John le Carré piles on

...
Probably no American president in history has been so universally hated abroad as Bush: for his bullying unilateralism, his dismissal of international treaties, his reckless indifference to the aspirations of other nations and cultures, his contempt for institutions of world government, and above all for misusing the cause of anti-terrorism in order to unleash an illegal war — and now anarchy — upon a country that like too many others around the world was suffering under a hideous dictatorship but had no hand in the events of 9/11, no weapons of mass destruction and no record of terrorism except as an ally of the United States in a dirty war against Iran
...

Thanks again to shrillblog.

Neoconservative bastion tips bucket on President Dubya, for the good of the country

The New Republic has eloquently, angrily, denounced the presidency of George W Bush:

... In domestic policy, Bush has been Newt Gingrich without the candor. Like Gingrich, he envisions stripping away many of the welfare-state protections that shield economically vulnerable Americans from the vagaries of the free market (while insulating corporations ever more from those same forces). But, rather than explicitly opposing popular government programs, as Gingrich did, Bush has pursued a more duplicitous strategy: He is eviscerating the government's ability to pay for them. His tax cuts, while sold as short-term measures to revive the economy, actually represent long-term assaults on the progressive tax code. If allowed to fully take effect, they will substantially shift the tax burden from unearned wealth to income, dramatically increasing inequality. And they will produce what Bush's former Treasury secretary, Paul O'Neill, has privately called a "fiscal crisis"--a collapse in government revenue just as the baby-boom retirement sends Medicare and Social Security costs skyrocketing. This crisis will sap America's ability to wage the war on terrorism--since government will lack the funds to adequately safeguard homeland security or expand the military....

[Thanks to Brad DeLong and shrillblog]

Bjorn Lomborg - behaving badly

Danish environmental superstar (contrarian/denialist/selfpromoter) Bjorn Lomborg says

Global warming will harm people in 100 years when there will be far fewer poor people. The best thing you can do is make people rich.

... hmmmm.
Lomborg and which army claims this? The bright eyed boy would have you believe that he is supported by a panel of eight well reputed economists - "Bring me my Nobel Laureates!" - who met earlier this year in Copenhagen to engage in a little cost/benefit analysis of some of the world's current problems. In fact, they specifically addressed themselves to consideration of certain current, quantifiable problems and made it clear that, while they believe the world faces many other, serious, problems, none which were not quantifiable were tackled by them this time. Fair enough, and the idea of asking them wasn't bad. It's just a shame Lomborg doesn't do his own economists the courtesy of representing their conclusions (pdf) accurately. What they actually said was

"The panel recognised that global warming must be addressed, but agreed that approaches based on too abrupt a shift toward lower emissions of carbon are needlessly expensive. The experts expressed an interest in an alternative, proposed in one of the opponent papers, that envisaged a carbon tax much lower in the first years of implementation than the figures called for in the challenge paper, rising gradually in later years. Such a proposal however was not examined in detail in the presentations put to the panel, and so was not ranked. The panel urged increased funding for research into more affordable carbon-abatement technologies."

The economists have acquitted themselves with dignity, it would seem, so much so that Lomborg is forced to misrepresent their views or risk derailing his anti-environmentalist bandwagon. This he unfortunately does, proving himself an anti-Green zealot and ideologue, not scientist or scholar.

Al Gore speaks well, four years late

It's very long and I haven't read it all but there are plenty of strong moments in this speech delivered by Al Gore, 18 October 2004, at Georgetown University Washington, DC.

........ the simplicity of his pronouncements, which are often misinterpreted as evidence that he has penetrated to the core of a complex issue, are in fact exactly the opposite -- they mark his refusal to even consider complexity. That is a particularly difficult problem in a world where the challenges we face are often quite complex and require rigorous analysis.
........
The essential cruelty of Bush’s game is that he takes an astonishingly selfish and greedy collection of economic and political proposals then cloaks it with a phony moral authority, thus misleading many Americans who have a deep and genuine desire to do good in the world. And in the process he convinces them to lend unquestioning support for proposals that actually hurt their families and their communities.
........
I did not accuse the president of intentionally deceiving the American people, but rather, noted the remarkable coincidence that all of his arguments turned out to be based on falsehoods.
........

Reads well so far, see the whole thing here

Friends like these

Priceless - George W Bush has just received the endorsement of Iran for the forthcoming US presidential election. (hat tip Desade)

Republicans spinning furiously in the air, in the media and in their graves.

Weak leadership

Daniel Drezner is the thinking Republican's person (or permutations on that) and he has been wrestling with his conscience of late. He's been feeling uncomfortably incapable of voting for George W Bush and the gang in the '04 elections. Daniel's thinking is interesting and well worth consideration, but we naturally prefer the following comments he received (from us posting as "Winston"):

That comment by Greg Djerejian (whomever he is - I admit I haven't read him) is so lame that it deserves Fisking.

I will go to my grave not knowing that. I can't answer it. I can't explain the strategic obsession with Iraq--why it rose to the top of people's priority list. I just can't explain why so many people thought this was so important to do.

You know, timid people will ignore the elephant in the living room right up until it treads all over their delicate sensibilities and polite manners. Realists can answer a question as straightforward as Djerejian's with the word "Israel". Elaboration would also be possible, but "Israel" would appear regularly throughout any answer

But if there was a hidden reason, the one I heard most was that we needed to change the geopolitical momentum after 9/11. People wanted to show that we can dish it out as well as take it. We're not a pitiful helpless giant. We can play offense as well as defense.

The sad thing about this is that any giant who reasons that way is, truly, a "pitiful" one. Parents know something about kids who lash out at weaker kids when they're themselves being bullied. It's not admiration they feel for them under the circumstances. This is upsetting commentary from Daniel when this stuff is touted as "must read". Why - aren't there opinions even lamer than this out there for us to waste our time on if that is what we seek?

This crap about the "post 9/11" world is, also, alright for the kiddies and Bush voters to babble on about. Daniel can and does do better. The only thing that changed on 9/11 was that the reality of missed chances, intelligence and security failures, and hamfisted US foreign policy - all fomenting away nicely right throughout Clinton's watch - finally blew up in the face of an even more clueless administration. The world didn't change that day, but Uncle Sam should have woken up a little to reality.

If the USA wants to continue in a happy world of its own imaginings and dreams, oblivious to harsh reality, then it has the chance real soon now to vote four more years to the schoolyard bullies who brag that they and their empire of hubris are the reality of your dreams. Rove (presumably) is quite correct to say that we create our own reality. Thing is - that fact doesn't help you if you don't know much about the rest of the world around you, and don't understand what kind of reality it would be good for you to create. Children spin their dreams in sandpits and their castles in the air, with mom and dad to look out for them. America is presently spinning its dreams in a bear pit, while the adults are fast losing what was their great compassion and sympathy for the once great giant.

Truth is that the best of Americans today still represent what is most noble and admirable in western civilization. None of those Americans will vote for a weak man like George W Bush for President of the United States.

That group which the right wingnuts know as the "hate-filled" voters against Bush waits to warmly welcome Daniel Drezner to the shrill inner fold!

Hatefilled jokesters against George!

Hilarious! - John Stewart and The Daily Show, the comedy show that witting Americans go to for their real news. Why do they do it? The main US news media, the Rupertworld and Richard Mellon Scaife and even, sadly, New York Times end of the business, no longer present any truth or even the semblance of reality (beyond the modern verity that all there is is political spin, anyway) to their audiences.

Or a page full of Bush jokes.

You might as well laugh, things aren't getting any better ...

The truth enslaves

Here is today's lesson delivered by the rogue Bush family of the once titanic USA.

From Ron Suskind in the New York Times Magazine:

In the summer of 2002, after I had written an article in Esquire that the White House didn't like about Bush's former communications director, Karen Hughes, I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. He expressed the White House's displeasure, and then he told me something that at the time I didn't fully comprehend -- but which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency.

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

And Bev Conover quotes from Uri Dowbenko's "Bushwhacked: Inside Stories of True Conspiracy":

Then there is the chilling statement Iran-contra insider Al Martin told Dowbenko that Jeb Bush made to him in 1986, during a visit to Jeb's Bush Codina Realty office in Miami: "The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't buy groceries with the truth. You can't pay rent with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross—all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another think coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have any money."

America teeters on the brink of the abyss - but if it falls that will be applauded by the fundamentalist loons who have set it there, and welcomed as the coming of the Apocalypse and the Saving of all True Believers and God's faithful. Thus goes the mightiest nation of all time, defeated from within and brought down by the dark night of its own lost soul, its hubris, and its own brutish strength.

Open Letter to ol' Doctor Horsefeathers

Stephen, this kind of stuff is just a little bit too poor.

After your worthwhile observations on the thousand petty slights to one's ego that a normal day may bring, which were pithy and to the point, you next opine

"It's very difficult to accept that people want us dead so that Allah's perfect world can come into existence"

This then is you talking to the librull strawman that you're obsessing about through all of your essays - a strawman that probably doesn't even approximate to more than a tiny fraction of the livin' 'n breathin' 'n Bush-hatin' liberals you despise.

It's a strawman because in reality - the reality of almost anyone who lived through the events of September 11 if nothing else - it's not at all hard to comprehend just, precisely, what you are claiming them stoooopid librulls jist don't get.
Stephen - they all understand that there are Muslim fanatics out to murder Americans. So the reason people see George Bush as a fool and a danger is not that they just don't get what you believe they can't understand.

So you're wrong. So are most of us most of the time so you're in company, bud. When you get to a point where you can conceive that others may deplore this administration's approach while themselves being under no illusions whatsoever as to the nature of the Islamic fanaticism we face, and being willing to take the fight right to those terrorists with nothing other in mind than the intent to win the battle and the larger war as well - then you'll be writing better stuff than you are today.
Best wishes,
Nort [possibly channelling Joe Conrad]

Saddam Hussein: "Guilty of thought crime" - Bush/Cheney/Wolfowitz/barroomparrots

Apparently dead to irony and unaware that this year of our Lord, 2004, is twenty years beyond the title date of that novel written by George Orwell in 1948 as the Cold War was getting under way, Dick "Head" Cheney today declared that Saddam Hussein had held evil thoughts toward the United States.

"This fully justified the war on Iraq"

said the Head man

".. or the effectual president of the USA is not George W Bush!"

Unrest broke out as secret service agents attempted to remove one or two journalists who initially seemed keen to ask questions of Mr Head. Questioning of the Head/Bush administration's statements has been so far off the agenda for so long that the agents had apparently forgotten what real questions sounded like. A small blogger in the room reminded them, and somebody else pointed out that 1984 was a novel, not a Head/Bush user manual, and peace was restored as Mr Head left the building with surprising alacrity.