i-sako.com

I’m pleased to say that my elected representative in the Senate is holding his ground against the president’s idiotic tax-cut agenda. Good man.

I’d like to think that my letter to Senator Voinovich played some part in strengthening his resolve, but the truth of the matter is that he’s always been a tightwad--which in this case is a very good thing!

Still, he’s going to need all the resolve he can muster, because Bush is coming to pressure him to give in, drop his principles, and join the Dark Side.

Or maybe Voinovich won’t need that much encouragement after all: Bush’s poll numbers are bound to fall soon, most Republicans acknowledge.

Still, another letter might be in order, just in case…

Dare I hope that George the Senator can hold out against George the pResident? I’d like to think so. I really cannot foresee a prosperous future for America if the latter George is successful in his attempt to persuade the former. 

A recent spate of articles tell me that France is to be punished for not toeing the line on the war in Iraq.

BBC: US seeks to sideline France

NYT: U.S. Officials Consider Ways to Punish France [free registration required]

Guardian Unlimited: France will pay for war stance, Powell says

Pardon me for asking, but since when is it the place of the United States to arbitrarily punish other sovereign nations for doing what they have a right to do?

The reasoning seems to be that, because France did not support Bush’s war, it should be excluded from playing a role in, well, just about anything significant from now on. Is Germany to be punished as well? Russia? China? Most of the rest of the world? 

By that same token, am I to be excluded from voting against Bush in 2004 as punishment for my resistance?

“We did not believe they played a helpful role,” Powell said. That is because the whole situation leading up to the war--including the incredibly flimsy “evidence” you proffered at the U.N.--was wrong, Colin. (How’s that rock-solid intelligence holding up these days, anyway? Seems like it wasn’t as good as you claimed.) You cannot expect a government with even a shred of integrity to accept such a contrived casus belli.

Not that I can blame Powell for the fiasco at the U.N. (though some certainly do) when it was clearly Bush’s fault for not giving diplomacy an honest chance. I once believed that Powell was a good man, but I believe that no longer. 

It’s a shame really, because Powell was the only redeemable person in the Bush administration. Now there are none. And the world will pay for the failures of these fools who run our country.

[Aside: You know, I’m really not as much of a political geek as I might seem, but the Bush administration simply astounds me with how awful it is. I didn’t care much for the first president Bush, or Reagan before him, but I would never have written so much about either of those presidents as I have about this one. I can honestly say that I utterly despise everything this administration stands for. That’s a first for me, which is why I tend to dwell on this subject so much. Sorry!]

...when Democrats try to squeeze some political advantage out of Paul Wellstone’s funeral, that is morally wrong, but when Bush decides to time his re-election campaign in such a way as to get maximum mileage out of the third anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks, that’s just shrewd election strategy at work.

President Bush’s advisers have drafted a re-election strategy built around staging the latest nominating convention in the party’s history, allowing Mr. Bush to begin his formal campaign near the third anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks and to enhance his fund-raising advantage, Republicans close to the White House say.

Gotcha.

I tend to complain a lot in this blog about the crazy things our government has been doing since the Bush regime came to power, but I am pleased to see that there are still a few sensible people left in our government. George Voinovich is one of them. Norm Coleman is another.

Courageous senators stand against Bush

Senator Voinovich recently voted to limit the president’s proposed tax cuts, citing the long-term costs of war in Iraq as one reason to be fiscally cautious.

It is good to see that some people, particularly those within the president’s own party, are willing to resist the president’s irresponsible economic priorities. In my previous entry, I worried that resistance to tax cuts would be branded “unpatriotic,” which I think is utter nonsense, but I am glad to see that a self-declared “budget hawk” like Voinovich has been largely spared this unwarranted slander.

Although it’s true that some have been calling him a turncoat or deriding his participation in a ”Coalition of the Unwilling,” I have yet to see anyone impugn Voinovich’s patriotism, which is a tactic that I think the Bush administration has been reserving almost exclusively for Democrats.

It does no good for the administration to smear someone like Voinovich, partly because he is one of their own, but also because he is all but invulnerable in his home turf. Who else would Bush be able to support in the state of Ohio, Jerry Springer? Not likely. Unlike the Democrats Max Cleland and Mary Landrieu, both of whom supported Bush only to be betrayed by him in the November mid-term elections, Bush stands to gain nothing from abusing members of his own party.

It is because Bush needs Voinovich’s support more than Voinovich needs Bush’s that the senator can take such a courageous position without fear of criticism.

Even more courageous, however, was Senator Norm Coleman’s vote against oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, which was another high priority for Bush—and for Ted Stevens, the senator from Alaska who also happens to be the chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. I must admit that I was skeptical of Senator Coleman’s claims during his election campaign that he would not allow himself to be beholden to Bush, but now he has shown that he is capable of resisting the president, even under intense, additional pressure from within the Senate itself. Here again, Coleman has been spared the “unpatriotic” accusations from the Bush administration (again, who else would it support in Minnesota, Mondale perhaps?), and he even seems to have steered clear of Stevens’ wrath.

I am very pleased to see both of these Republican senators taking a stand against their president, who is known to hold grudges against anyone who chooses to stand against him (indeed, he’s based his entire foreign policy on this ridiculous “with us or against us” posturing). It gives me hope that there is still some chance for sensible governance to prevail in the United States, even in spite of the run-rampant idiocy coming from the White House.

Frist: Hoping his actions will be shrouded by the fog of war?

Alas, that is not to suggest that all is well in Washington. John De Hoog tells me that Senator Bill Frist, the Republican majority leader, has been using the fog of war to to reward contributors by stealing from sick children. And, sure enough, today Yahoo is carrying a Global AIDS Alliance report that says Bush and Frist are sabotaging key AIDS initiatives, primarily for ideological reasons. (In response to this I can only say that we need more doctors in politics, which is why I am supporting Howard Dean’s bid for the presidency.)

Putting my money—and praise—where my mouth is

I think it is important to praise our senators when they resist Bush’s foolish leadership, as Voinovich and Coleman have done, and to rebuke them when they reverse their positions in support of an unworthy president, as Frist has done. We must show them that we are watching, that we will support those who are worthy of our support and cast of those who are not.

With that said, I ask you to join me in praising Voinovich, thanking Coleman, supporting Dean, and rebuking Frist.

For the record, I sent the following message to Senator Voinovich (I won’t print here the one that is going to Frist).

Dear Senator Voinovich:


I just finished reading an article in the New York Times that listed you as one of only three Republicans breaking ranks with your party and voting to limit the president’s proposed tax cuts. I applaud your cautious restraint in these troubled times. I have every confidence that you have done the right thing and am proud to have you representing me in the Senate.



With my very best regards,



S. Patrick Eaton

Even though I am an unrepentant Democrat, I realize the value of supporting those noble senators, regardless of their party affiliation, who have the good sense to stand up for their principles. They provide the clearest signs that there may yet be hope for sensible governance in the United States.

This blog has gone without an update for a while for a number of reasons, but perhaps foremost among them is the fact that I have been struggling to limit the number of bitchy political entries I post here. I never intended for this blog to be dominated by political issues (well, not entirely), but the Bush administration has done so many things that infuriate me that it has been difficult to focus on the other things that I would rather be writing about. I’ve been trying to show restraint, but it is difficult in light of all the amazingly bad things going on at the administration’s insistence.

I would like to get back to a discussion of matters that are more interesting than the subtle ways in which the Bush administration is hijacking the American political process, but I cannot help but feel obligated to expose this lying half-wit for the scoundrel he is. One might argue that it would be unpatriotic to do otherwise.

In fact, Alon Ben-Meir does just that in a recent article at UPI, “The Academic View: Patriotism and war”. (Hat tip: John McCreery, chair of DAJ.) In the article, Ben-Meir makes many good points, but of particular interest to me were two quotes, ones that should really grab the attention of the American people.

The first was from our first president, George Washington, in his 1796 Farewell Address:

Guard against the impostures of pretended patriotism.

Our current president is nothing less than the result of our failure to guard against precisely the “impostures of pretended patriotism” that Washington warned us about so long ago.

The other is from the philosopher Ralph Barton Perry, who said:

If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel, it is not merely because evil deeds may be performed in the name of patriotism … but because patriotic fervor can obliterate moral distinction altogether.

We certainly have seen a lot of moral distinctions obliterated recently:

• When France leads the Security Council in principled opposition to Bush’s insistence upon automatic triggers for war, it is vilified in the White House and in both chambers of Congress. Whatever the arguments leveled against France, surely it has the right to vote against a proposal, but the Bush administration would cast this exercise of a basic right as a betrayal.



• When Senator Daschle correctly criticizes the president’s diplomatic failures, he is accused of coming “mighty close” to undermining the president and giving comfort our adversaries, which—lest we take this statement lightly—is tantamount to an accusation of treason. That’s a pretty powerful statement, but here we see it bandied about lightly, as if it were a matter of course. If that is not a blurring of moral distinctions, nothing is. (It is also well worth pointing out that the Republicans had no qualms about criticizing Clinton’s handling of Kosovo. This ”screw-you-I’m-right smugness” is the most appalling thing about this whole affair. )



• In seeking to ram huge tax cuts through a spineless Congress, the administration is creating an atmosphere that suggests that it is unpatriotic to vote against the president in any circumstances when the country is at war. This was bad enough when the administration rammed the wholly unconstitutional USA PATRIOT Act through a shocked Congress just after September 11th, but it is completely unacceptable to even suggest that voting against the president on tax cuts is unpatriotic. If opposing the president on tax cuts is unpatriotic, then patriotism is not as desirable as people think. (By this logic, it would be to the president’s advantage to keep the United States in a perpetual state of war, so that no one could ever disagree with him for fear of being branded “unpatriotic”. Oh, gosh, wait a minute, that’s exactly what is happening now with this war on terror…)

Bush is no patriot, but he pretends to be one with great aplomb. And the American people seem to love him for it. The only reason I can think of for this is simply that the American people are unaccustomed to being wrong, so the enormity of his actions are something that Americans seem willing to overlook on good faith, which is precisely what we must not do. (I wrote a bit about this the other day at Antipixel.)

George Washington warned against it; Alon Ben-Meir reminds us to heed that warning:

No, we cannot afford to take this administration’s word for granted
either. For now it may be a good idea for every American patriot to
adopt the state of Missouri’s motto: “Show Me.”

In my opinion, given his record of producing flimsy evidence in support of both war and tax cuts, the Bush administration should be required to provide more substantial proof that it is right—on all issues, all the time. Nothing it does or wants should be accepted on trust, not even in a time of war. Bush is cheerfully marching us down the path of fascism; I, for one, submit that it would be unpatriotic to play along.

Here is a definition of patriotism with which I particularly agree in our current situation (although I’m sure Dick Cheney wouldn’t). It comes from The Devil’s Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:

PATRIOTISM, n. Combustible rubbish read to the torch of any one ambitious to illuminate his name.



In Dr. Johnson’s famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first.

Bierce is right, patriotism is the first resort of a scoundrel, an imposture of pretended patriotism: George W. Bush.

History is replete with warnings to guard against precisely this kind of behavior. Please, my fellow Americans, listen to the wisdom of history and resist any appeals to yield on patriotic grounds. To do so would be manifestly unpatriotic—and a betrayal of the principles our country was founded on. Take this “whip of patriotism” away from the Dicks who wield it against the better judgment of our elected leaders in Congress.

I have attempted to show warnings from the truest American patriots in the material above, but I fear that this may not be enough to sway people who truly want to believe that Bush is a force for good. Let me now close with warnings of another kind, pronouncements from leaders of a sinister past, ones whose words find an eerie echo in the Bush administration of today. (Note: This is why some protesters compare Bush to Hitler—it’s not an asinine comparison, but an apt one!)

Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s minister of propaganda:

“By simplifying the thoughts of the masses and reducing them to primitive patterns, propaganda was able to present the complex process of political and economic life in the simplest terms. We have taken matters previously available only to experts and a small number of specialists, and have carried them into the street and hammered them into the brain of the little man.”

What can be more simplistic than reducing the entire realm of foreign affairs to “good vs. evil” or “with us or against us”? In the mind of the little man in the street, however, this has proven to be a very effective tactic for Bush. He has hammered these messages into our brains to the fullest of his ability, and he allows no dissent. To the extent that the media do not question him openly (or are not allowed to question him, as we saw at his scripted press conference), they too share some complicity in this hypocritical and unpatriotic undermining of American principles.

Hermann Göring, Hitler’s Reichsmarschall, at the Nuremberg Trials:

“Naturally the common people don’t want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”

Indeed it does work the same in any country—even the United States of America, I’m afraid.

At this juncture in our history, I think there are only two things that can be called patriotic:

1. Thinking for yourself instead of accepting views that are spoon-fed by a jingoistic media, with the blessing of the administration (and the implicit threat of denied access to those who do not comply with the administration’s wishes); and



2. Demanding substantial justification for and ample debate about every major decision, at every opportunity, by the branch of government appointed to handle such matters in our Constitution (which in this case would mean Congress, not the White House).

I look forward to the Bush team’s adoption of an honest label for its policies in the 2004 elections: They should pitch themselves as the “compassionate fascists”.