READ MY (THIN, BLOODLESS) LIPS: NO NEW PLANS. HOWARD DEAN HAS SOME THOUGH.

Last night I participated in a question and answer session between bloggers and Francine Busby, the San Diego progressive Democrat with an excellent chance of turning "Duke" Cunningham's now vacant 50th CD from tyrannical red to democratic blue. I like Busby a lot and I think she's going to be an exemplary congresswoman and one of the things I liked the most on the call was when she explained how to make sure far right extremists don't get an opportunity to define the race with their demagoguery and simplistic answers to tough questions. Slogans are not what's needed to solve the country's problems-- solid programs are. Right after the call I wrote about Busby's Change Legislative Ethics and Attitudes Now (CLEAN) House Act, a perfect example of looking for real solutions to real problems rather than playing the posturing and PR game by appealing to everyone's dark side and basest instincts.

George Bush's pathetic excuse for leadership has given America 5 years of government by partisan PR. This morning's nonsensical rehash of failed old policies-- with a shiny, colorful (expensive) pamphlet, also with nothing new in it-- was more of the same: nothing by deceptive bullshit. Although some Democrats-- like Kerry and Nebraska Nelson-- have been inside the Beltway so long they've forgotten how to speak straight-forward English, the outpouring of dissatisfaction from Democrats and independents after Bush's disgraceful charade this morning, was deafening. Although the Likud's representative to the U.S., one Joseph Lieberman (disguised as a Democrat) supports Bush's neo-con con completely, actual Democratic reaction was thoughtful and stinging. Harry Reid' analysis was powerful and straight to the point. But even stronger was Russ Feingold's. "While today's speech by the President was billed as yet another attempt to lay out a plan for finishing the military mission in Iraq, the only new thing the administration gave the American people was a glossy 35-page pamphlet filled with the same rhetoric we've all heard before. Today's action by the White House isn't a step forward, it's a step back. In fact the booklet the administration released to accompany the President's speech is described as a '...document [that] articulates the broad strategy the President set forth in 2003...' That alone makes it clear that the President seems more dug in than ever to the same old 'stay the course' way of thinking. This is not a strategy, and it certainly is not a plan to complete the military mission in Iraq. The American people, an increasing number of elected officials, and more and more military and intelligence officials understand what the President doesn't-- that our seemingly indefinite presence in Iraq, and the lack of a plan to redeploy troops, feeds the insurgency and hurts our national security. We need leadership, and we need a policy on Iraq that includes a flexible timetable for completing our military mission there, so that we can focus on our national security priority-- defeating the global terrorist networks that threaten the US The President missed a vital opportunity today. Our brave service members, their families, the American people, and the Iraqi's themselves deserve and demand more."

Even Hillary Clinton is finally coming around to understand that for the vast majority of Americans this foolish war is all but over. Yesterday, saying she would "accept responsibility" for her vote to authorize Bush to attack Iraq, she added for the first time that "[I]f Congress had been asked, based on what we know now, we never would have agreed" to give Bush the authority to go to war. By 2010 she may catch up to Feingold and every single person I know.

And opposing Bush and watching him and his political party, drowning in arrogance and corruption, fall apart is NOT enough to re-shape the political landscape. An editorial by Howard Dean in THE HILL today could.

"In 2006, Democrats will take back the House and the Senate. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee have done an excellent job recruiting strong candidates, and we are already investing in the local infrastructure to ensure they win. But the key to winning is running a national campaign based on our different vision and the themes that Democrats around the country have put forward."

Like Francine Busby in San Diego, Governor Dean realizes Americans are revolted by GOP corruption and over-reaching-- and that something must be done about it and that Democrats need to be as clear as a bell about this. "Americans of all political persuasions are tired of and worried about the culture of corruption that Republicans have brought to Washington and to so many statehouses around America. We will offer real ethics reform and election reform so that the Government Accountability Office can report in three years that we can have confidence in our voting machines."

Just as important-- remember that is always the economy, stupid-- is... the economy and the sorry hash Bush and his greedy, selfish policies have wreaked on the rest of us. Dean promises Democrats "will offer a program for American jobs that stay in America and for energy independence that will create jobs and wean us off of foreign oil. The only president to balance a budget in the past 37 years was a Democrat. We will do that again. We will offer a real tax-reform program that helps the middle class pay for it by eliminating the shocking waste and giveaways the Republican Congress and president have added to the budget and subtracted from revenues in the past five years. We will join the 36 other countries that manage to include all their citizens in their health-insurance systems while simultaneously balancing their budgets. We will provide a strong public education system by avoiding bureaucratic federal mandates and taxpayer-funded puff pieces. We will rely on local control while requiring real standards that work nationally."

I know what Dean would like to say about getting us out of Bush's Iraq war and occupation, but as Chairman of the DNC he is somewhat obligated to represent all segments of the party-- not counting lunatics and assholes like Lieberman. "We will offer Americans real security. We all agree that 2006 must be a transition year in Iraq. While we may have different ideas about tactics and timing, it’s clear we must change course. The vision of strategic redeployment set forward by Brian Katulis and former Reagan Defense Department official Lawrence Korb offers a likely roadmap to success that we can coalesce around. We will offer the American people a government that is honest in preparing for any deployment of American troops and honor their sacrifice when they come home."

And with America in the clutches of the Republican Noise Machine, Dean wants to remind Americans that there are real differences between Democrats and Republicans. "Most important, we will talk about Democratic values, which are America’s values. The vast majority of Americans believe it is immoral to lets kids go hungry. We agree. The other party cuts school lunches (they just can’t seem to leave that one alone.) Americans believe it is immoral that not everyone has some kind of health insurance. We agree. The vast majority of Americans believe that government overreaching into personal and family decisions is wrong. We agree. Americans believe that it is immoral to leave huge debts to our children and grandchildren. We agree." Me too.
    

JEWS AND THE GOP-- THE RIGHT IS THE RIGHT IS THE RIGHT AND WILL ALWAYS BE THE RIGHT-- AND WILL ALWAYS HATE & KILL JEWS

Don't ask me how I wound up on a right-wing hate site called JEW WATCH but someone sent me an e-mail with some links and one led to another and then another and suddenly I'm in a right-wing land of make believe, a real Far Right No-Excuses-Made-World. And not unlike the way my friend A monitors Fox "News" (albeit excessively watching them all day and all night) to see what the Far Right is up to, I decided to check out these loons and see what's cooking at the logical conclusion of Bushism. Most of it is insane-- actually all of it is insane-- but there are a few little pieces worth knowing here and there. For example, for everyone who was wondering about "Scooter's" real name: Irving Lewis Liebowitz. Being a whacky far right site they also make a big deal about him being Jewish (and having made $2 million in legal fees for defending commodities trader/tax evader Marc Rich). Oh, and they claim he's possibly an Israeli agent. Most patriotic Americans realize Rupert Murdoch is a far right neo-Nazi (and only maybe re: "neo") who is willing to actually lose money in order to propagandize for right wing extremists and their causes. The loonies at JEW WATCH are scandalized because he has a bit of Jewish blood and "internationalist Jewish views"!

Wow and in their headlong dash over the cliff of sanity to slander Jews, they've got a cool story about one of the scores of Bush cronies using GOP connections to get in on the rape of Iraq (aka-- the GOP Iraq reconstruction effort). There's so much here. If you have any Jewish friends who support Bush and vote for Republicans you should make sure they see the site.

At the same time, they might want to take a look at the "writings" of Republican propagandist and BushCheney-America poster-girl, Ann Coulter. Although, for historical reasons, Jews may be somewhat more sensitive to this kind of vicious right-wing demagoguery and deceit, any and all Americans ought to play the Ann Coulter parlor game. You read a couple of paragraphs aloud and the person who identifies the most out-and-out lies wins. Here, give it a try:

In the Iraq war so far, the U.S. military has deposed a dictator who had already used weapons of mass destruction and would have used them again. As we now know, Saddam Hussein was working with al-Qaida and was trying to acquire long-range missiles from North Korea and enriched uranium from Niger.
Saddam is on trial. His psychopath sons are dead. We've captured or killed scores of foreign terrorists in Baghdad. Rape rooms and torture chambers are back in R. Kelly's Miami Beach mansion where they belong.
The Iraqi people have voted in two free, democratic elections this year. In a rash and unconsidered move, they even gave women the right to vote.
Iraqis have ratified a constitution and will vote for a National Assembly next month. The long-suffering Kurds are free and no longer require 24x7 protection by U.S. fighter jets.

No wonder some Americans get confused! Here's someone that is treated somewhat seriously by the mainstream media-- when she obviously belongs in a mental institution-- spouting off lie after lie after lie, as though they're undisputed Truth. You wonder why Bush still has over a quarter of the people in this country supporting him? The corporate mass media propagates psychopaths like Ann Coulter to keep Hitler/Goebbels "Big Lie" dictum operative.

And as long as we're on the topic of fringe right-wing Republicans, when's the last time you checked in on the distinguished Republican former-Representative from Louisiana, David Duke (also a former Grand Dragon of the KKK)? He's off on a diplomatic mission to see his pals in Syria. This crazy Republican racist, fascist and notorious anti-Semite spoke at a rally in support of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, did an interview on Syria TV, appeared at a press conference in Damascus-- who does he think he is, Ann Coulter?-- and met with Syrian Grand Mufti Ahmed Hassoun.

Kissing up to the Syrians, he started out by declaring that he had come "to Syria to express my support to the Syrian people and their just stances... It's the duty of every free man to reject the conspiracies and threats Syria is exposed to," adding that both the U.S. and Syria were both occupied by the Zionists and went on to say that the Zionists had also occupied "Washington DC, and New York, and London, and many other capitals in the world." He then went on to explain the real cause of the failed Iraq war. I've been warning Jews-- especially Jews who supported Bush in this idiotic and unjust war and occupation-- that all one has to do is look at History to know that when it all goes wrong the Right will blame "The Jews" for the whole thing. And here's Duke, on the cutting edge, just a year or two ahead of his Party.


"Well, you must understand," he explained on Syrian TV, "that the chief architects of the war were Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Pearl, Daniel Feith, Mr. Wurmser, Elliot Abrams, in the United States. They were the architects of this war. Mr. Pearl, as well as Mr. Wurmser and Feith, wrote a paper called 'A Clean Break: Securing the Realm,' a paper for Israel, for Benjamin Netanyahu. That paper said that the way to Damascus was through Baghdad. I believe that this is part of the ongoing Zionist effort, in their control of American foreign policy, to dominate the entire Middle East, and I believe, dominate the world. I think America is occupied in many ways the way the Golan Heights is occupied, the way the West Bank of Palestine is occupied... They are Jewish fanatics, extremists, they are not normal people... The people who are pushing Jewish supremacism, Zionism - they are absolute evil and they are crazy. All they know is more power, and so there is a real danger, I should say, for Syria, and a danger for Iran at this point."

How long will it be before other craven Republican hacks will be echoing what Duke already told the Syrians? This is Duke speaking but how hard is it to imagine Coulter or, eventually, Orrin Hatch, Tom Coburn, James Inhofe or either of those two nutcases from Texas? "Well, as a patriotic American - and I come here not as a Syrian partisan, but as an American patriot - it's more shocking for me than it should be for you, because our sons and daughters are being killed in Iraq, are being wounded, innocent Iraqis have died, America is being hurt, and yet we have this policy which is only for Israel. This war is completely about Israel, and I would like to suggest to people in the Middle East... Sometimes I believe that the Zionists run a mystification on us. I find, with some of the leftists around the world who say this is a war for oil or this is an American imperialist war - No, this is a case of the Zionists using America to fight their war with our blood and our money... every major Jewish organization in the United States, including the Council of Presidents of Jewish Organizations, supports this Iraq war. The largest and most powerful lobby in the United States government is the Israel lobby. Now as an American citizen, I find it pretty strange that a foreign country would have the most powerful lobby in our government... The number one problem, political, economic, and social, on this planet now is what we call Zionism and more specifically, Jewish supremacism. These radical, extremist Jewish elements such as Ariel Sharon, such as the neo-cons in Washington, believe this strange [idea] that they have a right to control the world - not just Palestine, not just Syria, Iraq, and Iran and the rest of the Middle East, but also London, New York, and Toronto. All over the world you see the same pattern of control over the media, the same pattern of influence."

And Duke is also getting ready to blame Israel and the (largely Jewish) neo-cons not just for the war but also for Bush's possible (probable?) impeachment: "The Zionists created the lies of this war. In fact, Steven Cohen was the CIA person who manufactured the evidence... Even Israel's CIA, even Israel's Mossad actually put forward evidence to the United States about weapons of mass destruction. Israel itself basically [knows] that they lied, they know Bush knows that he lied, so now they say to Bush: OK, either you continue on with this program, with securing the realm, with this war, either you continue on with this or we will have you impeached."

I can't believe someone as smart as Henry Waxman could have fallen into the right-wing trap. But he did. Waxman and all the southern California Jewish progressive congressmen voted with DeLay and Bush and against the majority of Democrats and progressives in Congress to give Bush authority to invade Iraq. It was a terrible mistake for America and for Iraq, of course, but it may also turn into a catastrophe for American Jews.

FRANCINE BUSBY FOR CONGRESS-- SOMEONE WHO WANTS TO CLEAN UP THE MESS

Francine Busby has been living in a San Diego area represented by one of the half dozen most corrupt and contemptible parasites to afflict American electoral politics, confessed crook Randy "Duke" Cunningham. Cunningham is going to prison until Bush pardons him in 2008 (unless Bush is impeached before then). But what about the 50th congressional district? Francine has basically been running a campaign geared for the law to catch up with Cunningham for 4 years. She is poised to win this seat.

Last week, even before Cunningham confessed to taking $2.4 million in bribes from defense contractors (who were selling shoddy and useless products to the Pentagon for our fighting men), Francine unveiled a Clean House Act. And it's no coincidence that something like this is coming from someone living in a district represented by pure and unmitigated filth like Cunningham (one among dozens of grotesquely corrupt Republicans, but one lame and greedily overreaching enough to get caught red handed). Calling it the Change Legislative Ethics and Attitudes Now (CLEAN) House Act, it is an ethics proposal more ambitious than any currently introduced in Congress. These are the 4 main parts:

• Ban All Outside Financial Relationships With Government Contractors
• Ban Members Promoting Specific Businesses For Government Contracts of Regulatory Favors
• Eliminate Anonymous Appropriations
• Ban All Privately Funded Congressional Travel

Watch the Republicans squeal like stuck pigs when Francine tries getting this modest, common-sense proposal legislated after she becomes the first Democratic congressperson elected in a tsunami of outrage against Republican extremism, incompetence and corruption. She is demanding that WE THE PEOPLE "hold members of Congress to the same standards that we demand of ourselves. The need for ethics reform has become obvious to Americans who have witnessed Congress treat itself more and more as an exclusive club where members make rules, bend rules and break rules to protect one another and the culture of corruption that has emerged as the norm." Makes complete sense to me and a really good reason to support Francine in the special election Schwarzenegger will have to call to fill the seat from which the disgraced Cunningham resigned yesterday.

GEORGIA LEGISLATOR SUE BURMEISTER (KKK-AUGUSTA)-- ABSOLUTE PROOF THAT RACISM IS LEARNED BEHAVIOR

With all the hubbub over the Reagan-era Salvadorian death squads poppin' up in newly democratizing (take note Wesley Clark, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Mark Warner) Iraq and with poor Congressman Cunningham admitting to a few million dollars in bribery to cover-up a Republican culture of corruption that should demolish the GOP's iron grip power in Congress and the White House, who has time to pay attention to a little old fashioned Georgia racism? Your pals at DWT, that's who!

Now if you thought Mean Jean Schmidt was an evil and vile crack whore you would be correct but that's like shooting ducks in a barrel because she looks like an evil and vile crack whore. Georgia GOP legislator Sue Burmeister, on the other hand isn't all haggard and perpetually frothing at the mouth. Appearances can be deceptive. This religionist fanatic, whose ideas are more akin to the thinking of the early Middle Ages (or to to that in moderne theocracies like Iran and Taliban-era Afghanistan), has personally carried much of the GOP's most divisive and highly charged, super partisan issues in this year's legislative session-- with a smile and what passes for charm in GOP circles. (Think, if you dare, of that Coulter monster.)

Another far right loon down there, Georgia's House Speaker Pro Tem, Mark Burkhalter (R-Alpharetta) can think of no better compliment for the somewhat deranged Burmeister than to refer to her as "just a great woman warrior for conservative causes." Her latest "conservative cause" is an attempt to reinstitutionalize racism in Georgia's voting system. Her photo ID requirement legislation has alarmed African-Americans, at whom it is aimed, and everyone who even learned about and understood why this country fought a Civil War. Many Georgia legislators have pointed out that Burmeister's vicious little bill is nothing more than a racist attempt to disenfranchise minorities (not just African-Americans but also the elderly, particularly the poverty-stricken elderly) who are less likely to drive than white people.

OK, that basically is the background. I'm not going to tell you that Burmeister was caught at a neo-Nazi rally in Decatur or that someone tackled a torch-brandishing KKK freak and when the sheets and pillowcase came off it was charming and smiling Sue Burmeister. Instead there's a little secret memo that got released that has people going bonkers. You see Representative Burmeister is fast to always point out that she was born and raised in "racist free" Wisconsin of "racist-free" Finnish parents and that she's never had a racist bone in her body and so on.

In any case, a couple weeks ago, after Burmeister's racist bill was passed-- and was then over-turned by a judge saying we don't do poll taxes to prevent people from voting in America anymore-- a memo leaked out of the Justice Department that was as good as taking off Burmeister's sheet and pillowcase hood.

According to the memo, Burmeister told the Justice Department that she was "aware of vote-buying in certain precincts" and detailed one episode in which she said former Augusta Mayor Ed McIntyre (now, conveniently dead) offered to put her name on a card and then round up black voters and "pay them to vote for the candidates on the card in exchange for $2,000." Burmeister then went on to say that "if there are fewer black voters because of this bill, it will only be because there is less opportunity for fraud." She said that when black voters in her black precincts are not paid to vote, they do not go to the polls. See? No racism there! And if there is any she didn't get it from Finns or Cheeseheads. I wonder how long you have to live in Georgia before you catch it?

A quick postscript on Bill Moyers

I'm not much given to hyperbole, but DWT's "revered" seems to me a good word for Bill Moyers as a journalist. "We were biased, all right—in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden," he says, and boy, does he have a body of work to back it up.

Can you imagine what a different place this country would be if working journalists took Bill Moyers as a model--as opposed to the Bob Woodward-Judith Miller ("You too can be an insider!") model?

The only reason I'm putting this in the form of a blog entry rather than a "comment" is that it connects all too directly with the point I've been trying to make about the substitution of "reality substitute" for the real thing in our public discourse. It's what allows Fox News to get away with calling its wholesale, unremitting and utterly conscienceless perversion of truth "fair and balanced." A loathsome slug like Kenneth Tomlinson, whose every word is a blatant lie and who has only contempt for the truth and suckers who honor it, can pretend to be a champion of "balance," a crusader against "bias." He probably doesn't have an honest cell in his diseased carcass.

And yet he has the power to defame Bill Moyers. And it's only because his arrogance (and, probably, his stupidity) is so sociopathically over the top that he allowed himself to get caught actually breaking the law. There's some comfort in his downfall (though he has far from disappeared!), but in truth, not all that much. If he hadn't overreached so grotesquely, Moyers' unimpeachable record of accomplishment would have provided him with no protection against Tomlinson's assault on him and public broadcasting.

One of the astonishing features of David Brock's Blinded by the Right, the book in which he chronicled his rise as a right-wing media hit man and then his falling away from the movement, is Brock's own (wildly belated) discovery that what he and all the other right-wing so-called journalists practiced has nothing to do with actual journalism. He came to understand that actual journalists set out to find out what the story is, whereas what he and his peers did was start with some premise, driven purely by extremist ideology, and then go out and find whatever dressing they could--factual or otherwise--to deck it out.

The shame Brock felt seems to have helped convert him to something of a zealot for truth. Actual truth, that is. Of course now hardly anyone listens to him. When he was a professional liar, stitching together vicious fabrications that too many Americans seem to want to hear, he was a media star.

If nothing else, my guess is that he sleeps better now.

WHAT KIND OF A MAN IS GOVERNOR BOB TAFT?

Well, we couldn't ask the fish, but according to a just released Zogby poll Ohio voters rate Taft lower than any governor has ever been rated by anyone... anywhere. "I'm not aware of anyone who's ever sunk lower," pollster John Zogby told the TOLEDO BLADE. The only other governor to ever come close to Taft's dismal ratings was Illinois Republican Governor George Ryan, also caught up in a financial and bribery scandal.

Taft, who heads up a political organization so riddled with corruption and fraud that it is far more appropriate to call it an organized crime syndicate than the Republican Party, although in the eyes of more and more voters the two things are practically synonymous. Remember this is the... well, whatever you want to call it: party... mob, crime organization... that spawned Tom "CoinGate" Noe, Bob Ney, Deborah Pryce, Mike DeWine, "Mean Jean" Schmidt, Ken Blackwell, Jim Petro, Betty Montgomery and dozens and dozens of some of the most corrupt and venal politicians in America. Taft's approval ratings have now sunken so low that they are in single digits! Only 3% of Ohio voters rate him as "excellent" and, overall, his approval rating is 6.5%, making even the much hated Dick Cheney look like a winner!

Taft, recently convicted of ethics violations-- though as yet uncharged for his role in the theft of the 2004 presidential election or for his very key role in the systematic looting of the Ohio Workmen's Compensation Fund, two continuing investigations-- has steadfastly refused to resign. 61% of Ohioans think he should have. The particular charges on which Taft were convicted stemmed from the vast on-going scandal-- touching nearly ever elected Republican in the state (including most of the state Supreme Court, both U.S. Senators, and half a dozen congressmen)-- involving Noe, the former Republican chairman/fund-raiser/Taft golfing partner who was recently indicted on charges that include laundering money to Bush's 2004 campaign.

Although poll respondents have Bush a relatively high approval rating of 46% (most states rate him in the 30s and he's starting to slip into the 20s), approximately half of those same respondents believe Taft is running a "purposely corrupt" regime in Ohio. Taft's only comment was that he "doesn't govern by polls." Yes, we have all become painfully aware of just exactly how Bob Taft does govern!

MOYERS ON TOMLINSON

There are so many Republican crooks running around loose that it's difficult to keep up with all the stories. And hard to image it was just a couple weeks ago that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson was roasting in his moment of infamy after being kicked off the Board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. I'm sure he's been very relieved every time someone brought up DeLay and Abramoff and Scanlon and Frist and Ney and Noe and Burns and even his close friend and benefactor Rove, and Libby and every Republicrook hittin' the headlines lately. And today... Cunningham pleading guilty to conspiracy, to taking millions of dollars in bribes, to tax evasion, etc and then breaking down and crying like a little girl on TV... well... who's gonna care that Kenneth Y. Tomlinson was caught wrecking the country's public broadcast system?

Well... Bill Moyers was interviewed by John Eggerton in BROADCASTING & CABLE today-- and he had plenty to say about Rove's sinister but slovenly-looking Goebbels. And Bill wasn't pulling any punches! In response to a question about Tomlinson having charged that Moyers-- one of the most, if not the most, revered broadcast journalists in the country-- was "liberally biased," Moyers correctly pointed out that "right-wing partisans like Tomlinson have always attacked aggressive reporting as liberal. We were biased, all right— in favor of uncovering the news that powerful people wanted to keep hidden: conflicts of interest at the Department of Interior, secret meetings between Vice President Cheney and the oil industry, backdoor shenanigans by lobbyists at the FCC, corruption in Congress, neglect of wounded veterans returning from Iraq, Pentagon cost overruns, the manipulation of intelligence leading to the invasion of Iraq. We were way ahead of the news curve on these stories, and the administration turned its hit men loose on us. Tomlinson actually told THE WASHINGTON POST that he was irate over one of our documentary reports from a small town in Pennsylvania hard-hit by outsourcing. If reporting on what's happening to ordinary people thrown overboard by circumstances beyond their control and betrayed by Washington officials is liberalism, I stand convicted. It is an old canard of right-wing ideologues like Tomlinson to equate tough journalism with liberalism. They hope to distract people from the message by trying to discredit the messenger. NOW threw the fear of God into Tomlinson's crowd because they couldn't dispute the accuracy of our reporting."

Moyers also talks about Tomlinson threatening to de-fund PBS if they didn't "deal" with Moyers and about how Tomlinson repeatedly refused to debate him as he scurried around in the dark, reporting only to KKKarl Rove and busy as a beaver wrecking a great institution by populating it with Republican political hacks and cronies ala that freak Bush installed at FEMA who oversaw the destruction of New Orleans.

THANKS TO BUSHCO AND THE REPUGS, CREDIT CARD COMPANIES NOW HAVE US COMING AND GOING

For as long as I've known Helen-- very long-- she's been getting upset about little things that could ruin peoples' lives. Of all my friends at college she was most eager to come with me to get arrested at the first big draft card burning. Today she was upset about the unregulated hand of credit card companies reaching into our wallets. She sent this in a little while ago:

A couple of nights ago, on CBS News, I saw a little segment about credit cards that got my blood boiling. Aha! A piece for DWT for sure!!

An older woman was seated at a desk with piles of papers all over it. She runs her own small business and she uses credit cardits to pay her bills. She views herself as an impeccably responsible business woman. She has always paid her bills on time; she has never been late with a payment. She always pays at least the minimum amount. Suddenly out of the blue, the interest rate on one of her cards skyrocketed, up to 28%! When she contacted the company about this, she was informed that because she was now borrowing more than the bank felt comfortable with, she is now a considered a high risk customer. Voila! They raised her interest rate significantly. Apparently, banks now have their own rules about how much debt you take on that are not related to the loan limit on your account. Apparently, banks now have their own guidelines, likely laid out in actuarial tables and charts, which they have not shared with us. Or have they? Maybe this data is buried in the tiny, tiny print on those pages we receive occasionally about our credit card accounts. The woman in the story is pursuing this matter legally, but at this point, she is required to pay this exhorbitant interest rate. (I wonder what the numbers would look like if you owe say $5,000 and were paying 7% and now you are paying 28%? It would not be pretty.) 

Wow. You could wind up in a real bind financially. Imagine having your family's financial picture, which is dependent on certain rules, suddenly shift because the rules have changed. You now need to pay out a lot more money every month to cover your debt. This would certainly tighten many people's budgets. What if it put you over the brink?

Too bad. Probably, if you are middle class, you can no longer claim bankruptcy. Because of the new law recently passed by the Republican Congress, with too many Democrats voting for it, I might add. This horrendous law was passed due to tremendous pressure from lobbyists for the credit card companies, who courtesy of indicted GOP Crime chief Tom DeLay and his K Street Project allowed the lobbyists to participate in the actual drafting of the law's provisions. How surprising and shocking.

I remember some other news segments I've seen that are related to this matter. If you are late with a credit card payment, even just one, you could be headed for BIG financial trouble. The interest rates could go up on ALL of your credit card accounts. I also saw a news segment about someone losing his homeowner's insurance because of one late credit card payment.

Usury laws vary among the states. What is interesting is banks have separate rules-- they can ignore state usury limits! Isn't that interesting?  

So what will happen to all of the people who find they are now borrowing more than they should according to the banks, even though the banks have been happy to loan the high amounts to them? We will have a lot of folks living in tremendous debt and working only to chip away at paying it off. A debtor class!! Another low for America a la BushCo.

My brilliant cousin Rachel, a professor in San Diego, sent me this article, "Burying College Grads in Debt," which describes college graduates as joining the ranks of the new debtor class. The average student borrower now graduates with $27, 600 in debt-- three and a half times more debt than ten years ago. According to the Department of Education, 39% of these borrowers have unmanageable levels of debt. In addition, young people's average credit card debt is $4, 000. This adds up to a lot of debt! How awful to be young and starting out and having so much debt. This is an unfair burden and morally reprehensible. And Republican-controlled Congress is chomping at the bit to cut even more student aid to finance even more tax cuts for multimillionaires and corporations.

CUNNINGHAM'S SAGA IS FAR FROM OVER. THIS IS THE GUY WHO COULD ACTUALLY BRING DOWN BUSH-- IF THE MEDIA WOULD STOP HUSHING IT UP

Last May/June there were two news stories the media was completely unwilling to cover and those two stories-- Ohio's CoinGate scandal and Duke Cunningham's myriad bribery cases-- are why I started DWT. Although Tom DeLay beat him to the punch indictment-wise, Cunningham was the first of the current crop of Republican congressional bad apples to actually plead guilty for what dozens and dozens of them have been up to: bribery-- taking money in return for favors done in regard to their official capacities. When I sat down a few months ago and talked with San Diego Democrat Francine Busby she was 100% positive that Cunningham would not last until the '06 election and she's been campaigning tirelessly and effectively as though he resigned when he first announced he wouldn't be seeking re-election and it became obvious that he would try to cut a leniency deal with the authorities. Busby will make a GREAT congresswoman in the 50th but a leniency deal is not what we should be looking for here.

From the first article I ever posted on The Dukester, I had no doubt he wasn't working alone. (At the time DeLay was calling him a hero and a man of "high integrity" and, perhaps compared to DeLay and his other close associates... no, even among that crew, Cunningham was a lowlife.) DeLay's handpicked and very crooked "Ethics" Committee Chairman, "Doc" Hastings, refused to allow any investigations of Cunningham.) Randy "Duke" Cunningham is very much a part of more than just the pervasive Republican Culture of Corruption. He is part of the Tom DeLay Crime Machine and the last thing anyone should want is just to see this turn into an open-and-shut case (which is exactly what Bush and DeLay want to see). First of all, crooked Republican Congressloon Jerry Lewis was in on the majority of Cunningham's bribes. The two of them operated as a pair when it came to shaking down defense contractors. But I haven't heard about Lewis being dragged away to be fingerprinted. I haven't heard a peep about the Big Bear extremist in the Mainstream Media.

But that is the least of the real Randy "Duke" Cunningham story. If anyone ever had a reason to feel certain about getting a presidential pardon out of Bush on his way out, it would be Cunningham. That's because Cunningham was selling advance pardons for Bush to dependable GOP crooks. In fact, this is the most interesting-- and, of course, least covered-- part of the Cunningham saga.

Thomas "Gus" Kontogiannis is a very wealthy, very corrupt and very convicted Republican criminal from Long Island, a felon-- and a business associate of Cunningham's, but one who is rarely mentioned in the press. TOO DANGEROUS-- way too dangerous. That's because this is the one that touches Bush directly. Kontogiannis is a big time GOP donor (he even financed his own candidate for Congress, who lost and who was later indicted with him for cheating the NYC public school system on a fraudulent computer deal). Almost 3 years ago to the day, Kontogiannis pleaded guilty in a bid-rigging, bribe and kickback scheme. Using Cunningham's long time modus operandi, Kontogiannis bought an inexpensive boat for a great deal of money, as a way to funnel almost half a million dollars into Cunningham's pockets. But unlike dozens of other rich Republican "businessmen," Kontogiannis wasn't looking for fat, padded contracts from the Defense Department and Intelligence agencies Cunningham had oversight of. Nope; what Kontogiannis needed was a presidential pardon. And he paid $400,000 for Cunningham to be the middleman between him and Bush. Cunningham can't grant pardons; neither can Rove or Cheney, nor Bush's old dad nor Bill Clinton. Only George W Bush can grant a presidential pardon. My bet is that he's already promised one to the Dukester in '08 if he just keeps his trap shut. So instead we'll hear about lots and lots of little bribes that amount to a tiny fraction of the real criminality in the Duke Cunningham Criminal Caper.

If the Dukester admits to taking $2.4 million in bribes, how much do you suppose he actually got?

It appears that being caught dead to rights by prosecutors has inspired an outpouring of atonement from DWT fave "Duke" Cunningham. "I can't undo what I have done, but I can atone," he says. Gosh, that's a lot of years' (and millions of smackeroos') worth of "doing" he's now regretting he can't undo. Do you suppose he ever considered, like, not doing it?

Also, as far as I can see there is still no mention of DWT's pet question regarding the Dukester: the presidential pardons he claimed to be selling. Don't we still need to know who if anyone besides the Dukester had any involvement with or knowledge of this?



Congressman Quits After Admitting Bribes
Republican Lawmaker Pleads Guilty to Tax Violations

By ELLIOT SPAGAT, AP

WASHINGTON (Nov. 28) - Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham pleaded guilty Monday to conspiracy and tax charges and tearfully resigned from office, admitting he took $2.4 million in bribes to steer defense contracts to conspirators.

Cunningham, 63, entered pleas in U.S. District Court to charges of conspiracy to commit bribery, mail fraud and wire fraud, and tax evasion for underreporting his income in 2004.

Cunningham answered "yes, Your Honor" when asked by U.S. District Judge Larry Burns if he had accepted bribes from someone in exchange for his performance of official duties.

Later, at a news conference, he wiped away tears as he announced his resignation.

"I can't undo what I have done but I can atone," he said.

Cunningham, an eight-term Republican congressman, had already announced in July that he would not seek re-election next year.

House Ethics rules say that any lawmaker convicted of a felony no longer should vote or participate in committee work. Under Republican caucus rules, Cunningham also would have lost his chairmanship of the House Intelligence subcommittee on terrorism and human intelligence.

The former Vietnam War flying ace was known on Capitol Hill for his interest in defense issues and his occasional temperamental outbursts.

After the hearing, Cunningham was taken away for fingerprinting and released on his own recognizance until a Feb. 27 sentencing hearing. He could receive up to 10 years in prison.

He also agreed to forfeit to the government his Rancho Santa Fe home, more than $1.8 million in cash and antiques and rugs.

In a statement, prosecutors said Cunningham admitted to receiving at least $2.4 million in bribes paid to him by several conspirators through a variety of methods, including checks totaling over $1 million, cash, rugs, antiques, furniture, yacht club fees and vacations.

"He did the worst thing an elected official can do - he enriched himself through his position and violated the trust of those who put him there," U.S. Attorney Carol Lam said. The statement did not identify the conspirators.

The case began when authorities started investigating whether Cunningham and his wife, Nancy, used the proceeds from the $1,675,000 sale to defense contractor Mitchell Wade to buy the $2.55 million mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. Wade put the Del Mar house back on the market and sold it after nearly a year for $975,000 - a loss of $700,000.

He drew little notice outside his San Diego-area district before the San Diego Union-Tribune reported last June that he'd sold the home to Wade.

Cunningham's pleas came amid a series of GOP scandals. Rep. Tom DeLay of Texas had to step down as majority leader after he was indicted in a campaign finance case; a stock sale by Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist is being looked at by regulators; and Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff was indicted in the CIA leak case.

Associated Press reporter Erica Werner in Washington contributed to this report.

11/28/05 14:55 EST

EVEN A FASCIST BLOWHARD LIKE PAT BUCHANAN GETS IT RIGHT SOMETIMES-- THE DIRE CONSEQUENCES OF BUSH'S IRAQI ADVENTURE

For all his decades of vile reactionary blovating, when Pat Buchanan is finally on the way to his rightful place in DanteWorld, the only thing for which he'll be worth remembering, will be the starring role he played in inadvertently helping Bush win the presidential selection of 2000 (Google: butterfly ballots + elderly Jews in Palm Beach voting for Nazis). Still, 5 years later, on this day, Buchanan made some excellent points-- though I suspect he doesn't understand how excellent-- in a piece he wrote about Bush's failed war in Iraq.

The article is about the "cut and run" concept, an age-old right-wing straw man that helps shift blame for their failed hubristic, self-righteous, imperialistic and nationalistic adventures onto democrats (or, in this case, Democrats). I bet you didn't know that more Communards were butchered in the fascist aftermath of Louis Napoleon's imbecilic-- and catastrophic-- war against Prussia than all Parisians, aristos and otherwise, during the entire Terror of the previous century!) But the cutting and running nonsense I'll leave for the talking heads on CNN and Faux. There was something else ole Pat talked about which is far more important.

I like his sneering mention of John McCain's stupider-than-Bush call for sending 10,000 more troops human sacrifices into Iraq (although I wish he had mentioned that Hillary, Warner, Biden and Clark are all on the same page, more or less) and how that proposal "has been met with polite silence, while all signals out of this city point to withdrawal, beginning in 2006, of scores of thousands of U.S. troops, whether the insurgency has been defeated or not, whether an Iraqi democracy is assured or not."

Yep, it's a post Murtha-world now and if Americans have to choose between sober veteran congressman and much-decorated war hero John Murtha (D-PA) and psychotic, fabricating, foaming-at-the-mouth, freshman witch and crack whore Jean "Piece of" Schmidt (R-OH), the troops are on their way home.
As ole Pat puts it "the argument suddenly seems over and the nation appears to have reached a consensus: earliest possible withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, consistent with the avoidance of a strategic disaster."

But there is a rub (as Pat points out, a rub that was absolutely inevitable but one we, as a People, deserve for electing someone as utterly ignorant of history as George W. Bush-- or for allowing ourselves to be bamboozled into acquiescing to his 2 patently transparent coups). "We are not," explains Buchanan, "going to get out of Iraq without suffering terrible consequences for having gone in. And when we come out, we no longer control what goes on within." I don't think a Wes Clark militarist mentality or a Hillary Clinton/Joe Biden "we're-tougher-than-Republicans political posturing will be able to come to terms with that. But they'll have no choice. It's just a matter of how many more Americans and Iraqis have to die for their stupidity.

"Once we depart, there is no guarantee the insurgents will be defeated, no guarantee that thousands of those who cast their lot with us will not be massacred, no guarantee Iraq will remain one nation, no guarantee there will not be chaos and civil war," says Pat. He's being sweet. There is a guarantee-- it's inevitable and it will be far, far worse than what happened after the kind of REALITY BushCo so vehemently abhors forced the American invaders out of Vietnam. It will be worse because Vietnam is a real country (despite our efforts and those of the colonialist French to divide it) and Iraq is not a real country (despite our efforts and those of the colonialist French and British to stitch one together for their own convenience). And because the Vietnamese are inherently sweet people and the Iraqis... aren't.

"There is no guarantee that after having invested* $200 to $300 billion and the lives of thousands of splendid young Americans, we will not end up with an Iraq that is a strategic ally of Iran and a Sunni Triangle that is a base camp and training camp for terrorists larger than the one we destroyed in Afghanistan." Well Pat's being kind again; I'd say that's pretty well-guaranteed too. Bush will be remembered as the president-- if History allows itself to call him that in the future-- who made the single worst strategic blunder in the history of war. And it's our fault for not understanding that that is inevitably just what happens when you allow a narrow-minded, insular moron steeped in ignorance and arrogance to assume stewardship of the nation.




*"Invested," of course being an operative word here. Americans and Iraqis, America and Iraq, may suffer mightily for Bush's... well, let's call them "blunders" for now... but the payoff on his investment will be in the creation of generational wealth for lots of little Bushes, Cheneys, Rumsfelds and the heirs of Halliburton and of all the other foul components of BushCo.

Here's some holiday inspiration from America's most inspirational philosopher, Homer Simpson

As far as I know, there's no official name for the Monday immediately following Black Friday. For most of us, it's just the first workday in the annual solemn religious commemoration known as the Official Holiday Shopping Season.

I don't know about you, but I was moved almost beyond words by this year's TV-news footage of all the "mall rage" that erupted this Black Friday among disgruntled shoppers presumably thwarted in their efforts to procure the divinely promised bargains. To me, nothing says "holiday spirit" more eloquently than the moving sight of brawling shoppers.

(Incidentally, "TV's Craig Ferguson" offered an interesting perspective on this annual orgy of shopping. On Thanksgiving Day, he pointed out, we give thanks for all that we have, and then the next day we're out frantically buying new stuff.)

Anyway, judging by how much I'm looking forward to being back at my desk in the morning, I thought we could all use some holiday inspiration.

Strictly speaking, the holiday in question is Halloween, since it's taken from this year's Halloween episode of The Simpsons. I have to confess that I'm not a Halloween kind of guy, and I finally watched this episode primarily to be able to wipe it off my DVR. But then came this incandescent exchange between that greatest of homespun American philosophers, Homer Simpson (well, maybe it's a tie between Homer and Dilbert's consummately bone-idle coworker Wally), and little Lisa.

While I'm in a confessional mood, I might as well admit that for many years now my cubicle wall (or whatever you call the thing that fails to enclose a cubicle--a "partition," I guess; ah, once upon a time I was a person who had actual walls!) has been adorned with a pair of quotes that are joined in my mind as "The First Step: East vs. West."

There is, first, the famous quote attributed to Mao Zedong: "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." Then there's the Western view articulated by Homer: "Trying is the first step towards failure." (One of my proudest moments came the day a coworker I'd hardly exchanged two words with stopped at my cubicle and announced excitedly that he'd just seen the episode in which Homer delivers this timeless utterance.)

Homer of course is no stranger to deep thinking. I cherish the time, for example, when he and Bart visited Springfield Airport--which greets visitors with a sign boasting of the number of days since its last crash, unfortunately just reset to zero--and Homer was accosted by a grubby Hare Krishna-like kid croaking, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Homer shot back, "That'll work!"

Anyway, here was Homer making one of his infrequent attempts at caring parenting, taking Lisa to the zoo. Unfortunately, and naturally unbeknownst to dear old dad, the environmentally hyper-aware Lisa isn't a zoo kind of toddler:

LISA: I hate going to the zoo. I feel so sorry for the animals.

HOMER: Lisa, the zoo opens up a whole new world for the animals. In the wild, they would never experience boredom, obesity, loss of purpose--you know, the American dream!

Now tell me that doesn't get your week started off on an appropriately celebratory note! Don't forget now: Shop till you drop!

RUMSFELD'S HESSIANS HAVE BEEN SHOOTING UP INNOCENT IRAQI CIVILIANS

Thanks to DAILY KOS for pointing out this incredible and horrific story in the SUNDAY TELEGRAPH (London).

Last July I ran a little piece about Hessians, paid military mercenaries, and how central to Rumsfeld's vision of the American military they are and how detrimental they have been to a- that same military and b- the U.S. efforts in Iraq. Today's TELEGRAPH piece goes way further in reporting how dangerously out of control this whole mess is spiraling.

The gist of the story is that a "trophy video" has turned up on a web site related to one of Rumsfeld's mercenary company's web sites (Aegis Defense Services)-- set to Elvis' "Mystery Train"-- showing private security "contractors" (ie- mercenaries) randomly shooting innocent Iraqi civilians, perhaps for sport. Rumsfeld's mercenaries are subject to virtually no laws in Iraq and virtually no oversight in the U.S. or Britain. (Rumsfeld pays these guys close to half a billion dollars... to... shoot up Iraqi civilians apparently. Oh and they also helped collect ballots in the recent so-called "elections" over there. (See and you thought there was nothing worse than Katherine Harris and Ken Blackwell when it came to screwing around with elections, didn't you?)

The videos showed up on www.aegisIraq.co.uk and, of course, once they were reported in the press, were immediately taken down. Instead this is a warning from one of the comapny's managers: "I am concerned about media interest in this site and I remind everyone of their contractual obligation not to speak to or assist the media without clearing it with the project management or Aegis London. Refrain from posting anything which is detrimental to the company since this could result in the loss or curtailment of our contract with resultant loss for everybody." (The guy who wrote that, a former mercenary/war criminal active in Sierra Leone, is also in charge of the investigation.)

The Iraqi authorities are none too pleased for some reason. According to the TELEGRAPH "Capt Adnan Tawfiq of the Iraqi Interior Ministry which deals with compensation issues, has told the Sunday Telegraph that he has received numerous claims from families who allege that their relatives have been shot by private security contractors travelling in road convoys. He said: 'When the security companies kill people they just drive away and nothing is done. Sometimes we ring the companies concerned and they deny everything. The families don't get any money or compensation. I would say we have had about 50-60 incidents of this kind.'"

OK, does this mean Bush and Cheney get turned over to a War Crimes Tribunal? Or just Rumsfeld? Oh, and speaking of Rumsfeld and Iraq...

For years I only bought American cars but last year I had had it with the always-breaking-down, expensive-to-repair Cadillac and I bought a classic Mercedes from my friend Dan's mom. It runs great. I wish I could quote more American newspapers but I find myself about to embark on yet another piece predicated on a foreign paper. (Actually when I woke up at 4 or 5 this morning, but before I had my eyes open, I heard someone on CNN mention this and then I searched around for it til I came up with an article in THE GUARDIAN. Basically all CNN reported was that former Iraqi Prime Minister Ayad Allawi (once an obedient Rumsfeld puppet) is now claiming that the U.S. occupation in his country has become worse than even the detested Saddam Hussein's deprecations!

"The Observer" reports that "Allawi told them that "People are doing the same as [in] Saddam's time and worse. It is an appropriate comparison. People are remembering the days of Saddam. These were the precise reasons that we fought Saddam and now we are seeing the same things."

Allawi talks at some length about Iraq's escalating human rights catastrophe and accuses fellow Shias in the government of responsibility for death squads and secret torture centres. Sounds like somebody's been taking Dick Cheney a lot more seriously than John McCain does (at least on torture issues). I know senators and congressloons have a dozen reasons why we should stick it out and stay the course and all that crap, but I'm as certain that we should leave Iraq immediately as I was that we should never have gone in. EVERY SINGLE DAY THINGS GET WORSE AND WORSE AND WORSE THERE. And it is ALL Bush's fault, everything.

BUSH CIRCLES THE WAGONS AND SPENDS ALL HIS TIME TRYING TO FIND OUT WHO'S RUNNING THEIR MOUTH ABOUT HOW DEPRESSED THE WHITE HOUSE IS

If Bush was serious about finding actual leakers, he might start with the cabal inside the White House and led by his own vice president which broke the law by leaking the name of an undercover CIA agent as revenge against her husband disagreeing with Regime propaganda. But Bush, who I've always been pretty sure was in on that one (or at least the cover-up that followed it), has no interest in the Valerie Plame case, other than to minimize the political damage to his regime. The leaks that have been driving him to distraction are leaks inside the White House about how depressed everyone is there. Now that he wants to get to the bottom of and find the traitor (not the traitors to our nation and our security but the traitor/yenta to his faltering regime!

I've come a long way since the first time I mentioned NY DAILY NEWS Bureau Chief Thomas DeFrank on this blog. The guy knows his stuff and has incredible inside-the-heart-of-the-beast connections. Today's column "All disquiet on West Wing front", pictures an embattled White House with no credibility, no leadership whatsoever, an evaporating agenda and lots and lots of paranoia.

"Two sources," according to DeFrank, "said Bush has not only lost some confidence in his top aides, as the Daily News has previously reported, but is furious with a stream of leaks about the mood within the West Wing. 'He's asking [friends] for opinions on who he can trust and who he can't,' one knowledgeable source said... The problem for Bush, advisers admit, is that the ongoing leak probe reinforces allegations that the White House allegedly hyped prewar intelligence to justify a war most Americans no longer support."

The White House is rudderless, with Bush-- at best-- moping (some say hitting the bottle) and lashing out and screaming at people. They've circled the wagons and no longer reach out to anyone outside a very inner circle. "A card-carrying member of the Washington GOP establishment with close ties to the White House recently encountered several senior presidential aides at a dinner and came away shaking his head at their 'no problems here' mentality. 'There is just no introspection there at all,' he said in exasperation. 'It is everybody else's fault-- the press, gutless Republicans on the Hill. They're still in denial.' Not ready to throw in the towel and declare the boss a lame duck, the Bushies are hoping two issues can help firm up their base and perhaps make inroads with centrists who voted for Bush: the anticipated confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Samuel Alito, and a plan to reinforce the border with Mexico to help stop illegal immigration. This week Bush will begin to press the border security issue, while Alito's Senate confirmation hearings start early next year. Aides hope those issues will draw attention away from the war and leak probe."

Yes, I'm sure they do. But they've made their bed (of nails); let's hope they don't drag all the rest of us through it for 3 more excruciating years.

Would you want to drive over a bridge built by a student of "Christian physics"?

Did you know that there is such a thing as Christian physics?

Or that good Christians should just say no to Mark Twain and Emily Dickinson?

Or that Theodore Roosevelt and his fellow Progressives were guilty of ignoring the fact that "man is sinful by nature (Ephesians 2:1-3)" and that "the fallible men who built the corrupt institutions that they attacked" were just like us other sinners?

(Huh? But what about their, you know, "corrupt institutions"? Isn't this like saying that pimps and drug dealers and murderers are just like regular folks--except maybe for all that pimping and drug dealing and murdering?)

Now, did you know that the godless satraps of the University of California system have been discriminating against good Christians by refusing to give in-coming Christian high school students course credit for having acquired such "knowledge"? Read on.

[Note: When I shared these tidings with DWT, he expressed the hope that believers in Christian physics aren't building bridges. Later, when I read with some approval on my part this "Christian" take on slavery, he wondered whether the stern attitude toward the sin of greed carries over to the other depradations of American capitalism run amok. Perhaps someone out there could fetch your copy of United States History for Christian Schools, check the index under "greed," and pass along the relevant citations.]


November 27, 2005

Word for Word | Church v. State U.

Here's the Problem With Emily Dickinson

By THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

INTELLIGENT design isn't the only flashpoint in the battle over religion in the nation's classrooms. On Dec. 12, the Federal District Court in Los Angeles will hear a lawsuit filed by a consortium of Christian high schools against the University of California system for refusing to credit some of their courses when their students apply for admission.

Among those courses are "Christianity's Influence in American History" and "Christianity and American Literature," both of which draw on textbooks published by Bob Jones University of Greenville, S.C., which describes itself as having stood for "the absolute authority of the Bible since 1927."

The plaintiffs, the Association of Christian Schools International, which represents more than 800 schools in California, and the Calvary Chapel Christian School of Murrieta, Calif., contend that their students are being discriminated against because of their religious beliefs. The university system counters that it has the right to set its own standards. Here are excerpts from the disputed texts. THOMAS VINCIGUERRA

•

"United States History for Christian Schools," written by Timothy Keesee and Mark Sidwell (Bob Jones University, 2001), says this about Thomas Jefferson.

American believers can appreciate Jefferson's rich contribution to the development of their nation, but they must beware of his view of Christ as a good teacher but not the incarnate son of God. As the Apostle John said, "Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ? He is antichrist, that denieth the Father and the Son" (I John 2:22).

Slavery, which most historians look at politically or economically, is seen as "an excellent example of the far-reaching consequences of sin."

The sin in this case was greed - greed on the part of African tribal leaders, on the part of slave traders and on the part of slave owners, all of whom allowed their love for profit to outweigh their love for their fellow man. The consequences of such greed and racism extended across society and far into the future. It resulted in untold suffering-most obviously for the black race but for the white race as well. ... The Lord has never exaggerated in warning us of sin's devastating consequences - for us and for our descendants (Exodus 34:7).

The book also criticizes the progressive movement championed by Theodore Roosevelt, and the Progressives themselves.

On the whole, they believed that man is basically good and that human nature might be improved. ... Such a belief, of course, ignored the biblical teaching that man is sinful by nature (Ephesians 2:1-3). Progressives therefore also ignored the fact that the fallible men who built the corrupt institutions that they attacked were the same in nature as those who filled the political offices and staffed the regulatory agencies that were supposed to control the corruption.

On the other hand, the "devout Methodist" H. J. Heinz is praised for his fine products and humane treatment of workers, which set him apart from the typical 19th-century robber baron.

Heinz illustrates the Christian's response to the challenge of business management: "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto men; knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance; for ye serve the Lord Christ" (Colossians 3:23-24).

•

"Elements of Literature for Christian Schools," by Ronald Horton, Donalynn Hess and Steven Skeggs (Bob Jones University, 2001), faults Mark Twain for calling God "an irascible, vindictive, fierce and ever fickle and changeful master."

Twain's outlook was both self-centered and ultimately hopeless. Denying that he was created in the image of God, Twain was able to rid himself of feeling any responsibility to his Creator. At the same time, however, he defiantly cut himself off from God's love. Twain's skepticism was clearly not the honest questioning of a seeker of truth but the deliberate defiance of a confessed rebel.

Emily Dickinson, too, is criticized for her lack of faith.

Dickinson's year at Mount Holyoke Female Seminary further shaped her "religious" views. During her stay at the school, she learned of Christ but wrote of her inability to make a decision for Him. She could not settle "the one thing needful." A thorough study of Dickinson's works indicates that she never did make that needful decision. Several of her poems show a presumptuous attitude concerning her eternal destiny and a veiled disrespect for authority in general. Throughout her life she viewed salvation as a gamble, not a certainty. Although she did view the Bible as a source of poetic inspiration, she never accepted it as an inerrant guide to life.

By contrast, the piety of Christina Rossetti, the 19th-century British poet, gets high marks.

The loneliness she faced is often reflected in her poems. But stronger than her loneliness was her total confidence in and submission to her Lord and Savior. Rossetti filled her mind and heart with Scripture. She gained from it a unique appreciation of the sustaining and sacrificial love of God. Her poetry and uplifting devotional literature are the natural overflow of her complete dependence on God.

•

"Physics for Christian Schools," by R. Terrance Egolf and Linda Shumate (Bob Jones University, 2004), addresses the question, "What is Christian about physics?"

Some people have developed the idea that higher mathematics and science have little to do with the Bible or Christian life. They think that because physics deals with scientific facts, or because it is not pervaded with evolutionary ideas, there is no need to study it from a Christian perspective. This kind of thinking ignores a number of important facts to the Christian: First, all secular science is pervaded by mechanistic, naturalistic and evolutionistic philosophy. Learning that the laws of mechanics as they pertain to a baseball in flight are just the natural consequences of the way matter came together denies the wisdom and power of our Creator God. ... Second, physics as taught in the schools of the world contradicts the processes that shaped the world we see today. Trying to believe both secular physics and the Bible leaves you in a state of confusion that will weaken your faith in God's Word.

Even the abstract laws of energy and matter, the authors write, reflect the hand of God.

You are about to embark on an adventure. The study of physics reveals the wonderful orderliness of God's creation - so orderly that it can be comprehended in terms of relatively simple principles (mathematical formulas). ... Physics is important because through it mankind learns how creation actually works. It satisfies our God-given curiosity about nature. Seeing that God does "great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number" (Job 5:9), men have dedicated their lives to unraveling the rich mysteries of creation.

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

Thomas Vinciguerra is deputy editor of The Week.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

BEFORE THE FALL-- WHAT WILL IT TAKE FOR YOU TO BE AS BRAVE AS FRIEDRICH AND ALBRECHT? OR WILL YOU JUST GO ALONG UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE TO SAVE YOUR SOUL?

You know how sometimes on weekends I run a non-Bush-bashing-article or two? Sabbath and all... So I sit down to purge the Bush scourge from my mind and do a nice innocent movie review and... well, look what happened (ma). I took some time off from Blogostan duty Friday to go see a movie. A few friends whose tastes in movies I totally trust had been suggesting that THE SQUID AND THE WHALE would be one I'd love and how I couldn't miss it. And the reviews were good. Years ago, whenever I'd go see a film with Roland he'd always go buy the tickets and say "One regular and one for gramps" and nod in my direction. I was always happy to save the money on a senior citizen ticket but I always marveled at how a 20-something airhead can't tell the difference between someone in their 40s and someone in their 70s. I guess it was all the same to me at one time too. Anyway, now I just routinely ask for a senior citizen ticket; no one has ever asked me for ID. So it's pretty cheap to see movies for me.

THE SQUID AND THE WHALE was excruciating. I found myself leaving the theater several times and nosing around the other theaters in the cineplex to see if anything looked good. Finally I stumbled onto the opening of BEFORE THE FALL. Oh, now that was a really good film. Alas, though, as easy as it would be to talk about THE SQUID AND THE WHALE without alluding to Bush, Bush is hard to avoid for anyone thinking about BEFORE THE FALL.

It's not the kind of film any right-winger is going to be able to enjoy or, in all likelihood, understand. I bet I can sum the plot up in one sentence: an ideal, albeit maybe a little less than intellectually-oriented son of an anti-Nazi working class family in 1942 Germany gets the opportunity to enroll in an elite Nazi school where he comes face to face with the visceral reasons why his (now) discarded father hates fascists. There; not even run on! So what does this have to do with Bush, you're wondering?

Well, the movie has a little subplot. See it's not just about the coming of age of a hunky Aryan boxer, It's also about how a tiny but dedicated band of fanatics and extremists can manipulate, over time, a whole nation of basically decent folks and turn them into murderous fiends capable of... well you know what the Germans did in the 40s. Do you know what the Americans are doing now? I mean, the whole world reviled the Nazis for torture, right? Do you think the whole world doesn't revile us for torture now?

I don't know about you, but I had a lot of disdain and contempt for Germans who let Hitler put one over on them. But let me tell you, the Germans had a lot more historical reasons to fall in behind Hitler-- as unforgiveable and repulsive as that was-- than we had for allowing Bush to steal two national elections and then lead our nation down the catastrophic path we're now on, a path we hear other political "leaders" (from Republican John McCain to Democrats like Hillary Clinton, Wes Clark, Joe Biden, and Evan Bayh) and almost the entire punditocracy (and mass media) telling us we have to keep going down.

BEFORE THE FALL is about one brave 17 year old-- well 2 actually-- awakening in the belly of the beast and saying "no more. It's wrong. We have become monsters." He gets the shit kicked out of him in every way for it too-- literally and figurately. I know Bush's approval ratings in the polls-- now in the hitherto unheard of high 20s-- are sinking like a stone, but are these people coming to grips, however slowly with how we have been made into a pariah nation of monsters? Are they ready to punish the criminals-- or even recognize that there are criminals? Or are they only angry cause gas prices are too high? I only saw one or two polls that even mention impeachment, let alone war crime tribunals.

CEAUSESCU, PINOCHET, BUSH AND CHENEY-- ONE DOWN, ONE GOING DOWN, TWO TO GO

I was contemplating the parallels between the Bush Regime and Romania's former Ceausescu Regime this morning and started wondering if the Bushes could ever end up like Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu, quickly tried after attempting to flee, and then shot by a firing squad. Yesterday, just one day short of his 90th birthday, Chile's former CIA-installed, right-wing dictator, Augusto Pinochet was arrested on tax fraud (not a few pesos misplaced, but $27 million hidden in Swiss banks) and human rights charges (actually 7 specific political murders, which were referred to by the judge as "permanment kidnappings"). Like Cheney, Pinochet was a big advocate of torture-- and, like Cheney, only when it was important, of course. During his nearly 2 decades in power, at least 3,000 Chileans were...permanently kidnapped by his corrupt, fascist regime (installed at the insistence of Nixon and Kissinger) which also tortured tens of thousands of Chilean citizens (but only for the very best of reasons, I'm sure).

Recently, when the judge who is working on this case, Victor Montiglio, questioned him, Pinochet said he regrets losses that people suffered during his rule but doesn't believe he had had gone too far in his fight against Communism-- but if he did God would pardon him. If the court does in this particular case, however, Pinochet is about to lose his judicial immunity in a case involving torturing politicians from other parties. Pinochet keeps getting off because he's been diagnosed as senile and every time he's about to be sentenced he has a convenient "life-threatening medical emergency" and they let the old fascist off. I sure hope we won't have to wait 20 or 30 years before Bush and Cheney and the many criminals they've surrounded themselves with to be brought to justice.

The tens of billions of dollars stolen by BushCheney cronies should be recovered for the nation and all of their ill-gotten wealth should be expropriated. The idea of these bums and crooks and their families having to work for a living would be the greatest justice ever meted out. But, I suppose if things get hairy enough, Bush could skip off to Bahrain or Qatar like Michael Jackson and evade justice (like Jackson does).

SLIGHTLY OVER ONE QUARTER OF AMERICANS STILL APPROVE OF BUSH !!! HITLER ALSO HAD A FEW DIE HARD SUPPORTERS UNTIL THE VERY END

John in DC over at AmericaBlog is reporting that he was watching Fox "News"-- like my friend A, he likes to keep an eye of what the fascists are telling people they're doing-- and lo! and behold!: they reported that Bush's approval rating has now sunk to 28%. I knew it was just a matter of time before his horrendous and destructive and FAILED policies would force his approval ratings into the 20s. But in reality, his policies have a positive (short term) effect on about 7-8% of the population and ill-effect everyone else. (As for long term-- not that he could care less, like most CEOs-- he is a complete catastrophe for America, along the lines of how his pal Ken Lay impacted Enron.) So why are his ratings still above 8%? Some people are slow. And not everyone who watches corporate mass media realizes it's basically one big Republican-controlled propaganda outlet.

HOME STATE MEDIA STARTING TO LINK CROOKED MONTANA SENATOR TO ABRAMOFF

Today's MISSOULIAN has a brief story on Republican crook Conrad Burns and his scandalous relationship, including kickbacks and scams, to Tom DeLay consigliere Jack Abramoff. Although dozens of Republican House members are involved in the scandal-- as well as several Bush cronies from the Executive branch-- Burns is the first U.S. Senator to be swept up by the investigation. It is unlikely that Burns will be alone for too long since other corrupt GOP Senators have been on the take from Abramoff for many years.

GEORGE BUSH HAS A BRUSH WITH INTELLIGENCE

According to the always reliable DAILY KOS, this one isn't a photo-shop job. But someone, or even a conspiracy of someones, must have a had a real sense of humor. If not... wow!

EPA PROPOSES CHEMICAL TESTING ON ORPHANS AND MENTALLY HANDICAPPED CHILDREN

Helen's back and she's in the process of agreeing to learn how to post her own blog pieces and write more frequently. I'm crazy about the comment she wrote this morning on the piece just below this one (about Democratic hawk Norm Dick seeing the light). She just sent this outrageous report in about Bush's EPA doing the unthinkable :

My close friend, Cathy, sent me a piece on this. At first I thought it was a sick joke, but no. I spoke to a nurse I work with, an extremely knowledgeable professional whom I hold in high regard, and she nodded and smiled sadly at me. She had already heard about it. Actually, upon doing a little research, it turns out that this has been public knowledge for a few months. I find it astounding that the EPA's new proposed rule and its glaring shortcomings are not in huge bold faced print on the front page of every newspaper in the country. On the other hand, DWT readers are well aware of the poor job our press is doing these days in informing the public.

Here is the scoop. Earlier this year, August 2, 2005 to be exact, Congress had mandated the EPA to create a rule that permanently bans chemical testing on children and pregnant women. (Gee, this indicates that this is already being done and should be stopped! I did not know this. Did you?) So, the EPA has proposed a new rule; however, it has GAPING HOLES in it that allow for government and industry scientists to treat children as "human guinea pigs."

Here are the three conditions under which chemical testing for the sake of research may occur with children:

1. Children who "cannot be reasonably consulted," such as orphaned newborns or those who are mentally handicapped, as long as permission is given from the institutions or guardians.

2. Children who are abused or neglected, no parent consent necessary.

3. Children outside the U.S.


Apparently this violates the Nurenburg Code, an international treaty that mandates assent of test subjects as absolutely essential and that test subjects must have the "legal capacity to give consent" and be able to "exercise free power of choice." This is too much! First the Geneva Conventions are out the window, and now the Nuremburg Code! Did we learn anything at the end of World War II? Are there parallels here with the Nazis? Inconsistencies among the three scenarios abound. For the first scenario, permission is needed, but for the second, for children unfortunate enough to have unfit parents, none is needed. For the third, testing on human subjects is fine as long as it is done on subjects outside the U.S.A.: no permission necessary from anyone, thank you very much.

Sadly, this proposed rule is one more nail in the coffin of America's dying morality. Our lack of respect for human beings is appalling. BushCo is destroying our soul, our humanity. GW has to be the most pompous hypocrite on the planet, recently espousing human rights to the Chinese (which they frankly ignored, who could blame them), while flagrantly violating human rights in so many actions. The list is getting longer each day. From Abu Graib to Guantanamo to the newly discovered gulag, we are condoning torture. I thought Saddam was a "monster" who had to go-- well, what do our actions make us? Why bother to count Iraqi deaths in this war? We need only count American soldiers' deaths, though mind you, we cannot look at the coffins, as this would be too upsetting, too reality based. And the wounded? Few to be seen or heard, with an almost total media silence. The poor in New Orleans? A momentary sound bite, with their stories fading away in the news, soon to be forgotten.

The new victims are our own children.

Who are we? What have we become? Is this who we want to be? Were issues such as this discussed at your Thanksgiving dinner yesterday? Not at mine, unfortunately. I did learn, however, that The Apprentice with Martha Stewart was cancelled for Wednesday, November 23.

ANOTHER DEMOCRATIC HAWK ABANDONS BUSH. NORM DICK (D-WA) STANDS WITH MURTHA (AND AGAINST REPUBLICAN CRACK WHORE JEAN "PIECE OF" SCHMIDT)

Washington Congressman Norman Dick is a hawk, very pro-military-- and not in a we-love-'em-so-bring-'em-home kind of way. Like his pal John Murtha, Dick was as gung-ho as a Republican when Bush and Gephardt came up with a request for Congress to authorize Bush using force against Iraq. Dick's on the House Intelligence Committee and he believed everything the Bush Regime fed him. Like Murtha and almost half the Democrats in the House, he voted with DeLay and against Pelosi and a majority of House Democrats.

Today Dicks told the SEATTLE TIMES that "it was all a mistake — his vote, the invasion, and the way the United States is waging the war... Dicks says the intelligence was 'doctored.' And he says the White House didn't plan for and deploy enough troops for the growing insurgency. 'The insurgency has gotten worse and worse,' he said. 'That's where Murtha's rationale is pretty strong — we're talking a lot of casualties with no success in sight. The American people obviously know that this war is a mistake.'"

And like Murtha, if Dick knew then about all Bush's lies and deceptions he would never have voted to allow him to send American troops to Iraq.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA IS NOW REPORTING HOW BLAIR TALKED BUSH OUT OF BOMBING AL-JEZEERA HEADQUARTERS-- BUT NOT IN AMERICA

Channel 4 is now reporting the whole scandal around the latest revelation of Bush war crimes: his bombing of Al-Jazeera offices in Baghdad and Kabul, his desire to bomb the headquarters in Doha, Qatar, and the ensuing cover-up. Today's BradBlog has a well-done video of the report. The report is not a CNN/Fox style soundbyte piece made for people with 2-digit IQs. It's the kind of news story U.S. television news used to routinely do all the time. If you watch this short, pointed piece you will walk away with a good understanding of what this-- and George Bush's corrupt, illegitimate regime-- are all about.


5PM UPDATE, DATELINE, LONDON

Not every Briton is taking Blair's outrageous attempt at 17th century censorship lying down. (I guess it's particularly galling to Britons that Blair is going to these absurd lengths to protect the almost non-existent credibility of the same Bush who nearly caused him and his party to get kicked out of government.) One Member of Parliament, Boris Johnson, says he'll publish the forbidden document even if it means going to the Tower of London. I heartily recommend you read Boris' whole statement but this is how he ends: "we now have allegations of such severity, against the US President and his motives, that we need to clear them up. If someone passes me the document within the next few days I will be very happy to publish it in The Spectator, and risk a jail sentence. The public need to judge for themselves. Sunlight is the best disinfectant. If we suppress the truth, we forget what we are fighting for, and in an important respect we become as sick and as bad as our enemies."

By the way, Boris is a Conservative.

Do you find it strange that U.S. corporate media is supressing this story?

Do folks know that the Salem witch trials really happened? (Or is it just as well? Maybe it would just give them ideas)

I hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving.

By the time I got around to trying to catch up on several days' worth of DWT posts, I was able to multitask with a Thanksgiving edition of The Late, Late Show with Craig Ferguson. If you haven't been watching The Late, Late Show, you may still remember Craig as Drew's loony English boss Mr. Wick on The Drew Carey Show. Unleashed now as himself--not the least bit English, incidentally, but quite gloriously Scottish--he's hilarious in a giddy, anarchic and often subversive way.

As it worked out, while I tried to keep pace with the antic adventures of Rep. Jean "The Crack Ho" Schmidt in the DWT posts, there was "TV's Craig Ferguson" (as he often styles himself--in part to distinguish himself from Colin Ferguson, the unfortunate fellow who shot up a Long Island Rail Road train some years back, with unfortunately lethal results) talking about witches! Come on now, are you going to tell me it never occurred to you that our Jean looks and talks like she should be auditioning for the Wicked Witch of the West in some regional-theater production of The Wizard of Oz?

Craig had noted in his lilting Scottish accent that he loves Thanksgiving. "It's a very big holiday in Scotland. They celebrate the time when the Pilgrims left. 'Thank God those people are out of here.'"

Now he came back to the Pilgrims. "Actually," he said, "you've got to ask yourself about these Pilgrims. This is a bunch of people who left medieval England, right, because religious practices weren't strict enough. [Long astonished pause.] This was medieval England. How strict do you need it to be?

"This is a society, they had the witch-burning. I mean, that's pretty strict.

"They had this system of how you tell someone's a witch. It was always a woman, and how you tell someone's a witch, you threw a woman--this is true!--you threw a woman in a lake. If she drowns, innocent--not a witch. If she doesn't drown, she's a witch--burn her! That's what they did!

"This strikes me as a flawed system. I'm just saying."

The audience found this hilarious, but in a way that suggested that, despite Craig's repeated insistences, the folks were blissfully unaware that, allowing for some blurred detail ("medieval" England?), the story is true.

"I've been reading up on this," Craig explained, "because I want to be an American citizen, and you have to know all that stuff or you're kicked out. If you're born here, you don't have to know any of it. You don't even have to know the national anthem. But if you come in, whoo! You have to know it."

It's a shame this isn't AOL, or we could run one of those famous polls to see how many people know that the all-powerful Puritan religious loons of the day actually did deal with suspected witches this way. Or better still, we could ask people whether they believe it. After all, haven't we now taken to determining truth by voting? ("Sorry, evolution fans, but your theory just didn't cut it in the polls. Well, it was just a theory anyway.")

I hate to be recommending Arthur Miller's wheezy old play The Crucible, which in any case was less concerned with witches than with the terror campaign being waged against Americans who deviated from right-wing orthodoxies by that loathsome bully Sen. Joseph McCarthy. Now Karl Rove--not to mention Rep. Jean the Crack Ho--has shown us that the only problem with Joe McCarthy, apart from his uncouth style, is that he didn't go far enough.

Maybe what we need, I'm thinking, is an updated version of The Crucible. And I think I know just the man to do it.

I figure along about now Governor Schwarzenegger must be spending more and more time looking at scripts and script proposals, knowing that he's apt to have a goodly block of time free for new projects in the not-too-distant future. With Arthur Miller himself no longer around to raise a fuss, maybe his literary executors are prepared to authorize a crowd-pleasing updating.

I'm thinking: The Crucible as a Rambo- or Terminator-style action drama!

The soon-to-be-former governor could play that stern judge, the Rev. John Hale, who comes to appreciate too late in the game the injustice of the witch trials. Now here's the twist: Instead of resigning himself to this injustice, the way Hale has always done in the lame-ass old fuddy-duddy version, he'll come out with automatic weapons blazing and right the injustice, the way only automatic weapons can!

And this might even be used to provide good career cover for our Jean the Crack Ho. Surely Arnold's screen adapter can find a use for a hideous. loathsome, brain-dead old crone.

ELTON JOHN MANNING THE BARRACADES AND FIGHTING FOR JESUS CHRIST

I just got back from my morning walk-- so invigorating! I lived so many years not really understanding that there was so much more to life than... than... than... Hey, did you ever listen to "Krafty" on THE SIREN'S CALL by New Order? (Morel's Pink Noise Vocal Mix is one of my favorite pieces of music of the last year-- fantasy solution of all the world's woes.) Anyway, it starts out like this:

Some people get up at the break of day
Gotta go to work before it gets too late
Sitting in a car and driving down the road
It ain't the way it has to be

But that's what you do to earn your daily wage
That's the kind of world that we're living in today
Isn't where you wanna be
And isn't what you wanna do

But don't worry, this isn't gonna be a story about New Order (or even about Elton John). I learned something today, as Kyle or Stan might say (always say): If you're driving cross country in an RV you can park at WalMart for free and hook up to all the stuff RVs hook up to. I didn't learn if you have a time limit or if WalMart allows you to stay weeks or months or years. But I've never been to a WalMart. I mean now no one wants to go near a WalMart -- at least no one I know-- but I remember when WalMarts started and the whole idea just repulsed me from the start. I never went to one. And there were no MacDonald's when I was a kid and I've never been to one of them either (nor a Wendy's or a Burger King or any of those other fast food places, except once Sandy Pearlman schlepped me to a White Castle with The Dictators). And I never tasted a beer or smoked a cigarette or liked the kind of music "everyone" else liked. And, as you may know, I only watch SOUTH PARK on the tv.

I remember some neighbors when I was in elementary school who were kind of shunned by everyone else. I don't remember exactly why but in retrospect I think they were some kind of suburban freethinkers. Their daughter was kind of a beatnik, which is why I was at their home, and they weren't all anal about "cleanliness" and I remember seeing ants in their house. Later I used to take a subway from Brooklyn into The Village to see if I could hear Bob Dylan and not long after I hitchhiked to California and stowed away on a ship to go to Tonga (never got to Tonga) but I did find some beatniks who took me in and let e smoke pot with them for a week. Anyway, anyway, anyway... conformism is something that never seemed like something to aspire to.

I even thought that being gay was the ultimate foray into bandit territory-- an unforgivable nonconformism so grave that you never had to worry about falling prey to any kind of Stepfordism. You can imagine how disappointed I was when I moved back to America and washed up in San Francisco and discovered The Castro and the whole concept of gay clones. My world was shattered. No one wanted to be a bandit? I brought DEVO to-- or told them about; can't remember-- Mr. B's Ballroom.

they know the limits 'cause they cross them every night
the dull sensations as it turns real hot
why, the guys in the back with their heads on the floor
surrounded by their buddies they're all hollerin' for more
whoa whoa whoa
it's mr. b's ballroom

At least there was that kind of banditry. Not exactly theoretical enough for my tastes after a short time-- but still, better than clones... I mean hundreds, thousands of gay guys from all over the country living in their own ghetto, dressing alike, talking alike, liking all the same (dreadful) music, dancing alike, thinking alike. I fought it. I was one of the first, if not the first rock guys to review music in gay publications and the editors were so uninterested that they let me say whatever I wanted so there was never anything about Barbra Streisand or Donna Summer or Gloria Gaynor... just stuff about Patti Smith, The Clash, the Sex Pistols, Metallica... Willie Nelson... anything that would give young gay people a chance to know that just because you were attracted to someone of your own gender it didn't mean you were doomed to a life of listening to the Village People.

So today I woke up and found out that Elton John is getting married to filmmaker David Furnish on December 21, the day the U.K. Civil Partnership Act takes effect. I think 1973 (GOODBYE YELLOW BRICK ROAD) was the last time I ever voluntarily listened to an Elton John album (although I have to admit that since then I have ripped a couple of old songs-- "Daniel," Your Song" and "Rocket Man"-- onto my iTunes).

I have noticed that even as he seemed to be turning more and more into a freakish clown, pasteurized and homogenized for the new family-friendly Las Vegas, there was always a (sometimes subtle) subversiveness, even banditry to ole Elton. I could never not like him and admire him for it. Just when you thought he has turned into Liberace, there he was, gay as wrapping paper, telling ROLLING STONE he was "bisexual." When no one did. He also seemed to be one of the most genuinely generous of all the successful show biz people I'd ever met. I'm sure you know about the Elton John AIDS Foundation and that all (like 100%) of the royalties from his single sales go to AIDS research, but Elton gives to every charity I ever heard of.

And today, November 25, 2005, I admire him too. I mean I think gays are insane and idiotic to be lusting for more freaking conformity all the time. First they want to be in the military (and here I was, always thinking that not having to go to the army was a way God told you it was good to be gay) and now this whole marriage crap. (I am positive both of these things were thrust on the gay community by gender-confused femmes who picked it up from the lesbians but now the cat's out of the bag and you gotta support them... as annoying as the whole thing is.) I mean I hate that it plays right into the hands of Karl Rove and the Amen Choir and the whole bigoted religionist Right-- and even makes progressives lose elections-- and I hate that it threatens the most wonderful of institutions: bachelorhood. But... but... but... if they want it, who are they hurting? Spare me having to go through all the arguments about equality under the law and so on-- I agree with every single one of them wholeheartedly. So someone has to fight for this (current) most despised of initiatives. It's today's race-mixing. Or, if you wanna go back even further, it's what Jesus Christ was talking about with all the stuff about lepers and prostitutes. And of course that's always been the whole point for the anti-Christs who run satanic "churches" in Jesus' name (the Dobsons, Phelpses, Robertsons, Falwells, et al), who seek only to spread hatred and bigotry and destroy Jesus' message-- and use Jesus as cover for it. Oh, those right-wingers are so cagey! (Or people are so dumb.)

So anyway, Elton John's a hero of the revolution and we all owe him a moment of respect and I'm listening to my meager stash of Elton John mp3's as I write these last few words. I even realized how Elton is just like Frederick in BEFORE THE FALL, though not as hunky... a freethinker like my old neighbors (and maybe with ants).

OHIO JUDGE DECLARES GOP PARODY SITE PROTECTED BY THE CONSTITUTIONAL GUARANTEES OF FREE SPEECH

An Ohio Democrat, Michael Dalton, has an awesome site that spoofs the Republican Party. Never known for their sense of humor, the Repugs sued. Today the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER is reporting that Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Ralph "Ted" Winkler denied a request by the Hamilton County Republican Party to shut down the site which dei partei claimed violates its trademark rights. The Republicans say the site will confuse people, but even the 30-odd percent of brain-dead Americans (true, overwhelmingly Republicans and related far right extremists) should have no problem in understanding that a site making fun of Republicans and calling attention to their corruption and treason is unlikely to be an actual Republican propaganda site.

Judge Winkler said political speech is protected by the Constitution and that he looked at the Web site and didn't think anyone would get confused. "Clearly it is not a site sponsored by the Hamilton County Republican Party," he said. Take a look at Dalton's site, though. It's pretty funny and the photo above is from it.

FOX NEWS REFUSES TO RUN PAID ADS ON ALITO. YOU CAN WATCH THE AD HERE

I don't know if Fox is refusing to run the People For the American Way ads about Scalito because they show what a right-wing kook he is or because they remind Americans what a bumbling catastrophe George Bush is. But the ads are pretty good and I urge you to take a look here.

Alito is a super aggressive far right judicial activist with an extreme ideological agenda. BushCo-- along with media allies and its propaganda team, like Fox-- is doing the best it can to pass him off as something he isn't. As they tend to do, the Bush Regime is lying about Alito. If moderates buckle under to right-wing pressure and confirm this maniac, he'll be doing grievous damage to our country long after Bush and Cheney are just a terrible memory of the worst administration in American history. I have two senators in my state, California, who I feel confident will do what they can to keep Alito from being confirmed. Most Republicans are more than willing to pander to the extreme right and confirm a judge who will be eager to do the bidding of the religionist kooks and of corporate interests-- the 2 hallmarks of Alito's very ideological career. However, there are a handful of Senators who might be persuadable when it comes to forgetting their partisan inclinations and, instead, doing what's right for the American people. If you live in Maine, you have two, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins (both trying to cultivate images as mainstream moderates). Ditto for Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island and Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. On the Democratic side, the two rightist Nelsons (Florida and Nebraska) are probably both leaning towards confirmation. Other unreliable right-of-center Democrats who need to be called and written to by their constituents include Mary Landrieu (Louisiana), Herb Kohl (Wisconsin) and Mark Pryor (Arkansas). And forget McCain. For him a chance to vote for someone as extreme as Alito is just another opportunity to reassure right-wing ideologues that he's one of them.

HOW MUCH BETTER THAN BUSH IS JOHN McCAIN? NOT MUCH, NOT MUCH AT ALL

John McCain says he would like to be President of the United States. He's less than enthusiastic about campaigning for office however. And after the horribly vicious beating he took from Rove and BushCheney in 2000, who could blame him? But, as much as the media would like us to believe that McCain's whole problem is winning the Republican primary, that is only part of what would make it very difficult for McCain to ever get to live in the White House.

Largely because of Rove, the GOP base does distrust McCain. True, he's against torture and, at least compared to most Republican politicians, seems to favor democracy, but otherwise he pretty much is very much in sync with the agenda of the radical right. I mean this whole "McCain as moderate" is fantasy, partially driven by relativity (sure compare someone to Hitler, Mussolini, Cheney, Santorum or Pat Robertson and a case could be made that they're a moderate) and partially driven by wishful thinking-- a Republican who could, like Snowe, Collins, Chafee, vote with progressives to stop the extremist Bush onslaught or this or that. But, when push comes to shove, he pretty much always is right there with the extremists... onslaughting.

One of the furthest right of any legal organized hate group is Phyllis Schafly's Eagle Forum, the U.S. version of a nascent Nazi Party. They don't rate McCain's record at 90% or 95% or eve 99%. McCain gets a perfect 100% from the furthest right group of political nutcases in America.
Is he a religionist loon? I doubt it but he votes like one. He certainly says he favors teaching creationism in schools (which alone should disqualify him from consideration for anyone sane and serious).

Gays seem to like him for a moderate stance he once took and he does seem unlikely to favor putting gays in concentration camps any time soon but he's not only against gay marriage, he opposes civil unions (which, just seek to give gay couples some kind of common sense legal status).

He voted with the hard right minority to convict President Clinton of spurious, trumped up charges, concocted to distract him from making progressive changes in America. And when it comes to abortion, he's unequivocally anti-choice, as bad as any of the neo-Nazi loons sniffing around the GOP primary race-- like Brownback, Allen, Santorum or Frist. Like the Eagle Forum, NARAL Pro-Choice America gives him a perfect score too-- a perfect zero.

Tax cuts for the rich (aka- redistribution of wealth from the working and middle class to the corporations and multimillionaires)? These days, McCain is 100% there: today there's never a tax cut favoring the rich he didn't love and he never met an increase in the minimum wage he could support.

And as for Iraq-- he may be less incompetent and less corrupt that Bush-- we don't know-- but he certainly is as much an imperialistic piece of crap. In fact, like the gaggle of right wing Democrats seeking the presidency (from Hillary to Biden to Clark to Bayh), McCain favors sending in more troops to win what is unwinable, not ending the occupation.

Doesn't sound like a pretty record, does it? One you want to support? But conventional wisdom shows him moving even further right to burnish his bona fides with the radical right which still doesn't trust him (basically because Rove, Norquist and the Amen Choir, all of whom he is now courting, told them not to). Keep in mind, the GOP primaries are utterly controlled by the far far religionist right these days. To win the primaries, a Republican has to please a paranoid and savage-- some would say crazy base indeed. After years of Bush and all the catastrophes his regime has inflicted on America (and the world), can anyone overtly appealing to WingNutia not alienate mainstream voters? And McCain really is trying to run as an extension of Bush (minus torture). "I'm extremely popular," he told the NEW YORKER recently; "it's some of the party apparatchiks who still harbor bad feelings toward me. But it is a little hard for them to do that now, because of my strong support for Bush." Yeah... that and the fact that a- he may be the only Republican who could win a general election in 2008, and b- he's signing all the apparatachiks up he can for his own campaign.

Once McCain pleased moderates and normal Americans by accurately denouncing neo-fascist religionist Jerry Falwell as one of the "peddlers of intolerance" that afflicts the modern Republican Party. Now he's courting Falwell and seeking his support. Is Falwell less intolerant? Less reactionary? Less into peddling hatred and bigotry? No; in fact Falwell is much worse now than he was when McCain denounced him.

Well, at least he's not going to subvert democracy the way Bush did, rigging and stealing elections and undermining the rights to vote, or vote meaningfully, for huge segments of the population... right? Well, the McCain/Feingold Act has his name on it, true. But, at heart McCain is a highly partisan Republican who will support whatever it takes to for the political Right to win. Recently he endorsed Ohio Secretary of State/2004 vote-rigger Ken Blackwell in his quest to be an even worse governor than Bob Taft (currently rated as the worst governor of any state since polling was invented). And here in California we saw him stick his nose into the highly unpopular Schwarzenegger propositions, making tv ads to urge people to vote for all of Schwarzenegger's highly partisan, uber-reactionary proposals. They all lost-- BIG. And McCain's luster in the biggest state in the nation was considerably diminished.

McCain's express train is headlong into a campaign to court the worst fringe elements of the Far Right. Last week he weighed in for George Wallace, Jr in the Republican primary in Alabama (where Wallace, every bit as much a vicious, unreconstructed racist as his father, is running for Lieutenant Governor). I'm not saying that McCain accompanied Wallace to any Klan meetings, but that's not why Wallace brought him into the state. Wallace-- the darling of what they now call the CCC-- has the KKK vote nicely tied up. He wanted McCain to give him an aura of respectability among suburban Alabama Republicans who aren't White Citizens Council types. 5 years ago McCain chastised Bush for speaking at Bob Jones "University." Last week McCain was campaigning for the virtual grand dragon of the Ku Klux Klan. Is this an honest and sincere man who progressives can feel good about? I don't think so.

IS BIN-LADEN DEAD ? HARRY REID SAYS HE DIED IN THE PAKISTANI EARTHQUAKE

KRNV is the NBC-TV affiliate in Reno, Nevada. They ran an interview with home state Senator Harry Reid who says he thinks Osama bin-Laden was killed in the Pakistani earthquake last month. This doesn't mean he is dead (or even that Reid actually believes he is); it could be an attempt to get him to react so they can catch him. But maybe he's dead. I guess sooner or later we'll find out. I hope he's dead. Bush and Cheney and far worse and I don't have any good wishes for them either.

ARIZONA REPUBLICAN GAY BLADE, JIM KOLBE, LEAVING CONGRESS

There are plenty of gay Republicans in Congress-- in fact, according to one right-wing homophobe, the entire Republican Party is crawling with closeted homosexuals. But only one gay Republican congressman has come out of the closet officially-- and he only did so to beat THE ADVOCATE to the punch when they announced they were outing him because of hypocritical votes on gay issues. That's John Kolbe-- and he just announced he isn't running for re-election. (Yes, yes, everyone knows that GOP right-wing congressloons David Dreier, Jim McCrery and Mark Foley are also very gay but they all try to keep up a front and get photographed with beards and stuff to hide it from their constituents.)

It's been buzzing around the rumor mill all week but today Jim Kolbe confirmed that he's not seeking re-election for a 12th term in his Tucson district. A.P. writer Paul Davenport reports that the 63 year old Kolbe (locally known to get more than a little inappropriately and lustfully aggressive towards young Latino boys) wants to find "new avenues of service."

With no incumbent this district could be a prime Democratic pickup. Remember, 2 weeks ago voters in the Tucson city councilrace kicked the right-wing creationist loons off and elected progressive Democrats to replace them. The district is basically pretty moderate and the GOP front-runner is a raging neo-fascist maniac who challenged Kolbe in last year's primary. Hopefully MoveOn.org will find a progressive grassroots candidate before Rahm and the DCCC/DLC move in with some putrid rich person calling themselves a "moderate Democrat" and all ready to support a right-wing agenda.

BETTER THAN A BUBP v MEAN JEAN GRUDGE MATCH WOULD BE MICHAEL JACKSON v JOE LIEBERMAN, NO HOLDS BARRED

I bet you don't read the NY POST. I don't either-- but I have friends who do. On condition of anonymity one former Michael Jackson pal sent me an article in today's POST. Now Michael, who was inadvertently saved by Tony Blair when Blair forced Bush into backing down from his plans to bomb Qatar is living an over the top sybaritic lifestyle with the sultans and sheiks, allowed to frolic with all the young boys he wants to frolic with and with no sheriffs or sharifs to stick their noses into his private affairs.  And all he has to do is make a couple of anti-semitic statements now and then. According to the only mutual friend Jackson and I share, "he's living on some kind of private peninsula, a 'megastructure' is what they call it, an extension of one of those caliphates far out into the Gulf, in the shape of a palm tree, and each branch is 30 million or something, and you can do whatever you want on it. Further inland are the American planes and tactical nukes."

So back to the POST. The catty writer points out that "Michael Jackson may love the children of the world— but he doesn't like Jews, according to a blockbuster new anonymity that apparently captures the Gloved One waxing anti-Semitic to a former business manager. 'They suck,' the King of Pop is allegedly heard saying on a voicemail message left the ex-adviser. 'They're like leeches . . . I'm so tired of it . . . they start out the most popular person in the world, make a lot of money, big house, cars and everything. End up penniless. It is conspiracy. The Jews do it on purpose.'"

Although it is being written off as "just a coincidence," the U.S. Senate's representative from the far right Israeli Likud Party, Joe Lieberman (ostensibly a "Democrat" from "Connecticut," rushed off to the Middle East. Lieberman has the power and clout, even among Bush neo-con Republicans to effectively advocate international policies that are catastrophic for America but serve the perceived interests of the Likud (to the long-term detriment of Israel itself). According to today's HARTFORD COURANT, Lieberman is sticking with Bush in urging the country to "stay the course" in Iraq. Lieberman has exerted profoundly damaging influence on actual Democrats (Hillary, Biden, Bayh and scores of others). According to the COURANT "Lieberman's chief concern today is that American partisanship is muddling and even obscuring that message. [That was his not-so-subtle attack on John Murtha and the 63% of Americans who do not think "staying the course" is an effective or suitable" Iraq policy.] Terrorists can't defeat us on the ground. They can win by affecting public opinion here."

More and more Democrats are growing disenchanted with Lieberman's aggressive and one-dimensional Likud approach to world affairs. The COURANT points out that increasingly his primary political allies are right-wing Republicans. Lieberman's positions are no longer part of the American-- let alone the Democratic-- mainstream, but extremist pols like George Bush are still using him for their own calculated purposes. "Fine Democrats like Sen. Joe Lieberman share the view that we must prevail in Iraq," Rove cunningly inserted into a Bush speech Sunday. Discerning patriots are more in line with the sentiments on DUMP JOE. The COURANT interviewed Norman Solomon, executive director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He called Lieberman "one of the worst Democrats in the Senate when it comes to foreign policy. He has an ideological view that prevents him from processing new information."

A perfect example would be Lieberman's disingenuous statement: "The whole world felt Saddam Hussein had those weapons and Saddam gave us reason to make us think he had them." This is patently false and pure Republican/neo-Con spin, more Bush lies and excuses.

CAT FIGHT ON THE FAR RIGHT! BUBP TAKES A SWING AT MEAN JEAN. CRACK WHORE COMES BACK WITH HER FAMOUS SUCKER PUNCH

There's a reason why it is Jean Schmidt who is a freshman legislator in DC and Danny Bubp is just a freshman legislator in Columbus. Her NY TIMES profile says "she grew up in the rough-and-tumble of a family auto racing business, went through concealed-weapons training, and bears a local nickname seldom applied to shrinking violets: 'Mean Jean.'" And "mean" is a nice way of describing the vicious right-wing partisan backstabber. OK, before I get any further, let me give you the exact quote-- now expunged from the Congressional Record, but caught on video for all to see: "A few minutes ago I received a call from Colonel Danny Bubp, Ohio Representative from the 88th district in the House of Representatives. He asked me to send Congress a message: 'Stay the course.' "He also asked me to send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do.'"

Coincidental to San Francisco radio station KGO exposing Mean Jean as a crack whore, Colonel Bubp went public with a bombshell: his fellow far right nutcase, Congresswoman Jean "Mean Jean" Schmidt, was lying; she'd made the whole thing up! (A tangent: paid Republican propagandists Rush Limbaugh and the dumb little nerdy guy on MSNBC with the bowtie both went on the offensive for Mean Jean-- repeating and garnishing her lies and distortions. Although no one is saying whether or not Schmidt and Limbaugh have used illicit drugs together, there is an obvious kinship between the far right OxyContin (aka- hillbilly heroin) addict and the psycho congressional crack whore. And according to Media Matters Limbaugh (and the MSNBC nerd with the bowtie) have been distorting the story to make it seem that Bubp, a Marine reservist, is on active duty in Iraq.)

Anyway, back to the main story-- I mean if you don't know that Limbaugh and the MSNBC bowtie nerd can't open their partisan traps without lying, you're in trouble to begin with-- which is: Mean Jean never even discussed Murtha with Bupb. He admits he called her on the phone Friday but he says they never discussed Murtha and that he would never call a fellow marine a coward. (Murtha, unlike Republican smear-mongers and detractors like Dick "5 deferments/other priorities" Cheney, served with distinction in VietNam and was awarded 3 battlefield medals for bravery.) Meanwhile, Mean Jean, the trained concealed weapons crack whore, went on Cinci radio station WLW and called Bubp a liar: "I was repeating words. I am not going to get into that debate," she hissed threateningly. But this use of surrogates to smear American heroes is not a new tactic for the vile and vitriolic crack whore. She also used a far right naval veteran to attack and smear (aka-"Swift Boating") Marine Colonel Paul Hackett.

Now Burp claims he's an innocent bystander who was being used by the nefarious Mean Jean for her own purposes. "I wish she never used my name," he whined to the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER. But Burp is no innocent in the woods himself. Bubp, a close ally of Schmidt's, has been a low-level right-wing figure in SW Ohio for some time. Far from any Iraqi battlefields Limbaugh or the MSNBC bowtie nerd claimed he was on, Bubp's battle was against the separation of Church and State. Burp's biggest claim to fame before winning a legislative seat in the 88th district was as pro-bono legal counsel for Adams County for the Ten Commandments, an ad-hoc Ohio nut group formed to keep 10 Commandments monuments inappropriately displayed in local public schools. Coming to Burp's aid was a veritable A-list of far right religionist fanatics, the U.S. equivalent of The Taliban: James Dobson, "Rev." Rob Schenck, Don Wildmon, ex-Judge Roy Moore, Jay Sekulow, every Buy Bull-thumpin' Elmer Gantry in the coalition Rove cobbled together to make the simple-minded among us think God hates the poor and meek, and loves the mighty, wealthy and powerful.

After hiding out and cowering in the dark for a day, Mean Jean, actually still hiding and cowering, but with a fax machine by her side, went on the attack back in Ohio. WKRC-TV reports a statement they got from her claiming she accurately relayed her conversation with Bubp-- again, in effect, calling him a liar-- and then blaming the whole brouhaha on "the left" attacking her. (It wasn't "the left" that gave her a choice of retracting her vicious attack on Congressman Murtha or resigning, unless you consider Hastert, DeLay and Blunt "the left" these days.) So the questions remain: will Mean Jean resign? And, more importantly, will Ohio voters get a grip?

CELEBRATE THANKSGIVING WITH A COMPREHENSIVE LOOK AT THE LIFE OF GEORGE W. BUSH (A 3 MINUTE VIDEO)

I hope you have QuickTime: DUBYA.

But if you're more a reader than a video person, here's a way cool story for you to read about the Thanksgiving festivities at the White House. This should put you in a cheery mood!

GOOD NEWS FOR CATHOLIC CHURCH-- THEY'RE NOT ALONE! OTHER RELIGIONISTS ALSO RAPE CHILDREN

Would you leave your child alone with a Catholic priest? Some people claim the Catholic Church, Inc has been unfairly targeted by late night comedians and just as many preachers and "holy men" from other scam-"religions" rape and abuse young children as the Roman Catholic clergy. And some people have a point! Yes they do.

Now I don't even know if my TV set gets Fox or MSNBC, I never checked and anyway, I do what I can to avoid yellow-journalism and paid propaganda networks. However, whenever I visit this one close pal he's always flipping back and forth between these two channels and baseball and football games. To be honest, without him I probably would never have known that the biggest story of the year was about some Alabama girl who disappeared in Aruba. Anyway, a week or two ago I was over there and he was all worked up, in a manner of speaking, about an MSNBC sting operation that was targeting internet predators. I was over there for about 2-3 hours and basically all MSNBC did was show a parade of perverts coming to what they thought was a sexual liaison with underage boys. And one was a rabbi, which is like a Jewish priest. I mean he's a Jewish religion guy like a priest is a Catholic religion guy-- not that rabbis necessarily molest children all day. But not even all the priests do that all the time.

And then today AP ran a story about a jury awarding victims over $4 million from the Mormon Church in another child abuse case. Whether you accept that the kooky Mormons are a legitimate religion or just a cult, you are probably aware that underlying Mormon ideology routinely turns children into victims. In this particular case, very typical of religionist hierarchies, whether Catholic or Mormon, the Church tried to cover up for one of its priests. And in this case the priest was the stepfather of two young girls who he was... having his way with. When the girls complained to their bishop that the priest had been sexually assaulting them since they were 7 years old, the bishop did what bishops always do in such matters-- squat. (Afterall, bishops were once priests too.) Specifically, the bishop told the girls to pray. He also failed to alert the civil authorities.

So a jury ordered the Mormon Church to pay $4.2 million. But the Mormons know their rights and they're a lot more proactive about safeguarding their wealth than about safeguarding their children. A flack for the so-called church of the Latter-day Saints (aka- The Mormons), a Gordon Conger, says they will "aggressively pursue an appeal." (They claim the Bishop never witnessed any abuse himself or some such bullcrap.) So yes, Mormon and Jewish religionists are also dangerous perverts who should be kept away from children, but... Catholic clergy still get the blue ribbon when it comes to raping children.

I don't know how this slipped my mind but I really almost forgot! A couple days ago the former vicar general of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Phoenix was arrested for-- guess what!!!-- fondling underage boys and young men and asking them prying questions about their sex lives that he pretended were part of confession. Hardly seems like news anymore, huh?

REPUBLICAN CRACK WHORE JEAN SCHMIDT CAUGHT WITH HER PANTS DOWN. CONGRESS ADJOURNS AS MEMBERS TRAMPLE EACH OTHER TO GET AWAY

Hometown paper, the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER is reporting today that psychotic crack whore Congresswoman Jean (aka- Jeanne) Schmidt was lying her ass off when she claimed Colonel Danny Bubp told her to call decorated marine John Murtha (D-PA) a "coward."

If you've been on Mars and missed this story, the whole thing-- including KGO Radio's startling revelation that Ohio Republican Congresscreature Jean Schmidt is a sick and perverted crack whore-- can be accessed by clicking on "Congresscreature" or any of the highlighted words a couple inches back. But today Malia Rulon is reporting in THE ENQUIRER than Schmidt's wild accusations, typical of her entire career as a right-wing extremist and hatchet-woman, known locally as "Mean Jean," are ricocheting and causing her mega-problems back home. Turns out she fabricated the whole thing about Danny Bubp calling her and asking her "to send Congressman Murtha a message: That cowards cut and run, Marines never do." Although Bubp, a colonel in the Marine reserve and a local Republican freshman legislator back in Ohio, neither confirmed nor denied that he has witnessed Schmidt in the process of crack whoreness, he did say she's a liar. Burp said he called Schmidt, an old crony, on Friday to discuss the Republican resolution that called for the immediate withdrawal of troops from Iraq-- not to talk about Murtha; he said he would never call a fellow Marine a coward. "I wish she never used my name," said Bubp.

Decked out in a red, white and blue tablecloth, Schmidt was booed off the House floor and forced by the Republican leadership to withdraw her slander. She's gone into hiding, refusing to speak to the ENQUIRER, canceling a previously scheduled radio talk show appearance and a farewell dinner for outgoing Cinci mayor Charlie Luken, and she refuses to resign and will not comment about the KGO crack whore revelations.

According to the ENQUIRER, a lot of locals-- in an area better known for its speed labs than for crack whores-- are embarrassed. "'How dare this idiot call John Murtha, a war hero, a coward. I am ashamed to be from her district,' Gregory Moore, a 39-year-old lawyer from Batavia, said in an e-mail. Chris Finney, a Cincinnati lawyer who led an anti-tax group in opposing Schmidt during her recent special election, said the politics of negativity and name-calling should be a thing of the past. 'People want someone who can get things done,' Finney said. 'She's an embarrassment to this district.' Several bloggers called on Schmidt and Bubp to apologize and resign their offices [Poor Bubp! He didn't do anything to deserve to be tarred with this brush. Can you imagine growing up with a name like Bubp? I mean little kids are so cruel. No wonder he turned out to be a Republican!] Others compared her remarks with a statement she made minutes after she was sworn in on Sept. 6. 'I pledge to walk in the shoes of my colleagues and refrain from name-calling or the questioning of character,' Schmidt said then. [Oops.] 'It is easy to quickly sink to the lowest form of political debate. Harsh words often lead to headlines, but walking this path is not a victimless crime. This great House pays the price.' Sarah Feinburg of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee said Schmidt's remarks could attract Republicans to oppose her in next year's primary election or encourage Democrats to run. Freshmen typically are the most vulnerable lawmakers in elections. 'We're starting to talk to folks in the district about running against her,' Feinburg said. 'Jean Schmidt's been in Congress less than three months and she's already managed to alienate the entire House of Representatives, not to mention every veteran. ... She hasn't shown herself to be an asset for the district.' But some Republicans are praising Schmidt. 'We stand behind her sentiments,' said Brad Greenberg, executive director of the Hamilton County Republican Party. 'I don't believe that Jean Schmidt intended to attack (Murtha) personally. I understand that people felt that she was attacking him, but I don't believe that, in her heart, she meant to.' Schmidt's offices in DC and in her district, claim she is receiving overwhelming support but they are either lying or delusional (both well-known symptoms of extended crack use).

BUSH DENIES HE PLANNED TO BOMB AL-JAZEERA. POLL SHOWS 63% OF AMERICANS THINK HE'S LYING AGAIN

If you're buying into the Bush spin-machine on this story, please keep in mind that a British civil servant, David Keogh, has been charged under the Official Secrets Act for leaking a top secret government memo about Tony Blair talking Bush out of bombing Al-Jazeera headquarters in Doha, capital of U.S. client state Qatar. (The British memo, a 5-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and Blair, didn't mention whether or not Blair talked Bush out of bombing the NEW YORK TIMES, CNN, CBS or any other establishments which dare to use the inconvenient freedom of the press guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution-- and for which Bush claims young American men and women are dying in Iraq and other godforsaken faraway places.)

Although the White House is frantically doing all it can to tamp down this story in the U.S., it is the top international story everywhere else on the globe. London's DAILY MIRROR cites a "Top Secret" Downing Street memo that indicates on April 16, 2004 Blair convinced Bush that bombing Al-Jazeera would be counterproductive. The Bush Regime doesn't like media that veers away from the official propaganda line exemplified by Fox "News."

Bush and Blair are trying to keep a united front on this, claiming it was all a jokey-jokey and no one meant anything serious. The DAILY MIRROR quotes a source saying "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair." Peter Kilfoyle, a former defense minister in Blair's government, says that "If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Al-Jazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces... It gives an insight into the mindset of those who were architects of the war." Bush and Rumsfeld did order deadly precision bombing attacks on Al-Jazeera offices in Iraq and Afghanistan-- which I believe is a war crime. The leaked memo indicates that Bush had decided to bomb several Al-Jazeera offices and that Blair was able to talk him out of hitting the headquarters in downtown Doha, but, apparently, not the offices in Baghdad or Kabul. The Bush Regime claims the bombings in both cities were accidents and coincidences.

An AOL poll today asks Americans if they find the report credible. 63% said they do. I don't understand why AOL hasn't started polling on impeachment and war crimes trials for these monsters.


WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE

Although the U.S. corporate media is still keeping this story from surfacing, Juan Cole has a great piece on Bush's unbelievable attempt to murder journalists whose message diverged from his own propaganda. Oh-- and Blair isn't allowing the U.K. press to talk about it anymore. Now why are we fighting in Iraq again?


WEDNESDAY NIGHT UPDATE

RAW STORY'S ace reporter Larisa Alexandrovna has great follow-up on Blair talking Bush out of bombing Al-Jezeera headquarters in Doha, the capital of U.S. client state Qatar. Although Blair has barred all further mention of the memo from the U.K. press, invoking the Official Secrets Act to protect Bush from another potential war crimes indictment, Alexandrovna has gotten to the bottom of Bush's plans to bomb Al-Jazeera (above and beyond him not liking them and how far afield they wandered from the official U.S. propaganda line clearly demonstrated 24/7 on Fox "News"). Turns out Bush was desperate to keep them from telling the truth about the brutality of the U.S. assault on Fallujah.

Since U.S. corporate media is steering clear of a story this dangerous for the Bush Regime, if you would like to read today's editorial in the MIRROR, here it is. Basically the editors explain how censorship is working in this story. "The Daily Mirror," it starts, "was yesterday told not to publish further details from a top secret memo, which revealed that President Bush wanted to bomb an Arab TV station. The gag by the Attorney General Lord Goldsmith came nearly 24 hours after the Mirror informed Downing Street of its intention to reveal how Tony Blair talked Bush out of attacking satellite station al-Jazeera's HQ in friendly Qatar." The photo above, by the way, was the one the MIRROR used, captioned "WARMONGER: Bush."

ARM YOURSELF WITH THE FACTS AND FIGURES FOR TURKEY DAY

Despite the weaked state 5 years of Bushism has inflicted on what they derisively call "the reality-based community," (be sure to read Ken's elegantly-written defense of reality from a couple days ago) I want to urge everyone to prepare for holiday get-togethers with facts and figures. I'm not suggesting killing Republicans or even beating them up. In fact, I'm not even urging you fight with them verbally. However, about a third of the country-- and not every single one of them is in backwards states like Utah and Idaho and Texas-- is delsuional when it comes to political reality and just in case you wind up in a friendly discussion with one, you should have a few easy facts at your fingertips.

When the Delusional-in-Chief compared war-hero John Murtha to Michael Moore, he was no doubt unaware that the majority of Americans agree with Moore on most issues. In poll after poll, after poll, including partisan right-wing polls, Americans feel that going to war in Iraq was a mistake, that Bush and his Regime misled us into war with lies and deception, not just incompetence, that the war should be ended and we should bring our troops home, and that Bush is no longer a trusted or believable person. Be calm and steady; you have the facts on your side. After the holidays if we all communicate with our delusional acquaintances nicely perhaps Bush's approval ratings will sink into the 20's. They are certainly headed in that direction.

SCHWARZENEGGER ADMITS HE LIKES ASSES BEST AND CALLS IT HIS "FAVORITE BODY PART"

This is a nice short film made by the Governor of California. Even though it was made some years ago, you can see how he devleoped into the sleazy imbecile we're stuck with now. By all means watch it 'til the very end when he demonstrates with vegetables what he likes. What a star!

BUSH'S DISASTROUS TRIP TO ASIA CLIMAXES WITH A CHECK TO THE MONGOLS-- $70,000 PER MERCENARY THEY HAVE IN IRAQ

Forget all the domestic political acrimony that stalked Bush at every stop on his ill-fated Asian escape. And forget how accelerated the disintegration of his political party was while he was trying to find a door somewhere in the Far East. There is actually a lot more to Bush's Asian fiasco than all that. He failed, miserably, everywhere (except in Mongolia which is... Mongolia). Instead of trumpets Bush's arrival in Asia was heralded by a tsunami in Japan followed by a typhoon in South Korea. Welcome to the Orient, Mr. Bush.

I didn't follow the pointless trip all that closely and all I got out of the first stop, Japan, was how Bush's "good friend" Junichiro Koizumi visits Yasukuni, a shrine to Japanese fascist war criminals, all the time, inspiring anger and tension from China, South Korea and other nations that connect Japan to the inhuman Asian war of the 1940's (before Bush's time... and he probably was too stoned or drunk in class when they went over that one). In South Korea Bush contended with the inclement weather and a little surprise by the pissed off Koreans-- who freak whenever Koizumi goes to Yasukuni and probably wanted Bush to scold him; at least Bush didn't go with him there and lay a wreath on the graves of the guys who bombed Pearl Harbor; they told him they were pulling a third of their troops out of Iraq.

Next stop was China, the actual catastrophe where Bush was under a lot of pressure from the corporate folks who pay for Republican campaigns to bring home some bacon. The Chinese laughed in his face. Beijing made it clear they're not interested in having anything to do with a duck so lame and worthless that they ignored all his pleas for something to show the folks back home. It looks like the Chinese will wait until there is an American leader with some support back home before they deal seriously with the trade issues which are causing a massive transfer of wealth from America to China. As far as issues involving religion and human rights, the Chinese told Bush he could either go fly a kite or go for a bike ride. The latter was the height of his Asian sojourn.

Unless you want to count... Mongolia. The Mongols have contributed nearly 160 troops to Bush's occupation of Iraq, the third biggest contributor on a per capital basis. According to an AP story Bush saluted Mongolia's "fearless warriors" for helping his embattled effort to establish democracy in the heart of the Middle East. One might almost think Bush was joking when he read a prepared statement that said "Mongolia and the United States are standing together as brothers in the cause of freedom." Although Bush met with President Nambaryn Enkhbayar, a Communist-turned-Bush-style free trader, inside a ger (a nice felt tent) and sipped mare's milk and listened to Mongol throat singing-- calling it "special"-- there is nothing in the press details about whether or not Bush slept in a yurt. Bush gave the Mongols another $11 million dollars for their efforts (that works out to about $70,000 per mercenary).

FUTURE OHIO SENATOR PAUL HACKETT EXPLAINS WHY HE THINKS BUSH IS A COKE-SNORTING, BOOZE-GUZZLING PUSSY

I haven't read ESQUIRE in a long time. Someone turned me on to an online advance excerpt from the December issue called 16 DEAD IN OHIO by Kenneth Cain. It's a powerful and gripping story. And, via the rhythm of a CSNY song, harkens back to another war that turned very unpopular and how deaths in Ohio-- that time at Kent State University-- helped to hasten its conclusion.

The ESQUIRE story is about the tragic deaths of 16 young men from Lima Company as part of Bush's catastrophic Iraq adventure. Cain brings the tragedy home to America very viscerally and very personally. It is also the story of two Paul's who did not die in Iraq, the father of one dead marine Augie Palmer, and a marine officer who is running for the U.S. Senate.

"Sitting on their front porch under a flapping Marine Corps flag," Cain finds Augie's grieving parents, Rosemary and Paul who he says "are the picture of midwestern moderation and grace. Like all the grieving families I’ve met, they are especially focused on their final correspondence with their son. Augie had been frustrated that his unit was forced to return again and again to Euphrates River towns to clear out insurgents they’d already cleared out. In his last conversation with his father, Augie had said that the tactic of sweeping towns and then withdrawing only to return again was becoming 'less and less worth it.'”

Cain introduces us to Paul as "a thoughtful, restrained man who teaches a thirty-six-week Bible-study course at Church of the Saviour in Cleveland Heights (where Rosemary chairs the Membership and Evangelism Committee), but his anger toward the Bush administration is palpable. 'I blame Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Condoleezza Rice, and George Bush for the death of my son,' he says slowly and quietly. 'I don’t think Bush is supporting the troops. He claims he is, but he’s not. Otherwise he would have had enough troops there so that IED that blew up my son would not have been in the road. I use my son as an example, but multiply that by 2,000.' The day after they buried Augie, Rosemary and Paul went public with their critique, reading a statement from their front lawn to a collection of local reporters. Even amid the intense coverage of Ohio’s losses that week, Paul’s statement stood out for its controlled, articulate fury. 'Mr. President, our son was a Marine,' Paul said. 'He was obliged to do his duty without public complaint and did that faithfully. We, sir, are not so constrained. Now you have to deal with us and a growing number of Americans who think you have created a mess that you do not have the capacity to end.' And this: 'We ask you to recognize that our comments are not just those of grieving parents. They are based on anger, Mr. President, not grief. Anger is an honest emotion when someone’s family has been violated.'"

It wouldn't be fair for me to quote Cain's whole piece; you should read it though. The human emotions are palpable, even overwhelming and it is more than clear that Rosemary and Paul, Cain says "despite" but he could have said "because of" their faith, "are deeply offended by the direction much of the religious rhetoric that surrounds them has taken. 'The religious right should read their Bible a bit more carefully,' Paul says. 'Listen to what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount. You’re not going to find a George Bush in that sermon. It’s a gospel of love. That’s God’s grace. A lot of churches are forgetting the most important element of Christianity, and that’s grace. Fear is not grace. Does that mean you don’t punish culprits who are responsible for 9/11? No, you have to punish them. But don’t punish everybody. We’re killing a lot of Iraqis who had nothing to do with 9/11. Don’t kill innocents and create chaos. Look at how we go about spreading our gospel of Western democracy: We’re demanding almost permanent war to demonstrate and exercise our power.' He is most provoked by the manner in which he believes religious faith has been exploited politically in order to muzzle opposition to the war that killed his son. 'When Bush wraps himself in Christian faith, combines it with patriotism, and says they come from the same place, that implies that if you question or oppose him you are unpatriotic and ungodly, not just of a different opinion. That negates the power of my own faith. It negates the faith of people who disagree with him. I resent it. There’s something horrible about that. It’s un-American. It’s certainly anti-Christian.'”

Paul and Rosemary get lots and lots of calls and e-mails from other military parents, thanking them for having the courage to speak up publicly. Another Ohioan who has been speaking up publicly and who Cain caught up with for ESQUIRE is Paul Hackett. If you read DWT you already know about Hackett's valiant struggle to win a congressional seat, as a progressive Democrat, in one of the reddest districts in America (only to be beaten, barely, by far right crack whore, Jeanne Schmidt, who showed herself to be certifiably insane on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives a few nights ago.

Hackett is now in the midst of taking on Ohio's bland conservative Bush-supporting Senator Mike DeWine and recent polls show him beating DeWine in 2006 (although in Ohio legitimate polls have to be taken with a grain of salt as long as the corrupt one-party state is run by the political machine of criminals like Governor Bob Taft and Secretary of State Ken Blackwell).

The 6'2" marine is not a big fan of the Bush Regime. Cain visited him at home and lets Hackett explain his attitude toward Bush's war and occupation. “We’re in ‘patriotism lite.’ People put a yellow ribbon on their SUV and they’re convinced that makes you a patriot—but by virtue of your zip code, you know your kid’s not going, while other people’s kids in the field don’t have enough gear.”

Cain found Hackett going out of his way to explain that he is not antiwar. “Look, Marines like combat. That’s just a fact. It’s a self-selecting group of guys, and when you get into battle, it’s confirmed that you love it as much as you thought you would. I want to tell you something: I loved being in Fallujah. This is what we train for, what we do. We’re professionals. If it’s Somalia, fine; Iraq, fine; Afghanistan, fine. I enjoyed it.” But he goes on and Cain points out a divergence in his critique, a path not every marine or soldier has taken when they returned from war. "The military has been misused by this administration. Bush has to swallow his own words. In 2000 he said, ‘I will not use the military to nation-build.’ Excuse me, Mr. President, what are you doing? We’re nation building. We’re building schools, infrastructure, forming a democracy—so we think—that they don’t want. It’s not in their culture. It ain’t gonna work. By any standard military definition, we have succeeded in nothing in Iraq. We don’t even hold any ground. We can’t drive the roads over there safely. We stopped Fallujah in November. Guess what. It’s a hotbed of insurgency again... How we get used has nothing to do with who we are. That’s the difference. Marines are a tool. If I criticize the war, that doesn’t mean I don’t like the tool. I am the tool. I’m gung ho as hell. I love the Marine Corps.”

Cain doesn't shy away from Hackett having called Bush a chicken hawk during the campaign. In ESQUIRE, Cain quotes him saying “Bush didn’t serve his country during the defining war of his generation. That makes him a chicken hawk. He’s been less than forthright about his service, which in my book makes him dishonest. And he’s mentally lazy at best. He lacks any interest in inquiry, as reflected by the fact that he signs off on whatever flavor of the day to explain why we’re in Iraq. Bush is a fraud. He wants to be perceived as a macho guy, but he didn’t have the stones to serve in his generation’s war. He didn’t have the balls to do it. Point fucking blank. He didn’t have the balls. Because he wanted to drink alcohol and snort cocaine and party. Well, I didn’t do that.”

REPUBLICAN BENCH IN NEVADA SUFFERS A SEVERE BLOW, LOSES A REAL GOP SUPERSTAR

A little over a year ago, a special session of the Nevada Assembly voted unanimously to impeach Republican Controller Kathy Augustine "for her use of state workers and equipment during her 2002 re-election -- on state time." The 2 highest ranking elected Republicans in the state, Governor Kenny Guinn and Senator John Ensign have both asked Augustine to resign after she admitted breaking 3 state ethics laws. She was fined $15,000 but not removed from office.


It seemed that Kathy Augustine had become an embarrassment for the Republican Establishment in this swing state. But for anyone paying even the slightest amount of attention, it shouldn't have seemed "sudden." Augustine's political career as a member of both the Assembly and the state Senate was troubling for many, but not atypical for a Republican right-wing politician. Outrageous lying as well as pandering to racism and anti-semitism were woven through Augustine's rise to the top of the Nevada GOP. When running for her current job-- the controller is like the state's chief accountant-- she cited as her only relevant experience making change while serving drinks as an airline stewardess.

Last week the State Republican Chairman, Paul Williams, demanded that the party's former rising star not seek another electoral job in Nevada as a Republican. She is about to be term-limited out of her current job and Williams (speaking for most of the state GOP) called her "an embarrassment to the Nevada Republican Party."
Augustine -- who is deciding between running for either Lieutenant Governor or State Treasurer -- is the only state official ever impeached and convicted in Nevada's 141-year history. "I think I have quite a stellar work record, in what I've accomplished in office," she said, and then hinted that there is more to her case than what has come out so far. The Republican Chairman wrote her a letter saying that the party "cannot embrace a candidate who has been censured, fined and impeached for an ethics violation" and then made sure it got into the hands of the press.

The context of all this Republican drama are a challenge to a U.S. Senator, Jon Ensign, (although his colleague Harry Reid has stupidly signaled that Democrats won't target his seat: “We’ve got other places where we’re going to focus our attention”) and potentially-competitive races for two Republican House seats. Jon Porter, whose swing district (the 3rd) covers the suburbs of Las Vegas and is frantic that Augustine not be on the ticket with him, is particularly vulnerable. The 3rd is a creature of redistricting, drawn after the 2000 Census so that the new district would have almost a precisely equal number of registered Democrats and registered Republicans. Porter is far to the right of his moderate constituents and if 2006 continues to shape up as a Democratic year, as it has been so far, he will need a miracle to retain the seat. The 2nd district is currently held by Jim Gibbons, who is giving it up to run for Governor. His wife wants to run for the seat. The Democrats have a very strong candidate in Jill Derby, a respected and popular State University System Regent. The district is basically all of Nevada north of Vegas and is usually considered safe GOP territory.

Although there is no way to know how honest the 2004 vote count was in Nevada, Bush supposedly beat Kerry by 3 percentage points. Today approximately 60% of Nevada adults give Bush a negative approval rating, the lowest rating of any state that supposedly voted for him in 2004. And despite being "protected" by Reid, Ensign has pretty bad approval ratings (49% favorable-- even lower than prime Democratic targets Burns and Chaffee). Republican Party officials in Nevada are nervous about 2006 and they feel that if Augustine is on the ticket, and her blatant corruption is debated in the media again, it could be enough to sink the whole party in what looks to be a very tough year for Republicans.

NEXT TIME A GAY PERSON IS MURDERED BY A BIGOT FEELING EMPOWERED BY SOCIETAL ATTITUDES, BLAME IT ON ARLEN SPECTER

I could never understand why Democrats and progressives put so much stock in the good will of supposedly "moderate" Republicans. They are rarely moderate and almost always vote with the hard-right majority on all but a symbolic vote or two that can be used to establish "indie cred" with the back home voters. The two "moderate" Maine senators, for example, almost always vote straight-Bush-- helping to destroy the American social fabric with anti-minimum wage votes, or almost routinely going along with neo-fascist judicial nominees-- in a state where progressive Democrats could otherwise easily be elected.

I'm working on a report on extremely right-wing Republican Senator John McCain who has sold the American public a bill of goods based primarily on relativity and on a few specific issues-- yes, he's anti-torture!!-- but who is being taken seriously as a presidential contender by people who have recognized the extreme danger the Republican Party means for our nation.

Another so-called "moderate" Republican is Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania. And, yes, compared to a narrow-minded, raging neo-Nazi Opus Dei bigot like Rick "Man-on-dog" Santorum, Specter doesn't look as bad. But in a sane universe his record is absolutely abysmal. Last week he cast the deciding vote to advance Bush's virulently anti-gay Marriage Protection (Constitutional) Amendment. Specter is the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and he claims he opposes the amendment but wants to see the full Senate vote on the Frist/Brownback-sponsored bit of institutionalized bigotry. The amendment passed 5-4 in a subcommittee and could have been killed by Specter if he really was a moderate. But he's not; he's just a right-wing political hack who isn't a Nazi or a KKK member from a moderate state.

Shh! Don't tell Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson and the gang about this, or they'll go after poor old Ben Franklin

Even before the advent of "reality" TV, I was fascinated by the public's peculiarly ambivalent relationship with reality. Let me try to explain.

I think we're all familiar with the old-style disdain for reality in the world of entertainment. As far back as I can remember, the common wisdom was that people watching TV or going to the movies wanted to escape reality. And believe me, I understand the impulse, as a card-carrying 9-to-5 drudge. When I leave my desk every day, whew, do I want to escape.

But gradually I came to understand that the craving for escape isn't the whole story. The concept of reality still exerts some kind of pull. It's amazing how many folks seem to crave the "stamp" of reality--some kind of seal, or certification, or label, or sticker, or imprimatur that says, "THIS IS REAL."

The hitch is that those folks don't seem to demand, or necessarily even want, the actual reality that lurks beneath that precious seal of reality.

An anecdote:

Awhile back, a coworker and friend told this story drawn from his real life as a would-be writer for TV and/or the movies. He had pitched an idea that seemed tailor-made for a TV movie. Which is to say that it was built around a health issue--something to do with midwives, as I recall (as you'll see, it really doesn't matter)--and the story lent itself to good guys vs. bad guys (presumably those nasty bureaucrats). My friend's idea had attracted enough interest to move several rungs up the TV world's notoriously rickety Ladder of Development. He was just a rung away from raking in what for him would have been significant money. Of course, considering that he had gone from being a struggling actor to a struggling writer, what qualfied as significant money in his life probably wouldn't cover lunch for a TV mogul.

The deal looked all set, until one day a panic-laden phone call came. Some network bigwig, or at any rate a honcho higher up on the corporate food chain, was having a hissy fit, demanding to know: WAS THIS STORY REAL? And you have to trust that what mattered to Mr. Bigwig wasn't the substance of the story. Clearly what mattered was that the network be able to slap on the precious label "based upon a true story." (Notice how they like to say "based upon" rather than "based on," which is what you or I would say? Presumably this is meant to show that they're really, really serious about this based-uponness.)

My friend was made to understand that Mr. Bigwig's concern was in fact so important that it constituted a deal-breaker. Luckily, he was able to allay the panic with the assurance that the story was 100-percent Grade A true.

Unluckily, the fortess-against-thought that is Hollywood is protected by a veritable minefield of deal-breakers. There were still plenty of other ways for the project to be derailed, as it was soon enough.

Now the irony here, in case you haven't worked it out for yourself, is that if the movie had actually been made, we know that not the slightest millisecond would ever have been wasted over so utterly inconsequential an issue as the "truth" of the story. You'll note that none of these TV movies that come certified as "based upon" reality are ever promoted as BEING "a true story." I imagine that anyone who says at any point in the development or production of such a project, "But that's not the way it happend," is assumed to be either (a) joking or (b) out of his friggin' mind.

And yet, and yet. . . . Isn't it fascinating that the powers that be would spare no effort to make sure that the damned story of their TV movie, despite having ultimately been distorted and falsified in every way imaginable, at some point was true?

What I detect here is an undercurrent in American life that has hardly been noticed, except by people like Karl Rove who use it for evil. I'm not so naive as to suggest that the American people have an unnoticed passion for truth. C'mon, take a glance around us! But people do still seem to need the trappings of reality, just without any of the inconvenient things that tend to come with it. Real reality has a nasty way of being complex, ambiguous, untidy, uncontrollable, not conventionally dramatic, and often (and this may be the most unforgivable) downright depressing.

What they seem to want is some kind of "reality substitute," a reality that's better than the real thing. And no one gave them a clearer vision of what they could have than our beloved President Ronald Reagan. Reagan after all lived his last several decades in a private reality of surpassing pleasantness. Being rich and having many still-richer friends can do that for a person. And Reagan wanted everyone to share this pleasantness--by sharing, not the riches, but the crucial concept that every American has the right to believe in whatever reality makes him/her feel best. If that happens to be hatred and bigotry, then not only should you do it, but there's no reason why you should feel bad about it.

For years I was proud of my discovery of the sway of "reality substitute," and thought I should do something with it. I just couldn't think what. Beyond identifying it, what was there to say or do about it?

Nobody really seemed to care. Especially when "reality" TV descended on us. Of course it should always have been called "unreality" TV, since it was devoted to offering only the veneer and never the substance of reality. But what else would you expect in an era when the media, emphatically including the mainstream news media, had so open-heartedly embraced reality substitute?

And even more especially when control of the White House was seized by our first full-fledged reality-substitute president. The crowning moment in the flight from reality came when that unnamed philosopher-functionary in Bushworld, while paying tribute to intrepid trailblazer George W. Bush, who was creating visionary new realities out of . . . well, it was never clear what he was making them out of, contrasted his hero with the surly malcontents who remained outside the neoncon fantasy world. He referred to those fringe elements derisively as "the reality-based community."

I can't imagine that any DownWithTyranny reader needs chapter-and-verse documentation of the Bush administration's assault on reality. Perhaps nobody has captured the spirit better than Air America Radio's "Morning Sedition," which every Wednesday has been serving up the latest dispatches from "The War on Brains."

In its most brazen form, the War on Brains has set its sights on science.

Now science isn't and shouldn't be immune from criticism. For example, there is a corporatized commodity we might call Big Science which could benefit from some stiff knocks. But that of course isn't what the thugs of the Right have gone after. No, they've sought to marginzalize if not actually dismantle the very concept of science, which is to say the struggle that mankind has been waging since the dawn of the species to achieve some understanding of the physical universe around us.

Of course the administration's indispensable allies in this central battlefront in the War on Brains have been the massed, itchin'-fer-a-fight forces of organized junk religion.

None of this is news. I guess I've been inspired to bring up the subject by a couple of recent rays of hope. First there was the election-day defeat of that pack of school-board know-nothings in Dover, Pennsylvania. Then, in part inspired by that event, there was an op-ed piece in Saturday's New York Times by Scott M. Liell, "the author of the forthcoming 'Founding Faith,' about the religious beliefs of the founders."

Liell was commemorating the 250th anniversary of an earthquake centered at Cape Ann, Massachusetts, north of Boston--"the most destructive earthquake ever recorded in the eastern United States."

This cataclysm, Liell notes, produced two very different kinds of responses:

* On the one hand, there were people like John Adams who responded to this awesome display of nature's power with curiosity, taking it as an opportunity to try to gain some knowledge and understanding of natural phenomena.

* And then there were the people who retreated behind the power and wrath of mumbo-jumbo, notably the dark forces of religion as practiced in colonial Massachusetts. To this fire-and-brimstone set, the earthquake was God's punishment for . . . well, fill in the blank.

No one filled in the blank more creatively than the Rev. Thomas Prince of Boston's South Church. Prince sermonized that the earthquake was God's punishment for a sinful invention by none other than . . . Benjamin Franklin!

Liell reminds us that Franklin was already world-famous for his invention of the lightning rod. With all that famous kite-flying, he had learned enough about lightning and electricity to figure out that lightning rods could protect buildings by harmlessly redirecting lightning bolts, which since time immemorial had been frying any structure that came in their path, to ground.

To the Reverend Prince this was mucking about in God's domain. Lightning, after all, was God's basic tool for expressing displeasure. Now this dastardly Franklin had deprived God of His favorite tool! Was it any surprise that He had visited an earthquake upon the northern colonies?

Now, I don't want this to smack of a homework assignment, and so I'm refraining from posting the whole piece here. But I hope your appetite has been whetted enough to want to read it if you haven't already, and therefore, in particular for the benefit of those who haven't coughed up the NYT's ransom payment for its now-under-wraps opinion writers, I'm going to try to post it in a comment. (No guarantees here, but I'll give it a shot.)

However, the point I want to get to is the conclusion Liell offers us about the nature of the battle that raged in the colonial America of 1755, and how it relates to the battle beteween science and faith that is promoted so vehemently, and often violently, by the junk religionists of 2005:

"At the end of the day, it was never faith per se that stood in opposition to science; Franklin was ultimately as much a believer as Thomas Prince. Many people of faith--Unitarians, Quakers and those who, like most of the founding fathers, were deists--were prominent members of the scientific community. Rather, it was (and is) a specific type of belief that consistently finds itself at odds with science, one that is not found merely in America and is not limited to Christianity. It is the specific brand of faith that devalues reason and confers the mantle of infallible, absolute authority upon a leader or a book. It is only the priests of these sects, as Jefferson said, who 'dread the advance of science as witches do the approach of daylight.' . . .

"For Franklin and his like-minded contemporaries, scientific pursuit was the ultimate act of faith; faith that there was an order to be discovered and faith in our ability to discover it."

JUSTICE DEPARTMENT MAY BE FROG-WALKING HALF A DOZEN GOP CONGRESSMEN TO JAIL SOON IN ABRAMOFF/DELAY SCANDALS

Today's NY TIMES says that the Justice Dept is signaling "that prominent members of Congress could be swept up in the corruption investigation of Jack Abramoff, the former Republican superlobbyist who diverted some of his tens of millions of dollars in fees to provide lavish travel, meals and campaign contributions to the lawmakers" who were willing to help him in his nefarious schemes. Aside from DeLay, dozens of other Republican House members have been on the take from Abramoff, although the ones most connected with Abramoff's specifically criminal activities have been Bob Ney (R-OH), in the top 5 among ethically-challenged and out-and-out corrupt House members, John T. Doolittle (R-CA), Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT), Richard Pombo (R-CA), and Tom Feeney (R-FL).

ONE WEEK ON AND WE HAVE AN UPDATE... FROM THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, NORMALLY A VERITABLE BASTION OF FASCIST PROPAGANDA

I'm not sure if the WSJ is trying to make it seem like there are only 4 members of Congress involved in the Abramoff corruption scandals or they are only looking to discuss the 4 most likely to serve hard time, but in today's issue Brody Mullins points out that DeLay, Burns, Ney and Doolittle are all in deep doo-doo. The reality is that literally dozens of right-wing Republican congressloons were on the take from Abramoff, not to mention GOP operatives like Ralph Reed, David Safavian, Grover Norquist and Bush's uber-corrupt Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton.

DeLay has already been indicted on several unrelated charges and, aside from trying to still control the Republican House Caucus, is preparing to defend himself on those charges. Ney's goose is so cooked and the evidence against him is so overwhelming that he's just keeping his mouth shut while his attorneys beg for mercy (and offer cooperation?). But Burns and Doolittle are in complete states of denial akin to their fearless leader's attempt to make people believe he never even knew one of his closest supporters, Ken "Kenny Boy" Lay. Montana Senator Conrad Burns, in a fight for his political life back home (where Democrat Jon Tester's approval ratings are rising almost as fast as Burns' are sinking), was chairman of a subcommittee where he was able to see to it that one of Abramoff's clients, the Chippewas of Michigan, got a $3 million dollar grant-- at least $150,000 of which was kicked back to Burns' campaign coffers. Three of Burns aides were also hired by Abramoff's lobbying firm. Yet Burns' only comment, through a flack, was "We have not been contacted by the Justice Department. We are more than happy to help out in any investigation should we be asked." I think he will be.

SUGGS IS BACK FROM THE COUNTRY MUSIC AWARDS AT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN AND HE WANTS US ALL TO FOLLOW THE LEADER

[Phil missed a week or two on DWT because he was in NYC seeing some of his heroes play at the Country Music Awards at Madison Square Garden. Plus one of his associates told him that DWT wasn't really down with the kind of tyranny he's for and he accused us of possibly running a "commie propaganda piece" by a well-known blue and he decided to re-evaluate his participation in the blog. Well, he's back from New York and the re-evaluation must have gone in our favor because last night he copied us on an e-mail he sent to dozens of country music luminaries.]


Dear President, Chairpersons of Country Music Association, Toby Keith and Billy Ray C,

My name is Philbert Suggs and I'm a dedicated biblical conservative, Christian styled right-wing, outdoorsman Republican, desperately working for the advancement of ultraconservative Patriarchy.
Its a tough 'n rough moment for us right now with all the liberal sissy bias in the media. Because in today's America we evangelical far to the right Christians are being hunted down like varmints while the rest of the public is fed the line that dissent against our Leader is good and that treason is wrong!
We need to fight back against the evil Al Franken types who are constantly making fun of this country's Super-Patriots like Bill O Reilly, Rush Limbaugh and Zel Miller. Al and his ilk have made it a national pastime in (as the kids say) "dissing"....the magnificent Bush!
That's why I'm writing to all of you important reachers today. I especially want you all to hear my song "Follow The Leader" that I've just recorded for my divine Bush... who I cherish with all my dominionist hunters heart and who I ask you to please come out to support now in his time of need.
Please download into your desk tops and then listen to my new glorious song. I would appreciate you over nighting a contract to me so that I may perform this live with Toby at the upcoming San Bernadino County Fair. Also feel free to send me a contract so that I may record another version as a duet with the warrior patriot acting Billy Ray C.
FYI's...I have performed this new song for the local promise keepers at their last "beast feast" barbecue as well as singing it many times out in the woods with my hunting buddies, and let me just say...it is a huge sensation !
I also have many other songs of support in my arse nal for the great leader Bush and for the General Dick Cheney, who I praise now more than ever for the brave biblical words he has been using when attacking the ones who dare shame America.
By questioning the Bush/Cheney massive successful Shock and Awe campaigns to bring a Theorcracy to the middle east coast of Iraq, these liberal heathens actually endanger this once powerful administration's brilliant policy of protecting us from the truth.
Please Follow The Leader.

God Bless Bush's America,

Philbert Suggs

p.s.... Please go here and click yes on my reviews to help fight Al Qaeda. Your yes vote ensures my ranking which has doubled over night!

CRACK WHORE JEANNE SCHMIDT TAKES A DUMP ON THE HOUSE FLOOR. OHIO NEEDS TO BE MORE CAREFUL ABOUT WHO THEY SEND TO CONGRESS

I was up in the Bay Area for the last couple of days. What a great place! And thanks to Republican greed, selfishness, and anti-environmental policies-- in the form of global warming-- the weather is absolutely amazing! KGO is the biggest radio station west of the Mississippi and my first night up there I heard a bizarre reference to a member of Congress. It was on Gene Burns' show, a guy you may not know as a talk show host but you may remember as a 2-time candidate for President of the United States for the Libertarian Party. The epitaph that intrigued me-- even more powerful than Marion Berry's reference to Florida congressional wingnut Adam Putnam as a Howdy Doody-looking nimrod-- was made by a caller revealing that tightly-wound Ohio rightist Jeanne Schmidt is a "crack whore."

Having watched her campaign against Paul Hackett closely I am very aware of many-- and there are many-- of Congresswoman Schmidt's shortcomings. But it took KGO to inform me-- and I am grateful-- that she is a crack whore. I was on planes and on ridiculous lines at the disastrous Oakland Airport and in meetings and at dinners and I missed the whole episode of the crack whore, dressed, as my fashion-critic friend Jim pointed out, in an American flag tablecloth, losing her mind in the House well. And although she was forced by an embarrassed-- see you thought nothing could embarrass them-- GOP leadership to have her wild crack-induced remarks ("send Congressman Murtha a message, that cowards cut and run, Marines never do...") stricken from the public record, you can check the whole disgusting episode out on MSNBC by clicking here (if you have QuickTime).

The video pretty much tells the story. (The crack whore incident comes at the very end of the clip.) The NY TIMES covered the whole sordid mess which was basically just a cheap Republican ploy that made a mockery about the concerns the vast majority of Americans now have about how Bush's occupation of Iraq is proceeding. Even conservative GOP Senator John Warner told his Republican colleagues that they should be ashamed of themselves. They were already embarrassed by a crack whore. What's it gonna take to make them feel ashamed?

DELAY/ABRAMOFF CRIME ASSOCIATE MICHAEL SCANLON TURNING STATE'S EVIDENCE ON OHIO REPUBLICAN CONGRESSCROOK BOB NEY

Today's NY TIMES ran a story by Anne Kornblut about how a major cog in the Tom DeLay Republican Crime Syndicate is turning state's evidence that will, in all likelihood doom the political career of crooked Ohio congressman Bob Ney.

Scanlon, long known in DC as a congenital liar and a worthless flack for DeLay, as well as a partner of Abramoff's, has agreed to plead guilty on one charge of conspiracy and to testify against Ohio extreme right-wing Congressman Bob Ney. Many have been interested in the DeLay/Abramoff/Ney gang's participation in the brutal 2001 gangland-style murder of former business partner Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis. The 3 mafia hitmen (pictured above and now in prison on murder charges) were working for Abramoff "as consultants" after business dealings with the DeLay/Abramoff crime operation and Boulis soured.

DeLay, of course, has already been indicted in Texas on possibly-unrelated charges involving fund-raising practices for Texas Republicans and, like the 3 hitmen pictured above, is awaiting trial. His whole crime operation and his shady relationship with Abramoff have been under investigation by various law enforcement agencies. The court papers filed Friday show how Scanlon and Abramoff, conspired to "corruptly offer and provide things of value, including money, meals, trips and entertainment to federal public officials in return for agreements to perform official acts." And although the wording suggests that more than one lawmaker was under investigation, Ney is known to have been a major recipient of financial rewards from the DeLay/Abramoff gang and to have helped them in their vendetta against Boulis. Ney claims to not know anything about nuthin' and contends that he was tricked by Mr. Scanlon and Mr. Abramoff into assisting their clients.

Although DeLay's handpicked crooked Ethics Committee chairman, a lowlife Republican from Yakima who goes by the name "Doc" Hastings has effectively closed down any attempt to serious examine the myriad of charges against DeLay and Abramoff and Ney and the other members of their operation ("Doc" in all likelihood being one), Federal prosecutors have been looking into the theft of over $80 million by Abramoff and DeLay from American Indian tribes. According the TIMES "Investigators believe the two men funneled millions through charities and front organizations to skim profits, avoid taxes and mask incomplete work." And, of course, they are also investigating the relationship between how DeLay ran the House of Representatives and the lucrative, illegal money machine he and Abramoff created.

The 8-page criminal filing accuses Scanlon of taking part in a "corruption scheme" between January 2000 and April 2004, working alongside Abramoff and bribing Ney, who they enticed into performing "a series of official acts," including "agreements to support and pass legislation, agreements to place statements into the Congressional Record" [a reference to the Boulis murder case] and meetings with their clients. Ney, whose committee oversees these matters, also helped one of Abramoff's clients apply for a license to install wireless telephone infrastructure in the House of Representatives.

Crooked Republican congressmen like DeLay, Ney, Pombo, Taylor, Burns (a Senator from Montana) and as many as a dozen others may be busy with more than just tough re-election campaigns between now and November, 2006.

FRIST, A TONE-DEAF CROOK AND CAT KILLER, REFUSES TO ALLOW THE SENATE TO HONOR BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

You might remember how right wing loons in the Texas state Senate derailed plans to name a local highway for country music hero Willie Nelson earlier this year. Well, the Repugs are at it again-- and this time they're dissin' The Boss. A.P. is carrying a story this weekend by Donna De La Cruz called Republicans Refuse to Honor Springsteen. Repugs sabotaged the efforts of New Jersey Senators Corzine and Lautenberg to honor the writer of "Born in the U.S.A." and a whole catalogue of inspiring and beloved songs on the 30th anniversary of the release of BORN TO RUN, an album which had a major impact on the lives of so many Americans-- and had a far better impact of foreigners perceptions of our country than anything done by the Bush Regime.

Unindicted stock manipulator/Republican Majority Leader Bill Frist, petulantly refused to allow the resolution to be considered and refused to give a reason. (This is the kind of innocuous resolution that normally passes routinely by unanimous consent. According to the Associated Press "Lautenberg said he couldn't understand why anyone would object to the resolution. 'Even if the Republicans don't like (Springsteen's) tunes, I would hope they appreciated his contributions to American culture.'... Corzine added that "We'll never surrender looking for ways to honor our local hero who made it big in this land of hopes and dreams."

I guess we'll have to just wait until 2008 or impeachment before anyone brings up Green Day.

DESPITE WHAT THE PUNDITS TRIED TO MAKE US BELIEVE, THE YOUTH VOTE DID TURN OUT BIG IN 2004

An awful lot of work and resources was put into turning out young and first-time voters in the run up to the 2004 presidential election. The next day the right wing soon had the whole mainstream media echoing its message that the effort failed and that young people didn't turn out. Scott Goodstein, the hardworking and diligent Executive Director of Punk Voter told me they were lying. And now, a year later, the truth is starting to come out. This week Ron Fournier and Stephen Ohlemacher did a story for A.P. about how voting among young people surged in 2004. "Turns out," they start, "the kids rocked after all. Nearly half of all eligible young voters cast ballots in the November 2004 election, raising their turnout rate by more than twice any other age group." And, it turned out that Kerry won 56% of all voters between 18-24 (the neo-fascist clown got 43%).

"This is big," said David King, associate director of the Institute of Politics at Harvard University who highlighted the Census Bureau findings in an IOP report Wednesday. "When you vote young, you're much more likely to vote the rest of your life, so the 2004 campaign turned a generation on to politics... The 2004 campaign itself was an immense mobilizing event, bringing out the largest percent of young voters in 32 years."

AS BUSH'S APPROVAL RATINGS FALL, HIS RADIOACTIVITY RATINGS SKYROCKET. MORE GOP POLITICIANS BEG HIM TO STAY AWAY

You've probably noticed that Bush's approval polling, though higher than Cheney's, is struggling to stay above 30%. Americans have finally realized that we've been duped. Drowning in corruption and treason scandals, mired in an unjust and unwinable war, the Republican Party is on the verge of cracking up entirely. And with Rove's foul Machiavellian mind engaged-- at least part time-- in keeping himself out of prison, George Bush himself is floundering, badly. To Republicans who depend on moderate suburban voters (rather than religionist fanatics and KKK-type haters and bigots), Bush has become completely radioactive and persona non grata .

Yesterday the Republican governor with the highest approval numbers in the country, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, joined a growing list of elected GOP officials who have publicly asked Bush to stay away. Rell is a social moderate and big booster of stem-cell research, women's right to choice and even gay civil unions. "I don't think President Bush will want to campaign for me ... As an individual I always respect the President, but we don't always agree on policy." Bush's approval ratings in her state are among the lowest in the country-- and headed lower-- and the 3 Republican Connecticut congressmen, Rob Simmons (#1 most endangered), Christopher Shays (#4 most endangered), and Nancy Johnson (#7 most endangered) are major Democratic targets for 2006. With the popular right-wing Democratic Senator Joe Lieberman on the ballot, it could be a bad year for Republicans in Connecticut anyway but if Democrats manage to tar Simmons, Shays and Johnson with their overwhelming support for Bush's unpopular policies, all 3 will probably be defeated.

HOWDY DOODY-LOOKING REPUBLICAN NIMROD HELPS PASS SUPER REACTIONARY BUDGET

There was such a brouhaha over the Robin-Hood-In-Reverse Republican budget yesterday. First-- for anyone (like me) who questions whether there even is a difference between the Democrats and Republicans-- let me say that on both votes yesterday even the most reactionary Democrats (like Melissa Bean of Illinois and a handful of ultra-conservative throwbacks from Texas and Oklahoma and Arkansas) voted en masse to protect American workers and the middle class from the vicious Republican budget, which, basically, cuts billions from crucial social services (like higher education, ) to accommodate more tax breaks for multimillionaires and corporations. 100% of the Democrats voted against this horrible bill and almost all the Republicans voted for it. And "almost" wasn't enough early in the day when the bill failed. At that point 22 Republicans-- a combination of suburban moderates who fear for their re-election prospects if they cut too deeply (like Delaware's Castle, Connecticut's Simmons and Iowa's Leach) and extreme right-wing maniacs who think the draconian cuts weren't deep enough (real kooks like Pickering of Mississippi, Rogers of Alabama and Emerson of Missouri) and by a gaggle of just plain petrified endangered incumbents who have no strong beliefs one way or the other and just want to keep their lucrative positions (like Wilson of New Mexico, Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Renzi of Arizona)-- voted against the GOP hard right leadership's Bushite bill. The $142.5 billion measure was rejected by a vote of 224 to 209.

Then last night the desperate Republican leadership was able to "convince"-- one way or another-- a few of the so-called "moderates" to vote for the bill and they passed it by 2 votes. According to today's WASHINGTON POST, the debate last night was filled with bitterness and acrimony. Extreme right-wing fanatic Jack Kingston (R-GA) attacked the deficit-minded "Blue Dog" Democrats, calling them "lap dogs" and Arkansas Democrat Marion Berry let the cat-out-of-the-bag as far as the widely used nickname for mentally-challenged redheaded Florida Republican, Adam Putnam, referring to him as a "Howdy Doody-looking nimrod."

According to the POST article "the House measure would cut about 220,000 people off food stamps, allow states to impose new costs on Medicaid beneficiaries, squeeze student lenders, cut aid to state child-support enforcement programs and trim farm supports. Education funding would decline for the first time in a decade, with Pell grants frozen for the fourth year in a row." Inadequate funding for the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, which was a non-negotiable demand from Bush and the Republican leadership and which subsidizes heating bills, virtually guarantees that some elderly people, forced to chose between eating and heating, will freeze to death this winter while Cheney's pals running the big oil corporations get more multimillion dollar bonuses-- and more tax breaks. This is America???

IT'S NOW OFFICIAL-- BUSH LOST 2004 ELECTION. AS WE KNEW ALL ALONG OHIO VOTES WERE RIGGED BY DIELBOLD AND BLACKWELL

How bizarre that the corporate mass media has given virtually no play-- and, frankly, I don't know what compelled me to stick "virtually" in there just now-- to a massive report by the Government Accounting Office (GAO) that supports the contention that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. It has taken the American public-- including most, though not all, elected Democrats, to realize that Bush is a liar and that his regime is toxic. How long will it take the country to also come to terms with the fact that he isn't and never has been a legitimate president?

Right after the 2004 election, the House Judiciary Committee was flooded with nearly 60,000 complaints of specific vote tampering. Congressman John Conyers, the senior Democrat on the committee, asked the non-partisan GAO (the government's lead investigive agency with an unblemished record for unassailable integrity and reality-based analysis) to investigate.

As I mentioned a few days ago, the evidence is all there for anyone who wants to look at it. Yesterday
Online Journal.com reported that the GAO report stated that “some of [the] concerns about electronic voting machines have been realized and have caused problems with recent elections, resulting in the loss and miscount of votes.”

There are no other democracies-- societies that depend on vote counts-- that allow private, partisan companies to count and tabulate electoral votes, not just in secret, but using privately-held software. These companies are all owned by conservative Republicans. And, as everybody knows the CEO of Diebold, a major Republican contributor, publicly vowed in the run-up to the 2004 election to deliver Ohio's crucial electoral votes, and the presidency, to Bush.

Diebold's machines' count, which was overseen by crooked Ohio Secretary of State/BushCheney Ohio Campaign Chairman Ken Blackwell-- a more biased person would be impossible to find anywhere unless, maybe Lynn Cheney was counting the ballots-- gave Bush a 119,000 lead (out of 5,600,000 votes cast). There was nothing straight forward about the counting and tabulating-- and nothing public! The GAO report finds that the machines were designed in a way to facilitate tampering (and tampering without detection) with ballots and system audit logs. The GAO found that the Diebold machines can easily alter tabulations in a way to count votes for one candidate (or, as they did in last week's R.O.N. election, for one proposition) even though the voter voted for the other candidate. That would explain how consistently and overwhelmingly Democratic districts recorded overwhelming vote counts for Bush. The Diebold machines registered gigantic margins for Bush, way out of proportion with vote tabulations that didn't come from Diebold machines.

The GAO also found that access to the whole voting network was simple to compromise because a design flaw in the supervisory function that left the network unprotected by password and completely vulnerable. Rigging the election did not take a “widespread conspiracy”-- just a coopertaive Secretary of State and the cooperation of a small number of-- even just one or two-- operators with the ability to tap into the networked machines. Vote totals were altered at will. It was not a big task for just one single programmer to flip vote numbers to give Bush, say... 119,000 votes. This has something to do with Democracy? Maybe the kind of "democracy" BushCo has in mind for Iraq!

And if you don't want to believe-- for some reason that is beyond me-- that Blackwell and Diebold's O'Dell didn't do this themselves, the GAO report finds that even amateur hackers could have gotten into the network and changed the vote. Now who would ever think of something like that? Surely not Karl Rove. I mean what motivation would he have? And is this in character with his past?

CINDY SHEEHAN FOUND GUILTY-- SHE SHOULD WIN THE NOBEL PEACE PRIZE

After WW II the allies found very few Nazis in Germany. It seemed like everyone was one of the "good Germans." No one will ever have to wonder if Cindy Sheehan was one of the good Americans. She was arrested for her beliefs. And today AP reports that Cindy was found guilty of demonstrating without a permit. She should be very proud, very, very proud. Anyone who does not want to take on the karma of torture, of using chemical weapons that burn away the flesh of women and children, of the BushCheney war crimes, should get arrested.

Every time I get a letter from John Edwards asking for money I suggest he go join Cindy and get arrested; it would guarantee he'd become president. I would bet Chuck Hagel-- who yesterday answered Bush's and Cheney's slanders against their critics by saying "To question your government is not unpatriotic-- to not question your government is unpatriotic"-- would do it before any of the Democratic candidates for president.

When I was in college I couldn't wait to get arrested for opposing the war against VietNam-- one of the proudest moments of my life. The war against Vietnam didn't end because the misguided imperialistic dogs we had then-- no, Bush and Cheney aren't the first-- changed their minds. It ended because the support for their foul endeavor by the American people utterly collapsed. Our whole social order was shaken to the roots. The best people were protesting and being arrested. The worst were burying the heads like a different kind of "good German," the good Germans who just took orders and went along to get along. The ones who lived next door to concentration camps that slaughtered untold numbers of humans but never suspected a thing. In America it is still-- at least it is in November of 2005-- our right to protest against slime like Bush and Cheney. Use it or lose it.

TIM BEDORE v GEORGE W. BUSH-- A GUEST COLUMN FROM MY FUNNIEST FRIEND

Tim Bedore's an old friend of mine from when he was a music director at boring old rock stations in Sacramento and Houston playing dreadful hair bands like Journey and REO Speedwagon. Eventually I was able to convert him to good music and he wound up in San Francisco and developed excellent musical taste-- big Wilco and Replacements fan-- and worked at the alternative rock stations there. And he always fancied himself a comedian; still does. In fact, once he talked me into dressing up in a jalaba and playing some Biblical figure on a TV sketch he was doing for a vestigial version of VAGUE BUT TRUE which, as everyone knows, is now a blockbuster show for NPR (running on 140 stations as part of "Marketplace"). Recently Tim moved to Minnesota or Wisconsin. But he's still a riot.

Yesterday he attacked our president, George W. Bush. Can you image someone kicking a man when he's down? Most people see a wretched, drunken, despised fool like Bush and they want to lend a hand and clean him up but Tim's a real pit dog and just because Bush has done some damage here and there, now and then-- or maybe because he lies about it-- Tim eviscerates him. Can you image? No? Well, here's the transcript of the piece that NPR broadcast yesterday. (One wonders how Tomlinson missed Tim.)

Let’s Get Behind a Bush

Here he is, a philosopher, a writer, a comedian, a loyal follower of no one..., the host of vague but true...Tim Bedore. Well thank you very much.

Nothing has gone right for President Bush recently and I believe we as a nation need to quit nitpicking and criticizing. Not every decision a President makes can be perfect.

So, he attacked a country that didn’t attack us first. So, he got us into an unnecessary war that we’ll be paying for for generations to come.  People, that’s an easy mistake to make.  Look at what he was dealing with-– somebody from that part of the world attacked us and those sneaky bastards over there conveniently all look the same. Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Banana-stand... it’s very confusing as to who's who. 

Even if invading Iraq doesn’t turn out to be a brilliant move, anybody who ever went to college knows... not every bar fight you get into looks as justified in the end as it does when it starts.  Sometimes you just punch the wrong guy. So, let’s back off a bit on Iraq.

Let’s try to focus on the positive things like how blessed we are to have a President who talks to God. People say President Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina was a little slow, but that’s only because God was too busy whipping up that next Hurricane to remind the President about feeding the poor and suffering from the first hurricane. If God didn’t want the poor down there to suffer a little bit why would He have sent another hurricane to the same place weeks later? That’s why the relief effort was slow, it’s what God wanted.

And yet people still carp and complain about President Bush. They say wouldn’t it be great to have a President who only screwed-up... interns in the Oval Office.

Really? You want to go back to Presidents who had affairs? Look at the hell that results when we have philandering Presidents.  It’s a historical fact George Washington had affairs.  And what a loser President he was. I believe it started as a joke they even called him the father of the country.  There was no birth control back then, and...“Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, Old George is the Father of the Country,” was the depraved punch-line told throughout the colonies. When they carved “Washington slept here” in their headboards... they were talking about the General getting more than a little shut-eye. They were talking about his Yankee Doodle Randy. His illegitimate offspring? The Daughters of the Revolution. Look it up! These were the jokes of the time. This country barely got off the ground with that pervert Washington running things.

Thomas Jefferson had illegitimate kids with his Negro slaves. Would we ever want to have a President like Jefferson again?

Some historians think Abraham Lincoln might have been gay. Gay! How’s that for cheating on your wife? Lincoln, total loser.

FDR? This guy was so horny he was wheeling around the country looking for women. And we’re still trying to recover from the four terms of Franklin Disastero Roosevelt. 

Kennedy? King of the affairs. If John Kennedy ran against George Bush today, knowing what we now know about him, would anybody vote for the bed-hopping boink-meister from liberal Boston? No way.

If history teaches us anything it’s that jobs are created, the economy blossoms, this country flourishes, when we have Presidents who don’t have affairs like George Bush, Jimmy Carter and Richard Nixon. 

So, let’s back off and cut the President some slack.  And that’s not just me talking, that’s a message I got from the higher power I listen to... Rush Limbaugh. If you love America get out there and get behind a Bush.

From Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the introverts stare at their shoes and the extroverts stare at your shoes, I’m Tim Bedore on the Bob and Tom radio network.

GEORGE WILL-- QUEEN FOR A DAY

I'm not one to recommend the writing of nefarious old right-wing fusspot and old-line Republican propagandist George Will. But every dog has his day and today is George Will Day on DWT. He's bemoaning the disrepute the GOP has fallen into by its alliance with Satan in the form of the religionist fanatics like the fake preachers (Pat Robertson, Fred Phelps, James Dobson, Jerry Falwell...) and hate-filled demagogues (Brownback, Santorum, Tancredo...). George Will is a staunch Republican because he fervently believes in greed and selfishness as the sole motivators of human behavior. He's not happy his party is in cahoots with-- if not controlled by-- the KKK, Aryan Nations, Church of Loons, Nazi Party, etc.

Today he points out that the Republican Party is rudderless and under the power of "zealots" and that some of their shenanigans "make conservatism repulsive to temperate people." He also points out that the entire GOP philosophy of smaller, less intrusive government has been a fraud perpetrated on the American people. The column seems to me a plea for the GOP to clean house and get rid of the religionist fanatics before it is too late. (George-- It is too late!)

THE POLLSTERS NEED TO START ASKING HOW MANY AMERICANS BELIEVE BUSH AND CHENEY SHOULD BE TRIED AS WAR CRIMINALS

The use of chemical weapons in Iraq is one of the most outrageous developments from an illegitimate Regime that started off by stealing an election and the proceeded to shove one outrage after another down our throats. And we took it.

On November 8, I started talking about the proof of the U.S. use of chemical weapons in Iraq. If you missed that one, please read it here and take a look at the comments because there is a link to the photos of what the white phosphorus has been doing to the Iraqi civilians Rumsfeld claims the white phosphorus isn't aimed at.

Meanwhile, if you want a more establishment source than DWT, how about today's WASHINGTON POST? Robert Burns has a story datelined around dawn today all about how The Pentagon (RUMSFELD) authorized the use of white phosphorus. Rumsfeld, who also denies they torture people and feed them to lions, says the chemical weapons were not used against civilians, so be sure to look at the photos of the women and children whose skins where burned off; their military uniforms must have been burned off too. (By the way the Condoleeza initially denied that U.S. troops had used white phosphorous against enemy forces but once the films and photos started circulating, the State Department issued a statement saying that they had made a little error and that, yes, we used the damn white phosphorus-- but not against civilians.)

WILL THIS END BUSH'S ILLEGAL AND CATASTROPHIC WAR AND OCCUPATION? MAYBE NOW IT'S SAFE FOR HILLARY OR EVEN BIDEN TO OPPOSE THE WAR.

Other than SOUTH PARK, I don't watch much tv. I'd say I catch bits and pieces of CNN that add up to maybe 20-30 minutes a day. My neighbor slept late today so the normal 8AM walk in the hills was postponed by half an hour. In the interim I decided to tidy up my bedroom and I flipped on CNN. There was a fat old politician on the screen and I didn't pay much attention, thinking it was probably just another BushCo attack dog out to try to see if brainwashing could get Americans back in line behind the Regime. But gradually it started dawning on me that the beefy hawkish looking guy on the tv screen was not giving the George Bush/Wes Clark line about staying the course or the John McCain/Hillary Clinton line about sending in more troops. This guy, 37 year Marine Corps veteran, moderate Congressman John Murtha of Pennsylvania was demanding that Bush pull American troops out of Iraq-- no if's, and's or but's.

By the time I heard Murtha say he wanted "the immediate redeployment of American forces because they have become the target," I had stopped tidying my room and turned up the volume. "It is time for a change in direction. Our military is suffering, the future of our country is at risk. We cannot continue on the present course. It is evident that continued military action in Iraq is not in the best interests of the United States of America, the Iraqi people or the Persian Gulf region."

Murtha, a decorated war hero, will be a hard one for the Swift Boat Bushites to tackle. But I have no doubt that Rove is already on the case. Afterall, until Fitzgerald fixes the problem, that's what he does for a living. Murtha was among a minority of House Democrats who voted with the DeLay gang to give Bush the authority to attack Iraq in 2002. He has watched with dismay as Bush botched the entire handling of the war effort-- and as torture, secret prisons, chemical weapons, etc have besmirched our national honor. "The war in Iraq is not going as advertised. It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion," Murtha said.

By the time Murtha, stopped talking from his notes and said, "let me personalize this for you," I was completely focused. His stories about visiting-- "every week"-- veterans' hospitals shook me up. The bell rang and I had to go for a walk just when CNN cut in for some advertising. I was already crying for the blinded vet with a missing foot who BushCo had a collection agency after-- and for my country.


THE 10 PM UPDATE-- WHY KERRY LOST AND SHOULD LEAVE THE PUBLIC STAGE AND STOP EMBARRASSING HIMSELF AND THE REST OF US

And apparently it not just Clark, Biden and Hillary who need to pay attention to what Murtha had to say. Do you remember the overly-cautious loser the Democrats put up against Bush last time? Just a couple of hours after John Murtha-- a man with no political ambitions beyond serving his constituents and his country-- captured the imagination of the whole country, a man with laughably idiotic pretensions and ambitions, John Kerry, found someone with a microphone and started babbling how Murtha was wrong about setting a timetable for withdrawal. The more I hear from John Kerry the happier I am that I didn't donate one cent to his pathetic Bush-enabling campaign in 2004.

IRAQ OCCUPATION CRASHING IN ON BUSH'S HEAD AND UNDERMINING GOP HOPES TO HOLD ON TO POWER

While BushCo thinks the way to win over American public opinion is by lying and lying and by having Bush made vicious partisan attacks against Democrats who oppose his failed and discredited policies, no one seems to be buying it outside of all the indicted and so-far-unindicted usual suspects: Robertson, DeLay, Reed, O'Liely, Fallwell, Frist, Hannity... In fact there were some interesting counterpoints to Bush's crazed lashing-out and slashing and burning today. Conservative Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel told the WASHINGTON POST that "the Bush administration must understand that each American has a right to question our policies in Iraq and should not be demonized for disagreeing with them." [Emphasis mine, 'cause it's nice to take note that even conservatives are starting to notice that BushCo only knows how to play one tired tune: demonization of critics]

And the man who was just voted "the most influential person on earth," or something like that, Bill Clinton (the last legitimately elected President of the United States), told students at American University in Dubai that the U.S. made a "big mistake'' when it invaded Iraq. Clinton emphasized BushCo's incompetence and utter lack of planning. "Saddam is gone. It's a good thing, but I don't agree with what was done,'' Clinton told students who cheered and gave him a standing ovation.

Let's hope he tells Hillary soon. Meanwhile Hagel is sounding far more in touch with the national mood than Mrs. Clinton, let alone that nincompoop Biden. Why is this electronic voting thief making a cogent opposition argument while self-proclaimed Democratic "leaders" are still dithering about how to approach the war? Would this sound great if Hillary said it: the Vietnam War "was a national tragedy partly because members of Congress failed their country, remained silent and lacked the courage to challenge the administrations in power until it was too late. To question your government is not unpatriotic - to not question your government is unpatriotic. America owes its men and women in uniform a policy worthy of their sacrifices." He accused BushCo of using divisive tactics against Democrats to tear the country apart.
I mean, if Hillary is a leader, why doesn't she lead? I mean Hagel isn't afraid to say that "you could probably argue it is worse in many ways in the Middle East because of consequences and ripple effects" (of Bush's war and occupation) while Hillary is getting lame hawkish advice from the Likkud's U.S. representative, Joe Lieberman, and from Wes Clark who seems to have a better understanding of battle strategy than of contemporary geo-politics.

Bush shouldn't look for any standing ovations anywhere outside of pre-selected audiences. Although BushCo trotted out Rumsfeld to try to bloody their opponents today, the only thing anyone wants to hear from that lying sack of shit is why he's torturing people in our name, using lions on Iraqi civilians and spraying horrifying chemical weapons on innocent men, women and children. Today's NEWSDAY has an article that opines that Bush is risking alienating even Republicans with his disastrous policy. "Polls show marked declines in support for the war, notably among moderate Republicans, especially Republican women, and independents - voting blocs that the GOP needs to woo or keep in their camp. If Bush castigates Democrats for changing their minds on the war, he might wind up alienating Republicans who have done so, too."

PREPARING FOR THANKSGIVING. ED SCHULTZ IS A STUFFED GASBAG

I love listening to AirAmerica. If I'm in my car and Al Franken is on, I'm there. Ditto for Randi Rhodes (who I wasn't always the biggest fan of) and Janeane Garofolo & Sam Seder and especially for Mike Malloy (whose show I love but who is on, alas, really late for me). But between Franken and Randi the local affiliate has Ed Schultz, a "reformed" wing-nut, on. I used to listen to him but when he started bashing Howard Dean I was back to NPR from noon to 3. But today NPR was doing cookie recipes or something excruciatingly dull so I wound up checking out Schultz. Oy! Maybe there was some caveat I missed but he was going on (and on and on and on) about how to avoid talking with family members about politics at Thanksgiving. Big mistake. Of course it is better not to fight with relatives but how else are we going to save our country if we don't reason with friends and relatives and colleagues (nicely)? The key is not to avoid discussions but to engage in them in a friendly and respectful way. And you must be able to back up your opinions with facts, dispassionately.

In light of that, DWT has exactly what you need: a one-stop website by Henry Waxman with all the facts and all the quotes. IRAQ ON THE RECORD is well-organized and easy to use and filled with everything you need to know to help even the most brainwashed members of your family wake up. All the exact quotes from Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rice, Rumsfeld, et al... every lie that each one of them used to deceive Congress and the American public. If this approach doesn't work... they can always listen to Ed Schultz.

PATTI SMITH IS ROCK'N'ROLL

"She's not rock'n'roll." I'm dumbfounded because, to me-- and untold numbers of others-- that is precisely what she is. But the fella just quoted there has been... part, maybe even a very great part... of keeping Patti Smith from being inducted into the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. I'm on the nominating committee. Every year she gets nominated. Sometimes I'm close enough to the chairman so that I get the honor of nominating her. Sometimes she gets the most votes on the committee. But then it goes out to the voters and she never gets inducted. I ask why. "She's not rock'n'roll." I'm more than dumbfounded. Patti Smith IS THE SPIRIT OF ROCK'N'ROLL, especially all that is smart and edgy and eternally worthwhile in rock'n'roll.

If you've been reading DWT, you know I'd be lying my ass off if I said I love everyone. But suspend your judgment for a moment or two and at least believe me when I tell you I feel joy for everyone who gets inducted into the Hall of Fame-- not just my friends, not just my heroes, but even people I didn't vote for. I worship at the feet of Joni Mitchell, one of the most important writers of our time (and I certainly did vote for her) but is she "more rock'n'roll" than Patti Smith? Is Steely Dan? Is James Taylor? Is Bonnie Raitt? These are all absolutely great artists but they are rock'n'roll and Patti Smith isn't? LaVern Baker,
Bobby "Blue" Bland, Bill Joel, The Moonglows and Ruth Brown are rock'n'roll but Patti Smith isn't?

The first time I saw Patti play live I was visiting NYC-- I lived in Holland at the time, boycotting America because of the war against VietNam-- and my old bud Sandy said he wanted to bring me to hear the greatest rocker he'd ever seen. (Sandy managed bands and produced records, working with bands like Blue Oyster Cult, The Clash, Black Sabbath, The Dictators, Pavlov's Dog...) He brought me to the basement of some dodgey church. Patti, Lenny Kaye and Richard Sohl were on stage. My mind was utterly blown and re-opened to the possibilities of rock'n'roll. I agreed with Sandy that she was greatness personified but I said what she does could never be captured on record.

Oh, was I ever wrong! 30 years ago Arista released HORSES, one of the most influential and inspired and inspiring records ever made. Every song is perfect and every song helps define what rock'n'roll has evolved into. Yesterday Patti invited me to see her play a low-key show at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, a sort of celebration of the anniversary of HORSES. She was accompanied by combinations of no one, Lenny Kaye, her daughter Jesse, her road manager Barry and Flea. My friend who says she's not rock'n'roll should have been there to see how the spirit of rock'n'roll was alive and well and glowing and vibrant on that stage. One poem read by Patti from a book is as rock'n'roll as anyone ever inducted into the Hall of Fame.

I didn't run into my old friend Karen at the show. She was there though. Karen is HITS Magazine's president and alternative music editor. I've known her since she was the music director of he college radio station decades ago. I just ran into her online and I asked her what she thought of Patti. "I heard HORSES the day it came out at my local record store/head shop. I was 14 and the very embodiment of awkward, and, as with many at that stage of development, music was my salvation. Springsteen and Rundgren were it for me--a female musical savior had never occurred to me--Linda Rondstadt, Helen Reddy and Olivia Newtwon-John dominated the radio. Hearing Patti Smith for the first time was a revelation. I asked the store manager if I could look at the album--wait, here's this amazing voice, on a WOMAN.
How is this possible? I brought home the album and everytime I tried to play it, I was ridiculed by my friends who preferred the Dead or Boston or, I'm sad to say, Styx. And then, maybe a year later, I saw Patti Smith on the Mike Douglas Show. She was just so so cool, but in a way I'd never seen before. That moment changed my life. Maybe I didn't have to conform to make my mark. Maybe my (different) point of view was as valid as the status quo. Patti paved the way for other strong women like Chrissie Hynde, Exene, PJ Harvey [who was at the show last night] and countless others. 23 years into a career in the music business, I always think about the life-long impact that one artist, one record, one television performance can have on someone. If any 14 year old girl (whose fragility is of greater concern to me than their male counterparts) feels empowered by the music of any of the artists I've worked with--either by hearing it on the radio or in concert, then my job has been a success."

Earlier last night I had welled up at soundcheck when she started singing some of the HORSES era classics. The voice is timeless, so evocative, so thrilling and inspiring. Between soundcheck and show time she told me about her last few weeks: a trip to Namibia with a troupe of German opera singers making a move, a show and some horseback riding in Iceland, this tour, a new book of poetry AUGURIES OF INNOCENCE... She was rushing back to NYC today to play at Madison Square Garden with this year's Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame inductees U2 (who didn't need her to sell any seats in the sold out arena but want her on the show for the influence she had on them and for the truth and beauty and the sheer rock'n'roll experience she offers to their audience.

If you've never seen Patti, do yourself a favor-- catch a show as soon as you can. There is no one better. And, unlike many, she's not resting on any laurels. Patti Smith is as exciting and vibrant and challenging today as she was when I saw her in the church basement 33 years ago-- as a performer and as a songwriter.

People Have the Power

I was dreaming in my dreaming
of an aspect bright and fair
and my sleeping it was broken
but my dream it lingered near
in the form of shining valleys
where the pure air recognized
and my senses newly opened
I awakened to the cry
that the people / have the power
to redeem / the work of fools
upon the meek / the graces shower
it's decreed / the people rule

The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power
The people have the power

Vengeful aspects became suspect
and bending low as if to hear
and the armies ceased advancing
because the people had their ear
and the shepherds and the soldiers
lay beneath the stars
exchanging visions
and laying arms
to waste / in the dust
in the form of / shining valleys
where the pure air / recognized
and my senses / newly opened
I awakened / to the cry

Refrain

Where there were deserts
I saw fountains
like cream the waters rise
and we strolled there together
with none to laugh or criticize
and the leopard
and the lamb
lay together truly bound
I was hoping in my hoping
to recall what I had found
I was dreaming in my dreaming
god knows / a purer view
as I surrender to my sleeping
I commit my dream to you

Refrain

The power to dream / to rule
to wrestle the world from fools
it's decreed the people rule
it's decreed the people rule
LISTEN
I believe everything we dream
can come to pass through our union
we can turn the world around
we can turn the earth's revolution
we have the power
People have the power ...

WILL TED "I DON'T KID PEOPLE" STEVENS DO AMERICA A BIG FAVOR AND ACTUALLY RESIGN NOW THAT HIS BRIDGE TO NOWHERE HAS BEEN AXED? (FINGERS CROSSED)

Back on October 20, when Oklahoma right-wing loon Tom Coburn (unbelievably, a U.S. Senator), attempted the first positive thing of his miserable political career-- to delete the embarrassing $453 million Alaska "Bridge to Nowhere" from the 2005 transportation appropriations bill-- Alaska right-wing loon Ted Stevens (as unbelievably, also a U.S. Senator), had a major hissy fit. "I don't kid people," Stevens threatened. "If the Senate decides to discriminate against our state . . . I will resign from this
body." At least that is what the WASHINGTON POST reported. Home state television station KTVA went a little further in painting a picture of a drama queen at full throttle-- showing him looking right at Coburn and screeching that if his bill passed he (Stevens) would "be taken out of here on a stretcher." Alas, the old boys (and girls) network in the pork-fueled Senate closed ranks behind the whacky Stevens and voted down Coburn's sensible amendment (82-15) which would have redirected some of the
$453 million to the Interstate 10 bridge across Lake Pontchartrain, a major New Orleans thoroughfare that was severely damaged during Hurricane Katrina.

Even Stevens' dependable allies at the viciously right-wing Heritage Foundation abandoned him on this, circulating a paper, "The Bridge to Nowhere: A National Embarrassment," which points out that "fiscally responsible members of Congress should be eager to zero out its funding." And many residents of Alaska-- less selfish and ego-driven than the crazy Stevens-- support forfeiting the bridge money in order to help Gulf Coast residents. "This money, a gift from the people of Alaska, will represent more than just material aid; it will be a symbol for our beleaguered democracy," reads a typical letter to the Anchorage Daily.

Well today the whole world waits with baited breathe to see how Mr. "I Don't Kid People" gets out of resigning-- let alone the stretcher scenario-- now that saner heads and the right-wing's bane-- REALITY-- have prevailed and his beloved bridge has indeed been defunded. Well, not everybody. Citizens Against Government Waste (CAGW) has been calling on Stevens to resign for some time-- at least from his conflict-ridden job as chairman of the powerful Senate Appropriations Committee. (They have also called on the less powerful Senate Ethics Committee to investigate the full extent of a mind-boggling array of conflicts of interest that point to Alaska's senior senator as being even more corrupt than current corruption posterboy Bill Frist.)

According to the non-partisan CAGW "an investigation by the LOS ANGELES TIMES revealed how the powerful Senator made millions of dollars from investments with businessmen who received government contracts or other aid through his legislative efforts. The case highlights the lax ethics rules surrounding the business dealings that members of Congress and their families have with special interests at the taxpayers' expense."   
 
CAGW President Tom Schatz has pointed out that "in 1997, Sen. Stevens allegedly began a concerted attempt to accumulate a personal fortune by wielding his extraordinary power in the Senate. Apparently, the longest-serving Republican in the Senate thinks he can get away with anything in the pursuit of a plush retirement... The looting mentality is so ingrained in Washington that lawmakers see nothing wrong with profiteering from our tax dollars. It is bad enough that Alaska leads the nation in pork barrel spending per capita, but for Sen. Stevens to bring home the bacon for his own financial benefit would be a new low-- even for an appropriator. Every one of his projects should be scrutinized by the Senate Ethics Committee."     
 
The LA TIMES clearly points out that Stevens, like George Bush, has a lifelong, unadulterated record of failures in business and private enterprise but somehow has wound up extremely wealthy, a multimillionaire.  

THE BUSH REGIME ASSAULT ON PUBLIC BROADCASTING IS UNRAVELING

Yesterday's NY TIMES had an article by Stephen Labaton on the continuing scandal of Bush crony and partisan right-wing hack, Kenneth Y. Tomlinson, attempting to undermine the Public Broadcasting System from within. Beloved by ordinary Americans, especially in rural areas where it is difficult to find reality-based news, and despised by the Far Right which seeks to completely control all information, PBS was put in jeopardy as soon as Bush stole the 2000 election. Bush appointed a far right crony to wreck statutory boundaries that protect public radio and television from political interference. And although the whacked-out drug addict/Bush propagandist Rush Limbaugh has been braying away on his radio show that Tomlinson was fired because "he was trying to get some conservative programming on NPR and PBS," the TIMES reports that "Investigators at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting concluded today that its former chairman repeatedly broke federal law and its own regulations in a campaign to combat what he saw as liberal bias. The scathing report by the corporation's inspector general described a dysfunctional organization that violated the Public Broadcasting Act, which created the corporation and was written to insulate programming decisions from politics."

It is clear from a series of cryptic memos between Tomlinson and the White House that Rove-protogee Tomlinson was solely motivated by partisan consideration in filling positions at PBS. He hired as many GOP fundraisers and incompetent cronies as he could find including a former co-chair of the Republican National Committee, Patricia Harrison, as the president/CEO.

An investigation started after outraged media reports began to appear that Tomlinson was illegally making personnel decisions based on political ideology, criticism that became deafening after the egregiously incompetent Harrison was named president last summer (most likely at the direction of Karl Rove). Until Tomlinson and Rove started butting in, the corporation's presidency, the senior staff job, has always been reserved for a nonpartisan expert in public broadcasting. Harrison is, of course, highly partisan and not an expert in anything except raising money for the Republican political machine. Other candidates for various jobs had to prove that they had made sufficient contributions to the Republican Party before they could get jobs.

Meanwhile, although fired from the PBS chairmanship and under a cloud of disgrace, Mr. Tomlinson remains the head of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which supervises all American government-broadcasting programs overseas, including Voice of America, Radio Free Europe and al-Hurra. Acting on complaints from some officials there, the inspector general of the State Department is examining accusations of misuse of federal money and the use of phantom or unqualified employees. Although several senators are demanding Tomlinson be fired from that job as well, Bush refuses to budge.

REPUGS DEFEAT A WITHDRAWAL RESOLUTION SO MODERATE AND FLEXIBLE THAT EVEN HILLARY, BIDEN AND BAYH VOTED FOR IT!

So here's the scoop. The Repugs are freaking out, sensing the party is over. Poll after poll after poll is showing that the voters-- their employers-- want us out of Bush's bullshit occupation of Iraq. The same polls show that the public has completely turned against the venal, incompetent Bush and the scandal-plagued extremist Republican leadership. So under mounting pressure from Senate Democrats-- after the utter failure of Bush's laughable attempt to defend the indefensible-- soon-to-be-indicted Bill Frist and John Warner introduced a resolution that mirrored the defeated Democratic resolution minus the key requirement for a tangible, albeit flexible, withdrawal plan.

The Democratic resolution was defeated 58-40 with one uber-endangered Republican joining almost all the Democrats voting yea and all the other Republicans voting nay. "Almost," you ask? There were Democrats that joined forces with the Dark Forces of Fascism on this??? Well, sort of... 4 right-wing jerks who are Democrats in name only-- the 2 atrocious Nelsons, Pryor from Arkansas and, of course, the Likkud representative to the U.S. Senate, Lieberman-- voted with the Republicans (as usual).

Well, at least there's a clear campaign issue for the Democrats now! Come 2006, 40 Senators are on record voting to ask Bush to draw up a plan to start withdrawing troops and 58 are on record as having voted against it. Meanwhile, if anyone had any doubt that Bush is a completely lame lame-duck, today's votes should dispel that permanently.

If you want all the details, the Reuters story is here and the actual Senate rollcall is here.

DISTRAUGHT AND ISOLATED, BUSH REFUSES TO TALK WITH ANYONE EXCEPT THE 4 MOTHER FIGURES IN HIS LIFE

I know this sounds insane-- although not out of context when you consider the last 5 years our country has been through. THE MOONIE TIMES (a mouthpiece for the Washington-based Republican Party), is usually good for nothing except hearing the precise party line du jour. However, sometimes something slips out that only they have access to. And the story about Bush's dangerous bunker mentality, spreading all over the Net, started in the MOONIE TIMES.

"President Bush feels betrayed by several of his most senior aides and advisors and has severely restricted access to the Oval Office, administration sources say. The president's reclusiveness in the face of relentless public scrutiny of the U.S.-led war in Iraq and White House leaks regarding CIA operative Valerie Plame has become so extreme that Mr. Bush has also reduced contact with his father, former President George H.W. Bush, administration sources said on the condition of anonymity."

Another GOP propaganda operative, closeted right wing loon Matt Drudge writes on his gossip site that "Bush maintains daily contact with only four people: first lady Laura Bush, his mother, Barbara Bush, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes. The sources also say that Mr. Bush has stopped talking with his father, except on family occasions." (No mention of poor old Harriet.)

Is there anything I need to add? Is anyone not thinking this man needs to be impeached and sent back to his pig farm in Crawford before he does something we'll never recover from?

BUSH'S LEGACY TO AMERICA WILL BE EVEN WORSE THAN HIS DISASTROUS PRESIDENCY

It's taken Americans an inordinately long time to figure out that Bush and his vile regime, as well as his corrupt, greedy, selfish political party, define venality! No one in the world could believe we re-elected this arrogant, self-serving and incompetent gang in 2004. And even if you are aware that we didn't actually re-elect them-- since the evidence clearly shows they managed to steal the election in Ohio complements of Diebold and Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell-- we did sit by like a nation of sheep will these rustlers were shearing us. But, as the country is experiencing a great re-awakening and starting to come to terms with what the Bush Regime is, we also have to face the fact that the shearing has hardly begun.

USA TODAY has a very ominous headline this morning A 'Fiscal Hurricane' on the Horizon-- Economists Say Unchecked Spending Will Trigger Recessions and Worse with a story by Richard Wolf. He starts with David Walker, the U.S. Comptroller General stating, bluntly that "We face a demographic tsunami" that "will never recede." Walker likens America today to Rome before the fall of the empire-- a complete lack of viable leadership, a financial condition is "worse than advertised," a "broken business model," with overwhelming budget deficits and a hellish balance of payments.

Bush's uncontrolled spending, coupled with the uncontrolled graft and corruption endemic to the Republican Party has brought the country to the brink of bankruptcy. Does that should like I'm exaggerating? The USA TODAY article points out that budget watchers from all political points of view are warning of serious, even catastrophic, fiscal trouble looming. (Shame Bush doesn't read and it's a shame no one around him cares to give him bad news and it's a shame that the "Mayberry Machievellis" who make up his regime are short-thinking political hacks who only think in terms of partisanship and cheap politics.

Meanwhile, this is what we get (from the USA TODAY piece):
· Douglas Holtz-Eakin, director of the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, dispassionately arms 535 members of Congress with his agency's stark projections. Barring action, he admits to being "terrified" about the budget deficit in coming decades. That's when an aging population, health care inflation and advanced medical technology will create a perfect storm of spiraling costs.
· Maya MacGuineas, president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, sees a future of unfunded promises, trade imbalances, too few workers and too many retirees. She envisions a stock market dive, lost assets and a lower standard of living.
· Kent Conrad, a Democratic senator from North Dakota, points to the nation's $7.9 trillion debt, rising by about $600 billion a year. That, he notes, is before the baby boom retires. "We're not preparing for what we all know is to come," he says. "We're all sleepwalking through this period."
· Stuart Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation projects a period from now until 2050 in which tax revenue stays stable as a share of the economy but Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security spending soars. To avoid big tax increases, he says the government has to "renegotiate" the social contracts it made with its citizens. [Air America host, Johnny Wendell, blew a gasket while he and I were reading this paragraph. He's no fan of Butler or the fascist ass-wipes at the pernicious Heritage Foundation. "The endless pandering to dithering idiots that believe that one day they'll be driving golf balls with the Chimp's relatives has led to the bankruptcy of the Treasury by Die Partei Republikkkanische. Trickle down economics is the basis of upward redistribution of wealth and it relies on not taxing Die Partei's actual money base and enraging its foot soldier base when the payoff never comes-- the latter then blames immigrants, Blacks and liberals for their misery which keeps them voting Republikkkanischen. This impending economic meltdown might just end that vicious and insane cycle." You can certainly see why Johnny and I are friends.]
· Alice Rivlin and Isabel Sawhill of the centrist Brookings Institution put their pessimism into a book titled Restoring Fiscal Sanity. Rivlin, who became the first director of the Congressional Budget Office in 1974, says it will take an "economic scare" such as the 1987 stock market crash to spur action. Sawhill likens the growing gulf between what the government spends and takes in to a "Category 6 fiscal hurricane."

Wolf writes of them as "the preachers of doom and gloom. Liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, they are trying to be heard above the ka-ching of the cash register as it tallies the cost of government benefits and tax cuts, Iraq and Hurricane Katrina." But Bush, like a really atrocious CEO-- and, believe me, as a former president of a company owned by a multinational corporation, I have seen more than my share of this particular brand of Republican jackass-- addresses only the nation's immediate, relatively piddling short-term budget deficits, leaving the gargantuan long-term problem for... Well, Bush's motto was always apres nous le deluge.

Here's part of the deluge (the fiscal part) Bush's years incompetence, upward redistribution if wealth and neglect are leaving us:

· Prescription-drug coverage under Medicare takes effect Jan. 1. Its projected cost, advertised at $400 billion over 10 years when it passed in 2003, has risen to at least $720 billion. "We couldn't afford" it, Walker says of the new law.
· The leading edge of the baby boom hits age 62 in 2008 and can take early retirement. The number of people covered by Social Security is expected to grow from 47 million today to 69 million in 2020. By 2030, the Congressional Budget Office projects, Social Security spending as a share of the U.S. economy will rise by 40%.
· The bulk of Bush's 10-year, $1.35 trillion tax-cut program is set to expire at the end of 2010. But Congress is moving to make the reductions permanent. That would keep tax revenue at roughly 18% of the economy, where it's been for the past half-century — too low to support even current spending levels. "We can't afford to make all the tax cuts permanent," Walker says.
· Baby boomers begin to reach age 65 in 2011 and go on Medicare. Of all the nation's fiscal problems, this is by far the biggest. If it grows 1% faster than the economy — a conservative estimate — Medicare would cost $2.6 trillion in 2050, after adjusting for inflation. That's the size of the entire federal budget today.

And what does this mean for you and I? Well, much higher interest rates, nice for bond holders, bad for the rest of us; the long-time Republican goal of lower wages and destruction of collective bargaining; shrinking pensions ("shrinking," is a BushEnron euphemism for "disappeared;" slower-- or even negative-- economic growth; and, ultimately a much lower standard of living for non-millionaires. Add to this higher taxes for our children, less savings, plunging stock and bond prices and lots of deep recession... if not worse.

Walker, who went from being a conservative Democrat to a moderate Republican to an Independent
states flatly, in a statement reminiscent of Bush's father's pronouncement of right-wing trickle-down fiscal policy as "voodoo economics," that "Anybody who says you're going to grow your way out of this problem, would probably not pass math."

AOL is carrying the USA TODAY piece today. Along with it is a user's poll. They ask two questions. The first is "Are we heading for any of the following?"
All of the above 60%
Recession 14%
None of the above 12%
Pension meltdown 12%
Market crash 2%

And the second is "Will you rely on a pension during retirement?"
No 56%
Yes 44%


WEDNESDAY MORNING UPDATE ON THE BUSH ECONOMIC CATASTROPHE

After exhaustive research, the Economic Policy Institute has concluded, "By virtually every measure, the economy has performed worse in this business cycle than was typical of past ones, including that of the 1990s, which saw major tax increases."

IS KATHERINE HARRIS GETTING READY TO TAKE ONE FOR THE TEAM? WILL SHE WITHDRAW FROM FLORIDA SENATE RACE?

Today the the Quinnipiac poll released more bad news for right-wing whacko Katherine Harris. According to the polls, her uphill battle to unseat right-of-center Democratic Senator Bill Nelson has gotten a little more uphill. Nelson now bests her 55% v 31%. (And it's not like she doesn't have the name recognition. In fact, that is precisely the problem. People know who she is and do not like her and no not think she would make a good senator.)

But this is more than just a blurb on what a jerk Katherine Harris is and how another set of bad poll numbers have come out. Apparently the Bush Brothers, who are desperate that the GOP retain this seat (in light of a possible impeachment trial for George W. in 2007), have once again
joined with Elizabeth Dole, head of the moribund Republican Senate Campaign Committee (whose task of recruiting strong candidates is a total shambles), to find a plausible alternative to Harris. Suddenly Florida House Speaker Allan Bense's name is back in the DC rumor mill. (A few months ago, after polls showed that Harris would cream him in a WingNutia-dominated primary, he had said he wasn't a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat. Now he seems to be changing his mind again.)

Meanwhile Harris' campaign manager, Jim Dornan, abruptly quit yesterday. There was an interesting line in his resignation statement: "Congresswoman Harris feels that in this period of national crisis, her first obligation is to her constituents in the 13th District, to fully fulfill her term, and to serve them everyday in Congress." I read that as a recognition by Harris that the constituents she needs to please are the ones in her congressional district, not the ones who will be voting for the Florida senate seat. And remember, Harris won last year by one of the slimmest margins in the House and is considered an endangered incumbent (and, of course, a Democratic target).

She's been known to sacrifice her own ambitions and whatever dignity she ever possessed in the past for the Bushes and the GOP. Some think she is-- albeit reluctantly-- about to do it again.


WEDNESDAY LUNATIC FRINGE UPDATE

As if everything weren't going badly enough for Katherine Harris' doomed quest for a senate seat, yesterday MSNBC.com ran a piece that exemplifies what a dangerous loon she is. By dangerous I don't necessarily mean she's going to bite one of her constituents and give him rabies. I mean she is using taxpayer dollars for harebrained schemes to please religionist lunatics. Her latest misadventure shows that when she was Florida Secretary of State she did more than just rig the 2000 presidential election for Bush. She also "ordered a study in which, according to an article by Jim Stratton in the Orlando Sentinel, 'researchers worked with a rabbi and a cardiologist to test "Celestial Drops," promoted as a canker inhibitor because of its "improved fractal design," "infinite levels of order," and "high energy and low entropy."' The study determined that the product tested was, basically, water that had apparently been blessed according to the principles of Kabbalic mysticism, 'chang[ing] its molecular structure and imbu[ing] it with supernatural healing powers.'"

That's lovely, I'm sure, but why with taxpayer dollars-- especially when Florida was warned months in advance by the head of Florida's Bureau of Entomology, Nematology and Plant Pathology that the holy water was a hoax and [like everything Republican] "not based on any credible known science." He added, "I wish to maintain our standing in the scientific community and not allow [the developers of Celestial Drops] to use our hard-earned credibility" to promote their product. That didn't stop Harris' ceaseless efforts to please religionist whackos and win their votes. After the tests it was determined that the holy water didn't work. Who'da thunk?

WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO ? DID BLACKWELL AND DIEBOLD STEAL THE ELECTION AGAIN ? SURE LOOKS THAT WAY

All week there was something I was feeling uncomfortable about, but I didn't want to spoil the party mood that all the Democratic victories brought on. I too was overjoyed to see Americans overwhelmingly throw up their hands in disgust at BushCo's lies and corruption and incompetence and vote for Democrats running from everything from governors to school board members... everywhere. Well, almost everywhere. Like a big, three-eyed old maiden-aunt sitting quietly in the corner in a rocking chair at the party, the absolutely crucial election in Ohio went stunningly bad. And no one was talking about it.

I remember freaking out Tuesday afternoon when the first results were leaking out and the Reform Ohio Now propositions (which would have broken the corrupt one-party rule in Ohio by reforming the electoral process) were all going down to ignominious defeat-- in heavily Democratic districts in Cleveland! My immediate reaction-- one I had worried about all week-- was that arch-criminal/ election fixer Ken Blackwell was in cahoots with Diebold to steal this one just like they stole the 2004 presidential election.

I kept checking my favorite Ohio political site, GROW OHIO but nary a word about Blackwell and Diebold stealing the election. However, big Democratic wins in local races that GROW OHIO was reporting got me even more suspicious. Examples:
-In Logan County, every Democrat on the ballot appears to have won
-In Fayette County, Democrats picked up five trustee positions.
-In Darke County, Democrat Julie Monin was elected Judge.
-In Etna Township in Licking County, Democrats picked up a hotly contested trusteeship.
-In Richland County, Democrats won the Municipal Clerk of Courts office.
-In Marietta, Democrats picked up a Municipal Judgeship.
-In Salem, Republican Mayor Larry DeJane proclaimed "They cleaned house" in the SALEM NEWS as Democrats won all local Council races over incumbent Republicans.
-In Marion, Democrats picked up another seat to increase their City Council majority.
-In Lancaster, a city George Bush won with 58% of the 2004 vote, Democrats took control of City Council for the first time since the early 1970s.
-In Newark, Democrats picked up two council seats in an area Bush carried by 56% in 2004.
-In Springfield, Democrats picked up two of three City Commission seats.
-In Franklin County, Lori Tyack, a Democrat, is the new Municipal Clerk of Courts for the first time in history.
-In Franklin County, Andrea Peeples won a Municipal Judgeship.
-In Medina Township, Mike Todd unseated a Republican incumbent for Trustee
-In Brunswick, Pat McNamara unseated a Republican incumbent for City Council

I was still scratching my head trying to figure out how to start writing about this today when I got an e-mail from Brad at BRAD BLOG telling me to take a look at a story he had posted this morning called THE STAGGERINGLY IMPOSSIBLE RESULTS OF OHIO'S '05 ELECTION and to an article by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman in THE FREE PRESS called Has American Democracy died an electronic death in Ohio 2005's referenda defeats?.

These two stories make it pretty clear that the most corrupt vote stealer in contemporary American politics, Ohio Secretary of State/candidate for Governor, Ken Blackwell, is still up to his old tricks. The R.O.N. propositions would have put him out of business. There was no way he was going to let them pass.

"MAN ON DOG" SANTORUM RUNNING FROM THE FAR RIGHT-- BUT HE IS THE FAR RIGHT! NOW HE'S SUDDENLY AGAINST CREATIONISM!

When right wing extremist loon Rick "Man On Dog" Santorum speaks to national newspapers like the NY TIMES, WASHINGTON POST or, his favorite, THE MOONIE TIMES, he's always posturing to look good for the Far Right base he had hoped would propel him into the presidency. Now Mr. Opus Dei is looking at almost certain defeat in the 2006 Senate race and he's talking very differently to local papers that Pennsylvania voters read. In yesterday's BEAVER COUNTY TIMES, Ricky had changed his tune considerably. Suddenly Senator Religionist Maniac is saying "intelligent design" (AKA- creationism) has no place in a science classroom. Why it seemed like only yesterday that Santorum was penning an editorial in "Reverend" Sun Myung Moon's right-wing WASHINGTON TIMES that "intelligent design is a legitimate scientific theory that should be taught in the classroom." Why the change of heart?

Well, for one thing Santorum has the lowest approval ratings of any U.S. Senator anywhere and among pundits of both parties-- who rarely agree on anything-- he is unanimously considered the most endangered incumbent Senator up for re-election. (In fact rumors are rife that the national Republican Party has given up on this race already and has told Santorum's allies that he shouldn't count on them for cash-- but we wish you all the best and good luck and thanks for the memories.) On top of that Santorum watched with other swing state Republicans as moderate suburban Republicans thoroughly deserted GOP candidates in last week's elections in neighboring New Jersey and Virginia.

But worst of all for Santorum, the loony creationism issue has come front and center in Pennsylvania because his own allies from the extreme right of the PA GOP have pushed it into the headlines, disastrously for themselves. A federal court just ended the testimony phase of a much ballyhooed trial in which 8 families sued the Dover Area School District in eastern Pennsylvania. After 8 radical religionist nutcases from Santorum's wing of the GOP were elected to the district's school board, they insisted on introducing "intelligent design" into science classes. "This is Pennsylvania, not Kansas or some other primitive backwater," said one horrified parent. The 8 families said the policy violated the constitutional separation of church and state and sued. Although the court hasn't issued a ruling yet, the people of the district-- Santorum's employers-- have. On Tuesday all 8 of the lunatic fringe religionist Republicans were defeated-- 8 for 8-- and replaced by normal Americans. This caused another of Santorum's crazy allies, make-believe "Reverend" Pat Robertson to threaten Dover, PA with God's wrath. Panicked, Santorum issued a statement immediately trying to distance himself from his close association with Robertson. "I disagree. I don't believe God abandons people."

Although Santorum suddenly avoided Bush's most recent visit to his state, even though the local Democratic congressman was brave enough to appear on the same stage with Bush (having voting against virtually all of Bush's harebrained, reactionary schemes over the last 5 years), he hasn't addressed Bush's well-publicized support for teaching creationism in science classes. (This past weekend Santorum, desperate to appear not-Bush, told a Philly audience, according to the BEAVER COUNTY TIMES that "mistakes had been made in the Iraq war, and that at least a portion of the blame lies with the White House.") At least.

Bob Casey will make an infinitely better U.S. Senator.

TWO DEMOCRATIC HOUSE TURNCOATS HIGH ON THE 2006 ENDANGERED INCUMBENTS LIST-- BEAN AND MARSHALL

Superribbie over at DAILY KOS did an exhaustive survey of 2004's endangered Democratic congressmen, ranked by likelihood of defeat. Although I'm be putting all of my political energy into trying to help progressive candidates defeat Republicans, I can't help but smile at some of the names on the endangered list. And numero uno is Georgia turn-coat, Jim Marshall in the 8th District, the only Democrat to break ranks with the House caucus and vote to prevent a serious investigation of the Bush Regime's lies and distortions that lead us into war-- a vote the Republicans won by ONE VOTE, Marshall's. I don't live in Macon so I don't have to think about voting for him or the even more horrendous GOP alternative, former congressloon Mac Collins, a certifiable lunatic and far right extremist. But it's candidates like Marshall that keep me from giving a dime to the DCCC (and using my donations in targeted races being fought by progressives.

And speaking of non-progressive Democrats in trouble with voters, an even more egregiously horrible freshman Democrat looks like she's going down the toilet next year, the horrid Melissa Bean in Illinois' 6th District. This CAFTA turn-coat (one of only 15 Democrats to abandon us on this crucial vote) votes like a Republican on an enormous number of important issues-- too many. It's a very Republican district and Labor is out to see her fail. She just spent her entire first term doing nothing but raising money, so she won't go down easy, but I think she'll lose and, as much as we could use her vote when it comes to organizing the House... well, that's all she's good for, so let her eat shit and... There are a couple of other turn-coat Dems, like Henry Cuellar (TX), Dennis Moore (KS), Charlie Melancon (LA), and Jim Matheson (UT) on the endangered list but these two are the worst.

IS BUSH A LAME DUCK ? OR A COOKED GOOSE ?

Republican losses last week were not confined to high-profile governors races in Virginia and New Jersey. Republicans took it on the chin on the city, county and even school board levels. A former Republican County boss of Suffolk County-- once home base for both Helen and myself-- said that GOP losses there on the county level were so devastating that he didn't believe the party would recover... ever! On top of the plummeting approval ratings in every single poll, even right-wing polls, and the mounting corruption scandals sweeping the Republican Party, rifts between the Bush Regime and elected Republicans who have an eye on keeping their jobs, deepened... cataclysmically.

The first reports of Republicans declaring Bush radioactive came from deep inside the right-wing base. Long time neo-fascist propagandist Robert Novak was the first to thrust the dagger into Bush's back. As they watched heretofore moderate Republican suburbs in New Jersey and, more important (to them), in Virginia vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, Novak says DC "Republicans in Congress envision their own doom. The antidote to avoid that fate is to keep as far away from President Bush as possible, a lesson underlined by the president's failed election rescue mission for former Virginia state Attorney General Kilgore. The consequences may be profound. As his approval rating dipped, Bush increasingly has been treated in Congress as a lame duck. Tuesday's Virginia outcome increases the propensity of Republican senators and House members not only to avoid their president on the campaign trail but also to ignore his legislative proposals."

Then even far right fringe nuts like Rick "Dog on Man" Santorum, whose approval ratings are even worse than Bush's, and Arizona kook J.D. Hayworth both issued loud broadsides that they weren't interested in Bush campaigning for them. Hayworth, who is likely to be indicted as part of the Abramoff scandal told Don Imus on morning radio that he doesn't want Bush in Arizona and that he wouldn't be interested in Bush cutting any campaign spots for radio or TV for him. And then one of the more right-wing papers in the country, DC's MOONIE TIMES, declared flatly that Kaine's victory in Virginia over Kilgore was because of Bush. The Moonies quote a local VA legislator who escaped defeat by the skin of his teeth, David Albo: "We know that George Bush is just killing us. His popularity just brought the ticket down. There's no other way to explain it."

Polls show that Virginia voters were turned off by election-eve campaigning by Bush with Kilgore. In fact the conservative Rasmussen Poll found that Kaine won votes from 22% of registered Republicans! And today the THE NEWARK STAR LEDGER has a piece from New Jersey's defeated Republican gubernatorial candidate, Doug Forrester, saying flatly that he lost because of Bush! And Establishment Republican Tom Davis is going to extreme lengths to show his suburban constituents that he is independent of BushCo, even threatening Bush associates with subpoenas (something they feel they have more than enough of right now, thank you).

In the runup to Virginia's vote, pragmatists tried to keep Bush away but he showed up in Richmond Monday night and that was the nail in Kilgore's coffin. One aide claims that most people in the White House "knew an appearance by the President would hurt Kilgore rather than help him but (Karl) Rove rammed it through, convincing Bush that he had enough popularity left to make a difference.” It was soon clear to everyone, everywhere that Bush doesn’t have any popularity left. Overnight tracking polls showed Kilgore dropped three percentage points after the President’s appearance and Democrat Tim Kaine won on Tuesday. Republican pollsters are privately telling Republican leaders that unless they stop the slide they could easily lose control of the House and Senate next year. And while Republican pollsters are astonished by the virtual free fall in Bush's and the GOP's support, Democratic pollster Geoffrey Garin points out the usual dirty tricks always used by Republicans all failed.

And, of course, the question on everyone's lips in DC is whether Bush has any clout left with Congress at all. DeLay's number two (and now acting Majority Leader while DeLay struggles to stay out of prison), the odious Roy Blunt was forced to postpone a vote on a budget reconciliation bill that would have cut $50 billion primarily from food stamps, Medicaid, and student loans, all on the kill list for the dominant extreme right-wing of the party. And their plans to allow oil companies to drill in Alaska's natural preserves was also scrapped. Both fell for the same reason: panicked Republicans from moderate districts (districts far more moderate than they are themselves) refused to go along with the extremist BushCo legislative agenda. And it wasn't only in the House that WingNutia is falling apart. Olympia Snowe, who only 2 weeks ago joined with the worst drooling neo-Nazis and fascists in the Republican Party to defeat a modest minimum wage increase, this week scuttled Bush's #1 priority-- extending the existing tax cuts for the wealthy.

No amount of scaring Americans with tall tales about avion flu is gonna save Bush's ass this time.


THE EVENING UPDATE

I thought I should update this in light of the release of today's Gallup Poll, which shows Bush's approval ratings going lower and lower and lower. I don't just want to say it couldn't happen to a better person. But I do want to point out how this will increase Bush's utter radioactivity to Republican candidates running in next year's elections. In fact, among all the disapproving of this and all the disapproving of that, is an interesting new subject. LESS than 10% of respondents say they want to vote for a Republican who agrees with Bush on most major issues. Could this be any clearer? Even a huge majority of Republicans say they want candidates who disagree with Bush and about 20% of admitted Republicans disapprove of the job Bush is doing.

In case you're too lazy to click on the link and you're wondering how the Bushster is doing overall, the headline question was "Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?" 37% now approve (down from 41% last time) and 60% disapprove (up from 56%). Even worse is that 53% of Americans trust Bush less than previous presidents and 60% say that going to war against Iraq was "not worth it." This doesn't sound like something Bush is going to recover from... ever.

THE CORNYN-ABRAMOFF-REED CONNECTION

Usually Texas' extreme right wing loon Senator (the crazier male one), John Cornyn doesn't get accused of much except for being extremely dull, almost as ignorant and narrow-minded as Bush, and extremely right wing (which, in much of Texas, is no put down). But even in Texas, people no like it when their congresscritters-- even their furthest right ones-- get caught with their paws in the cookie jar. And yesterday the AUSTIN-AMERICAN STATESMAN reported on the link between Tom DeLay consigliere/indicted Republican influence peddler Jack Abramoff, unindicted co-conspirator/fundalmentalist hypocrite Ralph Reed and the Texas nutcase.

AP's Suzanne Gamboa reported that as part of the Reed/Abramoff conspiracy to rip off several American Indian tribes for millions of dollars while tricking Christian fundies (who they refer to as "the crazies") into voting in their casino scheme, Reed was bragging to Abramoff how he was able to choreograph Cornyn (then Texas Attorney General) and get him to do what Abramoff needed.

Abramoff was paying Reed (as well as right-wing ideology fuehrer Grover Norquist) immense sums of money so he could steal as much as $80 million dollars from the Indian tribes in a somewhat complicated scheme (which I tried explaining last month here). One of Reed's tasks was to get the Alabama-Coushatta and Tigua casinos closed in Texas. The AP article states that in a just-released November 30, 2001 e-mail (that is part of Abramoff's criminal investigation) "Reed told Abramoff that 50 pastors led by Ed Young, of Second Baptist Church in Houston, would meet with Cornyn to urge him to shut down the Alabama-Coushatta tribe's casino near Livingston. He said Young would back up the request in writing.
'We have also choreographed Cornyn's response. The AG will state that the law is clear, talk about how much he wants to avoid repetition of El Paso (where the Tigua casino was) and pledge to take swift action to enforce the law,' Reed wrote. 'He will also personally hand Ed Young a letter that commits him to take action in Livingston.'"

Cornyn claims he doesn't know Abramoff-- making him virtually the only Republican in America who doesn't (if you believe him)-- but he does confess to knowing Reed. He also claims, according to Gamboa, that "he did not remember receiving a letter from Young or Reed, or providing a letter to Young." In a move to protect Cornyn's "good name," fellow Republican senator John McCain, head of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, which is investigating this scandal, blocked out Cornyn's name in the released e-mails. That fooled no one at all, thanks to sloppy work on the committee and no is now denying that all the references were to Cornyn.

One of Reed's flacks refused to respond directly to questions about whether Reed had copies of or had seen Young's letter, or details about how he "choreographed" a response from Cornyn. There is no mention in the e-mails disclosed this far of Cornyn getting any money directly for his efforts. This investigation, however, is likely to sink Reed's attempt to run for Lieutenant Governor of Georgia because the e-mails clearly show that he has been lying about his participation from the very beginning.

HELEN'S BACK-- AND ASKING QUESTIONS ABOUT "THE GOD THING" IN OUR PUBLIC SCHOOLS

I enjoy kvetching to Howie about incidents in my daily life related to politics. Unlike many people I know, Howie loves politics and he enjoys spending a lot of time talking about it. He is a good, sympathetic listener and I rely on him at times to keep my sanity. Howie suggested that I write this up for the DWT blog.
Last night, I had dinner with a friend from California. She expressed dismay that in California schools, children are no longer allowed to say the Pledge of Allegiance and she did not see what all the fuss was about. You know, the fuss about the “God” thing. She said the phrase does not really matter to the children, that they are oblivious of it.
I did not realize that in California, the Pledge is now banned in schools. This is because in New York, it is alive and well. Every day in my school, the principal says the Pledge over the loudspeaker and all the students and staff rise to place there hands over their hearts and recite along with him. I am uncomfortable with this because of the “God” thing. You see, I am an atheist and I don’t think it is fair to me to be expected to pledge “under God” when it is against my personal beliefs. I do love my country and this puts me in a philosophical bind. Also, I highly respect my coworkers and I really don’t want to stand out and appear different. This puts me in a very awkward situation on a daily basis. Many of my coworkers are religious and attend church regularly. They have no problem with the “God” thing. They are wonderful, ethical and tolerant people and I have a distaste for making an issue about this in front of them. For a while, I would say the pledge and mumble or harrumph during the “under God.” Eventually, this began to seem silly to me. Lately, I have chosen not to say the pledge at all. When it comes over the loudspeaker, I stand up, put my hand over my heart and face the flag to show my respect, but I remain silent. I am very thankful that I live in a diverse and tolerant community and no one cares a wink about my silence. In some other parts of our country, however, I know I could be in a great deal of trouble for it. I am an adult and can make such independent decisions, but what about children faced with lots of peer pressure? Placing them in such a situation is unfair and intolerable.
My California friend also did not know that the “under God” was inserted into the Pledge in the 1950’s. She thought it had always been there and was surprised that it had actually been added. It used to be”…one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.” When I told her the addition occurred during the McCarthy era to give those "atheist Commies" the finger, she was surprised.
Another issue that comes up occasionally in my school is the song, “God Bless America,” which is trotted out during patriotic ceremonies. Again, I have a BIG problem with the “God” thing. Since when did this song replace our national anthem? I believe that this song has come to the forefront in the past few years exactly because of the “God” in the title. The right wing fundamentalists must love this song; however, I am like a bull when it sees red when this song is sung. It infuriates me, even more than the Pledge. It insinuates that God is on our side and not theirs, i.e., the Muslims. Excuse me? Weren’t the Crusades over and done with 500 hundred years ago? If there were a God, would he or she chose sides in a war, particularly this awful unprovoked war and occupation? Is this a religious war? I certainly hope not, but the undercurrent of this song is very, very dangerous. And again, this song intrudes the “God” thing into the schools, which I believe is clearly against our forefathers’ intention of separating church and state. Children should not be pressured to sing this song. It is very inappropriate in the public school setting. I suppose you can guess what I do when everyone sings this song --- I remain silent.
It is ironic that we cannot have any religious ornaments for Christmas or Channukah in the school lobby but the Pledge and the song are okay.

HOWARD DEAN RULES THE AIRWAVES ON MEET THE PRESS TODAY!!

I hope you saw Howard Dean on MEET THE PRESS today. He completely rocked the house! Armando over at DAILY KOS has a fantatsic blow-by-blow (and BladBlog has a video of it; if Crooks & Liars don't yet, I'm sure one'll be up soon). Anyway, here's Amando's superb analysis (so perfect that I even kept all his bolds):


Tell the Truth. When asked what Democrats will do on Iraq, Dean answered, in essence, tell the truth. He contrasted this with the dishonesty and deception that has marked the Bush Administration and Republicans on Iraq and almost every other issue. When asked what Democratic politicians should say about their prior votes on Iraq, he said - tell the truth. He markedly contrasted them with Bush and the Republicans, whom Dean called "corrupt" and "dishonest." This is a winning issue that most Americans agree with and behind which Democrats of all ideologies can rally behind.
Extremist Religiosity Does Not Equal Moral Values. Russert put up a poll finding in the most recent NBC poll that found that 35% of Americans thought the Republicans were the "more moral" party, while only 18% thought the Democrats the moral party. Dean did not bite into the premise. He understood two things about that poll finding - (1) That only 35% of Americans thought Republicans the more "moral" party is a huge problem for the GOP. If 65% of Americans have not been spun on this issue, then the GOP attempt to brand the Democratic Party as the party of the perverse is failing. (2) That Democrats comfortable talking about their faith of course should and will. This signalled to me that on "values" questions, Dean embraces the Big Tent concept, where different approaches for different Dems in different parts of the country is an essential strategy for Democratic success. Dean stressed that it is our underlying values, not the source of them, that bring us together as Democrats.
Dean also took an opportunity to tweak Russert's assumption that faith = Christianity. Russert spotlighted a Tim Kaine statement about his Christianity and asked Dean if Dems willbe talking more about their faith. Dean reminded Russert that faith does not equal Christianity. I thought it was an embarrassing moment for Russert.
The Alito Nomination. Russert tried to put Dean on the defensive on the question of the Alito nomination, suggesting that Dem opposition would amount to obstructionism. Russert referenced a NYTimes editorial today as a negative example of this. Dean turned this entirely around, embracing the Alito nomination process as a chance for Dems to define themselves as the Party of Mainstream Values. In particular, Dean endorsed this portion of the editorial:

The Alito nomination comes at a critical moment for the Democratic Party. With President Bush's poll numbers plummeting, Democrats are finding a new optimism about their chances in 2006 and 2008. But to capitalize on the Republicans' weakness, the party needs to show that it has an alternative vision for the country. As the Democrats refine their message for next year's elections, the first thing they need to be able to say to the American people is that they did not sit by idly while the far right took over the Supreme Court and began dismantling fundamental rights and freedoms.

Keep Us Safe. While acknowledging the Democratic political weakness on national security and the need to address it, Dean resisted Russert's call for Democratic alternatives on Iraq and other national security issues. Dean rightly pointed out that Republicans are in complete control of the government and that they do not take advice from the Democrats.
Which leads to my final point When Do Democrats Define Themselves? Dean gave the right answer - when the voters have a chance to make a choice for real change, in 2006. The Elections. The Democrats are doing what they are supposed to do right now - opposing a Republican agenda harmful to the country. And agreeing on those few occasions when the Republicans do the right thing. That is called being an opposition party. The time for offering alternatives is when the voters can choose that alternative for real change. And that is 2006.
Kudos to Dr. Dean for a stellar performance.  

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

And kudos to Dr. Amando for his own stellar performance!

THERE HE GOES AGAIN-- BUSH LIED HIS ASS OFF ABOUT PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE FRIDAY

Nearly 60% of Americans, according to the latest polling, think Bush is a liar. Specifically they feel he has been dishonest about getting us into a war with Iraq and about the cover-ups and scandals plaguing his party, many of them because of the original lies about pre-war intelligence. As though to add gasoline to the already raging fire, Bush got up in front of a crowd of veterans in NEPA yesterday and... lied and lied and twisted and twisted. He came off as really pathetic, deceptive, weasely and clueless.

Today Dana Millbank and Walter Pincus dissect Bush's lies in the WASHINGTON POST. They also dealt with the bullshit that's been spewing forth from thus-far unindicted TreasonGate figure Stephen Hadley, Bush's seriously ill-equipped National Security Advisor. Bush and Hadley are trying to convince the shrinking number of Americans who are still open to hearing their deceptions that Democratic Senators and Representatives, who are finallystanding up and saying "We were tricked into voting for his war because he manipulated the intelligence," saw the same intelligence the Regime did before the war, and that independent commissions have determined that BushCo did not misrepresent the intelligence. Millbank and Pincus state flatly that "Neither assertion is wholly accurate."

They're not accurate because Bush and Hadley are still lying and twist, twisting and lying. "Bush and his aides," as The Post points out, "had access to much more voluminous intelligence information than did lawmakers, who were dependent on the administration to provide the material. And the commissions cited by officials, though concluding that the administration did not pressure intelligence analysts to change their conclusions, were not authorized to determine whether the administration exaggerated or distorted those conclusions."

Yesterday one of the Regime's attempts to spread around the blame was mouthed-- badly-- by Bush when he asserted that "more than 100 Democrats in the House and the Senate, who had access to the same intelligence, voted to support removing Saddam Hussein from power."

Millbank and Pincus point out that "Bush does not share his most sensitive intelligence, such as the President's Daily Brief, with lawmakers. Also, the National Intelligence Estimate summarizing the intelligence community's views about the threat from Iraq was given to Congress just days before the vote to authorize the use of force in that country. In addition, there were doubts within the intelligence community not included in the NIE. And even the doubts expressed in the NIE could not be used publicly by members of Congress because the classified information had not been cleared for release.... Even within the Bush administration, not everybody consistently viewed Iraq as what Hadley called 'an enormous threat.' In a news conference in February 2001 in Egypt, then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said of the economic sanctions against Hussein's Iraq: 'Frankly, they have worked. He has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction.'"

Bush's main point in his pathetic speech was that "it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the history of how that war began." And that is precisely what he and his rogue regime are trying to do. One example Millbank and Pincus give of how Bush is still trying to manipulate reality to fit his ideological delusions was when he asserted yesterday that "When I made the decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Congress approved it with strong bipartisan support." That was news to all the members of the Senate and House since the joint resolution did authorize the use of force in Iraq, but did not directly mention the removal of Saddam Hussein from power.

Would you believe, the president's mother about to be replaced?

Would you believe:

In Broad White House Shake-Up, President's
Mother Said to Be Targeted for Replacement

Made-up news, exclusive to DownWithTyranny
WASHINGTON, Nov. 13--In response to President Bush's plummeting poll numbers, as well as the alarming results of last Tuesday's elections, the president's mother will soon be replaced, say high-level White House sources who have been involved in the planning sessions.

The sources indicate that the decision to replace the First Mother, Mrs. Barbara Bush, has already been finalized. The only reason for the delay is to find a suitable replacement.

"Look at at this way," said a source with first-hand knowledge of the discussions. "The polls tell us that 78 percent of the American people now think that the president is 'a vicious lying scumbag who's a danger to every living creature.' Now who does that immediately make you think of?"

A White House source with direct knowledge of the president's thinking said, "Obviously he's not happy about this. He thinks that, okay, maybe she hasn't done all that great a job, but she's been in the job all these years, so where's the harm in letting her keep at it?

"Frankly," the source continued, "I think he's afraid of how the old lady will take the news. She has, uh, shall we say, a sharp tongue, which she has always used quite freely where her eldest son is concerned.

"But in the end, the president agreed that what has to be done has to be done."

There were conflicting reports regarding candidates being considered to replace Mrs. Bush. Most sources discounted reports that White House Counsel Harriet Miers is the front-runner.

"It's true Harriet's name came up," said the source with first-hand knowledge of the discussions. "At one point the question was raised whether the nominee will require Senate confirmation, and somebody said we should run it past the counsel. Somebody else said, 'I don't think so. You know what happens when we ask Harry to help us fill a job.'"

But apparently there is other foundation for the Miers rumors. A source outside the White House who is familiar with the president's thinking said, "He's often said he wonders what it would be like to have 'a mom who treats me with a little respect--you know, someone like Harry.'"

Other candidates believed to be under consideration include retiring Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, media icon Joan Rivers, "that lady down to the barbecue joint out by the county line," entertainer Cher, "that saint lady from Asia, you know, Mama Whatshername, Tracey," television personality Ellen DeGeneres, and singer Dolly Parton.

One early-front runner is said to have moved quickly and forcefully to take herself out of the running. Presidential favorite Karen Hughes, currently seving as under secretary of state in charge of really screwing up international relations, is quoted as saying, "I mean I love that man to death, but no way I want to be his mama."

Early feelers put out to former President Bill Clinton are said to have been rebuffed with the curt reply that the former president's mother is, first, unavailable and, second, deceased. The source familiar with the current president's thinking indicated that he's "not unalterably opposed to a candidate who's nonliving."

Former President Jimmy Carter declined through a spokesperson to comment on whether any approaches have been made concerning his late mother.

A possible obstacle arose in the form of an objection from one of the president's younger brothers, Neil A. Bush. A spokesman for Mr. Bush acknowledged that he had expressed concern as to whether "my mom will still be my mom" after the proposed changes. "She's the only one stuck up for me when I had my troubles," Mr. Bush is reported to have said.

One of the White House sources countered: "Look, if it's the old lady's time to go, it's time to go. As to Neil, do you think we don't know how to shut that twerp up?"

It appears that no serious consideration has been given at this time to replacing the president's father, former President George H.W. Bush. "Hey, everybody knows the old man is just as monstrous as the old lady," said the same White House source, "but people seem to think he's just some old goof.

"Besides," the source continued, "the president has no purpose in his life except to humiliate his father by showing him up as president."

MY PAL DANNY SENT ME A CUTE LITTLE GAME THAT'S GOOD FOR A RELAXED SUNDAY AFTERNOON

The idea here is to guess which politician or well-known pundit said each of the following statements (no peeking):

1) “You can support the troops but not the president.”

2) “Well, I just think it’s a bad idea. What’s going to happen is they’re going to be over there for 10, 15, maybe 20 years.”

3) “Explain to the mothers and fathers of American servicemen that may come home in body bags why their son or daughter have to give up their life?”

4) “[The] President…is once again releasing American military might on a foreign country with an ill-defined objective and no exit strategy. He has yet to tell the Congress how much this operation will cost. And he has not informed our nation’s armed forces about how long they will be away from home. These strikes do not make for a sound foreign policy.”

5) “American foreign policy is now one huge big mystery. Simply put, the administration is trying to lead the world with a feel-good foreign policy.”

6) “If we are going to commit American troops, we must be certain they have a clear mission, an achievable goal and an exit strategy.”

7) “I had doubts about the bombing campaign from the beginning…I didn’t think we had done enough in the diplomatic area.”

8) “I cannot support a failed foreign policy. History teaches us that it is often easier to make war than peace. This administration is just learning that lesson right now. The President began this mission with very vague objectives and lots of unanswered questions. A month later, these questions are still unanswered. There are no clarified rules of engagement. There is no timetable. There is no legitimate definition of victory. There is no contingency plan for mission creep. There is no clear funding program. There is no agenda to bolster our over-extended military. There is no explanation defining what vital national interests are at stake. There was no strategic plan for war when the President started this thing, and there still is no plan today”

9) “Victory means exit strategy, and it’s important for the President to explain to us what the exit strategy is.”

10) “I think it’s also important for the president to lay out a timetable as to how long they will be involved and when they will be withdrawn.”

The guy who came up with this, "Heavy," at Think Progress, is ready with the answers although first he asks "Where’s the mainstream media on these quotes? You’d think that Democrats and cable news talking heads uttering such quotes would be making huge headlines…

…except that all those quotes come from Republican leaders and FOX talking heads from back in the 1990s when President Clinton was committing troops to Bosnia.

1- Tom DeLay
2- Joe Scarborough (former right-wing congressloon from Florida, current right-wing blovator on MSNBC, and suspect in the murder of one of his young female staffers)
3- Sean Hannity
4- Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum
5- Tom DeLay
6- Karen Hughes [on behalf of George W. Bush]
7- Trent Lott
8- Tom Delay
9 & 10- George W. Bush

BRUCE WILLIS WANTS OSAMA OR MUSAB-- AND HE'LL PAY (CASH)

The National Ledger, a somewhat loony right-wing blog, has a story today about reactionary former Hollywood actor Buce Willis offering a million dollar bounty for either Osama bin-Laden or Abu Musab al-Zarqawi; he doesn't care which. I thought Bush had printed up wanted posters with $25 million rewards on 'em. Is Willis' million gonna make the difference? Or is this a desperate publicity stunt from Willis to get into DOWN WITH TYRANNY? I'm certain no one else would print this nonsense.

REPUBLICANS PLANNING TERROR ATTACK ON U.S. TO MAKE BUSH LOOK GOOD AGAIN? DO WE HAVE ANY PROTECTION FROM THESE MANIACS?

This story is almost too scary to believe. But so is the entire ascension of George W. Bush. Doug Thompson seems to have gotten his hands on a top secret GOP memo circulating in certain DC neo-fascist circles. His story in CAPITOL HILL BLUE sounds like a plot for a bad movie-- or for a worse right-wing politician. This is a really vile... proposal? wish? suggestion?... God knows... to keep control of Congress in 2006. "The closely-guarded memo," says Thompson, "lays out a list of scenarios to bring the Republican party back from the political brink, including a devastating attack by terrorists that could 'validate' the President’s war on terror and allow Bush to 'unite the country' in a 'time of national shock and sorrow.'
GOP insiders who have seen the memo admit it’s a risky strategy..."

GUEST COLUMN FROM RICKIE LEE JONES: "YOU DON'T KNOW UNTIL IT'S PERSONAL WHAT THESE THINGS MEAN"

I met Rickie Lee Jones in 1979. I was a rock writer and she was an up-and-coming young singer-songwriter who was playing in San Francisco just as "Chuck E's in Love" was starting to break. I interviewed her. I was blown away by how cool and smart she was. I don't think the feeling was mutual because she kind of dozed off while I was asking her questions. I did get a great story written though! Fast forward a decade or so and I'm the president of Reprise Records and Rickie Lee is back on the label. Oh, was I thrilled! A real artist, not a manufactured product; someone with something to say that it worth listening to and-- great bonus-- a unique way of saying it!

A couple years ago I was blown away when she played me "Ugly Man," one of the best songs ever written about George W. Bush. Tonight I'm going to see Rickie Lee play at the Wilshire Theater (8440 Wilshire Blvd in L.A.). Vic Chestnut is opening so I'll be getting there early. This afternoon Rickie sent me some thoughts that have been rattling around in her mind lately, thoughts I think we've all been having, thoughts, as she says, you might not fully grasp until it's personal. Usually sharing what is personal is what Rickie does in her music. I'm really excited that today she's sharing that with Down With Tyranny readers.

-Howie (DWT)



here is a work, a dirge, a sonnet,
a song of the rags and utensils of our time,
the hospital beds and pans and plastic
cups for your teeth, the straw,
the apple sauce.



i know these things because my mother came here last month and immediately had a stroke. We sat in the emergency room for four or five or six hours until they found her a room, we were grateful. Then she had a stroke for a bout a week and they sent her home
one day after I asked if she could go home. She wanted to go home, but she wasn't ready.
They brought some guy in to tell her about the walker, and that was it.

That night, the third trip to the bathroom, about two in the morning she fell down.
Fell hard, but i have carpeting in the hall.

In the hospital the Dr. took her off her dilantin for seizures. Has she had a seizure? no,
she has been on that medicine since she had a seizure two years ago.

Five, six trips to the toilet, no sleep all night. IN the morning we begin to call the pharmacy for her meds, but no meds have been phoned in. The nurse, the home care nurse, he calls the DR. and the drug store, but no meds have been phoned in. I have a few, half of the pills (left over from before this episode) but none of the new ones. I give her what i have.
I figure, one day, it's got to be ok, these people just worked to save her life, they aren't going to send her home and kill her.

That night she gets up and goes to the bathroom just as many times as last night, but i am not with her. I don't wake up when i hear her move. I guess i am too tired.
IN the morning i go to the drug store and the pharmacist says, no, no medicine has been phoned in, we have been trying to reach the Dr. I say she needs this medicine to survive,
she will die without it. Trying to sound dramatic, urgent, and off hand at the same time,
i turn and walk away. I go to the county to get an application to build a five foot fence, my neighbor has been SHOOTING his gun at my dogs. The sheriff did not arrest this Israeli.
The fact that white men get away with outrageous infractions of the law the black men would be arrested without question for is really bothering me. I am seeing racist attitude in every aspect of the law lately. I cannot escape knowing that each thing that happens to a white man will be a different story for a black man. Wealth is not the trump card for racism.
I am driving home wiping the steam of the window ( that has been coming out of my ears)
and pull up to the house and Lee is standing in the drive way. I can see by his face that
he is Hiding. Hiding his thoughts.

Your mother had a seizure. The ambulance came. It happened right after you left.

Mom was so sick, i put her in front of the fire place, made her toast, and ran to get the
drugs. But there were no drugs.

AT the hospital emergency room the nurses had no idea why mom was brought there. The ambulance driver didn't tell you it was a seizure? That she just got out of here two days ago?

That she has a stroke last week?

no...they just said maybe some shaking or fainting.

For Christs Sake.

It would be twelve hours before they put the old woman in a room. They didn't bring her food because no one came to evaluate her to see if she could swallow. They didn't give her the
dilantin because no dr. came to prescribe it.

When i saw her Dr. two hours after she arrived, i said, we have tried to reach you for 48 hours.
I am totally reachable.
YOu are not. I watched while the nurse called you, both pharmacists said you had not returned their calls, and I also phoned you. And now here she is.
I am always available But perhaps you should find another Dr. for your mother.

Yes, that's obvious.

and that was it, he quit there in the emergency room.

I am telling you all this to tell you what it is like to care for a sick person in America today.

Because as terrible, as difficult as this is, it is made ludicrous when capped with Bush's policy toward health care for the elderly. I kept looking at these people, these health care
professionals, who always seemed to have some secret thought on the back burner.
You know, it was her health care. Her coverage. Wealth would provide immediate back up
under any circumstance But if you have insurance, we have to evaluate where you can go
for your care. That takes time. And who it will be, and how long you can use our hospital.

Bush cut the funding for after stroke rehabilitation. My mother is instilled to about 1500, period. That is speech therapy, occupational therapy, rehab of all kinds. Nurse, and equipment she might need to get around - a walker, a piece of metal in the shower to grab onto when you are trying not to fall.

You know, my mother is 79. She worked her entire life. She never collected well fare, never, for one day, rode on the back on anyone else.

Here in office is a man who has never worked, and never not rode on the back of someone else. He has no idea the implications, the indications of his decisions. He has no
connection to the results, to the meaning of the words that he makes into law.

I cannot help but feel angry as we try to squeeze a few dollars here and there out of the system, with the help of the very nice people, good people, nurses and home care people,
They see this every day of their lives.

But this new attitude of irreparability this administration brings to our country is what i worry most about. They have these marching boots on, and they trample our beautiful garden, our Constitution our history, our liberal history of great leaps against racism, against
Ism, against the call to Hate it if it isn't like You. We have fought this good fight for so many years, and these men in their boots come in and try to erase that history. They make our lives so pale, so colorless that we forget how colored we are. We forget there are stars.

Let me remind you that there are stars, galaxies, rivers, and a great powerful earth that will squash little GW like a bug before long. He thumbs his nose at the great mother earth.

He steals from the poor to feed the rich, he reminds us of the depths we are capable of,
he cuts back Medicare for mothers who have had strokes, who cannot speak anymore,
and whose only hope is a little bit of therapy for a long, long time.

You don't know until it's personal what these things mean, these bills, these words
MediCare - care, head - start. all of these names we think little of.

But a generation of children will have no head start, and another generation of adults will
have no second chance, either.

WILL HILLARY, BIDEN AND CLARK BE THE LAST PEOPLE IN AMERICA STILL SUPPORTING BUSH'S IRAQI OCCUPATION-- OR WANTING TO EXPAND IT ?

Yesterday even the contemptible FOX NEWS ran a story about how most of the bishops in Bush's church are repenting for supporting his Iraq War! In an article called "Methodist Bishops Repent Iraq War 'Complicity'," Kaukab Jhumra Smith writes at FoxNews.com that "Ninety-five bishops from President Bush's church said Thursday they repent their 'complicity' in the 'unjust and immoral' invasion and occupation of Iraq. 'In the face of the United States administration's rush toward military action based on misleading information, too many of us were silent,' said a statement of conscience signed by more than half of the 164 retired and active United Methodist bishops worldwide."

Smith points out that "in their statement, the bishops pledged to pray daily for the end of the war, for its American and Iraqi victims and for American leaders to find 'truth, humility and policies of peace through justice... 'The only solution seems to be to stay the course. But if you're on the wrong course, you don't stay the course,' Carder said. 'At the heart of the Christian faith is the willingness to acknowledge mistakes.'" Amen. I wonder how long it's going to take Hillary Clinton, Wes Clark, Joe Biden and other DLC-Democrats to figure this out.


5 PM UPDATE: EDWARDS v BUSH (v CLARK)

John Edwards expands on his change of heart about Bush's Iraq war in today's WASHINGTON POST. The Clark camp, which seems to really hate Edwards and view him as its chief rival (for something), has an intersting analysis by Crunchyfrog here.

A dilemma: If and as Republicans regain their senses, how do we respond?

I read with great interest DWT's report (see below) on the unprecedented--for a Republican congressman during this administration--efforts of Virginia's Tom Davis to pry likely-to-be-damning information out of Fortress Bush. At the risk of belaboring the obvious, doesn't this raise the question of how we respond to such behavior?

I mean, for going on five years now haven't we been saying that it's time for any Republicans who still have any sense and integrity to start showing them? How, then, do we treat them if and as they do? Let's say Tom Davis does a proverbial "heckuva job" with his investigation, pursuing all the appropriate lines of inquiry as vigorously and successfully as one might wish? Is there, then, a case for wishing him well in any efforts he makes to remain in government service? (Translation: let him hold onto his House seat?)

I think I can guess DWT's answer, and after five years it's easy enough to argue "too little, too late." There is, in addition, the relatively fresh precedent of the GOP's treatment of turncoat Democrats who--during Chimpy's first term*--sold their souls to the devil, thinking to save their sorry hides when it came time for reelection. A slew of them learned that in Karl Rove World there is no such thing as showing mercy toward an enemy (unless there is yet another angle being played).

But is there any hope for easing the debilitating polarization that so famously afflicts our current public life if we can't rise above this attitude? I don't know, I'm just asking.

- - - - - - - - - - -

*Forgive me, but it still blows my mind to think that we're talking about two terms, as president, of these United States, for such a low-grade specimen of humanity--"President George W. Two Terms Mandate Bush," as he's known to Planet Bush chief correspondent Lawton Smalls on Air America Radio's indispensable "Morning Sedition" broadcast. ("Indispensable," perhaps, but naturally about to be destroyed. Is it somehow reassuring to know that craven corporate imbecility isn't the exclusive province of the Right?)

CONGRESSMAN DAVIS, REPUBLICAN, DECLARES WAR ON BUSHCO, HOPING HIS SUBURBAN CONSTITUENTS NOTICE AND LET HIM KEEP HIS JOB

One Republican who got the message from Tuesday's election loud and clear was Tom Davis (R-VA). Davis, who has represented moderate, suburban, Republican-leaning Fairfax County since 1994, saw his hopes of being appointed U.S. Senator go up in smoke Tuesday (since they depended on Allen winning the presidency and Kilgore winning the governorship-- the former unlikely and the latter... well... you know already that Kilgore was stomped). Davis' suburban constituents looked into the radical, fanatic face of today's hard right Republican Party and turned away from Kilgore in droves. Moderates and independents deserted Republicans everywhere. And Davis, who has been preparing to get his district a little more gerrymandered in 2010 to protect him from the Democratic surge there, was one of the first to start fretting.

Davis is doing all he can to distance himself from Bush and the radical right-wing of the GOP, the dominant wing both nationally and in Virginia. Yesterday he threatened, as chairman of the House Government Reform Committee, to start issue-ing subpoenas to Bush cabinet members and to Bush's counsel, poor old Harriet Miers, if they keep stonewalling him on legitimate document requests issued by his select committee on Hurricane Katrina response.

Yesterday Davis played the enraged drama-queen at a committee hearing, sounding more like a Democrat than like one of Tom DeLay's henchmen as he moaned and groaned about BushCo's failure to hand over e-mails and other communication records related to Katrina and how badly FEMA and other Bush crony-infested operations botched the response. Huffing and puffing and threatening to blow their house down, Davis set a "final" deadline of Nov. 18 for BushCo to comply with his demands. And in case the folks back home still didn't understand that their rep was no Bush-patsy no mo' and added that “If documents aren’t produced by that date, I’m ready to proceed with subpoenas.” Ouch! BushCo is very subpoena-phobic right now for some reason(s).

Davis has requested documents from the White House, the secretaries of defense, homeland security and health and human services and from poor old Harriet. The Bush Regime has been dragging it's feet on releasing any more documents after the ones they did send over showed what a shallow, vapid airhead Bush had appointed to head FEMA, with Mike Brown fussing and preening in e-mails about his wardrobe to frantic and despondent underlings in New Orleans watching babies' bodies float by. Davis is also threatening to charge You're-Doin'-A-Great-Job-Brownie with perjury for lies he testified to while under oath at a committee hearing. The message to constituents: "You're right; Bush is the worst and I'm not going to be an enabler anymore." We'll see if Virginians fall for this next year.

GAY DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATE BASHED BY... DEMOCRATS ?!?!?!!!!?

Look, I want to help anybody who's sincere about fighting fascism and a couple years ago I met a Democrat running for congress just north of here (L.A.-adjacent) in Ventura/Santa Barbara, Brett Wagner. Brett was taking on entrenched right-wing extremist Elton Gallegly. The district, CD-24, gets more Democratic by the day but it is still basically a moderate suburban GOP-leaning area (like the northern Virginia districts that turned out for Tim Kaine Tuesday and made him governor of that state). Elton Gallegly is far more of a right-wing nincompoop that Kaine's opponent was; Gallegly's hardcore, down-the-line far right record is completely inappropriate for the district and Wagner has been chipping away over the past 3 years and is poised to take away a district that the DCCC doesn't even know is competitive.

Brett is a national security policy expert (and former Clinton nuclear disarmament operative). He teaches at the Naval War College. If he's elected he'll be one of the more progressive congressmen in the state. (The first thing I remember reading about him was how he was driving around the district meeting voters with Joni Mitchell CDs in his player. And the first time I met him in person was at a Democratic pep rally the Goo Goo Dolls played at.)

Over the past couple of months I've watched the local Democratic Establishment in Ventura try to shoulder Brett aside. 2006 is going to be a Democratic year. There's a good chance that whoever runs against a loon like Gallegly next year is gonna win. The local party bosses want to make sure it's one of their own creatures. I've been thinking about writing about this situation for at least a month but today I got a "Dear Friend" e-mail from Brett that explains the whole situation really well.

You've read the headlines in our local newspapers and the national
media, such as "California candidate told to get out of race because
he's gay" (Associated Press). In fact, our campaign has been in the
national spotlight for the past several weeks, including an article in
the upcoming issue of The Advocate.

Well, now it's time for me to share "the rest of the story" --

By now just about everyone knows, from May through September, I
received a series of insulting, threatening, and sometimes virulently
homophobic emails from a small group of self-appointed local Democratic
"kingmakers" who have been trying to force me to stop running for
Congress in order to clear the way for a "born-again" candidate who
compares homosexuality to a disease.

What many people still don't know, however, is that last August –
shortly after receiving a particularly threatening email that included
an arbitrary deadline for me to begin complying with this group's
wishes – I was the victim of an unprovoked attack, in broad daylight,
walking through the parking lot of a major Democratic fundraising event
in Santa Barbara.

I was struck in the forehead, resulting in a nasty head wound and a
loss of memory. Several people saw me immediately afterwards walking
covered in blood and noticeably dazed. As you might imagine, I suspect
there may be a link between this incident and the threats I had been
receiving.

Our campaign filed a formal request with the California Democratic
Party for an official investigation, and I'm very pleased to report
that the investigation has now begun. Our campaign has promised to
cooperate fully with this investigation. I am confident that our state
party will get to the bottom of all this, and restore a sense of
justice, tolerance and fairness in our local party.


"Why is all this happening now," you might ask, "when our party should
be redoubling our efforts to pull together?" While the timing does seem
odd, the motivations are clear:

During my first bid for U.S. Congress as the 2004 Democratic Nominee,
our campaign built the largest field operation for a legislative race our
area has seen in quite a while (more than 800 active volunteers, more than
40,000 phone calls, virtually every precinct walked. . .) all inspired by
a candidate who touched people's hearts by challenging them to "unleash
the dreams that are in your hearts, and unleash the love that's in your
hearts that can make those dreams come true – it's time to dream again
America, it's time to dream again."

Unfortunately, not everyone in our party believes in the power of the
"American Dream". That small group of "kingmakers" from the darker
corners of our local party apparently thinks that if they can force me out
of this race, they can simply steal our field operation and hand it over
to the candidate of their choosing.

Well, you know what? I'm not going to let anyone force me out of this
race. I will never walk away from our thousands of loyal supporters who
gave their time and money to build something from the bottom up. The
balance of power is beginning to shift in our area, and we have a real
opportunity to build a winning campaign for future elections.

The rest is a request for financial help. I'll spare you the whole schpiel but I recommend
you consider making a donation to Brett if you can by going to his campaign website or by
writing a check and sending it to:

BRETT WAGNER FOR CONGRESS
John Applegate Consulting
1901 Ave. of the Stars, Suite 1025
Los Angeles, CA 90069

I'll keep you up to date on this situation as it develops.

THE GOP ISSUES VETERANS A MIDDLE FINGER SALUTE... AND A VERY HAPPY VETERAN'S DAY

Today the Associated Press and Ipsos released a new poll, showing, among other things, that most Americans have now realized that a- Bush is a lying sack or shit and b- that Bush's ethics leave a great deal to be desired. Most Americans no longer believe anything he says about Iraq or about the scandals that are rocking his corrupt regime. Most of the ones who still believe his lies are white Southern religionist delusionals. Only 42% said they approve of Bush's handling of foreign policy and terrorism, his lowest rating yet in the only area where he has been able to deceive people the longest. AP quoted Rich Bond, a Missouri conservative who was once chairman of the Republican Party, "To use an unfortunate metaphor, Iraq is a roadside bomb in American politics."

So Bush flies up to the Poconos to give a combative Veteran's Day address, attacking critics of his failed policies and making absurd promises about "victory over terror," whatever childish concept that's supposed to represent. Afterwards radio announcers speculated whether or not he was hopped up on drugs. The nation's biggest Iraq War Veterans' organization, OpTruth.org, expressed "disappointment" with Bush's idiotic and partisan speech. The Executive Director of OpTruth, Paul Rieckhoff, stated that "those of us who fought in Iraq deserve to know why we became Veterans in the first place." He renewed his call for an independent investigation into BushCo's manipulation of pre-war intelligence, a call most Americans agree with.

Meanwhile Kenneth L. Stephens of Veterans Against the Iraq War had very different ideas about how to support our troops than those expressed by Bush or other chicken-hawks who brought us into this disastrous occupation. "Being a Marine and Viet Nam veteran myself, I do not support the policy of going to war based on false and inaccurate statements made by this administration; I do not support sending our brave men and women into battle without the appropriate armor; nor do I support the way this war has been prosecuted. In other words, I do not support the policy of this 21st-century Viet Nam. But having said that, I do support our troops, and as a demonstration of that support, I will speak out and fight vigorously against the abuse of our troops and the failure of honesty in this administration by their deliberately hiding the true human cost of this war."

And, just in case there are people still not getting the point that Republican politicians don't give a rat's ass about American military personnel or veterans, Tom DeLay's handpicked chairman of the House Veterans' Affairs Committee, Steve Buyer, a rightist loon from Indiana, announced that for the first time in memory "veterans service organizations will no longer have the opportunity to present testimony before a joint hearing of the House and Senate Veterans' Affairs Committees." Another vets organization, the Disabled American Veterans issued an outraged press release calling the GOP's move "an insult to all who have fought, sacrificed and died to defend the Constitution."