Spain is in shock, the BBC says. "Hundreds of people visited makeshift shrines at the railway stations affected by the attacks. Black ribbons were tied to cars, posted in windows and draped over flags on public buildings."

 

Yes, like New York after September 11. For several weeks the city was one big alter, with photos of the dead and flowers and ribbons and flags and votive candles as far as the eye can see. Grief made visible. 

 

I've held off commenting on the terrorist tragedy in Madrid. This is partly because of lack of time and partly because we don't know who was responsible and partly because I didn't have anything original to say. And also, perhaps, because this hits awfully close to home for me.

 

This is the way our lives our now. Since September 11, New Yorkers have lived with armed National Guard in major transportation hubs, such as Grand Central and Penn Station. It was startling at first, but now it's part of the scenery. 

 

However, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the state of New York says that "MTA subways, buses, and railroads move 2.4 billion New Yorkers a year." I calculate that on an average day MTA provides about 66,000 rides in a public transportation network that covers about 5,000 square miles. The MTA cannot conduct 66,000 body searches a day. The MTA cannot patrol 5,000 square miles to look for bombs.

 

The Bush Administration says it is stepping up security for commuter trains. I'll report if I notice any increased security.

 

New Yorkers, eyewitnesses to the terrorist attack of September 11, know all too well that a bomb could turn a train car or bus full of commuters into mangled meat in a can. And if you are in a tunnel or on a bridge, there's no way to escape. This is a reality we live with. But life goes on, and so does commuting.

 

But we don't forget.

 

It's a damn shame that, on September 11, we in the United States had Flightsuit Boy as a President instead of a real leader. A real leader would have united the world in a relentless hunt for al Qaeda. Instead, we got sidetracked into Iraq and squandered our good relations with the rest of the planet.

 

And now Madrid grieves. And if we find out the perpetrators were connected to al Qaeda, we can only wonder if having real leadership in the White House might have prevented this.

 

Some speculate that, should the Madrid bombing prove to be the work of al Qaeda, Europeans will want to close ranks with George W. Bush in the war on terror.  But it seems just as likely that Europeans will blame Bush for being the incompetent, smirking asshole that he is and hold him partly responsible. He blew it in Afghanistan; he didn't follow through when al Qaeda was on the ropes, and now they are building back. And his arrogance and blunders in Iraq have stirred the fires of jihad. 

 

And speaking of September 11 -- Donald Rumsfeld and others kept bleeping souvenirs of the September 11 attacks. Rummy's been keeping a piece of the airplane that flew into the Pentagon on his desk. A few days ago it was disclosed that a Tiffany globe paperweight taken from the World Trade Center site had been gracing an FBI desk in Minneapolis.  An FBI assistant director of terrorism had items collected and given to "dignitaries." And visiting FBI agents "cut World Trade Center security patches from the sleeves of shirt pieces found in the rubble." Unbelievable.

 

Gaffes Worry Bush Backers

 

Bush's Missile Defense Folly

 

Bush Ads Link Kerry to Al Gore

 

Young Evangelicals and Gay Rights

 

Molly Ivins: Bush Is the Flip-Flopper

 

Ashcroft Wants Easier Internet Wiretaps

 

"Dumbocrat Morans! You Are Doomed!"

 

White House Bullied Official to Lie About Medicare

 

It seems fairly obvious by now that the Bush administration likes being lied to. It is even paying for the privilege of being screwed over. This is sort of reverse crooked. It is to crookedness as sado-masochism is to sex. But there are grounds for suspicion of out and out crookedness, too. Reuters reports (as will all the major newspapers today) that the Defense Intelligence Agency is paying Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress $340,000 per month for "intelligence." The INC is the organization that lied to the US until it was blue in the face, falsely claiming it knew for sure that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and weapons. It supplied single-source reports from defectors that were full of tale tales. [Juan Cole]

In the religion corner (we're talking metaphor here, remember), we have the pro-"trade" crowd. Here Trade is God: omnipotent, omniscient, beneficent. We reward Trade by shifting all federal dollars to the producers of wealth (if not goods), the theory being that with a modest investment we will get back vast multiples of dollars--money that will benefit us down to the last Wal-Mart associate. Putting federal dollars toward things like social services is folly--how can it ever multiply like Trade? Furthermore, workers are line items on the expense side of the spreadsheet. They are regarded as obstacles to Trade. Reward them not directly, but through the manifold benefits Trade will bestow later on, when we're all wealthy.

On the science side of things are a shadowy and dangerous cabal who appeal to logic. With their pointy, evil heads, they cast away the Faith of Trade and whisper Newton's heresy about actions and reactions. They argue that the economy is a massive Ponzi scheme that will eventually (some say soon!) implode. [Jeff Alworth, the american street]

MaxSpeak is struck by the vehemence of anti-critique directed at those who describe the lamentable job market. It's not just the Bushies and their legion of mental-munchkin bloggers, whose interest in the debate is transparent. Rather, it comes from the responsible, elite, ignorant middle of the spectrum of economic policy commentary. I'm talking about the editorialists and columnists (Robert Samuelson, David Ignatius, etc.) at the Washington Post, the New(t) Republic, and other would-be popularizers of the dismal science. [MaxSpeak]

1. Outlawing abortion. The "partial birth" abortion ban Bush and a pack of other old white men signed into law in November was just a first step to making sure the women of America have no access to medically safe abortions.
2. Restricting stem cell research, thereby prolonging the suffering of countless diseased people and putting scientific researchers in America at a terrible disadvantage.
3. Preventing homosexual persons from getting married.

Yessirree, folks, this is "compassionate conservatism" at its finest.

Of course, at a time when Wall Street is on a slide, we're more than 3 million jobs in an unemployment hole, and our record trade deficit threatens to swamp the economy of the entire globe, not to mention the fact that the Middle East is increasingly unstable and our military is stretched too thin, and not to mention Haiti and North Korea and who knows what else ... you'd think the items listed above would not be priorities, even if you agreed with them.

Well, you'd think. Obviously, some people don't.

The fliers and advertisements do not violate restrictions on the use of federal money for "publicity or propaganda purposes," but they are flawed by "omissions and other weaknesses," said the legal opinion by Anthony H. Gamboa, general counsel of the accounting office.

For example, Mr. Gamboa said, the administration did not point out that beneficiaries might be charged up to $30 for drug discount cards that become available in June. Likewise, he said, the administration incorrectly suggested that the law set a premium of $35 a month for drug coverage, beginning in 2006. That amount, he said, is only an estimate and ignores the penalties that could be imposed on people who delay enrolling.

The administration plans to spend more than $22 million on the advertisements and brochures, which publicize drug benefits, new coverage for preventive health services and new insurance options. Medicare officials said the advertisements and fliers were a way to educate beneficiaries, as the law requires. [Tom Curry, MSNBC, March 8, 2004]

The South Korean daily, Chosun Ilbo, reports that Kerry is good friends with a Korean man named Kim Chang-sik. He is a Zen master and founder of a school of martial arts in the Boston area known as Shim Gum Do.

Kerry and Kim Chang-sik "exchange letters once a month to exchange views on Zen and spiritual discipline, and meet whenever the need arises," Chosun Ilbo reports.

According to sources associated with Shim Gum Do, Kerry is not a student of the practice, "but is known to have much interest in Eastern Zen and other forms of spiritual training. Although he's never visited Korea, he is reported to have said he would like to visit Buddhist holy spots in this country."

I hope Master Kim Chang-sik is invited to the inaguration.

Marie Cocco: Bush Owes 9/11 Answers, Not Ads

Officials at the commission said it was reasonable to estimate that Afghanistan had hundreds of such cases in a year.

"It is not only in Herat; it is in all of Afghanistan," said Dr. Soraya Rahim, deputy minister of women's affairs, on her return from a government investigative trip to Herat.

"It takes different forms in different provinces," she said in a telephone interview. "Some take tablets. Some cut their wrists. Some hang themselves. Some burn themselves.

"But the reason is very important. The first reason is our very bad tradition of forced marriage. Girls think this is the only way, that there is no other way in life."

Fat lot of good we did them, huh? Of course, the situation these women face was not caused by America but by age-old cultural attitudes toward women. Still, we'd like to think life is better for them after the routing of the Taliban. I guess not.

See also this story in today's Guardian, which says that women in Iraq really are worse off because of the war.

The Ba'ath regime's "faithfulness campaign", an act of terrorism against women that included the summary beheading of scores of those accused of prostitution, is just one example of its brutality against women.

However, it is now almost a year after the war, which was supposed to bring "liberation" to Iraqis. Rather than an improvement in the quality of women's lives, what we have seen is widespread violence, and an escalation of violence against women.

From the start of the occupation, rape, abduction, "honour" killings and domestic violence have became daily occurrences. The Organisation of Women's Freedom in Iraq (Owfi) has informally surveyed Baghdad, and now knows of 400 women who were raped in the city between April and August last year.

A lack of security and proper policing have led to chaos and to growing rates of crime against women. Women can no longer go out alone to work, or attend schools or universities. An armed male relative has to guard a woman if she wants to leave the house.

Republican politicians are chilled by a story making the rounds in the state's political circles. A delegation of North Carolina factory owners recently went to Washington to plead for relief from foreign competition. They returned complaining that the president's agents responded with the ''free trade'' mantra. Their verdict: They could no longer support Bush. North Carolina may be changing from a certain ''red'' state (carried by Bush with 56 percent in 2000) to a potential battleground with hopes for capturing Edwards' Senate seat diminishing. ...

State Sen. Fred Smith, a rising new face in North Carolina Republican politics, told me the GOP will be saved here by conservative social values -- in particular, opposition to gay marriage. But many Republicans disagree as they ponder this question: Can a debate over homosexuals getting married in other states really trump China-bashing on jobs lost in North Carolina? [Bob Novak, "Protectionist Tilt Worries GOP," The Chicago Sun-Times, March 8, 2004]

The Labor Department report [released Friday morning] was as grim as faces on a bread line. Despite all the president's promises, the economy added just 21,000 jobs last month. No jobs were added by the private sector. The 21,000 additional jobs were all government hires.

The report also showed that job growth in December and January was worse than previously believed. The January tally was revised from 112,000 to 97,000. The December count dropped from 16,000 to a pathetic 8,000. ...

The nation is in an employment crisis and the end is not in sight. The Bush administration has no plan, other than a continued ludicrous reliance on additional tax cuts. The White House continued to say on Friday that making the president's tax cuts permanent would be an important step toward solving the employment problem. [Bob Herbert, "The Unrecognizable Recovery," The New York Times, March 8, 2004]

Allan Lichtman, a political scientist at American University in Washington, said the events call attention to Bush as "both the macho guy and the regular guy."

"Despite all the charges that his administration is a giveaway to the rich, this shows President Bush as in touch with the concerns and the lives of ordinary Americans in all the ways the patrician, distant, former hippie war protester John Kerry isn't," Lichtman said.

An Associated Press poll taken last week showed Bush leading Kerry by almost 20 percent among white men.