After the abortive attempt to paint Kristina Leung as the evil female Fu Manchu / Dragon Lady, the New York Times is raising the heat on China again:

With unemployment high and American manufacturers reeling from three years of misery, politicians and businesspeople around the country have found a villain to blame for these troubles: China, or more specifically its currency.

Whee! And the front page story is followed up with an even more lurid story on the abuse of urban migrants.

I don’t mean to defend China’s abysmal human-rights record, and I don’t mean to necessarily approve of the billions of dollars in trade deficits with the U.S., but I mean, come on: pot, kettle, black.

Meanwhile, as the war on Iraq — I’m so sorry, I forgot the war was already declared over — becomes more grim for American troops, President Smirk pulls out the same tired crap about “the struggle between civilization and chaos:”

We’ve adopted a new strategy for a new kind of war. We will not wait for known enemies to strike us again. We will strike them and their camps or caves or wherever they hide before they hit more of our cities and kill more of our citizens. We will do everything in our power to deny terrorists weapons of mass destruction before they can commit murder on an unimaginable scale.

In Iraq’s case, those WMDs were denied indeed.

We’ve sent a message that is understood throughout the world: if you harbor a terrorist, if you support a terrorist, if you feed a terrorist, you’re just as guilty as the terrorists, and the Taliban found out what we meant.

Saudi Arabia must be quaking in its boots.

Afghanistan today is a friend of the United States of America. Because we acted, that country is not a haven for terrorists, and the people of America are safer from attack.

Man, you can practically see him rehearsing in front of a mirror, looking at the way his lips move: “…Must mention ‘friend…’ must mention ‘the people of America…’ See Spot run. Run, Spot, run.”

America and our coalition removed a regime that built, possessed and used weapons of mass destruction, a regime that sponsored terror and a regime that persecuted its people.

This is somewhat new, as “WMD” is back (he had initially changed it to “weapons program”), but now that the media’s attention has shifted to Gov. Arnie and the Ten Commandments (Chief Justice Moore can put it in his living room), he can confidently bring up WMDs again.

In all the debates over Iraq, we must never forget Iraq.

Uh-huh.

We are on the offensive against the Saddam loyalists, the foreign fighters, and the criminal gangs that are attacking Iraqis and coalition forces.

Yup — that’s a lot of people there, and it’s increasingly clear that “the coalition forces” have no idea who they are, where they’re coming from, who’s financing them. The war is over, indeed…

We’re receiving more and more vital intelligence from Iraqi citizens, information that we’re putting to good use.

Obviously not good enough.

Our course is set. Our purpose is firm. No act of terrorists will weaken our resolve or alter their fate. Our only goal, our only option, is total victory in the war on terror. And this nation will press on to victory.

“Total victory” can only mean total annihilation in this case, which seems like the sum of the Bush administration’s plan for “the war on terror.”

Learning by rote is never very effective, but maybe these cheap-labor conservatives know what they’re doing. Bush has no new talking points in this speech, except for the deliberate omission of Osama bin Laden. Indeed, it could practically have been delivered a year ago, and the rhetoric would have been similar. WMDs, war on terror, America will prevail, with us or against us, blah blah, completely ignoring everything that has happened since then — a brutal and expensive war, an even more unstable world order, a rising death toll since Bush squeezed into his flight uniform, more proof (as if anyone needed more) of a tanking economy. (All this is happily abetted by some of the most retrogressive policies in education, social welfare, the environment — the outrage goes on and on…)

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The U.S. government is very quickly refining its methods of harassment: Americans who acted as human shields in Iraq are receiving letters from the Treasury Department, asking about what they did there and reminding them that “spending money there was a crime that could lead to 12 years in prison and civil penalties of up to $275,000.”

…a Treasury spokesman bristled at the notion that the inquiries were politically motivated.

“Of course not,” the spokesman, Taylor Griffin, said. “Unlike in Iraq under Saddam Hussein — where dissent was met with imprisonment or worse — the freedom to protest and disagree with the government is a cornerstone of American democracy. However, the right to free speech is not a license to violate U.S. or international sanctions. While free expression is a right enjoyed by all Americans, choosing which laws to abide by and which to ignore is not a privilege that is granted to anyone.”

It sure was a “privilege” granted to the U.S., no? What nerve.

Speaking of balls (or the lack of them), Bush lies again (what’s new?):

“We are discussing a lot of things, and we believe that the tax relief plan we have in place is robust enough to encourage job growth,” Mr. Bush told reporters at his 1,600-acre Texas ranch here, as he stood flanked by his top economic advisers. “If we change our opinion, we will let you know,” he added.

“If we change our opinion, we will let you know??” What kind of moronic statement is that? (Well — the kind of moronic statement you follow previous ones, I suppose.)

…Mr. Bush and his advisers offered no new initiatives or ideas to improve the economy. Instead, Mr. Bush repeated calls that Congress rein in spending, and said that the $350 billion in tax cuts enacted this year would soon lead to economic growth.

This is despite Nobel Prize-winning economist and UC Berkeley professor George Akerlof’s warning that “the Bush policy is the worst policy in the last 200 years.” (See also Bob Herbert’s column for more.)

And for the women and men on duty overseas: nothing beats being lied to and made to pay for it.

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Once again, Bob Herbert tells it like it is:

The official jobless rate, now 6.2 percent, does not come close to reflecting how grim the employment situation really is. The official rate refers only to those actively seeking work. It does not count the “discouraged” workers, who have looked for jobs within the last 12 months but have given up because of the lack of offers. Then there are the involuntary part-timers, who would like full-time jobs but cannot find them. And there are people who have had to settle for jobs that pay significantly less than jobs they once held.

When you combine the unemployed and the underemployed, you are talking about a percentage of the work force that is in double digits.

As he adds: “Right now there is no plan, no strategy for turning this employment crisis around. There is not even a sense of urgency.”

The simple truth is that the interests of the Bush administration’s primary constituency, corporate America, do not coincide with the fundamental interests of workaday Americans.

Can you say “cheap-labor conservatives?”

(I titled my post “It’s a class war, baby!” because I heard it said once by one of my professors, who was referring to the Tonya Harding – Nancy Kerrigan skating fiasco back in the ’90s. Since this was pre-Austin Powers, I had thought that this was a catchphrase from the late ’60s — and was a little surprised not to find it on Google.)

I’ve already written about the merits of Conceptual Guerilla’s argument, so I won’t rehash it here — suffice it to say that framing this current crisis chiefly in terms of a basic conflict over class interests should hopefully be effective in galvanizing the public. Bob Herbert’s last statement above comes close to formulating that same sentiment.

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Read these now (though you’ve probably already seen the links): “Defeat The Right In Three Minutes” (via American Samizdat), the Visual Iraq Body Count, and “End the Liberal Voluntary Extinction Movement.”

So go now — you can right-click on the links and open a new window or tab — before coming back and reading more. =)

…

Already read it? Good. Repeat the words to yourself: “cheap-labor conservative.” “Cheap-labor conservative.” Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?

There is, admittedly, a bit of reductiveness in the Conceptual Guerilla’s analysis — using class as a lens to simply explain gender inequalities, or racial or ethnic discrimination, among others — but it’s the right kind, really, if only to circulate it as a viral catchphrase. To get people to make those connections and think for themselves. (And considering that the Democrats are all trying very hard to fly under the radar — sorry, but that only works on Survivor, and not even all of the time — those connections have to be made by other people.)

Why the utter wrongness of this (cheap-labor conservative) administration doesn’t seem evident to everyone leaves me dumbfounded, since it’s so obvious in many ways. Let’s examine something really simple:

Q. We now have more evidence of a massive budget deficit that taxpayers are going to be paying off for years or decades to come. The economy continues to shed jobs. What evidence can you point to that tax cuts, at least of the variety that you have supported, are really working to help this economy? And do you need to be thinking about some other approach?

A. No, the answer to the last part of your question. First of all, let me — quick history, recent history. The stock market started to decline in March of 2000. Then the first quarter of 2001 was a recession. And then we got attacked 9/11. And then corporate scandals started to bubble up to the surface, which created a lack of confidence in the system. And then we had the drumbeat to war.

Remember on our TV screens — I’m not suggesting which network did this — but it said “March to War” every day from last summer till the spring. March to war, march to war, that’s not a very conducive environment for people to take risks when they hear march to war all the time.

Let’s take a look at what’s going on here. “We’re all sinners” aside, Bush (in one of his blue-moon press conferences) once again makes himself sound staggeringly moronic. Consider the fact that he lamely dodges the two most important questions on everyone’s mind before the conference: evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (he now says “weapons program”), and the terrible state of the economy.

Blaming the deficit on, of all things, television — people who coddled him all the way, mind you — is simply beyond belief. Never mind the fact that he clumsily sidesteps the tax cut issue — he actually blames television for the “not very conducive environment” which he himself created! (Nice of him at least to mention “corporate scandals,” since people do need reminding.)

His “Bushisms” have been explained away as Texas-style, plain-folks locution, or as proof of his merely scattered brain, as if the latter wasn’t frightening enough. (I can see him saying to himself, over and over, while he brushes his teeth: “Stick to the talking points. Stick to the talking points.”)

But this is perhaps a little too generous, for it gives him a way out, some form of excuse — kind of like the equivalent of his “gentleman’s C.” Why bother cutting him some slack, since he obviously doesn’t give a shit? Why are words like arrogance or malice hardly ever mentioned when it comes to him? Does Bush and his cheap-labor conservative cronies not think that people would finally make the connection between the huge deficit and the huge tax cuts, or, at the very least, the billions of dollars spent on the war on Iraq every month? Or is it because they think they can get away with it?

Lying we’re used to. But now Bush isn’t even bothering to lie well anymore. See, this is the kind of person we’re dealing with here — that smirk on his face says it all. He’s smirking at you and me. The next time you see Bush smirking, just think to yourself: he’s smirking at me.

In a month’s time I will be going back to school and facing my students, who — if they can afford to enroll — would have had to suffer through a whopping 30 percent tuition fee increase.

In two months’ time the democratically-elected governor of the severely cash-strapped state I live in may have been toppled in a travesty of a recall election engineered by cheap-labor conservatives and replaced by either a car-alarm salesman, the Terminator, or the publisher of Hustler magazine.

Mykeru reminds us that “This isn’t a game.” That’s absolutely correct. CEOs are making more money than any of their poor fired employees will ever make in their lifetimes. Cheap-labor conservatives piss and moan about the so-called liberal media and pat themselves on the back for their “moral clarity,” while at the same time indulging their various hypocrisies. Teachers are being laid off. Funding in almost all social services has been violently slashed. Too many people — both Iraqis and Americans — have suffered and died because of Bush’s lies, and more people will suffer in the years to come from Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.”

Enough is enough. It’s knives-out time.

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First of all, one of my new modern-day heroes, Stephen Eagle Funk, is being charged with desertion (desertion!) and a possible two-year sentence — even though, as he writes, he returned to his unit after applying to be discharged from the army as a conscientious objector:

Under media attention, the military initially claimed my application for discharge would be handled quickly and fairly, and that I would likely receive only non-judicial punishment for my unauthorized absence. Now that public scrutiny has died down the military says that I deserve to be convicted. I feel I am being punished simply for practicing my First Amendment rights, and they are seeking an unfit punishment to dissuade others from becoming conscientious objectors.

BuzzFlash has a couple of excellent commentaries, one of which is on Condoleeza Rice pleading innocent about the CIA’s warnings regarding the forgery of documents alleging Iraq’s uranium purchases:

It’s really quite impossible for the White House not to have known that the information was, at best, unreliable, and almost certainly forged. Just look at Condoleezza’s public statement: “Maybe someone knew down in
the bowels of the agency, ” Rice said on NBC’s “Meet the Press…”, “but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.”

It’s one thing to engage in disinformation. It’s quite another thing, to lie stupidly. Are we to suppose that the only method of communication between the CIA and the National Security Director boils down to “advisories” e-mailed back and forth, which they may or may not get? Do they seriously expect us to believe that this is how the White House gets its security information? The White House bases a war on a few pieces of misinformation, and they don’t even sit down with the intelligence community, and discuss how accurate, or reliable, or verifiable their information is? They don’t even check it out? Think about it! This is information that the President of the United States of America is announcing to the entire world as provocation for war!

And then more outrage from that Son of a Bush, also via BuzzFlash (the title of the Reuters article is “‘Bring Them On,’ Bush Says to Iraq Attacks”):

President Bush on Wednesday [July 2] challenged militants who have been killing and injuring U.S. forces in Iraq, saying “bring them on” because American forces were tough enough to deal with their attacks. “There are some who feel like that conditions are such that they can attack us there,” Bush told reporters at the White House. “My answer is bring them on. We have the force necessary to deal with the situation.”

Well, here you go, Mr. President. Enjoy your Fourth of July.

US soldier shot dead in Iraq

One United States soldier serving in Iraq has been killed and many others wounded in separate attacks, the US military says.

One serviceman from the First Armoured Division was shot dead in Baghdad on Thursday night [July 3], when his Bradley vehicle came under sniper fire.

In a second attack, at least 19 soldiers were hurt when mortar rounds were fired at a US military base north of Baghdad.

At least 26 American soldiers have died in combat since US President George W Bush declared the Iraq war over on 1 May.

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