TV-B-Gone zaps the White House

Steve Brannon, who alerted me to TV-B-Gone, has mused that a Cellphone-B-Gone might come in handy. Out driving, you could zap that zoned-out talker/driver, who would just think the zapping was another dropped call.

And if a Cell-B-Gone is possible, why not a Bush-B-Gone, packaged with a requisite Cheney-B-Gone?

That would give us Pelosi-B-President.

Not that I would wish our current leadership permanent off-dom, but a temporary disappearance wouldn’t hurt.

Like the TV-B-Gone, the Bush-B-Gone could turn Bush back on—just later, say after the next election.

We might actually give responsibility for turning Bush on again (and interesting phrase in itself) to a bi-partisan “Return-George-On” Commission. Its membership might be something along the lines of John Kerry, Al Gore, Al Franken, Jon Stewart, Donald Rumsfeld, Ann Coulter, and Mama and Papa Bush. If only Molly Ivins were still around to serve, alas....

The understanding would be that a returned-on Baby Bush would be “extraordinarily renditioned" to some appropriate place. I’m thinking Elba, Abu Ghraib, or, best of all, Guantanamo—in an orange jump suit with goggles, ear-guards and no lawyer.

Fair's fair.

Leave me out of this!

Headline writers at The Oregonian not only proclaim the news, their work proclaims a need for two daily newspapers.

Enter The New York Times.

On Monday, both papers ran on their front pages a story about an effort to get the Bush Administration to collect unpaid taxes.

The Oregonian story, which came from the L.A. Times-Washington Post News Service, dominated the page with this four-column-wide screamer: “Congress wants your unpaid taxes”

Wait just one second there, Bub.

"Your" unpaid taxes? Who, me?

The Times ran its own story in the lower left-hand corner. Its headline made it partisan, not personal.

“Democrats Seek Unpaid Taxes, Setting up Clash.”

On to the stories themselves.

In The Oregonian, the story says nothing to support the headline’s false intimation that I’m not paying my taxes.

It also specifically calls the so-called “tax gap” effort bi-partisan: “...Democrats and Republicans are talking it up as a way to fund politically appealing initiatives—and bring down the deficit to boot.”

The Bush administration’s position toward addressing the gap isn’t mentioned.

But back in the New York Times, the lede and headline are joined at the hip: “Congressional Democrats, hoping to finance an ambitious agenda without raising taxes, are on a collision course with the Bush administration etc.” From there on, the story is framed as a push and pull between the Democrats and various Bush mouthpieces.

At one point the Times quotes one Michele Davis in the Treasury Department. Ms. Davis is a spokeswoman, an unsettling term that for me unfailingly evokes the female-phobic humorist James Thurber (vis. "The Catbird Seat").

Anyway, Ms. Davis manages to inject a hackneyed Conservative shibboleth into her oh-so-well-crafted sound bite: “We are very mindful of the compliance burden on taxpayers who do follow the law.”

Wait a minute! “Compliance Burden on taxpayers who do follow the law.”

Now she’s doing what the Oregonian headline writer did—dragging me into this. I follow the law, and I frankly bear no “compliance-burden”—well, on second thought....

My "compliance burden" has nothing to do with how much I pay, but with how Ms. Davis’ boss and patron in the White House, George W. Bush, is spending my money on a policy that has led to mayhem and murder.

If only Ms. Davis would talk about THAT compliance burden.

Until then, she, and The Oregonian, can leave me out of this.

Bush, Baby Einstein and Dangerous Bunk

In his State of the Union Address, President Bush singled out Julie Aigner-Clark, developer of the wildly successful and dangerous "Baby Einstein" DVDs, for entrepreneurial praise.
Promotion of the DVDs play on parents' fears (and guilt) that without a video boost from "Baby Einstein" and their related "Brainy Baby" DVDs, parents may be depriving their infants.
Far from it.
(Aigner-Clark has since cashed out by selling her "Baby" creations to Disney.)
The American Academy of Pediatrics specifically warns that children under the age of two should be exposed to NO screen time, including "Baby Einstein" and its kindred tapes. Of course the "Baby" DVD's target audience is exactly that vulnerable age group.
Bush's address rewarded unhealthy, fear-driven marketing, something he is a master of.
As pointed on by Susan Linn in a Common Dream's essay, "Baby Einstein's" Aigner-Clark, and "Oil Wars" Bush have much in common.
None of it is good.
But do they ever know how to dupe the public—at the expense of the young, whether they are under two years of age, or old enough to enlist.

Protest reflections: The war and its lubricant

The candle-light protest/vigil held at the corner of Sunset Boulevard and Capitol Highway Thursday evening certainly won't sway the president, but it is part of a national effort that is changing the minds and building the resolve of others.

Particularly hearting was the participation of high school students.

When Ruth Atkins, the protest organizer, invited me to read aloud the name of one of our fallen Oregon soldiers, David Weisenburg of Portland, a sudden grief and a renewed resolve welled up in my voice.

The broad public is finally getting it about this war and this president. The large majority seems set on holding the new Congress, peace's new power player, to the November mandate for change.

What the public still doesn't get—at its peril—is the real, one-word cause of the war: oil.

We need to make the oil connection crystal clear—particularly to this young generation. Today's youth will be living with the consequences the oil cartel's connection to the war and to myriad other Bush disasters. Some of those consequences, like global warming, are major and obvious threats to them (and us) now, but will deepen over their lifetimes.

The war is already taking its toll on their generation.

All the Bush/Cheney justifications for the war—WMDs, Saddam, terrorist links, growing democracy—were bogus. This invasion made no sense—and the continued war makes no sense either—unless you follow the oil pipelines. They lead directly to Big Oil and Bush/Cheney-Halliburton. And now we see the Iraq government fall into line, as reported in the British press.

Significantly the American mainstream press has uttered hardly a word about oil's role in the Iraqi conflict. It is as though the three letters, O-I-L, are a political taboo. Look in vain for the word "oil" in corporate media's voluminous analyses of Bush's speech Wednesday. Indeed, look in vain for any Democratic legislator uttering the word "oil."

It's not enough for the new Democratic congressional majorities to oppose the Bush/Cheney escalation. It's time for Democrats to expose the Big Oil/Bush/Cheney/Republican cabal that has dictated this administration's policies on everything from corporate tax loopholes and tax cuts for the wealthy, to uncollected off-shore oil lease revenues to global warming denial and military intervention.

As we protest in the weeks ahead in Hillsdale and thousands of other American communities, we must understand fully what we are protesting.