IRS: Before Getting Started

"The government believes that private industry, given its established expertise and experience in the field of electronic tax preparation, has a proven track record in providing the best technology and services available. In addition, the government believes a partnership with private industry will: provide taxpayers with higher quality services by using the existing expertise of the private sector; maximize consumer choice; promote competition within the marketplace; and meet objectives in the least costly manner to taxpayers."

Just did my 2003 US Taxes and my French Taxes at the same time. The online declaration of the French taxes is smooth, efficient, easy. The US version, on the other hand, is scandalously bad and it's offline (except by spending the time to find a "private" concern to submit my filing and maybe even pay something).

Why is the US online declaration so fastidious? Because of what the the "government" believes! It's along the line of what "they" believe, what "some" believe and what "most people" believe. Who knows just who and what the "government" is? Is it "big government"? The CIA, FBI or Tom Ridge himself? Is it a shadow figure like Richard Perle or Dick Cheney, or is it the official mouthorgan like Bubba Bush? Is it the IRS or is it HHS? We know what the "government" believes, but we don't know whoit is. Furthermore, the "government" should be nothing more than the organ of the people, something around the lines of "by the people, of the people, for the people", and not some separate hulking shadow industry, some lumbering beast that squashes everything in its path.

I'll be happy to tell you what "I" believe: I believe that privatized government is the scourge of modern American. With private "corrections facilities", private military, private education, private medecin, private mass transportation, the US has shown itself to be the most expensive, most inefficient administration in the organized world. The effect of privatization is to move the focus from "how does the government provide good and efficient services" to "how do I make a buck off of all of this and still blame big government?"

However, I also believe that this trend will be reversed in the near future, seeing how the current scandals (i.e. Halliburton) have lifted the shroud over "privatization" and exposed the money-grubbing reality of the situation: that Halliburton is quite willing to overcharge on services and, at the same time, provide the worst of services to the American military. That's OK to the Bubba Bush administration and the elected government officials since they are not concerned (not a single army child of a congressman or congresswoman). So we screw the taxpayers and screw the soldiers: that's the real meaning of privatization.

My San Antonio.com: Susan Ives: Assassinate, kill, whatever: Expect more death

"Let's face it. Yassin was a 67-year-old quadriplegic on his way home after praying at a neighborhood mosque. I venture to guess the Israelis had a pretty good idea where to find him on any given Monday morning.

Yassin wasn't in hiding. He had a house in what the AP called 'the rundown Sabra neighborhood in Gaza City.' If reporters knew it, you can bet the Israeli army knew it too. He had a handful of bodyguards.

Don't tell me the Israeli Defense Forces were incapable of scooping up an elderly man in a wheelchair and hauling his sorry ass back to jail. They could have if they wanted to. But they chose to assassinate him."

Susan Ives chides the AP for using the term "kill" rather than "assassinate", indirectly pointing out the "big lie" factor in the mainstream press.

One Nation, Indivisible

"Dr. Newdow, 50, often spoke very rapidly but never appeared to lose his footing during the 30 minutes the court gave him. He managed a trick that far more experienced lawyers rarely accomplish: to bring the argument to a symmetrical and seemingly unhurried ending just as the red light comes on.
'There's a principle here,' he told the justices in his closing moments, 'and I'm hoping the court will uphold this principle so that we can finally go back and have every American want to stand up, face the flag, place their hand over their heart and pledge to one nation, indivisible, not divided by religion, with liberty and justice for all.'"

I'm happy to see this case brought before the Surpreme Court, although I have little hope in the outcome. The separation of Church and State in the US has always been something of a joke and the Bubba administration hasn't helped this any.

Spinsanity - John Kerry's French connection

"Rather than trying to engage in the now-common rhetorical tactic of creating associations with terrorists or dictatorial regimes, some political opponents of Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry are engaged in a slightly more subtle campaign to link him with France, the leading opponent of the war in Iraq, and thereby play on nationalist sentiment. Kerry does, of course, have French relatives and speaks French. But the rhetoric has extended far beyond those near-meaningless facts."

French frying Kerry! Bubba Bush, having no legitimate arms, will try to do what he does best: get the Bubba vote with Big Hate politics! We're seeing a lot of it already in the "hate" press.

Take this article in the Intellectual Conservative (really an oxymoron, but I think that the title speaks in relative terms) which serves us up this pile of conservative intelligence:

It is not without reason that Senator Kerry has become known as the “haughty, French-looking candidate.” Regardless of his appearance and demeanor, Kerry’s ideology and voting record is in accord with France, a nation whose stated goals are to oppose the interests of, and diminish the influence of, America.

But wait there's more here in the Northern Star

"Well, French appeasers are ecstatic about Kerry.

Michael Manville of the New York Sun quoted the director of the French Center on the United States, Guillaume Parmentier, in his front-page article several days ago.

"[Kerry] is more like a leader would be in Europe."

Parmentier is right. But we are not Europe. We are better than Europe and the rest of the world. That's why we are the last remaining superpower and France is not."

Then there's this from the New Hampshire Union Leader

"Despite voting in support of the Iraq war, Sen. Kerry has aligned himself with the likes of France, Germany and Russia, all of whom tried to place the U.S. under constraints via the United Nations. Sen. Kerry’s cry to “internationalize” the war effort is a cry for Americans to obtain outside approvals before we defend ourselves."

The "French" cry will get more and more strident over the next few months, but I'm thinking that rather than tarnishing Kerry's image, we'll be seeing a re-think on global politics. People will be asking themselves "who is the enemy" and a lot of those who went ape over the Big Hate rallies in the past will soon be asking themselves "Are we hating the right people?"

Naples Daily News: Perspective

"John Kerry has referred to U.S. allies in the war in Iraq as a 'coalition of the coerced and the bribed,' and Dick Cheney has something to say about that.
'Many questions,' the vice president is quoted as remarking, 'come to mind, but the first is this: How would Senator Kerry describe Great Britain -- coerced or bribed?' "

The vast majority of Britons were against the Iraq invasion. So what do you call that? Bait and switch. The UK voted for a labour prime minister and ended up with a loose cannon.

Wheels fall off US war doctrine - FeaturesWorld - www.theage.com.au

"A few weeks before the war against Iraq began, US Vice-President Dick Cheney paid a visit to the home of the French ambassador in Washington. Despite weeks of intense diplomatic pressure, France, along with more than half the Security Council, was refusing to bow to America's demands to support a second UN resolution authorising the war.

Cheney confronted ambassador Jean-David Levitte with a simple question. 'Is France an ally or a foe?' The ambassador insisted France was an ally. Cheney disagreed. 'We have many reasons,' he said, 'to conclude that you are not really a friend or an ally.'
...
Once viewed as a hawk among the Democrats, when he worked in Jimmy Carter's White House, Brzezinski has become a vocal critic of the Bush doctrine. The first person to use the phrase, "If you're not with us, you're against us", he says, was the Bolshevik revolutionary, Lenin. He calls it "an absolutely paranoid perspective on the world".

The way that the newspapers are treating Bush these days, he should have every right to feel paranoid. Gone are the days of the Teflon W.

Guardian Unlimited | The Guardian | Things get worse with Coke

"So now the full scale of Coke's PR disaster is clear. It goes something like this: take Thames Water from the tap in your factory in Sidcup, Kent; put it through a purification process, call it 'pure' and give it a mark-up from 0.03p to 95p per half litre; in the process, add a batch of calcium chloride, containing bromide, for 'taste profile'; then pump ozone through it, oxidising the bromide - which is not a problem - into bromate - which is. Finally, dispatch to the shops bottles of water containing up to twice the legal limit for bromate (10 micrograms per litre). "

This sort of product marketing is a lot like Bubba Bush's administration: take a really bad process, call it "pure" and then make everyone pay way too much for it. And to top it all off, it's bad for you. I'm hoping that consumers will wake up to these kinds of shenanigans, in the same way that voters are starting to with the current neocon government.

Three op-eds and two stories: Who do you believe?

Today's New York Times, marking the anniversary of the US and British invasion of Iraq, has run three Op-Eds of some note: the NY Times editors themselves, Donald "Bubba" Rumsfeld and Paul Krugman. Now for some excerpts: Let's tart with Rummy:

"In Iraq, for 12 years, through 17 United Nations Security Council resolutions, the world gave Saddam Hussein every opportunity to avoid war. He was being held to a simple standard: live up to your agreement at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war; disarm and prove you have done so. Instead of disarming -- as Kazakhstan, South Africa and Ukraine did, and as Libya is doing today -- Saddam Hussein chose deception and defiance.

Repeatedly, he rejected those resolutions and he systematically deceived United Nations inspectors about his weapons and his intent. The world knew his record: he used chemical weapons against Iran and his own citizens; he invaded Iran and Kuwait; he launched ballistic missiles at Iran, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain; and his troops repeatedly fired on American and British aircraft patrolling the no-flight zones."

So Rummy's story is that Hussein didn't disarm, although Rummy doesn't bother to give any evidence of this.

Now let's go to the New York Times editors:

"It's nonetheless important to remember that none of this [Iraq invasion] might have happened if we had known then what we know now. No matter what the president believed about the long-term threat posed by Saddam Hussein, he would have had a much harder time selling this war of choice to the American people if they had known that the Iraqi dictator had been reduced to a toothless tiger by the first Persian Gulf war and by United Nations weapons inspectors. Iraq's weapons programs had been shut down, Mr. Hussein had no threatening weapons stockpiled, the administration was exaggerating evidence about them, and there was, and is, no evidence that Mr. Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

Quite the contradiction to Rummy's article.

Now for the Krugman punch line:

"But yesterday [...] the president of Poland — which has roughly 2,500 soldiers in Iraq — had this to say: 'That they deceived us about the weapons of mass destruction, that's true. We were taken for a ride.'"

So Rummy says "we were right" and the Polish president, along with the new Spanish Prime Minister, both says the US lied. Now who do you believe?

Scalia Angrily Defends His Duck Hunt With Cheney

"Justice Antonin Scalia of the United States Supreme Court today bluntly rejected demands that he step aside in a case involving Vice President Dick Cheney, mocking criticism that a duck hunting trip the two were on in January suggested he would be biased toward his longtime friend.
...
In a 21-page memorandum filled with scorn and with lessons in the ways of Washington, Justice Scalia wrote that if people assumed a duck hunting trip would be enough to swing his vote, ``the nation is in deeper trouble than I had imagined.''"

Scalia's hunting trip with Cheney, flown in on Air Force 2, is just another example of the extremely chummy relationship that he has with the Bush crowd. After having witnessed an extremely interventionist Supreme Court elect Bush in 2000, you can now expect the Supreme Court officials to claim just about anything and everything, no matter how outrageous. That's the Bubba factor: the bigger the gaffe, the more preposterous the situation, the more moral indignation you express in return to criticism.

Bush Agenda Reaching Critical Mass Hysteria

Bubba Cheney claims that "Kerry is making it up!" and that Kerry should "name names" when in reality John Kerry doesn't need to say anything at all: the newspapers have the whole story.

Start with one of Bushes ex-staunch ally, Spain,

"The International Herald Tribune recently quoted Zapatero as saying, 'We're aligning ourselves with Kerry. Our allegiance will be for peace, against war, no more deaths for oil, and for a dialogue between the government of Spain and the new Kerry administration.' "

Spain, check!

Now let's talk about Venezuela:

"Chavez, who survived a brief coup in 2002, has called President Bush "stupid" and accused the United States of plotting to overthrow him. He actively courts U.S. foes like Cuba and Iran."

Venezuela, check!

How about our friends the Brits?

"George Osborne, a Conservative member of the British Parliament from the plummy depths of Cheshire by way of Oxford and a Dean Rusk fellowship at Davidson College in North Carolina, declares himself "a signed-up, card-carrying Bush fan." But last month in Britain's Spectator he wrote: "If Britain could vote this November, no one doubts what the result would be. Kerry would win by a landslide. He'd win votes across the board. Not just on the Left, but on the Right, too. In fact, Kerry would probably get more votes in the Tory shires and suburbs than he would from Labor's urban heartlands. Because here is the truth that dare not speak its name: Many Conservatives don't much like Bush."

Indeed, Osborne wrote, "Bushites are a minority." On his own benches in the House of Commons, Osborne reported, one colleague told him: "Bush is a man who might wail at the moon — I don't feel comfortable with him, unlike Kerry."

And in a more aggregate picture:

"On Tuesday, the nonpartisan Pew Research Center released a survey showing widespread alienation with Bush's policies among residents of eight European, Asian and African countries.

Conducted between Feb. 19 and March 3 -- before last week's attack in Madrid -- the survey found that at least half of those surveyed in each country had unfavorable views of Bush, ranging from 57 percent in Britain to 96 percent in Jordan."

So I come back to the question: who backs Bush, other than "il duce" or perhaps Heiser? If Bush has some foreign backers, he should name names!

Democrats Seek Probe of Medicare Estimates (washingtonpost.com)

"Claims that the Bush administration withheld cost estimates of last year's Medicare prescription drug law prompted Democratic lawmakers yesterday to demand investigations and a GOP leader to say the reports are hurting his party's credibility.

Two Democratic senators wrote to President Bush, calling on him to bar any retaliation against Medicare's chief actuary, who last week said an administration official had threatened to fire him if he showed Congress his projected costs of the bill to add a drug benefit to Medicare. Meanwhile, half a dozen House Democrats have asked the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services to investigate the actuary's allegations. "

It's good to see a contentious press and a querelous congress for a change! Finally I get the impression that some semblance of democratic process still exists in the US.

Colin Powell Shows How Low He Can Stoop

One of the things that bugs me the most about the Bubba Bush administration is its Bubba-like swagger -- a pompous, presumptuous, pot-bellied bow-legged swagger. It exudes the kind of mentally that in Texas I think is "quaint", like the Texan who told me that "Texas wines are as good as any in the world." It's sort of a lie, but you can forgive those that say things about Texas, as long as it doesn't really hurt anyone.

But Bubba W and his cohorts take these "liberties with common courtesies" to a whole new dimension, to a very "crooked" dimension, signpost up ahead -- the "bubba zone"!

Today's notes by Colin Powell and Scott McClelland are no exception. The Voice of America headline says "Spanish Support for War on Terror Will Remain Strong, says Powell, but this is where the twilight zone starts. Powell is trying the big lie with this construction: Bush is America, America fights terror, the Iraq invasion fights terror, Spain fights terror with America. But the Spanish know better than to equate Bush with America or America with anti-terror.

So if Powell wants to make you believe that the Bubba Bush administration is chummy with the Zapatero administration, the Guardian gives you a different look:

Zapatero signals move away from US"

He [Mr. Zapatero] has already said he wants George Bush to lose the presidential elections, so he will have no friend there.

Oh, and by the way, Zapatero has announced that he is withdrawing Spanish troops from Iraq, and then some, in this article and this article in the Financial Times:

"The Spanish troops in Iraq will return home." Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Spain's next prime minister, repeated his election pledge in a radio interview on Monday in full knowledge of the impact that his words would have abroad.
...

"This was a decision taken by the Socialist party before the al-Qaeda attack, if it was al-Qaeda. The war in Iraq was a disaster and the occupation continues to be a disaster. You cannot organise a war with lies. [President George W.] Bush and [UK prime minister Tony] Blair should do some self-criticism to avoid repeating what has happened."
...
Questions are also being raised about the Bush administration's overt support for Mr Aznar in the run-up to the polls.

Diplomats On Monday revealed details of how within hours of the Madrid bombings last Thursday, Spain and the US pushed through a UN Security Council resolution that named the Basque separatist group Eta as the perpetrator.

Then as Spaniards were voting on Sunday, senior US officials were unanimous in telling talkshow hosts it was too early to say which group was responsible. "No, I don't have any intelligence that would give clarity," said Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary.

In an unintended sort of way, I think that Bubba Rummy's lie is the most truthful statement made by a Bush administration official recently.

But back to Scott McClelland. As long as we are still in the twilight zone, we might as well listen to Scottie in ABC News:

Kerry should identify the leaders who purportedly hope he beats President Bush in November, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said. "Either he is straightforward and states who they are, or the only conclusion one can draw is that he is making it up to attack the president," the spokesman said.

I would turn the tables on Scottie's request. Find one leader in the world, outside of maybe Silvio Berlusconi, who wants to keep the current regime in the US. I doubt highly that you'll get any takers in the current situation.

The funny thing is to read that:

Three times, McClellan repeated the charge that Kerry was "making it up." And he sought to turn Kerry's assertion to the White House's advantage by using it to raise questions about Kerry's credibility.

Reaching, there, Scotty.

HoustonChronicle.com - Did `death drive' cost a Marine his life?

"Three days before Christmas, the 26-year-old recruiter was ordered to drive approximately 335 miles from Little Rock, Ark., to his command headquarters in Dallas, where he was lectured to and disciplined. More than 11 hours into their day, at 6:27 p.m., he and a second Marine were on their way back home when their van veered off I-30 east of Mount Pleasant.

As it swerved back onto the pavement and began to roll, Lowry was thrown free and killed instantly. The driver, Lance Cpl. Jason Bolen, was either asleep or fatigued, a Texas trooper's accident report states.

Marines serving at Little Rock Air Force Base say Lowry was being subjected that day to a form of punishment they call 'death drives,' 'pain drives' or 'suicide drives,' according to interviews and an internal Marine memo provided to the Houston Chronicle. "

I have read many reports of overzealous military recruiters harassing young men and women to sign up. This report sheds some light on the rationale behind the recruiters activities -- that they themselves are subject to harassment and intimidation. So much for the all-volunteer army.

HoustonChronicle.com - Another fine proposed against Clear Channel

"The Federal Communications Commission voted 4-1 to cite Clear Channel's Elliot in the Morning show for nine alleged violations 'that involved graphic and explicit sexual material, and were designed to pander to, titillate and shock listeners.'

It was second-largest fine this year against the San Antonio-based radio giant, which has recently promised to clean up its programming. Last month it fired the disc jockey known as 'Bubba the Love Sponge,' took the Howard Stern show off the six Clear Channel stations that broadcast it and outlined new standards that include immediate suspension of any on-air performer accused by the FCC of airing indecent material. "

Even Clear Channel is getting bad press these days. Is the pendulum just starting to swing?

HoustonChronicle.com - Feds want ability to install wiretaps on Internet

"Critics said the government's proposal would have far-reaching impact on new communications technologies and could be enormously expensive for companies that need to add wiretap-capabilities to their products, such as push-to-talk cellular telephones and telephone service over Internet lines. "

It's chilling to note that the only item that is bothering the "critics" is the potential business slowdown. Gee, did anyone think about the US Constitution in all of this? How about democracy and freedom of speech? How about unlawful search and seizure?

HoustonChronicle.com - Report: Spain told envoys to blame ETA

"MADRID - The Spanish government told its ambassadors to spread the word that armed Basque separatist group ETA was to blame for the Madrid bombings within hours of the attacks, a leading newspaper reported today.
The report came amid increased grumbling from government critics that Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar's ruling party might be pointing the finger at ETA -- and minimising suspicions Muslim militants were involved -- for political reasons. "

Funny to see this in the Houston paper first. Seems as if it has finally become open season for bashing Bubba Bush and his allies, in this case Bubba Aznar. And not a minute too soon.

The Aznar case, much like Bush, is a grim reminder that those who pursue an unpopular war have every chance of losing the faith of their constituants. In Aznar's case, 80% to 90% of the Spanish population was against backing Iraq.

BostonHerald.com - National News: Bush uses radio address for veiled attack on Kerry's economic policies

"Bush says higher taxes are ``a recipe for economic disaster.''

He says "punishing families and small business is not a job-creation strategy.''

Recently, Bush has responsed to Democratic attacks on his record on jobs by accusing Kerry of trying to raise taxes and discourage trade. "

Kerry has said that he will work to repeal the very generous tax cuts made to upper-income brackets during the Bubba Bush administration. So accusing Kerry of "raising taxes" is analagous to accusing Bush to going to war with Iraq: it's not an accusation, it's a fact. The real question is whether or not you think that the US economy and the standard of living in the US in general are better off by giving tax cuts to the rich.

Any economist worth 2 cents, and that means the very large majority, will tell you that optimal marginal additional spending does not come from giving fiscal breaks to those who already have everything. Furthermore, decreasing state spending also dries up the economy. So the reality of the tax breaks to the wealthy is that they have a net "very bad" effect on the US economy.

Finally, criticizing Kerry for not stooping to protectionism is beyond the Bubba pale, even for W. Any of those > US$0.02 economists will also tell you that protectinism has a very bad long-term effect on the economy. Besides, far from being a protectionist, Bush is very close to large companies that have moved to the Bahamas to avoid US taxes.

The Seattle Times: Nation & World: Medicare analyst confirms he was ordered to withhold unfavorable cost estimate

"Richard Foster, chief actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, said last night that he received a handwritten note from Scully, then the centers' administrator, in early June ordering him to ignore information requests from members of Congress who were drafting the drug bill.
Scully's note, according to Foster, 'was a direct order not to respond to certain requests and instead to provide the responses to him and (to) warn about the consequences of insubordination.'
The note was Scully's first threat in writing, Foster said, and came after at least three less-formal threats. They 'came in different forms,' he said. 'Sometimes he would make a comment that 'I think I need another chief actuary,' or 'If you want to work for the Ways and Means Committee (which was drafting the bill) I can arrange it.' It was that sort of thing.' "

More Enron-style accounting in the Bubba Bush administration. This sort of intimidation is probably illegal and should be severely punished. At any rate, this is precisely the sort of thing that "crooked and lying" refers to.

$5 Million Settlement Ends Case of Tainted Texas Sting

"Five years after 46 people, almost all of them black, were arrested on fabricated drug charges in Tulia, Tex., their ordeal will draw to a close today with the announcement of a $5 million settlement in their civil suit and the disbandment of a federally financed 26-county narcotics task force responsible for the arrests."

This is the sort of "legal error" in Texas underlines the urgence of overhauling the court system and stopping the death penalty. Texas is to justice what Florida is to elected democracy.

One Event, Many Headlines

George Tenet's testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee gave matter for the widest possible interpretations, ranging from non-news headlines like Tenet says Bush administration didn't misrepresent facts on Iraq (AP) to some rather important headlines like CIA director disputes Cheney assertions on Iraq (Knight Ridder).

The two headlines offer entirely different views, but they are both correct and the articles themselves are extremely similar. How can this be, you may ask? George Tenet told Ted Kennedy that he didn't think that the Bush administration misrepresented the facts, but then went on to say that he corrected Dick Cheney "privately" on three important occasions.

The Knight-Ridder article seems to sum-up the affair:

Tenet at first appeared to defend the administration, saying that he didn't believe the White House misrepresented intelligence provided by the CIA.

The administration's statements, he said, reflected a prewar intelligence consensus that Saddam had stockpiled chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear bombs.

But under sharp questioning by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., Tenet reversed himself, saying there had been instances when he had warned administration officials that they were misstating the threat posed by Iraq.

Virgins have same rate of sexually transmitted diseases as non-virgins

"According to a survey of 15,000 kids aged 12-18, a whopping 88% who vowed to abstain from sex before marriage (remain virgins) eventually broke their pledge during their teens. The survey was carried out nationally and included all social classes (a representative sample).

As many of these *virgins* had not been attentive during sex education classes (or had not had them) they tend to have sex without protection more often than other kids. "

Is there any surprise that attempts to circumvent one of the most basic and pervasive human driving forces fall so short of the mark?

What is perhaps surprising is the deterioration of public attitudes towards sexuality in the US. This, along with teaching creationism or suggestions of an anti-Gay-marriage amendment to the Constition, are at the heart of the Bubbatisation of America!

HoustonChronicle.com - Billionaire investor slams tax cuts for rich

"Billionaire investor Warren Buffett accused the Bush administration Saturday of pursuing tax cuts that favor large corporations and wealthy individuals.
'If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning,' Buffett said in Berkshire Hathaway's annual report. "

I would like to see the Bubba Bush administration call the head of Berkshire Hathaway a communist!