The Conservative Media...

Today, Tony Snow was named as the new White House press secretary. Snow is a political analyst for Fox News and has had a successful career in both journalism and politics. I don't argue against this, he is a smart man with an education and a resume that is fairly impressive.

The problem I have is the fact that the White House press secretary comes from a news media channel that not only claims to be "fair and balanced" as their slogan goes, but also is notorious for attacking what they call the "liberal media" and their alleged bias in portraying politics to the public. Is it me or is the obvious hypocrisy of Fox News now blatantly obvious to the public? I mean, one of the president's right-hand men has come straight from both the office and news desk of a cable news channel that's clearly a GOP supporter and we now have the proof.

It's a shame that the vast majority of people I have met who watch Fox News (or Faux News as I like to call it) can't even accurately describe what a liberal is (see previous blog). Nor can this person accept that the channel is clearly more conservative than ANY other news channel or network news program is liberal. We get an hour of Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report and they get a whole channel. I think there should be a liberal version of Fox News, but that's not even the point. The point is that there is a group of people in this country led by the Christian Coalition and the likes of Jerry Faldwell and Pat Robertson and Dubbyuh and the whole crew of swines who want to shove a very narrow-minded agenda down the throats of Americans. Sadly, half of America is following along like sheep to the crook of a shepherd and they are blind to their misfortunes and ignorance.

Yet there is one more collection of selfish beings that help lead these sheep to their chopping block to twist their minds to believe what they want them to believe and do what they want them to do. These people, if you chose to call them people, manipulate and take advantage of uninformed viewers to proclaim their almighty knowledge of what is right and wrong and condemn those who do not agree. They use offensive language and abusive slang to hook their following into thinking it's alright to be better than the other half of America who are just a bunch of "stupid liberals." Yes, this group of CEO's and talkshow hosts look at people like me and snicker at my will to oppose them with nothing more than a few dollars a month to my political party while they donate millions to their PAC's and politicians via the disgusting sewer known as campaign finance. And now they are in the White House, the Mecca of corruption for the last 6 years and for the next 2 ahead of us.

They are the conservative media.

Tweaking The Numbers...

Does anyone "surf the internet" anymore? Do we all know enough about it to just go to wherever we want to go and then get off the computer when we're done? Well I was surfing a few days ago, just clicking around wherever I saw a link I thought was interesting, and landed on the White House's website summarizing our national debt and how our "deficit" is actually decreasing http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/outlook.html It's interesting how they say they will pay this debt of ours down. What they really claim is that the deficit growth is decreasing. In fact, the whole has nothing to do with what the actual budget deficit number is (currently $8.5 trillion). The White House has the policy that the "size of the deficit" is comparing the Gross Domestic Product - the measurement of the strength of our economy - to the amount of money owed. So, if our economy grows we are allowed to have as much debt as we want, so long as that debt is proportionally low compared to the GDP.

That's their trick. They have no clue of how to reduce our deficit. They're just talking the issue into their political favor. Take a look here: http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/opd/opdpenny.htm Our federal government's debt has increased every year since at least 1987. It has increased every month since at least October of last year, yet the graph on the White House website shows that when you divide the debt created last year alone by the GDP, our "deficit" has actually decreased from 2004 to 2005 and will decrease for the next 3 years. I'll believe it when I see it.

So this idea of paying down our debts is never going to happen, according to Dubbyuh. They're not even going to try. They claim that we are going to grow our economy to the point of lowering the ratio of debt to GDP. The typical smokescreen of "lowering government waste" is just to help cover some of the loss of federal income (big tax cuts to rich people) while they try to grow the GDP. Just a tweaking of the numbers, really. We're actually going to owe MORE money to foreign banks as we do today. What if Houston gets the next Katrina? What if Iran starts a full-on attack against Israel? What if we have another recession? What if the GDP just doesn't grow as expected? There's a hundred reasons why in two years we may not have lower ration of debt to GDP.

But wait a minute. Are these numbers at the White House website even true? I'm seeing some "fuzzy math" here...

Take a look at that line graph on the White House website again. Isn't it interesting that the only time the graph numbers go down is when a Democrat is in office and the only time it goes up a Republican is in office? I like the little dip in the graph at the end. This is also not true and in fact, the debt/GDP ratio being lowered in 2005 is a factual inaccuracy. The White House page conveniently does not list the actual debt or GDP numbers, but if you take the debt listed in the Treasury Department's website and the GDP listed in the Bureau of Economic Analysis, as of October 1, 2005 we have a debt equaling 62.9% of our GDP. Yes, it is only up 0.1% since the previous year, but it is not down to a level of 37% as the White House website would have you believe. It's not even down at all. Where are they getting their numbers? Can I not divide properly?

I think the White House assumes that people like me who fact check on their own either don't exist, or can't do anything about it. Well Mr. President, I can do something about it. I can call your group of budget advisors and policy makers liars. And I can prove it by using your own numbers. It's simple math. The national debt in 1999 was $5.66 billion and our GDP listed at the BEA website is $9.25 billion. Divide 5.66 by 9.25 and you have 61.2 or 61.2% of the GDP equaled the amount of debt our nation owes. This is what the line graph on the White House web page displays. In 2000 the debt goes down to 56.9%, but then starts a steady increase up to last year. Then the magical "dip." It's like the Golden Bullet. If you take the debt/GDP in 2004 ($7.38 billion/$11.75 billion) you get 62.8%. Last year we had 62.9% deficit. What am I doing wrong? How can the numbers from our own government be wrong? Or are we just being lied to and spun to believe that the GOP has a handle on our spending? The last 50 years and the same line graph also proves that to be a very unlikely scenario.

What does this mean? Why should anyone care? I believe this to be an example of the political advantage that the GOP is trying to achieve when it comes to economics. They will say anything they think they can get away with as long as no one can effectively challenge them. Everyone wants to vote for someone who will give them more money. The aura of "lower taxes, more economic growth" is what the Republicans have always seemed to have, but when you actually look at the facts and the numbers behind the spin, the reality of the situation is that we have more debt in return for their presidents. And where is this money I'm supposed to have? Our tax return was measly this year and I thought that everyone was getting these big tax cuts that Dubbyuh keeps talking about. Did you get the big tax break this spring?

No, there was no big tax break for us or millions of others in the lower-middle class. We still have a huge national deficit and will continue to owe money. We're still wasting our tax dollars on pork and defense and not spending it on schools and New Orleans. Our government is just tweaking the numbers.

Self-Destructive, Man...

A couple of days ago I sent a few someone a link to this news story at msnbc.com (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12275328/) and just mentioned how it was good reading and that Fox News was sure to not report it. The reply I received claimed that the picture could be a fake taken in Wrightsville Beach and that we were still right in attacking Iraq based on "threatened things" being made to be "tested on us or someone else" by Saddam Hussein (SH). The email also claimed that the EU believed SH was "up to his old tricks" and that had we waited and not done anything in response we would be blaming John Kerry.

I believe most of the email to me to be sarcastic in tone, but a true depiction of the beliefs of this person at a fundamental level... these are the people I wish to change in our fight to rid the world of oppression, vindication, and preemptive attacks that change the world for the worse.

I wrote a response to this person's email in which I talk about some basic points-of-view that I have. Normally I would have left it at that, but decided to post my response here. This is what I wrote...

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The picture "could" have been taken at Wrightsville Beach. It would be a funny joke if it were in reference to a pretty sunset or a decision to take a vacation. But it is in regard to 35,000 dead people and a part of the world leading to total chaos. Yes, it "could" have been taken in Wrightsville Beach. Faux News could be run out of C-Ring in the Pentagon and you could be a communist with ties to Michael Jackson. But none of these are true including that picture being taken in Wrightsville Beach and we both know that.

Agreeing that SH was "up to his old tricks" with support of the UN and their inspections, and advocating a complete invasion of a nation are two different things. How many troops did those three countries, France, Russia and Germany, donate to the coalition? Must be a lot, since you claim they agreed with American intelligence and really wanted to put an end to the development of "threatened things"... see http://www.mpburton.com/troops.html for total count. It equals EXACTLY zero.

You then mention how we should wait for one of the "threatened things" to be "tested on us or someone else." Which "threatened thing" are you referring to? Would they take a large cargo plane and drop that truck on us? Would they fire a potato gun at the Jordanian border? Or another attempt at invasion of a border country with the result of total annihilation like the last time? Which weapon of mass destruction would have been used on us? You take the stance of, "well, we just didn't know, so we had to attack before we were destroyed." That statement has a fundamental flaw... there was nothing to attack us with. Had we done absolutely nothing, there would be no mushroom cloud over Washington, no mass destruction, no chaos. So, it seems like - and I kind of already know this - you have the stance that we should shoot from the hip at anyone who we think might want to harm us with force. And then after the smoke clears from our onslaught and "shock and awe" and the truth of the matter is that they had no capability of doing any of the things we claimed and they had none of the weapons that we so clearly insisted that they did we expect everything to be ok because our claims of WMD are just as acceptable as the reality of WMD or lack thereof. Where in American society is that kind of behavior accepted as the norm? Can I go to to government and claim my employer is laundering money, have the government start the investigation, fold the company, and then when it's proven that I'm wrong I'm seen as a good person who was doing the right thing? No way.

When was this doctrine decided to be acceptable in Iraq? How will the world look at us the next time we do this and the WMD actually exist? Will they shoot down any attempt to attack and leave us stuck with nothing but discredibiliy and fear of the future? Are we expecting the same sort of belief of the evidence by the American public and support for the invasion of a country preemptively when another Rumsfeld or Powell say that there are WMD pointed at us right now and if we don't attack, we will die? How do you think a person like me sees the situation in North Korea? I have seen no picture, no evidence, no proof. We claim that the Koreans cannot be trusted, but when they tell us they have WMD, that's good enough for us... we'll select the trust. How ridiculous.

And how ridiculous to be doing this with not just our existence on the line, but human existence on the line. Downright scary, in fact. If we were to start dropping nuclear bombs on Iran to bust a complex 75 feet under ground that we've never seen, that no one has inspected, that someone like yourself says there is something under there that could be "tested on us or someone else," shit will hit the fan like never before. And how exactly would that make us safer? Sending planes over Iran to bomb facilities that we suspect are making the "threatened things"... not even a nuclear drop, just just a typical no-fly-zone-take-out style clear-out? Should I feel safer, then? Like I'm supposed to feel safer now about what happened in Iraq? Do you really think I feel safer now that every Muslim east of Italy hates me? Who cares why or how or if it's justified or fair... it is what it is. International politics are a very delicate situation in which every walk of life with different morals, values, laws, religions, colors, beliefs, etc. have to agree on a very basic level on how the world should be. Right now there is a broad disagreement on that point and we are paying for it with our taxes and our security. I bet if we went back to the ways of our leaders 100 years ago and just left people alone who wanted to be left alone the world would be a better, safer, less fearful place. You hit us, sure, we'll kick your ass, but this, "let's get our hand in every pot and keep it just the way we want it regardless of what they think, believe, want" is ruining the world.

And then you talk about the blame game and that we would be blaming John Kerry if he was president now and all of these things came to light after the election. I wouldn't blame him for it. My blame on President Bush came well before November 2004. This was all done and decided within months of the 2001 inauguration and shortly after 911. I don't blame the people of congress, DEMs or GOPs, who voted for the war in 2002/2003. They were given one side of the story. I'm not totally sure why and the public will probably never know. But I keep hearing generals and retired members of the CIA and White House staff who say they said to the proper officials years ago that intelligence from credible sources refuting the evidence supporting WMD and the war was ignored and kept from the American public. Yet George Tenet, the director of the CIA, called the case for WMD "a slam dunk." I believe had we known then what we know now, the vote in Congress for the President to use force against Iraq would not have passed, the American public would have been VERY skeptical of the idea and this whole thing would have never happened. I blame the President and the people around him who spun the evidence to us for completely one-siding the arguments and even personally attacking those who disagreed. Just like in 2000 when Bush's election team claimed McCain had an illegitimate child with a black woman. No morals. No ethics. Just gimme what I want and get the fuck out of my way.

So, you must then deduct that this outcome, being acceptable, is justified based in part by knowing only the evidence in support of the actions as opposed to the reality of the situation itself (no WMD at all). An awfully risky business in regard to the existence of "threatened things" being "tested on us or someone else" and human existence. And what of this talk of us having to wait 20 years to effectively judge what is going on over there... like, "wait it out folks, it's a brand new country! It takes years for this stuff to work. They just had elections. ELECTIONS! WOW!" Yeah, the Palestinians just had a democratic election. And who did they elect in this democratic election? An accepted international terrorist organization, that's who. I guess the, "democracy leads to freedom" spiel we've been hearing lately is now proven to be false.

Yeah, feel safer now? Do we go bomb them now that they legitimately elected a terrorist organization as their leaders? Will that make it all better? Or do we just cut them off and let them squabble in their poverty until they have to come begging for help? Think BIG PICTURE. Forget Haliburton, forget elections. Think BIG PICTURE. Think of how we can do something so that people won't want to kill us. That's the ticket. I bet if every American family said, "you know what, I'm going to give the people of Iraq $20 to help build a school" they would start to like us. I bet if every family sent them a Koran they'd think, "maybe they're not ALL imbeciles." They wouldn't be able to. We could then REALLY say we did everything to help both sides agree to disagree, but agree not kill each other. And if after all of that they were still aggressive towards us, the rest of the world would REALLY be on our side, not just be on our side in that we agree that Islamic nations wants us taken out.

But instead we have a very small group of people making irrational decisions based on God knows what that keeps driving the wedge between us and the Middle East and their ideology. They seem to think that the bombs will change the way the world is and how people think. It does just that... it makes the world less safe and secure and makes people think how arrogant, selfish and irrational we are. And as long as this keeps happening, people like you will keep pushing for more of it and keep thinking that this V-Day style "win the war" mentality and agenda will overcome a person thinking, "I hate you."

Self-destructive, man. Completely self-destructive.

Yes, I AM a liberal...

I saw a snippit of this speech on someones MySpace page and dug up the entire address (taken from www.turnleft.com) given by JFK in which he describes what a "Liberal" is and why he is one.

About halfway into this speech you'll find a section about immigrants in this country and their sacrifices made for attaining a good life and the American Dream. How timely this find is, considering the current protests and proposed legislation concerning immigration.

Good reading, indeed...

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Sen. John F. Kennedy, acceptance of the New York Liberal Party Nomination, September 14, 1960.

What do our opponents mean when they apply to us the label "Liberal?" If by "Liberal" they mean, as they want people to believe, someone who is soft in his policies abroad, who is against local government, and who is unconcerned with the taxpayer's dollar, then the record of this party and its members demonstrate that we are not that kind of "Liberal." But if by a "Liberal" they mean someone who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people -- their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights, and their civil liberties -- someone who believes we can break through the stalemate and suspicions that grip us in our policies abroad, if that is what they mean by a "Liberal," then I'm proud to say I'm a "Liberal."

But first, I would like to say what I understand the word "Liberal" to mean and explain in the process why I consider myself to be a "Liberal," and what it means in the presidential election of 1960.

In short, having set forth my view -- I hope for all time -- two nights ago in Houston, on the proper relationship between church and state, I want to take the opportunity to set forth my views on the proper relationship between the state and the citizen. This is my political credo:

I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, in human liberty as the source of national action, in the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas. It is, I believe, the faith in our fellow citizens as individuals and as people that lies at the heart of the liberal faith. For liberalism is not so much a party creed or set of fixed platform promises as it is an attitude of mind and heart, a faith in man's ability through the experiences of his reason and judgment to increase for himself and his fellow men the amount of justice and freedom and brotherhood which all human life deserves.

I believe also in the United States of America, in the promise that it contains and has contained throughout our history of producing a society so abundant and creative and so free and responsible that it cannot only fulfill the aspirations of its citizens, but serve equally well as a beacon for all mankind. I do not believe in a superstate. I see no magic in tax dollars which are sent to Washington and then returned. I abhor the waste and incompetence of large-scale federal bureaucracies in this administration as well as in others. I do not favor state compulsion when voluntary individual effort can do the job and do it well. But I believe in a government which acts, which exercises its full powers and full responsibilities. Government is an art and a precious obligation; and when it has a job to do, I believe it should do it. And this requires not only great ends but that we propose concrete means of achieving them.

Our responsibility is not discharged by announcement of virtuous ends. Our responsibility is to achieve these objectives with social invention, with political skill, and executive vigor. I believe for these reasons that liberalism is our best and only hope in the world today. For the liberal society is a free society, and it is at the same time and for that reason a strong society. Its strength is drawn from the will of free people committed to great ends and peacefully striving to meet them. Only liberalism, in short, can repair our national power, restore our national purpose, and liberate our national energies. And the only basic issue in the 1960 campaign is whether our government will fall in a conservative rut and die there, or whether we will move ahead in the liberal spirit of daring, of breaking new ground, of doing in our generation what Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson did in their time of influence and responsibility.

Our liberalism has its roots in our diverse origins. Most of us are descended from that segment of the American population which was once called an immigrant minority. Today, along with our children and grandchildren, we do not feel minor. We feel proud of our origins and we are not second to any group in our sense of national purpose. For many years New York represented the new frontier to all those who came from the ends of the earth to find new opportunity and new freedom, generations of men and women who fled from the despotism of the czars, the horrors of the Nazis, the tyranny of hunger, who came here to the new frontier in the State of New York. These men and women, a living cross section of American history, indeed, a cross section of the entire world's history of pain and hope, made of this city not only a new world of opportunity, but a new world of the spirit as well.

Tonight we salute Governor and Senator Herbert Lehman as a symbol of that spirit, and as a reminder that the fight for full constitutional rights for all Americans is a fight that must be carried on in 1961.

Many of these same immigrant families produced the pioneers and builders of the American labor movement. They are the men who sweated in our shops, who struggled to create a union, and who were driven by longing for education for their children and for the children's development. They went to night schools; they built their own future, their union's future, and their country's future, brick by brick, block by block, neighborhood by neighborhood, and now in their children's time, suburb by suburb.

Tonight we salute George Meany as a symbol of that struggle and as a reminder that the fight to eliminate poverty and human exploitation is a fight that goes on in our day. But in 1960 the cause of liberalism cannot content itself with carrying on the fight for human justice and economic liberalism here at home. For here and around the world the fear of war hangs over us every morning and every night. It lies, expressed or silent, in the minds of every American. We cannot banish it by repeating that we are economically first or that we are militarily first, for saying so doesn't make it so. More will be needed than goodwill missions or talking back to Soviet politicians or increasing the tempo of the arms race. More will be needed than good intentions, for we know where that paving leads.

In Winston Churchill's words, "We cannot escape our dangers by recoiling from them. We dare not pretend such dangers do not exist."

And tonight we salute Adlai Stevenson as an eloquent spokesman for the effort to achieve an intelligent foreign policy. Our opponents would like the people to believe that in a time of danger it would be hazardous to change the administration that has brought us to this time of danger. I think it would be hazardous not to change. I think it would be hazardous to continue four more years of stagnation and indifference here at home and abroad, of starving the underpinnings of our national power, including not only our defense but our image abroad as a friend.

This is an important election -- in many ways as important as any this century -- and I think that the Democratic Party and the Liberal Party here in New York, and those who believe in progress all over the United States, should be associated with us in this great effort.

The reason that Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman and Adlai Stevenson had influence abroad, and the United States in their time had it, was because they moved this country here at home, because they stood for something here in the United States, for expanding the benefits of our society to our own people, and the people around the world looked to us as a symbol of hope.

I think it is our task to re-create the same atmosphere in our own time. Our national elections have often proved to be the turning point in the course of our country. I am proposing that 1960 be another turning point in the history of the great Republic.

Some pundits are saying it's 1928 all over again. I say it's 1932 all over again. I say this is the great opportunity that we will have in our time to move our people and this country and the people of the free world beyond the new frontiers of the 1960s.

April Showers Bring November Flowers?

There is an election today for the 50th US Congressional District in California. I've been on edge all day waiting for the results. If Busby (D) can pull off 50% of the vote in a traditionally Republican district, it should be a sign of things to come in November. If she doesn't get 50%, it will be tough to win in a run-off in June. Let's hope the polls showing her going from 39% to 47% in the last 3 weeks are right.

Anyone see the opening pitch at the Washington Nationals game? Dick Cheney got up there and was booed like he was Michael Jackson in a YMCA. Classic...