CIA seeks probe of White House

Catching Up
Months back, in a post entitled "The Plumbers Would Be Proud", I talked about how Joseph Wilson, the last US ambassador to Iraq (who was decorated with, I believe, the congressional medal or honor or something like that for giving people refuge inside the US embassy during the Gulf War) was sent by the White House to confirm the "Iraq bought Uranium from Niger" claims. He told them it was bogus back in 2002, and when Bush & Co. tried to say they didn't know better, Wilson went public and said that he'd told them it was bogus. Well, not long after that, SOMEBODY in the White House told Robert Novak of the Chicago Sun-Times that Wilson's wife was an undercover CIA agent specializing in WMDs, and Novak printed as much in his column.

In other words, the White House blew the cover of one of our own agents to get back at her husband.

Well, now, it looks like George Tenet and the CIA have had enough. According to this MSNBC article, they're asking the Justice Department to investigate exactly who did the outing, because, my friends, that is a violation of at least two Federal laws.

Once again, the only reason I know about this is because Howard Dean made a statement about it today. But mark my words, Dean's on Face the Nation tomorrow morning and this is going to be all over the news come Monday.

This is going to be huge. To quote Joseph Wilson "I hope to see Karl Rove lead out of the White House in handcuffs."

Balance Sheets
As part of the $87 billion dollars they want to spend in Iraq, the White House is planning to devote $878 million towards providing health care to needy Iraqis.

Uhm. I'd like to point out that there are something like several million AMERICCAN citizens without health care.

This is just one of the many obscene disparities present in Bush's current policies, as outlined here by the Washington Post.

Quote of the Day

“A true Patriot Act is not born out of fear, but out of trust; it is not born out of division, but out of community; it is not born out of suspicion, but out of faith in each of us."

- Howard Dean, at a rally today in Boston, in a speech entitled "Democracy, Freedom, Action".

Hate for Hate's Sake
OK, I admit it.

I hate George W. Bush. He's a liar and an elitist who has tricked the majority of Americans into thinking he has their best interests in mind when he's really raiding the fortunes & prestige of this country to line the pockets of the richest 1% of the population while wrapping himself in a false cloak of Christian piety.

I know lots of people on the opposite side of the political spectrum hate Bill Clinton. They think he's a liar and an elitist who had tricked the majority of Americans into thinking he has their best interests in mind he's really giving their hard earned money away to people who don't deserve it while simultaneously receiving adulterous oral sex.

See how, in this article from the New Republic, why we all hate at least one of these guys, although some hate is more legitimate than others.

The Bad Guy Returns
I don't think I fully appreciated the phenomenon that is the 1983 remake of Scarface, written by Oliver Stone and directed by Brian DePalma, until I went to see it on the big screen.

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the film's release, so Universal & Focus Features is releasing a special edition DVD and a digitally remastered 35 mm print of the film in select theatres around the country. Here in L.A., it's playing for a few more days as the late show at the Cinerama Dome (imagine sitting inside a golf-ball the size of a small stadium, with a curved, three pane movie screen) at Arclight Cinemas.

Now, I've seen the movie before, and I love it, but I hadn't seen it with a crowd before. Last Saturday night, waiting in this sea of predominantly Latino teenagers & Gen-Xers, where an usher only allowed a handful of people into the theatre at the time, where LOTS of these kids wore Scarface T-shirts (mind you, most of them where only a couple of years older than the movie itself), I really felt like I was going to an Al Pacino rock concert. It was surreal.

I overheard one guy say to his girlfriend, "Aww, see! I knew I should have worn my Scarface shirt. Or at least the black one."

"At least the black one."

Everytime I see a show like Cribs go behind the scenes in the home of some rapper or Black pro athlete, the ALL have at least one picture of Tony Montana on the wall.

But, underneath the drugs and the violence and the rediculous financial excess of the film, there is a fundamental statement about the American dream, and it's deeply cynical.

Or, to quote Scarface himself, after he's finally acquired the outrageous wealth that he craves:

"Is this all there is? Eating? Drinking? Fucking? Sucking? Your 50. You got a bag for a belly. You got tits, that need a bra, they got hair on 'em. You got a liver, with spots all over it, and your eatin' dis fuckin' shit and lookin' like these fuckin' rich mummies...."

Something Tony never understood until the very end: Money does not necessarily guarantee you power. Observe Microsoft.

Anyway, this NY Times article touches a little bit on the pervasiveness of this film in hip-hop culture, which has it's own problems with capitalist excess.

Personally, I just wanted an excuse to put a picture of Tony Montana up on my blog. Guilty as charged.

Let 'Em Loose

They Only Want Me For My...


Fancy that my first contribution to Macroscope has something to do with the aesthetics and iconography of that classic figure from black culture...the pimp. Perhaps I'm late into this game, but I only recently heard of this new venture of Nelly's. Pimp Juice. And I must admit that I have mixed feelings about it.

Just to rewind things a bit here, I suppose I should first acknowledge my mixed feelings about Nelly in general. When he first came on the scene with "Country Grammar", I didn't really have strong feelings either way, and was as likely as anyone else to turn up the car radio a bit when it came on. Of course, with subsequent offerings like "#1", I began to feel like he was just a little too comfortable with his "pop" location in the mix of things for me to personally stomach. Then, I heard "Pimp Juice". And man...I loved it. There may be a host of reasons why...personal issues at the time, a funky guitar riff in the hook that I could really get my mind into, whatever. But if nothing else, it at the very least got me to publicly stop hating on this cat, and allow him to comfortably settle somewhere into my landscape of black culture.

So, when I heard that an "energy drink" was being marketed under the name Pimp Juice, I didn't quite know how to react, particularly in the context of my mixed feelings about it's front man. My first reaction was to be upset about yet further appropriation of cultural iconography by, well, the Man.

But then, I began to read the criticism of Pimp Juice from what I guess is the official Anti-Pimp Juice-Brigade. Featuring the likes of such notables as Clarence Page (okay, maybe that was just hateful...read up on Mr. Page and draw your own conclusions). And now I'm quite confusedly caught up trying to decide whether my enemy's enemy is my friend. Because on the one hand, I'm not quite sure that I like the undertones of why a large commercial beverage concern would want to use the imagery of a black pimp to sell products to black people. But on the other hand, the religious right is almost always wrong (as far as I'm concerned) on these type of issues. Which isn't to say that there are some valid points on their side of the argument. Women being physically, sexually and emotionally abused by pimps (or men responding to some sort of pimp-influenced masculinity) is surely not a good thing. And alcoholism (brushing aside the minor point that Pimp Juice isn't actually an acloholic beverage for a moment) is certainly a problem in the black community.

But is there any denying that the figure of the pimp is deeply intertwined with whatever black masculinity is? Not to say that it's defining of black masculinity, but in some sense, should not the pimp be regarded in the same way as the jazz musician, the athlete, and the rapper? Complicated for sure, certainly reactionary in part, but subversive in the context of a would-be hegemonic white-masculine power structure nonetheless. And not to give Nelly too much credit for this, but did anyone actually listen to the lyrics of the original song? Sure, they don't totally make sense, but it should be plain to the casual observer that the figure of the pimp embedded in these words is somewhat more nuanced than the one that his critics are reacting against.

Which brings me back to my point of departure. Perhaps I'm overidentifying with Nelly here (g-d forbid), but it seems to me that in some sense this is a microcosm of the struggle to define a black masculine identity. On the one had you have a (presumably?) largely white economic interest trying to market black male identity in a somewhat irresponsible way. And on the other you have a reactionary element of the black community struggling so hard to prove that they're not different that they miss the opportunity to define themselves. And in the middle you have the one creative person in the mix, who (though he quite possibly does not) might actually have something new and interesting to say.

Let 'em loose.

Headshaking Colloquy of the Day

"Do you know, Charlie, why we're hated so much?"

"I really don't know, Mr. President"

"Because they're evil, Charlie. Because they're evil."

- George W. Bush and Representative Charles Rangel (D-NY). Rangel has been trying to introduce legislation to re-instate the draft, under the assumption that the President & Co. will be less eager to send their own children to go get the evildoers and maybe put a little more thought into this thing.

And the moral of this story? "It's easy to be a crusader when your blood isn't being shed."

Incidentally, Rangel, a decorated Korean War vet, is a strong supporter of Wesley Clark for President.

Soft Light
This came to my attention through Warren Ellis's mailing list, Bad Signal
A Softer World is a series of poems set to pictures from a couple in the UK, and I think every single one of these has it's own exquisite beauty. Enjoy.

Playing To Win
Howard Dean wants to raise $5 million in the next 10 days.

For just a little perspective, consider this: Dean raised a total of $7 million for the entire 2nd quarter of 2003.

Now, I could rattle off a bunch of statistics on how many online supporters Dean has in his rolodex (412,000 at last count), or in how many states he's leading in the polls (such as Iowa & New Hampshire), or how many other candidates are so scared of Dean that he's the only one who's taken significant fire in the debates (Dick Gephardt has an entire website, Dean Facts, devoted to cutting on Dean. Doesn't he have better ways to spend his time, like explaining how he lead congressional Democrats to vote for the Iraq war resolution that he now calls a miserable failure? But I digress...).

Instead, I'm going to tell you why I'M supporting Howard Dean.

I hate sacred cows.

But I hate their worshippers even more.

One of my all time favorite basketball players was John Starks when he played for the New York Knicks. During their heyday in the early to mid '90's, the rough & tumble Knicks of Charles Oakley, Patrick Ewing, Anthony Mason and the like had legendary battles with Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls. What I loved about the Knicks, and Starks in particular, was that they had absolutely no respect for Jordan. Yes, MJ is probably the greatest player in the history of the NBA. But, everybody in the league just rolled over for him. Bowed down to him. Couldn't wait to be in a poster where he dunked on them.

And I always used to say to myself, "Are the other guys in this league trying to win the F'n championship or not?!?!?" Why not just hand the goddamn trophy to Jordan at the beginning of the season? Players, coaches, commentators. They all treated Jordan like he was about to turn water into wine.

All except The Knicks. The Knicks wanted the championship and were absolutely not going to play dead for the Bulls. And every playoff series, Starks drew the awful task of guarding against Jordan. Did Starks make excuses? Did he play back on his heels and give Jordan respect?

No. He dunked on Jordan's neck and said "Fuck you! I want to be the champion, motherfucker!"



Starks wanted to win. And he played like it.

Now if only Charles Smith had that same attitude. But that's a different discussion.

George W. Bush has pulled the Democratic Party's punk card for almost 3 years. He's made people ashamed of wanting things like support for the working poor, respect for the bill of rights, international sovereignty & cooperation, fiscal responsibility, and the like. The whole party has been cowering the corner, afraid to face the electorate with what they really believe. Afraid to even face their own constituents on what they're even fighting for.

Case in point: Gephardt, John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and John Edwards all voted for the Iraq war resolution. And, except for possibly Lieberman, they all did it because they were scared. And these people actually expect me to vote for them as my leader?

And Wesley Clark? Let's just say that asking for your mommy in the middle of a press briefing doesn't exactly give me confidence either, Mr. Supreme Commander.

And let's be honest: the other folks in the race are NOT running for the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
Bob Graham is running for Vice-President.
Carol Mosley-Braun is running for Governor of Illinois.
Al Sharpton is running for Jesse Jackson's job (whatever that is).
Dennis Kucinich running for the Green Party or Reform Party nomination (watch what I tell you. This guy is not going away...)

Dean is the ONLY candidate who has stood up to Bush from the very beginning. In an article in the Boston Globe, he told a close friend that he wouldn't be able to live with himself if he didn't run. Dean is the ONLY candidate who's taken a stand on principles, taken the slings & arrows, and still managed to avoid personal attacks on his opponents. Dean is the ONLY candidate who's not only asking to restore the sense of community in this country, he's actively recruited his supporters to engage directly in the country's problems without even being in office.

Dean wants the America we dream about. And he's not afraid to say so.

And that means, when it comes to George W. Bush, you call a spade "a spade".

Personally, I'm relishing the idea of a Dean/Bush debate. Because there is eventually going to be a point where they will say two things that are mutually exclusive. Bush's version of what's happened in America since 2000 simply cannot co-exist with Dean's version.

At some point in that debate, it will be undeniable that ONE of them is lying.

And then the real fun begins.

Now, if you like what's happened since the 2000 election, go ahead and support the President. You may also want to cash in all your saving & treasury bonds while you're at it, because, if the government finances continue on the same path, those things won't be worth the paper their printed on.

But if you want a better country, the country we all THOUGHT we were living in, can I suggest giving a few dollars to Dean for America?

Doomed To Repetition
Max Cleland is a Vietnam war veteran who lost both legs and an arm as a result of that conflict.

He also was, up until the 2002 election, a U.S. senator from Georgia. Needless to say, Vietnam is a living, breathing memory for him each and every day of his life, so it was with great conviction that he voted against authorizing the President to use military force against Iraq.

Cleland's opponent in the election, Saxby Chambliss, the President's hand-picked candidate, ran a campaign where they painted this man who gave 3 out of 4 limbs for his country as a coward and a traitor for not supporting the Iraq war resolution.

Cleland lost by 7%.

Supporters of Wesley Clark, take note. Your candidates credentials are not necessarily enough to drown out the lies.

In this op-ed Cleland wrote for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, he draws a direct line between Donald Rumsfeld and Robert MacNamara, LBJ's Secretary of Defense who lobbied the President to follow a policy that led to the needless deaths of hundreds of American soldiers. My brother, a solid Republican military guy, says MacNamara should burn in Hell for what he did. And he's not too keen on Rumsfeld either.

Supports of President Bush, take note: Don't assume the Army will let your President needlessly march them to their deaths and still vote for him in droves by absentee ballot next year.

Ultimately, Cleland's predicament drives home a point about Vietnam. The military learned their lessons there all too well. Vets as diverse as Wesley Clark, Colin Powell, John Kerry, Anthony Zinni, & Cleland have all voiced various levels of opposition to the way Iraq was handled. Only the draft dodgers like Bush, Cheney, Rumfeld, Wolfowitz, etc. who want to prove how tough they are without firing a shot themselves are all pumped up to "bring it on".

Repugnant.

Revolution

So, you've heard me mention Paul Krugman, New York Times economic columnist, on more than one occasion. I just recently learned that he's also on faculty at dear Old Nassau, which, of course, is instant brownie points in my book.

He's a very precise and consistant critic of the insanity of the Bush fiscal policy (see previous Macroscope posts "Turning Back The Clock" and "Great Expectations")

There were two things in this article from the Guardian about Krugman himself that really caught my attention:

1. Krugman has been receiving death threats for his criticism of President Bush.

And I thought for a moment: have I ever heard of anyone on the right receiving death threats for criticizing, for instance, Bill Clinton? I mean, Clinton has a very deep reservoir of love and good will among his constituents, but I've never, ever heard of anyone who was willing to even suggest they would hurt someone for talking bad about him.

Who are these people who love George Bush so much that they would threaten death if you dare impune his character? See, this is the part of American politics that I find the most disturbing. Sure, we can all talk about the importance of voting and going to rallies and wearing butttons and contributing money (see above) to support parties & platforms & politicians. But it's all predicated on the assumption that we're all playing by the same rules.

We've forgotten that there was a time that people not unlike yours truly were abducted, beaten, mutilated, killed, and hung from a tree like a f'n pinata for trying to vote. Those kinds of things didn't happen that long ago, and alot of the people who did that are still alive & kicking. They have friends. They have money. They have an agenda. And, most importantly, they are willing to do ANYTHING to get what they want.

I'm reminded of a Watergate retrospective I saw on PBS, where a reporter said he asked Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell if he was willing to commit murder to keep Nixon in office. The guy said he puffed on his pipe, thought about it, and said with a straight face "let me get back to you on that".

I understand crimes of passion. I understand killing out of hunger-induced desperation. I understand revenge. I simply have a hard time fitting my brain around killing innocent strangers for political power. But, as they say, power is it's own narcotic. And, at that point, John Mitchell putting out a hit on someone is the moral equivalent of a crackhead busting you with a pipe to steal your last nickel.

2. Henry Kissinger is an evil genius. And that's not a good thing.

Let's not even get into Christopher Hitchens' book, "The Trial of Henry Kissinger", where the author makes the case that Nixon's former Secretary of State should be tried as a war criminal for, among other things, sabotaging LBJ's peace negotiations with the North Vietnamese to solidify Tricky Dick's position as the only candidate who could end the war in 1968.

But, for his part, Krugman was the most terrified by the seeming prescience showed in the introduction to A World Restored, a history text Kissinger penned in the 1950s. Kissinger referred to Napoleon in 18th & 19th Century France as a revolutionary power that fundamentally rejected the basic tenants of the stable system the dictator sought to control. But Napoleon's greatest advantage was that no one in the opposition could ever fully accept that Napoleon wanted to completely undo the system, despite all the evidence to the contrary, until he had actually undone the system.

So, if Hitler is too incendiary a model to use for the way the Bush neo-conservatives are deconstructing America, perhaps a 200 year old French dictator is, ironically, more appropriate.

Mightier Than Swords
The Writers Guild of America is launching an ad campaign to promote the roles of screenwriters as the well-spring of the great stories of our time. So, here's my contribution to the effort. Free ad space for the guild. Everybody gives directors credit for creating the films, but, if you think about it for a moment, the directors, the cast, the crew, the producers, were all originally inspired by the work of us screenwrights. Every movie starts as a blank page under a waiting pen.

And, just to drive the point home, here are the screenwriters credited for the top movies at the box office last weekend:

written by Robert Rodriguez

screenplay by Nicholas Griffin & Ted Griffin
based on the book by Eric Garcia

story by Eli Roth
written by Eli Roth and Randy Pearlstein

written by Fred Wolf & David Spade

So the next time you go to the cinema, take a moment to check out whp gets the writing credit. Over time, when you start seeing names repeated, you might just find a pattern. Who knows how many of your favorite movies are all written by the same people?

Clarifying Quote of the Day

"We've had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with the September 11th."

- George W. Bush, 43rd President of the United States, on September 17th, 2003.

There you have it. Straight from the horse's mouth.

Forfeiting the Fourth Estate
Christianne Amanpour, CNN's go-to Mid East correspondent, says that the American media was too intimidated by the Bush war machine to be truly critical of the war in Iraq.

And in other news, water is wet.

Counting Cards
So, I recently had a conversation with a friend about voting booths. Ever since the Florida fiasco in 2000, everyone's all fired up about how bad punch card ballots are. So, there's a big push for electronic voting, in all it's various shapes and forms (internet voting, touch pad voting, etc.).

As a former techie, I'd like to give you all a cold slap of conspiracy-laden reality:

It is FAR easier to rig an election when the votes are only stored in the memory of a computer program, instead of on a physical, certified piece of paper.

Quite honestly, the employees of any company that provides hardware or software for electronic voting machines should be subjected to the utmost scrutiny. Heaven forbid an unscrupulous politician bribed some poor programmer to build an easter egg into the tabulation modules that guarantees a landslide victory for him with no paper trail.

But I digress. Because, according to David Broder, the Constitution gives the state governments the power to determine how their delegates to the Electoral College should be selected. And it doesn't have to be by a vote of the public. That's why some folks are talking about a constitutional amendment to guarantee all citizens the right to vote.

Yes, that's right. You DO NOT have that now. You vote for President at the pleasure of Gray Davis, George Pataki, Jeb Bush, and the 47 other state governors around the country.

Did I Mention That I Love This Woman?
So my rediculously talented (and mind-numbingly hot) significant other, Miss Kobina Wright, has decided to jump onto the blog bandwagon. Check this site out for regularly scheduled updates from her prolific pen, then go ahead and buy a copy of, Growth Spurt, the 1st book in her three volume set of collected poetry, for $15.00 through PayPal.com, using her e-mail at likizo@hotmail.com.

Needless to say, I get brownie points if you mention Macroscope when you buy one. And, if you're feeling really inspired, ask how to subscribe to her newsletter, too.

Turning Back The Clock
For those of you who have not seen it, the movie Seabiscuit gives one of the starkest portrayals I can remember about the reversal of economic fortunes that occurred as a result of The Great Depression. Early in the film, when horse jockey Red Pollard was still a boy, his family seemed to live the American Dream. Mom, Dad, a bunch of well-bred kids, sitting around a sumptuous dinner table in a nice, affluent house.

When the Depression hits, his parents were left with nothing but the clothes on their backs, warming their hands over fires in steel trashcans, as they tried to find the least objectionable people to at least give their children a roof over their heads.

Families destroyed. Lives ruined. A country full of desperate people willing to do anything to survive. Working slave wages just to get a can of beans.

So, imagine a world without Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment benefits, Medicaid, or even Welfare. A world with a minimum wage that would give an annual salary well below the poverty level. A world without overtime pay. A world where only the affluent can afford health care.

A world populated with desperate people.

Desperate people will work for any price. I guess, in the end, that's the point.

In this article from the New York Times, Paul Krugman studies the motivation behind people like Grover Norquist, who are providing the intellectual muscle behind the Bush tax policy. While Bush himself may actually believe that cutting taxes will someday create more revenue for the government, Norquist & his buddies are trying to engineer a fiscal catastrophy by cutting the funding far below the government's capacity to pay for itself. In their mind, the only alternative will be to cut out all of the social programs that aren't directly tied to military spending & the operations of the government itself.

Let me restate that: these guys want to get rid of the New Deal & the Great Society.

All those programs put in place to provide a safety net for the working class have an enormous bullseye on their backs.

Why on Earth would anyone want to that?

Because desperate people will work below minimum wage.

It's all about lowering the cost of doing business.

Think about that.

He's Batman
They may have finally gotten it right.

First, Warner Bros. hired Christopher Nolan, writer/director of Memento, to direct a brand new Batman movie.

Then they hired David Goyer, the screenwriter of the "Blade" trilogy, to pen the script.

NOW, the final piece of the puzzle: they've cast Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne.


For those of you who don't recognize the name, Christian Bale played the lead, a blood-thirsty, homicidal yuppie with an obsession for physical perfection in "American Psycho" a few years back. You can also see him in the most recent version of Shaft and in Reign of Fire.

My next casting suggestion? Get Guy Pearce as the Joker.

Sharp As A Tack
Can I say, I miss the old-school, fat, medallion-wearing Al Sharpton. If I could find that picture of him in the jogging suit, walking the streets of Harlem, I would have posted it. Straight-up, Ghetto Warrior. I love it.

But, beyond the pompadour, the gut, and the rhetoric, I must admit that I didn't know a whole lot about the details of Al Sharpton's life. But I must admit, Sharpton has been on G.W. Bush's case since Inauguration Day 2001, where he hosted a kind of shadow inauguration in D.C. to condemn the Supreme Court Decision on the 2000 Presidential Election.

Demagogue? Perhaps.

But the brother does say alot that needs to be said, particularly on issues of power, race, & class in America.

Will he be President? Not a chance in Hell.

SHOULD he be President? Not as long as he isn't putting together a serious platform or strategy on how he'll govern. But, to paraphrase what Public Enemy said about Farrakhan, I think we ought to listen to he has to say. Some of it really is gospel.

Kleptocracy
from Dictionary.com:
klep·toc·ra·cy ( P ) Pronunciation Key (klp-tkr-s)
n. pl. klep·toc·ra·cies
A government characterized by rampant greed and corruption.


[Greek kleptein, to steal + -cracy.]

klepto·crat (-t-krt) n.
klepto·cratic adj.

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition

While I definitely dig where this article by Jim Hightower in The Nation is coming from, I have one point of contention with him.

In my mind, the idea of America has always been greater and loftier than Americans themselves. Consider the Founding Fathers: the ideals put forth in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution were not really indicative of their lives, given that the vast majority of them where extremely wealthy landowners (or, in some cases, slave-holders). I suppose the trajectory of the American dream is some great asymptotic curve, always reaching for perfection, but never quite reaching it.