What Event in History Cost the U.S. the Most Money?

Peter Hartcher, writing in the Australian Financial Review (July 26, 2003):

If you had to guess the event that cost the United States more money than any other in its history, would you choose the Civil War? World War II? Or the Wall Street Great Crash of 1929? All of these are in the top five, but none even begins to approach the scale of America's most stupendously expensive event: the stockmarket collapse that the country has just lived through. The cost to date is $6.5 trillion in lost shareholder wealth. For proportion, World War II ranks second — in today's dollars, it cost the country $3.4 trillion.

Thank you, Molly Ivins: Intelligence report confirms no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda

Molly Ivins is the least liked journalist among the Bushies. She entitled her political biography of W: Shrub: The Short, Happy Political Life of George W. Bush. You go, girl! No connection between Saddam and Al Quaeda? No wonder the Bushies are trying to blur the print! Hell, the Saudis ain't the enemy. If not, who? Think about it. If this be treason, make the most of it.

[x Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
All that effort for this report?

By Molly Ivins
Creators Syndicate


The congressional report by the committees on intelligence about 9/11 that was partially made public last week reminds me of the recent investigation into the crash of the Columbia shuttle -- months of effort to reconfirm the obvious.

In the case of the Columbia, we knew from the beginning that a piece of insulation had come loose and struck the underside of one wing. So after much study, it was determined the crash was caused by the piece of insulation that came loose and struck the underside of the wing.

Likewise, in the case of 9/11, all the stuff that has been blindingly obvious for months is now blamed for the fiasco.

The joint inquiry focused on the intelligence services, concluding that the FBI especially had been asleep at the wheel. And that, in turn, can be blamed at least partly on the fact that the FBI, before 9/11, had only old green-screen computers with no Internet access.

Although the process is not complete, the agency is now upgrading its system: Many agents finally got e-mail this year.

My particular bete noire in all this is the Immigration and Naturalization Service, which distinguished itself by granting visas to 15 of the 19 hijackers, who never should have been given visas in the first place.

Their applications were incomplete and incorrect. They were all young, single, unemployed males with no apparent means of support -- the kind considered classic overstay candidates. Had the INS followed its own procedures, 15 of the 19 never would have been admitted.

The incompetence of the INS was underlined when it issued a visa to Mohammad Atta, the lead hijacker, six months after 9/11. In the wake of the attacks, the Bush administration promised to increase funding for the INS, to get the agency fully computerized with modern computers and generally up to speed. All that has happened since is that INS funding has been cut.

Much attention is being paid to the selective editing of the report, apparently to protect the Saudis. I think an equally important piece of the report is on the bureaucratic tangle that prevents anyone from being accountable for much of anything.

The CIA controls only 15 to 20 percent of the annual intelligence budget. The rest is handled by the Pentagon, despite widespread agreement that it needs to be centralized. The Bush administration has ignored these calls, mostly because Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld doesn't want to give up any power.

The most striking thing about this report is that none of its conclusions and none of its recommendations have anything to do with the contents of the USA PATRIOT Act, which was supposedly our government's response to 9/11. All the could-haves, would-haves and should-haves in the report are so far afield from the PATRIOT Act that it might as well be on another subject entirely.

Once again, as has often happened in our history, under the pressure of threat and fear, we have harmed our own liberties without any benefit to our safety.

Insufficient powers of law enforcement or surveillance are nowhere mentioned in the joint inquiry report as a problem before 9/11. Yet Attorney General John Ashcroft now proposes to expand surveillance powers even further with a second PATRIOT act. All over the country, local governments have passed resolutions opposing the PATRIOT Act, and three states have done so, including the very Republican Alaska.

All kinds of Americans are now waking up to the fact that this act gives the government the right to put American citizens in prison indefinitely, without knowing the charges against them, without access to an attorney, without the right to confront their accusers, without trial. Indefinitely.

The report was completed late last year, but its publication was delayed by endless wrangles with the administration over what could be declassified. Former Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who served on the committee, said the report's release was deliberately delayed by the White House until after the war in Iraq was over because it undercuts the rationale for the war.

The report confirms that there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

"The administration sold the connection to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," Cleland said. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."

Molly Ivins writes for Creators Syndicate. 5777 W. Century Blvd., Suite 700, Los Angeles, CA 90045

© 2003 Star Telegram

Want To Know Why The Democrats In The Texas Legislature Are Walking?

Go to the fifth paragraph for the most succinct explanation of why — first, the Democrat State Representatives and second, the Democrat State Senators — bolted and went to — first, Edmond, OK and second, Albuquerque, NM. In both cases, a denial of a quorum so that Tom DeLay's (R-TX) redistricting plan cannot be implemented. In 2001, the Republicans in the Texas Legislature and the Republican governor admitted failure to redistrict Texas. The task was thrown over to the federal courts and a redistricting map was created and established congressional (and legislative) districts for the 2002 elections. Congressman Tom (The Hammer) DeLay — emboldened by the Republican sweep of statewide offices (governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, and so on) and the first Republican majority in the State Legislature since Reconstruction — created a map designed to eliminate districts that are not lily-white or all-black, or all-brown (Latino). Despite the fact that non-whites (blacks and browns) are the majority of Texans, DeLay has created a map that guarantees 20 or more lily-white Congressional seats (and on-going Republican hegemony in the State Legislature). The Democrats in the State Legislature are fighting against political apartheid in Texas. The vast majority of Texas newspapers have fallen for the Big Lie perpetuated by Congressman Tom DeLay, Governor Rick Perry, and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst: the Democrats are traitors to the Texas tradition of fighting to their (political) deaths. Texas was redistricted by the federal courts for the decade until the 2010 Census. The people of Texas pay $7 million dollars per special session of the State Legislature (staff costs, and so on). DeLay, Perry, and Dewhurst will drag us into another special session and attempt to force the Democrats to submit to political apartheid. Sound nuts? Look at California! Sound nuts? Look at Washington, DC. If this be treason, make the most of it.

[x TNR]
TRB FROM WASHINGTON
Mistaken Identity
by Peter Beinart
Issue date: 08.11.03

Conservatives have spilled a lot of ink in recent years denouncing two interrelated cultural trends. First, racial separatism--the abandonment of the civil rights ideal of integration; second, identity politics--the basing of political claims on racial, gender, or religious status.

Well, it's time for them to spill some more ink, because both trends are picking up steam--in the Republican Party.

Start with racial separatism. Around the time of the 1990 census, the GOP forged an unholy alliance with civil rights groups: Both would support an interpretation of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that forced states to create majority black (or Hispanic) congressional districts wherever possible. The result was more black members of Congress and more Republican members of Congress--since, stripped of their Democratic-leaning black constituents, many white Democratic congressmen fell to Republican challengers. GOP politicos were thrilled, but principled conservatives were disgusted. The Weekly Standard has called the arrangement, which eviscerated political interaction across the color line, "thoroughly repulsive." National Review wrote, "In another day, this was called 'segregation.' It was wrong then, and it's wrong now."

The good news is that, by the time the 2000 census came along, many black leaders agreed. Their motivations were largely partisan--they realized that handing the GOP a congressional majority hadn't exactly enhanced black political power. But the effects were salutary nonetheless. In Georgia, the state's black officials blessed--and the U.S. Supreme Court upheld--a redistricting plan that added racially mixed districts rather than overwhelmingly black and white ones.

But, while the NAACP now favors integrated districts, the White House and House Majority Leader Tom DeLay don't. In fact, in Texas they are pushing perhaps the most radical political segregation plan in recent memory. DeLay's effort to redistrict as many as eight Texas Democratic congressmen out of their jobs has sparked outrage, mostly because it violates the long-standing principle that states redistrict only once per decade. But equally scandalous is the way DeLay's map would produce an avalanche of new GOP seats. His plan would create an additional black majority district, an additional Hispanic majority district, and a sea of bleached-white districts that would likely vote Republican. As University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray told The New York Times, the "plan basically envisions all Democrats elected to Congress being either from Hispanic-majority or African-American majority districts."

Imagine that: a politically and racially segregated congressional slate from the largest state in the South. It's a recipe for Cynthia McKinneys and Jesse Helmses--politicians who demagogue to their racial bases without ever having to cross the color line in search of a vote. Karl Rove might think that's good for the Republican Party, but in the past conservatives have denounced such schemes as bad for the United States. And, yet, I haven't seen a single prominent conservative condemn the Texas plan. Are they waiting for it to pass first?

And the GOP hasn't only fallen in love with racial separatism; it has fallen in love with identity politics as well. Since President Bush took office, congressional Democrats have proved surprisingly effective in blocking his most conservative nominees to the federal courts. Beltway Republicans have searched for ways to pressure the Democrats to relent. And, increasingly, they have found one: Accuse them of bigotry.

It started with Miguel Estrada, the Honduran-born conservative Bush has nominated to the D.C. Court of Appeals. For more than a year now, Estrada's supporters have tried to focus his confirmation battle on ethnicity. Pennsylvania's Rick Santorum has called Democratic opposition "complete discrimination." Trent Lott has said, "They [Democrats] don't want Miguel Estrada because he's Hispanic," before exclaiming, "Viva Estrada."

The charge is absurd. Democrats aren't upset that Bush is trying to make the federal bench more Hispanic; they're upset that he's trying to make it more conservative. In fact, for years they've opposed hard-core conservatives of all genders and ethnicities--from Patricia Owen to Charles Pickering to Clarence Thomas. Whatever you think about Democratic objections to Republican judicial nominees, they're based on ideology. It is President Bush's GOP that is trying to make the Estrada fight about identity instead.

And now it's doing the same thing with hard-right Alabama federal court nominee William Pryor Jr. Pryor is white and male. But the GOP has grown increasingly creative. And so, during his nomination battle, Judiciary Chairman Orrin Hatch--over Democratic objections--asked Pryor his religion. Turns out he's Catholic. Democrats on the committee showed zero interest in the subject--instead hammering Pryor for his positions on abortion, gay rights, and various ethical issues. But that hasn't stopped a political action committee with close White House ties from running ads in two heavily Catholic states charging, "Some in the U.S. Senate are attacking Bill Pryor for having 'deeply held' Catholic beliefs." Hatch and fellow Judiciary Committee Republican Jeff Sessions have echoed the charge.

A three-year-old could see the logical fallacy here. Democrats dislike Pryor's views on abortion and gay rights--they don't care whether he came to those views through Catholicism, Judaism, or by reading Edmund Burke. As it happens, almost half the Democrats on the Judiciary Committee who voted against Pryor's nomination are themselves Catholic.

The GOP argument seems to be that, if someone says his political views are rooted in his religion, opposing those political views makes you a religious bigot. That happens to be almost exactly the same argument Al Sharpton used to make. Since his political views stemmed from his racial experience, your opposition to them made you a racist.

Conservatives, as I remember, disliked it when Sharpton employed that tactic. And they loudly denounced civil rights groups when they embraced segregated redistricting. But what happens when the culprits are Hatch and DeLay? So far, not much. The Bush White House seems willing to sell out supposedly cherished conservative principles for partisan gain. Will conservatives even try to stop them?

Peter Beinart is the editor of TNR.

© The New Republic 2003

Best Damn Show On Television

My favorite TV news is "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central (cable network) weeknights (except Friday) at 10:00pm CDT. Last night, the host — standup comic Jon Stewart — deconstructed the Bush press conference (the first in months). No wonder Karl Rove keeps W away from the press! W was funnier than any of "The Daily Show" correspondents: Posturing. Blustering. Malapropism. Dissembling. We don't have a president. We have a clown. If this is treason, make the most of it.

[x Salon.com]
August 4, 2003
TV's boldest news show
OK, it's fictitious -- but so is our presidency. Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" pulls the pants down on the fakes and fanatics who are leading us into the future.

By Laura Miller

April 8, 2003 | Jon Stewart has gotten his groove back, and not a moment too soon. In the first few days after the war began, Stewart's late-night satirical news program, "The Daily Show" (Monday through Thursday at 11 p.m., 10 Central Time, on Comedy Central), seemed to go briefly toothless. Stewart and company resorted to parodies of entertainment journalism, dumb war-related jokes that involved plugging the names of various nations into an NCAA playoff bracket and guest appearances by Ringo Starr and actor Eddie Griffin, neither of whom seemed capable of saying anything about the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq -- Topic A for just about everyone else on the planet. That was a letdown, considering that in the weeks leading up to the March 19 commencement of the conflict, "The Daily Show" had been consistently offering the best political humor on television. Fortunately, the lull was brief.

Stewart, his team of "correspondents" (particularly Stephen Colbert and Ed Helms) and the show's head writer, David Javerbaum, have used their chosen format -- a parody of local newscasts with a talk-show guest segment awkwardly grafted onto its back end -- to skewer not just the Bush administration's single-minded march to war, but also the social temperament that let all this happen. Four nights per week, "The Daily Show" demonstrates the creeping obsolescence of, say, a performer like Bill Maher, whose Enlightened He-Man persona has proven itself barely viable outside the hothouse environment of the Clinton years.

Take, for example, a "Daily Show" segment called "Oh, Come On!" It mimics the tone of knowing suspicion found in cut-rate exposés of government waste and other supposed liberal boondoggles. The correspondent, Rob Corddry, starts out in a playground, gravely explaining: "We've all heard it before. It's an age-old saying that the children are the future. Our society bends over backward for the children. We feed them. We clothe them. We educate them ... But are children really worth the investment? [close-up on Corddry with narrowed eyes and a belligerently tilted jaw] I mean, come on!"

Corddry's investigation takes him to a storefront in New York, where he discovers, to his incredulity, "children get help with their homework -- for free," and to interviews in which he grills tots about alternative energy sources (they recommend poop) and asks them to put names to photographs of political figures (they identify Sen. Joseph Lieberman as "Grandma"). He even faces off against a 4-year-old girl on a basketball court (and trounces her). "The kids I know don't vote, they don't pay taxes," he complains. "Are the billions of dollars we're spending on the children paying off, or are they just teat-sucking parasites?"

The segment is silly (and hilarious), but the barbs hit home. "The Daily Show" doesn't just make fun of broadcast journalists (as "Saturday Night Live" has for decades), it mocks the underlying know-nothing mulishness that passed for trenchant common sense back when the president's sex life seemed like the most pressing moral issue facing the nation. Now there are bigger fish to fry. Asking whether "the billions of dollars we're spending on the children are paying off" isn't that far from the mentality of a government that can stand by as schoolteachers are laid off by the score in California and yet still find plenty of money to award tax breaks to rich people.

Political humor used to belong to the left, but that all changed in the 1990s, when the priggishness of political correctitude injected new vitality into a segment of the population that had been shut out of comedy's pantheon: assholes. Suddenly, a guy could flaunt his most petty and vindictive prejudices and still get to feel like a champion of truth and freedom. You could rail against "victimology" when, say, sexually harassed workers dared to resort to it, and then turn around and avail yourself of the same trend by claiming that a pack of censorious puritans was trying to shut you up. In fact, the appeal of shock jocks and other bad boys mostly lies in the idea that they're offensive to somebody else, someone you can imagine gasping in horror at each transgression. Without political correctness (and that's fading fast), a big chunk of what passes for contemporary American humor would be flapping in the wind.

It helps (comedy, at least) to have plutocratic religious fanatics with imperialist ambitions occupying the White House, and "The Daily Show" has been at the forefront in finding a new way to make political humor in the age of Dubya. Some of that feels tentative: Stewart is still honing his persona. He's an everyman with the intelligence to spot a crock, the humility to ask questions and a nifty way of keeping his mouth shut to let the absurdity of the naked facts sink in. He does, however, occasionally smirk, though he seems to be morphing that mannerism into a daffy eye-rolling gesture reminiscent of Jack Benny.

Here's what Stewart isn't: self-righteous. And that is more than Maher can say. The comparison is illuminating. Granted, Maher is a rigorously tough interviewer, and the unscripted conversations on his new HBO show, "Real Time," are the best things about it. He can get in the ring, deliver a sound drubbing to a cant-spouting Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., then step down and shake hands like a gentleman afterward. The debate segments of "Real Time," which corral Maher and three people drawn from a rotating group of feisty polemicists on both the right and the left (Dennis Miller, Arianna Huffington, Ann Coulter, Janeane Garofalo and Ted Rall, among others), are riveting. By contrast, Stewart is too nice to get much out of the talk-show segments of "The Daily Show," and his assortment of guests is peculiar, ranging from forgettable starlets to the editor of the Nation to the president of the Council on Foreign Relations.

But the sorry truth is that everything on "Real Time" that's meant to be funny isn't, including Maher's opening monologue, regular Paul Tompkins, and (especially) the guest comics who perform at each show's end. It all feels tired and smug. Infinitely pleased with himself, Maher needs to realize that the value of being the smartest guy in the room varies considerably with the quality of the rooms you choose to hang out in. His hodgepodge conglomeration of pet positions -- for the legalization of marijuana, against the demonization of porn, contempt for religion -- developed more of a moral center with his opposition to the Iraq war, but it's still rooted in a self-congratulatory rejection of other people's sanctimony. He's pious about his own impiety.

Stewart and company, on the other hand, can articulate their derision for the state of American public life without demanding that we admire their maverick élan. In fact, "The Daily Show" regularly advances the notion that self-satisfied white guys might sometimes be part of the problem and not just the blameless (yet rakish!) casualties of moral crusaders run amok. The show specializes in satires of bogus experts: No matter what the subject at hand, for example, Stephen Colbert is introduced as the show's "senior analyst." He's the senior U.N. analyst, senior media analyst, senior theater analyst, senior death analyst (commenting on a Texas execution), etc. He can always be counted on to speak utter drivel with unflappable authority.

After the war started, Stewart had the following conversations with Colbert, who was wearing his "senior media analyst" hat:

Stewart: What should the media's role be in covering the war?

Colbert: Very simply, the media's role should be the accurate and objective description of the hellacious ass-whomping we're handing the Iraqis.

Stewart: Hellacious ass-whomping? Now to me, that sounds pretty subjective.

Colbert: Are you saying it's not an ass-whomping, Jon? I suppose you could call it an ass-kicking or an ass-handing-to. Unless, of course, you love Hitler.

Stewart [stammering]: I don't love Hitler.

Colbert: Spoken like a true Hitler-lover.

Stewart: Look, even some American generals have said that the Iraqis have put up more resistance than they were expected to.

Colbert: First rule of journalism, Jon, is to know your sources. Sounds like these "generals" of yours may be a little light in the combat boots, if you know what I'm saying.

Stewart: I don't think I know what you're saying.

Colbert: I'm saying they're queers, Jon. They're Hitler-loving queers.

Stewart: I'm perplexed. Is your position that there's no place for negative words or even thoughts in the media?

Colbert: Not at all, Jon. Doubts can happen to everyone, including me, but as a responsible journalist, I've taken my doubts, fears, moral compass, conscience and all-pervading skepticism about the very nature of this war and simply placed them in this empty Altoids box. [Produces box.] That's where they'll stay, safe and sound, until Iraq is liberated.

Stewart: Isn't it the media's responsibility in wartime ...

Colbert: That's my point, Jon! The media has no responsibility in wartime. The government's on top of it. The media can sit this one out.

Stewart: And do what?

Colbert: Everything it's always wanted to do but had no time for: travel, see the world, write that novel. I know the media has always wanted to try yoga. This is a great time to take it up. It's very stressful out there -- huge war going on. Jon, hear me out, it was Thomas Jefferson who said, "Everyone imposes his own system as far as his army can reach."

Stewart: Stephen, Stalin said that. That was Stalin. Jefferson said he'd rather have a free press and no government than a government and no free press.

Colbert: Well, what do you expect from a slave-banging, Hitler-loving queer?

The sketch doesn't do much more than take the through-the-looking-glass logic operating behind the stances of many media professionals and exaggerate it just a hair. It's a far better way of needling the mindlessness of mainstream journalism than to simply rail against them for kowtowing to popular sentiment.

It also requires more modesty from Stewart as a performer than most of today's comics could manage. He's willing to play the straight man, not just to the show's other performers, but to the truth itself. His is a variation on the old Lt. Columbo technique, feigning bewilderment and requesting explanations that only underline how nonsensical someone else is being. Before the war, Stewart announced with a delivery that started out confident and ended in puzzlement, "Unless the U.N. authorizes the use of force against Iraq for disregarding its guidelines, the U.S. will unilaterally attack Iraq, thus disregarding the U.N.'s guidelines."

Here's another exchange from the same period, also with Colbert, "senior U.N. analyst," about the deadline by which Saddam Hussein was ordered to provide proof that he had destroyed any weapons of mass destruction:

Stewart: Haven't there been some rumors that he may not even have some of those weapons?

Colbert: That would be a huge headache for Saddam. In that case, he'd have to build factories to create the weapons, create them, admit to having created them and then destroy them. Again, by Monday. It's nearly impossible, Jon, unless he possesses weapons of mass destruction, in which case he can use them to destroy his weapons of mass destruction ...

Stewart: I'm confused. We think he has weapons, but if he doesn't ...

Colbert: Jon, don't confuse him actually having them with the threat posed by our thinking he has them. Just imagine what Saddam could do if he did what we're imagining he'll do. It's almost unimaginable.

There's more than a touch of Monty Python here, but the political sting is distinctly American.

It's not that Stewart doesn't get to make his share of the jokes -- most recently, after showing a clip of Donald Rumsfeld scolding Syria, he said, "Did you see what he just did there? We're in the middle of a war and he's starting another war. We're already fighting Iraq and he's like, 'By the way, Syria? You want a piece?' ... There's nothing like a cantankerous old man who takes a 'Hey, you kids, get off my lawn!' approach to foreign policy." But even then, Stewart never ditches his average-guy persona. This is, as Frank Rich pointed out recently in the New York Times, an example that Michael Moore, our best-known left humorist, would do well to follow. Moore has always been most persuasive when he is funny -- that is, when he is shambling and befuddled and asking questions -- and least so when he's preaching.

What the creators of "The Daily Show" understand is that in times like ours -- the era of "freedom fries" -- a good humorist doesn't need to grandstand and sometimes barely needs to editorialize at all. "Our show is obviously at a disadvantage with any of the other news shows we're competing against," Stewart said at the beginning of one episode, shortly after the war began. "For one thing, we are fake. They are not. So in terms of credibility, we are ... well, oddly enough we're about even."

© 2003 Salon.com

Send In The Clowns

This following poem is composed entirely of actual quotes from George W. Bush. It was compiled and arranged by Washington Post writer Richard Thompson.

Make the Pie Higher

I think we all agree, the past is over.
This is still a dangerous world.
It's a world of madmen
And uncertainty
And potential mental losses.

Rarely is the question asked
Is our children learning?
Will the highways of the internet
Become more few?
How many hands have I shaked?

They misunderestimate me.
I am a pitbull on the pantleg of opportunity.
I know that the human being and the fish
Can coexist.

Families is where our nation finds hope
Where our wings take dream.
Put food on your family!
Knock down the tollbooth!
Vulcanize society!
Make the pie higher!
Make the pie higher!