-Arab but are both Zionists (and thus both enemies of the Arab world), the slander is still there.
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Taheri further continues to talk about the "liberation" of Iraq, as tho that was ever on Bush's tiny little mind, and makes the astonishing suggestion that the "Democratic" Party has turned against democracy, the essence of its being, in the Middle East! No, Mr. Taheri, the Democratic Party is fully and permanently devoted to extending democracy all over this planet, including the Moslem world. Its devotion to real democracy is real.
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The New York Post and Amir Taheri owe John Kerry, the Democratic Party, and the American people a deep apology. (Responsive to column "Kerry Wins the Arab Vote" by Amir Taheri, New York Post, August 18, 2004)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 1:07 PM

 
Israeli Gratitude. New Jersey's Catholic governor, the newly self-proclaimed "gay American" James McGreevey, made the appalling mistake of falling for an Israeli, a citizen of the most evil and ungrateful country in the history of the world. It is that key error of judgment that has caused him, and my state of New Jersey, so much trouble. But it is hardly the first time ungrateful Israelis have cost us deeply.
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Tho some people might think excessive my assertion that Israel is the most evil country in history, and that surely the Mongols had to be more vile, my answer is that the Mongols weren't a democracy. They were ruled over by extremely violent and aggressive leaders who brooked no opposition. You went along or were killed, so of course most people went along. Jenghis Khan 'recruited' a huge army by the simple expedient of forcing into military service every physically fit man of military age and telling him that if he refused an order, he would be killed on the spot, as an example to others. Each conquered city or region became an instant source of military manpower, so that a tiny kernel of loyal Mongols came to control an outer group of semi-loyal allies, who in turn controlled an outer group of slave conscripts. One loyal Mongol could thus control 100 or more non-Mongol warriors. And the winners of the Mongols' myriad battles got to keep whatever they could grab from conquered and looted cities, because the world operated on the "spoils system" in those days.
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(It is worth noting Jenghis Khan's methods for raising a huge and nearly invincible force. A nation of a few hundred thousand came to control the largest continuous land empire in the history of Earth. The United States, by contrast with Mongolia, has a huge population. One of every 21 people on this planet lives in the United States. If Jenghis Khan could amass an army of 150,000 to 300,000 and thereby conquer the bulk of Eurasia, the U.S. could raise an army of tens of millions and conquer the entire planet, if it chose to. Moreover, the U.S. has the logistical genius and vast economic wherewithal to sustain an army of such enormous size for as long as necessary to unite this planet under a single government, which would empower us to shift food from where it is in extreme excess and costs societies a lot of money to store, to where it is desperately needed to keep people alive for even one more day. We could end all wars, crush all "insurgencies", impose civilization upon savages, teach everyone the same language so they could communicate across the planet (without suppressing any local language at all) and protect the conscience of the individual, the smallest minority, from compulsion by the majority. If we wanted to. But we don't seem to want to. Americans seem content to permit a world of starvation, disease, want, and war to continue into the indefinite, permanent future. Oh, they’d RATHER fix all that, but they feel they aren’t entitled to. I'm not content with a world of want and war, and I am willing to consider whatever it takes to correct such a horror, to use power to bring justice to the powerless.
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In any case, let's return to the main theme of this blog entry, the unreasonable costs in treasure and blood that we pay for backing the world's most evil country, Israel.)
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By contrast with the Mongols, who had the 'right' only to obey their Khans or die, Israel makes much of being a "democracy", even tho its democracy is about as representative and fair as Mississippi's "democracy" in 1951 — or a lot less. No Mississippi town ever asserted a right to erect a wall down the center of town to keep “nigras” away from “decent white folk”.
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Every crime committed by the Israeli government is committed by the Israeli people, who keep returning to office the most savage murderers, and who demand not more justice for Arabs as the way to bring peace but more violence against their 'enemies' — which is, of course, precisely WHY their enemies ARE their enemies, and why each year Israel has MORE enemies than the year before — as do we, for backing every crime committed by Israel against everyone else in its region.
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Despite desperate attempts by Zionists to distract us from the obvious fact that it is U.S. devotion to Zionism that produced the attacks of 9/11, everyone on planet Earth knows the truth. 9/11 had nothing to do with "freedom", but everything to do with Zionism. I am endlessly astonished, and disgusted, by the willingness of ordinary Americans to buy the RIDICULOUS lie that ARABS attacked the one country on Earth that keeps Israel in existence, because of ‘hatred of freedom’. RIDICULOUS!
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It is a grotesque reality that in the past three years, FAR more Americans than Israelis have died for Zionism: on 9/11 in New York, DC, and Pennsylvania (c. 2,800); since then in Afghanistan (140) and Iraq (950) = about 3,850. Now, are you ready for this? — in a period longer by a full YEAR, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs' own website says that Israeli deaths from conflict with Arabs amounted to 868!. Think about that: according to this Israeli government figure, 4.44 times as many Americans have died for Israel since September 2001 than Israelis have died for Israel since September 2000! Astounding but true.
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Here's the exact quote. Look particularly at the footnote:

Between September 29, 2000 and August 1, 2004, Magen David Adom treated a total of 6,480 casualties as follows:
868 killed, 560 severely injured, 798 moderately and 4,254 lighty [sic] injured, among them 11 MDA staff members....

Note: This list also includes 6 Israelis killed abroad in terror attacks directed specifically against Israeli targets, and 3 American diplomatic personnel killed in Gaza.

So Israel is counting "American diplomatic personnel" as Israeli casualties! Very telling.
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I researched Arab deaths from Zionism in planning this blog entry, but decided that that is a topic for another time. Let’s stick to today’s focus: more Americans than Israelis dying for Israel, and Israeli ingratitude.
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It is somewhere between hard and impossible to get comparable data on U.S. and Israeli deaths, time period to time period, at least via the Internet. But a pro-Israeli website says:

Almost 1900 Palestinians have been killed since the start of the “al-Aqsa Intifada” [September 28, 2000], compared to almost 700 Israelis. Numbers like these are used to create an image of lopsided slaughter, with Israel cast as the villain. But such numbers distort the true picture: They lump combatants in with noncombatants, suicide bombers with innocent civilians, and report Palestinian “collaborators” murdered by their own compatriots as if they had been killed by Israel.
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More meaningful figures show that Israel is responsible for some 733 Palestinian noncombatant deaths, while Palestinians have killed 546 Israeli noncombatants.

What this "meaningful figure" — which STILL shows Israelis killing MANY more Palestinian NONCOMBATANTS than the other way around — doesn't tell you is that there are 1.73 times as many Israelis as Palestinians, so a fairer comparison would be 1,900 x 1.73 = 3,287 Palestinians killed compared to the "almost" 700 Israelis killed since September 28, 2000, a per-capita rate of 4.7 Palestinians killed for each Israeli. But, I digress, again, from the main topic: more Americans, not Palestinians, than Israelis dying for Israel.
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In actual deaths, the total Israeli death toll from 9/2000 thru 8/2004, an entire year longer than the time from the WTC attacks to today, is about 700, according to this website, 868 according to the Israeli Government. It doesn't make much different. Both figures are much smaller than the 3,850 Americans dead for Israel in a period shorter by a year. If deaths were evenly distributed over that period, then in the three years since 9/11 only some 525 Israelis acording to the pro-Israeli website or perhaps 651 according to the Israeli Government website have died for Israel, whereas some 3,850 Americans have died for Israel! That's between 5.9 and 7.3 TIMES as many Americans as Israelis dying for Israel! Does that make any sense to anyone at all but Radical Zionists? Why should 6 or 7 times as many Americans die for Israel as Israelis? It's insane.
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Are Israelis grateful for this massive sacrifice of CHRISTIAN lives for Zionism, something in which not one Christian has any stake at all? Not as far as anyone could tell.
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The U.S. "asks" Israel to do things that might make our stance against the world even a tad easier, and Israel refuses. Why should Israel give in so much as one iota, ever, to any demand by the United States, just because without the U.S. Israel would not exist and the bulk of Israelis would be lucky to find themselves deported from Palestine rather than executed for their endless crimes against humanity? Israel acts as tho U.S. aid is irrelevant, and Israel could stand against the world without U.S. protection. Try it, you arrogant, ungrateful bastards! Try it! Tell us to take our money and shove it up our ass. We'll take our money, to be sure, but we won't shove it up our ass. Maybe we'll give it to Yasser Arafat. Maybe we'll train Palestinians to be an effective armed force to destroy Israel.
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Israelis' stance seems to be, "So, Israel's endless viciousness causes Americans to be attacked around the world and even at home, so what? So, a few thousand goyim [gentiles, i.e., non-Jews] die because of their support of Israel, so what?"
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What does that matter to Israel? Gentiles aren't Jews. Their lives don't matter. Gentiles don't count for anything. Nobody matters to Israel but Jews.
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The only concern Israel had when the World Trade Center towers cascaded into rubble was "How is this going to affect U.S. support for Israel?" Even worse, they actually feared being blamed for bringing this disaster onto Americans, as of course they did, and feared a violent anti-Jewish backlash. They headed that off by offering this crazy alternative reality, that ARABS attacking the United States was an "attack upon freedom"!
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They didn't care one bit that 2,800 Americans had died for Israel. Radical Zionists will gladly fight the Arabs to the last American.
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All that mattered was finding some way to keep the obvious truth of the matter from Americans: Arabs attacked the U.S. because the U.S. attacks Arabs in backing every outrage committed by Israel against Palestinians, Lebanese, Syrians, Jordanians, Egyptians, Iraqis — even Tunisians, 1,500 miles from Jerusalem — always in the name of "self-defense"! Aside from any harm to the U.S. “alliance” that alone keeps Israel from being destroyed, why would Israel care that thousands of Americans are killed by Arabs? Gentiles aren't human. They're not Jews! Neither are Arabs. So, Arab gentiles kill Christian gentiles — of what conceivable importance is that to Israel?
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Israel can build a fence that dwarfs the Berlin Wall and the U.S. doesn't dare raise the tiniest objection. Where is a Reagan-like call to the Israelis?, "Mr. Sharon, tear down this wall!"
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If George Bush somehow managed to borrow the balls to issue such a call, how would Israelis answer? "Go fuck yourself, you stupid, hillbilly goy!"
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How would Bush react to such a flat, insulting rejection? "Oh, OK. I suppose it's really none of my business what you do in your own country, even tho we have bought and paid for that worthless dirt several times over. You're right. I'm wrong. Go right back to religious segregation and murderous discrimination that we'll be blamed for and terrorists will kill Americans for. I shouldn't have said a word."
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Here in New Jersey, a dirty Israeli bastard rooked a Christian gay man into helping him immigrate to the United States and get a number of fabulous, extremely highly-paid jobs ($110,000 a year) for which he had no qualifications whatever; strung him along sexually; then threatened to "out" him and sue for "sexual harassment" if he didn't pay him $5 million (say the reports); and even denied being gay and asserted that he was 'terrified' of going to work because this horrible, out-of-control degenerate gayboy/goyboy 'hit on him'.
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Golan Cipel, the Israeli creep in question, is slime, the perfect Israeli: use people, blackmail people, expose them to ruin, but never accept any responsibility. Cipel should be Prime Minister of Israel. Let's help him find his way back to his beloved Israel: DEPORT the bastard.
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While we're at it, let's deport every other Israeli from the United States, and every Zionist of every national origin; renounce all support for Israel; go over to the Palestinian side; destroy Israel's entire military establishment and every last nuclear facility in a "shock and awe" campaign of two or three weeks’ duration; proclaim Yasser Arafat President of all of (Re-)United Palestine; and let his government decide which Jews may live in Palestine, which must die for their crimes, and which must leave Palestine forever. Then we will have peace in Palestine and peace between Islam and the United States. And probably not before.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 11:59 PM

 
I followed my own good advice again yesterday. I had nothing to say, so said nothing.
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Image Is Everything (He Has). I hate phoniness. George Bush is often seen nowadays wearing a long-sleeved shirt with the sleeves rolled up. What a PHONY! Listen, Bushy, if you want short sleeves, wear a short-sleeved shirt. If you wear a long-sleeved shirt, have the dignity to wear it with the sleeves in their natural position. You’re President of the United States (at least legally). Have some dignity. But cut the crap. You are not a hard-working field hand who wore the wrong shirt and had to cool off your wrists. You’re just posturing, posing as a macho man when you’re just a stupid, wooden puppet who wears whatever he’s told to wear. When I was in high school we had an insult for people like you: “Your mother dresses you funny.”
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 10:20 PM

 
McGreevey Resignation. As most of you will have heard, because it was the top news story last nite, the governor of my state, James McGreevey, announced in a press conference yesterday that he is “a gay American”; had an extramarital, homosexual affair (he's married to a woman and has a very young daughter with her and another daughter from his first wife (note: no sons; fate punishes hypocrisy?) — yes, the homo fool has been married heterosexually TWICE!); and is resigning from office effective November 15th. This blog entry is a bit difficult for me to write, because I have so many reactions — not including so much as an iota of sympathy for the stupid bastard himself.
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This was a very big deal in my office, a major New Jersey law firm in Downtown Newark. Around 3:20pm, word had gotten out that McGreevey was rumored to be resigning at 4pm via live press conference. Speculation abounded that he was being charged with sexual harassment (of a woman, everyone assumed) even rape! There was some frantic scurrying to figure out how we could see the press conference.
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My firm is filled with political and some very-well-connected people. Our IT guy set up our antennaless TV in the main conference room (we have a clear straight-line view from that glass-walled conference room to the broadcast tower atop the Empire State Building perhaps 13 miles away (see picture, below), so reception even without an antenna wasn’t so bad).

And one of our politically well-connected attorneys found a streaming-video site on the Internet. But the press conference started quite late, perhaps 4:20, so people who had wandered away had to regroup. Perhaps 20 of us were in the conference room and another dozen in the attorney’s office when the press conference finally got underway.
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When McG announced, after a dreary, c. two-minute vague, philosophical wandering, that he is a "gay American", there were audible gasps from various parts of the room. He then admitted to having had an affair with a man, then detestably said this was wrong, and then resigned in shame. What a jerk.
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McGreevey’s mistake was not in finally, at age 47(!) "coming out" but in having yielded to pressures to be straight and submerge his nature in favor of his ambitions until now. What was "wrong" was dragging an innocent woman he could not fully love into his confusions and shame, and ruining part of her life. Someone I know who worked closely with McGreevey and knew the kinds of pressures that his ambition and family subjected him to, was immediately sympathetic to the man. I'm not.
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When I was very young, I wanted to be President of the United States. But I knew very young that I was homosexual, and I was not going to live a lie and make my life hell just for the sake of avoiding antihomosexual bias. Quite the contrary, I decided that I must first do what I could to change public attitudes toward homosexuality. And then I might just be able to run for President as an open homosexual, and win.
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So I spent years in homosexual activism, amassing tens of thousands of words of encouragement and argumentation for gay rights and gay self-esteem (much of which is available to today's young gay men, who really need it!, at http://members.aol.com/MrGayPride). As part of that activity, I chanced to coin the term "Gay Pride" as it is now used, which has made a very big difference in the way gay men are perceived, by society and themselves. (For how that coining happened, see this blog's entry at June 27th.)
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To do all this, I had to put aside thoughts of a "career", and work on "propaganda" (as I call it) as my vocation. I lost tens of thousands of dollars to this activity, in a time (the 60s and 70s) when tens of thousands of dollars was a lot of money. I also sacrificed resume-building experience at low-level jobs in politics, academia, television, or publishing, in order to make progress on my life's work. McGreevey didn't do any of that. He didn't even read the stuff that I and hundreds of other gay men were writing to try to help people like him cope.
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It's as tho the Stonewall Riots never happened, the Gay Liberation Front and Gay Activists Alliance never held a demonstration. Jon Stewart on Comedy Central's Daily Show last nite said he hoped it wasn't what it seemed, that a gay man could not, in this day and age, serve as governor. There had to be more to it than that, didn't there? Or maybe not.
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Well, in this day and age an ambitious gay man could still hide in the closet, so why couldn't he be forced out of office by antihomosexual bias, even in New Jersey (Jon Stewart's home state as much as mine). No, that really isn't possible. The fault is not in New Jersey, one of the most sensible and liberal states in the Nation, but in McGreevey himself.
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It was, frankly, a little thrilling to hear the Governor of one of the Nation's largest states say he’s “a gay American” — a stirring locution that could have made him a gay hero, and not just in New Jersey, not even just in the United States. For once, the gay men of the Nation had a very highly placed public official, one of only 50 governors in this huge and influential political and cultural superpower — and the bastard resigns! Jeez. I said it aloud as soon as he made the announcement: "Idiot!"
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Maybe he's hoping for a groundswell of support, asking him to stay in office. Commentators in media have observed that many heterosexual politicians have had sexual scandals that didn’t end their political careers.
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My own first thought was to a homosexual scandal affecting an influential Congressman. Barney Frank's live-in boyfriend years at the time was running a CALL-BOY service from Frank's townhouse, unbeknownst to Franks, and Franks didn't resign. That was in 1989, FIFTEEN YEARS AGO. Barney Frank is still in Congress, having been re-elected seven times since then and served as a courageous and important champion of gay rights.+
Indeed,on July 25th of this year Frank said this to Newsweek:

If Kerry wins in November, will you run for his Senate seat?
If the Democrats don't take the House back. If they take the House back, I'd be chairman of a major committee, and I'd stay. But if Kerry wins and the Democrats don't take the House, yeah, I'm going to run for the Senate.

Why couldn’t McGreevey be comparably strong, courageous, and devoted to the public good — and especially the good of his own group (and mine), gay men?
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CNN.com today pointed out that:

McGreevey signed a bill in January that created same-sex domestic partnerships in New Jersey, but urged New Jersey officials to abide by current laws when the city of Asbury Park issued a marriage license to a same-sex couple in May.

In July, he condemned a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit marriage to heterosexual couples as "a divisive and drastic tactic."

Why should McGreevey end his political career and end his good works for gay men just because he was weak and devious until now? Learn from the experience and have the courage to be who you are. End your marriage and all pretense of heterosexuality. Apologize for the hurt you have caused. Then move on, as a proud, and finally self-assertive gay man, who is very much needed in an age when Radical Right Republicans are trying to force us back into the closet.

Why is he resigning as of November 15th? I know that if he resigned before September 15th there would have to be an election this November for governor, and the Democratic Party is ill-prepared for such an election — unless McGreevey himself were to run, and put his fate in the hands of the voters.
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But he didn’t make his announcement on August 15th. There are two full months between September 15th and the effective date of his resignation. The national election is November 2nd. Does McGreevey think that staying in office past that election but not standing tall to say "I'm gay and I'm proud, and I won't be intimidated any longer", would be in the Democratic Party's interest? Very curious.
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So let me close this entry with the observation, as Gaetano wrote it, from the only one of my gay friends who lives here in Newark: I SAY HE STAYS AND SAYS THE HELL WITH EVERYONE.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:28 PM

 
Moving the Question on Puerto Rico. I sent the following message by feedback form today to Republican Congressman Don Young of Alaska, who had been the key sponsor of the last legislation to address Puerto Rico's status. If this is something you care about, either because you feel a connection to Puerto Rico or because you are concerned about equal treatment under law for all citizens, and the right and responsibility of all citizens to vote, you may want to write to him yourself. You can find his feedback form at www.house.gov/donyoung under "State Your Opinion" on the upper right of the opening screen. If you do write, I'd be interested in seeing a copy of what you say: XPUS@aol.com.
>>[heading]Puerto Rico status
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SEVEN years ago, you were actively trying to resolve to statehood or independence the status of the world's oldest colony, but the measure you backed failed. I wonder if there is anything going on in Congress today to end the disgrace of colonialism on the part of a Nation that arose in indignation at colonialism.
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NOTHING will end Puerto Rico's endless clinging to dependence except a swift kick in the pants: Congress must UNILATERALLY END "COMMONWEALTH" and force Puerto Rico to choose statehood or independence, with NO THIRD OPTION.
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Please introduce legislation ending "Commonwealth" and making clear that no "improved Commonwealth" nor "Free Associated State" arrangement will be tolerated by Congress; so that if Puerto Rico rejects statehood, it automatically chooses independence and loses all connection to the United States, including all eligibility for any form of aid restricted to states or territories. Any Puerto Rican resident who then runs for office or votes in an election for independent Puerto Rico's own government, at any level, thereby renounces U.S. citizenship and all its entitlements, including the right of free movement to the United States, a U.S. passport, etc.
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Tell your colleagues on both sides of the aisle that it is just plain wrong for the U.S. to have colonies; that no one can know how Puerto Ricans will vote for Congress or President, and if the Republican Party makes Puerto Rico a state, it is certain to win a grateful fair hearing for Republican candidates, even as Puerto Ricans consider what the Democrats have to offer; and that in any case, how people might vote cannot in good conscience be a consideration in whether they are allowed to vote, because all citizens are entitled to vote as of right.
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The current President's father made nice noises about Puerto Rico statehood but did nothing. Your own proposal was doomed to failure, because it permitted a vote for "Commonwealth". ONLY ending "Commonwealth" will force Puerto Rico to make the choice between the only mature statuses open to it: statehood or independence - fish or cut bait! Cordially, L. Craig Schoonmaker, Chairman, Expansionist Party of the United States (URL at http://members.aol.com/XPUS)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 12:04 PM

 
Taunting Canada. Comedy Central's Tough Crowd with Colin Quinn show was rough on Canada last nite. Apparently a poll of Canadian opinion made the news (tho I didn't see it), in which some unspecified but significant number of Canadians expressed dislike for the United States. Host Colin Quinn reacted indignantly and derisively: "Who cares what Canada thinks, anyway?" And Patrice O'Neal said that Canada ought to be "the 51st state". Ralphie May said that Canadians may not much like us, but Mexicans do. And Colin added that if we made immigration as hard for Canadians as for Mexicans, Canadians might appreciate us.
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Americans have very mixed feelings about our near neighbors — when we think of them at all. Most Americans regard Canadians as basically just like us, so pay no more attention to Canada than to, say North Dakota — until the Canadian government or a public-opinion poll says something unpleasant about us.
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Part of the problem, of course, is that Canadians dislike being taken for granted, and know that they can get attention by criticizing us. They also feel the need to prove that they are NOT like us, even tho they know in their heart that they are. So they grasp at straws and build them into multiroom huts, veritable straw palaces of nationalism erected on grand molehills of difference.
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Many Canadians outgrow the years of nationalist indoctrination they are processed thru by the schools to realize that the 'world of difference' they were told existed between themselves and Americans is a load of crap, and maintaining a separate national existence costs them a lot of money and opportunities, causes needless discord with their neighbors, and leaves them feeling left out and unimportant. So they become "continentalists" or, 'worse', annexationists who agree with Patrice O'Neal that Canada should join the Union — albeit as several states, not just one.
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I know some Canadians who have had trouble gaining the right to work in the U.S., but the border hasn't seemed to cause problems for unemployed actors like Michael J. Fox when he was just starting out, and there are huge numbers of Canadians in U.S. news media who have taken some of the best jobs our society offers, from Peter Jennings (who refused U.S. citizenship for over 30 years before finally coming on board) to John Roberts and Keith Morrison and Arthur Kent (the "Scud Stud") to the aging Morley Safer. How did they get past immigration?
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Still, Canadian seniors who'd like to retire to the Sunbelt and young Canadians who'd like to pursue careers in the huge job market of the United States do run afoul of the INS. The border does matter. So there are at any given time a number of small organizations and websites across Canada promoting either Canada-wide accession to the Union or statehood for their own province, no matter what the rest of Canada does. One snazzy site, based in Winnipeg, in the Prairie Provinces, favors admission of all of Canada, as several states: www.unitednorthamerica.org. A website in Ontario favors statehood for Ontario without regard to the rest of Canada (tho its organizer believes that if Ontario goes, everything goes, because Ontario is the keystone of Canada): www.ontariousa.org. And a website in British Columbia advocates statehood for BC, whether the rest of Canada joins or not: www.annexationbc.com.
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They have allies in the Expansionist Party of the United States, which favors admission of Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico — you name it — and in an interorganizational alliance, United States International ("USI") that seeks to become a central registry of all statehood-oriented organizations. I serve as Chairman of the Expansionist Party and webmaster for USI — tho I shamefacedly admit to being remiss in updating the USI site to show an additional Philippine organization, two Taiwan organizations — that's right, many Filipinos want in to the Union, and some far-sighted people in Taiwan want their island to join the Union too — as well as AnnexationBC (which hasn't formally joined yet).
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Mexicans are the neighbors more on our mind, because there are a lot more of them here, and they stand out, whereas Canadians fit right in, as to be virtually undetectable. Some Canadian nationalists have played silly games about being able to tell Canadians from Americans on sight, but that is of course nonsense. If Canadians drop the one or two speech peculiarities for which they are known, e.g., use of "eh?" where we might say "you know" or "don't you think", and a pronunciation of OU in "out" that is more like OA in "boat", nobody can tell Canadians apart from Americans. That is the only reason Canadian actors can be hired as members of American television and movie families without seeming hopelessly miscast.
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Chicano comic Paul Rodriguez years ago did a routine in which he claimed there are as many Canadian illegals here as Mexican, but when the police approach them, they just say 'Oh, we're here on vacation, don't you know.' So "La Migra" carts the Mexicans off to a bus headed south of the border, while Canadian illegals are left alone. Most of the Mexicans deported on sight stand out racially, whereas Canadians do not — tho of course in East L.A. Canadians would stand out like a sore thumb while recently arrived Mexican illegals would fit right in. That leads me to the second part of last nite's Tough Crowd.
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The show moved on to one of its favorite topics, race, as, refreshingly, it often does. Patrice O'Neal (who is black) made the silly comment that black Americans top the list of oppressed people around the world, a notion that Colin (white) naturally ridiculed. I hasten to point out that black Americans are understood outside the U.S. to be (as the Paris-based expat magazine Jeune Afrique ("Young Africa") observed decades ago) the richest and most influential black community on Earth. And that was long before Colin Powell became Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice became National Security Adviser, and Oprah Winfrey became one of the most powerful people in television.
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Aside from some soreheads who have no perspective on the way most people in the world live, American blacks know how good they have it. They have had for decades both the right and the wherewithal to leave the U.S. for Africa, Jamaica, or anyplace else they think they'd be treated better, but almost nobody has left. News reports from Liberia — a country established in 1821 by freed U.S. slaves — of dictatorship and hideous violence by rebels (e.g., amputation of teenagers' arms) match other reports of astonishing violence from neighboring Sierra Leone's civil war, the Congo's civil war, the Rwanda massacre, etc. Black Americans have better sense than to rush into that — even tho they could create a hugely important trading network joining black Africa to the black diaspora in the U.S. and West Indies (more on that some other time).
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A black comedienne I saw on TV once, years ago, said she has been to Europe, but "came right back", because it is not her country. And she's been to Africa, but "came right back", because that's not her country either. Colin Quinn should get her on his show to shake Patrice O'Neal out of his paranoid delusions about black Americans being "oppressed".
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I live in Newark, New Jersey, a city that is only about 55% black but has a black mayor, many black city councilmen (if not an actual black majority), a black superintendent of schools, etc., etc. Most of NJTransit's bus drivers in Newark are black, as are people in occupations of all kinds and levels of difficulty. You can drive thru well-repaired streets past well-kept, tastefully landscaped private homes in Vailsburg and other predominantly black areas to see black Newarkers living good, solid, middle-class lives — the American dream in living color.
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If Patrice O'Neal is oppressed, maybe it's because of where he's living, and he should move to Newark. But he should leave the chip on his shoulder at the city line.
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 9:30 PM