Wars
of the Laptop Bombers
Today's
Stories
January 29
/ 30, 2005
Gabriel Kolko
Wilsonian
and Neoconservative Myths
Linn Washington, Jr.
Con Job: Bush Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
January 28,
2005
Rachard Itani
Tsunami
Aid By the Numbers: the US Really is a Miser
Jensen / Youngblood
Iraq's
Non-Election
Patrick Cockburn / Elizabeth
Davies
Attacks on Polling Places Leave 13 Dead
Dave Zirin
The Great Donovan McNabb: Proud "Black Quarterback"
Dave Lindorff
Suicide by State Execution?
Karyn Strickler
A Corporate Death Penalty Act?
Jorge Mariscal
Fighting
the Poverty Draft
January 27,
2005
Seymour Hersh
We've
Been Taken Over By a Cult
Cockburn /
Sengupta
The
US's Bloodiest Day in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Juke Box Journalism: Shilling for Bush
Ignacio Chapela
/ John F. García
The Laws of Nature
Mike Whitney
The Widening Chasm Among Conservatives
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
Those Liberal Southern Baptists!
Ray McGovern
Reining In Cheney
Russ Wellen
Marginalizing Bin Laden
Christopher
Brauchli
The
FBI's Carnival of Errors
Website of
the Day
Informed Eating
January 26,
2005
Saree Makdisi
An
Iron Wall of Colonization: Fantasies and Realities About the
Prospects for Middle East Peace
Scott Fleming
In Good Conscience: an Interview with Concientious Objector Aidan
Delgado
Dave Lindorff
Filling Saddam's Shoes: the Puppet Regime Return's to Torture
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Salazar and Obama: Two Dismal Debuts
Toni Solo
The
US and Latin America: a Not-So-Magical Reality
William James Martin
Condoleezza Rice: Confused About the Middle East
William A.
Cook
Bush's Second Inaugural Address: the Lost Ur-Version
Eric Hobsbawm
Delusions
About Democracy
Alexander Cockburn
The CIA's New Campus Spies
January 25,
2005
Brian Cloughley
Iraq
as Disneyland
Mike Roselle
Satan is My Co-Pilot
Josh Frank
/ Merlin Chowkwanyun
The War on Civil Liberties
John Chuckman
Freedom on Steroids
Paul Craig
Roberts
A
Party Without Virtue
Dr. Teresa
Whitehurst
The
Intolerance of Christian Conservatives
James Petras
The
US / Colombia Plot Against Venezuela
Website of the Day
Lowbaggers for the Environment
January 24,
2005
Fred Gardner
Last
Monologue in Burbank
Lori Berenson
On the Politicization of My Case
Uri Avnery
King
George
January 22
/ 23, 2005
Jennifer Van
Bergen / Ray Del Papa
Nuclear
Incident in Montana
Alexander Cockburn
Prince
Harry's Travails
Jeffrey St. Clair
The Company That Runs the Empire: Lockheed and Loaded
Stan Goff
The Spectacle
Saul Landau
Nothing Succeeds Like Failure
Gary Leupp
Official Madness and the Coming War on Iran
Fred Gardner
Is GW Getting the Runaround?
Phil Gasper
Clemency Denied: the Politics of Death in California
Stanley Heller
A Kill-Happy Government: Connecticut Chooses Death
Greg Moses
The Heart of Texas: an Inauguration Day Betrayal on Civil Rights
Justin Taylor
The Folk-Histories of John Ross
Daniel Burton-Rose
One China; Many Problems
Elaine Cassel
Try a Little Tyranny: Questions While Watching the Inaugural
Mike Whitney
Failing Upwards: the Rise of Michael Chertoff
Mark L. Berenson
My Daughter Has Been Wrongly Imprisoned
Christopher
Brauchli
It Doesn't Compute: a $170 Million Mistake
Gilad Atzmon
Zionism and Other Marginal Thoughts
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Day of the Rats
Mark Donham
The Secret Messages of Rahm Emmanuel
Ben Tripp
Adventures in Online Dating
Walter Brasch
Hollywood's Patriots: Soulless Kooks, Mr. Bush?
Poets' Basement
Wuest, Landau, Ford, Albert & Drum
January 21,
2005
Dave Lindorff
A
Great American Journalist:
John L. Hess (1917-2005)
Sharon Smith
The
Anti-War Movement and the Iraqi Resistance
Don Santina
Baseball, Racism and Steroid Hysteria
Ron Jacobs
Locked Out and Pissed Off: Protesting the Bush Inauguration
Kurt Nimmo
The Problem with Mike Ruppert
Don Monkerud
Once They Were Cults: Bush's Faith-Based Social Services
Alan Farago
Swimming Home from the Galapagos
Derek Seidman
An
Interview with Army Medic and Anti-War Activist Patrick Resta
Read How the
Press & the CIA
Killed Gary Webb's Career
January 20,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
Dying
for Sycophants
William Cook
The
Bush Inauguration: A Mock Epic Fertility Rite
Joshua Frank
The Democrats and Iran: Look Who's Backing Bush's Next
Eric Ruder
Why Andres Raya Snapped: Another Casualty of Bush's War
Mike Whitney
Coronation in a Garrison State
Robert Jensen
A Citizens Oath of Office
Peter Rost
Bush Report on Drug Imports: Good Data, Bad Conclusions
David Underhill
Is It Torture Yet?: the Eclectic Fool Aid Torture Test
James Reiss
Adieu, Colin Powell: Pea Soup in Foggy Bottom
CounterPunch
Staff
Voices
from Abu Ghraib: the Injured Party
January 19,
2005
Marta Russell
Social
Security Privatization & Disability: 8 Million at Risk
Mike Ferner
Marines
Stretching Movement: Protesting Urban Warfare in Toledo
Nancy Oden
The
Nuremberg Principles, Iraq and Torture
Tony Paterson
A Catalogue of British Abuses in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Divide-and-Conquer Plan to Destroy Social Security
Doug Giebel
BS and CBS: When 60 Minutes Helped Promote WMD Fantasies
Alexander Cockburn
Will
Bush Quit Iraq?
January 18,
2005
Paul Craig
Roberts
How
Americans Were Seduced by War: Empire and Militant Christianity
Jennifer Van
Bergen
Federal
Judge: Abu Ghraib Abuses Result of Decision to Ignore Geneva
Conventions
Douglas Lummis
It's a No Brainer; Send Graner: a Rap for Our Time
Ron Jacobs
Syria Back in the Crosshairs?
Seth DeLong
Enter the Dragon: Will Washington Tolerate a Venezuelan-Chinese
Oil Pact?
Lance Selfa
Stolen Election?: Most Democrats Didn't Even Bother to Inquire
Paul D. Johnson
Mystery Meat: a Right-to-Know About Food Origins
Elisa Salasin
An Open Letter to Jenna Bush, Future Teacher
January 17,
2005
Heather Gray
Misconceptions
About King's Methods for Social Change
Robert Fisk
Hotel Room Journalism: the US Press in Iraq
Dave Lindorff
What the NYT Death Chart Omitted: Civilians Slaughtered by US
Military
Jason Leopold
Sam Bodman's Smokestacks: Bush's Choice for Energy Czar is One
of Texas's Worst Polluters
Gary Leupp
A Message from the Iraqi Resistance
Douglas Valentine
An Act of State? the Execution of Martin Luther King
Harvey Arden
Welcome to Leavenworth: My First Encounter with Leonard Peltier
Greg Moses
King
and the Christian Left: Where Lip Service is Not an Option
January 15
/ 16, 2005
James Petras
The
Kidnapping of a Revolutionary
Robert Fisk
Flying Carpet Airlines: My Return to Baghdad
Ron Jacobs
Unfit for Military Service
Brian Cloughley
Smack Daddies of the Hindu Kush: Afghanistan's Drug Bonanza
Fred Gardner
The Allowable-Quantity Expert
Dr. Susan Block
The Counter-Inaugural Ball: Eros Day, 2005
John Ross
Zapatista Literary Llife
Suzan Mazur
Unspooking Frank Carlucci
M. Shahid Alam
America's New Civilizing Mission
Frederick B. Hudson
Jack Johnson's Real Opponent: "That I Was a Man"
Mike Whitney
Bush's Grand Plan: Incite Civil War in Iraq
Tom Crumpacker
A Constitutional Right to Travel to Cuba
Bob Burton
The Other Armstrong Williams Scandal
John Callender
La Conchita and the Indomitable 82-Year Old
Lila Rajiva
Christian Zionism
Saul Landau
An Imperial Portrait: a Visit to Hearst's Castle
Doug Soderstrom
A Touch of Evil: the Morality of Neoconservatism
Poets' Basement
Davies, Louise, Landau, Albert, Collins and Laymon
January 14,
2005
Robert Fisk
"The
Tent of Occupation"
Lee Sustar
Bush's Social Security Con Job
José
M. Tirado
The Christians I Know
Dave Zirin
The Legacy of Jack Johnson
Sheldon Rampton
Calling John Rendon: a True Tale of "Military Intelligence"
Tracy McLellan
Under the Influence
Yves Engler
The Dictatorship of Debt: the World Bank and Haiti
Tom Barry
Robert
Zoellick: a Bush Family Man
Website of
the Day
Ryan for the Nobel Prize?
January 13,
2005
Mark Chmiel
/ Andrew Wimmer
Hearts
and Minds, Revisited
Joe DeRaymond
The Salvador Option: Terror,
Elections and Democracy
Greg Moses
Every Hero a Killer?...Not
Dave Lindorff
The Great WMD Fraud: Time for an Accounting
Jorge Mariscal
Dr. Galarza v. Alberto Gonzales: Which Way for Latinos?
Christopher Brauchli
Gonzales and the Death Penalty: the Executioner Never Sleeps
Gary Leupp
"Fighting
for the Work of the Lord": Christian Fascism in America
January 12,
2005
Robert Fisk
Fear
Stalks Baghdad
Josh Frank
The
Farce of the DNC Contest
Jack Random
Casualties
of War: the Untold Stories
John Roosa
Aceh's Dual Disasters: the Tsunami and Military Rule
Carol Norris
In the Wake of the Tsunami
Mike Whitney
Pink Slips at CBS
Alan Farago
Can
the Everglades be Saved?
Paul Craig
Roberts
What's
Our Biggest Problem in Iraq...the Insurgency or Bush?
January 11,
2005
Tom Barry
The
US isn't "Stingy"; It's Strategic: Aid as a Weapon
of Foreign Policy
James Hodge
and Linda Cooper
Voice
of the Voiceless: Father Roy Bourgeois and the School of the
the Americas
Linda S. Heard
Farah Radio Break Down: Joseph Farah's Messages of Hate and Homophobia
Derrick O'Keefe
Electoral Gigolo?: Richard Gere and the Occupied Vote
Gila Svirsky
A Tale of Two Elections
Harry Browne
Irish
"Peace Process", RIP
January 10,
2005
Ramzy Baroud
Faith-Based
Disasters: Tsunami Aid and War Costs
Talli Nauman
Killing
Journalists: Mexico's War on a Free Press
Uri Avnery
Sharon's Monologue
Dave Lindorff
Tucker
Carlson's Idiot Wind
Dave Zirin
Randy
Moss's Moondance
Dave Silver
Left Illusions About the Democratic Party
Charles Demers
Plan Salvador for Iraq: Death Squads Come in Waves
William A.
Cook
Causes
and Consequences: Bush, Osama and Israel
January 8 /
9, 2005
Alexander Cockburn
Say,
Waiter, Where's the Blood in My Margarita Glass?
John H. Summers
Chomsky
and Academic History
Greg Moses
Getting Real About the Draft
Walter A. Davis
Bible Says: the Psychology of Christian Fundamentalism
Victor Kattan
The EU and Middle East Peace
John Bolender
The Plight of Iraq's Mandeans
Robert Fisk
The Politics of Lebanon
Fred Gardner
Situation NORML
Joe Bageant
The Politics of the Comfort Zone
Mickey Z.
I Want My DDT: Little Nicky Kristof Bugs Out
Ben Tripp
CounterClockwise Evolution
Ron Jacobs
Elvis and His Truck: Out on Highway 61
Saul Landau
Sex
and the Country
Rep. Cynthia McKinney
Time to End the Blackout
Ellen Cantarow
NPR's Distortions on Palestine
Richard Oxman
Bageantry Continued
Poets' Basement
Gaffney, Landau, Albert, Collins
January 7,
2005
Omar Barghouti
Slave
Sovereignty: Elections Under Occupation
Kent Paterson
The Framing of Felipe Arreaga: Another Mexican Environmentalist
Arrested
Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Old
Vijay Merchant and the Tsunami
David Krieger
Cancel the Inauguration Parties
Gideon Levy
New Year, Old Story
Dave Lindorff
Ohio Protest: First Shot Fired by Congressional Progressives
Christopher
Brauchli
Privatizing the IRS
Roger Burbach
/ Paul Cantor
Bush,
the Pentagon and the Tsunami
January 6,
2005
Brian J. Foley
Gonzales:
Supporting Torture is not His Greatest Sin
Greg Moses
Boot
Up America!: Gen. Helmly's Memo Leaks New Bush Deal
Petras / Chomsky
An
Open Letter to Hugo Chavez
Alan Maass
The Decline of the Dollar
Dave Lindorff
Colin Powell's Selective Sense of Horror
Jenna Orkin
The EPA and a Dirty Bomb: 9/11's Disastrous Precedent
P. Sainath
The
Tsunami and India's Coastal Poor
January 5,
2005
Alan Farago
2004:
An Environmental Retrospective
Winslow T.
Wheeler
Oversight
Detected?: Sen. McCain and the Boeing Tanker Scam
Jean-Guy Allard
Gary Webb: a Cuban Perspective
Fred Gardner
Strutting, Smirking, As If The Mad Plan Was Working
David Swanson
Albert Parsons on the Gallows
Richard Oxman
The Joe Bageant Interview
Bruce Jackson
Death
on the Living Room Floor
January 4,
2005
Michael Ortiz
Hill
Mainlining
Apocalypse
Elaine Cassel
They
Say They Can Lock You Up for Life Without a Trial
Yoram Gat
The
Year in Torture
Martin Khor
Tragic
Tales and Urgent Tasks from the Tsunami Disaster
Gary Leupp
Death
and Life in the Andaman Islands
January 3,
2005
Ron Jacobs
The
War Hits Home
Dave Lindorff
Is
There a Single Senator Who Will Stand Up for Black Voters?
Mike Whitney
The Guantanamo Gulag
Joshua Frank
Greens and Republicans: Strange Bedfellows
Maria Tomchick
Playing Politics with Disaster Aid
Rhoda and Mark
Berenson
Our Daughter Lori: Another Year of Grave Injustice
David Swanson
The Media and the Ohio Recount
Kathleen Christison
Patronizing
the Palestinians
January 1 /
2, 2005
Gary Leupp
Earthquakes
and End Times, Past and Present
Rev. William
E. Alberts
On "Moral Values": Code Words for Emerging Authoritarian
Tendencies
M. Shahid Alam
Testing Free Speech in America
Stan Goff
A Period for Pedagogy
Brian Cloughley
Bush and the Tsunami: the Petty and the Petulant
Sylvia Tiwon
/ Ben Terrall
The Aftermath in Aceh
Ben Tripp
Requiem for 2004
Greg Moses
A Visible Future?
Steven Sherman
The 2004 Said Awards: Books Against Empire
Sean Donahue
The Erotics of Nonviolence
James T. Phillips
The Beast's Belly
David Krieger
When Will We Ever Learn
Poets' Basement
Soderstrom, Hamod, Louise and Albert
December 23,
2004
Chad Nagle
Report
from Kiev: Yushchenko's Not Quite Ready for Sainthood
David Smith-Ferri
The
Real UN Disgrace in Iraq
Bill Quigley
Death
Watch for Human Rights in Haiti
Mickey Z.
Crumbs
from Our Table
Christopher Brauchli
Merck's Merry X-mas
Greg Moses
When
No Law Means No Law
Alan Singer
An
Encounter with Sen. Schumer: a Very Dangerous Democrat
David Price
Social
Security Pump and Dump
Website of the Day
Gabbo Gets Laid
December 22,
2004
James Petras
An
Open Letter to Saramago: Nobel Laureate Suffers from a Bizarre
Historical Amnesia
Omar Barghouti
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Patrick Cockburn / Jeremy Redmond
They Were Waiting on Chicken Tenders When the Rounds Hit
Harry Browne
Northern Ireland: No Postcards from the Edge
Richard Oxman
On the Seventh Column
Kathleen Christison
Imagining
Palestine
Website of the Day
FBI Torture Memos
December 21,
2004
Greg Moses
The
New Zeus on the Block: Unplugging Al-Manar TV
Dave Lindorff
Losing
It in America: Bunker of the Skittish
Chad Nagle
The View from Donetsk
Dragon Pierces
Truth*
Concrete
Colossus vs. the River Dragon: Dislocation and Three Gorges Dam
Patrick Cockburn
"Things Always Get Worse"
Seth DeLong
Aiding Oppression in Haiti
Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan and the 9/11 Commission's Report
Paul Craig
Roberts
America
Locked Up: a System of Injustice
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Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
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Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
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J.B.
Prison Bitch
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Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
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Impeach
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Weekend Edition
January 29 / 30, 2005
Con Job
Bush
Pledges on Racism Lack Realism
By
LINN WASHINGTON, Jr.
Condi proudly invoked the name of Dr.
Martin Luther King Jr. during her recent Senate confirmation
hearings.
Yes, the same Dr. Condoleezza
Rice who's consistently burnished her conservative career by
bashing the Civil Rights Movement craftily told Senators she's
"indebted" to the sacrifices of that movement which
enabled her to "be here" poised to become America's
first Black female Secretary of State.
Two days after Rice plucked
Senators' heartstrings with her 'bootstrapping-out-of-segregated-Birmingham'
autobiographical account, her boss the President made a bold
statement about racism in his inaugural address.
America "must abandon
all the habits of racism" President Bush declared.
Yes, the same George W. Bush
who usually rejects pleas for intervention on race related issues
as comparable to a four letter profanity condemned the "baggage
of bigotry" during his inaugural, promising to "strive
in good faith to heal" divisions in America.
What's going on here?
Is this the dawning of the
long promised era of compassionate conservatism?
Has Condi actually abandoned
her of-stated antipathy for affirmative action, antipathy credited
with convincing Bush to publicly condemn minority admissions
policies at the University of Michigan on MLK's birthday in January
2003?
Does Bush's inaugural articulation
of realities like "freedom by its nature [requires] protection
of minorities" and "there is no justice without freedom"
mean he now truly embraces these truths that should be self-evident?
Absolutely not!
Condi crassly played the race-card
during her confirmation snowing some Democratic Senators while
George's sweeping pronouncements criticizing racism constituted
a duplicitous attempt to 'play' Americans as fools.
Yes, show and not substance
motivated the respective Capitol Hill performances of Rice and
Bush.
Proof of Bush's sleight of
hand on racism is evident in his choosing Mississippi Republican
Senator Trent Lott as the master of ceremonies for his inauguration.
Selecting the racial segregation
praising Lott is not a shining example of sincerely showing the
asserted reversal of what is one of the worst civil rights records
of any president in recent memory.
Actions speak louder than words
and Bush's first term record in the arena of racial fairness
is truly repugnant.
In July 2000, when then presidential
candidate Bush addressed the NAACP America's oldest and
largest civil rights organization he pledged, "Strong
civil rights enforcement will be a cornerstone of my administration."
Yet, during the waning months
of Bush's first term, the US Civil Rights Commission issued a
report analyzing his administration's record on civil rights
that drew dismal conclusions.
"President Bush has implemented
policies that have retreated from long-established civil rights
promises" in a number of areas from affirmative action to
voting rights to issues dealing with women.
The same President Bush who
calls affirmative action evilly improper "racial preferences"
to non-whites sees no problem in providing special preference,
no-bid contracts worth billions to powerful corporations like
Halliburton, the firm once headed by his Vice-President, Dick
Cheney.
While Bush extolled his intent
to "widen the ownership ofbusinesses" during his inauguration
speech, his first term policies didn't dent the deliberate exclusion
of Black business from billions in federal highway and transportation
contracting opportunities according to a 2003 position paper
issued by the National Black Chamber of Commerce.
Black contractors, according
to data in this paper, provided 1.4 percent of the work on projects
funded by the Federal Highway Administration, down from 6 percent
in 1982, despite the existence of an affirmative action initiative
known as the Disadvantaged Business Enterprise program.
The National Black Chamber
described this exclusion as a "sham and national disgrace,"
blaming federal officials for "systematically killing Black
contractors."
Given Bush's repeated praise
of his (deadly & federal deficit-raising) campaigns to install
democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, it is disturbing that the
Civil Rights Commission's report criticized Bush's failure to
"act swiftly toward election reform" that ensures enforcement
of voting rights across America.
Reports of GOP lead disenfranchisement
campaigns against Blacks peppered the 2004 presidential election,
repeating voter suppression practices in Florida and elsewhere
during the 2000 presidential election.
Bush, in February 2001, told
Congress that he wanted to end racial profiling, repeating a
pledge he made repeatedly on the campaign trail.
Yet, an Amnesty International
report issued last fall rebuked Bush for backing off his pledges
to end this ineffective practice that Bush once called wrong.
"Almost four years later
[Bush] has failed to support any federal legislative effort to
eliminate racial profiling in the United States," stated
the AI report.
This report noted how racial
profiling has expanded beyond the traditional targets of African-Americans
and Hispanic-Americans.
"Native Americans, Asian-Americans,
Arab-Americans, Persian-Americans, American Muslims, many immigrants
and visitors, and, under certain circumstances, white Americans"
endure racial profiling that now ravages "32 million Americans,
a number equivalent to the population of Canada," the AI
report stated.
Also last fall, the Congressional
Black Caucus released statistics showing that African-Americans
comprised only 7 percent of Bush's 165 appointments to important
federal district court slots.
This appointment record compounds
the already persistent problem of under-representation of African-Americans
at all levels of the federal judiciary from district courts through
courts of appeals.
Further, the CBC statistics
pointed out the "stark contrast" between the judicial
appointment record of Bush and his predecessor Bill Clinton.
Blacks comprised 20 percent
of the 170 district court appointments during Clinton's first
term in office.
"President Bush's record
is truly disturbing and demonstrates a lack of commitment to
having a judiciary that looks like America," noted a CBC
press release issued at the end of last September.
Bush's deliberate exclusion
of Blacks from a position as freedom-ensuring/securing as the
federal judiciary continues the hollow ring of American democracya
brand of democracy that Bush repeatedly said in his inaugural
address that he wants to ring loudly around the world.
Bush's inauguration address
articulated a "goal of ending tyranny in our world."
However, Bush's stated intent
to require "other governments" to treat their citizens
decently doesn't square with his administration's sabotaging
of the democratically elected presidents of Haiti and Venezuela
who worked hard to improve the daily lives of their grossly impoverished
Black citizens.
As National Security Advisor,
Dr. Rice took point in defending Bush Administration assaults
on Venezuela's Chavez while the man Condi called "my mentor"
during her recent confirmation former Secretary of State
Colin Powell played a scurvy role in the removal of Haiti's
Aristide.
While presidential candidate
Bush addressed the NAACP in 2000, President Bush became the first
Oval Office occupant in over seven decades to not speak at the
organization's national convention.
Bush spurned a NAACP convention
speaking invitation last year, claiming anger over the organization's
'harsh' criticism of his civil rights record.
A passing criticism of Bush's
failure to appear at the July 2004 convention produced a Nixonesque
IRS investigation into whether the NAACP violated its tax-exempt
status by taking partisan stands during the presidential election.
President Bush also stonewalled
the CBC, meeting with the whole group only twice during his first
term. The first days after his 2001 inauguration where he said
it would be the "beginning of, hopefully, a lot of meetings."
The second meeting occurred when the caucus unsuccessfully sought
White House assistance in preserving Aristide's presidency in
Haiti.
The President known for his
'plain talking' style seemingly had problems talking with reporters
from Black owned media during his first term.
For example, during last year's
presidential campaign, Bush rejected interview invitations from
Black Press reporters, Black Entertainment Television and the
"Tom Joyner Morning Show," the most popular program
on Black radio.
Bush did respond to a December
2004 request for a fence-mending meeting from outgoing NAACP
President Kweisi Mfume.
Additionally, Bush did hold
post-inaugural speech meetings with some hand-picked Black leaders
and the CBC.
However, the reported focus
of Bush during all of these meetings was not new initiatives
to combat racism but improving his image among Blacks, expanding
Black interest in the GOP and gaining support for his controversial
Social Security reform and constitutional ban on gay marriage.
Bigotry is not an irreversible
condition so it is possible that Bush can fulfill his inaugural
pledges related to racism.
But the real measure here is
not possibility but probability and based on past performance
it's a poor bet that Bush will do a real 180 on race.
Linn Washington Jr. is a columnist for the Philadelphia
Tribune, America's oldest African-American owned newspaper. He
can be reached at: lwashing@temple.edu.
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