A couple of items found today --

 

First, 20,000 wild mustangs are to be slaughtered at the request of cattle growers, couresy of our federal government. "The Bush plan, spearheaded by Montana Senator Conrad Burns -- longtime bagman for Big Cattle interests -- sets a production goal of up to 20,000 wild horse corpses in the coming year, The Associated Press reports," writes Chris Floyd.

Here's how it works. The 50,000 remaining wild horses roam on federal land -- land held in common by the American people. Big-time ranchers also use this land to graze millions of their privately owned cattle. Able to buy and sell politicians like so much prime stock, the wealthy ranchers have rigged a long-running sweetheart deal that gives them access to this common pasturage at bargain prices: less than one-tenth of the going market rate for private grazing land. The result is an effective annual subsidy of more than $500 million to some of the richest men in America, The Philadelphia Inquirer reports. As always, your rootin', tootin' cowboy capitalists must be protected from the risks of the "free market" at every turn -- even as they impose it, at gunpoint, on others. ...

So the ranchers want the horses off public land so they can cram more cows in there and make more money through their sweetheart deals. The resource at issue here is grass, not oil, but the principle is the same as in Bush's witless, pig-layer adventure in Iraq: Me want, they got; kill them, give me.

As disturbing  as that is, the second item in its way is even sicker. Digby reports that James Dobson, "self-appointed moral leader of America" and child rearing expert of the right, proudly writes that he beat a dachshund with a belt.

Standard dachshunds usually weigh about 20 pounds and are prone to spinal injuries. I'm assuming the beaten dog, Siggie, is a miniature dachshund, because he weighs 12 pounds. This is according to the 200-lb. Dobson, who proudly explains that he beat the dog because he wouldn't go to his bed when ordered.

I don't know if the dog was injured, but in some places Dobson's act could have gotten him jail time.

If Dobson is moral, then give me immorality.

(Speaking of immorality, those values-free hedonists known as New Yorkers have been on the warpath lately over a destroyed hawks' nest. Latest word is that beloved Manhattanites Pale Male and Lola, both red-tailed hawks, will be permitted to rebuild their nest on a pricey Fifth Avenue apartment house.)   

Hear our humble prayer, O God, for our friends the animals,
especially for animals who are suffering;
for animals that are overworked, underfed and cruelly treated;
for all wistful creatures in captivity that beat their wings against bars;
for any that are hunted or lost or deserted or frightened or hungry;
for all that must be put death.
We entreat for them all Thy mercy and pity,
and for those who deal with them we ask a heart of compassion
and gentle hands and kindly words.
Make us, ourselves, to be true friends to animals,
and so to share the blessings of the merciful.

-- attributed to Albert Schweitzer

 

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The CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the State Department have warned President Bush that the United States and its Iraqi allies aren't winning the battle against Iraqi insurgents who are trying to derail the country's Jan. 30 elections, according to administration officials.

The officials, who agreed to speak only on condition of anonymity because intelligence estimates are classified, said the battle in Iraq wasn't lost and that successful elections might yet be held next month.

But they said the warnings -including one delivered this week to Bush by CIA Director Porter Goss - indicated that U.S. forces hadn't been able to stop the insurgents' intimidation of Iraqi voters, candidates and others who want to participate in the elections.

"We don't have an answer to the intimidation," one senior official said.

It remains to be seen whether President Bush will continue to stand by Rumsfeld or decide that he's become too much of a political liability. Rumsfeld and his backers are hoping that the storm will blow over during the holidays, two senior U.S. officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"What made Rumsfeld's response to the soldier's question a turning point was that it crystallized concern about his attitude and performance that has been growing for years," said Loren Thompson, the head of the Lexington Institute, a defense policy group that has long supported Rumsfeld but has become increasingly critical.

I said liberals need to drive home the message that "There Is No Social Security Crisis." Chris Bowers, aiming for a more positive approach, thinks "Social Security Is Healthy And Successful," which has some merit too. I think the crisis mentality sort of needs to be addressed head on, but I like the positive approach and the reminder that Social Security is a good thing (successful!) and not just some program we happen to have. Fortunately, people do get to speak in multiple sentences, even on talking head television segments (I know, I've been there, you don't get to say much, but you do get more than one sentence).

Social Security is healthy and successful. There is no crisis. The president and the Republicans in congress are trying to scare the American people to destroy the most successful program in American history -- a program presidents from Roosevelt to Truman to Nixon to Reagan to Clinton have been committed to preserving. President Bush wants to break Social Security's bipartisan promise to the American people and he's making up stories to try and convince the voters to go along with it. Even if we make no changes and the president's pessimistic assumptions come true, future benefits will be even higher than benefits are today. We need to focus on the real crisis in the rest of the budget created by the president's tax cuts for people making over $100,000 a year.

And elsewhere:

I'm not sure the older liberals who run the show quite understand how overwhelmingly important it is to keep the "there is no crisis" message front and center in the Social Security debate. Most of the young people I know -- including myself until very recently -- have been taken in by a decades-long effort on behalf of privatizers into believing that Social Security is in "crisis," and that if we do nothing the system will "go bankrupt" before we retire, meaning that the system will somehow collapse and we won't get any benefits.

If you approach the issue from inside that frame, then no amount of cavailing about benefit cuts or "risky" stock market transactions is going to get you anywhere. A smaller benefits package and a stock portfolio that may or may not pay off looks like a really good deal compared to a bankrupt pension plan that gives you nothing. Once you understand that even if we do nothing whatsoever to fix Social Security and the Trustees' overly pessimistic predictions come true, the system will still have enough money to pay my generation more in real terms then current retirees get, everything looks different. Bush is offering us a guarantee of lower benefits and $2 trillion in debt to forestall the possibility that benefits will need to be lowered sometime in the 2040s. That's a terrible deal in a straightforward way. But only if you try and see the truth: There is no crisis. If you can't make people see that, everything else becomes pretty irrelevant.

 

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All we need do is look to the Kerik debacle to see that Bush himself is now making decisions and he is doing it against the will of his advisors. It is obvious that Kerik appealed to Bush as a man's man. It was a sympatico relationship --- a pair of testosterone cowboys, one blue, one red, in love with their images as tough guys who take no shit. Bush saw in Kerik the man he now believes he is --- self-made, salt of the earth, leader of men, killer of bad guys. The empty frat boy and the crooked bureaucrat teamed up as adventure heroes.

The minute I read about this I knew that this had been a case of Bush saying "I take the man at his word, Alberto, now make it happen." This wasn't sloppy vetting. It was Junior issuing an edict based upon his vaunted "gut" with the predictable result. And I have no doubt that rather than blame himself for this mess, the Preznit blames Kerik for not being the man that Bush wanted him to be and blames the others for being right. (And I imagine that Bush will stick with Rumsfeld no matter what for the simple reason that so many want him out. That's the way dumb megalomaniacs think.)

The big question: Did Bernard Kerik fill out the proper paperwork to become police commissioner? If he did, would he have passed the test? If he did not, then why not?

When a mayor selects someone for a high-level post in city government, that nominee is required to go through an extensive background check even if they've already gone through that process for a previous city job.

In 2000, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani promoted Kerik from correction commissioner to be his top cop.

Sources say Kerik would have been required to fill out an extensive background questionnaire like the 44-page form currently used by the city.

It's an extensive form requiring clear answers to many questions, including sources of income from transfers of property or gifts. The form also asks about tax filings and any potential conflicts of interest.

Since Kerik withdrew his nomination for Homeland Security secretary, many issues have surfaced about everything from questionable gifts he allegedly accepted to ties to people convicted of crimes to his personal finances, all of which he would have been required to disclose in that questionnaire. But NewsChannel 4 is told there is no record of Kerik having filed such paperwork.

The New York Times reported recently that Kerik also did not file the proper background paperwork when he obtained FBI security clearance after 9/11 and when he accepted a job overhauling the police force in Iraq.

The purchase of about 20,000 Kalashnikov automatic weapons, 50,000 revolvers and 10 million rounds of ammunition from Jordan has also been widely criticized by Iraqi Governing Council members.

The contract was issued by the Interior Ministry during the summer when it was being supervised by the former New York City police commissioner, Bernard B. Kerik. Mr. Kerik did not respond to requests for an interview.

"It is totally unnecessary to buy them from outside the country," said Mr. Chadirji, who noted that he had purchased a number of Kalashnikovs to arm his personal bodyguards and that the price in the local market was as low as $50 for each weapon.

"Christmas is becoming taboo," said John Whitehead, the founder of an ultra-conservative Virginia organisation known as the Rutherford Institute.

"There is a pervasive political correctness movement in this country, and it is probably strongest in the public schools and in the major corporations," he said.

But the Christian brigades are fighting back. In California, the Committee to Save Merry Christmas has launched a boycott of Macy's department store, and its parent company, for wishing shoppers Season's Greetings or Happy Holidays instead of Merry Christmas.

Organisers cited "the recent presidential election showing political correctness is offending millions of Americans".

In Maine, two mothers launched a website called bringbackchristmas.org which argues that Americans have become overly sensitive about not offending minorities.

"We don't like to be melodramatic, but we are facing a world in which there are a couple million people in the Middle East whose avowed purpose is the destruction of America. By whitewashing ourselves, hiding and hushing our beliefs, and bowing to the pressure to silence who we really are, we are handing those people their victory," the website says.

All religious hatred — whether Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu or other — speaks the language of tribe and clan. And in true tribal fashion, that language is loaded with sensitivities about respect, honor and dignity. An insult or injury to any of these is sensed by all tribal members, and the only honorable recourse is full compensation or total revenge. This is an essential ethic of tribes and clans, no matter their religion.

These behaviors may worsen when tribal or clan elements are led by a sectarian chieftain who sees himself as a ruthless warlord or revolutionary. Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar of the Taliban, Muqtada Sadr, Abu Musab Zarqawi or Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev are examples of such leaders. If the people they target react in tribal ways — extreme nationalism is an example — fights over whose religion should win become inseparable from whose tribe should win. [Emphasis added]

Republican Missouri state Rep. Cynthia Davis, also a Christian radio fan who owns the Back to Basics Christian Bookstore in St. Charles County, is working on two new bills for the next session of the Missouri Legislature. One would remove the state's requirement that all forms of contraception and their potential health effects be taught in schools, leaving the focus on abstinence, reports the New York Times. Another would require publishers that sell biology textbooks to Missouri to include at least one chapter on alternative theories to evolution.

"These are common-sense, grass-roots ideas from the people I represent," Davis told the Times, "and I'd be very surprised if a majority of legislators didn't feel they were the right solutions to these problems."

Davis also elaborated on the connection she sees between supporters of birth control and mainstream science, and the foreign terrorists who used airplanes to murder thousands of Americans on 9/11.

"It's like when the hijackers took over those four planes on Sept. 11 and took people to a place where they didn't want to go," she added. "I think a lot of people feel that liberals have taken our country somewhere we don't want to go. I think a lot more people realize this is our country and we're going to take it back."

They're going to take it back, all right -- to the 19th century.

Also: How Bill O'Reilly is making America safe for Christmas.

As long as I can remember, the tone of the liberal message on abortion has been defiant, sometimes even celebratory. It’s an attitude that reflects the victory of legal abortion over back-alley dangers three decades ago -- a success that many who remember it still experience with deep emotion. It also reflects a certain well-deserved panic: Due to the rising tide of anti-abortion sentiment, abortions are available in only 13 percent of counties in this country, according to Medical Students for Choice; in his first term, Bush appointed more than 200 new anti-abortion federal judges.

Still, for those of us who came after Roe v. Wade, there is a significantly different reality. The context has changed. Back alleys and coat hangers are not part of our visceral memory. To this generation, the “choice” of a legal abortion is no longer something to celebrate. It is a decision made in crisis, and it is never one made happily. Have you ever talked to a woman who has had an abortion? Even a married, intentionally pregnant woman who has had a “D and C” for a dying or dead embryo? A college student whose birth control failed? I promise you, such a woman does not talk about exercising the “right to choose.” You may accuse her -- and me -- of taking such rights for granted, and maybe you’d be right. But mainly she will tell you how sad she is, how she wished she hadn’t had to make that “choice,” how unpleasant the procedure was. She is more likely depressed than defiant.

I'm not pro-abortion. I'm not anti-abortion. I'm anti-unwanted pregnancy. Frankly, I'm not particularly concerned about abortion rates as any sort of morality issue. Nor am I interested in any political campaign which implicitly shames women who have them.

Approximately 26 million legal and 20 million illegal abortions were performed worldwide in 1995, resulting in a worldwide abortion rate of 35 per 1,000 women aged 15–44. Among the subregions of the world, Eastern Europe had the highest abortion rate (90 per 1,000) and Western Europe the lowest rate (11 per 1,000). Among countries where abortion is legal without restriction as to reason, the highest abortion rate, 83 per 1,000, was reported for Vietnam and the lowest, seven per 1,000, for Belgium and the Netherlands. Abortion rates are no lower overall in areas where abortion is generally restricted by law (and where many abortions are performed under unsafe conditions) than in areas where abortion is legally permitted.

In California, a group called the Committee to Save Merry Christmas is boycotting Macy's and its corporate parent, Federated Department Stores, accusing them of replacing ``Merry Christmas'' signs with ones wishing shoppers ``Seasons Greetings'' or ``Happy Holidays.'' The organization cites ``the recent presidential election showing political correctness is offending millions of Americans.'' [Link]

The venerable spiritual leader Bill O'Reilly has gotten in on this act. John Doyle writes for the Globe and Mail:

According to the barking-mad Bill O'Reilly of Fox News, there is a conspiracy to squish Christmas.

It's hard to believe, I know, with Christmas advertising on TV in the United States starting before Thanksgiving. O'Reilly's theory has something to with that terrible thing, "diversity," and the Macy's retail store. (By the way, we'll get Fox News in Canada in January, but for now we can read Bill O'Reilly's wacky columns on the Internet. They're very entertaining.) Of course, Canada comes into the conspiracy. Apparently, if the U.S. doesn't look out, the place will end up like Canada and, further, 14-year-olds will be going around having sex. Like I said, it's really wacky.

To me, this episode is more proof that the "religious right" is not about religion, but tribalism.  Last I looked, Macy's was a retail department store, not a church. It is in business to sell stuff, not to advance anyone's spiritual practice.

I have kinfolk who are Seventh-Day Adventists. They don't do Christmas trees or Santa Claus, because those things aren't in the Bible. I can respect that. They see that most of the hoopla that has built up around Christmas has nothing to do with religion, and sticking "Merry Christmas" on a temple of materialism doesn't make it holy.

My understanding is that much of the trappings of Christmas -- Christmas trees and wreaths, mistletoe, yule logs -- are leftovers from pagan winter solstice festivals. Even the date of December 25, which apparently was pulled out of somebody's butt in the fourth century, may be related to a Roman sun god festival if not the winter solstice. I took a course in "Life and Teachings of Jesus" in college, and I remember the professor said that if shepherds were watching flocks by night, it was probably spring lambing season, not winter.  

In other words, Christmas has never been 100 percent pure. If you eliminated everything about it that isn't completely Christian, you'd have to do away with it entirely.

Christmas has evolved into a gawdawful, obese sloppy mess of a holiday that causes more stress than joy. If the "religious right" wants it to be more religious, step one would be to tone it down. No glitter, no tinsel, no spray-on snow, no neon reindeer on the roof. 

On the other hand, churches should be encouraged to have pretty manger scenes out front so people don't have to fight over displaying manger scenes on public property with taxpayer money.

I'd also be in favor of doing away with cheesy Christmas music -- "Frosty the Snowman," "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer," that kind of thing. Really annoying unless sung by very pretty little children, and even then I'm annoyed after about five minutes.

There are some beautiful old carols that are almost forgotten, like "Lo How a Rose" and "Shepherds Awake," that people ought to sing more because they are pretty. But give the "Drummer Boy" and "Do You Hear What I Hear" a rest. Please.

I'm not sure why the religious wingnuts are picking on Macy's, since Macy's doesn't seem to be enforcing a no-Merry-Christmas policy. But then I stay out of department stores in December, because they're too chaotic, and I understand the NYPD has cracked down on miracles on 34th Street.

Jerry Falwell believes Macy's is helping to bring about the death of Christmas beause of the alleged "Merry Christmas" ban. He's also annoyed because New York Mayor Michael BLOOMBERG (hint, nudge) wants the Rockefeller Center tree to be called a holiday tree, not a Christmas tree. Now, why would somebody named BLOOMBERG be down on Christmas, eh? (Think about it for awhile, Jerry. And it's MICHAEL Bloomberg, not David.)

Seems to me that if Christians want to re-sanctify Christmas, they'd insist that no commercial enterprise, including Macy's, use the name "Christmas" for commercial purposes.

Jesus threw money changers out of temples. Jerry Falwell confuses department stores with temples. Christmas is screwed, all right, but I don't think Macy's is to blame.