The Dem Diatribe Project

Gonzales resigns - Hell Yes!!!

2007-08-27T11:22:00.000-04:00

And not a moment too soon. That son of a bitch should be in jail. Rove got out while the going was still possible. The rest of them should be on their way to the slammer by now too but it seems lying to Congress and the American people is no longer a crime.

Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study

2007-02-02T11:26:00.000-05:00

Bush, Big Oil at it again. Always at it. This time it is just a little more blatant. Here's to the worst planet money can buy.

From the story:

Scientists and economists have been offered $10,000 each by a lobby group funded by one of the world's largest oil companies to undermine a major climate change report due to be published today.

Letters sent by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), an ExxonMobil-funded thinktank with close links to the Bush administration, offered the payments for articles that emphasise the shortcomings of a report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

Gonzales Questions Habeas Corpus

2007-01-24T08:22:00.000-05:00

In the most shockingly cynical, mis-directed and mind-boggling statement by an Attorney General in perhaps the history of the world, Gonzales offered his own feeble-minded re-interpretation of the United States Constitution. In an further attempt to somehow justify the criminal activities of the Bush Administration, Gonzales stated, "There is no expressed grant of habeas in the Constitution; there’s a prohibition against taking it away,".

So in order to take it away, does not one have to have it in the first place?

My god, where did Bush find this guy? Answer: the same pea pod of neocons who are bent on taking away the rights of the US people, imposing imperial rule on the United States and expanding US hegemony to the rest of the world.

It may be time to dust off those Hitler references.

Pentagon's Propaganda Machine

2006-10-31T08:51:00.000-05:00

The Pentagon has been planting "news" stories in the foreign press for several years. Government propaganda in the U.S. is supposedly illegal though the Bush administration seems to flaunt this with impunity and FOX news is all too happy to assist. Setting the constitution aside, the Pentagon has announced a new "media war" unit to add it's own noise to the din of misinformation in the world.

Fearing that insurgents and anyone else deemed unfriendly to U.S. policy (including U.S. citizens) are gaining the upper hand in the dissemination of information, disinformation and misinformation, the Pentagon will continue to plant U.S.-friendly news stories in all media outlets that it can manage to infiltrate including 24 hour news channels, the Internet and newspapers.

What is different? Nothing. The Pentagon is merely announcing that it is doing something that it has been doing all along. They are covering their butts so no one can act surprised when U.S. citizens wake up and realize how much and how often they have been lied to by their government. This is just another salvo in the propaganda wars.

Bush Nixes Public Access to EPA Libraries!

2006-08-30T13:38:00.000-04:00

If you cannot squelch public opinion and facts with propaganda and lies, just block access to the facts.

It seems that the self-appointed "Decider", George W. Bush, has decided to "end public access to research materials" at EPA Regional libraries without Congressional consent. In an all out effort to impede research and public access, Bush has implemented a loosely covert operation to close down 26 technical libraries under the guise of a budgetary constraint move. Scientists are protesting, but at least 15 of the libraries will be closed by Sept. 30, 2006.

...

The suppression of information to the public and efforts to control the flow of information of the sciences has reached critical mass. Shades of the once science fictional book, Fahrenheit 451, are dangerously close to reality and the banning and burning of books looms all to surreal, but are more fact than science fiction now. Who could have ever envisioned that Ray Bradbury's vicious, futuristic, dystopian society would ever come to fruition; but it may indeed have done just that!

See, Bush positively does not want the American people to know about the real effects of global warming, mercury levels, air pollution, and any other topic, which if known about by the populous, would undeniably be dire for "Corporate America". Bush is unconcerned with your health, my health, the health of our children and the future of this planet we all call home. What he is concerned about is the gleaming health of the bottom lines of the corporate trough from which his completely corrupt and dangerous enterprise feeds.

Oh Hell Yes!

2006-08-17T13:52:00.000-04:00

NSA eavesdropping program ruled unconstitutional
Judge orders immediate halt to program

Thank you ACLU!

(CNN) -- A federal judge on Thursday ruled that the U.S. government's warrantless wiretapping program is unconstitutional and ordered it ended immediately.

In a 44-page memorandum and order, U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor, -- who is based in Detroit, Michigan --struck down the National Security Agency's program, which she said violates the rights to free speech and privacy.

Taylor's ruling stems from a case filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. According to The Associated Press, Taylor is the first judge to rule the eavesdropping program unconstitutional. (Read the complete ruling -- PDF)

The defendants "are permanently enjoined from directly or indirectly utilizing the Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP) in any way, including, but not limited to, conducting warrantless wiretaps of telephone and Internet communications, in contravention of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and Title III," she wrote.

She further declared that the program "violates the separation of powers doctrine, the Administrative Procedures Act, the First and Fourth amendments to the United States Constitution, the FISA and Title III."

Block the Vote, Ohio Remix

2006-06-09T10:54:00.000-04:00

Published: June 7, 2006 New York Times:

If there was ever a sign of a ruling party in trouble, it is a game plan that calls for trying to win by discouraging voting.

The latest sign that Republicans have an election-year strategy to shut down voter registration drives comes from Ohio. As the state gears up for a very competitive election season this fall, its secretary of state, J. Kenneth Blackwell, has put in place "emergency" regulations that could hit voter registration workers with criminal penalties for perfectly legitimate registration practices. The rules are so draconian they could shut down registration drives in Ohio.

Mr. Blackwell, who also happens to be the Republican candidate for governor this year, has a history of this sort of behavior. In 2004, he instructed county boards of elections to reject any registrations on paper of less than 80-pound stock — about the thickness of a postcard. His order was almost certainly illegal, and he retracted it after he came under intense criticism. It was, however, in place long enough to get some registrations tossed out.

This year, Mr. Blackwell's office has issued rules and materials that appear to require that paid registration workers, and perhaps even volunteers, personally take the forms they collect to an election office. Organizations that run registration drives generally have the people who register voters bring the forms back to supervisors, who can then review them for errors. Under Mr. Blackwell's edict, everyone involved could be committing a crime. Mr. Blackwell's rules also appear to prohibit people who register voters from sending the forms in by mail. That rule itself may violate federal elections law.

Mr. Blackwell's rules are interpretations of a law the Republican-controlled Ohio Legislature passed recently. Another of the nation's most famous swing states, Florida, has been the scene of similar consternation and confusion since it recently enacted a law that is so harsh that the Florida League of Women Voters announced that it was stopping all voter registration efforts for the first time in 67 years.

Florida's Legislature, like Ohio's, is controlled by Republicans. Throughout American history both parties have shown a willingness to try to use election law to get results they might otherwise not win at the polls. But right now it is clearly the Republicans who believe they have an interest in keeping the voter base small. Mr. Blackwell and other politicians who insist on making it harder to vote never say, of course, that they are worried that get-out-the-vote drives will bring too many poor and minority voters into the system. They say that they want to reduce fraud. However, there is virtually no evidence that registration drives are leading to fraud at the polls.

But there is one clear way that Ohio's election system is corrupt. Decisions about who can vote are being made by a candidate for governor. Mr. Blackwell should hand over responsibility for elections to a decision maker whose only loyalty is to the voters and the law.

The Worst Bill You Never Heard Of

2006-06-06T08:03:00.000-04:00

This will be a busy week in the House -- Congress goes into summer recess Friday, but not before considering the Section 115 Reform Act of 2006 (SIRA). Never heard of SIRA? That’s the way Big Copyright and their lackey’s want it, and it's bad news for you.

Simply put, SIRA fundamentally redefines copyright and fair use in the digital world. It would require all incidental copies of music to be licensed separately from the originating copy. Even copies of songs that are cached in your computer's memory or buffered over a network would need yet another license. Once again, Big Copyright is looking for a way to double-dip into your wallet, extracting payment for the same content at multiple levels.

Today, so-called "incidental" copies don't need to be licensed; they're made in the process of doing *other* things, like listening to your MP3 library or plugging into a Net radio station. If you paid for the MP3 and the radio station is up-to-date with its bookkeeping, nobody should have to pay again, right? Not if SIRA becomes law. Out of the blue, copyright holders would have created an entire new market to charge for -- and sue over. Good for them. Bad for us.

Don't let Big Copyright legalize double dipping. Fight SIRA today.

Mike McCurry: More on Us Being Internet Rabble

2006-06-05T10:42:00.000-04:00

Mike McCurry, former Clinton Administration Press Secretary turned telecommunications industry lobbyist is out to kill the open Internet while lining his and the telcos pockets. Nothing good can come of this. If McCyrry and the giant telcos have there way, say goodby to free speech on the Internet.

Neo-Conservatives as Power Hungry Greasers? Let them tell you ...

2005-09-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

--- Been a little quite on this list, but here's a good read -->

David Broder excerpts some of the juicer tidbits from 10 year-aniversary issue of the Weekly Standard.

e.g.

But, Ferguson said, "[t]he Republican takeover -- which is to say, political success -- dealt the mortal blow. Conservative institutions, conceived for combat, have in power become self-perpetuating, churning their direct-mail lists in pursuit of cash. . . . The current story of Jack Abramoff's lucrative self-dealing, involving as it does such movement stalwarts as Ralph Reed and Grover Norquist, may seem lunatic in its excesses, but . . . [t]he point is the ease with which the stalwarts commandeered the greasy machinery of Washington power. Conservative activists came to Washington to do good and stayed to do well. The grease rubbed off, too."

Read Broder's Setting the Conservative Standard, or go to the source at the Weekly Standard.

Hackett a stand-out in 2nd district race -Ohio News

2005-07-19T13:24:00.000-04:00

Dem Diatribe's Pick for the special election on Tuesday, Aug. 2, to elect the successor in the 2nd District to Congressman Rob Portman, who recently appointed by the President to a high trade post: Paul Hackett

The 2nd District it is gerrymandered to wind from eastern Cincinnati’s prosperous suburbs and posh commercial sites through such small farm counties as Brown, Adams and Pike, part of Warren and Clermont, and all the way east across the state to downtrodden Portsmouth in poverty-ridden Scioto County.

The race is down to Republican Jean Schmidt, who was the only female in a 10-person primary race, a 100 percent Bush backer from Loveland, who is the head of an anti-abortion group in Cincinnati. Her opponent is Paul Hackett, a charismatic, impressive lawyer from Indian Hill, who recently returned from a seven-month tour of duty in Iraq as a Marine major, where he served on the front lines in battered Fallujah, an insurgent stronghold. If elected, he will be, incredibly, the only member of Congress to have served in Iraq.

Hackett is long (6-foot-4), lank, tan and fit, a kind of urban cowboy in the Gary Cooper mold. He is blunt and outspoken, with a clear, well-thought-out, pro-people agenda. He pulls no punches.

When it was revealed a few days ago in the press that Schmidt had failed to report two dinners and two $300 tickets to a Bengals game provided by a lobbyist, Hackett pounced.

“If she can’t resist freebies here, how would she function in Washington, where the slick bigtime lobbyists operate non-stop?”

Hackett said he originally opposed the war in Iraq, “but we’re there now and must work our way out.” He has an exit strategy based on his experience on the ground there: “We must provide intensive training for Iraq’s troops so they can provide their own security for the Iraqi people. They aren’t ready now, and it’s up to us to get them ready to defend their homeland before we get out. We aren’t doing the job adequately now.”

Of his opponent, he says the 2nd District would be wrong to send “a rubber-stamp like her” to Congress. “The district is diverse, made up of strong, independent voters, small business, family farmers, successful entrepreneurs. We need, and I’m convinced these voters want, bold new thinking to get the economy back on track, put Social Security on a sound footing, give all citizens access to health care.”

Hackett says he’s strongly pro-choice, but “I don’t know anybody who thinks abortion is a good thing. Let’s keep it safe, legal and rare.”

He says he supports the 2nd Amendment and the right to hunt and own guns.

“Ask yourselves these questions,” he urged the 300 in attendance at the debate: “Are you better off in the past five years? Is your job safer? Do you even have a job? Are you paying more for health care? How about gasoline? If you send me down there, I’ll fight for you. If you want a rubber stamp to represent you, then I’m not your candidate.”

Paul Hackett is the most impressive prospect for Congress I’ve seen in quite a while. If anyone can overcome the long odds in the 2nd District, he is likely to be the one. He would be a breath of pure, Ohio air in the fetid Washington atmosphere.
---
Thanks Bill Rentschler, The Journal News

Bush gives up even trying to apear to have ethics

2005-07-19T08:21:00.000-04:00

President Bush is completely back-pedaling from his 2004 pledge to fire anyone involved in leaking the name of CIA operative Valerie Plame.

Now that it appears that his most trusted, most evil confidant is the guilty party, Bush is adjusting his rhetoric. According to the Shrub, Darth Rove must now be convicted of a crime before said Shrub will fire him. I guess giving Rove his walking papers will be a lot easier once convicted, as he will be on his way to prison anyway.

The Shrub is on his way to being a bigger flip-flopper than John Kerry and he might want to pay careful attention to some of the things he says with such conviction. e.g.:

"...if someone committed a crime, they will no longer work in my administration ..."

Well Mr. Shrubbery, if you were to live by those words, you would have a pretty empty office. You might want to adjust your rhetoric again in the future to something like, "If someone in my administration who is not Karl Rove or Dick Cheney committed a capital crime they will no longer ..."

But given your administration's record, I imagine that you would have to back-pedal on that statement as well.

Who’s your Supreme Justice?

2005-07-15T10:42:00.000-04:00

Despite my entry in yesterday’s Diatribe, I think Karl-gate has all the ingredients of a summer scandal and all the staying power of an afternoon storm. Karl’s scandal should be easy enough for Bush and the RNC to handle. First off there aren’t enough Dems to stimulate the probe. Secondly, it’s summer time and vacations have a way of reducing all concerns to those of water safety. Lastly, it’s only too easy for the Administration to whip up a teasing frenzy that will cloud the American memory of Karl-gate. Hence, Rove-blood becomes a distant summer night’s dream.

Simply put, Bush need only publicly suggest, not nominate, an extreme right-winger to the top Court. By vetting a wacko-right-a-tarian at least two events should unfold:

Dems will drop Karl-gate and focus all energy on batting down the extreme candidate.
Bush will then be freed up to nominate a slightly more moderate supreme justice.

This strategy will benefit Bush by making it appear he’s listening to moderate Americans, and it will serve to suck all the remaining air out of the Karl-gate sheets.

In that spirit, let’s play the Nominate-A-Whacko game:

Use the comment function to add your nominee. What foil candidates will Bush suggest for the high court?

e.g. PA Senator, Rick Santorum

Karl-gate and the train wreck of incompetence

2005-07-14T14:31:00.000-04:00

Given me a little blood, just a little. Take, for example, the dark spots dripping from the pen of Washington Post columnist, Richard Cohen. Suddenly I'm thrashing along with the scent of summer scandal. Karl-blood is spilling into the swarming Democrat-infested waters. Will there be enough blood for a meal? Will this meal lead to an adversarial feast reminiscent of the Clinton blow-job frenzy – This time on the other side of the isle?

I say, "Gimme a scandal, any scandal." Is the Rove death watch the silver bullet that destroys the alfred-e-newman Chief Executive? I'd feel bad about waiting for the impending crash, and possible exploding media circus, except for the fact that W seems to revel in the American partisan divide. Subsequently, I can hardly control my excitement.

In my reverie I imagine a Democrat prosecutor (supported by a further, dreamy Democratic controlled House/Senate) ireverently chomping out some Bush re-quotes.

Will Bush continue staring silent and blank-faced into the American eye when asked if he'll honor his personal pledge to fire anyone (in the Executive Office) who leaked the identity of CIA Agent Plame?
Will a zealous Democratic prosecutor use the famous Bush re-quote, "Bring it on"?
And will the same prosecutor utter another re-quote following a successful impeachment trial, "Mission Accomplished"?

Stay tuned and fine out....

Rove Told Reporter of Plame's Role But Didn't Name Her, Attorney Says

2005-07-11T10:13:00.000-04:00

Yeah, right. We believe you.

See Also: Power Line.

Rove: the architectect of most Bush Administration lies.

Bush Beckons Big Government Intelligence

2005-06-30T08:38:00.000-04:00

President Bush ordered a new intelligence unit on Wednesday, the same day he delivered a speech designed to remind Americans we’re fighting a war in Iraq. Although Bush is seemingly unable to remember that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, there is some hope that this new intelligence unit will help in the war against terror.

Skeptics might like to remind the President that government intelligence is an oxymoron. However, skeptics would be wise to keep their words short and to the point. Any words beginning with the letters O, X, and Y are sure to confuse our little shrub. Meanwhile Americans retain hope that the remainder of the word, oxy-moron, might garner a modicum of pattern recognition within the presidential gray matter – if there is, in fact, such a thing.

I am left wondering if the President has any principles at all, beyond that is, an unrelenting, drain circling attempt to pretend that Iraq and 9/11 are inextricably related. Reportedly Bush is a “conservative” yet he continues to complicate the U.S. bureaucracy, this time with additional intelligence units. I fear the expansion of government bureaucracy will only serve to confuse Bush further. But there is hope. Maybe this new unit will have time to investigate the Downing Street Memo!

Downing Street Memo: DFA Get out the word.

2005-06-21T13:50:00.000-04:00

Democracy For America has put out a short Flash animation describing the Downing Street Memo and what it means for America.

Take a look:
http://democracyforamerica.com/memo_movie.php

Durbin Tells The Truth. White House Implies Lying Is A Better Option.

2005-06-17T09:38:00.000-04:00

According to the Washington Post on Tuesday, Senator Durbin mentioned an FBI report in which a Guantanamo Bay prisoner was chained to the floor, temperature conditions were at times extreme, and food and water were denied.

Durban is quoted as saying, "If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control," he said, "you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

In response to Dubin's criticism on the floor of the Senate, White House spokesman Scott McClellan had an opportunity to acknowledge mistakes may have been made. It would have been simple, honorable, and patriotic to clarify that such actions, as reported by the FBI, do not adhere to the ideals of a humane democracy. Instead McClellan chose to question Durban’s motives. McClellan’s remarks imply responsible “Gitmos” were acting in a manner which both supports America and can be held up as model leadership. Perhaps McClellan believes that fledgling democracies should behave in a similar manner?

Real leadership requires honesty and integrity. McClellan’s implications stain the flagging integrity of an increasingly defensive Executive Office -- an office which seems to have lost sight of honesty. McClellan's comments are a disservice to our men and women in uniform who are working hard under challenging conditions. Such reprehensible dishonesty must not be the standard by which our leaders approach the world.

Dem for Pres in 08

2005-06-15T19:27:00.000-04:00

Who do you think will run in the presidential primary for the Democratic nomination in '08?

I pick...

Hillary Clinton
John Edwards
Barack Obama
John Kerry
Joe Biden
Joe Liberman
Mace Windu

Use the comment section below.

Downing Street Memo is Unmemorable

2005-06-15T19:14:00.000-04:00

Michael Kinsley, formerly of Slate.com, now of the LA Times wrote last Sunday that the Downing Stree Memo tells us nothing about Bush's illegal pursuit of regime change in Iraq. At the same time Kinsley refers to Bush as a "proven war criminal" and praises the memo as a sign that the left is coalescing around a common issue. If Kinsley is right then Bush is accomplishing what no Democrat has yet done. Namely, uniting the left against the Republican controlled White House, Senate, and House.

Bolton is a miserable little prick while Bush is a baffled little creep : advice for talking to your Republican relatives

2005-06-15T19:09:00.000-04:00

For those unlucky enough to not get distribution of Hal Crowther, here's a great introduction. Ole Hal is on a tear, and he's got advice for you to share with your Republican relatives -- the same relatives that fear your knee-jerk liberalism has gotten out of hand.

Cheney: Evil, Mean-Spirited Crank: personal Attacks on Dean

2005-06-15T12:08:00.000-04:00

"Maybe his mother loved him, but I've never met anybody who does."
That's what Dick Cheney had to say about my brother, Howard Dean, on Monday.

This wasn't a quote from an insecure schoolyard bully at recess -- this
was our vice president speaking on prime time television. It's outrageous!

But then again, this is a guy who has no regrets about misleading
America into a war with Iraq and the deaths of over 1,700 brave men and women in uniform. He has no remorse over mismanaging our nation's economy and running up the biggest deficit in history. He wants to destroy Social Security. And he has given away billions to his corporate cronies at Halliburton.

Howard has said a lot of things about Republicans, but he was wrong
about Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney has worked a day in his life -- and the nation is worse off because of it.

Vice President Cheney says he has never met anyone who likes Howard - well, it's time for us to re-introduce ourselves to him.

It's time to bring back the bat.

What Cheney said was over the top.

After 10 straight victorious elections in Vermont, battling the left and
the right to balance budgets and enact Civil Unions, running a
transformative presidential primary campaign and winning the chair of the Democratic National Committee - and now transforming it into a bottom-up operation, Howard has grown some pretty thick skin. He's fair game for Dick Cheney and the Republican shock troops. But, Howard can and will continue to do what he does best: speak truth to power.

We need to let Dick Cheney know that even his penchant for putting
innocent family members in his cross hairs will never stop us from
speaking truth to power either.

So the bat is back.

Democracy for America will use the funds raised to spread the word about the Downing Street Memo and the Secret UK Eyes Only briefing paper that definitively prove that the Bush administration "fixed" the facts leading to the Iraq war -- and that they made virtually no plans for what would come after the military victory.

American soldiers and innocent Iraqi civilians die every day because of this travesty. And it was Dick Cheney who was and remains one of the war's biggest cheerleaders.

Help Democracy for America get the Downing Street Memo into the hands of high school students, hair dressers, clergy and the news director at your local television station. Hit the bat now:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/bat

Thank you for all that you do,

Jim Dean
Democracy for America

Repub Weldon believes Iraq will partner with Iran

2005-06-14T13:26:00.000-04:00

From Meet The Press on Sunday 6/12/05 ....

------------------------------

Russert Quotes Dick (Cheney) "Vice President Cheney said on May 30. 'I think the level of activity that we see today in Iraq from a military standpoint, I think will clearly decline. I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.'

...

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think we're in the last throes of the insurgency?
REP. WELDON: No, I don't. I think Iran is going to continue to escalate their building support so eventually, whatever government there takes hold is going to have to deal with Iran and eventually become a partner of Iran.

--------------

And I ask you, WTF?!

Howard Dean Speaks For Me Petition

2005-06-13T13:38:00.000-04:00

To: Democrats in U.S. Congress

Recently some Democrats in Congress have chastised Governor Howard Dean, Chairman of the Democratic National Committee, saying that he does not speak for the party.

We the undersigned have a simple message we would like to convey to you:

Howard Dean Speaks For Me.

And, we respectfully request that you refrain from public criticism of your fellow Democrats and that you begin to speak for us as well

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

Sign the petition.

Memo: U.S. Lacked Full Postwar Iraq Plan

2005-06-13T13:33:00.000-04:00

I'll take "The Obvious" for $1000, Alex.

Providing yet more evidence that Bush cannot think more than about one move ahead in any situation, the Washington Post is reporting on British analysis that the Bush administration had not given any serious thought regarding what to do with Iraq after the invasion. Forget chess. This man probably sucks at checkers. And he is "leading our country", YOW!

A briefing paper prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his top advisers eight months before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq concluded that the U.S. military was not preparing adequately for what the British memo predicted would be a "protracted and costly" postwar occupation of that country.

The eight-page memo, written in advance of a July 23, 2002, Downing Street meeting on Iraq, provides new insights into how senior British officials saw a Bush administration decision to go to war as inevitable, and realized more clearly than their American counterparts the potential for the post-invasion instability that continues to plague Iraq.

In its introduction, the memo "Iraq: Conditions for Military Action" notes that U.S. "military planning for action against Iraq is proceeding apace," but adds that "little thought" has been given to, among other things, "the aftermath and how to shape it." ...

... Now, disclosure of the memo written in advance of that meeting -- and other British documents recently made public -- show that Blair's aides were not just concerned about Washington's justifications for invasion but also believed the Bush team lacked understanding of what could happen in the aftermath. ...

... Saying that "we need to be sure that the outcome of the military action would match our objective," the memo's authors point out, "A post-war occupation of Iraq could lead to a protracted and costly nation-building exercise." The authors add, "As already made clear, the U.S. military plans are virtually silent on this point. Washington could look to us to share a disproportionate share of the burden."

UK Ministers were told of need for Gulf war ‘excuse’

2005-06-13T13:16:00.000-04:00

The evidence in Bush's manufacture of evidence for war seems to keep growing. How long can the U.S. mainstream media ignore this? Isn't it about time for a special counsel to investigate Bush's lies to Congress, the American people and the world?

MINISTERS were warned in July 2002 that Britain was committed to taking part in an American-led invasion of Iraq and they had no choice but to find a way of making it legal.

The warning, in a leaked Cabinet Office briefing paper, said Tony Blair had already agreed to back military action to get rid of Saddam Hussein at a summit at the Texas ranch of President George W Bush three months earlier.

Read more ...

One Hand Washes the Other

2005-06-09T09:11:00.000-04:00

Republican U.S. Rep. Katherine Harris, who was praised and vilified for her role as Florida's secretary of state in the 2000 presidential recount, said today she will run for the U.S. Senate next year against Democrat Bill Nelson.

Running against an incumbent may be a more difficult challenge, but Harris is considered a top fundraiser and is a popular figure among Republicans."

"A popular figure among Republicans". I'll bet she is. Her reward for giving Bush the WH was tons of campaign funding. She raised more than $2 million for her House seat campaign. The incumbent did not raise that much in his ten years in office.

ggggrrrrrrrrrr

Marching Towards a Police State (part 3)

2005-06-09T09:08:00.000-04:00

Senate panel votes to expand Patriot Act

This week the Senate was to take up the repeal of the Patrion Act, or at least consider scaling it back.

Instead, the controversial post-9/11 law would be expanded to give the FBI new powers to demand documents from companies without a judge's approval, according to a vote late Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence committee.

The latest proposal grants the FBI more power to seek information from banks, hospitals, libraries, and other organizations through "administrative subpoenas" without prior judicial oversight.
In addition, the FBI may designate that the subpoenas are secret and punish disclosure of their existence with up to one year in prison.

The ACLU denounced the Senate Intelligence committee's vote. "In a move antithetical to our Constitution, the new 'administrative subpoena' authority would let the FBI write and approve its own search orders for intelligence investigations, without prior judicial approval," the group said in a statement. "Americans have a reasonable expectation that their federal government will not gather records about their health, their wealth and the transactions of their daily life without probable cause of a crime and without a court order."

Isn't the Republican party all about individual freedom and less government involvement in people's daily lives?

Un-American by Any Name

2005-06-06T10:21:00.000-04:00

The Bush administration somehow feels justified in chastising Newsweek for their report on desecration of the Koran and smug, arrogant and hubristic in dismissing Amnesty International, but this is all just desperate rhetoric. This administration has the worst record of human rights abuses in the history of the United States. A closer read of the Amnesty report details specific cases of abuse and a policy that flies in the face of what the U.S. stands for.

The editorial in Sunday's New York Times expresses this more succinctly than I could attempt to do myself. Rather than snarking about the situation, as I often do, the article offers some constructive advice to the Bush administration:

Now that the Bush administration has made clear how offended it is at Amnesty International's word choice in characterizing the Guantánamo Bay detention camp "the gulag of our times," we hope it will soon get around to dealing with the substantive problems that the Amnesty report is only the latest to identify. What Guantánamo exemplifies - harsh, indefinite detention without formal charges or legal recourse - may or may not bring to mind the Soviet Union's sprawling network of Stalinist penal colonies. It certainly has nothing in common with any American notions of justice or the rule of law.

Our colleague Thomas L. Friedman offered just the right solution a few days back. The best thing Washington can now do about this national shame is to shut it down. It is a propaganda gift to America's enemies; an embarrassment to our allies; a damaging repudiation of the American justice system; and a highly effective recruiting tool for Islamic radicals, including future terrorists.

If legitimate legal cases can be made under American law against any of the more than 500 remaining Guantánamo detainees, they should be made in American courts, as they should have been all along. If, as the administration says, some of these prisoners are active, dangerous members of a conspiracy to commit terrorism against the United States, there must be legitimate charges to file against them. Those prisoners with no charges to face should be set free and allowed to go home or to another country. The administration must not ship them off to cooperative dictatorships where thuggish local authorities can torture them without direct American accountability - as they have reportedly done recently in places like Uzbekistan, Syria and Egypt.

What makes Amnesty's gulag metaphor apt is that Guantánamo is merely one of a chain of shadowy detention camps that also includes Abu Ghraib in Iraq, the military prison at Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan and other, secret locations run by the intelligence agencies. Each has produced its own stories of abuse, torture and criminal homicide. These are not isolated incidents, but part of a tightly linked global detention system with no accountability in law. Prisoners have been transferred from camp to camp. So have commanding officers. And perhaps not coincidentally, so have specific methods of mistreatment.

Over more than two centuries of peace and war, the United States has developed a highly effective legal system that, while far from perfect, is rightly admired around the world. The shadowy parallel system that the Bush administration created after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks has by now proved its inferiority in almost every respect. It does not seem to have been effective in finding and prosecuting the most dangerous terrorists, and it has been a disaster in undermining America's reputation for fairness, just treatment of the guilty and humane treatment of the innocent.

It is time to return to the basic principles of justice that served America so well even in the most perilous times of the past. Shutting down Guantánamo is just a first step. But it is a crucial step that would pay instant dividends around the world, not only toward repairing America's reputation but also toward enhancing its overall security.

So You're Being Tortured To Death In An American Military Prison!

2005-06-03T13:07:00.000-04:00

From Fafblog!:

Q: Help! I'm being tortured to death in an American military prison! What should I do?
A: First of all, you should get your facts straight. You're not being tortured to death in an American military prison; you're being interrogated to death in an American detainment facility. America does not tolerate torture.

Q: Is there any sort of legal representative or due process I could get before being beaten to death?
A: No. Lawyers, open legal procedures, and basic civil liberties are all tools the enemy can use to escape justice - the justice of being beaten to death in a prison camp.
Q: It's just that my name is Musab Mohammed Khan, the pastry chef, and I believe you have me confused with Musab Muhammed Khan, the al Qaeda associate also known as "The Fist of Jihad."
A: First, there are many terrorist pastry chefs, just as there are many terrorist pastries. Second, competent intelligence and accurate prison records are both tools the enemy can use to escape justice.

Q: I seem to be losing all feeling in my lower body. Is there a doctor in the gulag?
A: Please: we find the term "gulag" absurd and offensive. A "gulag" is Russian. You are not being interrogated to death by Russians. You are being interrogated to death by the greatest country in the world.
Q: Is there a more accurate term you'd pre- aaaa! AAAAAAAA!
A: We prefer "outpost of liberty" or "island of freedom." Stringing together Guantanamo Bay, Abu Ghraib, and Bagram Airbase creates the Freedom Archipelago.
Q: So! Much! FreeedaaaAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGH!!!

Q: When I die in a few minutes, will my death help the cause of freedom?
A: Not really. But in a way, isn't death itself just freedom from life - the greatest prison of all?
Q: Wow... you've *HRAAACK* totally blown my mind - and my lung and ribcage and my kneecaps!
A: Oh, don't thank us - it's all part of being tortured to death in an American military prison!

Impeach Bush/Cheney Now

2005-06-03T12:41:00.000-04:00

We now know, thanks to a leaked British memo concerning the head of British intelligence, that the Bush administration -- contrary to its explicit denials -- had already made up its mind to attack Iraq and "fixed" those bogus allegations to support its decision. In short, Bush and his top officials lied about Iraq. Going to war is the most serious decision a president can make. It should never be approached in a cavalier fashion. American lives, the prestige and influence of the country, international relations, the health of its defenses, and the future of the next generation are at stake. Yet every single piece of evidence we now have confirms that George W. Bush, who was obsessed with unseating Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, recklessly used the opportunity presented by the terror attacks to march the country to war, fixing the intelligence to justify his decision, and lying to the American people about the reasons for the war. In other times, this might have been an impeachable offense. -Salon.com

The rumblings have started. Soon it will be a roar. Just check some of these posts:

Letter to Pres Bush Concerning "Downing Street Memo"

After Downing Street Web Site

Truth and Deceit

My opinion Bob Herbert: U.S. needs more than image retool

Please be aware: U.S. solders in Iraq ARE NOT fighting (and dying) for OUR FREEDOM. They ARE NOT fighting to rid Saddam Hussein of WMDs. They ARE NOT fighting the 9/11 terrorists. They are fighting for Bush's lies. They are fighting for Iraq's oil. They are fighting for Bush Jr.'s revenge on Saddam Hussein. Bush lied to start this war. He is lying to us now about torture. It is time for Bush to go.

Impeach Bush/Cheney 2005

2005-06-02T08:40:00.000-04:00

I have frequently suggested that the Bush administration has been playing so fast and so loose with the laws of our nation that they should be impeached. And while this is pretty much a pipe dream with both houses of Congress controlled by the republicans, it is good to hear more voices take up the cause.

The facts are readily available. The lies and bogus pretenses for going to war are now common knowledge. Why are the American people not more outraged at how they were so blatantly lied to? There are just a few voices now. More will certainly take up the cause. "When Clinton lied, no one died." When Bush lies, thousands die. I vote to impeach.

Rainbow of Doom used to Bush's Advantage in 2004 Presidential Elections

2005-05-31T12:31:00.000-04:00

OK, OK. This story is a couple of weeks old. Seems it would have made a little more news. I guess that we have all just accepted the fact that the Bush Administration is so unscrupulous in so many ways that this kind of news does not even raise an eyebrow anymore.

According former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge, during the 2004 Presidential race, the Bush administration periodically put the USA on high alert for terrorist attacks even though there was only flimsy evidence to justify raising the threat level.

FEAR: The great motivator.

See also.

Fabricating intelligence for political gain is a criminal act --specifically in the case of providing a pretext for war or for influencing the outcome of an election.

Does the FBI have a file on you?

2005-05-26T15:26:00.000-04:00

The police help protect us from criminals and terrorists, but do you want FBI agents and local police spying on environmental, anti-war, political, and faith-based groups? Do you feel safer knowing they might be spying on you?

Documents obtained by the ACLU through the Freedom of Information Act prove that the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces are collecting files on peace groups, and intimidating anti-war activists through aggressive questioning.

The public deserves to know who is being investigated, who's doing the investigating, and why. Learn more about the Americans already under investigation and find out how you can help the ACLU fight for the privacy of political and religious groups.
http://www.aclu.org/spyfiles

Are you in an FBI file? Take this short quiz to find out.

http://www.aclu.org/Quizzes/QuizIntro.cfm?quizID=12

Collecting files on anti-war and environmental groups has nothing to do with fighting terrorism and will not make us safer. If anything, diverting FBI and local law enforcement resources to monitor political and religious expression will weaken our ability to fight terrorism.

Prewar Findings Worried Analysts -Washington Post

2005-05-23T15:00:00.000-04:00

Bush Lied. People Died. A LOT OF PEOPLE DIED. People are STILL dying for Bush's lies. Is there anyone out there who still believes that the U.S. went to war for anything other than oil, U.S. hegemony in the Middle East, and W's obsession with settling a score with Saddam Hussein?

The Republicans tried to impeach Clinton over a stained dress. Why is being responsible for almost 2000 Americans' deaths not an impeachable offense?

From the Washington Post:
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, May 22, 2005; Page A26

On Jan. 24, 2003, four days before President Bush delivered his State of the Union address presenting the case for war against Iraq, the National Security Council staff put out a call for new intelligence to bolster claims that Saddam Hussein possessed nuclear, chemical and biological weapons or programs.

The person receiving the request, Robert Walpole, then the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs, would later tell investigators that "the NSC believed the nuclear case was weak," according to a 500-page report released last year by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

It has been clear since the September report of the Iraq Survey Group -- a CIA-sponsored weapons search in Iraq -- that the United States would not find the weapons of mass destruction cited by Bush as the rationale for going to war against Iraq. But as the Walpole episode suggests, it appears that even before the war many senior intelligence officials in the government had doubts about the case being trumpeted in public by the president and his senior advisers.

The question of prewar intelligence has been thrust back into the public eye with the disclosure of a secret British memo showing that, eight months before the March 2003 start of the war, a senior British intelligence official reported to Prime Minister Tony Blair that U.S. intelligence was being shaped to support a policy of invading Iraq.

Moreover, a close reading of the recent 600-page report by the president's commission on intelligence, and the previous report by the Senate panel, shows that as war approached, many U.S. intelligence analysts were internally questioning almost every major piece of prewar intelligence about Hussein's alleged weapons programs.

These included claims that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium in Africa for its nuclear program, had mobile labs for producing biological weapons, ran an active chemical weapons program and possessed unmanned aircraft that could deliver weapons of mass destruction. All these claims were made by Bush or then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in public addresses even though, the reports made clear, they had yet to be verified by U.S. intelligence agencies.

For instance, Bush said in his Jan. 28, 2003, State of the Union address that Hussein was working to obtain "significant quantities" of uranium from Africa, a conclusion the president attributed to British intelligence and made a key part of his assertion that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program.

More than a year later, the White House retracted the statement after its veracity was questioned. But the Senate report makes it clear that even in January 2003, just before the president's speech, analysts at the CIA's Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center were still investigating the reliability of the uranium information.

Similarly, the president's intelligence commission, chaired by former appellate judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), disclosed that senior intelligence officials had serious questions about "Curveball," the code name for an Iraqi informant who provided the key information on Hussein's alleged mobile biological facilities.

The CIA clandestine service's European division chief had met in 2002 with a German intelligence officer whose service was handling Curveball. The German said his service "was not sure whether Curveball was actually telling the truth," according to the commission report. When it appeared that Curveball's material would be in Bush's State of the Union speech, the CIA Berlin station chief was asked to get the Germans to allow him to question Curveball directly.

On the day before the president's speech, the Berlin station chief warned about using Curveball's information on the mobile biological units in Bush's speech. The station chief warned that the German intelligence service considered Curveball "problematical" and said its officers had been unable to confirm his assertions. The station chief recommended that CIA headquarters give "serious consideration" before using that unverified information, according to the commission report.

The next day, Bush told the world: "We know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile weapons labs . . . designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors." He attributed that information to "three Iraqi defectors."

A week later, Powell said in an address to the United Nations that the information on mobile labs came from four defectors, and he described one as "an eyewitness . . . who supervised one of these facilities" and was at the site when an accident killed 12 technicians.

Within a year, doubts emerged about the truthfulness of all four, and the "eyewitness" turned out to be Curveball, the informant the CIA station chief had red-flagged as unreliable. Curveball was subsequently determined to be a fabricator who had been fired from the Iraqi facility years before the alleged accident, according to the commission and Senate reports.

As Bush speeches were being drafted in the prewar period, serious questions were also being raised within the intelligence community about purported threats from biologically armed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).

In an Oct. 7, 2002, speech, Bush mentioned a potential threat to the U.S. mainland being explored by Iraq through unmanned aircraft "that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons." The basis for that analysis was a single report that an Iraqi general in late 2000 or early 2001 indicated interest in buying autopilots and gyroscopes for Hussein's UAV program. The manufacturer automatically included topographic mapping software of the United States in the package.

When the list was submitted in early 2002, the manufacturer's distributor determined that the U.S. mapping software would not be included in the autopilot package, and told the procurement agent in March 2002. By then, however, U.S. intelligence, which closely followed Iraqi procurement of such material, had already concluded as early as the summer of 2001 that this was the "first indication that the UAVs might be used to target the U.S."

When a foreign intelligence service questioned the procurement agent, he originally said he had never intended to purchase the U.S. mapping software, but he refused to submit to a thorough examination, according to the president's commission. "By fall 2002, the CIA was still uncertain whether the procurement agent was lying," the commission said. Nonetheless, a National Intelligence Estimate in October 2002 said the attempted procurement "strongly suggested" Iraq was interested in targeting UAVs on the United States. Senior members of Congress were told in September 2002 that this was the "smoking gun" in a special briefing by Vice President Cheney and then-CIA Director George J. Tenet.

By January 2003, however, it became publicly known that the director of Air Force intelligence dissented from the view that UAVs were to be used for biological or chemical delivery, saying instead they were for reconnaissance. In addition, according to the president's commission, the CIA "increasingly believed that the attempted purchase of the mapping software . . . may have been inadvertent."

In an intelligence estimate on threats to the U.S. homeland published in January 2003, Air Force, Defense Intelligence Agency and Army analysts agreed that the proposed purchase was "not necessarily indicative of an intent to target the U.S. homeland."

By late January 2003, the number of U.S. troops in the Persian Gulf area was approaching 150,000, and the invasion of Iraq was all but guaranteed. Neither Bush nor Powell reflected in their speeches the many doubts that had surfaced at that time about Iraq's weapons programs.

Instead, Bush said, "With nuclear arms or a full arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, Saddam Hussein could resume his ambitions of conquest in the Middle East and create deadly havoc in that region." He added: "Secretly, and without fingerprints, he could provide one of his hidden weapons to terrorists, or help them develop their own."

Fafblog!: Stop Newsweek... Before It Kills Again!

2005-05-20T08:08:00.000-04:00

Fafblog! is right on the mark (as usual)! I could never express the hypocrisy of the Bush Administration and those barking heads on the right any more succinctly than Fafblog!:

Stop Newsweek... Before It Kills Again!

Newsweek must be destroyed - for the sake of national security! Oh, dear readers, you may have believed it to be just an innocent newsweekly with an unnatural preoccupation for health features ("Your Liver: The New Urban Nightmare?"), but through such reliable sources such as the White House and some schmuck with a keyboard you will know the truth: that Newsweek has killed over a dozen Afghans with a toilet and will do it again unless it is stopped. But that's not all. The Great Toilet Stab-in-the-Back of '05 was merely the tip of the iceberg of Newsweek's many crimes against America.

The Medium Lobster has learned that while it was spreading lies about Korans at Guantanamo Bay, Newsweek managed to torture hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, and Afghanistan, killing dozens of them in the process. And apparently Newsweek has not been content to torture prisoners on its own. It has also kidnapped citizens of other countries and flown them to dictatorships to be tortured! The Medium Lobster has said it before and he will, no doubt, say it again: no blood for mainstream media.

If this were not enough, it has just come to my attention that Newsweek spread discredited rumors and outright lies to goad the United States into invading another country, with no justification and no plan for the occupation, costing tens of thousands of innocent lives.
More ...

------
When Clinton Lied, nobody died.
When Bush lies, thousands die.

Marching Towards a Police State (Part Two)

2005-05-19T14:46:00.000-04:00

WASHINGTON - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee (Pat Roberts, R-Kan.) is working on a bill that would renew the Patriot Act and expand government powers in the name of fighting terrorism, letting the FBI subpoena records without permission from a judge or grand jury.

The measure would give the FBI new power to issue administrative subpoenas, which are not reviewed by a judge or grand jury, for quickly obtaining records, electronic data or other evidence in terrorism investigations.

More ...

THE WAR ON TERROR IS A WAR ON YOUR CIVIL RIGHTS.

Desecration of Koran Had Been Reported Before

2005-05-19T09:15:00.000-04:00

The Washington Post reports:

Newsweek magazine's now-retracted story that a military guard at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, flushed a copy of the Koran down a toilet has sparked angry denunciations by the White House and the Pentagon, which have linked the article to Muslim riots and deaths abroad.

But American and international media have widely reported similar allegations from detainees and others of desecration of the Muslim holy book for more than two years.

James Yee, a former Muslim chaplain at the prison who was investigated and cleared of charges of mishandling classified material, has asserted that guards' mishandling and mistreatment of detainees' Korans led the prisoners to launch a hunger strike in March 2002. Detainee lawyers, attributing their information to an interrogator, have said the strike ended only when military leaders issued an apology to the detainees over the camp loudspeaker. But they said mishandling of the Koran persisted.

Erik Saar, a former Army translator at Guantanamo Bay who has written a book about mistreatment of detainees at the military prison, said in interviews and in his book that he never saw a Koran flushed in a toilet but that guards routinely ignored prisoners' sensitivities by tossing it on the ground while searching their cells.

And numerous detainees, whose stories are uncorroborated, have said to various media outlets that at detention facilities in Guantanamo Bay and Afghanistan, the Koran was stepped on, tossed on the floor and placed in latrines.

"They tore the Koran to pieces in front of us, threw it into the toilet," former detainee Aryat Vahitov told Russian television in June 2004.

Under fire from the White House, Newsweek on Monday retracted the May 9 article in which it reported that a government investigation had confirmed an instance of a Koran being put in the toilet. Newsweek editors now say their source, a senior government official, is no longer sure that the alleged incident is confirmed in the investigation.

Yesterday, the administration called on Newsweek to explain how it got the story wrong and to report about U.S. military efforts to ensure that the Koran is handled with respect. The White House, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have cited the damage done to the United States' reputation in the Muslim world by Newsweek's original report.

Yesterday, Pentagon spokesman Lawrence T. Di Rita said previous detainee allegations have not been considered credible.

---
As is the standard Bush administration mode of operation: Attack the character of anyone presenting information contrary to the Bush line, especially the media. The White House is admonishing Newsweek and pressuring them to do more than retract the story. Bush and company are taking a "holier than thou" stance that will come back to bite them in the ass when the truth comes out .. if indeed, it ever does.

Frist Implodes on Senate Floor

2005-05-19T08:23:00.000-04:00

Oh, Hell yes! The hypocrisy just continues to ooze.

From ThinkProgress.org:

This morning on the floor of the Senate, Sen. Chuck Schumer asked Majority Leader Bill Frist a simple question:

SEN. SCHUMER: Isn’t it correct that on March 8, 2000, my colleague [Sen. Frist] voted to uphold the filibuster of Judge Richard Paez?

Here was Frist’s response:

The president, the um, in response, uh, the Paez nomination - we’ll come back and discuss this further. … Actually I’d like to, and it really brings to what I believe - a point - and it really brings to, oddly, a point, what is the issue. The issue is we have leadership-led partisan filibusters that have, um, obstructed, not one nominee, but two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, in a routine way.

So, Frist is arguing that one filibuster is OK. His problem is that several Bush nominees have been filibustered. This position completely undercuts Frist’s argument that judicial filibusters are unconstitutional. (Which is, in turn, the justification for the nuclear option.) If judicial filibusters are unconstitutional there is no freebee. But Frist digs his hole even deeper:

The issue is not cloture votes per se, it’s the partisan, leadership-led use of cloture votes to kill - to defeat - to assassinate these nominees. That’s the difference. Cloture has been used in the past on this floor to postpone, to get more info, to ask further questions.

When Frist voted to filibuster Paez’s nomination it had been pending for four years. It’s hard to believe he couldn’t get all the info he needed or ask all the questions he had during that time. Make no mistake about it: Bill Frist was trying to kill the Paez nomination. A press release issued the following day by former Sen. Bob Smith, who organized the filibuster effort, read “Smith Leads Effort to Block Activist Judges.”

Here is another story on Frist's Dishonesty and Hipocrisy.

US Hegemony in Space

2005-05-19T08:12:00.000-04:00

As if there was any doubt that the United States is the most war-like country on the planet, the U.S. is now planning to put weapons in space.

The Air Force, saying it must secure space to protect the nation from attack, is seeking President Bush's approval of a national-security directive that could move the United States closer to fielding offensive and defensive space weapons, according to White House and Air Force officials.

The proposed change would be a substantial shift in American policy. It would almost certainly be opposed by many American allies and potential enemies, who have said it may create an arms race in space.

A senior administration official said that a new presidential directive would replace a 1996 Clinton administration policy that emphasized a more pacific use of space, including spy satellites' support for military operations, arms control and nonproliferation pacts.

What is with these people? Truly the forces of darkness and evil are sweeping over the United States.

CNBC cancels 'Dennis Miller'

2005-05-14T13:04:00.000-04:00

Dennis Miller was never funny even on Saturday Night Live. He was about the most un-funny, boring comedian to ever walk on a stage. Frankly, I am surprised that he was not canned sooner. Even more surprising is that he got a show in the first place.

His commentary was generally un-insightful, un-enlightened and always un-funny.

Good bye and good riddance.

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts

2005-05-13T14:54:00.000-04:00

This story is a little over a week old. It does not seem to have gotten a lot of coverage in the MSM. Why ar not more people outraged?

"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official documents—this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.

Juggernaut Before The Horse

In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:

*
Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
*
Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
*
Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons laboratories;
*
Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
*
Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
*
A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.

All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli"—the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.

The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neil nor the other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.

Obedience School

As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal base for military action,"—a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.

The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action."

I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are no less jarring.

One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.

Politicization: Big Time

Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception—an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.

Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."

When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules of the road"—first and foremost, "We support the administration and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.

Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos—one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak truth to power.

Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.

Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures

Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well—the more so, inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.

In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:

We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.

If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran.

Nuclear Option - Get the Truth Out

2005-05-10T16:15:00.000-04:00

This just came in from the DEMS:

George Bush, who polls say has become the most unpopular lame-duck president ever, is hard at work with Bill Frist, the Republican Senate leader with presidential ambitions, to take the GOP over the brink of extremism.

They're trying to seize absolute control over all three branches of government -- and they will do anything to get what they want. In one move they will try to simultaneously crush all dissent in the Senate and destroy the bedrock democratic principle of a fair and independent judiciary.

Their carefully-orchestrated power grab will come to a head in the coming days. They have refused compromises, they have refused common sense -- they have even refused to follow the Constitution. They want to shut down the government until they get their way.

This show by an out-of-control majority will be in the newspapers, on TV and around the dinner table.

As a Democrat, it will be your responsibility to get the truth out and make the case for Senate Democrats in your community. So here is your briefing:

http://www.democrats.org/nuclear

Polls show that the more people learn about the Republican attack on checks and balances, the more they oppose it. That's why it's vital for you to step up, get the full story, and help spread the word.

The Republican propaganda machine will be in high gear on this issue. The lead-up to this crisis has included Republican efforts to divide people by race, gender and religion. They are working on dividing America while Democrats are trying to do the people's business. We can expect more of the same -- it will all be amped up in the coming days.

You are the first line of defense against this onslaught. Use these resources to help you fight:

http://www.democrats.org/nuclear

Ninety-five percent of Bush's judicial nominees have been confirmed. Only the very bottom of the barrel remains -- judges so unqualified, so out of the mainstream, that they simply don't deserve lifetime appointments.

Republicans know that. They don't care about these judges -- these judges are only a pretext for the power grab. The fringe GOP leadership wants to break the rules and consolidate power now, so that they can ram through expected Supreme Court nominations later this year.

So they're going to change the rules to take away the filibuster, a 200-year Senate tradition that has protected the voice of the minority and protected our system of checks and balances. (Disgraced Republican leader Trent Lott invented the name for their plan to destroy all this: he called it the "nuclear option.")

Every Democrat has to be part of the fight on this one. The stakes couldn't be higher. So please be a part of this debate:

http://www.democrats.org/nuclear

Thank you,
Tom McMahon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee

The right-wing have now perverted Christianity to the point where Democrats are no longer welcome in church.

2005-05-10T09:36:00.000-04:00

From The Democratic Underground:

The Rev. Chan Chandler made an interesting move last week when he decided to cut his congregation in half and rid himself of the sinners. Who are the sinners? Well according to Chandler, they're anyone who voted for John Kerry in 2004. Chandler, pastor of Waynesville NC Baptist Church, informed his congregation that if they did not vote for Bush they needed to publicly repent or leave his church forever, because he didn't want to be associated with people like that. Well maybe they don't want to be associated with you, Rev. Chandler. Apparently Chandler kicked nine people out of the church - some who had attended for more than 30 years - while other members of the congregation stood up and applauded. 40 more members of his congregation subsequently walked out in protest. Oddly enough, Chandler had the audacity to tell reporters that "the actions were not politically motivated." Uh, what? You know, I'm not sure what warped version of Christianity this is, where people are excluded and denounced for not voting for a particular politician. But somehow I don't think Jesus would approve.

Is there really a "silent majority" of religious whackos? I seriously doubt it. There are just a few very loud nut-jobs out there who feel that it is their time in the spotlight; that "they have a mandate". They are starting to give religious nut-jobs a bad name. If Chandler were to have his way in the coming U.S Theocracy, 50 percent of the population would be behind bars. We have always been told that Jesus loves everybody. Chandler does not think this is so. Perhaps it is time that the Baptist Church excommunicated Rev. Chanler.

Marching Towards a Police State

2005-05-05T10:10:00.000-04:00

The House-passed that bill broadly rewrites the rules for licenses is portrayed as an anti-terrorism tool. However, like Social Security numbers, it could be used for purposes well beyond their original intent.

The measure, passed by a 261-161 vote last month and supported by the Bush administration, could make it possible for the government to monitor people’s movements in the country through a chip in a license.

“Supporters of this don’t seem to have the ability to look beyond how this system they are putting in place can change. They can’t see how it can metamorphose into a national ID card,” said Steve Lilienthal, director of the Free Congress Foundation Center for Privacy & Technology.

Under the measure, states must verify they are giving licenses to U.S. citizens and legal residents. If they fail to do so, federal officers cannot accept licenses from residents of those states as proof of identity to get on an airplane or into a federal building, for example.

Lilienthal, whose think tank says it is politically and culturally conservative, asked what is there to stop the government from eventually requiring information about people’s health, criminal backgrounds or gun ownership.

Larry Pratt, executive director of Springfield, Va.-based Gun Owners of America, says the bill “hands an open-ended blank check” to the government to collect information about people.

Nomen!?

Taliban in Texas

2005-05-05T10:00:00.000-04:00

Break it, but don't shake it.

Texas lawmakers sent a message to the state's high school cheerleaders Wednesday: no more booty-shaking at the game.

The state's House of Representatives voted 85-55 to approve a bill that would forbid sexy cheers and give the Texas Education Agency authority to punish schools that allow "overtly sexually suggestive" routines at football games and other events.

State Rep. Al Edwards complained of cheerleaders "shaking their behinds, breaking it down," but the proposal does not define what constitutes suggestive cheering. Perhaps "getting jiggy with it"?

Democratic state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, also of Houston, said the bill was a waste of valuable time."I think the Texas Education Agency has enough to do making sure our kids are better educated, and we are wasting our time with 'one two three four, we can't shake it any more?"'
Hear, hear!

Get a life, Edwards.

Ayatollah Bush Proclaims "National Day of Prayer"

2005-05-05T09:36:00.000-04:00

U.S. Takes Giant Leap Towards Theocracy

"The Congress by Public Law 100-307, as amended, has called on our citizens to reaffirm the role of prayer in our society and to honor the freedom of religion by recognizing annually a "National Day of Prayer."

NOW, THEREFORE, I, GEORGE W. BUSH, President of the United States of America, do hereby proclaim May 5, 2005, as a National Day of Prayer. I ask the citizens of our Nation to give thanks, each according to his or her own faith, for the liberty and blessings we have received and for God's continued guidance and protection. I also urge all Americans to join in observing this day with appropriate programs, ceremonies, and activities."

And yet another nail in the coffin of the idea of seperation of church and state ...

Pat Robertson: One of the scariest religious whackos out there

2005-05-03T11:00:00.000-04:00

Federal judges are a more serious threat to America than Al Qaeda and the Sept. 11 terrorists, the Rev. Pat Robertson claimed Sunday on "This Week with George Stephanopoulos".

Robertson, never one to support civil liberties, would rather transform the United States into a Fascist regime than allow U.S. citizens free will or free speech. He completely ignores the purpose of the Judiciary as protector of our human rights against an over-zealous Executive and/or Legislative branch. Strike that. He knows exactly the purpose of the Judiciary. He would just rather destroy it, as the Judiciary presently stands in the way of transforming the United States into a theocracy.

The religious right is a greater threat to the North American way of life than terrorism. In the world that Pat Robertson envisions, there is no freedom of religion, no freedom of expression, no right to life, nor liberty. There is only Christianity. And this is the law. Sounds very familiar to Iraq and Afghanistan. If our society ever goes this far, perhaps the U.S will have to declare war on itself.

Review of Bush's Propaganda "News Conference"

2005-04-29T09:00:00.000-04:00

Lies, damned lies, and statistics* ....

Blah, blah blah.

Another Hate-Mongering Homophobe From Alabama

2005-04-28T11:24:00.000-04:00

Alabama Bill Targets Gay Authors

It just gets scarier and scarier in Alabama. Hate-mongering, homophobic (Or is he? Perhaps he protests too much?) Republican Alabama lawmaker Gerald Allen says homosexuality is an unacceptable lifestyle and he is out to ban the slightest reference to anything homosexual in literature, be it the author’s sexual orientation, or even the mention of the idea; Except, if it is gay-bashing, of course.

The apparently crack-smoking representative states, "I don't look at it as censorship. I look at it as protecting the hearts and souls and minds of our children." If banning books is not censorship, then shut my mouth and call me corn bread.

Books by any gay author would have to go: Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal. Alice Walker's novel "The Color Purple" has lesbian characters.

Allen originally wanted to ban even some Shakespeare. After criticism, he narrowed his bill to exempt the classics, although he still can't define what a classic is. There is some question as to whether the legislator has ever opened a book.

Hey Alabama; the whole world is laughing at you. It is people like Gerald Allen that keep the stereotype of the backwards, un-educated, barefoot hill-jack from Alabama alive.

Gallup: 50% of Americans Now Say Bush Deliberately Misled Them on WMDs

2005-04-27T08:17:00.000-04:00

Are Americans finally getting wise? There are no WMDs in Iraq, nor have there ever been any WMDs in Iraq. We were lied to about Iraq. We are being lied to about Social Security. Basically, we are lied to every time Bush opens his mouth. It is a tragedy that we had to elect him in order to wake up to how much Bush lies. The "axis of evil" IS the Bush Administration. ... But I digress.

Half of all Americans, exactly 50%, now say the Bush administration deliberately misled Americans about whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the Gallup Organization reported this morning.

"This is the highest percentage that Gallup has found on this measure since the question was first asked in late May 2003," the pollsters observed. "At that time, 31% said the administration deliberately misled Americans. This sentiment has gradually increased over time, to 39% in July 2003, 43% in January/February 2004, and 47% in October 2004."

...

Last week Gallup reported that 53% now believe that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was "not worth it."

The question of "worth" should not even be an issue. The issue is that WE WERE LIED TO BY OUR GOVERNMENT.

Americans Oppose Senate Rule Changes, Poll Shows

2005-04-26T13:33:00.000-04:00

As the Senate moves toward a major confrontation over judicial appointments, a strong majority of Americans oppose changing the rules to make it easier for Republican leaders to win confirmation of President Bush's court nominees, according to the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll.

...

But by a 2 to 1 ratio, the public rejected easing Senate rules in a way that would make it harder for Democratic senators to prevent final action on Bush's nominees. Even many Republicans were reluctant to abandon current Senate confirmation procedures: Nearly half opposed any rule changes, joining eight in 10 Democrats and seven in 10 political independents, the poll found.

...

More ...

The Bush Administration punishes some Democrat backers

2005-04-26T13:28:00.000-04:00

This should come as no surprise. Bushies are a mean and vindictive lot.

The Inter-American Telecommunication Commission meets three times a year in various cities across the Americas to discuss such dry but important issues as telecommunications standards and spectrum regulations. But for this week's meeting in Guatemala City, politics has barged onto the agenda. At least four of the two dozen or so U.S. delegates selected for the meeting, sources tell TIME, have been bumped by the White House because they supported John Kerry's 2004 campaign.

...

Those barred from the trip include employees of Qualcomm and Nokia, two of the largest telecom firms operating in the U.S., as well as Ibiquity, a digital-radio-technology company in Columbia, Md. One nixed participant, who has been to many of these telecom meetings and who wants to remain anonymous, gave just $250 to the Democratic Party. Says Nokia vice president Bill Plummer: "We do not view sending experts to international meetings on telecom issues to be a partisan matter. We would welcome clarification from the White House."

Again, House Republicans show that ethics are for sale.

2005-04-21T08:35:00.000-04:00

Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Washington, made the proposal at a news conference yesterday. (Note that the proposal was made in the press; NOT to Democrats directly.) The offer: Democrats agree to the weakened House ethics rules (weakened in order to protect Tom DeLay) and the Republicans on the committee will "vote at the earliest opportunity to empanel an investigations subcommittee to review various allegations concerning travel and other actions by DeLay".

The primary objection is to a rule that would automatically dismiss cases in a tie vote -- allowing either party on the evenly divided committee to stop an investigation. As the ethics committee is comprised of an equal number of Democrats and Republicans, one can see how easy, under these new rules, it would be to stop an investigation.

Under Hastings' proposal, the Republicans are asking the Democrats to trade their principles for a shady promise of action on DeLay.

Here is a quick analysis of what would happen if Dems accept this Faustian contract:
First, the weakened ethics rules go into effect. Then the Republican "empanel and investigations sub committee". Next, the Republicans on the committee conveniently find no compelling reason to investigate DeLay. Tie vote. No investigation. Evil wins.

Let us pray (to which ever deity you chose*) that the Dems stand their ground.

*Best to enjoy this freedom now. If the Christian Right continues gaining influence over our government, you will have only one option.

New pope intervened against Kerry in US 2004 election campaign

2005-04-20T13:05:00.000-04:00

As if there is not enough coverage of pope selection already...

Frankly I am tired of hearing about the death of the pope, the speculation on who the new pope would be and the announcement of who the new pope is. Now we get to hear all about his childhood, what kind of food he likes and how often he spanks it. Perhaps FOX should start a 24 hour pope network.

I suppose that the closer the United States moves toward becoming a theocracy, "all pope, all the time" media coverage should be expected. Of course we cannot forget about all of our other whack job non-catholic religious extremists on the Christian right... but I digress.

So forget about the separation of church and state. They will soon be one. It should come as no surprise that the Catholic Church would have their own role in U.S. elections. This is really, rather old news.

Conservatives Embrace [their own] Judicial Activism

2005-04-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

Check out this bang up Op.

"When it comes to judicial activism, conservative judges are no better than liberal ones - and, it must be said, no worse. If conservatives are going to continue their war on the judiciary, though, they should be honest. They do not want to get rid of judicial activists, a standard that would bring down even Justice Scalia. They want to rid the courts of judges who disagree with them.

(Kind and gentle Dem Diatribe readers are now convinced, fer sure, that Johnnie_Bike-O is an unwitting dupe of the NYT Op/Ed page. Although he does read other pubs.)

US State Department to Stop Publishing Terrorism Statistics

2005-04-19T10:16:00.000-04:00

Looks like another game of Bush Administration 'Hot Potato'.

For the first time since it began issuing the annual global terrorism reports, the US State Department has said it will stop publishing statistics on terrorism activities worldwide, handing over the task to a new government center.

I suppose after the State Department got burned last year for outright lying, [The State Department reported a decline in major terror incidents in its annual report last year, and the figures had been used by the Bush Administration as proof that the United States was winning the war on terrorism. The department, however, had to issue a corrected version later which showed an increase in major terror incidents instead.] they decided pass the buck this year:

"The government has decided that the National Counterterrorism Center should compile and publish statistical data on terrorism that has previously been included by the State Department in our report," Department spokesman Richard Boucher said .

"They are the people who do the detailed work," he said while announcing that the Counterterrorism Centre, established last year by the Congress, would take on the job.

I would imagine that all the car-bombing in Afganistan and Iraq alone would show a tremendous uptick in the statictics: A direct result of "U.S. anti-terrorism efforts". ... And we cannot have that now can we?

Bush's "War on terrorism" is causing an increase in the number of terrorists attacks. By not releasing the statistics, the report appears even more like a cover-up.

I take that back. It is not a game of 'hot potato'. It is going to be another game of 'button, button, Who has the button?' As it is very likely the Bush Administration will hide the facts and shop the report around to different agencies and congress until the statistics surface in some mutated form that supports the Administration's view.

Get DeLay to Church and the Dems to Mr. Miyagi

2005-04-18T11:23:00.000-04:00

My oldest son, age 9, is taking a cartooning class in his after school program and it seems the instructor has been quoting "wax on, wax off" to his little grasshoppers. After days of quizzical looks it was clear that none of the padawans had any idea what he was talking about. This lead to the extra curricular assignment of watching The Karate Kid. Since nine year olds can bring unbridled enthusiasm to nearly any endeavor, I found myself watching the movie with my boys over the weekend. This 1984, dare I say "classic", movie staring Ralph Maccio and Pat Morita is just jamb packed full of emotion, riffling from scene to scene quicker than a karate punch.

I must say however, upon second viewing separated by a mere 21 years, there are some teachable moments in this flick. Hypothetically speaking, a father could use this action film to emphasize bits of Mr. Miagi’s wisdom. If, that is, a father can prevent his two sons from faux karate kicking their way through the living room long enough to sit still and discuss the importance of catching flies with chop sticks.

Without doubt Mr. Miagi is the most interesting character as he dispenses pearls of wisdom with koans such as “things are not always as they seem” and “a man who can catch a fly with chop sticks can accomplish anything” (of course). However, the larger tale is also classic and bares retelling. It’s about the abuse of power and corruption among the ruling class (in this case the ruling class is represented by the Country Club elite of Beverly Hills and that nasty dojo sensei). The movie is also about how the less powerful can work hard and play by the rules to bring balance out of imbalance. Thus power is returned to a more natural state.

After watching the movie and after the kids went to bed I logged into the Sunday NYT and found Frank Rich has moved back over to the Op/Ed page. I knew this was happening and was glad to see the day. Rich delivers a great long format Op piece where he reminds us about the smarminess of Tom DeLay. Remembering the Danforth's piece, referred to in an earlier entry on this blog, the Times gives us nice bookends to consider the overreaching corruption of righteousness playing out with DeLay right now.

I was ready for bed after all that karate and NYT excitement. As I drifted off to sleep I thought of the Republicans as the Cobra Kai and DeLay as the dojo sensei. In my dreams Daniel LaRusso represented the Democrats, but I woke up before I figured out what sage character will play the role of Mr. Miagi. I hope I don’t have to watch Karate Kidd II to figure that out.

(BTW, did anyone ever notice that Daniel, played by Maccio, never actually apologizes to his sweetheart, Ali? After you rent the movie please explain to me – in the comment section below –how this manages to attract rather than repel the object of his affection. But, I digress.)

Historic parallels as DeLay's woes deepen

2005-04-14T14:46:00.000-04:00

Here is a good overview (and a quick read) of the DeLay kerfuffle as well as a little history of similar scandle.

EXCERPT:

It's a battle with historic parallels in an institution where it is not unusual for partisan power struggles to play out as controversies over ethics - with a powerful leader as target. Democrats' focus on DeLay, for example, mirrors the GOP campaign to topple Speaker Jim Wright (D), but on a much wider scale. Minority Republicans, led by Rep. Newt Gingrich, choreographed a "gathering storm" in the media around Mr. Wright, whose fall from power in 1989 was triggered by a book deal with the Teamsters Union. Mr. Gingrich made a special effort to draw good-government groups, such as Common Cause, to the fight.

More ...

Is the Christian Right the New Taliban?

2005-04-13T13:37:00.000-04:00

Members of the Christian Right are pushing the President and Congress to impeach "activist" judges, cut funding to "activist" courts, and pass legislation like the Constitutional Restoration Act of 2005 - which would seriously limit the power of the Judicial branch, and affirm that [the Christian] God is the sovereign source of "law, liberty, or government."

Combined with threats by Republican members of Congress (U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, Tom DeLay) that judges who make politically based decisions may inadvertently bring violence upon themselves and we can start to see where the Christian Right is going with this. They would replace rule of law with the rule of fundamentalism; Christian fundamentalism.

This is a two pronged attack: Intimidation of judges with State-condoned violence and legislation to remove Constitutional judicial powers.

How is this different than Islamic theocracies?

Suggest a Tom DeLay Billboard Slogan

2005-04-12T15:07:00.000-04:00

Note from Democracy for America:

If you could say something -- in a big way -- to the people of Congressman Tom DeLay's district in Texas, what would it be?

We're looking for a slogan -- something short, something memorable, and something that lets the people of his district know that it's time for him to go.

We're buying billboards in the 22nd Congressional District, and if your slogan is selected, it will be part of Democracy for America's big splash in Tom DeLay's backyard.

Suggest your Tom DeLay slogan here:

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/slogan

You have a lot of material to work with, thanks to Tom DeLay himself. Everything is fair game -- his abuse of power, his money-for-influence machine, his corporate shilling, his ethics rebukes, his foreign trips with lobbyists, his huge campaign payouts to family members, his bullying of fellow Congressmen.

You can even use his more recent threatening of judges and his wild lashing out at critics. And remember, his nickname is "The Hammer" and he's a former exterminator -- those facts might come in handy as well.

What message do you want to send?

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/slogan

With the folks at Democracy for Texas we're going to take your slogan and make a stand on DeLay's home turf -- where his political base erodes more and more every day.

You were the first to put an ad on the air in his district last year, when everyone thought Tom DeLay was untouchable. Our efforts helped give him the scare of his political life and his lowest margin of victory ever.

Now it's time to finish the job -- and have a little fun doing it.

Secret Service visits art show at Columbia

2005-04-12T15:00:00.000-04:00

Axis of Evil = Bush+Secret Service

It seems that the Bush Gestapo are trying to intimidate artists and museums:
(What else is new?)

Organizers of a politically charged art exhibit at Columbia College's Glass Curtain Gallery thought their show might draw controversy.

But they didn't expect two U.S. Secret Service agents would be among the show's first visitors.

The agents turned up Thursday evening, just before the public opening of "Axis of Evil, the Secret History of Sin," and took pictures of some of the art pieces -- including "Patriot Act," showing President Bush on a mock 37-cent stamp with a revolver pointed at his head.

More ...

Oh Hell Yes!

2005-04-11T15:30:00.000-04:00

Private GOP tensions over Tom DeLay's ethics controversy spilled into public Sunday, as a Senate leader called on DeLay to explain his actions and one House Republican demanded the majority leader's resignation.

Perhaps there is some justice in the world after all. Perhaps good will triumph over evil. Of course, this evil thrives at even higher levels of government than Delay and it is going to take more than a few Republicans growing a conscience to defeat pure evil.

The Dems might consider growing a spine.

Help Fire Tom DeLay

2005-04-06T16:44:00.000-04:00

Moveon.org is asking for you help to fire Tom DeLay.

From the moveon.org email...

This morning, the Washington Post and the New York Times each broke new scandals involving Republican Majority Leader Rep. Tom DeLay. According to the Times, DeLay paid his wife and daughter more than $500,000 of his political donors' money over the last four years. And the Post article highlights a seedy 1997 trip DeLay took, underwritten by "a mysterious company located in the Bahamas" that was tied to Russian business interests

Here's what I posted in my letter to my legislators...

I know it's not a good idea to use nasty words when I want to ensure action via my legislators, but ...

DeLay is a crooked little weasel. It's time for conscientious conservatives to stand up to DeLay’s corruption and abuse of power. The little ferret gives good Republicans a bad name. I am ashamed of him for you.

Take some action, Sign the petition.

The media ain't so Liberal! Story on Page 4

2005-04-05T08:59:00.000-04:00

Quick thought for the day.

Last week my local paper ran a story about the independent government commission that studied Bush's escalation to war. Says the commission: Bush was "dead wrong", on all accounts.

As memory serves, there were more than 5 counts of wrongness reported by the commission (Wrongedy, wrong, wrong WRONG!). Of course we all knew this. But the thing that blows my backside is the fact that it was a page 4 story. If the media is so liberal, why isn't this on Page one?! For that matter it should have been on page one, about two years ago.

Living will is the best revenge

2005-03-31T13:06:00.000-05:00

Funny as hell, and right on the mark:

By ROBERT FRIEDMAN, Perspective Editor, St. Petersburg Times

Like many of you, I have been compelled by recent events to prepare a more detailed advance directive dealing with end-of-life issues. Here's what mine says:

* In the event I lapse into a persistent vegetative state, I want medical authorities to resort to extraordinary means to prolong my hellish semiexistence. Fifteen years wouldn't be long enough for me.

* I want my wife and my parents to compound their misery by engaging in a bitter and protracted feud that depletes their emotions and their bank accounts.

* I want my wife to ruin the rest of her life by maintaining an interminable vigil at my bedside. I'd be really jealous if she waited less than a decade to start dating again or otherwise rebuilding a semblance of a normal life.

* I want my case to be turned into a circus by losers and crackpots from around the country who hope to bring meaning to their empty lives by investing the same transient emotion in me that they once reserved for Laci Peterson, Chandra Levy and that little girl who got stuck in a well.

* I want those crackpots to spread vicious lies about my wife.

* I want to be placed in a hospice where protesters can gather to bring further grief and disruption to the lives of dozens of dying patients and families whose stories are sadder than my own.

* I want the people who attach themselves to my case because of their deep devotion to the sanctity of life to make death threats against any judges, elected officials or health care professionals who disagree with them.

* I want the medical geniuses and philosopher kings who populate the Florida Legislature to ignore me for more than a decade and then turn my case into a forum for weeks of politically calculated bloviation.

* I want total strangers - oily politicians, maudlin news anchors, ersatz friars and all other hangers-on - to start calling me "Bobby," as if they had known me since childhood.

* I'm not insisting on this as part of my directive, but it would be nice if Congress passed a "Bobby's Law" that applied only to me and ignored the medical needs of tens of millions of other Americans without adequate health coverage.

* Even if the "Bobby's Law" idea doesn't work out, I want Congress - especially all those self-described conservatives who claim to believe in "less government and more freedom" - to trample on the decisions of doctors, judges and other experts who actually know something about my case. And I want members of Congress to launch into an extended debate that gives them another excuse to avoid pesky issues such as national security and the economy.

* In particular, I want House Majority Leader Tom DeLay to use my case as an opportunity to divert the country's attention from the mounting political and legal troubles stemming from his slimy misbehavior.

* And I want Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to make a mockery of his Harvard medical degree by misrepresenting the details of my case in ways that might give a boost to his 2008 presidential campaign.

* I want Frist and the rest of the world to judge my medical condition on the basis of a snippet of dated and demeaning videotape that should have remained private.

* Because I think I would retain my sense of humor even in a persistent vegetative state, I'd want President Bush - the same guy who publicly mocked Karla Faye Tucker when signing off on her death warrant as governor of Texas - to claim he was intervening in my case because it is always best "to err on the side of life."

* I want the state Department of Children and Families to step in at the last moment to take responsibility for my well-being, because nothing bad could ever happen to anyone under DCF's care.

* And because Gov. Jeb Bush is the smartest and most righteous human being on the face of the Earth, I want any and all of the aforementioned directives to be disregarded if the governor happens to disagree with them. If he says he knows what's best for me, I won't be in any position to argue.

Robert Friedman is editor of Perspective. He can be reached at friedman@sptimes.com

"I'm mad as hell and I can't take it anymore!"

2005-03-31T12:33:00.000-05:00

Propaganda and Arrogance

Despite the laws passed by congress regarding the prohibition on “covert propaganda” by US government agencies, the Bush Administration seems to “think” that it is not guilty of any crimes. I say “think” because they are well aware of what they are doing, they just believe that they are above the law. And with a few notable exceptions, the press (and most definitely the Democratic Party) has let these crimes slide. Perhaps this is not an impeachable offense, but it seems that at some point, the American public would get tired of being lied to and manipulated.

Have we all become so used to taking the medication we are fed that we just lap up the latest lies and beg for more?

Several months ago, I got into a discussion with a friend about how the Bush administration lied about his reasons for waging war on Iraq. I was outraged at how we were lied to about WMDs, about how we were told that the US would be “welcomed as liberators”, that Iraqi oil would pay for the expense of bombing their country further into the Stone Age, and manipulated into believing that Saddam Hussein master-minded the 9-11 attacks. His response? “All politicians lie.” Whatever! I cannot fathom such cynicism.

Shouldn’t we hold our leaders to some sort of ethical standard?

Just for reference, please consider the following:

Disinformation is deliberately misleading information announced publicly or leaked by a government or corporation or other entity for the purpose of influencing opinions or perceptions.

Misinformation is information that is not true. The difference is intent.

Propaganda is a specific type of information aimed at serving an agenda. Even if the message conveys true information, it may be partisan or fail to paint a complete picture. Propaganda attempts to change people’s understanding through deception and confusion rather than persuasion and understanding. Advertising, public relations and (cynically perhaps) all political speech can be said to be propaganda.

So what is the Bush Administration feeding us?

Republicans driven by religious agenda

2005-03-30T14:30:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago I learned a new term, “Evangelical Liberal”. The term was used in reference to former President Jimmy Carter. Reportedly, Carter, an active Baptist Sunday School teacher, agrees with the term. Unabashedly so, Carter is proud of his religious heritage and associations. Learning this new term was significant for me because, the older I get, I find myself more attracted to liberal politics than to Christian practice. (Unfortunately, I’m steadily loosing interest in both.)

However, I do try to keep my religion-bashing tendencies in check. (You can decide whether I’m successful on that score.) Nonetheless, I often find bashing conservative views, religious or not, is more fun than shooting fish in a barrel. And to that end I find myself in frequent disagreement with the reported political views of evangelical conservatives. Unfairly, I now think, I often lump evangelical conservatives in with all religiously driven republicans.

And who do I have to thank for all this new found open-mindedness, none other than John Danforth. Danforth reminds me how much texture there is in today’s political debate, even in the religiously derived components. Danforth is both an Episcopal minister and former Missouri Senator. As such I seriously doubt he’d sidle up to a term like “evangelical liberal”. But after reading his latest opinion piece in the NYT, I doubt he’s any more likely to consider himself an evangelical conservative. And yet as a Republican he is at least somewhat politically conservative. More so than your average Democrat – as far as such labels go.

Today, like a breath of fresh air, John Danforth, publicly charges the Republican Party with straying from their political and ideological roots. Danforth says the party has become nothing more than the political arm of conservative Christians. I think this op piece will keep me thinking for a while. If you have thoughts, drop them in the comment section.

To see Danforth's piece, see the NYT -->

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/30/opinion/30danforth.html

Return to Greatness by Alan Wolfe

2005-03-29T16:35:00.000-05:00

Sorry mama, but I'm gonna ignore more of your good advice. Namely, never recommend a book you haven't read. That's right, I'm blogging without regard for parental consent, and thereby recommending to the rest of your out there in DD-land a book by Alan Wolfe, Return to Greatness : How America Lost Its Sense of Purpose and What It Needs to Do to Recover It.

I heard Wolfe interviewed on On Point radio last week. Wolfe piqued my interest by dishing out loads of invective toward Geo. Bushie. The On Point interview is a good listen, and plenty entertaining. Wolfe argues there's a difference between goodness -- as in how to be a good, well healed, polite, country -- and greatness -- which often involves inspiring people to make tough and hard choices . Wolfe slammed Bush like nobody I've heard. And apparently, according to Amazon.com, he doesn't mind needling the liberals either -- but I didn't notice him needling anyone I know on the radio show. Instead I got to hear a good hour of him making articulate arguments about the lunacy of our very own "Shrub". In a nutshell, Wolfe says he's the absolute lowest of the low, the worst we've ever had (and it's our collective fault).

So, like I said, "I have not read this book!" If you read it, let me know what you think.

BTW, I am reading Education of a Woman: The life of Gloria Steinem by Carolyn G. Heilbrun. There's a lot to know about G. Steinem, a lot I didn't know. Although, My mama never said much about her. Since I am reading that book, I'll recommend that too. Happy now, Ma?!

Repubs are Myopic: NYT and George Will Agree

2005-03-29T10:01:00.000-05:00

In George Will's 3/20 column "Why Filibusters Should Be Allowed" and an unsigned editorial on today's NYT page "Walking in the Opposition's Shoes", penned 9 days later, the unlikely pair of opinion meisters find common ground. At issue is the possible proposal to change the rules of the Senate by making filibuster a thing of the past. Both the NYT and Will agree this short sighted notion can only mean trouble in the long run.

Clearly filibuster is a crude technique. It lacks both precision and the telegenic snap that frequently drives our CNN-like interest in the wheels of governance. But filibuster also has a long, if not entirely honorable, history of providing a powerful and united minority with a tool to prevent majority extremism.

The fact that both columns essentially agree on the utter lack of wisdom of the proposed rule change is enough to make anyone stand up and notice. Interestingly, the NYT eats a little crow in today's editorial by mentioning their opposing editorial position endorsed a mere 10 years ago. While Will suggests life will be better when the Republicans have a clear and convincing majority in the Senate. Until such time, however, both editorials agree: removing the filibuster is a poor idea.

This kind of agreement reaches both up and over the ideological spectrum. The areas of common ground suggest something is wrong in our capital. Anytime powerful D.C. politicians are concerned solely with obtaining absolute power while simultaneously and flamboyantly flaunting time-honored rules of American governance, we should be concerned.

Frank Rich Hits the Nail on the Head Yet Again

2005-03-25T13:21:00.000-05:00

Frank Rich rocks! No one provides a more keen observation of politics and culture and today's NYT piece is right on the money.

From The new York Times, March 27, 2005:

The God Racket, From DeMille to DeLay

“Freedom is a dangerous thing, and you might be exposed to things you don’t want to hear,”

2005-03-25T09:11:00.000-05:00

“Freedom is a dangerous thing, and you might be exposed to things you don’t want to hear.” --Dennis Baxley, Florida Legistaor, Republican, Ocala.

I think that this pretty much sums up the religious right/Republican agenda not just in Florida but the entire country and by extension, the world.

The statement was in reference to the latest atrocity pushed by Republican legislators in Florida regarding academic freedom. It seems, in their view, going to college should NOT be about broadening one’s knowledge of the world but rather reaffirming religious beliefs. The bill would give students the right to sue professors for putting forth views that run counter to what the student believes; A rather chilling prospect for free thought.

If one is so shaky in their own religious beliefs, perhaps one should attend Bob Jones University or one of the thousands of other religious affiliated schools and leave the pursuit of truth and knowledge to real universities. Instead the power elites/religious right and their puppets in the state legislatures would prefer to control what all potential students would be exposed to.

From a wealth/power elite point of view however, this kind of legislation makes prefect sense. Access to education at all levels is getting more and more expensive and fewer and fewer individuals are able to pursue post-secondary education. If present trends continue, only the sons of the rich and powerful will be able to afford an education beyond about the eighth grade level. If we are going to maintain the status quo, we can not have our young elites being exposed to any views that may run contrary to the dominant paradigm.

Republicans' Schiavo Scheme Flopping, But Dangers to Democracy Remain

2005-03-25T08:35:00.000-05:00

From the Democratic Underground:

March 25, 2005
By Carolyn Winter and Roger Bybee

What better moment to appease the fundamentalist Right than a miraculous midnight maneuver by Congress and President Bush on Palm Sunday to resurrect Terri Schiavo?

The timing could not have been more melodramatic, but the cynical spectacular produced by "Culture of Life" high priests Tom DeLay and George W. Bush is not getting the raves that were anticipated. Polling by Pew Research shows Americans opposed to the Congressional incursion on the courts by a 2-1 margin, hardly the result sought by the Right.

Tom DeLay literally saw the Schiavo case as a gift from God just at a moment when the backlash against DeLay's ethical lapses and heavy-handed domination of the House is growing.

"One thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America," Mr. DeLay informed a Family Research Council event. "This is exactly the issue that is going on in America, of attacks against the conservative movement, against me and against many others," he thundered.

Meanwhile, a memo by Republican strategists displayed the chillingly partisan motives behind the Republicans' sudden abandonment of states' rights, embrace of federal power, and prayers for long-hated "judicial activism."

"This is an important moral issue and the pro-life base will be excited that the Senate is debating this important issue," the memo gloated, later causing red faces on the Right when it got leaked to the media.

But the Republicans' momentary setbacks in public opinion and from federal appeals courts should not deflect our attention from the context of the rightist attempt to trample the separation of powers. The Republicans' continuing campaign to construct a one-party state - with only a façade of democracy - is by far the most troubling political aspect of the Schiavo drama.

Following the Medicare drug bill last year, the Palm Sunday farce marked the second time that momentous matters were decided by Congress in the middle of the night with little time for preparation, opportunistic bending of rules, and with maximum emphasis on rightist ideology (and/or theology.) The rules in Congress are increasingly being used by Republicans to undermine any voice for the minority party and any respect for due process.

According to a Boston Globe study, about 85% of House bills in the last session were handled under "emergency" rules that allowed the Republican majority to prohibit the Democrats from putting forth amendments, and thus sparing GOP congressmen from votes that would have clarified their loyalties to corporate donors.

However, the Democrats moan and groan surprisingly little, and basically acquiesce to a situation becoming closer to a one-party state than perhaps at any time in our history. Limits on class-action suits, a major defeat for consumer rights, were passed with considerable Democratic support. Even the many questions still surrounding the legitimacy of vote-counting in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections are rarely raised by mainstream Democratic leaders.

Without loud and consistent Democratic dissent, the Right feels free to stage new incursions on democratic rule. How can the Senate credibly vote to invalidate the Florida courts with only three senators present? If Bush and the forces of the Right continue to appoint extremely ideological federal judges, does every case wind up being appealed endlessly until it can be conclusively decided by an ideologically conservative judge? As of now, more than 20 judges have heard this case. Will it only end when one judge finally issues a ruling acceptable to the Right?

Where are all the constitutionalists who are devoted to the separation of powers and celebrate local control? One Republican leader declared that the constitutional basis of the Schiavo case was the guarantee of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" unless there has been "due process." Yet only a few Democrats have stood up and pointed out that this is exactly what has happened in the last seven years in the Florida courts.

What is truly amazing has been how little effort has been expended by the major media (especially cable TV news) to create a realistic context for this discussion. One would think from much of the coverage that the Schiavo case was unique and that other similar circumstances were not happening many times a day around this country. What would happen to the health care system of this country if every similar case was artificially supported for over 15 years?

As Daniel Schorr noted on NPR, Terri Schiavo is being supported by Medicaid and the award from a malpractice suit. Both sources of support are under fierce attack by the very same people who are so adamant about keeping Ms. Schiavo alive. So what about the right of poor people for dialysis or other necessary treatments that they can't afford?

Most of us who feel that Ms. Schiavo should be allowed to die with dignity would not be troubled if the courts had ruled against that position. But what is making us lose sleep is the loss of checks to the growing power of the right wing in this country. As the polls have shown, this is not the will of the people, as an overwhelming majority agree with the courts. So how does Congress justify overturning the state courts, including the Florida Supreme Court, and placing this case in the federal courts that the right-wing is doing its best to completely control?

The major media played totally into the hands of the Right by not representing any of the complexities of the case, e.g., probably a quarter of a million people per year have similar or related decisions made to limit artificial life support. What about them? The media let the Republicans totally frame the issues and filled almost all the talking-head slots with ardent right-wingers. The Democrats acquiesced by going on the defensive. Very little consistent attention is being paid to the validity of Congress intervening in this issue, especially in the middle of the night and with a disproportionate number of Republicans voting and using rules for non-controversial issues in the Senate.

Further, cable news in particular uncritically handled the Schindler family's understandable but clearly incorrect beliefs about the possibility of Ms. Schiavo's improvement. Their claims were run uncontested, often as if there were competing, equally valid medical opinions regarding Ms. Schiavo's condition by the medical experts who had actually examined her. To back up this view, the media offered a handful of doctors who support Right ideology, like Sen. Bill Frist who felt qualified to offer a cheery prognosis based on a five-year-old video. "We're making a decision to pull a tube this week without a clear-cut diagnosis, or what in my mind was a clear-cut diagnosis," Frist proclaimed like a faith healer with remarkable powers to treat patients from afar.

From time to time, the media occasionally balanced their coverage with mainstream doctors who all gave similar assessments that Ms. Schiavo could not hope to advance from her current "persistent vegetative state."

Yet, a minute later, news shows would have the Schindler family and their supporters back again to maintain that she was actually responsive and showed emotion. A video made by the Schindler family and edited to convey an impression of potential vitality was incessantly aired. While the medical community seems overwhelmingly convinced about the utter incapacity of Ms. Schiavo to improve, this fact was buried under a shrill, frantic chorus of contentions that with therapy she can improve and might even be able to talk.

The media also did a very poor job of contrasting the consequences of keeping people semi-comatose alive while $15 billion in funds for Medicaid and other health programs is set for slashing by Tom DeLay and Co. Little mention was made of the annual death toll stemming from lack of health insurance, estimated at 18,000 Americans per year by the Institute of Medicine.

Thus far, the major media responded to the issue as framed in the Republican playbook, and largely neglected such thorny issues as the ability of technology to prolong life, sometimes indefinitely, after the quality of life is gone.

Despite the deplorable, emotion-drenched and fact-deprived media coverage, the vast majority of Americans concluded, apparently from their own family experiences, that Congress has no place intruding from long distance into intimate, anguished life-and-death decisions. For progressives, the wisdom of ordinary Americans in the face of this propaganda barrage ought to be encouraging.

At the same time, the Schiavo case should urgently remind us of that the Right is still intent on tearing down fundamental pillars of democracy.

Carolyn Winter and Roger Bybee are progressive activists and writers living in Milwaukee, Wis. They can be reached at winterbybee@earthlink.net.

Activist Judges? Bring 'em On!

2005-03-22T12:56:00.000-05:00

According to Fox News [I'm just winding up ;-|]

A federal judge early Tuesday morning refused to order the reinsertion of Terri Schiavo's feeding tube, which prompted lawyers for the severely brain-damaged woman's parents to file a notice of appeal to a higher court.

U.S. District Judge James Whittemore said Bob and Mary Schindler had not established a "substantial likelihood of success" at trial on the merits of their arguments.

In the spirit of John McLaughlin (McLaughlin Group), my prediction is...
As early as the afternoon spin cycle, prominent religious conservatives will decry the tragedy of allowing "activist" judges to rule on matters that are disagreeable to the religious right. Powerful Republicans, having earned their political points, will attempt to slowly distance themselves from the issue.

Get ready for the Republican anti-Social Security blitz.

2005-03-22T08:53:00.000-05:00

A couple of weeks ago a right-wing front group called "USA Next" made national news when it started its anti-Social Security campaign with a bigoted, hateful ad. Immediately, tens of thousands of DFA grassroots supporters created a backlash so strong that USA Next spent the next few weeks licking its wounds.

But now they're back. USA Next is set to go on the air with its political hate speech in the next two weeks. Please act now -- petition media outlets to keep bigotry and distortions off the air.

Remember -- the USA Next ads come from the same Republican operatives who unleashed the swift boat attacks.

And USA Next isn't the only player -- it is just one of dozens of entities that funnel money from corporations and right-wing billionaires into our political process. They have pledged to spend whatever it takes to dismantle Social Security.

Their latest project: producing distorted polls to generate news coverage and "evidence" of support for their privatization agenda. It's part of a coordinated effort by corporate interests and conservative ideologues to wage a multi-front war on Social Security.

Fox News, of course, featured the results of the biased poll. But so did other news outlets -- and they need to be put on notice that they will be held accountable for airing USA Next's distortions.

Conservative ideologues have been plotting the takedown of Social Security for a generation. And while we have done a good job getting the truth out so far, we can't rest.

The fight to save Social Security isn't over -- it has barely begun.

Tom Hughes
Executive Director
Democracy for America

The Days Of Our Lives

2005-03-21T12:31:00.000-05:00

From Hullabaloo Blog:

One of the things that we need to help America understand is that there is a big difference between the way the two parties perceive the role of government in its citizens personal lives. Democrats want the government to collect money from all its citizens in order to deliver services to the people. The Republicans want the government to collect money from working people in order to dictate individual citizen's personal decisions. You tell me which is the bigger intrusion into the average American's liberty?

----

By now most people who read liberal blogs are aware that George W. Bush signed a law in Texas that expressly gave hospitals the right to remove life support if the patient could not pay and there was no hope of revival, regardless of the patient's family's wishes. It is called the Texas Futile Care Law. Under this law, a baby was removed from life support against his mother's wishes in Texas just this week. A 68 year old man was given a temporary reprieve by the Texas courts just yesterday.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are also aware that Republicans have voted en masse to pull the plug (no pun intended) on medicaid funding that pays for the kind of care that someone like Terry Schiavo and many others who are not so severely brain damaged need all across this country.

Those of us who read liberal blogs also understand that that the tort reform that is being contemplated by the Republican congress would preclude malpractice claims like that which has paid for Terry Schiavo's care thus far.

Those of us who read liberal blogs are aware that the bankruptcy bill will make it even more difficult for families who suffer a catastrophic illness like Terry Schiavo's because they will not be able to declare chapter 7 bankruptcy and get a fresh start when the gargantuan medical bills become overwhelming.

And those of us who read liberal blogs also know that this grandstanding by the congress is a purely political move designed to appease the religious right and that the legal maneuverings being employed would be anathema to any true small government conservative.

Those who don't read liberal blogs, on the other hand, are seeing a spectacle on television in which the news anchors repeatedly say that the congress is "stepping in to save Terry Schiavo" mimicking the unctuous words of Tom Delay as they grovel and leer at the family and nod sympathetically at the sanctimonious phonies who are using this issue for their political gain.

This is why we cannot trust the mainstream media. Most people get their news from television. And television is presenting this issue as a round the clock one dimensional soap opera pitting the "family", the congress and the church against this woman's husband and the judicial system that upheld Terry Schiavo's right and explicit request that she be allowed to die if extraordinary means were required to keep her alive. The ghoulish infotainment industry is making a killing by acceding once again to trumped up right wing sensationalism.

This issue gets to the essence of the culture war. Shall the state be allowed to interfere in the most delicate, complicated personal matters of life, death and health because a particular religious constituency holds that their belief system should override each individual's right to make these personal decisions for him or herself. And it isn't the allegedly statist/communist/socialist left that is agitating for the government to tell Americans how they must live and how they must die.

One of the things that we need to help America understand is that there is a big difference between the way the two parties perceive the role of government in its citizens personal lives. Democrats want the government to collect money from all its citizens in order to deliver services to the people. The Republicans want the government to collect money from working people in order to dictate individual citizen's personal decisions. You tell me which is the bigger intrusion into the average American's liberty?

Tell the big oil companies to stay out of ANWR!

2005-03-18T14:52:00.000-05:00

From Barbara Boxer:

Today, my heart is heavy. By just two votes, we came up short in our effort to prevent oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, home to over 150 wildlife species. In the end, over 90% of Senate Democrats voted to stop this madness -- we just didn't have the votes to overcome the Republican majority in the Senate.

But I want you to know that I won't give up in our fight to stop the drilling. And neither should you. I'm going to use every legislative tool at my disposal to reverse this vote and prevent this terrible policy from going into effect. But we can do more -- today.

I'm planning to organize a consumer boycott of any oil company that decides to drill in this pristine Alaskan wilderness area. If, through our pocketbooks, we can convince these companies to do the right thing, we can still save the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge from the destruction that would be wrought by the oil drilling rigs.

Send an email to the CEOs of ExxonMobil, BP, ConocoPhillips, Royal Dutch/Shell, and ChevronTexaco now and tell them to stay out of ANWR!

This battle is not over -- not by a long shot.

In Friendship,
Barbara Boxer

Take Action.

Fafblog is well worth a read today

2005-03-17T14:39:00.000-05:00

For me, Fafblog is well worth a read anytime!

An SAT Analogy Exercise, perhaps?

2005-03-17T11:42:00.000-05:00

So the analogy section will be missing from the new SAT. Aside from drastic analogies made by the media and politicians such as comparing things to tsunamis, nuclear bombs or the holocaust, here is a more subtle and poetic analogy that rings as true today as when Pete Seeger penned it in 1967:

WAIST DEEP IN THE BIG MUDDY

It was back in nineteen forty-two,
I was a member of a good platoon.
We were on maneuvers in-a Loozianna,
One night by the light of the moon.
The captain told us to ford a river,
That's how it all begun.
We were -- knee deep in the Big Muddy,
But the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, are you sure,
This is the best way back to the base?"
"Sergeant, go on! I forded this river
'Bout a mile above this place.
It'll be a little soggy but just keep slogging.
We'll soon be on dry ground."
We were -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

The Sergeant said, "Sir, with all this equipment
No man will be able to swim."
"Sergeant, don't be a Nervous Nellie,"
The Captain said to him.
"All we need is a little determination;
Men, follow me, I'll lead on."
We were -- neck deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool said to push on.

All at once, the moon clouded over,
We heard a gurgling cry.
A few seconds later, the captain's helmet
Was all that floated by.
The Sergeant said, "Turn around men!
I'm in charge from now on."
And we just made it out of the Big Muddy
With the captain dead and gone.

We stripped and dived and found his body
Stuck in the old quicksand.
I guess he didn't know that the water was deeper
Than the place he'd once before been.
Another stream had joined the Big Muddy
'Bout a half mile from where we'd gone.
We were lucky to escape from the Big Muddy
When the big fool said to push on.

Well, I'm not going to point any moral;
I'll leave that for yourself
Maybe you're still walking, you're still talking
You'd like to keep your health.
But every time I read the papers
That old feeling comes on;
We're -- waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.

Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep in the Big Muddy
And the big fool says to push on.
Waist deep! Neck deep! Soon even a
Tall man'll be over his head, we're
Waist deep in the Big Muddy!
And the big fool says to push on!

Words and music by Pete Seeger (1967)
TRO (c) 1967 Melody Trails, Inc. New York, N

US must stop 'outsourcing' torture

2005-03-16T09:24:00.000-05:00

By US Representative Edward J. Markey, Democrat of Massachusetts

Note: MR Markley introduced Bill HR 952 to eliminate the practice of ''outsourcing torture" on Feb. 17.

Right now the bill has fifty-two co-sponsors. No Republicans have signed onto it so far and Dennis Hastert says he's opposed to it.

----

AN UNMARKED PLANE arrives in the middle of the night carrying men who aren't wearing uniforms but have on black hoods. The men grab prisoners out of the hands of government officials, cut off their clothes, drug them on the spot, shackle them, force the prisoners onto the plane and take off into the night. When the ''torture" plane disappears, no one knows where and when the captives will appear and what will happen to them: electrocution, beatings, sexual abuse?

At first guess, you might imagine that this terrible operation is the work of a drug cartel or a rogue member of the ''axis of evil," but the scene described involves US officials in a routine part of the Bush administration's practice of ''outsourcing torture."

Recently, light has been shed on these dark practices, challenging us to reaffirm the principles on which our country was founded: justice, liberty, and the rule of law. The practice of sending prisoners into the hands of known human rights violators mocks the core values that define who we are and threatens our own soldiers who risk their lives in combat and could face terrible consequences as prisoners of war.

This extraordinary rendition first gained national attention in September 2002, when Maher Arar, a Canadian citizen, was seized by the US government while on US soil, but then was whisked away to Jordan and later Syria at the request of the CIA. While in Syria, Arar was tortured and held in a dark, 3-by-6-foot cell for nearly a year. He was ultimately released and detailed his story to the media upon his return to Canada. Since that time, other press reports have identified renditions elsewhere around the world, such as the transfer of an Australian citizen, Mamdouh Habib, from Pakistan to Egypt, where he was reportedly tortured.

The clandestine nature of ''torture outsourcing" makes it difficult to know the total numbers of those rendered by the Bush administration. In 2002, then-CIA director George Tenet testified to the 9/11 Commission that over 70 people had been subjected to renditions prior to Sept. 11, 2001. CIA operatives interviewed by The New Yorker magazine stated that the once limited practice of rendition has mushroomed into a worldwide operation of detaining and transferring prisoners outside of any legal structure. One former government official said that over 150 renditions have been conducted since 9/11. This practice goes unmonitored -- existing beyond the scope of national or international law. Hidden from daylight, and carried out far from US soil, the issue of third party torture has been swept under the carpet and shielded from public scrutiny.

Last spring, photographs of abuse conducted by American soldiers in Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq shocked the world. President Bush assured the nation that, ''torture is never acceptable, nor do we hand over people to countries that do torture." Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this principle when she told the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations that the United States ''will not condone torture."

Yet, Bush administration officials continue to request the rendition of prisoners to countries known to engage in torture. The United States will lose credibility if it continues to export the ''dirty work" of interrogating and abusing terrorist suspects as a tactic in the war on terror.

More ....

Krugman nails the Republicans

2005-03-15T15:30:00.000-05:00

Using Social Security reform as his topic, Paul Krugman's op piece in today's NYT, "The $600 Billion Man" nails the Republicans. And while he's at it he thumb-tacks the Democrats a little, but only in a kind and gentle "what are you thinkin?" kinda way. This is a solid op piece that allows some passionate opinion to slip through the cracks of a normally radical-free publication. Check it out.

Halliburton unit faces Pentagon inquiry

2005-03-15T13:50:00.000-05:00

All I can say is it is about friggin' time.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - A Halliburton Co. unit is facing new questions from Pentagon auditors about bills for supplying fuel to the U.S. military in Iraq as part of a no-bid contract to rebuild the country's oil infrastructure, according to a Wall Street Journal report Tuesday.

The newspaper reports that this new scrutiny comes after other inquiries about the billions the company has billed the military for services rendered in Iraq. A Justice Department probe is examining if the government showed favoritism when awarding the company the oilfield contracts.

...

Anti bad-media-moral campaign

2005-03-15T10:21:00.000-05:00

Last year the Swedish Social Ministry launched a web, print and video campaign called Flicka (girl) that attacks the moral of mass media.

A survey shows that every 4th girl feel under pressure by the media's beauty ideals, and the aim of the public campaign is to educate young girls about the techniques and effects of advertising and thus help them to think critically.

One of the campaign's video ads is shaped as a sexist music video featuring semi-nude women washing a car. Suddenly, one of them confronts the camera and asks "what is this, why do most videos look this way?". The viewers are then invited to pick up the phone and call the CEO of Universal Music in Sweden and ask him the question. His name and phone numer is shown on the screen. The local commercial broadcast stations TV3 and TV4 have refused to air this and another similar video.

Additionally, a recent interactive web ad illustrates the other (real) side of magazine-covers. The front side of a Metropolitan cover shows a typical photo of a young girl but by clicking the image it gradually reveals how it has been retouched and manipulated in order to meet the standard media beauty ideal. One of the headlines read: 69 clicks from sexbomb to normal.

The videos can be seen by clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

• www.ficka.org

Peace Rally / Petition Drive

2005-03-15T10:07:00.000-05:00

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
-- Abraham Lincoln

There are two issues we cannot afford to be silent
about, one local and one global, and on Saturday you can take a
stand on both issues.

The local issue is Ohio House Bill 1, the sweeping election law
changes, passed in a special December session of the Ohio
Legislature, that diminishes the rights of working families and
dramatically expands the influence of big corporations and
wealthy individuals.

The global issue is the War in Iraq. Remembering the
anniversary of the Iraq War is about keeping in our thoughts
the families of the more than one thousand five hundred service
personnel who have lost their lives, the thousands who have
been injured or maimed, and the loved ones of the tens of
thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties.

On Saturday, March 19, you can refuse to be silent about both
of these issues.

A growing list of sponsors, including the UC Antiwar-Coalition
and the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center are sponsoring
a Rally and March at 1:00 p.m. on March 19, a Global Day of
Action on the 2nd Anniversary of the War. The Rally will be
held on Fountain Square in Downtown Cincinnati.

I encourage everyone to participate in this rally; please do
not be silent on this issue!

Saturday, March 19, is also the last day to gather signatures
for the Referendum Petition Drive to stop Ohio House Bill 1
from becoming law at the end of March, and put it on the ballot
in November so that all Ohio voters can decide if it should or
should not be law.

Those helping with the petition drive will meet at the Tyler
Davidson Fountain on Fountain Square at 12:30 pm. (I plan to be
there by noon, if you can make it then, please do, so that we
can get signatures as people arrive at the Square). I will
have extra petitions for those who need them (and so that we
can get signatures for every county). I will also collect
completed petitions so that we can get all petitions to David
Kolbe in Columbus on Sunday, March 20.

PLEASE ATTEND THIS RALLY to protest the War!
PLEASE HELP WITH THE PETITION DRIVE to stop an unjust law!

To sign up to help with the petition drive register at:
petition.democracyforamerica.com

Under Bush, a New Age of Prepackaged Television News (PROPAGANDA)

2005-03-14T15:21:00.000-05:00

(Originally posted inthe Sunday New York Times.)

Under the Bush administration, the federal government has aggressively used a well-established tool of public relations: the prepackaged, ready-to-serve news report that major corporations have long distributed to TV stations to pitch everything from headache remedies to auto insurance. In all, at least 20 federal agencies, including the Defense Department and the Census Bureau, have made and distributed hundreds of television news segments in the past four years, records and interviews show. Many were subsequently broadcast on local stations across the country without any acknowledgement of the government's role in their production.

This winter, Washington has been roiled by revelations that a handful of columnists wrote in support of administration policies without disclosing they had accepted payments from the government. But the administration's efforts to generate positive news coverage have been considerably more pervasive than previously known. At the same time, records and interviews suggest widespread complicity or negligence by television stations, given industry ethics standards that discourage the broadcast of prepackaged news segments from any outside group without revealing the source.

... in three separate opinions in the past year, the Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of Congress that studies the federal government and its expenditures, has held that government-made news segments may constitute improper "covert propaganda" even if their origin is made clear to the television stations. The point, the office said, is whether viewers know the origin. Last month, in its most recent finding, the G.A.O. said federal agencies may not produce prepackaged news reports "that conceal or do not clearly identify for the television viewing audience that the agency was the source of those materials."

----
Do you feel manipulated by your government yet? Does anyone in Washington care that this is illegal? How long will we continue to take the medication we are fed?

The bankruptcy bill before the Congress is bad law, bad practice, and an example of bad faith.

2005-03-11T13:50:00.000-05:00

The bankruptcy bill before the Congress is bad law, bad practice, and an example of bad faith with the common people whom elected officials presumably serve. When it passes -- and it will -- it will be thanks purely to the Republican Party.

-From: www.redstate.org

he point here is fairly simple: The bill is basically a gift to corporate lenders that tightens requirements on consumers while paradoxically loosening restrictions on credit card companies. The argument for the bill goes something like this: The record number of bankruptcies in America is indicative of a lack of personal responsibility made possible through too-lax bankruptcy laws; these bankruptcies in turn force up costs and interest rates for responsible consumers; ergo, if we tighten bankruptcy requirements, American consumers and the credit industry will be better off.

This argument is almost wholly false for several reasons:

It's already plenty difficult to declare bankruptcy for the average consumer. I know because I've seen it, and I also know that it is a profoundly humiliating process that forever follows and tarnishes a person's good name and good credit. The notion that bankruptcy is somehow easy and easily abused to be deeply offensive. Make no mistake: there are those who abuse it nonetheless; but the solution to this is existing enforcement, not en masse punishment.

The record number of bankruptcies in America is not the fault of consumers so much as it's the fault of credit companies willing to extend credit to pretty much anyone, independent of their means or station. When I lived in Brooklyn, one of my roommates was unemployed for almost a full year. After six months of unemployment, he did an experiment and saved all the pre-approved credit offers he received. The result: in one month, this unemployed 26-year old was offered almost a hundred thousand dollars in preapproved credit. That the bankruptcy bill does zero to address this corporate malfeasance -- a major and easily-addressed cause of the bankruptcy rate -- is absurd.

To my knowledge, there is no empirical evidence establishing a relationship between bankruptcies and credit interest rates. The latter remain wildly variable, indicating that the credit companies have plenty of leeway. Furthermore, there is no empirical evidence that credit companies -- or any businesses involved in forms of lending -- are suffering more than ordinary cost-of-business risk from bankruptcies. This is a red herring.

The people affected by this bill are almost exclusively the desperate and the stupid. While we ought to have little problem allowing the latter their fate, having been amongst the former, I believe compassion demands something more for them than a simple tightening of the screws. But then, compassion appears to have no place amongst the Republicans pushing this wretched law:

Republicans also defeated an amendment that would have permitted seniors entering bankruptcy to protect $75,000 of the value of their homes, as well as one that would have exempted from the means test family members forced into bankruptcy by the need to care for a sick relative.

And the GOP rebuffed an effort by Sen. Daniel K. Akaka (D-Hawaii) to force credit card companies to disclose to their clients how long it would take to pay off their balances if they made only the minimum payments.

This is on us, folks. This is on the Republican Party. It's going to hurt a lot of people; it is a pure giveaway to business sectors that need no state help; and it makes us look like the corporate toadies we apparently are. Shame.

Lawsuit Holds Rumsfeld Accountable

2005-03-11T13:31:00.000-05:00

Lawsuit Holds Rumsfeld Accountable

The ACLU and Human Rights First last week filed a lawsuit charging that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld bears direct responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees in U.S. military custody. This is the first federal court lawsuit to name a top U.S. official in the ongoing torture scandal in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Secretary Rumsfeld bears direct and ultimate responsibility for this descent into horror by personally authorizing unlawful interrogation techniques and by abdicating his legal duty to stop torture," said Lucas Guttentag, lead counsel in the lawsuit and director of the ACLU's Immigrants' Rights Project. "He gives lip service to being responsible but has not been held accountable for his actions. This lawsuit puts the blame where it belongs, on the Secretary of Defense."

The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Illinois on behalf of eight men who were subject to torture and abuse at the hands of U.S. forces under Secretary Rumsfeld's command. The plaintiffs were incarcerated in U.S. detention facilities in Iraq and Afghanistan, where they were subjected to torture and other degrading treatment. None of the men were ever charged with a crime, and all have been released.

Fly Home from YOUR Jail Cell

2005-03-04T10:23:00.000-05:00

Nothing to contribute today, really. Just that I heard this rather odd tidbit on the radio: Martha Stewart was released from jail today. It seems her mode of transport was a tad different from your typical perp. She flew home in her private jet. And I am fascinated.

Introducing a Searchable, Easily Accessed, Text-Version of the Frank Luntz Republican Playbook

2005-03-02T13:16:00.000-05:00

The Frank Luntz Republican Playbook is now readable online!!

This is great news for those millions of us who can’t (or don’t want to) download the massive PDF image file. It is also an invaluable asset to bloggers, site proprietors, writers, and other researchers who wish to search the text.

They are putting out a section per day (The Playbook is 10 sections) and are currently up to section VI.

Every knowledgeable and responsible progressive should read and understand this material.

And besides, it is IMMENSELY ENTERTAINING!!!

Read it now!

Bush's Weird Tour: A Letter to European Friends

2005-03-02T13:02:00.000-05:00

Believe me, we Americans - at least half of our population, and, in the post-election period, probably more - understand why you in Europe are so upset. We have to live each day with these guys, their bullyboy tactics, their mendacity, and the ramifications of their reckless policies. By Bernard Weiner

... From Democratic Underground

BUSH: HOLDING THREE JOBS 'UNIQUELY AMERICAN'

2005-02-28T17:20:00.000-05:00

Received this one from Chain Suck.

****************
"Last Friday when promoting social security reform with 'regular' citizens in Omaha, Nebraska, President Bush walked into an awkward unscripted moment in which he stated that carrying three jobs at a time is 'uniquely American.'

"While talking with audience participants, the president met Mary Mornin, a woman in her late fifties who told the president she was a divorced mother of three, including a 'mentally challenged' son.

"The President comforted Mornin on the security of social security stating that 'the promises made will be kept by the government.'

"But without prompting Mornin began to elaborate on her life circumstances.

"Begin transcript:

MS. MORNIN: That's good, because I work three jobs and I feel like I contribute.

THE PRESIDENT: You work three jobs?

MS. MORNIN: Three jobs, yes.

THE PRESIDENT: Uniquely American, isn't it? I mean, that is fantastic that you're doing that. (Applause.) Get any sleep? (Laughter.)"

*******************
That's the best he can come up with? How about some sympathy for the woman? As if it's some kind of priviledge to have to work your life away. What a jerk. Completely clueless.

Grounded: Millionaire John Gilmore stays close to home while making a point about privacy

2005-02-28T08:23:00.000-05:00

He's unable to travel because he refuses to present a government-approved ID

SAN FRANCISCO -- John Gilmore's splendid isolation began July 4, 2002, when, with defiance aforethought, he strolled to the Southwest Airlines counter at Oakland Airport and presented his ticket. The gate agent asked for his ID.

Gilmore asked her why.

It is the law, she said.

Gilmore asked to see the law.

Nobody could produce a copy. To date, nobody has. The regulation that mandates ID at airports is "Sensitive Security Information." The law, as it turns out, is unavailable for inspection.

In post 9/11 America, asking "Why?" when someone from an airline asks for identification can start some interesting arguments. Gilmore, who learned to argue on the debate team in his hometown of Bradford, McKean County, has started an argument that, should it reach its intended target, the U.S. Supreme Court, would turn the rules of national security on end, reach deep into the tug-of-war between private rights and public safety, and play havoc with the Department of Homeland Security.

At the heart of Gilmore's stubbornness is the worry about the thin line between safety and tyranny.

"Are they just basically saying we just can't travel without identity papers? If that's true, then I'd rather see us go through a real debate that says we want to introduce required identity papers in our society rather than trying to legislate it through the back door through regulations that say there's not any other way to get around," Gilmore said. "Basically what they want is a show of obedience."

More ...

Senators Boxer, Clinton Unveil "Count Every Vote Act of 2005"

2005-02-28T08:17:00.000-05:00

WASHINGTON, DC- U.S. Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Barbara Boxer (D-CA) today unveiled comprehensive voting reform legislation to make sure that every American is able to vote and every vote is counted.

This bill (The Count Every Vote Act of 2005) corrects many of the problems in the last election. Notably, it requires paper receipts, and that the source and object code of all electronic voting machines to be open and readable by the public.

Fighting Liberal

2005-02-25T14:53:00.000-05:00

I firmly believe we need more sword carrying liberals. Thoughts? Are there enough swords being leveraged in politics today? Can our countries largely elderly politicians heft the mighty weight of a forged sword? Thoughts? Discuss amongst yourselves.

The Administration and the Fury: If William Faulkner were writing on the Bush White House.

2005-02-25T12:57:00.000-05:00

By Sam Apple at Slate.com

William Faulkner
February 23, 2005

Down the hall, under the chandelier, I could see them talking. They were walking toward me and Dick's face was white, and he stopped and gave a piece of paper to Rummy, and Rummy looked at the piece of paper and shook his head. He gave the paper back to Dick and Dick shook his head. They disappeared and then they were standing right next to me.

"Georgie's going to walk down to the Oval Office with me," Dick said.
"I just hope you got him all good and ready this time," Rummy said.

"Hush now," Dick said. "This aint no laughing matter. He know lot more than folks think." Dick patted me on the back good and hard. "Come on now, Georgie," Dick said. "Never mind you, Rummy."

More from Slate.com ...

With a Hush and a Whisper, Bush Drops Town Hall Meeting with Germans

2005-02-25T09:39:00.000-05:00

I seriously doubt that anyone believes that Bush's "Town Hall" meetings are anything but scripted propaganda where the participants are screened and selected and the fawning questions chosen in advance. So it should come as no surprise that Bush would avoid (like the plague) any forum where he might be asked a question that is not in the script or one that is not on the message that he is pushing.

During his trip to Germany on Wednesday, the main highlight of George W. Bush's trip was meant to be a "town hall"-style meeting with average Germans. But with the German government unwilling to permit a scripted event with questions approved in advance, the White House has quietly put the event on ice. Was Bush afraid the event might focus on prickly questions about Iraq and Iran rather than the rosy future he's been touting in Europe this week?

The much-touted American-style "town hall" meeting the White House has been planning with "normal Germans" of everyday walks of life will be missing during his visit to the Rhine River hamlet of Mainz this afternoon. A few weeks ago, the Bush administration had declared that the chat -- which could have brought together tradesmen, butchers, bank employees, students and all other types to discuss trans-Atlantic relations -- would be the cornerstone of President George W. Bush's brief trip to Germany.

State Department diplomats said the meeting would help the president get in touch with the people who he most needs to convince of his policies. Bush's invasion of Iraq and his diplomatic handling of the nuclear dispute with Iran has drawn widespread concern and criticism among the German public. And during a press conference two weeks ago, Bush said Washington is still terribly misunderstood in Europe. All the more reason, it would seem, for him to be pleased about talking to people here.

But on Wednesday, that town hall meeting will be nowhere on the agenda -- it's been cancelled.

Millions Listen To Three Hours Of Lies Every Day

2005-02-23T13:48:00.000-05:00

–47 percent believe that Saddam Hussein helped plan and support the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11, 2001 (up six percentage points from November).

–44 percent actually believe that several of the hijackers who attacked the U.S. on September 11 were Iraqis (up significantly from 37% in November).

–36 percent believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction when the U.S. invaded (down slightly from 38% in November).

Do you find this hard to believe? Do you have a hard time understanding how so many people could be so misinformed? All you have to do is turn on the radio and listen, and you’ll understand what is going on in this country. It’s hard to listen to, but try it. It is important to understand what is going on. Millions and millions of people listen to Rush Limbaugh every day. In my opinion his radio show is the biggest single factor in American politics, yet so much of “the left” largely ignores him. It’s understandable — who wants to listen to that vile,m insulting, manipulative, lying, hateful, fascist crap? But it’s there, it’s real, and it is having a huge effect on what many Americans believe.

Read More ...

The United States of War

2005-02-23T09:11:00.000-05:00

From The Democratic Underground. Posted by MrScorpio.

Welcome to the National Security State, the global arbiter of perpetual war, police state tactics and the militarization of society on all levels. It's a place where the state religion hawks Jesus wearing an Uncle Sam hat, driving a gas guzzling Humvee with little plastic flags attached to the door and a gay couple, recently married in the People's Republic Taxechusettes, dragged behind in chains that are attached to the rear bumper.

The National Meal is a fat laden, high calorie, low nutrition blob of dead, imported cow flesh, made possible courtesy of the patent protected products of Big Pharma and the destruction of the Amazon River Basin. Just the thing to feed the teaming masses of bloated and lethargic teenagers who have not yet found their proper place in the ranks of cannon fodder slated to fight future "preemptive" wars for their Neocon masters.

The National Anthem is an overblown ode to teenage sexualization and wretched excess, visualized by bright colors, wiggling flesh and flashy montages. It's a really catchy tune that's proud and swaggering, as it espouses the inferiority of older and more developed cultures that have done nothing more than to be the receded and ancient roots to our own bright and shining tree.

The National Pastime is electronically manipulated violence brought to you courtesy of the computer gaming technicians of the United States Army, their cousins who are the overworked and underpaid wizards of Silicon Valley and the monied patrons of Hollywood special FX technicians. The prerequisite for this orgiastic ballet of mayhem is that it's brought to you without context or consequence and that the display of gore is as cartoonish as humanly possible and devoid of any resemblance to the poison of stomach churning reality.

The dollar is a shiny new sedan that the drives directly from Wall Street to party at the Pentagon. Fact is mutated so much by the mainstream media, that by the time it becomes "information that you can use", it's devoid of the truth. Propaganda is the mantra of government and its supplicants are paid handsomely with the current coin of the realm, access to the throne and filthy, taxpayer supported lucre. Whores are dressed up and propped up to cry foul against their masters' enemies and when they're discovered, the collared lapdogs of the honored press are given a tug of the leash and told to heel. Only the untagged watchdogs of the blogasphere are free to bark loudly and intently at such a shameful display of hypocrisy decorated in almost comic proportions. Unfortunately, that's when we all hear cries from the peanut gallery to have them licensed.

True citizens are not Black, Asian, Latino, immigrant, Native American, gay, old, overweight, poor, Muslim, Jewish, Northern, Eastern, Western, Catholic, French speaking, Spanish speaking, Bush questioning, anti-war, pro-peace, diplomatic, pro independent press, intelligent, remorseful, sympathetic, non-violent, tolerant or thinking. We react... violently. Oh, yeah and we let loose with both barrels in the direction that our fearless, all-hatted, no-cattled, twang-laden master of the malapropism tells us to. Get behind him, Boys. Just as any true Amur-i-can should.

Despite a non-stop onslaught of lies, at a pace and substance never before shoveled at us by a sitting president, the masses remain stuck like flies to flypaper to the backside of a man, most unqualified ever, to be the top-dog for all of so-called western civilization. Well maybe, or maybe not, depending on how warped your point of view is. What is that cartoon of a man, George W. Bush, but a sick reminder that, as a country we have some serious mental issues to deal with. We're addicted to this sickness, this fantasy land of flag waving lies and turban decorated boogie men lurking behind grandma's closet door with a baseball bat, ready to take her life savings hidden in the mattress. It's not to say that the entire country is off its rocker. All one has to do is witness the largest outpourings of righteous outrage against the acts and policies of madmen and the atrocities of our tow headed sons and daughters that were sent into the bloodied field of battle on a stream of never ending lies and convenient excuses. It's a validation that some of us still have some sense.

At least half the country has bought a clue and not spent the grocery money on the tasty and addictive kool-aid of our Alien Lizard Masters who run rampant through the hallowed halls of government. But what is Bush, but a symptom of our times? The culmination of a generation of empire building, of political polarization, of social arrogance, of cultural disdain, of validation of violence, of disregard of the intelligentsia and of militarization of the populace on all levels. Not all of us has bought into this diseased spiral of logic, but the spin cycle is taking us all down with it.

We're priming ourselves for a collapse of the highest order. We've replaced the pillars of our democracy with a hollow framework of political capital grubbing. Our society has replaced the need to promote the general welfare with the need to promote generals that are ordered to see to the welfare of the spear. Keep it nice and shiny, boys. You never know who we have to stick it to the next time, but stick it you will. Nothing is more important than that spear, we're told. The spear is the end all and be all. Where ever the spear goes, it goes to do no wrong. The pointer of the spear, guided by the all-mighty hand of God himself stands tall and the rubes feel a little tighter in their jeans... that's the swelling of pride by the way. And no dirty, unpatriotic peacenik is going to take it way from them. It's what we live for as a beacon of feedom, right? Brook all sacrifices and lay our children on the altar of war, telling the nay-sayers that they have no right other than to follow their twisted example.

Don't pay attention to that crumbling sound, Lee Greenwood is singing.

Despite the worst of our sad natures coming to bite us all in the ass at this late date, there is an alternative. It's called sanity. At some point, a significant number of people are going to end up facing a brick wall and wonder how they got there after being guided to it by there favorite son, the knuckle-head in chief. I'm not talking about the dyed in the marrow true believers. I'm only talking about the merely misguided. The ones who'll wake up and step slowly away from the kool-aid bowl. Be they in one political party or the other, they have but no other choice but to realize that they've been sold a bill of rancid goods. That's the weakness of Bush, his house is built on lies and has a limited shelf life. The mere fact that he was handed on a silver platter the very staff of incompetent yes men he begged for all but assures his very downfall. When most people realize that they've been had, they start changing their ways.

Although, those who actually opposed him did all they could to stop his mad race to the land of fascism, little do they know that Bush himself will do their job for them. The seeds to Bush's collapse lies in his own stubbornness, or his hubris if you will, as well as his convoluted strategy to engage the support of diametrically opposed camps; the freewheeling ruling business class and the sociologically repressed evangelical proles. Both sides are asking for their piece of the action now and expect to be rewarded for their fealty to the King. Somebody, however, is going to be sorely disappointed.

His plans of conquest will yield bitter fruit, harvested by the bloodied victims, disillusioned returning troops and their outraged mothers. That's where the battles will be fought. Expect lots of blood, people. In all of this melee, the biggest failures will occur. Failures so ugly, that they will do nothing less than tear at the very heart of our society. There will be wars abroad and wars at home over the wars abroad. Now at this point, Bush's very nature to never admit guilt or own up to his responsibilities, the encirclement of his loyal yet unscrupulous followers and the lack of a willingness by a previously co-opted press whoredom whipped into shape by the vociferous power of blogdom will create the formula for his demise.

It's going to be ugly and heads will roll. But in the end, it's going to be ugly enough for those who have stopped drinking the kool-aid to realize their predicament. These few, if grabbed and brought into the side of a viable and organized left will form the margin needed to make the change from current insanity back to some semblance of respectability. It's going the be a hard fall, yet the left needs to figure out how the be a soft cushion. It's a start, and there will be tons of important work to be done afterwards. But without us taking these refugees from insanity close to our collective bosoms and making them our allies, there is no way that we can revert this country from the United States of War back to the United States of America.

The time to prepare is now.

Iran-Contra criminals in top government positions

2005-02-20T19:15:00.000-05:00

The Reagan-BushSr.-BushJr. power structure just keeps on churning!

Convicted criminals pardoned, now named to powerful posts, are determining national policy and making tons of dough.

Negroponte: czar of human rights violations

2005-02-20T18:38:00.000-05:00

"He understands the power centers in Washington," Bush said of Negroponte. "That was code to the intelligence agencies that John is not going to rock the boat," says Leslie Gelb, a former Defense and State Department official and president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations. "He's not going to try to pound the table and create a revolution. The agencies would blow up anybody who would try. He'll get them in the room, get them talking to each other, and if Bush wants a particular thing done, he will get it done."

SOSDD: Bush continues to surrond himself with people of like-mind. Scarier still, is the fact Negroponte has presided over operations in Iraq and Central America guilty of human rights violations. Some might say that is why he was nominated to Ambassador to Iraq: he has experience covering up abuse and human rights violations ordered by the White House, both for Reagan and GWB.

www.guardian.co.uk