Signing all those petitions

Yesterday I signed two more on-line petitions, forwarded one to my friends, and had four more in my inbox that I would have signed if I didn't have to go to work. I have a word or two to say on the matter, because this has to have some outcome.

George W. Bush will never listen to the voice of the people no matter how many of us speak. He is a bully. He wants to be a dictator.

Only the Congress and the House can stop him, and this must be done while it is possible. Given two more years, who knows what damage he can do? Here is one unthinkable, from The New York Times on January 30th, Bush Directive Increases Sway on Regulation, by Robert Pear:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush has signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules and policy statements that the government develops to protect public health, safety, the environment, civil rights and privacy.

In an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Mr. Bush said that each agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee, to supervise the development of rules and documents providing guidance to regulated industries. The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency to analyze the costs and the benefits of new rules and to make sure the agencies carry out the president’s priorities.

This strengthens the hand of the White House in shaping rules that have, in the past, often been generated by civil servants and scientific experts. It suggests that the administration still has ways to exert its power after the takeover of Congress by the Democrats.

The White House said the executive order was not meant to rein in any one agency. But business executives and consumer advocates said the administration was particularly concerned about rules and guidance issued by the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

While he distracts the Congress and the Senate with the Iraq issue, George W. Bush is doing a back-door job on the economy -- making sure that corporations retain their clout against workers and the environment -- and solidifying his hold on the Federal courts. Look at the people he has asked to resign as U.S. Attorneys. Look at the appointees to the regional courts of appeals. His unconstitutional actions are many and grievous.

How many voices does it take to convince Congress and the Senate that George W. Bush doesn't hear voices? He hears only his own edicts as the Decider. Members of both houses should be afraid, as I am, of losing representative government altogether. "Eyes on the prize" -- whether the prize is stopping the build-up in Iraq or the building of a political war chest for 2008 -- will not work. Look around at what Bush is doing! For the sake of our democracy, someone should be keeping score.

I hate the Iraq war. I have known from the beginning it was the means by which Bush and his "base" intend to take power and accumulate wealth. That is why we went to war. No WMD's, no spreading of democracy, just wealth and power.

The Congress and Senate have to say "No" to George W. Bush. He doesn't hear the people. That is the point. Help us out here by recognizing that. War is always a political shell game with goals of power and wealth. This one is not different. It is part of a larger plan. We are already not a democracy if our Senators and Congressmen will not stand up and represent us.

My name is on a hundred petitions. I have forwarded most of them to friends who have signed also. Our voices are worth nothing if people we have elected to representative seats will not stand up and declare the will of the people.

Of course I will still sign and forward petitions. But get real. We elect representatives to powerful positions so that they can exercise their Constitutional duties on the issues of the day. Exercise them already, if you still see them. Curb the power of the Executive branch. Stop the erosion of human and civil rights. Stop the War. Raise the minimum wage. Take back government from despotic rule by corporations. Didn't the electorate already say that?

And somebody watch the back door.

Lara Logan Story on CBS Website

Here is the Lara Logan story that CBS won't broadcast. They do have it on their website:

http://www.cbsnews.com/sections/i_video/main500251.shtml?id=2371456n

Smoke and mirrors

For a clear example of the current administration's slight-of-hand, check out SFGate.com's posting of an article titled "Gonzales says the Constitution doesn't guarantee habeas corpus: Attorney general's remarks on citizens' right astound the chair of Senate judiciary panel," by Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer on Wednesday, January 24, 2007.

And while you are checking it out, look carefully into the tight little corners in current politics. George W. Bush knows that he is the lamest of ducks at this point, so he will keep everyone distracted with the war and his puny and short-sighted suggestions on health care and energy that are all smoke and mirrors. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, he will set up escape routes for cronies and fortifiy protections for their wealth and power. On the front page issues, he is still serving his base:

• His energy proposal is couched in populist language, but it is too little too late with goals too far away. The immediate beneficiaries are still the same elite he has served throughout his presidency. If we double the US Petroleum reserves, the winners will be the oil companies. Consumer investment funds that bought oil futures have been pulling out, so your "privately invested retirement funds" won't get any money for the additional oil the US government adds to the reserves.

• His health care insurance proposition won't help anyone but the insurance companies. It will raise taxes on working people who have employer-paid health insurance, but it is not generous enough to help people who can't afford health insurance. Furthermore, it does not address the abusive system of closed negotiated networks that insurance companies have constructed to squeeze physicians, hospitals, and patients. The "in network/out of network" system is the juicer that makes sure everyone pays the maximum to the insurance company. Either your doctor pays them, or you pay them, or your employer pays them.

• His new initiative in Iraq is business as usual with a new set of generals who have agreed to agree with him. The same people are still getting the government contracts, and as Kerry-him-with-his-foot-in-his-mouth accurately observed, the same young people who are mostly not from the Bush base are deployed and more of the same people are dying.
  

You can spend a lot of time looking for anything new from this president. He hopes that you will. Meanwhile he will back-door continued Patriot Act abuses of human rights, continue his campaign to stack federal courts and install his supporters as US Attorneys, and move his powers to circumvent law to a less visible level.

In Honor of the State of the Union Address

What else did we expect? Best to talk about something else, and hope the Democrats we elected to the Senate and the House will make a difference.

So, here's someting else: In the middle of winter all of the flowers I keep at the office are doing interesting things! The Alocacia x Amazonica in the photo has a seed pod about to open, and then we can see if we can sprout the seeds! Over on Flickr there are photos of the amarylis that is blooming in the hallway by the windows and of the palm that is also doing its thing, whatever that is.

Religion and Politics

Some people believe in Hell, and others do not. I believe that Hell is just wishful thinking. For instance, imagine that you are George W. Bush, and you wake up one morning and realize exactly what you have done in the world. The first five seconds of that realization would be an eternity in Hell.

But, you say, he will never wake up to that. He should, and we would be better off if he did, but it is still just wishful thinking.

A New Direction in Iraq

In The New York Times, By David E. Sanger, January 7, 2007, some tidbits of the new direction in Iraq:

President Bush’s new Iraq strategy calls for a rapid influx of forces that could add as many as 20,000 American combat troops to Baghdad, supplemented with a jobs program costing as much as $1 billion intended to employ Iraqis in projects including painting schools and cleaning streets, according to American officials who are piecing together the last parts of the initiative....

A crucial element of the plan would include more than doubling the State Department’s reconstruction efforts throughout the country, an initiative intended by the administration to signal that the new strategy would emphasize rebuilding as much as fighting.

So much for the new plan for the war. More critical is the plan for how to make it look like a new plan:

When Mr. Bush gives his speech, he will cast much of the program as an effort to bolster Iraq’s efforts to take command over its own forces and territory, the American officials said. He will express confidence that Mr. Maliki is committed to bringing under control both the Sunni-led insurgency and the Shiite militias that have emerged as the source of most of the violence. Mr. Maliki picked up those themes in a speech in Baghdad on Saturday in which he said that multinational troops would support an Iraqi effort to secure the capital.

Somehow I am not reassured. I want to know:

• How is more of the same a change in direction?
• How is more of the same even a new plan?
• And what did they talk about for four weeks while they told us they were formulating a new plan?

I saw Mr. Maliki on CNN, and he did say that the Iraq was ready to take up the challenge of policing the country. He also said that any one of his people who did not carry out his orders would be severely punished. That statement did not have the ring of a budding democracy to me.

And reconstruction comes after a war is over. I am sure that I have that sequence right. It is purely stupid to pour money into reconstruction while they are still blowing stuff up. Isn't that a little like sending in a crew to repair the smoke damage while the building is still burning?