AOL USERS HAVE SPOKEN-- SCALITO IS A DUD (LIKE BUSH)

In today's AOL poll, users are asked to rate far right extremist Sam Alito, BushCo's nominee to replace mainstream conservative Sandra Day O'Connor. 45% call the choice poor, 30% excellent, 16% fair and 9% good.
When asked about Bush's overall appointments 59% called them poor, 19% excellent, 14% good and 8% fair. Although the poll didn't ask people to consider the questions of Bush's resignation or impeachment, it did ask if Bush should jetison Cheney (65% said YES) and Rove (75% said YES). Things didn't look any brighter for Chimpie when people were asked to rate specific policies.

How would you rate Bush's choices on energy policy?

Poor 74%
Excellent 12%
Good 8%
Fair 7%

How would you rate Bush's choices on the war on terror?

Poor 68%
Excellent 18%
Fair 7%
Good 6%

How would you rate Bush's choices on Social Security?

Poor 73%
Excellent 13%
Good 8%
Fair 6%

How would you rate Bush's choices on the economy?

Poor 65%
Excellent 17%
Good 11%
Fair 8%

Could a duck be any lamer than this one?

THE WORST POSSIBLE NOMINEE ?

If anyone thought Bush planned on naming a moderate, consensus-type judge to replace Harriet Miers after he was lambasted and beaten to a bloody pulp by the extreme right of his own fascist-lead coalition, they need to have their head examined. BushCo's idea of "consensus" doesn't involve the majority of Americans who favor a woman's right to choice or who have the separation of church and state or who think individual rights are more important than corporate rights. BushCo's idea of consensus involves reconciling the interests of the KKK and Aryan Nations with the interests of the folks who run multibillion dollar companies with a PO Boxes in the Bahamas so as not to pay any American taxes.

I was awake early enough to hear Bush reading the resume someone gave him for the extreme right wing loon he just nominated to the Supreme Court. He chose someone of the Far Right's list of 10 pre-approved maniac neo-fascists, someone committed to overturning Roe v Wade, someone committed to ending the meaningful separation of church and state. Bush's last speech to the nation (on Friday) was to laud the "sacrifices" and "service" of a traitorous scumbag in his Regime named Irving Libby (aka- "Scooter," a name Bush uses to make this vicious neo-Nazi sound less sinister and threatening) as he resigned in disgrace after being indicted for 5 serious criminal offenses committed in the heart of the White House. This morning the part of Bush's partisan little introduction that riled me the most was when he had the nerve to bring up the word "ethical" in referring to this crooked right-wing hack he's trying to install on the Supreme Court.

"Scalito," as he is derisively known, shorthand for Scalia-lite (connoting his extreme right-wing philosophy with a smile), is a typical Bush Regime crook. Perhaps you saw the profiles of the list of extremists that the religionist Right pre-approved for Bush to choose from which the WASHINGTON POST ran last week. The most memorable part of Alito's resume wasn't that he was known for a high standard in ethics but that he's a dangerous crook. "Three years ago Alito drew conflict-of-interest accusations after he upheld a lower court's dismissal of a lawsuit against the Vanguard Group. Alito had hundreds of thousands of dollars invested with the mutual fund company at the time. He denied doing anything improper but recused himself from further involvement in the case."

In a discussion with Katie Couric this morning, distinguished George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley stated flatly that "There will be no one to the right of Sam Alito on this Court. This is a pretty hardcore fellow on abortion issues." In the case that Alito is best-known for-- perhaps tied with his Christmas tree defense-- he issued a dissenting opinion in Planned Parenthood v. Casey. The fanatic judge concurred with the majority in supporting the restrictive abortion-related measures passed by the Pennsylvania legislature in the late 1980’s but he dissented because he didn't feel the majority had gone far enough. He claimed his fellow conservative justices were wrong to strike down a requirement that women notify their spouses before having an abortion. The U.S. Supreme Court subsequently rejected Alito’s lunatic opinion. Other highlights of Alito's judicial cases show clearly that he would oppose protecting victims of race-based discrimination (Bray v Marriott Hotels) or disability-based discrimination (Nathanson v. Medical College of Pennsylvania), and that he would always be there for the wealthy and powerful corporations who have financed his party's rise to political dominance.

People For the American Way has already announced that it do all it can to defeat Alito and Bush's attempt to violently shift the balance on the Supreme Court. According to PFAW President Ralph Neas, "Right-wing leaders vetoed Miers because she failed their ideological litmus test. With Judge Alito, President Bush has obediently picked a nominee who passes that test with flying colors. We had hoped President Bush would nominate someone with a commitment to protecting Americans’ rights and freedoms. That’s what the American people want, and it’s what they deserve. Unfortunately, with Judge Alito, that’s not what President Bush has given us. He has chosen to divide Americans with a nominee guaranteed to cause a bitter fight. Replacing a mainstream conservative like Justice O’Connor with a far-right activist like Samuel Alito would threaten Americans’ rights and legal protections for decades. Justice O’Connor had a pivotal role at the center of the Court, often providing a crucial vote to protect privacy, civil rights, and so much more. All that would be at risk if she were replaced with Judge Alito, who has a record of ideological activism against privacy rights, civil rights, workers’ rights, and more. President Bush wasn’t willing to stand up to the far right, so Americans must count on senators to stand up for the Constitution. Americans will have to live with the next justice long after President Bush has left office." The best place to get all the details of Bush's horrible new nominee is on the People For the American Way web site.




8 AM UPDATE

Of course, given Bush's lack of concern for the long-term effects of anything on the welfare of our nation, it's entirely possible that his main motivation for quickly nominating a hard-right radical judge sure to provoke tons of controversy and lots of headlines and TV debate, was simply to get Irving Libby (aka- Scooter) off the front pages. And, at this Bush has been somewhat successful. I noticed CNN this morning was all about Scalito and nary a mention of Irving or any of the other Republican felons or indictees or probably indictees (Rove, DeLay, Abramoff, Frist, Cheney, Pombo, Cunningham, Noe, Ney, Taft, Bolton, et al).


2:30 PM UPDATE

Oh, and speak of being a typical Bush Regime thug, it now turns out this creep is also, like Bush and Cheney and the rest of these pigs, a filthy chickhawk. The picture gets nicer by the minute.

HOW MUCH IS IRAQ ACTUALLY COSTING US ?

There are many ways to measure the cost of Bush's war against-- and occupation of-- Iraq. The most obvious would be in lives, lives of American military personnel, lives of our allies' military personnel, lives of Iraqi civilians, lives of others caught up in the war. Then there are the tens of thousands of men, mostly men, who will spend the rest of their lives with serious handicaps (minus limbs, eyes, hearing... things like that). And, of course there are the young-- mostly young-- people whose lives have now entered into a downward spiral, impaired beyond repair from a psychological travesty inflicted on them for no good reason and with no amelioration.

Then there's what Bush and Cheney's little adventure is costing us in terms of our national zeitgeist and how the rest of the world views us. I travel a lot. It ain't what it used to be. Since the Rehnquist Supreme Court installed Bush in the White House, the world has become a chillier and chillier place for Americans. We went from being everyone's favorite visitors, in the 90's to being... suspect. (Wherever I go people wonder, "Is he a Bush fascist?") Most of the rest of the world is not brainwashed by Fox and Limbaugh and the Amen Chorus. They fear us and hate us; they're not rooting for us anymore either. At first they were sympathetic and knew we were Bush's victims. But when we let him steal 2004, I feel we lost our dignity as a people and any respect anyone might have still had for us. And in a part of the world where people have generational memories, we'll be coping with Bush's blunders and incompetence and stupidity for decades.

But what I really wanted to do today is to show you what this has cost us-- and is costing us-- in terms of cold, hard cash. Helen mentioned to me this afternoon that she read how BushCo is cutting billions from social welfare programs (not from bridges to uninhabited islands off the coast of Alaska but from Medicare and food stamps and things like that). Well, take a look at this meter and try to grok what it means for our country and your community and your family. Keep it in mind when you're in the voting booth.

AMERICAN HUNTERS NEED DICK

From: The Desk Of PHILBERT SUGGS
To: General Richard Bruce 'Dick' Cheney
vice_president@whitehouse.gov, Richard.Cheney@halliburton.com, investors@halliburton.com

Dearest Vice President Dick Cheney,

My name is Philbert Suggs and I am a patriotic suppressor of a women's right to choose and an angry right-wing Christian warrior outdoorsman just like you sir. And like you, I'm also a big fan of treason and lying, especially if it means upholding the integrity of our American way of life.

But Dick, it seems to me that things are very different for you now. I mean you used to be able to get away with everything and anything! However now, I hear people calling you names like "War Profiter" "Crony Capitalist," "Greedy Dick," "Liar Liar" and "Outrageously Loathsome Maladjusted Evil Man Scourge of Ooze and Bile"! And those Dick, are out of the mouths of your republican supporters who attend my very right leaning church!

But Dick, I want you to know that I've figured it all out! Ever since I attended the Republican Wise Eyes Forum-Seminar at BIG SIR in beautiful Bishop, CA. I have been able to "see clearly" what is really secretly going on in the fellowship of the GOP. For instance, I now realize that you are going to resign from your post in a calculated move to… One: avoid going to Federal prison for your part in outing a CIA agent. And two: to quickly get the heck out of the "serving the public" crap with your new and vastly improved huge Haliburton booty.

But what your resignation also means to me and the millions of other Christian hunting devotees who you are fraternally bonded to, is you will be able to make available to the industry of killing animals for sport, the valuable experience of turning lies and failures into great accomplishments. This is why I am writing to you today.

As a fellow rural Republican supremacist you know the tragic, heartbreaking reality of the rapid declining numbers of men who go out hunting and killing animals for recreation every year. And as a ruthless self serving business executive you must notice the industry of hunting animals is now in dire straights just like the GOP, and desperately needs a man like you. Yes, we American hunters need you, Dick.

Because you sir, better than anyone else since Mcarthy, Hoover or Lee Atwater created a right-wing syllabus for America that truly reflects the mean spirit that is our GOP. That fraternal, ulterior motive Mafia thing that you had going on is truly what we American hunters are needing now to discredit the opposition against our war on the animals.

Lying about the reasons why the US invaded the Mesopotamia regions of Iraq is identical, in its complete dishonesty, to the lies we hunters make up when explaining the need to go into the woods and shoot animals. We hunters badly need the kind of triumphant success with lying that you and Bush have had so that when we explain to the public why we must invade the mountains, the grasslands, the tree filled areas with dirt and even the game ranches to kill animals, these lies will be totally accepted as necessary in the war to protect the American way of life.

Heck Dick, if you can keep the U.S. citizens from wanting to stone you after they have all seen how you helped award numerous no-bid no-compete contracts for the War in Iraq to your own former company Haliburton and that your stock options have risen 3,281% since 2004, then you could realistically even help brave Ted Nugent, myself and Fenced In Hunting International with our plan to import those penguin birds from the Antarctic for disabled children and a few of the lucky event organizers to shoot up inside enclosed game parks. And with you guiding the campaign, the public will remain passively silent.

Think of how simple it's been for a mean spirited man like you to turn scandals and selfishness into great accomplishments in the eyes of U.S. citizens!

Dick, with you as the Corporate CEO-Commanding General of the American Hunting Industry we would still be able to champion the old fraudulent reason that hunting animals actually saves animals from certain death when they are killed for recreation. With your help Dick it may even be possible to bring the numbers of American men who hunt and kill critters for fun, back up to the pre Viagra levels.

Oh Dick, don't panic. I'm not going to request that you become involved with the hunting industry's huge boycott against Viagra, (which as you know is the main reason the sale of hunting licenses has plummeted in the last 4 years)! No, we hunters understand how companies like Pfizer actually own you and that it's all part of the reality of our profit driven political system.

Can't you just picture yourself in a motorized wheel chair traveling around the nation like a modern day, but really angry and cranky, Roosevelt type?
Well? What do you think?
I look forward to hearing from you soon or at the very least seeing you again at the annual Rawlins,Wyoming Coyote Kill.

God Bless,

Philbert Suggs

HOW TO CLOBBER A RIGHT-WING LOON AT HIS OWN GAME-- NJ LOOKIN' LIKE A WIN FOR THE GOOD GUYS

You might not be a follower of the NEWARK STAR-LEDGER. If you've been with me since July you'll remember my run-in with the paper back then. First the good news: I just sold the house in Pennsylvania. Next the really great news: Yesterday's STAR-LEDGER is reporting such utter chaos in Doug Forrester's now doomed campaign for governor of New Jersey that Democrats will be studying Corzine's brilliant campaign for months to come-- as they should.

A couple of weeks ago I mentioned how Missouri was the first state with a great strategy for helping Democratic candidates use stem cell proposals in a manner akin to the Republican strategy of the last few electoral cycles where they strategically placed anti-gay marriage amendments on the ballot to bring out their base and distract voters from Iraq and bread and butter issues, turning serious elections into red-meat circuses.

Well, last week Senator Corzine unleashed an ad that just about ended any chance Forrester had to win. Forrester's disastrous and disingenuous responses have now dug him a hole he'll never climb out of. And today most New Jersey voters see him as the flip-flop man, chasing after pubic opinion for a position.

The headline in yesterday's STAR-LEDGER, the state's biggest paper, was "Forrester reverses field, backs stem-cell research." Josh Margolin paints a picture of a campaign thrown into confusion and disarray. A few days after Forrester told the STAR-LEDGER "What I have found is that -- I think it's more clear today than it was two months ago -- that the embryonic stem-cell research isn't going anywhere," he was forced to face the fact that despite George Bush's support from the fringe religionist radicals in WingNutia, the overwhelming majority of New Jersey residents adamantly favor stem cell research. Forrester started dancing-- fast, but with no grace whatsoever. During a debate last week, he completely shifted his stand by lauding the latest stem-cell research. The next day, one of his campaign flacks said his remarks represented "an evolution of his position." And yesterday, according to the STAR-LEDGER, "he strongly endorsed the science and did not rule out spending public money if the state could afford it. 'I've made my position very clear, [which of course is exactly what he has never done and what Republicans CANNOT ever do for fear of alienating either the crazies who make up their base or normal people who still believe in science and medicine] that, full-speed ahead with embryonic and adult stem-cell research," Forrester said during a news conference on the front lawn of the home of a Republican committeeman in Paramus. 'The ethical reservations have been surpassed by science. God bless the medical scientists.' Pressed on whether he is sticking to his earlier stance opposing public funding for the research, Forrester said he has 'not committed' to investing state money. He said he remains opposed to having the state borrow hundreds of millions of dollars for stem-cell research, as proposed by Democratic candidate Jon Corzine and acting Gov. Richard Codey... Forrester previously endorsed President Bush's 2001 position barring federal funding for research on embryonic stem cells except those extracted before the ban."

Meanwhile, smelling blood, Corzine stepped up his attacks on Forrester's stem-cell position in campaign speeches, and released the television commercial in the link above featuring paralyzed wrestler Carl Riccio of Warren, who supports Corzine because of his advocacy of research funding. Forrester really stepped in shit when he attacked Carl and said he was being used and didn't understand what was going on. This caused the feisty wrestler and his family to get into it with Forrester and make him look like a brute and thug. The STAR-LEDGER reports that Corzine was joined on the campaign trail yesterday by "Tricia Riccio of Warren, the mother of the wrestler featured in Corzine's commercial. She said her son, a registered independent, was glad to endorse Corzine and made his decision after researching the issue. 'He supports Jon Corzine 100 percent because of his stand on stem-cell research. Forrester does not have the same stand. He's changing his mind now, which is too late,' she said."

Corzine is significantly ahead of Forrester, and gaining momentum, in all polls for the November 8 election. Only 30% of Americans oppose stem-cell research and the number in New Jersey is even smaller. I doubt the lunatic fringe of the state GOP is happy about Forrester buckling on an issue that is important to them. Many will sit on their hands on election day.

OUTLOOK IS POSITIVE FOR STRONG DEMOCRATIC GAINS IN 2006

If you've been reading DWT at all, you already know what I think of the Inside-the-Beltway universe and how fond I am (NOT) of political consultants. But I always make an exception for Jim Carville. My company once hired him-- before we were swallowed by a big right-wing corporation called AOL-- to make a speech at one of our annual conventions. He was great and before he spoke I got to spend some time with him. I've been an admirer ever since.

Today he and Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg issued an extensive survey of the electorate for Democracy Corps, "THE CHANGE ELECTORATE ON THE EVE OF MORE CHANGE, A report on the shattered standing of the Republicans ." It's an incredibly heartening document that goes way beyond BushCo's sinking poll ratings. I think it's worth reading if you take electoral politics seriously. So, here it is:

Even before the announcement of any criminal indictments at the heart of the Bush White House, Republicans and the president himself were already facing their own shattered standing with the country. We send this memo as an important benchmark, as events perhaps worsen for the Republicans. About 60 percent of the country has settled into dark conclusions about the direction of the country, the economy, and the war. On all measures, they have hit their low point. That the Democrats have a 9-point lead in the congressional contest overall – and nearly as great a lead when we ask using the actual names of incumbent members – is actually the least interesting measure of these times.

Most interesting is the collapse of confidence in the Republicans on some critical attributes related to public service – on being trustworthy and in-touch, having the right priorities and new ideas, on caring for people and putting the public interest first. On many of these key measures of public support, not even 40 percent believe they apply to the Republicans.

The other interesting development, before the new phase in the White House, is the new signs of life among the Democrats. As you know, we have been quite critical of the Democrats for not being more expressive about their beliefs and plans and bold enough in their thinking, but this poll shows some reduced negativity about the Democrats and some greater respect on change, new ideas, putting the public interest first, and being for families. While Democrats remain at 48 percent in this poll-– as in virtually every poll since the beginning of the year-– they are poised to make gains over the Republicans, who have fallen below 40 percent of the vote.

The emerging images of the party are setting up the 2006 election as a big choice – with the Democrats for change and cleaning house in Washington, electing people who will put the American people first and work for everyone, not just the few.

Deepening Demand for Change

There is no measure where we do not find a rising demand for change, reflecting a deepening discontent with the economy, Iraq, the direction of the country, the Bush administration and the Congress.
• By 65 to 32 percent, voters say the economy is off on the wrong track – rising significantly this month. Over half the country strongly believes the economy is off on the wrong track.
• By 59 to 37 percent, voters say the Iraq war was not worth the cost in lives and dollars – the highest level since we began asking the question. By 56 to 41 percent, voters think the war has made us less, not more secure – matching the worst moments of the war.
• The public has lost confidence in how the Bush administration ensures the country’s security: by 55 to 39 percent, voters now say America’s security depends more on our ties with other countries than on our military strength-– again, the high point on the desire for a new approach.
• We are approaching 60 percent of the voters who want to go in a “significantly different direction” than Bush, with only 37 percent wanting to continue his direction for the country-– the low point in confidence. It is even worse for Congress, with 64 percent wanting that kind of change.

As a result, the pull back and disengagement from Bush continues. There are few loyalists left. Only 24 percent of voters now give Bush a “strong” approval rating, continuing downward to its lowest point-– 12 points below where it was at the election.

While the Democrats have only a 5-point lead with independents, these voters are almost as intent on change as partisan Democrats: two thirds want to go in a significantly different direction than Bush and almost three-quarters want to go in a significantly different direction than the current Congress.

The Changing Character of the Republican Party

The changes we are witnessing are not just falling indicators, like stock prices, that have ups and downs. The Republicans have lost hold of some fundamental things that will not be easily recouped. There is a broken bond here that leaves the party in a very different place.

Looking at the party on its own, just 38 percent describe the Republican Party now as “trustworthy” and “in touch;” 39 percent say they have “new ideas for addressing the country’s problems” and 40 percent say they have “the right priorities.” Critically, each of these has crashed 12 points from March, with the exception of priorities, which dropped 9 points. The muted excitement about the new administration clear in its direction and willing to take on tough issues has given way to judgments about an untrustworthy lot who are out of touch, with bad ideas and misplaced priorities. Only 42 percent say the Republicans are “on your side” (down 6 points). The voters reaffirm their judgment from earlier in the year that Republicans are part of the Washington mess (58 percent) and devoted to big corporate interests, not the middle class (68 percent).

The Democrats have emerged with huge advantages over the Republicans on a broad range of values and attributes – produced first by a pull back from the Republicans but also by not insignificant gains for the Democrats on some key measures. As we see below, the Republicans biggest declines in comparison with the Democrats have come on reform and change, cares about people, new ideas and thinking about the future, convictions, improving America and putting the public interest first. Barely 30 percent opt for the Republicans on advancing the public interest, trust, reform and change, for the middle class or for new ideas. Those are all well below the Republicans’ current vote for Congress.

Democratic Gains

It is important to underscore that important Democratic gains have come on putting the public interest first, knowing what they stand for, reform and change, and cares about people and families. In the comparison of the parties, the percent choosing the Democrat on each of these went up about 5 points from January. That is an important sign of progress, though we should note that on the majority of attribute comparisons, the percentage choosing the Democrats went up only two points or less.

Democrats looked at on their own (not in comparison to the Republicans) fare better with the voters now. In the aftermath of the presidential election, they were particularly weakened on clarity of beliefs and ideas and on values. Today, Democrats have improved 14 points on new ideas, which is a little surprising, though likely artificially suppressed last February. More typical of the best results are the 7 or 8 point gains on putting the public interest first, being for families, change, on your side and sharing your values.

Democrats have not made noticeable gains on thinking long term, standing up to the special interests, knowing what they stand for, or being trusted to keep America safe. These are not insignificant areas and they are relevant to the judgment people will make in November.

The Changed Partisan Landscape

In the end, 2006 will be a zero sum game, with the Republican crash reflected in the choice people make. The 9-point Democratic lead in the generic contest is reflected in even bigger advantages on the big themes, values and convictions that structure the choice in the election.

The biggest Democratic advantages all relate to putting people and the public interest ahead of the big special interests. The Democrats enjoy advantages of 25 points or more on standing up for people (not big special interests), being for the middle class and caring about people, and standing up for the public’s interests. On this terrain, almost 58 percent say these terms describe the Democrats, but barely 30 percent opt for the Republicans. The Democratic margin is three times the Democrats’ advantage in the actual race for Congress. That is why one of the strongest definitions of the election focuses on making the country work for everyone, not just the few.

The Democrats at this point enjoy an 18-point advantage on “reform and change” – reflecting the simple conclusion, for many that they may be the change. Their advantage is double their vote margin for Congress, re-enforcing the determination of Democrats to turn 2006 into a change election.

On a whole series of other comparisons, Democrats are doing respectably well, though mostly reflecting their vote margin. This includes being on your side, improving America, and new ideas. Here, the Democrats are chosen by less than half the electorate, helping explain why Democrats keep bumping up against the 48-percent ceiling. Raising the Democrats as a party battling for people and advancing new ideas to improve the country promises a yet stronger vote.

The Democrats’ margin on trust and shares your values, thinking long term, and creating prosperity are only modest and below their vote. Shares your values is the most important one of these to shift upwards, given the regression modeling. Right now, the Democrats have a 5-point advantage, half their congressional margin, and are chosen by just 46 percent of the voters.

The two strongest areas for the Republicans are “security and keeping the country safe” and “know what they stand for.” Their 15-point advantage here is what keeps Republicans in the game, though for now, these are not driving the congressional vote. In any case, the Republican margin has been cut in half since January on this key choice for the election.

First Clues of 1994

Despite the Democrats’ gains relative to the Republicans on key attributes and values, the party’s overall image has barely moved upward. In this survey, the negative assessments have dropped a few points, allowing the Democrats to emerge with a marginally positive image (39 percent warm and 35 percent cool). But with declining positives (39 percent warm) and hardening negatives (41 percent cool over the last four months), the Republicans have emerged with a net negative image. That is allowing the Democrats to approach where the Republicans were in 1993 when they were challenging from the outside, though Democrats are not yet as strong.

It is worth remembering that both parties are at historic lows and this is a very alienated electorate, unhappy with Washington, the direction of the country and its political leaders. This is still a moment for the Democrats to emerge much more decisively as a bold change agent, ready to change Washington, ready to battle for people and advance new ideas for the country. There is evidence that the electorate is starting to pay attention.

WES CLARK WOULD PROBABLY MAKE A REALLY EXCELLENT SECRETARY OF DEFENSE

I just got home from a somewhat rousing patriotic get-together in Cheviot Hills, a part of L.A. I had never heard of until Mark Kleiman invited me to join him and 3 or 4 other L.A. bloggers at a meeting with Wes Clark. Mark's one of the smartest guys I've met from Blogostan so I was happy to join him. And because it turned out he was so enthusiastic about Clark, I really tried to get into Clark's message with no preconceptions. (And without Dean in the race, I'd like to find someone worth supporting.)

When I tell my pal Jimmy that someone is a "good guy," he heads for the hills. I don't really mean it as a negative and I'm not sure if he even thinks I do. But he sure takes it as one! I'm not trying to say anything bad about Clark when I tell you he really seemed like a good guy. And I totally dug his wife Gert. But the private little session with "the bloggers" was kind of quasi-pointless and his speech to about 150-200 supporters afterwards just depressed me. His ideas about Iraq (except that he opposed it before it started) were almost identical-- sickeningly so-- to BushCo's (or Hillary's). The more this good guy spoke, the more depressed I got. He definitely made some points about Democrats and I'm glad he has seen the light since the days when he thought people with names like Nixon, Reagan and Bush were worthy of support. (My pal Casey, an Edwards loyalist-- see, and I bet you figured I didn't even know anyone who wasn't a Howard Dean supporter-- asked me to ask Clark if he is actually a Democrat. I didn't have to. He is. It's a big tent. And it should be.)

Clark is probably more a Democrat Party man than I am at this point. He defines his adherence very articulately but in a way that equates military service with patriotism (although he's probably been criticized on this enough so that he mumbles something about the Peace Corp and volunteering at hospitals and stuff). He talks about the importance of abandoning support for "gun control." And he downplays almost all the specific reasons I see the Democratic Party as a progressive alternative to corporate Republicans. I'm sure I'd vote for him over a Giuliani or McCain or Hegel, let alone over someone from the neanderthal wing of the GOP. He seems way too much the militarist for my comfort but at least he seems genuine and refreshingly honest (unlike Biden, Lieberman or Hillary). Mark thinks they'll love him in rural Ohio. Yeah, why not?

FAR RIGHT WANTS BUSH TO PICK A CERTIFIABLE LOON WHO DEMOCRATS (AND MOST AMERICANS) WILL OPPOSE

CNN is reporting this evening that the right-wing fanatics who are crowing about having forced him to withdraw the nomination of Harriet Miers are now demanding-- not requesting-- that he hew to their party line and not think outside of the narrowest of (neo-fascist) boxes. According to CNN, WingNutia is "vowing to oppose President Bush's next nominee unless the candidate has solid conservative credentials," code for opposes women's right to choice and opposes separation of church and state. One long-time loon, with solid Nazi cred is psycho-case Phyllis Schafly of the fringe hate group Eagle Forum. "I think [conservative groups] will swing into action again" [if he doesn't pick someone certifiably insane]. "The judicial issue was a major issue in the 2004 elections, and it was a reason why many people voted for Bush even though they might have been unhappy [with him] for other reasons." (Although with Adolph dead, she doesn't say what they would have done if not vote for Bush.) Schlafly said the extreme Right has given Bush a choice of a dozen acceptable fellow-loons they will allow him to pick from (specifically ruling out Bush's close friend, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, who is not considered radical enough for the fascists, even though he approved torture, something they love).

One senior White House operative, admitting they were beaten by their own radical Right, told CNN that Bush's next pick will be predicated on the "lessons learned" from disastrous Miers' nomination.

As bizarre as it sounds, CNN reports that Wingnutia spokesmen graciously say they will refrain from endorsing a particular candidate before Bush chooses someone. (Yes, they really and truly are insane.)
Tony Perkins, head of the nut group Family Research Council, and every bit as wigged out and psychotic as Schlafly, said leaders within the neo-Nazi Right "would not remain silent on what type of person they want on the bench. 'Very clearly, there is going to be a call for a nominee that can have the enthusiastic support from the people that supported the president,'" he said, using code for a die-hard opponent of womens' rights to choice and against any semblance of separation of Church and State.

"Dollar" Bill Frist, who is laboring under some kind of weird delusion that the religionist kooks support him and that he isn't going to prison for insider stock trading, called for "a highly qualified nominee who is committed to upholding the Constitution and who believes in the limited role of a judge to interpret the law and not legislate from the bench," code for "will vote against Choice and will legislate from the bench in favor of Right wing schemes."

CNN also reports on the controversy about whether or not "Bush's" next nominee should be a woman-- an option supported by retiring Sandra Day O'Connor and Laura Bush. Thus far unindicted fake-preacher/Abramoff whore/Traditional Values Coalition Chairman "Lucky Louie" Sheldon said he favors replacing O'Connor with another woman and gave Bush a choice of 3 lunatic judges as possible choices: Edith Hollan Jones, Priscilla Owen, and Janice Rogers Brown. "I think we should have a woman this time," Sheldon said. "Isn't the [justice] retiring a woman?" (Hopefully he's asking that rhetorically.)

But the men who run Concerned Women for America said gender shouldn't come into play. "For us it is not about sex, race or creed," said Lanier Swann, the conservative group's director of government relations. "It is really about their ability to fairly interpret the Constitution," code for denying women the right to choice or privacy and to opposing separation of church and state.

Democrats are hoping Bush will pick a mainstream jurist who will unite the country but Wingnutia is hoping Bush will bring together a Republican Party in "disarray" by nominating an off-the-wall out-and-out fascist that Democrats would vehemently oppose. "A fight I think would be helpful," said a neo-Nazi leader, who spoke to CNN on the condition of anonymity. "What will bring people together is to have a common goal, and that would be the nomination of a conservative nominee," code for someone willing to deny women a right to choice and abolish separation of church and state.

AFTER CHENEY RESIGNS...

My friend Suzi is on the road, back in the wet, frigid East. She sent me an e-mail today that I thought she wouldn't mind me sharing. She, or someone, saw a sign in the DC area reading:


"Would someone please give him a blowjob so we can impeach him!"

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ... BUT BETTER THAN NOTHING-- AND MORE TO COME

I woke up early-- even by my standards-- today: 3:30AM. I didn't open my eyes after a brief glance at the clock but I did switch on CNN. I dosed on and off, never opening my eyes but hearing snippet's of (mostly inane) convo. Somewhere in there they had Ann Coulter as a guest. Although I didn't get to see the big masculine bobbing Adam's apple, I did hear the vitriolic voice of a vicious psychopath babbling on about her plans for a Nazi take-over of America. (We beat them in the 40's and-- with people like Ann Coulter leading their charge-- we'll beat them in '06 and '08.) Anyway, Coulter inadvertently croaked out one piece of Truth: that the worst thing that could happen to Nutlandia would be for this whole RoveGate mess to drag on unresolved. No one knows who the hell Scooter Libby is, she boasted. Getting it over with is what Coulter and the rest of the wrong-wing want.

As long as Dick Cheney or Bush aren't indicted, BushCo can claim it's a minor matter and many people-- too busy with keeping their fraying lives together-- won't pay much attention. Today Karl Rove won't be indicted nor will a dozen other treasonous, conspiratorial BushCo operatives. OK, Scooter Libby has been, but Coulter's got a point (as well as a gross Adam's apple): does anyone other than those who already know about this treason and who did it and why, even know or care who he is? Maybe a few. But, back to Coulter's worry, the problem still lingers... threateningly. People like her and O'Liely and DeLay and Hannity and Limbaugh have already tried-- and dismally failed-- to smear Fitzgerald and make it look like a partisan witch hunt. That ain't stickin' and Fitzgerald is far from finished. He's barely started.

Now there is a CRIMINAL prosecution on the front burner (Scooter's), which means people will be called to testify under oath, even, perhaps, Bush and Darth. Scooter resigned which will probably encourage Mr and Mrs Smith in Iowa to scratch their heads and figure something about smoke and fire. The bad news for the Bush Regime isn't the loss of Scooter but that RoveGate lives and it lives when they need desperately for it to go away.

The only good thing for them today is that Rove wasn't forced into resigning... today. Death by a thousand cuts, on the other hand, is not good news for BushCo (not that they deserve any).

BACK BY POPULAR DEMAND: HELEN-- ON HOW BUSH IS CHIPPING AWAY AT THE WALL SEPARATING CHURCH AND STATE

Yesterday's NY TIMES had an article about FEMA giving a $66,000,000 grant to The United Methodist Committee on Relief, to provide counseling services for hurricane victims in the New Orleans area.  Wow. Am I surprised? Not really. Bush has been whittling away at separation of church and state every chance he gets. The fact that this organization claims it does not proselytize does not, in my humble opinion,  make it kosher for our government to give such large sums to a religious organization and subject victims of a tragedy to a Christian point of view in order to get assistance.  The article states that our government received this money in cash from several dozen countries, with carte blanche how to use it. This is not FEMA's first attempt to offer a windfall to a religious organization. If I recall, when FEMA listed charities for hurricane victims on its website, Pat Robertson's lovely group was listed second to the Red Cross. Complaints about this finally resulted in removal of his charity from this list. I wonder if this current attempt will pass under the radar.  At least there are still still some voices out there protesting. I think I'll write a letter of protest to the Times right now. 

IF THE 2004 ELECTION WERE HELD TODAY, BUSH WOULD LOSE... AGAIN

AOL runs these simplistic, ultra-unscientific polls every now and then. I don't know why. But I can never resist voting in them. I just love to vote. Today's poll posed the interesting questions: "Did you vote for President Bush in the 2004 election?" and "If a new election were held today, who would you vote for?"

The first question, with nearly half a million AOL members participating, confirms what most serious examiners of the 2004 election have concluded-- Bush didn't win. Only 41% of the voters admit they voted for him. There are a lot of reasons for such a low number-- some of these people didn't vote in 2004 at all, some are too embarrassed to admit they voted for such a loser (even to themselves) and are lying, and, of course, the #1 reason: without the help of tampered-with electronic voting machines and other shenanigans, Bush couldn't win anything. I'll stick with that last reason.

Oh and for who would you vote for today, Bush slips from 41% admitting they voted for him in 2004 to only 33% who would vote for him today. What rocks do these die-hard imbeciles live under. Does he have to personally send Darth Cheney over to their homes to cut their children into little pieces and eat them before they wake up and smell the... well, it ain't roses! Are there that many people in Utah?

CAN A VICE PRESIDENT BE IMPEACHED FOR TREASON ? NOT WITH REPUBLICANS CONTROLLING THE CONGRESS

With all the excitement over BushCo making poor Harriet walk the plank to placate the most extremist and fascistic elements of its Far Right coalition, people are missing the biggest story of the day: Murray Waas' piece in the NATIONAL JOURNAL about Cheney and Libby, (not about them not getting indicted today) but about them blocking crucial papers from getting to the Senate Intelligence Committee. Thoroughly believing they could do no wrong-- or at least never have to pay for doing wrong-- they utterly ignored the advice of White House lawyers who told them their actions were... unwise?... illegal?... treason?

Cheney, Libby and the rest of the neo-Con traitors surrounding Bush and making up the treacherous WHIG cabal inside the heart of our government, were determined to attack Iraq at any cost and Cheney and Libby felt they had to keep the documents away from the Senate Intelligence Committee, which was investigating the use of the pre-war intelligence that blatantly deceived the American public about weapons of mass destruction.

According to Waas, "had the withheld information been turned over, according to administration and congressional sources, it likely would have shifted a portion of the blame away from the intelligence agencies to the Bush administration as to who was responsible for the erroneous information being presented to the American public, Congress, and the international community... Both Republicans and Democrats on the committee say that their investigation was hampered by the refusal of the White House to turn over key documents."

DELAY FEELS LEGISLATORS SHOULD BE EXEMPT FROM LAWS THEY PASS

One of the really important precepts of English Common Law that is embedded in our own legal traditions is that no man is above the law-- particularly not the powerful and mighty and not those who write, pass and enforce the laws. I don't have much expectation that a lowlife bug exterminator like Tom DeLay, who managed to strong-arm his way to the top of the GOP, would have any appreciation-- or even knowledge-- of English Common Law, but DeLay's partisan ravings will probably ring alarm bells even among Republicans (a few Republicans).

As more and more Republican crooks are unmasked, like himself and his own cosigliere Jack Abramoff (both of whom await trials for serious financial violations), DeLay is attempting to shift the blame to Democrats for one of his own trademark modes of operation: "the politics of personal destruction."

After polls this week showed that his own political support in his Texas district has eroded and that he is now in serious jeopardy of losing his seat (even if he doesn't wind up in prison), DeLay sent a letter to constituents and contributors, connecting his case with probable indictments of Karl Rove and "Dollar" Bill Frist. He doesn't draw the conclusion, however, that arrogant powermad neo-fascists who believe the ends justify the means are dangerous and bound to be up to no good. Instead he is whining that they are being brought low by "the criminalization of conservative politics."

DeLay likes the idea of passing laws-- primarily laws that will benefit his wealthy and "generous" supporters at the expense of ordinary American working men and women-- but it never seems to have dawned on him that even he-- who once said, smoking a Cuban cigar in a No Smoking Zone, that "I am the government"-- must also obey the same laws that everyone is subject to.

If anyone has "criminalized" conservative politics, it is the people who have felt so empowered that they could disregard laws they considered, in the words of Leona Helmsley, "for the little people." Luckily for the little people, there are still straight-arrow law enforcement officials untainted by DeLay's big money politics who are willing to put themselves in the crosshairs of these vicious and corrupt pols and their allies, not for wealth or for power but for the good of our beloved nation.

NOE INDICTED FOR HELPING STEAL 2004 ELECTION FOR BUSH (AMONG OTHER REPUBLICAN CRIMES)

When I started Down With Tyranny, people kept asking me if I lived in Ohio. I don't. But I was writing all the time about the Republican scandal epidemic there. And at the center-- surrounded by Governor Bob Taft, Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, arch crook and DeLay/Abramoff henchman Congressman Bob Ney, Attorney General Jim Petro, both U.S. Senators, half a dozen other Ohio congressmen, half the state legislature, and a gaggle of other GOP offcials, is Republican kingpin Thomas Noe. Today's Toledo Blade, the crusading newspaper that uncovered this scandal while the one party state of Ohio fought furiously and viciously to cover it up, has announced that Noe has been indicted by a Federal Grand Jury for laundering money into Bush's re-election campaign, allowing Ohio Secretary of State Blackwell to steal the state's electoral votes for Bush (and hence handing him "re-election").

A few months ago a local California magazine asked me to write a summary of the Ohio scandal-- with an L.A. point of view-- but the editor resigned and the article never got published-- until now:

Outside of Ohio not too many people have heard about "Coingate," although it could turn out to be the biggest political/financial scandal since Teapot Dome! Even though it's been headlines for weeks in Ohio, the national mass media doesn't seem to want to talk about it. Maybe it's a little too complicated. Financial shenanigans involving political figures are always FAR MORE complicated than celebrities accused of molesting young boys or a runaway bride or a man who kills his wife. But since Arnold Schwarzenegger has now been implicated in the whole mess, maybe it's time for Californians to start paying some serious attention. Briefly, here's the story so far:

An Ohio Republican Party kingmaker (and former GOP Lucas County Chairman), Thomas Noe, is at the center because he was able to convince the state of Ohio to make a couple of extraordinarily risky, highly unorthodox-- some would say "bizarre"-- investments with the State Workmen's Compensation Fund. Noe, a Bush-Cheney Pioneer (which means he was able to raise at least $100,000 for the presidential campaign), has been very-- make that very, very-- active in financing Republican candidates in his home state, at least a couple of governors, a couple U.S. senators, the state auditor, state attorney general, the secretary of state, a gaggle of congressmen and state legislators... 5 of the 7 Supreme Court judges. What a generous guy! Civic minded? Well, turns out that Ohio state government is pretty much an experiment in one-party rule-- no checks, no balances. Every non-judicial statewide official is a Republican. So it wasn't all that difficult for Noe to get his hands on millions of dollars of Workmen's Compensation Money and put it into (what was termed "invest in") his highly speculative rare coin (and collectible baseball cards!!) fund.

Aside from making hefty commissions on the "investments," the Republican Party high-roller seems to have lost (literally) MILLIONS of dollars in coins. This isn't just a case of coins decreasing in value, but a case of tangible, physical items... just gone. And "strangely"-- according to an anonymous law enforcement source quoted in the Toledo Blade, records show, for example, Noe bought one coin for $100,000 but then claimed to have sold it for $1. (What happened to the other $99,999.00 from that "sale?") Meanwhile the generous contributions continued to flow unabated into GOP coffers. In fact, Noe was illegally reimbursing anyone he could coral into donating to the 2004 Bush Cheney campaign. Noe (currently extremely incommunicado) is under investigation-- in fact almost half a dozen of them. Many of his Republican-best-buddies-in-high-places have been returning some, though by no means all, of the money they got from him, including President Bush (a paltry $4,000 of the over $100,000 Noe gave BushCheney), Governor Taft, and the man many Democrats claim corrupted the Ohio presidential election results in 2004, Secretary of State/current GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell. Did what looks very much like stolen money wind up unduly influencing the presidential election? Perhaps a nonpartisan Special Prosecutor will be appointed? Not likely; like Zimbabwe, Ohio is functioning as a one-party state. Meanwhile, the first non-Ohio politician other than Bush, to have been a known recipient of Mr. Noe's largesse has been identified: the Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger. The Ohio coin dealer gave the money last year to a Schwarzenegger fund that supports the California governor’s legislative priorities. In other words, the tainted $10,000 Noe gave him, very likely stolen from Ohio State Workmen's Compensation funds, and which Ohio newspapers are reporting Schwarzenegger won't return, is being used along with other contributions from multinational corporations to push Arnold's highly dubious agenda in the "special election" he's foisting on California in November. The irony of using working people's money to push viciously anti-working people laws is seen as the height of irony by many Democrats.

Schwarzenegger, who campaigned in the state of Ohio for Bush-Cheney in the closing days of the 2004 election, has business interests including the Arnold Classic bodybuilding competition in Columbus. "Allegations about Mr. Noe became public a year after we accepted his contribution," Marty Wilson, executive director of Schwarzenegger’s fund, said Friday. "As he was an active Ohio Republican party fund-raiser and donor, we had no reason at the time to question his contribution."
Under California law, the California Recovery Team organization (the front for Schwarzzenegger's special interest/corporate money collection operation he plans to use to blanket the state of California with TV and radio advertising to push his reactionary agenda before the Special Election) can accept unlimited corporate or individual contributions. Schwarzenegger and his team have gone back and forth on whether or not they plan to return the $10,000 to the Ohio Workmen's Compensation Fund, saying yes one day and no the next day.

It sounds pretty bad-- around $55 million in Workmen's Comp money "invested" and something like $12 million missing. But it gets worse! As the investigation-- driven almost entirely by pressure from readers of the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Toledo Blade-- expanded it suddenly turns out that the poor Workmen's Compensation Fund was being looked on by Republican office holders charged with the fiduciary responsibility for protecting it as a honeypot for political donors even beyond Noe. Last week it was publicly announced, although the Governor Taft and Attorney General Petro have been aware of this-- and denying it-- since just before the election, that another $225 million have been lost. This time it was a different firm, one in Pennsylvania which runs hedge funds, and which is also a major donor to Ohio Republican politics.

Meanwhile Ohio officials responded to the unfolding scandal by attacking the newspapers pressing the investigations, claiming, at first, the whole thing was a vendetta and that the so-called "investments" were profitable. The Governor (of Ohio) who has not been indicted yet, was quoted on April 8 as screaming at a reporter from the Blade that "[Noe] was making money for the state; what's the problem?" Noe and his wife Bernadette (who was GOP chairman of Lucas County during the presidental election) have personally donated over $200,000 to Ohio Republican candidates and PACs in the last 15 years-- and those are just the above-board contributions, not the illegal ones like the reimbursements to Bush-Cheney donors. The Pittsburgh hedge fund managers have shovelled hundreds of thousands more into the Ohio state GOP-- but it turns out to have been money well-spent for them-- and for the Ohio GOP, if not for the state tax-payers. Youngstown Democratic State Senator Marc Dann is calling the mess "a culture of corruption... It's more than a guess that some of the money could have made its way to the campaign committees of Republican officeholders, starting at Toledo city council and going up to Arnold Schwarzenegger and the president. I can now go into any bowling alley or barber shop and mention Tom Noe's name and have everyone understand what corruption in our state means," continued Dann. "People understand when money is stolen, and they understand the connections to the Republican Party. The GOP might try to give back the money, but they're still tainted."

GUEST COLUMN: TAKING A CANDLE TO THE WHITE HOUSE

Scott Goodstein is a passionate progressive comrade and a friend of mine. Along with Fat Mike he has done incredible work running Punk Voter and is the co-founder of Military Free Zone! Last night Scott was arrested and this morning he wrote this and sent it to DWT.


Last night, in memory of the 2000th soldier killed in Iraq and the thousands of innocent people dying, I decided to go to the White House and stand with Cindy Sheehan to support the dozens of other Antiwar activists. As a result, I got arrested and charged with a basic civil disobedience violation.
 
It was not the fun experience one sees on TV. It’s real. My shoulders are still sore from being cuffed and I still have the marks on my wrists from the zip tie restraints. I have a court date scheduled and I may have additional problems if I get arrested again at another protest.
 
Don’t get me wrong, I knew what I was doing and was honored to be a part of it, especially as I was stuffed into the police wagon next to Juan Torres. Mr. Torres told me about his 25-year-old son that was killed in Afghanistan with only a few days left in his eight year commitment to our Reserves. He then thanked me for standing with him, told me how he flew in from Chicago and spent over $400 on this protest alone. Mr. Torres attends as many protests as he can because he wants answers from our government as to why he had to lose his son. Visit his website if you can at Uncover The Truth.
 
"I spent the next several hours in a holding cell learning the ropes from activists who had gone through this routine before. Code Pink DC made sure I had a few bucks toward bail and even a ride home when it was all done. The political director from Peace Action was arrested with us and talked to me about how the movement needs more members of Congress proposing real legislation in support of bringing the troops home.  I spoke with a George Washington University student about getting more students interested and involved.  Even Ann Wright, a former State Department Diplomat and 25-year military veteran, gave me a thumbs up through the fencing of the women’s holding cell.
 
After starting the protest around 5:30pm and not getting out of jail until around midnight, some of us were hungry and met at a nearby diner. It was there that I met Cindy Sheehan. I learned that she is a real human being from watching her both laugh and cry. She is simply a mother who lost her son and wants this war to stop so other parents don't have to lose their children too. While I may not agree with everything she says, I do believe her conviction is real and learned that she is not trying to be anything more than a concerned citizen taking action. She was refreshing to listen to and even asked others for advice and ideas on what measures are needed to end this war.
 
Meeting people with this level of passion for an ending the war humbled my discomfort and made this experience rewarding. Surely I can give a few hours for those who lost their children at war and cannot find out why from our own government. I realize we are a very long way away from the 55,000 U.S. soldier deaths in Vietnam and I pray that we do not let this war escalate in the same fashion.
 
My own mother worries about me at these activities because she fears this arrest will harm my career. She raised me as an honest, law abiding citizen and hopes that I will fight for these values and not lose my principles. All we did to get arrested was stand in front of the White House while holding a candle up to mark the sad anniversary of the 2000th soldier passing in Iraq." 


Scott should be proud of what he did last night. I'm proud of him. And, of course, his mom is worried but I bet she's proud too. I may have mentioned this before but the last time Elizabeth Edwards asked me for some money for her husband's campaign I suggested he go down to the White House with Cindy and get arrested too. It would probably guarantee that he'd be the next President of the United States (unless Bush gets impeached in 2006).  

PLEASE, LET ARNOLD SPEAK FOR HIMSELF

Even if you're not addicted to SOUTH PARK the way I am, here is one cartoon that will have you rolling. I LOVE this new Schwarzenegger ad!

NOT ALL CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICANS ARE FAR RIGHT, NEO-NAZI, RELIGIONIST MANIACS AND FANATICS. HERE'S A FEW WORDS FROM ONE WHO ISN'T

Former Senator John Danforth (R-MO) is an ordained Episcopal minister (who officiated at the Reagan funeral services), the heir to the Ralston Purina fortune, George Bush's former Ambassador to the UN, and a conservative Republican who served 18 years in the U.S. Senate. He is considered the man whose clout got his former aide and protégé, Clarence Thomas, through a controversial Supreme Court confirmation process. Yesterday Daniel Connolly reported for the Associated Press that Danforth said the political influence of evangelical Christians is hurting the Republican Party and dividing the country. "I think that the Republican Party fairly recently has been taken over by the Christian conservatives, by the Christian right," he said in an interview at the University of Arkansas. "I don't think that this is a permanent condition, but I think this has happened, and that it's divisive for the country." He also said the evangelical Christian influence would be bad for the party in the long run.


Although the Far Right Noise Machine is notorious for blackening the name of anyone who criticizes Bush or his fanatic base, perhaps because so many of the key players are spending all their energy trying to stay out of jail, there has been no smear of Danforth yet. One right-wing goon usually fast out of the shoot when the smear campaigns begin, Republican National Committee spokeswoman Tracy Schmitt, declined to comment on Danforth's remarks.

WHAT HAPPENED TO "UP OR DOWN" VOTE ? WHAT IS THE REAL MEANING OF BUSHCO SHOVING POOR HARRIET OVERBOARD ?

As predicted here for the last couple of days, poor old Harriet Miers "withdrew" her nomination so poor old Bush wouldn't have to turn over "classified" documents to untrustworthy yentas on the Senate Judiciary Committee who were demanding them, like Kansas neo-Nazi Senator Sam Brownback.

I woke up a little late this morning (double episode of SOUTH PARK last night) so when I turned on CNN "Dollar" Bill Frist was just finishing reading Miers' withdrawal letter, making it all look very neat and graceful and setting the stage for a Medal of Honor for her great service. I can't imagine anyone is falling for this charade, but, hey, I can't imagine anyone with less than $100 million is assets voting for Bush either. (And even I know they didn't steal that many votes!)

Even before "Dollar" Bill had finished his role in the farce People For the American Way had sent out this statement-- which is a lot more truthful than anything that came out of Frist's mouth: "Harriet Miers’ withdrawal from her Supreme Court nomination demonstrates that ultraconservatives are so determined to swing the Supreme Court sharply to the right that they pounded their own president’s nominee into submission, and now demand a nominee with unquestioned far-right credentials. It’s an astonishing spectacle. The unelected power-brokers of the far right have forced the withdrawal of  President Bush’s own Supreme Court nominee, before a confirmation hearing has even been held.  President Bush’s complete capitulation to the far-right interest groups is astounding. The ultra-right wing dominance of Republican Party politics is complete, and they have dealt a terrible blow to an already weakened President and his administration,” said PFAW President Ralph Neas. “Right-wingers are openly saying they elected Bush to put a battle-ready ultraconservative on the court to replace the moderate Sandra Day O’Connor, and they’re demanding a new choice – bipartisanship, moderation and mainstream Americans be damned.”

Neas and PFAW-- like most progressive groups-- had concerns over Miers, as did I, but they were willing to see the confirmation process through and give the lady an opportunity to explain herself and to have the Right's much-vaunted "up or down vote." However the hysteria from religionist-right and sexists within the GOP (according to George AND Laura Bush) doomed the nomination (which was a very personal one for the president).

The first day of this nomination I said that it wouldn't fly on the extreme right because Harriet Miers had donated money to anti-choice groups but NOT to the kinds of anti-choice groups which advocate blowing up women's health clinics and killing doctors.

Bush has been beset by catastrophes of every kind-- from his ill-starred, downward-spiralling occupation of Iraq, to Mother Nature's (or "God's," take your choice) revenge on him in the form of devastating hurricanes and floods for his abysmal policies, to the legal system snaring dozens of key Regime operatives (DeLay, Frist, Abramoff, Cunningham, Ney, Cheney, Hadley, Libby, Wormy, Rove, et al) to the embarrassing shutout of the Astros last night. He just didn't have the strength to stay the course for Harriet any longer.


Neas, of course, urged Bush to resist calls for the kind of ultraconservative maniac committed to overturning Roe v Wade, who would satisfy the extreme right. “After this sorry episode, the best way for the President to demonstrate leadership and recover strength would be to choose a nominee with a great legal mind and mainstream legal philosophy who could draw bipartisan support. The President must not let the extreme right dictate his next choice, but instead choose a nominee who can bring us together and maintain a fair and independent balance on the Supreme Court,” he said. I wonder if such an idea has ever crossed Bush's mind.

KERRY DIPS A LITTLE TOE INTO THE REALITY OF OUTSIDE THE BELTWAY AMERICA, AND THEN RUNS BACK TO BLANKET LIKE A LITTLE GIRL

I was driving home, feelin' good after running into my old Wire Train pal Kevin, when some really boring crap came on KCRW. Knowing the local Air America affiliate runs anti-Dean loudmouth/ego-maniac Ed Schultz I was a little reluctant to change the channel but the boring KCRW program just got worse and worse so I switched to AM. One of "Big Ed's" listeners was referring to an earlier interview he had done with NY Democratic Senator Chuck Schumer (who is also head of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and, like me, an alumnus of James Madison High School in Brooklyn). Schultz posed the right question to Schumer, one we should all be asking our Democratic elected leaders to face: "Knowing what you know now, would you still have supported Bush's proposal to go to war in Iraq." Schumer hemmed and hawed and played footsie almost as badly as the other New York Senator. Schultz' callers were as pissed off as I am with this waffling. Before I got home one progressive gentleman said he was done holding his nose at the ballot box and he would not vote for Democrats supporting Bush's illegal wars and occupations.

So when I got home I was pleasantly surprised, for 30 seconds, to read a headline that seemed to say that Kerry was complaining of Bush having mislead "the public into going to war." Alas, that was about as far as the once-- many decades ago-- courageous Kerry was willing to go. He them suggested Bush should bring home 20,000 troops (out of the 160,000 + only-God-(and-Rumsfeld)-know-how-many mercenaries) before the end of the year. What a loser! He's so lost touch with the world outside the Beltway that he thinks leading is moderating Bush's catastrophic policies. He couched his timid proposal as an alternative to the full-scale withdrawal advocated by some Democrats. Screw that. We don't need an alternative to some Democrats; we need an alternative to BushCo's proven record of utter failure. AMERICANS DO NOT SUPPORT THIS WAR. WE WANT IT OVER. WHY CAN'T PEOPLE LIKE SCHUMER AND CLINTON AND KERRY UNDERSTAND THAT?



Maybe I was a little harsh on Kerry. I just read his full statement and I like that he-- though neither Clinton nor Schumer-- is willing to say his vote to support Bush's war was wrong. Here's what he said:

"The country and the Congress were misled into war. I regret that we were not given the truth; as I said more than a year ago, knowing what we know now, I would not have gone to war in Iraq. And knowing now the full measure of the Bush Administration's duplicity and incompetence, I doubt there are many members of Congress who would give them the authority they abused so badly. I know I would not. The truth is, if the Bush Administration had come to the United States Senate and acknowledged there was no "slam dunk case" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, acknowledged that Iraq was not connected to 9/11, there never would have even been a vote to authorize the use of force -- just as there's no vote today to invade North Korea, Iran, Cuba, or a host of regimes we rightfully despise."

WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH KANSAS ? LESS THAN THERE WAS YESTERDAY

Ever since Thomas Frank's book became one of the biggest political best-sellers of our time, everyone has been looking for something good about Kansas. Well, yesterday's KANSAS CITY STAR found something. In the unlikely event that you missed your STAR yesterday, Jim Sullinger's article announces what will surely be the beginning of a national trend, a Republican politician jumping from the sinking, stinking SS GOP.

Yesterday morning Johnson County District Attorney Paul Morrison announced he's challenging political hack/incumbent Attorney General Phill Kline for Kansas attorney general next year. And Morrison switched parties to do so. He said it is time to put the office of attorney general in the hands of a prosecutor and not a politician. Explaining that there isn't a Democratic or Republican way to prosecute a case, Morrison said he believes the focus of the Democratic Party in Kansas is better on the issue of public safety.

He had hardly made his announcement before Kline's GOP smear machine was out doing its thing, laughably calling 17 year D.A. Morrison-- who has a 98% conviction rate-- "soft on crime." Morrison's switch was not something anyone was expecting but many Republican politicians are reading the writing on the wall as they watch Bush's and the GOP congress' approval ratings heading for uncharted territory.

DO REPUBLICANS READ? I MEAN LITERATURE, NOT JUST ANN COULTER SCREEDS? OH, YES, THEY CERTAINLY DO.

Do you ever wonder how someone as obviously unqualified to hold an office higher than church deacon can be elected president (of the United States)? Clinton made it look so easy that voters thought they could trust just anyone-- so they did. It isn't merely that Bush can't communicate or even that he's intellectually lazy or uncurious or uneducated or unintelligent. He's basically failed at everything he's ever attempted in his entire life and there was never any reason to believe that he was about to turn things around. Even if both the 2000 and 2004 voting results were compromised and he lost both elections, as most people who have looked into it seriously are now certain, many millions or people did vote for him. Are they all stupid? All unable to discern between reality and propaganda?

Sometimes I blame it on the rise of the electronic media. People are bombarded by paid propagandists like Limbaugh and Hannity and O'Liely and Boortz and Savage 24/7, all singing from the same daily talking points memo. Eventually they think there must be something to all that crap if everyone is saying it. And then there's TV, the laziest medium ever, geared for people with low, and rapidly dropping, attention spans. If only people read more...

And then today I saw this: “This book is one of the worst books I have ever read. I got to about page 3-4.” It's an Amazon review (not ironic) of Henry Miller's 1934 masterpiece TROPIC OF CANCER. Do you think the writer of this review might fall prey to the not so subtle blandishments of a later-day Josef Goebbels like Karl Rove? Take a look at a collection of Amazon reviews of some of the greatest books ever written and then think about how Schwarzenegger, Bush and the GOP are working furiously to undermine public education. An educated public would never vote for them. People who write reviews like this, who think about literature like this... that is the real base of the Republican Party.

BUSH, SCHWARZENEGGER, BIG PHARMA, PROPOSITION 78 & 79 AND THE CORPORATE STATE

This week's L.A. WEEKLY has an excellent story by Christine Pelisek about why the monopolistic corporations that control the medical policies in this country (thank you "Dollar" Bill Frist) are fighting tooth and nail to pass stealth right-wing Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger's horrible Proposition 78 while working to sink the really good pharmaceutical proposition (#79).

Reading it, I thought back to my first call and then my first IM this morning. Both were from M., my stock broker. I had just climbed out of the pool at around 7AM, after a couple dozen laps, when he called. He was quick to jump on the fact that I sounded out of breath. An hour later he was chastising me for mentioning what I had for breakfast today when I posted the story about BushCo trying to censor THE ONION.

Pelisek's introduction to her story brought me right back to M. "Los Angeles resident Margaret Sowma is in her mid-70s and trying to survive on a fixed income," she writes. "It’s not easy juggling her prescription drug bills. 'I have no benefits at all,' says the former seamstress, who spent 15 years making ladies’ suits and coats for a downtown factory that offered no health plan. 'Anytime I need a prescription it comes out of my pocket.' Seniors make up 14 percent of the population of California and receive 45 percent of all drug prescriptions. Prescription drug costs are their second largest monthly expense after housing. 'Pharmaceutical companies are making money hand over fist,' says Sowma, who spends close to $300 a month on medication for osteoporosis and high blood pressure. 'How much can small pills cost?' Just one osteoporosis pill costs $20. That is relatively cheap compared to some medications. According to California Public Interest Research Group, an uninsured person taking Zocor for high cholesterol is likely to pay at least $1,672 for a year’s supply."

I was taking Zocor for years for my "genetic" high cholesterol. (My mom had astronomically high cholesterol as do both my sisters.) I hated taking Zocor but eventually it brought my cholesterol levels way down. And, eventually I asked my doctor if I could stop taking it. He informed me that I'd be taking it for the rest of my life. Ugghhhhhhh... but I kept up the routine.

By and by something much more serious than high cholesterol struck and, having enough sense to know I couldn't be fooling around with Big Pharma priorities, I went to get a 5th opinion from a holistic doctor who came highly recommended as someone with a 100% rate of solving deadly little problems like mine. Holistic doctors, of course, treat the whole person, not just the alarm bell that happens to be ringing. Let me make a long story short. The following year, after a routine check-up, the regular pill-pusher who had condemned me to a lifetime of Zocor mentioned that I should stop taking Zocor. "Huh?" I asked in shock. "I thought I had to take that crap for life." He explained that my cholesterol level was now so low that even if it rose by a third-- which is normally what happens when someone stops using Zocor-- I would still be inside a normal cholesterol range.

I was delighted to comply. And after the next check-up he was surprised that the cholesterol level hadn't risen by a third... or at all. Big Pharma is NOT about your health. It is about maximizing profits regardless of anything. Check that link, above, again. That's one delicious breakfast-- a lot better than $1,672 worth of Zocor a year. And remember, Big Pharma is part of the deceitful, totalitarian state fronted by Bush and Schwarzenegger. If you live in California you have an opportunity to strike a blow for freedom next month: you can vote NO on Proposition 78 and YES on Proposition 79, NO on BushCo, no on Schwarzenegger and no to Big Pharma's overweening greed and avarice.

THINK ABOUT IRAQ FOR A MINUTE OR TEN. THEN PICK ONE: HILLARY OR CINDY

I just know in my bones that in 2008 I'm going to be confronted by some hideous choice between Hillary Clinton, dishonest, corporatist, finger-to-the-wind pol vs some neo-Nazi greed-obsessed potential mass-murderer. Will I have the balls to do what I've never done before? I mean I once trekked down from the mountains to vote at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. I always vote. In 2000 I even wound up voting for one of the people I most detest in the Democratic Party, self-righteous prig and mega-bribe-taker Joe Lieberman, just because it looked like Bush/Cheney was closing in on Gore/Lieberman in California. But Clinton... she supported Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq and supports Bush's catastrophic occupation of Iraq. Is that a leader for the Democratic Party? Today, the day the 2,000th American soldier was killed in Iraq (not counting hundreds of other American deaths, like when someone is wounded there and then rushed to a hospital in Kuwait or Germany in time to die there and not counting the thousands and thousands of shattered young lives of men and women who will be learning to live with less limbs and less senses than they started life with), Cindy Sheehan was out in front of Bush's lair protesting. What was Clinton doing? Counting all the millions and millions of dollars she's amassing for her 2008 campaign, money that is needed by progressive Democrats to take back at least one House of Congress from the fascists?
Cindy did something else today. She wrote an article about why Hillary doesn't deserve to be the Democratic nominee for president.

I'm republishing it:

I would love to support Hillary for President if she would come out against the travesty in Iraq. But I don't think she can speak out against the occupation, because she supports it.
I will not make the mistake of supporting another pro-war Democrat for president again, as I won't support a pro-war Republican.
This country wants this occupation to end. The world wants the occupation to end. People in Iraq want this occupation to end.
Senator Clinton: taking the peace road would not prove you are weak. Instead, it would prove that you are the strongest and wisest candidate. As a mom, as an American, as a patriot: I implore you to have the strength and courage to lead the fight for peace.
I want to support you, I want to work for you, but like many American moms, I will resist your candidacy with every bit of my power and strength unless you show us the wisdom it takes to be a truly great leader.
Prove that you are "passionate" and reflect our nation's values and refusal to support imperialism, greed and torture.
Senator Clinton: come out against this occupation of Iraq. Not because it is the politically expedient thing to do but because it is the humane thing to do. If you want to make Casey's sacrifice count, bring the rest of his buddies home alive.
I did meet with Sen. Clinton, along with Sen. Harry Reid, on Sept. 22, 2005. No one has asked me how it went with Sen. Reid, but I've been asked about my meeting with Sen. Clinton many times. A few days earlier in Brooklyn, I had referred to her as waiting for a politically "expedient" moment to speak out against the war in Iraq. I, of course, think that this tactic is wrong, because politics has nothing to do with the slaughter going on in Iraq. No one asked the almost 2000 Americans and tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis who have been killed what political party they were rooting for. When a mother receives the news that her son or daughter has been killed for lies she never thinks "Oh no, how could this have happened? I am a Democrat (Republican)!!!"
Playing politics with our soldiers' lives is despicable.
I thought the meeting with Sen. Clinton went well. I thought she listened and heard what we had to say. I went with another Gold Star Mother, Lynn Braddach, and my sister, Dede Miller. After Sen. Reid left, Mrs. Clinton stayed for a few more moments and she told us that she had met with the other Gold Star Mothers who had a different view from ours. I said it didn't really matter, because our view is right. Lynn, Dede and I don't want our loved ones to be used as political pawns to justify the killing spree in Iraq. I can't believe any mother who has had her heart and soul torn out would wish that on another mother. How often do the lies have to be exposed before every American (elected official, media representative, average citizen) wakes up and says, "enough killing is enough!"
I thought Mrs. Clinton listened, but apparently she didn't because immediately afterwards she said the following to Sarah Ferguson of the Village Voice:
"My bottom line is that I don't want their sons to die in vain ... I don't believe it's smart to set a date for withdrawal ... I don't think it's the right time to withdraw."
That quote sounds exactly like what the few Republicans I talked to that week said. Making sure that our children did not die in "vain" sounds exactly like something George Bush says. A "date" for withdrawal? That sounds like Rush Limbaugh to me. That doesn't sound like an opposition party leader speaking to me. What Sen. Clinton said after our meeting sounds exactly like the Republican Party talking points I heard from Senators Dole and McCain.
Sen. Clinton is in California today to raise money for her political campaigns. An invitation to one star-studded gala reads:
"We must stand with Senator Clinton as she stands up for what we believe in. Hillary is and always has been our champion in the White House and the Senate." And she's one of the "strongest, most passionate and intelligent Democrats."
I didn't get an invitation to any of the events, but maybe it's because she doesn't stand up for what I believe in. I don't believe in continuing this occupation of Iraq and I don't believe in killing more of our soldiers because my son has already been needlessly and tragically killed. I don't believe she is passionate. I think she is a political animal who believes she has to be a war hawk to keep up with the big boys. She is intelligent, there's no doubt about that. However, I believe that the intelligent thing for Democrats to do for 2006 and 2008 would be to come out strongly and correctly against the botched, bungled, illegal and immoral occupation of Iraq.
Sixty-two percent of Americans now believe that this war is based on lies and betrayals and want our troops to start coming home. Fifty-three percent of Americans want our troops to come home immediately. The last time I looked, Democrats did not comprise 62 percent of our population. Americans oppose this war in overwhelming numbers and it crosses party lines. Because America can see that the war in Iraq has fueled terrorism and has made the world and our country less secure. America can see that the murder of innocents is not a "right and left" issue, it is a "right and wrong" issue.
Sixty-nine of our best and brightest have been sent meaninglessly and unnecessarily to their premature deaths since I met with Mrs. Clinton on September 22nd. Sixty-nine mothers and fathers, and who knows how many spouses, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, cousins, and friends, have been meaninglessly and unnecessarily sent into tailspins of grief and emptiness since that meeting.
We all know that Sen. Clinton, along with many other Representatives and Senators voted to give George Bush the authority to invade a sovereign nation that was no threat to the U.S.A. We know that they spinelessly abrogated their constitutional responsibility and duty to declare war. We (and most of them) know that voting to give an irresponsible person authority to wage war was a devastating mistake. But I know that knowing all of that will not bring my son or almost 2000 other Americans back, and it won't bring back that nation's war dead, either.

ET TU, SUNUNU ?

One could almost feel sorry for the pathetic under-equipped would-be tyrant. Well, maybe not "almost;" maybe two or three steps before almost. Timothy Noah has a funny little story in SLATE today about more Repugs kicking Bushie when he's down. This time it's another of his father's old cronies, ex-White House Chief of Staff John Sununu, joining former George I National Security Adviser Brent Scowcroft in helping Americans understand that we have the absolutely worst-run government in the history of our country.


UPDATE: MORE AND MORE REPUBLICANS ABANDONING BUSH-- WITH EITHER A SENSE OF REAL PATRIOTISM OR A SENSE OF REAL MALICE. YOU DECIDE.

My good friend Harry is always urging me to read the L.A. TIMES. I don't always but I did today. If you missed it, you missed a follow-up by former Colin Powell Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson on why he put the word "cabal" stage center in current political discourse and why he sums up Bush's foreign policy as "ruinous." He claims the secretive cabal (WHIG), lead by Cheney and Rumsfeld, made virtually all the decisions regarding the country's national security, including everything that involved Iraq. In a catty slap at Bush himself, Wilkerson obliquely referred to Bush's... um... lazy mind and lower-than-average IQ, writing "I believe that the decisions of this cabal were sometimes made with the full and witting support of the president and sometimes with something less." Gee, these Republicans really go after each other when they get mad. He adds that "more often than not, then-national security advisor Condoleezza Rice was simply steamrolled by this cabal."

He adds that right at the heart of our government this little-known cabal's "insular and secret workings were efficient and swift — not unlike the decision-making one would associate more with a dictatorship than a democracy. This furtive process was camouflaged neatly by the dysfunction and inefficiency of the formal decision-making process, where decisions, if they were reached at all, had to wend their way through the bureaucracy, with its dissenters, obstructionists and 'guardians of the turf.' But the secret process was ultimately a failure. It produced a series of disastrous decisions and virtually ensured that the agencies charged with implementing them would not or could not execute them well."

He doesn't let up. You wanna read it?

HEALTHY EATING, RIGHT-WING LOONS AND THE GOP'S NEXT BEST THING TO SLAVE LABOR

Last night I got into a brief spat with another leftie blogger because he was kind enough to invite me to eatin' and drinkin' festivities with Southern California bloggers... of all stripes. He mentioned right-wingers. With my irrepressible, but sometimes not clearly decipherable sense of humor, I shot back with a wise-ass answer about the only good right-wingers were... well you know the rest. Oh he was pissed-- especially when I threw in that I don't drink alcohol and that I only eat health food. (We patched it up later). But the irony is that that very night (last), I had a dinner date with an actual real life right-winger!

Yes, my seriously unlikely pal, J from rural Georgia came along for dinner to The Jade Cafe in Silverlake, where all is safely vegan, organic and uncooked. Healthy, healthy, healthy-- and yum, yum, yum. And the right-winger just babbled on about the merits of Sean Hannity, Neil Boortz and Michael Savage (all of whom he volunteered were his favorites). J also volunteered that he had eaten a steak before we met, since he knew what was in store for him (although he also professed to have loved Jade Cafe's food, especially the sugar-free dessert and said he plans to go back.)

But as we were driving away-- I had something special lined up for him in an African-American ghetto-- an odd thing happened. I don't remember what the stimulus was, probably something that came out of my car radio from NPR or Air America, but J started pontificating about his theories on undocumented labor and illegal immigration. "Oh, so you're a Democrat on this one," I offered. He was momentarily stunned; then wary.

But, he was actually offering up many of Labor's arguments against BushCo doctrine on Immigration, one of the (many) soft white underbellies of Greed and Selfishness Republicanism's hold on non-multimillionaire white voters. Need I mention that J is a hopeless xenophobe (although later that night he mentioned to a houseful of my African-American friends that he exclusively goes for "ethnic" chicks and offered to introduce anyone interested to all the white girls he always rejects)? But, nonetheless, somewhere deep down in his rural Georgian roots he senses that there's something wrong with policies that drive American wages and buying power down. And, as much as I'm sure he wants to try, he can't quite blame Bush's immigration policies on either Bill or Hillary Clinton (not that either of those too-corporatist-for-my-taste almost-Republican-Democrats has a position all that different from Bush's). But Bush and the Republicans are in charge now-- and not the Know-Nothing/Tancredo wing of the GOP-- and they are the ones who are primarily concerned with one thing that impacts immigration: CHEAP LABOR.

Ever since progressives routed them and made them give up their slaves (the ultimate in cheap labor), the right-wingers, who are currently led by BushCo, have been fighting, sometimes literally, a battle-to-the-death with working men and women struggling to achieve the American dream through their labor. Right-wingers define this quest for fair wages and a safe working environment as "communism" and do whatever they can, often very successfully, to confuse people like J from rural Georgia.

I'm sure many people like J were confused today when they read in USA TODAY this morning that undocumented immigrants are working on hurricane reconstruction for below minimum wage rates. I mean first the hideous Bush decides the way to "help" New Orleans recovery is by making it legal for companies (particularly his campaign contributors' companies outside of Louisiana) to pay substandard wages and then we find out that on a U.S. Naval base Halliburton has a crew of undocumented illegal immigrants working away. I saw a report on this on CNN last week on which the manager of the project just lied and lied and lied about it all, doing his best to cover up BushCo/Halliburton policies of illegally exploiting desperate third world workers for their own profits and much to the detriment of American workers-- AND U.S. SECURITY CONCERNS.

According to the USA TODAY report, "Robert 'Tiger' Hammond, president of the Greater New Orleans AFL-CIO, said about 75 union electricians lost their jobs after the Bush administration temporarily suspended the Davis-Bacon Act, which guarantees the prevailing local wage for workers hired under federal contracts." Halliburton hired them through Alabama and Texas-based slave-labor companies. Imagine that! Where the hell is Lou Dobbs when we need him?

THE BUSH REGIME IS ABOUT MORE THAN JUST CORRUPTION (PLEASE ADULTS ONLY ON THIS ITEM)

With all the focus on BushCo mendacity and corruption lately, please let's not forget that George "I'll get bin-Laden dead or alive" Bush is also the least competent leader, if one can somehow use that term to describe this worm, America has ever known. My good friend Danny reminded me of that in chilling terms when he turned me on to a website about the potential effects of the kind of nuclear terrorism Bush's wrong-headed policies are making more and more likely.

"The threat of nuclear terrorism is not limited to New York City or Washington, DC. While New York is widely seen as the most likely target, it is clear that Al Qaeda is not only capable but also interested in mounting attacks on other American cities, where people may be less prepared. Imagine the consequences of a 10-kiloton weapon exploding in San Francisco, Houston, Chicago, Los Angeles, Charlotte, or any other city Americans call home. From the epicenter of the blast to a distance of approximately one-third mile, every structure will be destroyed and no one would be left alive. A second circle of destruction extending three-quarters of a mile from ground zero would leave buildings looking like the Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City. A third circle reaching out 1 mile would be ravaged by fires and radiation."

Click on the link above and see how you would do if you were in your office or in your home if, God forbid, Bush's monstrous policies come home to roost.

YOU KNOW THE ROVE-GATE INDICTMENTS ARE ABOUT TO HIT BECAUSE BUSHCO GOES INTO OVER-DRIVE SMEARING FITZGERALD

My new favorite White House reporter, Tom DeFrank of the NY DAILY NEWS-- I still can't believe I'm quoting the NEWS-- reports this morning that BushCo is "bracing for possible indictments in the CIA leak probe." He also points out that the aggressively and highly vicious Bush Regime smear machine has "launched a not-so-subtle campaign against the prosecutor handling the case." This, of course, has been the over-rising hallmark of George W. Bush's entire "leadership" style. When someone brings up some inconvenient facts, attack him and destroy him. (They don't seem to have learned their lesson, since this is how they got in this whole mess to begin with.)

Fitzgerald was first recruited to investigate the leak of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media by John Ashcroft's Deputy Attorney General, Republican James Comey. As the vilification of Pat Fitzgerald heats up-- with predictable GOP hacks like Hannity, Limbaugh, O'Liely, Carlson, the Amen Choir of fake right-wing preachers and radical right pols screeching their lies and vitriol-- it is important to remember what fellow-Republicans have said about the straight-arrow prosecutor 'til now. Armando over at Daily Kos has the whole story of how Pat Fitzgerald is a man of ultimate integrity and this is one you should read so you're ready for the ditto-heads' assault around the water-cooler.

And if you doubt there will be an assault, keep in mind that one BushCo hack already told DeFrank that Fitzgerald is "a vile, detestable, moralistic person with no heart and no conscience who believes he's been tapped by God to do very important things" (and no, he wasn't projecting what most people think of George Bush; he was describing the new White House/Far Right spin on Fitzgerald). Bush is trying to not sound like a neo-Nazi maniac personally, going on NBC to tell TODAY viewers, in his condescending way, that "The special prosecutor is conducting a very serious investigation. He's doing it in a very dignified way, by the way, and we'll see what he says." But, according to DeFrank White House allies have started their anti-Fitzgerald whispering campaign and propaganda assault. He points to pathetic Republican hack Kay Bailey Hutchison, an ethically-challenged light-weight from Texas who BushCo "armed with comments that sources said were 'shaped' by the White House, suggested Fitzgerald might nail someone on a 'technicality' because they forgot something or misspoke." (Very different from what Hutchison had to say about Clinton's technicality-- but of course that was about a crucial and earth-shattering blow-job case not a mere, piddling treason conspiracy at the heart of the U.S. government.)

Last night right-wing cypher Tucker Carlson, on his underwhelming MSNBC GOP-propaganda show, was whining about how disappointed he was about how BushCo is handling the whole Rove-Gate scandal. His point boiled down to: why the hell didn't these guys attack Fitzgerald from the git-go instead of waiting til the very end when no one will believe them? What the bow-tied little Nazi said exactly was that he thinks the Bush Regime screwed up by "saying nice (true) things about Patrick Fitzgerald some months ago-- 'he's a man of integrity,' 'he's a good guy, 'we have complete confidence he's going to do the right thing,' etc, etc-- making it now almost impossible for the White Hose, even on background, to attack the guy." Good thing they have shills all over the TV and radio, though, to do it for them.

One shill they can usually count on to attack whoever they identify as an American patriot and who therefore needs to be destroyed, has dug in his heals and refused to play ball with the Bush thugs on this one. Andy McCarthy of the far right NATIONAL REVIEW has drawn the line on wrecking the reputation of a good and descent man to cover-up the Bush Regimes lies and crimes. "I'm too busy today to be monitoring the media," says the conservative McCarthy, "but I've gotten a lot of questions about this from people who say some conservatives are hitting the airwaves with preemptive suggestions that my friend Pat Fitzgerald may not be as apolitical as his press clippings indicate. Let me just say this. Pat is at least as apolitical as his press clippings suggest. Pat Fitzgerald is the best prosecutor I have ever seen. By a mile. He is also the straightest shooter I have ever seen - by at least that much. And most importantly, he is a good man. This investigation has gone on for 22 months. Most of the evidence was collected before autumn 2004 - the last year of delay has mainly been caused by reporters challenging subpoenas in the federal courts. If Pat were political-- or, worse, if he somehow had it in for the Bush administration-- it was fully within his power to return indictments in the weeks before the November elections, which would almost certainly have cinched things for Senator Kerry. It is something, I am quite certain, it would never even have occurred to him to do. The only thing the guy I know would do is bring charges or close the case without charges when the facts of the investigation warranted doing so."

If you think this outrage against fascist solidarity isn't going to hurt McCarthy's bona fides with the lockstep fascist crowd, please go back to a piece from last week about how BushCo turns on its own when they stray from the Party Line.



THE 3 PM UPDATE:

Jason Leopold and John Byrne over at RAW STORY say sources close to Fitzgerald report that he has decided to seek indictments. Ladies and gentleman, prepare for FITZMAS.



THE 6 PM UPDATE:

CBS News says they have the inside scoop that tomorrow (Wednesday) is FITZMAS. And, some drama-queen at the network
has introduced a new element: MR. X (or possibly MS. X). The rumor is that Rove and Libby are going down but there's someone else (someone bigger?), dubbed MR. X, who is also in for some unpleasantness. Liberal Blogostan is buzzing that it's Cheney and the right-wing loons insist it's Ambassador Wilson! That's how out-of-touch with reality these Freepers and assorted neo-Nazis are!

AND NOW, FROM THE FOLKS WHO CONVINCED BUSH TO NOMINATE HIS LAME LAWYER TO THE SUPEME COURT, LET'S SEE HOW SOME GOOD OLD-FASHIONED CENSORSHIP FLIES

I read a lot of stuff online but now that THE NATION kicked me off their mailing list, the only physical magazine I read at home is THE ONION. It often has me laughing aloud in the mornings as I eat my delicious, antioxident-rich half a papaya stuffed with blueberries, ground flaxseeds and pecans (and, when in season, pomegranite seeds). So, of course, it was only a matter of time before the fascist censors would start threatening the beloved magazine.

Today's NY TIMES has a story by Katharine Q. Seelye about Harriet Miers' deputy dog, Grant M. Dixton-- right in the midst of helping to find Bush a Supreme Court nominee-- writing THE ONION a threatening letter. The White House is offended that THE ONION uses the presidential seal when it regularly parodies Bush, often insinuating that the reason he opposes evolution so hysterically is because he hasn't experienced it first-hand. THE ONION runs a great parody of Bush's idiotic Saturday radio addresses. Here's a typical example of what has the White House staff so offended.

Citing some legalistic mumbo-jumbo, Dixton wrote that "It has come to my attention that THE ONION is using the presidential seal on its Web site," which, Dixtin kvetches "is not to be used in connection with commercial ventures or products in any way that suggests presidential support or endorsement." Wow! I wonder if Dixton also wrote a letter to Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham when he was selling Presidential pardons for $400,000/pop or was Bush getting a cut? Alas, if this is just a shakedown for a taste, THE ONION is free (500,000 hard copies and 3,000,000 weekly online readers). THE ONION'S lawyer, Rochelle Klaskin, pointed this out to Dixton adding that "it is inconceivable that anyone would think that, by using the seal, THE ONION intends to 'convey... sponsorship or approval' by the president." A BushCo spokesperson, Trent Duffy, blasted back that one "can't pick and choose where you want to enforce the rules surrounding the use of official government insignia, whether it's for humor or fraud." (After all, it isn't like perjury, he implied, where Republicans know it's fine to lie about matters of state-- as long as they never get caught lying about matters of the flesh.*) Well, when they go after Cunningham for selling the presidential pardons, they can also ask him about selling belt buckles and other paraphernalia with congressional seals on them.

Seelye ends her piece asking Trent how Miers' White House office found out about THE ONION ribbing the man she thinks is the most brilliant she's ever met-- a comment many people thought qualifies her to be an ONION editor herself if this Supreme Court thing doesn't start going any better for her.
"Despite the seriousness of the Bush White House, more than one Bush staffer reads THE ONION and enjoys it thoroughly," he said. "We do have a sense of humor, believe it or not." Not.



* unless it involves priests molesting children; then even matters of flesh and lying about them don't matter

MEET MY OLD PAL HELEN, NEWEST MEMBER OF THE DOWN WITH TYRANNY TEAM

THE DOWNWARD SLIDE OF THE MIDDLE CLASS

Howie asked me to write a guest blog for DWT. I am honored. Before I begin this piece, however, I would like to briefly digress to provide readers with some background.
Howie is one of my oldest and dearest friends. I have known him since I was seventeen, my first week of college. My first memory of him is walking into G lobby, where everyone gathered to line up for the cafeteria, and there was Howie, grabbing everyone’s attention, charismatic from the get go. No one could miss him. With his long hair held back in a skeevy headband, baggy sweater and semi unkempt appearance, H. was hard to miss. (Most students were clean cut as hell, still wearing madras shirts and penny loafers). There he was, singing and swaying, a little off tune and off beat, to an anti war song by Country Joe and the Fish that he was playing on a victrola (there’s a word from the past!). You know, the song with the line, "Be the first one on your block to have your boy sent home in a box." Howie and I soon became fast friends. For one thing, we were compadres in politics. My father, the "NY Commie" mentioned earlier on this blog, had discerned very early on the immoral and futile nature of the Vietnam War, and I had taken this position in high school. When I met Howie, this point of view was not yet popular on campus. Howie and I shared some life forming experiences. We were arrested together on Whitehall Street, at a draft protest led by Dr. Spock. My father was very proud of me! By the way, my dad had more true compassion and morality in his fingernail than our current Prez.
Now back to the topic of this piece. Being middle class myself, I have personally experienced considerable anxieties about government policies that have been implemented or proposed by BushCo and the Republican Congress. Howie has mentioned two in particular: my prior panic about a possible draft (I have two sons ages 19 and 20), which has not come to pass, and current panic about changes in tax deductions.
It is increasingly apparent that BushCo has complete disdain for the middle class, let alone the poor. The recent recommendations of the commission that was established to look into tax reform are truly frightening. To revise and simplify the tax code, the commission is proposing to reduce or eliminate deductions for mortgage interest and state and local taxes. Hello? These changes would have the effect of SIGNIFICANTLY RAISING taxes on the middle class. Isn’t BushCo’s mantra to reduce taxes? Only for his "base," the wealthy, apparently. BushCo wants to eliminate taxes on capital gains and inheritance, which would only effect people with substantial investments and money to pass along to their heirs. Basically, then, the working class - anyone who WORKS for a living – would be screwed. We would be taxed up the wazoo, while those fortunate enough to own businesses or corporations or live off of unearned income and not even work would pay little or no tax. Increasing taxes on the middle class would be a big shove downhill.
While Howie has reassured me that these changes would NEVER come to pass, as they are not politically viable, the fact that these proposals are even seriously being put forth at all is an abomination.

Unfortunately, changes in the tax code are only one aspect of many potential threats to the middle class. When you have a government beholden to enriching corporations rather than to its people, the people will surely suffer. The effects of BushCo’s policies have barely begun to hit the middle class, but they will. I only wonder whether they will be felt incrementally or catastrophically. I do know that just living these days is becoming a lot harder financially.
Take housing, for example. Most middle class people own homes and have ongoing expenses to meet. Anyone who purchased a house in the past few years is in a particularly precarious position. Current prices are very high and there has much talk about a "housing bubble" that may soon burst. As a result of lenience in borrowing by mortgage brokers, which has tremendously benefited the mortgage industry, by the way, many people have over extended themselves and have "interest only" mortgages." If the interest rates go up and the value of the houses go down, people will find themselves in enormous debt. And what will happen if they cannot carry it? Too bad! The new bankruptcy law will preclude starting fresh. People will lose their homes and be enslaved by their debt.
Another aspect of owning a house is carrying all of financial responsibilities associated with it. Wait until the heating bills hit this winter. Whereas everyone is well aware of the increased cost of home heating oil, as it is closely connected to gasoline prices, most newer homes are heated by natural gas and paying for this will be an unpleasant surprise. I have read that the cost of gas this winter will be double what it was last year. Think of all those sprawling McMansions with cathedral ceilings! My friend at work, who has a beautiful large house, told me that last year her heating bills were about $1000 a month. This year, her expenses will double. We are talking about REAL money here, just to maintain living in a house. Many Americans living the American dream are now facing huge carrying costs and will be financially squeezed by these bills. And let us not forget state and local taxes, which have also been increasing. The middle class would be lucky to keep what they have let alone improve their status. By the way, it appears that as major construction companies such as the Toll Brothers continue to build McMansions (as per the NY Times Magazine article last week), executives of these companies are busily dumping their stock: they can see the writing on the wall.
What’s next? Job security. Middle class Americans have good jobs: they pay well, have decent benefits and some offer retirement plans. Unless you are in a union, however, job security is not what it used to be. Many are vulnerable to the unemployment line. Even union workers are threatened these days by possible loss of benefits, reduced salaries and reneging on retirement plans. As more and more jobs go overseas, job security is increasingly threatened here. The gap in pay between top executives and workers is growing, now over 400 to 1 in the U.S. Earning a living wage is becoming more difficult. Should social security be mentioned here as well? Many middle class Americans rely on this income as part of their retirement finances. Fortunately, BushCo is not having much success with dismantling this program, although the desire to do so again illustrates insensitivity to working people and lack of concern for the elderly. Wall Street would really benefit, however.
The family lifestyle of the middle class is becoming increasingly vulnerable. The costs of child care, health insurance, transportation and especially college education are increasingly burdensome. Also, the cost of food is rising, due to higher transportation costs.

So where are we headed? Well, I guess it depends on the will of the American people. At this point, the middle class in poised to take a downhill slide, with a speed yet to be determined. The only way to change this direction is to boot out BushCo and the elected officials associated with it. Even then, it will take much courage and determination to face the problems of the middle class head on and make changes in policies and laws in support of working people. Let us not forget, the middle class work. We face a tremendous battle ahead.

TARGET (THE STORE) AND CIVIL RIGHTS AND RAPE AND RELIGIONIST LOONS

If everyone keeps boycotting WalMart and Target soon we'll all have to shop in stores owned by our neighbors! Why Target, you ask? Well, aside from absolutely sucking as a store, there's a new twist here I've been trying to figure out how to explain. It's all about how a woman was raped and tried to get a "morning after pill" so she wouldn't conceive. The right-wing pharmacist, presumably licensed by the state, refused to sell her one because of his religionist and "moral" objections. Not only has his license not been revoked, Target is defending this behavior. John in DC over at AMERICAblog has the letter attacking Planned Parenthood and a great analysis. You should read it so you know what we're up against-- and why you might look for a different store to spend your hard-earned bucks in. (I bought some great new jeans at Cosco today.)

BUSH FINDS A WAY OUT OF THE MIERS QUAGMIRE. NOT IRAQ THOUGH

Do you remember the piece Saturday when I said Bush was looking for a "graceful" way out of the Miers' catastrophe? It looks like he found it. I don't know who came up with the strategy but it now appears that Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee are joining Democrats in demanding papers about Miers that everyone knows Bush will never turn over. This way he can stand on principle and not look like he abandoning the doomed, divisive nomination. This L.A. TIMES is carrying a story today setting the stage for Bush's abandonment of that poor sweet old church lady.

I wonder if he'll just buckle in and give the Far Right religionist base the loon they lust for and demand. Or is he so pissed off at them that he won't pick one from their pre-OKed list of judicial psychos?


TUESDAY MORNING UPDATE:

See, it's happening! Bush isn't staying the course with his gal Harriet at all. He's worming its way out of the Miers' problem by setting up a fake "principle"-driven confrontation with dependable GOP allies on the Senate Judiciary Committee. BushCo is a complete and utter farce, dishonest through and through.

BUSH-- MEAN DRUNK ON THE RAMPAGE ?

Last night I was driving home from seeing a rather dull movie. Maybe the name, KISS, KISS, BANG, BANG (which I already knew wasn't a biography of Specimen), should have warned me away but it didn't and I sought to clear my brain with some Air America. Sam Seder claimed that Thomas DeFrank, the NY DAILY NEWS Bureau Chief in DC, is super-connected and that when he reports a story, it comes from very good White House sources. (And here I was a few days ago, totally making fun of DeFrank and the DAILY NEWS.) So this morning I got up to find out some disturbing DeFrank-reported news in today's NEWS.

If I'm reading his piece correctly, it certainly sounds like Bush is not taking the dissolution of his Regime with grace or aplomb. In fact, it sounds like the still untreated alcoholic is hitting the bottle, lashing out at everyone around him and blaming everyone but himself for the fine kettle of fish in which he now finds himself. "Facing the darkest days of his presidency," says DeFrank, "President Bush is frustrated, sometimes angry and even bitter, his associates say. With a seemingly uncontrollable insurgency in Iraq, the White House is bracing for the political fallout from a grim milestone that could come any day: the combat death of the 2,000th American G.I." Earlier today it was reported elsewhere that Cindy Sheehan plans to chain herself to the White House gates to protest Bush's senseless, disastrous occupation of Iraq.
DeFrank reminds us that "last week alone, 23 military personnel were killed in Iraq, and five were wounded yesterday in a relentless series of attacks across the country. This week could also bring a special prosecutor's decision that could shake the foundations of the Bush government. The President's top political guru, Karl Rove, and Vice President Cheney's right-hand man, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, are at the center of a two-year criminal probe into the leak of a CIA agent's identity. Many Bush staffers believe indictments are likely."

One of DeFrank's Seder-vouched-for-sources told him that "Given his (Bush's) nature, there's no way he'd be happy about the way things have gone." Ok... sounds like a good source to me. But DeFrank claims that "Bush usually reserves his celebrated temper for senior aides because he knows they can take it. Lately, however, some junior staffers have also faced the boss' wrath." Unless lately means "the last couple years," this statement isn't... well-sourced. Bush has been reported to be so brutal to staffers that no one is ever willing to give the non-TV news viewing/non-newspaper reading/non-Internets-surfering CEO President the bad news, ever. "This is not some manager at McDonald's chewing out the help," explains one of DeFrank's legendary sources. "This is the President of the United States, and it's not a pleasant sight."

Bush is hysterical about the imminent loss of his brain Rove and he's not exactly pleased how everyone, regardless of political party, is calling his nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court the worst SC nomination in modern history. Bush is exhibiting all the traits of someone who has fallen off the wagon. DeFrank describes him as "a mass of contradictions: cheerful and serene, peevish and melancholy, occasionally lapsing into what he once derided as the 'blame game.'"

He's also delusional and babbling, the way Nixon did after he was unmasked as a lawbreaker, that he's "convinced that history will vindicate the major decisions of his presidency even if they damage him and his party in the 2006 and 2008 elections." (I'm certain this is reassuring to the 30-50 Republican Congressmen who are now looking at having to get honest jobs after the 2006 elections.)

"The President is just unhappy in general and casting blame all about," whispers one of DeFrank's sources inside the White House. "Andy [Card, the chief of staff] gets his share. Karl gets his share. Even Cheney gets his share. And the press gets a big share." Yes, everybody but the guy who sits where the buck is supposed to stop. DeFrank enlightens us that even though Darth Cheney is still "Bush's most trusted political confidant," the DAILY NEWS "has learned Bush has told associates Cheney was overly involved in intelligence issues in the run-up to the Iraq war." Uh... yeah. Is that what Bush calls undermining the CIA and making it impossible for them to do a good job?

The delusional Bush, lashing out erratically and blaming everyone around him for everything (apparently never looking in a mirror), does realize one of his problems was his and his alone-- his gal Harriet. EVERYONE told him it was a miserable idea and one of DeFrank's sources claims even the arrogant and self-deluded Bush "knows some of these things are self-inflicted. He must know that the way he did that, relying on his own judgment and instinct, was not good."

FRIST, IN IOWA, SEEMS TO RULE OUT RUNNING FOR PRESIDENT IF HE'S IN PRISON

Today's Washington Post sounds yet another death knell in the long drawn out public demise of crooked Tennessee Senator "Dollar" Bill Frist. It lays bare as completely false the entire edifice he has carefully constructed about a so-called "blind trust" insulating him from his family's multi-million dollar holdings in HCA, a huge hospital concern. This is more than just a crooked senator doing a little Martha Stewart-like insider trading. Frist, long considered to be one of the 2 or 3 least ethical and most hypocritical men in the U.S. Senate, drove U.S. health care policies with the sole purpose of increasing his families great wealth (estimated to be well over a BILLION dollars), at the expense of consumers, workers and... sound health care policies.

Now even Frist, who is stepping down from his perch as Bush's Senate Majority Leader in order to run for President (not of the hospital trade group, but of the United States... of America), realizes his future residence is more likely to be the Big House than the White House. This weekend, speaking at an Iowa Republican fundraising dinner, Frist seemed to signal that he might not run for president after all and that the outcome of the Federal investigation of his corrupt stock manipulations will affect his decision. Apparently he has ruled out running for president from a prison cell but he begged people to "wait for the facts before passing judgment." (If you don't want to wait but wantthe facts now, I suggest you go to Google and run a seach with the words "Frist" + "corrupt.")

In a statement that is sure to further erode Harriet Miers' chances to win the confidence of the American people-- if not Senate confirmation-- Frist admitted publicly that, although she doesn't have any judicial experience, he expects, according to the Associated Press, "that she will display the same ideals as the GOP." He doesn't seem to realize that that is exactly what is troubling so many Americans about this nomination!

EAT THE RICH... CONGRESSMEN

Many political philosophers-- lol; like probably every single one of 'em-- worried that in a "democracy," the "rabble," by sheer weight of numbers, would trample on the rights of the propertied classes. "Safeguards" to prevent anything of the kind from happening, were always discussed and then always put in place in all bourgeois democracies (or republics), our own included; our own especially. The rights of the rich and privileged HAD to be protected from the masses. Right into the 1900s U.S. Senators were appointed, not elected, and their body was thought to be kind of an Americanized version of the House of Lords, at least by some, a check on any populist tendencies of a "too democratic" House of Representatives. Far from being trampled upon, the rights of the propertied classes have become so sacrosanct than even a hint of a discussion of economic "fairness" is met with wild-eyed hysteria marking the hinter as un-American, un-patriotic, anti-God, Communist, gay, etc. And instead of a legislature filled with congressmen and senators coming from the masses of working and middle-class Americans, we have a legislature filled, over-filled, with multi-millionaires, millionaires, with just a smattering of average-income middle class people. Normally about half the senators are millionaires, which ranges from people with assets over $100 million (like John Kerry, Herb Kohl, Jay Rockefeller and probably Bill Frist-- they all lie fudge big time when it comes to reporting) to a few with barely over a million (like Grassley, the Florida Nelson, Landrieu, Hatch, Boxer, Cantwell, Stevens, Carper, Brownback, Reid). Assets are different from annual income. Every member of Congress is paid a salary of $154,700 (and members of the leadership get $171,900 each) and each is the recipient of a truly generous, even royal retirement and health benefits package; all this puts them in a financial situation considerably higher than their constituents. Only 10 U.S. senators reported a net worth of under $100,000.

Jonathan Salant of Common Dreams pointed out after the 2004 elections that about half the incoming members of Congress were millionaires and that "many will face votes that could affect their financial holdings." A large number, for example, held significant interests in banking and credit card companies (as they prepared to vote of a bankruptcy bill they made those holdings worth a lot more-- at the expense of less well-off constituents). Same went for the pharmaceutical and energy industries, each of which benefited mightily from aggressively-generous legislation (written, for the most part, by their own paid lobbyists!), at the expense of average American workers and consumers. Salant pointed out that "watchdog groups often cite the economic inequity between many members of Congress and the people they represent. They say wealth makes lawmakers more apt to think about their financial interests than what's best for their constituents."

The specific conflicts of interest are too numerous to count-- and many wealthy congressmen are either out-and-out liars or seriously delusional about the issue, as we recently witnessed in the case of one of the biggest offenders "Dollar" Bill Frist, the Senate Majority Leader who helped fashion medical legislation that made his already wealthy family into BILLIONAIRES. And although Frist was clumsy, greedy-beyond-reason, outrageous and arrogant enough to think he couldn't get caught-- and will probably wind up in prison-- other members of Congress are more... subtle. Republican Congressman Trent Franks of Arizona owns Liberty Petroleum and claims his business interests don't affect his votes. "There's every desire on my part to do what's best for the country and for the people I represent, regardless of any implication it has upon my business," said Franks, who would need to represent a district of multi-millionaires for that statement to even approach objective truth. Not to mention the fact that the very wealthy and those who aren't, often have divergent opinions on "what's best for the country," usually seen through the sort of economic prism that allows Franks to vote for legislation that enriches him and the 1% of Americans the policies he backs are actually good for, while further impoverishing the lives of the vast majority of Americans.

Another right-wing Republican from the Greed and Selfishness wing of the GOP, New Hampshire's Jeb Bradley obfuscates enough so that the closest one can come to guessing his net worth is to say more than a million but not over $5 million. "I don't believe you can, as a member of Congress, use your influence to benefit yourself," Bradley said. "What you try to do is set the stage for the economy to benefit. That's why you enter into public service, to improve, as you perceive it, the lot of your constituents." Is he naive? Retarded? A bold-faced liar? A little of each? Has he met "Dollar" Bill Frist? (Even if he hasn't, we do know he met Tom DeLay, who funneled many thousands of tainted dollars into Bradley's campaign coffers. After DeLay was indicted for money laundering and conspiracy, Bradley, facing tough re-election prospects, returned $15,000 of corrupt money to DeLay.)

About 50% of the legislators are millionaires, as opposed to about 1% of Americans. The concerns of ordinary Americans are not shared, at least not viscerally, with their legislators. (Examples, according to a Pew poll last December 86% of Americans think the minimum wage law should be raised and 65% think there should be government backed universal health insurance even if taxes have to rise. (Even the CEO of one of the country's worst labor exploiters, WalMart, is asking Congress to raise the minimum wage.) Obviously neither of these overwhelmingly popular ideas is going anywhere in a Congress of the rich and for the rich.

Wealthy congressmen have their rap down pat about how beneficial it is to have "successful, talented business people" serving in Congress. "You want people who have good judgment and have the courage to stand up for what they believe in," said Maryland Representative C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger. "If people have done well, that means they're successful. Maybe that's part of leadership." Or maybe it's part of cronyism or inheritance or shady business practices or lucky breaks... could be a lot of things. And it is a lot of things.

I remember how shocked I was during the run up to the coronation of John Roberts as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when a couple of CNN talking heads decided to "analyze" his stock portfolio. They didn't analyze anything; they merely pointed out that it was "a typical American middle class $10,000,000 stock portfolio." There was no sense of irony in anyone's voice; nor was their an ironic smile playing on anyone's lips. This was, in their minds, a straight forward statement of fact: "a typical American middle class $10,000,000 stock portfolio". Do they live in a different America from the one I live in? Actually... the chattering class and the political class do.

One of the biggest yaps on the Far Right, just under Ann Coulter in terms of sheer loathsomeness-- a slick-talking apologist for the rich and powerful-- is Michael Medved. "If we agree that it would be ridiculous to discriminate against candidates because of their educational achievements," he oozes, ever so unctuously, "then why should we discount them because of their financial achievements? Do we honestly believe that earning a university degree provides a more reliable indication of talent and leadership ability than accumulating a personal net worth of more than a million dollars?" Uriah Heep Michael Medved says it would be hard for him "to imagine a middle-aged American who's achieved the sort of conspicuous success in any field that might make him an attractive congressional candidate not coming close to that million dollar net worth – unless he's made the sort of ill-considered investments that might lead to questions about his wisdom and maturity." (Not that I want anyone to think that I'm taking Medved's nonsense seriously, but I would like to point out that wise and mature and rightist Judge Roberts' single biggest investment was in AOLTimeWarner stock, which has been catastrophic, trading right now at between $17 and $18/share after having reached a high of around $100, when it was being touted by Wall Street shills and stuffed into every average American portfolio.)

A classic battle along these lines is brewing in Vermont, where proud independent socialist, Bernie Sanders is looking to jump from his House seat to an open Senate seat, a Senate seat that a Vermont multi-millionaire, Rich Tarrant wants to buy for himself. Campaign fundraising laws, written by wealthy people to favor wealthy people, are, of course, stacked in Rich Tarrant's favor. According to an A.P. article on the race "Campaign finance filings show that Sanders has received donations this year from more than 100 times as many Vermonters as sent money to Tarrant... Sanders (who refuses to take corporate PAC money, also known as BRIBES) gets lots of relatively small, individual donations." Rich Tarrant has gotten far fewer donations, but almost all are for the maximum amount permitted. Sander's average donation is under $55; Rich Tarrant's average-- not counting his own massive donation; he claims he is willing to spend $5 million of his own to get the seat-- is $1,890.

WE GOT TO HELP TOM AND JACK AND BILL AND SCOOTER AND KARL AND EVERYBODY, KIDS !

FROM THE DESK OF PHILBERT SUGGS


TO: BLOGGER TEAM MEMBERS at (I'm) DOWN WITH TYRANNY
MICHAEL MACK, Chairman, Young Republican National Federation
Eric Hoplin, Chairman, College Republican National Committee
Paul Gourley, Chairman (Incoming), College Republican National Committee
Nathan Taylor, Young Republican National Convention

FROM: CAMPAIGN: ACT NOW-- NO TIME FOR DELAY
(rasing funds to help delay he pain and dangers of prison sex for the GOP)

Dear Sirs,

My name is Philbert Suggs and along with my fellow patriotic Christian outdoorsmen enthusiasts, Mike Hawk and Jesse (GOP) Jones we reach out to you young warriors today to help our brothers in peril.

The three of us are all warriors for Christ, Bush, Rove, Cheney and The NRA. We are all right-wing anti tax paying soldiers for the GOP and our beliefs ultimately keep us from caring or siding with the troubled and the downtrodden folks in our society. Yet, we are reaching out to all the young conservatives this week to plan a campaign for our fallen heros. We are teaming up with the a fantastic young pro Tyranny group called "Down With Tyranny." They are a wonderful group of pro Patriot act and pro Torture/Ashcroft/Gonzalez men.

As you all know the slang word or term "Down" means you actually are "pro" or "With" something. Sometimes a youngster will say they are "down" with what we do at the landfill I work at and I always thought they were against me because I was moving garbage around and I smelled like trash but I have now been informed we are recycling and that is "good" with the kids. They are also down with OPP as well. The Oppressive Patriot Police, which as you know is that group of vigilantes who patrol the borders of Kansas to keep the brown people who are fleeing from Operation Katrina.

Speaking of kids, it is an extremely painful time for all of us in the beaten down GOP this week yet we all know that for all of you young conservative kids it must seem like a real living quagmire of Hell. Heck, I mean you young Republicans being under so much pressure everyday to enlist in the military and go and fight in this war you've all voted for and supported so bravely but can't go fight because of all the fine work you do here with funding Anne Coulter speeches or organizing conventions for your respective groups in Las Vegas. GREAT JOB, NATHAN!

I saw the video clips from both of the Young and College Republican conventions (military age people) this past summer and I've never seen so much whooping, cheering and support for an issue like
all of you seem to have had for this war in Iraq. It really must be a brutal situation for all of you when you are confronted by skinny liberals about enlisting.

The "Sign Up or Shut Up" campaign being waged against you young conservatives right now is obviously taking its toll on you. That must be why there were so many beer cans on the floor at both conventions you held this year. After me and my buddies kill dozens of critters on hunting trips we drink a lot to dull the shame we all feel for being such cowards.

I gather that drinking helps all of your dedicated members mask the pain they feel from being called hypocrites all the time by the families and friends of those not so privileged as you young Republicans. These traitors like the Islamic woman Cindy Shehan or that awful Patrick Tillman's mother and father who watch their sons, daughters, brothers, sisters, etc., go to fight and die in our Leader's glorious war make life difficult for not just you but all of us caught in the web of this war. Now I know why they say "War is Hell."

Mike, Jesse and I are all apart of the Iraq War Glorifiers Committee and we do our share by helping organize hunting trips and weekend getaways to do our patriotic duty to kill some...thing and wear our camouflage fatigue gear in support of the troops.

Our Republican Party is facing a criminal crisis that's putting a real harsh (as the kids like to say) on this administration. The physical victory of Katrina has turned into a propaganda loss for our Leader Bush. Even though he has hired the Godly Rove to rebuild Katrina it may still be too late to regain our momentum back and win one more for Jesus.

It seems now more than ever before since Nixon and Bob Barr maybe, that our main leaders, our great fundraisers and now even your own fundraisers, and all the communicators are being sent to or are just about on their way to being sent to be imprisoned.

Just in the last month or so ago, it was our spokesperson at the New York Times, Judith Miller who was imprisoned. And now in these fearful days ahead, it will be Karl Rove, Tom Delay, Bill Frist, Rush Limbaugh, Bob Ney, Jack Abramoff, Conrad Burns, Ted Stevens, Bob Taft, Duke Cunningham, Jim West, Doc Hastings, Larry Franklin, Richard Pombo, Scooter Libby, Dr Hagar, Ralph Reed and a host of other top conservatives who will most likely will be spending time in the big house. Maybe even Under-Leader Dick Cheney, God Forbid!

So the three of us along with the great patriotic bloggers at DOWN-WITH-TYRANNY want to do something that can help ease the pain for all of our fine leaders when they discover themselves behind bars in the upcoming months.

All of you young Republican types have done such a fine job in sending lip balm for instance to the poor, miserable, chapped and dried lipped troops in Iraq. However, I'm really writing to all of you to ask you to help us raise the much needed money.
We want you to help us organize a fundraising campaign for cartons of cigarettes and condoms,.... yes...condoms.
I know many of our fine conservative men for Bush mentioned above have fought long and hard (no pun intended) against the use of condoms in society and have preached abstinence day in and day out almost obsessively. However, and let me warn you now: our leaders will not be able to preach or enforce the A-word to the inmates in cell block D at Leavenworth Federal Prison, I can tell you that much.
So a few cartons of Marlboro lights could for instance help majority leader Tom Delay bribe the prison's biggest and meanest inmates so that he can be protected from the prison's biggest and meanest inmates. Yes, I know that Tom is usually on the receiving end (no pun intended again) of such bribes but he at least has that type of business experience and it may help if in the end...(no pun again).
Armed with a few cases of Camel's Rush Limbaugh will be able to spend his time lounging near the prison pharmacy free of worry rather than cowardly hiding from prison gang members who want to extort money in exchange for his many many many prescriptions.
And I really don't want to have explain to all of you good men the importance of a massive supply of condoms while being imprisoned in a Federal Institution. Of course Karl will be able to explain in colorful detail to the other imprisoned leaders of our party the concept of being a top or a bottom. He can even maybe do that infamous slide show presentation about his special visits with Talon news director Jeff Gannon.
If we can provide Bill Frist with whatever he needs to set up cameras in certain places, like hospices and animal shelters he can still do his godly diagnosing of victims while in solitary confinement.
Its a sad time for our party, our people, our war, and our Leader and we all must help raise these funds for those basic supplies. Who knows; maybe we can raise enough money to buy extra supplies for the next batch of GOP leaders heading to the big house.
Please visit our campaign immediately via DownwithTyranny.blogspot.com/ and we can brainstorm and start organizing for this most serious fundraising cause now.

Look forward To Working with you...

Yours In Tyranny,

Philbert Suggs
Mike Hawk
Jesse Jones

8 INDICTMENTS PREPARED; 10 MORE LIKELY; CHENEY IN PLEA-BARGAIN NEGOTIATIONS AFTER POWELL RATS HIM OUT !

I got this letter from a very well-connected NY source who has never steered me wrong before. He got it from an advisor/consultant to international corporations. We'll see how true it is in the next few days!

"Below, some extremely sensitive information about the impending
conclusion of the Valerie Plame investigations. The sources include two
senior members of the Senate and key staffers; counsel for individuals that
have been called before the grand jury; and two journalists taking a
lead position in investigating the case. the following represents a
composite of the information from those sources.

Plamegate coming to conclusion. The investigation has focused mostly
closely on Vice President Cheney and his staff, as well as U.S.
Ambassador to the UN (and former Undersecretary of State for Arms Control) John
Bolton and his staff. We are told that eight indictments have already
prepared, with the possibility of another ten. These indictments include
senior white house staff, most notably Vice President Cheney's chief of
staff Scooter Libby, Fred Flights (Special Assistant to John Bolton),
and--very surprisingly--National Security Adviser Steve Hadley.
Apparently, Libby and Hadley have both been told by their lawyers to
expect indictments. The indictment of senior Bush political advisor
Karl Rove seems highly probable.

Most critically, a plea bargain process has evidently been opened with
Vice President Cheney's lawyer. That does not mean that an indictment
is coming. But I've some critical background around the issue.

In the past several days, former Secretary of State Colin Powell had a
meeting with Senator John McCain (R-AZ), primarily about the
McCain-sponsored amendment on inserting a rider prohibiting torture onto
the U.S. defense budget (a bill which Powell has himself been lobbying
heavily for, against objections of President Bush).

During the meeting, Powell recounted to the senator that he had
traveled on Air Force One with Bush and Cheney, and brought to their attention a
classified memorandum about the issue of whether there was indeed a
transaction inolving Niger and yellow cake uranium. The document
included Ambassador Joe Wilson's involvement and identified his wife,
Valerie Plame, as a covert agent. The memorandum further stated that
this information was secret. Powell told McCain that he showed that
memo only to two people--President and Vice President. according to Powell,
Cheney fixated on the Wilson/Plame connection, and Plame's status.

Powell testified about this exchange in great length to the grand jury
investigating the Plame case. According to sources close to the case,
Powell appeared convinced that the vice president played a focal role
in disclosing Plame's undercover status.

In his conversation with McCain, Powell felt that--at a minimum--there
would be a serious shakeup at National Security Council as a
consequence. In particular, Vice President Cheney would no longer hold
a pivotal role in U.S. national security affairs. Powell apparently did not
discuss the potential of a Cheney resignation.

Lead Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has apparently been looking at the
precedent of formerly indicted Nixon Vice President Spiro Agnew. This
shows the likely path, because addressing executive immunity and
privilege questions would necessarily begin start with a plea-bargain
deal that would entail a resignation.

This is all likely to occur within the next week. 28 october (next
Friday) is the last day of the Grand Jury, and no requests have been
made to extend their session. Ihe investigator is expecting to wrap up
by then.

There are enormous implications for what would be the biggest White
House shakeup since the Iran-Contra Scandal in the Reagan era. President
Bush's approval rating at 39% has already led to a significant decrease
in policy efficacy with key legislators in Congress (which I've already
discussed at length elsewhere). I'll spin out the broader policy
implications when i have some time to write at greater length, but i
wanted to get this out immediately.

One interesting point though--it is worth noting that a parade of
senior Republican senators have evidently been privately pushing McCain to
lobby to be Cheney's replacement. Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) has
also been mentioned. meanwhile, the white house has already been developing
countermeasures--notably including senior White House officials
privately voicing President Bush's disappointment in Karl Rove's
involvement in the case, calling it 'misconduct.' An urgent search for
a Rove replacement is already underway."

UPDATE!

An observant reader just pointed out a major problem with the report: Bush and Cheney never fly on the same plane. I'm not as convinced now as I was when I posted this. We'll see what happens next week.


UPDATE! UPDATE! UPDATE!

When my pal, "the impeccable source," sent me the above I was so excited-- excited the way any patriotic American would be, at the prospect of an early demise to the proto-fascist regime, and excited because I thought, "WOW! I have a scoop!" Well, it sure drove traffic to this site. But am I ever embarrassed! And I want to apologize to all my readers. This thing has been circulating for a few days and it appears to be made up. Some of it may turn out to be true but the above is just rumor-mongering and I am so sorry to have been a part of it. And thanks to the readers who pointed out the inconsistencies and fallacies. I'll be more careful from now on.

graphics thanks to 2PoliticalJunkies (via Jane Hamsher)

ALMOST-NO-BUSH-BASHIN' ENTERTAINMENT

Yesterday I got a very endearing letter from a young person. Spell-corrected, it read something like "Hey dude, what music do you listen to when you write this stuff? I need to get some so I can write some of this wild stuff." Well, I'm glad you want to write-- and let me remind you that we all use spell-check-- and I am glad you asked. Unfortunately most of what I've been listening to this week isn't commercially available yet-- 3 awesome future releases by L.A.-based bands, Building A Better Space Ship, Plastic Letters, and Sparks. You can hear the German vinyl-released album by Plastic Letters on their My Space page, and you can hear some rough recordings by Building A Better Space Ship here. The new album from Sparks, HELLO, YOUNG LOVERS, isn't due out til February; worth waiting for! Other than those, the more easily accessible music I listened to most this week lend themselves to a "DWT Top 10 of the Week." Numero Uno is a song that-- at least in my fertile mind-- is about Jesus coming back to earth and trying to make stuff work right this time. It's "Krafty" (Morel's Pink Noise Vocal Mix) by New Order. Right now it just makes me cry; hopefully stigmata won't follow. Going back to my iTunes I see exactly how many times I listened to everything this week while I was working on my computer.
2- "Pounding" by Doves
3- "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" by Green Day
4-"April Skies" by Jesus and Mary Chain
5- "Opus Dei" by Laibach (maybe that's why I write about Santorum so much!)
6- "Jerusalem" by Steve Earle
7- "She's A Jar" by Wilco
8- "Bird on a Wire" by k.d. lang
9- "Catch the Wild" by Donovan
10- "No W" by Ministry

I saw CAPOTE yesterday. There's a good movie I'd recommend; amazing acting!

BUSHCO PREPARING TO MAKE MIERS NOMINATION DISAPPEAR, SAVING JOHN CORNYN FROM THE ROMAN HRUSKA ROLE IN CURRENT FARCE

One of the Bush Regime's unofficial media mouthpieces, THE WASHINGTON TIMES (aka- The Moonie Times, because it is owned by right-wing money launderer/tax crook/religionist loon Sun Myung Moon) is reporting that BushCo is looking for a graceful way out of their Harriet Miers' conundrum. The imbecile who nominated her on a whim (aka- "Mr Stay the Course," because of his ill-informed and arrogant "mean drunk" personality), is terrified that certain defeat by the Republican-controlled Senate will unmask him as the Emperor With No Clothes (and, more importantly, as the Schlemiel With No Capital).

According to the 2 Moonies who wrote "Insiders See Hint of Miers Pullout", BushCo operatives are making "contingency plans for the withdrawal" not of American troops in Iraq but of Harriet Miers absurd nomination to the Supreme Court. The 2 Moonie propaganda cyphers quote a senior BushCo operative as saying "We're not discussing pulling out her nomination, but if we were to, do you have any advice as to how we should do it?" Although BushCo hasn't asked Ralph Neas or Ted Kennedy, they have been calling every right-wing psychopath in their phone book for advice of how to get out of this without Bush looking like a failed, incompetent idiot.

Of course official BushCo spokespersons deny this-- they deny everything always; that's their job-- one "conservative political consultant" pointed to Sara Taylor, director of the Office of White House Political Affairs, as the advice asker, and a second right-winger-- the leader of an influential special interest group of religionist loons with strong BushCo ties-- confirmed that calls are being made to a select group of right-wing power-mongers who are not directly employed by BushCo. "The political people in the White House are very worried about how she will do in the hearings," the second conservative leader said. "I think they have finally awakened."

After Miers' disastrous meetings with individual Judiciary Committee members, all of whom reported that basically they had finally come across someone working in DC who understood less about the U.S. Constitution than George W. Bush, all further meetings between Miers and non-White House staffers would be canceled "for now." According to the 2 Moonies "Republican lawyers on the committee staff have said Miss Miers' meetings with senators have gone poorly. That's why, they say, the White House has shifted its strategy from the private meetings to 'boning up' for the hearings." BushCo operatives were stung when GOP Committee Chairman Arlen Specter (R-PA) said Miss Miers needs a "crash course" in constitutional law. Other senators also suggested she take a crash course in writing. The only senator who seems to believe she's qualified is himself widely thought to be patently unqualified to hold any public office, Texas right-wing loon, John Cornyn, a bumbling laughing-stock, destined to play the role of Roman Hruska should BushCo decide to play this farce out in public.

There are reports that several Supreme Court justices were laughing so uncontrollably when Cornyn's moronic remarks about Miers--"When you take a look at Harriet Miers' career, what you see is a lawyer who has a breadth of legal experience unmatched by any justice currently sitting on the Supreme Court"-- started getting around Washington, that people worried about heart attacks. Right-wing observers of the total confusion at the White House attribute the disaster to Rove's attention being on other more pressing matters (ie- staying out of prison for treason) and on an ill-fated attempt by Andrew Card and George W Bush to try to handle Rove's former role (of running the United States).

TWO VERY DIFFERENT VIEWS OF RAHM EMANUEL, HEAD OF THE DCCC

If you've been reading this blog much you probably know that I've leveled some harsh criticism towards the DCCC and it's leader, Illinois Democrat Rahm Emanuel. This week ROLLING STONE has an incredibly laudatory piece on Emanuel and his point of view on how Democrats can wrest control of the House from the Forces of Darkness. Good story. And David Sirota has an even more powerful counter punch.

Somehow if the Republicans are going to be routed in next year's Midterms, allowing for a serious investigation into the Bush Regime crimes-- not to mention a chance of starting the long, hard process of cleaning up the catastrophic mess BushCo has created-- there is going to have to be some kind of truce between genuine idealists and progressives on the one hand and the career-oriented Establishment Democratic Party hacks on the other.

Does that mean holding your nose and voting for a reactionary prig like Lieberman? That's pushing it too far for me and I'm done with that much compromise. But what about something more reasonable-- and less easy to define-- like the primary battle between Congressman Sherrod Brown and Col. Paul Hackett for the U.S. Senate seat in Ohio? The Democratic Establishment recruited Brown once it looked like Republican DeWine was vulnerable (in a state where GOP corruption is so endemic that if Tom DeLay is driven out of Texas, he could start a new life in the Buckeye State). When Brown, a proven progressive with a great record of leadership, announced he wouldn't run, Hackett jumped in. Hackett was a uber-hero of the Democratic "netroots" for taking on a Republicrook hack in an overwhelmingly Republican district and nearly winning. But is he a progressive? Well... compared to a Republican, sure. Compared to Sherrod Brown? Questionable. And who would be most electable, the exciting new face of Hackett or the tried and true Brown? I wrote a check for Hackett when he ran for Congress. If he wins the Democratic Senate primary I'll write him another one-- happily. If Brown wins, I'll be happy to send him a contribution. Either way, the Democratic Party will have a good man to face DeWine a year from now.

SENATE SEAT OPENING UP IN MISSISSIPPI ?

Back on September 29, after being tipped off by my friend Willard, I posted a short piece called COULD MISSISSIPPI GO A LITTLE BLUE? Basically it's about how Mississippi could be the big sleeper race in 2006, a contest no one was expecting. Well, rumblings of expectation have begun.

Trent Lott, who has been speaking openly about retirement, only raised the kind of automatic chump change (around $27,000) in the just-ended fiscal quarter that comes in to a campaign that isn't campaigning. ROLL CALL already reported that Lott has been musing about retiring for personal financial reasons. Lobbying pays a whole lot better than senatoring (unless you play by Frist-rules; but then you can get caught and go to jail) and Lott claims all his money was tied up in the house that was destroyed by Katrina. (That sounds like a stretch and I don't believe that he wasn't covered by the kind of insurance company that isn't going to take good care of the senior senator from Mississippi. I mean Trent Lott's not gonna get treated like a... constituent of his.)

His musings: “I am going to wind up taking a pretty good financial hit from this, anyway you cut it. That was frankly, most of my life savings. It was the first thing I ever had in my life that was paid off. On a personal basis, it is probably time for me to go... On a constituent and professional basis, maybe I shouldn’t. I don’t know.”

He could be trying to blackmail desperate GOP leaders, hysterical about the prospect of losing their (Bush-impeachmnet-proof) Senate majority (and their cushy/prestigious leadership status). Coburn may not care about losing the Senate leadership for a cycle but BushCo is frantic. What does Lott want to stay put?: back into the leadership. When Frist retires from the Senate (either to run for president or go to prison for insider trading, etc-- or both), Mitch McConnell will take over Lott's old job as party leader. But there are 5 other leadership posts that could interest Lott. And with Santorum unlikely to be returning to Washington after the elections, Lott seems to be offering to stay in the Senate, keeping Mississippi off the electoral table, in return for a position. It probably won't work. This seat could be very much in play.

DELAY DEMANDS TO BE TRIED BY A REACTIONARY REPUBLICAN JUDGE

Have you ever been arrested? My first arrest-- and my most glorious-- was at a draft card burning demonstration in NYC when I was a college student. I wound up in a cell with The Fugs, Allen Ginsberg, Dr. Spock and all kinds of cool patriotic people. But they didn't negotiate with me about my mug shot and they didn't allow me to pick my own judge. And you don't want to KNOW what it was like north of Mazar-i-Sharif when I was arrested in Afghanistan with 50 kilos of local produce! Luckily it was a pre-Taliban era where just a very little grease went a very long way-- and a relative of the king's was a pal, well a kind of business partner, of your intrepid blogger. Anyway, after a brief visit to the local death camp-- I mean prison-- they did let me go (with my produce) but they never did let me chose my own judge.

Former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay, who still hasn't be charged as a conspirator in the murder of his and Jack Abramoff's former business "associate," Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis, is demanding a new judge in his money laundering and conspiracy cases. After being fingerprinted and all that, DeLay was due to be arraigned today. But his trial attorney, Dick DeGuerin, asked the judge to recuse himself. (In Texas judges are elected in partisan elections. You get either a Democrat or a Republican judge. DeLay wants a Republican, the more partisan the better, from his perspective.) According to the Associated Press, "In a courtroom session that ran less than 10 minutes, DeGuerin noted that Perkins had donated money to MoveOn.org, a liberal organization that he said has been selling T-shirts bearing the image of DeLay's mug shot." Judge Perkins wasn't wearing the t-shirt, hadn't bought one; wasn't even aware they existed. He thinks he made a donation to MoveOn.org a couple years ago, as have many thousands of Americans concerned with the way DeLay and the Republicans have been ruining America. Proceedings in DeLay's case are now on hold.



MORE-LIES-FROM-DELAY-UPDATE

This is gonna be a long and painful case. The Little Bug Man ain't going down with no grace nor dignity! And, like client, like lawyer. Upon checking the MoveOn.org site, one notices an unfortunate dearth of DeLay mug-shot t-shirts (I thought they would be good prizes in a high school civics class). Now it turns out, that although the mass media is parroting DeGuerin's lie like it came straight from the Bible, he had made the charge up! "I noticed yesterday Moveon.org, to which you have contributed, was selling T-shirts with Mr. Delay’s mugshot on it to raise money," were DeGuerin's exact words. MoveOn.org doesn't sell them and hasn't sold them-- ever. One thing you can always be sure of-- call a Republican on their crimes and get slimed and slandered. I hope Judge Perkins isn't a woos about this and takes DeGuerin to task for lying in the courtroom.

BETTER THAN A MORNING CUP OF COFFEE

GOOD MORNING! If you want to start your day with a chuckle go here. Thanks Zepp!

THANK GOODNESS THE VOICE IN HIS HEAD NEVER TOLD GEORGE BUSH TO DROWN BARBARA AND JENNA

I was really horrified when I woke up this morning and heard about that poor woman who drowned her 3 children in the San Francisco Bay. Lashaun Harris, 23, who had been living with her children in a Salvation Army Shelter in Oakland, has no prior criminal record and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia earlier this year. She said a voice in her head had told her to throw her children into the Bay. Tonight she's in prison.

That was the news this morning-- that plus Bush having a joint press conference with Abu Mazen, Prime Minister of Palestine. Abu Mazen... oh yeah, I wrote about him on October 6. It was about a BBC story on how Bush told Abu Mazen and Palestinian Foreign Minister Nabil Shaath that he hears voices in his head directing him too. In fact here's what Shaath told the BBC: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, "George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan." And I did, and then God would tell me, "George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq …" And I did. And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, "Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East." And by God I'm gonna do it.'"

After the BBC ran the story Bush said he never said this and, in effect, called the foreign minister a liar. Abu Mazen, diplomatically, kept quiet, more or less.

I don't know if Bush has been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. I know I feel tremendous sadness for Lashaun T. Harris and very different emotions for George W. Bush, although both claim their violent crimes were committed because they were hearing voices in their heads telling them what to do. One is in prison and the other probably never will see the inside of a prison (unless he doesn't pardon Rove and that crew and decides to visit them). That reminds me of something else I've been meaning to talk about today... also inspired by my 10 minutes of daily CNN dosage.

Some fools on there were babbling airheadedly about Saddam Hussein's trial and what a great impact it was making in the Middle East. Sounding like it came directly from a White House press release, the CNN idiots were going on and on how "in the Middle East former presidents never stand trial." I suppose that was supposed to invoke wonder and joy in the listeners prompting them to think: "Wow, we are so democratic; we are causing the mighty and powerful and corrupt to be tried by the people. How wonderful we are for these Middle Easterners. Soon they'll be just like America!" Where corrupt lawbreaking presidents always go to trial?

REPUBLICANS VOTE TO KILL MINIMUM WAGE BILL. OLYMPIA SNOWE SHOULD READ BARBARA EHRENREICH'S BOOK

My friend "H" tends to be pretty well-grounded. Her dad was an intellectual old-line NY commie and he instilled all the best values in her. Obviously she's about as pleased with the Bush Regime as is anyone with more than a 2-digit IQ. But I rarely she her veering towards hysteria. She was veering big time when it was looking like a formal draft might be instituted a year or so ago; she has two boys in college. In the last week or so "H" has started veering a little again. This time I think it would take her dear departed dad to talk some sense into her. She's a huge Tom Paine fan but the Mansion Subsidy story there about abolishing the home mortgage deduction just infuriated her. "How dare they pick on home owners?? I suspect the statistics are slanted or downright wrong, also," she wrote to me. "No mention of housing prices and the amount people now have to borrow to buy a home." I calmed her down, at least operationally, by assuring her that 1- the real estate and banking industries OWN both political parties and that it would be instant suicide for any elected official to advocate abolishing the income tax deduction for mortgages; 2- even poor people who rent want to be (and expect to be) rich enough one day to make use of this middle class tax deduction.

There's a lot more for "H" and the rest of us to worry about in terms of our governing class. They may screw the middle class now and then, but only subtly-- and never at the expensive of their wealthy corporate campaign contributors. On the home mortgage deduction Democrats and Republicans are united. On most other issues they aren't (not counting DLC Democrats who are, in many cases, Republicans in disguise anyway). But this week Congress too action on some legislation that clearly divided the two parties: Ted Kennedy's modest bill to increase the minimum wage.

Historically the political Right has always been violently against the very concept of a minimum wage, let alone increasing it. Republicans routinely vote NO on every minimum wage legislation ever introduced (except to abolish it). Yesterday when the bill to increase the minimum wage from $5.15 to $6.25 came to the floor of the U.S. Senate, it was defeated 51-47 (having needed 60 to pass). All the Democrats present (42) voted yes, as did Independent Jim Jeffords of Vermont. All the Republicans voted against it with the exception of 4 Republicans [3 in tight re-election battles-- Chafee (RI), DeWine (OH), and the normally viciously anti-workingman Santorum (PA)]-- + a moderately pro-labor Republican who doesn't care about GOP-political correctness any long for personal reasons, Specter, (PA).

Kennedy said Hurricane Katrina showed the whole country-- the whole world-- the depth of poverty in the country and he pointed out that a single parent with 2 children working a minimum wage earns $10,700 a year, $4,500 below the poverty line. NICKEL & DIMED, Barbara Ehrenreich's brilliant book on Americans trying to make do on minimum wage jobs, should be required reading for all these wealthy senators. Kennedy didn't say that; I did. He said it was "absolutely unconscionable" that in the same period that Congress has denied a minimum wage increase, lawmakers have voted themselves seven pay raises worth $28,000. Meanwhile, the fascists, falling back on the hideous old canard they always trot out on such occasions, despite the fact that it has been proven false for generations, said higher minimum wages work against the poor by forcing small businesses to cut payrolls or go out of business. They never change their patently false arguments because their financial contributors, corporations and wealthy special interests love to hear it.

Patriots who believe in American values and ideals should think twice when they have to vote in 2006 for incumbents who opposed the increase-- George Allen (R-VA), Conrad Burns (Crook-MT), John Ensign (R-NV), Jon Kyl (R-AZ), Trent Lott (KKK-MS), Olympia Snowe (Fake Moderate- ME), and Jim Talent (R-MO).


SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE!

I've been looking for the polling data on this and I finally found it this morning. Last May the Pew Research Center asked whether or not people thought the minimum wage needs to be raised. 86% of Americans felt that the minimum wage needs to be raised. 86%! That's a bigger percentage than the one by which George W Bush won even the most backward and benighted states of the Old Confederacy or even Utah! Yet the Republicans are arrogant enough to think they can kill a modest, gradual increase in the minimum wage with impunity and with no consequences. If you live, for example, in Maine or Nevada or Missouri, please remember you have a bold-faced liar and fraud as a senator up for re-election in 2006. It's time to make these bastards understand what losing a job really means!

FORGET GUESSING WHO'S BEING INDICTED; GUCKERT/GANNON IS WRITING A BOOK ABOUT WHO HE SLEPT WITH IN THE WHITE HOUSE !

Having a memory the stretches back further-- at least at times-- than the last election cycle, I can say with a sense of dignity that I have never once turned on Fox "News." I remember when Gingrich cut the deal for the damn fascistic foreigner to be allowed in here and allowed to own our mass media. When Clinton went along, it was the first time I realized he was more one of them than one of us (and not the last). Nor can I stomach CNN. Although he's more often than not wrong about any given subject, "A" (the Fox-addict and O'Liely devotee) is correct when he points out that CNN is so light that you're more likely to see a cookie recipe segment than a hard news segment at any given time. And when you do see hard news, its just as likely to be some Fox-lite corporatist propaganda nonsense than anything worth watching. Nevertheless, when I wake up in the morning, before going for a swim, I turn on CNN-- basically just to see if God/Mother Nature took any revenge on us for allowing Bush to make himself our leader. And that's how I came to become aware of Gannon/Guckert. I was about to jump out of bed and start my routine when on came a Bush press conference. I'm not a lookie-loo driver but I've heard about Bush press conferences and I figured I could give this live car crash a few seconds.

I don't remember Guckert/Gannon's question exactly. It was something to the effect of "Oh, Exalted Leader, how can someone as great and pure as yourself put up with the carping and whining of all those traitorous Democrats in the Senate." I did a double take. I said to myself, "Self, am I awake? Did that really just happen? Is this CNN or Comedy Central? This must be a replay from John Stewart's show."

But, alas, it was the about to be exposed lover of Scotty Mc-whatever-his-name-is, Bush's hapless, closeted press secretary, someone who was immediately thrust onto the national stage. Jeff Gannon/Guckert, a make believe journalist and male prostitute specializing in... watersports went from a right wing attack poodle to a late night TV punch line for a week. Democrats being too decent a lot for their-- let alone OUR-- own good, no one followed up on exactly why he was always in the White House, let alone sleeping over! So today Washington took a moment out from the Cheney/Libby/Rove/Hadley/Hannah/Wormy/DeLay/Pombo/Abramoff/Ney death watch for a collective chuckle about Guckert/Gannon's announcement that he was writing a book. Then they saw the veiled threat ("I'm sure there are people who had hoped I'd never write about this") and the titters weren't quite so hearty. Forget about stains on a blue dress, does Guckert/Gannon have soiled rubber sheets? Rove DNA? McClellan (that's his name!) DNA? He says he's working on "the content right now." Let's hope it comes out-- no pun intended-- in time for the midterm elections! I wonder if there's a publisher?

WING-NUTS ON THE WARPATH-- AGAINST GROVER NORQUIST

Thank you, thank you, thank you to Nico at THINK PROGRESS for allowing me to go to sleep tonight in a major happy, happy, schadenfreude delirium. The Far Right is fracturing along a non-Miers faultline-- the San Andreas of neo-fascist politics!

The execrable Grover ("drown government in a bathtub") Norquist has worked harder than anyone since Nixon and Lee Atwater to stitch together the uneasy coalition between the Greed and Selfishness (corporatist/traditional) wing of the Republican Party and the Hatred and Bigotry (Know Nothing/religionist) wing. Although their goals were never identical each wing has been able to do a little give-and-take to achieve it's ends, although the Greed and Selfishness guys got most of what they wanted and the Hatred and Bigotry guys mostly got laughed at... plus some crumbs. Well, speaking of crumbs, tonight the whole stinkin' edifice is crumbling!

Extreme right-wingers are going out of their collective minds today because ole Grover (who earlier admitted getting mixed up with Abramoff and Reed and DeLay in their scheme to defraud American Indian tribes based not on greed but because, as a libertarian, he has no problem with casinos and gambling) was the headliner at a fund-raising event for the Log Cabin Republicans. Gambling and ripping off Injuns they can live with but treating homos like human beings-- NEVER! Cathie Adams, president of the neo-Nazi hate group, Texas Eagle Forum, called Norquist's appearance "an act of utter betrayal." The viciously hate-obsessed Adams called Norquist's presence at the fund-raiser "traitorous. If he was a serious economic conservative, Grover Norquist would not have accepted the invitation or the honorarium for speaking at a fund-raiser for a group bent on the destruction of traditional families," she spewed venomously. "It's deceitful to pretend to defend sound economic principles while undermining the very fabric of society," she added in a state of serious delusion.

Noting that Norquist's organization Americans For Tax Reform demands that politicians "take the pledge" not to raise taxes, the wing-nuts are demanding that the loon community (what they call "social conservatives" or "value conservative") withhold their future support until Norquist "takes the pledge to no longer give aid and comfort to homosexual activist groups intent on undermining traditional marriage and the family." And it isn't just Adams and the fringe maniacs in Texas. Homophobic maniacs (most of the 38% of people who still support Bush) are crawling out from under every rock in every backward corner of America to pile on. Gary Glenn is the leader of rightist hate group in Michigan calling itself the American Family Association. He was livid and having a major tizzy fit when he found out Norquist was rubbing elbows with the homos, claiming it was an "act of utter betrayal of the Reagan coalition of social and fiscal conservatives." And Glenn recalls that this isn't the first time that Norquist has betrayed the gay-bashers. "Norquist," he says "said some potential Republican voters might be turned off by raising the issue (the anti-gay marriage amendment) to a constitutional level, just as they were by too much talk of guns or abortions." The NY TIMES quoted Norquist as saying: "Obsessions turn people off," a major slap in the face to people whose entire lives are based around obsessive fears and hatreds.

And they're all armed (and insane).

UPDATE: A SECOND DOUBLE TRAITOR IN CHENEY'S OFFICE !

The two intrepid RAW STORY investigative journalists who brought us news of the treacherous John Hannah barely 24 hours ago, are reporting today that he isn't the only cornered rat spilling the beans on Cheney's conspiracy to lie to the American people and trick the constitutional government into ok-ing his and the neo-Cons' dream of eliminating Saddam and occupying Iraq. Today Jason Leopold and Larisa Alexandrovna report that Cheney's traitor-ridden office has produced another snitch willing to turn state's evidence on Cheney for a lenient deal: David Wurmser. According to their RAW STORY report Wurmser is providing Fitzgerald evidence that the illegal CIA leak of Valerie Plame's name was a coordinated effort by Cheney’s office to discredit the agent's husband (forthright and courageous Bush critic Ambassador Joe Wilson).

Wurmer is Cheney's Middle East advisor, having come over from Bolton's nest of conspirators when he was Under Secretary of State for Arms Control. Wurmser admits to having taken part in the long-rumored WHIG plot (White House Iraq Group), a shadowy, secretive cabal of Bush Regime extremist war-mongers who would stop at NOTHING to get the U.S. to attack Iraq who were in cahoots with the extremist Likkud Party in Israel. Wurmser has evidence that Cheney was present at these meetings, tantamount to treason. The RAW STORY report makes Wurmser sound like a real worm-- "Wurmser’s cooperation with Fitzgerald would certainly come as no surprise to those who have been following his career. Last year, he was questioned by the Federal Bureau of Investigation for his possible role in leaking U.S. security secrets to Israel.
According to a 2004 story in the Washington Post, the FBI interviewed officials in Cheney’s office and the Pentagon, including Hannah and Wurmser, former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, to determine if they were involved in leaking U.S. security secrets to Israel, the former head of the Iraqi National Congress Ahmed Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)."

A more vile gaggle of traitors and criminals has never been so embedded in the heart of the American government! "Wurmser was the lead author of a 1996 policy paper for then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu titled 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm.' It called for removing Saddam from power in Iraq as part of a broad strategy to transform the region and remove radical regimes. Eight months before 9/11, Wurmser called for joint U.S.-Israeli air strikes on Iraq, Iran, Syria and Libya." I wonder if you have to work for a corporate mass media mouthpiece like the NEW YORK TIMES to get a Pulitzer or if Alexandrovna and Leopold will be eligible.


EARLY EVENING WHIG UPDATE!

It wasn't that many hours ago that I was recounting how the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS' only purpose was to cover the floors of subways and here I am quoting them twice in one day! They actually have a great story that explains what the treasonous WHIGs were up to, who they were, and how they infiltrated and undermined the NEW YORK TIMES!

In a story today by James Meek and Ken Bazinet, THE NEWS says it has testimony that explains how this little right-wing cabal "morphed into a virtual hit squad that took aim at critics who questioned its claims" and how that led to the mess WHIG members Cheney. Libby, et al are in now. Other WHIP conspirators that I wasn't aware of this morning are Karen Hughes, James Wilkinson, Nicholas Calio, and (lo and behold!), Judith Miller. According to the DAILY NEWS' source, "They were funneling information to Judy Miller. Judy was a charter member."

NY TIMES publishers and editors don't believe in ritual suicide, do they?

NEW WHITE HOUSE SPIN-- BUSH SAID "BAD DOG!" TO HIS BRAIN. (BUT WAS BUSH A CO-CONSPIRATOR ?)

Growing up in Brooklyn, my earliest memories of the NEW YORK DAILY NEWS was its pages blowing around the floors of the subways. People seemed to read the NEW YORK TIMES. The NEWS was just on the floor, with muddy footprints. I haven't seen one in a number of years. But today in Blogostan I notice the NEWS has manufactured some silly story-- or is carrying some silly manufactured story-- purporting to distance the Imbecile-in-Chief from the CIA-outing scandal. According to a story by Thomas DeFrank, the paper's DC bureau chief (They have a bureau? I always thought they just made everyone up in that rag! Ya live and ya learn!), "An angry President Bush rebuked chief political guru Karl Rove two years ago for his role in the Valerie Plame affair, sources told the Daily News. 'He made his displeasure known to Karl,' a presidential counselor told The News. 'He made his life miserable about this.'"

So why didn't Bush fire the law-breaking, treason-committing Rove? THE NEWS has the answer, which sounds strangely like a GOP talking points memo some genius like Grover Norquist would come up with: "Bush has nevertheless remained doggedly loyal to Rove, who friends and even political adversaries acknowledge is the architect of the President's rise from baseball owner to leader of the free world." An anonymous White House leaker told THE NEWS that "Karl is fighting for his life, but anything he did was done to help George W. Bush. The President knows that and appreciates that." Ahhhh... so does that make Bush a co-conspirator?

Maybe. The NEWS story inadvertently seems to indicate Bush was up to his eyes in the shit. "Bush has always known that Rove often talks with reporters anonymously and he generally approved of such contacts, one source said. But the President felt Rove and other members of the White House damage-control team did a clumsy job in their campaign to discredit Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, the ex-diplomat who criticized Bush's claim that Saddam Hussein tried to buy weapons-grade uranium in Niger. A second well-placed source" (so it's more than just Scotty???) "said some recently published reports implying Rove had deceived Bush about his involvement in the Wilson counterattack were incorrect and were leaked by White House aides trying to protect the President. 'Bush did not feel misled so much by Karl and others as believing that they handled it in a ham-handed and bush-league way,' the source said." (No pun intended, I'm sure.)

YOU CAN DO SOMETHING TO STOP SCHWARZENEGGER

An old pal from the early days of the Howard Dean campaign, Suzanne Savage, is working full time trying to stop Governor Gropenator's Prop 75 (the Republican's dream bill to further weaken and marginalize unions). Suzanne asked me to let DWT readers know that they can volunteer to save the Democratic Party at the Alliance for a Better California headquarters in North Hollywood. They run a phonebank every Sunday through Thursday, noon to 9pm. And despite hopes to the contrary, emails, anger and indignation don't get occassional voters to the polls. They need a personal conversation-- quick and friendly-- to get the message across. So they need volunteers to do that.

This is a state campaign with national implications. Prop 75 is a union busting, anti Democratic measure. If it succeeds, it will be on every ballot nationwide within the year, and organized labor will be unable to fund Democratic campaigns. It's what Washington wants, which is why they have a right wing extremist who funded it to be on the ballot, and companies like Wal-Mart funding its ad campaign.

Their address is:
11256 Magnolia Blvd. (between Lankershim and Tujunga)
North Hollywood

Check out their website at Alliance For a Better California.

REVENGE FOR ANTI-GAY MARRIAGE BALLOT MEASURES

Chris Bowers over at My Due Diligence makes a good case that "withdrawal from Iraq" ballot resolutions could be for the Democrats what the divisive Anti-Gay Marriage ballot measures were for the Republicans-- a way to draw die-hards on election day with the hope that as long as they're there for their issue they'll also vote the right way on candidates. Bowers points out the latest Democracy Corps polls showing that antipathy for the war is about as strong as antipathy for gay marriage.

Meanwhile, others have what I think is an even better idea: stem cell ballot measures. Although the fringe loons on the most extreme edge of the KKK/Nazi/GOP coalition oppose this, the VAST majority of Americans, including moderates, independents and even rational conservatives, embrace it. Imagine the predicament of right-wing congressloons and senators who have to take a position! Do they alienate they fringy base of religionist idiots or do they alienate the electorate in general? And one state, promising one of the tightest and most crucial senate races in the country, Missouri, is already moving in this direction. The incumbent, a good for-nothing right wing freshman, with a vague whiff of DeLay/Abramoff corruption about him (Jim Talent) has to face popular State Auditor (and former TOUGH county prosecutor) Claire McCaskill. McCaskill, of course, is an enthusiastic supporter of stem cell research, like all sane Americans. Talent is ducking the issue so intensely that you'd think he could quack.

McCaskill will benefit a couple of ways from this. Obviously it will bring people to the polls, Democrats and independents who support it overwhelmingly, but also non-political types whose grandpa has a debilitating disease who the wing-nuts don't care about. But there's more. How about a bitter, even vicious, battle between the maniacs who think God is on their side vs the Greed and Selfishness wing of the Republican Party who are aware that we're in the 21st century, not the 11th?

Republicans in Missouri are dreading this one and there are few states where this wouldn't help progressives. Even in the bowels of the old Confederacy this issue is a winner and could help tip races in other states where Democrats could use an extra push (Virginia, Nevada, Colorado, Minnesota, Arizona, Tennessee...). Even in a state like Rhode Island, where Chafee supports stem cell research, it will fracture the GOP and piss off far right loons who might boycott the election altogether or just go and then not vote for U.S. Senator. As Cartman would say, "Sweet."

BRUCE BARTLETT WRITES BUSH OUT OF THE CONSERVATIVE MOVEMENT. HE'S FIRED

Bruce Bartlett is an old fashioned conservative, a pillar of the Greed and Selfishness wing of the Republican Party. In the 1970's he worked for Loonietarian Ron Paul (R-TX), Jack Kemp (R-NY) and Roger Jespen (R-IA). He's never been one to keep company with the KKK end of the party or with the now dominant Know-Nothing/snakehandlers wing. In the 80s he was a Senior Fellow at the rightist Heritage Foundation and then a policy functionary in the Reagan White House and at George I's Treasury. He wrote several books trying to justify voodoo economics, including REAGANOMICS: SUPPLY-SIDE ECONOMICS IN ACTION. Now he writes for the Moonie Times and is often touted by clueless wing-nuts as their Krugman.

Lately he has become more and more vocal about how far Bush has strayed from any semblence of actual conservatism and is about to publish a new book savagely taking BushCo apart from a right-wing perspective, THE IMPOSTOR: HOW GEORGE W. BUSH BANKRUPTED AMERICA AND BETRAYED THE REAGAN LEGACY. Monday he was summarily fired as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis after that Bush propaganda operation's president John Goodman saw an advance copy of the book.

Bartlett's columns have shown a distraught and confused conservative growing increasingly disenchanted with BushCo's catastrophic fiscal policies. And he has been articulate and less than flattering in arguing that BushCo is on a madcap federal spending spree, not making government leaner and smaller but bloating it beyond all reason.

Today's column found Bartlett writing Bush out of the conservative movement! Referring to conservatives, Bartlett wrote, "George W. Bush is not one of them and never has been," attacking the BushCo positions on education, campaign finance, immigration, government spending and regulation. Although Bartlett has apparently grown to distrust and even hate the Regime's policies over the last couple of years, today he seems to say that the last straw was Bush's choice "of a patently unqualified crony for a critical position on the Supreme Court." (He didn't mean Roberts.)

SO WHICH RAT SQUEALED ON CHENEY ?

Mark Hannah may soon be replaced as the biggest blackguard named Hannah in U.S. history by someone named John Hannah. Word is all over the internet today that John Hannah, a senior national security aide to Cheney, is the secret witness who has turned state's evidence. Hannah is probably the one who originally leaked Plame's name-- ordered to do so by Cheney-- to get even with Plame's husband, courageous Ambassador Joseph Wilson, for not toein' the party line in regard to the cock'n'bull story the wing-nuts made up about Saddam trying to buy uranium in Niger. Wilson exposed Hannah as one of the culprit in his book, THE POLITICS OF TRUTH, but the mass media was too busy covering that Alabama girl in Aruba at the time. As Larisa Alexandrovna and Jason Leopold point at in RAW STORY today, Wilson wrote that "senior advisers close to the president may well have been clever enough to have used others to do the actual leaking, in order to keep their fingerprints off the crime. John Hannah and David Wurmser, mid-level political appointees in the vice-president’s office, have both been suggested as sources of the leak …Mid-level officials, however, do not leak information without the authority from a higher level,” Wilson added.

Hannah is already under investigation for his possibly treasonous relationship with Iranian puppet/Iraqi bankrobber/neo-Con darling Ahmed Chalabi. Other names being bandied about today as possible indictees by people who claim to have "inside" knowledge, are Dick Cheney, Stephen Hadley, Karl Rove, Lewis Libby, Condoleeza Rice (oops, new VP replacement needed asap), and Mary Matalin. Someone on the radio today said this is virtually the only scandal in DC not tied in to the Abramoff/DeLay machine.

Does all this sound too exciting to be able to even think about anything else. If so, be sure to read Georgia10's "Ten Tips For Dealing With Fitzmas" at KOS today.

RICHARD POMBO-- JUST AS CORRUPT AS DELAY, JUST NOT ARRESTED YET

When I started writing this blog last spring I immediately focused in on the 2 most egregiously corrupt politicians in California, my state, and started writing about them. The lowest hanging fruit of all was Randy "Duke" Cunningham, who specialized in selling intelligence and defense committee assess to wealthy contractors and who would then overpay him-- to the tune of millions of dollars-- for things he sold them (like houses and boats). He also ran a side business of selling presidential pardons for $400,000 to wealthy Republican criminals. (Since he isn't the president and the only person who can grant a pardon hasn't been questioned about this, the pardon part of the Dukester's financial empire awaits unmasking. Meanwhile he has declared that he is leaving Congress, though DeLay's handpicked, uber-corrupt Ethics Committee chairman, a sleazy sack of crap from Yakima, Washington named "Doc" Hastings ("doc" as in "the fixer"), refuses to open an ethics investigation against him. Once Cunningham is actually facing the long prison sentence he so richly deserves, we may hear more about his role in the DeLay crime syndicate and how exactly Bush fit in.

Meanwhile, Cunningham has a close competitor for the "most corrupt pol in California" title: Richard Pombo, another one I've written extensively about. You can comb the DWT archives or check out the nifty Vote Pombo Out web site. Although it hasn't hit the mainstream media yet, Pombo is on the verge of getting outed big time for a series of trips he and his wife and staffers have taken, illegally, paid for by a fake environmental group funded by Monsanto. Expect this to hit the media this week and cause a genuine shit-storm leading to the unraveling of Pombo's filth-encrusted career. (Did I mention he is also one of the most extreme right wing loons ever to represent a district in California, not to mention a moderate district near San Francisco. Calling Rahm... I mean if you want to find someone to derail netroots progressives like Christine Cegelis in Illinois, maybe you could also find a little time to work on fascist Republicrooks in moderate districts that are trending Democrat and that NEED a good candidate?

WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE:

Thanks for Matt from SAY NO TO POMBO for turning us on to the full breaking details of this story at The Center for Public Integrity. Anyone interested in all the ins and outs of this aspect of Pombo's pre-trial case, needs to read this piece.

SCENARIO: SURGING DEMOCRATS MAKE CONDI PRESIDENT-- IN JANUARY 2006 !

Paul Bedard has some interesting speculation in U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT today. I want to take it a step further. Since it now appears that Cheney's role in the Plamegate scandal was that of mastermind and that he well may be indicted (and forced to resign), tongues are wagging all over DC that Bush will name his former tutor and failed National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, to be vice president (...of the United States).

Bedard quotes one delusional Bush insider as saying, "It's certainly an interesting but I still think highly doubtful scenario. And if that should happen there will undoubtedly be those who believe the whole thing was orchestrated-– another brilliant Machiavellian move by the VP." Of course brilliant and miserably failed Mayberry Machiavelli will by then be the hideously disgraced Machiavellian ex-vice president, hoping his presidential pardon covers all crimes, not just this particular one.

One neo-Nazi Senate staffer's first thought was absolute horror, asking "Isn't she pro-choice?" (Presumably this isn't someone who will be supporting Rudy Giuliani or Mitt Romney in his party's primary.) But Bush could make her the first woman VP and the first African-American VP. And if the Democrats win big enough in 2006, they will make her the first woman president and the first African-American president. (Darth Cheney has always been the biggest impediment to even the thought of impeaching Bush!)

SOME CONSERVATIVES STARTING TO REALIZE BUSH FASCISM IS UNCOOL-- WHEN IT'S DIRECTED AT THEM

Everyone knows what the ACLU is and why it is one of the most important and cherished organizations in our country. But many people are as enthusiastic about another non-profit with a similar name, the ACU. This one is not about protecting anyone's civil liberties, but rather about restricting them in favor of corporate dominance. It is the American Conservative Union, a treacherous cabal of far right extremists and plotters headed by David Keene. The ACU can be reliably counted on to be on the wrong side of every important issue facing our nation. Do you want poisonous pollutants pumped, unrestrained and unrestricted, into the air? Send a check to the ACU. Do you want to see minorities' abilities to vote restricted and working men and women kept from collective bargaining with powerful corporations? Write some more checks to the ACU. Do you want to see American jobs shipped off to slave-labor countries where multi-national corporations can claim a PO Box as a "headquarters" so as not to pay a million dollar tax bill and instead just send a $100,000 campaign "donation" to Tom DeLay and his pal Jack Abramoff? ACU is the group for you.

So wasn't I surprised this morning to read Keene bellyaching about the vicious manner in which the fascistic Bush Regime treats the people with whom it disagrees. The ACU, like many conservative organizations, are feeling the wrath of the Bush Regime for their opposition to his latest and most pathetic example of grotesque cronyism: the nomination of the clearly unqualified Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

Keene doesn't expect Bush's stealth candidate to give anything away during the confirmation hearings. He says he doesn't know enough about her-- or think he will find anything more out about her from the secretive Regime he has always supported-- to be able to quell the complete skepticism he feels towards her nomination. Keene points out that the Regime stooges who are trying to get the Far Right behind this nomination are all full of hot air (etc). "The case for Miers is simple," Keene writes. "The president knows her and likes her. She’s a hard worker and a woman who did well as a lawyer in Texas, is devoted to the president and has performed loyally as a White House staffer. Oh, and there is one other thing. Ms. Miers regularly attends church and apparently takes her religion seriously. This, according to White House arm twisters, tells us that she would vote on the court in a way that would please social and religious conservatives."

But the part of Keene's missive that struck me as most familiar-- and caused me some of the schadenfreude Al Franken is always talking about-- is when he complains, bitterly, about the "way the administration has gone about trying to demonize conservatives who have raised questions about Ms. Miers. It began from day one to attack personally the motives, loyalty and judgment of anyone who questioned the wisdom of the nomination. Since then, the ad hominem attacks on Miers’s conservative critics have been unconscionably heavy-handed and will haunt the president regardless of how the nomination fight turns out. Most conservatives have stood with Bush from the beginning. Those of us who know him like him. We’ve swallowed policies we might otherwise have objected to because we’ve believed that he and those around him are themselves conservatives trying to do the right thing against sometimes terrible odds. We’ve been there for him because we’ve considered ourselves part of his team."

"No more," he thunders (or was that a wimper? You can't tell because it was written). "From now on, this administration will find it difficult to muster support on the right without explaining why it should be forthcoming. The days of the blank check have ended because no thinking conservative really wants to be part of a team that requires marching in lock step" (good analogy to their fascist roots, of course) "without question or thought, even if it is headed by the president of the United States."

We'll see. Meanwhile, let any conservatives with a fucking SHRED of a conscience left-- if there are any (which I doubt)-- meditate on how George "I'm a uniter, not a divider" Bush has split our country in two with his lies and with the very mass demonzations of his critics which these conservative lock-steppers have participated in for the last 5 years-- starting with their militant approach to the stealing of the 2000 election in Florida. Stew in it a little, assholes.

DID YOU THINK I HAD FORGOTTEN ABOUT HARRIET ?

Although Fox "News" is undoubtedly the Völkischer Beobachter of this decade, the closest publication to this once-influential official Nazi Party newspaper is THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, and more specifically the infamous WALL STREET JOURNAL Editorial Page. One may think of the WALL STREET JOURNAL as a respectable mainstream, corporate daily with a lot of hard to read stock and bond prices. The Editorial Page in far from mainstream. It is a radically right neo-fascist cabal of dangerous imbeciles pushing a sickening agenda that was already outmoded when Louis XVI met his fate. And few of its writers are further off the cliff in fringe-land than John Fund.

On today's Editorial Page, Fund has a piece called "Did Christian conservatives receive assurances that Miers would oppose Roe v. Wade?" He concludes what is basically a conference call among Far Right politico-religionists with another swipe from the Right at Bush's ill-starred nomination of the hapless Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court. "There are philosophical reasons for Republican senators to oppose Ms. Miers," warns Fund. "In 1987, the liberal onslaught on Robert Bork dramatically changed the confirmation process. The verb to bork" (which Fund defines as "meaning to savage a nominee and distort his record," rather than as "exposing a dangerous fascist ideologue hiding behind an ugly beard," which is what I though the verb means; it isn't in the dictionary), "entered the vocabulary, and many liberals now acknowledge that the anti-Bork campaign had bad consequences. It led to more stealth nominees, with presidents hoping their scant paper trail would shield them from attack," he claims, although I'm not certain which ones he means. Only Miers and Roberts have been actual post-Bork stealth candidates whereas Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer have had records. (Souter, whose conscience and ethics, unfortunately for the extreme right, didn't fit him into the kind of Stepford boxes they expect from judges, didn't turn out the way they and Bush I hoped he would.)

Anyway, Fund goes on to say that the current Bush "has now gone further in internalizing the lessons of the Bork debacle. Harriet Miers is a 'superstealth' nominee--a close friend of the president with no available paper trail who keeps her cards so close to her chest they might as well be plastered on it. If Ms. Miers is confirmed, it will reinforce the popular belief that the Supreme Court is more about political outcomes than the rule of law."

Probably to get Democrats to rally to the Far Right's hope to de-rail the nomination Fund-- as well as other propagandists in the splintered Right Wing Noise Machine-- is doing the best he can to scare progressives about her intentions. The conference call he brings up (Oct 3, the day Bush laid his bomb of a nomination on us), was hosted by neo-fascist fanatic and fake preacher Donald Wildmon of the American Family Association and brought together as dangerous a group of reactionary conspirators as anything since the birth of the Confederacy. Taking part were vicious and crazed wing-nuts like Gary Bauer, the Southern Baptist Convention's Richard Land, Tony Perkins, Paul Weyrich, Karl Rove-confidant James Dobson and other contemptible America-haters.
Fund claims he got his hands on voluminous notes from the call and also spoke to several participants, many of whom are, of course, close friends of his. "According to the notes, two of Ms. Miers's close friends--both sitting judges--said during the call that she would vote to overturn Roe."
The two judges were Nathan Hecht of the Texas Supreme Court and Judge Ed Kinkeade, a Dallas-based federal trial judge, both extremist reactionary ideologues who can always be depended on to rule against ordinary Americans in favor of the wealthy, powerful and privileged and, of course, always in favor of corporate special interests and always against inclusion and social harmony.

Fund reminds his readers that Dobson claims to have received the info he "shouldn't know" from Rove on Sunday, Oct. 2, the day before President Bush publicly announced the nomination, Rove assuring Dobson that Miers is an evangelical, and said that Justice Hecht (Miers' beard or boyfriend, depending who you believe) had helped her join an evangelical church in 1979 and could provide background on her. (Speak about stealth!! Look how that Rovean mind works and twists and turns!) The next day-- much to be embarrassed surprise-- Dobson was asked to introduce Hecht and Kinkeade on the conference call. Fund tells us that "according to the notes of the call, Mr. Dobson introduced them by saying, 'Karl Rove suggested that we talk with these gentlemen because they can confirm specific reasons why Harriet Miers might be a better candidate than some of us think.' What followed, according to the notes, was a free-wheeling discussion about many topics, including same-sex marriage. Justice Hecht said he had never discussed that issue with Ms. Miers. Then an unidentified voice asked the two men, 'Based on your personal knowledge of her, if she had the opportunity, do you believe she would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?'" Kinkeade jumped in first, "Absolutely." "I agree with that," said Justice Hecht. "I concur."

Fund claims the participants of the call considered the 2 judges' comments "an assurance, and at least one based his support for Ms. Miers on them." I wonder how many of these plotting loons are going to get subpoenaed.

Except for my unswerving devotion to the serially-proven absolute that Bush is a disaster and that everything he touches turns to shit, I have some mixed emotions about the Miers nomination. If it fails, we're not going to get someone better (other than in the unlikely scenario that Bush decides to take revenge on his radical right base). I'd bet we'll get someone even worse. At least Miers is old and lame and won't do much damage except consistently voting against our country's best interests. On the other hand, I like the idea that Bush picked someone from outside the approved pool of pre-selected candidates. Bush is an imbecile and he picked the wrong person but the idea... well I have to give him credit for it. Probably at the root of half the howling and braying you hear from the Inside-the-Beltway Establishment is that Bush did something this unexpected and... rad.

I was a president once too. I remember looking at some preening, strutting "acceptable" candidates
for an important position once. I went outside the pool with a pretty rad candidate and... wow, did I make some enemies! I was less stiff-necked and arrogant than Bush, though, and I was able to smooth things over, more or less, with all parties. Bush won't be able to do that and it's very much looking like this nomination is further breaking the Republican coalition apart at the seams. Fund claims no one in the Senate is looking forward to the hearings. I can imagine. But I sure am.

GEPHARDT: "I WAS WRONG"

Kagro X over at The Next Hurrah spent some time with Dick Gephardt in Seattle lately and got to revisit Gephardt's crucial support of Bush's unprovoked and illegal attack on Iraq. The headline: Gephardt now admits he was wrong. Hmmmm... From Gephardt's point of view, he had told Bush he wouldn't support his little anti-Saddam adventure unless we were going in with allies and unless it was about weapons of mass destruction. Bush seems to have pouted and groused but eventually was persuaded to make up a good cover story about WMD and put together some kind of bogus alliance with England and a smattering of Eastern European countries eager for American aid and some other small easily ordered-around client states in Central America and Polynesia.

Gephardt claims CIA Director George Tenet assured him absolutely that Bush wasn't lying about WMDs. I guess it never dawned on Gephardt that Tenet lied for a living. (Oddly, a majority of Democrats in the House weren't as easily taken in as their leader.) Now Gephard says, about supporting-- even ENABLING, Bush, "It was a mistake... I was wrong." Now he says that trusting this Administration was a mistake. (Did he not notice that what he refers to as "this Administration" lied, cheated and stole its way into power in the first place? At what point and WHY did Gephardt ever think the Bush Regime could be trusted?) He says there were two big mistakes. The first was that "we" never comprehended the complexity of the undertaking. "I didn't. None of us did." Is that so? Many of us did. Gepardt didn't seem to have a problem calling me and bugging me to come to his hotel-- knowing 100% that I was a die-hard, unshakable Dean supporter-- and then tricking me into shaking hands with Terry MacAuliffe. But he wasn't interested that I was very much aware of the complexity of the undertaking, as well as the futility and sure-fire catastrophic nature of it. And it wasn't "none of us were" in my world; it was ALL OF US WERE (except "A"); he could have asked any of my friends or colleagues and OVER HALF OF HIS OWN COLLEAGUES. But who did Gephardt mean when he said "none of us were?" The grown-ups? The Inside the Beltway assholes who think they know better than anyone else? The GOP Establishment with their faithful DLC counterparts? Yeah, you can see how impressed I am with Gephardt's mea culpa. Oh, yeah-- and the second big mistake (which he says was the bigger of the two): He says Bush "has never been honest about the sacrifices required... the lives lost, the eyes blown out. Bush fails the first test of leadership: 'Can you be honest with the people you lead?'"

According to Kagro X, Gephardt told him that "in the national interest, in a time of crisis, our side played its cards face up -- and they held cards up their sleeves. They knew what they wanted, and they played on our patriotic idealism and earnest statesmanship to freeze us -- 'the opposition' -- in untenable positions."

Gephardt failed miserably as leader of that opposition. He had no choice but to go away and leave the public stage. I'm glad he's willing to speak out a bit now but it's too late for too many thousands of Americans and Iraqis. If war crime trials ever come, Gephardt will have to face Justice along with the other conspirators in this disaster.

EVELYN OSTIN, REST IN PEACE

Sooner or later everyone dies. I don't know how many people die so respected, so admired, so beloved, so cherished as Evelyn Ostin. I don't know of anyone who ever met her who wasn't bowled over by her joie de vivre, her compassion, her uncanny ability to empathize with her entire being, her kindness, her warmth, and her generosity. EVERYONE loved this woman.

She passed away Tuesday evening. Her family announced a memorial service on the Warner Bros lot and within hours it became obvious they had to move it someplace larger. UCLA's Royce Hall graciously accommodated. Like Evelyn, the memorial was dignified and easy-going; there were tears and there was laughter. Presidents and royals don't get a send-off more impressive or more filled with awe and love.

The speakers, all relatives and close friends of Evelyn's were inspiring because they were to a person inspired by her. Evelyn was always alive to discovery and spirituality and her own spirituality imbued each and every speaker, from her young grandchildren full of grace to important spiritual figures Eitan Yardeni, Deepak Chopra and Quincy Jones. Between speaker some of Evelyn's favorite singers performed, some of whom talked about what an integral part of them lives she was: Barbra Streisand, Paul Simon, Neil Young, Patti Austin and James Ingram, Don Henley, Josh Groban and Nita Whitaker, and Randy Newman.

A haiku by Evelyn:

Enfold your loved ones into your arms
and never let them go.

Let them know how treasured they are
so that when some darkness comes,
they can look up and say "I am loved"
and see the light come through.

Love them even more.

ARE THE ABRAMOFF/DELAY CRIMINAL CASES TOO COMPLICATED FOR VOTERS TO UNDERSTAND ?

I'm going to make an attempt to explain it in 4 quick paragraphs. Abramoff was the #1 GOP-connected lobbyist with connections so tight to ruthless, powerful, unethical House Majority Leader Tom DeLay that he functioned as a virtual extension of his office and as an integral part of his vast money-making machine. Abramoff is being investigated for dozens of serious crimes (including the gangland-style murder by Abramoff "consultants"-- recently arrested and in prison-- of a former business partner of his and DeLay's). But this simple piece is about just one case for which Abramoff has already been arrested and indicted and is rapidly approaching trial.

The long and short of it is that Abramoff's lobbying client, eLottery-- which paid out millions of dollars to ostensibly anti-gambling Republican pols and their religionist-right allies-- was hysterical because an anti-gambling bill was about to pass by a landslide in the Republican-controlled House. DeLay's office intervened and, suddenly-- and astonishingly-- the anti-gambling bill was defeated. Among the anti-gambling fake religionists who were on the pro-gambling gravy train were former Christian Coalition head Ralph Reed (whose Lt. Governor campaign in Georgia is now floundering) and so-called "Reverend" Louis "Lucky Louie" Sheldon, head of the Traditional Values Coalition. Abramoff also enlisted GOP operative and ideologue Grover Norquist in his efforts to save gambling. Bribe money was carefully routed through 3rd and 4th parties to obscure who was getting paid and for what. Reed and "Lucky Louie" now claim they can't remember nuttin'. Norquist, who claims he's a libertarian and doesn't oppose gambling, got to dip his beak in every transaction and served as the money launderer for the bribes and pay-offs. (No wonder he wants to shrink government and drown it in a bath tub! Small, ineffective government would be a real boon for the crooked-at-heart.)

DeLay, normally an always outraged moralist screaming his head off about "sins" like gambling, was the key man who prevented the bill from passing. Considerable bribes were involved, to DeLay personally (the now infamous $25,000 golfing trip to Scotland was part of this scheme), to DeLay staffers and to family members. One of the intermediaries employed by this crew to help shuffle the money around was GOP operative Robin Vanderwall, current serving a 7 year prison term in Virginia for soliciting sex with children.

One of the most bizarre aspects-- straight out of George Orwell-- had "Lucky Louie" Sheldon threatening to smear anti-gambling conservatives by claiming the bill he was being paid by Abramoff and eLottery to kill wasn't "anti" enough! The fake preacher was able to target and terrorize almost a dozen conservatives-- Robert Aderholt (R-AL), J.C. Watts (R-OK), James Rogan (R-CA), Robin Hayes (R-NC), etc-- to save the day for the gambling forces-- and for the DeLay/Abramoff money machine.

SCHWARZENEGGER TRIES TO DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM BUSH BUT HE CAN'T DISTANCE HIMSELF FROM BUSH'S & THE GOP'S BRAND OF FASCISM

Referring to Schwarzenegger's plan to hide out in the rural Central Valley while Bush is in L.A. this Thursday, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez said, "The governor is trying to create some distance between himself and the president. ... But we're going to make that connection every day of the week.'' Good; he needs to. Democrats all over the country need to make the connection OBVIOUS BEYOND ANY DOUBT that their local Republicrooks are part of the Bush/Rove/DeLay criminal conspiracy.

In the case of California, Schwarzenegger is having fits because he specifically asked Bush, who is even more reviled than the no longer popular Governor, to stay out of the state 'til after Schwarzenegger's Special Election on November 8. Schwarzenegger reminded Bush how he risked his own political capital by campaigning for Bush in Ohio in the closing days of the 2004 presidential election, something that helped Bush in tightly-contested Ohio-- and hurt Schwarzenegger in deep blue California.

Schwarzenegger doesn't want Bush sucking up political contributions in the state and he's afraid Bush's unpopularity (now bordering on widespread loathing in the most populous parts of the state) will drive a stake into the heart of his carefully disguised by very reactionary special election measures. Bush doesn't care about either of his concerns and he'll be starring at a major fundraiser in L.A. for the RNC on Thursday and cutting a ribbon the next day at the opening of the new Air Force One exhibit at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley.

One of the far right extremists plotting to turn California into his version of hell on earth from behind the forbidding walls of the hideous Hoover Institute, Bill Whalen, is concerned about the fake-reform propositions Schwarzenegger is trying to trick Californians into voting for. He thinks the Gropenator needs to avoid being seen with Bush; "it's probably a photo op he doesn't need." Instead he wants Arnold to concentrate on screwing teachers (Proposition 74), screwing public employee unions (Prop. 75), running roughshod over the budget (Prop. 76) and gerrymandering the state's districts like DeLay did in Texas (Prop. 77). Whalen makes clear exactly why Schwarzenegger and other local Repugs are so upset that Bush. "The biggest favor he can do is stay out of this election. Arnold doesn't want this to be a referendum on the war in Iraq, the price of gasoline and (Supreme Court nominee) Harriet Miers."

Schwarzenegger's public snub of Bush's ill-timed visit has dismayed tone-deaf Beltway operatives who can't see further than a White House hysterical and panicked as Bush faces increasing criticism over the Miers nomination and his cronyism in general, the disastrous war in Iraq, and all the GOP indictments, from Bush's Congressional allies Randy "Duke" Cunningham and Tom DeLay (with Ohio Bob Ney probably next) to GOP crooked fundraisers Jack Abramoff and Thomas Noe to the likelihood that Scooter Libby and Karl Rove get their turns soon (not to mention Dick Cheney). One White House flack, speaking on condition of anonymity, called Schwarzenegger some dirty names. "At a time when the president needs the support of a Republican governor, Schwarzenegger is turning his back" on him. Bush is pissed off that Schwarzenegger made a high-profile campaign swing through the state with John McCain, one Republican who remains untainted-- though not justifiably so-- by Bush's catastrophic and corrupt regime. Bush detests McCain and is driven to distraction (in whatever form) by anything positive about him.

Allow me to leave the California propositions for another day. I want to get to what made me start writing today (without missing the entire SOUTH PARK Marathon). Voters are wising up to Bush and DeLay and Frist and the national Republican machine. Now a clear and growing majority of Americans entirely distrusts Bush, sees that he and his party have priorities that are destructive to our own, and are starting to grasp that the only way to stop the madness is to vote against Republicans in general. Sounds good? It is good-- except for those last two words: "in general." In general, for example, people in Maine intuitively understand that fighting Bush is as important today as it was for Colonel Joshua Chamberlain & the heroic 20th Maine to stop the slaveholding fascist rebels at Big Round Top, allowing the United States to win Gettsyburg and end the rebellion which neo-Confederate scum like DeLay, Frist, the Bush Brothers, Sessions, Cochran, Lott, Inhofe, Coburn, et al are trying to revive. (I mean African-Americans are sensitive to this kind of thing and their 98% disapproval rating of Bush is unprecedented in the annals of American polling.) But will Mainers vote to oust Olympia Snowe? Not according to any poll I've ever seen. In Maine the Republican senator isn't looked at someone who votes for Bill Frist to be Majority Leader as much as she's looked at as an independent-minded "moderate." People think fondly of her as OUR Senator. OK, let's move a little south to Connecticut, one of the bluest of the blue states, where Bush would do a jig if his approval ratings reached as high as 38% (his national number). Connecticut is a state where Gore in 2000 and Kerry in 2004 slaughter Bush. Yet there are 3 Republicans in Congress, Rob Simmons (in the overwhelmingly Democratic 2nd District), Chris Shays, and Nancy Johnson. They are all part of the DeLay machine, all, especially Johnson and Simmons, dependable votes for almost every hair-brained, neo-Con scheme and corporate-fascist outrage against everything decent about our country. By all right the 3 of them should be afraid to even stand for re-election. In truth Simmons and Shays are worried, but not overly. Johnson's laughing. And so it goes all over the country.

I like the way some Nebraska Democrats are dealing with it. Take a look at New Nebraska Network. Kyle Michaelis points out that Republican candidates are running away from Bush, DeLay and the national GOP. And he doesn't think we should let them. "The problem," he says, "is not that Republicans have lost their way...it's that the Republican way doesn't work. And guess what, the American people-- even the people of Nebraska-- have noticed."
People see the danger Bush and the national GOP pose but they're not trying it to their own specific legislators... at least not yet. But that's the Democrats job. Let's pray they're up to it.

TIME TO STICK A FORK IN ROVE ?

For the people who ask me why I don't write more about Rove and "Treasongate," let me reassure you that it isn't because I don't think it's a worthy story. It's huge! But so many others have followed it so well and know the in's and out's so well that I just leave it to them. My favorite Rove exposer is Jane Hamsher. Here's an example: firedoglake. It's all you need to know about how the case is progressing.

DELAY WILL FALL LIKE LIGHTNING FROM THE SKY (TIP OF THE HAT TO J.C.)

Listening to an hysterical... I don't know what she is... maybe a Democrat, maybe an independent... could be anything, has been everything (even a right wing loon)... anyway an hysterical famous person prognosticating on the radio (when I was driving way across town to the only store that can be depended upon to have actual organic vegetables and actual raw food) I shuddered at an aural mirror (or is that an echo chamber). Here she was, beating up the Democrats, like I always do-- BIF! BAM! POW!-- and... well, like Kyle or Stan would say, "I learned something today."

It's so easy to see the Democrats as a pathetic herd of cats, each craven, self-important, little turf-protector a big cheese in his own universe. And THIS is what's gonna defeat the Rovean Empire's machine? It seems impossible. But let me dig back into my Poli Sci 101 class in the 60s. Chances are you never heard of Bob Michel. Michel started serving in Congress before I knew what Congress was and he served as Minority Leader for almost my whole young person life-- the 97th through the 103rd Congresses. He never served as (Republican) Majority Leader; he came to define loser. He was an Inside-the-Beltway establishmentarian first and foremost, leader of the kind-of-opposition after that, and ideological... not. I mean, maybe a little. But not much. People used to call him "a good sport."

More idealistic (ideologically-motivated) Republicans wanted to strangle him. Eventually one did-- Newt Gingrich did him in, took over and lead the House GOP to "glory days" that are only now winding down. Today the Democrats seem like the perpetual minority in need of leaders with balls. The famous lady on the radio today was beating them up good. I do it all the time. But, sans an innovative, risk-taking muthafucka for a leader (like the execrable Newt was), minority parties can't do much, other than allow the majority party's own inevitable hubris to bloat it up and bring it down.

I mean for me it would be easy to fix this right now. Howard Dean is the head of the Democratic Party. Until there's a Democratic president, Dean is the leader. My first IM this morning was from Air America's L.A. star talker, Johnny Wendell. He was quoting Krugman's column before I had my honeydew, blueberries, flaxseed, pomegranate seeds and pecans: "Read the speeches Howard Dean gave before the Iraq war, and compare them with Colin Powell's pro-war presentation to the U.N. Knowing what we know now, it's clear that one man was judicious and realistic, while the other was spinning crazy conspiracy theories. But somehow their labels got switched in the way they were presented to the public by the news media." OK, Johnny and Krugman probably see it the way I do. What about Nancy Pelosi? What about Harry Reid? Not to mention Mr. and Mrs. Clinton. Or the two corporate Joes from Connecticut and Delaware. Or Kerry or Edwards. Or anyone who fancies himself a future occupant of the Oval Office. So everyone's off and running in his or her own direction, often as not, a self-serving one, calculating how to come out on, or near the, top inside the minority party.

But, like I said, hubris was inevitable and, like Jimmy Cliff said, "the harder they come, the harder they'll fall." And as long as I'm quoting... Jesus could have been thinking of DeLay and Cunningham and Rove and Pombo and Frist and Ney... and on and one when he said “I have observed Satan fall like lightning from the sky." Amen, brother, Jesus, Amen! And if we watch over the next few months, we all will.

IF YOU'RE NOT A DYLAN FAN, YOU MIGHT WANT TO SKIP TO THE NEXT BUSH BASHING PIECE. BUT THIS IS REALLY AMAZING

Mike Watt sent me this this morning and I've been kind of floored by it all day. Dylan's my favorite songwriter of all time. Last couple weeks I've been more into him than usual because I'm helping a 16 year old musician in the 'hood to grok Dylan's music. I'll get him to read this but you should too-- unless you just are into all Bush bashin' all the time. If you saw the amazing two nights of Dylan TV on PBS a couple weeks ago you've got some instant context.

The National Emergency Civil Liberties Committee (NECLC), founded in
1951 and known for many years simply as the Emergency Civil Liberties
Committee (ECLC), annually held a Bill of Rights Dinner which
gathered together members and friends of the organization and
provided a setting for the presentation of the group's Tom Paine
Award, given once yearly since 1958 in recognition of distinguished
service in the fight for civil liberty. The recipient of the 1963
award was singer/songwriter Bob Dylan who accepted the award on
December 13 at the Dinner in New York, which also featured noted
author James Baldwin.

What follows here is a most remarkable set of three documents: first,
Bob Dylan's extemporaneous speech, probably typed out later from an
audio tape, then an eloquent letter in defense of Dylan and of youth
itself from Corliss Lamont, who was then Chairman of the ECLC, and
finally, a most beautiful and poetic explanation by Dylan himself
analyzing and expressing his tumult of feelings on the occasion. Read
on.....


TRANSCRIPT OF BOB DYLAN'S REMARKS AT THE BILL OF RIGHTS DINNER
at the Americana Hotel on 12/13/63

I haven't got any guitar, I can talk though. I want to thank you for
the Tom Paine award in behalf everybody that went down to Cuba. First
of all because they're all young and it's took me a long time to get
young and now I consider myself young. And I'm proud of it. I'm proud
that I'm young. And I only wish that all you people who are sitting
out here today or tonight weren't here and I could see all kinds of
faces with hair on their head - and everything like that, everything
leading to youngness, celebrating the anniversary when we overthrew
the House Un-American Activities just yesterday, - Because you people
should be at the beach. You should be out there and you should be
swimming and you should be just relaxing in the time you have to
relax. (Laughter) It is not an old peoples' world. It is not an old
peoples' world. It has nothing to do with old people. Old people when
their hair grows out, they should go out. (Laughter) And I look down
to see the people that are governing me and making my rules - and
they haven't got any hair on their head - I get very uptight about
it. (Laughter)

And they talk about Negroes, and they talk about black and white. And
they talk about colors of red and blue and yellow. Man, I just don't
see any colors at all when I look out. I don't see any colors at all
and if people have taught through the years to look at colors - I've
read history books, I've never seen one history book that tells how
anybody feels. I've found facts about our history, I've found out
what people know about what goes on but I never found anything about
anybody feels about anything happens. It's all just plain facts. And
it don't help me one little bit to look back.

I wish sometimes I could have come in here in the 1930's like my
first idol - used to have an idol, Woody Guthrie, who came in the
1930's (Applause). But it has sure changed in the time Woody's been
here and the time I've been here. It's not that easy any more. People
seem to have more fears.

I get different presents from people that I play for and they bring
presents to me backstage - very weird, weird presents - presents that
I couldn't buy. They buy - they bring me presents that - I've got
George Lincoln Rockwell's tie clip that somebody robbed for me.
(Laughter) I have General Walker's car trunk keys - keys to his trunk
that somebody robbed for me. Now these are my presents. I have
fallout shelter signs that people robbed for me from Philadelphia and
these are the little signs. There's no black and white, left and
right to me anymore; there's only up and down and down is very close
to the ground. And I'm trying to go up without thinking about
anything trivial such as politics. They has got nothing to do with
it. I'm thinking about the general people and when they get hurt.

I want to accept this award, the Tom Paine Award, from the Emergency
Civil Liberties Committee. I want to accept it in my name but I'm not
really accepting it in my name and I'm not accepting it in any kind
of group's name, any Negro group or any other kind of group. There
are Negroes - I was on the march on Washington up on the platform and
I looked around at all the Negroes there and I didn't see any Negroes
that looked like none of my friends. My friends don't wear suits. My
friends don't have to wear suits. My friends don't have to wear any
kind of thing to prove that they're respectable Negroes. My friends
are my friends, and they're kind, gentle people if they're my
friends. And I'm not going to try to push nothing over. So, I accept
this reward - not reward, (Laughter) award in behalf of Phillip Luce
who led the group to Cuba which all people should go down to Cuba. I
don't see why anybody can't go to Cuba. I don't see what's going to
hurt by going any place. I don't know what's going to hurt anybody's
eyes to see anything. On the other hand, Phillip is a friend of mine
who went to Cuba. I'll stand up and to get uncompromisable about it,
which I have to be to be honest, I just got to be, as I got to admit
that the man who shot President Kennedy, Lee Oswald, I don't know
exactly where --what he thought he was doing, but I got to admit
honestly that I too - I saw some of myself in him. I don't think it
would have gone - I don't think it could go that far. But I got to
stand up and say I saw things that he felt, in me - not to go that
far and shoot. (Boos and hisses) You can boo but booing's got nothing
to do with it. It's a - I just a - I've got to tell you, man, it's
Bill of Rights is free speech and I just want to admit that I accept
this Tom Paine Award in behalf of James Forman of the Students
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee and on behalf of the people who
went to Cuba. (Boos and Applause)





LETTER FROM CORLISS LAMONT TO ATTENDEES OF THE DINNER

The review referred to by Mr. Lamont in this letter was written by
Robert Shelton and appeared in The New York Times of October 28,
1963. It was a review of a solo concert given by Bob Dylan at
Carnegie Hall.

( D-R-A-F-T )

December 19, 1963

Dear Friend:

Many of our friends disapproved our choice of Bob Dylan for the Tom
Paine award. Without defending his acceptance speech, I would like to
tell you why we feel he deserved the award. Bob Dylan has sent us a
message which more clearly conveys his feelings. It is enclosed and I
urge you to read it carefully.

E.C.L.C. defends the right of all Americans to advocate their
beliefs. This is not confined to ideology or political groups. It
should certainly be extended to our own youth, who according to many
experts are becoming increasingly alienated and lost in our present
society.

Whether we approve or not, Bob Dylan has become the idol of the
progressive youngsters of today, regardless of their political
factions. He is speaking to them in terms of protest that they
understand and applaud. (see the enclosed review from The New York
Times).

E.C.L.C. feels that it is urgent to recognize the protest of youth
today and to help make it understood by the older generation. Walt
Whitman and Woody Guthrie, the culture antecedents of Bob Dylan, were
not appreciated by their society until they were very old. We think
that it would be better to make the effort now to comprehend what Bob
Dylan is saying to and for the youth. It is true that he is not as
respectable as Lord Russell, the winner of last year's award, but
neither was Tom Paine, and our history is too full of disregard for
important messages which were unrespectable at the time.

The annual celebration of Bill of Rights Day is not just a
fund-raising affair - although we hope that our friends will help us
carry on our work - it is also an opportunity for us to present to
our supporters the problems of our democracy which in their daily
lives they are apt to over-look.

This year over 1400 people were at the largest civil liberties dinner
on record. We appreciate the understanding and support we received
from many of those present and we hope that others will gain from the
reading of the enclosed message by Bob Dylan an understanding which
his speech did not convey.

Yours sincerely,

Corliss Lamont





A MESSAGE

from Bob Dylan

(Sent to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee after he received
the Tom Paine Award at the Bill of Rights dinner on December 13,
1963.)

to anybody it may concern...
clark?
mairi?
phillip?
edith?
mr lamont?
countless faces I do not know
an all fighters for good things that I can not see

when I speak of bald heads, I mean bald minds
when I speak of the seashore, I mean the restin shore
I dont know why I mentioned either of them

my life runs in a series of moods
in private an in personal ways, sometimes,
I, myself, can change the mood I'm in t the
mood I'd like t be in. when I walked thru the
doors of the americana hotel, I needed to change
my mood... for reasons inside myself.

I am a restless soul
hungry
perhaps wretched

it is hard to hear someone you dont know, say
"this is what he meant t say" about something
you just said

for no one can say what I meant t say
absolutely no one
at times I even cant
that was one of those times

my life is lived out daily in the places I feel
most confortable in. these places are places where
I am unknown an unstared at. I perform rarely, an
when I do, there is a constant commotion burnin
at my body an at my mind because of the attention
aimed at me. instincts fight my emotions an fears
fight my instincts...

I do not claim t be smart by the standards set up
I dont even claim to be normal by the standards
set up
an I do not claim to know any kind of truth

but like an artist who puts his painting (after
he's painted it) in front of thousands of unknown
eyes, I also put my song there that way
(after I've made it)
it is as easy an as simple as that

I can not speak. I can not talk
I can only write an I can only sing
perhaps I should've sung a song
but that wouldn't a been right either
for I was given an award not to sing
but rather on what I have sung

no what I should've said was
"thank you very much ladies an gentlemen"
yes that is what I should've said
but unfortunatly... I didn't
an I didn't because I did not know

I thought something else was expected of me
other than just sayin "thank you"
an I did not know what it was
it is a fierce heavy feeling
thinkin something is expected of you
but you dont know what exactly it is...
it brings forth a wierd form of guilt

I should've remembered
"I am BOB DYLAN an I dont have t speak
I dont have t say nothin if I dont wanna"
but
I didn't remember

I constantly asked myself while eatin supper
"what should I say? what should I tell 'm?
everybody else is gonna tell 'm something"
but I could not answer myself
I even asked someone who was sittin nex t me
an he couldn't tell me neither. my mind blew
up an needless t say I had t get it back in its
rightful shape (whatever that might be) an so
I escaped from the big room... only t hear my
name being shouted an the words "git in here
git in here" overlappin with the findin of my
hand being pulled across hundreds of tables
with the lights turned on strong... guidin me
back t where I tried t escape from
"what should I say? what should I say?"
over an over again
oh God, I'd a given anything not t be there
"shut the lights off at least"
people were coughin an my head was poundin
an the sounds of mumble jumble sank deep in
my skull from all sides of the room
until I tore everything loose from my mind
an said "just be honest, dylan, just be honest"

an so I found myself in front of the plank
like I found myself once in the path of a car
an I jumped...
jumped with all my bloody might
just tryin t get out a the way
but first screamin one last song

when I spoke of Lee Oswald, I was speakin of the times
I was not speakin of his deed if it was his deed.
the deed speaks for itself
but I am sick
so sick
at hearin "we all share the blame" for every
church bombing, gun battle, mine disaster,
poverty explosion, an president killing that
comes about.
it is so easy t say "we" an bow our heads together
I must say "I" alone an bow my head alone
for it is I alone who is livin my life
I have beloved companions but they do not
eat nor sleep for me
an even they must say "I"
yes if there's violence in the times then
there must be violence in me
I am not a perfect mute.
I hear the thunder an I cant avoid hearin it
once this is straight between us, it's then an
only then that we can say "we" an really mean
it... an go on from there t do something about
it

When I spoke of Negroes
I was speakin of my Negro friends
from harlem
an Jackson
selma an birmingham
atlanta pittsburg, an all points east
west, north, south an wherever else they
might happen t be.
in rat filled rooms
an dirt land farms
schools, dimestores, factories
pool halls an street corners
the ones that dont own ties
but know proudly they dont have to
not one little bit
they dont have t be like they naturally aint
t get what they naturally own no more 'n anybody
else does
it only gets things complicated
an leads people into thinkin the wrong things
black skin is black skin
It cant be covered by clothes an made t seem
acceptable, well liked an respectable...
t teach that or t think that just tends the
flames of another monster myth...
it is naked black skin an nothin else
if a Negro has t wear a tie t be a Negro
then I must cut off all ties with who he has
t do it for.
I do not know why I wanted t say this that
nite.
perhaps it was just one of the many things
in my mind
born from the confusion of my times

when I spoke about the people that went t Cuba
I was speakin of the free right t travel
I am not afraid t see things
I challenge seein things
I am insulted t the depths of my soul
when someone I dont know commands that I
cant see this an gives me mysterious reasons
why I'll get hurt if I do see it... tellin me
at the same time about goodness an badness in
people that again I dont know...
I've been told about people all my life
about niggers, kikes, wops, bohunks, spicks, chinks,
an I been told how they eat, dress, walk, talk,
steal, rob, an kill but nobody tells me how any
of 'm feels... nobody tells me how any of 'm cries
or laughs or kisses. I'm fed up with most newspapers,
radios, tv an movies an the like t tell me. I want
now t see an know for myself...
an I accepted that award for all others like me
who want t see for themselves... an who dont want
that God-given right taken away
stolen away
or snuck out from beneath them
yes a travel ban in the south would protect
Americans more, I'm sure, than the one t Cuba
but in all honesty I would want t crash that
one too
do you understand?
do you really understand?
I mean I want t see. I want t see all I can
everyplace there is t see it
my life carries eyes
an they're there for one reason
the reason t see thru them

my country is the Minnesota-North Dakota territory
that's where I was born an learned how t walk an
it's where I was raised an went t school... my
youth was spent wildly among the snowy hills an
sky blue lakes, willow fields an abandoned open
pit mines. contrary t rumors, I am very proud of
where I'm from an also of the many blood streams that
run in my roots. but I would not be doing what
I'm doing today if I hadn't come t New York. I was
given my direction from new york. I was fed in
new york. I was beaten down by new york an I was
picked up by new york. I was made t keep going on
by new york. I'm speakin now of the people I've met
who were strugglin for their lives an other peoples'
lives in the thirties an forties an the fifties
an I look t their times
I reach out t their times
an, in a sense, am jealous of their times
t think I have no use for "old" people is a betrayin thought
those that know me know otherwise
those that dont, probably're baffled
like a friend of mine, jack elliott, who says he
was reborn in Oklahoma, I say I was reborn in
New York...
there is no age limit stuck on it
an no one is more conscious of it than I

yes it is a fierce feeling, knowin something you
dont know about's expected of you. but it's worse
if you blindly try t follow with explodin words
(for that's all they can do is explode)
an the explodin words're misunderstood
I've heard I was misunderstood

I do not apologize for myself nor my fears
I do not apologize for any statement which led
some t believe "oh my God! I think he's the one
that really shot the president"

I am a writer an a singer of the words I write
I am no speaker nor any politician
an my songs speak for me because I write them
in the confinement of my own mind an have t cope
with no one except my own self. I dont have t face
anyone with them until long after they're done

no I do not apologize for being me nor any part of me

but I can return what is rightfully yours at any
given time. I have stared at it for a long while
now. it is a beautiful award. there is a kindness
t Mr Paine's face an there is almost a sadness in
his smile. his trials show thru his eyes. I know
really not much about him but somehow I would like
t sing for him. there is a gentleness t his way.
yes thru all my flounderin wildness, I am, when it
comes down to it, very proud that you have given this
t me. I would hang it high, an let my friends see in
it what I see, but I also would give it back if
you wish. There is no sense in keepin it if you've
made a mistake in givin it. for it means more'n any
store bought thing an it'd only be cheatin t keep it

also I did not know that the dinner was a donation
dinner. I did not know you were gonna ask anyone
for money. an I understand you lost money on the
masterful way I expressed myself... then I am in debt t you
not a money debt but rather a moral debt
if you'd a sold me something, then it'd be a money debt
but you sold nothin, so it is a moral debt
an moral debts're worse 'n money debts
for they have t be paid back in whatever is missin
an in this case, it's money

please send me my bill
an I shall pay it
no matter what the sum
I have a hatred of debts an want t be even in
the best way I can
you needn't think about this, for money means
very little t me

so then

I'll return once again t the road

I cant tell you why other people write, but I
write in order to keep from going insane.
my head, I expect'd turn inside out if my hands
were t leave me.

but I hardly ever talk about why I write. an I
scarcely ever think about it. the thought of it is
too alarmin

an I never ever talk about why I speak
but that's because I never do it. this is the
first time I am talkin about it... an I pray
the last
the thought of doing it again is too scary

ha! it's a scary world
but only once in a while huh?

I love you all up there an the ones I dont love,
it's only because I do not know them an have not
seen them... God it's so hard hatin. it's so
tiresome... an after hatin something to death,
it's never worth the bother an trouble

out! out! brief candle
life's but an open window
an I must jump back thru it now

see yuh
respectfully an unrespectfully

(sgd) bob dylan

THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON JOKE SECTION

My pal Ellen is in Florida this week and she just sent me a great Friday afternoon joke that I figured everyone would enjoy-- at least everyone who enjoys this blog. Not all cops are like the ones who beat up that guy in New Orleans, and the one Ellen wrote to me about comes close to winning the DWT ingenuity award this week.

A driver did the right thing, stopping at the crosswalk even though he could have beaten the red light by accelerating through the intersection.

The tailgating woman behind him went ballistic, pounding on her horn and screaming in frustration as she missed her chance to drive through the intersection with him.

Still in mid-rant, she heard a tap on her window and looked up into the face of a very serious police officer. The officer ordered her to exit her car with her hands up.

He took her to the police station where she was searched, finger printed, photographed, and placed in a cell.

After a couple of hours, a policeman approached the cell and opened the door. She was escorted back to the booking desk where the arresting officer was waiting with her personal effects.

He said, "I'm awfully sorry for this mistake. You see, I pulled up behind your car while you were blowing your horn, flipping the guy off in front of you, and cussing a blue streak at him. I noticed the "Choose Life" license plate holder, the "What Would Jesus Do?" bumper sticker, the "Follow Me to Sunday School" bumper sticker, and the chrome-plated Christian fish emblem on the trunk. Naturally, I assumed you had stolen the car.

MASS MEDIA UNMASKS BUSH FAKE IRAQI TELECONFERENCE AS SCRIPTED BULLSHIT

The big story this morning when I flipped on CNN at 4AM was Bush's "staged" question-and-answer videoconference session with a handful of handpicked soldiers in Iraq. And Soledad and the imbecile with the same last name as hers even went beyond the obvious to tiptoe through the fact that ALL Bush appearances are staged. The real story, though, is that the mainstream mass media is covering the story from this perspective. I couldn't bring myself to put on Fox "News" so I'll have to wait for my Fox-addicted Florida friend, "A," to wake up and report if the Far Right's propaganda is also talking about this.

I see the big Associated Press headline is "Bush Teleconference With Soldiers Staged." I wonder if Americans, who, according to ALL recent polls have lately, seem to have had their blinders removed and now basically see Bush for what he is and always has been: a craven, bungling villain, will be shocked. A significant part of the mass media seems to have stopped covering his corrupt ass. The A.P. story starts "It was billed as a conversation with U.S. troops, but the questions President Bush asked on a teleconference call Thursday were choreographed to match his goals for the war in Iraq and Saturday's vote on a new Iraqi constitution. 'This is an important time,' Allison Barber, deputy assistant defense secretary, said, coaching the soldiers before Bush arrived. 'The president is looking forward to having just a conversation with you.'"

This and the rehearsal that ensued are not earthshattering. Bush's presidency is one big staged photo-op. Nothing is real. Everything is fake. But the whole thing-- the rehearsals and set-up-- was caught on video tape and played on television this morning. A.P. couldn't show the video so they showed, through his own words what a lying sack of shit-- or a delusional moron (make up your own mind/we report; you decide) Bush is. "Before he took questions, Bush thanked the soldiers for serving and reassured them that the U.S. would not pull out of Iraq until the mission was complete. 'So long as I'm the president, we're never going to back down, we're never going to give in, we'll never accept anything less than total victory,' Bush said." (How many people started thinking how many congressional seats really have to change hands before impeachment could become a reality at this moment?) "The president told them twice that the American people were behind them. 'You've got tremendous support here at home,' Bush said. Less than 40 percent in an AP-Ipsos poll taken in October said they approved of the way Bush was handling Iraq. Just over half of the public now say the Iraq war was a mistake."

A recent poll shows that 98% of African-Americans disapprove of Bush's handling of his job. None of them were included in the q and a though. In fact half the soldiers included were officers in this minutely scripted publicity affair geared towards trying to get Bush's poll ratings up. It sure won't work for people who watched the CNN video of the fakery or for those who heard it on NPR or read about it in the press descriptions.

SUNDAY UPDATE:

Tim Karr has a great website called mediacitizen which I want to recommend everyone look at for more on this story. In a piece called "Media No Longer Taking Flak," Tim exposes how the Bush Regime inserted one of it's own hacks to pose as a soldier in an attempted-- botched, as most things in Bush's miserable life-- manipulation of the news to an even greater extent than has been reported in the mainstream media.

BUSH GETTING AS UNPOPULAR IN U.S. AS HE IS IN THE REST OF THE WORLD

The lead story on the front page of AOL today was about Bush's slumping popularity and abysmal approval ratings in a string of recent polls. AOL then conducted their own poll. I'm not saying-- nor are they-- that the AOL polls are scientific but... Bush hates science anyway. So enjoy...

How would you rate President Bush's overall performance?
Poor 73%
Good 10%
Excellent 10%
Fair 7%

Do Bush's poll ratings signal long-term trouble for him?
Yes 75%
No 25%

Which issue do you believe has been the most damaging for him?
War in Iraq 69%
Hurricane Katrina 16%
Rising gas prices 14%

Which is more to blame for Bush's poll ratings?
Decisions and actions within his control 81%
Circumstances beyond his control 19%

What should be Bush's top priority?
Iraq 51%
Energy costs 29%
Katrina recovery 10%
Other 10%

Is Bush out of touch with issues that are important to you?
Yes 83%
No 17%

Do you think Bush will be remembered as an effective president?
No 84%
Yes 16%

Harriet Miers will get confirmed to the Supreme Court.
Fiction 56%
Fact 44%

President Bush's approval rating will jump by this time next year.
Fiction 78%
Fact 22%

Democrats will win control of Congress in 2006.
Fact 70%
Fiction 30%

CRAZY RIGHT WING PROPAGANDA HACK INSINUATES HARRIET MIERS IS TOO PRO-BLACK

Right-winger blogger and closet case Matt Drudge is seeking to help discredit Harriet Miers by posting a copy of some sworn testimony of hers from 1989. Ironically, while it is sure to raise the dander of far right ideologues and the lunatic fringe of Bush's coalition, it makes her sound reasonable and kind of all-American to a non-Nazi.

Drudge gets his panties all in a knot because Miers said she wouldn’t belong to the Federalist Society, a partisan rightist attack group, because it was “politically charged" but didn't categorize more mainstream groups like the NAACP and the Black Chamber of Commerce the same way. Drudge claims, in his overwrought, annoyingly breathless style, that "word of the testimony circulated late last week, roiling conservatives and setting off a scramble among lawyers to obtain the actual testimony. Sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT that conservatives demanded that the White House and its allies release copies of the testimony, but their demands were ignored."

Much to the dismay of roiled hate groups like the KKK, Christian Identity, Aryan Nation, GOP, Posse Comitatus, and other key parts of the Bush coalition, it comes out that Miers testified in a voting rights lawsuit claiming the Dallas City Council had too few black and Hispanic members. She didn't have much to say one way or the other but her few lines of testimony can be parsed and twisted by right-wing loons like Drudge to make it sound like she's probably a Negro in disguise and that as soon as she gets onto the Supreme Court she'll do whatever pathetic white people fear Negroes want to do to them.

"The DRUDGE REPORT can now reveal," Miss Drama Queen writes, "that not only did Harriet Miers testify that she would not join the 'politically charged' Federalist Society -- she testified that she had joined a liberal organization – the Democratic Progressive Voters League. Miers was also asked whether she considered 'the NAACP [to be] in the category of organizations' that she considered to be 'politically charged.' Her answer: 'No, I don’t.' To a neo-Nazi that is damning testimony.

THE PARTY OF DIRTY TRICKS COMPLAINING THEY ARE VICTIMS... OF DIRTY TRICKS

The National Review Online, an extreme right-wing partisan website claims that residents of 37 districts have gotten calls from an organization calling itself "We The People," informing people that the Republican congressman in the district has taken tainted money from DeLay and refuses to return it. The Repugs are blaming the Democratic Party which claims to have never heard of the group and to have no part in this. Bill Burton of the DCCC said his party had nothing to do with it. "I flatly deny that we are in any way connected with whomever is making these calls," he said. One of the half dozen most corrupt people in Congress, Ohio's Bob Ney, is crying the loudest. Ney, who faces possible indictment for his criminal involvement with Abramoff (not just for Abramoff's and DeLay's defrauding the Indian tribes-- which Ney was definately involved with-- but possibly for involvement in the gangland style murder of Abramoff's former business associate) was squealing like a stuck pig when he found out residents of his district are being telephoned about the thousands of dollars DeLay has paid him. Ney's flake, shady character named Brian Walsh made baseless claims that "this is part of an ongoing effort by the Democrats in Washington to use these shadowy outside groups to spread negative attacks."

DeLay also has a flack that claims it's a Democratic Party effort to paint a bad picture of himself. One Democrat remarked that DeLay "doesn't need anyone from our party to help him paint bad pictures of himself. We're talking about the singular most corrupt politician in modern history and all his activties are coming unwound in full public view. He's done all his own painting."

HOW BADLY COULD RALPH REED HURT THE GEORGIA REPUBLICAN PARTY ?

On Monday I did a little piece called "BIG CHANGES AT THE CHRISTIAN COALITION-- NO ONE BELIEVES IN THEIR BULL ANYMORE BUT BUSHCO (AND THEY'RE ONLY MAKIN' BELIEVE)," which goes into how badly Ralph Reed's Christian Coalition has fallen. Several friends of mine in Georgia have since contacted me to tell me that I missed something: Ralph Reed is wrecking the state GOP with his futile run for lieutenant governor. Because he was caught in bed-- metaphorically-- with indicted DeLay consigliere, bilking American Indian tribes out of millions of dollars in a gambling casino operation, Republicans are urging Reed to drop out-- and drop out NOW.

I had mentioned that there might even be some spill-over that could impact Gov. Sonny Perdue's re-election campaign, especially since Republican ability to manipulate voting machines, which may have been what won the race for Perdue last time, may have been neutralized. But now there is talk that with Reed on the ballot, the GOP hold on the General Assembly could also be in jeopardy and that their carefully laid plans to steal two congressional districts they have gerrymandered to be less Democratic-friendly could also backfire (the 3rd and 12th)!

A former state chairman of the Georgia Republican Party (post-Christian Coalition), Reed is now seem as a liar and hypocrite-- and a heavy liability because of his widely publicized connections to the DeLay-Abramoff crime operations. The state's biggest newspaper, THE ATLANTA JOURNAL-CONSTITUTION, has detailed how Reed, who has been a vocal opponent of gambling on moralistic grounds, has been helping Abramoff play off various Indian tribes who want to open casinos against religious conservatives controlled by Reed who oppose the casinos. The little game Reed and Abramoff have been playing has brought millions of dollars into GOP campaign coffers-- and their own pockets.

Even Reed's erstwhile natural allies, the vicious homophobes who dominate much of the GOP in Georgia, are starting to back away from him as the stink of corruption permeates everything he touches. Representative Earl Ehrhart, an aggressive gay-basher and religionist hypocrite of long-standing who would normally be expected to be campaigning vigorously for someone like Reed has already endorsed Casey Cagle, a state senator Georgia Republicans hope will knock the better-known Reed out of the primary. Even the head of the Georgia state Christian Coalition, Sadie Fields, another maniac obsessed with persecuting gay men and women, has refused to endorse Reed.

FRIST SUBPOENAED

Although Tennessee's crooked right-wing senior senator, Bill Frist hasn't been arrested yet, he has been subpoenaed by the SEC and must turn over all personal documents pertaining to the insider trading scandal that netted him millions of dollars. He will also be forced to testify under oath, a major problem for someone who lies as naturally as normal people breathe.

Frist has used his position in the Senate to craft medical legislation that has benefited corporations, including his family's, while screwing patients. Long considered one of the least ethical of any current senator, Frist is trying to get the Republican nomination for the 2008 presidential race.

"It seems that for years, Frist may have misled his constituents and the American people about his health care industry stock holdings and the conflict of interest they created as he drafted our nation's health care policy," said Karen Finney of the DNC. "This deal raises even more questions about the Republican culture of corruption in Washington, D.C." Frist has also admitted killing stray cats.

GORE BASHES BUSH'S BRAND OF FASCISM BUT SAYS HE'S NOT RUNNING

AP reported today that Al Gore says he won't run for president in 2008. It's a shame. As I've said before, I think he's more ready now to be a great president than he was when Bush stole the election in 2000. Gore, in Sweden for an economics conference, responded to reporters' questions by declaring he has no intention of ever running for president again: "I have absolutely no plans and no expectations of ever being a candidate again." A reporter then asked him how the U.S. would be different if he had been declared president. Pointing out the obvious-- that the U.S. would be an entirely "different country" than it is under Bush's crony-capitalist/proto-fascist regime, Gore spoke the kinds of truths that corporate mass media in this country usually keep from people. "We would not have invaded a country that didn't attack us," he said, referring to Iraq. "We would not have taken money from the working families and given it to the most wealthy families," referring to the never-ending cycle of Bush tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires that have wrecked services for the less well-off. "We would not be trying to control and intimidate the news media. We would not be routinely torturing people," Gore said. "We would be a different country."

A.P. reports that a propagandist for the fascist regime's political party, Tracey Schmitt, predictably made an ad hominem attack on Gore, calling his comments "fictitious rants that border on dangerous." Twisting what he said about the fascist Bush Regime to mean "Americans," Schmitt screeched hysterically that "to accuse Americans of participating in 'routine torture' is absurd and reveals that while Al Gore may no longer be a leader in his party, he still embodies the maniacal anger that guides Democrat leaders in Washington today."

WHY DO RIGHT WING PARENTS ALLOW FAKE "HOLY MEN" TO RAPE THEIR CHILDREN ?

Probably no one in America hasn't spent at least some time over the past couple years thinking about what makes priests and ministers sexually molest children. As diocese after diocese around America was swamped in excruciating stories of trusted and respected supposed "men of God" having sex with children in their spiritual care, people started wondering... why? What makes a man who ostensibly dedicated his life to "God" (and all that that means) take thwart one of the most crucial and iron-clad of all human societies' mores (right up there with prohibitions against cannibalism): thou shalt not rape small children. The Board of Directors of the hugely profitable and longest running corporate business in world history, the Roman Catholic Church based in the Vatican City enclave of Rome, would like people-- especially donors-- to think the problem is an aberration or that gays sneaking into the priesthood is what this is all about. But it isn't an aberration and it isn't about gay priests. It's about the kind of people who decide on an avocation in the priesthood.

When I was just a little boy (as the song goes, more or less), I figured the whole priest thing out. I was thinking about cavemen and what the self-selection was for shaman. Everybody had to work their ass off in extremely dangerous conditions (saber-toothed tigers, for example, had no reason to know about the theory of Dominion yet). I mean you were up at the break of day, hunting and gathering and avoiding beasts to scrape together a meager existence. But there's one guy in the group who is lazy as hell, doesn't like taking his chances outrunning hungry things with sharp teeth who want to eat him and can't really throw a spear straight for shit anyway. But he does like to eat as much as anyone else-- maybe a little more-- and he's pretty smart. Pretty soon he's figured out the whole "god" business and he's not leaving the cave but getting a portion of everyone else's hunted and gathered stuff and he's telling 'em stories about the power of this and that and the other and making it all make sense to the dumber cave men.

Pretty soon his descendants are rich and powerful and running around in fancy dresses, smooth hands and fat bellies with actual accumulated wealth and boucoup power. So much wealth and so much power that they can flaunt every law ever dreamed up-- and they seem to like sex with kiddies more than cannibalism. What a scam for so many for so long.

This month the MINNEAPOLIS CITY PAGES ran a fascinating story on one extreme right-wing authoritarian priest/child molester and how his parishioners (and victims) reacted to his deprecations. Bruce Rubsenstein's piece, "The Sins of the Father," focused on "Father" Ryan Erickson of Hudson, Wisconsin. Erickson, although an alcoholic, was through and through a traditionalist, a big fan of the rituals, costumes and hocus pocus... a real drama queen when it came to the ceremonies and all that. He was also a gun-totin' (pistol in the waistband) right-wing political extremist, a vote-Bush-or-rot-in-eternal-damnation kind of guy.

Rubsenstein tells us not all the congregants were equally enthused by Erickson's performance. "The parishioners who were wowed by his histrionics became known as 'kneelers,' because they knelt during Consecration. The 'standers' were either uncomfortable with his act or oblivious. Mostly they suffered in silence or opted to attend another church. The parish's spiritual life, they believed, was being hijacked by the born-agains, people they wearily referred to as 'holy rollers,' in reference to the way they demonstrated their fervor. Alternately, they called them 'chirpers,' after a retreat group that Father Ryan led named CRHP--Christ Renews His Parish."

The MINNEAPOLIS CITY PAGES story is also the story of one of the "standers," 39-year-old Dan O'Connell, a member of one of Hudson's most prominent families and the owner of O'Connell Funeral Home. And about James Ellison, O'Connell's 22 year old intern. Both were murdered, shot in cold blood (by guess who). Last week, over 2 years after the murders, the story reports "St. Croix County Attorney Eric Johnson is presenting evidence connecting Father Ryan to the killing. And Johnson will confirm what has long been whispered by Erickson's harshest critics: that the crusading sexual moralist had been engaging in the same crimes against children that have devastated the Catholic church in recent years." But the gun-totin', hard drinkin', Bush-campaignin', child molestin' right-wing asshole already committed suicide so he's already rotting in the hell he threatened anyone he didn't like with.

Rubsenstein reports that "On December 19, 2004, he hung himself in the hallway of the church where he'd been reassigned, St. Mary's of the Seven Dolors, in Hurley, Wisconsin. His suicide came the day after investigators executed a search warrant on his living quarters, looking for evidence that would connect him to the murders. What they discovered, according to a front-page PIONEER PRESS article, is child pornography on his computer, some of it involving bondage.

When Erickson was still in his early teens, his family moved and left him in the "care" of a Catholic priest. People who remember him from those days remember him as "obviously gay" and obsessed with becoming a priest. By the time he was 18 parents were careful to not leave him alone with young children-- although everyone knew girls were perfectly safe around him. He was already drinking himself into oblivion at 18.

Once he made it into the seminary, his fellow students, according to Rubsenstein "referred to him as 'the Monsignor' because of his ultra-conservative religious views." He was ordained in June 2000-- "a baby-faced, bespectacled young man with a dour expression. He came to St. Patrick's with some firm beliefs: that levity had no place in sermons; that Mass should be celebrated at least partly in Latin; that it was his calling to lecture parishioners, especially children, about mortal sin... One of Father Ryan's chores at St. Patrick's School was sex education. His conservative supporters liked the priest's black-and-white approach to the topic, but other parents were alarmed by what he told their kids. Mortal sins and the temptation to commit them were his major concern. Abortion was high on his list, but it was trumped by masturbation, which obsessed him."

He used to e-mail the parishioners with his crazed thoughts and the crazed among the parishioners ate it up. One that Rubsenstein found for his readers was about the church-going Catholic ladies who came to mass. "Even Sunday Mass is not safe from the immodest dress of some devils. They come to read, give out Holy Communion, etc....looking like an advertisement. Their immodest dress says to all present: 'I'm easy! Please go home and masturbate to my beautiful body.' The sad thing is that some do." Erickson was clearly out of his mind but the Stepford wing-nuts in town didn't seem to notice. I mean this IS the kind of world Limbaugh and Hannity and Dobson and Phelps paints for them anyway. Still, as Rubsenstein puts it, "nobody doubted that he got his details about rampant onanism firsthand. Father Ryan aggressively sought confessional visitors. He instructed the students at St. Patrick's school to come to him for confession, and got pushy if they were reluctant. 'Why haven't you seen Father this week?' he asked several junior high students." And the conservative loons in town demanded that Erickson take a larger role at the school, although the school's principal and some of the parents were doubting whether he should be there at all, or allowed anywhere near their children.

He was 100% into all the pre-Vatican II stuff and he was trying to pass all that discredited, bigoted crap on to the kids. The church was split. Rubsenstein introduces us to a woman who identifies herself as an Erickson supporter, Patricia German. She "argues that the split came from some congregants' resistance to the hard truths that he taught. 'I know that Father's frank discussion of mortal sin offended some people, but he simply preached the real teachings of the church,' German says. 'They'd been hearing a watered-down version of the faith until he came. He taught the true faith and it made some of them uncomfortable. I'd say the parish was about 10 percent with us, 10 percent opposed, and the rest pretty uninvolved.' A woman who was on the other side of the rift questions whether it's that simple. She uses the example of the kneeling/standing controversy. 'Bishops have a wide latitude concerning what they can do in the diocese, and Father Peter, with the Bishop's tacit approval, allowed people to stand during Consecration, because the ones in back couldn't see if they knelt. It was a minor thing, a matter of convenience, but it became this huge, divisive argument--the kneelers versus the standers.' Father Ryan's critics said he wanted to drag their church back to the 12th century (although my friend Danny would protest how unfair that is to Thomas Aquinas, Abelard etc) but he was quite modern in one respect: He had an extensive e-mail list, and used it to exhort the faithful and chastise the infidels. In turn, they demanded militant action against abortion and gay sex, calling public opposition to such sins a Catholic's religious duty. During the run-up to the 2004 election they distributed leaflets in the church parking lot demanding that Catholics vote for George Bush, another duty of the faith. Patricia German's husband, Jerry, says that Father Ryan brought something to St. Patrick's that had been sorely lacking until then: passion. 'He did everything passionately,' he says. 'Preach, hunt, fish, drink beer. He just reeked passion.'" And booze.

The wing-nuts defended their alcoholic child-molesting little fascist priest. One says: "People turned it into something divisive. He taught the truth, and there are a lot of people who don't want to hear it. He stuck to his guns. The truth is the truth and there is no variance." Sounds like what you get from Limbaugh and Robsertson and O'Reilly day in and day out, something these clueless wing-nuts just eat up. The defender continues: "For example, looking at pornographic material is a sin. Well, there are a lot of men in our parish who look at girlie magazines, and they don't want to hear that. Abortion is a sin. Masturbation is a sin. They don't want to hear that, because they've had to go through it, or maybe they're for it." And when Limbaugh gets caught using drugs and Roberston gets caught stealing from his contributors and calling for assassinations and when O'Reilly goes beyond just writing pornography into... well you know... all the loofah stuff... and when Father Ryan gets drunk and rapes an 8 year old boy and shoots 2 people?

A partisan right-wing newspaper, RENEW AMERICA, edited by anti-abortion fanatic Matt C. Abbott, frequently defends Erickson. An avatar of the macho right, they deny Erickson was gay at all. And his followers in town see it the same way. One told Rubsenstein that being gay-- not just gay sex-- "is a sin. It's a choice. That's been proven. I've read studies on it." She explains that people who aren't attracted to the opposite sex may be meant to be celibate. She finds rumors that Erickson was gay laughable. "He was a very holy priest," she says. When Rubsenstein asks her how she can be sure of the priest's sexual orientation, the clueless nitwit replies "I'm a mom and you just know these things. My kids were very close with Father Ryan. They went to his night prayers, they fished with him, they hung out with him. He was at our house all the time. When a priest comes into your life like that and he's young, you think, 'Oh-oh, better be careful.' You watch for signs, you pop into rooms, and never even once did I come close to thinking there was even a possibility."

Interestingly-- though only an imbecile would expect otherwise-- Rubsenstein points out that "some of the child victims came from conservative Catholic families that were reluctant to believe Father Ryan had abused their kids. They impeded the investigation, and until it was complete, investigators couldn't fill in the blanks concerning Father Ryan's motive for murdering O'Connell." As some of the victims came of age they stopped listening to their horrible fascist parents' criminal blandishments to protect the priest and started talking to law enforcement officials about Erickson feeding them alcohol and sexually molesting them in the rectory.

But, the wing-nuts still refuse to accept the truth about Erickson (or themselves, of course). I mean how do parents face themselves when their own ideological bigotry has led to their son being fondled by the parish priest? According to Rubsenstein, "when pressed, these people will admit that 'the hanged priest' hung himself, but they also hint at a mysterious martyrdom. In death as in life he remains a divisive figure, either murdered or hounded to an early grave by demonic liberals according to his devotees; dead of a self-imposed penance after a subconsciously compelled confession according to his critics. One of his followers, Darla Meyers, has become a regular on right-wing talk shows and the far-right print media, where she frequently invokes the memory of Father Ryan during her discussions of abortion. Meyers is the gatekeeper of a secretive website devoted to Erickson's memory. Anyone can get to the home page at fatherryanerickson.com, but only the chosen make it into the messages section, where Erickson's disciples share their memories of the man who had such an impact on their lives. Requests for a password to the inner sanctum are answered with a query: 'How did you know Father? Journalists are not welcome.' Typical of the rabid rightists who still adhere to their murderer/molester priest is Helen Shaw. Her attitude is very representative of many of his delusional supporters. "She's aware," writes Rubsenstein, "that he suffered from depression and she believes he was pushed into committing suicide. 'I know that they questioned him about sexual acts with kids and I think when they did that his heart about fell through the floor,' she says. 'This man loved kids.' She doesn't believe Erickson committed any of the transgressions attributed to him. Amid all the newspaper coverage and the lurid details, has she ever questioned the holiness of the hanged priest? 'No,' she says, 'never.'

Today Associated Press reported that "Newly released records of sex abuse claims against 126 priests that are at the core of hundreds of lawsuits against the Archdiocese of Los Angeles show that church officials for decades moved accused priests between counseling and new assignments." Although the archdiocese worked hard to keep the documents sealed, they were released today and show a pattern of abuse with the church hierarchy protecting serial child molesters. Cardinal Roger Mahony, who has led the archdiocese since 1985, is the head of a pernicious crime family who should spend the rest of his miserable life in prison. So far he has not been arrested.

BLOGGERS' DELIGHT IN MULLET

This past weekend there was a shindig in Mullet, California for L.A. Area bloggers. It was hosted by Bryan Linse of Ain't No Bad Dude (http://www.aintnobaddude.com) and my old Bay Area punk rock campadre, Jane Hampsher of Firedoglake (http://firedoglake.blogspot.com). I had no idea there were so many dedicated people blogging away about progressive politics right here in L.A. It was great to meet John, the visionary behind Crooks & Liars, and to get turned on to all these cool new blogs. One I've already been having fun with today is AgitProp (http://agitprop.typepad.com) where there's this cool game you can play writing Fox "News" headlines from any time in history (examples: "CRUCIFICTION UNSUCCESSFUL; CHRIST IN PERSISTENT VEGETATIVE STATE," "NEW WORLD - SAVAGES TO GREET NEW SETTLERS IN ROANOKE COLONY AS LIBERATORS," "ENTERTAINMENT NEWS: RIEFENSTIAL'S "TRIUMPH OF THE WILL" A DELIGHTFUL FAMILY FILM," "GOEBBELS: 'ELEANOR ROOSEVELT IS A CLOWN' AND THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT 'DOESN'T EXIST,'" "THE SOFTER SIDE OF DER FUHRER: THE COMPASSIONATE VEGATARIAN. TONIGHT ON THE NO SPIN ZONE"... You get the picture. Go over and join the fun.

Meanwhile, I was mesmerized by some of the really smart people and their amazing theories about what's going on behind the headlines. Jane's analysis on Treasongate was particularly fascinating and enthralling. If I could rememeber all the in's and out's I'd share them but one of the other really smart guys who I met there, Mark Kleiman, already posted Jane's theories on his blog. Worth checking out at Mark A.R. Kleiman.com (http://www.markarkleiman.com)

There's this whole new world out there. I even figured out-- or someone figured out for me-- the difference between Atrios and Kos and Eschaton. I mean I thought they were all the same thing. I hope I still have time for writing with all the daily reading I have to do!

SANTORUM GETS CAUGHT LYING ABOUT U2. CAN ANYONE NAME ONE INSTANCE WHEN SANTORUM HAS EVER BEEN TRUTHFUL ABOUT ANYTHING ?

When U2's first album, BOY, was released in the U.S., it was sent out with a review I had done of the advance. I've known them a long, long time. They used to put some of the bands that were signed to my tiny indie label on tour with them. COOL guys. Last year when I asked them for a signed thingie for an auction I was helping put together for People For the American Way, Bono said he can't get tangled up in partisan politics. (Even though People For the American Way is a non-partisan educational and public service organization-- an argument that I've been successful using when persuading right-wing celebrities to donate stuff, like Johnny Ramone-- I let it go with Bono. He's doing his own important work and if he thought even a tangential association with PFAW would harm his prospects for helping needy, desperately needy, Africans, I could easily respect that.)

So this week when Pennsylvania neo-fascist Rick Santorum announced U2 was doing a benefit concert for him in Philly, it never for one second crossed my mind that Santorum wasn't lying his ass off, as he does as reflexively as he breathes. There was no way U2 was getting involved with any grubby American pols, let alone a fascist grubby American pol. But he's the press release Santorum released: "Teaming up with the legendary rock group U2 for a one-night only appearance will be Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Penn.). The thousand-dollar-a-seat concert has been put together by Sean and Ana Wolfington and will take place at the Wachovia Center in Philadelphia in support of Santorum’s re-election." One of the extreme rightist Wolfingtons added, wishfully: "It's truly appropriate for U2, a band with a purpose, to be involved in a fund-raiser with Senator Rick Santorum, a politician with a purpose. Both men are passionate about what they believe and their faith is very important to them.”

Although U2 couldn't exactly say that Santorum is a delusional lying sack of shit, Bono had the organization he founded and actually does fundraising for, DATA (debt AIDS trade Africa) release a statement to the press for Jamie Drummond, DATA's Executive Director: "It is not uncommon for politicians, from both parties, to organize events at all kinds of music concerts. If any such events take place at a U2 concert, it is without the involvement or knowledge of Data, U2 or Bono. U2 concerts are categorically not fundraisers for any politician-- they are rock concerts for U2 fans."

You may recall that the Gropenfuehrer tried the same thing with the Rolling Stones concerts-- and got badly burned for his efforts. Schwarzenegger was made to look like a craven asshole a clown and a fool by Jagger from stage. I doubt Bono will be as aggressive but I think all Pennsylvania U2 fans are already aware that Santorum's $1,000/head luxury box shenanigans is not connected to or condoned by U2 in any way shape or form. Shouldn't Santorum be trying to hook up with Clint Black and ZZ Top and leave socially aware artists alone? I hope he tries to pull a stunt like that with Green Day.

FRIST-- WORSE THAN MARTHA STEWART, MUCH MUCH WORSE

Look, I reserve my sorrow and anguish for victims of Katrina, Rita, Bush and the earthquake in Pakistan, not for multi-millionaires striving like heck to claw their way to billionaire status but who get caught with their hands in the cookie jar and get a good slap (or even a tepid slap). Do you think Martha Stewart or Bill Frist would ever be treated the way those New Orleans cops treated Robert Davis, a retired elementary school teacher whose only crime appears to have been born the ancestor of kidnapped citizens of Africa a few hundred years ago? No, rich white folks don't get brutalized by the regimes' enforcers. Especially not Republican rich white folks.

I could give a crap if Martha Stewart was sent away to do some easy time in a cushy Connecticut prison. Be more careful next time or, better yet, realize you have to obey the same laws the rest of us have to obey. Well, at least most of the rest of us. "Kenny Boy" Lay is still hiding-and-spending stolen assets, as are the vast majority of Bush-connected crooks. "Duke" Cunningham isn't even being investigated by "Doc" Hastings' so-called "House Ethics Committee," let along being kicked off the House Intelligence or Defense Appropriations committees, access to which were linchpins in the millions of dollars in bribes he was able to coax out of defense contractors (and all mention of the fact that he was selling presidential pardons to convicted Republican criminals has disappeared without a trace). And so on and so on.

But what about Republicrook Senate Majority Leader (and self-proclaimed presidential candidate), Bill Frist who was caught red-handed doing something about 500 times more egregiously illegal than Martha Stewart? His punishment should be 500 times harsher than hers. But this week he's still doing grievous damage to America as Senate Majority Leader. And today the Associated Press ran a story by Larry Margasak exposing that Frist broke the law by accumulating stock-- OUT SIDE IS FAKE "BLIND" TRUST-- in his billionaire family's Hospital rip-off business while he was aggressively pushing medical policies that would drive the price of that stock up. No cops beat the shit out of him today.

According to the AP story, documents show that outside the farcical "blind" trust, Frist earned a great deal of money and was utterly entangled in gross conflict of interest, exactly what a true blind trust seeks to avoid for public officials. Margasak got a hold of two experts in the field of blind trusts, Edmond M. Ianni, a former Wilmington, DE, bank executive who established blind trusts for corporate executives, and Kathleen Clark, a government ethics expert at the Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. Ianni questioned why Frist's brother was able to manage assets "when the whole purpose of a blind trust is to ensure lack of not only conflict of interest but appearance of conflict of interest?" And Clark's assessment was even starker, saying "she doesn't believe the Senate trusts or the Tennessee trust insulated Frist from a conflict because the senator or his brother were advised of transactions and could influence decisions. 'What I find most appalling is the Senate calls it a qualified blind trust when it's not blind,' Clark said. 'Since the Senate says it's OK, the Senate has made it a political question. It's up to the voter. But there's no doubt it's a conflict of interest.'"

Caught red-handed and exposed today Frist, through his team of high-priced lawyers, admitted his brother could influence investment decisions in the Bowling Avenue partnership that controlled the stock and said the partnership was placed in a Tennessee trust because Senate ethics rules didn't allow the non-public HCA shares to be included in Senate-approved trusts." This guy sure likes dancin'! The brother, a well-known crook, refuses to comment on any of this of course. The shares in question brought Frist around a million dollars, perhaps much more.

Margasak doesn't mention that medical student Frist was a notorious cat torturer but he does point out that Senate Majority Leader Frist "with his background as a heart surgeon as well as majority leader, has been at the forefront of legislation that would affect the hospital chain. Among the issues: a Medicare prescription drug benefit and limits on medical malpractice lawsuits" (in case you were wondering why the legislation screws the poor and elderly and is a gigantic windfall for corporate entities... like Frists').

OH, THOSE WRONG-WINGERS SURE ARE IN A TIZZY ABOUT THAT POOR UNQUALIFIED HARRIET LADY

I was just listening to some right-wing loons arguing about Harriet Miers on KCRW. One of them was her "beard," a far right Texas state supreme court judge, Nathan Hecht, who has been running around since Bush nominated her, telling everybody that he knows for sure-- so don't worry-- that she's as dependably far right as Scalia and Thomas. I'm so relieved! And I'm sure Harry Reid is too. Fortunately right-wing Republicans know as well as normal patriotic Americans that Bush is an untrustworthy lying sack of shit and not a word that comes out of his mouth can ever be taken at face value. So since we certainly know we can't depend on Harry Reid and his pathetic caucus to save us from The Stealth Church Lady, the best we can hope for is that the right-wingers do.

They have a cool anti-Harriet web site up you might want to check out: http://stopmiersnow.com/

And there's some kind of a petition to help mobilize the extremist loons in the Senate. Michael Graham wrote a piece Saturday called "SOMEBODY (ANYBODY!) SAVE THIS HONORABLE COURT," which is none too complimentary of the Imbecile-in-Chief or his tragic regime.


"And let's start by saving it from George W. Bush," he begins. "That's the reason that we started this webpage." Good beginning. It would almost make you think it was someone who wasn't consumed with greed and selfishness. But then he starts to make it clear he's looking for someone WORSE than Miers, not better!

"We believe that, as conservatives, it's our job to protect the Supreme Court from cronyism and the Constitution from a nominee who needs on-the-job training." OK, that's a reasonable point for the Far Far Right over the plain ole Far Right.

"If you agree, then please join us in this effort to stop the nomination of Harriett Miers, the worst court pick since Portland took Sam Bowie over Charles Barkley, John Stockton AND Michael Jordan in the '84 NBA draft." What's the matter? He couldn't do an analogy using Sammy Sosa?

"What can you do to stop the Church Lady from getting her inexperienced hands on your life, liberty and pursuit of happiness? First, don't call the White House. It won't do any good. A president who never fired Michael Brown, Norm Mineta or George Tenet isn't about to start dumping buddies overboard merely for being incompetent." Does this guy sound like one of us or what?

"No, the people with the ability, duty and political interest to stop Harriet Miers are the 55 Republican members of the US Senate." (Uh oh.) "They swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and it never needed more protection than it does now--from a life-time appointment of an unqualified political hack with no experience or tested judicial philosophy." Well, she's definitely an unqualified political hack-- and most polls show between 65 and 75% of Americans agree, regardless of political leaning-- but... are we going to have to depend on an oath by people like Bill Frist, Mitch McConnell, John Cornyn and James Inhofe, all proven congenital liars and crooks. And what happens if Frist gets hauled away to prison for insider trading before the vote?

"We are starting our focus with the 10 Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee (OK, 9 plus Arlen Specter)." That's right-wing humor. He means Specter refuses to come to KKK meetings and won't support bombing women's health clinics. Get it? Aren't they amusing? "If just four of them do the right thing and vote no, their votes plus the five Democratic idiots who thought JOHN ROBERTS was unqualified will keep the committee from reporting her nomination favorably to the US Senate. That should end this nonsense on the spot." I think this loon is more confident in the Democrats than I am. I mean Dianne Feinstein, for one, seems to have made every indication of voting for Miers and Miers is probably right up Kohl's alley. Unfortunately for BushCo (this time) the collection of dependable extremist lunatics the Repugs have packed the committee with-- Hatch, Kyl, Sessions, Cornyn, Brownback and Coburn (the last two vying for title of "most over the top neo-Nazi in public office")-- is likely to work against them, for a change. But the more "moderate" Repug, Lindsey Graham, may support BushCo on this one as a way of voicing solidarity for relatively-moderate-right-wingers-who-live-their-miserable-lives-in-closets.

Graham, the writer, not the closeted senator, ends his piece with a bit of a wimper: "The contact information for the Senate Judiciary Committee is here. Please use it well, and spread the word. Remember: The Constitution you save may be your own." I was hoping for another gratuitous Bush slam. Oh well, the hearings should start soon (or do you think they'll really make her withdraw so she can spend more time in Texas with her... cats?)

BATTLE HYMN OF THE REPUBLICANS

My old comrade in arms, Zepp, wrote a nice little song you may find inspiring. He only wrote the words, not the music or the melody. Originally it was a blue state song that was meant to inspire those fighting against fascist anti-U.S. rebels (1861). It still is. Zepp, like Howe (and Howie), is a true American patriot and it pains him to see fascists trying to destroy our great country. When you sing this for your friends and family or at picnics or on the bus, please remember to keep to Howe's original tune. (Thanks Zepp!)


Mine Eyes have seen the bungling of that stumbling moron Bush;
He has blathered all the drivel that the neo-cons can push;
He has lost sight of all reason 'cause his head is up his tush;
The Doofus marches on.



I have heard him butcher syntax like a kindergarten fool;
There is warranted suspicion that he never went to school;
Should we fault him for the policies -- or is he just their tool?
The lies keep piling on.



Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
His wreckage will live on.



I have seen him cut the taxes of the billionaires' lone heir;
As he spends another zillion on an aircraft carrier;
Let the smokestacks keep polluting -- do we really need clean air?
The surplus is now gone.



Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Your safety net is gone!



Now he's got a mighty hankerin' to bomb a prostrate state;
Though the whole world knows its crazy -- and the U.N. says to wait;
When he doesn't have the evidence, "We must prevaricate."
Diplomacy is done!



Oh, a trumped-up war is excellent; we have no moral bounds;
Should the reasons be disputed, we'll just make up other grounds;
Enraging several billions -- to his brainlessness redounds;
The Doofus marches on!



Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
Glory! Glory! How he'll Screw Ya'!
THIS...DOO...FUS...MAR...CHES...ON*

BIG CHANGES AT THE CHRISTIAN COALITION-- NO ONE BELIEVES IN THEIR BULL ANYMORE BUT BUSHCO (AND THEY'RE ONLY MAKIN' BELIEVE)

Religionist fanatics are mad at their man Bushie because his clearly anti-choice nominee for the Supreme Court, to the seat that could change "the balance," is not clear enough or loud enough or so wild-eyed and crazed that she could spark a serious backlash-- however unlikely-- from the quiescent Democratic wing (+ the 3 or 4 "moderates" left in the GOP) of the ruling corporatocracy. And they just may get their way! There is more and more talk about the Regime flushing this one the same way they flushed Flanigan.

The irony of all this is that the hardcore religionist right is losing influence, credibility and power everywhere EXCEPT inside the Bush Regime. Pat Robertson has become a punchline on late night TV and his every statement is an embarrassment for serious ministers and people of actual faith. The Christian Coalition, which he founded, is two steps ahead of a myriad of collection agencies for unpaid bills. Their annual income has plummeted worse than Bush's poll approval numbers-- from a peak of $26 million in 1996 to just over a million in 2004 (with a $200,000 deficit for the year). The "Red States" are all a lot redder from the Coalition's unpaid bills blanketing the whole former Confederacy. They're being sued in courts all over the country by dozens of vendors and creditors for non-payment of debts. No wonder they and their front organizations were so eager to get their paws on taxpayer dollars meant for Hurricane Katrina victims in Mississippi and Louisiana!

Apart from Robertson, who resigned as President in 2001, the other famous Christian Coalition personality, former Executive Director Ralph Reed, is now getting even more famous for his crooked dealings with indicted GOP lobbyist Jack Abramoff whom Reed helped bilk millions of dollars from several Indian tribes. The Christian Coalition's problems go deeper than pernicious political hacks like Robertson and Reed. When 10 African-American employees who filed a racial discrimination lawsuit because they were forced to enter the office by the back door and eat in a segregated area, the Christian Coalition paid them $300,000 to prevent the suit from going to court and to stop the bad publicity. Meanwhile they're being sued by everyone from their former landlords, who they bilked for over $75,000 to Pitney-Bowes, Federal Express, several direct mail firms, audio and lighting vendors for a DeLay rally they put on, lots of unpaid ex-employees, and even their longtime (former) law firm, Huff, Poole & Mahoney, which has already won an uncollected judgment against them.

Meanwhile the chairman of the Christian Coalition of Oregon, Louis Beres, has joined a long list of pious hypocrites on the religionist right charged with child molesting. Beres, who was also the chairman of the Multnomah County Republican Party, molested at least 3 female members of his own family, one of whom was in elementary school at the time, may escape prosecution on a technicality. According to Beres' nephew, when law enforcement authorities were told that Beres was molesting children-- for over two generations-- his family was made to go through "hell. Lives have been ruined. Those of us who have come forward have been ostracized, verbally abused and the victims of character assassination." And that, sadly is what the Christian Coalition is all about today: staying ahead of the bill collectors, molesting defenseless children and, of course (no change here) preaching hatred and GOP politics and scaring the hell out of people.


5:30PM UPDATE-

By the way, I'm not trying to say that the only people who sexually molest small children are Republican leaders in Oregon. Oh, no. Republican leaders in Kentucky need to be kept away from kids too. WYMT ran with an interesting little story about the Republican Party's ex-leader in Floyd County, Bobby Stumbo (a recently defeated GOP candidate for Kentucky's House of Representatives). He was charged with sexually abusing a five year old boy. I know Republicans have trouble relating to other human beings on an equal, one-on-one basis... but a FIVE YEAR OLD CHILD??? I mean even for a right-wing loon, this is a bit much!

Police testified it all started when the boy returned home from his father's house and sat down with his mother. "He kissed her, and when he kissed her, he stuck his tongue in her mouth. She asked him where he learned that, and the child told her Bobby did that to him, talking about Bobby Stumbo," Detective Byron Hansford said. Police say Stumbo lives with the boy's father, but he was alone with the child at the time. Stumbo, in true Republican fashion, denies everything, of course. A judge doesn't agree and the case is moving forward. Stumbo is out of jail, but he is not allowed within one thousand feet of the five year old boy but that doesn't protect other 5 year olds-- or 4 year olds.

GEORGE BUSH IS THE MOST HATED MAN IN THE WORLD-- AND THE STINK IS STARTING TO RUB OFF ON THE REST OF US

I travel a lot-- and I go everywhere. Well, I don't go to Caribbean island resorts but I spent years traveling through places like Afghanistan, India, Bosnia, Morocco, Indonesia, Spain, Turkey, Pakistan, Iran, Hungary, Egypt, Sir Lanka, Nepal, Iran, Bulgaria, Thailand, Finland, Iceland... Soon I'm going to Morocco again (for like the 10th time since 1969). And when I go to Morocco I don't just run across the Straits and have some sugary tea in Tangier and run back to Spain after. I've been to every part of the country and even rode a camel out into the Sahara towards Timbuktu (one of my dream destinations). Anyway, I'm not about to offer a travelogue. I'm mentioning it because wherever I've gone, since I started foreign travel in the 60s, I found OVERWHELMINGLY admiration and genuine enthusiasm for America and Americans. Even at the height of the War Against VietNam (most of which I spent living in Europe and Asia), when a lot of people were pissed off, I experienced nothing but kindness in Berlin, Paris, Bombay, Tehran...

Lately I've noticed a shift. A year or so ago I fell off a mountain in the middle of Turkey. No one really spoke any English where I fell. But they seemed to know enough to say "Bush: Bad/ America: Good!" I agreed wholeheartedly of course. A taxi driver outside of Barcelona was somewhat more aggressive with basically the same message that he had the language to communicate in a more sophisticated fashion; something to the effect of: "alright ,we all know he stole the election in 2000. We don't really blame you. Make sure it doesn't happen again this year. Or we will."

And now they kind of do. Bush is probably the most hated man in history. I'm not saying he's as BAD
as Hitler or Ghenghis Khan or Stalin. I'm just saying more people hate him, much of that having to do with the prevelence of mass communications today. And, from what I can tell, they're not feeling overly loving of the United States. I mean BushIsUs-- or so many people are starting to think... and feel. Yuck, right? My friend "D" sent me an editorial from THE MIRROR, a popular mainstream newspaper in the U.K., our #1 ally. Rather dramatically, the headline blares: IS THIS THE DEATH OF AMERICA? The writer of the headline wasn't the writer of the article. The Mirror's veteran U.S. correspondent, Dermot Purgavie, was. Take a look:



THIS week Karen Hughes, long-time political adviser to George Bush, began her new mission as the State Department's official defender of America's image with a tour of the Middle East.
She might have been more help to her beleaguered president had she stayed at home and used her PR skills on her neighbours. At the end of a cruel and turbulent summer, nobody is more dismayed and demoralised about America than Americans.
They have watched with growing disbelief and horror as a convergence of events - dominated by the unending war in Iraq and two hurricanes - have exposed ugly and disturbing things in the undergrowth that shame and embarrass Americans and undermine their belief in the nation and its values.

With TV providing a ceaseless backdrop of the country's failings - a crippled and tone-deaf president, a negligent government, corruption, military atrocities, soaring debt, racial conflict, poverty, bloated bodies in floodwater, people dying on camera for want of food, water and medicine - it seemed things were falling apart in the land where happiness is promoted in the constitution.

Disillusioning news was everywhere. In the flight from Hurricane Rita, evacuees fought knife fights over cans of petrol. In storm-hit Louisiana there were long queues at gun stores as people armed themselves against looters.

AMERICA, which has the world's costliest health care, had, it turned out, higher infant mortality rates than the broke and despised Cuba.

Tom De Lay, Republican enforcer in the House of Representatives, was indicted for conspiracy and money laundering. The leader of the Republicans in the Senate was under investigation for his stock dealings. And Osama bin Laden was still on the loose.

Americans are the planet's biggest flag wavers. They are reared on the conceit that theirs is the world's best and most enviable country, born only the day before yesterday but a model society with freedom, opportunity and prosperity not found, they think, in older cultures.

They rejoice that "We are No.1", and in many ways they are.

But events have revealed a creeping mildew of pain and privation, graft and injustice and much incompetence lurking beneath the glow of star-spangled superiority.

Many here feel the country is breaking down and losing its moral and political authority.

"US in funk" say the headlines. "I am ashamed to be an American," say the letters to the editor. We are seeing, say the commentators, a crumbling - and humbling - of America.

The catalogue of afflictions is long and grisly. Hurricane Katrina revealed confusion and incompetence throughout government, from town hall to White House.

President Bush, accused of an alarming failure of leadership over the disaster, has now been to the Gulf coast seven times for carefully orchestrated photo opps.

But his approval has dropped below 40 per cent. Public doubt about his capacity to deal with pressing problems is growing.

Americans feel ashamed by the violent, predatory behaviour Katrina triggered - nothing similar happened in the tsunami-hit Third World countries - and by the deep racial and class divisions it revealed.

The press has since been giving the country a crash course on poverty and race, informing the flag wavers that an uncaring America may be No.1 on the world inequities index.

IT has 37 million living under the poverty line, largely unnoticed by the richest in a country with more than three million millionaires.

The typical white family has $80,000 in assets; the average black family about $6,000. It's a wealth gap out of the Middle Ages. Some 46 million can't afford health insurance, 18,000 of whom will die early because of it.

The US, we learn, is 43rd in the world infant mortality rankings. A baby born in Beijing has nearly three times the chance of reaching its first birthday than a baby born in Washington. Those who survive face rotten schools. On reading and maths tests for 15-year-olds, America is 24th out of 29 nations.

On the other side of the tracks, 18 corporate executives have so far been jailed for cooking the books and looting billions. The prosecution of Mr Bush's pals at Enron - the showcase trial of the greed-is-good culture - will be soon.

But the backroom deal lives on and, in an orgy of cronyism, billions of dollars are being carved up in no-bid contracts awarded to politically-connected firms for work in the hurricane-hit states and in Iraq.

The war, seen as unwinnable, is becoming a bleak burden, with nearly 2,000 American dead. Two-thirds think the invasion was a mistake.

The war costs $6billion a month, driving up a nose-bleed high $331billion budget deficit. In five years the conflict will have cost each American family $11,300, it is said.

Mr Bush says blithely he'll cut existing programmes to pay for the war and fund an estimated $200billion for hurricane damage. He won't, he says, rescind his tax cuts. Republican Senator Chuck Hagel says Mr Bush is "disconnected from reality".

Americans have been angered by a reports that US troops have routinely tortured Iraqi prisoners. Some 230 low-rankers have been convicted - but not one general or Pentagon overseer. Disgruntled young officers are leaving in increasing numbers.

Meanwhile, further damaging Americans' self image, there's Afghanistan. The White House says its operations there were a success, yet last year Afghanistan supplied 90 per cent of the world's heroin.

America's sense of itself - its pride in its power and authority, its faith in its institutions and its belief in its leaders - has been profoundly damaged. And now the talking heads in Washington predict dramatic political change and the death of the Republicans' hope of becoming the permanent government.

GORE vs CLINTON ?

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT has a paragraph in their new issue speculating on Al Gore challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Many progressive Democrats would prefer to support unambivalently anti-war and outspoken Bush critic Gore than finger-always-to-the-wind war hawk Hillary (who still cluelessly insists that the solution to our problems in Iraq is more U.S. troops!).

Here's the piece from "Washington Whispers:"

"Is Al Gore coming back? If allies we talked to have their way, the former veep will be the next president. 'It's Gore Time,' says a political strategist and fundraiser who is opening a bid to get Gore into the race. Gore friends see his recent political and business moves as proof he's preparing to run. Allies say that in speeches, Gore has found his voice to address domestic and world issues. And in raising money for his Current TV network, which targets the critical youth market, Big Al has built an issue base and donor network that's competitive with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's. Our source--a top aide in the previous Bush administration--is planning meetings with Gore's team to push an early entry while Clinton runs for re-election in New York. It doesn't end there: The Gorebots want him to pick Sen. Barack Obama, the youthful Illinois African-American, as his No. 2."

Sounds good to me. And Hillary could pick Lieberman as her VP running mate, since their politics have started converging more and more. I threw my two cents in on September 26 with a piece here called AL GORE-- THE NEXT PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES? I bet Al would make a better president in 2008 than he would have in 2000-- although the guy who over-charges on all the checks at Farfalla would have made a better president in 2000 than the monstrosity who wormed his way in.

LETTER TO TED NUGENT FROM PHILBERT SUGGS

FROM THE DESK OF PHILBERT SUGGS
TO: TED NUGENT
Radical Right-wing hunter
Republican guitar hero
Reality TV show host
Real loin cloth wearer

Dear Mr. Nugent,

My name is Philbert Suggs and I'm a huge fan of your work.
Its beautiful, and somewhat magical what you've accomplished considering you've really had nothing to work with. You've killed more animals in your life time (according to the Guinness book of records) than any other man whose hair extends past his shoulders. I think its important that you understand that I know that this troubles you, (you mention it in every interview) but I've never been one of those men who have despised you or think those not very nice thoughts of you because of your long wavy and womanly like hair. No, not me Ted. I'm probably your biggest fan because I know how manly you are and I've come to realize that both you and I are so very much alike as well.

     Besides the divine like coincidence that both of us have been in and out of court and kicked out of numerous charitable events for our racist comments. I have dedicated my life just as you have to forwarding the agenda of violence against animals. This agenda we both share of upholding our god given dominion and power over all the   creatures who walketh the earth is first and foremost of importance for you sir as well as for myself.
Now when I heard your righteous speech at the NRA's 2005 national convention in Houston and I witnessed first hand your intense passion for killing as well as your hankering sentimental intensity for glorifying our leaders war in Iraq, I cried with bitter tears of joy, and weeped with a sincere rugged pride. Sir, the way your words darted so peacefully from the killing of animals, to the killing of Iraqis was pure strategery in its piercing comparisons. And when you shrieked out your famous motto "lets whack em and stack em!" to an auditorium packed with thousands of other merciless and wet eyed gun loving men I knew that you were speaking the language of our modern right-wing family values more accurately than I had ever heard it expressed before.
Oh Nuge, your message about liberating Iraqi's from the grip of evil by killing them is similar to your whole philosophy regarding the killing of animals to save them from the perils they will certainly face living in the woods or thickets. Indeed, when you go shooting up rabbits, blowing away deer, slaying raccoons, blasting bears and just whacking and stacking so many animals who otherwise might starve in a harsh winter climate you are like the "Mother Theresa to animals" as you call yourself.
As you know we hunters have defended our joy in killing animals throughout history as necessary for human survival. Yet now, just like our brave war time President who maintains that we must continue to save Iraqis by blowing them up, you make it crystal "see through" style clear that we will only save the earth's creatures from extinction, by killing them.
Because of your celebrity status and America's incredible success's in Iraq, I come to you with an idea that could help save the fast declining activity we call hunting. What we need to do now is to liberate a very popular animal from its supposed possible potential extinction and use the same language, propaganda and uplifting slogans that General Cheney and Commander Bush used in persuading congress and the public to liberate the Iraqis.
  Now Nuge, I have just seen the very popular moving picture "March of The Penguins" six times and yes I do know its a French film because the filmmakers did not gun down any penguins with a Xypex 44 maxim magnum master 750xxx Panther (dual scope) Winchester Mystery House semi automatic shotgun series, like any red blooded American patriotic would have. I was imagining with my eyes closed the other morning while cleaning the shaft on my miniature Smith and Wesson 69 how the kids today just really love these bird critters so much that if you could help me organize a hunting mission to wherever that artica place is and we could liberate us some Emperor Penguins we might encourage more families with children to hunt. Ted,with the right name like The Committee For The Liberation Of Penguin Birds, your patriotic fervor, and my talent for coercion we can build a case for this mission and our dying sport. And Ted my brother, the most exciting thing is, that similar to the fenced in animals on your ranch these critters don't hardly ever move for months while they are raising their young ones. Those penguin birds would make such simple and easy targets just like the raccoons and old deer you nail so patriotically in your back yard that we could just whack em and stack em and bring total liberation, promote regional security, create Penguin Freedom and democracy thus saving our way of life!

God Bless You, Ted.

Patriotically yours,

Philbert Suggs

PS- Ted please check out my review of your book "Blood Trails" on Amazon.com (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2WVMPCAKKMH54/ref=cm_cr_auth/103-7013865-1399866?%5Fencoding=UTF8). I gave it 5 out of 5 stars.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR MANKIND... ONE BUSH CRONY WITHDRAWS. 999 TO GO

With the BushCo virtually drowning in scandals and more and more Americans waking up to the venality of Bush's brand of extreme cronyism, the Regime decided it could not afford another public brouhaha over yet another ethically-challenged crony Bush was trying to install into a high-ranking position. Friday they withdrew the nomination of Timothy E. Flanigan for the #2 spot at the Department of Justice. Flanigan, a well-known Republican partisan and shady-dealer was a close associate of indicted GOP lobbyist and DeLay consiglieri Jack Abramoff. Abramoff, already arrested and indicted for the first of scores of corruption charges pending against him-- and a prime suspect in the Florida murder of an ex-partner of his and DeLay's-- was also in business with Flanigan, a senior lawyer for Tyco, a corrupt Bush-supporting corporation which relocated to Bermuda to avoid paying taxes.

BushCo asked Flanigan to withdraw "gracefully" rather than face another damaging hearing in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that would have focused on the massive bribes Abramoff brokered from Tyco on behalf of Bush and DeLay and on Flanigan's role, while he was deputy White House counsel (around and around Bush's revolving door goes), in framing BushCo torture policies used illegally on detainees in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Lying his ass off-- as usual-- BushCo Attorney General Gonzales said he was disappointed about "Flanigan's decision." (BushCo gave Flanigan a letter to turn in that said he was withdrawing because of "uncertainty concerning the timing of my confirmation," a cockamamie excuse that caused even GOP Senators to laugh aloud.) Gonzales, who was Flanigan's immediate supervisor in the White House counsel's office and also heavily and directly complicit in the anti-Geneva-Convention/torture-is-ok-policy, conceded the wide-ranging federal investigation of Abramoff played a role in the withdrawal, and suggested, with a straight face, that Flanigan is not a criminal (although Flanigan has hired Abramoff to lobby DeLay and Rove to kill legislation that would have forced it to pay taxes). Gonzales claims that the Dept of Justice is not investigating Flanigan for his criminal behavior and that he withdrew out of patriotic fervor knowing how badly the Dept needed to fill the position soon and feeling he might not get confirmed quickly.

Last time Flanigan was questioned-- then a BushCo nominee but still employed by Tyco-- he admitted to the Senate Judiciary Committee that Abramoff began lobbying on behalf of Tyco early in 2003 and bragged about his ties to indicted now-former House Majority Leader DeLay and to about-to-be-indicted Karl Rove, Bush's top aide for partisan strategies (and wet jobs).

WHY THE HOUSE ETHICS COMMITTEE REFUSES TO INVESTIGATE DELAY-- MEET "DOC" HASTINGS, A CROOKED POL FROM YAKIMA

Chances are you never heard of "Doc" (as in Baby Doc) Hastings... unless you're an avid tracker of egregious Republicrooks destined for infamy and, hopefully, prison. Doc Hastings is a very very bad apple, one of the most rotten in a wormy bushel. If you go back into the DownWithTyranny Archives to June 23, you'll find a piece I did on Doc called "DOC HASTINGS FEELING THE HEAT AFTER PROTECTING DELAY." Apparently he didn't feel enough heat. He's still protecting DeLay. But of course, this is the ONLY reason why DeLay made this corrupt crook the chairman of the House Ethics Committee. Hastings latest excuse-- in a long line of excuses, none ever valid-- for not investigating for the most ethically-challenged House leader in the history of the United States is that "we don't have the resources."

Doc would rather just echo DeLay's desperate lies that Austin's D.A., Ronnie Earle-- who has spent much of his professional life going after corrupt politicians, OVERWHELMINGLY Democratic ones-- is a partisan on a vendetta. Norman Ornstein, at the conservative American Enterprise Institute was incredulous that the Chairman of the House Ethics Committee would publicly identify himself with this kind of trash. "It's outrageous for the chairman of the ethics committee to virtually endorse the idea that the indictment is a political vendetta. It's a matter that is before the committee." But, as Ornstein should know, that kind of partisanship is par for the course for Doc, who was hand-picked by DeLay after he fired Colorado Republican Joel Hefley when the Ethics Committee UNANIMOUSLY reprimanded DeLay several times for ethics violations. (DeLay also has contributed generously to Doc's campaign coffers and, of course, Doc has refused to join other Republican congressman in returning the tainted money.)

Doc's strategy for preventing the House Ethics Committee from taking further action against his master has been to keep it from meeting-- something he has been successful in doing for almost half a year! Considering this is the most corrupt Congress in modern history-- with indictments served or about to be served on a dozen members, that is quite an "achievement" (something the citizens of the Yakima area should be very ashamed of). After taking over from Hefley, Hastings purposely provoked a partisan staffing conundrum inside the committee-- with the intention of protecting DeLay from bipartisan investigation-- effectively closing down his own committee, and thus allowing corrupt Republicans like Richard Pombo, Randy "Duke" Cunningham, Charles Taylor, Bob Ney and many others to steal with utter impunity. Hastings himself is closely tied, financially, to DeLay's now-arrested and indicted consiglieri, GOP lobbyist and murder suspect Jack Abramoff. Doc is up to his ears in a slave labor scandal in the Marianas Islands and should himself be the subject of serious investigations, not sitting in a position to prevent investigations!