Bush Critic Ends Up On No-Fly List

Ken AshfordBush & Co., War on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Jim Moore is a former TV news correspondent and author.  He has an Anglo name, pays tens of thousands of dollars every year in taxes, has never been arrested, has never been late with a credit card payment, and "cries after the first two notes of the national anthem".

He’s also a Bush critic.  He is best known for the popular book "Bush’s Brain" (about Karl Rove). 

As he writes here, he’s also on the No Fly Watch List, a list for suspected terrorist.

Of course, merely being a critic of Bush and Rove shouldn’t get one on the No Fly Watch List.  But Moore is mystified as to how he got there, and suspects there’s a connection between his books and his appearance on the list.

And be honest, don’t you too?

The Bush Medicare Plan

Ken AshfordHealth CareLeave a Comment

Here’s how bad it is:

For starters, coverage is woefully inadequate. You pay a $250 deductible and then a 25 percent co-pay on the first $2,250 of drug benefits each year, plus roughly another $450 a year in premiums. So if your prescriptions cost $2,250 a year, or about $190 a month, for prescriptions, you pay $1,200 a year all told and the plan pays just $1050.

That’s pretty shabby. But then, the truly bizarre feature of the plan kicks in. Coverage simply disappears, until you have spent nearly $3,100 out of pocket. This is the infamous "hole in the donut." Coverage kicks in again only after a total of $5,100 in prescription costs.

A great many seniors will never get the coverage because the plan is a bad bargain, and they just won’t sign up. Of if they do sign up, they will run out of the ability to pay enough out of pocket before qualifying for needed benefits. Even with these disgracefully skimpy benefits, the plan is expected to add over half a trillion to the federal budget over the next decade.

Kevin Drum is right.  This looks like a piece of legislation specifically designed to prove that the federal government can’t be trusted to administer healthcare.  Of course, the people who believe that the federal government can’t be trusted to administer healthcare …are the same people actually running the federal government and pushing for this bill.  So what else do you expect?

There is a popular school of thought that federal government and regulation is inherently bad.  That’s all well and good for members of the citizenry, but does that mean we should elect people who dislike federal government to actually be the federal government?  That makes about as much sense as having a Christian Scientist become Surgeon General, or (if you prefer) Jane Fonda as Secretary of Defense.

John Cage Composition To End In 2639

Ken AshfordPopular CultureLeave a Comment

Composer John Cage, who died in 1992, is perhaps best known for his musical piece 4’33":

It consists of the pianist going to the piano, and not hitting any keys for four minutes and thirty-three seconds.  (He uses a stopwatch to time this.)  In other words, the entire piece consists of silences — silences of different lengths, they say.

(Click here to see and hear a performance of 4’33" as performed by the BBC Symphony Orchestra).

[NOTE:  4’33"is a piece that’s hard to get out of your head.  As I lay in bed late last night trying to get some sleep, I swear I heard this being performed]

But John Cage also composed a piece called "ASLAP", which is short for "as slow as possible".  It was originally scored for piano, but Cage reworked the piece for organ (renaming it "organ2/ASLAP").  The point of the piece, Cage said before he died, was that it should be played as slowly as possible.

In 1997, a group of musicians in Germany got together and formed The John Cage Organ Project.  They decided they would perform "organ2/ASLAP" as Cage intended — i.e., it would be played "as slow as possible".

The concert began on September 5, 2001 in an abandoned Buchardi church in Halberstadt, eastern Germany.  A year and a half later, the first chord of the piece was played on an organ specially built for the Project.

Today at 5:00 pm GMT, the second chord (comprising A, C and F-sharp) is being played.  Weights will hold the organ keys down until it is time to play the next chord, sometime in late 2007.  Read more.

Attacking Bush’s Only Weapon: Fear

Ken AshfordWar on Terrorism/TortureLeave a Comment

Everybody’s talking about Glenn Greenwald’s post at Hullabaloo.  A taste:

And literally for four years, this is what Americans have heard over and over and over from their Government – that we face a mortal and incomparably powerful enemy on the precipice of destroying us, and only the most extreme measures taken by our Government can save us. We are a nation engaged in a War of Civilizations whose very existence is in imminent jeopardy. …

It is that deeply irrational, fear-driven view of the world which has to be undermined in order to make headway in convincing Americans that this Administration is engaged in intolerable excesses and abuses of its power. The argument which needs to be made is the one that we have seen starting to arise in the blogosphere and elsewhere: that living in irrational fear of terrorists and sacrificing our liberties and all of our other national goals in their name is the approach of hysterics and cowards, not of a strong, courageous and resolute nation.

Read the whole thing.  This is what I’ve been saying for a long long time.

What’s The Difference Between A Neo-Con President And A “Con” President?

Ken AshfordRepublicansLeave a Comment

Not much.  Mark Schmitt observes:

Roughly speaking, there have been four great showdowns over abuse of executive power in modern U.S. history.

The earliest has to do with domestic surveillance by the CIA, and other ill-conceived schemes, as revealed by the 1975 Church Committee hearings.

The second, closely overlapping the first, involved all the excesses of the Nixon administration, including Watergate itself, the "Plumbers," the secret bombing of Cambodia, Kissinger"s wiretapping of staffers, etc.

The third, the Iran-Contra scandal in the Reagan Administration, seems quaint compared to the fourth, the Bush administration"s NSA domestic surveillance program, and the broader assertion of executive authority to torture and otherwise ignore international law.

These episodes have certain themes in common. Yes, one of them is that they were all hatched in the first term of Republican presidencies and revealed only after reelection…

Those Who Can’t Do, Teach

Ken AshfordIraqLeave a Comment

Bush, today, apparently with a straight face (from the White House website):

First, we’re going to work with the Iraqi government to increase the training Iraqi police recruits receive in human rights and the rule of law, so they understand the role of the police in a democratic society.

Yup.  The Bush Administration is going to teach Iraqis about human rights and the rule of law.

The Question

Ken AshfordWiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

Atrios asked a question several days ago, and Bush apologists still can’t answer it:

No one has yet managed to explain how revealing that the administration illegally spies on American citizens without obtaining warrants, instead of legally spying on people after obtaining such warrants, damages national security.

The only plausible answer is that the revelation clues in suspected terrorists that their communications are being monitored.

But don’t they already know that??  Isn’t that why they talk in code?

Dave Barry Reviews 2005

Ken AshfordRandom MusingsLeave a Comment

Read it.  Some samples….

From June:

In disturbing medical news, a new study of 1,000 Americans finds that obesity in the United States has gotten so bad that there actually were, upon closer scrutiny, only 600 Americans involved in the study.

From November:

President Bush, needing to make another appointment to the Supreme Court, conducts a thorough and painstaking investigation of every single woman lawyer within an eight-foot radius of his desk. He concludes that the best person for the job is White House Counsel Harriet Miers, who, in the tradition of such legendary justices as Felix Frankfurter, Louis Brandeis and Oliver Wendell Holmes, is a carbon-based life form.

Lead Paragraphs We Love

Ken AshfordGodstuff, Sex/Morality/Family ValuesLeave a Comment

From CNN:

OKLAHOMA CITY, Oklahoma (AP) — A pastor who has spoken out against homosexuality was arrested after propositioning a male undercover police officer outside a hotel, authorities said.

UPDATE:  Big Brass Blog has more.  Apparently, the pastor offered up oral sex, but told reporters later that he was "pastoring to the police".

Oh, is that what they call it these days?

Best headline: "Tulsa pastor arrested; Tried to ‘lay hands‘"

Christiane Amanpour Update

Ken AshfordWiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

Re: my posts here and here

It looks like NBC is looking into whether or not there was eavvesdropping on the CNN journalist,  Yestreday, NBC released the following statement:

"Unfortunately this transcript was released prematurely. It was a topic on which we had not completed our reporting, and it was not broadcast on ‘NBC Nightly News’ nor on any other NBC News program. We removed that section of the transcript so that we may further continue our inquiry."

[Source]

Blogometer surveys the reaction.  Favorite comment comes from Josh Marshall:

"Despite the fact that it’s framed as a question, Mitchell inevitably becomes in some sense a fact witness for the underlying claim. She legitimizes the question and strongly suggests she has at least some evidence that it is true. Okay, so someone at NBC screwed up. Mistakes happen. But the bell can’t be unrung."

You Knew This Was Coming…

Ken AshfordGodstuffLeave a Comment

Pat Robertson says that God is punishing Ariel Sharon:

The Rev. Pat Robertson said Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is being punished by God for dividing the Land of Israel. Robertson, speaking on the “700 Club” on Thursday, suggested Sharon, who is currently in an induced coma, and former Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, assassinated by an Israeli extremist in 1995, were being treated with enmity by God for dividing Israel. “He was dividing God’s land,” Robertson said. “And I would say, Woe unto any prime minister of Israel who takes a similar course to appease the E.U., the United Nations or the United States of America. God says, This land belongs to me. You better leave it alone.”

Who will Pat reveal next to be the object of God’s wrath?  Will it be Patrick Crenshaw?

The Strange Gets Stranger

Ken AshfordWiretapping & SurveillanceLeave a Comment

Early today, I posted about Andrea Mitchell’s interview with James Risen.  In that interview, Andrea Mitchell pointedly asked Risen if he knew anything about government wiretapping of CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour.  Risen said "no", but it caused me (among others) to wonder what prompted the question in the first place.  Was Andrea Mitchell aware of something that nobody else is?

I copied the section of the NBC interview, and provided a link.

But here’s the thing…..

Since that post, NBC has edited the transcript of the interview . . . omitting that question!!  Why?

AmericaBlog has more.