Bush v. Reagan
I’ve written this week’s column, which will go up later today, concerning the similarities between Gov. Dubya and Ronald Reagan. But there’s also a major difference.
When George W. Bush dies someday, please bear in mind that, unlike Ronald Reagan–a duly-elected president–Bush will not be entitled to a state funeral or placing flags at half staff. As an illegal usurper who seized power extraconstitutionally, Bush should be buried at sea, in a simple shroud, and returned to the sharks that spawned him. Reagan, for all of his faults, should at least be acknowledged as a former president.
More Hate Mail Follies
The Drudge Report has linked to my blog (see below), and the right-wing psychos are back at it again! Here, for your entertainment, are some of the lowlifes who inexplicably enjoy the right to vote:
From damnuebay@yahoo.com:
Former President Reagan has done more for this country than you ever will, or could dream of doing, you are pathetic speaking about people that can no longer defend themselves. I hope we don’t have to wait very long till you join the dead.
From rjohns9797@sbcglobal.net, who sent me more than 30 threatening emails during the Tillman thing:
Re: Ronald Maximus Reagan would have laughed
In the presence of greatness your tiny little prick, just shriveled up, didn’t it?
By the way, did you ever get that body guard?
Do you stay off subway platforms and away from dark streets?
You should, you know…
He also sent this:
DO YOU AVOID DARK STREETS?
YOU SHOULD, YOU KNOW…
ALL IT TAKES IS ONE…
SOME DAY, SOMEONE WILL DECIDE TO DO THE WORLD A FAVOR…
YOU SHOULD BE PREPARED…
From SrChief5473@aol.com:
I have finally identified you. You are a miserable little piece of shit
lying on the sidewalk.’
Fathered by a pig and mothered by a dog.
From JJMc@pge.com:
MAY YOU DIE SLOWLY OF STOMACH CANCER YOU PIECE OF CRAP. YOU WERE NOT FIT TO WIPE RONALD REAGAN’S ASS. YOU WOULD BE QUALIFIED TO REPLACE MONICA AND SERVICE THAT TRAITOROUS COWARD BILL CLINTON ON YOUR KNEES.
Dig the username: RomanticArtwork@aol.com:
YOUR OPINION COUNTS…….NOW HERE’S MINE. YOU LOOK GAY AND PROBABLY LIKE
IT IN THE ASS SO I BELIEVE YOU WILL DIE OF AIDS. Anyway, I’m sure YOU’LL BE
turning crispy brown ONE DAY SOON. I ONLY WISH S0ONER. YOU ARE LIBERAL TRASH.
OUT YOU WILL GO. THIS IS NOT A THREAT JUST FACT AND WISHFULL THINKING.
From Bmorganrey@cs.com:
If Ronald Reagan is in hell, I am sure he will save you a seat. Move to
France you piece of scum. If it weren’t for people like Ronald Reagan you wouldn’t
be able to write your garbage.
God Bless President Reagan, America, and most of all you ,
Brent Reynolds
From Rabel873@aol.com:
I hope you die in prison you SOB!
From ehagemeyer@sbcglobal.net:
Hey Ted,
I’m just writing to say what a sniveling little bitch you are. Why
don’t you go join the Iraqi resistance? It sure would be wonderful if
the next thing I read about you said, “Ted Rall Killed by American
Troops in Iraq.” That might hurry along your own trip to Hell… where
I’m pretty sure they reserve the best spots for pathetic whiners who
can’t get their cartoons published.
Fuck you!
Evan Hagemeyer
From justin@redrightandblue.com (this kind of personal threat is commonplace among Republican emailers):
Im going to post your fucking address everywhere I can.
Enjoy you sorry bastard.
Justin Warlick
www.redrightandblue.com
From Kspearmank@aol.com:
Ronald Reagan was a great leader. You are a socialist bastard.
From Tony.Reeves@sourceonehealth.com:
You better hope that for your sake there is no GOD, because as sure as I
am typing this your sick ass is going to burn in hell for eternity and
according to Webster’s that is a mighty long time. I am sure your
children are proud of “daddy”.
How Sad…
…that Ronald Reagan didn’t die in prison, where he belonged for starting an illegal, laughably unjustifiable war against Grenada under false pretenses (the “besieged” medical students later said they were nothing of the sort) and funneling arms to hostages during Iran-Contra.
Oh, and 9/11? That was his. Osama bin Laden and his fellow Afghan “freedom fighters” got their funding, and nasty weapons, from Reagan.
A real piece of work, Reagan ruined the federal budget, trashed education, alienated our friends and allies and made us a laughing stock around the world.
Hmmmm…sounds familiar.
Anyway, I’m sure he’s turning crispy brown right about now.
Depressed in Europe
Just got back from France and Italy. The food was awesome, the people interesting and the weather better than usual. But the usual subject of discussion–the United States and its foreign policy–proved more depressing than ever.
Abu Ghraib was the reason. But not why you might think.
When I mentioned the Iraq prison abuse scandal, people shrugged. “So you murdered maybe 25 people in prison,” one woman told me in Mantova, the setting for “Romeo and Juliet.” “So what? The U.S. kills thousands every year.”
Conservative Bush apologists, it seems, are correct. Abu Ghraib isn’t destroying our reputation overseas. Not at all. The truth is, our rep was already so atrocious before–due to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq (both of which are equally despised abroad), our support of Israel in its genocidal campaign against the Palestinians, and years of hypocritical imperialistic misadventures from Kosovo to Somalia to Central Asia–that Abu Ghraib didn’t do anything to make it worse. Nothing could.
So maybe it is time for people like me to stop worrying about the torture of prisoners. Truth is, our rep has already hit rock bottom. This is no big deal by comparison.
It’s also true, of course, that the French and Italians read reports of abuse in U.S.-run Afghan and Iraqi gulags dating back several years. And they’ve also published far more graphic photos from Abu Ghraib than we’ve seen here.
But the bottom line is that Abu Ghraib has only shocked one constitutency: us.
Better late than never. I guess.
From The Wall Street Journal:
WASHINGTON – Democrats were crowing yesterday about snatching a U.S. House seat in South Dakota from Republicans. But to 2,000 liberal warriors gathering for a conference here called “Take Back America,” the result is just a tiny rumbling of something much bigger.
On the defensive for more than a generation, the American left is seeing signs of political revival. Recent polls show more Americans are calling themselves “liberal” — a term that had been considered something of an epithet — and fewer are identifying themselves as “conservative.” Liberal groups, from the National Organization for Women to Moveon.org, are enjoying a big fund-raising surge. The flagship publication of the left, the Nation, claims to have captured the highest circulation of any weekly political magazine.
“The plates have all moved,” argues Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg. The combination of hostility toward President Bush, anxiety about the war in Iraq and concerns about tax cuts and other economic issues “make it possible for something fundamental to happen in this election,” he says.
Republican strategists say liberals are delusional. Since Republicans seized Congress in 1994, Democratic predictions that they would recapture control have repeatedly proved false.
Still, the proportion of Americans calling themselves “liberal” edged up to 21% in Mr. Greenberg’s May poll from 16% a month earlier. Self-identified “conservatives” dropped to 37% from 41%. Similarly, last month’s Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed 42% of voters identifying themselves as Democrats, compared with 39% who say they are Republicans. Two years earlier, Republicans had a 37%-to-36% edge.
The same Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed Mr. Bush’s job approval rating at 47%, the lowest of his presidency.
Liberal organizations devoted to feminist, labor and environmental causes are displaying unusual coordination in hopes of electing John Kerry. Sen. Kerry drew $31 million in donations in April, doubling the take of the President Bush, as liberal groups like Moveon.org, whose antiwar membership helped fuel Howard Dean’s political rise in 2003, ape the aggressive funding and recruitment tactics that helped Republicans mobilize grass-roots support in the 1980s.
The National Organization for Women reports daily contributions up to roughly $22,000 from $17,000 a year ago, and estimates attendance at its recent abortion-rights march on Washington was one-third higher than a similar event in 1992.
Liberals also see hope in more anecdotal evidence. Books attacking President Bush, with titles like “Worse than Watergate” and “The Politics of Truth” are selling briskly. The Nation has seen its circulation grow to 160,000 from nearly 140,000 in mid-2003 and just over 102,000 in June 2001. The latest figure exceeds the circulation of longstanding conservative stalwart National Review, which is roughly 155,500, down from about 159,000 in mid-2001.
“When the other side’s in power, your people get angry,” laments National Review editor Rich Lowry. Under Republican rule, “liberals have become more muscular,” argues David Corn, the Nation’s Washington editor and author of “The Lies of George W. Bush.”
And activists were cheered by the squeaker in South Dakota Tuesday night, in which Democrat Stephanie Herseth edged Republican Larry Diedrich in a special election. That win, like the victory of Kentucky Democrat Ben Chandler in special election earlier this year, came in a state that Mr. Bush carried in 2000 over Democratic nominee Al Gore.
Readers of my new book:
already know that I’ve anticipated this leftward shift and explained why it’s occuring and will continue to do so. Moreover, I also explain how the left and Democrats can exploit disgust with the Republicans to recapture Congress as well as the White House this November and in future election years.
Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline Project Update
Bushie apologists, and far too many anti-Iraq war progressives, continue to believe that the US invasion and occupation of Afghanistan had nothing to do with oil. No evidence, they say, despite mountains thereof.
Most recently, that left-wing bailwick the US Department of Energy issued its June 2004 country factsheet for Afghanistan. Among the goodies are this overview of Afghanistan’s supposedly fictional energy reserves:
Energy Overview
Between the 1960s and mid-1980s, the Soviets had identified more than 15 oil and gas fields in northern Afghanistan. Only three gas fields — Khwaja Gogerdak, Djarquduk, and Yatimtaq – were developed in the area surrounding Sheberghan, which is located about 120 kilometers west of Mazar-i-Sharif. Afghan natural gas production reached 275 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d) in the mid-1970s. The Djarquduk field was brought online during that period and boosted Afghan natural gas output to a peak of 385 Mmcf/d by 1978. About 100 mmcf/d of this amount was used locally in gas distribution systems in Sheberghan and Mazar-i-Sharif as well as at a 100,000 mt/y urea plant located near Mazar-i-Sharif. One oil field, Angot, was developed in the late 1960s, but aside from production tests, oil production was intermittent, with daily outputs averaging 500 b/d or less.
Northern Afghanistan has proved, probable and possible natural gas reserves of about 5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf). This area, which is a southward extension of the highly prolific, natural gas-prone Amu Darya Basin, has the potential to hold a sizable undiscovered gas resource base, especially in sedimentary layers deeper than what were developed during the Soviet era. Afghanistan’s crude oil potential is more modest, with perhaps up to 100 million barrels of medium-gravity recoverable from Angot and other fields that are undeveloped. Afghanistan also may possess relatively small volumes of gas liquids and condensate.
Outside of the North Afghan Platform, very limited oil and gas exploration has occurred. Geological, aeromagnetic, and gravimetric studies were conducted in the 1970s over parts of the Katawaz Fault Block (eastern Afghanistan – along the Pak border) and in the Helmand and Farah provinces. The hydrocarbon potential in these areas is thought to be very limited as compared to that in the north.
The Soviets had estimated Afghanistan’s proven and probable natural gas reserves at up to 5 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) in the 1970s. Afghan natural gas production reached 275 million cubic feet per day (Mmcf/d) in the mid-1970s. The Djarquduk field was brought online during that period boosted Afghan natural gas output to a peak of 385 Mmcf/d by 1978-79. After the Soviet pullout and subsequent Afghan civil war, most gas wells at Sheberghan area fields were shut in due to technical problems and the lack of an export market in the former Soviet Union.
At its peak in the late 1970s, Afghanistan supplied 70%-90% of its natural gas output to the Soviet Union’s natural gas grid via a link through Uzbekistan. In 1992, Afghan President Najibullah indicated that a new natural gas sales agreement with Russia was in progress. However, several former Soviet republics raised price and distribution issues and negotiations stalled. In the early 1990s, Afghanistan also discussed possible natural gas supply arrangements with Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and several Western European countries, but these talks never progressed further. Afghan natural gas fields include Djarquduk, Khowaja Gogerdak, and Yatimtaq, all of which are located within 20 miles of the northern town of Sheberghan in Jowzjan province. In 1999, work resumed on the repair of a distribution pipeline to Mazar-i-Sharif. Spur pipelines to a small power plant and fertilizer plant also were repaired and completed. Mazar-i-Sharif is now receiving natural gas from the pipeline. The possibility of exporting a small quantity of natural gas through the existing pipeline into Uzbekistan also is reportedly being considered.
Soviet estimates from the late 1970s placed Afghanistan’s proven and probable oil and condensate reserves at 95 million barrels. Most Soviet assistance efforts after the mid-1970s were aimed at increasing gas production. Sporadic gas exploration continued through the mid-1980s. The last Soviet technical advisors left Afghanistan in 1988. After a brief hiatus, oil production at the Angot field was restarted in the early 1990s by local militias. Output levels, however, are though to have been less than 300 b/d. Near Sar-i-Pol, the Soviets partially constructed a 10,000-b/d topping plant, which although undamaged by war, is thought by Western experts to be unsalvageable.
Petroleum products such as diesel, gasoline, and jet fuel are imported, mainly from Pakistan and Uzbekistan, with limited volumes from Turkmenistan and Iran serving regional markets. Turkmenistan also has a petroleum product storage and distribution facility at Tagtabazar ( Kushka – it’s on the Turkmen side) near the Afghan border, which supplies northwestern Afghanistan.
Besides oil and natural gas, Afghanistan also is estimated to have 73 million tons of coal reserves, most of which is located in the region between Herat and Badashkan in the northern part of the country. Although Afghanistan produced over 100,000 short tons of coal annually as late as the early 1990s, as of 2000, the country was producing only around 1,000 short tons.
Then there’s this bit on the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline project (italics are mine):
Afghanistan as an Energy Transit Route
Due to its location between the oil and natural gas reserves of the Caspian Basin and the Indian Ocean, Afghanistan has long been mentioned as a potential pipeline route, though in the near term, several obstacles will likely prevent Afghanistan from becoming an energy transit corridor. During the mid-1990s, Unocal had pursued a possible natural gas pipeline from Turkmenistan’s Dauletabad-Donmez gas basin via Afghanistan to Pakistan, but pulled out after the U.S. missile strikes against Afghanistan in August 1998. The Afghan government under President Karzai has tried to revive the Trans-Afghan Pipeline (TAP) plan, with periodic talks held between the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Turkmenistan on the issue, but little progress appears to have been made as of early June 2004 (despite the signature on December 9, 2003, of a protocol on the pipeline by the governments of Afghanistan, Pakistan and Turkmenistan). President Karzai has stated his belief that the project could generate $100-$300 million per year in transit fees for Afghanistan, while creating thousands of jobs in the country.
Given the obstacles to development of a natural gas pipeline across Afghanistan, it seems unlikely that such an idea will make any progress in the near future, and no major Western companies have expressed interest in reviving the project. The security situation in Afghanistan remains an obvious problem, while tensions between India and Pakistan make it unlikely that such a pipeline could be extended into India and its large (and growing) gas market. Financial problems in the utility sector in India, which would be the major consumer of the natural gas, also could pose a problem for construction of the TAP line. Finally, the pipeline’s $2.5-$3.5 billion estimated cost poses a significant obstacle to its construction.
All of this, including my longstanding assertion that the TAP project would likely never occur, jibes perfectly with what I’ve written in essays and my comprehensive survey of TAP, GAS WAR: THE TRUTH BEHIND THE AMERICAN OCCUPATION OF AFGHANISTAN.
Most recently the website Hi Pakistan reported on May 20th as follows:
U.S., Afghanistan and Pakistan hold trilateral meeting
ISLAMABAD: Finance Ministers of Pakistan and Afghanistan and Deputy Secretary of US Department of Treasury held a trilateral meeting in the sidelines of the Annual Meetings of Asian Development Bank, in Jeju Island, South Korea.
They reviewed the economic developments in the region and discussed a number of initiatives to foster close economic links between Pakistan and Afghanistan and the region in general. The meeting noted that the level of trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan was rising rapidly and was likely to touch the billion dollars mark during the calendar year.
It was pointed out that there was scope for further expansion in trade provided new border points were established and transit trade arrangements further simplified.
A number of issues related to fast and unhindered movement of goods were examined. Shaukat Aziz, Finance Minister of Pakistan pointed out that Pakistan was in the process of acquiring scanning machines to be placed at the border points that would discourage smuggling and pave the way for use of trucks for movement of Afghan transit trade cargo.
The meeting also discussed the possibility of gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Afghanistan and noted that Asian Development Bank would soon finalize its report after which further examination of this project will be undertaken.
Because Bushies are stupid, the dream lives.
The Wonderful Horrible Life of Ahmed Chalabi
Time was, Ahmed Chalabi was Donald Rumsfeld’s main man. Sure, the Iraqi National Congress leader claimed the right to rule Iraq after Saddam even though he hadn’t lived in the country since he was 9 years old. Sure, he was a convicted bank embezzler and con man. (Chalabi claimed the Jordanian government framed him.) But he was a smooth talker, and the neocons—themselves so used to conning others that they were all the more easily taken themselves–in the nascent Bush Administration literally bought–at a cost of millions of dollars–his fictional intelligence.
Invading Iraq, Chalabi told Cheney and Condi, would be a cakewalk. Flowers on the streets.
So the Department of Defense flew Chalabi in with the invading forces, against longstanding US policy, to take over the Iraqi government. The 50 guys you saw celebrating the Marines’ pulling down of the Saddam statue at Farbus Square in Baghdad were all Chalabi’s INC goons. Really. You can look it up.
Of course, naysayers on what the rightist maniacs call “the far left”–in truth, no one from the far left has gotten a word into print in the United States in decades–pointed out that Chalabi was full of shit. Now the rightist maniacs are coming to the same conclusion. In today’s news, it seems that Chalabi may have betrayed the fact that the CIA had broken Iranian code to the Iranians, who are fellow Shias. And the Bush Administration, which went so far as to seat Chalabi next to Laura Bush at the State of the Union address earlier this year, has decided that Chalabi (gasp!) falsified intelligence.
Like the war itself, anyone with half a brain could see that no good could come out of this. And lots of people with that perceptiveness said so, loud and clear. Now would be a good time for the rightist maniacs and their mouthpieces in the mainstream media to admit that, as usual, they were wrong and we were right. Better yet, now would be a good time for them to promise to stay out of politics once and for all. America just can’t afford the rightist maniacs and their incessant fuckups anymore.
“Generalissimo El Busho” is my chronicle, in essays and cartoons of the most polarizing presidency in modern American history, a tragicomic week-by-week dissection of the Bush Administration’s follies and crimes.
I’ve traveled to Third World trouble spots,so I recognize a dictator when he see one. Having seized power extraconstitutionally, Bush and his cabal of corrupt businessmen made it obvious from the outset that they intended to rule with ruthless zeal. Unlike many of my fellow journalists, however, I refused to be cowed or water down my rhetoric–even in the wake of 9/11. It’s easy to forget just how radical the Bush Administration was — and how the changes he made continue to have repercussions today.
Ted Rall, a cartoonist and columnist for Universal Press Syndicate, is more hostile to President Bush than most members of Saddam’s inner circle, as this collection of his work from recent years makes scaldingly clear. There’s nothing really humorous here; the satire mixed into Rall’s screeds is far too bitter for that. In a piece from October 2002, he calls the military mission in Afghanistan ”Operation Enduring Failure.” In another 2002 piece, he refers to the Bush administration as a ”circus of hypocrites.” The best part of the volume, though, is its earliest material, centered on the 2000 election. Rall, unlike practically everyone else, allowed the president no honeymoon. He labeled the election stolen early and often. The resolution of the whole mess was far too casual for his taste; there was, he felt, too much at stake. Given all that has happened since, it appears he was right. —The New York Times
Even when the country was rallying around President Bush, syndicated cartoonist and columnist Rall remained in a state of outrage—one he effectively maintains throughout this book, a set of essay-like meditations on a Pinochetesque figure he calls “Generalissimo El Busho.” Each of 60 or so short salvos is typically accompanied by one to three cartoons (at most four to six panels). Bush’s election (“The Seizure of Power”) is followed by a post-9/11 cartoon on the president’s attitudes toward civil liberties violations titled “Martin Niemoller Now”—referring to the priest who said, in part, “When they came for Jews, I did not speak up, because I wasn’t a Jew.” A prescient cartoon imagines the prison at Guantánamo as the reality show Gitmo House . A “Canyon of Heroes” cartoon cites a 9/11 victim: “My death helped create the political climate that allowed tax cuts for rich folks during a recession.” Love him or hate him, Rall is never less than provocative. The material is current through March 2004, and much of it still stings. A specialist on Central Asia, Rall actually went to Afghanistan and wrote, “We won the war but we lost the peace. Will we do the same thing in Iraq? Count on it.” —Publishers Weekly
Essays and Cartoons, 2004
NBM Hardback, 6″x9″, $19.95
NBM Paperback, 6″x9″, $13.95
To order the hardback: Amazon
To order the paperback: Amazon
