Senate Says No to Bush Overtime Rules

Very pleased to hear that a slim majority said NO to Mr. Bush's overtime rule overhaul. The change - while it sounded good for certain workers - certainly appeared to have provisions that would make it far easier for an employer to demand more work just by offering a position title change that brought with it no pay raise. The way I read it, everyone at McDonald's would become a manager to avoid cases where someone would need to be paid overtime worked.

I've read too much in the past year about companies either forcing the workers themselves to shave hours off time sheets to meet budget or used payroll people or managers themselves to wipe the hours off.

I also used to work for a company that would take hours away, where we were told how much we could earn in a given period and then told to fictionalize our invoices/time slips to make certain that all the extra hours demanded of us would never appear. As I recall, the Labor Department investigated them about 3 times. Never went anywhere even though several of us provided information.

Duh Moment

For those who can't mind read - and really, anyone who can read my mind today deserves a mental checkup - the immediately previous post refers to the first of two statements Mr. Bush is giving on US funded Arab TV.

Perhaps I Missed it But

CNN's poll says the American people are relatively eager to have Mr. Bush apologize for the Iraqi prisoner abuse, but I never actually caught the words "I'm sorry" in there.

My own apologies if I'm wrong - I'm still nursing a migraine from reading through the Taguba Report (one of the studies on the abuse) - but what CNN is reporting is basically what I heard in sound bytes:

The people of Iraq "must understand that what took place in that prison does not represent the America that I know," Bush said.

I'm even going to avoid pointing out that the America Mr. Bush knows is usually quite astoundingly different than the one most of us know.

Bus or Plane Tour

For all the talk about Bush's bus tour (and the bus is one of the most lavishly outfitted buses of all time, the mainstream media said today), why is it I've seen four different shots of Bush getting off a plane (different times, different clothes) during the tour, but only one shot of him on the bus (where he's sorta using the French flag to lean on like a towel over the dashboard)?

I take it there are several buses just being moved about to accommodate where the plane lands.

The "Reprimanded" Grunts, Too

Just as I mentioned just now that Bush and Company will take another victory walk around the mess created by the Iraqi prison scandal, I'm sure there will be no serious investigation of whether these soldiers now charged with torture and cruelty actually got pressure to do this from higher up.

Oh, the people in charge will justify it well to themselves. They'll say, "a few people from West Virginia or the whole Arab-Islamic world hates us." But the Arabs and Muslims won't forgive this easily, and this crew (Bush and Company) simply want to escape any hint of connection with what they did.

And we'll let them get away with it.

Teflon?

This administration has gotten away with more terrible acts than any administration in my lifetime (I suspect, perhaps, in the history of the United States). For the last two days, this president was allowed to say, again and again, "Because of us, the torture rooms are closes. Because of us, the rape rooms are closed."

Again and again before, I've thought, no way, he won't get away with this. He always does, however.

This time, perhaps - just perhaps - he'll hand us a high head (probably one not planning to return next term, like Rumsfeld). But it won't be his head. And I'm sure - damn it - that Bush himself will walk away untouched.

Rush....

[Ed Note:He's got to be back on the drugs for all those back problems he never mentioned for years while he conducted an extremely active golfing life (for a very fat man, that is).] I mean, that's the only possible explanation.

Via Pandagon, World o Crap based at Salon brings us this gem from Rush Limbaugh regarding those pictures of Iraqi prisoner torture:

Folks, these torture pictures with the women torturers, I mean Marv Albert looking at those pictures would say, "Hey, that doesn't look so bad."...

You know, if you really look at these pictures, I mean I don't know if it's just me but it looks like anything you'd see Madonna or Britney Spears do on stage. Maybe you can get an NEA grant for something like this. I mean this is something you can see at Lincoln Center from an NEA grant, maybe on Sex in the City: the Movie. I mean, it's just me.

EEK!

Who's bright idea was it to have President Bush give two 10-minute interviews in the coming days with Arab TV? They say it's for damage control, post the Iraqi prisoner debacle.

But I know I'm not the only person extremely concerned about what this president - knowing the things that come out of his wildly undeft mouth - may say. I'm sure they'll vette it carefully, but...

Oh, good, and I just heard that Condi Rice appeared on Al Jazeera today to ask the Arab world to trust us. I'm sure they feel so much better now. I know I get the warm fuzzies when Condi uses words like that.

The Taguba Report

Here's the overall Taguba Report available on MSNBC, courtesy of the first link I saw for it as Josh Marshall's Talking Points Memo.

I warn you: it's NOT easy reading, as you can imagine.

Imagine if someone were to invade our country and do the same to us?

I should also warn you that I pretty much consider Josh Marshall a brilliant orator... er... blogator? I think we're extremely fortunate to have him providing so much information and insight at such a critical time for our country and world (and I'm not just referring to the 2004 elections here either. Thanks, Josh, for all you do.

Veteran, Go Home

That was the message from Bush's handlers to a World War II veteran who went to try to see him in Dubuque, link via Atrios.

A Better Bush Blog

I happened to run into this in my blog stats and wondered why the heck Bush2004 would link to me. But it's worth a look!

George S. Huh

After talking with Reader CK this morning, I went back to look at the George S. Will column I breezed through this morning. As Josh Marshall says, it's worth a read. Not quite Mr. Will's usual swill.

In responding to these Bush remarks last week:

"There's a lot of people in the world who don't believe that people whose skin color may not be the same as ours can be free and self-govern. I reject that. I reject that strongly. I believe that people who practice the Muslim faith can self-govern. I believe that people whose skins aren't necessarily -- are a different color than white can self-govern."

Mr. Will responds:

What does such careless talk say about the mind of this administration? Note that the clearly implied antecedent of the pronoun "ours" is "Americans." So the president seemed to be saying that white is, and brown is not, the color of Americans' skin. He does not mean that. But that is the sort of swamp one wanders into when trying to deflect doubts about policy by caricaturing and discrediting the doubters.

Scott McClellan, the president's press secretary, later said the president meant only that "there are some in the world that think that some people can't be free" or "can't live in freedom." The president meant that "some Middle Eastern countries -- that the people in those Middle Eastern countries cannot be free."

Perhaps that, which is problematic enough, is what the president meant. But what he suggested was: Some persons -- perhaps many persons; no names being named, the smear remained tantalizingly vague -- doubt his nation-building project because they are racists.

That is one way to respond to questions about the wisdom of thinking America can transform the entire Middle East by constructing a liberal democracy in Iraq. But if any Americans want to be governed by politicians who short-circuit complex discussions by recklessly imputing racism to those who differ with them, such Americans do not usually turn to the Republican choice in our two-party system.

This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts. Thinking is not the reiteration of bromides about how "all people yearn to live in freedom" (McClellan). And about how it is "cultural condescension" to doubt that some cultures have the requisite aptitudes for democracy (Bush). And about how it is a "myth" that "our attachment to freedom is a product of our culture" because "ours are not Western values; they are the universal values of the human spirit" (Tony Blair).

Rhetorical Question But....

Does anyone in Washington DC read? We know Ms. (I'll call her a DR as soon as I see one situation she's ever helped with her knowledge) Rice doesn't, and certainly not Mr. Bush or Rumsfelt or JCoS Myers. Ashcroft is too busy prosecuting glass bhong manufacturers and smut (which offers not enough plot to read).

ADD: Duh. Rumsfeld

Al Gore to Announce?

No, not the presidency: that he completed the sale of that NewsWorld channel away from Vivendi, a deal the press said was dead a month ago.

Our Counterfeit President

This and other gems from Intervention Magazine:

George W. Bush summed up his qualifications for elected office back in 1989:

• “…I could run for governor but I'm basically a media creation. I've never done anything. I've worked for my dad. I worked in the oil business. But that's not the kind of profile you have to have to get elected to public office.”

George could coast through life because of his family’s money and influence. Someone was always there to help George jump to the front of the line. There was always someone ready to bail him out from his failed business dealings.

• “[George W. Bush] is probably the least qualified person ever to be nominated by a major party. Yes, he was elected governor of Texas, and before that he ran a baseball team and lost a lot of other people's money in the oil business. But what has happened in the intervening five years to make people believe that George W. Bush would be a good president? What is his accomplishment? That he's no longer an obnoxious drunk?”-- Ron Reagan Jr., quoted in Salon.com, 8/7/00

Paul Krugman

From his Times column today:

Last November the top economist at the Heritage Foundation was very optimistic about Iraq, saying Paul Bremer had just replaced "Saddam's soak-the-rich tax system" with a flat tax. "Few Americans would want to trade places with the people of Iraq," wrote the economist, Daniel Mitchell. "But come tax time next April, they may begin to wonder who's better off." Even when he wrote that, the insurgency in Iraq was visibly boiling over; by "tax time" last month, the situation was truly desperate.

Much has been written about the damage done by foreign policy ideologues who ignored the realities of Iraq, imagining that they could use the country to prove the truth of their military and political doctrines. Less has been said about how dreams of making Iraq a showpiece for free trade, supply-side tax policy and privatization — dreams that were equally oblivious to the country's realities — undermined the chances for a successful transition to democracy.

A number of people, including Jay Garner, the first U.S. administrator of Iraq, think that the Bush administration shunned early elections, which might have given legitimacy to a transitional government, so it could impose economic policies that no elected Iraqi government would have approved. Indeed, over the past year the Coalition Provisional Authority has slashed tariffs, flattened taxes and thrown Iraqi industry wide open to foreign investors — reinforcing the sense of many Iraqis that we came as occupiers, not liberators.

But it's the reliance on private contractors to carry out tasks usually performed by government workers that has really come back to haunt us.

Conservatives make a fetish out of privatization of government functions; after the 2002 elections, George Bush announced plans to privatize up to 850,000 federal jobs. At home, wary of a public backlash, he has moved slowly on that goal. But in Iraq, where there is little public or Congressional oversight, the administration has privatized everything in sight.

For example, the Pentagon has a well-established procurement office for gasoline. In Iraq, however, that job was subcontracted to Halliburton. The U.S. government has many experts in economic development and reform. But in Iraq, economic planning has been subcontracted — after a highly questionable bidding procedure — to BearingPoint, a consulting firm with close ties to Jeb Bush...

Regarding Torture

In the wake of 9/11 and the beginning of the war on terror in Afghanistan (my, that's gone well, hasn't it?), we opened a debate in this country in which sometimes 7 or 8 out of 10 respondents to polls agreed that torture would be an acceptable means by which to extract information from people. It seemed to matter little to people that studies suggested information derived from such means was often flat-out wrong (those tortured would invent information to rescue themselves from more pain.

As I lay in bed last night unable to sleep (at least in part because of these Iraqi charges of abuse), that phenomenon came to mind. I was reminded of it again with a CNN poll early this morning asking if torture as part of an interrogation is ever acceptable (right now, 54% say no, meaning 46% say yes).

Thus, sadly, as we sit here shaking our heads and feeling sick over these pictures and while Bush makes certain grunt GIs are punished, perhaps we need to accept some culpability and rethink our sanctimonious positions.

Bush: Everything Depends on the Election

From CNN:

Peace and freedom depend upon this election. Prosperity for the people depend upon this election," Bush said while wrapping up a campaign stop with about 1,200 supporters in Niles, in the southwest corner of Michigan.

Finally, points on which I can agree with the President. Peace and freedom and prosperity DO depend on this election. Unless we remove Bush, Cheney, and this entire crew from office, we have zero hope for peace, freedom, and prosperity for more than the military industrial complex, as well as renewed respect, honor, and integrity for the American people.

It will take time to accomplish this once Bush is gone. He's dug us perhaps into the worst hole our country has ever known. But we can do it.

Editor Leaving in Disgust

When the editor of a newspaper in Iraq, paid for with our American tax dollars, actually quits in disgust about the way the Americans try to control everything.... Well....

More on Karbinski

This lady is very busy since this has to be the fourth or fifth network I've seen her on today. Again, while she definitely is a veteran of military verbiage, she's certainly consistent on each show saying military intelligence - rather than she herself - was in charge of the operations where the brutality took place.

Funny thing - and I'm sure it must have been there somewhere but I missed it - is that I've heard little from the Pentagon about Karbinski.