Layers of liars Maybe they’re not as exciting as the walls in HBO’s “If These Walls Could Talk,” but I’ve got some talking walls of my own. While fixing a hole where the rain got in — and then the ants and small mammals — we gutted the back of our house and decided to […]
Bush administration
Posted inNews & Opinion
Urban Journal – 12.21.05
Remember Nixon? This is just terrifying. It was bad enough that the Bush administration fought John McCain’s push to ban torture. Now we learn that he has approved government spying on US citizens with no judicial oversight. And he says he intends to keep right on approving it. The excuse is the predictable one: we […]
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XX Files – 12.14.05
Merry Democratsmas With all the gifts the Republicans have been giving Democrats lately, I think we should change Christmas to Democratsmas. I know: there’s been a big hue and cry about taking Christ out of Christmas, and here I am replacing him with Democrats. That’s probably heretical to some. Others might say the energy and […]
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Urban journal – 11.23.05
The Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld attacks on critics of the Iraq war have been vicious, but not surprising. Nor is it surprising that some Republican members of Congress have joined in, or that the Republican Party — as concerned as the administration about eroding public support for the president and the war — is producing television ads targeting […]
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Hot news, cold news
Do you ever wonder how some stories in the news get covered extensively; others, seemingly more important, get little coverage, and still others get no coverage at all? Here are a few examples of what I mean by COLD NEWS. These are stories that are “out there” but there is little or no follow-up. • […]
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The new propaganda
Browsing through the Brighton library recently, I came across a video from a 1982 PBS mini-series titled “A Walk Through the 20th Century.” This particular installment was called “World War II — The Propaganda Battle,” narrated by Bill Moyers. Being a history buff, especially about World War II, I checked it out. The film compares […]
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Next: absolute power
If I read the results right, last year’s presidential election was a close one. That means the country’s divided — or unclear — about what it wants. But the Bush administration acts as if the American people have embraced right-wing governance. And that’s exactly what we’re getting. Republicans are trying to grab total control […]
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Skating on thin ice
The word “conservative” comes from a Latin word meaning “to preserve.” The Bush administration bills itself as conservative, but it’s anything but. It’s unprecedented for a country, under conservative leadership or otherwise, to propel itself from financial health to possible collapse as fast as the US has over the past five years. When George […]
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Social security: lies, lies, and damn lies
Adolf Hitler wrote in Mien Kampf “The people will more easily fall victim to a big lie than to a small one.” The key is to keep repeating it over and over. For the second time in three years, the Bush administration is using the Big Lie Technique to advance its agenda. The first Big […]
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Saving Schiavo: hypocrisy without limit
In near-record time, the Terri Schiavo case has morphed into a national cause célèbre stoked by the almost unlimited self-righteousness and hypocrisy of the Bush Administration. The family tragedy has been happily picked up by Tom Delay, who’s seeking to divert attention from his growing scandal woes. Continuing the political grandstanding, Bush rushed back to […]
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Value judgments
The past week has been one of stark contrasts. The deaths of two remarkable Americans — George Kennan, who urged the country to seek diplomacy rather than war, and former Rochesterian Sol Linowitz, who applied his wisdom and judgment to better the world — were reminders of what this country once stood for. And the […]
