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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?


To: longnshort who wrote (230639)4/25/2005 11:31:13 AM
From: Raymond Duray  Respond to of 1572208
 
The New York Times: "The Oblivious Right" (That's You!)

April 25, 2005

By PAUL KRUGMAN

nytimes.com

According to John Snow, the Treasury secretary, the global economy is in a "sweet spot." Conservative pundits close to the administration talk, without irony, about a "Bush boom."

Yet two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup say that the economy is "only fair" or "poor." And only 33 percent of those polled believe the economy is improving, while 59 percent think it's getting worse.

Is the administration's obliviousness to the public's economic anxiety just partisanship? I don't think so: President Bush and other Republican leaders honestly think that we're living in the best of times. After all, everyone they talk to says so.

Since November's election, the victors have managed to be on the wrong side of public opinion on one issue after another: the economy, Social Security privatization, Terri Schiavo, Tom DeLay. By large margins, Americans say that the country is headed in the wrong direction, and Mr. Bush is the least popular second-term president on record.

What's going on? Actually, it's quite simple: Mr. Bush and his party talk only to their base - corporate interests and the religious right - and are oblivious to everyone else's concerns.

The administration's upbeat view of the economy is a case in point. Corporate interests are doing very well. As a recent report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities points out, over the last three years profits grew at an annual rate of 14.5 percent after inflation, the fastest growth since World War II.

The story is very different for the great majority of Americans, who live off their wages, not dividends or capital gains, and aren't doing well at all. Over the past three years, wage and salary income grew less than in any other postwar recovery - less than a tenth as fast as profits. But wage-earning Americans aren't part of the base.

The same obliviousness explains Mr. Bush's decision to make Social Security privatization his main policy priority. He doesn't talk to anyone outside the base, so he didn't realize what he was getting into.

In retrospect, it was a terrible political blunder: the privatization campaign has quickly degenerated from juggernaut to joke. According to CBS, only 25 percent of the public have confidence in Mr. Bush's ability to make the right decisions about Social Security; 70 percent are "uneasy."

The point is that people sense, correctly, that Mr. Bush doesn't understand their concerns. He was sold on privatization by people who have made their careers in the self-referential, corporate-sponsored world of conservative think tanks. And he himself has no personal experience with the risks that working families face. He's probably never imagined what it would be like to be destitute in his old age, with no guaranteed income.

The same syndrome has been visible on cultural issues. Republican leaders in Congress, who talk only to the religious right, were shocked at the public backlash over their meddling in the Schiavo case. Did I mention that Rick Santorum is 14 points behind his likely challenger?

It all makes you wonder how these people ever ended up running the country in the first place. But remember that in 2000, Mr. Bush pretended to be a moderate, and that in the next two elections he used the Iraq war as a wedge to divide and perplex the Democrats.

In that context, it's worth noting two more poll results: in one taken before the recent resurgence of violence in Iraq, and the administration's announcement that it needs yet another $80 billion, 53 percent of Americans said that the Iraq war wasn't worth it. And 50 percent say that "the administration deliberately misled the public about whether Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."

Democracy Corps, the Democratic pollsters, say that there is a "crisis of confidence in the Republican direction for the country." As they're careful to point out, this won't necessarily translate into a surge of support for Democrats.

But Americans are feeling a sense of dread: they're worried about a weak job market, soaring health care costs, rising oil prices and a war that seems to have no end. And they're starting to notice that nobody in power is even trying to deal with these problems, because the people in charge are too busy catering to a base that has other priorities.



To: longnshort who wrote (230639)4/25/2005 1:31:29 PM
From: Raymond Duray  Read Replies (3) | Respond to of 1572208
 
shorty,

Have you renewed your loyalty oath today?

The Republican Party Loyalty Oath, Courtesy of Kim Jong Il of North Korea

buzzflash.com

A BUZZFLASH EDITORIAL

BuzzFlash recently came upon what appears to be the Bushevik Republican Party loyalty oath in the most unlikely of places (but we'll get to that in a minute).

Here is what BuzzFlash believes Republicans at the highest levels must swear to:

All Republican Party members have to:

1. Dedicate ourselves to struggle to arouse the whole society in pursuing the theocracy implemented by the great President chosen by God, George W. Bush.

2. To offer our highest loyalty to the anointed President, George W. Bush.

3. To make absolute the authority of the wartime leader, George W. Bush.

4. To believe in the Biblical one-party state thought of the great President, George W. Bush, and to maintain the uniformity of the messages of the President.

Each Republican Party member must also observe the following principles:

5. A Party member only recognizes the authority of President George W. Bush and the Republican Congress -- and Judicial appointees handpicked to carry out the orders of the great President.

6. A Party member accepts unconditionally the teachings of the President and regards them as a yardstick for making all decisions.

7. When making reports, discussing a topic, giving a lecture, or quoting from documents, one has to refer to the President's message of the day and Biblical worldview and never speak or write about something inconsistent with the President's views.

Sounds pretty accurate to us, doesn't it to you?

Well, we have a confession to make. We were reading a Neo-Connish account of North Korea that we received from a publisher who obviously doesn't read BuzzFlash. (You know the book's got a Neo-Con orientation when the first book jacket quotation of praise is from the American Enterprise Institute and the second from an organization whose board of directors includes the former Executive Director of GOPAC, Newt Gingrich's controversial political fund.) The information in the book is actually interesting, because Kim Jong Il is kind of like George W. Bush without voting booths. They both inherited power -- and they both think that they are in their positions because of higher forces.

We admit Kim Jong Il has had more time to wreak havoc in North Korea, including an estimated 3 million people starved to death, and is almost a cartoonish villain out of "Austin Powers." Jong really is a bad boy and threat to the world. He lives in a bubble, you know, like some other people we know -- and always thinks he's right. Civil rights have been permanently suspended in North Korea because of threats to the "homeland," but George is working on catching up.

Well, you get the picture. Sometimes it doesn't seem too far from here to there.

And this is one reason why. The Bushevik Republican Party loyalty oath BuzzFlash posted above is actually adapted (by BuzzFlash) from the loyalty oath to Kim Jong Il (originally written for his father, Kim Il Sung) as excerpted on pages 70-71 of "Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea," by Jasper Becker:

All [North Korean Communist] party members have to:

1. Dedicate ourselves to struggle to arouse the whole society in pursuing the revolutionary thought of the great Chairman, Comrade Kim Il Sung.

2. To offer our highest loyalty to the great Chairman, Comrade Kim Il Sung.

3. To make absolute the authority of the great Chairman, Comrade Kim Il Sung.

4. To believe in the revolutionary thought of the great Chairman, Comrade Kim Il Sung and to maintain the uniformity of the teachings of the Chairman.

And so forth. Each [North Korean Communist] member must also observe the following principles:

5. A Party member only recognizes the authority of Comrade Kim Il Sung.

6. A Party member accepts unconditionally the teachings of the Chairman and regards them as a yardstick for making all decisions.

7. When making reports, discussing a topic, giving a lecture, or quoting from documents, one has to refer to the Chairman's teachings and never speak or write about something inconsistent with the Chairman's views.

This ironic similarity in loyalty oaths between a nascent totalitarian regime (Bush's) with a member of the "Axis of Evil" (Kim Jong Il of North Korea) takes on more ominous -- and less laughable -- implications, when you consider that the American national government is now a one-party state. In this one-party state, everyone from Tom DeLay, to Karl Rove, to George W. Bush, to Dick Cheney, have instituted processes and placed people in positions (e.g., Alberto Gonzales) where they will not be prosecuted or seriously investigated for violations of American law.

Furthermore, we are about to embark on the final stage of Bush's "Biblicalization" of the Federal Courts through the appointment of incompetent hacks, whose only loyalty is to the oath of "Bushism" cited above. They will be consistently and unhesitatingly loyal to Bush because they would have never merited the honor of being on the Federal bench except that they are lackeys for the Busheviks. Putting incompetents on the Federal courts will buy you a lot of loyalty in the effort to turn America into a Biblically run nation.

As the "Lexington Herald-Leader" of Kentucky noted on Sunday, April 24, 2005:

Today, if all goes as planned, Kentucky will play host to a well-scripted immorality play in which political and religious extremists pummel truth beyond recognition and twist Christianity into an ugly caricature of itself in their crusade to give Dubya the opportunity to perform an extreme makeover on the federal courts, packing their benches with enough "faith first, law last" judges to tilt our legal system dangerously toward the model of the Spanish Inquisition.

… .But one defining trait of the political and religious extremists who lead the radical right is an arrogance so strong that it does not allow for the possibility that their current reign will ever end. It is this arrogance that leads them to ignore negative poll numbers and continue their quest to eliminate the filibuster for judicial nominations so that Dubya will be free to do his extreme makeover of the federal judiciary.

We have gone through a period of weeks when judges have been verbally assaulted and physically threatened by the likes of Tom DeLay and religious extremists who form the base of Bush's Party (with the corporate prostitutes providing the seed money to spread the faith in return for contracts and tax deductions).

Everything that the Busheviks have treasonously uttered could have been said about purging the ranks of dissenters from the "pure" Communist ideology of Bush's evil "mini-me," Kim Jong Il. One recent Bushevik fundamentalist with criminal intent said that non-Christian thinking judges should be put to death as Stalin dealt with his foes: "He had a slogan, and it worked very well for him, whenever he ran into difficulty: 'no man, no problem.' " Shouldn't the Secret Service or FBI have had a little conversation with this Bushevik implying that judges should be killed if they don't follow "orders"?

Totalitarian regimes aren't built overnight. The Busheviks are still putting their people in place.

But know this, these appointees may swear allegiance to the Constitution -- and lie their way through confirmation hearings -- but their only loyalty is to the phone call from the White House when a crucial decision comes up.

Kim Jong Il knows the routine.