ken Hatch |
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Links and Writings:
Art, Aviation, Photography,
Photoshop, and Politics
email Kenneth M. Hatch
Houston Center for Photography Photoshop Restoration & Retouching Buzzflash Media Whores Online Brad DeLong's Simi-Daily Journal Talking Points Memo The Daily Howler Archives 
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Friday, February 28, 2003
A letter to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell from an American hero. Where is your letter, Mr. Powell? Tuesday, February 25, 2003
Bush's speech signaled the end of rule of law Craig Barnes Santa Fe N.M. Sunday, February 23, 2003 - When I grew up on the plains of eastern Colorado, I walked across wheat fields to a little three-room country school. I slept on summer nights under the cottonwoods, raised chickens and sheep and some days rode horses like the wind flying across the prairies. In school, we had three classes in the same room, but I learned what we thought were the values of America... ... On Jan. 28, in one speech, George W. Bush threw away and rejected all this that I had learned. He scorned the rationality of his opponents, scorned the diplomatic process, scorned containment, condemned deterrence, declared the right of pre-emptive aggressive war, implied a willingness to use nuclear weapons first and authored a new doctrine of American imperialism for the Middle East...more. Sunday, February 23, 2003
Saturday, February 22, 2003
From one of my favorite Bloggers, Avedon Carol , “...Reagan had Alzheimer's and he wasn't as bad as these guys”...Link . Thursday, February 20, 2003
In the upside down world of Shrub and Company they have solutions the need is for problems. An example is the 1992 Defense Planning Guidance document produced while Dick Cheney was Secretary of Defense and written by Paul Wolfowitz. The connections between the positions outlined in the parts of the 1992 DPS I have read, the present players in the Bush Administration, 9/11, and Iraq read like a bad spy novel. Only one problem: this isn’t from the imagination of a hack novelist. Does Old Europe Hate New America, Or Just President? by Will Hutton It wasn’t only in London, Paris and Berlin that hundreds of thousands took to the streets on Saturday, Feb. 15, in protest against war in Iraq—there were plenty of protesters on the streets of American cities. To characterize "old Europe" as peopled wholly by cheese-eating surrender monkeys and the U.S.A. by a warrior race uniformly and bravely behind military action is to traduce reality. As George W. Bush’s ratings fall to new lows, the conservatives around him—and the right-wing American commentariat—might reflect that many of the attitudes they detest as "old Europe" are alive and well in America. Europeans—to the extent anyone on this continent of 370 million conforms to the generic stereotype—are baffled and extraordinarily anxious at the rhetoric now emanating from the world’s most powerful country. Mockery of President Bush’s linguistic faux pas has given way to the realization that he and the people round him are very different from the American elites we’ve become used to. Europeans expect America to live up to the high standards it sets for itself—and, at key moments over the last century, it has done so. Now there’s a realization that Mr. Bush is not of the same ilk; he is potentially very dangerous both for America and the world...more . Compassionate conservatism at work or Shrub’s usual bait and switch. It doesn’t matter — the end result is always the same: talk a good game and distract the rubes with smoke, mirrors, and red meat while you reach for the KY Jelly. Wednesday, February 19, 2003
A word about non-profits ... they are all hurting for funds. If you have a favorite arts organization, non-profit youth group, or believe in what the Red Cross is doing, please think about writing them a check if you have a few extra bucks. It will help more than you will ever know. Monday, February 17, 2003
From Eric Alterman: WILL HISTORY FORGIVE GEORGE W. BUSH? With Bin-Laden and company still at large, al-Qaida regrouping, and both the NATO alliance and homeland security in chaos, the attack against Iraq is one of single most irresponsible acts ever perpetrated by an American president, (and an unelected and increasingly unpopular one at that). When the Iraqis attack innocent Americans at home and abroad in response, I can only hope the nation knows just who should be held responsible...more>. 09:39 Thursday, February 13, 2003
Ok, wetheads, now is the time to put your money where your mouth is. Like they say money talks, BS walks :-). The Houston Center for Photography has a Durst 45S enlarger for sale. It is a beauty; a few years ago I would have been scrambling to find $10,000 US to buy it. The enlarger comes with the cold light head and all the condensers for every film size up to 4 X 5. BTW, when I checked with RK Equipment they said the cold light head was worth $2000. If you buy the cold light head, I will throw in the enlarger if you pay shipping. A hell of a deal ... any takers? Wednesday, February 12, 2003
Monday, February 10, 2003
How the West Was Lost * Europeans view Bush as a cowboy, and the president sees himself as one too. But Europe's version is wearing a black hat. By Vince Canzoneri, Vince Canzoneri is an attorney. BOSTON -- Europeans, particularly the French, love to deride President Bush as a cowboy, and Bush, apparently, enjoys playing the part. This disconnect probably has several causes, but one of them is surely that Europeans don't see the same cowboy from across the Atlantic that Bush sees in the mirror. Steeped in classics of American cinema, I suspect Europeans imagine a smirking gunslinger with an itchy trigger finger, a drunken barroom bully -- Lee Marvin as John Ford's Liberty Valance -- bristling for a fight and ready to shoot up the neighborhood just for kicks. Although the president seems incapable of wiping a smirk off his face, the rest of the French view doesn't really fit. The cowboy he portrays is the soul of rectitude -- the reformed drunk, not the libertine. His model appears to be one of the Western sheriffs that American television depicted so vividly when Bush and I were kids. The closest fit is Matt Dillon of "Gunsmoke"... All told, Bush's cowboy is no less scary that the one the French imagine. Still scarier is his apparent inability to move beyond the "Gunsmoke" stage of imaginative development. America's frontier heroes grew up a bit in the early 1960s, evolving into "adult Western" characters like Bret Maverick in "Maverick" and Paladin in "Have Gun -- Will Travel"; but the complexities and ironies they embraced would only undermine the moral clarity Bush is also keen to project...If Paladin is not the president's cup of tea, one can only wonder what Bush the cowboy would make of "Maverick"...Maverick thought gunplay was inherently stupid and preferred to talk his way out of trouble. He also made sure that he knew where the exits were. Bush appears to lack Maverick's verbal gift and nimble mind, talking himself into troubles that too often offer only Dillon's way out... Ironically, however, Bush may have more in common with Maverick than he knows. When this country finally confronts Saddam Hussein, most of us in the audience will be hard put to imagine that we're watching the dictator's death rattle through Bush's bowlegs, for we know that this president has never been fond of putting himself in the line of fire. In fact, when offered the chance to carry a gun in Vietnam, he opted, Maverick-like, for the exit, choosing to play just a good ol' boy in the reserves. When push comes to shove in Iraq, it will be other Americans' sons who will step out onto main street for the house-to-house fighting; and Bush's role will be to cheer them on from the sidelines, wondering perhaps if it would be unmanly to tell them to be careful. Some cowboy. For the whole article . Sunday, February 09, 2003
A Caper Flick With a Lone Star by Joe Conason People hate reading about budgets. Budgets are often not only depressing, but tedious and difficult to comprehend. If citizens are to pay attention, the budget debate has to be a lot more entertaining. So, from now on—or at least until 2004—think of the federal budget as a caper movie: The Great Treasury Robbery. In this script, there are no car chases or high-tech gadgets. All the violence takes place off-screen. (That’s a different movie.) There isn’t even an explosion that blows open the bank vault. But by the end of the story, trillions of dollars have disappeared from the U.S. Treasury, and the guys who heisted the money are long gone. Put in the traditional "high concept" Hollywood terms: It’s The Sting meets The Grifters at the Heritage Foundation! Like other caper movies, this one begins with assembling the team. It’s a challenging and incredibly expensive process that offers some sense of the plot’s scope: The movie opens with the successful seizure of the White House. In the early scenes, lobbyists and corporate executives collect a couple of hundred million dollars for the war chest of the most expensive Presidential campaign in history. But that’s chicken feed compared with the eventual pay-off. Their front man is George (Dubya) Bush, a smooth, playful guy with a down-home drawl. The closest advisers in his crew—sometimes whispered to be the real brains behind his operation—are Dick (Big Time) Cheney and Karl (Boy Genius) Rove. Their backstory is that Dubya and Boy Genius took over and looted the state of Texas, leaving behind a gigantic deficit. Now they’re aiming for the biggest score in history... Link for the rest of the story. Boy, does Brad DeLong nail it. “Truth to tell, these people in the Bush Administration are no more competent in foreign policy than they are in domestic economic policy--or in simple day-to-day truth-telling. That foreign policy doesn't look as bad is due to the fact that the Bush Administration was handed control over a remarkably good military machine, which has performed very well.” Link Friday, February 07, 2003
Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist has a fine rant: “So let's see if we have this straight. We still don't seem to have this straight: Because there stands emasculated and completely Cheney-whipped Colin Powell, up in front of the U.N. Security Council and the world's TV cameras, scowling and pounding his fist and making a big show of indignation and showing everyone -- what? Some blurry satellite photos with little red squares? An audiotape of an alleged phone conversation between members of the Iraqi military, proving the existence of some biological agents we probably sold to them? Is he serious? There is no real evidence. There is no smoking gun. There isn't even a smoking spit wad. There is only, basically, a smoking middle finger...” You should read the rest. Thursday, February 06, 2003
From consortiumnews.com: “When the New England Patriots won the Super Bowl in 2002, some enthusiastic sportswriters found the victory fitting because, since Sept. 11, “we’d become a nation of patriots.”...Following that logic, the outcome of Super Bowl XXXVII means that the United States is now “a nation of pirates.” ...The “nation of pirates” theme, of course, doesn't have quite the ring that “nation of patriots” did. The image might be a little troubling, too, with George W. Bush moving toward a possible invasion of Iraq outside the sanction of international law, a war could begin with the seizure – or “protection” – of Iraq’s oil fields holding the second-largest known petroleum reserves in the world...” For the rest of the editorial. This is late but I think it is important: “ Maury Maverick Jr., a cantankerous Texas liberal who regarded his passionate public pursuit of unpopular causes — as a civil liberties lawyer, a legislator and a newspaper columnist — to be his proud birthright, died Tuesday in his native San Antonio. He was 82...” for more from the New York Times or from Texana. The Mavericks were related on my grandmother’s side of the family. I can’t say I’ve patterned my life after Maury and his dad’s but they were both tremendous influences on how I thought and acted. Texas will miss him. Wednesday, February 05, 2003
From Brad DeLong: I Really Cannot Understand Why Anyone Would Do This Even a year ago people could think that the finances of the U.S. federal government were not grossly out of balance for at least two generations to come. Looking beyond 2050, projections of an ever-aging population and ever-growing health care costs sent the budget into increasing deficit. But the long-run budget projections in the back of the 2003 Budget documents told us that the yawning gap between the pledges and spending policies of the U.S. government on the one hand and the taxes levied by the U.S. government on the other--the yawning gap that had opened after the productivity slowdown that started in 1973 and had then exploded in size with the grave fiscal policy mistakes of the Reagan administration--no longer existed. Projections of current-policy budget balances showed the budget remaining in surplus until 2025 or so. Thereafter they showed deficits widening (if spending growth was not cut to less than the rate of growth of GDP, and if taxes were not raised) to nearly 5% of GDP by 2050. But even so the national debt held by the public as of 2050 was projected to be 46.5% of GDP: only a percentage point or two higher than the peak debt level reached as a result of the Reagan deficits. 
Now--one year later--things are very different indeed! The numbers in the back of the 2004 Budget documents project that the budget year that began when Clinton was still President will be America's last surplus year, ever. The policies proposed in the 2004 Budget are projected to see the deficit widen steadily to 17.5 percent of GDP by 2050. By that date debt held by the public is projected to be 229.4 percent of GDP--a debt and deficit level that no economy could possibly sustain. What does this mean? It means that the (not very bad) economic news of the past year coupled with the provisions the Bush Administration has put into its 2004 Budget will, if enacted, put the U.S. once more on the path to national bankruptcy. Once again the commitments of the government--to defense, administration of justice, the safety net, and the large elderly programs of Medicare and Social Security--will be far beyond the reach of federal revenues. Why would any administration deliberately unbalance the long-term finances of the federal government? Why would anybody want to set up a situation in which the taxpayers one and two generations hence will find themselves stuck with an enormous bill? Why set up a situation in which what HHS and SSA tell potential beneficiaries of programs is radically inconsistent with what the White House and Treasury tell taxpayers about tax burdens? It really is beyond my comprehension why anyone would do this. The Ds are the party of good government. While sometimes they have to be dragged kicking and screaming to making the right choice when it gets to the nut cutting, for the most part, you can rely on Ds to do the right thing even if it means trouble with the voters in the future. The Rs on the other hand talk a good game but have a record of seldom doing what is best for the country. On issue after issue the Rs will go for power and short term gain that benefits only the rich and/or panders to the worst of human nature. This graph illustrates just one aspect of the Rs inability to govern and what happens when you have only one answer to all problems with the economy; tax cuts for the wealthy. This gang of incompetent thieves have shown the only thing they do well is steal elections. Korea is a total fuck up and getting worse daily, relations with our allies are at the lowest point I can remember, the Iraq insanity makes the other problems seem small but the one bit of incompetence that may finally rid the U.S. and the world of these ideological hacks is their economic policy. Read Newsweek’s Allan Sloan on “Bush’s Depressing Economy.” Monday, February 03, 2003
This one is long but worth the time. Retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni on Oct.10, 2002 spoke before the Middle East Institute in Washington D.C. about the war with Iraq. When the Rs were passing out the Iraq Koolaid, someone missed Paul Craig Roberts: “The Republican Party will not survive its invasion of Iraq, its commitment to open borders and its pandering to preferred minorities. "An invasion of Iraq is likely the most thoughtless action in modern history. It has the support of only two overlapping small groups: neoconservatives infused with the spirit of 18th century French Jacobins who want to impose American "exceptionalism" on the rest of the world, and foreign policy advisers who believe that the primary aim of U.S. foreign policy is to make the Middle East safe for Israel...” For more . |
