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"Religious party"! Gag me with a spoon. While it is easy to understand the GOP's use of God, for God to permit the Republicans to adopt him is a different matter. God must be blind...and deaf. Was away in the high desert for a few days and didn't catch historian Kevin Phillips' article "How GOP Became God's Own Party" until this morning. "Now that the GOP has been transformed by the rise of the South, the trauma of terrorism and George W. Bush's conviction that God wanted him to be president, a deeper conclusion can be drawn: The Republican Party has become the first religious party in U.S. history." What are the Democrats to do...turn into sanctimonious hypocrites? It would be interesting to see the results of the mid-term elections. Time is running out and the Democrats still lack a clear message. The gains and losses by each party will be an indicator of how the voters feel about God's party and what it has done for them and the country. Would the milking of God and 9/11 continue for ever and ever? The prospect is depressing.

Who Are the Beneficiaries? * Iraq - The President Talks but does not fundA clear picture is emerging of the effects of the much-vaunted tax cuts championed by the president and passed by Congress in 2003. It is not a "water under the bridge" issue. We are paying for the tax cuts and we'll continue to pay for them. David Cay Johnston writes in The NY Times: "The first data to document the effect of President Bush's tax cuts for investment income show that they have significantly lowered the tax burden on the richest Americans, reducing taxes on incomes of more than $10 million by an average of about $500,000."To be fair, the president and his party made no secret of their objective. The numbers were there for all to see. They are,however,masters of the game. Smoke and mirrors succeeded in hiding the ugly truth. A few who raised red flags were not heard in the din. With Republicans in control of Congress, the tax bill was passed. The President continues to push to remove the sunset clause and make the cuts permanent. What has changed is that the president is no longer the 500 lb. gorilla he was back in 2003.Excerpts from NY Times:"When Congress cut investment taxes three years ago, it was clear that the highest-income Americans would gain the most, because they had the most money in investments. But the size of the cuts and what share goes to each income group have not been known. As Congress debates whether to make the Bush tax cuts permanent, The Times analyzed I.R.S. figures for 2003, the latest year available and the first that reflected the tax cuts for income from dividends and from the sale of stock and other assets, known as capital gains. The analysis found the following: Among taxpayers with incomes greater than $10 million, the amount by which their investment tax bill was reduced averaged about $500,000 in 2003, and total tax savings, which included the two Bush tax cuts on compensation, nearly doubled, to slightly more than $1 million. These taxpayers, whose average income was $26 million, paid about the same share of their income in income taxes as those making $200,000 to $500,000 because of the lowered rates on investment income. Americans with annual incomes of $1 million or more, about one-tenth of 1 percent all taxpayers, reaped 43 percent of all the savings on investment taxes in 2003. The savings for these taxpayers averaged about $41,400 each. By comparison, these same Americans received less than 10 percent of the savings from the other Bush tax cuts, which applied primarily to wages, though that share is expected to grow in coming years. The savings from the investment tax cuts are expected to be larger in subsequent years because of gains in the stock market. *Funding for Iraq Not A PriorityThe glaring difference between what the president says and the facts about Iraq again brought to light in Peter Baker's report in the Post:"The commitment to what the president of the United States will say every single day of the week is his number one priority in Iraq, when it's translated into action, looks very tiny," said Les Campbell, who runs programs in the Middle East for the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, known as NDI."Note: NY Times articles can be accessed free of charge only for 7 days after publication.

The news that,due partly to female foeticide and skewed ratio of men to women,some Indians are paying to buy brides would have been amusing if it were not for the implications and conditions that created the situation. For centuries parents in India have been paying dowery to get their daughters married to suitable grooms. Although no longer legal, it is a practice that continues covertly and it is not going to disappear any time soon. Story about men buying brides (sex slaves) is another side of the picture. The customs---of female foeticide,dowery,and bride buying---are all reprehensible.From the BBC: "Can a young, single girl get married to a father of six willingly?" asks Anwari. ...

DeLay * Liberals and the Immigration Debate * Iraq War * Twentynine Palms CA 92277 Events finally caught up with Tom DeLay, aka The Hammer, aka The Exterminator. Allegations of campaign finance law violations, questionable manipulation of redistricting in Texas, involvement in Jack Abramoff's shady deals, all dragged him into the center of a growing storm. The decision by Tony Rudy, his former aide, to plead guilty to conspiracy charges was perhaps the straw that broke the camel's back. The formerly feared congressman from Sugarland,TX, faced reality and announced that he would give up his seat and withdraw from reelection contest.The Immigration DebateTwo columnists,known for their liberal views, have expressed their reservations about the merits of the guest workers program. Their comments are close to those made by conservative Republicans.Robert Samuelson in the Post, "We don't need guest workers": Guest workers would mainly legalize today's vast inflows of illegal immigrants, with the same consequence: We'd be importing poverty. This isn't because these immigrants aren't hardworking; many are. Nor is it because they don't assimilate; many do. But they generally don't go home, assimilation is slow and the ranks of the poor are constantly replenished. Since 1980 the number of Hispanics with incomes below the government's poverty line (about $19,300 in 2004 for a family of four) has risen 162 percent. Over the same period, the number of non-Hispanic whites in poverty rose 3 percent and the number of blacks, 9.5 percent. What we have now -- and would with guest workers -- is a conscious policy of creating poverty in the United States while relieving it in Mexico. By and large, this is a bad bargain for the United States. It stresses local schools, hospitals and housing; it feeds social tensions (witness the Minutemen). To be sure, some Americans get cheap housecleaning or landscaping services. But if more mowed their own lawns or did their own laundry, it wouldn't be a tragedy. Paul Krugman in NY Times: "North of the Border" First, the net benefits to the U.S. economy from immigration, aside from the large gains to the immigrants themselves, are small. Realistic estimates suggest that immigration since 1980 has raised the total income of native-born Americans by no more than a fraction of 1 percent. Second, while immigration may have raised overall income slightly, many of the worst-off native-born Americans are hurt by immigration — especially immigration from Mexico. Because Mexican immigrants have much less education than the average U.S. worker, they increase the supply of less-skilled labor, driving down the wages of the worst-paid Americans. The most authoritative recent study of this effect, by George Borjas and Lawrence Katz of Harvard, estimates that U.S. high school dropouts would earn as much as 8 percent more if it weren't for Mexican immigration. The President,Iraq and History Twentynine Palms in California is the gateway to Joshua Tree National Park. It also happens to be the home of the Marine Air Ground Task Force Training Command. It was there a few days back that I read "Deluded",by Steve Coll which appeared in the Talk of the Town Section of The New Yorker, April 3rd issue. The President and the members of his war cabinet now routinely wave at the horizon and speak about the long arc of history's judgment--—many years or decades must pass, they suggest, before the overthrow of Saddam and its impact on the Middle East can be properly evaluated. This is not only an evasion; it is bad historiography. Particularly in free societies, botched or unnecessary military invasions are almost always recognized as mistakes by the public and the professional military soon after they happen, and are rarely vindicated by time. This was true of the Boer War, Suez, and the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and it will be true of Iraq. At best, when enough time has passed, and the human toll is not so palpable, we may come to think of the invasion, and its tragicomedy of missing weapons, as just another imperial folly, the way we now remember the Spanish-American War or the doomed British invasions of Afghanistan. But that will take a very long time, and it will never pass as vindication. ...

Do prayers by well-wishers help sick people? Some of us do not believe in the power of prayer while others do. A study,to be published in the April 4th issue of the American Heart Journal, based on 1800 heart by-pass patients, by the Harvard Medical School confirms "Praying for other people to recover from an illness is ineffective, ......" The study covered " "distant" or "intercessory" prayer". This is not going to deter the believers and rightly so. If they find solace in prayer more power to them. The study of more than 1,800 heart-bypass patients found that those who had people praying for them had as many complications as those who did not. In fact, one group of patients who knew they were the subject of prayers fared worse. The long-awaited results, the latest in a series of studies that have not found any benefit from "distant" or "intercessory" prayer, came as a blow to those hoping scientific research would validate the popular notion that people can influence others' health, even if the sick do not know that someone is praying for them. Comments Anonymous — 2006-03-31 Duh! I pray government dollars were'nt spent to discover this obvious conclusion.

A Mixed Bag on a Cloudy Thursday Morning First the good news. Jill Carroll,the free-lance reporter who was kidnapped on January 7th while on assignment for the Christian Science Monitor in Baghdad, has been freed, unharmed. "I was treated very well. That's important people know that," she said in an interview broadcast by the Iraqi Islamic Party. "They never said they would hit me, never threatened me in any way. I was just happy to be free, and I want to be with my family." Good news indeed. The Lobbying Bill After making a lot of noise the Senate produced a mouse---a toothless one at that. The legislation could be further watered down in the House. Democrats proved to be as unwilling as the Republicans to give up the rewards that lobbyists provide. They have become addicts. "On Tuesday, the Senate rejected a bipartisan plan to create an independent investigative office designed to help the Senate's ethics committee enforce lobbying and ethics laws. Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), one of the authors of the Democrats' lobbying proposals, voted against the Senate bill in part because it did not contain the office of public integrity."Remember Diebold,Inc. ?Diebold, the voting machine manufacturer was mentioned in 2004 for being involved in voting fraud by rigging the machines. This is from Naperville Sun 3/15/06: "Shortly after North Canton Ohio-based Diebold Inc. bought the voting equipment company Global Election Systems Inc., past chairman and CEO Walden O'Dell allegedly told Republican fundraisers he would help Ohio deliver the electoral votes to President Bush in the 2004 election. O'Dell resigned from Diebold in December." Now the attorney general of Florida has subpoenaed Diebold and two other voting machine manufacturers for refusing "to sell equipment to let disabled voters cast ballots without help in Leon County."

One thing leads to another. Reading former President Jimmy Carter's comments about the nuclear deal with India and the dangers of nuclear proliferation made me think of the very lucrative trading in arms and ammunition in which all major nations take part. An Israeli friend,currently in graduate school in the USA, to whom I had forwarded the Washington Post article "Of Israel,Harvard and David Duke" (March 26,2006) commented: They forgot to add it that even Israelis in Israel argue that they wish US aid to Israel will stop since it is making the country more militant, and only contributing to the military industrial complex. I think these authors will be more honest if they will realize that the US does not give money to Israel because they care about Israel's security; the US only tries to maintain the economic profitability from selling weapons. The military industrial complex in the US accounts for as much as 25% of the US GDP. You ask yourself how? Well, for every weapon that Israel 'buys' form the US, rich oil producing countries in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, buy the same weapons from the US to equalize their military power with Israel. This is really where the US makes its most money from weapons. Whether or not one agrees with her view, it is indisputable that the United States ranks No.1 among the nations that do a thriving business selling weapons of war--weapons of death--followed by Britain,Russia,France,China. Israel,Canada and Germany rank among the top ten.The web site of Federation of American Scientists (FAS) contains a wealth of facts including the following:The Global Picture ...

President Bush and Prime Minister Blair continue to justify the rightness of their position. They have no choice. But let us look at the headlines."Iraq bombing kills 40, U.S. raid denounced" APAt least 40 people have been killed by a suicide bomb inside a military base housing US and Iraqi forces near the northern Iraqi city of Mosul."Bush-Blair War Memo Revealed" BBC The New York Times says it has seen a memo which shows that the US president was firmly set on the path to war two months before the 2003 Iraq invasion. From private talks between George Bush and UK PM Tony Blair, the memo makes it clear the US was determined to go to war whether or not he had UN backing. He is quoted discussing ways to provoke Saddam Hussein into a confrontation. "Political storm over Iraq deaths" BBC"The US military in Iraq is facing growing political pressure over a raid on a Baghdad mosque complex that left about 20 people dead on Sunday evening."

Something happens when an elected member of Congress goes to Washington, and I am not talking about the fabled Jefferson Smith in Frank Capra's classic film Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Mr. Smith (played by the late James Stewart) encountered corruption and fought it. Our present day legislators readily embrace the lobbyists and lap up the rewards. It happens in State houses across the nation too but it is Washington where the action is. So, the news that "Lawmakers may be forced to Detail Contacts, Cash Received", is encouraging. It is a very small step toward cleaning what has been described as legalized bribery that takes place in Washington but we should welcome it.

A Sunday Morning in MarchBack when I belonged to the world of business my employers sent me to a full-day seminar conducted by the time management guru, Alan Lakein. Cannot honestly say that I did not benefit from it. In those days I was a corporate man, and it so happened that my work (in ocean transportation industry) gave me pleasure. Among other topics, Mr. Lakein covered positive procrastination. That was then. Nowadays I find myself spending a lot of time looking out of the window. Cars and people passing by are objects that do not always register, just blurs. My mind travels, often to the past. There are times when I think of the present and the future. I do not dwell upon unpleasant experiences. I cannot totally escape the harsh reality of what is happening in the world. I am affected by the use of force to dominate and control those who are weaker, by the suffering of people in different corners of the world and by the arrogant certitude of the adherents of different faiths. Simple,everyday things give me pleasure: Flowers,trees,walks and runs through the woods, drives through backroads, couples holding hands,children playing,the dip of the rod when a fish bites,smell of a soup simmering on the stove,sipping red wine,the sound of music.A few days back a frail, old Chinese lady stopped in front of my yard. I had seen her before--she lives in the neighborhood and a younger woman accompanies her. She looked at my flowers and started walking in from the sidewalk. She probably wanted a closer look. Her companion grabbed her hand and steered her away. I went out, cut a few daffodils and freesias, and gave them to her. Her face lit up. She said something in Chinese. I didn't understand what she said but there was no need. When I told my friend JHL about it she said "It probably made her day and your day too". Yes, it did.The late Emily Dickinson wrote about "A bobolink for a chorister". There is no bobolink around but cannot think of a better substitute than Janet Baker singing Bach arias. A star looks down at me And says: "Here I and you Stand,each in our degree:What do you mean to do-- Mean to do?"I say: "For all I knowWait,and let Time go byTill my change come."--"Just so," The star says: "So mean I--So mean I."---Thomas Hardy "Waiting Both"