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Re: Re: Guardian Article on the Bush Family Nazi Connections (Concluded): (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Sorry, gavia, that my computer facility, lodging, cat and health (temporarily) gave out before I could reply to your comment.
Glancing over all this material, I see that in my two month absence, nothing much has changed which would support you positions.
Afghanistan is shaky, Iraq is descending into civil war. The parliament will probably come apart soon. Seventeen Americans died in Iraq yesterday, including at least seven of our soldiers.
The deep thinkers from "The Project for a New American Century" are talking about invading Iran again. Not Syria, dummies, but Iran! And with the disappearance of Shiron from the political stage in Israel, the original contractor of the Project, Netenahu (sp,) will probably be that country's next Prime Minister.
At home, Tom Delay has thrown in the towel as majority whip. Abramoff has turned states evidence in the kickback scandal. Over sixty members of the House of Representatives, most of them Republicans, are said to be implicated. The sums involved are said exceed 80,000,000 dollars, of which 40 million was paid back to Delay and his pals. No word (might I say?) about the murder of Florida "The Subway King." Still, it will be the biggest fraud scandal in the history of the Republic.
[And no one has begun to dig seriously into the missing and/or misappropriated tens of billions in Middle Easterm and Central Asian "war on terror" contracts.]
Republicans and Democrats in both Houses are condemning the President's violation of Federal Law and the Constitution over wiretapping, illegal detention and torture. There is talk of censure now, and possibly Impeachment after the midterm elections.
More and more comparisons are being made between the actions of the Bush Administration with the growth of Nazism in Hitler's Germany: Fascism in a ten gallon hat, as one wit put it.
Time will continue to tell you, gavia. Better listien to "Old Father Time," gavia. He has seen this kind of criminality before but never at such inflated prices, never on such a scale. If by leaving George W. Bush alone to finish out his term, in order to save the Republic, I would be for it, but enormity of these crimes, and their sheer number, may not allow that to be possible.
Meanwhile, the relevance of my remarks to today's situation must give you at least some small pause, gavia. That relevance should make you study that information I provided you on the relationship of the Bush Family to Nazi Germany.
Pray for America, gavia . . .
and . . .
Happy Hogmanay!
Alex
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Jan 08 '06
6:42 pm PST
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Re: Bless you again! (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear Jason (name of my son): I didn't know that you had posed the question (or another one) about Polk. Yes, I think he can make the list of Worst Presidents. Not only did he put us into a preemptive war, but he claimed later that General Zachary Taylor had moved without his specific authorization. But after the fact . . . "Not to worry, we'll keep the Southwest."
As for your second question: I have spent some interesting days in and around Ft. Bliss, Texas, as well as in New Mexico and Arizona. Beautiful, wild, raw country. Salt of the earth, gritty, genuine people. The common five-eight are just fine. You know where they stand. Nothing bothers me about our having those States in the Union, except they probably do, by rights, belong to Mexico.
You, like all my Web of Trust members, will soon receive sealed orders on guarding, if not saving, the Republic.
Welcome on board, Jason Wasp.
Alex
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Oct 12 '05
12:48 pm PDT
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Re: Guardian Article on the Bush Family Nazi Connections (Concluded): (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Hi again, Alex--
I carefully read about 2/3 of your last several comments re the Guardian article and Prescott Bush, but finding nothing new I abandoned the effort---but thanks for taking the trouble. I respect your intentions in doing it. But I've seen ALL of that material before---some of it years ago when it was first brought up by Lindon LaRouche (I THINK that was his name!) to discredit the Bush family.
Loftus is a determined Bush basher, and I've seen all of that material as well as the rebuttals by Bush family spokespeople. Both the accusations and the rebuttals strike me as VERY weak, there probably being SOME truth to the allegations.
As someone said in one of your quotes, LOTS of successful businessmen worldwide invested in the economic recovery of Europe after WWI, and made a lot of money doing so---as well as probably aiding the build-up of the Nazi war machine. And there were plenty of supporters of eugenics---including, for example, Margaret Sanger. And also LOTS of antisemitism in the thirties and into the forties. Those factors all contributed to the slow response to Hitler until he could only be dealt with in a World War that involved virtually every American family---including the Bush's.
Our disagreement concerns the relevance of that history to today's circumstances. You are entitled to your view of that, of course!
Gavia
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Oct 11 '05
1:02 pm PDT
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Bless you again! (Reply to this comment)
by thewasp
It's not (exactly) a great job offer -- but when I realized I had made your WOT, I shouted out "Yes!" right here in the law library's computer lab! See you at the next Meet & Greet!
Also, you haven't answered my question about whether Polk really belongs on the list of Worst Presidents. Perhaps we should have a W/O on the impact of the Mexican Cession on the development of the United States -- and Mexico. The central question being, would either country be a better place had that piece of land not changed hands?
Wasp (Jason Galbraith)
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Oct 11 '05
12:40 pm PDT
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Hi Jan, (Reply to this comment)
by craftswoman
I agree with your history teacher as I was thinking the same thing several weeks ago.
Marcy
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Oct 10 '05
3:37 pm PDT
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Guardian Article on the Bush Family Nazi Connections (Concluded): (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
In 1941, Thyssen fled Germany after falling out with Hitler but he was captured in France and detained for the remainder of the war.
There was nothing illegal in doing business with the Thyssens throughout the 1930s and many of America's best-known business names invested heavily in the German economic recovery. However, everything changed after Germany invaded Poland in 1939. Even then it could be argued that BBH was within its rights continuing business relations with the Thyssens until the end of 1941 as the US was still technically neutral until the attack on Pearl Harbor. The trouble started on July 30 1942 when the New York Herald-Tribune ran an article entitled "Hitler's Angel Has $3m in US Bank". UBC's huge gold purchases had raised suspicions that the bank was in fact a "secret nest egg" hidden in New York for Thyssen and other Nazi bigwigs. The Alien Property Commission (APC) launched an investigation.
There is no dispute over the fact that the US government seized a string of assets controlled by BBH - including UBC and SAC - in the autumn of 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy act. What is in dispute is if Harriman, Walker and Bush did more than own these companies on paper.
Erwin May, a treasury attache and officer for the department of investigation in the APC, was assigned to look into UBC's business. The first fact to emerge was that Roland Harriman, Prescott Bush and the other directors didn't actually own their shares in UBC but merely held them on behalf of Bank voor Handel. Strangely, no one seemed to know who owned the Rotterdam-based bank, including UBC's president.
May wrote in his report of August 16 1941: "Union Banking Corporation, incorporated August 4 1924, is wholly owned by the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvaart N.V of Rotterdam, the Netherlands. My investigation has produced no evidence as to the ownership of the Dutch bank. Mr Cornelis [sic] Lievense, president of UBC, claims no knowledge as to the ownership of the Bank voor Handel but believes it possible that Baron Heinrich Thyssen, brother of Fritz Thyssen, may own a substantial interest."
May cleared the bank of holding a golden nest egg for the Nazi leaders but went on to describe a network of companies spreading out from UBC across Europe, America and Canada, and how money from voor Handel travelled to these companies through UBC.
By September May had traced the origins of the non-American board members and found that Dutchman HJ Kouwenhoven - who met with Harriman in 1924 to set up UBC - had several other jobs: in addition to being the managing director of voor Handel he was also the director of the August Thyssen bank in Berlin and a director of Fritz Thyssen's Union Steel Works, the holding company that controlled Thyssen's steel and coal mine empire in Germany.
Within a few weeks, Homer Jones, the chief of the APC investigation and research division sent a memo to the executive committee of APC recommending the US government vest UBC and its assets. Jones named the directors of the bank in the memo, including Prescott Bush's name, and wrote: "Said stock is held by the above named individuals, however, solely as nominees for the Bank voor Handel, Rotterdam, Holland, which is owned by one or more of the Thyssen family, nationals of Germany and Hungary. The 4,000 shares hereinbefore set out are therefore beneficially owned and help for the interests of enemy nationals, and are vestible by the APC," according to the memo from the National Archives seen by the Guardian.
Red-handed
Jones recommended that the assets be liquidated for the benefit of the government, but instead UBC was maintained intact and eventually returned to the American shareholders after the war. Some claim that Bush sold his share in UBC after the war for $1.5m - a huge amount of money at the time - but there is no documentary evidence to support this claim. No further action was ever taken nor was the investigation continued, despite the fact UBC was caught red-handed operating a American shell company for the Thyssen family eight months after America had entered the war and that this was the bank that had partly financed Hitler's rise to power.
The most tantalising part of the story remains shrouded in mystery: the connection, if any, between Prescott Bush, Thyssen, Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC) and Auschwitz.
Thyssen's partner in United Steel Works, which had coal mines and steel plants across the region, was Friedrich Flick, another steel magnate who also owned part of IG Farben, the powerful German chemical company.
Flick's plants in Poland made heavy use of slave labour from the concentration camps in Poland. According to a New York Times article published in March 18 1934 Flick owned two-thirds of CSSC while "American interests" held the rest.
The US National Archive documents show that BBH's involvement with CSSC was more than simply holding the shares in the mid-1930s. Bush's friend and fellow "bonesman" Knight Woolley, another partner at BBH, wrote to Averill Harriman in January 1933 warning of problems with CSSC after the Poles started their drive to nationalise the plant. "The Consolidated Silesian Steel Company situation has become increasingly complicated, and I have accordingly brought in Sullivan and Cromwell, in order to be sure that our interests are protected," wrote Knight. "After studying the situation Foster Dulles is insisting that their man in Berlin get into the picture and obtain the information which the directors here should have. You will recall that Foster is a director and he is particularly anxious to be certain that there is no liability attaching to the American directors."
But the ownership of the CSSC between 1939 when the Germans invaded Poland and 1942 when the US government vested UBC and SAC is not clear.
"SAC held coal mines and definitely owned CSSC between 1934 and 1935, but when SAC was vested there was no trace of CSSC. All concrete evidence of its ownership disappears after 1935 and there are only a few traces in 1938 and 1939," says Eva Schweitzer, the journalist and author whose book, America and the Holocaust, is published next month.
Silesia was quickly made part of the German Reich after the invasion, but while Polish factories were seized by the Nazis, those belonging to the still neutral Americans (and some other nationals) were treated more carefully as Hitler was still hoping to persuade the US to at least sit out the war as a neutral country. Schweitzer says American interests were dealt with on a case-by-case basis. The Nazis bought some out, but not others.
The two Holocaust survivors suing the US government and the Bush family for a total of $40bn in compensation claim both materially benefited from Auschwitz slave labour during the second world war.
Kurt Julius Goldstein, 87, and Peter Gingold, 85, began a class action in America in 2001, but the case was thrown out by Judge Rosemary Collier on the grounds that the government cannot be held liable under the principle of "state sovereignty".
Jan Lissmann, one of the lawyers for the survivors, said: "President Bush withdrew President Bill Clinton's signature from the treaty [that founded the court] not only to protect Americans, but also to protect himself and his family."
Lissmann argues that genocide-related cases are covered by international law, which does hold governments accountable for their actions. He claims the ruling was invalid as no hearing took place.
In their claims, Mr Goldstein and Mr Gingold, honorary chairman of the League of Anti-fascists, suggest the Americans were aware of what was happening at Auschwitz and should have bombed the camp.
The lawyers also filed a motion in The Hague asking for an opinion on whether state sovereignty is a valid reason for refusing to hear their case. A ruling is expected within a month.
The petition to The Hague states: "From April 1944 on, the American Air Force could have destroyed the camp with air raids, as well as the railway bridges and railway lines from Hungary to Auschwitz. The murder of about 400,000 Hungarian Holocaust victims could have been prevented."
The case is built around a January 22 1944 executive order signed by President Franklin Roosevelt calling on the government to take all measures to rescue the European Jews. The lawyers claim the order was ignored because of pressure brought by a group of big American companies, including BBH, where Prescott Bush was a director.
Lissmann said: "If we have a positive ruling from the court it will cause [president] Bush huge problems and make him personally liable to pay compensation."
The US government and the Bush family deny all the claims against them.
In addition to Eva Schweitzer's book, two other books are about to be published that raise the subject of Prescott Bush's business history. The author of the second book, to be published next year, John Loftus, is a former US attorney who prosecuted Nazi war criminals in the 70s. Now living in St Petersburg, Florida and earning his living as a security commentator for Fox News and ABC radio, Loftus is working on a novel which uses some of the material he has uncovered on Bush. Loftus stressed that what Prescott Bush was involved in was just what many other American and British businessmen were doing at the time.
"You can't blame Bush for what his grandfather did any more than you can blame Jack Kennedy for what his father did - bought Nazi stocks - but what is important is the cover-up, how it could have gone on so successfully for half a century, and does that have implications for us today?" he said.
"This was the mechanism by which Hitler was funded to come to power, this was the mechanism by which the Third Reich's defence industry was re-armed, this was the mechanism by which Nazi profits were repatriated back to the American owners, this was the mechanism by which investigations into the financial laundering of the Third Reich were blunted," said Loftus, who is vice-chairman of the Holocaust Museum in St Petersburg.
"The Union Banking Corporation was a holding company for the Nazis, for Fritz Thyssen," said Loftus. "At various times, the Bush family has tried to spin it, saying they were owned by a Dutch bank and it wasn't until the Nazis took over Holland that they realised that now the Nazis controlled the apparent company and that is why the Bush supporters claim when the war was over they got their money back. Both the American treasury investigations and the intelligence investigations in Europe completely bely that, it's absolute horsesh*t. They always knew who the ultimate beneficiaries were."
"There is no one left alive who could be prosecuted but they did get away with it," said Loftus. "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averill Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany."
Loftus said Prescott Bush must have been aware of what was happening in Germany at the time. "My take on him was that he was a not terribly successful in-law who did what Herbert Walker told him to. Walker and Harriman were the two evil geniuses, they didn't care about the Nazis any more than they cared about their investments with the Bolsheviks."
What is also at issue is how much money Bush made from his involvement. His supporters suggest that he had one token share. Loftus disputes this, citing sources in "the banking and intelligence communities" and suggesting that the Bush family, through George Herbert Walker and Prescott, got $1.5m out of the involvement. There is, however, no paper trail to this sum.
The third person going into print on the subject is John Buchanan, 54, a Miami-based magazine journalist who started examining the files while working on a screenplay. Last year, Buchanan published his findings in the venerable but small-circulation New Hampshire Gazette under the headline "Documents in National Archives Prove George Bush's Grandfather Traded With the Nazis - Even After Pearl Harbor". He expands on this in his book to be published next month - Fixing America: Breaking the Stranglehold of Corporate Rule, Big Media and the Religious Right.
In the article, Buchanan, who has worked mainly in the trade and music press with a spell as a muckraking reporter in Miami, claimed that "the essential facts have appeared on the internet and in relatively obscure books but were dismissed by the media and Bush family as undocumented diatribes".
Buchanan suffers from hypermania, a form of manic depression, and when he found himself rebuffed in his initial efforts to interest the media, he responded with a series of threats against the journalists and media outlets that had spurned him. The threats, contained in e-mails, suggested that he would expose the journalists as "traitors to the truth".
Unsurprisingly, he soon had difficulty getting his calls returned. Most seriously, he faced aggravated stalking charges in Miami, in connection with a man with whom he had fallen out over the best way to publicise his findings. The charges were dropped last month.
Biography
Buchanan said he regretted his behaviour had damaged his credibility but his main aim was to secure publicity for the story. Both Loftus and Schweitzer say Buchanan has come up with previously undisclosed documentation.
The Bush family have largely responded with no comment to any reference to Prescott Bush. Brown Brothers Harriman also declined to comment.
The Bush family recently approved a flattering biography of Prescott Bush entitled Duty, Honour, Country by Mickey Herskowitz. The publishers, Rutledge Hill Press, promised the book would "deal honestly with Prescott Bush's alleged business relationships with Nazi industrialists and other accusations".
In fact, the allegations are dealt with in less than two pages. The book refers to the Herald-Tribune story by saying that "a person of less established ethics would have panicked ... Bush and his partners at Brown Brothers Harriman informed the government regulators that the account, opened in the late 1930s, was 'an unpaid courtesy for a client' ... Prescott Bush acted quickly and openly on behalf of the firm, served well by a reputation that had never been compromised. He made available all records and all documents. Viewed six decades later in the era of serial corporate scandals and shattered careers, he received what can be viewed as the ultimate clean bill."
The Prescott Bush story has been condemned by both conservatives and some liberals as having nothing to do with the current president. It has also been suggested that Prescott Bush had little to do with Averill Harriman and that the two men opposed each other politically.
However, documents from the Harriman papers include a flattering wartime profile of Harriman in the New York Journal American and next to it in the files is a letter to the financial editor of that paper from Prescott Bush congratulating the paper for running the profile. He added that Harriman's "performance and his whole attitude has been a source of inspiration and pride to his partners and his friends".
The Anti-Defamation League in the US is supportive of Prescott Bush and the Bush family. In a statement last year they said that "rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
However, one of the country's oldest Jewish publications, the Jewish Advocate, has aired the controversy in detail.
More than 60 years after Prescott Bush came briefly under scrutiny at the time of a faraway war, his grandson is facing a different kind of scrutiny but one underpinned by the same perception that, for some people, war can be a profitable business.
------------------
You may believe, gavia, that the tooth fairy financed Adolph Hitler's rise to power, and the consolidation of world-wide Nazi financial and industrial interests, but any objective observer would see a pattern here which is unavoidable. The Anti-Defamation League, which might have some reason to desire the support of the powerful Bush Family, looked at all this evidence, and did what you often do:
They simply denied it.
That's not good enough. They should be at least as judicious as Kevin Philips.
I rest my case, gavia. You are too easily taken in by perfunctory denials, when the evidence is there for anyone to see.
[Macresarf1]
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Oct 05 '05
1:24 pm PDT
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British Guardian Reply to the Anti-Defamation League (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Now, let's deal with the Anti-Defamation League perfunctory denial of the above, using a recent article from the British Guardian, let's deal with the Anti-Defamation League denial:
How Bush's grandfather helped Hitler's rise to power
Rumours of a link between the US first family and the Nazi war machine have circulated for decades. Now the Guardian can reveal how repercussions of events that culminated in action under the Trading with the Enemy Act are still being felt by today's president
Ben Aris in Berlin and Duncan Campbell in Washington
Saturday September 25, 2004
The Guardian
George Bush's grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.
The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.
His business dealings, which continued until his company's assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.
he evidence has also prompted one former US Nazi war crimes prosecutor to argue that the late senator's action should have been grounds for prosecution for giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The debate over Prescott Bush's behaviour has been bubbling under the surface for some time. There has been a steady internet chatter about the "Bush/Nazi" connection, much of it inaccurate and unfair. But the new documents, many of which were only declassified last year, show that even after America had entered the war and when there was already significant information about the Nazis' plans and policies, he worked for and profited from companies closely involved with the very German businesses that financed Hitler's rise to power. It has also been suggested that the money he made from these dealings helped to establish the Bush family fortune and set up its political dynasty.
Remarkably, little of Bush's dealings with Germany has received public scrutiny, partly because of the secret status of the documentation involving him. But now the multibillion dollar legal action for damages by two Holocaust survivors against the Bush family, and the imminent publication of three books on the subject are threatening to make Prescott Bush's business history an uncomfortable issue for his grandson, George W, as he seeks re-election.
While there is no suggestion that Prescott Bush was sympathetic to the Nazi cause, the documents reveal that the firm he worked for, Brown Brothers Harriman (BBH), acted as a US base for the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, who helped finance Hitler in the 1930s before falling out with him at the end of the decade. The Guardian has seen evidence that shows Bush was the director of the New York-based Union Banking Corporation (UBC) that represented Thyssen's US interests and he continued to work for the bank after America entered the war.
Tantalising
Bush was also on the board of at least one of the companies that formed part of a multinational network of front companies to allow Thyssen to move assets around the world.
Thyssen owned the largest steel and coal company in Germany and grew rich from Hitler's efforts to re-arm between the two world wars. One of the pillars in Thyssen's international corporate web, UBC, worked exclusively for, and was owned by, a Thyssen-controlled bank in the Netherlands. More tantalising are Bush's links to the Consolidated Silesian Steel Company (CSSC), based in mineral rich Silesia on the German-Polish border. During the war, the company made use of Nazi slave labour from the concentration camps, including Auschwitz. The ownership of CSSC changed hands several times in the 1930s, but documents from the US National Archive declassified last year link Bush to CSSC, although it is not clear if he and UBC were still involved in the company when Thyssen's American assets were seized in 1942.
Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush's involvement. All three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.
The first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress, show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of companies involved with Thyssen.
The second set of papers, which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director. Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush's ventures, had also been seized.
The third set of documents, also at the National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was prosecuted for war crimes.
A report issued by the Office of Alien Property Custodian in 1942 stated of the companies that "since 1939, these (steel and mining) properties have been in possession of and have been operated by the German government and have undoubtedly been of considerable assistance to that country's war effort".
Prescott Bush, a 6ft 4in charmer with a rich singing voice, was the founder of the Bush political dynasty and was once considered a potential presidential candidate himself. Like his son, George, and grandson, George W, he went to Yale where he was, again like his descendants, a member of the secretive and influential Skull and Bones student society. He was an artillery captain in the first world war and married Dorothy Walker, the daughter of George Herbert Walker, in 1921.
In 1924, his father-in-law, a well-known St Louis investment banker, helped set him up in business in New York with Averill Harriman, the wealthy son of railroad magnate E H Harriman in New York, who had gone into banking.
One of the first jobs Walker gave Bush was to manage UBC. Bush was a founding member of the bank and the incorporation documents, which list him as one of seven directors, show he owned one share in UBC worth $125.
The bank was set up by Harriman and Bush's father-in-law to provide a US bank for the Thyssens, Germany's most powerful industrial family.
August Thyssen, the founder of the dynasty had been a major contributor to Germany's first world war effort and in the 1920s, he and his sons Fritz and Heinrich established a network of overseas banks and companies so their assets and money could be whisked offshore if threatened again.
By the time Fritz Thyssen inherited the business empire in 1926, Germany's economic recovery was faltering. After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Thyssen became mesmerised by the young firebrand. He joined the Nazi party in December 1931 and admits backing Hitler in his autobiography, I Paid Hitler, when the National Socialists were still a radical fringe party. He stepped in several times to bail out the struggling party: in 1928 Thyssen had bought the Barlow Palace on Briennerstrasse, in Munich, which Hitler converted into the Brown House, the headquarters of the Nazi party. The money came from another Thyssen overseas institution, the Bank voor Handel en Scheepvarrt in Rotterdam.
By the late 1930s, Brown Brothers Harriman, which claimed to be the world's largest private investment bank, and UBC had bought and shipped millions of dollars of gold, fuel, steel, coal and US treasury bonds to Germany, both feeding and financing Hitler's build-up to war.
Between 1931 and 1933 UBC bought more than $8m worth of gold, of which $3m was shipped abroad. According to documents seen by the Guardian, after UBC was set up it transferred $2m to BBH accounts and between 1924 and 1940 the assets of UBC hovered around $3m, dropping to $1m only on a few occasions.
[To be Continued.]
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Oct 05 '05
1:20 pm PDT
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Re: Bottom line--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Gavia, here's Part II of my reply:
Let's take up a cautious biographer of the Bushes.
Kevin Phillips, an architect of Richard Nixon's key "Southern Strategy," hardly a wild-eyed radical gossip monger of the Internet, put the case more subtly and judiciously, in his definative biography of the Bush Family in American Dynasty:
George H. Walker and Samuel Bush, great grand-fathers of the second Bush president, made their respective successes by leaving their fathers’ vocations — dry goods and the Episcopal ministry — and striking out on their own. Neither was a particular role model for his own sons; both provoked some filial resentment or distance. Prescott Bush talked about his father not having money for him, and did not go back to Columbus, Ohio, to work (save for awhile when his father was bereaved after his mother died in an auto accident ). He may have found more of an economic, political and athletic authority figure in father-in-law George Herbert Walker. On the other hand, Prescott Bush may have resented, by 1938 or 1942, the nest of cobra eggs that his father-in-law had left under the names of Union Banking Corporation, American Ship and Commerce, Silesian American, Harriman Fifteen and the rest. Former Justice Department official John Loftus suggests such disillusionment in his book The Secret War Against the Jews. Other chroniclers have shunned the subject.
What George H.W. Bush, in turn, was trying to do when he went from Andover into naval aviation training rather than Yale—and then when he went with Dresser Industries, an oil services company, rather than stay in New York with Brown Brothers Harriman—is also grist for interpretation. Was he rejecting that world or just trying to get out of his father’s long Eastern and Ivy League shadow?
Loftus, citing unnamed sources in the intelligence community, contends that the eighteen-year-old George H. W. Bush, in becoming a naval aviator, was trying to redeem the family honor. The greater weight of evidence, judged by the views of biographers, is that
he had a great respect for his father, proudly following his path through Yale and Skull and Bones. Besides, at age eighteen, just out of Andover and with no college under his belt, he depended on his father’s help to arrange an under-age and unqualified entrance to the naval air program. while nominally impossible, this might have been quite manageable by a telephone call from Prescott Bush to one of three fellow Yale and Skull and Bones men (the Secretary of War, the Assistant Secretary of War for Air or the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Air)."
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George Herbert Walker Bush seems to have arranged a less repectable, less admirable deal for his son, George W. Bush at the time of the Vietnam War, under similar circumstances, so far as qualifications and fairness were concerned.
[To be Continued.]
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Oct 05 '05
1:13 pm PDT
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Re: Bottom line--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
I commend you for doing some research, but you are too quick to accept the Anti-Defamation League conclusion. Fresh research is constantly turning up damning evidence against the Bush Family and its origins. This not a Right Wing Catholic yen for Nazism, as practiced by the Kennedys early on; nor Nixon's early run-in with the Mob when he was on the Rubber Board at the beginning of WWII; nor LBJ's ties to Brown and Root, now enfolded in the Bush Group of industries; certainly not the Clintons failed real estate ventures. Prescott Bush found himself in charge of an organization which owned a slave labor camp (Auschwitz), which became rapidly a death camp. He was charged, with family friends ( the grandson of one now the American Ambassador to the Court of St. James), and he was brought up on a charge of "Trading with the Enemy," in 1942, to which he pled nolo contendere, and did "Community Service" by forming and fronting for the United Services Organization (USO) during the remainder of the War.
Here is research evidence from my review of DEAR FIDEL:
[ http://www.epinions.com/content_3324944516 ]
C. Lorenz, A.G. -- In the early 1930's, major portions of this company were acquired by Sosthenes Behn's I.T.T. and Brown and Harriman (CEO Prescott Bush, negotiated by the Dulles Brothers -- John Foster and Allen). Behn, born in the Virgin Islands, son of sugar brokers, was educated in Corsica, and served with distinction in the First World War, where he made the acquaintance of George S. Patton. Retired from the U.S. Army Signal Corps in 1929 with the rank of lieutenant colonel, Behn formed International Telephone & Telegraph and began to buy up depressed communications companies here and in Europe. After Behn and Bush acquired controlling interest in the company, C. Lorenz got the contract to develop 25% of Folke-Wulf aircraft for the Luftwaffe, at its Bremen North German Atlantic Cable Company site. In World War II, Behn and Bush, among others, continued to do business, with European countries, from South America and Switzerland.
In Germany, they continued to deal with people such as Reich Air Marshal Hermann Goering and Gestapo Leader Heinrich Himmler, both of whom maintained a strong interest, financial as well as strategic, in aircraft war industries. Though Prescott Bush and Brown and Harriman were ordered, with others, to cease and desist, under the American "Trading with the Enemy Act," Behn continued as before. At one point in 1943, U.S. Liberator bombers (for which Behn provided intercoms) bombed the Lorenz Plant outside of Bremen. Folke-Wulfe 190 interceptors, which the Behn and Bush finances had helped build (perhaps the best single radial engine plane of the War) shot down Liberators, and vice verse. While Prescott Bush's German assets were frozen until ten years after World War II, Colonel Behn joined General George S. Patton's famous Black motorcade following his Third Army across Europe. Behn personally got his factories up and running again quickly, with the help of his old Army comrade. After the War, Behn sued the United States Government for damages done to his factories by American Army Air Force bombers, and collected $27,000,000.
Prescott Bush, whose Brown and Harriman frozen holdings included the Union Munitions Factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau [featured in THE GREY ZONE, 2002], had to wait to collect his booty until his old German partner, Baron Fritz Thyssen, died in Argentina in 1951. Some of those funds were used by U.S. Senator Prescott Bush to help finance the early business ventures of his son, George H.W. Bush. It is conceivable that some of that money has passed on down as part of President George W. Bush's fortune today.
[To be continued.]
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Oct 05 '05
1:10 pm PDT
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Re: Re: (10) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Gavia: You have indeed sait it all, or almost. Time will tell, and the tale at the moment should make you reflect on some of your judgments and assumptions:
[Taken from my recent BLOG entries.]
Republican House Majority Leader Tom Delay was forced to step down last week when he was indicted for conspiracy by grandjury. He had been implicated in the dealings of Jack Abramoff for Indian gaming rights in Texas. In a separate action earlier, other associates had been arrested in connection with the gangland style murder of Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, in Florida. Then, a few days ago, Delay was indicted by a second grand jury, this time for Money Laundering. In that matter, it was reported that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was being questioned by Scotland Yard about talks she had with Delay, some five years ago.
At the same time, Federal Prosecutor Fitzgerald was reported to be ready to issue his assessment of what went on in the "outing" of CIA noc-agent Valarie Plame. The word was that evidence had been gatherer which would point to Presidential Advisor Karl Rove, Vice President Dick Chaney, and perhaps even President George W. Bush in plotting a revenge against Ambassador Joe Wilson, Plame's husband, for embarrassing the Administration by revealing how he had counseled repeatedly against the President's using a claim, to justify the Iraq War, that Saddam Hussein had attempted to purchase "Yellow Cake" Uranium from Niger.
Expert observers suggested that Rove, Chaney and possibly the President had not understood the implications of their act. Revealing the name of an undercover CIA agent is a serious violation of Federal Law.
Charges of bribery, illegal campaign contributions, white slavery, treason and gangland-style murder might be difficult to fend off, even for the bullet proof Bush administration.
Time was telling.
Meanwhile Federal Chairman Alan Greenspan continued to give cautious, sinister warnings about the U.S Budget being out of control; the hurricane disasters producing unforeseen strains; the "relative" problems that a deflation of the "Real Estate Bubble" might bring; the dangers of carrying interest-only loans; and the vital need to control inflation.
I am going to leave a note on your further research (above), but I must reluctantly say, that this exchange is at an end.
Onward, gavia, toward Enlightenment.
[Macresarf1]
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Oct 05 '05
12:30 pm PDT
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Bottom line--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
---regarding Prescott Bush, Dubya's granfather, and your allegations of his activities with the Nazi's befor WW II;
I've read lots of stuff about this on the Internet mostly originating from Eva Sweitzer, John Loftus, and Mickey Herschkowitz, I think. There was even a lawsuit against the Bush family by a couple of holocaust survivors that never got off the ground, unless I'm mistaken.
The Antidefamation League looked thoroughly into all the documentation and stories and concluded that "---rumours about the alleged Nazi 'ties' of the late Prescott Bush ... have circulated widely through the internet in recent years. These charges are untenable and politically motivated ... Prescott Bush was neither a Nazi nor a Nazi sympathiser."
That's good enough for me, Alex!
Gavia
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Oct 02 '05
11:20 pm PDT
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Re: (10) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
You commented, early on, that I was providing "much needed balance here." I hope our discussion has served that purpose to at least some extent.
Eugenics like Evolution is a theory.
The idea of Eugenics is wholly based on the theory of evolution---like nuclear bombs are based on the theory of relativity. It was seen as a scientific practical application of natural selection--to guide the natural process through human intervention to hasten the improvement of the human species. It was accepted science to the extent that much of the US and Europe had Eugenics laws mandating things like, for example, neutoring of mentally disabled people. It was just one of numerous scientific misapplications of evolution science---much like nuclear bombs COULD be said to be a misapplication of relativity science and physics. And the Kyoto proposals are a misapplication of climate science.
The research you like to urge, and flaunt, strikes me as VERY deficient on your part on this subject.
A large number of the Bush Administration will be indicted---
A fond hope of the extreme Left. I don't think so, but we'll have to wait and see---
More and more are charged every day with violations of law.
I'm sure you mean "accused" and or "suspected." NOT charged. Tell me who has actually been indicted---or convicted of any crime!
Anyone who knows anything about politics, and you admit you don't know much---
I said I was a pragmatist and an engineer, and that I didn't study political science in college, as you say you did. You apparently know little or nothing about science or engineering.
---Tom Delay has been inordinately corrupt.
He has undergone a flurry of ethics accusations, highly partisan, and none very well-founded or proven. The present indictment is highly suspect---but we'll see if it will amount to anything. Primarily he's guilty of being a highly effective Republican leader in the House. Of anything else, he is innocent until PROVEN guilty, I'm sure you will agree.
Ronnie Dean, the Travis County, Texas, DA is obviously highly partisan, although he has gone after a few Republicans as well as Democrats.
--why don't you do a little research on the leads I give you?
Because I'm already familiar with the "facts" behind your erroneous assertions and allegations, for the most part.
I won't debate about Harry Belafonte. His political statements are very harmful, and he would do well to stick with calypso, where he knows what he's doing---
To the extent, that we fail to expand true Democracy, rather than narrow corporate interests, we will continue to suffer such criticism.
"Corporate interests" are not narrow and are not in conflict with expanding "true Democracy." And the pursuit of corporate interests has done much to help expand true Democracy, as well as many other kinds of advancement!
Belafonte's----connection of the Bush Family to Nazism has a basis in fact.
There are stronger connections of the Bush Family to the DEFEAT of the Nazi's. Some misjudged Hitler in the '30's, but revised their positions and their actions later. It's utterly ridiculous and pointless to try to associate GWB ancestors to the Nazi's. To my knowledge, there is only one Bush biographer who has done so, and his writing is an obvious hatchet job for the gullible. Many others have quoted from that one questionable source.
Do the research, gavia. You will come to similar conclusion as mine, if you are at all fair and sensitive.
I take great pride in my fairness and sensitivity, qualities I find you lacking. My "research" leads me to that inescapable conclusion!
A stimulating discussion, Alex, and I hope I provided some "much needed balace" as you said earlier.
Gavia
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Oct 01 '05
9:31 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re(5) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear gavia: I agree that we should begin to wind this up because we now appear more in agreement than disagreement, now that we have defined our terms. In that regard:
Eugenics like Evolution is a theory. The difference is that the preponderance of evidence has supported Evolution from the beginning. Eugenics, on the other hand, was a notion which was used for political and racist purposes, and not much authentic scientific evidence was ever generated which supported the notion. Bumps, head shapes, and racial types never added up to much except excuses to exploit scapegoats, put them in concentration camps, work and gas them to death.
I might note that many intellectuals and scientist believed in Nazism, too, but as we know now, that philosophy was intellectually bankrupt and inhuman to the extreme. Not many of them supported both Nazism and Eugenics, invested their money in both, profited from both, and got away with it though -- as did the Bush Family.
A large number of the Bush Administration will be indicted, how many depends on the political climate, to be sure. It may turn out to be the largest group in an Administration ever to be so. [Which is saying a lot, looking at the last 100 years of our political history.] More and more are charged every day with violations of law. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, for instance, has been accused of several violations of law in just the last couple of days.
[When I state such things I am referring to announcements Senior Congressmen, DA's, and Federal Attorneys, not hack talk show hosts.
Sorry, gavia. Anyone who knows anything about politics, and you admit you don't know much, is aware that Tom Delay has been inordinately corrupt. His own Party has been forced to consider censuring him numerous times.
Ronnie Dean, the Travis County, Texas, DA has prosecuted four Republican and twelve Democratic politicians during his career, so your allegation of political partisanship in the matter also seems to be full of holes.
Instead of taking the easy catch phrase from Hanady or Limbaugh, why don't you do a little research on the leads I give you? Find out the facts, gavia. You would look better here, than following your practice of just agreeing or disagreeing perfunctorily.
Finally, Harry Belafonte is defending the people from whom he comes the same way the son of dairy farmers might defend them if the Bush Administration had abandoned them, fought their progress. When he criticizes Condi Rice or Colin Powell, Belafonte is saying that they are not representing the best interests of people they came from.
If the White race were not the dominant one on Earth, if the United States was not "The World's One Remaining Super Power," then these charges might not fall so hard on us. Racism would not be such an issue for us, at home and abroad. We have taken over where the British, the French, the Dutch, and the Belgians left off.
To the extent, that we fail to expand true Democracy, rather than narrow corporate interests, we will continue to suffer such criticism. This situation has been exacerbated by the end of the Cold War over the fifteen to twenty years.
You can argue with Belafonte's views, of course, but his connection of the Bush Family to Nazism has a basis in fact. The remark is racist only in the sense that the Nazis were racists, and the Bush Family supported them, and the policies of George W. Bush reflects that.
Do the research, gavia. You will come to similar conclusion as mine, if you are at all fair and sensitive.
Talley ho!
[Macresarf1]
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Oct 01 '05
12:47 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re(5) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Briefly, gavia: Followed by 1000 words or so! I've no desire to keep this up indefinitely, and I'm sure you don't either, but you ARE so provocative!
Somehow I have missed Noam Chomsky.
I'm surprised---your approach to history, and political science, seems to have much in common---based on consistently following this principle: Blame the US first, for every socio-economic injustice that remains anywhere on Earth---
--tends to speak in terms of political theory (which as a graduate political scientist, I quite understand)
That helps to explain our non-overlapping perspectives. I'm a graduate engineer, and definitely an amatuer and pragmatist when it comes to politics. And I think Sociology sucks, for the most part.
The indictment this morning of Majority Leader Tom Delay is a step in the right direction.
It's an obvious political ploy by a devoted Democrat partisan, to temporarily (at least) remove Delay from his leadership position. It will be interesting to watch this play out---and see if there's anything at all behind the accusations---
---if his case should be linked to the murders in Florida involving the Mob and a friend of the President--
Not worthy of comment--analagous to the RW suspicians about Foster---
You seem, from your perspective, though you say that you share many of my views, to be one who does not want "to rock the boat."
I have NO opposition to change, per se, but I want evolutionary, positive change, not the revolutionary, destructive kind of change you would evidently favor. I have confidence in our legal system to identify and correct illegalities and corruption--but there will always be some of that on all sides of the spectrum--
Return to the economic reforms ushered in by Teddy Roosevelt early in the last century;
No argument, if I undesrstand what you mean.
--reinvigorate the social reforms installed by FDR's New Deal---
Seems to me they are very much still in place---in many cases with strong enhancements!
--return to the foreign policy ideals of cooperation we adopted when we were instrumental in establishing the United Nations.
No argument--provided we do so in a way that also gives reasonable attention to our own national interests.
--share the still considerable wealth of our beloved nation with all its citizens---
The "wealth" is shared here by all who participate in producing it---largely in proportion to their contribution to producing it. And also with those who cannot participate in producing it, for whatever reason.
---and see that all people of the World have freedoms, education, stuff to eat and safe drinking water---
A goal we all support, of course, but with considerable differences about HOW to support and achieve that goal.
--the U.S. Budget is "out of control,"---
Serious concern, of course!
---military situation is a disaster, that our foreign policy is in shambles---
Lots of room for controversy and reasonable dialogue about that---but the name calling and anger doesn't help---
Senators Obama and Clinton are expressing the kind of "centrist" positions that you suggest the Democrats adopt---
I'm saying that's what they will need to do to have any political success. I don't quite trust their proposals, because, like Bill, their centrist ideas will be overwhelmed by their more Leftist constituencies if they are elected.
Harry Belafonte---is a very bright, intelligent, informed private citizen.
Also a hate-filled racist, whose public statements do great harm to the people you say he wants to help--
Why was the Administration's giving the wealthiest 1% of Americans a tax break large enough to buy a small Caribbean island and the lower 40% economically enough for a meal at MacDonalds not "class warfare"?
Taxes were reduced for people that pay raxes, but not quite in proportion to the taxes they pay. Lower incomes got a much more generous reduction, proportionally, that higher incomes. That's "fairness" not class warfare.
You speak of racism and eugenics being a product of their time in America, as if---their practice should be excused.
Understood---not excused--
---abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire in 1836, thirty years before we accomplished the feat after a knock-down, drag-out fight -- a real war.
But we DID fight a real war, at great sacrifice, to end slavery here!
And Eugenics had been discredited by the 1920's----
Eugenics was accepted science, by many, much later than the '20s, although it had it's detractors--
---when the President's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his namesake George Herbert Walker, championed the study and practice of that pseudo-science.
It wasn't seen as psuedo science at the time---it was generally accepted by scientists and intellectuals who strongly advocated it. It's one of the things that make many deplore the theory of evolution, the root of eugenics ideas. And skeptical of science, generally--
I believe in being forthright, being above board and dealing in facts, wherever they may lead.
You are HIGHLY selective in the "facts" you deal with, and you mix them liberally with rumours, accusations, and gossip. I won't join you and Michael in that practice---
Gavia
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Sep 29 '05
11:48 am PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re(5) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Briefly, gavia:
1) Somehow I have missed Noam Chomsky. I have read nothing by him except an occasional article, but I confess to seeing a documentary on him, at the urging of a friend. From my limited knowledge of his views, I agree with him on the Post War drive of the American power elite (Republican, Democrat, and Vegetarian) toward accruing power and capital while maintaining that we are defenders of democracy and ordinary people around the World.
Chomsky, it seems to me, tends to speak in terms of political theory (which as a graduate political scientist, I quite understand), but he avoids or denigrates what lies behind nuts and bolts operations like the assassinations of the 1960's, our involvement in Vietnam, Watergate, Irangate, and Whitewater. He may be wise in this regard, from a practical political viewpoint, but I say: Let the light flood in.
[The indictment this morning of Majority Leader Tom Delay is a step in the right direction. Granting his presumed innocence and due process, if his case should be linked to the murders in Florida involving the Mob and a friend of the President, and then to political contributions (bribes) from the white slave sweat shop operations in our little Pacific colonial outpost in the Commonwealth of the Marianas, we shall not need a flood to sweep this bunch of gangsters and fascists out of office.]
2) You seem, from your perspective, though you say that you share many of my views, to be one who does not want "to rock the boat." Fifty years of "not rocking the boat," of not getting to the root of our national corruption has allowed the people behind that corruption to recover, again and again, correct their mistakes by executive, legislative, judicial and economic means, so as to become stronger than ever. At this point, their arrogance, incompetence and criminality threatens the future of mankind.
What would I do, in the theoretical sense you seem to favor? Return to the economic reforms ushered in by Teddy Roosevelt early in the last century; reinvigorate the social reforms installed by FDR's New Deal; and as the World Leader, the "Only Existing Super Power," return to the foreign policy ideals of cooperation we adopted when we were instrumental in establishing the United Nations.
If we cannot protect capitalism with a "small c," share the still considerable wealth of our beloved nation with all its citizens, and see that all people of the World have freedoms, education, stuff to eat and safe drinking water, Americans are doomed, no matter how much chablis we drink.
The Republicans in general, and the fascist/corporatist idealogues now in power in particular, have dedicated themselves from the late 1960's to reversing all of the positive programs above.
The result is that Alan Greenspan is telling the French Finance Minister, the U.S. Budget is "out of control," and most objective observers say that our military situation is a disaster, that our foreign policy is in shambles (though admitting our mistakes with North Korea may be a helpful sign).
You know, gavia, my guess is that you, I, Hilary Clinton, Obama, Harry Belafonte and Michael Brown -- hey, maybe even Joe Klein! -- may all be sipping chablis tonight while innocent people, here and abroad, are suffering or dying.
[Mr. Brown says that he prefers "making a stiff Margarita." -- everyone to his taste, as the old woman said when she kissed the cow (a favorite expression of my Mother). More power to him on that!]
We all have said extreme, even stupid things. Senators Obama and Clinton are expressing the kind of "centrist" positions that you suggest the Democrats adopt, that I adopt. But re-read the misunderstanding you invest them with. You are full of contempt for them, as you should be.
Senators Obama and Clinton should be saying that the "war on terror" has been badly handled, an opportunistic bungle, in the bargain; that the Iraq War is a living, walking, exploding war crime built on lies; that "Katrina" was a revelation of the foolish, incompetent, crooked, crony-filled operations of the 180,000 member Office of Homeland Security; that the soon $8,000,000,000,000 (that's 8 TRILLION dollar) National Deficit is approaching 5% of GNP, and on the next economic downturn (which our crazy, misdirected, and wasteful war, pork barrel, and disaster expenditures will insure), the viability of the United States will no longer be sustainable.
Can you spell 1929, gavia?
So what will it matter if the Democrats don't get re-elected if our economy is in collapse, our Army is being blown to pieces in Central Asia and the Middle East, the waters of Antarctica have swollen the oceans to swallow New Orleans, Philadelphia, Marseilles, etc, and a real atom bomb had come into San Francisco Bay in the belly of an uninspected tanker?
3) Harry Belafonte, at least, a champion of his people and the little guy since his days as a cross-over matinee idol, is a very bright, intelligent, informed private citizen. On the one occasion I met him, he seemed to me a quiet, polite, regular sort of guy (which is more than can be said for a lot of the characters in this scenario). Belafonte is passionate about the kind of injustice which lets poor people starve and suffer for days at the hands of Pat Robertson's faith based boondoggle and insurance sharks led by the likes of Michael Brown, while the President assures us that Senator Trent Lott's devastated estate will be restored and Governor Halley Barbour's pet real estate developments in Central Mississippi will receive full-funded hurricane and flood relief.
If that's "class warfare," if Mr. Belafonte was overly passionate about it, and the continued, growing misery of the poor, so be it.
[You suggest that invocations of "class warfare" in America should be avoided. Why was the Administration's giving the wealthiest 1% of Americans a tax break large enough to buy a small Caribbean island and the lower 40% economically enough for a meal at MacDonalds not "class warfare"? But pointing out the lies, looting, incompetence and criminality of the Administration is? You speak of racism and eugenics being a product of their time in America, as if display of the attitudes inherent in their practice should be excused. Granting we have made progress but not to agree that racism and the practice of eugenics does not continue in America), racism and eugenics were already deplored in the World long before we formally rejected them. William Wilberforce in the British Parliament, you will remember, sponsored a bill abolishing slavery throughout the British Empire in 1836, thirty years before we accomplished the feat after a knock-down, drag-out fight -- a real war. And Eugenics had been discredited by the 1920's, when the President's grandfather, Prescott Bush, and his namesake George Herbert Walker, championed the study and practice of that pseudo-science. When they both helped finance the Nazis way into power, and later, profited from the slave labor of Auschwitz.]
I believe in being forthright, being above board and dealing in facts, wherever they may lead. I trust, gavia, you will join with me in that belief, too.
Regards, as always.
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 28 '05
2:59 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re(5) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Alex--Thanks for an interesting discussion of past meanings of Left and Right, and your perceptions of their current status. You say much about what you think is wanted by the extreme Left and by the Extreme Right, but I have a question, perhaps rhetorical.
I don't think you will be offended if I say that I find much commonality in your view of history and the US with those of Noam Chomsky, whom I've always found interesting, disturbing, infuriating sometimes---but the thing that always seems missing from him is what changes he would like to see, and how he would suggest trying to bring them about. In the few cases where I've seen him try to address that, it comes across mostly destructive---which is why I join those who see him as a nihilist. I think I suggested the same about you in an earlier comment.
So my question---maybe rhetorical--is: What do YOU want, and how do you think it might be brought about?
If your answer is throw out and/or convict the Republican Rascals, and do so by continueing and increasing the negative attacks, accusations, ridicule, etc., then I think you are pushing a losers agenda, as I've said. Liberals and Democrats sorely need to get back to some constructive ideas, and right now there is an extraordinary historical opportunity to do so! AND possibly even on a bipartsan basis, if more could get over the pathological Bush hatred.
I'll stick with my OTH analogy, although you may be right that we are OTH from each but not necessarily at traditional Left and Right extremes.
In any case, our perspectives have little or no overlap. In my perspective I'm struck by the good we have done in our short history, while aware of the bad things you insist on emphasizing. In my view the bad things reflect conventional wisdom and accepted science of the time---things like racism and eugenics---and must be judged in the context of those times.
Your perspective, on the other hand, seems mostly absorbed by the bad, as though those are the things that characterize America. And that's why our perspectives do not overlap.
There are some Democrats beginning to see the futility of the racial hatred spewing from Belafonte, for example, and the class hatred from many others. Joe Klein and David Brooks have both commented in recent articles. Klein directed the following, rhetorically, to Harry Belafonte, after he had attacked proposals by Obama and H. Clinton for new intiatives aimed at alleviating poverty:
"Harry,---tonight when you're sipping your Chablis in your NYC apartment, there will be thousands sleeping on cots in shelters. We're trying to help them. Your anger doesn't help."
The same could reasonably be said by many in the Bush administration---and by the rest of us moderate conservatives.
Regards,
Gavia
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Sep 27 '05
4:13 pm PDT
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Re: Re(5) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Gavia, I see that you did enjoy your meal!
Thank you for revising your rating.
As for your puzzlement, gavia, let me assure you that I do not "live in the extreme Left . . . OTH Left." For one thing, no one of any credibility lives in that Left anymore. The Left in this country was turned out, fired, put in jail or banished following World War II. McCarthyism was the mopping up operation for that.
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Talk about extreme Left in America: The International Workers of the World, after "The Great War," wanted to seize the factories, create the One Big Union, run America with a Labor Government. They had millions of members, but no American political party, not even the American Socialist Party (which was viable in the 1920's), would touch that concept (as Great Britain explored it, after World War II).
The American Establishment, conservative as most entrenched political groups are, but frightened by the upheaval of the Depression and the distant threat of Communism as a potential force, incorporated the best ideas of the Left into the New Deal under FDR. After World War II, the relatively Leftist leaders, no longer necessary, were denigrated, purged (as they say in Europe), as the Democratic Party fought to maintain the majority its policies of broad prosperity had created. But the threat of Communism abroad kept a majority of both parties striving for broader social programs, racial equality and social democracy.
[The period we are in today is an extremely successful attempt to roll back those broad democratic gains, to put us back in the hands of a regime ancien of the Robber Barons in the 19th Century, where a small class of Americans enjoyed most of the benefits from the Nation's riches.]
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Talk about extreme Right in America: Three percent of Americans now control 90 percent of the Nation's wealth, but many of these individuals want even more.
An even smaller percentage of those Americans wish to make America a World Empire. Many of those wish to declare God an American, and us "a Christian Nation." Some yearn to return women to the status of baby makers for men. Others wish to reduce the Middle Class, as it has developed since after World War I, to a "service industry." There is a general desire to to eliminate the "working class" through automation. The shared wisdom of the whole group supports proposals to curtail the fundamental freedoms guaranteed and evolved since 1789 under the excuse of "the war against terror."
Though truly OTH, how are the extreme Right doing?
Just fine, thank you, at the moment, even though the folly of their course is being read and decried in all the nations of the World.
We are in an extremely dangerous situation, gavia, and it is mostly of our own making.
My hope is that reasonable people like yourself will see the wisdom of my analysis, and that of others wiser than I, before it is too late.
The time is very late now.
I quite agree with you, gavia, about the Democrats. They have become craven, "me to" (as they used to say of the Republican Right), and ad hominem. George Bush appears to have many miserable qualities but he is no fool politically. And George Bush's character is no more relevant than Bill Clinton's was.
The threat to the American Republic we both love is the totalitarianism (torture, suspension of habeas corpus, agression), incompetence (military equipment snafus, "Katrina" response, "the war against terror," the National Debt scandal), fraudulence (the preferential war contracts, corporate scandals), and now (if we examine the Republican Leadership's dealings) grossly criminal policies of the Administration which should be attacked.
Not George Bush because he is a coward or "a dry drunk" or a former dope addict. That's irrelevant.
[Democrats should be more "Christian" in its arguments, more Christian than many of the Administration's supporters.]
Let the Democrats deal only in facts. Get the just indictments. Impeach the malfeasors. Put the criminals in jail. Tell the truth. Then, the Democrats will win.
Then, together, we shall restore and preserve the Republic!
We agree, gavia.
Thank you for the apologies for your extreme ad hominem remarks toward me, and I hope you will accept mine, in return.
Onward, gavia! America needs clear-eyed, logical Patriots. We have too many "know nothing" lemmings in this first and greatest of modern democracies.
Regards.
Alex -- Macresarf1
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Sep 27 '05
1:38 pm PDT
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Re: Re(5): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear gavia: I find that we are, like two large tankers, slowly responding to intelligent helms, and veering away from the collision courses which dinged our hulls in the past.
Let me just say several things here:
When you again dismiss the President's avowal and reiteration of our fascistic right to attack at will any nation which displeases us (60 being a fairly ripe number which even Hitler would have avoided in 1938), you overlook the fact that in June 2002, when he first made the vow to an audience of cheering future military leaders, we had not yet attacked Iraq. That lay beyond all the subterfuge revealed in "The Downing Street Memo," eight months in the future.
And we know now that there was no reason in the immediate National Interest to invade Iraq, and that the mess we are in was, indeed, a result of an International governmental conspiracy. To paraphrase President Bill Clinton, in another context: President Bush had America attack Iraq for the worst reason -- because he could.
And of course, you overlook the fact that the President repeated his saber-rattling threat to attack other nations at will, in March of 2004, a year after the invasion, when it was becoming clear that Iraq had become, and likely would remain, a disaster for America and the few Coalition of the Willing remaining.
As I say, gavia, you don't seem to have much sense of how history tends to play out, nor a grasp of many facts. What annoys you, you simply ignore. Yet, referring to my efforts, you write --
"This writing of yours, as well as others I've read and rated, is a peculiar melding of a few highly selected facts, some fiction, many distortions, all to support your condemnation of everything in US history. Skillfully and cleverly done, Alex! And as I've said, I agree with a lot of it---but not all---"
Of course, most of my writing at Epinions has been in Movie and Restaurant reviews, not in History Books. Obviously, I must include some fiction (the plots) when I review, say, CITIZEN KANE or NIXON or, but when I give facts, they are facts, and if someone points out an error to me, I correct it. I don't just write "not at all" or "blah-blah-blah" or "BS" or "phony, phony, phony," without a single supporting fact in return.
I've assured you, and I think my pieces show, that I love America. But my America is the one that guarantees life, liberty and due process; the one that presents a democratic, honest and fair model to the World. It is not the World of the genocide of Native Americans, the land grabs of the Mexican and Spanish American wars, the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan, the Anti-American Palmer Raids, the McCarthy Period, or the brazen move of the Bush Administration toward unprecedented corruption, incompetence and totalitarianism.
If you disagree with what I love or hate about America, as a foolhardy President once said: "Bring it on!"
Might I suggest that, when you read a piece of mine, if you "agree with a lot of it," you start with that, as most people do at Epinions. If I present "a fact" which startles you, check it out. If you find me in error, point the error out to me and we'll deal with those on an individual basis.
To do otherwise is to live in Yahoo Land.
Please don't characterize me as some wild-eyed "Leftist" America-hater. Such a characterization, gavia, is what started McCarthyism.
Finally, I thank you for pointing out President Clinton's Directive 60.
I have not been able to find the actual text, but evidently it is part of a reformulation of a series of guidelines to our military intentions in the World, last revised by the Reagan Administration. The Directive appears to back off warnings to Russia and China, now that the Cold War is apparently in the past, but broadens our concerns to include "rogue states." Nowhere, so far, do I see the introduction of a doctrine of unprovoked, preemptive attacks on sovereign states.
That would appear to have been added by the Administration of George W. Bush (and intensified, as I've shown you, in just the last few weeks).
However, I'll continue to look into the matter, and if I find that proverbial "smoking gun" in the former President's hand, I'll call attention to it.
If you can direct me to the full text of President Clinton's Directive 60, I would be grateful.
Thank you again, gavia, for vigorous exchange.
Hope you enjoyed your meal.
Alex -- Macresarf1
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Sep 27 '05
12:19 pm PDT
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Re(5) (cont;d): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Hi again Alex--
It strikes me as wondrous strange that two people who lived long through the same world and national events can see the world so differently. But I know the reason for that---a case of "non-overlapping perspectives." While I live in the moderate center--OK, slightly right--you live in the very extreme Left--so far Left that for me it is Over The Horizon (OTH) and invisible to me---- and at least a third of the citizenry. There's another third, or so, that exist with you and the OTH Left, including many, if not most, of the folks here, as can be seen by the comments on this writing.
You see an America we do not see, and we see an America you do not see. I've re-read your piece and revised my rating, to reflect my opinion that it is, indeed, helpful for the insight you've provided into the POV of the OTH Left.
As for the Bush administration---they have earned plenty of criticism--but the OTH Left consistently plays into their hands by overstating the case against them. If the Democrats were to follow your suggestion and continue to focus on extremely negative attacks on Bush and Republicans generally, as you have advocated, I think it will continue to marginalize the Democratic party and insure a Republican dynasty---which would NOT be a good thing, IMHO!
I think and hope more reasonable views will prevail, and Democrats will come up with something constructive. Edwards made a good start in that directioon in a recent speech---in sharp contrast with a TERRIBLE speech in the Senate by Kerry, dwelling on: Bush is rotten, Bush is loathsome, going on to Bush is evil. That continued preoccupation with the badness of Bush will keep the Democrats out of power. I REALLY hope they follow Edwards lead and come up with something constructive.
But thanks for an entertaining and stimulating exchange, Alex. And I apologize for a few negatory adjectives I've used, here and there. And for motivating you to get a bit insulting, too, here and there.
The world will get better---regardless of what we do or say here---
Gavia
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Sep 26 '05
6:57 pm PDT
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Re(5): Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Why is it, gavia, that I sense that you do not really know what "enlightenment" is?
It's clear that my enlightenment leads me to different conclusions than yours, a circumstance I'm sure you will think is not possible. I'll say a little more about that at the end of this comment.
--require proof from others which you seldom provide for your own assertions.
Any assertitions I've made are accepted facts---
Facts are not your strong suit.
This writing of yours, as well as others I've read and rated, is a peculiar melding of a few highly selected facts, some fiction, many distortions, all to support your condemnation of everything in US history. Skillfully and cleverly done, Alex! And as I've said, I agree with a lot of it---but not all---
You deny the intent of my direct quote from the President George W. Bush's speech at West Point, in June of 2002.
There's no way that speech can be said to state an intention to make a totalitarian invasion of sixty nations, and I guess I'll insist that's clear to any numbskull, except those determined to see implacable evil in Bush---
--one more reckless statement by a man who had already proved himself the most disastrous Leader of the Western World since World War II.
I wouldn't characterize his statements as reckless, given the circumstances, but I understand others may see it differently.
The intention to launch unprovoked attacks on other nations remains our foreign policy---
The conditions that COULD lead to other attacks are quite clearly defined---and are not very likely, in my opinion---
We may see the above policy exercised, within a year or so, when we attack Iran.
I think you're mistaken, and I hope I'm right---
Then, you state that there is nothing new about the Pentagon's reservation for a "First Strike Use" of nuclear weapons.
I showed you that the policy has been in effect since Clinton, who first established it with Pres Dir 60, as I said.
Are you mad?
I'm not angry---and I'm not insane--
You could find better use for your time--
You got that right---
I have another brief comment, but gotta go for dinner---will finish in a seperate comment.
Gavia
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Sep 26 '05
6:03 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Why is it, gavia, that I sense that you do not really know what "enlightenment" is?
Perhaps, it is because, you disregard facts, have precious few of your own, and require proof from others which you seldom provide for your own assertions.
Facts are not your strong suit.
Recent examples in this exchange: You deny the intent of my direct quote from the President George W. Bush's speech at West Point, in June of 2002. If he did not mean what he said, the foreign ministries of not only the 60 nations referred to, but those of our allies in Afghanistan, reacted as if he did. It was one more reckless statement by a man who had already proved himself the most disastrous Leader of the Western World since World War II.
None in the American media, right or left, doubted his speech's intent. The intention to launch unprovoked attacks on other nations remains our foreign policy, as it was Nazi Germany's.
Evidently, everyone but you and President Bush was a "numbskull." An awful lot of numbskulls, gavia.
We may see the above policy exercised, within a year or so, when we attack Iran. The groundwork is being laid for that now.
Then, you state that there is nothing new about the Pentagon's reservation for a "First Strike Use" of nuclear weapons. All the newspapers who carried the story, including the papers of record, the few remaining leftist journals, and the warmongering media of the right disagree.
Are you mad?
Nothing new about insuring a new arms race, and quite possibly making a nuclear holocaust inevitable?
What steps do you think China and Russia will feel forced to take in the face of such a foolish, bellicose declaration?
Sorry, gavia, as they say about the President and his boy-toy ranch estate in Crawford, Texas: "You are all hat, and no cattle."
When it comes to facts and sources, that's for sure.
You could find better use for your time than keeping up this increasingly one-sided argument (in terms of serious debate).
Find a fine reference library and start reading half a dozen good newspapers.
Regards.
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 25 '05
12:44 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Thank you for not being so "long winded" as I.
You are most welcome!
And thank you for coming into almost total agreement with my main points.
Not---
About your allegation about Bush's intention you allege that Bush has made atatements --declaring our totalitarian intention to preemptively attack sixty of those nations---"
And I replied: "I'm curious about the source of that BS---"
To which you graciously provided the source of that BS, a speech by Bush at West Point in 2002 regarding the threat of terrorism. I won't repeat the quote, but almost any numbskull can see that he said NOTHING that could possibly be construed as ---declaring our totalitarian intention to preemptively attack sixty of those nations--- So, Alex, that's another horse on you--
You also wrote: "--and use first strike atomic weapons (making us International war criminals --"
And I rejoined jauntily: "---and that one, too."
I've pointed out that a nuclear first strike was authorized by a Clinton Presidential Diretive, but I'll check the Post for the recent articles you mentioned. But the point is--it's nothing new! ANOTHER horse on you, Alex---
George W. Bush's arrest records have been "lost," and according to official sources, an entire new set of credentials were created for him. A service which ordinary Texans or American citizens would not have been able to command.
I would GREATLY appreciate it if you would be so kind as to identify those "official sources." The same ones used by Dan Rather, perhaps??
3) I'm happy to hear that we both served in "The Korean Emergency."
I'm SO glad you're happy!
The difference seems to have been, according to what you write, that, like Our President, you joined the National Guard (Air?) to avoid actually going into combat.
I can't say why the President joined the Air Guard, but I joined the infantry guard, not air---in order to avoid getting drafted and to avoid going into combat. I later joined the USAF, primarily to fulfill my military obligation in a way that wouldn't involve shooting at people, or them shooting at me. I wound up in Kimpo, but did not see any combat--so my strategy was successful!
Ironically, you re-ed-up in the Air Force and went over to Kimpo, where I volunteered for the Draft, and had a great time serving in Great Britain.
Yep---that IS ironic!
Finally, thank you for your praise of teacher frugality and honesty, little heard these days.
I was thinking more of the outrageously generous retirement pensions we give teachers---with annual increases that reall add up after a few years! But of course teachers EARN it!
But, in two years---we may both be in the equivalent of "the poor house."
There are no poor houses no more Alex. We do MUCH better than that for our elderly, whether poor or not, and Bush won't be changing that. But I WOULD like to see a cancellation of the Medicare enhancements. FAR too expensive and completely unnecessary.
To Enlightenment, gavia!
I'll drink to that, and encourage you to try it---
Gavia
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Sep 24 '05
4:10 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Hi Alex: Thanks for identifying some of the sources of some of your misinformation and erroneous conclusions. I'll get back to that in another comment, but first let me offer this quote from an article written in 2002 during congressional discussions of the use of force against Iraq:
"President Bush was not the one who changed our nuclear first-strike policy: President Clinton did. In November of 1997, President Clinton signed Presidential Decision Directive 60, which allowed the United States to "consider using nuclear weapons against attackers who hit American forces with chemical or biological weapons. " It was made to address the "worrisome possibility that nations such as Iraq might turn chemical or biological arsenals against U.S. troops."
I'm sure that question has been addressed since, but I'm not sure whether there might be any later Presidential Directive on the subject.
Your misinformation is FAR too massive for me to address point-by-point, but I will respond briefly to the other quotes and sources in this comment--but seperately.
Later--
Gavia
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Sep 24 '05
3:41 pm PDT
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Re: Re: excellent, mac (Reply to this comment)
by thewasp
Why is Polk on your list of worst Presidents? You happen to live in a part of the country that would still be Mexico, without his intervention.
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Sep 24 '05
2:54 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Re: Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Dear gavia: Thank you for not being so "long winded" as I. And thank you for coming into almost total agreement with my main points.
Let me help clarify your thinking on a couple where there is still misunderstanding, and then, we may both buzz off to the Peace March nearest us, on this important day.
I wrote: 1) "They papered over our catastrophic foreign policy toward other nations, about declaring our totalitarian intention to preemptively attack sixty of those nations---"
And you replied: "I'm curious about the source of that BS---"
Tsk, Tsk, gavia. You are being condescending, vulgar and arrogant here, but most of all you are being ignorant, as can easily be shown.
On June 1, 2002, President Bush told graduates at West Point: "The work ahead is difficult. The choices we will face are complex. We must uncover terror cells in 60 or more countries, using every tool of finance, intelligence and law enforcement. Along with our friends and allies, we must oppose proliferation and confront regimes that sponsor terror, as each case requires. Some nations need military training to fight terror, and we'll provide it. Other nations oppose terror, but tolerate the hatred that leads to terror—and that must change. (Applause.) We will send diplomats where they are needed, and we will send you, our soldiers, where you're needed. (Applause.)"
[For the Full Text of this (BS?): http://www.ashbrook.org/articles/bush_02-06-01.html]
[The President reiterated this apocalyptic message on March 4, 2004.]
I also wrote: "--and use first strike atomic weapons (making us International war criminals --"
And you rejoined jauntily: "---and that one, too."
Gavia, when will you learn to check your own facts? I try to deal knowingly only in facts. Newspapers early in September carried news that Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld had given the President the above recommendation, and that he would approve it. The Washington Post carried an article on September 10, 2005. You will find the announcement also in many other reputable papers. It marks the first change in our agreements on this point in decades, and of course, would label us as what we would term "a rogue nation," and in violation of International Law, should one of the above 60 nations the President referred to have done it.
----------------
2) George W. Bush's arrest records have been "lost," and according to official sources, an entire new set of credentials were created for him. A service which ordinary Texans or American citizens would not have been able to command.
---------------
3) I'm happy to hear that we both served in "The Korean Emergency." The difference seems to have been, according to what you write, that, like Our President, you joined the National Guard (Air?) to avoid actually going into combat. Ironically, you re-ed-up in the Air Force and went over to Kimpo, where I volunteered for the Draft, and had a great time serving in Great Britain.
[That should have suggested to you something about your karma and ethics, gavia. Plus, a tendency to believe in, and act upon, "facts not in evidence."]
------------------
Finally, thank you for your praise of teacher frugality and honesty, little heard these days. But, in two years, when interest rates, forced up by insane Republican "borrow and spend policies" (a bitter chuckle here), reach ten percent and all ordinary credit cards are at 23 or 24 percent, we may both be in the equivalent of "the poor house."
Whoops, there will be no "poor houses" in the Bush Administation's Brave New World!! Perhaps, then, we shall have to test W.C.Field's dictum: "How to Keep Warm in a Ditch."
It will make us both more appreciative, and you less contemptuous, of the "wrong choices" which can make a person homeless.
To Enlightenment, gavia!
[Macresarf1]
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Sep 24 '05
2:39 pm PDT
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Re: excellent, mac (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Thank you, Jan.
Contrary to comments of my fan who brackets yours here, I really hoped Bush would, as he promised, have a team of geniuses to make up for his own deficiencies. That, obviously, did not happen.
Yes, to the List of Worst Presidents -- Polk, Pierce, Buchanan, and Harding -- we must add the name of Bush 43. And I'm afraid, as your teacher friend judged, George W. Bush is the worst.
But if we look at the history of the Roman Empire . . . we ain't seen nothin' yet.
Thank you for your praise, Jan.
Mac -- Macresarf1
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Sep 24 '05
12:51 pm PDT
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Re: Re: Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
Thanks Alex, for your longwinded blast in response to my critical comment. Your story, and your reply to my comment, give us an excellent window into your pathological hatred for Bush---and I can see you have rationalized extensive justification for it---and let me hasten to add, I AGREE with some of it!
There's little overlap in our perspectives about much of this---but let me try to respond to a few of your statements and questions:
You provide much needed balance here.
Thank you VERY much for that! I offered my comment with that in mind--
---whenever the ideals of our democracy or the preservation of the Republic have been in danger, polemicry has lurched toward the gamy.
My initial impressiion had been that all the acrimony directed toward Bush was payback for Whitewater; which began as payback for Watergate------but the attacks on Bush hace evolved into a whole new level of "polemicry"--neatly summarized by your tale of Euphoria.
--no President since Cleveland had to stand for the sheer douche of lies and irrelevant attacks which William Jefferson Clinton suffered.
I would agree that it did get overboard---but Clinton was much of the cause with his clever deceitfulness. Even so, I agree it was out of hand---
About Bush: From his days of sticking firecrackers up the anuses of cats--
I'm sure some of his "friends" have reported the truth about that---?
---to his muddled school career---
His GPA was a tic higher than Kerry's, I've heard.
--to an unbroken string of business failures---
I don't think so---
--through his DUI's--
I've heard of one arrest---no DUI's.
--his dope addiction--
No evidence of that, whatsoever---except in the fevered mind of Stuarte Smalley (See Franken's Lies---, unlike Clinton--who admitted to smoking pot, "--without inhaling--." Both some 30 years ago or more---
--and apparent actual avoidance of combat duty by volunteering service in the Air National Guard--
Service in the National Guard is honorable military service---did it myself for a time to avoid the Korean War, before I enlisted in the AF and wound up in Kimpo anyway--
--to his record as the Texas Governor---
An OK record as governor, except in the minds of implacable enemies like Mollie Ivins and a few others.
--Clinton's rise was a relatively innocent one.
I agree--with the exceptions you noted, plus his scandalous exploitation of usually willing women, and his tricky use of language.
He even formed a centrist group in the Democratic Party---
A posture he had to assume to be successful at the national level---one of his greatest deceits. Just as Hillary is now pretending to gravitate to the center--including support for the war!
After all the nonsense about Vince Foster---
There's never been an acknowlement of the reasons behind Foster's suicide---I think it was his disillusionment with the tactics he was expected to implement for the Clinton's---
--the firing of White House factotums--
If you're talking about the travel office, it was a trivial injustice carried out by Hillary for the purpose of rewarding their friends---but VERY indicative of their lack of character!
--Scaife and the Freedom Foundation's Ken Starr got down and dirty when they managed the prosecution or incarceration of cabinet members and largely or entirely innocent Clinton acquaintances on trivial or trumped up charges.
Innocent? Not. Trivial or trumped up? Not. Overboard? Yes.
Clinton's Administration looks quite creditable, especially in the area where he and his highly competent Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin eliminated the deficit with extremely disciplined measures, and actually began to roll back the National Debt.
What Clinton and Ruben did had little or nothing to do with it. (Take a look at my essay called "The Prosperity of the 90's" if you're interested in my unbiased take on what happened)
In five years of the Bush Administration, there has been an almost unbroken string of failures.
Bush has had to cope with an unprecedented string of problems--starting with the Clinton recession---and hasn't always done it very well. Certainly there is room for serious debate and criticism--but the Left has carried it completely out of reasonableness--as does your satire.
The Administration of George W. Bush --- is the most disastrous one in American History:
There's much to criticize, but I think "--most disastrous in history--" is overboard, as I've said.
Incompetence, chicanery, lies, fraud, betrayal of the citizenry and the public trust, the needless death of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians, massive malfeasance from top to bottom!
All false charachterizations, in my opinion! But of course you're entitled to yours---
---ridiculing the messengers from all walks of life, from various parts of the political spectrum; from a legitimate war hero like John Kerry---
Kerry was NO war hero in the eyes of the folks who served with him, and there's no doubt about that.
--to the poor suckers wading through the sh*t in New Orleans.
There were plenty of problems with the response to Katrina, but blaming Bush is unreasonable, unfair, and ridiculous. Plenty of error by State and Local officials, as the investigation will show, if it doesn't get TOTALLY politicized---
They lied about the events surrounding 9/11--
No--
--the looting of the Middle Class by the Mega-Corporations like Enron and Tycho International---
Appalling crimes by a few individuals that are being brought to justice. Little to do with Bush--
--the loss of 1700 dollars over five years in income for working class people, the rise in infant mortality and the number of children without adequate health care, the increase in the ranks of poor individuals by millions --
I don't find this kind of sociological data very meaningful, and certainly says nothing about causes and effects. Plenty of social dynamics at play, with little to do with government--
--the treasonous manipulation of non-facts which has mired us in that costly Iraq War---
I see some misjudgements, shared by virtually EVERYONE in the US and elsewhere---tragic, but certainly nothing remotely treasonous---
They papered over our catastrophic foreign policy toward other nations, about declaring our totalitarian intention to preemptively attack sixty of those nations---
I'm curious about the source of that BS---
--and use first strike atomic weapons (making us International war criminals --
---and that one, too.
--if the Administration had not opted out of the World Court---
Good reasons for that, as you probably know, but choose to ignore.
By legislative and judicial acts, they stripped American citizens of Constitutional guarantees for life, liberty and due process.
They did? Holy Sh!t!! That's illegal, isn't it. "They" should be thrown in jail!
--they owned up, sort of, to presiding over the greatest environmental tragedy, the greatest Federal snafu in dealing with such a tragedy, the greatest betrayal of ordinary, bonafide American citizens, in United States History.
SO totally unreasonable--there was a snafu at ALL levels, but even without the snafus it STILL would have been an extreme catastrophe. I'm much more struck by the extremes of compassion that have occurred from everyone at all levels---
There are a FEW claiming a connection between CO2 and Katrina---but most scientists I've read see NO connection.
But if people keep accusing the admin, or Republicans, or racism, I know I'm going to close MY wallet---and I think many others will too. Of course you believe Farakkan when he says that some white guys blew up the levee to drown all those poor black folks and get rid of them. Those kind of lies do GREAT harm---
Hurricane Katrina has awakened at last a large group of Americans in the middle who are often unmindful, uncaring, fearful---
Americans are ALWAYS sympathetic, caring and helpful, but evidently that has escaped your notice. Of course helping victims of a catastrophe get back on their feet is a different thing than establishing a welfare class as a generational way of life---about the cruelist thing ever done--and that was the bottom line effect of much of Johnson's Great Society. That's why Clinton promised to "--end welfare as we know it--" then did nothing to overcome opposition from the radical Left. What we saw in NO are some remnants of the culture created by the well meaning but totally wrong Great Society programs---
They see now that Iraq is an abyss---
Plenty of reason to be concerned about it---but at this point we can't walk away. And we were taken where we are by BOTH Democrats and Republicans. MUST carry it through at this point--
It has become a time for deficit spending and investment, through no action by Bush. The tax cuts have likely REDUCED the deficit, and had other positive effects as well--but the growing national debt is a concern, especially with the need for Billions to reconstruct after Katrina--and now Rita---
My vote would be to CANCEL the expansion of Medicare. That would cover much of the problem.
--the Bush Republicans "borrow and spend" -- BIG TIME --
A concern, to be sure. Would like to see MUCH less spending---
What has the average American gotten out of the trillions which were spent and all the trillions which were borrowed?
It's going to be hard for the Academics to sort it all out, with all that has happened. But---we haven't had another Terrorist attack in the US. The economy was recovering nicely, but remains to see how the hurricanes will affect energy and the economy. Education spending has probably helped some people. I'll wait and see---
--the debts which we, our children and our grandchildren will pay eventually to Japan, China, etc., through higher prices and higher interest rates.
A serious concern, of course---
And now, in his desperation, the President is invoking FDR and the New Deal -- to be carried out by Halliburton, and overseen by Karl Rove.
None of the above---just a determination to help the victims and rebuild the South.
Regarding Koslowski's sentence: Most of us here really hope, I'm sure, you would not be in that last 8%---
Koslowski is a common criminal and a thief, and he got an appropriate sentence.
The people who make up much of that 8% think it just a little "mistake," a "cost of doing business,"---
I have NO idea who the 8% are, but I've never known ANYONE who sees Koslowski as anything but a common crook---albeit on a VERY large scale---
Tell us, gavis, that you would not consider 26 years in jail "too harsh" a sentence.
The sentence was just fine---certainly NOT too harsh---in my opinion!
Because by all the evidence of the last five years, George W. Bush would.
Nope! Where's the "evidence" of that?
Mr. Kozowskie was one of George W. Bush's most ardent "Have More's," as was "Kenny" Lay of Enron, who may never really pay for his crimes, under the protection of Vice President Dick Chaney;
There may be problems bringing Kenny Lay to justice, but it won't be because of any protection from Bush or Cheney. He was also a pal of Clinton, of course, in the Enron heyday. But mostly it's just that those guys are skillfull at keeping within the letter of the law. But I'll predict the Enron guys will be convicted and get serious sentences.
--as was Michael "Brownie" Brown.
Not so sure about the problem with Brown. It was the right thing to fire him, but I see no reason to think he committed any crime. Worth investigating, tho'--
Thank you, Gavia, for giving me the opportunity to "proudly" reply to your welcome provocative comment.
You are quite welcome, Alex, and I thank you for your proud and candid comeback!
See you in bankruptcy court.
No you won't---teachers NEVER go bankrupt!
Gavia
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Sep 23 '05
4:33 pm PDT
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excellent, mac (Reply to this comment)
by jankp
I wish it was only a modernized fairy tale like the one I wrote earlier. Was speaking to a history teacher the other day and he believes Bush is the worst prez we've ever had and that people in the future will think we were idiots for electing him. I knew we were in for a very bad time when he stole the election, but reality is far worse than I imagined.
Jan
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Sep 23 '05
1:34 pm PDT
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Re: Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by macresarf1
Thank you for the comment AND the adverse rating. You provide much needed balance here.
I share with you a sadness in regard to the quality of political discourse in America. We must note that whenever the ideals of our democracy or the preservation of the Republic have been in danger, polemicry has lurched toward the gamy.
However, no President since Cleveland had to stand for the sheer douche of lies and irrelevant attacks which William Jefferson Clinton suffered. Not FDR, not Johnson, not Nixon, not Reagan, not Bush 41. As I noted in my comment over at your essay, Clinton had his personal failings, but from the day he entered office, both he and his wife were subjected to wagon-loads of BS unequaled in our history.
[It is really hard to give a logical explanation for the vituperation he was forced to wade through. Though perhaps the most intellectually endowed President since the Founding Fathers, his tendency to dither, as you are quick to point out, might very well have created the same mediocre presidency that scholars will likely mark him for. Without the Republican Attack Dogs having to savage our National Civility.]
Now let us turn to President Bush. From his days of sticking firecrackers up the anuses of cats, to his muddled school career, to an unbroken string of business failures; through his DUI's, his dope addiction, and apparent actual avoidance of combat duty by volunteering service in the Air National Guard (using similar political influence as his spiritual advisor, Pat Robertson); to his record as the Texas Governor who denied clemency to the most death row inmates, insuring their executions (a number of which, it now appears, were unjust or at least, questionable); and his politically shaky rise to the Presidency, George W. Bush provides an amazing contrast to the early record of Clinton.
Except for his rather obvious belief that the Vietnam War was morally objectionable, his forgivable ambition, the whispers that he sanctioned as Governor of Arkansas a CIA drug trade at Mena [ditto many other (usually Republican) governors in those states during the time], and the absurdly created scandal by Scaife operatives that a Clinton property deal in which they lost money was the Crime of the Century, Clinton's rise was a relatively innocent one.
He even formed a centrist group in the Democratic Party (read, sort of Main Street Republican in nature), and he confessed to a National TV audience the first of a number of sexual liaisons.
After all the nonsense about about Vince Foster, the firing of White House factotums, etc., Scaife and the Freedom Foundation's Ken Starr got down and dirty when they managed the prosecution or incarceration of cabinet members and largely or entirely innocent Clinton acquaintances on trivial or trumped up charges.
Nevertheless, Clinton's Administration looks quite creditable, especially in the area where he and his highly competent Secretary of Treasury Robert Rubin eliminated the deficit with extremely disciplined measures, and actually began to roll back the National Debt.
Contrast that record with the one I regretfully satirize in "The Rise and Fall of Euphoria." In five years of the Bush Administration, there has been an almost unbroken string of failures. The one or two successes, such as the agreement with Libya, were things long in the works.
The Administration of George W. Bush -- and believe me, Gavia, this is something which until very recently I avoided stating so unequivocally -- is the most disastrous one in American History: Incompetence, chicanery, lies, fraud, betrayal of the citizenry and the public trust, the needless death of American soldiers and hundreds of thousands of innocent foreign civilians, massive malfeasance from top to bottom!
And what did the Right Wing Republican Operative Corps do in facing all this failure? They offered a hundred non-flying excuses, and turned their attack machine to ridiculing the messengers from all walks of life, from various parts of the political spectrum; from a legitimate war hero like John Kerry to the poor suckers wading through the sh*t in New Orleans.
They lied about the events surrounding 9/11, the looting of the Middle Class by the Mega-Corporations like Enron and Tycho International, the loss of 1700 dollars over five years in income for working class people, the rise in infant mortality and the number of children without adequate health care, the increase in the ranks of poor individuals by millions -- the treasonous manipulation of non-facts which has mired us in that costly Iraq War, and cost us the blood of thousands of our soldiers and hundreds of billions of dollars. They papered over our catastrophic foreign policy toward other nations, about declaring our totalitarian intention to preemptively attack sixty of those nations, and use first strike atomic weapons (making us International war criminals -- if the Administration had not opted out of the World Court, off the bat). By legislative and judicial acts, they stripped American citizens of Constitutional guarantees for life, liberty and due process. And finally, after trying to blame the victims, the mayors, the governors -- even God -- they owned up, sort of, to presiding over the greatest environmental tragedy, the greatest Federal snafu in dealing with such a tragedy, the greatest betrayal of ordinary, bonafide American citizens, in United States History.
Hurricane Katrina has awakened at last a large group of Americans in the middle who are often unmindful, uncaring, fearful or given to supporting authority. They see now that Iraq is an abyss leading into the fastness of Central Asia. They recognize that the National Debt is now 8,000,000,000,000, over double what it was when George W. Bush entered office, five years ago, promising fiscal responsibility. They recognize that, rather than "tax and spend" as the Republicans always accused the Democrats, the Bush Republicans "borrow and spend" -- BIG TIME -- on a scale of recklessness never seen in American history. And most of those trillions of dollars have gone to what the President humorously called his base: "The Have Mores."
Now tell me, Gavia, what has the average American gotten out of the trillions which were spent and all the trillions which were borrowed?
Very little except the debts which we, our children and our grandchildren will pay eventually to Japan, China, etc., through higher prices and higher interest rates.
And now, in his desperation, the President is invoking FDR and the New Deal -- to be carried out by Halliburton, and overseen by Karl Rove.
Please!
I was just reading an AOL Poll on the sentence of Tycho International CEO Kozlowski to 26 years for fraud and malfeasance. [Something which would not have happened if the Democratic Attorney General of New York had not been so indefatigable.] In the survey, 46% of 25,000 or so responders said the sentence was "too lenient"; 45% thought it "About Right"; and 8% declared it "Too Harsh."
Most of us here really hope, I'm sure, you would not be in that last 8% because that would mean that you are entirely out of the American mainstream. You might well not have been, three years ago. The people who make up much of that 8% think it just a little "mistake," a "cost of doing business," to rob thousands of stockholders, betray tens of thousands in the Wall Street community, put so many businesses into bankruptcy and and employees out of work, ad infinitum. Cost the United States Economy and its Citizens ONE HUNDRED BILLION DOLLARS.
Tell us, gavis, that you would not consider 26 years in jail "too harsh" a sentence. Because by all the evidence of the last five years, George W. Bush would. Mr. Kozowskie was one of George W. Bush's most ardent "Have More's," as was "Kenny" Lay of Enron, who may never really pay for his crimes, under the protection of Vice President Dick Chaney; as was Michael "Brownie" Brown.
The feed trough may be closing down, but there may not be much left, anyway.
Thank you, Gavia, for giving me the opportunity to "proudly" reply to your welcome provocative comment.
See you in bankruptcy court.
[Hey, maybe I won't; maybe you've done okay in the last five years. Most Americans have not.]
Good Luck to you.
Alex -- Macresarf1
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Sep 19 '05
3:56 pm PDT
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Just to let you know--- (Reply to this comment)
by gaviidae
--that I stopped by to read your Euphoria bit in its entirety, after you quoted from it extensively in a comment elsewhere.
I rate it Not Helpful, and I think that may be WAY over-generous. This kind of rhetorical garbage will do nothing to ease the appalling political acrimony that prevails among the extreme right and left. If your excuse is that it's humor---well, it ain't funny, either!
I can see that you're very proud of this effort---but in my opinion you ought to feel DEEPLY ashamed! (BTW, I'd say the same about SOME of those who railed against Clinton, and how they did it!)
Gavia
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Sep 18 '05
1:08 pm PDT
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