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A Test of Cognitive Dissonance
According to Sid Blumenthal, if John Bolton is confirmed, it will be because senators believe that the evidence making him unfit for the U.N. job, unearthed at their own hearings, is false.
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By Sidney Blumenthal
April 14, 2005 | Once again, President Bush is conducting a grand experiment in cognitive dissonance, testing whether his asserted "truths" can prevail over new and obvious facts. This psychological phenomenon was first defined by sociologist Leon Festinger and a team of social scientists in 1957 who studied the behavior of members of a UFO cult under duress when aliens failed to land on Earth as predicted. Some in the cult dropped out when the announced deadline came and went; others redoubled their conviction in the face of disconfirming evidence.
Bush's latest experiment involves his appointment of John Bolton as ambassador to the United Nations. The cognitive dissonance being tested goes beyond the nominee's oft-stated contempt for the United Nations, and extends to his blatant efforts to twist intelligence. Bush's guinea pigs are the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and, as always, the American people.
On Tuesday, John Negroponte, nominated as the first director of national intelligence, pledged in his confirmation hearings before the Senate intelligence committee that he would attempt to ensure reliable information, unlike that provided in the run-up to the Iraq war. "Our intelligence effort has to generate better results," said Negroponte. "That is my mandate, plain and simple ... The things that need to be done differently will be done differently."
At the same time, Carl Ford Jr., the former assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research, was testifying in the Bolton confirmation hearings before the Foreign Relations Committee that Bolton was "a serial abuser" of intelligence and intelligence officers. Ford described Bolton as "an ill-suited nominee to become ambassador to the United Nations ... a quintessential kiss-up, kick-down kind of guy who stands out" (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A46436-2005Apr12.html)as he "abuses his authority with little people" (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/13/international/13bolton.html) in his efforts to subvert the intelligence process for his own political purposes.
With the Bolton hearings we are at last getting a glimpse of how the Bush administration's political leadership has been systematically browbeating and threatening the intelligence community to drive ideological conclusions. We are also learning that the national security team of the first term was sharply and bitterly divided, with Secretary of State Colin Powell unable to impose his views even on his own undersecretary. Bolton waged his war against the intelligence professionals within the State Department as a Fifth Column, constantly and flagrantly undermining his own chain of command. His efforts to coerce the State Department's Intelligence and Research Bureau (INR) to rubberstamp his political imperatives "prompted the secretary of state to intervene," according to Ford's testimony. Powell felt compelled to speak to INR analysts in order to "assure employees that they should continue to 'speak truth to power.'" But his extraordinary step did not stop Bolton's relentless campaign of intimidation. In case after case -- Iraq, Cuba and North Korea -- Bolton personally bullied INR analysts, berated them, screamed at them and sought to destroy their careers if they did not do his bidding, even when it flew in the face of the facts, disregarded professional procedures and was contrary to the stated policy of the secretary of state.
The discrepancy between the reckless record of John Bolton and the anodyne promises of John Negroponte is not the only factor that points to the use of cognitive dissonance. Two reports on Bush-era failures of intelligence -- one by the Senate intelligence committee, the other by the President's Commission on Intelligence Capabilities Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction -- carefully avoided studying the political manipulation of information. Instead, both blamed the intelligence community alone, as though it acts in a vacuum. Despite orchestrated criticism before the Iraq war by conservatives that the intelligence agencies were not alarmist enough about Iraq's WMD, both reports have excoriated the agencies for being too alarmist. But the Senate intelligence committee report of last year attributed the failure to the intelligence community's "groupthink." In fact, INR was not part of any such "groupthink" and proved in retrospect to have been consistently correct on WMD in Iraq and elsewhere, while being subjected to the pressures of Bolton the "serial abuser."
The cognitive dissonance has been further elevated by Sen. Lincoln Chafee, (R-R.I.), the swing vote on the Foreign Relations Committee. At first, he indicated skepticism about voting to confirm Bolton, asked questions that elicited information highlighting Bolton's abusive conduct. But then he denied the hearings had produced anything that would lead him to vote against Bolton. If Chafee votes against Bolton the committee will be deadlocked in a nine-to-nine tie and the nomination will not be able to move to the Senate floor. "It was strong testimony from Mr. Ford. He used strong language," Chafee conceded. But, he added, "it's all focused on this one incident. We're not really seeing a pattern." Then the Senate's Hamlet swung the other way. "From the evidence we've heard, he's a difficult man to work for," Chafee said on Wednesday. Bolton, he continued, was "absolutely not" the best man for the job. "It's not my style," he said. Here, with infinite jest, Chafee was playing Yorick, but he swiveled back into character as Hamlet. "I don't endorse it, but that doesn't mean it can't be successful for some people." Thus Chafee wrestled with cognitive dissonance: Should he acknowledge the reality that contradicts the false picture before him? To be or not to be?
On Wednesday, Sen. Christopher Dodd, (D-Conn.), asked Bolton to explain why he had requested intercepts from the National Security Agency of other U.S. officials' communications, a highly irregular act. And the committee's vote on Bolton was postponed until next week. Will new information surface between now and then about this or another matter?
The pattern that has emerged so far in the hearings is inescapable. Ever the realist, Brent Scowcroft, the elder Bush's national security advisor, lately fired by President Bush from the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, remarked last week at a Washington think tank: "How [Bolton] performs will depend on two things -- the instructions he gets -- and whether he will carry them out."
Consider, first, the case of Iraq's WMD: The Senate intelligence committee report states that in early October 2002 the deputy director of the CIA informed the Senate that the intelligence community did not believe British intelligence reports of enriched uranium sales from Niger to Iraq. Then CIA Director George Tenet told the deputy national security advisor the same thing. The president, Tenet urged, should not be a "fact witness" to a claim for which evidence was lacking. This assessment was consistent with that of State's own intelligence office, INR. Yet, in December 2002, the first State Department report on Iraq's WMD declaration included the falsehood that Iraq was seeking enriched uranium in Niger. This lie was inserted by none other than Bolton, only to be subsequently scrubbed from official documents and the State Department Web site after his superiors realized he was gaming the system.
Despite these efforts by the CIA and the State Department accurately reflect the facts, President Bush uttered the now infamous 16 words in his 2003 State of the Union address, lending his imprimatur to the lie. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice claimed she never reviewed the statement before it came out of the president's mouth. Her deputy, Stephen Hadley, who had been told only three months earlier by Tenet that it was false, took responsibility. (Both, of course, have since been promoted in Bush's second term.) A White House spokesman was trotted out in July 2003 to acknowledge that "the 16 words did not rise to the level of inclusion in the State of the Union address."
Undoubtedly, Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, were keenly aware of Bolton's disloyal act. The evidence is unmistakable -- Powell did not use the claim in his February 2003 speech to the United Nations making the case for Iraqi WMD, one week after the State of the Union. Neither Powell nor Armitage was formally interviewed by the Senate intelligence committee for its report. Nor have they been called to testify before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Bolton's confirmation.
Consider, next, the case of North Korea: From the beginning of the administration, Bolton has been a key figure in the manipulation of intelligence in a conservative network stretching from the Office of the Vice President to the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans to Bolton's own office as an undersecretary in the State Department. This political operation has also depended upon Republican senators and outside conservative groups for support at crucial moments. Bolton acted like a rogue, but he was not unilateral. Powell distrusted him, but could not remove him, in part because of Dick Cheney's protection for Bolton's subversive campaigns.
Over the six-party talks with North Korea to curb its production of nuclear weapons, Powell and Bolton fought a running battle. Bolton continually attempted to sabotage Powell's negotiations by making antagonistic remarks to upset the North Koreans. Finally, in 2003, Powell instructed his special envoy and chief negotiator, Charles Pritchard, to inform the North Koreans that only the president and the secretary of state -- and their designated representative (meaning Pritchard) -- had authority. This communication was specifically aimed at Bolton. Bolton's speeches were combed over by INR and others in the State Department -- "taken on line by line," according to a direct source quoted by Steve Clemons, a fellow at the New America Foundation, on his Web site, the Washington Note. "There was always a fight." In July 2003, Bolton submitted a speech to be delivered in Seoul, South Korea. Forty-three "line items" were "challenged and expunged," Clemons reports. Bolton left for Seoul without having his speech approved. Upon landing, he demanded that the South Korean government provide him a venue, but after consulting with the State Department it refused. Then Bolton forced the U.S. Embassy staff to locate a forum. On July 31, he gave his inflammatory speech, titled "A Dictatorship at the Crossroads" and calling the North Koreans "extortionist," without having received final clearance from the State Department. The North Koreans' response was immediate and exactly what Bolton must have hoped for.
They called him "human scum." With that, the negotiations threatened to blow up. Pritchard tried to calm North Korea by reiterating Powell's injunction about who spoke for the U.S. government. Infuriated, Bolton struck back. In August 2003, Sen. John Kyl, (R-Ariz.), sent a letter to Vice President Cheney and the State Department calling for "corrective action" against Pritchard for being out of step with administration policy. Kyl claimed that Pritchard had attacked Bolton by telling the North Koreans that his speech reflected only Bolton's "private view." Pritchard replied that he had not mentioned Bolton by name at all. "According to those who have read the diplomatic notes on the meeting," Clemons reports, "Pritchard never mentioned Bolton's name in the meeting and focused on his objective -- which was to keep the North Koreans committed to the scheduled first meeting of talks in Beijing. "Nonetheless, a week later, Pritchard resigned his post. Bolton had won.
Consider, finally, the case of elusive Cuban WMD, the incident that led Ford, after some "soul-searching," to testify at Bolton's confirmation hearings: In February 2003, as the Bush administration was making its closing arguments before going to war that Iraq possessed WMD, Bolton decided he would give a speech stating that Cuba also had WMD. His text appeared on the desk of INR's chief expert on chemical and biological warfare, Christian Westerman. He checked Bolton's claims with the existing intelligence and concluded that Bolton's case about Cuban WMD was untrue. Enraged, Bolton summoned the analyst to his office. Westerman testified before the Foreign Relations Committee about what happened next: "He was quite upset that I had objected and he wanted to know what right I had trying to change an undersecretary's language ... And he got very red in the face and [was] shaking his finger at me and explained to me that I was acting way beyond my position, and for someone who worked for him. I told him I didn't work for him." Of course, Westerman worked directly for Carl Ford -- and for the U.S. government. "And so, he basically threw me out of his office." Bolton angrily called Thomas Fingar, principal deputy assistant secretary of state, to his office. "What did Mr. Bolton say to you?" Fingar was asked by the Foreign Relations Committee. He replied: "That he was the president's appointee, that he had every right to say what he believed, that he wasn't going to be told what he could say by a midlevel INR munchkin analyst." Then Bolton told Fingar "that he wanted Westerman taken off his accounts. I said, 'He's our CW/BW [chemical and biological weapons] specialist, this is what he does.' He expressed again, as I remember it, that he was the president's appointee, [and] he could say what he wanted."
In the end, Bolton did not give the speech and Westerman was not reassigned or fired. Questioned about the episode, Bolton remarked, "I didn't seek to have these people fired. I didn't seek to have them discharged. I said I lost my trust in them."
By exposing a handful of Bolton's manipulations, the hearings have exposed the politicization of intelligence that has been studiously ignored by the Senate intelligence committee and the President's Commission. The Republican chairman of the committee, Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas, has been a reliable tool of the White House in suppressing any talk of the political distortion of intelligence. Not only has he reneged on his commitment to Democratic senators on his committee that it would conduct an investigation, but he has avoided looking into the obvious cases of abuse of intelligence beyond that of WMD in the rush to war -- and has thus laid the onus entirely on the intelligence community. Roberts conceives his chairmanship as blind support of the Bush White House at the expense of his constitutional duty in the Senate. He has been a principal enabler of the abuse.
After three days of testimony, the pattern of Bolton's efforts to bend information, intimidate the intelligence community and willfully subvert his superiors was firmly established. Yet Sen. Chafee wavered about whether there was indeed a pattern. "Chafee's comment that it is an exception is inaccurate," a senior State Department official told me. "Bullying, bombastic, screaming 'I'm going to crush you,' that's typical."
Bolton's methods are hardly unknown to the White House. It can only be assumed that they are what the president wants in his ambassador to the United Nations. But Bolton will be confirmed only if the senators voting for him believe that the evidence their own hearings have unearthed cannot possibly be true. In that event, Bush's use of cognitive dissonance again will have triumphed.
First!
(Karen - My goodness, woman, don't you ever get sleep?)
OT, but some news are always good to take in the morning.
During the Conclave Grand Mass opening today, Cardinal Ratzinger clearly condemned...fundamentalism, aiming at the crazy American missionaries who are spreading their beliefs in poor countries, and at the ones at home by the same way.
Will the American Catholic Church report, and for some stop supporting Shrub's regime? They should.
When is Chafee up for re-election?
If it is 2006, he must know that if he votes to confirm his senate seat is toast. We should help close the deal if he does vote to confirm. I read earlier today that Hagel has a staffer who worked with Bolton, and has some hesitations about the walrus. This article highlights the man's pathological behavior, and his disrespect for those who would work for a less confrontational foreign policy:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61304-2005Apr17.html
SECURITY FAILURE: PUBLISHING DISCONTINUED AFTER INCREASE IN TERRORISM REPORTED
** SNIP **
WASHINGTON - The State Department decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered.
http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/11407689.htm
WHAT THE AMERICAN PEOPLE DON'T KNOW -
MORE GOVERNMENT REPORTS SCRUBBED BY BUSH ADMINISTRATION:
From Daily Kos -
Sirota lists some of the wonderful government information Bush has scrubbed in the past four years:
Knight-Ridder reports today that the Bush administration announced yesterday that it has "decided to stop publishing an annual report on international terrorism after the government's top terrorism center concluded that there were more terrorist attacks in 2004 than in any year since 1985, the first year the publication covered."
When unemployment was peaking in Bush's first term, the White House tried to stop publishing the Labor Department's regular report on mass layoffs.
In 2003, when the nation's governors came to Washington to complain about inadequate federal funding for the states, the Bush administration decided to stop publishing the budget report that states use to see what money they are, or aren't, getting.
In 2003, the National Council for Research on Women found that information about discrimination against women has gone missing from government Web sites, including 25 reports from the U.S. Department of Labor's Women's Bureau.
In 2002, Democrats uncovered evidence that the Bush administration was removing health information from government websites. Specifically, the administration deleted data showing that abortion does not increase the risk of breast cancer from government websites. That scientific data was seen by the White House as a direct affront to the pro-life movement.
Fasten Your Seatbelts
The Rapture Index, in which the Pope is considered a sinner along with the rest, & will help bring about the desired "end times" - in which the tsunami was a good thing because it brings the "rapture" closer
http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0211-22.htm
Excerpt:
Let us consider the Rapture Index. This is a real thing prepared by serious people. If it makes you laugh, you have not gotten the memo. You probably have not read any of the 12 volumes of the "Left Behind" series, the best-selling books in America today.
Those Left Behind are those who did not experience the Rapture, which is an instant in time when all the truly holy people are taken directly to heaven, leaving their clothes in small neat piles behind them. The rest of the ungodly losers are left to deal with natural disasters and wars and the armies of the Antichrist, after which they die in various colorful ways while the ranks of the saved watch with compassion tempered with an understandable sense of satisfaction.
The Rapture Index, as of this writing, stands at 153. Anything over 145 is labeled by the Rapture Actuaries as "Fasten your seat belts." In other words: Repent for the End Is Near. You may see all this for yourself at www.raptureready.com/rap2.html, should you think I'm making it up.
Note for Andree:
It's good that Ratzinger is pointing out the extremist & proselytization. He does, however, support war and the death penalty under certain circumstances but never abortion or euthanasia under any circumstances. Therefore, he diametrically opposes my own values.
Example of Cognitive Dissonance:
The Myth being propagated by the White House & Congress: Bush Energy Plan Will Help Problem of High Gas Prices at the Pump
The Facts: This is a way to line the pockets of the oil industry
The House's Dirty Little Bill (Amer. Progr. Rept)
In his radio address this weekend, President Bush called on Congress to pass new energy legislation, saying, "American families and small businesses across the country are feeling the pinch from rising gas prices." It's true. Gas today costs an average of $2.28 per gallon, up six cents in a week and 50 cents from this time last year. And Americans are mad. In a new Gallup survey this month, 44 percent of Americans said it was "extremely important for Congress and the president to address gas prices."
The legislation the House is likely to vote on this week, however, would do little to bring down the price at the pump. The new energy bill crafted by right-wing conservatives contains next-to-nothing to promote reduced energy use or renewable energy sources. Instead, it's chock full of measures to protect the profits of the powerful energy industry. As Rep. Jim McDermott charged, "There is no provision … that will lower the price of gasoline, only protect the profits of the oil industry."
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/18/bullies/
BULLIES NEED NOT APPLY
Tell me that Bob Jones III, the president of the segregationist South Carolina university of the same name, has been nominated as chairman of the Civil Rights Commission.
Tell me that Father Dan Berrigan, the antiwar Jesuit priest, had just been named commandant of the Marine Corps or that Sir Elton John will be the new president of the Teamsters Union.
But don't tell me that the United States Senate, which likes to be called the "the world's greatest deliberative body" will vote to confirm President Bush's pick of John Bolton to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.
John Bolton has what conservatives used to call "book smarts." He is a distinguished alumnus of a New Haven school that is the alma mater of both Presidents Bush, Yale, as well as of that same university's law school.
He has a long record of federal appointments, including service as a U.S. assistant attorney general, assistant secretary of state for international organization affairs, and from 2001 to 2005, as under secretary of state for arms control.
Bolton on paper has strong credentials. What John Bolton tragically lacks, according to the first-hand testimony of people who have worked with him, is the human touch or mature temperament so important in a colleague and so indispensable in a diplomat.
In closed door sessions with the committee, one CIA official and three State Department officials recounted two episodes in which Bolton attempted to remove intelligence analysts who had upset him. They had told him that there was no conclusive evidence to support the claim he intended to make in a speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation that Cuba had a program of biological weapons of mass destruction that could threaten the United States. While denying he sought to get the analysts fired, Bolton admitted that he did try to get them moved to other jobs.
Bolton is the classic swaggerer who never served in uniform but conspicuously places on his office desk a brass hand grenade. Carl W. Ford, a self-identified conservative Republican and the former chief of State Department intelligence, testified to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that John Bolton is a bully, a "serial abuser" of subordinates and a "kiss-up, kick-down" type. In 2005 or any other year, the nation's capital does not need another bully in a position of power.
Sucking up to your superiors and mistreating, even tormenting, your juniors is unprincipled but, sadly, not uncommon. Character, or the lack thereof, is revealed in how someone with power treats someone without power and without the capacity to retaliate.
If the United States senators take at all seriously their responsibility to "advise and consent" to the nominations the president makes, then they have to talk to and listen to the dedicated professionals and "little people" who have, during his years in public office, had John Bolton as a boss.
Supporters of Bolton have defended his history of contemptuous public statements about the value and mission of the United Nations by comparing him to one of this nation's most respected ambassadors to the United Nations, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Moynihan never hesitated to publicly criticize actions or inactions of the world body he deemed hypocritical or intellectually indefensible.
But, unlike John Bolton, Pat Moynihan believed profoundly in the importance and the possibility of the United Nations and its charter, of which he wrote, "It is of inestimable value that these are the proclaimed standards of the nations of the world to which they are bound by solemn covenant." You will never hear a red-meat, tough guy like John Bolton expressing such sentiments.
Character, it has been written, is destiny. Temperament really does matter. Abuse of subordinates is not to be rewarded. A bully is never a leader. The Senate should reject President George W. Bush's nomination of John Bolton to the United Nations.
From THINK PROGRESS --
Labor Unions face increased audits from Bush administration.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/17/politics/17labor.html
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Can you say political retribution?
Can you say political retribution?
Posted by: Victoria Ellen at April 18, 2005 12:21 PM
Yes, and next up would be Democratic donors like Costco and Apple.
Singles Night at Walmart. I'm not kidding.
http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/07/news/fortune500/walmart_dating/
Popealooza 2005
for those of you who want the action of March Madness, but feel the need to keep your wagering holy:
http://www.drewmarlowe.com/pictures/brackets.jpg
Money from our social security trust fund is now being used to poll (probably push-poll) Americans on the idea of privatizing Social Security. How DOES W get by with this stuff??????
I'm tired of funding his propaganda machine with my tax dollars, and now, evidentlyc with my Social Security taxes as well. Here's the link:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=536&ncid=536&e=5&u=/ap/20050418/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/social_security_polls
My Billboards didn't make it but it was fun.
I like Would you buy a Used Car from this Man? with Tom DeLay's Photo?
You might want to join in:http://www.democracyforamerica.com/billboard
Oncall:
Chafee's fundraiser contacted me after my message was left with Chafee's Washington office and he told me they were selling tables at a dinner they were having this weekend in Providence for his re-election campaign and would I be interested in contributing. I told him I will wait first to see how he votes on the Boulton nomination. Silence.
Did you see that Move On PAC has done an emergency change for its activism plans for citizens over the next week or so?
They have changed their focus from Social Security to preventing utilization of the Nuclear Option to get arch-conservative judges into place.
Here are the billboards:
Nail the Hammer
How am I doing? (Photo of DeLay) Call (DeLay’s DC office number)
(Photo of Texan) Tom DeLay does not represent me.
Rep. DeLay, Your ethics don’t match our values. --From the growing majority in the 22nd district
Don’t mess with Ethics!
“Education is not my job.“ -- Tom DeLay
Delay listens to powerful insiders... but does he ever really hear YOU?
Tom Delay: Unchecked and Unbalanced
Tom DeLay Is Messing With Texas
Tom Delay: Hammering the Constitution one civil right at a time
Tom Delay: Exterminating Democracy right here in America
(Picture of Delay) Congressman for sale (or at least his vote is)!
Corporations spent millions to send Tom DeLay golfing, and all you got was this billboard.
Would you buy a used car from this man?
Looking for moral decay...look no farther than Tom DeLay!
Tom DeLay: Putting your taxpayer dollars to work, 18 holes at a time.
We apologize for the DeLay, public service will resume shortly.
Tom DeLay: My Values Should Be Your Values
Tom DeLay: The best representative money can buy.
Tom DeLay: All His Ethics Aren’t in Texas
Why vote for Tom DeLay, when you can buy him?
DeLay, no longer.
Tom Delay: Bad for Texas, Bad for America.
America for Sale! Call Tom DeLay for details.
Ethics are a moral value. Tell Tom.
While he is looking out for big corporations, who is looking out for you?
Tom Delay: Unethical, UnTexan!
Tom DeLay: Never before have the taxpayers done so much to improve the golf game of a public official.
When a man fails to understand separation of powers, it is time to separate him from power.
When Ethics Get Hammered, The Voter Gets Nailed.
Posted by: Ira at April 18, 2005 02:09 PM
Looks great, I will vote there later.
My local used car lot had a huge Bush-Cheney '04 sign there as well. Of course I honked and made the place miserable every time I passed by.
I agree with Ed Schultz that moveon is insane if they are wasting their precious resorces spending money to run campaign ads against Steny Hoyer for his voting for the bankruptcy bill. Perhaps this is why we have such difficulty winning elections. This money should be used against Santorum and DeLay. There are enough Republicans to attack for legitimate reasons. Is there any email address to let moveon know of our dipleasure with this tactic?
Ira--WTF? Moveon moving against Steny Hoyer? You got a link for this idiocy?
A RADICAL IN THE WHITE HOUSE
The New York Times
Last week - April 12, to be exact - was the 60th anniversary of the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. (snip)
That more wasn't made of this anniversary is not just a matter of time; it's a measure of the distance the U.S. has traveled from the egalitarian ideals championed by F.D.R.
His goal was "to make a country in which no one is left out." That kind of thinking has long since been consigned to the political dumpster. We're now in the age of Bush, Cheney and DeLay, small men committed to the concentration of big bucks in the hands of the fortunate few.
To get a sense of just how radical Roosevelt was (compared with the politics of today), consider the State of the Union address he delivered from the White House on Jan. 11, 1944. He was already in declining health and, suffering from a cold, he gave the speech over the radio in the form of a fireside chat.
After talking about the war, which was still being fought on two fronts, the president offered what should have been recognized immediately for what it was, nothing less than a blueprint for the future of the United States. (snip)
Roosevelt referred to his proposals in that speech as "a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race or creed."
Among these rights, he said, are:
"The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.
"The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
"The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living.
"The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad.
"The right of every family to a decent home.
"The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
"The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident and unemployment.
"The right to a good education."
I mentioned this a few days ago to an acquaintance who is 30 years old. She said, "Wow, I can't believe a president would say that."
read in its entirety at
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041805X.shtml
spinaker:
I just got Air America in my office and listen to it every day. That was Ed Schultz's story today and he had someone named Tom somthing on from moveon talking about how they were not affiliated with the DNC and planned on raising money to run ads against 10 Congressmen including Hoyer who voted for the bankruptcy bill.
Ed when on and on about how it is a collosal waste of moveon's valuable resources and how misplaced it is. Perhaps they are just trying to show how even handed they are. Who cares. We have bigger more impt fish to fry.
Moveon doesn't show an email address to send complaints to but if you have time they have a comments section to their web site. Its totally self destructive. Hoyer is a great guy and this is nonsense. I am sure Rove is getting a kick out of it.
Marjorie Cohn | Bully Bolton Threatens National Security
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041805B.shtml
'Bolton Kept Information Away from Rice and Powell'
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/041805C.shtml
Hmmm...maybe this guy wants to become a DCP member...
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/04/18/wbumper.sticker.ap/index.html
http://www.dnext.com/#
This is definitely a site worth looking at. Good use of viditorials.
Posted by: oncall at April 18, 2005 08:00 PM
cool site! those videos are great.
Ira,
My husband and I both pulled our support for MoveOn today because of the ads. I was an Operation Democracy team leader, but I've asked them to take my name off their list for everything.
Funny, you can't find a list of the politicians they're targeting anywhere on the site. Apparently 73 Dems voted for the bankruptcy bill. Will they target all of them?
MoveOn is NOT about electing Democrats. It's about furthering a sweeping progressive agenda. That's not my focus, or rather, I disagree strongly with their views about how to achieve that goal.
I have said it many times, and I will say it again: Americans need to learn to compromise. The extreme right wants gays persecuted and the government to be based on some radical notion of Christianity; the extreme left want every progressive idea acted on NOW, and never a mention of religion. It just doesn't work that way. If everyone continues as they are in this country, there will be constant conflict and no progress. To live in peace means to compromise.
The rest of the civilized world achieved universal health care, subsidized day care, high academic achievement and environmental awareness through a series of small steps, each requiring compromise.
MoveOn and other progressive movements seem to think that they have been appointed the supreme intelligence, the arbitors of what is righteous. Compromise isn't in their vocabulary. Their views are the only right ones and therefore must be instituted in their entirety.
Well, compromise is a HUGE part of my vocabulary. I understand it, and I approve of it. It's necessary to compromise in order to move forward - without compromise, WWII would have been lost.
So I no longer support MoveOn. My goal is not immediate institution of my progressive values. My goal is to defeat the neocons. And what MoveOn is doing is in direct conflict with my goal. They lost my money and my efforts.
Amy I have to disagree with you and moveon somewhat. You said "MoveOn is NOT about electing Democrats. It's about furthering a sweeping progressive agenda."
Unfortunately it has to be about electing Democrats not just Progressives, b/c we can not count on folks like Lincoln Chafee who will vote for Bouton or Susan Collins who may support ending the filbuster and ceratinly not Arlen Specter to side with Progressives.
Yes we need to compromise but that is not in the Republican vocabulary. Ed Schultz pointed out that Hoyers is a great spokesman for progressive causes and it is possible that he polled folks in his district that agreed with him on the bankruptcy bill even tho most folks here did not take that position. If we expect 100% agreement from our Democratic Congresmen does that mean we can not support folks for instance that oppose abortion. I don't think so.
Moveon just contacted me to organize a Houston rally next Wed supporting the filibuster. Anyone from around here interested in helping? If so contact me. I am pissed at moveon but they did a great job in November and I don't think Ed Schultz and certainly I am not encouraging folks to withdraw their support like Amy suggest. Something about cutting off you nose Amy....
We need to somehow just communicate our dissatisfaction to moveon which is not particularly easy to email. Moveon is looking for leaders like us to organize a National protest day next Wednesday. This is the most impt cause for us since last November.
Ira, did you hear the rep from MoveOn being interviewed on AAR? He explicitly stated that MoveOn is not about electing Democrats. These are their words, not mine. Have you read the MoveOn website? They want to legalize marijuana, for example.
Yes.they support a lot of Dems. But their running attack ads against Democrats will not help us to defeat the neocons. On the contrary, it may well insure that in 2006, the neocons gain seats, not lose them.
You may not agree with my withdrawing my support, but I hardly think that deciding not to fund ads against Democrats (when there are so many more worthy neocon targets) is cutting off my nose to spite my face. It's making a decision about where I spend my money and my time. Last I heard, that was my right. We've moved that regular donation to the James Carville effort to elect Dem senators in 06. In my view that will be money well spent. Carville knows how to win.
Liberals/Democrats/Progressives will never get it, it seems. There are times to fix things from the inside, and times to make a big public stink. This was a time to fix things from the inside.
We can't change anything if we don't win seats.
Posted by: Ira at April 19, 2005 11:37 AM
Ira, two more points. You made my case for me with your comment that it's only Republicans that can't compromise. I'm sure they say the same about Democrats. No one can accept that they themselves may be part of the problem.
Second, "We need to somehow just communicate our dissatisfaction to moveon which is not particularly easy to email."
Your suggestion is that a protest of their actions should be private, quiet, kept inside, not publicly broadcast. Again you make my case for me. MoveOn should have done something from the inside if they objected that much to these Dems.
Still, I maintain that I have a right to put my money where I think it will do the most good. That is no longer at MoveOn. If others think differently, so be it. But keeping this MoveOn action against Democrats a secret would be the worst possible thing to do, in my opinion.
I didn't hear Ed's program yesterday so have no idea what he is advocating or not advocating.