More Bush Crookedness
Who is "reporter Karen Ryan"?
Month: March 2004
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The Fog and the Fury
Headline and opening sentence of a column in the Washington Times:
"Job creation fog . . . and fury
Something must be done [to] restore jobs in U.S. manufacturing...."
So far, so good. But the columnist goes on to explain the recent loss of manufacturing jobs:
"Let's be honest. Some of these manufacturing jobs will not be coming back because of structural changes in our economy. Manufacturers have been reducing payrolls, in middle management and on the production line, because they have found ways to produce more goods at far less cost, boosting profits for further expansion and fatter investor and worker pension dividends."
Uh-huh.
Here is a different explanation (the "fury," as opposed to "the fog"), from a March 10 column:
"Last week's jobs report, with hundreds of thousands giving up the search for work, and manufacturing jobs disappearing for the 43rd straight month, jolted the White House. What is going on?
They're calling it a jobless recovery. Wrong. Millions of jobs are being created. They're just not being created here in the United States.
The reasons can be traced to these four acronyms: NAFTA, GATT, WTO, PNTR. These are the trade treaties and global institutions that have permitted the historic substitution of foreign labor for American labor, to the enrichment of the transnational companies that look upon the Congress as a wholly owned subsidiary....
For the Bush Republicans, the chickens are coming home to roost....
At a weekend conference on immigration and jobs hosted by The American Cause, which this writer chairs, one speaker blurted out that while he voted for Bush in 2000, he would never do so again. The room erupted in applause, though virtually all there were conservatives, and all had once been Goldwater-Nixon-Reagan Republicans."
-- Pat Buchanan, author of
A Republic, Not an Empire
Happy Ides, Caesar. -
Clarity and Certainty
"At the age of 12 I experienced a second wonder of a totally different nature: in a little book*
dealing with Euclidean plane geometry, which came into my hands at the
beginning of a schoolyear. Here were assertions, as for example the
intersection of the three altitudes of a triangle in one point, which
--- though by no means evident --- could nevertheless be proved with
such certainty that any doubt appeared to be out of the question. This lucidity and certainty [Klarheit und Sicherheit] made an indescribable impression upon me.... For example I remember that
an uncle told me the Pythagorean theorem before the holy geometry
booklet* had come into my hands. After much effort I
succeeded in 'proving' this theorem on the basis of the similarity of
triangles ... for anyone who experiences [these feelings] for the first
time, it is marvellous enough that man is capable at all to reach such
a degree of certainty and purity [Sicherheit und Reinheit] in pure thinking as the Greeks showed
us for the first time to be possible in geometry."-- from "Autobiographical Notes" in Albert Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, edited by Paul Arthur Schilpp
"Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating."
-- Carl von Clausewitz at Quotes by Clausewitz
For clarity and certainty, consult All About Altitudes (and be sure to click the "pop it up" button).
For murkiness and uncertainty, consult The Fog of War.
Happy birthday, Albert.
* Einstein's "holy geometry booklet" was, according to Banesh Hoffman, Lehrbuch der Geometrie zum Gebrauch an höheren Lehranstalten, by Eduard Heis (Catholic astronomer and textbook writer) and Thomas Joseph Eschweiler.
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The Line
From a March 10, 2004, entry:
"Language was no more than a collection of meaningless conventional signs, and life could absurdly end at any moment. [Mallarmé] became aware, in Millan’s* words, 'of the extremely fine line
separating absence and presence, being and nothingness, life and death, which
later … he could place at the very centre of his work and make the cornerstone of his personal philosophy and his mature poetics.' "
-- John Simon, Squaring the Circle
* A Throw of the Dice: The Life of Stéphane Mallarmé, by Gordon Millan
The illustration of the "fine line" is not by Mallarmé but by myself. (See Songs for Shakespeare, March 5, where the line separates being from nothingness, and Ridgepole, March 7, where the line represents the "great primal beginning" of Chinese philosophy (or, equivalently, Stevens's "first idea" or Mallarmé's line "separating absence and presence, being and nothingness, life and death.")
By the Associated Press,
Saturday, March 13, 2004:
"Dave Schulthise, known as Dave Blood during his career as a bassist with the 1980's Philadelphia punk-rock band the Dead Milkmen, died on Wednesday [March 10, 2004] at the home of friends in North Salem, N.Y. He was 47.
'David chose to end his life,' Mr. Schulthise's sister, Kathy, wrote on the band's Web site."
I walk the thinnest line
I walk the thinnest line
I walk the thinnest line
Between the light and dark sides of my mind
-- The Dead Milkmen, Beelzebubba album
Related material: The Word in the Desert.
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A Game of
Texas Hold'em
From Lou Dobbs Tonight, March 12, 2004:
DOBBS: A New Jersey company is suing President Bush and U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick for failing to protect American manufacturers. The company Motion Systems is challenging the White House to provide safeguards from a flood of Chinese imports. Lisa Sylvester reports.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LISA SYLVESTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Motion Systems makes that little device used to make a dentist chair tilt up or down. It's also used in scooters for senior citizens. Business was great before 2001, before a Chinese company developed a nearly identical unit.
BILL WOLF, MOTION SYSTEMS CORP.: The Chinese manufacturer produces the unit and sells it for less than one-third of what we sell it for. In fact, it's sold for less than we can buy the materials for.
SYLVESTER: As sales dropped off, Motion Systems filed what is called a 421 petition at the International Trade Commission. That's a safeguard provision written into the law when China joined the World Trade Organization. It's supposed to protect American manufacturers from a surge of Chinese imports. The International Trade Commission agreed with Motion Systems that imports were causing market disruption and recommended quotas be put in place. But that never happened. Despite the ITC's ruling the Bush administration concluded that restricted imports would hurt the U.S. economy.
JIM WOLF, MOTION SYSTEMS CORP.: We are being told by -- to follow these set of rules. And then you follow those set of rules and then it's OK to change the rules.
It's like playing in a
crooked card game.
No one wants to play.
SYLVESTER: This is not the only time this has happened. The International Trade Commission has reviewed five 421 China safeguard petitions. The ITC determined Chinese imports were disrupting the U.S. market in three cases but in each case the White House refused the ITC's recommendation for quotas.
TOM PUTNAM, MOTION SYSTEMS CORP.: This is the largest decline in manufacturing since the great depression. If everybody doesn't stand up and take notice of that, we are doomed.
SYLVESTER: Motion Systems is not done fighting. It has filed a lawsuit against President Bush and U.S. trade representative Robert Zoellick to reverse the decision. That case is pending.
SYLVESTER: We asked the U.S. trade representative's office and the White House counsel for an interview, but they declined to comment. Lisa Sylvester, CNN, Washington.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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Bush's Stalinist Justice
From Ashcroft the Nihilist:
"... victims had no idea just how rigged the federal court system really has become until they actually were in the dock, protesting their innocence (which federal law also has deemed a crime – see the Martha Stewart case). They had no idea that federal prosecutors can legally suborn perjury (called "statements of interest") and that judges are sickeningly pro-government to the point where they are simply another arm of the prosecution. And they had no idea that their trial would differ only in name but not in substance from the famed Stalinist show trials of the late 1930s."
This note commemorates Communist author Howard Fast (Spartacus), who died one year ago today.
"In the memoir Being Red, published in 1990, Fast wrote: 'In the party I found ambition, narrowness and hatred; I also found love and dedication and high courage and integrity — and some of the noblest human beings I have ever
known.' " -- CBS News
"Fast wrote critically about Soviet leader Josef Stalin and left the party after the Soviet Union's crushing of an uprising in Hungary." -- CBS News
Howard Fast was twice the man George W. Bush is, since Bush's Stalinist justice department makes him, at best, half-Fast.
(See, too, yesterday's entry A Half-Right Leader.)
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A Half-Right Leader
For the Record
President Overstates Kerry's Record on Intelligence Budget
By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, March 12, 2004
President Bush, in his first major assault on Sen. John F. Kerry's legislative record, said this week that his Democratic opponent proposed a $1.5 billion cut in the intelligence budget, a proposal that would "gut the intelligence services," and one that had no co-sponsors because it was "deeply irresponsible."
In terms of accuracy, the parry by the president is about half right.....
For more details, click here.
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Sequel
From an entry of July 27, 2003...
Catholic Tastes, Part I:
"...my despair with words as instruments of communion is often near total."
-- Charles Small, Harvard '64 25th Anniversary Report, 1989 (See 11/21/02).
Perhaps dinner and a movie?
The dinner --
at Formaggio in Cuernavaca.
The movie -- Michael.
Lucero
(Bright Star),
portrayed by
Megan Follows
See also
A Mass for Lucero.
Catholic Tastes, Part II:
A Catholic priest on "The Passion of the Christ":
"By the time it’s over, the make-up artists give his skin the texture of spaghetti marinara."
-- The Rev. Richard A. Blake, S.J., professor of fine arts and co-director of the film studies program at Boston College, in America magazine, issue dated March 15, 2004.
Related material:
"I’m waiting for Mel’s sequel:
'He’s back. Christ Almighty!
The Resurrection.
This time, it’s personal.' "
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