Gyroscope
A newsletter
for those unmoved by spin.
No. 6, September 1, 2003
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Gyroscope A newsletter
for those unmoved by spin. |
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| by John Nordin | ||
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I've not read many of these books actually, but one I have just finished is Big Lies, by Joe Conason (Thomas Dunne Books, St. Martin's Press). He provides a succinct and compelling refutation to a series of propositions that the right claims to be true. Starting with the bizarre idea propounded by conservatives that they represent the ordinary American in contrast to "Limousine liberals" he shows both how right wing policies undermine working class people and how right wing spokespeople have chosen the rare privileges of the wealthy over the ordinary American virtues they profess to like. Limbaugh lives the high life his working class listeners are encouraged to hate, Ann Coulter praises Kansas City as the real America opposed to liberal east-coast decadence, but lives in Miami. And on it goes. Liberals control the media? Not true. Liberals are unpatriotic wimps? But so many of the most vitriolic attacks on liberal patriotism come from people on the right who dodged military service by dubious means. Conservatives protect family values? But so many who smear liberals as immoral have very dubious personal lives themselves. Conason does not descend to the smearing of the right. He is careful to point up private hypocrisy by the right only when the people involved have made public claims at variance with their own lives. Much of the book, though, is about policy. And here he catalogs the disastrous effect on our economy and our civil liberties perpetuated by the right who so loudly claim to "understand how to make government run like a business" and to be the real defenders of the Constitution. Well documented. Compelling. Recommended. |
"We will need to make it clear in launching the document that we
do not claim that we have evidence that [Saddam] is an imminent threat." "When George W. Bush became President, the federal government enjoyed
a projected 10-year budget surplus of $5.6 trillion. Today, less than
three years later .... a growing number of private forecasters not predict
a 10-year deficit of around $4 trillion.... According to the Congressional
Budge Office, over the next two years, the Bush tax cuts enacted since
2001 will cost nearly three times as much as the fighting and occupation
in Afghanistan and Iraq, reconstruction and relief after September 11th,
and homeland security combined." Microsoft has a cash reserve of $49 billion and a further $13 billion in long-term investments. The cash reserve is growing $1 billion a month reports Business Week, Aug. 11, p. 36. Many of the treasures that were reported looted from the Iraq national museum were put away for safekeeping and are back in the museum. One of its major collections is gone - some 4,700 cylinder seals dating from as far back as the fifth millennium BC. Focus on the National museum overlooks the looting going on at archaeological sites around the country, reports the New York Times, July 18th, p. B32. Russia has asked the U.S. to make a bigger effort to control the growing of opium in Afghanistan reports the Wall Street Journal, Aug. 11, p. A7. Bosnia is being run by the west in a manner best described as an "European raj, as the British describe their imperial rule in India." Reports the Economist describing and commenting on a report by the European Stability Initiative a Berlin think-tank. July 26th, p. 50. |
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Lutheran World Relief is one institution connected to my church that I can enthusiastically recommend. Working in 50 countries to reduce poverty and help people become self-sufficient, it receives good marks from auditing groups including an A+ grade from Charity Watch |
