This Can't Be Happening!

Anybody who thinks that the government is telling the truth about the plan to shoot down a dead spy satellite--that it's all about protecting us, and not about testing an anti-satellite weapon--has to be really stupid.

And stupid is what the Bush administration and the Pentagon apparently think we are.

They're claiming they need to shoot this thing down because it's got a tank with 1000 pounds of hydrazine, a fuel used for maneuvering satellites while in orbit which is said to be as toxic as chlorine if breathed.

President Bush has turned to the cheapest lies in an effort to protect himself from being exposed as a criminal in the ongoing campaign to have the National Security Agency spy at will on Americans.

I don’t want to overstate the case for Barack Obama, who has been fairly circumspect about his intentions if elected. While saying he is against the Iraq War, he has not acted very forcefully to help bring it to an end. And he certainly has not called for any downsizing of America’s bloated military budget or any end to its imperialist foreign policy—absolutely essential if there is to be any progressive change of consequence in the US.

For two years now, I have been telling people who insisted that Hillary Clinton would be the next Democratic candidate for president that they were wrong. I even put it in writing a few times.

Now I'm going to really put it out there: Hillary Clinton is Toast. She is not going to be the Democratic nominee.

The reason I always figured she wouldn't make it across the primary finish line was that she was too calculatingly conservative for primary voters.

What is all this nonsense about us electing a “commander in chief”?

Okay, I mean we all know it’s President Bush’s favorite title. He thrills to being a “war president,” and loves strutting around in front of guys in uniform and getting saluted. But really, what is this all about?

The Constitution says that the President is the commander in chief of the army and the navy, and of the militia if it is called to national service. But that is really just for the sake of having a civilian at the top of the food chain.

Who’s minding the store in Washington?

While President George W. Bush was standing before the members of Congress on January 28 laying out his plans, such as they are, for the final year of his second term in the White House, he was also seriously and perhaps fatally undermining the authority of Congress with a new signing statement, attached to the latest National Defense Authorization Act, in which he declared that he would simply violate or fail to comply with four provisions.

With the presidential race now effectively pared down to four candidates, thanks to the departure of John Edwards and the imminent departure of Rudy Giuliani, we’re left with a really “B-grade” contest: a bomber (John McCain), a bummer (Hillary Clinton), a betrayer (Mitt Romney) and Obama (that’s Barack with a B).

When journalists are caught lying outright, they can be fired, and can even find their careers terminated. Take Janet Cooke, the Washington Post reporter who made up a story about a young drug user. A decade after her firing, she was earning $6/hour as a Liz Claiborne clerk in a department store. Or consider Stephen Glass, who famously made up stories at the New Republic. He landed on his feet as a fiction writer, but his journalism days are over.

The first government response to America's sinking economy was denial. We were told as recently as a month ago by administration officials and Wall Street charlatans that the economy was robust and that there would not be a recession. Now we are told that the economy is in trouble, but that the government is taking decisive action to shore it up.

When you hear a number like $100 billion (the amount Bush is proposing to give back to people in the form of tax rebates, at about $800 per adult family member) or $145 billion (that $100 billion, plus another $45 billion in business tax breaks—mostly accelerated deductions for capital investment) bounced around, it sounds like a lot of dough, and you might think it would be a good shot in the arm for an economy that is falling into a dead faint.

But let’s think about it on a micro level.

What would my wife and I do with an extra $1600?