Jim Manis on Most Anything

Jim Manis can formulate an opinion about a good many things, including those about which he has little knowledge. (And some dude named "Lazlo.") Visit The MagicFactory.

Thursday, June 30, 2005

Bush Administration Pours Mud on U.S. Constitution: In about a week, Bush's man in black, Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the Federal District Court in Washington, will send Judith Miller of The New York Times and Matthew Cooper of Time magazine to jail for something they did not do.

Hogan, the Bush hit man, will send the two reporters to jail for about four months for failing to reveal sources for articles that they did NOT write.

In the meantime, Robert "the Bush stooge" Novak, did reveal the sources to the government, making the whole case moot, except that it provides the Bush administration another opportunity to further trample the Constitution, making a mockery of the American justice system and free press and speech rights in our country.

In addition, Hitman Hogan plans to fine Time magazine for failing to turn over Cooper's notes to the court. The intention is to threaten the company with bankruptcy because its editiorial policy is too liberal, i.e., critical of Bush.

Tuesday, June 28, 2005

Halliburton Fraud Being Exposed: Are you paying attention, America?

Halliburton, the company that bought Dick Chaney the office of Vice President, is now being exposed in Congress. Hearings are currently underway in which former employees, government officials, and other interested parties are beginning to testify to the extent to which Halliburton defrauded American taxpayers and our servicemen and women in Iraq.

One former K.B.R. official (K.B.R. is a Halliburton subsidiary) told of regularly billing the government for 20,000 meals served per day when in fact they were only serving 10,000 and in fact at least some of these meals were out of date and therefore dangerous to the health of the soldiers who were eating them.

Halliburton tried to pass off such practices as pure accident in accounting, but the former official testified to the fact that his managers knew all to well what was going on and threatened to have him transfered into harms way as a means of keeping him and others like him quiet.

For more details, see today's New York Times article by Erik Eckholm. The hearings are being shown on C-SPAN as well.

Tired of the recruiter calls to your teenager? Fed up with the recruiter giving away violent video games at your high school in an effort to recruit your child into the military? Looking for help?

Try leavemychildalone.org. You did NOT bring your child into the world to become cannon fodder for Haliburton's get rich quick schemes.

Sunday, June 26, 2005

Bush Bankrupts America: During February of 2001, a month after taking office, Spinmeister Bush told the country that his administration would oversee a $2 trillion dollar reduction in the national budget. He lied.

By the year 2010, according to the administration's own estimates, the country will owe $10.8 trillion of debt, much of it to foreign nationals in Japan and China. (Yes, that's China as in "Red China." Remember that term?) This figure constitutes, roughly, a doubling of the national debt since the Bush-ites assumed office and began the process of enriching the already rich at the expense of working folks.

American babies born in 2010 will begin life by owing the rest of the world $150,000 each. Yup, that's right folks. Let's see, what does the average house cost? What does a college education cost? Better start planning for boy babies with lots of testosterone so they can get those college scholarships.

Bush will tell you, ad nauseam, that the world changed after 9/11, thus justifying the heavy debt load. Ask him for me why it didn't change the tax cut fiasco?

Your sons and daughters are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan while Bush's rich pals keep getting richer and richer, and the country owes the Chinese and the Japanese more and more money.

"Neo-Con": A con artist who tells you the government is evil, then convinces you to take out a loan against your house and to give him the money so that he can prove it to you.

Saturday, June 25, 2005

Supreme Court Watch: Yesterday the Supreme upheld a decision by the Supreme Court of Connecticut that will allow the City of New London, Conn. to condemn a residential area for private development.

This clears the way for anyone with power to condemn your home under the rule of "economic development." All that's needed is for some government agency to be bought off by the developer. Then your home, your farm, your favorite piece of nature can be condemned and turned into a giant strip mall or WallyWorld, the life expectancy of which is ten years, afterwhich that property can decay into one ugly, rat infested mess of scrap metal. (See Linda Greenhouse's article in the NYTimes.)

Please note, this is not about your government tearing down crack houses so that your neighborhood is safe for your kids to go to school. It's about whichever scam artist developer can buy off the right politician.

Chaney Defines "Glib": Dick "I'll paint the truth with any color I want" Chaney told the world that the insurgents in Iraq were in their "last throes." Meanwhile Gen. John P. Abizaid, the top military man in Iraq reports that the insurgency is just as strong now as it was six months ago, with foreign fighters streaming into the country.

At what point will an American administration declare victory and fly out the last troups from the roof tops of Saigon (oops!) Bagdad? Will it be three years from now, just before W. leaves office? Or four years, once a new administration is sitting in the Oval Office?

By the way, Dick Chaney ducked military service in the sixties because he "had better things to do." So is the welcome mat still out at the local VFW and American Legion watering holes?

According to Gen. Abizaid, Afghans and Iraqis are concerned that the American public is growing weary of the war and will lose interest (pull out). Americans, these folks recall, only had staying power in Vietnam for a mere ten years and this war is likely to last at least thirty.

Pentagon in Violation of Federal Law: Pentagon officials admitted recently that they have been violating federal privacy rights of your children. The Pentagon, along with a private contractor, has been compiling a secret database of Social Security nuymbers, prade-point averages, e-mail addresses and phone numbers for all young people between the ages of 16 and 25. Currently, the list has more than 30 million names in it.

Military recruiters can thus contact your children in high school, without your being aware of it, and tell them all kinds of nonsense in order to get them to join up. Military recruiters, of course, are those people in uniform who get to live like civilians, at about double the pay of other military folk of the same rank, and thus avoid combat or other forms of hardship duty.

The Pentagon is doing its very best to avoid the necessity of starting up the draft again, while fighting what is increasingly a highly unpopular war. Young Americans across the nation are starting to wake up to the realization that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are not video games where, once you "die," you simply start the game over again.

There is a price to be paid for having a president, the only president in many decades, who actively wanted to lead this nation to war and was willing to trump up fake charges to do so. Increasingly, young Americans are beginning to realize that the cost is being paid by them, not that fellow who has trouble walking in his cowboy boots in the white house.

The database, created in 2002, before the invasion of Iraq, was required by federal law to be revealed to U.S. citizens before it was created, not three years afterwards. At the very least, someone should be hauled into court for this.

Job Market Improves: If you live in India. IBM plans to layoff some 13,000 workers in the U.S. and Europe and replace them with 14,000 workers—for much less pay—in India, where slavery is still widely accepted. Currently there are at least 27,000,000 people living in slavery throughout the world.

By the way, the bottom line is looking up for IBM, at least if you are one of those few executives who made the decision to outsource jobs to India. Those IBM executives are the same ones who benefitted most from the Bush tax cuts. Maybe those 13,000 newly jobless can find jobs working part-time at WallyWorld, no benies of course.

Tuesday, June 21, 2005

Pakistan's Brutality of Women and Children Rewarded by U.S.: In Pakistan women and girls who are brutally ganged raped are routinely publically humiliated and expected to commit suicide in order to protect "the honor" of the males in their family. Mukhtaran Bibi, one of the world's true heroes, a woman who defines courage, is the perfect example. If you haven't been following her struggle with justice in Pakistan, Google her name. General Musharraf, the strong man who runs the country, has been attempting to silence this hero. Now George Bush, who claims to be a Christian, is about to reward Musharraf by giving him nuclear bomb carrying F-16s.

If you are a Christian, prove it. Tell Bush and your congressmen and women that this behavior must be stopped. If you think the invasion of Iraq was justified by the brutallity of its ruler, ask your leaders why they are condoning such brutallity in Pakistan.

Murder in Mississippi: Forty-one years ago today, three civil rights workers were brutally murdered outside of Philadelphia, Mississippi. Eight members of the KKK went to jail for the crime, but none served more than six years.

And yet Justice Thomas thinks it's perfectly okay for a defendent in a capital case to be executed without an adequate defense. He adds new meaning to the word "justice."

Monday, June 20, 2005

Libraries Begin to Censor Themselves: One aspect of the Patriot Act (sic) is to have libraries censor themselves. Librarians choose which books and periodicals to order for public access. Under the Patriot Act, the government has the right to spy of citizens' behavior, such as being able to demand to know who reads what at the local library. As a result, some librarians are beginning to be careful not to order anything that might be deamed controversial.

Thus the Bush administration has begun to censor your knowledge and, therefore, severely limit your ability to make democratic choices. This works much like refusing to allow TV or photo journalist from showing you pictures of war dead. If you don't see the painful images, you won't be as likely to become upset by the actions that caused them. Back in the "olden days" of the cold war we called this "mind control." It's the sort of thing we said the Nazis and the Commies did to their citizens.

Think of it this way: An election is coming up. You aren't sure who to vote for. You go to the library to do some research in order to make the most informed choice that you can. You can only read favorable material about the administration. Just how informed are you?

Yes, I know, no significant number of people will go to the library in order to do what I have just described, but some people will, most significantly researchers for those outlets of information, such as newspapers and TV, who do inform us.

Just look at the history of race relations in this country to see a prime example of how disinformation and outright lies allowed the brutal exploitation of African Americans to continue for more than a hundred years after the official end of slavery.

And, oh yes, if the government does go to the library and ask what you've been reading, the librarian cannot legally tell you about it. Your government can spy on you without your knowledge, and thus you have no way to protect yourself other than to do nothing. Now who do you suppose benefits from that sort of behavior?

As my grandpappy said, go ahead, bury your head in the sand and see whose butt gets shot off?

Tuesday, June 14, 2005

Cheney Defends Guantanamo: Dick "the oil man" Chaney defended the Guantanamo prison camp by pointing out that two of the prisoners released from the off shore facility actually returned to Afghanistan where they joined militant forces and fought against the U. S. Each were killed there. Evidently, the qualities of Gitmo include releasing people who want to do us harm. This really speaks well for the facility. Just how stupid does Dick Chaney think you are?

Senate Apologizes to African Americans: More than 140 years after the end of the American Civil War, the U. S. Senate finally has the common decency to apologize for its failure to pass an anti-lynching law.

No one knows precisely how many African Americans were murdered by white terrorists—the official number is 4,742—but the actual number is certainly much higher. Visiting terrorism on African Americans served to maintain a seriously oppressed group of Americans in a constant state of fear and repression while also involving simple minded whites in activities that would blind them from seeing who was really keeping them in a lower class state of existance as well.

Supreme Court Takes a Slap at Racist Texas Court: In a 6-3 vote, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 20-year-old murder conviction of Thomas Miller-El. The convicted murderer has been residing on death row for the murder of a clerk during a robbery that took blace in 1985.

The Court overturned the verdict based on the fact that the Texas prosecutor had deliberately stacked the jury pool, denying the accused of his right to a trial by his peers as protected by the U.S. Constitution. The prosecutor in the case had used his "peremptory strike" to remove ten of eleven black jurors. This meant the prosecution did not need to justify its objections to particular jurors. The rational, of course, was obvious.

One of the more interesting aspects of this case is who voted in the minority. Justice Thomas, the man who is on the court because he is black, wrote the dissenting opinion. Thomas doesn't believe racism was a factor in the case. But then that's why Thomas is on the court—to prove that racism doesn't exist anywhere in this country. According to Thomas, everything is just hunky-dory. Thomas knows how to toe the party line.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Nothing to Fear: Proponents of the Patriot Act (sic) like to say (piously) that if you haven't done anything illegal, you have nothing to fear from the Patirot Act. (They mean the government, since the act itself is just an "act," not the people who are enforcing it.)

In today's New York Times, Ted Koppel (of Nightline fame) weighs in on the topic of privacy, pointing out that there are already many ways to track our persoanl behavior, from our driving habits to our TV viewing.

Most of the criticism of the Patriot Act so far has focused on groups having access to our private information whom we might not care to know so much about us. With the recent revelation of Deep Throat and the reminder of all things Watergate, it might be wise to focus on some of the worst possible scenarious.

Let's say you decide to run for political office. You've never done anything criminal are even suspicious in your entire life. However, your opponent is a twenty-year office holder. He has access through the government to all of your data. His investigators find nothing incriminating against you. They are told to "look again, more closely this time." They come back with the report that your local ISP reports that you regularly visit porn sites on the Web. It seems that you've been observed chatting on-line about various subjects of a seriously illegal sexual nature. Your opponent leaks this info to the press. You deny it, but your opponent has control of the data through the FBI investigation. They couldn't possibly be wrong.

Think this couldn't happen? Where's the WMD in Iraq? Remember, Tricky Dick's people were doing just this sort of thing thirty years ago. Think a good Christian like George W. wouldn't stoop to this behavior? He doesn't have to. He's got plenty of people around him who are just aching to do it.

As Henry Kissinger pointed out, power is the most powerful aphrodisiac known to mankind. People have sold their souls to the devil for far less than the White House.

Saturday, June 11, 2005

Fun with Computing: Think efficiency has run amok? Check out David Pogue's "Circuits" column in Thursday's New York Times for a humorous take on "time saving devices." Mr. Gadget himself, Pogue lays it on the line with a light hand. "Spending time to save time" leaves David with no time at all.

His story reminds me of the state government who hired an efficiency expert back in the early seventies. The expert focussed on one department's motor pool. The department allowed the employees to drive their vehicles home as well as on the job.

The efficiency expert said that was highly inefficient. The department should have the employees driving their personal cars into the main office and signing the vehicles out. By driving the vehicles (cars and light trucks) home, the employees were adding extra miles and probably misusing the vehicles in some manner, at least that had occurred in other departments.

So the department set up a special parking lot to park all the vehicles in. This required some serious construction work, although no new real estate was required. They did need to pave over a considerable area of the property that they owned, paint parking spaces, and buy parking curbs.

Then they needed to hire someone to be incharge of the motor pool and that person needed a secretary. Both people needed offices, desk space, filing cabinets, telephones and so forth.

Now keep in mind that the new parking facilities needed to house both the state's vehicles that had previously not been parked on the property and the employee's personal vehicles because they now had to drive them onto the property and park them in order to drive the state vehicles in order to perform their jobs.

By the time the efficiency expert's plan was in place, the cost to the state per state vehicle came close to doubling. And the employees' job satisfaction had fallen through the basement floor.

Not suprisingly, one minor department head, an engineer, did a cost analysis prior to all of this being done and presented it to his superiors, who simply ignored him. They proceeded with the changes that the efficiency expert advised them to follow. A year after this was all done, they fired the efficiency expert. But the damage was done.

I grew up being taught the following by my father and grandfather: "Never trust a man further than you can throw him." That may sound like school yard philosophy, but I've found that it's more often true than not. How far do you think we can throw the government? Any government?

My seventh grade history teacher explained to me that's why we have a government made up of checks and balances. You just can't trust anyone in power. You've got to give someone power to get anything done, but don't turn your back on them.

As my grandpappy said, "Never trust anything you hear and only half of what you see."

Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Big Oil's Dirty Fingers in Your White House: Proof that big oil has a strangle-hold on the White House is beginning to leak out. Philip A. Cooney, chief of staff for the White House Council on Environmental Quality (sic), has been caught doctoring reports. Cooney, who is not a scientist but is trained as a lawyer and economist, according to today's New York Times, "was the 'climate team leader' and a lobbyist at the American Petroleum Institute, the largest trade group representing the interests of the oil industry" before coming to work for the administration in 2001.

Cooney's editing downplayed serious scientific arguments, specifically with regard to global warming. This, in turn, helped the administration to find cover against international arguments that the U.S., which is responsible for at least 25 percent of the global warming problems, has been ducking its responsibilities for protecting the environment and your children's future.

Army Misses Recruiting Goal by 25 Percent: Even after reducing its recruiting goal, the Army fell short by one-fourth in bringing in new recruits during the month of May. One wonders just who these new recruits are. It would nice to see a realistic profile. One wonders just how desperate these inductees are considering how poorly the "new professional army" has been treating the troops: indefinite terms of service, low pay, poor medical treatment, families left to live on food stamps, and completely inadequate post service health care.

Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Bush/Frist v. U.S. Senate: NPR's Ron Elving provides an excellent analysis of the battle that is shaping up in the Senate. The ultra right wing in America is attempting to undermine the way the federal government in terms of how it has functioned from its inception.

Elving points out in his colum, "Watching Washington," that the Senate has always functioned as a place where our highest elected officials within the legislature as a body working towards consensus, something like a jury. And like a jury member, each senator had the right to argue his point before the body of the Senate as long as he or she needed in an attempt to sway the consensus of the complete body.

The effort to shift from a "super majority" of a 60 percent vote to stop discussion to a simple majority of 51 percent is a clear attempt to end the need to gain consensus so that positions taken by the executive branch which might be highly controversial can be imposed on the nation as a whole.

Bush has obvious reasons for wanting such a change imposed. He does not have a "super majority" following within the nation but he wants to rule as if he did.

Frist position has not been quite so obvious to the average citizen. Just the other day, I heard several college student puzzling over who the Republicans might offer up as a presidential candidate in 2008. Frist's name never came up. The average voter seems to be missing completely what is taking place.

Throughout the history of our country, we have recognized the benefits of having the legislature and the executive branch pitted against one another. In order to get things done, government had to arrive at a consensus. There had to be give and take, and the debate between the two branches would of necessity be made public so that the average citizen could judge the value of what was taking place.

In the sixties, we witnessed the problems that could develop when the exective office held the legislature in the palms of its hands. Pres. Johnson was able to wage a war without obtaining the consensus of the nation.

In the early seventies, we witnessed the benefits of having the two bodies serving as watch dogs, when the legislature voted to impeach Nixon.

Americans are often displeased with the Congress in Washington. It sometimes seems that nothing can get done. However, our system of checks and balances has worked well to prevent hasty actions like those that took place in the early thirties in Germany. We want daddy to fix things for us, but regardless of how we behave, we are not children. We must accept responsibility and not surrender our power to the man offering us candy.

As my grandpapy said, "Every criminal believes he is completely justified in the action he took."

Monday, June 06, 2005

Pandering to the Superstitious: In a calculated move to further tighten hostility between fundimentalist Christians and everyone else, Texas Gov. Rick Perry signed a bill restricting a woman's right to safe abortions while he was on church grounds. The Governor, who is rich enough and powerful enough to make sure that any of the women in his family can receive legal and safe abortions anytime they might choose, also signed a bill to outlaw same sex marriages.

Certainly, the synical behavior of the governor, a step to close the gap between church and state, thus allowing a handful of politocos to manipulate the citizenry of the country through their religious beliefs, ironically took place on the grounds of a Baptist Church. Throughout the history of Baptists, that organization has made one of its primary tenents the separation of church and state.

Since the advent of mega churches, Republicans have come to realize that they can manipulate large numbers of people through these churches to empower themselves (the politicians). People like Perry and Bush are laughing their heads off at the gullibility of their constituents.

Note: One of my forefathers was a Baptist minister who, as a member of the Rhode Island Assembly, passed the U. S. Constitution on the condition that it contain the Bill of Rights, especially insisting on the Ammendment to insure the separation of church and state. One of his progeny became the president of Baylor University and president of the Southern Baptist Association. They are both spinning in their graves now.

Saturday, June 04, 2005

Gauantánamo Bay/Newsweek: Now that everyone has forgotten about the Newsweek article which brought such disdain from the administration's sanctimonious crew, the military is owning up to the fact that something like what Newsweek alluded to did actually take place. Copies of the Koran were mishandled in some disturbing ways that displayed not only disrespect for other people's religious beliefs but also the very poor training of some American troops in charge of the detainees.

It's important to remember that the alledged purpose of holding these people was to gain whatever information that might have in a war against terrorism. It seems that some of the guards assumed the detainees were incarcerated simply for the guards' sadistic amusement. Perhaps some American voters, in a vindictive mood, might find no fault with this, but as a tax payer, I do. I have no desire to have my tax money used to fund sadism for the amusement of idiots. Only a damn fool believes that you can possibly get anything useful out of a man who is being humiliated over his religion.

Putting Your Tax Money to Work for Private Companies: Senator Santorum of Pennsylvania is sponsoring a bill that will turn over tax funded weather information to the strictly for pay, private use of private companies. His argument is that government is now providing this universally important information over to the public for free (the public currently pays for it through taxes) and it should be available—for free—only to private companies so that they can sell it for a profit. Do I need to point out that these companies are funding his re-ellection campaign? Santorum knows who his constituency is—those few people who buy him the election. Is Ricky a senator? or a lobbyist?

Friday, June 03, 2005

New York Times Article on Moms v. Military Recruiters: The New York Times today reported on the difficulties some military recruiters have encountered while performing their duties in trying to convince children to become heroes overseas. Some have reported that they have been threatened with violence by irate parents. (Is there irony here or just guilt?)

Could the draft be far away? The last thing the Bush administration wants is to re-install the draft. Resistance to its global plans would reach critical mass if that occurs. However, even the Army's generals are stating that the "professional" army is in jeopardy. Fewer and fewer people want to join up.

Moms V. Military Recruiters: As an honorably discharged veteran and as a parent with draft-age children, I'd like to say this about military recruiters: We know what you are!

A military recruiter is a good soldier who has found a way to avoid combat. He (or she) is usually someone with a family. He gets to live with that family as far away from a military post as possible, here in the U.S., not in some foreign country. He gets extra pay. Lots of extra housing and so forth. He gets to live like a civilian. His spouse loves this. His kids get to go to regular schools away from other military brats.

And the more of your kids he can convince to join up, the longer he will be allowed to continue to live this way. A long way from Afghanistan or Iraq. Safe. With extra money, when his brothers in arms are off fighting and being wounded and killed, he's safe and fat and sassy with his wife and kids at home. And he gets to be sanctimonious about serving his country.

Can you see why they want to be in your high schools, telling your kids whatever they think they want to hear to get them to join up?

Like Deep Throat said, "Follow the money."

Thursday, June 02, 2005

More on Sin Tax: So we live in this country of fundamentalist Christians who have decided that their model for governance should be Iran, but the best way to fund the government is by taxing our sinful behavior. Let's see—as a fundamentalist you are adamantly opposed to smoking, drinking, gambling and prostitution, but in order to raise money for your schools you want to tax these behaviors. That means you've got to count on people continuing to perform the very behaviors you say you're opposed to. Obviously, you are not going to do much to discourage people from imbibing in these behaviors.

As my grandpapy used to say, life just keeps getting curiouser and curioser.

Pennsylvania Turns Back on Sin Tax: More and more states are trying to fund public works on the backs of minority groups. Pennsylvania has never shied away from trying to exploit the weak in order to fund its programs in the past. Exploiting the state's gullible gamblers seemed like a good political move for a Democratic governor in one of the country's conservative states. Everybody, it was thought, would happily approve of slot machines funding school districts.

But—there always seems to be one—80 percent of the state's school boards turned down the measure. Perhaps the educators thought they'd be sending the wrong message to the state's children. Is this a sign of the times? Could it be that everyone will be asked to do their fare share in the future, like pay taxes?

That seems unlikely, but maybe people will begin to rethink property tax laws. As the nation ages, the burden of funding programs based on property taxes seems like a less viable approach. And then there is the problem of getting the big businesses to pay their fare share of such taxes. Usually they have enough clout within the community to manipulate the system in their favor and substantially lower the amount they are assessed.

Wednesday, June 01, 2005

Will the real Deep Throat please stand up? Some folks think there was more than one, but it seems unlikely that so many people could have remained quiet for so long. Still, I didn't think I'd learn who Deep Throat was in my lifetime.