The Underside

Reality: Hillary Doesn't Have The Votes

2008-05-22T15:26:00.000-07:00

I haven't posted on this blog for nearly a year.

Frankly, I felt: what was the point? I was getting heckled by wing-nuts with only the occasional kudo, and those were mostly ingenuous comments left by people wanting to leave links to their sites in my comments section in order to promote their businesses.

So why bother?

But the long slog of 117 million taxpayers coming to some kind of realization about how the country operates these days and what it means to have robber baron Republicans in the White House seems to be dawning. Hence the excitement over Barack Obama.

But - again - I see too many divisive comments a la the "I would have voted for Hillary, but now I'm voting for McCain" variety so that my despair over the future of this country has not yet lifted.

Yet, don't get me wrong. I'm doing okay. I am busy and happier with my own life than I've been for years. In fact, there seems to have been a reversal. I'm now ike everyone else was six to eight years ago when I tried to raise the alarm among friends about the vipers in the administration. Ha! I was spitting in the wind and left in the dust.

But times have changed. My ideas are no longer so easily dismissed. In fact, many Americans have come to the same conclusions about how toxic Bush et al has been for the nation.

And what about all those Republicans who switched coats, abandoned the president yesterday and helped democrats override his veto on the farm bill? They know which way the wind is blowing. . .

Did you read the reason why Bush vetoed it? It's hilarious. Typical NewSpeak. He says he vetoed it because it did not go far enough in eliminating subsidies for millionaire "gentlemen" farmers (who never grow anything but get paid to have homes out in the country where they can have horses for their kids.)

Right. No, Bush, we know you vetoed it because 1) the farm bill gives more nutritional aid to poor kids and 2) some of your rich buddies in Texas are no longer going to get their farm subsidies and they were probably calling you about it.

But I digress.

Back to the Hillary/Barack contest and my original impetus for writing:

On May 13, 2008 I read posts on the New York Times website in regard to an editorial published by George McGovern in which he pled for democrats to unite behind Obama who - even two weeks ago - had the electoral votes to assure him the democratic nomination, no matter what anyone else would have you think.

Yes, 8 days is like six months in Internet time. I'm writing about old news. But let me get it off my chest, would you?

Because I’m still struck by the insults leveled at Mr. McGovern for stating the obvious:

Obama has the electoral votes sewn up to win the nomination, Hillary's chance is OVER, and if the candidates don’t make peace, McCain will win the presidency.

Yes, it's deplorable how Hillary was - virtually - raped by every clever pundit in town, including Maureen Dowd. (Whose biting wit I usually enjoy.)

If Hillary cried, it was an act. If she didn't cry, she was "too cold."

Virulent sexism poisoned the campaign with the result that the woman could not do anything right.

No male candidate could have handled what was done to Hillary and it is a tribute to her immense ability and strength that she stood strong.

So, yes, I believe Hillary “should have” gotten her party’s electoral votes. But she hasn't. Count the votes. Math doesn’t lie. It's over.

So the question is: Do you want the gutting of America to continue under Republican leadership?

Do you want to continue a war that was - make no mistake - started as a business for vested interests?

Do you want no environmental plan, gutted protection laws, mountain top removal mining that’s destroying the Appalachians?

Do you want under-funded public schools and – eventually – only private schools?

Do you want PBS abolished or its integrity eroded?

Do you want the poor to bear the tax burden for running a government that takes from them, but gives nothing?

Do you want there to be only rich and poor, with no middle class?

Do you want rotting infrastructure, falling bridges (like the one in Minnesota) and the continued goosestep march toward privatization?

Do you want the U.S. to be a purely dog-eat-dog country with no compassion, no safety nets, no care for anything, but our own, personal bottom lines?

Would you sacrifice the country and the working poor for your own egoistic bruising because your candidate's chances are over?

Would you choose war within your own party to unity that might actually solve our pressing problems (including our 9 Trillion dollar deficit which represents over $80,000 in money due from each of 117 million taxpayers?)

Because it sounded like - from most of the comments I read – that the answer is, “Yes. Yes, I do.”

So be it.

Insist your candidate slug it out to the end instead of returning to the Senate as the most powerful female force for change on the planet who, under a democratic administration, could make very good things happen.

Insist you’re doing it “on principle.”

The party - and the country - you will help destroy will be your own.

The "Radical Wrong's" Philosophy: Punishment

2007-06-17T11:49:00.000-07:00

An Ohio inmate who brought an issue of astonishing unfairness to the Supreme Court - so it could make things right - has learned that punishment has replaced fairness as a part of our highest court's agenda.

A lower court told Keith Bowles that he had until Feb. 27 to appeal his conviction. He filed the appeal on Feb. 26, and was ready to argue why he was wrongly convicted. But it turned out the district court made a mistake. The appeal should have been filed by Feb. 24.

In a 5 to 4 decision, the Supreme Court of the United States, now skewed with radical right-wing appointees, has given this logic - worthy of the Queen's in Alice In Wonderland - its stamp of approval.

What should have been a no-brainer decision to correct an injustice based upon a trivial clerical mistake has, instead, emerged as proof that whatever the radical right does, its actions are based in a philosophy of punishment.

It's time to realize that the mean spirited infliction of punishment has become an embedded American value. So, how long until we revisit our Puritan heritage of throwing sinners into the stocks, forcing them to remain in uncomfortable positions for hours and hours at a time in-between torturing them?

Oh, that's right. I forgot. We just call that Guantanamo now.

Seriously - the philosophy of punishment is the basis of the Radical Wrong's politics. Look at the issues:

Denial of Global Warming - the Radical Wrong has been fighting the truth on this issue for decades. Why? From the perspective of the Religious Wrong the sooner the "the end times" come - and punishes all of us for our selfish, consuming ways - the better. We all "deserve" punishment anyway - just for being born - because we are "born as sinners."

Yet the secular, profiteering branch of the Radical Wrong also relies on punishment, but for different reasons. Corporate supporters - who have never been opposed to using a big stick to smash poor people down, punishing them lest they get too uppity and want a share of the profits - have sown the belief that poverty itself is not punishing enough, but is deserving of further collective punishment through deepening.

So who cares if the poor don't have water and die like flies?

If you look around at the policies being promoted by the Radical Wrong, you quickly see that, if you are poor, you are judged unfit to live.

Punishing the poor for being poor has been programmed into us as an "American value" by Republicans for the last sixty years, as revenge for The New Deal.

Denial of Health Care - You remember, surely, why Hillary Clinton was originally demonized? She wanted the men, women and children of America to have access to doctors and medical treatment. That was her big "sin." That's what got her branded as "crazy."

Imagine, wanting the sick kids pf the working poor to have health care. What an insane idea. To paraphrase Scrooge: Are there no workhouses? Let them die, for it will reduce the surplus population.

Hillary didn't want kids - or any American - to suffer and die needlessly.

But the Radical Wrong loves punishment. And they heaped it - and are still heaping it - on Hillary's head in retribution for challenging their heartlessness.

The Rape of Mother Earth - So who cares if Mother Earth has given us a home and nurtured us? According to the Radical Wrong, it's okay to rape your mother if there's a buck in it.

They are thrilled to blow the tops off mountains, so that streams, communities, and ecosystems alike are destroyed, and seem oblivious to our steady gallows march toward killing every other animal in the world.

The proof? Bush changed 90% of environmental laws so there's more lead in the air and more mercury in the water. No doubt the Radical Wrong seeks to punish us - the impudent non-rich - as well as other "lower animals" for breathing and taking up space where condos could be built - and perhaps even for not having opposable thumbs.

Anti-Gay Rights - How dare gays aspire to be happy? How dare they want lasting relationships and families? The Radical Wrong believes they deserve to be punished.

Yet you can almost understand this one when you consider that, from an insecure, frightened woman's perspective, it's a no-brainer as to whon to hate. Male homosexuals often are better looking and offer more frequent - and exotic - sexual favors for their partners than up-tight heterosexual women.

Well, what woman wants competition like that which puts her at such a disadvantage?

Really - I sympathize. It must be hell for the ugly to average-looking woman - who has already been told by our youth driven culture that she doesn't cut it - to realize that she not only has to compete with other women for a male partner, but that she has to compete with better looking males.

And for insecure, testosterone drive men - who refuse to acknowledge that they have an inner female - they'd rather bash heads than get in touch with their own feelings.

Who can blame them? After all, it's so much quicker.

Thus they "dis" every man who exhibits feelings and sensitivity - and a different sexual preference - as "unnatural." {Right. Homosexuality's been with us since the species began, but it's "unnatural.")

It's all part of the old story. When people are threatened, they like to dole out punishment to those by whom they feel threatened.

That is, after all, what got Jesus crucified.

Those who threaten a person's sense of his or her own self, values, morality, ethics, life style and - yes - sexuality will be punished by those scared of their own selves. Yet - and here's the rub - it's always projection, and of the person's own shadow. And who brings up issues of sexual identity faster than a homosexual?

Naturally, if you don't want to deal with your own issues - your own lack of love for yourself, your own sexual fears, your own self-doubts - then you'll punish everyone - and anyone - who brings up things you just don't want to deal with in yourself.

Iraq - Pure punishment heaped upon Saddam - and the Middle-East - for controlling the oil wanted by western oil corporations. Despite the rhetoric, this wasn't revenge for 9/11 because neither Iraq nor Saddam had anything to do with this "New Pearl Harbor."

Instead, 9/11 was an excuse - welcomed by the Radical Wrong - to channel America's entire economy toward feeding the maw of corporate America, to include Halliburton and global arms manufacturers.

The irony here, of course, is that it's no longer just the Middle-East that's being punished. Ask the families of the soldiers who have been killed and maimed. Ask them if they feel blessed or punished by the war.

Anti-abortion movement: not so much a "right to life" movement (since the mother's life is expendable and anti-abortionists tend to be in favor of the death penalty) this is revenge for the women's movement, revenge against the audacity of women controlling their own reproductive lives.

Those who would decide their own fates by using birth control and, yes, abortion - if they cannot tolerate the idea of sacrificing their own lives to pregnancy and parenthood - are shamed and manipulated with punishing strategies.

Remember, the practice was to bomb abortion clinics and kill doctors, but being outright terrorists has become less practical for those who want to punish others since they began to be sued in civil court for damages and found themselves bankrupted.

Yet, more than punishing women for the right to choose to have a child or not, the movement embodies a principle of punishing others for thinking, for raising awareness that the world is already overpopulated and that, to have a child, may well be an irresponsible act that threatens habitats, people and animals that already exist.

Regardless of the realities of living in a finite space, on a finite planet with a finite amount of soil and natural resources, we still have an expansionist policy promoted by those who seek to promote religious and corporation interests.

Popes have always wanted more Catholics in order to amass even more power and money. Is it co-incidence that their religious dogma (which the Church has had no scruple in changing over the years when changes suited its agenda) would punish those who would promote a decreased or stable population?

Since their power is likely to diminish with a declining Catholic population, does it not make sense that shaming and threats of excommunication for the use of contraception or abortion might simply - as crude as it sounds or as disguised as it might be behind lofty words - be part of the business plan?

Corporations are always looking for more and more consumers - and more and more growth no matter how unsustainable and impossible that is the long run.

Yet stock market profits depend on the illusion that growth can continue forever without coming up against a wall.

Large corporations have funded the Republican party - and thus fueled the culture wars so a global movement doesn't actually gain enough power to achieve economic equality and policies of sustainability. This, in itself, is punishment enough in that people are spending their lives hating and arguing with each other over political abstractions instead of learning how to compromise and live in harmony.

Worse, megacorporations have a history of punishing the poor with everything from funding anti-worker armies in third worlds to making the collection of rainwater illegal, as Bechtel did in Peru.

Bottom line, if you examine all the issues raised and promoted by the radical "right" - which is more correctly named the Radical Wrong - it becomes evident that punishment is the connecting factor.

It is punishment that guides this wrong-wing government as a guiding principle, and which translates to an utter lack of regard for the lives and rights and suffering of not only the people that it governs, but the people of the world.

1/3 of Female Troops Victimized

2007-04-03T10:40:00.000-07:00

According to a story by the AP, a soldier who filed for conscientious objector status, Robert Zabala, "...said he was troubled during boot camp in 2003 when a fellow recruit committed suicide and a superior used profanities to belittle the recruit. Zabala said he was "abhorred by the blood lust (the superior) seemed to possess," according to a 2006 court petition for conscientious-objector status."

"Another boot camp instructor showed recruits a "motivational clip" showing Iraqi corpses, explosions, gun fights and rockets set to a heavy metal song that included the lyrics, "Let the bodies hit the floor," the petition said. Zabala said he cried, while other recruits nodded their heads in time with the beat."

This is the inhumanity - the perpetrator mentality - that is cultivated to fight the war in Iraq. God help us - and these guys - when they all come home with no one to kill. Killing is probably the ultimate high for those who "enjoy" it.

Certainly the high alert under which they all live is the ultimate stimulus for the human nervous system and withdrawal symptoms from that "stimulus" - not to mention post traumatic stress syndrome - will make it difficult for all who fought in Iraq to adjust to peace.

As for women soldiers, add this on to their psychological burden: nearly 1/3 of females troops have been victims of rape or attempted rape by male American troops. Some have died of dehydration rather than risk venturing out of their barracks for water at night.

Rape of female troops is the ugliest elephant in the room that no one bothers to mention.

This debacle has gone on too long and has decimated too many lives. Just bring the troops home.

Now.

Ex-Aide Says He’s Lost Faith in Bush

2007-04-01T12:18:00.000-07:00

There may be a temptation to sneer at Bush campaign strategist Matthew Dowd for his "born again" ideas about creating a political campaign that "appeals to more than 51% of the people" and his statement, now that his enlisted son is going to Iraq, in which he says he feels "a calling of trying to re-establish a level of gentleness in the world."

Surely many are thinking that his loss of faith in President Bush comes a bit late considering the nation has been decimated by partisan politics and destructive leadership for over six years.

So what did it take for this about face?

A few personal tragedies and the probably that his own son will, at the very least, be traumatized by what he experiences in Iraq, if not mutilated or killed there. This combination of personal events has managed to wake him up to the callous inhumanity he helped foist upon us and the world.

But, at least, he has seen the light.

Unlike Karl Rove or Rumsfeld or Cheney or Bush himself, not to mention the multitude of the selfish and the brain dead who remain encrusted in the Bush camp, he has seen that things have gone downhill very fast and that the nation is hemorrhaging as a result of the Republican agenda.

In truth, the mishmash of ideologies which the American public was sold as a patriotic and conservative "platform" proved to be a schizophrenic misanthrope - something that has worked to divide citizen against citizen even as it has indebted us beyond belief, shackled us like slaves to corporate desire, worked to eliminate institutions and agencies created for the public good such as public schools, social security, PBS and FEMA, enmeshed us in an unwinnable war and continues to destroy our dollar.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have increased the size of government, spied upon us, shredded our Constitution and put us on Amnesty International's list of nations that employ torture.

Of course we know that the list of all Bush has wreaked upon us goes on and on and on, not the least of which is the 90% of our environmental regulations that have been changed - with just a flourish of Bush's pen - with just one result being the ongoing destruction of the Appalachian Mountains and, so far, about 1000 miles of streams below them.

Forget the increase in the amount of mercury that is being released in the air which has resulted in warnings that most of our fish are too toxic to eat.

Maybe, in the final analysis, Bush will prove to have been the disease that almost killed us, but which woke us up to how we better start living our lives and running our politics.

Raise a glass with me in sincere hope that Matthew Dowd will not be the first, nor the last Republican strategist to decide that dividing the nation to win an election, for the purpose of plundering the nation, isn't quite all it's cracked up to be.

What Does Globalization Really Mean?

2007-03-24T15:45:00.000-07:00

From an article by the international Trades Union Congress:

"Globalisation is a term that is frequently used but seldom defined. It refers to the rapid increase in the share of economic activity taking place across national boundaries. This goes beyond the international trade in goods and includes the way those goods are produced, the delivery and sale of services, and the movement of capital."

Is that good or bad?

"Globalisation can be a force for good. It has the potential to generate wealth and improve living standards. But it isn't doing that very well at the moment. The benefits from increased trade, investment, and technological innovation are not fairly distributed.

The experience of the international trade union movement suggests that the reality for the majority of the world's population is that things are getting worse.

Globalisation as we know it is increasing the gap between rich and poor. This is because the policies that drive the globalisation process are largely focused on the needs of business.

The relentless drive to remove trade barriers, promote privatisation, and reduce regulation (including legal protection for workers), has had a negative impact on the lives of millions of people around the world.

In addition, many of the poorer countries have been pressured to orientate their economies towards producing exports and to reduce already inadequate spending on public services such as health and education so that they can repay their foreign debt. This has forced even more people into a life of poverty and uncertainty."

The article states that, although globalization is being promoted as some inevitable force, the truth is that governments are making the rules that allow globalization, in its current exploitative form, to grow so it infects every transaction on the globe.

Globalization could be a good thing, but under current laws, it is not.

But laws can be changed.

E-mail the link above to your representatives. Ask that the laws governing globalization be made fairer so that they do not further impoverish the poor of the world. And watch who you do business with. Shop free trade whenever you can. Compose a short letter based upon the article above and, once a week or once a month pick out one of the companies whose products you buy and send a personalized copy of your letter to that company.

If we let corporations abuse the most vulnerable and powerless in the world, it won't be long before those same corporations reduce our standards of living. In fact, we are seeing the results of their actions now.

Remember, we're all linked. Ultimately, what happens to one of us must affect all of us.

Get Involved In Your Local Party

2007-03-10T10:12:00.000-08:00

Here's a joke most of us have heard, in which the two main political parties in this country are, cynically, compared:

The Republican party screws you.

The Democratic party screws you, but tells you it loves you first.

I am concerned about the rhetoric being thrown around by young (and, yes, passionate) voters who are just discovering that Democratic Congresses and Presidents have supported wars and the same kind of human rights violations in Third World Countries as have their Republican counterparts. They are criticizing the Democrats mercilessly even as they are trying to get the Republicans out of office.

While they have a valid point and, in a quick and dirty comparison, the two parties can seem very much the same, their philosophies - and their current platforms - are very different.

Certainly if you care about domestic issues and the betterment of the U.S. as a whole, then a careful scrutiny will show you that the Republican party is, by far, the worst of the two.

The GOP is for the privatization of virtually everything and seems to make profit its sole measure for action. Thus its work to enhance corporate profits translates into the elimination of good jobs, social security, public television, environmental regulations and so forth.

Republicans don't support unions and have lulled the middle class into believing unions are, somehow, bad. It doesn't believe in equal rights and has done its best to ignite a backlash among white males against helping anyone who is disadvantaged. It certainly has fought women's rights by calling women who simply want equal pay and equal opportunity "femi-nazis" (one of Rush Limbaugh's favorite terms.) Yes, God forbid corporations should have to pay women equal wages. Also, let us not forget that the "Republican Wrong" continues to fight all effots to recognize climate change an issue or promote any kind of conservation.

Sadly, even the Christian Wrong, which was, at long last, about to get something right by championing responsible stewardship of the earth, has now sent out a message to the faithful to shut up about climate change.

Here's a Times Select article on the issue.

In 2000, just after Bush was elected, I happened to sit near some influential democratic campaign planners while waiting for a film to begin in a theater in St. Petersburg, Florida. I overheard their conversation and asked a question. During that brief conversation we had, one of the strategists told me "Bush will ruin this country."

I laughed and said one man couldn't ruin a country this big. They all just smiled. They knew I had no idea what I was talking about and that I would see they were right. That's because Bush is just the apex of a vast army of powerful policy makers. He is the leader of an army of rich and influential people who want - and can pay - to assure the U.S. follows the course they want, which is to give them unfettered ability to tap markets and exploit everyone and everything for profit. They tell Americans that this gives them a high standard of living, but they work tirelessly to keep the extra profits for themselves.

Obviously, the democrats I spoke with were right. With trillions in debt, habeas corpus suspended, torture justified, 90% of environmental protections rolled back & the government justifying everything it does based upon an unwinnable "war on terror," the nation is in dreadful shape.

The list of changes the Bush administration has made to this nation is huge and growing in regard to how the country is being turned back from the progressive progress we had made toward social justice and moral issues.

But let me go back to the biggest strike against the democratic party according to the perceptions of young voters: the democrats support wars.

Anyone who criticizes the democrats for supporting wars in the past has to realize that the U.S. is an imperialist country, with an imperialist doctrine at its core. In other words, the U.S. has wages war as a strategy to advance its agendas. In fact, the U.S. has been waging war in some country, somewhere, to advance corporate and strategic interests, in every year since WWII.

The democrats have, for the last sixty years, simply reflected the goals built into our national plan; the most basic tenets that the country has adopted. The U.S. was built on slavery, built on military aggression and expansionism. It is the philosophy of the country as a whole, and the psychology of its populace, that supports these actions. Therefore, in order to get elected, both parties adopt a hawkish attitude to get votes or risk being branded as "weak" on defense and patriotism.

The problem is not with the parties, per se, but with the mindset of the people in our nation.

The fact is, that a nation gets the leaders it deserves. Just as Germany got Hitler, we have gotten Bush. If we got him due to ignorance as to what he stood for, that is no excuse. As they say: "Ignorance is no excuse under the law."

The least productive thing any voter can do is to say the two parties are the same. This discourages voting. The rich who want to keep the Republicans in power are going to vote.

The poor who think that the parties are the same will not bother to vote. Certainly they see that the Republican party could care less about their needs. If they believe that the Democrats are the same, then what is their motivation to vote?

In fact, that belief, is the reason we have George Bush at the helm. If the poor had voted in their own interests, he would never have been elected.

But they didn't vote. Yet that is normal. We had something like a 49% turn out rate in this country during federal elections, which virtually assures that the rich stay in power and get richer while the poor (and now, surprise, surprise the middle class) is getting poorer.

Ironically, the middle-class votes for the Republicans because they want to have more money and tend to identify with the concerns of wealthy people more than those of the poor. And, because nothing is done about violence and guns, they don't feel safe, so they vote for law and order candidate which misses the point. Handguns are what makes America unsafe.

But Republicans have convinced people otherwise. And since they have more money, more think-tanks, more ads and more effective spin, they have an advantage beause, unfortunately, most people make their voting decisions based upon very little information. Sound bites tend to determine an election and the Republican machine is a master at creating them.

People tend to vote based upon fear rather than hope. Since the Republicans are masters at generating fear of taxes, change, civil rights, loose morals, etc., they have a real psychological advantage in ad preparation

So, to all those who would see real change in this country, I would give this advice:

The difference between the parties must be first emphasized and then expanded upon.

There are big differences and if people want the differences to be even greater, then they must work to raise consciousness both outside and inside the party itself.

Because until the consciousness of the country starts to shift away from arrogance and "might makes right," and heads toward cooperation and peaceful co-existence, the party that gains power will reflect the consciousness of the majority of American people who, you will remember, were very gung-ho to go to war against Iraq.

So - if you really want to see change, don't just criticize from the outside, but get involved inside the party itself at the local level. Join your county's democratic party. Be a peacemaker. Create goals for what you want your country and your party to stand for (justice, peace, education, human rights) and work for them. Either that or join the Green Party or some party you can support.

Also, check out: http://www.thepeacealliance.org/

Dennis Kucinich (a democrat) and Marianne Williamson are working to establish a U.S. Department of Peace. It's the responsibility of each of us to decide to become part of the solution. If we don't, we are just going to keep getting more of the same.

America Needs Citizen Leaders

2007-01-25T22:02:00.000-08:00

Bob Herbert wrote an elegant and accurate piece on the lack of leadership in this country. Entitled Long On Rhetoric, Short On Sorrow it really hits home not only on the bankruptcy of Bush politics, but on the timidity of Democrats in speaking up and forging radically different and necessary policy.

Admittedly, Senator Webb's response was a bright spot after the president's dismal "business as usual" State of the Union speech.

But Webb is only one man of moderate opinions, whereas we need a nation full of vocal activists. It will take a national movement to reclaim our higher ideals and create real solutions in regard to Global Warming, energy independence, restoring the financial strength of the middle class, alleviating the poverty of fifty million Americans, effecting election reform and restructuring corporate law so that we may stem the tide of corporatism and the threat of fascism (the merging of corporate and government power) which, if this merger continues unchecked, will control every aspect of our lives including ownership of our DNA.

Mr. Herbert suggests that the empty hole in our nation - which should be filled by educated, intelligent, enlightened and socially progressive leaders - must now be filled by her citizens. He believes each citizen must now rise to the occasion, get involved, become informed, run for local office, etc.

I agree that we lack leadership and that it is past time for the average citizen to educate him or herself and take the reins.

Yet, given our national addiction to escapist entertainment of all kinds - television, pornography, alcohol, gambling, shopping and video games - I'm not sure we have the time to devote to politics. After all, was it not our topsy-turvy priorities that allowed a man like George Bush to be elected?

The fact is that, as an electorate, we prefer to be convinced by sound bites instead of facts and prefer the immediate satisfaction of attacking science as opposed to the sustained effort needed to understand it.

Likewise, instead of thoroughly researching the positions of candidates and contemplating the gray areas of issues, we prefer quick and easy, black and white answers such as "voting makes no difference."

Why? Because becoming well-informed takes so much time. Because it is so humbling - and makes us feel so insecure - to realize our deficiencies in critical thinking. It can feel overwhelming when we first begin to sort through the enormous amounts of information (and misinformation) that abound and determine the truth about a person or an issue.

Yet developing critical thinking - being able to separate allegation from truth and supposition from fact, and then acting through our knowledge to bring about the highest good - this is what growing up is all about.

America is, sadly, a nation filled with adult children who refuse to grow up.

A growing percentage of our younger citizens - predominantly males - are remaining in adolescence far beyond their twenties or thirties. Many are living at home, have never had what we consider a "real" job and spend their lives in imaginary worlds such as those created by video games. They do not take responsibility for their familes or the fate of their nation, much less the world. Yet this is not just an American phenomena. Rehab centers for video games addicts – mostly males – are popping up all over Europe.

I suppose we can blame corporations for moving jobs overseas so "real" jobs don't exist. We can also blame corporations for creating all these "entertainment" distractions for ourselves and our youth. We can certainly blame the corporations that control media for “dumbing down” our nation and misinforming us but, really, that will hardly help us in the long run.

We must understand that the buck stops with each of us, with the choices each person and each family makes. It is our responsibility to understand when we are being manipulated, betrayed and sold down the river, and to object.

It is our responsibility to realize that injustice anywhere is, as Martin Luther King said, “a threat to justice anywhere.” If we are unwilling to look up long enough to see the big picture, if we insist on remaining narcissistic, if we prefer apathy and cynicism, well, as the saying goes: a nation gets the leaders it deserves.

It seems to be a characteristic of Americans that we seek to be entertained above all else. Contrast this with the idea that being an adult means – above all - taking political and moral responsibility for one's family, nation and the state of world.

The tale is told in this statistic: only 41% of us bother to vote. Within this group is the 5% that controls the wealth of this nation and which votes to maintain its own political power. Aided by religious fundamentalists (who vote in droves for socially oppressive policies) and upper class wannabes, this group of voters - approximately 21% of those eligible to vote - has worked to elect Republicans who have implemented extreme political and economic policies that oppress the poor (not just in the U.S. but around the world), extol imperialism, create war, erode civil liberties and contribute to the degradation of the planet.

20% vote against these policies.

The other 59% who do not vote - many of whom are poor and disadvantaged - may well be noticing that that their quality of life is deteriorating even futher and may be disgusted. But unless significant numbers of them are ready to rise up out of indifference to make a difference in the real world, then nothing much is going to change for the better.

To educate oneself about what is going on takes time and effort, the reward for which comes in the long, not the short term.

Can the majority of Americans change from short term to long term thinking? Mr. Herbert thinks so. I hope he's right, otherwise those who insist on escaping from the pain of responsibility now will be caught - along with the rest of us - by the pain of consequences yet to come.

Bush: Still In A Dangerous Fog

2007-01-11T22:41:00.000-08:00

Anyone want a peace sticker?

How about this one, specifically for Iraq?

Nice thought, but it's a bit late for that second one. Frankly, I don't see where peace was ever on the Bush/Cheney drawing board.

The New York Times published an editorial, finally, that pulls no punches.

The Real Disaster states what is likely the truth: there is no disaster to be avoided in Iraq by withdrawing because Iraq is already a disaster.

It's Bush's disaster (and Cheney's and Rumsfeld's and Rice's and Wolfowitz's, et all as well, but since the President sold the country on it, it is primarily his failure) and he is not going to make it better by menacing Syria and Iran.

I hope we - and Congress - have learned that Bush has no concept of the Pandora's Box he unleashes when going with his "judgment."

Case in point: having failed in Iraq, please tell me how sending U.S. troops over the borders of Iran and Syria in search of "terrorists" - essentially invading Iran and Syria - is going to lead to anything but confrontations with both those countries and a dangerous escalation of this war?

Just as the U.S. invaded Cambodia as an excuse to protect servicemen in Vietnam, now Bush is going to justify invading Iran and Syria as part of the war in Iraq.

Do you ever wonder if Bush isn't one of those "born agains" who are hoping for the 'second coming' and actively trying to create doomsday? That might explain his fiasco of a foreign policy.

And, yes, accuse me of hyperbole, but isn't invading when you're losing what Hitler did? These kinds of doomed policies are usually the brainchildren of megalomaniacs and fascists.

For those who have not seen The Fog of War, the film interview of Robert McNamara who served as Secretary of Defense under JFK and LBJ, rent it. A must see, it's an education in which he shares the lessons he learned.

Meanwhile, here's another eye opener. David Brooks, who usually writes editorials (at least the ones I've read) criticizing Democrats, defending Bush and supporting the War In Iraq has now reached that place where so many of us have been for so long.

He is perplexed by Bush. He says Bush's new plan makes no sense and the President is being dishonest and unclear.

For him to come out with this analysis of Bush's "plan" is telling.

The truth is, Bush is playing "Calvinball." He's always made it up as he went, while spinning and lying about it, as has Cheney, as did Rumsfeld. Too bad people die as a result.

Republican Senator Chuck Hagel appeared on Charlie Rose tonight and said Bush has "squandered" another opportunity. (What else is new?) He had the opportunity to start over with the recommendations from the bi-partisan committee, unite the nation and bring this thing to an end.

But Bush doesn't want to bring it to an end. He's still itching to attack Iran and Syria. He's like General Curtis LeMay. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, LeMay wanted to attack Cuba even if it meant nuclear warheads would be fired at the U.S. and some of our cities destroyed.

Bush, with his plans to invade Syria and Iran even as our army is being destroyed in Iraq seems to have the same mentality.

But who really expected such a black and white thinker like Bush - who is insulated and supremely stubborn - to do anything different?

Not I. How about you?

Here are excerpts from David Brook's Times Select column:

January 11, 2007

Op-Ed Columnist

The Fog Over Iraq
By DAVID BROOKS

"The Democrats have been fecund with criticisms of the war, but when it comes to alternative proposals, a common approach is social Darwinism on stilts: We failed them, now they’re on their own."

[Note: I find it incongruous that Brooks is criticizing social Darwinism. I thought one had to subscribe to that ideology to even be a Republican.]

"So we are stuck with the Bush proposal as the only serious plan on offer. The question is, what exactly did President Bush propose last night? The policy rollout has been befogged by so much spin and misdirection it’s nearly impossible to figure out what the president is proposing.

Nonetheless, here’s my reconstruction of how this policy evolved:

On Nov. 30, Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki presented Bush with a new security plan for Baghdad. It called for U.S. troops to move out of Baghdad to the periphery, where they would chase down Sunni terrorists. Iraqi Shiite and Kurdish troops, meanwhile, would flood into the city to establish order, at least as they define it.

Maliki essentially wanted the American troops protecting his flank but out of his hair. He didn’t want U.S. soldiers embedded with his own. He didn’t want American generals hovering over his shoulder. His government didn’t want any restraints on Shiite might.

Over the next weeks, Bush rejected the plan and opted for the opposite approach. Instead of handing counterinsurgency over to the Iraqis/Shiites, he decided to throw roughly 20,000 U.S. troops — everything he had available — into Baghdad. He and his advisers negotiated new rules of engagement to make it easier to go after Shiites as well as Sunnis. He selected two aggressive counterinsurgency commanders, David Petraeus and Raymond Odierno, to lead the effort. Odierno recently told John Burns of The Times that American forces would remain in cleared areas of Baghdad “24/7,” suggesting a heavy U.S. presence.

Then came the job of selling the plan. The administration could not go before the world and say that the president had decided to overrule the sovereign nation of Iraq. Officials could not tell wavering Republicans that the president was proposing a heavy, U.S.-led approach.

Thus, administration officials are saying that they have adopted the Maliki plan, just with a few minor tweaks. In briefings and in the president’s speech, officials claimed that this was an Iraqi-designed plan, that Iraqi troops would take on all the primary roles in clearing and holding neighborhoods, that Iraqis in mixed neighborhoods would scarcely see any additional Americans.

All of this is designed to soothe the wounded pride of the Maliki government, and to make the U.S. offensive seem less arduous at home. It’s the opposite of the truth.

Yesterday, administration officials were praising Maliki lavishly. He wants the same things we want, they claimed. He has resolved to lead a nonsectarian government. He is reworking his governing coalitions and marginalizing the extremists. “We’ve seen the nascent rise of a moderate political bloc,” one senior administration official said yesterday.

But the selling of the plan illustrates that this is not the whole story. The Iraqi government wants a unified non-sectarian solution in high-minded statements and in some distant, ideal world. But in the short term, and in the deepest reptilian folds of their brains, the Shiites are maneuvering amid the sectarian bloodbath all around.

This is not a function of the character of Maliki or this or that official. It’s a function of the core dynamic now afflicting Iraqi society.

The enemy in Iraq is not some discrete group of killers. It’s the maelstrom of violence and hatred that infects every institution, including the government and the military. Instead of facing up to this core reality, the Bush administration has papered it over with salesmanship and spin.

On Tasting Saddam's Blood

2006-12-30T16:17:00.000-08:00

Saddam Hussein has been hung. The chalice containing his blood is being held to our lips and, at least for this blogger, the taste is acrid.

This has been a day of sober reflection, a day in which my American soul felt sick with shame over what has been done in my name. There was no energy in my step as I walked while wondering: Who believes this one death was worth the destruction of an entire nation?

Who believes it was worth the life of Abir al-Janabi, the young girl who was gang raped and killed by U.S. troops? Was the horror she endured - was her life or the lives of her family members - worth this?

In regard to the impact on U.S. families: Who believes that securing this one death was worth the deaths of 3000 and the maiming of 22,000 [and some say 40,000] recruits?

My god, I hope the answer is not many; not many believe this single dismal end justifies the pox we have unleashed.

There is one uncomfortable truth that many are expressing: if we would attempt to rid the world of murderers like Saddam Hussein, then none of us can be one.

Yet, that is exactly what this administration has made the U.S. as a nation and each of us by proxy: a mass murderer.

Depending upon whose statistics you believe, between 52,139 and 600,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the U.S. invasion. Anyone who thinks atrocities like Haditha or the rape of Abir are isolated incidents is lying to himself, showing ignorance of both statistics and human nature.

Hawks and the "empathy-challenged" are fond of bad-mouthing the compassionate. But they lack the insight to realize what the world would be like if every single compassionate person was eliminated and those who remained were "empathy-free."

That "eye for an eye" strike-first mentality that the fearful, power hungry and rapacious advocate would soon result in universal blindness, if not outright extinction.

Of JD, Nikes, Ipods, RF and... WE WON!

2006-12-02T14:37:00.000-08:00

I am delighted that I was WRONG WRONG WRONG! Hooray and yippie! The election was not stolen. There were too many precincts and it would have taken too many frauds to keep Congress in Republican hands. It couldn't have been hidden. Thus - oh joy - the Democrats have the House and Senate.

Let's just work to keep the momentum building through 2008 so we can throw out more of the bums. Once we get a progressive president we can turn this country to solving problems instead of fighting over wedge issues while sitting in the Stone Age.

So does this mean I need to stop being a negative, depressed "Eyore," stop pointing out all the corruption and start focusing on positives?

I suppose so - although we still have problems with apportionment and the way democracy has been subverted by corrupted processes - so please let me have just one more flameout of sarcastic, negative comment that is completely barren of any solutions:

John McCain said that he would "commit suicide" if Democrats took the Senate. I cut him a lot of slack before that but, really, where was the man's mind? Why does he keep supporting a party that, long ago, turned against his most cherished ideals? Yet, at least he has an excuse for being a screwed up authoritarian follower: he was tortured as a prisoner of war.

Okay, okay, I'll quit.

Negativity's addictive you know. That why all those authoritarian Republicans love to hate. When that angry and self-righteous adrenaline surges through your blood, boy-oh-boy it's addictive.

But Republican smear tactics don't work nearly as well when Liberals try them because the tactics are authoritarian by nature and Liberals aren't, typically, authoritarian. (Duh.) So they aren't turned on by that mindset and approach.

If you wonder why not, read John Dean's Conservatives Without Conscience. What a great and informative book.

I put off reading it because I thought it would be just another listing of all the corruption and meanspirited dirty tricks Republicans have engaged in since 1994.

I don't need to go over it all again because - trust me - after five years of being glued to the Internet watching this trainwreck of an administration in action, I pretty much know the laundry list of debacles by heart.

But Dean explains the modern Republican psyche in psychological and social terms. He sites a cornucopia of academic studies of the authoritarian personality and puts the puzzle pieces together as to why these people are so - there's no other word for it - nasty.

Now I've said some pretty inflamatory things such as "the new breed of Republican is a mental defective without a heart," but I'm such a lightweight in the nastiness department that it's laughable. Secretly, I don't feel good about saying such things and I'm never out to destroy anyone. Also, I know perfectly well that most readers know the problems backwards and forwards by now and really tire of the hyperbole.

But apparently the authoritarian psyche never does. Also, apparently, they really are not mental defectives (dang I knew that was too simplistic an explanation) but they simply lack self-reflection.

Blinded to their own faults to a more extreme extent than the average person (and let's face it, we're all pretty darned good at ignoring our own warts) Dean says that those authoritarians who can be made to see what they are doing and the psychological reasons why they are doing it are capable of change. A few have experienced a reawakening of conscience and have become human beings again.

So I stand corrected, chastened - and dare I say - a little more optimistic?

But I digress. Get the book out of the library and arm yourself with understanding.

Next time I promise to wax optimistic on our opportunties to solve some of our most critical national problems - solutions apparently exist - but for now I simply must point out these stories:

Mandatory RFID chips in our ID's and in products we purchase may well give us problems similar to this story about nikes, ipods and radio frequencies. I don't think anyone has thought of all the ramifications that radio frequency technology can and will have.

Likewise, hundreds in Colorado cannot open their garage doors thanks to air force transmissions. Of course each homeowner can just get a new opener for around $250 US.

Lastly:

It looks like the government of Iraq is now embracing censorship of the media. Apparently the dangers of being in that country have not quite been sufficient to stop all reporting despite the fact that 107 journalists have died in Iraq since 2003.

It wasn't enough that they've been putting their lives on the line by being there.

Now it looks like they'll be facing jail time if the Iraqi government doesn't like a story it deems "too negative."

Yeah, we invaded Iraq to promote democracy.

And to anyone who still believes that load of horse manure: I have twenty-five million dollars I want to share with you if you'll just give me your bank account and social security numbers. Please note that those with a net savings of less than five thousand dollars need not apply.

The Election Will Be Stolen

2006-11-03T12:52:00.000-08:00

I've voted via absentee ballot since 2000. I've wanted to make sure, in the event of a recount, that there was a record.

This year I've voted via absentee ballot again, this time, to make sure that some voting machine doesn't switch my vote, as I stand there watching with my mouth hanging open.

That's what happened to a lot of voters during the 2004 election. According to a Rolling Stone article by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., they saw their votes for Kerry turn into votes for Bush. These changes were then reflected in the discrepancies between exit polls and the official counts.

Sadly, the networks retracted their initial statements questioning how the official results could differ so much from the exit polls (used by the U.S. to determine if elections in other nations are fair) and announced that the exit polls had to be wrong.

So what do you think the chances are that we are going to see a repeat of that whole debacle next week?

Consider the predictions by Bush, Cheney and other G.O.P. talking heads who are predicting that it's going to be "a good day for Republicans" - despite all the polls projecting otherwise - and that they are going to hang onto Congress.

Another clue: Bush has barely campaigned on behalf of his fellow Republicans.

You may think that's because he's been recognized as an albatross around their necks and they've shunned him.

I don't think that's it. I think he knows he needn't bother to do more than make a cursory show of it.

Otherwise how can he be so confident that Republicans are going to maintain control of the House and Senate, despite all the polls that show they will, at the very least, lose control of the House?

Is it braggadocio?

Is it an effort to convince the public they are unbeatable so people get depressed, stay home and don't vote?

Is it more of BushCo's inability to see reality?

Or do they have the election fixed?

I think the answer is "E" - All of the above.

It's documented that there was a vulnerability in the Diebold machines that could have allowed votes to be tampered with.

If you read the article by Kennedy it becomes shockingly clear that those in power fixed the 2004 election. So why on earth wouldn't they fix this one, given how crucial it is to their maintaining power?

Also, it should be easy. The same voting machine corporations are in charge of the election - which was, basically, privatized in 2004.

Also, given that if this cadre loses control of the government now it may never get it back again, do you think they'll stop at anything to maintain it?

I don't.

Look for exit polls to show Democratic victories while the "official counts" show a razor thin victory by Republicans. They'll have to make it close, if they hope to fool the nation once again into thinking the vote was legitimate.

If the Administration was willing to take us into a war on lies and if - as the evidence overwhelmingly suggests - 9/11 was an inside job, then why on earth would they stop now?

Our only hope is that the technicians in charge of the voting machines will figure out what those chip changes mean and won't go along with them.

But, if the machines are tampered with, then Americans may awaken on November 8th to the realization that our nation bears no resemblance to the America we were all taught to believe in.

JFK's 9-11 Doodle

2006-09-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

This from an article today about Presidential doodles:

"President Kennedy, known for separating his life into compartments, would enclose words and numbers inside circles and boxes. Events long after his death give one doodle an unintended chill: A small circle with the numbers '9-11' contained within. Just to the lower left on the page, the word 'conspiracy' is underlined."

Since the 1980's physicists have postulated that there are not just 3 but 11 dimensions.

Einstein proved that matter is composed of energy and that time and space are malleable, not fixed. The illusion they are both fixed is based upon how we are constructed and perceive.

Today scientists are postulating that we are made of "space-time" and that there is no such thing as "space" as we know it.

This would certainly explain a myriad of unexplained phenomena such as Edgar Cayce's ability to fall into trance and receive information that could heal people - which then healed them.

Bottom line, physics has proved that we live in an energy Universe. Everything is related energetically. Everything breaks down to infinitesimal packets of energy. And if you have missed it: the packets can be in two places at once, appearing in one place and in another simultaneously, without having to get from point A to point B.

Thought is, likewise, an energy.

So did Kennedy's subconscious get a signal? Was his "deeper" and subconscious self trying to alert him to the fact that there was a conspiracy that would kill him and involve the dialing of 9-11?

More than that, was his subconscious tapping simultaneously into something else? Was the Universe pulling a double entrendre and alerting us, even then, about our own 9-11?

Those of you who know what I'm talking about will see this as confirmation of what the evidence points to.

Those of you still based in a material world and who only believe what you see, you think I'm - no wait - you know I'm nuts for bringing this possibility up and will accuse me of "furthering the dumbing down of America."

Sorry, Poppet. That's the risk I have to take in trying to smarten her up.

A word to the wise, Poppet: listen to your intuition. It can cut through lies with amazing accuracy.

Annoying Bloggers Equal Felons

2006-07-26T08:18:00.000-07:00

Are you an anonymous blogger?

Are you "annoying?"

Well, you can now be charged with a felony.

This is no joke.

In January President Bush signed a bill into law that has the potential to make any anonymous blogger who "annoys" anyone (and the definition of "annoy" is slippery) a felon.

The law, originally intended to punish those who stalk others anonymously via phone calls has morphed into an entirely different beast that now has jurisdiction over Internet communications, blogs and websites.

Considering how this administration uses every means to attain its ends, it is only realistic to face that this legislation could be used to stifle liberal free speech and rant that "annoys" those who still support the Bush regime.

Couple this with Republicans killing Net Neutrality and I'd say that liberal blogs will go the way of India's blogs which were banned from the Internet by India's government.

While India's ban seems to have been reversed, don't count on that happening for U.S. bloggers. Yet, perhaps there is a way around bans. This from refWrite:

The ban on accessing blogspot blogs seems to have brought Pakistani and Indian bloggers a little closer. Help-Pakistan.com says ÂIn light of the recent blogspot ban in India, the blogging community in Pakistan would like to present as a gift to the Indian blogging community a small script that can be inserted into their websites which converts all Blogspot links into a URL utilizing the proxy servers of pkblogs.com.

On another topic, I can't pass this up:

In her July 26th column, Maureen Dowd informs us that 300 garbage collectors have been killed in Iraq in the last six months and gives us this quote from President Bush:

"That's what leaders do..." "They see problems, they address problems, and they lay out a plan to solve the problems."

Ergo, by his own definition, he is not a leader. He doesn't see problems. He manufactures problems. He creates, instead of solves, problems.

Bush is the Unleader.

(And regarding those 300 dead garbage collectors: Can you imagine the hell Iraqis are living in? They live without clean water, food electricity, jobs or security. Bodies are being blown up every day and virtually everyone has lost someone. Yet, that's not enough. With garbage collectors being killed at such an astonishing rate the garbage must be piled high. How do we live with ourselves considering what we have allowed to happen to them in our name?)

BTW, did you notice that Israel stopped bombing Lebanon "in deference" to Condolezza Rice when she was in Beruit? I'm sure someone said: "Hey, if we kill Condi, Bush will be pissed so we better stop bombing and not risk it."

So: what does that mean?

It means that the most effective use of our Secretary of State would be to have her MOVE PERMANENTLY TO BERUIT.

Let her set up permanent residence there where her presence would actually be accomplishing something, for a change.

Another insult added to injury:

Remember the story about Bush using government resources and lawyers to block medical suits brought by persons harmed by pharmaceutical companies?

Just like firing half the IRS lawyers who dealt with the tax returns of the very wealthy in order to circumvent the Estate Tax, fighting the consumer in court is just part of an overall plan to maximize corporate profits and consolidate wealth and power in the hands of the ultra rich.

This from a story by Gardiner Harris:

A 15-month inquiry by a top House Democrat has found that enforcement of the nation's food and drug laws declined sharply during the first five years of the Bush administration.

For instance, the investigation found, the number of warning letters that the Food and Drug Administration issued to drug companies, medical device makers and others dropped 54 percent, to 535 in 2005 from 1,154 in 2000.

The seizure of mislabeled, defective or dangerous products dipped 44 percent, according to the inquiry, pursued by Representative Henry A. Waxman of California, the senior Democrat on the House Government Reform Committee.

The research found no evidence that such declines could be attributed to increased compliance with regulations. Investigators at the F.D.A. continued to uncover about the same number of problems at drug and device companies as before, Mr. Waxman's inquiry found, but top officials of the agency increasingly overruled the investigators' enforcement recommendations.

Dr. Sidney M. Wolfe, director of the Health Research Group at the watchdog organization Public Citizen, noted that the agency now received about $380 million a year in fees from drug makers.

"The public," Dr. Wolfe said, "is getting the kind of F.D.A. that the industry is paying for them to get."

Want another little gem?

On February 17, 2005 U.S. Representative Steny Hoyer introduced legislation to appeal the 22nd amendment to the Constitution which would lift limits and allow a President to serve more than two terms in office.

It hasn't gotten anywhere - yet - but can you imagine if Bush could be elected to a third term?

Steny is a democrat so I don't know what he's thinking - unless he's hoping to resurrect Bill Clinton and get him back in office. Still young, Clinton might be able to bail us out of the incredible mess Bush has created. But it would probably take him about twenty years.

U.S. And Indian Blogs Censored

2006-07-22T09:03:00.000-07:00

The Indian government has blocked all bloggers including blogspot.com.

Officials are answering no questions as to why all blogs have been blocked. There is no estimate in regard to when or if blogs will be allowed and freedom of opinion on the Internet restored.

When the New York Times called India's secretary for telecommunications, D. S. Mathur, he hung up the phone.

The Indian government is citing "security" reasons and alluding to the possibility that something in one of the blogs could be used by terrorists. For that they blocked them all.

Tell me this couldn't happen in the United States and I have a bridge you can buy.

Notably, the United States government just fired Christine Axsmith on Monday after C.I.A. officials objected to a message she posted - on an internal blog - that criticized the interrogation technique called "waterboarding.

[This from an anonymous post: "The modern practice of waterboarding involves tying the victim to a board with the head lower than the feet so that he or she is unable to move. A piece of cloth is held tightly over the face, and water is poured onto the cloth. Breathing is extremely difficult and the victim will be in fear of imminent death by asphyxiation."]

In March 2005 J. Porter Goss - the incompetent flack Bush appointed to head the C.I.A. - described waterboarding as a "professional interrogation technique."

Ms. Axsmith expressed the opinion on an interdepartmental C.I.A. blog - not accessible by the public or news media - that "waterboarding is torture and torture is wrong."

She is of the opinion that the majority of C.I.A. employees are against torture. She also believes that if they are allowed to express their frustrations on the blog - since C.I.A. workers are often prohibited from discussing their work (and their opinions about their work) even with other agency officials - they may have less desire to go public with their concerns.

[Imagine not being able to talk about things that bother you at work. That's the pressure employees of the C.I.A. are under.]

"The blogs are a safety valve for people to discuss controversial topics," she said. "It reduces the chances that people may leak to the press."

I'm sure she's sincere in that opinion. However, there is always the possibility that they could realize they are, virtually, of one mind and decide they are not going to be puppets of a government that is acting immorally.

They might unite and rebel and threaten to walk out en mass. What would BushCo do? Fire them all? They might be able to exert power and say: stop the torture or we're walking out; we're going to the media.

After all, these people are highly educated, experienced and they see the inside picture. They know what's going on. They have high morals and no one can question their loyalty. They went into the C.I.A. to protect their country.

Yet all these people are faced with a moral question of how do I keep quiet and how do I allow myself to be used by an immoral administration? Yet they know they have to, not just to keep their jobs but to get any job after they're fired.

Like Ms. Axsmith, they can - acting individually - have their careers and security clearances erased in a nanosecond. That is a horrible dilemna and one, I'm sure, that this government doesn't want them acknowledging or discussing among themselves.

BushCo and his puppets at the C.I.A. want to keep people divided, uncertain, cowed.

Bottom line, these two examples just add evidence to why Net Neutrality is so important. Censorship is just waiting to happen. And once this Bush loving Congress sells us out, telecos will be able to block blogs, news, sites - anything they don't like or which doesn't pay them enough.

By the way, Ms. Axsmith has a public blog here on blogspot.com entitled Econo-Girl.

She says she guesses she has too big a mouth to be affiliated with the C.I.A. I say the mouths of the others are too small.

When we are judged as a nation - as Germany was for the Holocaust - Bush isn't the only one who is going to be held accountable for the war in Iraq, torture, etc. Our entire nation - and all of us - will be indicted by history, that is if there is any history after Global Warming sets in.

Which creates a segueway for the last story.

Bush ordered a change in NASA's mission statement.

He had "to protect and understand our home planet" deleted in order to stop NASA's involvement in gathering information on Global Warming, among other environmental concerns. He obviously intends to continue destroying Earth - and us - full speed ahead.

Friedman: Talking About Us?

2006-07-20T13:44:00.000-07:00

Thomas Friedman wrote about the Kidnapping of Democracy in Lebanon and Israel on July 14th, in the New York Times.

A few quotes:

What we are seeing in Iraq, the Palestinian territories and Lebanon is an effort by Islamist parties to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of Islamizing the Arab-Muslim world.

The tiny militant wing of Hamas today is pulling all the strings of Palestinian politics, the Iranian-backed Hezbollah Shiite Islamic party is doing the same in Lebanon...

As a result, the...democracy experiment in the Arab-Muslim world is being hijacked.

Yes, basically free and fair elections were held...[yet] they refuse to be accountable to international law

Then why do parties like Hamas and Hezbollah get elected? Often because they effectively run against the corruption of the old secular state-controlled parties...But once these Islamists are in office they revert to serving their own factional interests, not those of the broad community.

Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected Islamist parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against Hamas or Hezbollah are either delegitimized as “American lackeys’’...

Friedman then laments that the flower of democracy may wither and die in the Mid-East.

Okay, let's back up, this time substituting a few words:

What we are seeing in the U.S. is an effort by Christian extremists to use elections to pursue their long-term aim of changing the U.S. from a secular and religiously tolerant nation to one of Christian fundamentalism.

The...militant Christian right aligned with Republican extremists today are pulling all the strings of American politics...

As a result, the...democracy experiment in the United States is being hijacked.

Yes, basically free and fair elections were held...[yet] the Bush Administration refuses to be accountable to international law...

Then why do parties like the G.O.P. and Grover Norquist's neo-cons get elected? Often because they effectively run against the corruption in government under the secular Democratic party. But once these extremists are in office they revert to serving their own factional interests, not those of the broad community.

Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected right wing parties for working against the real interests of their people? Because those who speak against the Christian right or the Bush administration are either delegitimized as “liberal lackeys" and lose their jobs or...

My point is this:

What’s happening in Israel and Lebanon is part of a bigger picture, a trend toward backward thinking and aggression. Anyone aware of U.S. politics knows that we in the U.S. are also under the control of an aggressive and hostile minority that has used elections to kidnap democracy.

Let’s review:

Voting districts have been reapportioned by Republicans to include individual streets and houses in order to assure election results. Both of our presidential elections were hijacked, our Constitution is ignored, our populace spied upon and investigations into government’s role subverted.

Protesters have been blocked from protesting, jailed and beaten. Fake news has been generated and widely disseminated at government cost. Legitimate media has been cowed, threatened with lawsuits or bought. A covert CIA operative was exposed in retaliation over her husband’s attempts to tell the truth about government machinations.

Based upon lies and false pretenses, Iraq was attacked and virtually destroyed, with tens of thousands—perhaps hundreds of thousands—of civilians killed as a result. Torture has become U.S. policy. To no one’s surprise, Amnesty International has found the U.S. to be a human rights violator.

Meanwhile, 80% of all environmental regulations have been rolled back and cuts made to all social services. Real progress has been made in drying up funding for public schools, Medicare, the VA and PBS. Every law and institution, from affirmative action to the National Direct Loan, from the Freedom of Information Act to Social Security, from the EPA to FEMA, (all created to promote democracy, justice and the collective welfare of the American people) has been assaulted if not damaged, dismantled or destroyed.

How could this happen? To quote Friedmann, "…the roots of democracy are so shallow" and our own "moderate majorities so weak and intimidated that we are getting the worst of all worlds" right here in the United States.

Witness our domestic policies, national debt, outsourced jobs, shrinking American dream, gutted social services, lack of health care, abandoned poor, etc.

Friedmann asks: "So why did this party get elected?...Why don’t the silent majorities punish these elected...parties for working against the real interests of their people?”

Although he asks this about the Israelis and Lebanese, he could, as easily, ask the same questions about the American people.

It’s time to face that Americans have wanted simple answers and simpler politicians. We have allowed our ideals to be sold out from under us in exchange for cheap goods at Wal-Mart. Now our youth is exchanging their intellects for an expanded choice of cell phones.

Truth be told, we find it all too convenient to shop for politicians as we do for consumer goods — looking at the ads — and lumping all government corruption together with the intellectually lazy claim that the parties are “all alike.”

The parties are not alike. And anyone who seriously bothered to research George Bush's record along with the Republican agenda could have predicted the destruction visited upon us by this administration. Yet most Americans didn’t. They preferred voting for a man who made the world seem simple.

His message was, basically: “Us right, them wrong. Cut taxes. Grog be okay.”

Well, the super rich are okay, but the country isn't doing so well.

By surrendering our responsibility to read, analyze, think logically and turn our attention from entertainment to reality, Americans have allowed their government to be hijacked by billionaires, corporate lobbyists, the religious wrong and warmongers.

Unaware that we are being swung toward fascism and feudalism, we are sinking into the morass from which we once fought to escape: primitive thinking. So given that this is happening to us, can we really expect Israel and Lebanon to overcome what we cannot?

One thing's for certain: we in the U.S. no longer have the credibility to preach at others - with any effectiveness - or convince them to embrace democracy. After all, we’ve virtually discarded ours.

Frankly, I think this is a worldwide trend and, based upon how democracy is withering in the U.S., there's zero hope that democracy will take root in the Middle-East. At best, with super human effort, we Americans might realize we need to resurrect it here at home.

4th Of July

2006-07-03T13:34:00.000-07:00

July 4th is the anniversary of the birth of our nation, a nation founded on principles of justice, equality and freedom.

Yet, as we prepare to celebrate - if we are honest - we must admit that our nation has strayed from these principles. If you want to know how far, consider that 77% of the people in Great Britain - one of our staunchest allies - have a very bad opinion of us and "...disagree with the statement that the US is 'a beacon of hope for the world'".

"A massive 83 percent of those questioned said that the United States doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks. More than two-thirds who offered an opinion said America is essentially an imperial power seeking world domination. And 81 per cent of those who took a view said President George W Bush hypocritically championed democracy as a cover for the pursuit of American self-interests."

Although it is, generally, unreported by corporate media, more and more people we respect are speaking up about what has happened - and is happening - to our national character and values. Yet we don't hear about it.

For instance, NBA player Etan Thomas of the Washington Wizards delivered an impassioned speech to 30,000 people on this issue during an anti-war protest in Washington D.C., yet it was never reported in any of our major media outlets or papers, including the Washington Post.

I happen to believe the American people are good people. But we can't make good decisions when the hard information is kept from us. We can't make good decisions when a perpetual war is started to distract us from pressing domestic problems such as the inability of millions to earn a decent wage.

Why does our nation no longer value work? If it did we would respect the immigrants who are performing so much of it.

Why does our nation no longer believe that working at a job should keep a person out of poverty, not trap one inside it?

Why is it out of fashion to talk about a worker being paid a fair wage for a day’s work?

And why is our current federal minimum wage still at $5.15 an hour?

This is a disgraceful pittance, a wage that forces families to choose between buying groceries and paying rent.

A person who works a 40-hour week earns $10,712 for a 52-week year. That's six thousand dollars below the poverty line.

We all know the cost of rent, gas, food, clothing. Could any of us live on just over ten thousand dollars a year? If you have a child, could you care for and raise that child on that amount?

You know the answer.

Therefore, I urge you to support Senator Ted Kennedy’s amendment to the Department of Defense authorization bill to increase the federal minimum wage to $7.25 an hour.

As the number of Americans living in poverty continues to increase at an alarming rate, now is the time to take action to prevent this desperate spiral of unreasonable choices and despair. Increasing the federal minimum wage is an important step toward slowing the poverty growth rate in America.

Bear in mind that, even as Congress sells out the American people to corporate interests and has received record low approval ratings for doing so, House lawmakers gave themselves a $3,300 pay raise on Tuesday, June 13, 2006, that will increase their salaries to $168,500. They have full medical and dental plus countless perks that a simple working man or woman earning minimum wage never has.

These inequities are not right. Write to your Senators and Congressional Representatives today.

For more on the minimum wage issue, visit Living Wage Campaign.

For more on economic justice issues, such as the inequities in the 2007 Federal budget, the need for labor unions, and the move by 18 billionaires to repeal the estate tax, visit this highly informative Take Action Page.

I've written before that if Americans want a dose of reality then, instead of watching "reality" TV, let them paint their faces brown and go live in the ghetto where they'll never get voted out. Here's an excerpt from the transcript of Etan Thomas' speech regarding the politicians and pundits who dominate the news and are shaping our values and policies today. He says it better than I ever could:

I'd like to take some of these cats on a field trip. I want to get big yellow buses with no air conditioner and no seatbelts and round up Bill O'Reilly, Pat Buchanan, Trent Lott, Sean Hannity, Dick Cheney, Jeb Bush, Bush Jr. and Bush Sr., John Ashcroft, Giuliani, Ed Gillespie, Katherine Harris, that little bow-tied Tucker Carlson and any other right-wing conservative Republicans I can think of, and take them all on a trip to the ‘hood. Not to do no 30-minute documentary. I mean, I want to drop them off and leave them there, let them become one with the other side of the tracks, get them four mouths to feed and no welfare, have scare tactics run through them like a laxative, criticizing them for needing assistance.

I’d show them working families that make too much to receive welfare but not enough to make ends meet. I’d employ them with jobs with little security, let them know how it feels to be an employee at will, able to be fired at the drop of a hat. I’d take away their opportunities, then try their children as adults, sending their 13-year-old babies to life in prison. I’d sell them dreams of hopelessness while spoon-feeding their young with a daily dose of inferior education. I’d tell them no child shall be left behind, then take more money out of their schools, tell them to show and prove themselves on standardized exams testing their knowledge on things that they haven’t been taught, and then I’d call them inferior.

I’d soak into their interior notions of endless possibilities. I’d paint pictures of assisted productivity if they only agreed to be all they can be, dress them up with fatigues and boots with promises of pots of gold at the end of rainbows, free education to waste terrain on those who finish their bid. Then I’d close the lid on that barrel of fool’s gold by starting a war, sending their children into the midst of a hostile situation, and while they're worried about their babies being murdered and slain in foreign lands, I’d grace them with the pain of being sick and unable to get medicine.

Give them health benefits that barely cover the common cold. John Q. would become their reality as HMOs introduce them to the world of inferior care, filling their lungs with inadequate air, penny pinching at the expense of patients, doctors practicing medicine in an intricate web of rationing and regulations. Patients wander the maze of managed bureaucracy, costs rise and quality quickly deteriorates, but they say that managed care is cheaper. They’ll say that free choice in medicine will defeat the overall productivity, and as co-payments are steadily rising, I'll make their grandparents have to choose between buying their medicine and paying their rent.

Then I'd feed them hypocritical lines of being pro-life as the only Christian way to be. Then very contradictingly, I’d fight for the spread of the death penalty, as if thou shall not kill applies to babies but not to criminals.

Then I’d introduce them to those sworn to protect and serve, creating a curb in their trust in the law. I’d show them the nightsticks and plungers, the pepper spray and stun guns, the mace and magnums that they’d soon become acquainted with, the shakedowns and illegal search and seizures, the planted evidence, being stopped for no reason. Harassment ain’t even the half of it. Forty-one shots to two raised hands, cell phones and wallets that are confused with illegal contrabands. I’d introduce them to pigs who love making their guns click like wine glasses. Everlasting targets surrounded by bullets, making them a walking bull's eye, a living piñata, held at the mercy of police brutality, and then we’ll see if they finally weren’t aware of the truth, if their eyes weren’t finally open like a box of Pandora.

I’d show them how the other side of the tracks carries the weight of the world on our shoulders and how society seems to be holding us down with the force of a boulder. The bird of democracy flew the coop back in Florida. See, for some, and justice comes in packs like wolves in sheep's clothing. T.K.O.d by the right hooks of life, many are left staggering under the weight of the day, leaning against the ropes of hope. When your dreams have fallen on barren ground, it becomes difficult to keep pushing yourself forward like a train, administering pain like a doctor with a needle, their sequels continue more lethal than injections.

They keep telling us all is equal. I’d tell them that instead of giving tax breaks to the rich, financing corporate mergers and leading us into unnecessary wars and under-table dealings with Enron and Halliburton, maybe they can work on making society more peaceful. Instead, they take more and more money out of inner city schools, give up on the idea of rehabilitation and build more prisons for poor people. With unemployment continuing to rise like a deficit, it's no wonder why so many think that crime pays.

Maybe this trip will make them see the error of their ways. Or maybe next time, we'll just all get out and vote. And as far as their stay in the White House, tell them that numbered are their days.

Save The Internet NOW

2006-06-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

"The Internet can't be free." - A.T. & T. CEO Ed Whitacre

I am proud to join Bloggers For Net Neutrality.

Unfettered access to information is key to self-determination. You cannot make good decisions if the facts are kept from you or if you have trouble accessing them.

And make no mistake, the THREAT TO YOUR FREEDOM is real.

Therefore, it is vital that freedom and truth triumph now in regard to Internet freedom. Big corporations are deliberately funding campaigns to lull you into complacency so they may take over the Internet and insure only the content they want is accessible while gaining unnecessary profits at your expense.

Congress is a revolving door for corporate lobbyists. Those Senators who mean well and have good values, like Bill Nelson of Florida, are still uninformed about the bigger picture. They want to do what their constituents want them to do and, unfortunately, THEY HAVEN'T HEARD FROM YOU.

Please take a moment to see if your Senator is on the Senate Commerce Committee. If he is, CALL AND WRITE him NOW and demand that he support U.S. Senator Ron Wyden's “hold” on major telecommunications legislation recently approved by the Senate Commerce Committee until clear language is included in the legislation that prevents discrimination in Internet access.

Unless Senator Wyden gets the support of your Senator and succeeds, if you have a blog or a small internet business, you will not only have to PAY to get anyone to see it, you will never be able to compete with the big corporations as you can now.

Here's a list of the Senators who hold the fate of the Internet - and your ability to make good decisions and have equal access - in their hands:

Chairman Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Phone: 202-224-3004

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
Phone: 202 -224-2235

Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.)
Phone: 202-224-2353

Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.)
Phone: 202-224-5274

Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.)
Phone: 202 224 3224

Sen. David Vitter (R-La.)
Phone: 202 224-4623

Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.)
Phone: 202-224-6253

Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.)
Phone: 202-224-2644

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.)
Phone: 202-224-6551

Sen. John Ensign (R-Nev.)
Phone: 202-224-6244

Sen. John E. Sununu (R-N.H.)
Phone: 202-224-2841

Sen. Gordon Smith (R-Ore.)
Phone: 202-224-3753

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.)
Phone: 202 224-6121

Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas)
Phone: 202-224-5922

Sen. George Allen (R-Va.)
Phone: 202-224-4024

Sen. John D. Rockefeller (D-W.Va.)
Phone: 202-224-6472

Your phone calls actually make a difference. Please call now and urge your senators to support the bipartisan Snowe-Dorgan Internet Freedom amendment in the Commerce Committee. The free and open Internet as we know it is on the line.

Make the call today.

Sadism Does Not Equal Security

2006-06-20T13:17:00.000-07:00

I am proud to join Bloggers Against Torture for Torture Awareness Month.

It is 2006 and the United States of America, once a liberator of the tortured, has turned to torture as easily as a person changes his clothes.

As Jumah al-Dossari writes, who was kidnapped on the Pakistani border, sold to American troops for $5000 and deported to Guantánamo, Cuba where he has been imprisoned and tortured. He writes:

"What I will write here is not a flight of fancy or a moment of madness...I have suffered ..."

An excerpt:

The soldiers then started beating us and walking on us and we were lying face down. The beating and kicking was so severe that the sackcloth bag fell one of the brother’s eyes. He saw the soldiers pointing their weapons at us so he shouted, "they’re going to kill us, brothers"; one of the soldiers hit him on the head with the butt of his weapon and he lost consciousness…

After several hours of this beating and the severe cold, they made us stand in one line. They started to wrap a very strong wire around our right arms; each of us was tied at a distance of about two metres from the person in front of him.

After they pulled this wire, they started making us run towards the unknown. When we approached the tents...they started to insult us savagely.

The prisoners started shouting and crying because of their severe pain – there were many young people with us – and the soldiers increased their insults and beatings and those of us who fell started to drag themselves on the grounds on the asphalt of the airfield and the others continued to jog.

As I have already mentioned, I still had the Pakistani shackle which made it hard for me to walk, so I was one of those who fell and was dragging himself along on the asphalt. I tried to stand and walk but I could not.

After that, we entered the tents and they started beating us extremely violently; I fainted several times because of the severity of the beating. Once I fell when I fainted and found my head under the boot of a soldier who started beating me severely.

I fainted again and woke only to find the soldier urinating on my head and back; he was roaring with laughter.

I was still lying on my stomach; he raised my head by the hair and started kicking me in my face with his boot and put it inside my mouth until my face and my lips were cut, my face was swollen and my blood was flowing copiously. Then he started hitting me on my eye; I almost went blind, were it not for the grace and mercy of Allah.

All this would sound very familiar to Victor Frankl, the author of Man's Search For Meaning. He knew well what those men are going through today, having spent three years in concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

Subjected to similar treatment by the Nazis, Frankl told about what happens to a person who has everything ripped from him, is taken from his family and placed, both unjustly and indefinitely, in prison without any hope of reprieve. He wrote and spoke of the tortures endured and the psychological effects of being treated like something unhuman and disposable.

He also addressed what must cross every compassionate person's mind: Who tortures? What kind of person tortures another?

Here is an except on that topic:

"...we shall consider a question which the psychologist is asked frequently, especially when he has personal knowledge of these matters:

What can you tell us about the psychological make-up of the camp guards? How is it possible that men of flesh and blood could treat others as so many prisoners say they have been treated? Having once heard these accounts and having come to believe that these things did happen, one is bound to ask how, psychologically, they could happen.

First, among the guards there were some sadists, sadists in the purest clinical sense.

Second, these sadists were always selected when a really severe detachment of guards was needed.

There was great joy at our work site when we had permission to warm ourselves for a few minutes (after two hours of work in the bitter frost) in front of a little stove which was fed with twigs and scraps of wood. But there was always some foremen wo found a great pleasure in taking this comfort from us.

How clearly their faces reflected this pleasure when they not only forbade us to stand there but turned over the stove and dumped its lovely fire into the snow. When the SS took a dislike to a person, there was always some special man in their ranks known to have a passion for, and to be highly specialized in, sadistic torture, to whom the unfortunate prisoner was sent."

Torture exists because 1) those who order it lack sufficient empathy and 2) there are people who enjoy doing it.

Normally we consider sadists to be a detriment to society. Normally we become aware of them when they get in the headlines through plying their delight in sadism as serial killers, child molesters, animal torturers.

But the U.S. military now employs them. And we give them jobs overseas.

Only now we don't call it sadism. We call it "necessary for national security."

But what is it really? It is a giving in to the sadism within our species and within our national character.

John Donne said it better than anyone else ever has:

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

For whom does the bell toll when someone is tortured or driven out of his mind by unjust imprisonment and abuse?

It tolls for you and it tolls for me.

Say no to sadism, say no to torture.

No exceptions.

No excuses.

Save Our S.I.P.P.

2006-06-20T10:32:00.000-07:00

Here's a story that's likely to slip under the radar of most Americans.

Our Republican led Congress is looking for yet another way to avoid accountability.

They are planning for future long term mismanagement by eliminating the Survey of Income and Program Participation, or SIPP, which is used extensively by analysts inside and outside the government to determine how well, or how poorly, government is performing in critical areas.

As the New York Times reports:

"These (areas) include insuring and educating children, moving people from welfare to work and providing food stamps. Killing the survey would create a devastating void in public information starting in 2007. It would take until 2010, at the earliest, to complete an alternative survey. Losing years of reliable data would make it all too easy to base policy decisions on ideology rather than on evidence. The lack of objective data would also make it very difficult to hold politicians accountable for their decisions.

And who made the recommendation to the House Appropriations Committee to eliminate this survey?

President Bush, Wizard of Wastefulness, Baron of Bafflement, Pooh-pooher of the Poor, Icon of Incompetence.

He knows his legacy is going to bad. He just doesn't want us to know how bad.

The One Percent Doctrine

2006-06-20T08:31:00.000-07:00

Today, Michiko Kakutani reviews The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 by Ron Suskind. (367 pages. Simon & Schuster. $27.)

An excerpt:

"This book augments the portrait of Mr. Bush as an incurious and curiously uninformed executive that Mr. Suskind earlier set out in 'The Price of Loyalty' and in a series of magazine articles on the president and key aides."

"In 'The One Percent Doctrine,' he writes that Mr. Cheney's nickname inside the C.I.A. was Edgar (as in Edgar Bergen), casting Mr. Bush in the puppet role of Charlie McCarthy, and cites one instance after another in which the president was not fully briefed (or had failed to read the basic paperwork) about a crucial situation."

The reviewer says that Mr. Suskind's book appears to have been written with wide access to former C.I.A. director George Tenet, other C.I.A. officials and a plethora of sources from the F.B.I., and State, Defense and Treasury Departments, and that it fleshes out the personalities and relationships.

It also describes how poorly prepared homeland security was - and is - for another terrorist attack, and "looks at a series of episodes in the war on terror that often found the 'invisibles,' who run intelligence and enforcement operations on the ground, at odds with the 'notables,'" who head this government.

Old news, but at least the dots will be connected and by someone with inside knowledge and - dare we hope - credibility?

How many intelligent, informed people - and how many facts - does it take to dislodge the governing elite of the G.O.P. and discredit them, then put policies in place that promote the real common good and sustainability as opposed to this suicide ride we've been sold?

More than we've got, according to a second book that Kakutani panned. But more on that tomorrow.

Interview with Aaron Russo

2006-06-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

Aaron Russo, the film maker who brought us Trading Places and The Rose has created a new film From Freedom To Fascism.

Russo's main points are that:

1) Fascism is the synergistic blending of corporations and government to control the people. This is what we have in the U.S. now, not democracy.

2) The Federal Reserve is composed of private, wealthy individuals who, as a result of controlling the nation's money supply, also control its politics. The Delaware Corporation was handed the right to control our money supply and flow in 1913. As a result, not only has it destroyed our currency, but it has quietly overthrown our democracy, replacing it with centralized control.

3) Corporations and banks are global in nature. They make secret agreements, working together to create policy that is steadily heading the world toward a central government which they will control. (Note it is the 18 richest men in America who have created the whole "movement" to repeal the estate tax.)

4) Once we accept RFID (Radio Frequency I.D.) chips, every person will be able to be tracked, found, controlled, made to conform because if you don't conform your RFID will be blocked so you can't even buy food.

5) Our society and system has been created to make us debt slaves. People have been taught, not to pay off their houses or save, but to calculate how to keep their credit payments low. The banks own everything and deliberately are manipulating things - such as making bankruptcy for individuals nearly impossible - to keep us in debt for life.

6) We have "the 3 i's" against us: The IRS, interest and inflation. Income tax was created to tax corporations, not workers. It's being fraudulently assessed on worker wages so workers carry the burden that corporations should. The dollar, which was backed up with a portion of gold, in 1913, is now worth 4 cents and, because it is backed by nothing materially, is really worth nothing. "The Fed" controls interest rates strictly to benefit corporate growth.

7) The U.S. government - and the IRS - operate outside of our U.S. Constitution now and things are only going to get much worse unless people wake up to what's happening and take responsibility for changing things back.

Russo, during his interview, cites some very disturbing facts, including that 800 interment camps - huge underground facilities - are being constructed within the U.S.

Russo believes they are being constructed for a reason, and activists can use their imagination as to what that use might be.

The interview is rational and includes facts I know to be true - such as the Federal Reserve is no more "federal" than Federal Express. Disturbing stuff.

I can't help but wonder - since corporations have us on a suicide course with Mother Nature (read Ronald Wright's eye-opening bestseller A Short History of Progress) - if environmental collapse will stop all this.

While it is likely that about five billion of us will die, if the worse changes occur which result in massive crop failures, such a calamity might also be expected to destroy corporate control. But if those who survive have chips planted in them, well, I don't want to be around to experience the nightmare.

Between impending climate change and the noose of totalitarianism closing in around us, focusing people's attention on a non-issue - a constitutional amendment against gay marriage - seems more insanely Machiavellian than ever.

Here's Russo's interview.

FBI Omits 9/11 From bin Laden's Resume

2006-06-08T06:59:00.000-07:00

On June 7, Maureen Dowd wrote a piece entitled Damien, Demons and Dubya in which she said:

"...the F.B.I. does not even mention 9/11 in its "Ten Most Wanted Fugitives" profile of Osama. The poster, updated in November 2001, says bin Laden is wanted in the bombings of the United States Embassies in Tanzania and Kenya that killed 200 in 1998, and "is a suspect in other terrorist attacks." No word of the nearly 3,000 killed on Sept. 11."

You know there might be a logical reason for that.

Bin Laden might not be responsible.

I discovered - belatedly, I admit - a plethora of thinkers and writers who, using analysis and evidence, have dissected the official explanation for the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 in NYC and have come to the conclusion that it all looks a lot like an inside job.

Most people don't remember Building 7, but it fell, too, even though it was not next to the Twin Towers nor hit by a plane. Of interest, however, was the fact that Building 7 held a lot of files on mega corporations that the SEC was investigating.

I thought the talk about our government having carried out 9/11 itself was insane - a paranoid fantasy.

But the evidence impresses me as depressingly compelling.

It doesn't help that people like physicist Steven Jones of Brigham Young University and Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D. professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX - who served as chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001 and 2002 (in George W. Bush's first term) - both find compelling evidence that the 3 destroyed buildings were the result of planned demolition.

Yet, no one could have managed to plant explosives for such demolitions without inside cooperation by the CIA or FBI.

If this was an inside job, then those at the highest levels of one or both of these organizations know the real story.

The omission of 9/11 from bin Laden's resume could have a logical explanation: it's a telling of the truth, a telltale slip.

While bin Laden may have sent the pilots, those in the FBI may know the planes didn't cause the buildings to fall or the 3000 to die.

Don't be surprised if the FBI "corrects" their list and adds 9/11 to his misdeeds if anyone credible brings it up.

By the way - I read that the security company of Marvin Bush - Dubya's brother - was responsible for security for both the Twin Towers and United Airlines.

If true, what a coincidence that 9/11 gave his brother nearly unlimited power.

Fought and Lost In 1920: Iraq War

2006-06-02T07:50:00.000-07:00

David C. Unger, senior foreign affairs writer for The New York Times' editorial board, wrote a piece in March about the questions that should have been asked about Iraq before the invasion: 10 that policy makers should have asked before invading, 10 that they should have asked as it unfolded, and 5 that they should be asking themselves now.

One crucial point that Mr. Unger brings to our attention is the fact that Iraq was cobbled together by the British in 1917. Composed of three distinct and separate peoples, the only thing that kept it together was top-down dictatorial rule.

So a very reasonable question - asked by the State Department in it's 1200 page report was: what happens when you remove the dictatorship without adequate troops and strategies to preserve order and immediately provide improvements in people's lives?

Present day Iraq is what happens.

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, Wolfowitz - the great ignorers of history and facts - all of them in the Republican cabal had warning. They keep trying to say otherwise, but as Unger writes:

"Some of the parallels between the puncturing of Britain's delusions about Iraq in the 1920's and the rude shocks encountered by America eight decades later are so uncanny it's hard to believe nobody (not even the British) managed to learn anything useful from that earlier experience."

From an article in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs by Joel Rayburn, an American military historian:

"In 1920, a large-scale Shiite insurgency cost the British more than 2,000 casualties, and domestic pressure to withdraw from Iraq began to build.

In the revolt's aftermath, the war hero T. E. Lawrence led a chorus of critics in the press and Parliament denouncing London's decision to continue the costly occupation.

'The people of England,' Lawrence wrote, 'have been led in Mesopotamia into a trap from which it will be hard to escape with dignity and honour. They have been tricked into it by a steady withholding of information. ... Things have been far worse than we have been told, our administration more bloody and inefficient than the public knows. It is a disgrace to our imperial record, and may soon be too inflamed for any ordinary cure. We are to-day not far from a disaster....'"

I dare anyone to tell me that doesn't sound like an exact duplicate of the history we are making today. But that's not all. When British military commander, Maj. Gen. Stanley Maude, invaded Baghdad from the south in 1917, he proclaimed that his armies "do not come into your cities and lands as conquerors, or enemies, but as liberators."

President Bush used identical language when he addressed American troops in 2003 with: "you'll be fighting not to conquer anybody but to liberate people."

More from Mr. Unger:

"But as both occupations wore on, large numbers of Iraqis came to see it differently. By 1920 Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds were all in armed revolt against the British.

Britain used air power and other state-of-the-art weaponry to shock and awe the rebels into submission. That didn't work out quite as well as the British hoped. Rising casualties on both sides turned British opinion against the war, and British officials started churning out deliberately over-optimistic reports boasting of progress in political development, stability and training of Iraqi security forces that became increasingly detached from the disappointing realities."

The British who study their nation's history must be experiencing the phenomena of deja vu.

And all those oh-so-bright neo-con con-men who sold us on this war are turning out to be pretty dumb and uninformed after all. What happened to the British eight decades ago has happened to us now.

So what now?

Let's go to Mr. Unger's final five questions that we should be asking ourselves today:

1. Where should the United States draw the line on giving full military support to an Iraqi government that insists on being sectarian, vengeful and non-inclusive?

2. What can Washington to do to mitigate the advantages it is handing Iran by aligning itself with Iraq's most pro-Iranian parties?

3. Should Washington give up on the idea of holding Iraq together as a single nation and accept an equitable partition of territory and resources as the best remaining hope for avoiding civil war?

4. If civil war cannot be avoided, should American troops stay in Iraq and risk getting caught in the crossfire in the hope of limiting the carnage, the regional repercussions and the effects on world oil markets?

5. In the long run, would the United States be better off holding out for something it can call "peace with honor" or would it be better to cut our losses by announcing an exit strategy and brokering the best deal we can?

Before we give our opinions - which the Iraqis, as opposed to us, will have to live with - consider that Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki lashed out at the American military on Thursday, denouncing what he characterized as habitual attacks by troops against Iraqi civilians.

Those of us who surf alternative news sources have come across rumbling about the looting of souvenirs by troops during house searches and incidents in which civilians in isolated places were killed "as insurgents" to reach kill military quotas.

In light of confirmation by the military that 24 Iraqi civilians were massacred by marines in the town of Haditha, such rumblings suddenly have more credibility.

If the Prime Minister is now turning against the American military, we may not have a choice in regard to whether we stay or go. All Iraqis may simply begin to wage war on American troops.

After all, according to a WPO poll, nearly half of Iraqis approve of attacks on US-led forces - including nine out of 10 Sunnis, and most Iraqis believe that many aspects of their lives will improve once our US-led forces leave.

It is time to have another referendum in Iraq. Let them vote on whether the U.S. should pull out or stay. Let them vote if they want to break up into three countries or fight each other to the death in one.

As Thomas Friedmann observes:

"...there has been a subtle but important change in the violence in Iraq. The main enemy in many places is no longer the Sunni insurgency. It is anarchy. Mini-wars of all against all. As the BBC reported Wednesday from Basra: Prime Minister Nuri Maliki 'has declared a monthlong state of emergency in Basra, which has been plagued by sectarian clashes, anarchy and factional rivalry.' That's what happens in a security vacuum.

Once this kind of militia madness takes root, it's very hard to uproot. U.S. troops can't do it, because it would require searching homes, neighborhood by neighborhood. Only a cohesive Iraqi national army could do that."

The U.S. has destroyed Iraq. There will be no peace with honor, no withdrawal with honor. We didn't go there to give them democracy, but to establish military bases, to throw the Middle-East into turmoil and destroy the whole region, thinking we would pick up the pieces in the end.

Yet, the pieces are falling from our inept hands. Jeffrey Gettleman reported in March 2006 that:

"In Sadr City, the Shiite section in Baghdad where the [four] terrorist suspects were executed, government forces have vanished. The streets are ruled by aggressive teenagers with shiny soccer jerseys and machine guns.

"They set up roadblocks and poke their heads into cars and detain whomever they want. Mosques blare warnings on loudspeakers for American troops to stay out. Increasingly, the Americans have been doing just that."

Stupid neo-cons. Stupid, arrogant neo-cons. They shouldn't be elevated to the position of dog catcher.

Herbert On U.S. Slave Trade

2006-06-01T07:29:00.000-07:00

"The horror of slavery," says Kevin Bales, is "not confined to history."

The author of Disposable People: New Slavery in The Global Economy states that slave labor is not just responsible for the shoes on your feet or your daily consumption of sugar, but that the products of forced labor comprise a large portion of daily Western life.

"They made the bricks for the factory that made the TV you watch. In Brazil slaves made the charcoal that tempered the steel that made the springs in your car and the blade on your lawnmower.... Slaves keep your costs low and returns on your investments high."

From an Amazon. com review:

"The exhaustive research in Disposable People shows that at least 27 million people are currently enslaved around the world. Bales, considered the world's leading expert on contemporary slavery, reveals the historical and economic conditions behind this resurgence."

Included in this number are those who are demeaned and abused even further: sexual slaves.

Many in the U.S. think that sexual trafficking is just a Third World problem.

It's not.

Foreign women are lured with promises of real jobs - waitressing, factory work, laundry work - to find themselves in hell right here in the good ole U.S. of A.

Bob Herbert reports today on Kika Cerpa, who came to New York City from Venezuela in 1992, thinking she was coming to a land of opportunity.

Instead, she was coming to another land of slavery and rape.

An excerpt:

The word spread that there was a new girl at the brothel in Queens, and the johns began lining up.

"I was crying all night," said Kika Cerpa in an interview last week. "One by one they came in."

That first night, she said, "I had sex with 19 men."

Afterward, she took a shower, and then the man who had forced her into the sex trade demanded his turn with her. When she refused (saying, "I can't have sex with nobody - I feel like I'm dead"), he beat her up.

It may seem peculiar, but there is no law against sex trafficking in the state of New York - or most other states, for that matter. Many thousands of women and children are coerced into the sex trade each year, and the pimps, madams and other lowlifes who trap them are seldom subject to legal sanctions commensurate with the severity of their crimes.

Why is it so important to make this unpopular topic into a national conversation?

Because trafficking is much more widespread than most people realize. As the advocacy group Sanctuary for Families has pointed out, "In our backyards and communities, a slave trade is flourishing that makes a mockery of our belief in civil and human rights."

As reported by Peter Landesman in The Girls Next Door:

'Because of the porousness of the U.S.-Mexico border and the criminal networks that traverse it, the towns and cities along that border have become the main staging area in an illicit and barbaric industry, whose ''products'' are women and girls.

On both sides of the border, they are rented out for sex for as little as 15 minutes at a time, dozens of times a day. Sometimes they are sold outright to other traffickers and sex rings, victims and experts say. These sex slaves earn no money, there is nothing voluntary about what they do and if they try to escape they are often beaten and sometimes killed.'

Yet, to our shame, most of us are too busy seeking our own entertainment to pay attention to stories like this.

Trafficking is a world-wide problem yet, until recently the U.S. has ignored it both at home and abroad.

As reported by Nicholas D. Kristof in Bush Takes On The Brothels:

"My own epiphany came in 1989, when my wife and I lived in China and covered the crushing of the Tiananmen Square democracy movement. Arrests of dissidents were front-page news, but no one paid any attention as many tens of thousands of Chinese women and girls were kidnapped and sold each year by traffickers to become the unwilling wives of peasants.

Since then, I've seen the peddling of humans in many countries: the 8-year-old Filipino girl whose mother used to pull her out of school to rent to pedophiles; the terrified 14-year-old Vietnamese girl imprisoned in a brothel pending the sale of her virginity; the Pakistani teenager whose brothel's owner dealt with her resistance by drugging her into a stupor. The U.N. has estimated that 12.3 million people worldwide are caught in forced labor of one kind or another.

In an age of H.I.V., sex trafficking is particularly lethal. And for every political dissident who is locked up in a prison cell, hundreds of teenage girls are locked up in brothels and, in effect, sentenced to death by AIDS."

In Sex Slaves? Lock Up The Pimps he wrote:

'Two girls, age 4 and 6, were being quietly offered for sale in Poipet earlier this month. That kind of child abuse can be defeated, as has been shown in the Cambodian hamlet of Svay Pak, which specialized in pedophilia. When I first visited it, 6-year-olds were served up for $3 a session,"

In 2000, Congress finally passed anti-trafficking legislation. Urged to do so by President Bush who has earmarked more money to the problem of human trafficking than any of his predecessors, this is one thing he has gotten right. But the office responsible is still very small.

In Kristof's opinion:

"But the heaviest lifting has been done by the State Department's tiny office on trafficking -- for my money, one of the most effective units in the U.S. government.

The office, led by a former Republican congressman, John Miller, is viewed with suspicion by some career diplomats who fear that simple-minded conservative nuts are mucking up relations with countries over a peripheral issue.

Yet Mr. Miller and his office wield their spotlight shrewdly. With firm backing from the White House (Mr. Bush made Mr. Miller an ambassador partly to help him in his bureaucratic battles), the office puts out an annual report that shames and bullies foreign governments into taking action against forced labor of all kinds.

That's all fine and good - no amount of money or effort should be spared in rescuing the enslaved from the clutches of their enslavers around the world and we must continue. I think Mr. Miller should be given more help to expand his work.

But what about those enslaved here in the U.S.? The effort to root out the brutes who profit from their misery must be led by local and state politicians - yours and mine - but they seem to lack the political will to tackle it.

Am I the only one who finds it outrageous that trafficking rings exist under our noises here in the U.S. even as our government dances around talking about preventing terrorism?

Sexual slavery and rape is a terrorism that affects a huge number of women and children and deserves at least as much attention as Bush's now maligned "War On Terror."

While terrorism against 3,000 justified a war, expeditures of billions and the loss of thousands of other lives, the ugly and ongoing terrorism against 10,000 women and children each year - due to enforced sexual slavery and trafficking in the U.S. - is not even causing a blip on the screen of our attention.

Everyone should be hounding their Congressional Representatives and Senators on this issue. The daughter you save may wind up being your own.

Molly

The U.S. Simply Took Over Saddam's Role

2006-05-28T20:31:00.000-07:00

On May 1st 2003, President Bush presented us with his falsely staged presentation - with himself cast as a hero strutting around on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln - of a war that had been won.

Of course, we know now that it had actually been lost the moment it was launched, thanks to Donald Rumsfeld. He told the Pentagon to ignore the 1200 page State Department report that predicted Iraq's deterioration into chaos and civil war. Experts had outlined strategies for preserving order and infrastructure and making a relatively quick transition so the U.S. could get out before we were resented and Iraqis turned on us.

But remember - Rumsfeld said from the get-go that it would be a "long war." It was started to have a place to build bases. There was never any plan to leave. And if things were thrown into chaos, that would just give us reason to occupy Iraq in perpetuity.

So it was nonsense when Bush said we were there to "rebuild Iraq, where the dictator built palaces for himself, instead of hospitals and schools."

We did nothing to protect the ones that were there from being destroyed by looters who wrecked Baghdad's infrastructure by ripping out plumbing, electrical wiring and anything that they could sell to make a buck.

Yet he insisted that was outside of his hands, that our troops were sent to protect civilians, stop torture and eschew the building of palaces.

What rot.

We are protecting no one.

The latest story about marines killing civilians and, in the words of a military spokesperson, "committing an atrocity" is no surprise.

PHOTOGRAPHS taken by American military intelligence have provided crucial evidence that up to 24 Iraqis were massacred by marines in Haditha. One portrays an Iraqi mother and young child, kneeling on the floor, as if in prayer. They have been shot dead at close range.

There have been, of course, rumbling from returning troops about theft, about unjustified civilian deaths, about civilians being labeled as "insurgents" in order to make kill quotas. So anyone who was paying attention knew it was just a matter of time until something like this happened, was discovered and brought to light.

And, of course, there remains the fact that even our best and bravest who are dying trying to create order cannot stop the bloodshed because the hot spots in Iraq are total chaos and portions have descended into civil war.

The number of Iraqi civilians that have been killed has been estimated by the U.S. military at between 38,000 and 43,000 but, then, it is not U.S. policy to keep a body count.

Yet, sources outside the U.S. Military suggest that 250,000 is a more accurate number representative for Iraqi deaths since the U.S. invasion.

Gee, didn't Saddam kill only about 100,000? Oh, but the torture has stopped, right?

Wrong. We do the torturing now.

When we don't, we farm it out to Syria. So we have, essentially, just replaced Saddam Hussein.

But the raison d'etre is that, like Saddam, we have built a "palace" for our government instead of schools and hospitals.

From Frank Rich: Bush of a Thousand Days

"...courtesy of the Army Corps of Engineers...our corrupt, Enron-like Iraq reconstruction effort has yielded at most 20 of those 142 promised hospitals. But we did build a palace for ourselves. The only building project on time and on budget, USA Today reported, is a $592 million embassy complex in the Green Zone on acreage the size of 80 football fields.

Symbolically enough, it will have its own water-treatment plant and power generator to provide the basic services that we still have not restored to pre-invasion levels for the poor unwashed Iraqis beyond the American bunker.

These days Mr. Bush seems to be hoping that we'll just forget every falsehood in his "Mission Accomplished" oration.

Trying to deflect a citizen's hostile question about prewar intelligence claims, the president asserted at a public forum in April that he had never said "there was a direct connection between September the 11th and Saddam Hussein." But on May 1, 2003, as on countless other occasions, he repeatedly made that direct connection.

"With those attacks the terrorists and their supporters declared war on the United States," he intoned then. "And war is what they got."

It was typical of the bait-and-switch rhetoric he used to substitute a war of choice against an enemy who did not attack us on 9/11 for the war against the non-Iraqi terrorists who did.'

You know, BushCo has even blown being an effective replacement for Saddam Hussein. Saddam used all his torture and death to keep order. Iraqis lived under a brutal dictator, but it was a trade-off for having a working country with water, electricity, jobs and order. Say what you like about him, there weren't any terrorists blowing themselves up in police stations under Saddam.

Under BushCo Iraqis have the worst of all possible worlds. With none of the basic services they had before, yet with the disappearing, torture, death and occupation they don't even have the freedom to move about that they had under Saddam. They have Saddam in spades plus daily, crazy-making chaos.

But that's the neo-con way. They started out as poor left-wing extremists, then made money and became right-wing extremists. Either way, they believe in "creative destruction" of others in order to attain power.

This just goes to prove that an extremist on either side of the spectrum is basically the same: a destructive nut job who doesn't belong in power.

They Can't Fool Us This Way

2006-05-27T10:55:00.000-07:00

Have you noticed?

The "War on Terror" is no more. It has been replaced by the "global struggle against violent extremism."

As linguist George Lakoff says:

'It is important to note the date on which the phrase "war on terror" died and was replaced by "global struggle against violent extremism." It was right after the London bombing. Using the War frame to think and talk about terrorism was becoming more difficult. The Iraq War was declared won and over, but it became clear that it was far from over and not at all won and that it created many new terrorists for every one it destroyed. The last justification "fighting the war on terror in Iraq so it wouldn't have to be fought at home" died in the London bombing.'

The new phrase has been chosen carefully, to make us realize that this conflict is a global and, essentially, unwinnable slog as it always was. It has been chosen to make us forget that "the war on terror" ever existed and that it could not, from the get-go ever succeed.

It has also been chosen to make the term "War on Terror" go away; to make us forget that anti-war progressives said exactly what Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the head man in waging war) said in objecting to the original term: "... if you call it a war, then you think of people in uniform as the solution" whereas the solution is "more diplomatic, more economic, more political than it is military."

Yet, Republicans and Neo-cons cannot end their war - and ours (for it is the citizens of this country who are fighting and dying) - just by changing the name.

However, as usual, they want to lull us into amnesia. Make us forget just how wrong and how destructive they are and that they have gotten us into a war that is like quicksand.

Well, I'm not letting them get away with it, and I hope you won't either.

So what should progressives do?

As Lakoff says:

'Remind the public that there is still a war going on, that it was the wrong policy from the beginning, that the administration now agrees with the anti-war activists, and that you can't end a war just by stopping the use of the word.

And remind the public of what Karl Rove said just weeks ago: "Conservatives saw the savagery of 9/11 in the attacks and prepared for war."'

It was conservatives who lead us into this debacle, not democrats, liberals or progressives.

And the conservatives were wrong. Had they been right, they'd still be talking proudly about the "war."

So I'm going to create a bumper sticker that will say:

THEY CAN'T END THEIR WAR
JUST BY NOT SAYING THE WORD

and another urging everyone to vote the bastards out of the House and Senate this November.

Yours for:

people over corporations
humanity over inhumanity
truth over lies
congressional ethics reform over "lobby reform"
justice over cheating the poor

Molly

O'Reilly: Flipflopping King Of Spin

2006-05-21T10:48:00.000-07:00

From an article in the New York Times:

'THE DIXIE CHICKS call it "the Incident": the anti-Bush remark that Natalie Maines, their lead singer, made onstage in London in 2003. "Just so you know, we're ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas," said Ms. Maines, a Texan herself.

It led to a partisan firestorm, a radio boycott, death threats and, now, to an album that's anything but repentant: "Taking the Long Way" (Open Wide/Monument/ Columbia).

Her remark was reported in Britain and quickly picked up. Right-wing blogs and talk shows vilified the Dixie Chicks as unpatriotic and worse, and the Incident reached the nightly news. On March 12 a Web site statement from Ms. Maines said: "I feel the president is ignoring the opinion of many in the U.S. and alienating the rest of the world. My comments were made in frustration, and one of the privileges of being an American is you are free to voice your own point of view."

The article makes it clear that the Dixie Chicks got the shock of their life when they found out that there are a large number of Americans who are against freedom for speech that does not parrot their own views:

"We have video footage of this lady at one of the shows protesting, holding her 2-year-old son," Ms. Maines said. The woman commanded her son to shout along with an angry chant. "And I was just like, that's it right there. That's the moment that it's taught. She just taught her 2-year-old how to hate. And that broke my heart."

The band received death threats, including at least one, in Dallas, that the F.B.I. considered credible. A newspaper printed Ms. Maines's home address in Austin, Tex., and she ended up moving first outside the city and then to Los Angeles.'

Must I point out the obvious?

That it was the height of irony for these Americans to support a war that, supposedly, was being fought to bring American freedoms to another country while simultaneously denying those same freedoms to their own fellow citizens?

The Times article then talks about how now, over three years later, the same media pundits who once slandered this musical group for their clear-sighted honesty, are now are praising them:

"At the Time 100 party a few days before this interview, the Dixie Chicks performed "Not Ready to Make Nice." Afterward Ms. Maines recounted, the Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly — who has regularly denounced her, and whom she pointedly calls "despicable" — rushed over to greet them. "It's like, 'Just want to say that was great!' " Ms. Maines said. " 'I really like that new song.' "

"And I go, 'But two million tops, right?' And he goes, 'What?' And I said, 'I saw your show when you said we wouldn't sell more than two million, tops.' And he was like, 'Oh, ah, well, two million's pretty good these days, right?' And I was just like, 'Right, yeah. You were saying it in a positive way.' "

Ms. Robison interrupted, laughing. "That's what you call a no-spin zone."

"So then he was just backtracking," Ms. Maines continued. "He says: 'We really respect what you did. And we really respect that you stand up for yourself and blah blah blah.'

We know O'Reilly has proven himself to a) talk for talk's sake, b) cater to intolerance and hate & c) foment destruction for ratings.

Now we know he's a hypocritical flip-flopper as well.

Yet, doesn't he villify flipfloppers?

I guess only he has the right to change his mind and (maybe) get it right for a change:

'(The next day on "The O'Reilly Factor," Mr. O'Reilly acknowledged that Ms. Maines had "chided" him. He mentioned the radio boycott but did not endorse it. "Not Ready to Make Nice" is "a pretty good song," he said. "There's no reason not to play it.")'

Yet, just three years ago he helped get them banned from country and Christian radio.

Whatever works for you, Bill.

Middle-Class Exodus From Iraq

2006-05-19T11:12:00.000-07:00

'Deaths run like water through the life of the Bahjat family. Four neighbors. A barber. Three grocers. Two men who ran a currency exchange shop.

But when six armed men stormed into their sons' primary school this month, shot a guard dead, and left fliers ordering it to close, Assad Bahjat knew it was time to leave.

"The main thing now is to just get out of Iraq," said Mr. Bahjat, standing in a room heaped with suitcases and bedroom furniture in eastern Baghdad.

In the latest indication of the crushing hardships weighing on the lives of Iraqis, increasing portions of the middle class seem to be doing everything they can to leave the country. In the last 10 months, the state has issued new passports to 1.85 million Iraqis, 7 percent of the population and a quarter of the country's estimated middle class.'

That is an excerpt from the article As Death Stalks Iraq, Middle Class Exodus Begins which appeared in the New York Times today.

Written by Mona Mahmoud, Sahar Nageeb and Qais Mizher, it paints a picture that so many Americans still refuse to see: that our mission was to destroy Iraq, not save it, and we are succeeding.

Yet, don't you love it when you get an e-mail with three or four photos of U.S. service men posing with Iraqi kids who are holding signs that say things like "Thank you President Bush?"

Gee whiz. I wonder who printed those signs in English. Do you think it was those Iraqi kids who don't know English? Or could it have been staged, with the kids not even knowing what they were holding?

And don't you love how, despite all the capitalized printing about how this is "the real truth" that the "liberal" media will not print, that there is never a date given for those photos?

That's because you know they are from March 2003. Back when the kids were smiling.

And that, of course, was immediately after Saddam Hussein had been overthrown but before Iraqis realized that our "government" (read Big Oil) went in to destroy their country, not save it.

Corporate America (via BushCo) has done to Iraq what a rapist always does: beat the crap out of the victim.

I believe that when the BushCo villains are turned out of power, the subpoenas will run hot and heavy and we will uncover secrets that will make Americans' hair stand on end. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld - and more - will be tried for treason as people of conscience inside the government risk ruin to come forth with the truth.

I believe that the American people will stop believing that corporate greed is really good for us as people - or a country - and that we will rethink our place in the world for, as Paul Krugman so aptly put it in Coming Down To Earth), we are "a nation in which people make a living by selling one another houses, and they pay for the houses with money borrowed from China."

I believe that people will stop watching American Idol and take to the streets to change the rules under which corporations operate so they are pro people instead of pro empire.

I believe that empathy will stop being a dirty word.

I believe that people in this country are going to get real very fast, rediscover that we are all in this together and do whatever it takes to create a government based upon our humanity, not our inhumanity.

Because even if a majority of us want to stick our heads in the sand and continue continue ignoring what our corporately controlled government is doing to the world and its people, Global Warming isn't going to let us.

And inexplicable things are beginning to happen.

How about Ken Lay's top lawyer (Michael Ramsey) having a heart attack and being out of the court room for a month. (This is the guy who got New York real estate heir Robert A. Durst acquitted after Durst shot and killed a neighbor, dismembered the victim's body and threw parts of it into Galveston Bay.)

Dare we think it might be his own, ignored conscience that caused that heart attack? Or that, as in the Picture of Dorian Gray the ugliness of these men must, finally, come home to roost and destroy them?

I'm a believer.

Maureen Dowd on "Bacon Guy"

2006-05-13T21:19:00.000-07:00

Maureen Dowd's column in the New York Times today was on "Bacon Guy," (who I wrote about yesterday) and titled Six Degrees of Bacon.

The woman is clever and definitely has a playful way with words. Here's an excerpt:

"After Bacon Guy was forced to withdraw, Mr. Goss and his chief of staff, Patrick Murray, were not moved to look for a sterling choice for the No. 3 post. They were moved to go on a rampage to ferret out and get rid of the libs in the agency whom they suspected of leaking the news of Bacon Guy's carnivorous crime.

With a Nixonesque sense of paranoia and vendetta, the Bush dominatrixes never seem to worry about the nefarious activity itself - from shoplifting to gathering data on all Americans' phone records. They just resent it when the nefarious activity is revealed. When word got out that the government was snooping on domestic calls, the administration rushed into action, not to investigate the violation of the Constitution but to punish any government employees who might have leaked it to The Times."

That's BushCo - persecute the whistleblowers, not the criminals.

And further:

"In a scene that would impress even the "Law and Order" impresario Dick Wolf, investigators from the F.B.I., the I.R.S., the Defense Criminal Investigative Service and the C.I.A.'s inspector general showed up yesterday for the searches. Dusty's C.I.A. office and his house in a nearby Virginia suburb were examined.

The dolts at F.B.I. headquarters could not get it together to search Zacarias Moussaoui's computer before 9/11, but now we have the F.B.I. searching the C.I.A.

That's not progress."

I disagree. It is and it isn't. It's progress, at least, that a criminal hack inside this clandestine organization is being investigated with the possibility of being prosecuted.

Better that than remaining untouchable like criminals Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld et al (who aren't at all happy about this latest little revelation of the systemic incompetence of their faux - shall we call it style of governing? (They don't govern, they force their ideas on us, winging how to make their ideas reality with a mixture of incompetence and malice.)

While the FBI investigating the CIA is not progress on the war against external enemies, it is progress against the internal enemies America has: Republicans who would allow America to crumble into ruin for the sake of ideology based on fear, greed and desire for unlimited power.

Better that the corruption, incompetence and lack of fitness to govern (and appoint competent staff) be revealed than remain hidden.

BushCo's Bacon Shoplifter

2006-05-12T09:45:00.000-07:00

It just gets better.

One of the high "mucky-mucks" brought into the CIA by BushCo had previously been arrested for shoplifting bacon.

Are you laughing your a** off?

How is it that virtually everything this administration does is based in corruption, greed, incompetence or all three? They just seem to find criminals and idiots to elevate within their ranks.

Today we have another clue of just how systemic these operating principles are as the New York Times reports:

"Kyle Foggo, who is the man known by friends and associates as Dusty — and who on Monday resigned his post as the third-ranking official at the Central Intelligence Agency — has become entangled in a widening investigation that has already brought down former Representative Randy Cunningham, a k a Duke, [who pleaded guilty last year to taking bribes from military contractors.] Investigators say they are examining what could be a larger pattern of bribery and government corruption."

Foggo was "plucked out of obscurity" by J. Porter Goss. [Goss was appointed C.I.A. director in September 2004 and recently resigned after nothing but clashes with agency professionals who "derisively" called him and the people he brought in 'The Gosslings']

But that's not all the muck that Goss tracked in. More from the New York Times:

"The man Mr. Goss first selected to become the C.I.A.'s executive director, Michael V. Kostiw, had to turn down the job when it surfaced in the news media that he had resigned from the agency in the 1980's after being caught shoplifting bacon.

It was finger-pointing over who leaked word of Mr. Kostiw's shoplifting arrest that led to the resignation of several top officials in the agency's clandestine service. Among those who left were Stephen R. Kappes, the deputy director of operations, and his deputy, Michael Sulick. Mr. Kappes is expected to return as the agency's No. 2 if Gen. Michael V. Hayden is confirmed as the new director.

Days before Mr. Goss submitted his resignation, the C.I.A. director asked Mr. Foggo to step down as executive director, according to one intelligence official who was granted anonymity to speak freely about the circumstances of Mr. Foggo's departure. The official said that Mr. Goss had concluded that the inquires into Mr. Foggo's activities had become a distraction and had the potential to damage the agency's reputation.

Mr. Foggo, 51, has admitted attending poker parties throughout the 1990's that Mr. Wilkes held in a suite at the Watergate Hotel in Washington. The parties were primarily attended by C.I.A. officials and congressmen, and Mr. Cunningham, a California Republican, occasionally attended. Several news media accounts have reported that prostitutes frequented the parties."

This fits in with the image we now have of Bush as President who creates no policy or standards as reported by Paul Krugman in his article State of Delusion published on February 3, 2006:

'John DiIulio, the former White House head of faith-based policy explained it more than three years ago. He told the reporter Ron Suskind how this administration operates: ''There is no precedent in any modern White House for what is going on in this one: a complete lack of a policy apparatus. I heard many, many staff discussions but not three meaningful, substantive policy discussions. There were no actual policy white papers on domestic issues.''

In other words, this administration is all politics and no policy. It knows how to attain power, but has no idea how to govern. That is why the administration was caught unaware when Katrina hit, and why it was totally unprepared for the predictable problems with its drug plan. It is why Mr. Bush announced an energy plan with no substance behind it. And it is why the state of the union -- the thing itself and not the speech -- is so grim.'

[Note that historians have commented on the fact that Hitler had no policy discussions, no papers, no apparatus. He had ideas (mostly bad, like Bush's) and just told his staff to figure out how to get it done. After the war staffers testified that they had no idea what they were doing or how to do it. The shared incompetence, to me, is clear, along with the fact that Hitler identified others as enemies and brought about war to take attention away from his - dare we call them - domestic programs?]

Meanwhile, the CIA continues to 'disappear' people and use extraordinary rendition to take dark skinned people to other countries for torture. (And there is my segway.)

This is 'Torture Awareness Month.' (Isn't it mind-boggling we need one?)

To find out what is going on - and that torture HAS NOT BEEN MADE ILLEGAL IN THE U.S. despite the McCain/Feingold ammendment [thanks to Bush's tricks and the complexity of our laws] visit Torture Awareness to find out what you can do to create zero tolerance for torture in the U.S.

You can view a brief video interview of Maher Arar, the Canadian kidnapped by the CIA as he was returning to Canada from a vacation, as well as read fact sheets with some pretty disturbing statistics. For instance, out of nearly 750 men thrown into Guantanamo, many wound up there because they were SOLD to the U.S. for $5000 per head by Northern Alliance warlords and Pakistani authorities.

Tell me that no innocent men were rounded up for the money. Five thousand dollars is a virtual fortune to those who collected it.

Who is this monster that we have become as a nation?

Fear and ignorance will do it every time.

The Gutting of the Village Voice

2006-05-11T10:41:00.000-07:00

New Times, now known as Village Voice Media recently bought The Village Voice to stop its activism. Michael Lacy, the new owner, fired staff and stopped publishing any piece containing a stand on an issue or that is critical of the Bush administration.

Based in Phoenix, the newly named Village Voice Media despises activism and appears to have a game plan of buying up all alternative papers all around the country (there are 17) in order to make them all the same and eliminate their points of view.

The Village Voice was part of an activist tradition of the alternative press for decades. It has now been neutralized in the same way that a few big chains like Gannett have bought up and neutralized most of the daily newspapers in the United States.

Likewise Clear Channel controls the lions share of radio and 5 big corporations control most of the TV. They all cater to entertainment, soundbites and ratings, not in-depth news reporting or "pro and con" perspectives. Most of them have run "newsclips" manufactured by the Bush administration - and by corporations to get their products in the public eye - which has been the basis for the flurry over "fake news."

Virtually the only way to get fact-based, non-fluff, non-soundbite, in-depth news is through PBS, NPR and the Internet. (CNN reports real news, but sticks with major, middle-of-the-road stories. It also wastes air time - and the viewer's time - on dramatic come-ons and repeating - in addition to commercials.)

Yet partisan appointees are working from inside PBS to change it and the budget for PBS and NPR are slated to be slashed again. (It has long been part of the Republican agenda to kill both).

Meanwhile, big media continues to lobby hard to control broadband content - to have the power to block content and e-mails and charge users extra to have their websites come up or their e-mails sent.

The best thing to do is sign up for alerts at www.freepress.net.

Americans are more and more isolated from real news and issues they should care about (but which are not publicized) and the views of the rest of the world (5.9 billion people.)

(For instance, do you know that the move to eliminate the estate tax - supposedly some sort of grass roots movement supported by trade unions, etc. to protect the middle-class as well as the rich - was the brainchild of 18 of the richest families in America? They created sham organizations to lobby on their behalf, looking as though there was more widespread support for the move.)

A letter-writing campaign is needed to rescue our media, with weekly letters (easy to print out and mail the same letter with a different date) to your representatives.

Please alert the people you know who care and who think it undermines the whole premise of our nation to stifle different points of view.

If we don't turn the tide of repression now, people will have to take to the streets and put their bodies on the line later. Considering the Patriot Act and the possibility of being branded a "domestic terrorist" while actively demonstrating, what's the likelihood that will happen?

China controls a billion people quite nicely by blocking Internet content and news and making sure only the party line is heard. Is that what we want?

If not, compose a letter to your Congressional representatives today, keep it on your computer, change the date each week and mail it out afresh.

It's volumes of real mail - not e-mail - that get the real attention and have the real power.

You can change things. Start today.

And keep the faith.

BushCo Brings Back the Cold War

2006-05-05T22:52:00.000-07:00

The latest news is that BushCo is bringing back the The Cold War.

It's amazing how, with the Republicans in office, it never ends. Things just get better and better, don't they?

Hum - lest we forget, let's recap a fraction of what's happened in five and a half years:

We've been lied to as a matter of policy.

Government has gone super secret. Plus the Freedom of Information Act has been subverted by the assessment of thousands of dollars in fees to get information.

Government now provides networks with false news.

Black is white and white is black.

Empathy is considered a weakness and killing a virtue.

The U.S. is now listed on Amnesty International's list of human rights violators for "disappearing" people and torturing them.

The Patriot Act, having been renewed, continues to wreak havoc on civil liberties.

We're enmeshed in an unnecessary war which has virtually destroyed Iraq. At least 2300 American families have been shattered, along with the nearly 50,000 American lives of those who have suffered catastrophic injuries.

The soul of America - New Orleans and her people - were left to drown and dry and are now scattered hopelessly across the country.

Corporations continue to take over everything, jettison pensions and employees and move to China in worship of their god, Obscene Profit.

Osama hasn't been caught (and never will be) because BushCo is friends with the Saudis, even providing over a dozen with them with clandestine airfare out of the country after 9/11. It was all just a ploy to get absolute control of the government anyway. They had the information. They let it happen - and even helped it along - then covered it all up.)

The dollar is falling, interest rates are rising and everyone except the upper crust (who gets all the tax breaks and stock options) is in debt.

As a nation we're going to reach 8,000,000,000,000 in debt and go beyond it soon. Expect the (planned for) result to be that all social programs (including schools) go on the chopping block.

Our public schools - the last, best chance for creating an egalitarian population that is informed - are being starved to death and teachers blamed for the system's problems (instead of blaming the true culprit, lack of funding and respect for education.)

Meanwhile the wealthy send their kids to private schools and think nothing of paying $40,000 a year for a child's education. Meanwhile, poor kids are punished for going to poor schools as "Every Child Left Behind" cuts their funding further.

Corporate welfare continues unabated while the poor go without health care, jobs, proper schools or hope. (Gee, weren't all those tax cuts to the wealthy supposed to create jobs that provided health care? Yeah, that always works. Not.)

The environment is going down the toilet. Public parks are being sold off for lumber. Climate change is happening more rapidly than anticipated while BushCo still stalls and toasts big oil's profits.

There's a powerful move by all the communication giants to stifle the Internet, charge more and control what we can pull up.

PBS - the only media that tells us the hard truths - has been stacked with vultures who are trying to kill it from the inside - along with BushCo's proposed slashing of its budget.

Scientist are ignored, evolution is disputed and a number of Bush supporters argue that the earth is only 6,000 years old and dinosaurs were on the ark with Noah. Heck, our science education is so bad that one in five Americans thinks the sun revolves around the earth.

The "reform" movement in Congress that would have put some sort of break on corruption was killed. It would have stopped the swinging door which allows Congressional representatives to leave Congress, become high paid lobbyists and lobby all the friends they left behind to sell out the people for control and profits. But God forbid - why would a Republican Congress want to do that? Why would they put educating their nation's children or taking care of people and families over being able to fly to their homes in the South of France where there is actually a pretty decent quality of life?

The Twin Towers - and building 7 - were imploded from within and the steel all secreted away to be melted down in China so no one could test it - but the media shuns the story and most Americans haven't seen the facts. Bottom line, most people still refuse to believe the government that has stabbed them in the back from Day One is capable of such treason.

It wasn't enough to rattle their sabers and talk about invading Iran or dropping a nuke on Tehran.

Now Cheney's bringing back the Cold War as a prelude.

Isn't that grand?

And what's the response? We've found America's enemy in the millions of Mexican-American immigrants who do our dirty work.

I'm glad that's solved. Aren't you?

The Big Lie We All Believe

2006-03-06T00:54:00.000-08:00

I just went through all 49 pages of evidence and discussion that dissects the official explanation for the collapse of the Twin Towers and Building 7 in NYC. Most people don't remember Building 7, but it fell too even though it was not next to the Twin Towers. Of interest, however, was the fact that Building 7 held a lot of files on big companies that the SEC was investigating.

I have come away stunned. I thought the talk about our government having carried out 9/11 itself was insane - a paranoid fantasy.

But the evidence is depressingly compelling.

It doesn't help that people like physicist Steven Jones of Brigham Young University and Morgan Reynolds, Ph.D. professor emeritus at Texas A&M University and former director of the Criminal Justice Center at the National Center for Policy Analysis headquartered in Dallas, TX - who served as chief economist for the US Department of Labor during 2001 and 2002 (in George W. Bush's first term) - both find compelling evidence that the 3 destroyed buildings were the result of planned demolition.

As I say, I thought those who opined that the U.S. government was directly responsible for 9/11, and not bin Laden, were angry nuts. But this
49 page explanation of the evidence has given me a very bad feeling.

Shortly after 9/11 I thought Bush was simply inept in not reading reports about the 9/11 bombers and preventing the attacks.

Last year I came to the conclusion that, given the lies, etc., it was likely that Cheney - but probably not Bush - had known the attack was going to occur and had deliberately allowed it to happen so to provide justification for invading the Middle-East.

I thought that was treasonous enough.

But I never thought that our ruling class neo-cons actually were actually responsible for having explosives planted or blowing up the Twin Towers and Building 7.

But - to my shock - in conjunction with all the other "censored" information that is not making its way into our major media about what BushCo is doing - a very ugly picture has taken shape. They're not playing here, boys and girls. I fear our situation in the U.S. is worse than I thought.

It appears the 3 towers collapsed because they were imploded from within. I urge you to take a close look at the facts. See if you find the evidence compelling or not.

Bottom line: We know the very rich make money no matter who suffers.

If BushCo orchestrated the detonation of those building, it was brilliant because it will be impossible for most Americans to believe their own government capable of such treasonous treachery, especially with the folksy, likeable, seemingly not-so bright George Bush at the helm.

They have, quite possibly, pulled off the biggest coup in American history. They have succeeded in selling the biggest, most outrageous lie - the lie that everyone wants to believe because it is unthinkable that our own government would orchestrate 9/11 - that the fires started by the planes caused those buildings to fall.

But no planes flew into Building 7, did they?

For more on this subject, see:

More discussion as well as Dr. Reynold's paper.

No, I don't want to believe it's true. It's insane.

But, the evidence is compelling and, put together with the big picture, it makes so much awful sense.

Shocking Evidence: U.S. Bombed Mosque

2006-03-06T00:24:00.000-08:00

I know I've been harsh in writing about BushCo. Sometimes I've even felt badly about it. But it turns out I haven't been nearly harsh enough.

Why?

I made the mistake of thinking BushCo was composed of imbeciles with poor judgment.

It turns out they are ruthless, treacherous and treasonous.

This makes sense, unfortunately, in the way the dots are connecting with BushCo's assaults on unions, tort law, environmental standards, the Constitution, human rights, peace and now the Internet. There's a group of people in power who are on the cutting edge of disempowering the American people.

And it isn't stupidity or bungled good intentions that causes them to do it.

Instead, it's a thirst for absolute power.

And they're quite brilliant in the way they are steadily working toward total control over the media and complete control over us by eliminating jobs, freedom, information and communication.

And here I thought the war in Iraq was a mistake.

Sadly, it appears to have been part of a larger strategy, a step toward creating civil war and complete breakdown of nations in the Middle-East.

Think I've gone over the deep end?

I don't blame you.

But listen to this interview first, and then decide:

Who bombed the mosque? [mp3]

or use:

Who bombed the mosque? [m3u] from Taking Aim

Yet this isn't the worst of it.

But this is more than enough to choke on for now.

Bush: Debt Vampire

2006-02-27T15:33:00.000-08:00

To get a T-shirt with this image on it, visit: Bumper Progress.

There are still people who call Dubya "our beloved President Bush." I know one - he's a neighbor.

One reason why Bush gets away with mistake after mistake - [or calculated policy after calculated policy] - to kill America is because of his folksy, friendly bumpkin image.

Yeah, he's friendly to America all right, just like "friendly fire" is friendly to American troops.

The image of a vampire is more in keeping with the truth of what Bush is doing to us.

He's killing America - bankrupting our finances and our morals - through his policies built upon irresponsibility, greed and corruption.

He's killing America by destroying every program devised to help the disadvantaged gain hope and motivation so they may be inspired to contribute to our country.

He's killing every social service he can, including our beleaguered public schools, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaide.

He's killing our air and water through decreased environmental regulations, killing our forests through defying all evidence about Global Warming (the bark beetle thrives in warmer weather.

He's allowing lumber companies to harvest our public lands,

He's killing us with a war that is decimating American families even as it turns Middle-East Muslims against Americans in record numbers.

He's killed our hopes for security by not funding Homeland Seurity, cutting funds for the military and veterans and by lying to us in order to get us embroiled in Iraq.

And now he wants to open the door to Middle-Eastern terrorists through the Dubai Port Deal.

The fact is, he and his friends make money off destruction and chaos.

He and his ilk are vampires on the world, and on America.

Dubya: Determined To Destroy U.S.

2006-02-22T08:33:00.000-08:00

Bush is pathetic. Once again, he is the last to know what's happening regarding the Dubai Port deal. Nonetheless, he defends the sale and has threatened a veto if Congress tries to block it.

Unbelievable.

Given that the Sept. 11 hijackers used the United Arab Emirates as an operational and financial base and that the UAE is thought to have been a transfer point for shipments of smuggled nuclear components sent to Iran, North Korea and Libya, there is no way our ports should be handed over to Dubai Ports World which is owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai.

As so many of us have suspected, all Bush's talk about "keeping America safe from terror" has been empty rhetoric employed shamelessly to blind Americans into agreeing to what he wants.

Don't let him get away with it. You know the administration's got an agenda that doesn't serve us. Write your representatives now and say: "NO!" And if they don't listen, organize a protest.

Bush: Still Paving The Way For Osama

2006-02-21T22:25:00.000-08:00

The Bush administration gave Dubai Ports World, owned by the United Arab Emirate of Dubai, a $6.8 billion deal last week in which they will buy control of six of our largest and most crucial ports: New York, New Jersey, Baltimore, New Orleans, Miami and Philadelphia. Only a flimsy investigation and weak "good faith" agreements guarantees the company in charge will - or can - stop Osama bin Laden operatives from infiltrating its workforce.

Given that the United Arab Emirates gave the Taliban refuge, this is an unbelievably stupid move. As Senator Lindsey Graham, R-S.C. told "Fox News Sunday":

"It's unbelievably tone-deaf politically at this point in our history, four years after 9/11, to entertain the idea of turning port security over to a company based in the UAE, (which) vows to destroy Israel."

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., demanded that President Bush personally intervene.

"The president must act," he said at a news conference with New York Harbor as a backdrop. "Outsourcing the operations of our largest ports to a country with long involvement in terrorism is a homeland security accident waiting to happen."

But Bush, approved it and, as usual, is unconcerned. He dropped the ball before 9-11. He dropped the ball before and after Katrina. He's created a Medicare mess, a mess in our schools, a disaster in Iraq and is bankrupting us.

Another terror attack would certainly give the GOP the absolute power it craves, since it is so close now.

And, although Bush perports to love the U.S. he spouts rhetoric as opposed to analyzing what's best for her. As Bush said himself while aboard Air Force One on June 4, 2003:

"I'm also not very analytical. You know I don't spend a lot of time thinking... about why I do things."

And don't we see the result of that! Now, to crown his legacy of disastrous leadership, he's throwning open the door to another terrorist attack.

Write to your representatives. If they don't care, organize a protest.

Regarding a related issue, has anyone actually read the 2/15/06 testimony of Anthony A. Shaffer, Lt. Colonel, U.S. Army Reserve, Senior Intelligence Officer in regard to project ABLE DANGER in which he maintains that 9-11 terrorist Mohammed Atta and his al Quaeda cell were identified a year before 9-11?

Here are some quotes:

Pg. 7: "...much of the critical data that was harvested for the ABLE DANGER project, that could be used again now in the search for sleeper cells and others that matched the 'Atta' profile is now gone - destroyed at the direction of the DoD officials in the 2000 timeframe. You have heard from Eric Kleinsmith of his work on ABLE DANGER, and his receiving direction to 'destroy the data and background documents or go to jail' - which he did."

Pg. 16: "Mr. William Huntington, who was just promoted to serve as the Deputy Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, who after becoming the Deputy Director of HUMINT in the early 2001 timeframe passed the buck. When I attempted to brief him on the DORHAWK GALLEY project, to include information on the ABLE DANGER project that was to use specific portions of the ABLE DANGER methodology to sort through and separate U.S. Person information from Foreign Intelligence information, he refused to hear the briefing, announcing that 'I can't be here, I can't see this' as he left his office and refused to return to hear the information. By doing this, he could later feign ignorance of the project."

Pg. 22: "In the late January early February 2000 timeframe...all information relating to Atta, and the other terrorist[s] that are identified as working and living in the U.S. or have connections to U.S. persons become 'off limits'."

Pg. 25: "Late Spring/Early Summer 2000. [ ]Based on my unit's enhanced relationship with the FBI, I set up three separate meetings between SOCOM (COL Worthington the then ABLE DANGER chief) and FBI Counter-terrorism Special Agents in Washington DC. SOCOM cancels all three meetings."

Pg. 28: "May 2001. Scott Phillpott calls me in desperation in the May 2001 timeframe on my mobile phone. He asked if he can bring 'the ABLE DANGER options' that ABLE DANGER had come up with to DC and to use one of my STRATUS IVY facilities to do the work. I tell him with all candor that I would love nothing better than to loan him my facility and work the options with him (to exploit them for both Intel potential and for actual offensive operations) but tell him that my DIA chain of command has directed me to stop all support to him and the project.

In good faith, I ask my boss, COL Mary Moffitt if I can help Scott and exploit the options - and that there would be a DIA quid pro quo of obtaining new 'lead' information from the project. She takes [offense] at me even mentioning ABLE DANGER in this conversation, tells me that I am being insubordinate, and begins the process of removing me from my position as chief of STRATUS IVY. As a direct result of this conversation, she directs that I be "moved" to a desk officer position to oversee Defense HUMINT operations in Latin America."

"11 Sep 2001. We are attacked."

"Late September 2001 Eileen Preisser calls me for coffee and tells me she has something she needs to show me.

At coffee she shows me a chart she had brought with her - a large desk top size chart. On it she has me look at the 'Brooklyn Cell.' I was confused at first - but she kept telling me to look - and in the 'cluster'. I eventually found the picture of Atta. She [continued in testimony on page 29] pointed out ( and I recognized) that this was one of the charts I LIWA had produced in Jan 2000, and that I had taken down to Tampa.

I was shocked - and had a sinking feeling at the pit of my stomach - I felt that we had been on the right track - and that because of the bureaucracy we had been stopped - and that we might well have been able to have done something to stop the 9/11 attack. I ask Eileen what she plans to do with the information/chart - she tells me that she does not know but she plans to do something."

Throughout his testimony Shaffer conveys his experience and perception of how the administration - through the DIA - has worked to discredit and harass him. He certainly makes his point that what has been used against him seems flimsy. And on page 39 he reports finding out in June or July of 2004 that his office documents and holdings had been moved and his classified documents destroyed.

He gives his opinion that agency bureaucrats are more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting America and calls for better protection for whistleblowers.

Shafter also raises what should be an important question:

"If there can be a cover-up on a [cut-and-dried] issue like the truth about Sgt. Tillman's death, [who was killed as a result of friendly fire, not in fighting insurgents as reported] to what length do you think government bureaucrats, who were never held accountable for their failures to detect and prevent the 9/11 attack would do to suppress direct evidence that we had an offensive capability that could well have been used to pre-emptively target and destroy Al Qaeda a full year before we were attacked?"

On 2/16 William M. Arkin wrote about the ABLE DANGER issue in The Washington Post. He concluded that Under Secretary of Defense Stephen Cambone, who refutes Shaffer's testimony that Mohammed Atta and other terrorists were known and their pictures were on a chart, "...cannot necessarily be believed because he is the mouthpiece for a damaged administration and a Pentagon that is not above lying when it suits it."

However, he also says Shaffer can not be relied upon "...because he is a nut."

After reading through Shaffer's testimony, I disagree.

Shaffer does not sound insane. He does convey the kind of fervor that is common in the military, which is the desire to be a hero, to fight the bad guys and win.

The fact that his testimony leads one to believe he believes he inadvertently discovered evidence of a conspiracy by the U.S. government to cover up information, does not necessarily make him crazy nor paranoid. We've seen ample incidences of cover-ups and conspiracies orchestrated by the U.S. government, with Watergate holding the number one spot for the worst abuses uncovered to date.

What detracts from Shaffer's testimony is the fact that he, obviously, did not have his prepared testimony proofread. There are a number of grammatical errors, misspellings and misuse/overuses of quotes which have the effect of detracting from his credibility as a communicator and professional.

He also reaches in making his points, looking even to obscure historical references for evidence to show that he is not the first to be maligned and that it is those who are discrediting him who need investigation.

Lastly, he rambles at times, as most of us would ramble if we were to find ourselves torn between allegiance to the U.S. and stunned consternation that our government is discrediting us and our direct experience. This emotional component does not make him crazy. It shows he's upset.

And if Shaffer is emotional, it may be akin to the emotional turmoil that Hal, in Kubrick's 2001, was shown to go through in trying to keep his charges safe while he, himself, was expected to operate on two conflicting and mutually exclusive premises.

Bottom line, it's obvious that Shaffer loves his country and he was trying to keep her safe, but seems to have found himself up against an agenda that not only was never adequately explained, but was denied.

Shaffer thinks bureaucrats killed his program and destroyed his files in an effort to protect their jobs and butts. Most likely, but why?

Between the lines is the subtext that the government was conducting secret, illegal surveillance and there was fear that this would come out and fall under the scrutiny of civil rights activist groups. The argument he claims he was given was that data mined from spying could not be kept, for fear that these groups would discover how it was gathered and make waves.

If he did not give the start of this shut down as occuring just before Bush's election, I would scoff at this idea, given how little this administration cares for civil rights - or about what those, concerned with constitutional rights, think.

But what happened once BushCo got into office? Did personnel not probe into these intelligence issues? They were not completely ignorant of them, for we were told that the President was given a report on the potential for a terrorist attack only one month before 9/11. But did that information rely, in part upon ABLE DANGER's data?

Did they receive a general warning? Or did they find out they had specifics?

We don't know. But the administration's spokesperson seems to be denying that they had specifics.

Yet we know the new administration was itching for a reason to invade Iraq.

Because of this, I cannot shake the idea that someone, somewhere, in the new administration got wind of how close Shaffer and his group were to preventing a terrorist attack on home soil. If so, what could possibly prevent them from pounding nails in the coffin of ABLE DANGER?

For only an attack here, on our soil, would have aroused the American people to support a war.

The fact that records were destroyed under Bush's watch is suspicious. And the word of the Bush administraton appointee who refutes Shaffer's testimoney isn't worth much.

After all, every time we turn around the White House is discovered to have manufactured another lie. The most flagrant of these was in telling us that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in order to get us to go to war.

As for Shaffer, who once thought of himself as being on the "side of good," he has now been expelled from that roll. Imposing that kind of powerlessness and identity change on a formerly competent and respected intelligence profession might be seen as a deliberate attempt to drive him over the edge, when he and we are continually being told that the next terrorist attack is not an issue of if but of an imminent when.

Sadly, there is no political will to uncover the truth, even if it were possible.

And I doubt that Bush knows. After all, he doesn't seem to know much before it happens. Besides, we saw his face on 9/11 and he seemed stunned.

But we never saw Cheney's first reaction.

Judging from the secrecy of this administration, it's doubtful we'll ever know the truth. From all appearances Watergate didn't teach Republicans to stop overreaching themselves, but simply to orchestrate better cover-ups when they do.

Protest Irony

2006-02-16T11:51:00.000-08:00

Muslim outrage over the Muhammad cartoons continues to be front page news.

Meanwhile a 2/14/06 blurb, that portends the death of freedom in the U.S., was relegated to the back pages.

In Cincinnati, Ohio, two workers for CityWatcher.com were voluntarily embedded with tiny silicon chips. The chips, according to CEO Sean Darks, work “like an access card.”

Recall that Wal-Mart revolutionized retailing by introducing barcodes. Wal-Mart has since introduced the next retail revolution: embedding RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips in its products.

Does anyone doubt that embedding employees with ID chips is the next step? Or that government will begin to look at embedding us with ID chips to “fight terrorism?”

This possibility should be guarded against by every American, given that the President is secretly and illegally wiretapping millions of American’s private communications.

Unfortunately, Americans are not connecting the dots.

Instead we’re divided over the seriousness of the President’s crimes. Yet his secret spying is part of an all-or-none package that includes unrestricted authority to use full war powers against all Americans.

With these unlimited, unrestricted and non-expiring war powers, Americans are giving the President the authority to deny them their rights to an attorney and trial by their peers. As a result, American citizens can be imprisoned indefinitely and tortured, for the purpose of extracting confessions. If an American citizen is killed during this process, it will be without penalty or avenue of redress.

Neither Congress nor the Supreme Court will have the power to revoke these non-expiring war powers once their use is accepted as law.

Considering that newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is expected to side with the President and give him unlimited power over our lives, one would think Americans would be organizing massive protests to protest his spying.

Yet we aren’t protesting our loss of fundamental rights. Unlike our forefathers who put their lives on the line for liberty, most of us are AWOL.

Is it possible that Americans do not realize that, by 2008, they must have federally approved ID cards with a “machine readable zone” that will allow easy capture of all data on the ID by stores – or anyone else with a reader?

Or that these cards, vulnerable to technological glitches and false security alerts, will control all access to air and train travel, opening a bank account, entering federal buildings and “any other purposes that the Secretary [of Homeland Security] shall determine?”

But if we know, how is it we are so calm?

Does anyone doubt that the government’s next step will be to promote the embedding of RFID tags in us?

Once in place, required tagging – in combination with the President’s unlimited war powers – must mark the death of freedom, individuality and dissent in the United States.

In the profit sector, an employer will be able to track all employee movements. The potential to coerce workers through manipulation, harassment and firings will be staggering.

As computing power grows, the government will gain the ability to track all tags, 24/7. Since spying will be the norm, we will have no recourse if we are called in for questioning. If they don’t like our answers, can’t make up their minds about us or don’t have time to think about it, we can be plopped in a cell until further notice, to undergo whatever treatment thought necessary.

We will become one of those countries that jail, torture and kill “dissidents” – citizens – who are concerned about the environment, globalization, jobs, health care, peace, justice and freedom of speech.

And we will be hard pressed to find out about the fates of our fellow citizens. PBS is slated by the GOP for extinction and the corporations that “own the pipes” of Internet broadband are insisting they have the right to control the Internet and, effectively, screen out what they don’t want us to read.

So have your lobotomy now.

Of course, there’s another option.

Let’s not pretend that Americans care about freedom. Instead, let’s focus on American strength: our desire for fun, entertainment and winning. Let's play a game. After all, we like competition.

Let’s play World Cup Protest.

Who’s going to win? Will it be the nearly one million believers in the sanctity of Mohammed who are protesting against the Muhammad cartoons?

Or can we get a couple of million believers in the sanctity of freedom to march on Washington in protest of the President’s spying on us?

True, we might need a fund raiser to get prizes to reward people for showing up.

We also may need top entertainment – bands and comedians – to generate interest.

And advertising – we’ll have to buy a lot of air time – if the networks will sell it to us.

Last, but not least, we’ll need a big, engraved trophy – maybe a silver reproduction of Lady Liberty – for the winning protestors.

But, surely, having our government declare war against us – combined with a future of being tagged so we’re easy targets for control and detention – is worth the effort.

Because won’t it be ironic when those against freedom win the protest game?

Americans: All The President's Enemies

2006-02-09T22:51:00.000-08:00

People who listen to sound bites don't understand the gravity of what this President is doing. He is attacking us - the American people - on all fronts. He has used a "divide and conquer" strategy that has worked well for him. As we've bickered among ourselves, throwing epithets back and forth, he has quietly changed 90% of our environmental laws and has indebted us - on purpose - so that we will eventually have no money for any social programs whatsoever. The rising interest on our debt will see to that.

The group of neo-cons which he represents - to which he prostituted himself in order to become President of the United States - hates people. To them we're like roaches. Sending our kids to war doesn't bother them in the least. We're expendable. We're just consumers, maleable sheep they'll own. So for them, killing Social Security, public schools, public libraries and public television is part of their long term plan. They're committed to that part of their plan just as they were committed to finding a way to implement their long term plan to begin a seige on the Middle-East.

They'll bide their time as they continue to hammer the coffin nails of miserliness into our educational system. They'll continue to craft "created-to-fail" policies for our schools and assure that only the privileged will lead this country.

They're eliminating Head Start and food programs for children. They're turning student loans into a privatized, expensive scam. They are pursuing every way possible to disempower the populace and are doing so at an amazing rate, economically, as they, simultaneously, undermine our constitution.

They've done this while we the people have been busy watching American Idol and CSI.

Now corporate America is set to take over the Internet. Once they do so, the blog you are reading now, for instance, along with on-line pages from foreign newspapers where you might see the real news, will become inaccessible to you through broadband. The Republican party is operating on lies. It makes sense they would not want anything smacking of the truth to be seen. In addition, the owners of broadband also intend to charge you for everything you do on the Internet and everything you see.

Bush, of course, is leading all this. He's doing, you see, for his friends, the very rich owners and shareholders of corporations that want to own us all, lock, stock and barrel to the point that we cannot change laws, cannot communicate effectively with each other in order to take action against them, cannot protest against our slavery, cannot appeal to the courts.

Think I'm an alarmist? Just look at how he's setting the scene with his insistence he can spy on Americans at will:

According to Glenn Greenwald, a litigator in NYC specializing in First Amendment challenges, Gonzales’ argument is that this administration - and all administrations to come - "...have the right to use all war powers — of which warrantless eavesdropping is but one of many examples — against American citizens within the country.

And not only do they have the right to use those war powers against us, they have the right to use them even if Congress makes it a crime to do so or the courts rule that doing so is illegal.

Put another way, the administration has now baldly stated that whatever it is allowed to do against our enemies in a war, it is equally entitled to exercise all of the same powers against American citizens on American soil. …

The “war powers” which a president can use in war against our enemies are virtually limitless — they include indefinite detention in prison with no charges or access to lawyers, limitless eavesdropping, interrogation by means up to and perhaps including torture, and even killing.

The reason the administration claims it can engage in warrantless eavesdropping against Americans is because it has the general right to use all of these war powers against Americans on American soil, of which eavesdropping is but one example.

Without hyperbole (exaggeration), it is hard to imagine a theory more dangerous or contrary to our nation’s principles than a theory that vests the president — not just Bush but all future presidents — limitless authority to use war powers against American citizens within this country."

It's time to start writing letters to the White House, to your representatives and to the media. It's time to say you do not want to be thrown in jail, without bail, for looking at a blog critical of your government.

If we do not take action now, these neo-cons will do their best to take our remaining freedom from us. As the jobs dry up, one day people are going to wake up and want to protest. But guess what? It'll be Kent State in spades, with no restitution.

It happened in Germany. It happened in Italy. It happened in Spain. It happened in Greece.

Fascism is alive and well and marching steadily into a country you live in. It's coming in behind a man who seems inept, stupid, yet friendly so you don't recognize it. But he's just the front man, the wolf in sheep's clothing.

The time to act is now, not when after your livelihood and your liberty have been devoured and you find the only freedom you have is whether to buy generic brand X or Z.

RSS Feeds For Human Rights Watch

2006-01-09T12:07:00.000-08:00

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Human Rights Watch News Releases, United States
http://www.hrw.org/
Human Rights Watch on U.S. Foreign Policy and Human Rights
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Copyright 2004, Human Rights Watch
News Releases in English
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U.S. Operated Secret ‘Dark Prison’ in Kabul
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/19/afghan12319.htm
Accounts from detainees at Guantánamo reveal that the United States as recently as last year operated a secret prison in Afghanistan where detainees were subjected to torture and other mistreatment.
Mon, 19 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST
Afghanistan
Press Release

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U.S.: Landmark Torture Ban Undercut
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/16/usdom12311.htm
Congress Would Allow Evidence Obtained by Torture Even as the U.S. Congress has passed a prohibition against the use of torture and cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment, it is set to adopt legislation that would strip the judiciary’s ability to enforce the ban, Human Rights Watch warned today.
Fri, 16 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, Domestic
Press Release

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Clarification on CIA Prisons
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/09/usint12191.htm
An article today in the Polish newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza quotes a Human Rights Watch researcher concerning alleged CIA interrogations in Poland and Romania. Human Rights Watch has not reached final conclusions about CIA operations in eastern Europe.
Fri, 9 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, International
Press Release

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U.S.: Rice Response Inadequate
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/07/usdom12165.htm
(New York, December 8, 2005) – The U.S. Secretary of State's statement yesterday about U.S. obligations under international law does not answer key outstanding questions about the treatment of detainees in U.S. custody, Human Rights Watch said today.
Thu, 8 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, Domestic
Press Release

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U.S.: Rice Miscasts Policy on Torture
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/12/05/usint12147.htm
Remarks at Start of Europe Visit Leave Concerns Unanswered In remarks at the start of a five-day trip to Europe, the U.S. Secretary of State mischaracterized the U.S. government’s “rendition” of terrorist suspects to make it appear lawful, Human Rights Watch said today.
Mon, 5 Dec 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, International
Press Release

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U.S. Holding at Least Twenty-Six “Ghost Detainees”
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/30/usdom12113.htm
List of Detainees Published by Human Rights Watch The United States is holding at least twenty-six persons as “ghost detainees” at undisclosed locations outside of the United States, Human Rights Watch said today, as it released a list naming some of the detainees. The detainees are being held indefinitely and incommunicado, without legal rights or access to counsel.
Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, Domestic
Press Release

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U.S.: 1,000th Execution Scheduled for Friday
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/30/usdom12117.htm
On Friday, December 2, the United States will conduct the 1000th execution since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Wed, 30 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, Domestic
Press Release

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CIA Whitewashing Torture
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/21/usdom12069.htm
Statements by Goss Contradict U.S. Law and Practice Porter Goss, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, has made misleading statements about the CIA’s use of torture and mistreatment of detainees, Human Rights Watch said today.
Mon, 21 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, Domestic
Press Release

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U.S.: Restrictive Policies Undermine Anti-AIDS Efforts
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/09/usdom12006.htm
Amicus Curiae Brief Highlights Negative Impact on Public Health Interventions by Mandatory Anti-Prostitution Pledge In an Amicus Curiae brief issued today, Human Rights Watch and 22 organizations stated that USAID’s mandatory anti-prostitution pledge “runs counter to U.S. and internationally recognized public health practice, and human rights standards protecting the right to health.” The groups expressed concern that the anti-prostitution pledge precludes recipients of U.S. funds from using the best practices at their disposal to prevent HIV/AIDS among populations at high risk of HIV/AIDS, and serves to stigmatize those populations.
Wed, 9 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, Domestic
Press Release

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Human Rights Watch Statement on U.S. Secret Detention Facilities in Europe
http://hrw.org/english/docs/2005/11/07/usint11995.htm
The Washington Post reported on November 3, 2005 that the United States has used secret detention facilities in Eastern Europe and elsewhere to illegally hold terrorist suspects without rights or access to counsel. Citing U.S. government concerns, the article did not identify the locations in Eastern Europe.
Mon, 7 Nov 2005 00:00:00 EST
United States, International
Press Release

Thanks and Happy New Year!

2006-01-03T10:52:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year, fellow Progressives!

I want to thank all of you who have bought my political bumperstickers. It fills me with awe to know that all over the country you are displaying them on your bumpers. I feel a kinship with you all and my heart is full.

It's been a hard year as we've seen corporations grow richer and the poor grow poorer. I know it cannot just be me who wonders why Mother Earth washed away New Orleans. Why not Crawford, Texas instead? What's the lesson? Whatever it is, we better learn it.

And the scandals! What would have had another president impeached long ago has left this president virtually unscathed.

And so many people still identify with him and love him! They don't love Cheney or Rove or Rumsfeld, but their love for Bush spills over on to all the others. Yet, truthfully, it seems to be an insecure, fear based love.

Average Joes with money seem to love Bush precisely because he comes across as so ordinary. It's like they are afraid of Rhodes scholars and people who can speak another language - or even English - well. Such people make them feel inadequate. Of course they'd never admit it. They don't have the insight to even recognize the kernel of their disdain.

I have long thought that the Republican or conservative brain - as we know it now, that selfish, swindler's brain - is defective. It's not politically correct to say so, of course, but James Watson - it was either Watson or Crick who was interviewed on Charlie Rose (the pair mapped the DNA molecule) - who said that, biologically, brains are different.

The conservative - and I'm not talking sensible conservative here where you want to balance the budget and look for pragmatic solutions - I'm talking about the greedy, plundering, "no amount of money is enough, bring back the work houses" kind of brain - seems defective.

Why is it defective? Because it is more like a reptile's than a human's. It's the "kill or be killed" brain, not the "turn the other cheek" brain. It's a lower order brain on the evolutionary scale, I'd say. No wonder they reject evolution. And no wonder they are so paranoid about "liberals." They know we're superior!

Seriously, what pisses Progressives off is that we all know it would be easier to give in to the reptile brain - we all have it - but we don't. So here we are, trying to be "good" and compassionate and loving while these schweinhunds are skimming the cream, sending other people's children to war and, generally, reveling in taking full advantage of everyone else.

But - and here's our secret, the one that got us into this, the one that keeps the Repubs in power - Bush, et al are just mirrors of what we don't like in ourselves.

We don't really like our own arrogance and sense of entitlement as Americans. We know the world has a billion people starving, we know we use the majority of the world's resources and exploit cheap labor in third world countries so we can spend our Saturdays filling our carts full of crap at Wal-Mart, but we ignore it for the most part and let our government do what it wants. But guess what? Now our government is screwing us, so we can't ignore it any more.

The fact is, the Bush's and other very wealthy people who control this country and have allowed us to hitch a ride on their coattails have a very strong belief in their entitlement while poor people question their right to the air they breath.

I say it's time we all cultivated a belief in our entitlement to live in a beautiful, compassionate and loving country. I say it's time we started believing in and teaching spiritually grounded self-empowerment. All that means is that you look for what not only brings you joy and prosperity, but which also benefits everyone else.

Spirituality - not religon - teaches us to look for win-win solutions and to settle for nothing less. We learn to seek that which is most loving and helpful for the greatest number of people.

Unfortunately, to change anything means we have to realize Bush just reflects the part of our nation we were ignoring, yet responsible for. Hating Bush is like hating ourselves. It will get us nowhere, as we have seen.

So what do we do?

First, we have to stop hating the Bushies, et al. I know we love to hate them, but its counterproductive. We have to walk the talk. We can't be knowingly inconsistent.

But, speaking of inconsistencies - for which human beings are so well known - it continually amazes me that Pa Bush is so blind when it comes to his son.

In one breath he talks about the hurricane survivors and raises money with Clinton, in another breath he says he's "so proud" of his son who has treated the hurricane survivors like crap. It's like Papa Bush is a schizophrenic with two brains. He sees the terrible plight of those who lost their homes as a result of Katrina but is blind to the how Baby Bush's policies have helped create that misery and how Baby is turning his back on New Orleans and her people.

Belief is critical in human affairs. It's time we all cultivated the belief that we are entitled to a humane, compassionate government and that the loud and defectively selfish-brained no longer have credibility among the electorate. It's time to believe that more and more people will stand up for what's right, not what's politically expedient or what will make them a buck. We are, in short, wanting a miracle.

So let's co-opt God and miracles. Let's start by thanking God for abortion centers. Maybe we could have large groups go around blessing abortion centers and the women who seek them, affirming that they are doing God's work.

Okay, so that's tongue in cheek, but why not? Why not get together and begin blessing and praying for what WE want?

There are so many good and caring people in the U.S. Let us envision that miracle: that these people all become activists and join with us to create the America we all thought we lived in, one of justice and compassion.

I ask you, my friend, to do what I am going to try to do. I may not succeed, but these are my New Year's goals: to concentrate on those who are walking the talk and to be one of them; to stop fearing and despising those who are bankrupting us financially and morally, but to get involved trying to help someone, somewhere in a personal and hands-on way. I want to do more than sign petitions and create bumperstickers, although those things certainly have value.

I vow to see the Bushes and Cheneys and Roves and DeLays of the world as pitiful, pathetic creatures who must fall from their pedestals as part of natural selection, as did Hitler. Hitler wound up killing himself. Of course, maybe he's a bad example since he took sixty million people with him, before hand.

But, the point is this: he could not have come into power if not for the hate and desire for revenge enacted upon Germany for starting World War I. The world brought Hitler into being with its own unforgiveness and miserliness. And we all - God help us - brought Bush into being. I mean, could Canada have elected a Bush? Could France? Mai non. (But Kerry wouldn't have been a bad bet, with his command of French.)

I propose: cultivate humor and hilarity and promote science and education as a good things.

Laugh at those wicked Bushies, yes, yes, but no more hate; no more fantasies of revenge. Instead, let's concentrate on being the best Progressives we can be, the best people we can be. Adopt Arnie's phrase: "Zat's fantastic" instead of "I hate those bastards!"

Let's use our brains and come up with solutions and policies. Let's work hard to create what we want and know WE ARE ENTITLED to the America we want, an America that is loved and respected all over the world for her humanity.

Conservatives seem to hate the poor and see the American people as pawns who can be controlled with beer and fast food commercials. They certainly don't want to uplift us, so let's do it ourselves.

Me, I've given up Wal-Mart and Coke and McDonalds. (Well, I never did drink coke or eat McDonalds, but I haven't found another corporation to shun yet and one does not seem like enough. But I swear I didn't even buy a bow there over Christmas.)

I don't believe in the devil, but I do believe in God. And I believe God will help us help ourselves. But the first rule is: forgive the Bushies. Then stop going into debt to buy stuff you don't need that just makes the corporations richer and you poorer.

We in the U.S. have been sleepwalking through the mall of life for a long time. We got got the inevitable. The blessing for me is that, for the rest of my life, I will never be politically asleep again, no matter how much time it takes to stay informed.

Oh, and although I've been told since I was small not to discuss them because I might tread on some toes, my main topics will be politics and religion and ethics for the rest of my life. What else is important? Buying bargain fleece? Celebrities? Fluties drop kick? Please.

Oh, yeah, and one more thing: Despite the taboo against talking to other people's kids, I'm going to tell that kid over there to stop running around in the aisle while I'm drinking my latte and blogging. Self indulgent little bastard.

God bless you, my friend. And God bless America, the real America we hold in our hearts.

:>)

Faith-Based War

2005-11-23T16:05:00.000-08:00

The following article from antiwar.com. is very insightful. Bush's mistake is to keep harping on Democracy as a necessity of life as opposed to basic human rights. It is human rights that are what's key, not any specific mode of governing and those rights must include a guarantee that a person will not be tortured.

Faith-Based War by Patrick J. Buchanan 10/19/05

"This is a very positive day … for world peace," said President Bush, following the referendum on a new Iraqi constitution. "Democracies are peaceful countries." Considering that Iraq is perhaps the least peaceful country on earth, the statement seemed jarring.

It should not be. For it reflects a quasi-religious transformation in George W. Bush – his political conversion to democratism, a faith-based ideology that holds democracy to be the cure for mankind's ills, and its absence to be the principal cause of terror and war.

In the theology of a devout democratist, if Americans will only persevere in using their power to convert the Islamic world, then the whole world, to democracy, we will come as close as mankind can to creating heaven on earth.

As Bush said in his second inaugural, "So, it is the policy of the United States to seek and support the growth of democratic movements and institutions in every nation and culture, with the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in our world."

Speaking two weeks ago to the 20th birthday conclave of the National Endowment for Democracy, Bush recited the true believer's creed: "If the peoples [of the Middle East] are permitted to choose their own destiny … by their participation as free men and women, then the extremists will be marginalized and the flow of violent radicalism to the rest of the world will slow and eventually end."

The president was seconded by Vice President Cheney on CNN: "I think … we will, in fact, succeed in getting democracy established in Iraq, and I think that when we do, that will be the end of the insurgency."

Upon this faith Bush has wagered his presidency, the lives of America's best and bravest, and our entire position in the Middle East and the world. But as the Los Angeles Times' Tyler Marshall and Louise Roug report, U.S. field commander George Casey is skeptical that any election where Iraq's Sunnis are dispossessed of preeminence and power will ensure an end to terror. It may, he warns, bring new Sunni support for the insurgency.

Also challenging the Bush faith is Brian Jenkins, a terrorism specialist at RAND. He cites Colombia, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, and Northern Ireland as countries where democracy has failed to end political violence.

Nathan Brown, a Mideast expert at the Carnegie Endowment, agrees: "The democratic process as it has worked so far [in Iraq] has certainly done nothing to undermine the insurgency."

But the most sweeping challenge to President Bush's faith-based war comes from F. Gregory Gause III in Foreign Affairs. Writes Gause: "There is no evidence that democracy reduces terror. Indeed, a democratic Middle East would probably result in Islamist governments unwilling to cooperate with Washington."

In Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Syria, it is anti-American Islamists who seem positioned to seize power should it fall from the hands of the authoritarian rulers the National Endowment for Democracy and its neoconservative allies seek to destabilize and dump over.

If Gause is right and Bush wrong, the fruits of our bloody war for democracy in Iraq could mean a Middle East more hostile to American values and U.S. vital interests than the one Bush inherited.

That would be a strategic disaster of historic dimension.

Not only does democracy offer no guarantee against terror, writes Gause, democracies are the most frequent targets of terror. Not one incident of terror was reported in China between 2000 and 2003, but democratic India suffered 203. Israel, the most democratic nation in the Middle East, endured scores of acts of terror from 2000 to 2005. Syria's dictatorship experienced almost none. While Saddam's Iraq was terror-free, democratic Iraq suffers daily attacks.

Researching 25 years of suicide bombings, scholar Robert Pape found the leading cause was not a lack of democracy, but the presence of troops from democratic nations on lands terrorists believe by right belong to them.

The United States was hit on 9/11 because we had an army on Saudi soil. Britain and Spain were hit for sending troops to occupy Iraq. Russia was hit at Beslan because she is perceived as occupying Chechnya.

Democracy is thus no more a cure for terror than its absence is the cause. Osama has no moral objection to dictatorships. He means to establish one, a caliphate where mosque and state are joined, and sharia law is imposed without recourse to referendum.

As with Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Ho, and Castro, so, too, with bin Laden and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Such men seek absolute power and use revolutionary terror as the means to establish their dictatorships.

By January, we shall know whether Iraqi democracy is the antidote to terror Bush believes it to be. If it is not, he and we will have to face the grim consequences of his conversion to a utopian ideology in the name of which he pursued a potentially calamitous three-year war.

COPYRIGHT CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.

Please Let Our Soldiers Live

2005-11-16T16:36:00.000-08:00

If anyone watched FRONTLINE last week, you know now that, although abortion may be legal, the Reich has imposed a mountain of legislation requiring poor women to jump through so many hoops that the end result is most can't get abortions.

Okay, there's one of two things we can do.

We can give in and admit the abortion issue, although already lost, is killing us and drop it as a progressive issue and then sweep every office in the country.

The right to life can then be reframed as a "right to life" for gays and lesbians, since that term will have lost its function on behalf of fetuses.

The other option is to keep allowing this issue to turn our nation over to callous conservatives who do far more damage beyond forcing poor women to bear children they cannot afford. Frankly, considering how Republicans hate and fear poor people, I have never understood why it is not Republicans who are not in favor of abortion, not as a humane issue of human rights for women, but as a way of getting rid of poor people.

But they haven't had to reveal that they really, the majority of them, don't mind abortion at all.

It's time to be as pragmatic as the Republicans and admit we're less fond of it then they, we were only trying to mitigate women's suffering and poverty.

But we're no longer doing that.

Abortion in this country, except for in a few states such as California, has become a mute issue. It's been taken away. The right is gone. We lost the fight.

It's just that no one except poor women, who of course have no voice, realizes it yet.

Making an abortion impossible to obtain would not be such a terrible abridgment of a woman's right to choose if she had choices other than raising her kid in poverty, living without health care, working for an obscenely low minimum wage, having no access to affordable day care so she can go back to school or get a good job (not some nightshift position at McDonald's) and had financial help in actually raising her kid other than the scourge of Welfare.

This is the hypocrisy of the Reich. They force you to raise children in poverty as they work to get rid of Headstart, schools, scholarships and foodstamps. They refuse to provide medical care for these kids, refuse to provide anything that would give them "a leg up."

Surely, if their God exists, and I mean the hell fire and brimstone one that they threaten everyone else with, they will be first in line for the pitchfork, based on their stunning hypocrisy and how they are so intent on punishing poor women, and women in general, for having sex.

What's next? Stoning?

Oh, these "Christian" hypocrites wouldn't do that, at least not unless they're also going to start building workhouses and orphanages a la Charles Dickens' world as well. For you know they don't want any responsibility for these children.

Do you know these groups go to abortion clinics en mass and say things like "Please mommy, I want to live?" over and over like a chant in these poor woman's faces?

I think it's time we began taking pictures of our soldiers to churches whose congregations support the war in Iraq and start chanting, "Please, brother, we want to live."

Take it to Washington and chant, "We want to live." But don't expect a permit for gathering. Expect to be arrested for standing up for the lives of real, living people.

Cindy Sheehan was.

It's only fetuses the religious and political Reich love. Probably because they can't vote, have no opinions and, as adults, can be convinced to fight unnecessary wars so people like Bill O'Reilly can live the fat life.

Speaking of which,I love this article from the San Francisco Chronicle by Mark Morford:

It's almost too easy. He's too easy a target, really, Bill O'Reilly of the casually toxic Fox News, too bloviated and too silly and too undercooked, and no one whose opinion you truly value or with an IQ higher than their waist size actually watches him with anything resembling intellectual honesty or takes anything he says the slightest bit seriously. You hope.

Especially when he, like Pat Robertson ranting about how gays caused Sept. 11 or that Dover, Pa., is now a doomed and godless hell pit, given how the town fired every single one the imbecilic, intelligent design-supporting Repubs from the school board, especially when Billy goes off his nut once again and essentially wishes al Qaeda would attack San Francisco, well, it is up to us to merely look at him like Shiva looks at a sea slug -- i.e., a moment of compassion for his regrettable incarnation -- and then laugh and shake our heads and move the hell on.

I mean, what else do you want to do? Allow him credence? Give his infantile words any sort of weight and import? Let him slither into your heart like a worm and fester and burn? O'Reilly is, after all, the Right's most self-aggrandizing blowhard, one who still vilifies France like a child who hates broccoli, one who has, next to Rush Limbaugh, perhaps the worst spin in all of media.

And he is one who now suggests that because San Francisco dared to ban aggressive military recruiting in our high schools so disadvantaged 18-year-olds won't be unwittingly sucked into the brutish military vortex so they can be shipped off to Iraq to die for appalling and indefensible reasons, al Qaeda should blow up Coit Tower.

What do you do with that? You laugh. Sure, file a formal complaint with the Fox network. Sure, demand that Billy be fired, which is a bit like demanding Ronald McDonald be canned from the McDonald's corporation for poisoning our children. Yes, you have to do it, even if such complaints come from someone like San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly, not exactly the poster child for tact and grace when it comes to political maneuvering.

But of course, it won't make one bit of difference. BOR is still Fox's cash cow. He draws big ratings, even here in the Bay Area. And even if O'Reilly's cultural relevance is tanking right along with the bad ship BushCo, he's still getting PR for miles out of the childish comment. Hell, you're reading a column about it right now, which means all those extremist right-wing inbreeding sites get to squeal "San Francisco in Uproar Over O'Reilly Comments," and grunt and revel in our displeasure. Ah well. It matters not.

Here's the takeaway, the only thing you need to know: Bill O'Reilly is a walking, snorting cautionary tale. For those of us who occasionally tread similar terrain of barbed political commentary (tempered, I hope, with satire and hope and sex and humor and fire hoses of divine juice), he is the Grand Pariah, the threshold, the Place You Do Not Want To Go as an intellectually curious human soul. He is the guy you can always look to, no matter how bad it gets, and say, Wow, at least I'm not him.

In a way, we should be grateful for O'Reilly and Robertson and Limbaugh and Coulter and their slime-slinging ilk. They live in those black and nasty psycho-emotional places, so we don't have to. They show us how ugly we can be, how poisonous and ill, so we may recoil and say, Whoa, you know what? I think I need to be more gentle and less judgmental and kinder to those I love. BOR works an inverse effect on anyone with a vibrant and active soul -- he makes us better by sucking all the grossness into himself and blowing it out via a TV channel no one of any spiritual acumen really respects anyway.

Hell, this very column has been known to wallow in political extremes too, often and regularly wishing fiery karmic pain upon Rove and Cheney and Dubya et al. for the humanitarian and environmental and moral hells they have unleashed upon our once-prosperous, gorgeous, diverse nation, and for the wars and the homophobia and the misogyny and the rampant lies and the unchecked ignorance of the workings of the human spirit.

But I would never go so far as to wish terrorists would blow up, say, Washington, D.C. Or Bill O'Reilly's personal fetish dungeon at Fox HQ in New York. I would never take a similar BOR tack and suggest that every red state that openly supports Bush and his miserable wars (and by extension, O'Reilly and his miserable worldview) should offer up their kid as a blood sacrifice to the Iraq War.

Check that: Maybe I would. Of course I would. But I would recognize the inherent silliness of it all, and the futility, and push it so far into satire that I'd suggest we also send in the NRA, and the Bush daughters, and Ashlee Simpson, and moreover I'd suggest they string up Karl Rove as bait because you know what Islamic extremists think of creatures both godless and porcine.

Conversely, BOR, of course, takes himself quite seriously, the inflation of his ego and speed of his rapid-fire fury matched only by the obvious deterioration of his heart.

But maybe that's not quite true. It has been rumored, somewhere, that Bill O'Reilly has a soul, that he was personally hurt and wronged by that sex scandal last year, that he's reasonably intelligent and that his almost comical lack of nuanced comprehension on the air and in his public persona, like Bush's mumbling incoherence or Condi Rice's apparent lack of the slightest hint of femininity, is a bit of a stage act, a dumb ruse that masks a keener intelligence, all designed to milk his bloviation for his bloody, mealy slice of fleeting fame. You may believe this as you wish.

It does not matter. What is clear is that BOR has made a Faustian bargain of the ugliest kind, taken on a worldview where there is no room for humor and light and sex and joy and grace, whereby he gets to unleash streams of rather appalling ignorance upon the progressive segments of the nation -- like, you know, cities that dare to encourage peace and nonviolence and a measured, respectful response to the world -- and he gets paid enormous sums and lives like an angry, sneering king, while the gods of karma can only sigh, and shake their heads, and wait.

Mark Morford's Notes & Errata column appears every Wednesday and Friday on SF Gate and in the Datebook section of the SF Chronicle. To get on the e-mail list for this column, please click here and remove one article of clothing. Mark's column also has an RSS feed and an archive of past columns, which includes a tiny photo of Mark probably insufficient for you to recognize him in the street and give him gifts.

As if that weren't enough, Mark also contributes to the hot, spankin' SF Gate Culture Blog.

Times: Put Darth Cheney Out To Pasture

2005-11-09T03:28:00.000-08:00

The 11/8/05 editorial from the New York Times (cut and pasted below) is a model of objectivity. The Times calls for Bush to send Cheney on a three-year-long wild goose chase while Bush asserts his leadership, shows he's in control and crafts better policy.

Okay, do we laugh now or later?

In fairness, The Times is a conservative, rational publication that bases its opinions on facts in order to maintain its stature and credibility. It does not print opinions based on gut feelings.

I, however, can say what I like. I'm not bound by reputation. And my gut has told me this for a long time:

Bush isn't a leader and he's not in control. He wouldn't know good policy if God appeared to him and pointed it out. Anti-Christs Cheney and Rove tell him what to do, get his agreement on things they want to further their agendas and tell him - especially Rove tells him - how to present it to the American people.

Have you ever listened to Bush and gotten the feeling he doesn't quite understand what he's saying? That he doesn't quite grasp his own reasoning?

It's because he's the puppet, the rich boy along for the ride as a figurehead to play golf, fly in that big ol' jet and act important. He doesn't understand the ramifications of anything he's done or is doing.

I admire the Times. Usually they get it right. But just as Bush backed down on Rove and Libby, Bush is not about to tell the real leader of this nation - Darth Cheney - to spend his time attending funerals and leave policy formulation to him (Bush). If Bush did, he'd be totally at sea, because Bush is not a leader.

If someone doesn't tell Bush what to do, he doesn't know what to do. We saw that when he continued reading to gradeschoolers after he was informed of the attacks on New York City. He waited until someone came and got him and told him what he was supposed to do.

Bush has dropped the ball more times than the worst fielder. He's caused more suffering for more people than any President since Truman dropped the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

And, quite frankly, since we were looking at a potential minimum of another 250,000 dead GI's in trying to take over Japan in hand-to-hand combat (because Japan had no intention of surrendering, but fighting to the death of every citizen) Truman's actions were far more justifiable. Also, don't forget a key fact. Unlike the war in Iraq, we didn't start the war with Japan. Japan did.

Bush has, therefore, caused more STUPIDLY unnecessary suffering and death. And not just abroad in Iraq - where he's made that country into a nightmare - but here at home.

Just look at all the cuts to the poor. He's anti-union and seems in favor of killing the Middle class. Witness the increased bankrupcies. Look at the nightmare he's made of the schools, enacting legislation whose real agenda is to kill our public schools. Meanwhile teaching time is diverted to "test them to death" time.

Then look at all the bad policy decisions in regard to gutting FEMA and failing to prepare levees and coastlines for the predicted Category Hurricane that every expert said would destroy New Orleans whenever it struck.

The only explanations for the latter example in terms of all he's done and not done - other than stupidity, incompetence and callousness - is that there really has been a silent conspiracy in which certain powers were hoping for that "big one" to clear out all the slums and public housing.

So much of the suffering in this country and abroad that has occurred never had to happen. It's not so much God made, as Bush et al made.

So my prediction is we're looking at three more years of hell and there's no getting around it. Our country will continue spiraling further down the tubes while Bush/Cheney et al fight for tax cuts for the rich and torture for those detained.

Rome will burn while Nero fiddles and the world waits, straining at the bit, for a day in November 2008 when this fool and his callous and dangerous entourage will be turned out of office.

But you decide. Below is the Times editorial.

By the way, I still predict that, at the end of his term, Bush will pardon Libby and anyone else in his administration that's convicted of wrong doing. Look for him to pardon DeLay and Abramoff too, should either see jail time.

November 8, 2005
Editorial
President Bush's Walkabout
After President Bush's disastrous visit to Latin America, it's unnerving to realize that his presidency still has more than three years to run. An administration with no agenda and no competence would be hard enough to live with on the domestic front. But the rest of the world simply can't afford an American government this bad for that long.

In Argentina, Mr. Bush, who prides himself on his ability to relate to world leaders face to face, could barely summon the energy to chat with the 33 other leaders there, almost all of whom would be considered friendly to the United States under normal circumstances. He and his delegation failed to get even a minimally face-saving outcome at the collapsed trade talks and allowed a loudmouthed opportunist like the president of Venezuela to steal the show.

It's amazing to remember that when Mr. Bush first ran for president, he bragged about his understanding of Latin America, his ability to speak Spanish and his friendship with Mexico. But he also made fun of Al Gore for believing that nation-building was a job for the United States military.

The White House is in an uproar over the future of Karl Rove, the president's political adviser, and spinning off rumors that some top cabinet members may be asked to walk the plank. Mr. Bush could certainly afford to replace some of his top advisers. But the central problem is not Karl Rove or Treasury Secretary John Snow or even Donald Rumsfeld, the defense secretary. It is President Bush himself.

Second terms may be difficult, but the chief executive still has the power to shape what happens. Ronald Reagan managed to turn his messy second term around and deliver - in great part through his own powers of leadership - a historic series of agreements with Mikhail Gorbachev that led to the peaceful dismantling of the Soviet empire. Mr. Bush has never demonstrated the capacity for such a comeback. Nevertheless, every American has a stake in hoping that he can surprise us.

The place to begin is with Dick Cheney, the dark force behind many of the administration's most disastrous policies, like the Iraq invasion and the stubborn resistance to energy conservation. Right now, the vice president is devoting himself to beating back Congressional legislation that would prohibit the torture of prisoners. This is truly a remarkable set of priorities: his former chief aide was indicted, Mr. Cheney's back is against the wall, and he's declared war on the Geneva Conventions.

Mr. Bush cannot fire Mr. Cheney, but he could do what other presidents have done to vice presidents: keep him too busy attending funerals and acting as the chairman of studies to do more harm. Mr. Bush would still have to turn his administration around, but it would at least send a signal to the nation and the world that he was in charge, and the next three years might not be as dreadful as they threaten to be right now.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Bush: Leader for the 12th Century

2005-11-08T15:54:00.000-08:00

Who would have thought that now, in the 21st century, torture would be something that people in this country would banter about quite easily, as though it's a game?

Yet, it's not a game to cause any person physical or psychological agony.

In fact, torture is completely unnecessary given the truth serums we have at our disposal. Heck, even laughing gas in a dentist's chair has always made me spill the beans about my life.

It is, therefore, disgraceful that President Bush, after labeling himself a Christian, has shown that he obeys none of Christ's teachings, but claimed to, to get votes.

For despite the fact that Forbes reported that U.S. authorities have confirmed that torture occurred (the acknowledgement was made in a report submitted to the UN Committee against Torture, according to a member of the ten-person panel, speaking on on condition of anonymity), despite the documentation by the well-respected Amnesty International, and despite the wide-spread photographic evidence to the contrary, today President Bush issued this declaration today: "We do not torture."

He said this even as he fights his own Republican lead Congress to keep torture legal. The U.S. Senate passed legislation banning torture, yet both President Bush and Vice-President Cheney are seeking an exemption for the CIA which maintains a network of prisons in eastern Europe and Asia - previously unknown - where terrorist suspects are held and, obviously, tortured.

If they weren't being tortured, why would this administration be seeking an exemption? The answer is obvious. They wouldn't.

So this President and Vice-President stand for torture.

And what message does this give our nation?

The first message is that President Bush is lying to us once again - as he did in his case for the war in Iraq - to further his own political agenda. The reason for this baffles Republican Senator Chuck Hagel who has labeled the President's position "a terrible mistake," adding: "Why in the world they're doing that, I don't know."

Of note, John McCain, who knows first hand why torture must be banned, has stated that "Our image in the world is suffering very badly, and one of the reasons for it is the perception that we abuse people that we take captive."

As Senator Dick Durbin said, torturing and degrading people in custody "is not what America is about. Those aren't the values we're fighting for."

But perhaps those are precisely the values that this administration - and those who voted for it wittingly or unwittingly - are for. They represent a certain callous mindset that is gaining popularity.

Note this story that serves as a barometer for where we are heading, as a nation:

The Mayor of Las Vegas, Oscar Goodman, has suggested that those who deface his city with graffiti should have their thumbs cut off on television.

He also advocates public whippings and canings.

And he is serious.

It is outrageous that we have reached a place where such a barbaric idea can be owned - and promoted - by a public official.

So what's next? Public stoning? It would fit in the package. Yet isn't that what we say we're against?

[And the reason we're in Iraq? Isn't it because Saddam tortured? Guess not.]

Exerpted from Prayerforce Blog

G.O.P.'s New Plan: Only The Rich May Run

2005-10-21T11:40:00.000-07:00

If you want to see an animation of the 21 named hurricanes in the 2005 season, from Arlene to Wilma, go here, click on the arrow and wait for it to load.

I don't know why it should astound me that the media - virtually all right-wing owned at this point - has now created a spin about the hurricanes in which they, cleverly, mention Global Warming, but only do so to say that that this spate in hurricanes is "just part of a cycle" due to warming seas.

Hmmm. Warming seas.

Excuse me, but why are the seas so much warmer as we proceed through this la-de-da-no-problem-folks-ignore-that-man-behind-the-curtain cycle?

Could it be because Global Warming has caused the warming of those seas? Does the fact that 50% of Arctic ice has melted in the last 50 years tell them that this isn't an ordinary 25-year cycle, but part of a much bigger picture?

Nah, more people might actually wake up from their ignorance and demand changes if media admitted that the heat and smog we're created - that our industries have created - have turned us into Planet Greenhouse.

We are going to continue to get wacked until people wake up. Mother Nature is fighting back and in an all-out war, guess what? We're going to lose any way you cut it.

Speaking of getting wacked, today the New York Times finally printed a story that, after five years of watching the insanity unfold under Bush, should be anti-climactic, old news.

The headline reads: Former Powell Aide Says Bush Policy Is Run By Cabal

It has been so clear since the days before we entered Iraq that our foreign policy, most notably represented by the debacle in Iraq, is the deformed brain child of a handful of wing-nuts, the main players of which are Rumsfeld and Cheney.

Yet, here we are two-and-a-half years later still getting wacked by Bush et al and still in denial about it.

Thanks to the great job by reich-wing media, Republican lockstep and the masters of spin and deception surrounding Bush et al - including Rove - the fact that this administration is completely dysfunctional is not only "news" but, hilariously - although in a dark way - "controversial."

Come on. For anyone paying attention for the last five years, it's not controversial at all, but the truth.

Wake up, people.

One quote says it all:

"Mr. Wilkerson suggested that the dysfunction within the administration was so grave that 'if something comes along that is truly serious, truly serious, something like a nuclear weapon going off in a major American city, or something like a major pandemic, you are going to see the ineptitude of this government in a way that will take you back to the Declaration of Independence.'"

Oh we see it, those of us who've been looking for five years, have seen it and it makes our stomachs turn.

The tip of that iceberg in terms of the incredible incompetence and heartlessness - the disconnect from the reality of how their policies affect real people - is revealed today in the testimony of FEMA employee Marty J. Bahamonde.

His desperate e-mails to FEMA officials regarding the dire situation affecting people in New Orleans and the levee breaches were ignored, so he sent one directly to Michale Brown stating: "I know you know, the situation is past critical. Hotels are kicking people out, thousands gathering in the streets with no food or water."'

An aide to Mr. Brown responded hours later that Director Michael Brown would need a restaurant in Baton Rouge that night. "It is very important that time is allowed for Mr. Brown to eat dinner," the message said.

Like Nero, who fiddled while Rome burned, Brown ate while New Orleans drowned.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. Everything's either been gutted or is on the table (such as the new move to privatize our national parks), part of the ongoing agenda to kill this country and all she had come to stand for: equality, opportunity, fairness, intelligence, preservation (of her land, water, air) and real liberty other than the choice to buy product a or b.

Fortunately, Wilkerson's got the credentials to say that Bush's adminstration is dysfunctional. Besides being Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff at the State Department from 2001 to early 2005, Lawrence Wilkerson is a retired Army colonel and former director of the Marine Corps War College.

It's so tragic, so wounding when you love your country and know what she could have been after Clinton. With our debt paid down and the love of the world after 9/11, we could have completely reshaped our energy priorities and created an entirely new philosophical paradigm promoting peace and sustainability.

Nope, we chose the $300 tax cut - who cares that billionaires get enough to fund some cities for a year as a result - and the "we're not changing, we'll just drop bombs and take Iraq's oil, and, now that that's done, how about we go out for Chinese tonight and stop at the mall afterwards?" mentality.

Now the coals are heaping upon our heads. This country's sin of not paying attention and electing such a selfish, stupid person as this President and his cabel of arrogant and self-serving fascists is coming home to each of us, up close and personal.

But it is said a people gets the leaders it deserves. If you, as a voter, insist upon remaining inept at understanding science, politics and the nature of the world and our place in it - while arrogantly proclaiming the U.S. can do whatever it likes - then you get someone like Bush.

If you understand, but you're too busy or "angry at the system" to get involved, refusing to study the issues, vote or support a good candiate for local, state and federal offices, you get someone like Bush anyway.

And those in perpetual denial who dared to label us "unpatriotic" in order to silence us from speaking about the lies, spite, corruption, ineptitude and callousness creating disasters for us?

Or those who have been justifiers or apologists for Bush, his henchmen and his policies while slandering Democrats?

I don't even want to go there. There would be a special place in hell reserved for them, if there were any hell other than the one we are seeing unfold right here, on earth.

As Dr. Phil says, there are no victims, only volunteers. And everyone who remained ignorant about who Mr. Bush was prior to both elections, who he surrounded himself with and what his agenda was going to be, is just as much to blame as those who love his agenda and would bring back poor houses and torture.

Democracy can be exhausting. It can require turning off American Idol and watching Senate debates instead. It can require actually learning that the earth goes around the sun and not vice-versa. (I'm talking to the 1 in 5 adult Americans who are confused on that issue.) It requires voting and being engaged and caring what the hell happens to the rest of your countrymen.

Oh, and it requires learning about history and science and getting over the acute insecurity that makes small-minded people reject facts because it's easier to deny them.

Our nation's people - especially those voting Republican - have been intellectually and morally lazy. Instead of studying, they like to label those interested in knowledge, language, science and the arts as "elitists." They think money - not the quality of our collective soul - is the measure of our lives.

Meanwhile the real elitists - the ones with private jets, five homes and no tie to reality who are controlling us all - have gotten to turn their pitchforks on those parts of government that actually helped people live, like schools, FEMA, Head Start, fire departments, Medicaid and those agencies that worked to give us air to breath, forests to visit and levees that could hold back water.

But whatever you name, there is nothing in this country that this adminstration and this Republican controlled Congress hasn't poisoned and diminished and overcharged us for.

Yet, Democrats helped them get elected through laziness and arrogance. They betrayed their roots, becoming "Republican Light" while still distancing themselves from all talk about God. Portrayed as godless, the DNC leadership failed this country and allowed the anti-Christ to do a cake-walk into power.

There's been a multitude of sins to which we've all, in one way or another, contributed. As more and more of us pay the price it will all become very real, up close and personal.

I predict few of us will remain unscathed. Before we're back on track I predict there will be no one in any economic class who has not suffered, be it from the war, hurricanes or some pandemic, as payment for our own ineptitude in allowing such ignorant and callous hooligans to take the reins of our government and declare government's task is NOT to look out for the welfare of it's citizens.

Yet now Republicans - in political danger due to their incredible list of follies and corruption - want to make their coup complete by getting rid of the $3 contributions we make to fund presidential campaigns for candidates poorer than George Bush.

If you want more George Bushes, Dick Cheneys, Don Rumsfelds, Karl Roves, et al in government from now on, then stop reading.

If you don't, then read the following editorial and send a letter or an e-mail to your Representatives and Senators today telling them you won't stand for it.

It takes time, but time will be all we have, eventually, as we look around at our nation of ruin.

October 21, 2005
New York Times Editorial

Hiding Behind Katrina

It takes gall to use Hurricane Katrina as cover to undermine the democratic process, but that's what conservative ideologues are attempting in the House. Among their budget-cutting proposals - being sold as "tough choices" for America to pay for the Gulf Coast recovery - is a startling plan to kill public financing in the presidential election system.

That program, financed by $3 checkoffs volunteered by taxpayers on their returns, has been a bulwark of presidential elections. It was enacted about 30 years ago, after the Watergate scandal exposed the big-money bagmen corrupting the heart of the political process. It makes politics more competitive for underdogs, more involving for the public and less reliant on floods of special-interest campaign money.

Congress should indeed turn its attention to the program - not to end it, but to repair its outdated limits. The primary calendar has become so front-loaded that the candidates with the strongest sources of private donations are now choosing to skip the limitations of public financing so they can spend early and furiously, leaving other challengers at a disadvantage.

The primary subsidy formula needs to be made more realistic to level the field, and the checkoff amount should be increased. Candidates should not be allowed to have it both ways by feeding on private money in the primaries, then switching to public money in the general election, as President Bush and Senator John Kerry did last year.

Under the current system, participating candidates in the primaries receive matching funds for the first $250 of each private contribution. This one-to-one formula should be increased to two-to-one matching or more as a way to invite more of the small donations that began showing up impressively last year from Internet users.

Sponsors of the House proposal must know they are wrong because they are trying to tuck the change into a budget bill without a public hearing and debate. If they want budget cuts, they should focus on government waste, not open elections.

Time For America To Wake Up

2005-10-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Republican Senator John McCain is sending Americans e-mails alerting them to his findings during a recent trip to the Arctic: that it's melting with alarming speed.

Yet we've had thirty years of warnings. We didn't heed them because poorer nations have always felt the effects of our folly before we do. Indeed, as with the tsunami, it seems we have thought the effects of our assault on the earth would never touch us.

The spate in hurricanes - and the assurance more are coming - has begun to clue us in. But, as usual, Africa is first in line to suffer the effects as the effects of Global Warming begin to manifest in exponential proportion.

According to the article below, South African leaders now understand that they must change or die. Now the question is, when will we?

We must adapt to climate change - or die

By Caroline Hooper-Box

As Earth hurtles towards potentially disastrous changes in temperature, top scientists from Africa and the rest of the world will meet South African government officials on Monday in Midrand to discuss the threat of climate change in South Africa and the sub-continent.

In South Africa, the effects of global warming are predicted to include the spread of diseases such as tick-bite fever, cholera and malaria; the extinction of plants and animals; and ruined crops.

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka is to deliver the opening address at the National Climate Change Conference, where delegates will thrash out options for responding to the crisis.

Globally, nine of the past 10 years have been the warmest since records began in 1861. Research confirms that climate change is "a real and significant threat to biodiversity in South Africa", according to Guy Midgley of the South African National Biodiversity Institute.

South Africa's botanical treasures - the succulent Karoo and fynbos biomes, recognised as specialised ecosystems of rich plant biodiversity - are under grave threat. Once temperatures rise 2,4Â°C higher than they are now, the Karoo's 2 800 endemic plant species will become extinct. Above 3Â¼C, the Kruger National Park is projected to lose two-thirds of its animals.

Some species in the Kruger Park are already disappearing, Norman Owen-Smith, a Wits university scientist, said. "Half the species in the park may want to be somewhere else in 20 to 30 years' time."

Sable and roan antelope in particular will want to move west of the Kruger, where rainfall is higher, he said, but are unable to move beyond the park fences.

South Africa's biodiversity provides livelihoods for a significant number of rural South Africans who are victims of poverty, Midgley said.

Maize is particularly susceptible to drought
This was confirmed by a report on the impact of climate change to be presented at the conference this week by Council for Scientific and Industrial Research scientists Graham von Maltitz and Carmel Mbizvo. They predict that in most instances, climate change will add stress to already fragile livelihoods.

Because 70 percent of Africa's population relies on agriculture for its livelihood, and because the continent includes some of the world's poorest nations, it is particularly susceptible to climate change.

Southern Africa's staple food, maize, is particularly susceptible to drought.

The southwestern tip of Africa will see less rain as the planet heats up, Von Maltitz and Mbizvo say, "and it is this area where some of the most severe livelihood consequences may result".

The United Nations Environment Programme predicts that an increase in temperature is likely to reduce soil moisture and soil quality, both of which are vital for agriculture, as well as to generate a proliferation of pests.

The UN has warned that by 2050 as many as 150 million "environmental refugees" may have fled coastlines vulnerable to rising sea levels, storms or floods, or agricultural land that has become too arid to cultivate.

In South Africa, a broad reduction of rainfall in the range of 5 to 10 percent for the summer rainfall region is predicted. This is likely to be accompanied by an increased incidence of drought and floods, with prolonged dry spells being followed by intense storms.

The department of environmental affairs and tourism says the increased temperatures and changes in rainfall can be expected to affect health, including an increase in the occurrence of strokes, skin rashes, dehydration and skin cancers.

South Africa's east coast is expected to become wetter, with an accompanying increase in the incidence of diseases such as cholera, malaria and sleeping sickness.

In a warmer world, mosquitoes and ticks could also expand their range to higher altitudes.

Peter Luckey, the chief director of the department of environmental affairs, told reporters this week that climate change science predicted more frequent and intense extreme weather conditions, and said that "in most cases, they will be changes that affect our everyday lives".

Bruce Hewitson of the climate systems analysis group at the University of Cape Town said what was needed most in this period of climate change was "following up on adaptation and responding to impact".

It was too late to mitigate the effects of climate change, Hewitson said. "There is nothing we can do to prevent climate change for this generation."

This article was originally published on page 3 of The Sunday Independent on October 16, 2005

Published on the Web by IOL on 2005-10-16 09:33:00

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Â© Independent Online 2005. All rights reserved.

Harriet Mier: Bush's One Right Thing?

2005-10-14T15:01:00.000-07:00

The storm over Harriet Miers seems to be subsiding. Her biggest threat, it turns out, has been from loudmouth, self-satisfied powerbrokers like Bill Kristol who cannot relate to her, because, from all indicators, she doesn't play by their rules.

Ms. Miers is neither loud nor self-aggrandizing. She doesn't insult others or dismiss people with contempt. She, apparently, operates with that quality which is seldom seen among "real" people, and seems to have been surgically removed from those who seek power: humility. Focused on the details of her job, she is described as having an integrity we haven't seen from the "stars" of the Bush White House.

At least this is what Matthew Scully writes today in a New York Times Op-Ed piece entitled The Harriet Miers I know.

My personal opinion is that, given the staggering list of things President Bush has done wrong during his administration, it was just a matter of time before he had to get something right. And, just maybe, that something will be the choice of Harriet Miers for Supreme Court Justice.

He certainly has chosen incompetent people for important jobs. But worse than that, he has chosen arrogant people.

Some have been very good at doing their jobs because of that arrogance, when those jobs have been to pull the wool over the eyes of the electorate.

But others - like Donald Rumsfeld telling the Pentagon to ignore the 1200 page State Department report compiled by experts on how to avoid the debacle we now have in Iraq - have gone on, through arrogance, to compound mistakes tenfold through their combination of arrogance and ignorance.

Time will tell if Ms. Miers will prove to be a blessing for these United States. But, in the meantime, from Mr. Scully's description, I like her.

I don't think she'll obnoxiously and ingenuously argue there's no separation between Church and State in our Constitution because the signers wrote "in the year of our Lord" at the end, as another lawyer and political spokeswoman for the off-base insists.

We could have gotten that mentality, God help us.

Besides her humility and attention to facts, we could use a little civility. We could use a role model that argues using ideas, not insults, that relies on facts, not conjecture. I might even be inspired to clean up my own act a little bit, as much as I believe Rove, Rumsfeld, DeLay, et al have earned bonus cat calls.

One thing we need in politics and in the judiciary are people with integrity and grace. If Harriet Mier, indeed, has these qualities, she has my blessing.

And for a taste of Mr. Scully's opinions, read on. But careful, he might convince you that the top people in our administration are not really Republicans at all, but some sinister mutant variation - Neo-Conensis - because this guy is someone you really might find yourself liking.

Excerpt from The Harriet Mier I Know by Matthew Scully

My friend David Frum expresses the general complaint when he asks, in his blog, when did Harriet Miers "ever take a risk on behalf of conservative principle? Can you see any indication of intellectual excellence? Did she ever do anything brave, anything that took backbone?" To translate: When all the big-thinkers were persevering year after year at policy institutes and conferences at the Mayflower Hotel, or risking all for principle in stirring op-ed essays and $20,000 lectures, where was Little Miss Southern Methodist University?

If four years observing the woman is any guide, the answer is she was probably doing something useful. But whatever she was up to, it's not good enough. Harriet Miers, says Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, is undoubtedly a well-meaning person, but he was expecting "brilliance," and her selection signaled "weakness" and "capitulation." Mr. Kristol also suggested how the Miers nomination could be withdrawn. In the tone of Michael Corleone laying out some general instructions, he said that with Ms. Miers out of the way, "the president's aides would explain that he miscalculated out of loyalty and admiration for her personal qualities," adding, "and he could quickly nominate a serious, conservative and well-qualified candidate for the court vacancy."

When it was Mr. Kristol's charming friend John Bolton whose fate was in question, that was family business, and for the president no price was too high for loyalty. But Harriet Miers, who is only the president's friend, is now to be led away like Carlo in "The Godfather" with his "ticket to Vegas." Quickly replace her with some credentialed luminary, and in a week no one will even ask where the woman is.

Overlooked in all this caviling is the actual ability and character of the person in question. Indeed, about the best quality to recommend Harriet Miers just now is that she is not at all the sort of person who goes about readily and confidently dismissing other people as third-raters, hacks and mediocrities. She has too much class for that.

It is true that Harriet Miers, in everything she does, gives high attention to detail. And the trait came in handy with drafts of presidential speeches, in which she routinely exposed weak arguments, bogus statistics and claims inconsistent with previous remarks long forgotten by the rest of us. If one speech declared X "our most urgent domestic priority," and another speech seven months earlier had said it was Y, it would be Harriet Miers alone who noted the contradiction.

The accounts of the nominee's work habits are also true. But even better, when the lights went on at 5:30 a.m. or so in office of the staff secretary or the legal counsel, she was not starting the day with a scan of the newspapers in search of her own name. And all of us who leave our White House jobs and go on to write and trade on our service to the president could stand to learn more from Harriet Miers about service to a president. Whenever she was in the room, calmly listening and observing, you knew that on any matter, great or small, at least one person involved had in mind only the interests of the president, the office and the nation.

Surely the most pertinent conclusion to be drawn from Harriet Miers's low profile is that this is not a person susceptible to the charms of news media flattery. Already we have read suggestions that, should the next justice find a comfortable place in the liberal wing, the "O'Connor court" could well become the "Miers court." But I can assure the editorialists, too, that all such offerings to vanity will go untaken. They can save their catnip for the next nominee.

It may be, in fact, that a details person is just what the Supreme Court needs right now. If anyone can be counted on to pause in deliberations over abortion cases, for example, and politely draw attention to small details like the authority of Congress and of state legislatures, or the interests of the child waiting to be born, it will be the court's newest member. As a justice, however, she will command the kind of respect that has nothing to do with being conservative, or liberal, or anything else but a person of wisdom and rectitude.

Although it is conceivable that President Bush has had his fill of advice from overreaching pundits, that is not why he chose Harriet Miers. Maybe he didn't want somebody who had been planning for 20 years for a place on the Supreme Court. Maybe he has looked around every so often and noticed that the least assuming person in the room was also the most capable and discerning. Or maybe he remembered how the hardest-working person in the White House found time to prepare the will of a terminally ill 27-year-old colleague, and to spend nights and mornings staying with her and praying with her.

Whatever his reasons, what America got is a nominee of enormous legal ability and ferocious integrity, and in the bargain a gracious Christian woman only more qualified for her new role because she would never have sought it for herself. And in a few years, when the same critics we hear now are extolling the clarity, consistency and perhaps even the "brilliance" of judicial opinions, that's when you'll know it's the Miers court.

Matthew Scully, the author of "Dominion," was special assistant to the president and deputy director of speechwriting for President Bush from 2001 to 2004.

Language: Key Mechanism of Control

2005-10-05T15:22:00.000-07:00

The Center For Media and Democracy reports that The Corporation for Public Broadcasting is now headed by Republican fundraisers Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines.

I bring this to your attention because CPB vice chair Gaines was a charter member of GOPAC, a group associated with Newt Gingrich's 1994 House takeover. It's a cinch he's now poised to reshape PBS and NPR so they are "Republican friendly."

How will they do it? Myriad ways, including influencing the language on PBS.

The Nation's David Corn recently reviewed a 1990 GOPAC memo titled "Language: A Key Mechanism of Control" that lists words to use to talk up GOP vision as ebodying ''caring," "freedom" and "prosperity" while trashing Democrats as "corrupt," "intolerant" and "traitors."

My first observation is quite simple: aren't Republicans confused? They got the lists mixed up. It is they who now own the words "corrupt" and "intolerant."

Likewise they've proved themselves to be traitors to both the American Dream and regular Americans who don't have seven figure incomes or Lear jets.

So now we can expect to see objective PBS slowly turned into a reich-wing marketing tool. Great, just what we needed on top of all the other debacles the Repos have brought us.

I think we ough to take every opportunity to turn the tables on them. Ignore their Orwellian language. Let's co-opt everything good for Progressives, since we actually are the caring people, in favor of freedom and prosperity for all, not just for Bush's brazillionaires.

Yes - shamelessly I'm referring to that joke you've seen go around in which Bush is so concerned when Rummy tells him "3 Brazilians have been killed," asking, "How much is a brazillion?

But I digress.

From the man now in charge of PBS, your key to using language to deceive and control:

Language: A Key Mechanism of Control

As you know, one of the key points in the GOPAC tapes is that "language matters." In the video "We are a Majority," Language is listed as a key mechanism of control used by a majority party, along with Agenda, Rules, Attitude and Learning. As the tapes have been used in training sessions across the country and mailed to candidates we have heard a plaintive plea: "I wish I could speak like Newt."

That takes years of practice. But, we believe that you could have a significant impact on your campaign and the way you communicate if we help a little. That is why we have created this list of words and phrases.

This list is prepared so that you might have a directory of words to use in writing literature and mail, in preparing speeches, and in producing electronic media. The words and phrases are powerful. Read them. Memorize as many as possible. And remember that like any tool, these words will not help if they are not used.

While the list could be the size of the latest "College Edition" dictionary, we have attempted to keep it small enough to be readily useful yet large enough to be broadly functional. The list is divided into two sections: Optimistic Positive Governing words and phrases to help describe your vision for the future of your community (your message) and Contrasting words to help you clearly define the policies and record of your opponent and the Democratic party.

Please let us know if you have any other suggestions or additions. We would also like to know how you use the list. Call us at GOPAC or write with your suggestions and comments. We may include them in the next tape mailing so that others can benefit from your knowledge and experience.

Optimistic Positive Governing Words

Use the list below to help define your campaign and your vision of public service. These words can help give extra power to your message. In addition, these words help develop the positive side of the contrast you should create with your opponent, giving your community something to vote for!

active(ly)
activist
building
candid(ly)
care(ing)
challenge
change
children
choice/choose [choice a Republican word? I don't think so.]
citizen
commitment
common sense [If they had any, we wouldn't be 8 Trillion in debt]
compete
confident
conflict [Oh, now this is one they're good at, creating conflict]
control [This fits, as in Republicans intend to control you]
courage [Not much. They send other people's children to fight their wars.]
crusade [Yes, but always for the wrong things.]
debate
dream
duty
eliminate good-time in prison [I'm for that when these neo-cons all land there]
empower(ment)
fair
family
freedom
hard work [Give me a break. They all live off investments and interest.]
help
humane
incentive
initiative
lead
learn
legacy
liberty
light
listen
mobilize
moral
movement
opportunity
passionate
peace [HA! They dare try and use this one? Have they no shame?]
pioneer
precious [Yeah, like what? Our natural resources they're destroying?]
premise
preserve [What? Certainly not our air or water. Or the lives of our troops. Or New Orleans. Must refer to their bank accounts.]
principle(d) [Not even possible in the same breath re: Bush et al]
pristine
pro- (issue): flag, children, environment, reform [Repos are pro-flag, anti-child]
prosperity [For the Brazillionaires, no doubt]
protect [the truth from being known, that's what this is about]
proud/pride [Oh, dare we hope they pair this one with gay?]
provide
reform [Yes, I agree the Republican party is stunningly corrupt, in need of reform]
rights
share [? I didn't know this word was in their vocabulary. Oh, wait, that's STOCK SHARE
strength
success
tough
truth
unique
vision
we/us/our

Contrasting Words
Often we search hard for words to define our opponents. Sometimes we are hesitant to use contrast. Remember that creating a difference helps you. These are powerful words that can create a clear and easily understood contrast. Apply these to the opponent, their record, proposals and their party.

abuse of power
anti- (issue): flag, family, child, jobs
betray
bizarre
bosses
bureaucracy
cheat
coercion
"compassion" is not enough
collapse(ing)
consequences
corrupt
corruption
criminal rights
crisis
cynicism
decay
deeper
destroy
destructive
devour
disgrace
endanger
excuses
failure (fail)
greed
hypocrisy
ideological
impose
incompetent
insecure
insensitive
intolerant
liberal
lie
limit(s)
machine
mandate(s)
obsolete
pathetic
patronage
permissive attitude
pessimistic
punish (poor ...)
radical
red tape
self-serving
selfish
sensationalists
shallow
shame
sick
spend(ing)
stagnation
status quo
steal
taxes
they/them
threaten
traitors
unionized
urgent (cy)
waste
welfare

While making fun is fun, we seriously need to use their own techniques against them. There is no way we can let them get away with calling themselves caring, look where they put "compassion" as a negative trait! That says it all.

Abortion: Is It Time To End The Rift?

2005-10-03T15:52:00.000-07:00

Normally I don't get into the abortion question.

But while I support a woman's right to control her body and make her own decisions about whether to have children, i.e. can she afford it economically and emotionally, I think we have allowed Republicans to exploit this issue long enough.

The really poor in this country can't even afford the trip to an abortion clinic at this point.

So it's time to stop fighting - and losing elections - over the abortion issue.

Abortion is not a good thing, it's a last resort. It's a sad necessity that, at times, keeps a woman sane and her other children fed.

We need to stop campaigning for it like it's a religion or something as important as, say, higher wages. That attitude just plays to the Reich in using it to their own ends.

Let's face it, Republicans want every baby to be born, only so it can be sent off to die in one of their powermongering wars. They're absolute hypocrites in that regard.

To prevent those unnecessary wars, to get money for schools to educate the children we have, to raise the standard of living for the poor and to provide some kind of real moral leadership for this country, we must focus on other issues and get progressives elected based on real, American values.

What are those values? They are caring about one another, working together, providing equal opportunities, looking at how we can create a better nation and a better world together, as a people.

While we are all in this together, Republicans have torn us apart in a very selfish power-accruing agenda emphasizing an "us vs. them" mentality at every turn.

The result is that many good, well-meaning people have been alienated over the abortion issue, on both sides.

Christians, for the most part, should feel more resonance with Progressives since progressives urge turning the other cheek, giving to the poor, etc.

But it's that abortion issue that keeps them away, for the most part.

So here's a wake up call to progressives: we have allowed a wedge issue, that most of us defend without much conviction, to allow the most corrupt group of politicians in our history to gut our country.

The irony is that the abortion issue has changed. We're not looking at women being butchered in back alleys any more. If a woman really cannot afford a child psychologically or economically, she can turn to pharmaceuticals.

See this from the New York Times:

October 2, 2005

Abortion Might Outgrow Its Need for Roe v. Wade

By JOHN LELAND

WITH the confirmation last week of John G. Roberts Jr. as chief justice of the United States, eyes turned to President Bush's next judicial nominee, who, on a closely divided court, may determine the fate of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that recognized a woman's right to an abortion.

But such speculation overlooks a paradox in the abortion wars: while combatants focus on the law, technology is already changing the future of abortion, with or without the Supreme Court.

Even if the court restricts or eliminates the right to an abortion, the often-raised specter of a return to back-alley abortions is not likely to be realized, said Dr. Beverly Winikoff, president of Gynuity Health Services, a nonprofit group that supports access to abortion.

"The conditions that existed before 1973 were much different than what they are in 2005," she said.

But no change is bigger than the advent of an inexpensive drug called misoprostol, which the federal Food and Drug Administration approved for treatment of ulcers in 1988, but which has been used in millions of self-administered abortions worldwide.

If the Supreme Court overturns Roe v. Wade, freeing states to ban abortion, this common prescription drug, often known by the brand name Cytotec, could emerge as a cheap, relatively safe alternative to the practices that proliferated before Roe.

"We won't go back to the days of coat hangers and knitting needles," said Dr. Jerry Edwards, an abortion provider in Little Rock, Ark. "Rich women will fly to California; poor women will use Cytotec."

Because it was never intended for use in abortions, it has not been widely tested for safety and effectiveness.

In 2000, researchers at three obstetrics and gynecology clinics in New York noted that low-income immigrant women were already using misoprostol as an alternative to going to an abortion clinic, because it was easier and less expensive.

They got the pills from doctors, pharmacies, relatives and from contacts in other countries.

The drug causes the uterus to contract and, if the contractions are strong enough, to expel the embryo or fetus.

In the United States, misoprostol is typically used off label with the abortion drug RU-486 in non-surgical abortions and in some surgical abortions.

A spokeswoman for Pfizer, which sells misoprostol under the name Cytotec, said the company does not comment on off-label use.

Last year, Americans filled 365,000 prescriptions of misoprostol for ulcers, according to IMS Health, a pharmaceutical consulting firm.

A dose sufficient to cause an abortion costs less than $2, said Dr. John K. Jain, an associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Southern California, who has performed limited clinical trials of abortions using misoprostol alone.

He said he found that it was effective 80 to 90 percent of the time, if administered by a doctor. This is slightly lower than its effectiveness in combination with RU-486.

Misoprostol is usually used in the first trimester, but under clinical conditions, Dr. Jain and other researchers say it has been used safely and effectively in the second trimester.

Women taking it on their own risk greater rates of failure and higher side effects, including nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and fever and chills.

Carrie Gordon Earll, a senior analyst of bioethics at Focus on the Family, which supports a reversal of Roe v. Wade, said the existence of new technologies like misoprostol should have no bearing on the law.

"The law operates as a teacher in a moral sense," regardless of people's opportunity to break it, she said. "Even if you have some people who get a drug off the black market and sell it to women, that doesn't mean we don't have a policy to discourage abortion."

In Brazil, where abortion is banned except in rare circumstances, misoprostol is the method of choice for up to 90 percent of all abortions, said Alessandra Chacham, a professor of sociology at the University of the State of Minas Gerais, who studies reproductive health in Brazil.

In the late 1980's and early 1990's, she said, pregnant women started to spread the word, because the drug's label warned that it could cause miscarriages.

Compared with illegal abortions using other methods, the rate of infection with misoprostol was 12 times lower, researchers have found. But researchers at the University of Rio de Janeiro reported that they also found that among babies born with certain birth defects, a high percentage of the mothers used misoprostol. When the government in response restricted access to misoprostol, drug smugglers created an illegal black market, Ms. Chacham said.

But American women may not be as receptive, said Norma McCorvey, who in 1973 was known as Jane Roe, the woman who brought the case that legalized abortion, but who has since argued for the reversal of the court's decision.

"When women start using these self-induced drugs, and start seeing body parts in their potty, they're going to go bananas," Miss McCorvey said. "And it's going to be horrible."

[Is it any more horrible than having to live in a crack infested neighborhood because you can't afford higher rent or see your kid - that you couldn't afford - go to bed hungry and be shaped for a life of failure? Or have to live with someone who winds up getting ticked off at the baby and shakes it to death? Please. These are the choices desperate women face. - my comment]

Dr. Jain said researchers still need to learn more about what happens when the drug doesn't work. Currently, if women fail to terminate a pregnancy using RU-486 and misoprostol, they still have a surgical abortion. But if abortion were illegal, many of these women might carry to term. "Data suggest it causes birth defects, including facial paralysis and limb defects," Dr. Jain said. "It's hard to quantify, but yes, there probably is a risk."

And widespread use of misoprostol could have another unintended consequence, said Mitchell Creinin, director of family planning at the University of Pittsburgh, who has run clinical trials on the drug. In Brazil, if women have problems with the drug, they go to the hospital to be treated for miscarriage. If women in the United States start using misoprostol for abortions, Dr. Creinin said, "someone going through a miscarriage is going to be looked at suspiciously, like, 'Did you do something?'"

Dr. Creinin added that "compared to when abortion was illegal before Roe, misoprostol is still safer." But as with any illegal drug, there is a period of elevated risk before users discover the proper dosages and protocols. If abortion became illegal, he said, "If I were a woman, I'd rather go to Brazil than Mississippi, because at least there they've learned how to do it."

The lesson here is: where there's a will, there's a way. And as long as people try to dictate the conditions of our lives without giving us tenable options, they will be subverted.

Once in power, Progressives can work to give people options so abortion is less necessary.

For those who don't know, the abortion rate has skyrocketed thanks to Bush's economic policies which continually beat down the poor and the working person.

It's time to admit: we don't like abortion either. It's been a necessary evil that women resort to because we're not taking care of the business of taking care of ALL our people.

No one has a "God given right" to have abortion. But each person should have a right - IN THIS COUNTRY, AND ASSURED BY ALL OF US - to fair wages, decent housing, good schools and affordable medical care.

Lets get our priorities straight.

Urban Hamid's Tales of Tragedy

2005-09-19T14:56:00.000-07:00

Discovered a poignant blog www.urbanhamid.com about what happened to an Iraqi man's uncle and cousin.

Because Rumsfeld threw out the 1400 page State Department report detailing how we could avoid the current disaster in Iraq, he - and we - unleashed a Pandora's box of revenge in Iraq. What none of us realized is that Saddam Hussein kept this kind of "revenge killing" under control because he was just as brutal.

But now there are hundreds of "Saddams" killing people right and left. The news has been even more horrific lately. Hundreds have been killed in just days.

It's pointless to waste energy ranting against Rumsfeld. Bush won't fire him nor ever admit he made a mistake there. Not, at least, until the American people stare him down as we did over Katrina. Only then will he admit error.

Forget Bush - he's a blind pawn who will never suffer any consequences for any of this other than going down in the world's history books as the worst president we've ever had. Fault finding just wastes our energy

The question is: How do we help the people of Iraq?

As horrible a bloodbath as it will be when U.S. troops leave Iraq, it will not be any worse than it is right now.

We need to get out. And you know what will happen? What has to happen? Another tyrant will take over. Another Iraqi who tortures and murders will gather up an army and stage a coup against the new Iraqi government.

And the Iraqi people will suffer doubly as another monster "out monsters" the terrorists to restore order.

But he'll restore order. And Iraq will be back where it was, only worse: with a destroyed infrastructure and thousands of families in mourning.

But as long as the U.S. is in there, the common person is torn. They are, I'm convinced, half on the side of those creating chaos because they - like we - know if there weren't terrorists blowing everything up, Rumsfeld would have marched through Iraq to Iran by now and be on his way to blow up Syria.

There's no fatwas issued against Bin Laden, et al because everyone - the people and the clerics - are caught between hell and a beheading. They don't want to live in an occupied homeland forever and they're being slaughtered by their own people who will do ANYTHING to get us out.

And there is that huge part of that population that wants revenge, was waiting for revenge against the Baathists, the Kurds, whoever.

Did you ever try to save some small and helpless creature only to tear its leg off or injure it mortally?

That's what we've done to Iraq.

God help us. We've got to stop tromping around creating more damage and just get out.

If you haven't written to Congress, to your representatives and senators, it's time.

And send a letter to the editor of your local paper. Say we can't afford Iraq and Katrina's cleanup, say whatever you want.

But the bottom line is that Iraq can't afford us there anymore.

And that includes the mercenary army we have there protecting contractors - not the Iraqi people - at both their and our expense.

Neo-Cons: A Long And Deadly Arm

2005-09-13T00:00:00.000-07:00

The Bush Machine has a long and deadly arm. The destruction of institutions, environment, lives and careers goes on.

If you missed it, Elizabeth Reyes, an attorney for the Texas Secretary of State in Austin was fired last week. Why? She answered tax questions, that applied to Karl Rove, for a reporter.

From the AP:

"Rove received a homestead tax deduction on his home in Washington, even though he had not been eligible for the benefit. Rove was eligible for the deduction when he bought the home in 2001, but a change in the tax law in 2002 made the deduction available only to property owners who do not vote elsewhere. Rove is registered to vote in Texas.

The tax office admitted the mistake, saying it failed to rescind the deduction, and Rove agreed to reimburse the city an estimated $3,400 in back taxes, the Post reported.

Rove is registered to vote in Kerr County, Texas, where he and his wife own two rental homes that he claims as his residence. But two local residents told the Post they had never seen Rove there.

The Post reported Saturday that when its reporter called the Texas Secretary of State's office for her story, she was told the press officer was on vacation and she was transferred to Reyes.

The attorney told the reporter that it was potential vote fraud in Texas to register in a place where you don't actually live, and she was quoted as saying Rove's cottages don't "sound like a residence to me, because it's not a fixed place of habitation."

The story about Rove's tax deductions ran on September 3rd in the Washington Post . Ms. Reyes, 30, was quoted. She was subsequently fired. A superior told her that her bosses and Texas Secretary of State Roger Williams, who had raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for Republicans and President Bush, were upset about the article.

The kicker? Reyes didn't know she was talking to a reporter and Rove's name was never mentioned.

The second kicker? There is no policy in the office of the Texas Secretary of State that bars Reyes or anyone else from speaking to the media.

This is the intimidation that has kept the media from descending upon Bush et all and exposing that the Emperor has no clothes.

Which is a nice segueway into this next tidbit.

Fox 5, a Fox affiliate television station in New York, rejected Brian Ellner's campaign commercial. One of nine Democrats running in a local primary, Ellner's 30-second ad pans the Republican party line, policies and, of course, their leader George Bush.

Bush's head is superimposed onto a bare torso and a voiceover states, "He claims he's a uniter, but New Yorkers know the emperor has no clothes."

The truth would hurt Bush if it got out, so Fox wouldn't air it.

The argument used was that the ad was "disrespectful" to the President.

Well excuse me, but Bush has been far more than just "disrespectful" of our country, our institutions, our people and our environment. And he deserves to be outed.

But these actions are what we've all grown to expect from a finely coordinated and highly oiled political machine that depends upon keeping itself and its actions hidden from the American eye.

We haven't begun to reap the repercussions of all the damage Bush has done in the last five years. The fallout from Katrina has revealed the tip of the iceberg.

In All The President's Friends Paul Krugman talks about FEMA being the shell of what it was prior to the Bush administration's budget cuts and personnel changes, prior to being made into a subservient arm of Homeland Security with a racehorse commissioner at its head.

His message is that what we have seen in regard to the ineptness of FEMA is a hint of things to come. Budget cuts, ill-advised appointments and personnel changes have also afflicted the EPA, PBS and The Treasury Department.

Even the Department of Homeland Security has seen budget cuts and, created by Bush, has been on shaky ground since day one when Bush attempted to put the agency in the hands of Bernard Kerik. Since then there has been a "steady exodus" of counterterrorism officials from the agency, thanks to Bush's embroiling us in his ill-conceived and disastrous war in Iraq.

Of the EPA, Krugman warns of the probability of an environmental cover-up going on as you read this, citing an interview in The Independent, the British newspaper, with Hugh Kaufman, a senior policy analyst in the agency's Office of Solid Waste and Emergency Response.

Kaufman, whom Krugman suspects is planning to join the exodus, was quoted as saying, "The budget has been cut and inept political hacks have been put in key positions."

We know Bush quietly changed 90% of our environmental laws through a process of re-regulating them and, thereby, rolling back health standards by forty years.

Of the U.S. Treasury, which has fallen in prestige and effectiveness since the 2000 election, Krugman writes that the "... symbol of that fall is the fact that John Snow, who was obviously picked for his loyalty rather than his qualifications, is still Treasury secretary."

"Less obvious to the public is the hollowing out of the department's expertise. Many experienced staff members have left since 2000, and a number of key positions are either empty or filled only on an acting basis."

"'There is no policy,'" an economist who was leaving the department after 22 years told The Washington Post, back in 2002. "'If there are no pipes, why do you need a plumber?'" So the best and brightest have been leaving.

I've said it before, I'll say it again.

The only explanation for all this damage and for involving us in a war that saps our strength and resources and kills our youth is this: Neo-Cons do not love America. They are simply using her. They do not love Americans, they see us as pawns in their game.

Next blog: Cheney plans to nuke Iran when the next terror attack occurs on U.S. soil - no matter who is to blame.

Don't Let Bush Reframe The Blame

2005-09-09T05:00:00.000-07:00

In writing about Hurricane Katrina, George Lakoff states:

"This was not just incompetence (though there was plenty of it), not just a natural disaster (though nature played its part), not just Bush (though he is accountable). This is a failure of moral and political philosophy -- a deadly failure. That is the deep truth behind this human tragedy, humanly caused."

The fact is that right-wing conservatives are destroying our country.

Grover Norquist, policy crafter for the Republican Reich, spoke in a room of 4000 very wealthy Bush supporters after the results of the 2004 presidential election. He announced with glee that Republicans would now "stick a knife in government and kill it."

That is just what conservative and Republican politicians have been doing, and as we have seen with Hurricane Katrina, their policies are working, with devastating results. The reason? According to Lakoff it is because:

"Their main value is 'Rely on individual discipline and initiative.' The central principle: 'Government has no useful role.' The only common good is the sum of individual goods.

It's the difference between 'We're all in this together' and 'You're on your own, buddy.'

It's the difference between 'Every citizen is entitled to protection' and 'You're only entitled to what you can afford.'

It's the difference between connection and separation.

It is this difference in moral and political philosophy that lies behind the tragedy of Katrina."

"A lack of empathy and responsibility accounts for Bush's indifference and the government's delay in response, as well as the failure to plan for the security of the most vulnerable: the poor, the infirm, the aged, the children."

"Eliminating as much as possible of the role of government accounts for the demotion of FEMA from cabinet rank, for Michael Brown's view that FEMA was a federal entitlement program to be cut, for the budget cuts in levee repair, for placing more responsibility on state and local government than they could handle, for the failure to fully employ the military, and for the lax regulation of toxic waste dumps contributing to a "toxic stew."

Incidentally, for those who are unaware, Bush appointed Michael Brown to his current post. Brown's expertise is not in disaster management, for he has no experience there. He was the judges and stewards commissioner of a racehorse association.

In his usual style, Bush ignores calls to fire Brown. (I'm waiting for him to give us the now familiar pep talk about what a great public servant Brown is.) Instead the right-wing machine is blaming the Mayor of New Orleans and local officials to try and get the heat off itself.

But Mayor Ray Nagin and his Police Chief, Eddie Compass are heroes. I don't think the American people are going to fall for Bush's lies, having seen and heard Nagin and Compass on television and heard their first-hand accounts.

In addition, Senator Mary Landrieu, after spending the last ten days in Katrina's wake in her home state, had this to say:

"If one person criticizes them" [local officials such as the Mayor of New Orleans] "or says one more thing" [to criticize local officials, even if it is]"...the president of the United States, he will hear from me...One more word about it after this show airs and I might likely have to punch him [the President]. Literally."

"Everybody anticipated the breach of the levee, Mr. President," Landrieu said, in contradiction of Bush's statement last week that no one "anticipated the breach of the levees." And as she addressed the U.S. Senate, she noted that even "...the clay figurine, Mr. Bill, from 'Saturday Night Live'" anticipated the breach, asking "How can it be that Mr. Bill was better informed than Mr. Bush?"

Simple. He has those wonderful right-wing values and principles: he doesn't care enough to be informed.

Unfortunately, Democrats are letting Bush spin it his way and, as Lakoff says, once the American people accept the spin, there will be no changing it.

So write to your Democratic representatives right now. Send them Lakoff's article and tell them: get with it or we'll have this type of tragedy again.

Republicans can't seem to help themselves, they just have no heart. Majority Leader Dennis Hastert doesn't believe money should be wasted on rebuilding New Orleans and Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) of Baton Rouge was overheard telling lobbyists: "We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did."

If we don't unite and start speaking in one voice to present an alternative to this mindset, we each will hold a much bigger share of the blame for the next disaster.

We must demand that the Democratic party create a compassionate progressive agenda for the American people to follow, based upon compassion and concern for the common good.

Judging from the amount of courage, compassion and bravery out there, the American people - our people - are ready, willing and waiting for it.

Ignorance + Tax Cuts = Chaos

2005-09-03T18:50:00.000-07:00

In 2001, the Federal Emergency Management Agency ranked a major hurricane strike on New Orleans as "among the three likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country," directly behind a terrorist strike on New York City.

In 2002 two Louisiana reporters wrote an article predicting everything wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

Yet we have been caught unprepared. Why? 1) No one wanted to spend the money to prepare and 2) most people spend more time watching American Idol than in educating themselves about the issues they face as citizens in a Democracy and 3) we have no real leadership.

While Katrina was targeting New Orleans, President Bush decided to continue his vacation, stopping by the Pueblo El Mirage RAP and Golf Resort in El Mirage, California, to hawk his Medicare drug benefit plan.

On Sunday, President Bush said, "I want to thank all the folks at the federal level and the state level and the local level who have taken this storm seriously."

And this is the problem we have with President Bush and why he is such a terrible President. He is a figure head for corporations, not a leader of people. He delegates and remains blissfully unaware of the consequences of his actions.

President Bush is the pretty boy, the likeable guy recruited to get the votes for all the hard-nosed corporate defenders and empire builders who wanted to get control of the government.

Bush is not a bad man, he's an unaware man. He can't see the forest for the trees, so he believes in giving the okay when others want to cut them down.

According to AmericanProgress Report, two months ago, President Bush took an ax to budget funds that would have helped New Orleans prepare for Katrina. The New Orleans branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers suffered a "record $71.2 million" reduction in federal funding, a 44.2 percent reduction from its 2001 levels.

Reports at the time said that, thanks to the cuts, "major hurricane and flood protection projects will not be awarded to local engineering firms. ... Also, a study to determine ways to protect the region from a Category 5 hurricane has been shelved for now."

In addition, since The Gulf Coast wetlands form a "natural buffer that helps protect New Orleans from storms," slowing hurricanes down as they approach from sea, President Bush pledged to uphold the "no net loss" wetland policy his father initiated.

He didn't keep his word. Bush rolled back tough wetland policies set by the Clinton administration, ordering federal agencies "to stop protecting as many as 20 million acres of wetlands and an untold number of waterways nationwide."

Last year, four environmental groups issued a joint report showing that administration policies had allowed "developers to drain thousands of acres of wetlands."

The result? New Orleans may be in even greater danger in the future: "Studies show that if the wetlands keep vanishing over the next few decades, then you won't need a giant storm to devastate New Orleans -- a much weaker, more common kind of hurricane could destroy the city too."

On top of this, President Bush gutted the agency responsible for developing hurricane responses. Again, from American Progress Report (which has links to confirm their statements)

Forward-thinking federal plans with titles like "Issues and Options in Flood Hazards Management," "Floods: A National Policy Concern," and "A Framework for Flood Hazards Management" would be particularly valuable in a time of increasingly intense hurricanes.

Unfortunately, the agency that used to produce them -- the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) -- was gutted by Gingrich conservatives several years ago.

As Chris Mooney (who presciently warned of the need to bulk up hurricane defenses in New Orleans last May) noted on August 29th, "If we ever return to science-based policymaking based on professionalism and expertise, rather than ideology, an office like OTA would be very useful in studying how best to save a city like New Orleans --and how Congress might consider appropriating money to achieve this end."

Of course we all know much of our National Guard - our first responders to a national disaster - is in Iraq.

Roughly 35 percent of Louisiana's National Guard is currently deployed in Iraq, where guardsmen and women make up about four of every 10 soldiers.

Additionally, "Dozens of high water vehicles, humvees, refuelers and generators" used by the Louisiana Guard are also tied up abroad.

"The National Guard needs that equipment back home to support the homeland security mission," Louisiana National Guard Lt. Colonel Pete Schneider told reporters earlier this month.

"Recruitment is down dramatically, mostly because prospective recruits are worried about deployments to Iraq, Afghanistan or another country," the AP reported recently.

"I used to be able to get about eight people a month," said National Guard 1st Sgt. Derick Young, a New Orleans recruiter. "Now, I'm lucky if I can get one."

President Bush continues to help fuel global warming which contributes to the earth's "need" for hurricanes to equalize temperatures. In fact, he still cannot grasp that a call to conserve gas, drive smaller cars and develop alternative energy sources would be in our best interest. Certainly we see it is madness to drill in the Gulf of Mexico considering the trend of more and stronger hurricanes.

Yet, there was no call for conservation during his speech today.

As the Progress Report has noted, data increasingly suggests that human-induced global warming is making these phenomena more dangerous and extreme than ever.

"The hurricane that struck Louisiana yesterday was nicknamed Katrina by the National Weather Service," science author Ross Gelbspan writes. "Its real name is global warming."

AP reported recently on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology analysis that shows that "major storms spinning in both the Atlantic and the Pacific ... have increased in duration and intensity by about 50 percent" since the 1970s, trends that are "closely linked to increases in the average temperatures of the ocean surface and also correspond to increases in global average atmospheric temperatures during the same period."

Yet just last week, as Katrina was gathering steam and looming over the Gulf, the Bush administration released new CAFE standards that actually encourage automakers to produce bigger, less fuel efficient vehicles, while preventing states from taking strong, progressive action to reverse global warming.

Bottom line, neither President Bush nor 80% or our electorate understand what's at stake with these decisions. They don't understand the science behind Global Warming, stem cell research or evolution.

In fact, according to the article Scientific Savvy? In U.S. Not Much one out of every 5 adult Americans believes the sun revolves around the earth, a concept disproved in the 17th century.

Our nation elected President Bush and elected him, mainly on a platform of tax cuts, not on facts about how he would proceed once he got in office.

Just as those who bothered to open their eyes could see the havoc that a category 5 hurricane like Katrina was going to cause, so did many people foresee the damage George Bush would do as President.

Still others of us saw the disaster that would grow out of waging an unwinnable war in Iraq.

One wonders if the average American is beginning to understand that a $300 tax cut is not a reason to elect a President. The irony is that the small cuts most people got were simply shills to cover the mammoth cuts for the rich and super rich.

But it's for sure we have an information deficit in this country that is even less amusing than our National Debt.

How do we counter a media that fills our minds, not with helpful information and facts, but with pap and misinformation that keep us ignorant and focused on "being entertained?"

How do we resurrect education as a valued goal when there seems to be open hostility to education - and especially science - as "elite" or "snobbish?"

How do underpaid teachers educate an unwilling population of children seduced by the mindlessness of television from reading and critical thinking?

These are huge challenges. We need to keep blogging and trying to spread the truth, as we understand it. In addition, we need to concentrate on brainstorming answers as opposed to complaining.

Meanwhile, donate to the Red Cross if you can.

Also, if you can offer housing to those displaced by Hurricane Katrina, MoveOn.Org is working to match up housing with those who need it.

Keep the faith.

Ars Magna Has Bush Pegged

2005-08-24T00:05:00.000-07:00

When Mike and Sabra Morton hear grumbling coming from the depths of their computer, they know that Ars Magna, the software program they created that always answers in anagrams, is awake and worrying.

When Ars was asked what he thought Rove was doing when he did not say the name of Valerie Plame, his answer was this:

Reveal. Impale.

If you haven't read this hilarious and insightful article, you owe it to yourself if for no other reason than to see what Ars thinks of George Bush.

Out of the mouths of cyber children comes the darndest things.

The link at the Times has expired and this is just too good for you not to read it:

Artificial Intelligence
By MIKE MORTON and SABRA MORTON
Published: August 18, 2005

WHEN we hear grumbling coming from the depths of our computer, we know that Ars Magna, the software program that always answers in anagrams, is awake and worrying.

This software sometimes can seem opinionated. Lately, for instance, it speaks happily of the Statue of Liberty as "built to stay free," but when it hears the name George W. Bush, it's likely to cry, "He grew bogus!"

Ars is still angry about that C.I.A. leak.

So, Ars, it all began when Karl Rove, as he tells it, did not say the name of Valerie Plame. What do you think he was trying to do when he didn't name her?

Reveal. Impale.

Well, then, what did he achieve by not naming Valerie Wilson?

Orwellian vise.

But Mr. Rove is President Bush's key political advisor. Can't we depend on him to be truthful?

Leaky; solicit avid pro.

By which you mean Robert Novak, who is believed to have helped him expose Ms. Plame? What's Mr. Novak's job in this affair just now?

Bark: "Not Rove!"

Lately, Scott McClellan, Mr. Bush's press secretary, likes to say at news conferences, "I appreciate the question." What do you think he means?

Riot technique: appease it.

Ars, for more than two years we've heard accusations and denials and hours of commentary on this business. Do you have any idea what actually happened? Can you figure out who said what to whom, when?

Them want who? How?

What who? Now them?

Our thoughts exactly. But perhaps the full truth will be, uh, revealed. After all, Mr. Bush says he has instructed his staff that when the prosecutor comes calling, they're to fully cooperate. How do you read that?

Leery: coup aloft.

In the past, Mr. Bush said that anyone in his administration who exposes a C.I.A. agent will be fired. What might he say now?

"I'd ... well ... brief ..."

And if Mr. Bush is asked to fire Karl Rove?

"Karl ... forever ... I ..."

What advice would you give Karl Rove today?

"Lark OVER!"

And what will President George Bush do now?

He ponders big gesture.

Ah yes, his nomination to the Supreme Court. We'll get back to you on that one, Ars.

Mike Morton is a software engineer and the creator of Ars Magna. Sabra Morton is a writer.

The Madness of George Bush

2005-08-23T03:29:00.000-07:00

Bush cheerleader, Pat Robertson, has gone too far. He has proved he is not just the anti-Christ, but insane. He has called for Hugo Chavez' death. [Read the interview of Chavez by Greg Palast.

Chavez, of course knows he is the last stop before U.S. corporations wipe out - through globalization - the ability of the poor to take control of their lives and economies.

Robertson is a symptom of what is increasingly an unsustainable way of life: rampant greed by corporations that has been sold to us as "democracy" and "capitalism."

In service of this greed, violence has become an end in itself.

"If the citizenry would recognize that Bush's [and Robertson's] egomania is acting out a national illness," says psychiatrist Carol S. Wolman, "we would all be saner."

For what we are suffering from is a mental disease fed by media hype created by anti-Christ Christians and Reich wing politics. We are well into it, as was Germany when it elected Adolph Hitler chancellor.

Like Hitler, King George is just the tip of our iceberg. If we want to get well as a nation and as a people, each of us better face this bitter truth today.

SLAPP Suits: Filed To Shut You Up

2005-08-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

Corporations are now filing what are called "SLAPP" suits or "strategic lawsuits against public participation."

Corporations file these suits, not to win them, but because they cost critics so much money that the critics are silenced, along with everyone else who thinks about raising a question or complaint about a corporate product or practice.

Some examples of SLAPP suits from PR Watch:

In Las Vegas, a local doctor was sued for his allegation that a city hospital violated the state's cost-containment law.

In Baltimore, members of a community group faced a $252 million lawsuit after circulating a letter questioning the property-buying practices of a local housing developer.

In West Virginia, an environmental activist was sued for $200,000, for criticizing a coal-mining company for activities that were poisoning a local river.

In Pennsylvania, a farmer was sued after testifying to his township supervisors that a low-flying helicopter owned by a local landfill operator caused a stampede that killed several of his cows.

In Washington state, a homeowner found that she couldn't get a mortgage because her real-estate company had failed to pay taxes owed on her house. She uncovered hundreds of similar cases, and the company was forced to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in back taxes. In retaliation, it sued the woman for slander and dragged her through six years of legal harassment before a jury found her innocent.

In Missouri, a high-school English teacher was sued for $1 million after complaining to a weekly newspaper that an incinerator burning hospital waste was a health hazard.

For the story on this, see: Freedom of Speech, Going, Going...

In an unprecedented move that is being appealed, one of these suits has been struck down by U.S. District Judge Manuel Real (don't you love his name) and the gigantic, multi-state law firm that filed it, fined.

But the $267,000 in sanctions for filing a "frivolous lawsuit" against a community activist and three Forest Service employees will hardly stop these suits.

Corporations and their attorneys will just build it into the "cost of doing business."

It's time to write to our representatives and demand that SLAPP suits be made illegal.

In addition, interested parties are urged to call the law firm Foley and Lardner at (619) 234-6655 (San Diego) and let them know what you think of their plan to appeal and, thereby, waste more public tax dollars.

Remember, democracy requires vigilance. We need to act now or, the way things are going with the neo-cons intending to oust all judges not in their corporate pocket, we will have no avenues of action open to us in another decade.

Fred Mattlage: Peace Hero

2005-08-17T00:44:00.000-07:00

It's growing. Support for peace and accountability is growing.

Support for pulling our sons and daughters out of the wretched and ill-conceived war in Iraq is growing.

Support for the Rosa Parks of the peace movement, Cindy Sheehan, is growing.

And people are blogging all over the net about it.

To my atheist friends, forgive me, but : Alleluia! Praise God!

In addition, Fred Mattlage, a cousin of the infamous Larry who fired a gun to frighten the protestors, has stepped up and offered the protestors his land to camp on, in order to assure their safety.

So, how about y'all send postcards to Fred Mattlage of Crawford, Texas with big ol' Thank You's on 'em.

Way to go, Fred!

It can't be easy to stand up to your neighbor the President and all the people around him who persist in maintaining the war in Iraq has merit. And when the protestors go home, he's still going to have to live in that community.

He's a hero. The kind of hero who steps up and makes a commitment.

The kind of hero like our founding fathers who put their lives and livelihoods on the line for humanity's soul over the interest of powermongers.

Fred Mattlage is an every day hero. Write and let him know care of:

Crawford Peace House
9142 East 5th St
Crawford, TX 76638-3037

I'm sure the people there will see he gets them.

Also, consider making an on-line donation to the Peace House which has supported Cindy's protest from the planning stage and could use funds.

Support Our Troops: Support Cindy

2005-08-15T02:07:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan remains outside Bush's ranch, waiting to meet with him.

Now is the time to support her with e-mails, letters to the editor and messages to President Bush urging him to meet with her.

Why? Because she needs your help. Now.

Yesterday, on Sunday, while Sheehan and about sixty supporters were conducting a prayer service, a nearby landowner, Larry Mattlage, "fired his shotgun twice into the air."

Sheriff's deputies and Secret Service agents went to his house but did not arrest him.

Did you read the quote of what he said? He said: "This is Texas."

Brilliant. That explains it all, doesn't it?

He can fire a gun in the air and intimidate anyone anytime he wants.

I bet he considers himself "a Christian" too.

What a laugh.

This is a voter that supports Bush.

On this topic - I read a bunch of posts on some "patriotic" site that were so foolish as to be laughable. They called Sheehan a media whore.

And like George Bush isn't? What was that media stunt in a borrowed flight suit? Or the grandstanding of any of their dear Republican darlings?

They're just biting their own tails, furious that she's getting attention.

When a person has no answer, he or she resorts to insults.

Even more important, when a person is, subconsciously, deeply afraid he has taken the wrong position and is about to be proved "wrong" he lashes out with a vengence.

The more insulting a person is, the more they fear they don't know what they are talking about.

It's that old rigid mind that would rather break than face the truth.

So this handful of geniuses were going around and around comforting themselves with insulting her.

Someone else said: Her actions have to be nipped in the bud!

What? Her constitutional right to protest and free speech?

No doubt.

But when her rights are all gone, so will their rights to blog be taken away.

Guess they haven't figured that one out yet.

But what was truly sickening - and I mean turn your stomach sickening - were not the insults but the fact that in post after post there was zero - that's right - ZERO sympathy for a mother who has lost her son.

And ZERO sympathy for any of the 1800 families who have lost children.

And less than ZERO sympathy for the troops sweating it out in Iraq in that hell hole with insufficient body armor.

One poser (not an error) had the gall to say Casey "didn't have to go," it was his choice.

So I guess none of them have gone, right?

And I guess they're saying it's okay if no one wants to go fight, right?

And National Guardsmen who never signed up for Iraq but for a few weekends a year doing domestic duty don't have to go, right? They can "just say no."

So that won't land them in jail? No body will call them deserters, right?

I mean that's the logic. Unless they want to flipflop on that.

Well, that's the point of Cindy's protest.

Let everybody know: Nobody should go. You'll just die for people who don't give a rats ass about you OR your mother.

So pass the word to all those thinking about enlisting or re-uping. Tell the guardsmen: Don't go. Don't leave your children fatherless for a lifetime.

Don't go. Don't die. You don't have to go. Even self-styled Republican pundits are now saying it's your own fault if you go and die because you have a choice.

No wonder this country is self-destructing.

That's loyalty for you.

Next Targets: U.S. Security & Iran

2005-08-12T01:15:00.000-07:00

Give me the money that has been spent in war and I will clothe every man, woman, and child in an attire of which kings and queens will be proud. I will build a schoolhouse in every valley over the whole earth. I will crown every hillside with a place of worship consecrated to peace. ~Charles Sumner

As trillions are being spent for war, (The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.64 billion per day since September 30, 2004 and we are approaching 8 Trillion in debt) the Bush Administration is quietly dismantling our arms control offices.

This from the American Progress Report:

"NATIONAL SECURITY -- BUSH QUIETLY DISMANTLES ARMS CONTROL OFFICES:

Harvard specialist Graham Allison has noted that the “consensus in the national security community” is that “if policy makers in Washington keep doing what they are currently doing about the threat, a nuclear terrorist attack on America is likely to occur in the next decade.”

Moreover, “if one lengthens the time frame, a nuclear strike is inevitable.”

But such warnings don’t seem to bother the White House. Global Security Newswire reported last week that "[w]hile Congress is on vacation, the Bush administration is planning to quietly eliminate most State Department arms control offices, phasing out senior positions and merging personnel and functions with nonproliferation and other units."

What’s more, this phase-out isn’t an issue of funding. It’s actually the Bush administration’s strategy:

"The changes, many of which could begin in less than two weeks, appear to reflect a determined shift by the administration away from decades of U.S. focus on promoting international arms control agreements toward ad hoc, less universal efforts to prevent the spread of restricted weapons to terrorists and certain regimes."

Why?

Because the same people who brought you the war in Iraq are preparing to bring you another one in Iran, according to The American Conservative.

Isn't that sweet?

To all you people who voted for Bush the second time around:

When the bombs start falling on us, take a bow because it's because of you, baby.

Peace Quotes

2005-08-11T14:46:00.000-07:00

Two great quotes:

When you give food to the poor, they call you a saint. When you ask why the poor have no food, they call you a communist.

- Archbishop Helder Camara, Brazilian liberation theologist

It is the job of thinking people, not to be on the side of the executioners.

- Albert Camus

For more, visit Peace Quotes.

Another Kid Goes To War

2005-08-10T04:10:00.000-07:00

Another kid who knows nothing about the realities of the war in Iraq signed up.

There's a comment after this article - by some scared person who is probably just at the tipping point where he's going to have to accept that Iraq is an obscene mistake, but he's throwing a tantrum over it - who posted the comment that "liberals hate the military."

FDR, the greatest liberal that lived, had no hesitation in fighting a war of last resort.

Reagan and Bush Senior decreased military spending.

Clinton increased it.

So such railing against liberals is just so...I don't know...boring?

Besides being untrue.

But I digress.

Stories like the one posted above point out how the youth of America is being wasted.

Iraqis Riot Over No Power, Water, Jobs

2005-08-09T04:02:00.000-07:00

You won't hear about it from main stream media.

If it surfaces - which it won't - Rice will give it the devil's spin by calling those who were shot in Iraq as insurgents.

But they weren't.

They were simply fed up.

Residents of a peaceful town, protesting that they still have no power, water or jobs, were shot and killed.

Yet can you blame them for becoming irate? We get bent out of shape if the cable goes for five minutes.

But for expressing their disgust - not with bombs or guns, but with a protest - they were shot and several killed.

This is the "free Iraq" Bush yaps about all the time.

It's a lie.

You aren't free when you can't protest without being shot.

We learned that at Kent State. But we still had courts to rule it was wrong.

Iraqis have no justice system left.

Their justice system is fearful soldiers with guns ready to mow down anything that moves - against them. Forget you if you are a citizen. Someone can shoot you in the head and take your car. And it happens.

Some freedom we've given them.

But, of course, it was never about them anyway.

Cindy Sheehan: Bush Tainted Flag

2005-08-07T01:42:00.000-07:00

Cindy Sheehan is one brave woman.

Riding in a red, white and blue bus emblazoned with the words "Impeachment Tour" she showed up at Bush's Texas ranch on Saturday asking to talk to him so he could tell her what "the noble cause" was, for which her son died in Iraq.

The fact is, the United States was founded on the idea of having a noble destiny. Unfortunately, that idea has turned into an arrogant superiority that says anything we do - no matter how destructive - is part of that noble cause.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make the invasion of Iraq into a noble act, no matter how hard you try.

And the Administration has certainly been trying with obfuscation, but as this war rages on it will become clearer and clearer just what a mistake - and a crime against the world - it is.

The war in Iraq has killed over a hundred thousand Iraqis, over 1800 of our troops and left nearly fifty thousand of our sons and daughters severely disabled.

The war in Iraq has threatened world stability and given terrorists a breeding ground.

Some noble cause for a son to die for.

Sheehan's analysis of how George Bush has tainted our flag with the blood of innocents is profound.

Support Low Power Community Radio

2005-08-05T01:16:00.000-07:00

We need a media revolution in this country so voices other than Fox can be heard talking about something more meaningful than the latest celebrity fashions.

We could have one if we continue to grow low power community radio.

But it's at a dangerous junction. Note this from The Free Press:

"In 2000, the FCC opened up the nation's airwaves to low power community radio stations. Since then, more than 675 local stations have gone on the air in 50 states, forming the national backbone for community broadcasting."

"Now, local radio (LPFM) needs your help to survive and grow. The FCC is considering critical new measures that would prevent commercial stations from pushing our community broadcasters off the dial. Before the FCC decides, they need to hear from you."

Tell the FCC to support low power community radio

You can also support local radio by participating in the Grassroots Radio Conference in Northampton, Massachusetts on August 4-7, 2005. Grassroots radio organizers and friends are gathering in Northampton to help build and launch the new Valley Free Radio (WXOJ-LP). To learn more about the Grassroots Radio Conference, visit conference organizers Prometheus Radio.

Bye Bye Charities

2005-07-29T08:25:00.000-07:00

Electronic Frontier Foundations reports that corporations are now claiming patents on things such as "one-click" shopping.

Convio has alerted us to the fact that this will cripple philanthropic efforts and fundraising, especially over the Internet.

Imagine your local charity having to pony up licensing fees in order to conduct a telethon, make a direct mail appeal, use return address stickers or colored wristbands?

The cost would be prohibitive.

When we give to a nonprofit or charity, we want every donated dollar going toward the cause, not licensing fees for the system we use to make the donation.

But this is part of the culture and climate of greed that corporations continue to expand and impose upon us.

Americans have always been very generous when they are alerted to need. Such licensing patents would even keep us from informing each other through e-mail about causes dear to our hearts.

What's the surprise? We know corporations are drooling over the profits they could make if they can privatize and own the water on this planet.

Plus they are trademarking words and phrases right and left, virtually taking them out of our common lexicon.

If this continues, in a hundred years - mark my words - you will have to pay a licensing fee to use words in sending a letter to someone.

And, unless you are very weathy, you won't be able to afford to publish a blog.

Turd Blossom

2005-07-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

George Bush's nickname for Karl Rove is "Turd Blossom."

How appropriate.

But it shows that Bush knows exactly the kind of crap Rove used to give Bush the blossom of power.

Bumper sticker available at: Bumper Progress.

RNC Spreads Lies To Save Rove

2005-07-25T11:52:00.000-07:00

Former CIA analyst Larry C. Johnson gave testimony on July 22nd, 2005 in hearings held by Senate and House Democrats on the national security implications of the Rove CIA leak.

One of the points he makes is that he voted for Bush because he "wanted a President who knows what the word 'is' means."

Unfortunately he is finding out that this President doesn't know the meaning of the word "leak."

To Johnson's credit, he stands up for Valerie Plame and decries the smear campaign going on against her in an attempt to save arch villain Karl Rove.

Rove belongs in a dung heap. He didn't just jeopardize Plame's life, but everyone else she worked with in her cover company.

Rove has no shame, no conscience. He's like a psychopath.

It's time to express outrage to the media via a letter writing campaign.

Rove has to go.

If Convicted, Lay Will Be Pardoned

2005-07-24T10:07:00.000-07:00

After watching Enron: The Smartest Guys In the Room and seeing the relationship between Ken Lay and George Bush, I have a prediction:

IF Ken Lay is convicted and winds up in jail, one of the last things George W. Bush will do as President is pardon him.

Remember, you read it here first.

See the Enron Film

2005-07-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

I finally saw Enron: The Smartest Guys In The Room.

Just one comment: every American owes it to himself to see this film.

I'm betting it isn't just Enron that manipulates us for profits. This is probably the tip of the iceberg. If we don't want to be saps, we better understand the lengths to which the greedy will go to get rich and watch our backs.

Rove's America: Death & Lies

2005-07-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

"You have to make more noise than anybody else, you have to make yourself more obtrusive than anybody else, you have to fill all the papers more than anybody else, in fact you have to be there all the time and see that they do not snow you under, if you are really going to get your reform realized."

- Emmeline Pankhurst, suffragist and social reformer.

We have been too quiet. Progressives are trying so hard to be the voice of reason, to speak in moderate tones.

We crucified Howard Dean for getting emotional, without checking into the fact that the airplay of his "screaming" was doctored so that the crowd noise was diminished in order to make him seem "out of control."

We need to unite and begin screaming, because truth and rationality and middle-of-the-road-ism are simply getting us more of the same: death & lies.

One definition of insanity is expecting that you can continue doing things the same way and get a different outcome.

We need to stop being cowards. We need to write letters, call into shows and say it:

Rove committed treason. He outed a CIA operative and risked our national security for partisan purposes.

Karl Rove is a traitor to America. He should be arrested under the Patriot Act and held without bail.

In refusing to fire Rove, Bush is a traitor to this country. He is killing America, gutting our military, wrecking our institutions, poisoning our air and water, bankrupting us, supporting thugs like Rove and creating a class and ideological war that is totally unnecessary but distracts from his destructiveness.

Bush is just not bad for America, but a disaster for America. His policies have led to more terrorism, not less. He uses 9/11 for his own political gain and has absolutely no shame.

We need to say it: Bush is a traitor to America and her values.

If we aren't heard, we need to say it louder.

If we have to scream like Rush Limbaugh to be heard, then so be it.

Because as Paul Krugman succinctly points out in his article Karl Rove's America:

"What Mr. Rove understood, long before the rest of us, is that we're not living in the America of the past, where even partisans sometimes changed their views when faced with the facts. Instead, we're living in a country in which there is no longer such a thing as nonpolitical truth. In particular, there are now few, if any, limits to what conservative politicians can get away with: the faithful will follow the twists and turns of the party line with a loyalty that would have pleased the Comintern."

For example, read how Republican Congressman Peter King turns the facts around and says Joe Wilson and former CIA operative Valerie Plame should be shot for telling the truth about Bush's lies that got us into Iraq.

King cannot possibly believe this B.S. he's spouting. He's lying as a strategy to confuse the American people.

And what's with this violent language? He says these distinguished people, a CIA agent as well "should be shot?" These Neo-cons are sounding more like violent reactionaries every day.

Republicans have spent 40 years and billions of dollars running media campaigns to brainwash Americans into believing black is white and white is black.

They have reapportioned our districts down to which side of the street votes Republican and Democrat and used those apportionments to swing the electoral college in their favor.

We are in their grips and they are not going to let go until enough of us are suffering to notice their lies.

The truth is, they hate America and they hate our government. They have taken it over to destroy it and our way of life. Grover Norquist has said: "We will stick a knife in government and kill it."

So the question is: How bad do we want it to get? And do we want to wait until we have no government-protected Constitutional rights of protest left?

Are we going to unite, work to get Progressives elected in the House and Senate or are we going to continue to bicker while treasonous and destructive liars destroy us?

Are we going to stand up for America? Or turn our backs?

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

- Dante Alighieri

Rove has to go. It's time for massive demonstrations, letter writing campaigns and calls to the White House and our representatives. The line has been crossed too many times.

Enough is enough.

U.S.: Gutted Like Enron

2005-07-13T12:45:00.000-07:00

A New York Times editorial discusses White House duplicity regarding the Valerie Plume leak.

All the news yesterday and today shows that President Bush has no intention of firing Karl Rove. On the contrary, the White House is officially maintaining silence while Bush continues to express great "confidence" in Karl Rove.

To me this proves Bush knew and approved of Rove's action which compromised our national security and the life of a covert CIA agent. This President smiles and jokes with the American people while acting like a "good ole boy" you'd like to have a beer with, when all the time he's sticking one knife after another in our backs via Iraq, the deficit, social security piratization...

When is the media - all of them - going to get tough and start screwing this administration to the wall?

When is the Democratic party going to resurrect American values, unite and become a party for the people so politicians like these - without shame or conscience - can never get into office again?

Or are we really going to continue to let our once great country be a tool of liars and ideologues who are gutting our nation and our military like their friends gutted Enron?

Bush & Rove: Above The Law?

2005-07-11T23:11:00.000-07:00

In 2003 Joseph Wilson wrote an op-ed piece for the New York Times suggesting that the Bush administration had manipulated intelligence to justify the invasion of Iraq.

We have proof now thanks to the leaked Downing Street Memo that Mr. Wilson was entirely correct.

However, to keep the truth under wraps, a message of retaliation was sent by this White House and Mr. Wilson was punished for telling the truth about what he knew.

Mr. Wilson's wife was outed as an undercover CIA agent five days later. Her identity revealed, Valerie Plame's life was not only placed in danger, but her career was ruined.

Leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent is a felony. Because of the seriousness of this leak, President Bush was pressured into saying that the person who had leaked Ms. Plane's identity would be found and brought to justice. (Much as he pledged Osama Bin Laden would be brought to justice.) Meanwhile, President Bush insisted no one in the Administration was responsible.

Now Time Magazine has turned over its notes and e-mail confirming that Karl Rove is - and was - the source of the leak.

Rove's own lawyer, Robert Luskin, confirmed that it was Rove who spoke with the reporter who broke the story on Plame and revealed her identity.

It should be no surprise that President Bush has declined to comment. Neither has he fired Rove nor withdrawn Rove's security clearances despite the fact that Rove jeopardized the life of a CIA operative and compromised our national security.

It should come as no surprise that Rove's attorney has had the gall to say his client "did nothing wrong."

We have waited two years for what we knew but could not prove to come out: that Bush's White House punishes and stifles the press in order to lead the American public around by the nose like a blind ass.

Karl Rove must be fired. He must go to jail. But if Bush won't do it, don't be surprised.

The truth is that President Bush's White House is far worse than Nixon's White House.

Besides following in the steps of Nixon, it also appears that President Bush is following in the steps of France's President Mitterrand who directed the terrorist bombing of Greenpeace's Rainbow Warrior and then denied any involvement while maintaining he would leave no stone unturned in "searching for the criminals."

Nixon was a criminal and a liar. Mitterrand was a criminal and a liar. The fact that they were Presidents is irrelevant.

The question is: Is Bush also a criminal and a liar? He says he relied on faulty intelligence to enter the war in Iraq. We can't prove otherwise - yet.

But did he know and allow Rowe to out Valerie Plame as White House strategy to silence the truth?

If he does not fire Rove and fire him soon, only one conclusion can be reached: he knew all the time, he condoned it and now he is hoping that ignoring the truth will make it go away.

Presidents and governments cannot be above the law. If Bush will not fire Rove, it is time for impeachment.

Bush led us to war on lies. He is responsible for 100,000 Iraqi deaths, over 1700 American deaths and 40,000 men and women who have suffered horrible injuries resulting in severe disabilities. Yet he has no exit strategy and doesn't want one.

Bush does nothing to secure our borders but has created a breeding ground for terrorists in Iraq. Bush is crushing us with debt and lowering our standard of living. Bush is destroying our forests, air and water by changing environmental regulations and giving lumber companies the rights to clear cut in National Parks. And he has made his White House the most secretive in our history.

Bush is the most anti-American President we have ever had. He is certainly the most destructive to our institutions - including our military - as well as our environment and people. And if he doesn't make good on this one measly promise to get rid of the person who leaked Plame's name, it must be the beginning of his end.

Eventually all the dirt has to come out. All the lies and treachery he has practiced in the undoing of our country for his own political ends must eventually be revealed.

I predict the case for impeachment will grow. He's more than earned it. The proof is just waiting to be outed.

Plain Dealer Kills Stories

2005-07-10T15:24:00.000-07:00

Does anyone really think we are "making progress" against terrorism with this war in Iraq? Does anyone think we can ever "win?"

Does anyone really think this administration has acted or is acting in the best interests of the American people?

If so, think again.

Catherine the Great said: When the people start to complain about problems at home, start a war.

Why? It keeps people's attention occupied, fearful and focused elsewhere and off the treachery of those in power.

Yesterday the Cleveland Plain Dealer - Ohio's largest newspaper - announced that it had decided to kill two investigative pieces regarding our government because they were based on anonymous sources - whistleblowers still employed by the government - and the paper would be sued by our government and would lose. Reporters - after the Judith Miller precedent - would go to jail. The paper would have serious legal problems.

Although the reporters were willing to go to jail to see the stories published, the corporation that owns the Cleveland Plain Dealer was not willing to fight for a free press. It killed the stories.

In fact, even if the sources in the government came forward, because the sources are leaking classified material - and "classified" is what the government makes anything it does not want us to know about - the paper still would not print the stories.

To the surprise of the editor of the Plain Dealer, there has been no outrage expressed by the public over this story or the Administration's stifling of the press and government whistleblowers.

So what is everyone doing? Having a good time, I guess. Not too worried, I guess. The bombing happened in London, not in the U.S.

And did anyone report this death of our free press? Was it a big story on any major station?

Of course not.

Yet it should be, because secret policies - and the push for the war in Iraq - have helped create terrorists.

You know by now that this administration planned to go to war against Iraq come hell or high water. These neo-cons operate out of a limited world view that believes in "creative destruction" as a political strategy. They are far closer in ideology to Trotsky than to true "conservative" American politicians.

Although they never accepted that what they did could turn Iraq into a breeding ground for terrorists, it plays into their hands just fine.

They never planned to leave Iraq; now they argue that they can't.

You know there are documents that show the extent of the treachery. But those documents are under wraps. The administration never wants us to see the proof. And most of us seem to be okay with that.

Well, remember, there are no victims. Only volunteers.

If we continue to volunteer to be dupes for those in power, the world situation will only continue to deteriorate. Americans will continue to be killed; maybe a whole generation.

Meanwhile there are two stories that we should know about that might outrage us if we knew about them. Two stories that might make people say: get out of Iraq and stop shooting up the world and making enemies.

Stories that most likely play into the whole terrible drama of Iraq and our contribution to this terrorism fiasco and growing hate for us.

But we will never know.

If you think we should, write to your Representatives and Senators and demand protection for the press in exposing government manipulation, corruption and secrecy.

If you don't, we'll have what France had or worse.

20 years ago France's President Francois Mitterrand approved the sinking of a Greenpeace ship, the Rainbow Warrior, in a New Zealand Harbor.

He did this because Green Peace was planning on protesting nuclear tests using the ship.

New Zealand, ally of France, considered it a terrorist act.

Mitterrand orchestrated a cover-up while feigning ignorance over who did the bombing. He kept up a game of "searching for the truth" while condemning and supposedly searching for the "criminals." He even called the attack on the Rainbow Warrior "a criminal and absurd act."

But the criminals were in the French administration and included the President of the republic.

According to The Standard the action earned France "...a reputation as an arrogant nuclear power prepared to go to any lengths to defend its interests" but, until now, a link to Mitterrand could never be proved.

Does any of this sound familiar?

The French story - of how Mitterrand ordered the attack - was classified and under wraps for twenty years. It has just been revealed.

When will we find out the role Bush played in 9/11? And the lengths to which this administration has gone to further its arrogant power mongering in the Mid-East?

With this precedent of jailing reporters and killing investigative reporting of government duplicity, the answer is: NEVER.

Grieving Over The Bombings

2005-07-09T23:35:00.000-07:00

Today it hit me.

The grief over Thursday's bombings in London.

Today was a beautiful sunny day - a perfect day. I walked down to our local market filled with fresh fruits, vegetables and flowers. Happy people wandered, drank coffee and chatted with each other.

I felt so fortunate to be alive and part of such an idyllic scene. Then a quartet of four young women set up and began playing violins.

It was then that it hit me. Those notes dipped deep into my being and suddenly the photos in the newspaper came alive. The pleas for missing friends and loved ones became real. It could have been us. In a very real sense it was us.

I wept.

Life can be so beautiful.

And life can rip you apart.

Last night I watched an interview from - I think it was from 2002 - of a Muslim cleric who lived in London and was happy over 9/11.

He said any Muslim who did not admit he was happy over 9/11 was a liar. He said the United States has been menacing the Middle-East and disrespectful of her people for decades. He saw terrorism as the only possibility of stopping a rogue state from taking over the world.

Rogue state. That's us he was talking about.

Or, more exactly, it's our government he was talking about, the one we like to ignore as we go shopping. The one that has waged a war somewhere in the world every year for the last fifty years. The one that does these things in our name, supposedly to keep us safe.

But all that aggression is coming around now to bite us - you and me and others - in the ass.

Yet, although government policies are backfiring on us now, we continue to allow our government to do these things.

Why? Are we are too busy watching American Idol or CSI?

Those running this dog and pony are counting on it.

They ratcheted up the terror index to orange.

A lot of good that does.

What a pathetic joke. It's just a lot of crazy making.

Thursday's tragedy and its message was this: we need to back off and work for peace instead of war.

Our leaders are way too disconnected from the real pain of what is happening in this world. They don't get that they share responsibility for it.

They ought to listen to some violin music.

Who'll We Invade This Time?

2005-07-08T08:12:00.000-07:00

Thomas Friedman has an article in the New York Times today. In it he states that "when Salman Rushdie wrote a controversial novel involving the prophet Muhammad, he was sentenced to death by the leader of Iran. To this day - to this day - no major Muslim cleric or religious body has ever issued a fatwa condemning Osama bin Laden."

Mr. Friedman makes an important point. Right-wing fanatics, under a banner of religion, are waging this war of terror against Western politics and values.

And why have Muslim leaders not condemned it? Because they share the terrorist's fears that, given free reign, the United States will turn their cultures and societies into clones of ours and they don't want it.

Who can blame them? American corporate culture has turned all of us into servants of the dollar. Thanks to our culture of entertainment bred by television, lack of meaningful work and bankrupt social values in which we are mostly focused upon consuming, tens of millions of us are hooked on one addiction or another, whether it's alcohol, drugs, pornography, gambling, television or shopping.

It is not our real freedoms that they despise. It's our petty vices.

One of those vices was the arrogance of pursuing revenge and shooting up Iraq.

We have a decades long road to travel now to try and get back to sanity.

To get the Arab world to condemn these bombings; to have all major Muslim leaders declare a fatwa condeming Osama Bin Laden, Al Quaeda and terrorism, it is time for us to admit our vices.

It is time to admit we were wrong to invade Iraq.

It is time to admit that corporate America has been itching to get its hands on Middle-Eastern markets and turn them into clones of the U.S. model.

Just because the Arabs are paranoid doesn't mean no one wants to take them over and kill their cultures.

If we are going to have peace, we need to get honest about motives.

And we need to back off.

We need to stop this arrogance of thinking our way is so much "better."

Arabs brought civilization to a primitive and Medieval Europe - our ancestors - centuries ago. Baghdad was the cradle of Civilization. Yet we act as though the Middle-East is some back water that needs us.

It doesn't need us or our way of life. It's complete arrogance to think we have any right to impose our ways on those cultures - especially in terms of turning Muslims into Christians.

American firepower obviously cannot cure this or it would have.

It's time for honesty and walking a higher path.

It's past time trying to prove we're "right."

It's time we accepted that Muslim cultures are as valid as ours and said that OUT LOUD.

And 9/11? Why doesn't Bush take a lesson from the families of the victims? Most of them are focusing on forgiveness and working for peace.

Our arrogance is our Achilles heel. Hanging onto it isn't working and if we want a blanket condemnation of terrorists by Muslim clerics, it's time we got over thinking we're superior and banging the 9/11 drum.

Virtual March - Global Warming

2005-06-30T00:14:00.000-07:00

Laurie David has started a virtual march on Washington for action on global warming. The reason? Read her words:

"Don’t let anyone tell you a “little” global warming is no big deal. As human beings, we may not notice the difference between a cold day and a freezing day, but invasive species like the Bark Beetle do. And it spells disaster for our nation’s forests.

Just a 2 to 3 degree rise in average temperatures have allowed the larvae of these locust-like pests to survive what were once freezing and deadly winters. This “small” shift in climate has upset nature’s delicate balance: plagues of Bark Beetles are infesting not only the forests of Cody, Wyoming, the gateway to Yellowstone National Park, but hundreds of forests from Arizona to Alaska, decimating the trees they inhabit, leaving behind a veritable tinder box of dead wood in their wake. The combination of global warming, bark beetles, and America’s forests is the perfect storm for wildfires on a monumental scale.

As CO2 levels in our atmosphere rise, and temperatures continue to increase, Bark Beetles will just be one insect on a long list of destructive species that will defy nature’s way, taking advantage of new, man-made climate conditions, thus wreaking havoc on our planet’s natural resources. You can find out more at Stop Global Warming.

Please understand that this grim vision is just a vision. The future of the Earth can and will be preserved with your help. So spread the word and direct your families, friends, neighbors, and colleagues to www.StopGlobalWarming.org today. The March is growing by the thousands and with each new marcher the demand for change only grows louder. And we’re just getting warmed up."

Sign up and "march" today.

The Big Lie

2005-06-29T00:57:00.000-07:00

Did you listen to Bush's speech?

If you didn't, you missed nothing except a bunch of lies spoken unconvincingly. It was the same old tired rhetoric.

We had to go into Iraq.

That's a lie. We didn't.

We're making the world safer.

That's a lie. The world was far safer - we were actually safer - before the war. Certainly at the very least 1723 people were safer and the 40,000 troops who are returning with severe physical and mental scars were safer.

We're keeping Iraq from falling into a civil war.

That's a lie. There's already one raging. Iraqis are killing Iraqis.

We're keeping Iraq from falling to terrorists.

Okay, help me out with the logic of that statement. We are fighting terrorists daily - they have made Iraq into a hell hole - but Iraq hasn't fallen to terrorists?

Sure it has. Terror affects and controls everyone's behavior there.

Unless he's admitting that he has created a civil war in Iraq. So was he admitting that Iraqis are killing Iraqis and these are not "terrorists" in the strictest sense of the word but people who want to reclaim their homeland from a foreign occupier?

You can't have it both ways, George.

His arguments are as full of holes as the Missile Shield.

But my ears perked up when G.W. talked about "murderers who kill because of 'ideology'."

It was like he was talking about his own administration and neo-con advisers.

Really, sentence after sentence could be applied to them. It was the classic case of projection: the pot calling the kettle black.

The people who worked to put Bush - the front piece - into office did so to implement policy based upon their ideology.

They call it a right wing ideology, but it is so far "right" that it has traveled in a circle and is now clearly on the side of the lunatic fringe. This administration's ideology is aligned much more closely with the philosophy of communism circa 1917 than it is with historical conservatism.

The Orwellian double speak that they use in which black is called white and killing 100,000 people - not to mention the wounded - and dooming the Iraqi people to live with daily terror is equated with giving them freedom. He keeps repeating it, but it still does not make it true. It's propaganda.

In fact Bush's twisting of facts and ignoring the reality of suffering that he has created by following his advisors - Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, et al - is classic. There is no liberty when you can't walk down the street without being taken out by a suicide bomber.

But Bush gave them that life, that daily terror.

And he calls it freedom.

But it isn't freedom.

It's THE BIG LIE.

Even bigger than WMD.

It could take how long, Don?

2005-06-28T01:11:00.000-07:00

"Anyone who tries to estimate the end, the time, the cost or the casualties in a war is making a big mistake."
– Donald Rumsfeld, 6/27/05

"It [the war in Iraq] could last six days, six weeks. I doubt six months."
– Donald Rumsfeld, 3/7/03

More than 1,720 U.S. soldiers have been killed and 40,000 permanently injured in Iraq. I've seen two men in my town who are now home from the war as amputees.

In Iraq, 100,000 Iraqis have died and virtually everyone in Iraq has lost a friend or relative.

Instead of looking for an exit strategy - since we know our presence incites insurgents to attack their own people in order to chase us out - we are building bases and settling in for an endless war. Instead of calling a cease fire, Donald Rumsfeld has admitted he negotiates with insurgent groups as soldiers die.

The reason for staying in the war is clearly to justify the deaths of those who have already died. But Mr. Rumsfeld - if I understood him correctly - is now saying this war could take a dozen years.

His "six weeks" war turned into over two years. Now he's saying it will be a dozen years. Perhaps he plans no end at all.

After all, if these neo-cons with their ideas of "creative destruction" have to pull out, the world will see the absolute folly of their beliefs - and this disastrous foreign policy that has been built upon them - and Republicans will be turned out of office.

So, to help Republicans remain in office, Bush is insisting we will remain in Iraq - now for an initial estimate of twelve more years.

This means an entire generation of Americans will be killed or crippled by this war.

It makes no sense to justify the loss of 1720 men and women through the deaths and disfigurement of an entire generation of our sons and daughters.

This war was lost when Donald Rumsfeld told the Pentagon to ignore the State Department report that predicted the disaster we have and gave strategies for avoiding it.

Donald Rumsfeld's failed experiment has gone far enough and far too many have suffered already.

I am not alone in this view. In the poll conducted by The Washington Post and ABC News, more than 40% of those polled said the war in Iraq was becoming analogous to the war in Vietnam.

It's time for an exit strategy.

Write to your Congressional representatives and tell them to support H.J.RES.55, the new bipartisan resolution calling for the Bush administration to announce a plan by the end of the year for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq - and to initiate the plan as soon as possible.