BUSH KNOWS SACRIFICE

George Bush is the kind of guy who wants to have his cake and eat it to. In this case the cake is exploding.

The thing about Bush is he knows people are idiots. All Republicans know that if you dangle taxes as an issue in front of them they will bite every time. Everyone in America uses services paid for with taxes, but nobody wants to pay them. Especially rich crackers. No matter if cutting taxes will be good for a particular person, they like to hear that taxes will be cut.

Just look at Bush in that picture. He's doing the old "The finger thing means the taxes" bit.

So, like all Republicans do when they are in a snag, he talks about taxes.

While interviewing Bush, Jim Lehrer brought up sacrifice and taxes. If the war in Iraq is so great, why not raise taxes and ask rich crackers to sacrifice.

That was out of the question for Bush. "I strongly oppose that [raising taxes]. If that's the kind of sacrifice people are talking about, I'm not for it because raising taxes will hurt this growing economy." Bush is still under the delusion that trickle-down economics (or "voodoo economics" as Bush Sr. once called it before he had to kiss Reagan's ass) is a good thing.

The truth is that trickle-down economics creates a larger divide in wealth, doesn't create jobs any faster, and forces the government to make cuts in the budget -- and the first cuts are programs which the poor rely on. It's no wonder highly religious people are more conservative both socially and economically -- it is an act of faith to believe a more regressive tax code is a good thing for anyone besides the rich people who get the breaks.

During the annual Martin Luther King, Jr. march in San Antonio, a group of people were trying to get a chant going. One of the chants they tried was, "Tax the rich, feed the poor, we don't want George Bush's war!" I thought it was pretty clever.

If Bush were there he might have countered with: "Pay the rich, screw the poor, and by the way expand the war!"

NEOCON SWINDLES.

Among pundits and other idiots, it is widely accepted that Iran is working on developing a nuke. Iran is making no bones about uranium enrichment, but this is far from solid proof that Iran is close to having or even working on a nuke.

Scott Ritter, in the November 20, 2006, issue of The Nation, makes it very clear that Iran is only seeking to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.

The Iraq Study Group Report (while extremely flawed, it is at least something) suggested engaging with Iran to help with the Iraq disaster (one of only a handful of useful ideas in the report). The Bush Administration, however, has made it very clear that is off the table. Not only will they not approach Iran because of their supposed nuclear weapons ambitions, they are hinting at an attack of some sort against Iran.

The WMD justification is not their best bet for convincing the American people such a move would be a good idea - and for good reason too. Bush does not want Iran's help with Iraq, and is alleging (without much proof) that Iran is already meddling in Iraq. If Bush is right about such meddling, maybe it means Ahmadinejad is deciding to implement the ISG recommendations with or without America. He's such a good sport.

I'm not sure if the American people care whether or not Iran is messing with our mess. American's are not behind Iraq, why should they care if Iran is trying to assert its influence in the country?

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING IN: YOU'RE A CONSERVATIVE NOW!

This has probably been the case with someone you know: an acquaintance of yours is very religious, but you don't know much about them beyond that; you especially don't know their political affiliation (either because they haven't discussed it with you, or they are very ambiguous about it). Now, you could probably be forgiven for assuming that person is socially conservative if not fiscally conservative as well. And why wouldn't you assume that. Conservatives these days like to act as if they have a lock on religiousness in America and on what they call "moral values."

Every year on the third Monday of January we celebrate the life and works of Dr. Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. (This year the holiday just happened to fall on his actual birthday, January 15.) It also seems that every year, King's legacy is commandeered for the agenda of every right-winger, from Bill O'Reilly to the Minutemen aka the Minuteklan. (In fact, it doesn't even have to be January for this to happen, though the celebration of his birthday is a popular time to use King's legacy.)

Even though there really isn't any debate as to Dr. King's political beliefs, a few opportunistic right-wingers try to pull a fast one on everyone and claim he was a good conservative. For anyone who knows the difference between Dr. King and Alan Keyes, this is not even a serious area of contention. But, tragically, Dr. King is dead and it can be hard to apply positions to someone who isn't alive and can't respond. We can, however, take a fairly good guess at what he thought on a whole range of issues, given what he believed at the time and other indicators.

On the January 16, 2006, (Martin Luther King Jr. Day) broadcast of BreakPoint, burglary aficionado and Nixon buddy Charles Colson claimed that King was "a great conservative" and went on to claim that Sammy "The Bull" Alito (link, link) would have been the kind of dude he would want on the Supreme Court. For some reason this seems unlikely to me.... Oh, wait, I know why, because it's ridiculous. As Media Matters for America showed, there is absolutely no reason to think Dr. King was "a great conservative", a mild conservative, or even a conservative on any issue. Let's see what Colson had to say:

COLSON: Many think of King as a liberal firebrand, waging war on traditional values. Nothing could be further from the truth. King was a great conservative on this central issue [of law and morality], and he stood on the shoulders of Augustine and Aquinas, striving to restore our heritage of justice rooted in the law of God.

Were he alive today, I believe he would be in the vanguard of the pro-life movement and would be supporting Judge Alito. I also believe that he would be horrified at the way in which out-of-control courts have trampled down the moral truths he advocated.

Well, uh, not quite.

Let's be generous for a second and deal with something Colson almost got right: the reference to Augustine and Thomas Aquinas was about King's quotation (or paraphrasing) of two Roman Catholic saints that are held in much regard among conservative Christians. This, however, doesn't mean anything. Does Colson have anything else to back up his assertions? Well, no. If Colson and other conservatives who have used King to espouse their agenda did any research they would have found that the way they portray King is totally false.

- Pro-life. Dr. King didn't say much about abortion, contraception, or anything else identified by the pro-life (or as I call them, anti-choice) crowd. But it is interesting that, in 1966, Dr. King received the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award. For the award ceremony he wrote a speech entitled "Family Planning -- A Special And Urgent Concern." Furthermore, it is noted by people who are familiar with King that he and his wife Coretta Scott King were very similar in there political views. Coretta was a feminist and pro-choice.

The right has tried on several occasions to adopt King in their anti-choice camp. On the May 11, 2006, episode of The 700 Club, assassination advocate Pat Robertson ranted on about a strange conspiracy involving the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, Planned Parenthood and others to recruit African-American leaders to commit "black genocide" by advocating legal access to abortions. Robertson claimed that Sanger deliberately set out to fool black leaders, including Dr. King, into joining the pro-choice camp. This notion is racist. Robertson is saying that King and other African-Americans were/are too stupid to realize they're being duped.

- Alito. Dr. King's hypothetical opinion about Alito sitting on the bench as a Supreme Court Justice is a hard thing to be sure about (after all, Alito was just a 28-year-old nothing when King died). We do know that Alito opposed many decisions made by the Warren Court (wink, wink, you know what that means) and was very proud of his membership in Concerned Alumni of Princeton which was very upset about the admission of women and minorities to Princeton.

- Runaway Courts. The idea that King "would be horrified at the way in which out-of-control courts have trampled down the moral truths he advocated" is especially absurd when one considers the fact that he worked hard to get court decisions passed that many conservatives felt were far-reaching (many feel the same way about those decisions today).

- King and Economics. Bill O'Reilly is an idiot. Like Colson, he decided to use the King holiday (January 16, 2006) to claim that "Dr. King would [not] be disappointed in where the economic situation is in the USA right now.... Because our system of government and economy gives more people the chance to pursue happiness in a meaningful way than any other system in the world." He then went on to say that he is the "poster boy for that."* Well, according to a study done by the Center for American Progress, "Children from low-income families have only a 1 percent chance of reaching the top 5 percent of the income distribution," and that minority children have an even lower chance of living out the rags to riches story.

King also believed in greater measures of wealth distribution and said on a few occasions that we should move toward a more socialist system.

- Does King Have Any Conservative Record? Well, no. Wait, let me think...no. On practically every issue King spoke, he took a position the religious right was and still is opposed to. On gay rights he differed from conservatives: one of his greatest allies was Bayard Rustin who was openly gay and a socialist; and Coretta Scott King supported gay rights. King spoke out against the Vietnam War before it was cool. From 1961-1966, he wrote annual reports on the Civil Rights movement for The Nation, which in the 1960's was farther to the left than it is today. And this one is especially telling: Dr. King supported the separation of church and state, and supported court decisions banning prayer in school!

If Dr. King was a conservative at all he would have to reconcile that with his sympathies to socialism. He was a fan of Socialist Party leader and presidential candidate Norman Thomas (he wrote an article for Pageant called, "The Bravest Man I Ever Knew," in which he paid tribute to Thomas and the SP for their involvement in the Civil Rights movement at a time when white people weren't getting involved); he worked closely with socialists and communists; he read Marx but didn't embrace communism for its "materialistic interpretation of history," which caused it to have little room for religion; and he spoke often in support of socialism:

we are treading in difficult water, because it really means that we are saying that something is wrong .... with capitalism .... There must be a better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism.

It will always happen. Whether it's Bill O'Reilly using Dr. King's name to sell people on how good America is, or the Minutemen Project's Chris Simcox comparing their vigilante border patrolling to King's fight for Civil Rights**.

There are, however, many right-wingers who aren't trying to fool anyone into thinking they aren't just a bunch of racist idiots who really don't care about the rights of African-Americans. Michael Savage decided to celebrate the King holiday on the January 15, 2007, episode of his radio program The Savage Nation by calling Civil Rights "a racket that is used to exploit primarily heterosexual, Christian, white males' birthright and steal from them what is their birthright and give it to people who didn't qualify for it." Writing for Middle America News (who's heard of that magazine...yeah, I thought so) former Human Events managing editor Kevin Lamb decided to fess up and admitted conservatives really don't care about King and called out Human Events for trying to claim King for their own, when only a decade ago they were bashing him and speaking out against the formation of the holiday (Lamb, I guess, didn't mind sounding mildly racist in the process of exposing conservatives).

Conservatives really have a knack for realizing when they are wrong and scrambling real hard to put on a front for the public. They see now that they were (and still are) wrong about equality. Now they are trying to co-opt a hero and claim him as their own.


*Bill O'Reilly claimed that he grew up in Levittown, New York, which is a working-class area of Long Island. He also said his father only took in a modest $35,000 a year. The Washington Post decided to check out his story and found out (with the help of O'Reilly's mother) that he actually grew up in Westbury which is a middle-class suburb of Long Island. When pressed on this, O'Reilly explained that he lived in the Levittown area of Westbury despite the fact that the two are a few miles apart. O'Reilly also lied about a few other things about his "modest" upbringing. What about the $35,000 a year his father earned, "what O'Reilly doesn't mention is that Dad retired in 1978," the Post explained, "when a $35,000 income was the equivalent of $92,000 in today's dollars."

**Even though the Minutemen have tried desperately to prove they are not racist and say that go through tough measures to keep racists out of their group, it seems they haven't tried all that hard. Co-founder Jim Gilchrist has called the group "white Martin Luther Kings." (It's odd, because they often claim they aren't just white people but a group of diverse people working for the same goal. If this were true, why does he say they are "white Martin Luther Kings"?) Chris Simcox and Jim Gilchrist have often compared their group to King. In fact, Gilchrist was giving an interview while in the desert explaining what the Minutemen do and believe. However, he gave the interview to a documentary film crew standing with three white supremacists. The white supremacists looked visibly agitated when Gilchrist said the group wasn't racist, didn't hate Mexicans, and were like King and Gandhi with their work. One of the racists finally had enough and shouted, "End of interview." "Once they were out of earshot," explained The Intelligence Report, a magazine published by the Southern Poverty Law Center which monitors hate groups and works on Civil Rights suits on behalf of poor, mostly minority, plaintiffs, "[a neo-Nazi named] Johnny called King 'an Alabama silverback' and made gorilla noises. Michael [another neo-Nazi] said, 'I hope he [Gilchrist] doesn't believe that crap. I realize he's gotta be all PC for the media, but come on — Gandhi didn't wear a gun. We're in a race war, not a peace march.'"