Newsday’s Paul Vitello reports that in a speech President George W. Bush gave to a group of factory workers at Bay Shore, Long Island, the crowd rose to give the President an enthusiastic standing ovation. Bush wove their stories seamlessly into the fabric of his re-election campaign. He engaged in self-deprecating humour that even a detractor might find charming; the crowd loved him.
Only problem is: the Hispanic workers who had gathered to hear him speak, hadn’t understood a word Bush spoke, as they spoke no English. Rather, Bushies’ address to the workers – titled “Strengthening America’s Economy” – was little more than an hour-long infomercial for White House tax cuts. Not that tax cuts would make much difference to workers earning only $6 an hour, as was the case with the cheering crowd in Bay Shore.

Looks like the “vast right-wing conspiracy” crew are back in business down south.
Writing in Salon magazine, Joe Conason prepares readers for what is sure to become “an unusually nasty presidential election”, pointing to this ad by Citizens United, written and produced by the same group of “consultants” who brought Paula Jones, Willie Horton and Whitewater to the world.
In the coming months, we will all become witness to a “scorched earth campaign”, the likes of which we’ve not seen since the last Presidential election, the focus of which will most certainly play on the resentment of U.S. citizens towards the French, and gays and lesbians. If Bushies’ handlers are really really lucky, they’ll even dredge up a sex scandal.

There’s been much written on this site, and across the Web, as well as being broadcast on radio and television, and published in newspapers and magazines, about the recent coup in Haiti. But for many, none of what has been written or broadcast has much “value”, because there is no “human face” to put on the changes that the coup has wrought.
Jay Currie comments on this site and chides me for seeming to defend the deposed Haiti President, Jean Bertrand Aristide, when such is not the argument that has consistently been put forward on VanRamblings. Rather, my concern is for the people of Haiti, and of what the recent actions of the U.S. (and, by extension, Canada) in fomenting insurrectionary change, means for the people of Haiti (not much good, I would suggest).
Tonight, the human face of the coup, the story of an 18-year-old boy. Tell me, after reading Johnny’s story that Aristide being deposed is, in itself and wholly, a good thing, and that the world community could not have found a more workable and humane solution to the problems in Haiti, and engaged in a process which would have preserved the dignity of the Haitian people.

On the first anniversary of the American invasion of Iraq, author Jonathan Schell, writing in March 29th issue of The Nation (posted today online), explains why Iraq is a cautionary lesson in the folly of imperial rule, recounting how “549 American soldiers and uncounted thousands of Iraqis, military and civilian, have died; some $125 billion has been expended; no weapons of mass destruction have been found; the economy is a disaster … terrorist bombs have taken a heavy toll; and Iraq … (has become) a cautionary lesson in the folly of imperial rule in the twenty-first century.”
In the same issue, Christopher Scheer, Robert Scheer & Lakshmi Chaudhry review the 5 biggest lies Bush used as justification for his actions.