The ONLY reason that the Repuglicans OWN, control, THE ENTIRE US government - treasury, department of war, fbi, cia, nsa, white house, senate, house, judiciary, supreme court, 4th estate (press/media), and all government agencies - is because over the past decade they have MASTERED THE ART OF ATTACKING Democrats.
Much of this "attack Democrats" campaign rises to the level of outright, full-fledged propaganda; a propaganda of deception and distraction and and lies and smears - smears relentlessly and repetively disseminated. For example, in leading one of his first professional campaigns, Karl Rove "discovered" a spying device ("bug") in the office of his Republican candidate, and called the FBI to have "the bug" investigated. That call, and that law enforcement appearance, was enough to get a whiff of scandal in the air in the days before the election. The Dem. candidate had been nursing a small lead, but was blindsided by the "bugging" story, and Rove's candidate won in the elections a few days later. It was only upon review of the entire "bugging scandal" that it was understood that the "bug" that had been placed in the Republican office only had a battery life of several hours, which is to say, it would have been, at best, politically useless to plant such a bug and risk arrest. If, on the other hand, the Republican campaign staffer "MANUFACTURED" the "incident" by planting a bug in his own office(s), it was a masterstrok of election-campaign propaganda. The only problem would be, FILING A FALSE POLICE REPORT is, in almost every jurisdiction in America, a misdeameanor or felony crime.
SUCH PROPAGANDA IS EFFECTIVE.
A hearty, "BRAVO!" to MediaMatters.org for showing how the "mainstream media" whores GO for such trivial, inane, bash-democrats propaganda, HOOK, LINE, and STINKER.
In this case, both Tim Russert and Chris Mathews reprise their HEAVY BREATHING over a Clinton marital story - such stories made them cable-tv 'news' stars - while IGNORING a similarly sourced story that suggests that the leader of the free world and president of the United States might be consuming alcohol and having marital fights.
Coming soon to The New York Times? Globe reports Bush marriage breakup
Media Matters for America
Fri, May 26, 2006
http://mediamatters.org/items/200605260003
Summary: In Patrick Healy's recent front-page New York Times article on the state of the Clintons' marriage, Healy noted that a "tabloid photograph" of former President Bill Clinton "was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages." Media Matters does not endorse the decision by elite media figures to take their cues from tabloids, but if they do so, we expect them to be consistent. As it happens, the cover of the May 29 edition of the Globe magazine contains a headline about another high-profile political couple: "BUSH MARRIAGE BREAKUP! EXCLUSIVE! SEPARATE LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE."
In his May 23 front-page article in The New York Times, staff writer Patrick Healy asserted that "[w]hen the subject of Bill and Hillary Clinton comes up for many prominent Democrats these days, Topic A is the state of their marriage" and how it "might affect Mrs. Clinton's possible bid for the presidency in 2008." Healy offered no specific reasons for this purported interest among "prominent Democrats" aside from the amount of time the Clintons spent apart, a mention of a decade-old affair, and a reference to year-old "concern[]" over a "tabloid photograph showing Mr. Clinton leaving B.L.T. Steak in Midtown Manhattan late one night after dining with a group that included Belinda Stronach, a Canadian politician." Healy continued: "The two were among roughly a dozen people at a dinner, but it still was enough to fuel coverage in the gossip pages."
It was also enough to fuel a front-page New York Times article, and the rapt attention of the Washington press corps, as Media Matters has documented.
Healy did not identify the "tabloid" in question, but he seems to be referring to the Globe magazine, which in the spring of 2005 ran a headline about Clinton and Stronach that read "Bill caught with blonde AGAIN! New divorce battle with Hillary."
Media Matters does not endorse the decision by The New York Times, NBC's Tim Russert, MSNBC's Chris Matthews, The Washington Post's David Broder, and countless other elite media figures to take their cues from tabloids like the Globe, or to pry into the personal lives of political figures. But if they are going to do so, we expect them to be consistent.
As it happens, the cover of the May 29 edition of the Globe contains another sensational headline about another high-profile political couple:
BUSH MARRIAGE BREAKUP!
EXCLUSIVE!
SEPARATE LIVES IN THE WHITE HOUSE
* Nasty fights
* Booze problems
* Laura urges counseling
On Pages 20 and 21, the Globe announces "Bush and Laura's 29-year marriage FALLS APART," adding: "They barely talk to each other," "[t]hey argue when they do speak," and "[s]he's afraid he'll hit the bottle." Quotes in the article attributed to "a longtime friend" include the assertion that "[w]hen the cameras aren't on, they have nothing to do with one another," and that "[f]or all practical purposes, they've broken up." The "family friend" continues: "After their last fight over booze, they just stopped talking -- period." The Globe's report that Laura Bush is concerned that President Bush may "hit the bottle" is reminiscent of a September 21, 2005, NationalEnquirer article about "Bush's booze crisis," which reported: "Faced with the biggest crisis of his political life, President Bush has hit the bottle again."
Media Matters wonders when we can expect The New York Times to assign a reporter to tally the number of nights the Bushes spend together and to conduct 50 interviews with Republicans to assess their interest in the state of the Bush marriage, or in President Bush's reported relapse -- and when it will run a 2,000-word front-page article on the topic. If it does so, we wonder if Broder will refer to the article as "anything but unsympathetic" to the Bushes.
—J.F.
Saturday, May 27, 2006
Bush leaves an Appalling legacy to America: "danger...drift...menacing... failed leadership...a GATHERING STORM...
Nothing illustrates the state of whoredom in America better than comparing this Op-Ed by David Gergen of the appalling LEGACY George W. Bush has already left us with in his 5 long years as president, with Maureen Dowd's catty "LEGACY" editorials aimed at slashing the final months of the Bill Clinton administration.
At the time Dowd was administering another dozen to the "death of a thousand cuts" to President Clinton's remaining credibility, America was at peace, had a surplus, and was admired throughout the world for supporting democracy and human rights, however imperfectly or incompletely these last effforts may have been. The debacle of Somalia (where American bodies were dragged, Hector-behind-Achilles'-chariot style, through the streets) led to massive American revulsion for an operation we went in to prevent famine, and would tie Clinton's hands with political constraints for doing anything re stopping the mass-murder purging in Rawanda.
Yes, Hezbollah bombed the US barracks at Khobar towers in 1996; and in 1998, and Al Qaida bombed two US embassies in Africa, and a US warship (the Cole) in Yemen in 2000. But even Muslim countries were appreciative that America had stepped in on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. And, no, not even Maureen Dowd could (or would even care to try) blame America's NEGLECT of Afghanistan on Clinton - nobody CARED about Afghanistan even a little bit, not even as a haven for Al Qaida, though President Clinton did send a salvo of cruise missiles against bin Laden's training camp, the deadly missiles missing bin Laden by only twenty minutes as the terrorist leader got a last-second warning and fled for the hills.
Worse than merely getting a free ride off of the Clinton follies - stalking Monica, "earning" a Pulitzer Prize for her pop-psychology assessment of an otherwise routine affair (there have been other affairs in the White House, including at least one which led to a child out of wedlock) and capping her "Monica-gate" columnns with her "Clinton LEGACY" columns, Maureen Dowd then shifted effortlessly and seamlessly to trashing AL GORE all through the summer of 2001. Dowd basically jumped on the "major media" bandwagon of bad-mouthing Gore as, at best, "wish-washy" and spineless; at worst as an inveterate liar whose every move was calculated to somehow deceive voters. Even Gore's choice of "earth tone" suits was fodder for a mocking Dowd column!
That was then. Today, Maureen Dowd and David Gergen, and the rest of America's press corps, have some REAL CONCERNS to write about. Dowd has actually transformed back into relevent and perceptive critic, her scathing commentaries of President Bush laying for public examination some REAL deceptions, distortions, and even bald-faced lies.
So, Dowd has quit the ranks of the undead, and joined the living, to talk about bread-and-butter issues that actually affect Americans who don't quite command the 7-figure income she does. And Gergen lists those issue pretty well.
But it is still instructive to see how we got here.. to see just how "whore-iffic" America's mainstream-media, indeed lead news organization the NY Times, could so trivialize, sensationalize, and distort the news, while IGNORING the entire political legacy of Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
(In the summer of 2000 the internet was yet to be the massive info source in daily lives that it is today. Dowd's NYT column was perhaps the most widely syndicated woman's column in America, and NYT stablemate, former Nixon speechwriter, and relentless Clinton-hater William Safire was probably the most widely syndicated male columnist. For Maureen Dowd, an independent woman at the very apex of America's 'journalism' industry to slash and bash at Al Gore ever week for months leading up to the election of November 2000, could not have helped Gore's campaign prospects. Given her influence among independent-minded women in 2000, I feel it is no exaggeration to say that Maureen Dowd, like Ralph Nader, was one of the straws that put Florida within snatching-range for the Bush campaign, and hence, Maureen Dowd is one of the players who helped put George W. Bush in the White House, and thus has given America this LEGACY of "A Gathering Storm."
________________________________
The Danger of Drift
By David Gergen
5/29/06
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060529/29gergen.htm
As Hurricane Katrina built up in the Atlantic last year, swept across Florida, then gathered force in the Gulf, many realized that this was the big one they had expected for years--yet when the storm struck, the country wasn't ready. Our political leadership had failed us. Even now, with a new storm season approaching, the Gulf region is still not ready.
Sadly, Katrina has become a metaphor for the nation, a symbol of what can happen when challenges to our well-being gain force, and we fail to address them. At few times in our history has that metaphor been more important than today, because a series of gathering storms--different from Katrina, yet more menacing--is now heading our way.
Washington once again is more obsessed with the politics of the moment than the long term. The decline and fall of the Bush administration is the topic du jour. Around the president, aides are diving into history books to see what lessons they can learn and scrambling to come up with stopgap measures to revive his fortunes. But the overriding issue isn't whether George W. Bush can climb back 5 or 10 points or who will win more congressional seats this fall. The real issue is whether we will drift through nearly three years with a president wounded, a Congress divided, and a public disillusioned. A thousand days as a leaderless nation would leave us almost defenseless against dangers bearing down upon us.
Most Americans know this in their bones. Traveling the country, one meets growing numbers deeply anxious about the future. And it's not just Iraq, gas prices, and immigration. What it is is the yawning gap between the many long-term problems we face and the inability of our leadership class to fix them. Just what are these "gathering storms"? Everyone has a different list. But there are five big ones on nearly all--storms that have been building for years.
- Public education. Twenty-three years have passed since a national commission warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" in our K-12 schools. After many efforts to improve, test scores are modestly better, especially in early grades. But progress has been excruciatingly slow and uneven. High school dropout rates haven't improved. Only a third finish high school ready for college, and even fewer, 18 percent, actually finish college within six years of high school graduation. "So much reform, so little change," one observer said ruefully.
Not only have we failed to close the achievement gap between rich and poor, and between minorities and whites, but our young people now face growing pressure from Asian students hungry for a better life. "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad," said Bill Gates, "I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow."
Troubles in K-12 spill over into universities, where the United States today is pressed to stay ahead as China, India, and other nations pour investment into science, engineering, and technology education. Larry Summers, Harvard's outgoing president, once estimated that of the top 10 research universities in the world, at least seven, and arguably 10, are now American, but 25 years from now, at least five could be in Asia. Already, more than twice as many engineers, computer scientists, and information technologists are graduating in China as in the United States. All of this suggests that to maintain its edge, America no longer needs evolution in its schools--we need revolution.
- Healthcare. The quality of specialized care at U.S. hospitals remains the envy of the world, but the overall system is in deep trouble, perhaps meltdown. With medical inflation more than three times as high as general inflation, health costs have risen to 16 percent of gross domestic product and are heading toward an unsustainable 20 percent.
Not only are the ranks of the uninsured swelling--up to 45 million, an increase of 6 million since 2000--but corporations are under increasing financial pressure. General Motors spends more on healthcare than on steel. The Government Accountability Office estimates that without a major overhaul of healthcare, GDP will cumulatively grow 72 percent by 2030, but Medicaid will increase 166 percent and Medicare an astonishing 331 percent. Solving the healthcare puzzle has become the single most important step to solving budget problems, too.
- Financial imbalances. It is well understood that the federal government has squandered the budget surpluses of just five years ago. Less well understood are the extra commitments Washington has quietly made to future spending. David Walker, a Republican voice of truth at the GAO, reports that five years ago, the federal government's long-term liabilities and unfunded commitments for things like Social Security and Medicare stood at $20 trillion. Today, the tab is $46 trillion. The new Medicare prescription program alone will account for $8 trillion of this mammoth debt.
As America continues to import far more than we export--so that we borrow some $2 billion a day from nations like China--we have built new twin towers: budget debt and trade debt. Economists keep warning us they are unsustainable, and our political leaders keep whistling past the graveyard.
- Energy and the environment. From Richard Nixon on, presidents have called for energy independence. Congress has passed one bill after another, but the nation's dependence on foreign oil has actually grown since 30 years ago--from around 30 percent to over 60 percent! And with the price of oil around $70 a barrel, as columnist Tom Friedman points out, not only are consumers paying more at the pump, but we're financing authoritarian regimes in Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.
Then there's climate change. The question is no longer whether mankind is heating up the atmosphere but whether and when there might come a tipping point when warming is no longer reversible. Some scientists think we have already passed it; others disagree. But no one disagrees that the United States is a primary culprit, accounting for 24 percent of carbon dioxide emissions with less than 5 percent of the world's population. The time has clearly come for a "grand bargain" in American politics in which the right agrees to major conservation steps, the left agrees to more production and to nuclear power, and both agree on a dramatic investment in renewable energy. But Washington today is so caught up with gaining a tiny partisan advantage that no one even talks boldly.
- Staying ahead. Last fall, the National Academies, experts on science, engineering, and medicine, issued a report aptly titled, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm." It warned that unless the United States moves fast, China, India, and others will rapidly catch up with us competitively. America maintains commanding leads in many fields, but signs of slippage are abundant. In the sale of high technology, we've gone from a $54 billion surplus in 1990 to a $50 billion deficit today. Last year, American investors put more money in foreign stock funds than in domestic.
Part of the reason our rivals are catching up is their lower costs. A high-tech company in the United States, says the national commission, can now find and employ eight young engineers in India for the cost of just one in America. But another reason is that China and India are aggressively preparing for the future through education. Within five years, observers believe, 90 percent of all of the world's scientists and engineers will live in Asia.
We are already feeling the front edges of the economic storm putting downward pressure on incomes here. In one recent period, low-wage employers in companies like Wal-Mart (the nation's largest corporate employer) and McDonald's produced 44 percent of the country's new jobs, while high-wage employers generated just 29 percent. Unless we turn things around, we will soon see a steep downward slide in our standard of living.
All these storms are tied together. Mediocre schools mean we become less competitive. High medical costs make it impossible to bring our deficits down. A lack of energy independence makes us even more hostage to others. Losing our competitive edge lowers our incomes and makes it harder to pay for better schools and information systems that could help reduce healthcare costs. Each gathers force year by year.
In writing his books on World War II, Winston Churchill entitled the first The Gathering Storm. It was obvious in the 1930s, he said, that threats were rapidly building in Nazi Germany; yet the political leaders in Britain and France looked away, drifting into the future. One day, it was too late. Will history now repeat itself in America?
At the time Dowd was administering another dozen to the "death of a thousand cuts" to President Clinton's remaining credibility, America was at peace, had a surplus, and was admired throughout the world for supporting democracy and human rights, however imperfectly or incompletely these last effforts may have been. The debacle of Somalia (where American bodies were dragged, Hector-behind-Achilles'-chariot style, through the streets) led to massive American revulsion for an operation we went in to prevent famine, and would tie Clinton's hands with political constraints for doing anything re stopping the mass-murder purging in Rawanda.
Yes, Hezbollah bombed the US barracks at Khobar towers in 1996; and in 1998, and Al Qaida bombed two US embassies in Africa, and a US warship (the Cole) in Yemen in 2000. But even Muslim countries were appreciative that America had stepped in on behalf of Muslims in Bosnia and Kosovo. And, no, not even Maureen Dowd could (or would even care to try) blame America's NEGLECT of Afghanistan on Clinton - nobody CARED about Afghanistan even a little bit, not even as a haven for Al Qaida, though President Clinton did send a salvo of cruise missiles against bin Laden's training camp, the deadly missiles missing bin Laden by only twenty minutes as the terrorist leader got a last-second warning and fled for the hills.
Worse than merely getting a free ride off of the Clinton follies - stalking Monica, "earning" a Pulitzer Prize for her pop-psychology assessment of an otherwise routine affair (there have been other affairs in the White House, including at least one which led to a child out of wedlock) and capping her "Monica-gate" columnns with her "Clinton LEGACY" columns, Maureen Dowd then shifted effortlessly and seamlessly to trashing AL GORE all through the summer of 2001. Dowd basically jumped on the "major media" bandwagon of bad-mouthing Gore as, at best, "wish-washy" and spineless; at worst as an inveterate liar whose every move was calculated to somehow deceive voters. Even Gore's choice of "earth tone" suits was fodder for a mocking Dowd column!
That was then. Today, Maureen Dowd and David Gergen, and the rest of America's press corps, have some REAL CONCERNS to write about. Dowd has actually transformed back into relevent and perceptive critic, her scathing commentaries of President Bush laying for public examination some REAL deceptions, distortions, and even bald-faced lies.
So, Dowd has quit the ranks of the undead, and joined the living, to talk about bread-and-butter issues that actually affect Americans who don't quite command the 7-figure income she does. And Gergen lists those issue pretty well.
But it is still instructive to see how we got here.. to see just how "whore-iffic" America's mainstream-media, indeed lead news organization the NY Times, could so trivialize, sensationalize, and distort the news, while IGNORING the entire political legacy of Texas Gov. George W. Bush.
(In the summer of 2000 the internet was yet to be the massive info source in daily lives that it is today. Dowd's NYT column was perhaps the most widely syndicated woman's column in America, and NYT stablemate, former Nixon speechwriter, and relentless Clinton-hater William Safire was probably the most widely syndicated male columnist. For Maureen Dowd, an independent woman at the very apex of America's 'journalism' industry to slash and bash at Al Gore ever week for months leading up to the election of November 2000, could not have helped Gore's campaign prospects. Given her influence among independent-minded women in 2000, I feel it is no exaggeration to say that Maureen Dowd, like Ralph Nader, was one of the straws that put Florida within snatching-range for the Bush campaign, and hence, Maureen Dowd is one of the players who helped put George W. Bush in the White House, and thus has given America this LEGACY of "A Gathering Storm."
________________________________
The Danger of Drift
By David Gergen
5/29/06
http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/060529/29gergen.htm
As Hurricane Katrina built up in the Atlantic last year, swept across Florida, then gathered force in the Gulf, many realized that this was the big one they had expected for years--yet when the storm struck, the country wasn't ready. Our political leadership had failed us. Even now, with a new storm season approaching, the Gulf region is still not ready.
Sadly, Katrina has become a metaphor for the nation, a symbol of what can happen when challenges to our well-being gain force, and we fail to address them. At few times in our history has that metaphor been more important than today, because a series of gathering storms--different from Katrina, yet more menacing--is now heading our way.
Washington once again is more obsessed with the politics of the moment than the long term. The decline and fall of the Bush administration is the topic du jour. Around the president, aides are diving into history books to see what lessons they can learn and scrambling to come up with stopgap measures to revive his fortunes. But the overriding issue isn't whether George W. Bush can climb back 5 or 10 points or who will win more congressional seats this fall. The real issue is whether we will drift through nearly three years with a president wounded, a Congress divided, and a public disillusioned. A thousand days as a leaderless nation would leave us almost defenseless against dangers bearing down upon us.
Most Americans know this in their bones. Traveling the country, one meets growing numbers deeply anxious about the future. And it's not just Iraq, gas prices, and immigration. What it is is the yawning gap between the many long-term problems we face and the inability of our leadership class to fix them. Just what are these "gathering storms"? Everyone has a different list. But there are five big ones on nearly all--storms that have been building for years.
- Public education. Twenty-three years have passed since a national commission warned of a "rising tide of mediocrity" in our K-12 schools. After many efforts to improve, test scores are modestly better, especially in early grades. But progress has been excruciatingly slow and uneven. High school dropout rates haven't improved. Only a third finish high school ready for college, and even fewer, 18 percent, actually finish college within six years of high school graduation. "So much reform, so little change," one observer said ruefully.
Not only have we failed to close the achievement gap between rich and poor, and between minorities and whites, but our young people now face growing pressure from Asian students hungry for a better life. "When I compare our high schools to what I see when I'm traveling abroad," said Bill Gates, "I am terrified for our workforce of tomorrow."
Troubles in K-12 spill over into universities, where the United States today is pressed to stay ahead as China, India, and other nations pour investment into science, engineering, and technology education. Larry Summers, Harvard's outgoing president, once estimated that of the top 10 research universities in the world, at least seven, and arguably 10, are now American, but 25 years from now, at least five could be in Asia. Already, more than twice as many engineers, computer scientists, and information technologists are graduating in China as in the United States. All of this suggests that to maintain its edge, America no longer needs evolution in its schools--we need revolution.
- Healthcare. The quality of specialized care at U.S. hospitals remains the envy of the world, but the overall system is in deep trouble, perhaps meltdown. With medical inflation more than three times as high as general inflation, health costs have risen to 16 percent of gross domestic product and are heading toward an unsustainable 20 percent.
Not only are the ranks of the uninsured swelling--up to 45 million, an increase of 6 million since 2000--but corporations are under increasing financial pressure. General Motors spends more on healthcare than on steel. The Government Accountability Office estimates that without a major overhaul of healthcare, GDP will cumulatively grow 72 percent by 2030, but Medicaid will increase 166 percent and Medicare an astonishing 331 percent. Solving the healthcare puzzle has become the single most important step to solving budget problems, too.
- Financial imbalances. It is well understood that the federal government has squandered the budget surpluses of just five years ago. Less well understood are the extra commitments Washington has quietly made to future spending. David Walker, a Republican voice of truth at the GAO, reports that five years ago, the federal government's long-term liabilities and unfunded commitments for things like Social Security and Medicare stood at $20 trillion. Today, the tab is $46 trillion. The new Medicare prescription program alone will account for $8 trillion of this mammoth debt.
As America continues to import far more than we export--so that we borrow some $2 billion a day from nations like China--we have built new twin towers: budget debt and trade debt. Economists keep warning us they are unsustainable, and our political leaders keep whistling past the graveyard.
- Energy and the environment. From Richard Nixon on, presidents have called for energy independence. Congress has passed one bill after another, but the nation's dependence on foreign oil has actually grown since 30 years ago--from around 30 percent to over 60 percent! And with the price of oil around $70 a barrel, as columnist Tom Friedman points out, not only are consumers paying more at the pump, but we're financing authoritarian regimes in Russia, Iran, and Venezuela.
Then there's climate change. The question is no longer whether mankind is heating up the atmosphere but whether and when there might come a tipping point when warming is no longer reversible. Some scientists think we have already passed it; others disagree. But no one disagrees that the United States is a primary culprit, accounting for 24 percent of carbon dioxide emissions with less than 5 percent of the world's population. The time has clearly come for a "grand bargain" in American politics in which the right agrees to major conservation steps, the left agrees to more production and to nuclear power, and both agree on a dramatic investment in renewable energy. But Washington today is so caught up with gaining a tiny partisan advantage that no one even talks boldly.
- Staying ahead. Last fall, the National Academies, experts on science, engineering, and medicine, issued a report aptly titled, "Rising Above the Gathering Storm." It warned that unless the United States moves fast, China, India, and others will rapidly catch up with us competitively. America maintains commanding leads in many fields, but signs of slippage are abundant. In the sale of high technology, we've gone from a $54 billion surplus in 1990 to a $50 billion deficit today. Last year, American investors put more money in foreign stock funds than in domestic.
Part of the reason our rivals are catching up is their lower costs. A high-tech company in the United States, says the national commission, can now find and employ eight young engineers in India for the cost of just one in America. But another reason is that China and India are aggressively preparing for the future through education. Within five years, observers believe, 90 percent of all of the world's scientists and engineers will live in Asia.
We are already feeling the front edges of the economic storm putting downward pressure on incomes here. In one recent period, low-wage employers in companies like Wal-Mart (the nation's largest corporate employer) and McDonald's produced 44 percent of the country's new jobs, while high-wage employers generated just 29 percent. Unless we turn things around, we will soon see a steep downward slide in our standard of living.
All these storms are tied together. Mediocre schools mean we become less competitive. High medical costs make it impossible to bring our deficits down. A lack of energy independence makes us even more hostage to others. Losing our competitive edge lowers our incomes and makes it harder to pay for better schools and information systems that could help reduce healthcare costs. Each gathers force year by year.
In writing his books on World War II, Winston Churchill entitled the first The Gathering Storm. It was obvious in the 1930s, he said, that threats were rapidly building in Nazi Germany; yet the political leaders in Britain and France looked away, drifting into the future. One day, it was too late. Will history now repeat itself in America?
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