Titanic Post

July 13, 2007

BILL MOYERS: Welcome to the Journal.

Impeachment…the word feared and loathed by every sitting president is back. It’s in the air and on your computer screen, a growing clamor aimed at both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney.

This week’s news only agitated the clamor. The president acknowledged that someone in his administration did leak the name of a CIA agent to the press, but he said let’s move on — even as he refused to let his former White House counsel testify to Congress about political influence at the Justice Department.

So the talk in Washington was of executive arrogance. All the more so as the Democratic House voted to withdraw US troops from Iraq by next spring despite a threat of veto by President Bush. A public opinion poll from the American Research Group reports that more than four in ten Americans — 45 per cent-favor impeachment hearings for President Bush and more than half -54 per cent — favor putting Vice President Cheney in the dock.

Are these the first tremors of a major shock wave…or just much ado about nothing? First, let’s take a look at the last time a president found himself fighting off an impeachment campaign. It happened less than a dozen years ago. And what was the issue:

Read complete transcript here.

Sam Smith Progressive Review

The claim that Reagan won the Cold War is pure rightwing propaganda. The Soviet Union had long been far weaker than many American leaders knew, or wished to acknowledge, thanks to CIA gross overestimates of its economy. The Soviet Union was brought down by a number of factors including the inherent weaknesses of dictatorship and ethnic divides that eventually forced its breakup.

William Blum: “[George Kennan], the former US ambassador to the Soviet Union, and father of the theory of ‘containment’ of the same country, asserts that ‘the suggestion that any United States administration had the power to influence decisively the course of a tremendous domestic political upheaval in another great country on another side of the globe is simply childish.’ He contends that the extreme militarization of American policy strengthened hard-liners in the Soviet Union. ‘Thus the general effect of Cold War extremism was to delay rather than hasten the great change that overtook the Soviet Union.’”
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BUSH REGIME AGREES NOT TO BLOW UP NEVADA DESERT

SALT LIKE TRIBUNE - Divine Strake was promised to blow a hole in the earth and create a mushroom cloud over the Nevada desert. Instead, it blew open old wounds for Utahns who had been promised Cold War atomic tests would be safe, and the hurt, betrayal and rage that poured out left the Pentagon with little choice but to announce it was scrappingt the test. Michelle Thomas spent the day in tears. “I’ve cried all day long. I just can’t yet grasp it,” said Thomas, a St. George Downwinder who opposed Divine Strake. She has had cancer and suffers an immune deficiency she blames on exposure to radiation. “I just felt such an overwhelming relief,” she said. “You just think, ‘Oh my gosh. We matter.’ ” The memories of Utahns helped fuel an unprecedented flood of resistance to the test, the ignition of 700 tons of explosives planned for the Nevada Test Site from which radiation spread from atomic tests into Utah and other states downwind. “This wasn’t run-of-the-mill public opposition. This was a heartfelt and broad-based public expression, so much so that it would have been impossible for anyone to neglect,” said Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr. “I can’t remember the last time we had an issue that had this kind of unified public response. . . . Memories are very much alive and well.”

by Sam Smith
Progressive Review

As always happens, as soon as I say something nice about a political candidate, I find myself in trouble.

Part of the problem may be that I think about political candidates differently than a lot of people. Unlike many, I don’t see myself as part of some great collective of St. Peters at the gate deciding who should get into heaven and then, in a strange twist of metaphor, come back to earth and save us. Rather I think of politicians as one more tool in social and political change and the first question that jumps to my mind is: what can they do for us?

I expect them to fail, con, double-cross and desert, but before they betray us too much I would like to get a civil liberties bill or universal healthcare passed. Read more…

A majority of television scientists and newscasters do not believe that our globe is warming up and are generally doubtful that human activity could have anything to do with a potential climate change It is only among the unaffiliated liberal scientists that the cries of looming disaster are coming. These scientists generally work for universities or government agencies and are without exception funded by the government, and I don’t have to tell you what that means!

Real scientists, the ones approved by our present administration and hired by the corporations that make our country so successful, have found no evidence of climate change or a human component in our climate.

If you look closely, however, you will see that the skeptics among the scientists have affiliations or funding from large and powerful corporations that have a financial interest in supporting the idea that human driven global warning is a hoax. Those scientists that have found evidence supporting global warming and human causes tend to have more neutral sources of funding.

As a non-scientist, I think that, as a society, we should stop fouling our nest. Instead of arguing about whether or not there is a human cause of global warming or if there is a global warming, how about we stop polluting the air, the earth, and our drinking water? How about we stop wasting our resources and start appreciating the earth as our the only home we will ever have and which we should maintain and keep clean? It is not a corporate planet, it is the people’s planet. Our planet.

Our City of Alamogordo needs a new library. The old one is bursting at the seams with not enough space for new bookshelves, archives, meeting rooms, and public computers. The Alamogordo Public Library is one of the most used public spaces in the county. Recently, a water line break under the building caused a corner of the building to sink. The foundation, a wall, and several roof structural supports cracked and portions of the library had to be closed off until they could be supported.

Years ago it was decided that a new library must be built. A five acre parcel across the street from the old library was donated to the city with the stipulation that it be used for a new library. Other sums of money were donated, auctions were held to raise money, grants were applied for and granted, but it was still not enough to cover the cost of a new library building. A new bond issue was proposed, and therein lies a problem for our community.

A few people, including members of the stodgy Eagle Forum, have decided that, in keeping with the right wing odors emitting from Washington, D.C., they don’t want their property taxes raised to pay for it. One such person even resigned her post on the Friends of the Library Committee in order to freely protest the issue. I imagine that the Eagle Forum will invest a good deal of money into a campaign to defeat the bond referendum.

My point here isn’t about the values-challenged right wing, but about the slow erosion of the common good and how it is affecting communities all over the country. This library is just one example. It is a process that contaminates the water we drink and the air we breathe. It is the reason that we have no universal health care. It is the reason that there are so many poor people. It is the reason that we have been asked to fight so many senseless wars. The tragedy of our commons is that people put their self interests over the interests of the community.

I believe that at the end of this story the bond issue will have passed and that our library will be rebuilt in it’s new location. I believe that the good people of Alamogordo will prevail. I believe that the majority of our property owners will realize what an asset a library is to the common good. However, we do need to keep our collective eyes on the Eagle Forum and their ilk.