Dowd: Bush Scaring Up Votes.

Maureen Dowd in this morning's New York Times gives some good reasons to support our campaign's drive to counter the Bush air war. Some excerpts:

First came the pre-emptive military policy. Now comes the pre-emptive campaign strategy.

Before the president even knows his opponent, his first political ad is blanketing Iowa today.

"It would take one vial, one canister, one crate slipped into this country to bring a day of horror like none we have ever known," Mr. Bush says, in a State of the Union clip.

Well, that's a comforting message from our commander in chief. Do we really need his cold, clammy hand on our spine at a time when we're already rattled by fresh terror threats at home and abroad?...

The president is trying to make the campaign about guts... But the real issue is trust: should we trust leaders who cynically manipulated intelligence, diverted 9/11 anger and lost focus on Osama so they could pursue an old cause near to neocon hearts: sacking Saddam?...

James Goodby and Kenneth Weisbrode wrote in The Financial Times last week that the Bush crew has snuffed the optimism of F.D.R., Ronald Reagan and Bush père: "Fear has been used as a basis for curtailing freedom of expression and for questioning legal rights long taken for granted. It has crept into political discourse and been used to discredit patriotic public servants. Ronald Reagan's favorite image, borrowed from an earlier visionary, of America as `a shining city on a hill' has been unnecessarily dimmed by another image: a nation motivated by fear and ready to lash out at any country it defines as the source of a gathering threat."

Instead of a shining city, we have a dark bunker.

But the only thing we really have to fear is fearmongering itself.

Don't let Bush and Karl Rove get away with their fearmongering. Contribute today.

[Blog for America]

The difference between a great President and a mediocre one. You only have to read two speeches by FDR and see the huge difference between a giant of a President and a weak one.

The first is FDR's inauguration speech in 1933. This is the famous, 'Only thing we have to fear...' speech. read and realize how little has changed, or rather how we have allowed things to relapse. The first 2 paragraphs:

I am certain that my fellow Americans expect that on my induction into the Presidency I will address them with a candor and a decision which the present situation of our Nation impels. This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper.

So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself--nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory. I am convinced that you will again give that support to leadership in these critical days.

True they have tried, but their efforts have been cast in the pattern of an outworn tradition. Faced by failure of credit they have proposed only the lending of more money. Stripped of the lure of profit by which to induce our people to follow their false leadership, they have resorted to exhortations, pleading tearfully for restored confidence. They know only the rules of a generation of self-seekers. They have no vision, and when there is no vision the people perish.

Happiness lies not in the mere possession of money; it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort. The joy and moral stimulation of work no longer must be forgotten in the mad chase of evanescent profits. These dark days will be worth all they cost us if they teach us that our true destiny is not to be ministered unto but to minister to ourselves and to our fellow men.

In the field of world policy I would dedicate this Nation to the policy of the good neighbor--the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others-- the neighbor who respects his obligations and respects the sanctity of his agreements in and with a world of neighbors.

But the differences between styles is even more apparent when comparing the State of the Union Address that FDR gave in January, 1941 to Bush's. This is his famous Four Freedoms speech. On the eve of WW2, during the Depression, when democracy was under attack throughout the world, FDR addressed Congress and, in contrast to this Administration's fear-mongering, FDR gave an incredible SOTU speech.

It starts in an eerily relevant fashion:

I address you, the Members of the Seventy-Seventh Congress, at a moment unprecedented in the history of the Union. I use the word "unprecedented," because at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today...

In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms.

The first is freedom of speech and expression - everywhere in the world.

The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way - everywhere in the world.

The third is freedom from want - which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peace time life for its inhabitants -everywhere in the world.

The fourth is freedom from fear - which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world.

That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation. That kind of world is the very antithesis of the so-called new order of tyranny which the dictators seek to create with the crash of a bomb.

To that new order we oppose the greater conception - the moral order. A good society is able to face schemes of world domination and foreign revolutions alike without fear.

Post-Pearl Harbor, our country and FDR's administration was certainly not free of fear-mongering but there was a recognition of how things were supposed to be. We just get an image of a mushroom cloud over America, or some nameless biological weapon unleashed in the Heartland. And, because of these fears, we are ready to give up many of the civil liberties that have been so hard fought for.

Bush has no opponents in the Republican primaries, so he is free to run ads on TV now that play on the fears, that use media manipulation to control the message. That is the old technology. It is still powerful but will begin to yield its power to the newer technologies starting with this campaign. Today is another keystone in the progress of America. These new technologies will cause a change in how things are down, they will open up new arenas for civil discourse and blunt the power of the Major Media.

Eventually, the power elites will regain control, just as they did with TV, which was a revolutionary technology FOR change at one time, rather than a tool of stasis. But, in the meantime, they will not really understand what is happening. It should be a very interesting few years.  2:32:52 PM    

Crimes Against Nature [TOMPAINE.com - Features]

Hey, why should I worry about what my grandchildren's lives will be like? I'm rich and I am sure they will figure something out byt then. Just as long as I stay rich.  12:59:19 PM    

Toe The Line [TOMPAINE.com - Features]

Pork is pork. When the Democrats held sway, the Republicans were all over attempts by Democrats to use pork projects. Now, when the shoe is on the other foot and the Republicans are making an even more unseemly rush for the pig trough, how do the Democrats respond? Write a letter!!

I hold a lot of anger towards the Republicans and this Adminstration but I also hold alot for the piss poor leadership of the Democratic party. These guys deserve to get run over or run out. Their cowardly and wimpish behavior has allowed an imperial Presidency to remerge in collaboration with a corrupt Legislature. Where is the principled opposition? Heck, where is any effective opposition? We have Democratic leaders being given their 30 pieces of silver to vote for an energy bill that enriches the few, while screwing the many. I want my Jimmy Stewart. All we seem to have is Robert Byrd.  12:54:08 PM    

An illustration of how bad managers habitually refuse to listen and thereby sow destruction. The sad truth about how NASA managers effectively destroyed the Columbia and killed all seven astronauts aboard: they explicitly refused to look at reality; they chose to not examine the facts.

Over and over, a projector at one end of a long, pale-blue conference room in Building 13 of the Johnson Space Center showed a piece of whitish foam breaking away from the space shuttle Columbia's fuel tank and bursting like fireworks as it struck the left wing.

In twos and threes, engineers at the other end of the cluttered room drifted away from their meeting and watched the repetitive, almost hypnotic images with deep puzzlement: because of the camera angle, no one could tell exactly where the foam had hit.

It was Tuesday, Jan. 21, five days after the foam had broken loose during liftoff, and some 30 engineers from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and its aerospace contractors were having the first formal meeting to assess potential damage when it struck the wing.

Virtually every one of the participants ... agreed that the space agency should immediately get images of the impact area, perhaps by requesting them from American spy satellites or powerful telescopes on the ground.

They elected one of their number, a soft-spoken NASA engineer, Rodney Rocha, to convey the idea to the shuttle mission managers.

Mr. Rocha said he tried at least half a dozen times to get the space agency to make the requests. There were two similar efforts by other engineers. All were turned aside. ...

The Columbia's flight director, LeRoy Cain, wrote a curt e-mail message that concluded, I consider it to be a dead issue. [What a poor choice of words. Issues can be analyzed, resolved, shelved, ignored, categorized as risk, but they don't die. People die, especially when managers don't know how to deal with risk. —MK]

New interviews and newly revealed e-mail sent during the fatal Columbia mission show that the engineers' desire for outside help in getting a look at the shuttle's wing was more intense and widespread than what was described in the Aug. 26 final report of the board investigating the Feb. 1 accident...

The new information makes it clear that the failure to follow up on the request for outside imagery, the first step in discovering the damage and perhaps mounting a rescue effort, did not simply fall through bureaucratic cracks but was actively, even hotly resisted by mission managers. [NYT] [Jinn of Quality and Risk]

I think we are seeing something similar in this Adminstration. Ignoring what the experts are saying when they conflict with what you 'know' is 'true.' Generally, scientists and engineers know how easy it is to fool themselves, especially when they do not have all the information they need. They withhold judgement until they have all the info they can get, knowing that moving incorrectly can be disasterous.

Unfortunately, bad managers and bad politicians appear to react in exactly the opposite fashion when given little info. They make a decision and stick to it as it comes crashing down, knowing they can always squirm out of it. Everyone of those NASA managers should be replaced. When will NASA learn to listen to the damn engineers? If the engineers are worried, everyone should be.   12:37:58 PM    

Terrorism is a Technique, Not an Enemy State That Can Be Defeated... (Jonathan Steele). Terrorism is a Technique, Not an Enemy State That Can Be Defeated... (Jonathan Steele) [Common Dreams]

My problem with The War On Terrorism is that you can never know when it is over, when we can reurn to normal and again provide civil protections from government interference. There is no one to surrender to us, no way to know whether a lull means we have won or whether they are just waiting.

It should have been defined as a war against Osama. Go and get him and his leaders. But this adminstration decided that we needed to fight terrorism in Iraq instead of fully rooting it out from Afghanistan. Like someone who has a hard time focussing on the really important problems, this Adinstration move away from al Queda to become transfixed on Saddam. Why? It helped mid-term elections tremendously. It got the President's popularoty up. But it allowed al Queda to get itself reorganized. And we still do not has Osama. Nor do we have Saddam. Has anyone learned the lessons of England/orthern Ireland or Israel/Palestine?   12:09:58 PM