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The Crisis Papers on DU
| Ernest Partridge |
John McCain's campaign is imploding as the presidential candidate lapses into incoherence and petulance, and his running-mate becomes a national laughing-stock. In the face of an impending economic meltdown, the Democratic candidates, Obama and Biden, appear to be the only adults in the contest. Meanwhile, the GOP's erstwhile dependable allies, the corporate media, are displaying moments of journalistic integrity. This presents a problem for the Republican ticket for, as St...
| Bernard Weiner |
Don't ask me how many palms I had to grease or how I gained access to certain locked drawers, but over the weekend I was able to peek into the personal journals of the four major candidates, along with the diary of Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson. Here are some juicy excerpts, which provide some insight into their states of mind.
INSIDE JOHN McCAIN'S DIARY
I feel like I'm in quicksand, and no matter which way I move, I'm just dragged down deeper. Rove and Schmidt warned m...
| Bernard Weiner |
There's been so much happening politically -- the daily scandals, flippity-floppities, hypocrisies, lies -- that it's hard to know where to begin. Let's start with Obama vs McCain, Round 1:
1. A WHOLE LOT OF JABBING
The Obama/McCain debate was less substantive in its impact, since both candidates' views on the various subjects were well-known by now, but was more revelatory in its visual context: body-language, eye-contact (or lack thereof), physical strategy.
Both Obama a...
| Ernest Partridge |
The McCain campaign has carelessly served a fat pitch down the middle, and if Barack Obama doesn't hit it out of the park, perhaps he doesn't deserve to win the election.
The pitch? John McCain, the hero of the Hanoi Hilton, has shown himself to be a wimp – even, dare I say it?, a coward. McCain attempted to bail out of a scheduled debate, and he sequesters his running mate in various "undisclosed locations" out of reach of the media
Imagine what Karl Rove might do with ...
| Ernest Partridge |
Now is the time for all good Democrats to come to the aid of the capitalists.
However, if the Democrats are to be of any help, first of all the capitalists must come to the aid of the Democrats.
There's an election coming up in just six weeks. What is the fat-cat, Wall Street tycoon to do about it? He and his well situated buddies can direct bundles of cash to various campaigns, they can order cadres of lobbyists to lean on candidates, and they can issue orders to the co...
| Bernard Weiner |
Dear Wolfgang and Jacqueline:
Yes, I know that you and other European friends are, as you put it, "totally confused" by what's happening here in the U.S. right now. Welcome to the club. I wish I could answer all your questions about America's current political/economic crisis with definitive certainty. But the situation is moving real fast, with one disaster upon another, and with politicians flip-flopping all over the place.
As a result, it's difficult to know precisely wh...
| Ernest Partridge |
If we are to believe the most recent public opinion polls, this has been a very bad week for the Obama/Biden ticket.
According to Gallup, the Democrats' consistent eleven to fifteen point advantage since January Newsweek, CNN, NBC/WSJ, and CBS
But should we believe the most recent public opinion polls? Today's "dead heat" seems inconsistent with other statistics. Among them:
New registrations are overwhelmingly Democratic: that during the primary season, "more than t...
| Bernard Weiner |
Dear Diary:
Yeah, there have been other great moments in my political career -- maneuvering Dim Son into the White House in 2000 and then repeating in 2004, for example -- but this one feels really good.
McCain was on a fast track to oblivion a few weeks ago. Obama had the momentum, had the issues, had the youthful energy, had the money, whereas our Republicans were divided and depressed. John looked old and tired, running against Obama mainly because he was the last GOP ca...
| Bernard Weiner |
Each year around the anniversary of 9/11, I summarize what we ordinary citizens have learned since that awful day in 2001. This is the seventh annual look backwards, a 2008 update that contains new information and surmisings about those horrific events and what followed.
1. One 9/11 Size Fits All. What we now more fully understand is how the CheneyBush Administration utilized the murderous terrorism of 9/11 as the linchpin justification for their unfolding domestic and forei...
| Bernard Weiner |
What is it about American foreign policy that constantly gets the U.S. military involved in someone else's country and then winds up with our troops bogged down in a dimly understood local conflict? Are our strategists and foreign policy experts missing something?
When other countries stir up trouble in Latin America or the Caribbean, the U.S. regards this as a violation of its hegemony (the Monroe Doctrine) in its home "sphere of influence." But we seem unable to comprehen...
| Ernest Partridge |
A "Russian connection."
In June, 1989, I attended a seminar on "Global Security and Arms Control," at the University of California, Irvine, where I met and befriended four scholars from the Soviet Union. The following November, I was an invited participant in a Conference in Moscow on "The Ethics of Non-Violence," sponsored by the Soviet Academy of Sciences. There followed, during the decade of the nineties, six additional visits to Russia, in each case at the invitation o...
| Bernard Weiner |
The race between McCain and Obama is tighter than one would think should be the case. I needed some help in figuring out why, so I got a coded message to "Shallow Throat "-- the high-ranking GOP mole in the Bush Administration with whom I've consulted often.** We met a few days ago under some shade trees at a public park in Alexandria.
"I'm confused by what's going on," I said to Shallow Throat, who was wearing a new wig and wraparounds. "Obama should be wiping the floor wit...
| Bernard Weiner |
This is an essay about the consequences of lies and law-breaking emanating from the top of the government. We'll get to Russia's Putin and Georgia's Saakashvili below. First:
How can you tell when the Busheviks in America are telling lies or trying to hide the truth? One could resort to the old saw "When their lips are moving," but sometimes these guys inadvertently just spill the beans. Remember Bush's own accidental truth-bomb when he said his role as president is to "cata...
| Ernest Partridge |
Better get used to the idea: John McCain will probably be the next President of the United States.
The fix is in, as it has been in every election since 2000.
This follows from two overarching facts that the corporate media will not report, and the Democrats choose to ignore:
1. The ruling oligarchy can not allow a reformist Democrat to occupy the White House.
2. They have the means to prevent it, as they did in 2000, in 2004, and as they might do again in 2008.
All ot...
| Ernest Partridge |
My computer and I have been through a bad spell these past couple of weeks.
First, my router/modem developed a terminal malfunction, and then my new anti-virus software failed to install. Thankfully, three very capable and patient gentlemen at various technical support facilities found solutions.
These three gentlemen were, respectively, from India, the Philippines, and once again, India.
If you or someone in your family is about to graduate with a degree in computer sci...
| Bernard Weiner |
Author's Note: About six million Americans live and work outside the U.S. The Democratic Party has organized Democrats Abroad chapters across the globe so that many can remain active in political affairs back home, including absentee-voting in their home districts. DA also sends delegates to the National Democratic Convention. For the past several years, the largest DA chapter in Germany, in Munich, has invited me to address them about the ongoing electoral campaigns. Since I...
| Bernard Weiner |
Iraq is, will be, and should be, at the heart of the chasm between the two battling presidential hopefuls as we approach the November election. One candidate sees that war and occupation as part of a larger, permanent crusade, the other as a terrible error that needs to be corrected.
But before analyzing the distinctly different visions of McCain and Obama, it's important to remind ourselves how the U.S. got into this no-win situation and thus have a better idea how to get ...
| Ernest Partridge |
1946, Dr. Gustav M. Gilbert, a psychologist fluent in German, was assigned by the U.S. Army to study the minds and motivations of the Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg tribunals. The following year, his Nuremberg Diary was published, containing transcripts of his conversations with the prisoners. ().
In words consistent with what I have read of, and about, Gustav Gilbert, he is portrayed in the 2000 TV film "Nuremberg," as telling the Head Prosecutor Robert Jackson (Alex Ba...
| Bernard Weiner |
Dear Diary:
These final months are not fun. The economy is a disaster. My ratings have sunk even deeper into the toilet. Congress, sensing my lame-duck weakness, has started over-riding my vetoes. Republican candidates are staying away from me like I'm toxic waste. The Democrats are licking their lips, already tasting victory in November.
(But, lucky for us, the Democrat leaders are still wimps and aren't really coming after us in the White House. Karl was right: Make the D...
| Bernard Weiner |
In the old days, colonial powers simply conquered the local population, reconfigured the maps, installed their viceroys or governors, and ruled through them from their home countries. As nationalism began to grow more strident in the colonial territories, that blatant form of rule wouldn't do, so the neo-colonial powers installed their native "made" men or worked out arrangement$ with local strongmen/dictators agreeable to doing their bidding without much complaint. Iraq, a n...
| Bernard Weiner |
The question is not whether Iran will be attacked, but by whom and whether the bombing will commence within the next several months or shortly after the November election.
The U.S. for many months has made bellicose noises about thwarting Iran's nuclear ambitions with force -- complete with a virtual repeat of its pre-war propaganda campaign prior to "shock&awe" against Iraq. Israel is reported to have just carried out a practicing for an attack on Iran. Iran is letting it ...
| Ernest Partridge |
My friend Roy is a world-class computer wizard. Throughout the more than twenty years that we've known him, he has managed to solve numerous computer glitches that have had us totally baffled. In our business dealings with him he has been unfailingly dependable and honest.
But his politics are abominable! As often as not, when we visit his shop, Rush, or Hannity, or Savage are blaring on the AM radio. In 2000, and again in 2004, a "Bush/Cheney" sign was posted atop his ...
| Bernard Weiner |
Lies, big or small, are corrosive worms that can weaken foundations of trust, influence how events are framed, injure the liar as well as those lied to. When those untruths come from private individuals, the consequences usually are contained. When public officials lie, the moral dry-rot can be wide-ranging, sometimes leading to catastrophic results (read: Iraq).
I.F. Stone, one of my journalistic heroes from the '50s and '60s ("I.F. Stone's Weekly"), believed, correctly, th...
| Bernard Weiner |
Given how low the Republicans have fallen in popularity in the past several years -- mainly because of the dire economy, the endemic corruption, the never-ending war in Iraq, the extremist snooping on ordinary Americans, a government that doesn't function well in emergencies, torture as state policy, etc. -- given all that, one would think that the GOP higher-ups would realize that John McCain is heading for an ignominious defeat unless some major policy shifts in the party m...
| Ernest Partridge |
There are no sellers without buyers.
That's the first law of practical economics. Everyone knows this to be true, whether or not one has ever taken a course in Economics. Everyone except, apparently, a few Ph.D economists who seem to forget this rule when they are hired by the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institute, etc., from which they migrate, back and forth, between offices in Republican administrations and these right-wing think tanks.
For these wor...
| Bernard Weiner |
(Editor's Note: Some time after the Bush Administration had left office, in what historians call the beginnings of the period of "Restoration of Constitutional Rule," criminal indictments were about to be unsealed aimed at the architects of the former regime's illegal foreign wars/torture policy and martial law-type domestic rule. Those indicted would have one last chance to escape likely incarceration: testimony before the recently-instituted Truth & Reconciliation Commissio...
| Bernard Weiner |
OK, let's connect the dots: The Iraq War & Occupation. Scott McClellan's memoir. The death of film director Sydney Pollack.
When I heard about the death of Pollack last week, I happened coincidentally to be rewatching one of his earliest films, from 1971, "Three Days of the Condor." In it, Robert Redford plays a bookish CIA analyst who survives the mass-murder of his entire unit because he was "out to lunch," literally and figuratively. The rest of the movie involves Redfor...
| Ernest Partridge |
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
-- William Butler Yeats
The Partridges are feeling insufferably smug these days.
Halfway through the Bush regime, we cashed in our stocks, bought our house outright and tore up our mortgage. Though declining in value in this housing market crash, our modest home is our castle and now the bank cannot take it from us. We are completely free of debts. The Toyota Tundra truck, and on ...
| Ernest Partridge |
A Democrat campaigning for the White House must feel like a soldier advancing through a mine field. At any moment, he or she is one step away from being blown out of the contest. And the poor wretch is surrounded by a ravenous mob of media hounds, each of whom is eager to set off the fatal charge.
Gotcha!
Still worse, almost all the media volleys are fired toward the port side. If a Republican or (so-called) "conservative" makes a gaffe, as they do almost daily, their "mi...
| Bernard Weiner |
"I'm with my closest colleagues at the top of Mt. Everest. Below us on the snow, or maybe it's white sand, are thousands of bloody bodies. Suddenly, I see a line of approaching figures, armed with pitchforks and clubs, coming up the mountain. At first, I'm happy because they're carrying an American flag, but then I realize they're coming after me, led by a Toy Soldier wearing black. I turn around to figure out a counter-attack strategy with my key aides, but I'm all alone. I ...
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About the Crisis Papers
Ernest Partridge and Bernard Weiner are co-editors of The Crisis Papers, and have published their essays on Democratic Underground since 2001. Bernard Weiner, an activist journalist and public speaker, holds a Ph.D.in government and international relations, has taught at various universities, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle, and currently co-edits The Crisis Papers. Visit Bernard Weiner's blog Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website The Online Gadfly and co-edits the The Crisis Papers. He is at work on a book, Conscience of a Progressive, which can be seen in-progress here. Visit Ernest Partridge's blog Visitor Tools
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Previous Crisis Papers Archives
To view the Crisis Papers archives from March 2005 to March 2006, click here. To find Bernard Weiner's earlier essays on DU, click here. To find Ernest Partridge's earlier essays on DU, click here. Random Journal
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