Here's wishing a new year filled with everything they deserve to all DWT readers—not to mention DWT "regulars" Jack A. and Tommy D.

Creeping into the new year, we're in one of the slowest news cycles of the calendar, and knowing friends have cursed and nodded knowingly when the Washington Post chose to dump its peekaboo-ing, first, into "The Fast Rise and Steep Fall of Jack Abramoff" and, now, into "The DeLay-Abramoff Money Trail" into this news black hole.

If there's any compensation, it's that certain people—Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay, to mention two (without even counting their growing legal teams)—are undoubtedly reading these reports with the utmost concentration.

With the new year looming, here's wishing a happy and healthy one to all DWT readers from the whole gang. (DWT himself when last heard from was in Marrakesh, preparing to decamp for someplace called Essaouira—I'll have to crack out the atlas for that one—while the art department was in Atlanta preparing, I suspect, for some serious ringing-in-the-new-year carousing. Isaac has weighed in with his holiday thoughts, and we're all still hoping that Helen will soon have some reflections to share . . . guilt, guilt, guilt.)

For anyone in need of some holiday cheer, I can't do better than to recommend Paul Krugman's "Heck of a Job, Bushie" column from yesterday. (Once again, for the benefit of readers who haven't met the NYT's ransom demand for access to its columnists, I'll try to include the full text in a "comment," below.) If you haven't seen it, the column consisted of a series of ways in which the world today looks mightily different from the way it looked a year ago, as for example: "A year ago, hardly anyone outside Washington had heard of Jack Abramoff, and Tom DeLay's position as House majority leader seemed unassailable."

You can be sure that in 2006 DWT will continue to try to stay on top of the stories that demand attention. Like we've really got to watch for any developments in the case of the purloined Mother Teresa cinnamon bun.

Aha, so someone has tried to puzzle out the eternal question: What makes Fox Newsnut John Gibson such a dick?

Thanks to my friend Eugene, who passed along a lovely link for some cheerfully vituperative deconstruction of a passel of right-wing loons, starting with that singularly strange specimen, Fox News's John Gibson. Just recently I was wondering whether anyone else found him so creepy-weird. Now I see that our friendly scribe at fuckchristmas.org has tackled head-on the timeless question: "What makes him such a dick?"

It turns out to be maybe not so mysterious once you track some of the astonishing goofiness that comes out of his mouth. Oh sure, it's always political, always far-right-wing, and always delivered with utter absoluteness and viciousness. But also to an astonishing degree just plain nuts—and I do mean loony-tunes-style nuts. It's the psychotic blithering of a mind in such total disarray as to make its closest antecedent, the nutso noggin of Cheers's Cliff Klaven, seem like a model of order.

And of course we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that Cliff was a fictional character, whereas our John G is apparently for real, or at any rate what passes for real in the far-from-parallel universe of Fox News. Also, Cliff, along with other vaguely human traits that made him not only bearable but treasurable (again, partly because he was fictional), had at least a tiny shred of perspective on himself—enough so that on at least one occasion, after letting rip with one of his loopier riffs, he wondered out loud, "Was that out loud?"

With our John, the electrons just keep misfiring throughout his brain, and he lets it all hang out, spilling out on the convoluted and polluted cablewaves of Fox News.

I guess there's the additional fascination that in our John's previous incarnation on MS-NBC, he looked like a reasonable enough TV news anchor, especially of the more craven cable species. And on MS-NBC, he never seemed to say much of anything. He was just a predictable stooge of rightish-wing orthodoxy. Now that he's found his métier, as they say, when that big mouth opens, stand back—you never know what might come pouring out!

None dare call this leadership: Remember New Orleans? (When GWB announces a bold initiative, you can count the hours till it's forgotten)

In this final week of the year I've been scrambling to use up every last scrap of PTO time detailed in our employee manual. So on the "day off" I took today, I didn't get into the office until about 11:30 (and then didn't work for much more than three hours), meaning I had a chance to look at some of the Ellen rerun. You could tell it was a rerun, because the Donald Trump was on flogging the season premiere of The Apprentice.

So I assume the show was originally run in September, which may explain why Ellen was devoting so much time and energy to raising money for hurricane disaster relief. I don't get to see the show much, so I don't know whether the money-raising has continued. But I wouldn't be surprised to learn that Ellen continues to put more time and energy into disaster relief than—to pick a random example—the president of the U.S. and his "team."

My goodness, these people are something. I mean, anyone who's made it past, say, puberty is thoroughly inured to the concept of pols making cynically empty promises. But Land o' Goshen, these people have raised it to an art form. When Master Rove puts one of those phony promises into his puppet's mouth, these bozos no longer maintain the pretense that the words will even be remembered by the time the lying doodyhead closes his mouth.

Like, remember when Chimpy was going to be the scourge of AIDS in Africa? Or when he was going to send men to Mars or Neptune or Alpha Centauri or somewhere? Some of these "initiatives" (for want of a better word) have come from so far out in left field that the unwary are tempted to figure, Why would they bother bringing it up if they didn't have something in mind?

Eventually, though, they built up a track record to serve as a guideline. And the record indicates that whatever it was they had in mind had nothing to do with the issue at hand. If there was no obvious political advantage to be glommed via the empty sound-off, then the idea may have been just to change the subject. Changing the subject, after all, is one of the few things this administration has done with consistent success.

So when our Chimpy got up, even made that cemeterylike appearance in abandoned Jackson Square in destroyed New Orleans, to announce the planned rebuilding of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, there was no reason to expect that anything remotely resembling that was in the cards, any more than conquering AIDS on Mars was. It was just a puff of lukewarm air, except for the part where the Bush cronies and all those other leeches were granted open access to all the "reconstruction" boodle they could get their clutches on.

Eventually, as we all know, the reconstruction of New Orleans somehow morphed into an all-out congressional war on the poor. When it comes to leadership, I take Ellen a lot more seriously.

Our friend Isaac says: ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

[As you may recall, the proprietor of this space traditionally celebrates Christmas by fleeing the country, and is currently riding out the storm in Morocco. However, if you're looking for a heaping helping of, er, post-Christmas spirit, you've come to the right place! Our friend Isaac has some thoughts on the threat that almost made this year's Christmas not happen. Take it away, Isaac.--Ken]

Well, Christmas has passed, so that must mean the librul War On Christmas (tm) is over now too. For now anyway.

See, those godless libruls just can't pass up any chance to persecute the helpless people in this country that call themselves Christians.

Polls show that upwards of 80% or so of people in the US profess to be Christians. Do you see what that means?

It means that 20%--probably less--of this country's population has cleverly orchestrated a massive conspiracy to hold the vast majority of this country hostage. Christians just can't get a break in this country any more, and are at the mercy of the liberals, who run everything now.

Librul atheists just aren't happy unless they're trying to keep people from worshiping God in the schools, force everyone to have abortions, marry a homosexual, view pornography, and (horrors!) treat women and black people like they really were people.

It doesn't stop there.

With atheist's threats of boycotts and intolerance, it's a wonder that shows like Touched By An Angel, Highway to Heaven, Joan of Arcadia, Little House on the Prairie, The Waltons, Providence, Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, The Brady Bunch, Shining Time Station, Davey and Goliath, Adventures From the Book of Virtues, and ABC After School Specials manage to even get on the air to go up against The Simpsons and balance out the blatant homosexuality of the TeleTubbies and SpongeBob Squarepants and all those other atheist programs.

Sunday morning television and atheist cable networks have got so sinful, there's only Pat Robertson and the 700 Club, D James Kennedy, Robert Schuller, Jerry Falwell, Oral Roberts, Robert Tilton, Jimmy Swaggart, Creflo A. Dollar, Benny Hinn, Marilyn Hickey, Peter Popoff, William Branham, Carl Baugh, John Ankerberg, Garner Ted Armstrong, Kenneth Copeland, Paul and Jan Crouch, James Robison, Trinity Broadcasting, CBN, Jack Van Impe, Frederick Price, Ron Phillips, Rod Parsley, Joyce Meyer, Hal Lindsey, Zola Levitt, Bob Larson, T.J. Jakes, Jack Hayford, John Hagee, and Mother Angelica and a few hundred others on the tube these days, since the atheists ran them off.

AM radio has got so godless, you can only find Beverly LaHaye on about 600 stations around the country. Her husband Tim, author of the Left Behind series of books and merchandise dealing with the Rapture, have only managed to eke out an anemic estimated $1 billion in sales.

And don't even get me started about all those liberals and atheists in the US government and the ACLU.

So what's left for the heathen hordes to ruin for everybody?

Christmas. The most important holiday of the year to real Christians.

Just forget for the moment that there is little to no actual direct evidence that there really was a Jesus. Forget that, even if there was a Jesus, he was probably born early in the fall rather than on December 25. Forget that there is literally no archeological or contemporary historical evidence that there was a Jesus. Forget that much or most of the Bible appears to have been lifted from earlier religions and Christians rituals and observances were copied straight from the Pagans.

Just forget about all that: Christmas is a holy day, and being religion, that's all the proof it needs. If enough people believe a thing, that means it's true.

Retailers were so scared of the atheists, they had to stop telling shoppers "Merry Christmas." The holiness of Christ's birth was defiled because retailers had to say "Happy Holidays" when they were selling X-Boxes to soccer moms. And when salespeople had to say "Season's Greetings," the significance of the Holiest of Holy Days was completely ruined for people shopping for IPods.

But Christians did manage a few defenders of both the faith and the holiday.

Bill O'Reilly selflessly offered himself up as a sacrifice to the hazards of the ungodly liberal hordes, and used his (sadly overlooked) little cable TV program to alert us all to the danger. When O'Reilly loudly protested the liberal conspiracy to force people to stop saying "Merry Christmas," the forces of darkness tried to change the subject and direct people to O'Reilly's website, which offered "holiday gifts," which they claimed showed him to be a hypocrite who made up the whole issue for ratings and money and to stir up tension.

To prove he wasn't a hypocrite, O'Reilly quickly eliminated that objection by changing his website.

But the damage had already been done. Liberals had somehow infiltrated the White House and managed to hijack George and Laura Bush's Christmas card list. The Bushes found themselves in the embarrassing position of having sent out thousands of Christmas cards with the dreaded, atheist, politically correct "Happy Holidays."

The liberal plot against Christmas was exposed in detail with Fox News "personality" John Gibson's book The War on Christmas. When the liberal Rob Boston of the anti-American group Americans United for Separation of Church and State claimed on Gibson's program that Gibson had made it all up, Gibson cleverly and effectively exposed the weakness of Boston's criticisms by yelling loudly and talking over him so no one could hear what Boston was saying.

But the defenders of all that is good and right are a lonely bunch in the media.

Michael Moore and Molly Ivins have such a stranglehold on the media that, Bill O'Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, Brit Hume, John Gibson, Ann Coulter, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Laura Ingraham, Thomas Sowell, Michelle Malkin, Cal Thomas, Pat Buchanan, John Stossel, John Mclaughlin, George Will, Lucianne Goldberg, Bob Grant, Oliver North, Gordon Liddy, Ken Hamblin, Armstrong Williams, Michael Reagan, Laura Schlessinger, Joe Scarborough, Tony Snow, Mara Liasson, Chris Matthews, Dennis Miller, Michael Medved, Cokie Roberts, John Hockenberry, Robert Novak, Tucker Carlson, Paul Weyrich, Andrea Mitchell, Brian Williams, Wolf Blitzer, Bill Schneider, Candy Crowley, Peggy Noonan, Bernard Goldberg, Matt Drudge, and Howard Kurtz just can't get a word in edgewise to speak for the other side.

If it were up to the librul media, you wouldn't even know there was another side. We all know the librul media did everything in iys power to cover up how evil Bill Clinton was. Remember how hard it was to find anybody willing to talk about how he and Hillary murdered Vince Foster just to laugh at him while he died and how Bill was raping interns? And remember, you heard it here first: Patriots in the legislature stood up to the liberals and barely managed to call an impeachment inquiry. But it failed because the librul media did everything in its power to cover it up.

And now the beleaguered Christians have once again used their meager resources and stood up, against all odds, David vs. Goliath, to the heathens that want to take out the "Christ" from Christmas and just leave it with the rancid commercialization that otherwise defines the season.

Thank goodness we all still have Santa, the reindeer, and all the elves at the North Pole, and the Grinch Who Stole Christmas to remind us how dearly we hold the birth of the baby Jesus at Christmastime.

So another Christmas came and went with no problem, no thanks to the godless atheist liberals. Until next year, that is.

Or Easter.


[I know there's a boatload of way creepy folks mentioned above, and maybe it's just a personal thing, but I got caught up at Isaac's mention of "Fox News 'personality' John Gibson." I can't tell you what it is, but there's something about that guy, isn't there?

[Is it just me? I mean, okay, he's bellicose, devoid of the slightest human graces, and of course dumber than a dried fig—and I mean a really dumb dried fig. And of course he has no clue how screechingly and universally clueless he is. But isn't that true of true of lots of these people?

[Or maybe that's it. Maybe he's not a person! A robot? An android? A mass hallucination? Does anyone have any theories?—K]

More on the Medicare prescription-drug "benefit," with some notes on what your friendly pharmacist can and will (or maybe won't) do for you

My recent note on the dubious Medicare prescription-drug "benefit," inspired by a NYT letter to the editor responding to a news report that 1 million people have signed up, drew this interesting comment from enigma4ever:

only ONE million have signed up, and that means over 40 million are dazed and confused—great post by the way...I was at CVS the other day and I heard the pharmacist tell this woman that he COULD NOT help her, that it was against the law....WHAT?

I for one am prepared to believe that the law either says, or can be interpreted as saying, that pharmacists can't advise customers about plan benefits. After all, whoever devised this plan from hell took the precaution of legally barring any effort to negotiate lower drug prices, which would have been an obvious feature of any plan that was concerned with the well-being of senior citizens.

In reality, though, if any of the nominal "beneficiaries" of this plan happen to benefit from it, that's likely to be mostly a matter of luck, and certainly not a result intended by the planners, whose sights were set of a payday for the drug and insurance companies—or rather a year-round payday. Talk about "the gift that keeps on giving"!

It's a curious coincidence that enigma4ever's intelligence-gathering mission took place in a CVS store with a CVS pharmacists. As it happens, I've had CVS pharmacists on my mind.

As anyone who lives within CVS's service area is aware, I'm sure, the company has been running a TV promotional campaign built around the saintly service provided by its pharmacists. I've seen two TV spots, and every time I see one, I'm almost moved to tears by the lengths to which these people will go for their customers. I forget the particulars, but I like to think that if you were in danger of fainting from hunger, they would take you home and cook you dinner.

Now I don't meant to sneer at the pharmacist-customer relationship. I have friends who depend on prescribed drugs for their continued well-being and have been lucky enough to find pharamacists who provide amazing professional service. Since I tend to think of this as an "old-fashioned corner drugstore" kind of service, I am happy to think that perhaps it is provided by CVS's people.

Still, I've had a different response to the TV spots, heartwarming as they are. I guess I would have preferred spots with the message: "We fill your prescriptions, whatever they are."

When I wrote this post originally, at this point it continued: "Now let me make clear that this is not directed at CVS. I don't have any reason to think that CVS pharmacists have been failing to fill people's prescriptions—although if anyone has any such knowledge, I'd be interested in hearing it." Later, however, I decided to attempt a quick search, and discovered that there is in fact some history of at least one CVS pharmacist refusing to fill a birth-control prescription. (I also found a fairly recent account of a Target pharmacist refusing to fill an emergency contraception prescription.)

What I'm thinking about, of course, is the brouhaha sometime back when it became public that certain pharmacists were refusing to fill prescriptions for the "morning-after pill." What stunned me, and I hope I wasn't the only one, was the discovery that apparently this is perfectly legal, that pharmacists can legally refuse to fill a prescription if they feel like it.

Huh?

I mean, isn't the "control" in "controlled substances" a governmental function? Isn't the licensing of pharmacies and pharmacists to dispense such substances the government's way of exercising that control? Has any pharmacist ever been known to have been forced at gunpoint to enter the profession? If filling people's prescriptions poses intolerable ethical problems, aren't there other ways to make a living?

I hope that by now CVS has worked out its problems on this count. I'd still feel better, though, if the pharmacists in their TV spots made clear that they fill all prescriptions, without regard to any personal feelings they may have.

Stop the presses: BUN WITH LIKENESS OF MOTHER TERESA STOLEN

[People sometimes wonder why I keep up my AOL membership. Where else do you get news like this (courtesy of the AP, though the photo comes from The Tennessean)? Personally, I'm shocked. Is there no end to the litany of earthly wickedness?--Ken]


NASHVILLE, Tennessee (Dec. 26) - A cinnamon bun that bears a striking likeness to Mother Teresa has gone missing from the coffeehouse where it was displayed.

The owner, Bob Bernstein, arrived to find an early Christmas morning break-in and the world-famous pastry gone.

Bernstein said he believes that the culprit is someone angry over the shop displaying the Nun Bun, which has been preserved with shellac. A jar of money next to it was not stolen.

"They went right for the bun," he said. "Unfortunately I think it's somebody who wanted to take it to destroy it."

The Nun Bun gained worldwide attention in 1996 when a Bongo Java customer nearly took a bite of it before recognizing the revered nun in the folds of flaky pastry.

The bun was featured on world news programs, The Late Show with David Letterman and was even mentioned on episodes of "The Nanny" and "Mad About You."

Bongo Java sold T-shirts, prayer cards and mugs with the bun's image before Mother Teresa wrote a personal letter to the coffeehouse asking the sales be stopped.

12-26-05 10:31 EST

Has anybody out there figured out what to do about the new Medicare prescription-drug "benefit"?

As with so many other vicissitudes in the Age of Bush, the New York Times's Paul Krugman has put it best: In matters from disaster preparedness and relief to a prescription-drug benefit, it's hard to expect much of a job from a government that doesn't believe in the role of government.

Of course the ignorance, ideological savagery, criminality and general incompetence of this admistration extend way beyond this simple rule of thumb. For example, it's clear that all the power players in this administration, notably the vice president and the secretary of defense, believe fervently in whatever governmental function they fantasize they have been fulfilling in Iraq, and yet it's hard to see how the affair could have been managed worse, except from the standpoint of the cronies like Halliburton that have been cleaning up on the debacle.

(I notice that I seem to use the word debacle a lot in writing about the Bush cabal. This gives me pause, but I really don't think it has been excessive. How else would you describe a track record like this?)

However, this doesn't diminish the importance of what Krugman's rule of thumb is telling us. While these people are clearly capable of screwing up in many other ways, what chance is there of their ever getting anything right which doesn't fall within their excruciatingly narrow view of the role of government?

Americans seem finally to have gotten the idea with regard to the administration's Social Security "reforms." At least for the time being, that package has rung up a resounding "no sale."

However, thanks to the Rove gang's full-court press on Congress at a time when Americans were still paying hardly any attention, we're stuck for the foreseeable future with the administration's truly atrocious Medicare prescription-drug benefit. You didn't have to probe very deep into the thing to appreciate that the only intended beneficiaries are the insurance and pharmaceutical companies.

I've been tracking this with the inevitable mix of confusion and dread, since I have to figure out how to advise my 86-year-old mother to proceed. Every month or so I stumble across another newspaper or magazine article that only confirms my confusion and enhances my dread. I don't know what to do, and at this point, as long as I can be assured that her expectably large number of prescriptions won't cost us more if we do nothing, then nothing is what we may do.

Of course, even I in my economic semiliteracy understand enough about how actual insurance works--i.e., by spreading the risk, so that people who don't collect are covering the costs of people who do--to know that if it were truly possible for every consumer of this "benefit" to find a plan that benefits him/her financially, then the plan would be a fiscal catastrophe.

And it may yet be, especially when you reckon in all the money intended to pour into the coffers of the insurance companies (somebody, after all, has to pay for all that advertising to lure us into . . . uh . . . into whatever the heck it is they're selling), not to mention keeping Big Pharma's cash registers ringing merrily. In that case what we would have in effect is a direct prescription-drug subsidy to senior citizens, which might in fact have been an excellent idea.

I don't think that's what the Bush cabal had in mind, though, or what's going to happen--though I also don't doubt that the program will be very expensive. After all, from the cabal's standpoint out-of-control costs in this program have the additional benefit of making it easier to take aim at and ultimately destroy Medicare proper and Social Security itself.

I must have missed the most recent New York Times article on the prescription-drug benefit, on Friday (maybe because I was attempting to deal long-distance with a more immediate health crisis), but it drew this interesting letter printed in today's paper:

To the Editor:

Re. "Over a Million on Medicare Sign Up for New Drug Plan" (news article, Dec. 23):

The swell of people signing up for the new Medicare drug plans should not be taken as a sign that all is well. While the program may save people some money, the detailed rules may ultimately prove unworkable. For instance, the plan a person chooses can change the drugs it covers on 60 days' notice, but the person is locked into the plan for a year.

Unanswered questions loom, such as what will be the impact of enrollment on continued employer health coverage; who has authority to enroll a person with diminished capacity; and how plan exceptions will be processed.

Taxpayers are paying for a powerful marketing campaign of television, print and bus ads to encourage people to sign up, with little money allocated to helping people, one on one, understand the complicated terms of the plans. We are left wondering why this "benefit" is so hard on its beneficiaries.

--Amy T. Paul, Executive Director, Friends and Relatives of Institutionalized Aged

Catching up with . . . Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.)

I promised we would try to get caught up on some of the DWT fave Republicrooks, and why not start with the pride of San Diego, Duncan Hunter, powerful (and still-unindicted) chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, known in certain circles—okay, in this circle—as "dirtier than Duke . . . just smarter"?

Well, it appears that our Duncan, in between stumping for torture and a fence between the U.S. and Mexico, has been a busy beaver. One current project is using every trick in the congressional book to snatch Santa Rosa Island, off the California coast, away from Channel Island National Park, to give it to the Defense Dept., which has expressed no interest in it, originally as a resort for DoD fatcats.

This account comes courtesy of Daily Kos. I've included the whole thing for the sake of the comments, which are amusing as well as informative.

Why Does Duncan Hunter Want to Steal A National Park

by shadowgov

Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 12:04:55 PM PDT

Congressman Duncan Hunter (CA-52) has had a pretty high media profile lately. In just the last few weeks, Hunter, who is Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, opposed the McCain anti-torture amendment; proposed building a fence along the entire US-Mexico border and the study of a similar barrier for the Canadian border; AND attempted to steal 53,000 acres of the Channel Island National Park.

Duncan has been a busy, busy boy, lately. Of course being a close associate of Cunningham pay-for-play Co-conspirator #1, Brent Wilkes, may be part of Hunter's inspiration to change the subject in public.

• shadowgov's diary :: ::
• 
  

Hunter's opposition to McCain's anti-torture legislation was motivated by his desire to serve his masters in the Bush Administration and possibly to provide cover for one of his major corporate contributors and torture investigation subject, the Titan Corporation.

Hunter has long been a proponent of sealing the Mexican border. His efforts lead to miles of fence in the San Diego area. This, of course, just pushed illegal border crossing out into the less inhabited areas of San Diego and Imperial counties. Since the fences were built illegal immigration has increased, but facts don't get in the way of a Republican when he has a wedge issue to exploit.

Yet, Hunter's proposal to turn Santa Rosa Island over to the Department of Defense seems bizarre, even by the very low standards of San Diego county Republicans. The island makes up over 40% of a national park that serves about half a million visitors a year, but Hunter is proposing that it be converted into a hunting and recreation preserve for the military and their guests. When pressed on the issue he even went so far as to propose the island be established as a hunting preserve for disabled veterans.

Santa Rosa Island was privately owned until 1986 when the Federal government bought the island from the Vail and Vickers Company for $30 million. Vail and Vickers is a family business that has run cattle ranching and, more recently trophy deer and elk hunting, operations on the island since 1902. Part of the government purchase agreement allowed Vail and Vickers to continue their hunting operation on the island until 2011.

The hunting operation provides well heeled hunters the opportunity to bag trophy Roosevelt elk and Kaibab mule deer from herds managed to provide the maximum number of such animals. Neither the elk nor the deer are native to the island. They were transported the 40 miles from the mainland for the specific purpose of establishing a hunting preserve. The going rate for hunting on the island ranges from $5,000 to as much as $20,000 for a four day visit.

It is interesting that Hunter's proposal would turn the island over to the Department of Defense in 2009. As the purpose of the land grab is to provide recreation and hunting to the military and any fat cat congressional guests they might invite along, it looks like Hunter's motivation might be to maintain the island hunting concession, while freezing out the general public.

Hunter might even be able to argue that the island hunting concession could pay for much of the military's recreational use, if it were allowed to continue its commercial business. So, in essence, Hunter's proposal would transfer the island from public use to private use while maintaining the hunting concession. Ron Sundergill, Pacific Regional Director, National Parks Conservation Association, suggested as much in an article he wrote about Hunter's proposal.

"We can only guess that the reason this is being proposed is to protect the commercial interest that operates the elk and deer hunting venture on the island. The owners of the venture, whose family sold the island to the federal government in 1986 for nearly $30 million, will be required to end their commercial activities in 2011. The timeline for ending the elk and deer hunting results from a legally binding agreement between the National Park Service and the National Parks Conservation Association, but the owners of the hunting venture strongly objected to the agreement."

Could it be that this whole deal is as transparent as that? Is Hunter really proposing that a national park serving hundreds of thousand visitors a year be taken out of the public realm and locked up by the Department of Defense just to serve the narrow self-interests of small commercial venture?

Hunter attached his island take-over amendment to the defense appropriation bill. Just a few words in a multi-billion dollar spending package. This is the second time Hunter has tried to slip this proposal through Congress. In May, Democrats and environmental groups thwarted his first attempt. This time, Republican Senator John Warner, told Hunter that pushing forward with this proposal would jeopardize the passage of the entire appropriations bill. Hunter withdrew the amendment, but vowed to present the proposal again when Congress reconvenes next year.

The Sacramento Bee editorialized about Hunter's persistent efforts to take Santa Rosa Island back from the public.

"This is an insult to the national park system and for the efforts put into properly managing these islands. Last-minute amendments are no way to enact proposals like this. California's two senators say the military never asked for Santa Rosa Island as an exclusive retreat; regardless, they say they would never support such a fate for the island. It is not Duncan Hunter's to give away."

Why does Duncan Hunter want Santa Rosa Island? The Department of Defense has never asked for the island. In fact, the Department of Defense is closing military facilities all over the country. Many of these military bases, which the DOD still controls could easily be converted to the use Hunter proposes for Santa Rosa Island. These facilities are far more accessible and developed than an island 40 miles off the California coast.

So, why does Duncan Hunter persist in his efforts to take Santa Rosa Island away from the public? Whose interest is he serving?

Tags: Duncan Hunter, National Park, steal, CA-52, congress of corruption (all tags)

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Why does Duncan Hunter (4.00 / 2) want to steal anything? Because he can and/or because some paid him to try. Does the devil wear a suit and tie, Or does he work at the Dairy Queen- Martin Sexton by strengthof10kmen on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 12:09:42 PM PDT

This is why I never go east of I-15 in San Diego (4.00 / 2) You might as well be in Idaho or Utah, without the scenery, and with an endless sea of poorly planned shopping malls and housing developments. by diana04 on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 12:39:34 PM PDT

A hunting preserve for disabled veterans? (4.00 / 2) Shooting guys in wheel-chairs doesn't seem like very good sport? "Republicans hate the French Revolution, and everything it stands for; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, but they love the Guillotine. by agent double o soul on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 12:54:11 PM PDT Not sporting? (4.00 / 3) Actually, I think Hunter propose that the island be used for paralyzed veteran hunting. I guess hunting deer and elk in a confined preserve wasn't enough and vets in wheel chairs were too scary, so Hunter is after vets who can't move at all. by shadowgov on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 01:02:06 PM PDT [ Parent ] An immodest denial (none / 1) No I didn't mean to suggest that Republican fat cats might want to shoot disabled veterans in wheel chairs just for the sport of it. (It would have to make good economic sense as well). Hunter is completely wacked out and in deep in the Cunningham conspiracy. Hard to tell who is getting their wheels greased on this one. "Republicans hate the French Revolution, and everything it stands for; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, but they love the Guillotine. by agent double o soul on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 01:20:40 PM PDT [ Parent ]

Maybe not a bad idea.. (none / 1) I would support it being turned into a hunting preserve on the condition that the only game that Republican fat cats and their lackeys could shoot are each other. Or is that a pollution violation? "Abby Normal". "Are you sure that was the name?" "I'm almost certain." by vegancannibal on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 01:27:43 PM PDT

If it looks like a Duke and it walks like a Duke (none / 0) Why does Duncan Hunter want Santa Rosa Island? The Department of Defense has never asked for the island. In fact, the Department of Defense is closing military facilities all over the country. Many of these military bases, which the DOD still controls could easily be converted to the use Hunter proposes for Santa Rosa Island. These facilities are far more accessible and developed than an island 40 miles off the California coast This is the subtext going through the Cunningham, Wilkes, Mitchell scandal. This ceaseless promotion of projects the Defense Department does not want. They only listen when they hear the handcuffs snap shut. "Republicans hate the French Revolution, and everything it stands for; Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, but they love the Guillotine. by agent double o soul on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 01:28:40 PM PDT

If Really Wants to Help Disabled Veterans ... (4.00 / 3) If Hunter really wants to help disabled veterans, he could get money appropriated for a handicapped boat ramp and for paths for persons with disabilities on the island. He could also get legislation passed giving disabled vets preference for any hunting permits issued in the future. Or, he could work to reduce the number of newly disabled veterans that the Bush Administration is creating each month. by JPZenger on Wed Dec 21, 2005 at 01:30:29 PM PDT

This is the weirdest scandal story yet! (none / 0)

Transfer Santa Rosa island to the DoD? And the DoD responds with... "Huh?" Too weird. And unbelievably brazen, especially coming at a time with so many other swirling scandals on the table. Unbelievable!

By the way, Santa Rosa island is a beautiful place. I've been there, not to hunt but to camp, hike, and kayak. It has some great scenery and it's populated with free-roaming sheep, wild horses, elk, and those pesky little Island foxes, lol! It also has many sea caves around its perimeter. It's a great place to visit if you're into that sort of thing. And I am shocked and disgusted at this revelation.

by ricorun on Fri Dec 23, 2005 at 11:07:00 AM PDT

Isn't it time to give Sen. Ted Stevens a choice for living out his gutless, godforsaken life—between the can and the loony bin?

I don't know about you, but one of the things I miss most in DWT's absence is the regular updates on the criminal behavior of his honor roll of Republicrooks. Surely it isn't possible, for example, that his favorite subject, the kingpin of the Ohio GOP Crime Syndicate more popularly known as "the state government, plus its Washington henchpersons," Rep. Bob Ney, is still walking free?

Well, one of these days we'll have to get caught up on "the boys." Meanwhile, it's not the rank criminality of the Republicrooks, however gross, that most offends and alarms me.

I think rather of the stories told about not-quite-former House Majority Leader Tom "The Hammer" DeLay—tales of how, in the course of his shakedowns of lobbyists and other would-be players in his government, "encouraging" them not just to be generous with money and jobs for Republicans but to cut all Democrats off completely, he would make it clear to them that this is "his" government.

Confronted with no-doubt-bluffed threats to report his extortion demands to the government, the Hammer is supposed to have snapped back, "I am the government." And indeed, to an alarming extent, he was.

This, I submit, is so not good for America.

Not that I'm approving of the thieving that seems to have become rampant in Congress, or suggesting that anyone look the other way. On the contrary, the fact that congressional Republicans have turned their terms in office into an orgy of stealing every dollar they can lay their grimy paws on shocks and revolts me. I'd love to see all of those SOBs rot in prison.

Still, it's one thing to have become so arrogant in your greed that you think you can get away with anything, which is surely the attitude that has been demonstrated by the unthinking obviousness of so much of the Republicrookery we've learned about. But the behavior of the Hammer is something else.

Our Tom has raised the stakes. He seems truly to believe that he is beyond the reach of the law, that the rule of law doesn't apply to him.

I look at his protestations of innocence in the matter of his apparently flagrant violation of the Texas laws against corporate fund-raising, and I no longer know what he thinks. It surely isn't possible that he really believes he's innocent, is it? Not with the lengths he went to to paper over the crime. (Some of his thieving House confreres could have taken a lesson from his criminal playbook—that after all you're obliged to apply a little finesse.)

Is it rather that a man who is the government can't be brought down by some pisher of a district attorney? Or is it some sort of incredulousness like what Al Capone must have felt when he first heard that the government planned to indict him for tax evasion? How dare they demean me and everything I've accomplished with such triviality?

Well, Capone learned in time that the tax-evasion charges were quite sufficient to bring him down. However, if the Hammer thinks he deserves more grandiose charges, perhaps his old partner in crime Jack Abramoff will pave the way with the song, or perhaps songbook, he's dickering to sing to the feds.

Now, at least our Tom has the pressing attention of a gaggle of investigators. When is something going to be done about a lawmaker who has equally run amok, Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens?

You would have thought that just the stunning spectacle he made of himself, bringing that cartoon gallery of oil-company execs to the Capitol for the express purpose of lying their heads off with his naked protection, would have revolted enough senators to rise as one, or at least in sufficient number, to say, "Get the fuck out of the Senate, you loony old wackjob, before you take us down with you."

The evidence has certainly been mounting that the old coot really has gone completely out of control, what with the whole business of the famous $254 million bridge to nowhere (and recall that, while he finally gave in on the bridge, he didn't give up the appropriation to his state) and now his maneuvering to ram ANWR oil drilling down the Senate's throat while screwing people who can't afford the gouging to be inflicted on them this winter by his oil-company cronies.

When Senator Ted announced at that committee hearing that his oil-company pals weren't going to have to tell their lies under oath for the simple reason that it was his decision as chairman and it didn't matter how many of his Senate colleagues whined about it, he seemed to be saying, Hammer-like, that he is the government. Same deal with his relentless wheeling-and-dealing to drain the treasury for the benefit of his home-state cronies.

Again, this isn't healthy for our increasingly precarious democracy.

At least in Senator Ted's case there is a plausible theory to explain all this otherwise-inexplicable behavior. Perhaps, realizing that he has become so transparent in his wheeling and dealing that it would take a second-year law-school student maybe half an hour to draw up a set of indictments that, upon conviction, would have him dying in prison, he's laying the groundwork for an insanity defense.

If so, frankly I'm inclined to buy it. Actually, I'm beyond caring whether the old gasbag dies in prison or in a mental institution. Either way is good for me. I just think that, one way or the other, it's time get him the hell out of the Senate.

Happy holidays to all, from all of us here (and everywhere) at DWT

Don't you just hate it when you've blown your whole message in the subject line?

Okay, let's go for peace on earth and good will toward men and women all over the globe.

Ken

Riled-up DWT readers take aim at the grinch who stole Morning Sedition

Imagine my surprise and delight to find extended, impassioned comments from DWT readers Dan and Timcanhear regarding my note on coping with the loss of Air America Radio's Morning Sedition program.

Since I was attempting to be temperate (yeah, "even the most cretinous brain-dead empty-suit exec would be embarrassed to spout such screeching drivel" is, in its way, my way of being temperate--ya wanna make sumpin' of it?), I encourage everyone to read the comments of these two MS (ex-)listeners who weren't pulling punches.

Dan, for example, suggests: "Kicking [cohost Marc] Maron off the air on the same day as Stern moved to satellite is a blunder of cosmic proportions, for which I can only hope Danny Goldberg will be reincarnated as something chased endlessly by carnivores."

Really, I shouldn't have been surprised to hear from other "rudderless Seditionistas" (as Dan describes our breed), because it was abundantly clear to anyone who was paying attention that the show's listeners were wildly loyal. The problem was the failure to bring the show to the attention of all those people who might have become passionate listeners. Let me say again that I don't recall ever seeing or hearing the show name in any Air America Radio promotions except the occasional on-air mention.

I'm always amused by TV and film marketers who obviously think their job is to trick unsupecting viewers into seeing stuff that nobody in his right mind would want to. Have you noticed how wildly most movie previews misrepresent the actual films? You can't even tell which of those crappy-looking films might actually be worth taking a look at.

As I understand it, this is because the people who make movie trailers—an incredibly specialized, high-stakes business—work according to a set of rules about what they believe audiences want to see. All the promotion is then geared toward tricking those suckers into thinking that this turkey is it.

Doesn't anyone ever worry about what the product's real virtues are? That is, assuming the product has real virtues—though if it doesn't, then why the hell was all that money spent to produce the damned thing in the first place? Wouldn't all that promotional money be better spent trying to communicate those real virtues to people who might appreciate them?

Of course that means someone involved in the promotional effort has to know what those virtues are. Which brings us back to the Air America case.

Blogiologically, I approached the subject with some diffidence, because I hardly ever remember mentioning the show to anyone who'd even heard of it. For one, I never managed to interest DWT in it. (Of course, he's on the West Coast, and Air America never figured out what to do about the time difference. The most frequent solution, when West Coast affiliates even carried the show, was to broadcast it in real time—i.e., 3am-6am PT.)

Tim makes the useful observation that it took him awhile to get what the show was up to. To which I would add: Isn't this usually true of any form or format that's genuinely original?

After all, the MS team was actively engaged in inventing whatever the heck the show was—throughout its all-too-brief run. For example, one of my great regrets was that one of the three original cohosts, the deliciously lively and articulate and cheerily blunt Sue Ellicott, seems to have decided early on that there wasn't enough room in the broadcast booth for her and went back to England (where her kids also were). Sue was a great loss to Air America, but she was probably right about her role on MS. I notice, though, that none of the supposed future plans for her with Air America came to fruition either.

MS wound up with a great team in place, with cohosts Maron and Mark Riley and all the writers and performers, not to mention the behind-the-scenes people, including the bright, energetic and passionate young producing and engineering crew. I don't want to mindlessly bad-mouth Air America. Lots of good things happen on it, and it has already made an incalculable contribution to the political landscape. But dumb is dumb, and it was Air America management's job to understand what it had created and nurture it.

Tim offers an apt counter-example: "I was reminded of a morning dj in Chicago, Jonathan Brandmier, who was on WLUP and the station was about to pull the plug after nearly two years on the air. But they knew they had something and opted to keep it on and the rest is history. Brandmier's ratings began to climb and he became a radio star in Chicago and LA."

So how's this for a scenario, in the holiday spirit of It's a Wonderful Life: Air America management extracts its head from its butt and announces that it was all a mistake, the cancellation of Morning Sedition, that that was just a scenario that could have happened and the show will be back on the air as soon as the MS team can be reassembled.

Right now for a lot of us it's kind of a sucky life in the morning. And as far as I can see, there's just no good reason.

John Seigenthaler tells his own story of discovering that his Wikipedia bio contined lies--and his frustration trying to get to the root of it

Probably you've also heard about the case of journalist John Seigenthaler's phony bio on Wikipedia. I hadn't seen his own account until a friend passed it on, and thought you might like to see it too.--Ken


A false Wikipedia 'biography'
By John Seigenthaler

"John Seigenthaler Sr. was the assistant to Attorney General Robert Kennedy in the early 1960's. For a brief time, he was thought to have been directly involved in the Kennedy assassinations of both John, and his brother, Bobby. Nothing was ever proven."
—Wikipedia

This is a highly personal story about Internet character assassination. It could be your story.

I have no idea whose sick mind conceived the false, malicious "biography" that appeared under my name for 132 days on Wikipedia, the popular, online, free encyclopedia whose authors are unknown and virtually untraceable. There was more:

"John Seigenthaler moved to the Soviet Union in 1971, and returned to the United States in 1984," Wikipedia said. "He started one of the country's largest public relations firms shortly thereafter."

At age 78, I thought I was beyond surprise or hurt at anything negative said about me. I was wrong. One sentence in the biography was true. I was Robert Kennedy's administrative assistant in the early 1960s. I also was his pallbearer. It was mind-boggling when my son, John Seigenthaler, journalist with NBC News, phoned later to say he found the same scurrilous text on Reference.com and Answers.com.

I had heard for weeks from teachers, journalists and historians about "the wonderful world of Wikipedia," where millions of people worldwide visit daily for quick reference "facts," composed and posted by people with no special expertise or knowledge — and sometimes by people with malice.

At my request, executives of the three websites now have removed the false content about me. But they don't know, and can't find out, who wrote the toxic sentences.

Anonymous author

I phoned Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia's founder and asked, "Do you ... have any way to know who wrote that?"

"No, we don't," he said. Representatives of the other two websites said their computers are programmed to copy data verbatim from Wikipedia, never checking whether it is false or factual.

Naturally, I want to unmask my "biographer." And, I am interested in letting many people know that Wikipedia is a flawed and irresponsible research tool.

But searching cyberspace for the identity of people who post spurious information can be frustrating. I found on Wikipedia the registered IP (Internet Protocol) number of my "biographer"- 65-81-97-208. I traced it to a customer of BellSouth Internet. That company advertises a phone number to report "Abuse Issues." An electronic voice said all complaints must be e-mailed. My two e-mails were answered by identical form letters, advising me that the company would conduct an investigation but might not tell me the results. It was signed "Abuse Team."

Wales, Wikipedia's founder, told me that BellSouth would not be helpful. "We have trouble with people posting abusive things over and over and over," he said. "We block their IP numbers, and they sneak in another way. So we contact the service providers, and they are not very responsive."

After three weeks, hearing nothing further about the Abuse Team investigation, I phoned BellSouth's Atlanta corporate headquarters, which led to conversations between my lawyer and BellSouth's counsel. My only remote chance of getting the name, I learned, was to file a "John or Jane Doe" lawsuit against my "biographer." Major communications Internet companies are bound by federal privacy laws that protect the identity of their customers, even those who defame online. Only if a lawsuit resulted in a court subpoena would BellSouth give up the name.

Little legal recourse

Federal law also protects online corporations — BellSouth, AOL, MCI Wikipedia, etc. — from libel lawsuits. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, passed in 1996, specifically states that "no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker." That legalese means that, unlike print and broadcast companies, online service providers cannot be sued for disseminating defamatory attacks on citizens posted by others.

Recent low-profile court decisions document that Congress effectively has barred defamation in cyberspace. Wikipedia's website acknowledges that it is not responsible for inaccurate information, but Wales, in a recent C-Span interview with Brian Lamb, insisted that his website is accountable and that his community of thousands of volunteer editors (he said he has only one paid employee) corrects mistakes within minutes.

My experience refutes that. My "biography" was posted May 26. On May 29, one of Wales' volunteers "edited" it only by correcting the misspelling of the word "early." For four months, Wikipedia depicted me as a suspected assassin before Wales erased it from his website's history Oct. 5. The falsehoods remained on Answers.com and Reference.com for three more weeks.

In the C-Span interview, Wales said Wikipedia has "millions" of daily global visitors and is one of the world's busiest websites. His volunteer community runs the Wikipedia operation, he said. He funds his website through a non-profit foundation and estimated a 2006 budget of "about a million dollars."

And so we live in a universe of new media with phenomenal opportunities for worldwide communications and research — but populated by volunteer vandals with poison-pen intellects. Congress has enabled them and protects them.

When I was a child, my mother lectured me on the evils of "gossip." She held a feather pillow and said, "If I tear this open, the feathers will fly to the four winds, and I could never get them back in the pillow. That's how it is when you spread mean things about people."

For me, that pillow is a metaphor for Wikipedia.

John Seigenthaler, a retired journalist, founded The Freedom Forum First Amendment Center at Vanderbilt University. He also is a former editorial page editor at USA TODAY.

The DNC tries to document once and for all: Did George W. Bush break the law?

I guess I'm not very high up on the message-forwarding chain, as I just got this mailing from Tom McMahon, executive director of the Democratic National Committee, which I see was sent out on Thursday. So it's probably too late to join in the Freedom of Information Act request. But the issues raised here are still important ones, and it's still worth checking the website.--Ken in NY


More of the story is emerging about George Bush's use of our foreign intelligence services to spy on Americans without the consent of any court. Yesterday, after Governor Dean wrote to you, it was revealed that Bush was untruthful on the campaign trail in 2004 -- here's what he said then:

"Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so." -- George Bush, April 20, 2004

That was false, and he knew it at the time. A few days ago Bush personally admitted to overseeing wiretaps without any court orders.

Administration apologists continue to offer vague assertions that Bush's domestic spying program was somehow legal. Americans aren't buying it. In the last 24 hours, over 100,000 Americans have demanded to see the legal memos written by Bush appointees supposedly justifying this unprecedented, dangerous act.

Join our Freedom of Information Act request for these crucial documents -- the people need to know what authority this administration thinks it has:

www.democrats.org/foia

Bizarre excuses keep emerging from the right-wing spin machine for Bush's failure to use the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to obtain warrants. That court provides speedy, secure judicial review for our intelligence agencies. It has rejected a total of five requests for warrants over the last thirty years -- and granted more than 19,000 requests. Our intelligence agencies can even request warrants retroactively days after they begin surveillance, ensuring maximum flexibility.

It is vitally important that we get to the bottom of this explosive scandal. The same political cronies at the Bush Justice Department who wrote the infamous torture memos also appear to have written the still-secret memos fabricating the supposed legal authority behind this illegal surveillance.

Please add your name to the formal Freedom of Information Act request now. We plan to deliver it tomorrow, and you can make a powerful statement by being a part of it:

www.democrats.org/foia

If those documents reveal the kind of flimsy justification and manipulation of the law that we saw in the torture memos, and which we are hearing this week from administration officials, we may be on the verge of unraveling a serious abuse of power not seen since the Richard Nixon era.

And we all remember how that ended.

Tom

Tom McMahon
Executive Director
Democratic National Committee

"Failure Magazine" pays fitting tribute to the poster boy for failure, George W. Bush

DECEMBER 22, 2005
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: failuremagazine@aol.com

MAGAZINE ANNOUNCES SIXTH ANNUAL "FAILURE OF THE YEAR"
Critically Acclaimed Web magazine names George W. Bush "Failure of the Year" for 2005

Phoenix, AZ -Failure magazine-www.failuremag.com-the Web publication covering all things failure, today named President George W. Bush as its sixth annual "Failure of the Year" in a bold commentary by editor, Jason Zasky.

"It was the only reasonable choice," says Zasky. "No one has been responsible for more unredeemed failure than our President. Every week we hear about new mistakes, corruption, and scandals at the highest levels of government. This year we've witnessed the ongoing debacle in Iraq, a pathetic federal response to Hurricane Katrina, the CIA leak probe, Harriet Miers' Supreme Court nomination, a failed Social Security initiative, the Tom DeLay scandal, the rejection of the Patriot Act, not to mention a skyrocketing national debt, an ever-increasing trade deficit, and high gasoline prices-to name just a few. The President has even admitted authorizing an un-American, and likely illegal, program that allows the government to spy on American citizens without a search warrant. There's simply no end in sight to this reign of error."

George W. Bush is no stranger to the pages of Failure. In 2003, the Bush Administration was named the magazine's "Failure of the Year." Last December, in a prescient move, Failure tabbed The American Voter as FOTY 2004-for giving President Bush a second chance.

Failure magazine's annual "Failure of the Year" debuted in December of 2000 with The Breakdown of the Israeli-Palestinian Peace Process. The next year Failure named Terrorism as "Failure of the Year" 2001, followed by the Augusta National Controversy in 2002. In its July 2000 launch issue Failure named Charles the Hammer and the Battle of Tours as the most monumental failure of the past two thousand years.

Failuremag.com was launched in the summer of 2000 at the height of dot-com mania. Covering sports, history, science, entertainment and business, Failure and its nationally-recognized writers cover failure-and its close relative, success-from a bold perspective that is insightful, informative and entertaining. Featuring the daily "Failure of the Day" and the "Book Report," Failure presents a unique take on its subject with a wide variety of stories from the past and present.

Failure Magazine LLC is a privately owned and operated media company featuring Failure magazineT and FailureWearT.

The Pennsylvania "intelligent design" ruling: Could this be one (small) sign of the "anti-Apocalypse"--i.e., a national return to sanity?

No doubt everyone has heard about the federal district court ruling that threw out the teaching of intelligent design as science in schools under that court's jurisdiction. If you haven't seen the actual text, though, it's worth looking at least at this excerpt printed by The New York Times.

Actually, there's lots of juicy material in the omitted portions of the ruling, including Judge Jones's methodical tracing of the intellectual and literal dishonesty of the Dover school board members who conspired to sneak intelligent design into their schools' science curriculum. But the most important--and heartening--thing to remember is that, as the judge makes clear in this excerpt, he is no fan of "judicial activism." He is, in fact, a Republican and a Bush appointee.

And he apparently had no difficulty sorting out the issues at stake in this case.

While even this struggle is far from over (for example, the main NYT article quotes Eugenie Scott, executive director of the National Center for Science Education, "an advocacy group in Oakland, Calif., that promotes teaching evolution," saying in an interview: "I predict that another school board down the line will try to bring intelligent design into the curriculum like the Dover group did, and they'll be a lot smarter about concealing their religious intent"), this decision is as clear and decisive a step as we might hope toward a return to national sanity.

I like to think of it as a bracing antidote to the perennial watch being conducted by so many of our fellow citizens for signs of the Apocalypse.



The New York Times, December 21, 2005
Excerpt From the Ruling on Intelligent Design

Following is an excerpt from the ruling by Judge John E. Jones III that the policy of the Dover, Pa., school board to introduce intelligent design as an alternative to evolution violated the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. The full text of the opinion is at nytimes.com/evolution.

"In making this determination, we have addressed the seminal question of whether I.D. is science. We have concluded that it is not, and moreover that I.D. cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents.

Both defendants and many of the leading proponents of I.D. make a bedrock assumption which is utterly false. Their presupposition is that evolutionary theory is antithetical to a belief in the existence of a supreme being and to religion in general. Repeatedly in this trial, plaintiffs' scientific experts testified that the theory of evolution represents good science, is overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community, and that it in no way conflicts with, nor does it deny, the existence of a divine creator.

To be sure, Darwin's theory of evolution is imperfect. However, the fact that a scientific theory cannot yet render an explanation on every point should not be used as a pretext to thrust an untestable alternative hypothesis grounded in religion into the science classroom or to misrepresent well-established scientific propositions.

The citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the board who voted for the I.D. policy. It is ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the I.D. policy.

With that said, we do not question that many of the leading advocates of I.D. have bona fide and deeply held beliefs which drive their scholarly endeavors. Nor do we controvert that I.D. should continue to be studied, debated, and discussed. As stated, our conclusion today is that it is unconstitutional to teach I.D. as an alternative to evolution in a public school science classroom.

Those who disagree with our holding will likely mark it as the product of an activist judge. If so, they will have erred as this is manifestly not an activist court. Rather, this case came to us as the result of the activism of an ill-informed faction on a school board, aided by a national public interest law firm eager to find a constitutional test case on I.D., who in combination drove the board to adopt an imprudent and ultimately unconstitutional policy.

The breathtaking inanity of the board's decision is evident when considered against the factual backdrop which has now been fully revealed through this trial. The students, parents, and teachers of the Dover Area School District deserved better than to be dragged into this legal maelstrom, with its resulting utter waste of monetary and personal resources."

Here in NYC we have our subways and buses back, and maybe a tiny lesson in interdependence

Three days was quite enough for that "fun." My take is that, at a terrible price, in monetary penalties as well as public sentiment, the Transit Workers' Union fended off the Metropolitan Transportation Authority's attempt to steam-roller it.

What happens now with the contract talks is anyone's guess. (It's important to remember that while the workers agreed to end the strike, the contract impasse remains unsolved.) The media blackout that's been imposed seems like a good idea. Negotiations are likely to be more productive without that kind of microscopic scrutiny--and without either side being able to use the media.

On a shakily positive note, I wonder if there may have been a modest lesson, or at least a reminder: that in any social organization, let alone one as big and complex as NYC, we're all in this together.

It's not that I think NYers have developed a new appreciation for the hardship of the transit workers. In fact, some of the anti-transit-worker rhetoric we heard in all the media coverage was just plain shocking. But in general the hardest time coping was had by persons in the less favored sector of the economic spectrum.

Is it possible that the hardships endured by all those folks, both those who made it to work and those who didn't--people we depend on in our own workplaces, and workers who make it possible for businesses and agencies to provide products and services we depend on, as well as everyone who spends money to keep so many businesses going--may have been noticed? Not to mention the essential role they play in keeping our community functioning.

I find that what non-NYers understand least about the place, perhaps because so much attention naturally flows to the rich and famous among us, is how many of our 8 million are just regular folks eking out a living. Without these folks, however, the whole structure kind of breaks down.

Coping with Week One symptoms of Morning Sedition withdrawal

So how has it been for you, this first week without Morning Sedition?

Oh, you have no idea what Morning Sedition is, or rather was? You and most everyone else I spoke to during the show's run of something under two years as Air America Radio's morning show--the show that the network never, ever promoted or even mentioned publicly as far as I can tell, and yet pronounced a failure, displaying the kind of bullying chutzpah and imbecility we usually expect from the people who brought us President George W. Two Terms Mandate Bush.

Actually, it was Morning Sedition Planet Bush Correspondent Lawton Smalls who brought us President George W. Two Terms Mandate Bush. (The "Mandate" was added after the 2004 election.) Lawton reported from the alternative universe inhabited by our president, and became one of the most beloved of the show's regular characters. You see, in addition to being as hard-hitting political show as I could wish for, Morning Sedition was a comedy show, drawing on the talents of a roster of talented writers and performers including Jim Earl and Kent Jones and cohost Marc Maron.

(Starting January, the other Morning Sedition cohost, Mark Riley, a solid news and radio veteran, will do a 5am-7am show in the revamped Air America morning lineup, with the very solid Rachel Maddow filling the 7am-9am slot. I've become very fond of Riley, and I may listen to him. But I doubt that I'll feel I have to listen to him.)

It was great stuff, a brilliant and complex, splendidly entertaining and informative show that had an amazingly loyal following. I hear complaints that the ratings were bad, and the affiliates wouldn't carry the show, but you think even the most cretinous brain-dead empty-suit exec would be embarrassed to spout such screeching drivel. I mean, aren't those the suit's jobs?

Does it make sense to complain about ratings when you haven't brought the show to the attention of the people who might listen? I'm not a marketing guy, but when the world seems to be divided between people who love the show and won't miss it and people who've never heard of it and have no idea what it is, I reckon there's a huge problem that may have nothing to do with the show itself.

As for the affiliates, this is a real consideration. But again, isn't that the network suit's job? Would anyone care to guess how many of the affiliates wouldn't have wanted to carry Al Franken's show if Al Franken weren't Al Franken? Isn't it the suit's job to, you know, sell the damned product? Unless of course he doesn't have a clue himself about the product he's trying to sell.

Meanwhile, I'm left thinking about a lesson that was driven home for me some years ago when New York lost what may have been its most exciting experiment in newspapering, New York Newsday. It was a lively paper with a staggering array of column-writing talent (the likes of Murray Kempton and Jimmy Breslin and Sydney Schanberg and Gail Collins and Pete Hamill, off the top of my head). The paper was on the verge of reaching financial break-even and going into profitability in astonishingly short time for such a venture. But a pooh-bah in Los Angeles decided to pull the plug.

The lesson was this: It takes a remarkable conglomeration of talent to create a living organism like New York Newsday or Morning Sedition, but no more than one smug know-it-all to destroy it.

In re. U.S.A. v. George W. Bush: Ladies, would you give this guy a handjob? (For that matter, any takers among the guys out there?)

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi has performed something close to a vivisection of the president's "barnburning four-speech 'National Strategy for Victory in Iraq' tour" in his naughty report on Chimpy's "Magical Victory Tour" in the year-end double issue. [Note: DWT has been trying to teach me how to do links, and here is my first effort. By way of backup, I'll also post the article as a comment.]

How can you not love this description:

Bush in person always strikes me as the kind of guy who would ask a woman for a hand job at the end of a first date. He has days where he looks like she said yes, and days where the answer was no.

Today was one of his no days. He frowned, looking wronged, and grabbed the microphone. I pulled out my notebook . . .

A few minutes later, I felt like a hooker who's just blinked under a blanket with a prep-school virgin. Was that it? Is it over? It seemed to be; Bush was off the podium and slipping down the first line of the crowd, pumping hands for a minute and then promptly Snagglepussing toward the left exit. By the time I made it five rows into the crowd, he had vanished into a sea of Secret Servicemen, who whisked him away, presumably to return him posthaste to his formaldehyde tank.

Or this:

God bless George Bush. The Middle East is in flames, and how does he answer the call? He rolls up to the side entrance of a four-star Washington hotel, slips unobserved into a select gathering of the richest fatheads in his dad's Rolodex, spends a few tortured minutes exposing his half-assed policies like a campus flasher and then ducks back into his rabbit hole while he waits for his next speech to be written by paid liars.

If that isn't leadership, what is?

Or this:

All partisan sniping aside, this latest counteroffensive from the White House says just about everything you need to know about George Bush and the men who work for him.

Up until now this president's solution to everything has been to stare into the cameras, lie and keep on lying until such time as the political problem disappears. And now, unable to comprehend that while political crises may wilt in the face of such tactics, real crises do not, he and his team are responding to this first serious feet-to-the-fire Iraq emergency in the same way they always have -- with a fusillade of silly, easily disprovable bullshit. Bush and his mouthpieces continue to try to obfuscate and cloud the issue of why we're in Iraq, and they do so not only selectively but constantly, compulsively, like mental patients who can't stop jacking off in public. They don't know the difference between a real problem and a political problem, because to them, there is no difference. What could possibly be worse than bad poll numbers?

I really can't add anything to the above, but our Matt can. You should really read the whole piece.

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Frist: It's hard to take Sen. Dr. Bill seriously when his reputation (and record) precedes him

Somehow Sen. Dr. Bill Frist or his people got the idea that I am in some way, shape or form sympathetic to them. For a while now I have been receiving the senator-doctor's slimy, mendacious PAC e-mails. I'm always tempted to delete them unopened, but then curiosity gets the better of me. I always regret it.

This time out, I'm left wondering--as I often am these days with the wacky pronouncements that come from the Loony Right--how much of this nutso drivel the loon-doctor actually believes himself. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First, read for yourself:


From: Bill Frist, M.D. (VOLPAC)
Subject: Frist: Historic Education Legislation Passed
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 2005 21:09:08

Imagine an America in which cost is no longer an obstacle on the path to a college education ... an America in which our children enter the global marketplace fully equipped to compete with their overseas counterparts. In China. In India.

Today, we took a dramatic step toward creating that America.

I’m proud to announce the passage of my SMART Grants legislation. SMART grants are an entirely new aid initiative, aimed at promoting math and science and ensuring that our children are prepared for the global economy of tomorrow.

As it stands, China and India are generating scientists and engineers at an alarming pace, while America falls dangerously behind. Consider:

• U.S. 12th graders recently performed below the international average for 21 countries on a test of general knowledge in math and science.
• In 2004, China graduated about 500,000 engineers, India 200,000 and America just 70,000.
• By 2010, more than 90% of all scientists and engineers in the world will be living in Asia.

If these numbers don’t alarm you, they should.

But today, we begin to reverse that trend. Now more than ever, we MUST secure America’s competitiveness in the global market. My SMART grants will provide Pell Grant eligible students (low-income students who already receive $4,050 per year for college):

• $4,000 grants per year for maintaining a 3.0 GPA and majoring in math, science, engineering, technology or foreign languages critical to national security during their third and fourth years of study at a higher education institution.

That means that a low-income student will obtain up to $4,000 yearly to pay for the costs of college if they choose to major in those fields – in addition to the $4,050 they receive yearly in Pell Grants. The result? An average savings of 52% on the overall cost of college.

Rest assured, this is NOT new spending. It’s paid for … as part of the deficit reduction bill.

The simple fact is, if we don’t start looking to the future, America will be left behind. The goal of this legislation is to encourage more American students to major in these crucial subjects so that we can produce a workforce prepared to compete – and succeed – in the global marketplace.

Leading on principle, this is how we’re going to secure a more COMPETITIVE America.

Education will determine our future. And – despite the Democrats’ best attempts at obstruction – today marks a new day for American education.

More to follow on this legislation in the days ahead. In the meantime, I hope you will visit my blog to voice your opinion on this legislation, to do so please click here.

Bill Frist, M.D.


Well, I mean, really now!

Has any individual done more to stupidify this country than the senator-doctor? At times like this he likes to play the concerned scientist, but this is a man who has put himself at the forefront of the most massive and bloody assault on science and the acquisition of knowledge and understanding in the history of the human race, a man who, since his accession to political power, has sought at every opportunity to command the loyalty of benighted Americans who are crusading to doom their children--and, alas, everyone else's--to a lifetime of ignorance and imbecility.

There is plenty of ground for concern about the country's failure to produce adequate numbers of scientists. I wish there were more public discussion of the issue, but NYT columnist Tom Friedman hasn't had much journalistic company here. Sen. Dr. Bill's enlistment in the cause might be welcome, even with the lies and slash-and-burn partisanship. It's hard to forget who he is, though, and surely one reason for the Science Gap is the sneering, contemptuous, often violently dismissive attitude toward science on the part of the very politico-religious forces the senator-doctor aspires to lead to glory. (Does anyone remember the Terry Schiavo debacle? I imagine the senator-doctor hopes not.)

The notion that it's the Democrats who have presented obstacles to educational opportunity is . . . hmm, how to put his? . . . well, a grotesque lie, a lie of almost psychopathic proportions. Even this unprecedented initiative that the senator-doctor is trumpeting is by his own acknowledgment a glorified form of Pell grant. And shall we look at the record to see who supports the Pell program and who has been systematically gutting it? As I understand it, those Pell grants that the senator-doctor refers so confidently to students receiving are catastrophically underfunded, to the point of being virtually un-funded.

And when he assures his readers, presumably people who can smell a "tax-and-spend liberal" a mile away, "Rest assured, this is NOT new spending. It’s paid for … as part of the deficit reduction bill," well, if he tried to get away with saying this under oath, I'll bet any halfway competent prosecutor could nail his sorry hide for perjury.

I suppose it's possible that this initiative could nevertheless have solid educational merit. It's just so hard to take seriously when it comes from the likes of Sen. Dr. Bill.

Boy, all these rules kinda take the fun out of messengering stuff, don't they? (And aren't transit strikes supposed to be fun?)

Having gotten through my personal e-mail, I ventured into the office system and found this from our office manager:

"Due to the strike, our messenger services are very limited. They are not doing car jobs or walking jobs. They do have bike messengers available but only for packages that are under 3 pounds and envelope or pouch size. BUT, the receiver must guarantee that they will be open late since there is no guaranteed time for delivery. Packages will be delivered the same day but at no scheduled time."

K

Bulletin: Chimpy's wise counsel to Arik Sharon

Sifting further through the morning e-mail, I found this nugget:

U.S. President George W. Bush told Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to eat less, work less and exercise more in a phone call yesterday following Sharon's release from the hospital after treatment for a mild stroke, a government statement said.

At my desk before 9am, in time to pass on a DNC missive passed on by DWT: Howard Dean socks it to Chimpy the Snoop (or is it Snoopy the Chimp?)

Not that anyone should care, but on Day Two of the NYC transit strike I ventured out into the sub-freezing cold and actually got to work via my "backup plan"! Left home shortly after 7:10am and was at my desk at 8:40, at a cost of only $4, roughly two and a half times my normal commute. (Exercise gained hiking for an hour through frigid morning cold: priceless.) I've bought tickets for three more such trips.

In the morning e-mail I found this post from DWT as he passed through Madrid. I'm sure he would want to share it. (Of course I may find that he already has!)

You know, if Governor Dean keeps this up, in time the mainstream media will have to start acknowledging that he's our only major political figure who always speaks to the point and always make sense.

Won't they?

K


In a message dated 12/20/05 4:39:23 PM, EakesP@dnc.org writes:


Washington, DC - Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean today issued a radio actuality on the recently discovered program President Bush authorized to spy on Americans. In the actuality, Dean highlights the fact that "the Bush Administration's secret program to spy on the American people reminds Americans of the abuse of power during the dark days of President Nixon and Vice President Agnew," and calls on President Bush to be "truthful with the American people."

The actuality contrasts the latest revelations of abuse of power coming from the Bush Administration with contradictory statements the President made one year ago when he said that a wiretap "requires a court order" and assured that nothing had changed.

To listen to the audio, click on the link below:

http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/democratic1.download.akamai.com/8082/audio/20051220_Dean_Audio.mp3


"Democrats are serious about fighting terrorists, and the American people deserve a President and Vice President who understand that we can protect our liberty and our freedom AND keep America safe.

"President Bush's secret program to spy on the American people reminds Americans of the abuse of power during the dark days of President Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew. Why is it that President Bush went in front of the American people and said that a wiretap 'requires a court order,' after having approved a wiretap program without a court order two years earlier.

"From paying journalists to write positive stories, to allowing lobbyists like Jack Abramoff to peddle influence, to leaking the
identity of a covert CIA operative in a time of war, the Republican Party's culture of corruption has to end now.

"The President claims Congress had the same intelligence in the run up to the Iraq War, but that turned out not to be true. The President claims that leaders in Congress were briefed about the program to spy on the American people, but that turned out not to be true either. It's time for the President to be truthful with the American people.

"And while the President yesterday called the leak of his secret program to spy on the American people 'shameful' he hasn't applied the same standards to denounce the leaking of a CIA Agent's identity in a time of war.

"How can President Bush call the spy program leak shameful, while Karl Rove is still on the White House payroll, and still has his top secret security clearance?

"What's really shameful is the double standard. This is an abuse of power. It's un-American, and it's unacceptable.

"Americans need a President who will keep them safe and enforce the law; we don't need a big brother.

"Together, America can do better."

BUSH THEN AND NOW:

THEN

Bush: Wiretaps "Require a Court Order." "Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires -- a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so. It's important for our fellow citizens to understand, when you think Patriot Act, constitutional guarantees are in place when it comes to doing what is necessary to protect our homeland, because we value the Constitution." [President Bush, 4/20/04, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/04/20040420-2.html ]

To listen to this audio, click here:

http://a9.g.akamai.net/7/9/8082/v001/democratic1.download.akamai.com/8082/audio/20051220_Bush_2004_Wiretapcomment.mp3


NOW

Bush: I Authorized Secret Wiretap Program Without Going Through the Courts. "To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks. So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorized the interception of international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations. ...This program has targeted those with known links to al Qaeda. I've reauthorized this program more than 30
times since the September the 11th attacks, and I intend to do so for so long as our nation is -- for so long as the nation faces the continuing threat of an enemy that wants to kill American citizens." [President Bush, 12/19/05,
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2005/12/20051219-2.html ]

Greetings from transit-free NYC (where not trying to get to work at least made it easier for me to pick up a package at the post office)

As you may have heard, here in the Big Apple just now we're having some no-mass-transit days, the exact number to be determined. Our transit workers have gone on strike for the first time in 25 years, and only the third time ever.

We New Yorkers depend on our subways and buses to a degree that folks elsewhere may not appreciate. Personally, I opted out of Day One of the jamboree, except for such of the wall-to-wall TV coverage as I watched. I was already planning to use my next-to-last available sick day today. In my office, as in many others across this great land, December is "use it or lose it" season when it comes to "paid time off" days. And I don't mean to give up any PTO days if I can help it.

Why, I may even use that last sick day tomorrow. If the strike goes on, however, I will have to resort to my backup plan. This involves walking uptown about a mile, then crossing a bridge into the Bronx, squeezing into a presumably packed Metro-North commuter train, and then walking another 15 or 20 minutes from Grand Central Station to my office. Not to mention doing the whole thing in reverse to get home.

But then, at least I have a backup plan.

(Yes, I'm afraid I'm about to indulge in some shaggy-dog-style rambling. But if it's any consolation, eventually there will be some predictably leftish screeching about politics and those goddamn plutocrats and governmental and quasi-governmental cronies and hacks.)

I know from the experience of 9/11 that walking the distance isn't a realistic option. That day, after leaving my office at 32nd Street, I made it as far up Broadway as 103rd Street--en route to 189th--when I heard announcements emanating from the IRT subway station below which said that subway service, which had been totally shut down in the city, was about to resume on "my" line, the no. 1 Broadway local.

The final leg of the trip turned out to be not nearly as effortless as might have been imagined, but it sure beat more walking. And if you do the math, you'll notice that I hadn't even reached the halfway point!

Of course, if there had been no alternative, I would have had no choice but to trudge onward. At least then I would have been home, though. Doing the complete slog to get to work, and then doing it again to get home, and repeating it every day . . . sorry, but this really doesn't seem in the cards, especially at temperatures that rose today from the high 20s into the low 30s.

The 1980 transit strike, which featured then-Mayor Ed ("The Great Gasbag") Koch walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, was much more conveniently scheduled for April.

I hope it will come as small surprise that the Transit Workers' Union is being simply creamed in the media coverage, while the Metropolitan Transportation Authority gets a free pass.

(The MTA, you need to know, is a quasi-governmental authority that is basically controlled by the governor of New York State, in the present instance "Tall George" Pataki, who has stocked it generously with bottom-feeding political hacks and cronies. Now, I don't mean to be overly hard on "Tall George," but what can you do? I mean, the guy--yet another Yale product, please note--has been governor for what feels like a hundred years, and tallness still seems to be his only distinguishing quality. Unless you count boundless cynical opportunism. I'm inclined to count it, but that could be just me.)

So it doesn't seem to matter that for years now the MTA has screwed its workers at every opportunity, while the governor was willing to give away the store to other unions whose support he craved at reelection time, and even Mayor Michael Bloomberg (you'll never guess which bridge he was photographed walking across this morning), who fancies himself a tough labor negotiator, has never asked for the kinds of concessions that were presented to the TWU as a fait accompli. Some cynical commentators have had the nerve to suggest that the TWU makes an easy target for gutless and self-serving pols because its membership is so overwhelmingly made up of people of color.

Meanwhile, the MTA has managed for the second year in a row to "spend down" a surplus that materialized unexpectedly in the midst of the humongous budget deficits that have given us two recent rounds of giant fare hikes, with another supposedly coming sooner rather than later. (It's hard to keep track of MTA budget numbers, since it appears that the agency keeps a different set of books for every purpose, and it appears further that the numbers made available for public perusal are, you know, sort of made up for this purpose.)

This time the MTA, God love 'em, managed to make a windfall of some $1 billion go bye-bye just in time for the labor negotiations! The coincidences just keep piling up!

Naturally the sore-headed transit workers have suggested that it's not so much of a coincidence. The MTA is never shy about making budgetary disasters an integral part of contract negotiations, expecting the workers to roll with the fiscal punches. Apparently, however, management's official position is that, by contrast, financial news of a positive cast is none of the damn workers' damn business.

Make no mistake, whatever pathetic contract the TWU eventually "squeezes" out, the workers are screwed. In addition to suffering the usual financial hardships of a strike (and there isn't even relief from their union, since the national isn't supporting the strike), the state law that forbids strikes by public workers calls for penalties of two days' pay for every day of work missed--and various other fines can be levied as well.

Even here in the heart of Blue State Country, only glimmerings of the workers' side reach public attention. Nevertheless, in this morning's Times, in a piece that delusionally portrays the transit workers as bullyingly flexing their mighty muscle, the writer does note that

the very conditions of their job also grind them down and generate resentment, said Marian Swerdlow, a sociologist and the author of "Underground Woman," a memoir of her four years as a subway conductor.

"The working conditions are more physically onerous, the treatment by managers more disrespectful, and the abuse from the public more hurtful, than any other group of public workers in the city experiences," Dr. Swerdlow said.

Of course when you dip into the saturation TV quasi-coverage, you see these poor souls demeaned by most everyone from know-little street reporters to know-not-much-more talking heads to the august likes of the aforementioned Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki as vile and greedy Snidely Whiplashes who have willfully and gleefully set out to steal Christmas from us honest, hard-working folk.

Amazingly, for once George W. Bush doesn't seem to come into the picture at all! Unless you count all the energy that he and the people who installed him in the White House have spent all these years demeaning people who work for a living, and you connect this to the climate in which it is so easy to vilify people who aren't asking for much more than to be treated with a modicum of respect.

(Once again, I'm inclined to count it. But once again, that could be just me.)

Jonathan Alter on "Snoopgate" (a "Web-exclusive commentary"--I hope he plans to say something IN Newsweek)

Bush’s Snoopgate
The president was so desperate to kill The New York Times’ eavesdropping story, he summoned the paper’s editor and publisher to the Oval Office. But it wasn’t just out of concern about national security.
WEB-EXCLUSIVE COMMENTARY

By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
Updated: 6:17 p.m. ET Dec. 19, 2005

Dec. 19, 2005 - Finally we have a Washington scandal that goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power. President Bush came out swinging on Snoopgate—he made it seem as if those who didn’t agree with him wanted to leave us vulnerable to Al Qaeda—but it will not work. We’re seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator, or in his own mind, no doubt, like Abraham Lincoln during the Civil War.

No wonder Bush was so desperate that The New York Times not publish its story on the National Security Agency eavesdropping on American citizens without a warrant, in what lawyers outside the administration say is a clear violation of the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. I learned this week that on December 6, Bush summoned Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger and executive editor Bill Keller to the Oval Office in a futile attempt to talk them out of running the story. The Times will not comment on the meeting,
but one can only imagine the president’s desperation.

The problem was not that the disclosures would compromise national security, as Bush claimed at his press conference. His comparison to the damaging pre-9/11 revelation of Osama bin Laden’s use of a satellite phone, which caused bin Laden to change tactics, is fallacious; any Americans with ties to Muslim extremists—in fact, all American Muslims, period—have long since suspected that the U.S. government might be listening in to their conversations. Bush claimed that “the fact that we are discussing this program is helping the enemy.” But there is simply no evidence, or even reasonable presumption, that this is so. And rather than the leaking being a “shameful act,” it was the work of a patriot inside the government who was trying to stop a presidential power grab.

No, Bush was desperate to keep the Times from running this important story—which the paper had already inexplicably held for a year—because he knew that it would reveal him as a law-breaker. He insists he had “legal authority derived from the Constitution and congressional resolution authorizing force.” But the Constitution explicitly requires the president to obey the law. And the post 9/11 congressional resolution authorizing “all necessary force” in fighting terrorism was made in clear reference to military intervention. It did not scrap the Constitution and allow the president to do whatever he pleased in any area in the name of fighting terrorism.

What is especially perplexing about this story is that the 1978 law set up a special court to approve eavesdropping in hours, even minutes, if necessary. In fact, the law allows the government to eavesdrop on its own, then retroactively justify it to the court, essentially obtaining a warrant after the fact. Since 1979, the FISA court has approved tens of thousands of eavesdropping requests and rejected only four. There was no indication the existing system was slow—as the president seemed to claim in his press conference—or in any way required extra-constitutional action.

This will all play out eventually in congressional committees and in the United States Supreme Court. If the Democrats regain control of Congress, there may even be articles of impeachment introduced. Similar abuse of power was part of the impeachment charge brought against Richard Nixon in 1974.

In the meantime, it is unlikely that Bush will echo President Kennedy in 1961. After JFK managed to tone down a New York Times story by Tad Szulc on the Bay of Pigs invasion, he confided to Times editor Turner Catledge that he wished the paper had printed the whole story because it might have spared him such a stunning defeat in Cuba.

This time, the president knew publication would cause him great embarrassment and trouble for the rest of his presidency. It was for that reason—and less out of genuine concern about national security—that George W. Bush tried so hard to kill the New York Times story.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.

Would it be possible to impeach the president and the vice president at the same time?

This question comes from a European-born friend who is mostly resident in the States, and keeps a jaundiced eye on U.S. politics.

I suspect that a lot of us over on this side of the political spectrum go back and forth these days between the unshakable pessimism that's been ground into us these last five or six years and a giddy, almost manic euphoria at the possibilities that are opening up for the 2006 elections. There is at least the chance that, on the strength of the "performance" of the Republicans in their demonstration of one-party government, hardly any of their number will be able to get elected dog-catcher next year.

I bring this up because DWT, in his effervescing-about-2006 moments, fantasizes about a real, live impeachment if the Democrats retake the House of Representatives. Not impeachment-and-conviction, mind you. Even if the Democrats should recapture the Senate, he doesn't have much faith in nominal Democrats like the Nelsons. But impeachment nonetheless.

Of course our Chimpy has the best impeachment insurance money can buy--and Dick Cheney, our one and only veep, doesn't come cheap. Which brings us back to my friend's question. I'm sure there are technical problems with simultaneous management of two proceedings that are in most respects independent. But a lot of the evidence would surely apply to both malefactors, and if you can have joint trials in ordinary criminal matters, why not in this?

Does anybody know whether this is possible?

It's something to think about, anyway.

However you define "caught," more and more Republicrooks are it, which creates an etiquette problem for their "left behind" brethren

Tonight I switched off the surprisingly interesting Falcons-Bears game to take a look at The Lost Prince on PBS's Masterpiece Theatre. But instead, there--accompanied by assurances that regular programming would be seen in its entirety afterward--was Gwen What's-her-name informing us that our Chimp-in-Chief was about to barge into our living rooms to spew a new round of lies about Iraq. (Okay, she may not have used those exact words, but that was the gist.)

For as much of the debacle as my stomach could stand (it's tough, but not that tough), I got the impression that Chimpy is feeling proud and happy to have an Iraq policy at long last. Never mind for a moment that it's mostly disinformation, lies and rank imbecility; is it hopelessly churlish to wish that the li'l devil had gotten himself an Iraq policy before he launched his psychopathic orgy of violence and mayhem?

It will be interesting to see whether any of the country is swayed by the latest pack of lies and stupidities. Of course there's the wacked-out 30 percent that will apparently give a giddy Alfred E. Newman-like thumbs-up to any imbecility or evil that's excreted out of the doodyhead's orifices. This is too bad, because the future governability of the country may depend on the possibility of detoxifying the presently poisonous rancor of the Way-Far-Gone Right.

But the immediate problem is restoring some awareness and sanity to the broad middle of the country. And they may not be so easily swayed by this obvious attempt to divert attention from (a) the ruination brought about, at home and abroad, by the Bush administration's catastrophic policies and (b) the rampaging crime wave being exposed on the part of so many of the people who helped put this gang of loons and thieves in power and the people who have latched onto the profit-making opportunities.

In a chat before DWT winged off for Morocco, he objected to my reference to a growing number of Republicrooks being "caught," insisting it depends on how you define caught. I had to concede the point. What I meant, I said, was the actual state of prosecutors having the goods on you. He objected again that this definition applies to only the tiniest fringe of the R-crooks. In the grand scheme of R-crookery, he ventured, "Duke" Cunningham is not only small potatoes but an embarrassing criminal nincompoop--especially alongside the real champions of corruption like Duncan Hunter.

DownWithTyranny readers don't need a roll call of the titans of R-crookery. You've heard the names, over and over. (New visitors are invited to stroll through the DWT archives for some of the eye-popping details.) And it's true that hardly any of them are currently preparing their criminal defenses.

But that's just for now. I'm guessing that even Duncan Hunter isn't sleeping so well these days. Even allowing for the fact that all the U.S. attorneys are Bush appointees, there are limits to how much and how far they can look away. And once this process has begun, it has a way of snowballing. As the lower-level crooks spill their guts in hope of striking some kind of deal with "the man," even politically appointed prosecutors can't ignore where their investigations have taken them.

It is, of course, from the self-righteous extreme right that we've heard so much over the years about "law and order" and "values" and "restoring honesty and decency to government." And what we've gotten instead is a bunch of lowlifes so thoroughgoingly dishonest and personally corrupt that their motto might as well be "How can you think you've gone too far if nobody's stopped you?"

On the human level, you have to feel for the still-unindicted R-crooks, who have to figure out how to deal with their fallen brethren. One day they could rally behind their esteemed colleague Randy "Duke" Cunningham; the next day--and I'm thinking of the day when he confessed to the portion of his criminal activity for which prosecutors had him dead to rights--they didn't know him. They were shocked. Of course such a horrible person must be punished.

But how do you deal, say, with Tom DeLay? I gather that more and more of his House cohorts are already distancing themselves from him, and have no wish to have him back in the House leadership, whatever the outcome of the legal matters for which he so far stands formally accused. But you don't hear a lot of public repudiation, and this is understandable. Who would knowingly provoke the wrath of the Hammer, even in his present wounded state? This is a man who considers punishing his enemies a moral obligation.

What happens, though, when indictments start being brought for some of DeLay's vast expanse of criminal activities? And when people higher and higher up start cutting deals that incriminate him, and the noose starts tightening around him enough so that even DWT might concede that he's "caught"? I think it will be breathtaking to see how quickly the "left behind" R-crooks dissociate themselves from the Clawless Hammer. Never did trust the guy, we're going to be hearing.

Actually, as in so many other matters of cowardice, cravenness and flight from responsibility, a trail has already been blazed by the Chimp of Chimps himself. Yes, our very own George W. Bush. Remember how he reacted when the whole Enron scam was unraveling at the feet of his old buddy "Kenny Boy" Lay? The same Kenny Boy who played such a large role in installing him in the White House? And remember how GWB stood by his old buddy when the Enron jig was finally up? Hmm, barely recognized the name, he said. Oh yes, that Ken Lay, he said. Oh, but he was a friend of Ann Richards', not mine, Chimpy declared.

Well, sometimes what goes around comes around. Maybe there will come a time when R-crooks who escape the prosecutors' clutches will ask you to repeat that name--what was it, George U. Butch? Nope, can't say as I recollect the fellow, but if he did the awful things they say he did, why sure, he should be punished.

[Footnote: I gave up onThe Lost Prince after not too long a while. Sad as it might have been to learn about the poor mentally retarded prince whose grandfather and father were kings of England, at least that poor little fellow didn't grow up to be president of the United States.]

Remember that Democratic mayor in Minnesota who endorsed GWB, then lost his reelection fight? Our pal Isaac tells us more about Randy Kelly

DWT has persuaded a pal--of his and mine--of many ideological wars' standing to share a bit of his special journalistic perspective with DownWithTyranny readers.

Isaac drifted into journalism in the Twin Cities after he was forcibly drifted out of his previous employment by the economic forces that would eventually coalesce into the Mighty Don't-Even-Let-'em-Eat Cake Economic Engine brought to us by the people who also gave us George W. Bush as president of the U.S.A. He discovered that there was an enormous opportunity for an actual journalist in town--namely, actually covering government and politics there, rather than just lightly rewriting the pols' press handouts.

I wish he could share with you some of his splendiferous tales of raising havoc among state and local muckety-mucks by just reporting what the yo-yos said and did. He has been known to pull such dastardly tricks as attending sessions of the state legislature and telling his readers what happened there! In fact, maybe he will share some of those tales. Trust me, you won't know whether to laugh or cry.

Meanwhile, he has more to tell us about the downfall of one of the scummier specimens to adorn our political landscape in recent times, outgoing St. Paul Mayor Randy Kelly. Take it away, Isaac.--Ken


Last year, GOP pundits were busting their buttons over a Democratic mayor of a large city endorsing George W. Bush for "reelection." I leave it to you why I put that word in quotation marks.

Anyway, the mayor in question was Randy Kelly, of St. Paul, MN. And he lost big in his reelection bid last month. That was widely reported nationwide, but there was a lot left out of the reports I saw. I don't think it was just the endorsement, but also missteps Kelly and his campaign made afterward. GOP pundits were pretty quiet about the aftermath of Randy Kelly's endorsement.

First, the primary election in September didn't get much coverage outside of the area that I remember.

Kelly had two major challengers: Chris Coleman, a fellow Democrat and St. Paul city council member, and Elizabeth Dickinson of the Green Party ( I've met Elizabeth and like her a lot.)

Elizabeth pulled in 19% of the vote and shocked a lot of people, especially since Kelly only pulled in 24%. Coleman got about 52%, with the rest scattered among the also-rans.

Kelly put out a campaign statement that Coleman's poor showing just demonstrated that he was incapable of energizing his liberal base, ignoring the fact that the totals also showed that Kelly hadn't been doing a lot of energizing of his own. Actually, as we saw later, Kelly did do a good deal of energizing; it was just that he fired up the people who wanted him gone.

The word was out that the election was going to be a referendum on his Bush endorsement, at least according to people responding to pollsters. Randy Kelly's abrasive "my way or the highway" style of leadership, or conservative leanings weren't doing him any favors with voters either. Kelly is as much a Democrat as Zell Miller or Joe Lieberman.

John Kerry carried solidly Democratic St. Paul last year with around 62% (or so) of the vote. Kelly had his work cut out for him, so what did he do between the September primaries and the November general elections?

1. He ran a Republican-styled campaign, repeatedly referring to his fellow Democratic opponent as a "liberal." Having his inexperienced 24-year-old son as his campaign manager probably didn't help him a lot either.

2. Holding down taxes was his main issue.

3. He sent out campaign literature featuring him being buddy-buddy with Republicans US Senator Norm Coleman (no relation to Chris) and Governor Tim Pawlenty. This was supposed to show how he can reach across the aisle and work with the other party. What it showed people, however, was that he gets along with Republicans better than Democrats.

4. His endorsements didn't include any Democrats of any consequence. In fact, he had support from Republicans former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senator Coleman and Governor Pawlenty.

He did get an endorsement from one Democrat, or rather putative Democrat: former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who also endorsed Bush last year.

5. On the same day Ed Koch came to St. Paul to do a fundraiser for Kelly (at a mansion where the papers said around 50 people attended), John Kerry was in town stumping for Coleman. The papers said around 700 people were there, and early on a Monday morning.

6. There were reports that Kelly's campaign had paid a Karl Rove-related firm $40,000 for help.

7. Late in September, Kelly called a press conference where he said he was going to make an "important announcement" about the campaign. Instead, the place was packed with shills, and it was obvious that he had assembled the crowd for a campaign photo op. The media didn't appreciate it at all, and I was not able to find one positive story about him after that.

8. Kelly's "important announcement" was that he endorsed Bush "on principle" (I'll say more about that in a minute) and that people should vote from "hope, not anger." In reality, most people were planning to vote out of the "hope" of getting rid of Randy Kelly, and would have been "angry" if he held on for another term.

9. The more Kelly talked, the more he came across as a Republican. That had been a problem for him through his term. In fact, one thing that hadn't been noted much was that he was such a Democrat In Name Only, the GOP didn't run anyone against him.

The more he insisted he was a Democrat, the more he acted like a Republican. I think he misread Norm Coleman's experience. Norm had been the mayor before Kelly and was a Democrat who switched sides and was reelected anyway. The difference was that Norm was upfront about it, and enough people accepted his being forthright that he squeaked through to be reelected. A lot of people wondered why Kelly didn't just become a Republican.

He also seemed to forget that in 2001, he only won by about 400 votes, and therefore never had overwhelming support, or a mandate. He just acted like he did.

But the most important thing may have been how Kelly handled the criticisms about the Bush endorsement.

When he was asked about it--and he was asked a lot-- he stood his ground, saying he had done the right thing endorsing Bush. But he didn't stick with the same justification. One day it was that his endorsement was because it would be unwise to change commanders-in-chief in the middle of a war. This ignored that support for the war in heavily Democratic St. Paul was iffy at best.

Then he floated the notion that it was always a good idea to have friends in Washington, forgetting that those "friends" still shorted St. Paul of federal funding, guaranteeing that property taxes had to go up in order to keep the city afloat. Kelly refused to call them taxes--he used words like "fees" when the subject came up.

What it boiled down to was that:

(a) Kelly was telling the voters they were wrong and he was right.

(b) It called into further question his judgment and his priorities.

I firmly believe that, while it may not have won him the election, he might have picked up some votes if he had admitted he had made an error in judgment, or apologized for having misjudged the situation so badly. He might have picked up some support if he had vowed to keep his constituents' concerns at the top of his list of things to do, and that he would do better in the future.

Instead, he insisted that a stupid thing he did was the right thing, and in the face of evidence to the contrary, he refused to back down or admit it had been a mistake.

In the end, Randy Kelly came across as a surrogate of the Bush administration, and that was a dumb association to hold onto in a solidly Democratic city.

In the end, on election day, Kelly lost 69-31%.

I wouldn't worry about ol' Randy though: It wouldn't surprise me to find out he has a cushy future ready and waiting in the Republican Party.


UPDATE

I sent Isaac the text of my intro to his piece on Randy Kelly, and he worried that I had oversold him:

I'm just a guy that thought the status quo of reporting was inadequate and could do better. In this case, I thought there was a good deal that went unreported in the national media. This isn't intended to be anything more than my take on the whole thing, rather than the definitive analysis.

Well, Isaac, I agree it's sad, even pathetic, that being "a guy that thought the status quo of reporting was inadequate and could do better" constitutes a special journalistic perspective, as I described yours. But that's the reality, isn't it? Now would you please get to work sharing some of those cases-in-point with DWT readers?

DOWN WITH TYRANNY IS GETTING ON THE MARRAKECH EXPRESS

In a few minutes I'm closing up the DWT Los Feliz editorial office for a few weeks while I get some r&r in Morocco. I started going there in 1969, loved it and have been going back ever since. The photo of me on a camel was taken a few years ago when Roland and I were wondering what it would be like to traverse the Sahara for 40-50 days to Timbuctou. After one day and one night with our camels we decided we'd wait 'til Timbuctou builds a reliable airport someday. This trip will be a lot less adventurous-- just Tangier, Fez, Marrakech, Essouira and Casablanca (and Casa just to catch our planes home and to eat at my favorite restaurant in Africa, the incredibly delicious Port du Peche).

I don't know how much blogging I'm going to get to do from over there-- if any (I'm not even bringing my laptop; just an iPod shuffle)-- but thank goodness Ken has volunteered, more or less, to keep the blog going while I'm away-- with some help from Helen and Isaac. At the rate they've been going, the art department will have something ready for me to put up when I get back in January.

Meanwhile, enjoy this awesome piece about the odious Ann Coulter from a fellow L.A.-blogger (but not if you're easily offended). Happy HOLIDAYS!!!!

REPUBLICROOK BILL FRIST STILL VERY MUCH IN THE RACE FOR THE TITLE: "MOST CORRUPT U.S. SENATOR"

Most people paying attention to this sort of thing have surely come to the conclusion by now that Tennessee Senator Bill Frist is not just an extremist in his politics but also extremely dishonest, unethical and, in all likelihood, destined for prison. Whether he's caught lying about how "blind" his blind trust is (not blind at all) or about his faith-based, fraudulent "diagnosis" of Terri Schiavo, the Senate Majority Leader is one nasty piece of work. (I mean that is an undoctored photograph of the man!)

So it should have surprised no serious Frist watchers when Associated Press reported that the inside stock trader has also been fiddling with his taxes-- BIG TIME!. Apparently the senior senator from Tennessee thought it was ok to use "charity" donations to defraud the government (the citizens and taxpayers). His so-called "AIDS charity," for example, was used to funnel almost half a million dollars into the hands of his corrupt political supporters as "consulting fees." Apparently the 18 donors who contributed the bulk of the $4.4 million to Frist's "charity" were helping him fund his partisan scams-- and all at the taxpayers' expense! Many of these corrupt organizations found this a convenient way to bribe the ethicless Frist, who had tremendous impact on their business before Congress (such as 3M, Eli Lilli, GoldmanSachs and Blue Cross). Frist was then able to transfer the untaxed loot to Far Right pseudo-religionist organizations with Republican extremist agendas and to family members of his political cronies.

According to the A.P. story "Political experts said both the size of [the] charity's big donations and its consulting fees raise questions about whether the tax-exempt group benefited Frist's political ambitions. 'One of the things people who are running for president try to do is keep their fundraising staff and political people close at hand. And one of the ways you can do that is by putting them in some sort of organization you run,' said Larry Noble, the government's former chief election lawyer who now runs the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics that studies fundraising. Kent Cooper, the Federal Election Commission's former disclosure chief, said the big donors' motives are also suspect. 'These tax deductible gifts were earmarked through Senator Frist,' Cooper said. 'They were raised in the political arena at the 2004 Republican Convention and the natural question is were they given to the Senate majority leader to gain favor or were they given for true charitable purposes?' Cooper said the consulting fees were 'excessively high' and the fact that they were 'paid to primarily political consultants also raises questions about the long-range strategic benefits for the 2008 presidential race.'"

MORE EVIDENCE THAT BUSH STOLE THE 2000 ELECTION-- AND WHAT ANOTHER FLORIDA COUNTY IS DOING ABOUT IT

WESH, the CBS-TV affiliate in Central Florida, ran a story this week that explains how simple it was to hack Florida's Diebold voting machines in 2000, which is exactly how Bush was able to claim he "won" that state-- and hence the national election-- even though he had far fewer votes than Al Gore, the man who actually was elected President in 2000. Under the innocuous title, "Elections Official: Some Voting Machines Could Be Hacked," WESH offers another underpinning to what all Americans who cared to look into it know: that Bush stole the presidential election in 2000.

"Voting machines used in four Central Florida counties might be flawed," the report starts. "There's new evidence that computer hackers could change election results without anyone knowing about it.
The supervisor of elections in Tallahassee tested voting machines several times over the last several months, and on Monday, his workers were able to hack into a voting machine and change the outcome. He said that same thing might have happened in Volusia County in 2000... In other words, someone could fix an election and no one would know."

"The expert that we used simply programmed it on his laptop in his hotel room," explained Ion Sancho, Leon County Supervisor of Elections, who started investigating the problem after watching the votes come in during the infamous 2000 presidential election. "In Volusia County precinct 216, a memory card added more than 200 votes to George W. Bush's total and subtracted 16,000 votes from Al Gore. Sancho is certain that this is exactly how Bush won so many more votes in Florida than were cast for him by actual voters. "Someone with access to the vote center in Volusia County put it on a memory card and uploaded it into the main system," Sancho said. Florida's crooked Secretary of State at the time was Katherine Harris. Aside for being responsible for Florida's elections, she was also Bush's Florida campaign manager. To this day Sancho said he's gotten no cooperation from either Diebold or from the Florida secretary of state's office.

Florida's Acting Secretary of State is a crooked partisan hack, eager to stamp out any remnants of democracy left in the state and award as many elections as feasible to Republicans. He claims he is "confident that those machines will carry on an election when they're used within the context of the security parameters that all supervisors follow."

WESH reports that these "concerns come on the heels of the resignation of Diebold CEO Wally O'Dell, a Republican fundraiser and staunch Bush supporter. Diebolds were used in Florida and Ohio in 2004, and skeptics are raising a lot of questions." 30 Florida counties have been using the Republican-controlled vote counting machines. (Keep in mind, particularly in light how completely Stalinist the Republican party has become in the last decade, Stalin's famous quote about elections: "Those who cast the votes decide nothing. Those who count the votes decide everything.")

The BradBlog has been all over this scandal and last week they reported that a second Florida county, Volusia, has joined Leon County in dumping Diebold. If counties in Ohio and the rest of Florida follow suit, we'll never have to worry about another bogus Republican "victory" again.

MISSOULIAN TO MONTANA'S CROOKED REPUBLICAN SENATOR CONRAD BURNS: TIME TO SAY GOODBYE

First Montana's Republican Senator Conrad Burns claimed he never met Jack Abramoff and wouldn't know him if he ran into him. Then when it was revealed that Burns was the single biggest recipient of the tainted loot Abramoff had swindled American Indian tribes out of-- some of it on the promise (which was kept) that Burns would intervene for one of the Michigan tribes-- Burns claimed he wouldn't give the money back because he had already spent it. And today when that was revealed as the ridiculous canard everyone knew it was, Burns raised the white flag and finally agreed to return the stolen money. He still claims he wasn't working for Abramoff but was just helping out his progressive Democratic senatorial chums-- who he has never helped with anything ever-- when he moved to assistant in the Michigan tribe's casino situation. But he was working for Abramoff. Abramoff didn't give Burns over $150,000 just because he's a loony right-wing extremist. For Abramoff it was a quid pro quo and Burns delivered. Today's MISSOULIAN published an editorial-- please imagine the strains of Andrea Bocelli's "Time to Say Goodbye"-- entitled "Time to pass the baton, Sen. Burns". Montana's most influential newspaper's opening doesn't auger well for the beleaguered, already unpopular Burns: "Montana Democrats have got the perfect candidate to help them take the U.S. Senate seat up for election next year away from the Republicans. His name is Conrad Burns." And it doesn't get any better as THE MISSOULIAN builds a watertight case for Burns' retirement.

"Burns himself recently told a Kalispell TV station," they remind us, "'This Abramoff guy is a bad guy. And he's indicted, and I hope he goes to jail and we never see him again. I wish he'd never been born.' Strong language, but not exactly soothing words about Burns' association with Abramoff and the revolving door that existed between the lobbyist's firm and the senator's own staff." [Not to mention all the money that flowed from Abramoff to Burns.] Burns is a two-bit crook and bribe taker, no better or worse than Randy "Duke" Cunningham or Republican Crime Boss Tom DeLay. He belongs in prison, not the U.S. Senate (and the Democrats have a superb candidate to replace him in John Tester. George W. Bush, as the leader of this corrupt political party, and as the putative president of the United States of America and it's chief law enforcement officer, should get to the bottom of these scandals by voluntarily promising not to grant pardons to anyone who lies in any of these investigations.


SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: WHAT DOES CONRAD BURNS CHARGE?

The BILLINGS GAZETTE reported yesterday how "Burns first pushed for a tribal school construction program sought by lobbyist Jack Abramoff's clients within two months of receiving $75,000 in campaign donations from the indicted lobbyist's tribal clients in 2002." Burns has been totally dishonest about this and new revelations show his deceptions coming apart at the seams. He has always claimed, rather ingenuously-- to say the least-- that he was just doing a favor for his pals Debbie Stabenaw and Carl Levin (2 progressive Democrats the viciously partisan Burns wouldn't ever consider helping with anything). He claimed his support for the $3 million grant Abramoff's wealthy Chippewa clients wanted came about because he wanted to help out the 2 Democrats, not because he was given $75,000. But, the GAZETTE reports "According to letters released by Burns and by Sen. Robert Byrd, D-W.Va., Burns began advocating for the program more than a month before he received official requests from the Michigan delegation for the money."

MEAN JEAN SCHMIDT CLAIMS PEOPLE ARE ASKING FOR HER HAND IN MARRIAGE

It doesn't matter what the topic at hand is; as soon as a conference call with the art department gets going someone always starts saying they have a new idea for a Mean Jean Schmidt picture. "But today," I plead, "is a positive day-- a day about Russ Feingold and Lois Murphy and Howard Dean and Jack Murtha, and Barbara Boxer, a day about heroic men and women fighting for the American ideals. I want positive, beautiful, glowing art today." But the art department only wants to talk about their new ideas for that damned Piece of Schmidt.

"Look, she is washed up... finito. The Republicans are soliciting other people to run against her in the primary. They never want to hear from her again. We will never need a picture of that crack whore again. Now let's talk about doing something with a little dignity."

So wasn't I surprised when Wednesday's copy of the CINCINNATI ENQUIRER finally arrives and... guess who's crawled out from under her rock! Wednesday was Bowzer's 2nd birthday. Bowzer is my friend Carlos' schnauzer; it was also Mean Jean Schmidt's 100 day anniversary in the Congress. I gave Bowzer (the schnauzer) a bone and the ENQUIRER decided to celebrate Mean Jean with a profile.

Although Schmidt hasn't been allowed to speak again in Congress since she made an ass of herself and was booed out of the well of the House with her psychotic raging and blatant-- quickly exposed-- lies about decorated war hero Jack Murtha on November 18, she claims that at a closed-door GOP caucus she was given a standing ovation and that several members proposed marriage to her. Presumably these would have been Mark Foley, David Dreier, Jim McCrery or any number of gay Republican hypocrites desperately looking for a beard before the next election. "It's amazing," she gushed, as shocked that anyone would want to marry her as everyone else is. "There have been three marriage proposals and lots of dates. They think I'm a hottie."

Other Republicans with a slightly more of a bona fide connection with objective reality have a different viewpoint. "She's an embarrassment to the district," said Chris Finney, a Cincinnati lawyer who led an anti-tax group in opposing Schmidt during the primary. "Her lack of sophistication, her lack of ability to serve is hitting her hard and I believe she will be part of the downfall of the Republicans in Congress." Two Republicans and two Democrats are interested in opposing her bid for re-election.

NEW POLL FINDS MOST AMERICANS THINK BUSH THE MOST WARLIKE AND INCOMPETENT PRESIDENT

National Qualitative Centers in Chicago released a poll today ranking presidents. On top of the highly acclaimed-- and much ballyhooed new release from Jib Jab today-- this is not news the hapless Bush wanted. On a day BushCo wants people to be talking about the Iraqi elections, even though the apparent winners are the pro-Iranians Shi'a who plan to establish a theocracy asap, the big news is Jib Jab, Feingold's defeat of Bush's unconstitutional "Patriot" Act, Bush's illegal wiretapping and the accidental release of terrorist chieftain Al Zarqawi. And now a poll that puts Bush in historical perspective.

According to the Reuters report "Bush ranks as the least popular and most bellicose of the last ten U.S. presidents, according to a new survey." 10? That means people like him even less than Nixon! Gross! (Well, of course, they should; as bad as Nixon was, Bush is 10 times worse-- and has much worse people around him. Agnew, for example, was just a lame crook. Cheney is a lame crook and a fascist warmonger. Which do you think is worse?)

"Only nine percent of the 662 people polled picked Bush as their favorite among the last 10 presidents. John F. Kennedy topped that part of the survey, with 26 percent, closely followed by Bill Clinton (25 percent) and Ronald Reagan (23 percent). Bush was also viewed as the most warlike president (43 percent), the worst for the economy (42 percent) and the least effective (33 percent)." You can fool some of the people some of the time...

FEINGOLD'S LEADERSHIP HANDS BUSH A HUGE DEFEAT IN THE SENATE. HATED "PATRIOT ACT" DE-RAILED IN BI-PARTISAN STRATEGY

The Senate finally came up with someone to make them do a little soul searching and help them find that they have enough collective cajones to stand up to BushCo's headlong rush into fascism. Wisconsin Democratic hero Russ Feingold, carefully put together a bipartisan coalition to defeat Bush's extension of the misnamed "Patriot Act." Enough Senators joined Feingold to prevent Bush's Forces of Darkness from imposing provisions that clearly infringe on basic, inalienable American freedoms dealing with privacy and liberty. Even hard right conservatives like Idaho's Larry Craig joined Feingold to offer Bush the worst congressional defeat of his miserable presidency.

The Bushites were not able to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a threatened filibuster by Feingold. The final vote was 52-47. Even Bush's right-arm in the Senate, opportunistic Majority Leader Bill Frist (currently under Federal investigation for financial crimes) changed his vote at the last minute when he realized Feingold would win. (The other Republicans Feingold was able to persuade to stand up for the Constitution were John Sununu, Larry Craig, Chuck Hagel and Lisa Murkowski.)


SATURDAY UPDATE-- FEINGOLD TO BUSH: "YOU'RE NOT KING, ASSHOLE" (BUT A LITTLE MORE POLITE)

You can read the whole report from BLOOMBERG here but the basic gist is that Bush illegally spied on Americans and Feingold called him out on it. "'We have a president, not a king, and that's the way he's talking,'' Feingold said in an interview with CNN. 'What he's doing, I believe, is illegal. And it's really quite a shocking moment in the history of our country.'''

GOD STRIKES DOWN TEXAS RIGHT-WING IMBECILE JOE BARTON. LUCKILY HE ISN'T DEPENDENT ON THE MEDICARE PROGRAM HE IS TRYING TO GUT

Joe Barton is a vicious right-wing partisan who, unfortunately for America, is the Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. God looked at his war against the middle and working class and decided to strike him down yesterday and his carcass was hauled out of Congress on a stretcher. Having been in Congress for over 20 years, Barton's philosophy of selfishness and every man for himself social Darwinism has done untold damage to those who the Son of God claimed would inherit the earth.

Although Barton has been on a crusade to destroy Medicare, his own unlimited health care is not impacted the way ordinary American taxpayers' health care is. Before God gave him a heart attack, Barton, who will probably survive in some vegetable-like state, was busy with his 2 current pet crusades: making sure there would not be funds for the elderly to pay emergency heating bills this winter and cutting Medicare programs for the poor. With God having made sure Barton is incapacitated, the bills will have to be postponed. The very last thing Barton had done before God caught up with him, was to try to insert a sneaky provision in a budget bill that would allow oil drilling in God's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

God has encouraged a military hero, David Harris to run against Barton in the 2006 congressional election. Barton, one of Tom DeLay's chief lieutenants, has been involved in nearly every congressional financial scandal of the last 5 years. No wonder God hates him and struck him down!

CNN ADDS TREACHEROUS RIGHT WING LOON BOB NOVAK TO THE UNEMPLOYMENT STATS

My old pal Susan's little brother Jon finally did CNN viewers a favor and took the logical step after right-wing propaganda-whore Bob Novak was suspended from the network 4 months ago. DING DONG... Novak's actual firing is effective as of New Year's Eve-- an excellent symbolic gesture for CNN-- but the "Prince of Darkness," as the extreme right-wing advocate of greed, selfishness and partisan mayhem likes to call himself, hasn't been allowed on the CNN airwaves since August when he stormed off the set screaming obscenities after being challenged on one of his countless lies. I wonder if Fox can use another ranting, raving extremist lunatic since they only have 665 and one more would be perfection for their master.

ALMOST ONE THIRD OF AMERICANS AGREE WITH BUSH THAT THE CONSTITUTION IS "JUST A GODDAMNED PIECE OF PAPER"

If you sign on to AOL this morning, one of the first things you see is a headline about how Bush secretly authorized clearly unconstitutional (sans judicial approval) wiretapping of American citizens. And there's a little poll asking if you agree or disagree with this latest outrage from BushCo to be exposed. 4% of the respondents are unsure and 66% realize that Bush's actions are utterly anti-American. But a full 30% of Americans are either too stupid to discern why this is a threat to our nation (and to themselves) or just like the idea because they hate America and what America stands for.

This isn't the first time Bush has expressed his deep contempt for-- and complete lack of understanding of-- the U.S. Constitution, a document an elected president, which he is clearly not, would be charged with upholding. How many years or decades will it take to mend all the serious damage Bush has done to our nation after he is rooted out of the White House?

LOIS MURPHY SHOULD WALK ALL OVER DELAY-BUSH PUPPET JIM GERLACH IN '06

I'm not sure how I first came across Lois Murphy. Probably Howard Dean told me about what an exceptional candidate she was. It was a couple years ago and I was a dual resident, at least in theory, of Pennsylvania and California and after learning a bit about Lois I was happy to make a contribution to her campaign. I recently sold my home in PA but when Lois called me 2 weeks ago to tell me she would be in L.A. I said I would love to meet her in person. That's what I did yesterday-- in the midst of all the craziness in preparing for leaving for my trip to Morocco this weekend. And am I ever glad I did!

I mean on paper Lois Murphy is a GREAT candidate-- progressive, smart, informed... all that stuff. But the Lois you meet in person is even more incredible! First impression: can someone this good looking and this genuine and... well nice be an effective member of Congress? Then she starts talking and you see an incredibly dedicated, passionate, completely informed candidate who could make an actual difference in our government. I like to think I keep up with everything (you know, at least for the blog), but there were no gaps in Lois' knowledge, I'll tell you that.

And one of the things that impressed me most about her was the glimmer of a real leader. You know how I'm always bellyaching about how Hillary Clinton is such a non-leader? Lois seems like the polar opposite to me-- someone who goes out and learns all the facts, processes them through the kind of moral compass I wish every member of Congress possessed, and then stands and fights for what's right.

Last time out Lois came closer to beating an incumbent than any other challenger in the U.S. Her opponent, a would-be DeLay clone is not well-thought of and is almost certainly going to be looking for honest work a year from now. Jim Gerlach is one of these right-wingers in a moderate suburban district who is utterly unsuited to represent the residents of Pennsylvania's 6th CD. It's a pretty well-educated, upmarket district where ethics and good government is appreciated, even demanded. That alone should disqualify Gerlach who is, in short, one of the more corrupt congressmen running around in the DeLay circle of corruption. He refuses to return all the tainted money he's been raking in from the indicted DeLay and from the admitted criminal bribe-taker Cunningham and, suddenly, he can't account for a "small" $2,000,000 discrepancy in his campaign funds. But his corruption aside, even if you just skim an interview he did recently with a local Philly paper you find a man who is either a bold faced liar or so disturbingly out of touch with reality that a leadership role is the last place you'd think he belongs.

Example: Gerlach doesn't think the Religious Right has any impact on the Republican Party! I mean is he lying? Is he just stupider than a paper weight? Why would someone say something like that? Asked if the Religious Right has too much influence on the GOP, his response was "I haven't seen a lot of evidence where religious leaders themselves, say evangelical Christian or very conservative Christians, have much influence on the rank and file of the Republican conference or on the leadership." When the interviewer followed up with a question about the Dover, PA court case that involves teaching Bible stories in place of science in public schools, so called "Intelligent Design" (aka- Creationism), Gerlach tried to duck the question, a tactic that seems typical whenever his extreme right wing positions are in danger of being exposed, with a lame and meandering non-response: "It depends what you mean when you say 'Intelligent Design.' What I've read is simply the notion, in the Dover School District, where the proponents of Intelligent Design simply want the teacher in the classroom to say, and I'm paraphrasing here, that there is a view out there in the scientific community that there may be other causes for the evolution of the human race that may be somehow connected to something spiritual - I'm not sure what the word is - but saying something like that, very generic, very open ended. I don't think that is inappropriate at all because there are a lot of people who believe that our creation is divinely inspired and not just the result of the joining of cells and protoplasm." Voters in Dover don't seem to agree. Every single right-wing loon on the school board who forced this creationist farce on the district was defeated by a progressive.

On issue after issue after issue Gerlach's own views are either out of step with his moderate district or he's dancing to the tune of Tom DeLay and the radical right to whom he is so financially beholden. In a very telling editorial called "A Pale Shade Of Green," THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER paints a picture of a twisted flip-flopping imbecile trying to do what moderates and environmentalists in his district want-- until Tom DeLay tells him what the Far Right must have, as Gerlach switches his vote to please the Big Oil interests who have been shoveling immense sums of cash into the pockets of DeLay and his allies.

The contrast with Lois couldn't be clearer. She's the quintessential good government candidate, someone who is destined for national attention and respect, the kind of candidate the DCCC needs to find plenty more like if they seriously expect to take the House back from the Far Right next November-- abd then govern America in a way that will get us back on the right track after the misfortune and catastrophe of the Bush years.

BUSH LIED AGAIN: ABRAMOFF NEVER GAVE A CENT TO ANY DEMOCRATS. ALL HIS BRIBES WENT TO BUSH, DELAY AND THE REPUBLICROOKS

About a week ago I warned that the Republican strategy for dealing with all the corruption scandals swamping the Party of Greed and Selfishness would be to muddy the waters by claiming both political parties take bribes And right on cue, we get the King of Corruption, George W. Bush claiming that DeLay consigliere/Republican lobbyist/Bush Pioneer/indicted crook Jack Abramoff "gave money to both political parties." Well, like most of what comes out of Bush's mouth, this is a boldfaced lie.

Abramoff donated nearly a quarter million dollars to Republicans and never donated one penny to any Democrat-- not even when Democrats were in power! Like any professional lobbyist, Abramoff suggested that some of his clients donate money to a handful of key Democrats now and then but every cent of his own contributions went to the sleazy Republicans who kept him in business like Tom DeLay, George Bush and Dick Cheney. Bush needs to stop engaging in the cover-up and encourage guilty members of his Regime to come clean.

FORGET NOVAK; BUSH REALLY COULD SOLVE ALL THE REPUBLICAN CORRUPTION SCANDALS WITH ONE HONEST SPEECH

If the Grand Wizard of the Republican Party Ku Klux Klan were to go on a killing spree and shoot every Democrat in the House and Senate and then Bush decided to pardon him, there would be nothing anyone could do about it. A presidential pardon is absolute, unquestionable and non-appealable. And I think that's more Republicrooks are not ratting out their colleagues in crime. So many-- from all the different unrelated scandals swamping Bush's corrupt party-- know if they just hold their tongues they're gonna get a pardon (unless Bush gets impeached in 2007).

I noticed a cat fight developing today over on the extreme right with Bob Novak claiming that Bush "knows who the source [of the treasonous Plame leak] is". Today Scotty McClellen stopped a teensy weensy step short of calling the Prince of Darkness a lying sack of shit. Entertaining but there's one way to clear up all these Republican scandals real fast.

Bush has the worst tv ratings for his speeches of any president ever. (NPR couldn't find one Republican senator who had bothered to listen to Bush's latest "speech" on Iraq this week-- and I heard them interview almost a dozen senators who admitted they hadn't and a couple you copped to not listening to it "off the record." Well I bet my idea will make Bush's tv ratings go thru the roof. He should announce a press conference for next week and announce to the nation that any congressman or any member of the Executive Branch who is lying about any of the ongoing criminal investigations-- as Karl Rove is, as Bob Ney is, as Duncan Hunter is, as Conrad Burns is, as Tom DeLay is, as Denny Hastert is, as Katherine Harris is, as Irving "Scooter" Libby is, and on and on-- will forfeit any chance of a presidential pardon if they don't start genuine cooperation within 24 hours. If Bush doesn't get a clean bill of health immediately from a non-partisan Special Prosecutor he appoints to oversee this, the person in question becomes ineligible for a pardon. (I mean he is the chief law enforcement officer of the country in a way isn't he? Shouldn't he be trying to solve these cases instead of helping to cover them up?

DUNCAN HUNTER-- EVEN WORSE THAN RANDY "DUKE" CUNNINGHAM

When you examine the patterns of defense contractor donations a very interesting pattern arises-- oodles and oodles of bribes going to 3 far right wing Republican congressloons from Southern California: confessed felon Randy "Duke" Cunningham and his 2 so-far unindicted partners in crime, Jerry Lewis and Duncan Hunter. Lewis, who was very much in cahoots with Cunningham, is yet to be adequately investigated but Duncan Hunter is probably next up for a well-deserved career-ending indictment, trial and prison term.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars flowed from defense contractors, eager to do business with the government, to Hunter, Republican Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, including at least $50,000 from Brent Wilkes, one of the crooks who was caught bribing Cunningham. Fact of the matter is, Cunningham was a rank amateur compared to the far more corrupt-- and far smarter (remember, for all the millions of dollars he stole, Cunningham was just an amoral sly sociopath, neither educated nor intelligent)-- Hunter.

Hunter had a hand in virtually every military scandal involving large sums of money that has gone down over the past 2 decades. He was a key participant in getting Air Force funds questionably diverted to his campaign contributor, Boeing (the bi-product of which was the disgrace and resignation of Air Force Secretary Jim Roche). Bush replaced Roche by an even sleazier Air Force Secretary, Peter Geren (who owns a cabin with Hunter and who continued pushing Hunter's outrageous schemes for funneling taxpayer dollars to Boeing-- a percentage of which was, of course, always kicked back to his campaign coffers). Two Boeing executives and an Air Force procurement official were convicted and imprisoned in these matters but Hunter was protected by the Bush Regime, which kept his name out of the public records. After Geren was indirectly implicated in the religionist scandal that rocked the Air Force academy this year he resigned (last month) and Bush put in another crooked operative/Duncan pal tied in with Boeing wheeling and dealing, Michael Wynne.

Duncan's local paper, the SAN DIEGO UNION, in an article last week called LEGAL LOOTING: CUNNINGHAM CASE ONLY HINTS AT EXTENT OF ROT there is the beginnings of what is sure to earn Hunter the nice long prison sentence he's been working towards so diligently. "Cunningham and House Armed Services Committee Chairman Duncan Hunter, R-El Cajon, worked closely with two local companies – ADCS Inc. of Poway and Audre Inc. of Rancho Bernardo – to make the Pentagon pay for converting printed documents to computer files. They and a few other lawmakers got Congress to allocate $190 million for 'automated data conversion' projects from 1993 to 2001. Did the Pentagon want this 'help'? No. As a 1994 General Accounting Office report noted, it already had the tools for such work. But Cunningham, Hunter and their House allies didn't care. Audre and ADCS were generous with contributions."

Hunter's graft and corruption led to incredibly wasteful spending of taxpayer dollars-- MILLIONS of dollars that should have been used for armor for our front line troops dying in Iraq and Afghanistan. The UNION points to what they call "absurdities" like "a $9.7 million contract for ADCS to digitize historical documents from the Panama Canal Zone that the Pentagon considered insignificant. This isn't governance. This is looting." Indeed and the looters and war profiteers should be severely punished, although under Bush they are, of course, always protected until their greed and avarice goes beyond the pale and they wind up like Cunningham. In the twisted, self-serving mind of Duncan Hunter "if the Joint Chiefs of Staff think the military's bucks should go toward protecting soldiers and not the pointless preservation of old documents, well, tough luck." The pay-offs to criminal scoundrels like Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, and Duncan Hunter were from Wilkes and if Wilkes needed a multimillion dollar unnecessary contract to preserve useless documents while Army vehicles went unarmored in Iraq... well, making sure it happened was the job of the best friend a corrupt contractor could ever have: the all powerful Duncan Hunter.

And Brent Wilkes was always eager to reciprocate-- big time-- when it came to Hunter. So far hundreds of thousands of dollars have been traced going from Wilkes to Hunter, not to mention a disgraceful SALUTE TO HEROES gala Wilkes concocted for his criminal pals, Cunningham and Hunter in 2002 and 2003 and lots and lots of other not-so-little perks (like private jet rides).

And one thing everybody in DC knows-- or at least everybody in DC who matters-- is that when you buy Duncan Hunter, you always get your money's worth. I mean who would block an investigation of the scandal at Abu Ghraib that has so seriously damaged American credibility and prestige everywhere in the world? Well, follow the money and you will find... Duncan Hunter! A quarter million dollars from missile defense contractors like scandal-plagued Titan (who gave their boy Hunter over $40,000 and nearly as much to Jerry Lewis and Randy Cunningham) has kept Congress from looking into Titan's role in the torture of Iraqi prisoners at the infamous American-run prison. We now know exactly why Hunter has single-handedly blocked the Abu Ghraib investigation. Now we need to find out why Hunter is also blocking a congressional investigation of 9/11.

WHO GOT THE BIGGEST BRIBES FROM WILKES? THERE WERE OTHER REPUBLICROOKS WHO GOT EVEN MORE THAN CUNNINGHAM!!

In the massive bribery and corruption cases enveloping the Republican congressional caucus, it is becoming very clear that Randy "Duke" Cunningham was neither one bad apple nor the mastermind of the culture of corruption so massive that it looks to dwarf even Teapot Dome, 'til now, the biggest 20th century scandal of Republican politicians selling off our country for their own personal interests and unchecked greed.

The myriad corruption scandals are so widespread that it boggles the mind to even attempt to figure out who were the worst offenders outside of Tom DeLay. Like I said a few days ago in trying to figure out who got most of the Abramoff money, the recently exposed Indian casinos rip-off and bribes cases (which will probably land Ohio's Bob Ney, California's John Doolittle, and Montana's Conrad Burns in prison) just scratch the surface when it comes to the illicit funds Abramoff and DeLay funneled into GOP coffers and corrupt politicians' pockets.

The Wilkes scandals are also massive, with huge chunks of cash being illegally directed into Republican politician's pockets and campaign efforts. By now we've all read about Wilke's and his paper companies and his huge bribes to Randy Duke Cunningham. Cunningham, after vehemently denying any wrongdoing for months-- as all Republicrooks always do when they get caught with their paws in the cookie jar-- finally admitted guilt (although only to what the Feds already had evidence of, not to all the other criminal activities he had been engaged in, like peddling advance presidential pardons for Bush at $400,000/pop). But, at least on paper, it looks like other corrupt Republican congressmen were taking even bigger bribes from Wilkes slimy operation than Cunningham was! Among the worst offenders so far are Virgil Goode, Jr (R-VA), Katherine Harris (R-FL), Duncan Hunter (R-CA, and possibly next to be indicted), DeLay of course, John Doolittle (R-CA) and Cunningham's partner in crime, the always unethical and corrupt Jerry Lewis (R-CA). And of course Bush himself; he always got a piece of every Republican criminal caper. I am working on a Duncan Hunter story now and hope to get it up today. If you haven't heard about Hunter before, get ready; he's about to get his moment of fame.

THE REAL REASON FAR RIGHT REPUBLICANS WANT TO REPLACE SCHWARZENEGGER WITH MEL GIBSON-- ARNOLD'S NOT BIGOTED ENOUGH FOR THEM

As Kyle or Stan will undoubtable say on the show tonight, "I learned something today." Well I learn something almost everyday, but today's something came from a really unusual source. Ole Charlie is someone I usually pay any attention to. He works in a hardware store near where I live and he never shuts up. It's just yap, yap, yap, yap non-stop. And he only has one tooth in his face. He's a grizzled old coot who was working there when I first moved to the neighborhood almost 20 years ago and for all I know he's never been quiet for 2 minutes before then or since then. And although there are no topics Ole Charlie doesn't have an opinion on that he is eager to share with anyone he can corner, he loves babbling about politics, particularly right-wing politics.

I had to go over there today and get some last minute stuff before I leave for Morocco. I carefully avoided him although I noticed he has buttonholed some poor elderly lady trying to buy some lightbulbs and he was ranting and raving about what a traitor Schwarzenegger is. (I wasn't really paying attention and, at the time, I figured he had worked himself up into a lather because Schwearzenegger has pardoned that gang founder, although I soon found out that the gang dude is gonna fry tonight (ala Schwarzenegger) and that had nothing to do with Ole Charlie's rage at the Republican Governor. I-- along with everyone else in the store-- soon heard the problem: "She's a gurd-durn homo."

And that's the genesis of what I learned today. Although the old lady with the lightbulbs fled, one of Ole Charlie's co-workers told me that he's all worked up because some Republican club he belongs to is getting to word out to all the haters and bigots that "God's people" and Republicans should support Mel Gibson instead of Schwarzenegger because Schwarzenegger's new Chief of Staff is a lesbian.

Who knew? The papers around here mention she's a Democrat, mention she worked for Gray Davis, mention she supports a woman's right to choice-- all enough to give the local Republicans fits. But they don't seem to mention-- at least not clearly enough for me to have seen it-- that she is openly gay and that she married her longtime partner in Hawaii in 1999. What would I do without Ole Charlie?

I got back from the hardware store and googled around a little and found out that even though normal people don't know, the professional haters on the radical right certainly do know-- and they ain't takin' it lying down! "By placing a leading homosexual, pro-abortion Democrat activist in charge of his entire administration, Arnold has taken a disastrous turn to the left," frothed Randy Thomasson, president of a local hate group called the Campaign for Children and Families. "Conservative voters who supported him are waking up from their dream and stepping into reality -- and the reality stinks." (Gee, I wonder if he knows that Susan used to work with Jane Fonda and Tom Hayden.)

Gray Davis was a lot happier about the appointment than either Ole Charlie or Thomasson. "Flattery," he pointed out in response to the announcement, "is the sincerest form of flattery." It must be awful being a right wing nutcase in California these days, between Cunningham going to prison and bribery cases against extremist Congressloons Doolittle, Pombo, Hunter, Lewis, Issa and possibly Van de Weghe pending and now Arnold and the first lady hiring openly gay Chiefs of Staff (Maria hired Daniel Zingale, political director of the Human Rights Campaign), they must be going... well, crazier.

(Even before I had finished writing this piece, I had picked up this week's L.A. WEEKLY and found a report by Bill Bradley called "The Inside Story of the Governor's Anointing of a Lesbian Democrat".

DELAY'S UNCONSTITUTIONAL, RACIST TEXAS GERRYMANDER COMING UNGLUED?

I bet it irks the neo-Confederate bigots no end that there is a special law for them to keep them from disenfranchising African-Americans, Latinos and other minorities. Well, it used to irk them. Now that they control the Executive Branch they've found some ways around it. What am I talking about? According to Section 5 of the historic 1965 Voting Rights Act, Georgia, Texas, Alabama and other states with a history of discriminatory election practices (i.e.- the ones that started the Civil War so they could keep African-Americans as slaves) are required to receive approval from the Justice Department or a federal court for any changes to their voting systems. Section 5 prohibits changes that would be "retrogressive," or bring harm to, minority voters. This has been irking and frustrating to Republicans since Nixon's Southern Strategy kicked in-- until Tom DeLay and George Bush stomped all over it.

Tom Eggan wrote two excellent pieces about how Texas Republicans have gotten away with skirting the law-- to put it mildly-- under the leadership of GOP crime boss Tom DeLay and with the active connivance of Bush Regime political operatives in the Justice Department (Ashcroft and Gonzales). The pieces ran December 2nd and December 10th and show clearly how the Bush Regime conspired with DeLay to over-rule the unanimous finding of the 8 non-political lawyers and analysts from the Justice Department's voting section who reported that DeLay's gerrymander of Texas was a clear, straight-forward violation of the Voting Rights Act which would discriminate against minorities.

Today the Associated Press reports that the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to take up the Texas gerrymander. It's a political mess the Supreme Court was expected to steer clear of. So far it has led to lots more Republican seats in both the state legislature and the U.S. Congress-- and to the indictment of DeLay on ethics and criminal charges.
"Today's Supreme Court action agreeing to take up the Texas case on Tom DeLay's illegal redistricting scheme is a hopeful sign that the voting rights of millions of minorities will be restored," is what House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi had to say about it.

DeLay's illegally-drawn district lines run afoul of clear one-vote requirements, having been specifically designed to dilute the voting strength of Hispanic and African-American Texans for partisan Republican gain (and to insure DeLay's continued role as Majority Leader of the Congress where he would be able to continue directling millions of dollars of bribes into Republican coffers).

TERRI SCHIAVO REACHING OUT FROM THE GRAVE FOR WRONG WING OPPORTUNISTS LIKE FRIST, DELAY AND THE NOTORIOUS BUSH BROTHERS

Matt Stoller over at MyDD has an excellent Q&A with Michael Schiavo about how he has just started a political action committee, TerriPac to help hold accountable the right-wing opportunists who wrecked the lives of his family in what amounted to an horrific made-for-tv tragedy, produced by neo-Nazi scumbags Bill Frist (waiting for indictment) and Tom DeLay (indicted on several counts, waiting for more indictments and for trials).

Before craven Republican politicians jackbooted their way into his family, Michael had always been a Republican. He's learned his lesson and has set his sites on his tormentors: extremist loons like Opus Dei fanatic Rick Santorum, DeLay, Frist and Bush's little fat brother Jeb, among others.

"The politicians," Michael told Stoller, "most of whom were Republicans, knew exactly what they were doing. There was even a printed memo from a U.S. Senator's office spelling out how to take political advantage of me and Terri. Even just a few days ago, Republican Congressman Chris Shays said what the Republicans did to my family was an 'embarrassment' and said it was 'designed to give Tom Delay a platform.' So, I believe it was a plan-- a design. Interfering with families' rights to make private, personal decisions shouldn't be any politician's platform. There are many good Republicans-- where I work, in my family and all over the place. And many of them were sickened by what they saw their party doing to the rights of individuals and families. But the people leading the Republican party in Washington D.C. and in Florida today aren't like the Republicans I know. The leaders of that Republican party are, in my opinion, out of touch, mean spirited and very selfish. To do what they did just so they can win re-election is the lowest kind of politics. And it cost them the support of at least this Republican. I have gotten hundreds of letters and emails from other Republicans who agree with me and many of them have joined me in leaving the party."

ASIDE FROM AGGRESSION, ARROGANCE, IGNORANCE, INTOLERANCE, TORTURE & BIGOTRY, THE BUSH REGIME ALSO STANDS FOR POLLUTION

Sometimes we lose track about why non-religionist fanatics and non-hate-obsessed racists join the Republican Party-- and there are plenty of Republicans who are neither obsessed with Buy Bull fairy tales nor with an incapacitating loathing for gays, immigrants, people of different colors, etc. (Yes there really are.) These people have an entirely different reason for choosing the GOP and their goals almost always revolve around the two most important principles of right-wing political parties: Greed and Selfishness. And, when it comes right down to it, a large number of Republicans care more about the Greed and Selfishness than about all the hatred, bigotry and primitivism. Really.

And what better example of Republican Greed and Selfishness exists than BushCo's push to let manufacturers pollute our environment in order to make bigger profits? This has been a hallmark of Bush's environmental policies ever since hard right extremists in the Bush Regime forced out EPA Director Christie Whitman in 2003. Today the Associated Press is reporting that Bush and the Republicans are once again trying tying to gut crucial environmental protects so a few companies-- which happen to be big GOP campaign contributors-- can make bigger margins. "If the Bush administration has its way, some factories won't have to report all the pollution spewed from their smokestacks, making it harder for government scientists to calculate the health risks of the air Americans breathe." Nice to have Republicans-- who ideologically are committed to this kind of thing and believe in it with all their hearts souls... accountants.

"The Environmental Protection Agency, responding to an AP analysis that found broad inequities in the racial and economic status of those who breathe the nation's most unhealthy air, says total annual emissions of 188 regulated air toxins have declined 36 percent in the past 15 years. But the EPA wants to ease some of the Clean Air Act regulations that have contributed to those results and proposes to exempt some companies from having to tell the government about what it considers to be small releases of toxic pollutants. The agency said in September it wants to reduce its 'regulatory burden' on companies by allowing some to use a 'short form' when they report their pollution to the EPA's Toxics Release Inventory. Those changes would exempt companies from disclosing their toxic pollution if they claim to release fewer than 5,000 pounds of a specific chemical — the current limit is 500 pounds — or if they store it onsite but claim to release 'zero' amounts of the worst pollutants. Those include mercury, DDT, PCBs and other chemicals that persist in the environment and work up the food chain."

BUSH THREATENS CANADA BUT IT'S A BIG "HO HO HO" FROM BARENAKED LADIES

Canada has long been the U.S.' closest friend and biggest trading partner. Between the people, if not the governments, they tend towards almost being one big mostly happy family. I certainly don't feel like I'm going to see world beat artists when I go see Neil Young or Alanis Morissette or Joni Mitchell or even Leonard Cohen. And last night when I went to see Barenaked Ladies do a rousing concert at the Santa Monica Civic Center it was the closest experience to ultimate homeyness I'm likely to feel all Christmas season (mostly because I'm leaving for Morocco in 4 days). But it's not just because I'm continuing my decades-long tradition of spending Christmas time away from the grotesquely commercial materialistic non-spiritual nightmare Christmas has turned into in the U.S. It's also because Barenaked Ladies, always as American as mom and apple pie anyway, do the ultimate good-time holiday season rock'n'roll show, a show the entire audience participates in. But while Barenaked Ladies were showing L.A. what consummate and even heartfelt entertainers and good neighbors they are, guess what BushCo was up to.

Yes, they're invading and occupying other countries in our name, but that's not what I was talking about. Right around the time that Steven Page had invited me to come over and see them, the U.S.
Ambassador to Canada, David Wilkins, was threatening Canadians about the way they're running their election campaign. (I'm sure elections in Florida, Ohio and Iraq are more to the liking of BushCo but Canada has their own way of going about the whole process.) But sure enough, according to Reuters The United States made an unprecedented foray into Canada's election campaign yesterday, warning politicians not to bash the universally disparaged Bush in the run-up to the January 23 election.

Although he didn't exactly laugh in Wilkins' face, Canadian Prime Minister, "Paul Martin responded immediately by saying 'c'est la vie' -- that's life -- if the United States did not like his remarks, and he would not accept anyone telling him he cannot defend his country."

Wilkins was in Ottawa lamely complaining about what he called "relentless and incessant criticism of his country, which he speculated might begin to sow doubt about the strength of the bi-national relationship." Like many Americans, he doesn't understand that Canadian-- as well as people in virtually every country of the world, do not feel they are criticizing the United States or Americans when they criticize the contemptible Bush, his horrendous regime or their catastrophic and dangerous policies. 'It may be smart election politics to thump your chest and constantly criticize your friend and your No. 1 trading partner,' be blustered cluelessly. 'But it's a slippery slope and all of us should hope it doesn't have a long-term impact on our relationship.' He was pissed off because at last week's climate change conference in Montreal Martin has voiced the opinion of the entire world in calling on the renegade Bush Regime to heed a "global conscience" and join efforts to combat global warming.

Previously, and in sync with Canadian public opinion, Martin often said Canada did not want U.S.-style health care, fiscal deficits, taxes or attack ads. Of course, neither do most Americans outside of the backward and reactionary Old Confederacy. But this doesn't fit in my Rove's Mr. Roger's Neighborhood Propaganda Campaign used by BushCo to lull dullards into thinking that... well, into not thinking at all actually.

HAPPY HANNUKAH FROM HILLARY CLINTON, WINNER OF THIS WEEK'S DWT PANDER BEAR AWARD

Really gross, overt pandering has always been a real turn off to me. A few months ago I talked about it a little in regard to California Comptroller Steve Westley and why I'm not inclined to support his race for governor. The referenced article was a comparison with California Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez, who I saw speaking to a houseful of mostly upscale gay men and women in Beverly Hills. I was mighty impressed that the very savvy Núñez didn't say a word he couldn't have said in front of any audience anywhere. His inspiring message was positive for all progressives-- gay, straight, upscale, not upscale, white, non-white... That's why Fabian Núñez is a leader. And brings me to another example of why Hillary Clinton is not.

This morning my friend Rachel, a professor at the University of California in La Jolla, sent me a story by Kristen Lombardi called "Hillary Calls Israel a 'Beacon' of Democracy" from this week's VILLAGE VOICE. It was about a Hanukkah speech Clinton delivered at Yeshiva University last Sunday. Like Westley, Hillary should be made an honorary Pander Bear.

Her speech at Yeshiva U was... one-sided, very one-sided. I doubt it's the speech she'll make when she addresses Arab-Americans in Michigan, Florida and Ohio in 2 years when she's running for president. "The United States and Israel share deep and lasting bonds. . . . They are bonds forged in a common struggle for human rights, democracy, and freedom . . . There is no doubt that these strong bonds and values will remain as the lodestar of our relationship with our fellow democracy and ally. And Israel is not only our ally; it is a beacon of what democracy can and should mean. . . . If the people of the Middle East are not sure what democracy means, let them look to Israel."

I hate to be a party pooper but if there's one thing we should have learned from 5 years of Bush lies and propaganda it's that nations are not fighting for grand universal ideals but for their own interests. The U.S. in not fighting in Iraq for "democracy" or for the "freedom" of the wonderful Iraqi (whose dead children are nothing but "collateral damage" to Bush). The U.S. is in Iraq because of Bush's misguided perception of American national interests (and, tragically, for the financial interests of his family, friends and partisan allies). And the idea that Israel's struggle is primarily a struggle for "human rights, democracy and freedom" is equally laughable. Israel is fighting for its rights to exist as a nation. Given the geopolitical history of the area and the murderous, even barbaric nature of Israel's religionist-fanatic opponents, this job is daunting enough without burdening it with tawdry, supremacist motivations. Israel is a quasi-theocracy with lots of human rights, democracy and freedom for Jews and a more ambiguous situation for non-Jews. A beacon of democracy it's not-- not any more than George W. Bush is a beacon of democracy. Ms Pander Bear, apparently didn't think her speech at Yeshiva U was the appropriate time to talk a little balance.

And speaking of Bush, Hillary certainly knows how to use emotional images to manipulate an audience. "If Americans did not understand it before 9-11, it is abundantly clear now that we must stand beside Israel and make it clear we guarantee Israel's security... In defeating terror, Israel's cause is our cause. The evil of terrorism, a burden long suffered by Israelis, threatens to rip apart the fabric of the Middle East. And our effort fighting terrorism there is akin to our effort fighting terrorism everywhere." Well, more truth in that than she meant. The other people in that neighborhood have an entirely different perspective on what's ripping apart the fabric of the Middle  East. Maybe it's worth taking that into consideration as well as the perspective that has already been drilled into the heads of every person on Yeshiva U since they were born. But why would anyone expect that from someone like Hillary Clinton? That kind of tough talk comes from real leaders, not from pander bears.

ANYTHING NEW IN THE CORRUPT LITTLE WORLD OF THE LITTLE BUG MAN TODAY?

Damn, I sure hope Austin D.A. Ronnie Earle has plenty of bodyguards! Republican Crime Boss Tom DeLay was already plenty pissed off at him for all the conspiracy and fraud and money laundering indictments-- which forced DeLay to give up his title as House Majority Leader-- but now, Earle has gone and subpoenaed the bank records and other information from at least one of the Republican-connected defense contractors involved in the multimillion dollar Cunningham bribery case, a case which has now sucked in at least a dozen top GOP elected officials besides Cunningham and Tom DeLay.

According to an A.P. report, "District Attorney Ronnie Earle issued subpoenas late Monday afternoon for California businessmen Brent Wilkes and Max Gelwix, records of Perfect Wave Technologies LLC, Wilkes Corp. and ADCS Inc. in connection with a contribution to a fundraising committee at the center of the investigation that led to DeLay's indictment on money laundering charges. Perfect Wave contributed $15,000 in September 20, 2002 to Texans for a Republican Majority, a fundraising committee founded by DeLay, R-Texas."

Wilkes, a sleazy and super-corrupt Republican operative and head of Wilkes Corp., is one of four unnamed coconspirators listed in Cunningham's plea agreement and defense contractor ADCS and Perfect Wave Technologies are subsidiaries of Wilkes Corp., whose primary function seems to have been to get bogus contracts and funnel much of the money back into the pockets of Republican politicians. Wilkes' phony company was particularly "helpful" to DeLay and even hired Alexander
Strategies, a consulting firm that employed DeLay's crooked wife Christine. His private jet company, Group W Transportation, illegally provided free luxurious flights to DeLay at least three times. DeLay reimbursed Group W, although probably with Wilkes' own money!

FILM AWARD SEASON SHAPING UP AS A NIGHTMARE FOR BUSH AND THE FAR RIGHT

I don't go to many movies. If I see a really bad one-- and the vast majority of the crap that comes out of Hollywood are really bad ones-- it puts me off seeing movies again for months and months. In the last couple of years I've developed an uncanny knack for making sure I only see good ones. I mean now it seems like 95% of the movies I go see are excellent. And that's not because Hollywood is getting any better; they are still catering to a lowest common denominator that very much excludes me from virtually everything that is green-lighted from the major studios. I just finally figured out how to be more discerning in which critics I listen to and which of my friends have opinions that jibe with my own, etc.

And I doubt I've ever watched an Oscar Award tv show or any of that stuff. But today I happened to have heard an announcement of the Golden Globe nominees on CNN and then almost immediately afterwards, saw a story about the New York Film Critics Circle and their awards on AOL. And lo and behold-- both are jam-packed with the movies I liked this year!

I've been evangelizing for CRASH, THE CONSTANT GARDENER, BEFORE THE FALL, TRANSAMERICA, BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN, GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK and CAPOTE ever since I saw them-- and even urging my friends to see the somewhat-- at least in my mind-- flawed SYRIANA. And, except for the obscure German film with subtitles, BEFORE THE FALL, all my picks are up for awards. Big whoop, right? Yes, except for two thing: the big winners were mostly independent films made with reasonable budgets and these are all message movies and the messages are pretty much all anti-fascist/anti-conformist.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN (the brilliant short story in the NEW YORKER by Annie Proulx on which it is faithfully based, can be read online with one little mouse click) is absolutely revolutionary, in as much as it is a powerful love story between two cowboys. It seems to be shaping up as the critics' favorite, a big shock for me since the critics and I rarely see eye to eye-- and this despite "concerns that its depiction of a love affair between two men may have trouble winning over audiences in more conservative parts of the country." In fact, I think it has only been released in NY, San Francisco and L.A, maybe Boston. (I doubt insecure men will take a chance and the narrow-minded types who have made the Falwells and Dobsons and Robertsons multimillions won't go see it, but I don't think there is anyone who will be offended or put off by it once they sit down and watch it.) The potential controversy didn't stop the New York Film Critics Circle from giving it the awards for best film, best director and best actor (Heath Ledger). And, it turns out it has already won best film from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association on Saturday, and it earned 8 nominations for the Critics Choice Awards on Sunday. On top of that, the National Board of Review's prize for directing went to Ang Lee. "A lot of people among critics are responding to it because it is so daring," said Gene Seymour, chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle. "It has all the sweep of what we have come to know as a major Hollywood romance, but it carries within it such a grand departure," he said.

I have a feeling that Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson and the rest of the far right Amen Choir are going to find BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN a lot more threatening than a purple dinosaur or SpongeBob. And we haven't even talked about the Golden Globe nominations for Cillian Murphy as a cross-dressing Irishman in BREAKFAST ON PLUTO (which I didn't see) and for Felicity Huffman as best dramatic actress in a film for her role as a man preparing for sex-change surgery in TRANSAMERICA!

And don't forget that THE CONSTANT GARDENER, NORTH COUNTRY, SYRIANA and GOOD NIGHT, AND GOOD LUCK (not to mention BEFORE THE FALL) are all overtly political movies that brilliantly savage the right-wing agenda, as effectively-- if a bit more subtly-- as Michael Moore has done. They always say that the best art is done in times of repression and authoritariansim. I guess Bush is good for something.

NOT A VERY GREEN DAY FOR MEAN JEAN SCHMIDT: KEEPING THE AMERICAN FLAG TABLECLOTH SHE WORE HIDDEN. SHE IS NOW FACING A PRIMARY CHALLENGE

If you missed your CINCINNATI ENQUIRER yesterday you might not be aware that Mean Jean Schmidt is likely to have a Republican challenger for her seat. Local southwest Ohio Republicans, the national party and the congressional leadership are all embarrassed by the freshman imbecile who was caught lying about highly respected and highly decorated ex-Marine Jack Murtha, claiming that one of her political cronies, Danny Bubp, had called Murtha a coward. Schmidt was immediately boo-ed off the House floor, forced by the House GOP leaders to apologize-- and, to top it off, the much discomforted Bubp promptly claimed she made the whole thing up and that he had never even had a conversation about Murtha with her. Then the crazed Schmidt was exposed as a crack whore by KGO Radio and she has, more or less, been in hiding ever since.

Yesterday the ENQUIRER reported that former Republican congressman Bob McEwen is being urged to challenge her in the upcoming primary. (He lost a primary battle with Mean Jean last time, but that was before she appeared on the House floor wearing an American flag tablecloth and screaming wildly, some say insanely, at one of the most respected and admired members of Congress.

Schmidt, one of the least admired members of Congress, refuses to say where the infamous tablecloth-dress that she wore when she was booed off the House floor is. "It's in 'the cupboard.' I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it," she answered mysteriously when a reporter found her recently.

WALDEN O'DELL, THE DIEBOLD CEO WHO STOLE THE ELECTION FOR BUSH IN 2004, RESIGNS UNDER A CLOUD OF LEGAL QUESTIONS-- ANOTHER SOON TO BE PARDONED CROOK

In the debate over who deserves the most blame or credit-- depending on your point of view-- for stealing the 2004 election for George W. Bush, there are a lot of deserving contenders: Karl Rove, Kenneth Blackwell and the whole corrupt Ohio political machine (including Governor Taft, Tom Ney, and dozens of other crooked pols), GOP operatives on every level like Chuck McGee and James Tobin in New Hampshire)... and, of course, Walden O'Dell, the scumbag CEO of Diebold, the partisan voting machine company.

O'Dell, who made good on his promise to "deliver" Ohio to Bush/Cheney in 2004, is beset with legal problems over massive fraud at Diebold and he suddenly resigned today. Diebold is facing two serious cases right now-- an insider trading case involving securities fraud litigation and a company insider who has been spilling the beans on how Diebold has been stealing elections for Republicans in Georgia and Ohio.


TUESDAY UPDATE

The BradBlog has the whole scoop on the filing of litigation against the Diebold scumbags today. These people hijacked American democracy and saddled us with 4 more illegitimate years of BushCo. I rarely agree with Cheney about anything but maybe there are cases so extreme that torture is called for. If that were so, the Diebold crooks would be first on my list. But that's not what the BradBlog is about today. Instead they're dealing with the fact that 8 current and former executives have been named as co-defendants (including Bush-pal, ex-CEO O'Dell and the new CEO-- named yesterday-- Swidarski. Although it is a stock fraud case, it does cite "a number of allegedly misleading news releases pertaining to the fitness and security of election systems as contracted by Diebold in San Diego County in 2003; their settlement for $2.6 million with the state of California in 2004..."


WEDNESDAY UPDATE

The BradBlog is really doing an incredible job of holding Diebold's feet to the fire with their fine reporting. Brad Friedman is not letting up on these treasonous crooks and today he is reporting how Leon County, Florida ran a test with Diebold equipment that shows conclusively that Diebold equipment is as easily hacked and manipulated as the Iraqi elections. In the Leon County test "Diebold's security measures failed miserably and were easily defeated by a hack performed by a computer security professional on a Diebold Touch-Screen Voting Machine and Central Tabulator." The County announced, sensibly, "We will never use Diebold in an election again." I hope California's crooked Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, is paying attention. It looks like this wingnut has aspirations to being the Ken Blackwell or Kathleen Harris of 2006.

CONRAD BURNS (R-MT) WAS THE BIGGEST RECIPIENT OF ABRAMOFF DIRTY MONEY. THERE IS NOW A LIST OF THE TOP 20 SLEAZE-BAGS

Jack Abramoff, a virtual consigliere for Tom DeLay's crime syndicate, has been funneling millions and millions of dollars into Republican campaign coffers for many years-- and, less legally, into the hands of crooked Republican politicians for nearly as long (that would be bribes). Right now he is being investigated in only one specific area: his rip-off with help from the religionist right, of American Indian tribes in a casino scandal that saw over $5,000,000 go from the hands of 8 tribes into the hands of dozens of politicians. Today's WASHINGTON POST has some cool charts and a list of the 20 scumbag politicians who were on the take in this instance. I emphasize "in this instance" because it only scratches the surface of the myriad criminal activities Abramoff was involved with-- primarily with DeLay-- over the last half dozen or so years.

The POST article points out the 20 biggest recipients of the specific Abramoff dirty money stolen from the Indians, 14 Republicans (including, of course, Bush, who always gets to dip his beak in all GOP illicit operations) and 6 Democrats.

DeLay is certainly the overall biggest beneficiary of Abramoff's efforts, both personally and politically-- and he certainly told Abramoff who to give money to-- but in the specific Indian casino capers, the biggest beneficiary was the ethically challenged Republican senator from Montana, Conrad Burns. Disgracefully, the second biggest recipient was Congressman Patrick Kennedy (D-RI), who, like Burns and the rest of the bribe takers, should look for a different line of work. It just boils my blood when Democratic politicians act like lowlife Republicans and take bribes like this, allowing Republicans to point out to voters that "See, they all do it, not just Republicans."

The next half dozen sleaze merchants are all well-known Republicrooks in the House and Senate : J.D. Hayworth (R-AZ), Speaker Dennis Hastert, best known for accepting bribes from Turkey to screw over Armenian-Americans, (R-IL), John Doolittle, whose name seems to surface in every single financial scandal in DC (R-CA), Tom DeLay (R-TX), of course, Thad Cochran (R-MS), and, of course again, Bob Ney (R-OH), who is also implicated as an accessory in the murder by Abramoff and his partners of Konstatinos Boulis in a business venture that went south.

Also in on the pay-offs are two former Democratic leaders, Tom Daschle and Richard Gephardt, as well as the man in the running for sleaziest member of the House of Representatives (after DeLay): Richard Pombo (R-CA). Just from the Indian caper-- so not counting all of Abramoff's other illicit activities-- $3.41 million went to Republicans and $1.88 million went to Democrats.

(If you're looking for the obvious art for this piece... well, all I can do is apologize. Again, my art staff is sleeping it off after a drunken HOLIDAY party. You might click this to see appropriate art and read a very related story.)


WENESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: BURNS ISN'T GIVING UP THE $150,000 IN BRIBES

Although many of the crooked politicians caught up in Abramoff's web of corruption and deceit have been rushing to return the tainted money he bribed them with-- Katherine Harris, for example (no model of ethical behavior) just returned it all-- as well as the bribes she got through the Cunningham-related defense contractors. But one lowlife scumbag whose greedy little hands are tightly clenched has announced he's not giving back a dime. Any guesses? If you guessed it is the ultra-corrupt Republican Senator from Montana, you win. Today's MISSOULIAN reports today that the biggest known bribe taker in the Abramoff casinos scam, Conrad Burns, spent the money and he's not givin' it back. If what has happened in Cunningham's case is any indication, Burns will be returning the bribes and a lot more when he is indicted and threatened with the 30 year prison sentence he has earned.

BUSHCO'S LIES AND DECEIT ARE TAKING THEIR TOLL-- EVEN AMONG REPUBLICANS

My old pal Isaac is an award-winning journalist from Wyoming living in Minnesota. Right now he's in the middle of a one year fellowship at the Hubert Humphrey Institute that began in September. Yesterday he sent me a letter about how things are going. "There are about 30 of us," he wrote, "some very conservative, and some more liberal than I am. There are some real rabid Republicans in the group--one is a freshman state Representative, one is the deputy chairman of the Minnesota Republican Party, and at least one is a political appointee of our Republican governor, Tim Pawlenty, and a few others.

We've had monthly sessions with national policy makers, and so far it has skewed heavily right (Republican former US Representative Vin Weber is one of the directors and apparently has been hitting up his old buddies to come to the group.) (We've started to get some that aren't from the right--last month, we were special guests for talks by Walter Mondale
and Bill Clinton, and last week, Madeleine Albright.)

Now I told you all of that to tell you this: Invariably, the right wingers and centrists we've had come in have not been able to give us one bit of good, positive news from this administration. Not one single bit. They are uniformly PISSED and pessimistic.

Norm Orenstein of the American Enterprise Institute was one of the first we had a session with. He presented us with an approximately 45 minute (not including the Q & A)litany of the failures of this administration, from the deficit, to foreign policy, civil liberties, etc.

He expressed bitter disappointment and even anger over every move these pantloads have made. I couldn't have been more critical of these guys than he was.

The conservatives seemed pretty uneasy. One asked what is the magic bullet for the GOP to turn things around. Norm said, "There is no magic bullet." The Repubs have squandered every last bit of political they had to work with, and besides, they have run things so far into the ground that there may be no turning back. He also said that if the administration had any hope of recovering at all, it would take another disaster on the scale of 9/11 or worse that Bush got out in front of and
led the country through.

We've had some non-partisans in. One day we had people from the Concord Coalition and Brookings Institutions (both of which I believe to be non-partisan--I will cheerfully be corrected if I'm wrong). They are no happier than Norm Orenstein.

We had David Walker, the Comptroller General of the GAO. Dave is so pissed at these guys you'd think Cheney had run his mother down in the street. He explained how this administration has run this economy so far into the ground by borrowing from foreign companies and banks that it is now a national security issue. If China and/or our other creditors either call in our debt, or decide to invest in Euros, we are screwed, blued, and tattooed. Anything that causes our creditors to get nervous
about the strength of our currency and/or economy is the match that will light the fuse. We all know that pursuing the tax cuts as we have been doing is idiocy at its finest, and Dave went nuclear over the extent of it.

When questions come up like, "What about the good news about the war in Iraq? What isn't the media telling people about what's really going on over there?", the answer has invariably been that there is no good news, and the media is actually downplaying how bad things are. Yesterday, Madeleine Albright went as far as to say that the war is one of the
worst mistakes the US has ever made. Those kinds of questions aren't being asked any more, to my enormous approval.

(Co-director Vin Weber has been assisting the administration behind the scenes lately, with the difficulties they've been having, what with Rove, etc. under fire).

That's the gist of what I'm seeing. We are getting told by real, Goldwater-style conservatives who haven't drank the Bush KoolAid that these "conservatives" are conservative in name only and that they are the ruin of the US as we know it. There has not been a single one that has come in and even attempted to float or support the lies of these jokers. They are painting a picture of widespread disappointment, anger, and disillusionment, as well as profound concern about where we are and
where we're headed."

Frustration with the Bush Regime is rampant in the country-- and growing-- regardless of political persuasion, unless, of course, one adheres to the tried and true American tradition of a party known in the mid-nineteenth century as The Know Nothings. Approximately 30% of today's voters follow the Know Nothing philosophy (although they think they're Republicans). And the primary source of the frustration is the growing appearance that we have a government that mixes up propaganda and governing and doesn't realize that the two are not the same thing. They seem to lie about every single thing all the time. And people finally see it, even the right-wingers who are lecturing in Isaac's classes.

This weekend Salon's Mark Benjamin did a disturbing, even shocking, piece called "Incalculable Pain," raising the question of under-reporting of American casualties in Iraq. ""We are concerned that that the figures that were released to the public by your administration do not accurately represent the true toll that this war has taken on the American people," writes 7 congressmen to Bush. The letter is available right here. At the same time the NY TIMES printed an exhaustive look into the vast propaganda operations the Bush Regime is perpetrating on the Iraq "democracy." And Frank Rich's POTEMPKIN VILLAGE piece is destined to go down in the history of the tragic Bush Regime as another powerful cry of the utter nudity of the deranged emperor.

I've long despaired of ever hearing anything true from these people. But it goes beyond the crude propaganda exercises (like "We don't torture" and "Mission Accomplished") to something much worse. Like a sociopath or an ignorant 3rd grader, Bush reacts to any stimulus by promising the world-- and never delivering. Promising the money to heal post 9/11 New York City was a nice photo-op and sound byte-- quickly and cruelly forgotten. Ditto for most of the aid promised to every single international emergency. And, perhaps worst of all, to the people who suffered the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. If you haven't read the NY TIMES editorial on the the death of an American city, please take a moment to read this chilling piece and contemplate what we have saddled ourselves with. And in all likelihood, what we're saddled with for another 3 years.

SMART CREATIVE KIDS CAN GET UP TO SOME REALLY COOL THINGS-- EVEN IN TEXAS!

You've heard of needle exchange and gun exchange, right? Well some bright, dedicated students at the University of Teaxs, San Antonio have an awesome little group called The Atheist Agenda and if you give that thing a little click you'll be able to read about, and see photos of, the very cool exchange program they put together to try to assist the seriously, sometimes dangerously, delusional on their campus.

IS BUSH CERTIFIABLY INSANE? OR IS HE JUST ACTING THAT WAY?

We keep hearing that Bush has slid off the deep end into never-neverland. Maybe he's drinking again; he's a "dry drunk;" he's back snorting cocaine; he's screaming at everyone who works for him; he refuses to talk to anyone but his mother and 3 mamma substitutes... and so on. But does anyone know for sure?

Well, yesterday CAPITOL HILL BLUE ran a story by Doug Thompson which, if true, would call for consideration of the presidential incapacity amendment to be dusted off and looked at closely. According to attendees, there was a meeting in the Oval Office between Bush and Republican congressional leaders about renewing the inappropriately named Patriot Act. With both progressives and conservatives inside and outside the Beltway opposing many of the most authoritarian provisions, some of the Republicans leaders tried to explain to Bush that pushing for this too hard would alienate some of his far right base.

“I don’t give a goddamn. I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way... Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”

Thompson claims that 3 attendees personally told him Bush called the Constitution of the United States (of America) "a goddamned piece of paper." Perhaps he picked that way of thinking up from our illustrious Attorney General, who had referred to it as "an outdated document" when he was White House Counsel. Or maybe he's just an ignoramus who doesn't know any better. Or maybe he had a rough day and new polling numbers came out and he was on edge. Could have been. Or maybe he's stark raving mad.

WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: BUSH IS INDEED INSANE

It appears that the mainstream media is finally starting to catch on to Bush's severe mental disability. NEWSWEEK'S cover story about the "boy in the bubble" isn't about Michael Jackson but the far more dangerously out of touch George W Bush. He told NBC's Brian Williams that his cold, vicious mother can get through the bubble. "If I'm in a bubble," the clod said on the NBC Nightly News, "well, if there is such thing as a bubble, she's the one who can penetrate it." I'm comforted... but Newsweek is troubled. They searched for answers in places not so obscure or foolish - the Freudian tensions between Bush the younger and his father, Bush the failure all his life who is now suddenly frightened and insecure as reality presses in. David McReynold's piece about it-- under the above link "severe mental disability"-- is well worth reading.

IS JOHN MCCAIN FIT TO BE PRESIDENT? NOT UNLESS YOU WANT MORE FAR RIGHT POLITICAL BULLSHIT IN WASHINGTON

John McCain will do anything to become president. And many people think he would be a welcome respite after 8 years of a neo-fascist/neo-Con/neo lunacy Bush regime. Even progressives, and especially independents are laboring under the carefully cultivated delusion that McCain is something other than a hard right partisan hack. But even a cursory examination of his voting record, shows an extreme right-wing partisan, not a mainstream moderate or independent.

It is also somewhat ironic that McCain attached himself to Russ Feingold's campaign finance legislation (watering it down significantly even as he grabbed most of the credit in the dim mind of the public) since the need for real campaign finance legislation was shown viscerally by McCain's own brush with the law and the Senate Ethics Committee.

Back in 2000, Rove, as operative-in-chief for the Bush campaign, was running around reminding anyone who would listen, especially in South Carolina, that McCain is a crook. McCain himself acknowledged the problem, telling reporters that what became known as the Keating 5 Scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." This starts back in 1987 just after McCain won his first term in the Senate-- with the help of crooked Republican banker Frank Keating (who was eventually convicted of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and went to prison). When McCain, who facilitated Keating's criminal activities, was hauled before the Senate Ethics Committee he claimed he didn't do anything wrong (just like Cunningham and Ney and DeLay and all the other Republicrooks always claim) and said he intervened on Keating's behalf with bank regulators only because he was a constituent. He didn't mention they had been friends since 1981. He didn't mention Keating donated over $100,000 to his political campaigns. He didn't mention Keating used to pay for McCain and his family to vacation in the Bahamas. Oh, and he didn't mention that through his wife he had invested over $350,000 in one of Keating's shady real estate deals. Rove didn't press the scandal when the Bush Family reminded him that this would remind everyone about the candidate's crooked brother Neil the bankrobber Bush, who, like McCain and Keating, cost taxpayers billionsof dollars.

So now, with the public almost completely unaware of the very-much rewritten history of the Keating 5 Scandal (McCain "exonerated" for just "bad judgment" instead of bribery), McCain has been made to look like he is a champion of reform. It's a real laugh-- unless he becomes president; then it's be a real tragedy.

Now, back to his far right voting record. Interest groups rate all members of the Congress based on how often they support or oppose the issues most important to the special interest that group represents. The John Birch Society, for example gave Senator McCain a 90% rating in 2004. It is hard to stay within the bounds of the law and go further into right-wing extremism than the John Birchers. (These are the crew that accused President Eisenhower and Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren of being "conscious agents of Communism." But they love McCain-- or at least the way he votes.) But they don't love him as much as Phyllis Schlafly's extremist hate group, the Eagle Forum does. For 2004 McCain got a 100% rating by these extremist kooks and vicious hate mongers. The theocratic Christian Coalition, whose fondest wish is to destroy all barriers between Church and State, rated McCain a nice healthy 83% in 2004. And the crazy anti-choice loons at Concerned Women For America have him a 100% rating for 2003-2004, as did the crackpot anti-gay hate group, the Family Research Council. Predictably, progressive public interest groups don't rate him as highly as the right-wing hate groups do. The non-partisan U.S. Public Interest Research Group gave him a feeble 45% in 2004 and the progressive National Committee for an Effective Congress, founded by Eleanor Roosevelt, rated him a dismal 10%.

McCain is a right-wing bucket of partisan slime with a very good press office. He's probably the only Republican who could beat a Democrat in 2008. He shouldn't be looked at so benignly, especially because he hasn't learned any of the lessons he should have from the bribery and corruption scandal he got away with so easily. As chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, he received hundreds of thousands of dollars from companies affected by the committee's work, and he has repeatedly been criticized for intervening with regulators-- which is what got him in trouble in the Keating affair-- on behalf of businesses which give him huge contributions. He isn't honest. He isn't a reformer. He isn't independent. He isn't moderate.

But he's better than Bush... right? It would be hard not to be. But, in a headlong attempt to curry favor with BushCo's extreme right base (the basest of the base), he is doing whatever it takes-- from endorsing and campaigning for extreme right-wing candidates (like Kenneth Blackwell, the corrupt Secretary of State of Ohio, now running for governor, who stole the 2004 election for Bush) to using his clout to defame an actual straight talker and actual fighting war hero, Jack Murtha, who wants to get us out of Iraq (unlike McCain who says we need to send in moretroops). Last Sunday he went on TV and attacked Murtha as being "too emotional." In the NEW REPUBLIC he dripped condescending viciousness: Jack Murtha is “a lovable guy,” but “he’s never been a big thinker; he’s an appropriator... “As we get older, we get more sentimental. And [Murtha] has been very, very affected by the funerals and the families. But you cannot let that affect the way you decide policy.” Not only is this crap not nice, it is patently false and misleading. Murtha has been preferred by every single U.S. president-- both Republican and Democrat-- over McCain for serious military advise, all of whom have seen McCain as an amiable buffoon at best and an unreliable loose cannon and nothing more than hot air.

(The art department did a bang-up job on the photo of McCain in the basement of the House with his pals. It's worth double-clicking on it so you don't miss any of the subtle parts.)


MONDAY EVENING UPDATE: McCAIN STRATEGY TO NEUTRALIZE GIULIANI

The right-wing news site, NEWSMAX ran a story today about a possible battle shaping up between McCain and Giuliani and how each is trying to out extremist-loon the other. A recent Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll showed Giuliani would win a primary battle, beating McCain, 34% to 31%. Meanwhile, 1 in 5 Republicans say they wouldn't vote for McCain under any circumstances. McCain is countering this by re-creating himself-- the way Madonna always does-- as the rightful heir to Bush's extreme right-wing mantle, and by pointing out Giuliani's mainstream positions on abortion, gay rights and gun control.

BUSH, CHENEY & RUMSFELD LOVE LIEBERMAN; REAL DEMOCRATS LOVE HOWARD DEAN

Last night I got a call from a very wealthy old friend, very wealthy and very stingy (at least when it comes to political and social causes; he contributes large sums of money to religionist loons to try to buy his way into Heaven, but that's another story). He called last night to rant and rage about Lieberman. Now this guy doesn't know how to turn on a computer and probably has less of a concept of what's on them Internets than Bush does, so I was heartened to hear he was aware that Lieberman had completely deserted the Democratic Party, ala Zell Miller. Lieberman himself, utterly delusional about the scope of the catastrophe in Iraq and the Middle East, is completely aware of what he's doing politically in the U.S. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld have been wooing him and may well appoint him Secretary of Defense early next year. On the other hand, smiles the sleazy Lieberman, "Some Democrats said I was being a traitor," which he says doesn't surprise him, "given the depth of feeling about the war." And although the NY TIMES and other corporate media outlets persists in always referring to him as a "centrist," he is on the far right extreme of the Democratic Party and, on foreign policy, further right than many Republicans. Back to my wealthy, stingy old friend, he was calling to let me know that if Lowell Weicker runs against Lieberman he'll help finance the campaign.

We saw less eye to eye on the overall Democratic strategy of taking on the Far Right. Specifically, he was unhappy about Howard Dean's loud, out-spoken opposition to Bush. This confuses me because my friend actually agrees with everything Dean says. He just allows the mass media to make him think that Dean is "wrong" and "harmful." Whacky! Fortunately, though, the Democratic conclave in Florida this week has NOT taken in by the mass media/corporate-careerist Democratic take on Dean. Petrified, instinctively-reactionary politicians who happen for one reason or another to call themselves Democrats may be attacking Dean like there's no tomorrow, but the 2,000 activists and local office holders in Florida cheered him as the magnificant hero he is.

According to Hot Line On Call, "Florida Democrats want a message to run on, and they are growing less patient without one.
That's one reason why DNC chairman Howard Dean, castigated by members of his party for churning its already mucky Iraq message, was given a rousing welcome Friday night.
He brought one, and to many, it sounded good. Dean told the 2,000 activists and office-holders that they must stick to their guns and loudly, proudly proclaim Democratic values. He previewed the Democrats' national priorities, which the party plans to unveil in the middle of January.
'First, we must restore honesty and integrity to the government of the United States,' he said, drawing the loudest applause of the night. 'Number two, we must have a strong national defense based on telling the truth to our soldiers, our citizens, and our allies.' Third -- 'We want jobs for America that stay in America.' Fourth -- 'We want health care for everyone.' Fifth -- 'balance the budget.' Dean said the key to winning elections for Democrats is to simply knock on doors and loudly, proudly, evangelize. And he did not shy away from Iraq, delivering his version of the Center for America Progress consensus. (He did not change his position, having given this same speech many times before.)"

A friend of mine who was there said that if Lieberman was in the room he would have been tarred and feathered-- if he was lucky.

WOULD YOU LIKE TO TELL JOE LIEBERMAN WHAT YOU THINK OF HIS TREACHERY?

Democracy For America is sponsoring an online petition that explains to Bush-oriented Senator Joe Lieberman that debate is patriotic and a vital part of American political tradition. I just signed the petition (and added a choice PS) and if you want to do the same, just hit the link above.

BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN-- BEST FILM OF THE YEAR

I'm still floored from having seen BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN this afternoon. The story was beautifully told by Annie Proulx in a 1997 issue of THE NEW YORKER. I'm kind of thinking it's the best movie I saw this year-- or at least way up there with THE CONSTANT GARDENER and CRASH... better than BEFORE THE FALL.

I usually avoid romances like the plague so maybe I'm getting sappy in my dotage. But this one was more than a romance. It was a real no-frills, soul-mining slice of the human condition. I don't recall hearing so many people weeping in a theater in my life, not a cathartic weeping either, just bitter and desolate. And deep.

I saw SYRIANA a few days ago. The politics is right but the editing destroyed the movie. It's a B. BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN is an A+. I think it's the kind of film everyone-- minus maybe the ones who are waiting for Armageddon-- can love, although I already heard that Faux News is attacking it, which should be an indictation of how good and how powerful it is.

REPUBLICANS HAVE DEVISED A STRATEGY TO DEAL WITH THEIR HUGE CORRUPTION SCANDALS-- BLAME DEMOCRATS

Although House Speak Dennis Hastert, himself under a cloud of suspicion for taking large bribes from the government of Turkey in return for derailing the efforts of Armenian-American community, has suggested ethics seminars for Republican members of the House of Representatives, there was such a lot of squealing from so many stuck piggies, especially from Michigan's very crooked, very enraged, bribe-soaked Thaddeus McCotter, that the Republicans decided to come up with an alternative plan about how to deal with the multiple ethics scandals enveloping their party on all levels.

Although the defense contractors bribery case that tripped up admitted bribe taker, Republican ex-Congressloon Randy "Duke" Cunningham is threatening to spill over and swamp dozens of Republican legislators, the GOP has decided what to do about the Abramoff scandals: smear Democrats.

For although Abramoff was the consigliere of Republican Crime Boss Tom DeLay and has been financing the political careers of scores of GOP congressmen and senators, he was once seen in an elevator with the brother-in-law of someone who may have voted for John Kerry.

According to a story in today's issue of THE HILL, the "National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC) is planning a public-relations offensive tying leading Democrats to lobbyist Jack Abramoff in an effort to neutralize accusations that Republicans have been embroiled in a 'culture of corruption.' The campaign will zero in on Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.); Sens. Debbie Stabenow and Carl Levin, both Michigan Democrats; and the Democratic Senatorial Committee (DSCC), among others, for taking money from Abramoff's former clients. The fact that the GOP campaign is patently absurd doesn't make any difference. The Republicans' goal is just to muddy the water and make people believe that "they all do it."

Although a spokesman for the DSCC, Phil Singer, said that "now that the Republicans have gotten their hand caught in the cookie jar, they are doing whatever they can to divert attention from the corruption that has become the defining characteristic of the GOP majority. It's not going to work."
But it may. Most people don't pay close attention and don't know who these characters are or what they stand for-- I remember how shocked I was after reading in 1999 that over 10% of voters thought George W. Bush, then running for president, was his father, George H. W. Bush-- and will find it much easier to digest a simple message that all politicians of all political parties are crooks.

WILL MEL GIBSON REPLACE SCHWARZENEGGER AS THE FAR RIGHT'S CHOICE FOR GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA? LOGICAL CONCLUSION OF A DOWNWARD SPIRAL

Mel Gibson is a short right-wing Australian actor who used to be popular for violent futuristic fantasy films and now makes violent religionist fantasy films. He had a huge surge in popularity a couple years ago when SOUTH PARK resurrected his sagging fortunes by creating a brilliant episode about his religionist mania (voted #5 all time greatest SOUTH PARK show) called THE PASSION OF THE JEW. But if the last refuge of a scoundrel is religion, the last refuge of a religionist loon is politics-- and the California Republican Party has a deal for Gibson.

According to Robert Salladay in the L.A. TIMES, there is "a movement to draft Mel Gibson, the actor and director, to run against Schwarzenegger in the Republican primary next year." Republican strategists know how simple and cost effective it is to inspire already delusional religionist fanatics to mix up reality with tv and movies. Schwarzenegger is a spent force in right-wing politics, especially now that his connections to several financial scandals are coming to light, and the state Republican Party is hoping to hold on to power with a different candidate.

With the religionist right foundation of Schwarzenegger's political base up in arms, California Republican Party bosses have demanded a private meeting with the governor to complain about the hiring of Democrat and women's choice operative Susan Kennedy as his chief of staff. GOP party bosses are so enraged by the appointment that they are threatening to abandon Schwarzenegger during his re-election bid next year. According to Salladay, "Schwarzenegger is risking a nasty fight that could cause the party to rescind its endorsement during February's convention in San Jose."

"We need to have a good backup," said Mike Spence, president of the California Republican Assembly, an organization of extremist loons that is so far right and so ridiculous that it is kept separate from the quasi-respectible state party. Spence's whacko group has already set up a web site to bolster Gibson. "He seems to be more consistent with the Republican message than the governor does." [Good point; he embraces the Nazi vision in a way that might embarrass Scwarzenegger, because of his ancestry and his dad's rumored participation in war crimes against Jews.]

"The trouble with celebrities or major politicians is they, by necessity, live in an insular world, and their information is limited or distorted," said Shawn Steel, the former state GOP chairman and current member of the board of directors. Is that an argument for Gibson to replace Schwarzenegger?

REPUBLICAN CULTURE OF CORRUPTION-- TAKE 227

A couple nights ago Roland came over for dinner and acknowledged that the little Cunningham scandal I started obsessing over last May actually turned into something. "But enough with this already," he said. "It's in the TIMES; he took bribes; they all do. Time to move on." He's a reformed cow-tipper from Maine (and I don't mean Portland) and he is wrong, wrong, wrong. The Cunningham scandal, even apart from it being emblematic of a systematic and strikingly unique Republican Culture of Corruption, is anything but over. It has barely begun. The alluded to bribers in Cunningham's judicial documents were bribing many more Republican congressmen and congresswomen than just the fat, arrogant and stupid Cunningham. But what makes this story startling is that at least one or two of these bribers seems to have been primarily in "business" to kick back and funnel taxpayer dollars into the Republican political machine!

Brent Wilkes owned and operated a number of firms that benefited mightily from Republican generosity. His companies were raking in millions of dollars. But they were by and large paper companies that didn't do anything. Oh, stike that; they did do something: they funded a large number of Republican campaigns (and stuffed illegal cash up the asses of "Duke" Cunningham, Jerry Lewis, Tom DeLay and God only knows how many more like these foxes in charge of the People's hen house).

I first stumbled on Cunningham when I was looking into another grossly crooked far right California congressman, Jerry Lewis from the High Desert/Big Bear area. I noticed that Lewis and Cunningham were getting inordinantly large contributions from the same donors and that they were all donors who were doing business with Lewis' Defense Appropriations Committee. Something stunk. And now the mainstream media is finally starting to sniff around the edges of the story.

Not unlike the Thomas Noe-web of illicit transactions that oversaw the looting of Ohio's Workmen's Compensation Board in favor of the Ohio Republican Party and the Ohio BushCheney campaign's efforts to steal the presidential election in 2004, ADCS was shovelling millions of dollars into Republican campaign coffers far beyond Cunningham. Millions that Congress allocated for defense and intelligence projects-- money that, for example, could have been used to buy the armor that so many American fighting men complained about not having on the front lines in Iraq-- was diverted into the hands of Republican hacks like Californians John Doolittle (who was also one of the Abramoff scumbags), Duncan Hunter, Bill Van de Weghe, Jr. and Darrell Issa, as well as Jerry Weller(R-IL), George Gekas (R-PA), Katherine Harris (R-FL), Lindsay Graham (R-SC), Henry Bonilla (R-TX), Steve Pearce (R-NM), Thaddeus McCotter (R-MI), Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), and of course 2 of the most corrupt men in the history of American politics, one coasting under the radar and the other awaiting trial in Texas as money laundering charges: George W. Bush and Tom DeLay.

No, this isn't a story that is going away. This is a story that should shake the foundations of an institutionally corrupt American political system where cash is king and powerful, avaricious politicians are stealing taxpayer dollars by the millions while destroying the lives of countless citizens. I would think that once the Democrats retake Congress in 2006 this-- along with electronic vote rigging-- would be the first items on their plate.


8AM UPDATE: MUCH FROG-WALKING TO COME

Now even Fox "News," a right-wing propaganda outlet closely associated with the Bush Regime and the Republican Party, is reporting a wide-ranging corruption scandal encompassing not just Cunningham but dozens of Republican elected officials including George Bush, Tom DeLay, Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter, John Doolittle, Pete Hoekstra, Virgil Goode, Katherine Harris, Larry Craig and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

IF YOU COULD ASK CHIMPY ONE QUESTION WHAT WOULD IT BE?

Today's BOSTON GLOBE has an exclusive Suzanne Ryan interview with 60 MINUTES superstar Mike Wallace (now 87 years old). And the first question out of the shoot: "President George W. Bush has declined to be interviewed by you. What would you ask him if you had the chance?"

Although Wallace's old colleague Dan Rather was viciously savaged, many would say professionally destroyed," by Bush's propaganda machine when he tried to take on the fascist-oriented resident of the White House, Wallace didn't mince any words. "What in the world prepared you to be the commander in chief of the largest superpower in the world? In your background, Mr. President, you apparently were incurious. You didn't want to travel. You knew very little about the military. . . . The governor of Texas doesn't have the kind of power that some governors have. . . . Why do you think they nominated you? . . . Do you think that has anything to do with the fact that the country is so fucked up?"

Damned he's good. And now we have... Sean Hannity.


SUNDAY AFTERNOON UPDATE: POOR WALLACE WAS AFFLICTED WITH A FASCIST CHILD (WHO WORKS FOR FAUX "NEWS")

The far right extremist website, NEWSMAX has an attack piece quoting Fox lunatic fringe anchorman, Chris Wallace, which demonstrates exactly what Right Wing family values are really all about. After his revered father gave a much publicized interview covering (brilliantly of course) the ugliness of the disastrous Bush Regime, the unfilial son savagely lashed into his father and claimed he was initiating a competence hearing against his 87 year old dad. I think he prefers Hannity.

GOP MURDER SUSPECT ADAM KIDAN ROLLS OVER. IS THIS CURTAINS FOR THE LITTLE BUG MAN?

I think my art department is drunk under a table after a HOLIDAY PARTY they had while watching Howard Stern make an ass of O'Liely last night. In any case, the picture below can serve as the illustration for what you're about to read. Adam Kidan isn't a household name-- but a few months ago, neither was Tom DeLay consigliere Jack Abramoff. However, if you've been following DWT this year you probably have read at least something about this uber-corrupt Republican operative who has been in cahoots with Abramoff, DeLay, Ney and a shit-load of sleazy Republicrooks.

It always amazes me that the Republicans have managed to more or less keep this explosive story away from the lazy, pathetic mainstream media, but in Florida the Abramoff/Kidan/DeLay/SunCruz drama has been HUGE for a long time. Today's SUN SENTINEL is reporting that "Kidan is expected to plead guilty next week to federal conspiracy and wire fraud charges in connection with the purchase of the SunCruz gambling fleet from entrepreneur Konstantinos "Gus" Boulis." It is widely believed that DeLay, Abramoff and Kidan had Boulis murdered by 3 Mafia hitmen after their partnership soured. If Kidan's plea bargain takes effect, his 30 year prison term could be reduced to 10 years or less for testimony against his partners.

The SUN SENTINEL reports that the "case can be traced to 1999 when the government forced Boulis to sell his controversial SunCruz gambling fleet by using an obscure shipping law prohibiting non-U.S. citizens from owning maritime interests. One of Boulis' lawyers put him in touch with Abramoff to help find potential buyers. Abramoff met Kidan years earlier through a young Republicans club in Washington, D.C., while Kidan was a college undergraduate and Abramoff a law school student. Liking what he saw in the SunCruz deal, he asked Kidan if he wanted to become a partner. Prosecutors maintain that neither man had the financial wherewithal needed to buy SunCruz, especially Kidan, who was close to being broke, sources said. But authorities said that didn't stop them from diving into negotiations in January 2000. In Boulis, they found a man willing to go along with the agenda, if it meant he could secretly keep part of SunCruz, prosecutors contend. Six months later, a company Kidan and Abramoff formed struck a deal to buy SunCruz for $147.5 million. The funding they obtained through Foothill Capital Corp. and Citadel Equity Fund required that they pay, and show proof they paid, $23 million of their own money to Boulis at the closing." Congressmen DeLay and Ney were instrumental in both the financing and the pressure applied to Boulis to accept the bizarre deal that went down.

And when the deal soured Kidan contacted an old friend, John Gotti-associate Anthony "Big Tony" Moscatiello and 2 other Mafia hitmen, Anthony "Little Tony" Ferrari and James "Pudgy" Fiorillo (who have all been indicted for the gangland murder of Boulis). Kidan and Abramoff were conspicuously out of the country when the murder took place and claimed the Mafia hit men were only hired as "caterers," not for the skills they were best known for. I know it sounds like an episode from THE SOPRANOS but according to THE SUN SENTINEL, Moscatiello, after being arrested "told detectives that Fiorillo traveled to his Queens home two weeks after the murder and confided that Kidan reportedly told Ferrari to kill Boulis, according to court records. Moscatiello said Fiorillo also indicated that he and Ferrari carried out the hit, the documents show. Moscatiello told detectives, 'I told Adam what had happened, what I was told and he told me he never made no phone call and after Tony Ferrari told me it was a lie, I never discussed it anymore with Adam.'
Meanwhile Tom "The Hammer" DeLay and his chief financial associate, Jack Abramoff, refuse to comment, although Abramoff insists that the 3 Mafia hitmen were only caterers. Bob Ney says he was tricked into the whole mess by Abramoff and he regrets everything.

DID DELAY REMIND POOR MIKE PENCE OF WHAT HAPPENED TO KONSTANTINOS BOULIS WHEN HE CROSSED HIM?

Hapless Indiana congressloon Mike Pence abruptly withdrew his name from consideration for the open Majority Leader position after Tom DeLay cleared his throat in a funny way yesterday. According to THE HILL, DeLay pontificated sternly that "There is no leadership" race," just before Pence, who had peed down his leg announced that he'd prefer to remain as chairman of the Republican Study Committee (and alive) and declared "I have no intention at this time of running for a leadership position." Yesterday another candidate, also a big pussy, Tom Reynolds (R-NY) circulated a signed letter to all GOP congressmen saying that he isn't running. Reynolds has neither confirmed nor denied he woke up Tuesday morning with a horse's head under his sheet.

TONY BLAIR NOMINATED FOR A WAR CRIMES TRIAL BY NOBEL LAUREATE HAROLD PINTER

Everybody knows how detested George Bush and the freaks around him are throughout the world (not counting the Confederacy and Utah), but Tony Blair ain't all that popular either. According to yesterday's GUARDIAN, Nobel laureate Harold Pinter used the occasion of his Nobel acceptance speech to call for Tony Blair, who he referred to as "pathetic and supine," to be tried as a war criminal. "The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law," said the much-admirer 75 year old playwright. "The invasion was an arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public ... a formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands and thousands of innocent people. We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery, degradation and death to the Iraqi people, and call it 'bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East'." Sounds very familiar, doesn't it?

DOES JEB BUSH REMIND YOU OF A BIG PLATTER OF CANE-GLAZED PORK CHOPS WITH APPLE CHUTNEY?

Cubans-- the patriotic ones in Cuba-- may hate George W. Bush (like someone, somewhere outside the Confederacy and Utah doesn't??) but because their country is so poor and so many people don't have enough food to eat, it is the corpulent Jeb Bush that most Cubans really detest (again, the patriotic ones in Cuba. The ones in Florida seem to relish his right-wing politics, his fat ass and his sagging breasts.) Apparently hungry Cubans see tv images of Jeb and immediately start thinking of big heaping plates of Massas de Puerco.

In fact today Cuban President Fidel Castro made some disparaging remarks about Jeb's rotundity. In fact, in a speech about a terrorist from Florida he referred to Jeb as "the fat little brother in Florida," although later he clarified and asked forgiveness. "It is not a criticism, rather a suggestion that he do some exercises and go on a diet, don't you think? I'm doing this for the gentleman's health."

Forever uptight, the governor's office wouldn't "dignify this with a response," a spokesman said. When reporters asked Jeb himself what he thought he couldn't answer because his mouth was stuffed with food.

HOWARD DEAN TALKS TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE AS THOUGH THEY HAVE BRAINS AND WANT THE TRUTH. DO WE? OR DO WE WANT MORE LIES FROM BUSH AND FAUX NEWS?

Howard Dean is the greatest political figure in America today. He doesn't lie and pussyfooting around doesn't come easy. John McCain a straight-shooter? Not on your life! McCain opens his mouth and lies pour out. Otherwise he wouldn't be running as a Republican in the first place.

And the cowardly, confused, corporate, careerist wing of the Democratic Party, the Bidens and Kerrys and Clintons? (I won't even bring up the Republicans disguised as Democrats like Joe Lieberman and Jim Marshall, 'cause the only people who care what those assholes think are Republicans-- or Republican propagandists playing journalist rolls in the mass media.) "Several Democrats joined President Bush yesterday in rebuking Dean's declaration to a San Antonio radio station Monday that "the idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong," wrote Jim VandeHei in today's WASHINGTON POST.

Sounding a lot like he's auditioning for a Fox "News" job for when he loses his Georgia congressional seat next year, Democratic turncoat Jim Marshall states that "Dean's take on Iraq makes even less sense than the scream in Iowa: Both are uninformed and unhelpful." Marshall, the House version of Lieberman, is a reactionary Bush supporter and militarist with an 11 year old's comprehension of the Middle Eastern situation-- a dumb 11 year old at that.

Dean, who is voicing preferences in total sync with over half the people in the country, generated a shitstorm from rightwing talk show hosts and Bush Regime neo-Cons by predicting, during a San Antonio radio interview, a rerun of the Vietnam debacle. "This is the same situation we had in Vietnam," Dean said. "Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening." Dean said he favored a plan to immediately withdraw National Guard and Reserve troops-- with all military personnel slated to be out of Iraq within two years.

"Howard Dean should be arrested and hung for treason or put in a hole until the end of the Iraq war!" said the severely mentally-impaired son of Ronald Reagan on his extremist Radio America show Monday. And the Faux News talking heads have shut up about it since. Putting him in a role until the end of the Iraq war means forever, if the Republicans have their way. This is a war Bush and Cheney planned way before 9/11, used the 9/11 tragedy as an excuse for it, and see the occupation as a way of dominating the strategic, oil-rich Middle East. They're building permanent bases in Iraq and plan to never leave. If Diebold voting machines are counting are votes in the future, they never will leave.

Do you recall Reagan or Faux News or the congressional sheep bleating when Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) let loose an even more aggressively anti-Bush tirade about Iraq a few months ago? "Things aren't getting better; they're getting worse. The White House is completely disconnected from reality. It's like they're just making it up as they go along. The reality is that we're losing in Iraq."


It's easier for the Far Right to confront Dean's hot button charges than it is to confront Republican Hagel or the more intellectually thorough attacks on BushCo's mendacity by Henry Waxman. Today Waxman skewered the Bush Regime with an utterly devastating analysis of their Iraq catastrophe. "The President's claims today are mindboggling. Either he doesn't understand the facts or simply doesn't want to face them. The reconstruction of Iraq has been an enormous boondoggle - not an example of "quiet, steady progress." Halliburton has repeatedly overcharged American taxpayers through fraud, waste, and abuse. The U.S. officials in charge of the reconstruction have been incompetent and, in some cases, corrupt. And billions of dollars have been squandered without increasing oil or electricity production."

ANOTHER REPUBLICAN HOMOPHOBIC CHILD MOLESTER BITES THE DUST-- FAR RIGHT SPOKANE MAYOR JIM WEST RECALLED IN A LANDSLIDE

If you've been reading DWT for a while, you're probably familiar with virulently homophobic Republican child molester Jim West of Spokane. The whole background story of this lame excuse for a human being is on that link, how he lead a religionist right jihad against gays and lesbians while he was Majority Leader of the Washington State Senate, all the while using his political power to lure young boys into his lair, which he continued after being elected Mayor of Spokane.

Yesterday was the special recall election West fought so hard to prevent and 65% of those participating voted to recall his honor (who must vacate his office in a week). The well-connected Republican has still not been charged for any of his crimes against underaged children.

THE REPUBLICAN SCHEMES TO STEAL ALL ELECTIONS PROCEEDING, DESPITE SOME SET BACKS AND A FEW REPUBLICAN CROOKS IN PRISON

Because their economic policies-- their primary raison d'etre-- are so harmful to the financial well-being of the vast majority of citizens, right wing political parties always resort to non-issue-oriented strategies for winning elections, creating hot-button issues to confuse and divide voters, limiting voter participation and subverting fair elections. The Republican Party in the U.S. can't win elections without these techniques. The subverting of elections through electronic vote stealing is particularly dangerous to the functioning and survival of a democracy.

But Republicans,a truly Stalinist political party, live and die by the dictator's electoral axiom: "It doesn't matter who votes, only who counts the votes." They work every angle to discourage wide electoral participation and to disqualify voters and their votes who they feel are unlikely to support Republicans.

Today the Associated Press is running a story about how Bush's New England campaign chairman is going on trial for this kind of subversion. James Tobin, a former Republican Party top national official played the pivotal role in the 2002 election day scam to jam the phone systems and wreck the Democrats' Get Out the Vote campaign. He is being tried for conspiring against voters' rights and for telephone harassment. He could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted, but like Cunningham, is certain to be pardoned by Bush if he doesn't point any fingers higher up the GOP chain of command (to Rove, for example, the mastermind of this kind of activity).

New Hampshire's former Republican Party Executive Director, Chuck McGee, admitted hatching the plot, with Tobin and was already sentenced to 7 months in prison. Another Republican lowlife/conspirator, Allen Raymond, also pleaded guilty and is asking for reduced charges in exchange for cooperating with prosecutors. Raymond, president of some sleazy Republican dirty tricks operation in Alexandria, VA (GOP Marketplace LLC) was hired by McGee to arrange for a flood of computer generated hang-up calls to jam phone banks in Democratic-leaning areas of New Hampshire. The Republicans in this case have all turned on each other like vicious beasts and each one is blaming the other and spilling the beans, much to the delight of prosecutors in the cases.

Meanwhile, today's WASHINGTON POST is reporting that "irregularities" in electronic voting machines are, in effect, making the practice of democracy a moot point in many states. "Across the country, officials are trying multiple methods to ensure that touch-screen voting machines can record and count votes without falling prey to software bugs, hackers, malicious insiders or other ills." Leon County, Florida in 2000 and Franklin County, Ohio in 2004 are just two examples are areas where Republicans were able to steal elections using fraudulent electronic vote counts. Look for more problems in 2006, not less, as Republicans desperately try to hold on to their ill-gotten gains and misused power.

IS IT TIME TO KICK LIEBERMAN OUT OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY?

I was feeling great. I mean the Cossacks chased my grandfather out of Russia (luckily for him and his descendants) and the Republicans chased him out of Albany and here I was just a handful of decades later dancing at the White House. Lou Reed had just finished a great raucous set after a state dinner in the East Room for his pal Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic. One of my table-mates, Orrin Hatch (R-UT), had been seat dancing while mouthing the words to "Dirty Boulevard" ("Give me your hungry, your tired your poor I’ll piss on ’em/ That’s what the statue of bigotry says/ Your poor huddled masses, let’s club ’em to death/ And get it over with and just dump ’em on the boulevard...")

Yeah, I was feeling good. And then something awful happened. Tipper Gore's social secretary dragged Tipper up and introduced us and asked me if I would be supporting Al in the upcoming presidential race. I was so stunned to be confronted by someone I so thoroughly and passionately loathed that I hardly knew what to say. I mumbled something really lame like "Not if he's married to you" and that kind of ended the conversation quickly.

Later in the course of the campaign I found myself accepting kudos from many of my friends because a letter I had written was printed in the L.A. TIMES. I explained why I couldn't vote for Gore. By then-- in light of the hideous face of George W. Bush and the prospect of having to hear that ugly, ugly voice of the radio for 4 years-- I had forgiven him Tipper; after all we all make mistakes when we're young and in love. But Lieberman!!!! Gore wasn't young when he chose the worst possible candidate for vice president. Gore has come a long way since then and I'm hoping to be able to vote for him in 2008. He's grown a lot since then and he's not the kind of man now who would consider an asshole like Lieberman next time.

Lieberman was always a nightmare in politics because he is a nightmare as a person. He's a hypocrite to the extreme, a pious holier than thou power-player-- real mean, always with a big smile but with a dagger behind his back. He's one of the most furthest right Democrats and the most close to the Bush Regime neo-Cons of any elected Democrat in the country. He's made a career out of attacking fellow Democrats at the behest of the Far Right, as much a Benedict Arnold as the execrable Zell Miller.

Rumors have been flying that because of Rumsfeld's obvious mental and emotional "exhaustion," Bush is going to name Lieberman Secretary of Defense. That rumor seemed to solidify a bit today when the HARTFORD COURANT reported Lieberman calling for a "War Cabinet" and asking Democrats to get behind "our commander-in-chief."

Although he technically represents Connecticut in the U.S. Senate (as a Democrat) everyone in DC knows that Lieberman is actually the Likud Party rep in the U.S. government. His out-of-touch, ruthless and harebrained ideas are damaging not only to America but even to Israel who he thinks he's helping. Lieberman is unfit to be a U.S. Senator and unfit to be a Democrat. So he's perfect for Bush. The COURANT says he's "increasingly isolated in his own Democratic party because of his strong support for the Iraq war," and that he "called on the White House and congressional leaders to form a special 'war cabinet' to provide advice and direction for the war effort... Lieberman, whom the Bush administration has praised repeatedly for his war stance, defended the president. 'It's time for Democrats who distrust President Bush to acknowledge he'll be commander-in-chief for three more years," the senator said. "We undermine the president's credibility at our nation's peril.'"


THURSDAY MORNING UPDATE: ANTIPATHY FOR LIEBERMAN GROWING IN CONNECTICUT, ALTHOUGH BUSHCO LOVES HIM

The Manchester Democratic Town Committee has had it with DINO turncoat Joe Lieberman. Have you noticed more and more people online have begun spelling the Connecticut senator's name LIEberman? In his home state, Democrats are finally fed up at perpetually playing third fiddle-- after the Likud and the Republicans-- for the attention of their senior senator. A growing list of complaints about Lieberman, particularly his rabid and delusional support for Bush's war and occupation, were brought up by Joseph Rafala, who said "It's discouraging as a Democrat. If you want to be a Republican, then switch over your affiliation and run as a Republican." There were no Lieberman defenders in the meeting and Town Chairman Ted Cummings said, "Ever since the senator kissed the president, his stock has been going down hill."

Chatter and buzz about a serious challenge to the right-wing Democrat from a genuine moderate or a progressive have been growing rapidly.

Meanwhile, today's NY DAILY NEWS ran a story by the extraordinarily well-connected Thomas DeFrank about the Rumsfeld leaving the Pentagon rumors. DeFrank reports that "White House officials are telling associates they expect Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to quit early next year, once a new government is formed in Iraq, sources said yesterday. Rumsfeld's deputy, Gordon England, is the inside contender to replace him, but there's also speculation that Sen. Joe Lieberman-- a Democrat who ran against Bush-Cheney in the 2000 election-- might become top guy at the Pentagon."

DON'T LET ANYONE TELL YOU CUNNINGHAM WAS A PATRIOT. HE WAS A SELF-SERVING RIGHT-WING GREED BALL WHOSE LIFE WAS ALL ABOUT SELFISHNESS

I was so pissed off yesterday when my friend Cynthia told me that the L.A. TIMES, lately having made a sharp rightward turn editorially, had offered up a truly lame excuse for admitted bribe-taker Randy "Duke" Cunningham's outrageous and contemptible behavior. And when I researched the basis of their absurd comments, I noticed that much of the right-wing, corporate mass media has been putting forward or at least implying the exact same talking point! I don't know if they're all plagiarizing each other or this is part of a coordinated campaign for Bush's eventual pardon of the fake patriot. (More on fake patriotism below.)

"In the end," the L.A. TIMES pontificated without any substantiation whatsoever, "what puzzles most of those who knew Cunningham [I suppose they took a poll; NOT] is how a man who had so much going for him could have gotten into such a mess. Some think [these 2 words always means the writer and editor are conspiring to get their point of view into a story] it began in 1998, when he underwent surgery for prostate cancer. Friends say the experience left him physically weakened and emotionally shaken. [Big revelation in investigative journalism? That is what happens after a cancer treatment.] Convinced that he would not enjoy a long life, this theory goes [rotflmao-- this is journalism? Maybe they should fire the editor over there and bring back Bob Scheer to save their asses before its too late.] Cunningham decided to maximize the pleasure of whatever time he had left."

This is really pathetic! I was also diagnosed and treated for prostate cancer. It didn't drive me to betray my country or steal money. It didn't drive me to scream violent and vicious epithets at gay people and elderly sick people. It didn't drive me to conspire with a rogues gallery of Republican crooks to defraud America out of hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, it made me more contemplative and thoughtful about the meaning of life and getting my soul straight.

According to a report from MSNBC, after Cunningham was diagnosed with prostate cancer he "went on a strange jag while addressing some elderly cancer patients at Alvarado Hospital near San Diego. He made an obscene gesture and said 'fuck you to a World War II vet who suggested that defense budgets be lowered. He said that no man would enjoy prostate-cancer treatments, 'unless maybe you're Barney Frank.'" But that wasn't some new twist in his vile personality. The grossly overweight, hard drinking Cunningham had been behaving boorishly for a very long time. "In 1992 he declared that the Democratic leadership 'ought to be lined up and shot. I would have no hesitation about lining them up and shooting them.' In 1995, Capitol police had to break up a scuffle with Democratic Congressman James Moran, and Cunningham once challenged another Democrat, David Obey, to a fistfight on the House floor. The L.A. TIMES might come up with an excuse for this behavior too-- maybe an ingrown toenail?

Never a thinker of any sort, he's always been a complete hypocrite and was certain that he and his were above the law. Cunningham was a lying sack of shit who tried persuading people that Tom Cruise's character in TOP GUN was based on him-- not a grain of truth in it-- and he was always the posterboy for self-entitlement. An aggressive and loudmouthed supporter of mandatory-minimum jail sentences for drug offenders (minorities in his feeble and narrow mind), in 1997 he successfully begged a federal judge for leniency when his son was arrested for flying 400 pounds of marijuana across the country. Right-wingers like making harsh rules for other peoples' children. His son is a wealthy white boy; what do these rules have to do with him?

Cunningham was a bully who looked for fear in people and exploited it. He threw his considerable weight around-- as a Republican big shot-- and forced the Pentagon to buy expensive, systems they neither wanted nor needed, from "business associates" of his who gave him and other GOP lawmakers (like Jerry Lewis, Duncan Hunter and Tom DeLay) gigantic kickbacks. He terrorized low ranking government bureaucrats to get them to do his bidding.

Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, Ann Coulter, John McCain, Jean Schmidt, George Bush, Bill O'Reilly are lowlife slime that can only debate by "swift-boating" people they disagree with. Sunday "straight-talking, non-partisan" McCain attacked decorated war hero Jack Murtha for being old and "too emotional" for advocating that the U.S. extricate itself from Iraq. McCain (aged 69) patronized Murtha as "lovable" but "not a big thinker," saying "as we get older, we get more sentimental." More subtle than Mean Jean "Piece of" Schmidt" calling him a coward but... McCain has been around longer and has always been a lot more sneaky and sly than your garden variety wingnut. But have you heard one Democrat challenge the traitorous Cunningham's medals and his claims to fame the way the Republicans have attacked Kerry and Murtha. No, and you won't. That's another way the two parties tend to be different from each other.


WEDNESDAY MORNING: TIME FOR TODAY'S DUKE CUNNINGHAM UPDATE:

Today's right-leaning newspaper, the L.A. TIMES is reporting that the IRS is holding a big old garage sale for San Diego criminal/ex-Far Right Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham's graft haul. "The Persian rugs, silver candelabra, vases, armoires, French commode, end tables, mirrors, buffet table, leather sofa, sleigh-style bed and custom oak and leaded-glass doors once adorned Randy 'Duke' Cunningham's 8,000-square-foot mansion in Rancho Santa Fe. On Tuesday, they were spread across the concrete floor of a nondescript warehouse here, displayed by the Internal Revenue Service near crates of possessions seized from convicted drug dealers and financial finaglers. The Cunningham goods will be sold at auction next year under the government's asset-forfeiture program. 'Some people like opulence,' said appraiser Dave McPheeters as he surveyed the expensive furnishings that contributed to the loss of Cunningham's reputation, his seat in Congress, and, soon, his freedom. In his plea agreement with federal prosecutors, Cunningham admitted that the goods were given to him by military contractors as bribes."

Although Cunningham faces a 10 year prison sentence, no one expects the well-connected Republican insider with potentially explosive testimony he could give that would wreck the Republican Party for a generation, to serve much time at all. Bush refuses to rule out pardons for convicted Republican criminals and traitors.

MESHUGGAH... RUMMY? BUSH?

On the 6AM conference call with the DWT art department-- kudos to Adam for snapping that great photo of Hillary this morning before she was able to put on her makeup and disguise her corporate self as a Democrat-- we tossed around some ideas for the day's stories. Yesterday our pal Danny had sent me a disturbingly pointed e-mail about the Secretary of Defense of the United States (of America)... "He's going meshuggah," postulated Danny, a guy with a dependably keen sense of direction. So this morning I told the art staff to get on the case of tracking down Rummy and seeing if they could get a photo of him looking meshuggah. Then I went for a swim. By the time I was done with my laps our... asset at the Pentagon had already sent back a disturbingly meshuggah picture of the Secretary of Defense and I was thinking that maybe it is a good thing that the ex-alcoholic, coke-snorter, messianic religionist fanatic has the nuclear codes football after all. So I went upstairs to get dressed for my morning walk in the Los Feliz hills.

That's where the trouble began. Not in the hills-- they were crystal clear and sublime-- upstairs. As I am prone to do, I flipped on CNN while I was getting dressed. And guess who was doing a press conference! Before I could abort the putting-on-the-tee-shirt-operation and shut the thing off I realized he was talking about polio and meeting with the dude from the World Health Organization about bird flu and other dreadful diseases he wants to use to get peoples' minds off the disaster in Iraq, Alito's floundering nomination and Republican treason and bribery scandals. Harmless, enough, I thought, as I proceeded to "operation socks." But that's when it started.

The first reporter he called on after the polio warning asked him about how we're gonna get the kidnapped American back from the Iraqi insurgents. He blinked his eyes once or twice-- as though reprogramming himself-- and launched into a set speech on how "they kill women and children and have no regard for humanity." Do you think anyone has ever discussed the American military theories behind the collateral damage strategy? Or would they figure that's too tough for him to handle? Anyway, one he went with one lie and distortion on top of another. God only knows what the poor World Health dude was thinking while Bush unraveled. (I never found out because, with only one sock on, I scrambled for the remote and shut the damn thing down for the day-- well, until SOUTH PARK tonight.)

So I say to myself, "Self, here we have that awesome photo someone risked their ass to smuggle out of a secret Pentagon basement but isn't Bush even crazier than Rummy and shouldn't I do a story on how crazy he is?" A quandary. I mean, sure Kerry is demanding Rummy be replaced by someone with actual military experience but he gave that a tepid try in regard to Bush a couple years ago and it didn't go anywhere either. But everybody is always writing that Bush is loco. I mean that piece in the new NEW YORKER by Seymour Hersh offers conclusive evidence that Bush drank the religionist kool-aide and is plumb insane and even foreigners are offering evidence of Bush's disconnect with objective reality.

So let everybody else write about Bush being a nutcase, today will be dedicated to Rummy's tragic fall over the cliff of sanity. You might want to take a look at a little redux of his slippage by a sharp Buzzflash correspondant before we delve into the psychological analysis.

And, look, just because "meshuggah" is such a cutesy word, it doesn't mean that the U.S. government shouldn't take it seriously. In fact we were just reminded of how the State Department branded one of their ambassadors "meshuggah" in 1988 and forced him to retire. (It's a little tangent but you ought to read about how US Ambassador to India John Gunther Dean, a Jew who had escaped Nazi Germany, was accused of being mentally unbalanced when he reported his suspicions to DC that the Mossad had downed the plane of Pakistani President Zia to prevent the "Muslim nuclear bomb" and was forced to retire. Included in the plane "accident" were the US Ambassador to Pakistan and a US general, I guess what Bush Jr's regime might call "collateral damage" today.)

Now Rummy didn't accuse his pals at the Mossad of nothing, of course. He saved his accusations for the disastrous failures of his Iraq policies for... the U.S. media. (I noticed Bush doing the same thing in his press conference rant today.) As Will Dunham pointed out in a Reuters report yesterday, Rummy "spoke just days after the U.S. military acknowledged that it had paid Iraqi newspapers to publish pro-American news stories written by an 'information operations' task force. Rumsfeld complained that the issue 'has been pounded in the media' but 'we don't know what the facts are yet.'" Yes, whenever anyone catches Rummy doing anything... torturing, rendering, collateral damaging... the facts are never in yet.

He continued babbling: "We've arrived at a strange time in this country where the worst about America and our military seems to so quickly be taken as truth by the press, and reported and spread around the world, often with little context and little scrutiny, let alone correction or accountability after the fact."

Of course, as with anything and everything that involves this Regime (think Cheney, Rove, Libby, Bush, Rummy...), nothing is ever as it seems on the surface. Sure, Rumsfeld is crazy as a loon. But he has been for a very long time. Why now the drumbeat for his removal? Simple: they want to replace him with someone even worse (and at the same time bi-partisanize the occupation). Now who would fit that bill better than a war-mongering Likud agent? Let's see... Ah... Joe Lieberman, a Democratic Senator and Bush ass-licker, would do it in an instant. And he would then be replaced by Christopher Shays (R-CT) thanks to the Republican governor of Connecticut Jodi Rell. And, of course, the lame, hapless Kerry stumbled right into their trap.


WEDNESDAY EVENING MESHUGGAH UPDATE:

It looks like we're not the only ones who think Rummy's lost it. Stephen Pizzo has also noticed that Rumsfeld is as mad as a hatter. "We now have a certifiable loon in charge of the most powerful military on the face of the earth. Shouldn't someone do something?" And I don't think replacing him with Lieberman is what Pizzo has in mind.

FEINGOLD LAUNCHES CONTEST TO HELP FUND PROGRESSIVE CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATES

Senator Russ Feingold's leadership PAC, the Progressive Patriots Fund, is conducting an online voting event; it started today and runs thru Wednesday, Dec 14. He has 11 great congressional candidates up (Francine Busby in CA, Chris Carney and Lois Murphy in PA, John Courage and Nick Lampson in TX, Peter Welch in VT, Heath Shuler in NC, Patricia Madrid in NM, Brad Ellsworth in IN and Tim Walz and the awesome Coleen Rowley in MN) and whoever gets the most votes wins a $5,000 contribution from Feingold. Right now Rowley is ahead substantially with strong showings from Ellsworth and Welch. All these guys and gals are worthy candidates and Feingold's site is a great way to start getting to know them. Go vote!

HILLARY CLINTON MIGHT BE A LITTLE BETTER THAN BUSH. BIG WHOOP! SHE STILL SUCKS

My friend Scott gets the same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach at the prospect of Hillary Clinton becoming President that I get. We first met when he was working with Fat Mike on punkvoter.com and he is also the creator of militaryfreezone.org and organized Operation: CeaseFire. Scott sent this along to DWT today.



Lets not allow revisionist history to rewrite how great Hillary Clinton is to the liberal cause before this primary season has even started. People need to focus more on winning the 2006 races than the premature horse race of 2008!  Nonetheless, please don't let the early hype and money game turn into "Group Think" about Hillary's horrid record on the 1st Amendment.

For those with short memories - I should remind you of the Media Marketing and Accountability Act of 2001. This was a way that Hillary Clinton, Joe Lieberman and Herb Kohl publicly smacked the music industry (a good friend and huge Dem ally in the 2000 presidential election) to try and prove that Democrats are conservative and are going to be "strong on the the law" by expanding the Federal Trade Commission's authority into governing businesses against "false and deceptive advertising practices." Hillary Clinton even stated, "If you label something as inappropriate for children and then go out and target it to children, you are engaging in false and deceptive advertising" - Source: Danny Goldberg- How The Left Lost Teen Spirit (p259). 

This kind of trash of blaming music for corruption of children is the kind of stuff one fears from the farthest right wing members of Congress. Hillary makes the PMRC look liberal when it comes to censorship.

Earlier today, Scott sent me another little "Screw you progressives; you gotta vote for me anyway" message from Hillary.

COUNTDOWN TO DELAY IN FEDERAL PRISON CONTINUES-- AND HE HAD ANOTHER REAL BAD DAY

Not really a good day for indicted Republican Crime Boss/former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay today. Judge Priest rejected motions from DeLay to dismiss all the charges against him. He did dismiss the less serious charges (conspiracy) but is going forward with a trial on the money laundering charges that could land DeLay in prison for many years-- and will prevent him from reclaiming his leadership post in the House. Judge Priest said Ronnie Earle, Travis County D.A. and his office "will have established that money was laundered'' if they can show that DeLay and the 2 crooked stooges charged with him, Jim Ellis and John Colyandro, funneled corporate donations through the Republican National State Elections Committee in 2002 with an agreement that it be used in races for the Texas legislature. It will be next to impossible for DeLay to slither out from under that one.

But as a measure of God's hatred for someone festering with as much evil as DeLay, a CNN/Gallop poll of DeLay's East Texas district came out today showing that Democrat Nick Lampson will probably wipe the floor with the former exterminator (nicknamed "The Hammer by admirers). If DeLay isn't in prison by next November-- a big if-- and he seeks re-election, respondants to the poll say they would have any Democrat by a margin of 49% to 36% for DeLay. And Lampson isn't just any Democrat. He is a much admired and trusted moderate former congressman who represented much of this district before DeLay engineered the gerrymander that has him two steps away from the pokey now. (Talk about being hoisted on one's own petard, DeLay actually cut some GOP strongholds out of his districts to make it easier for Repugs in surrounding areas to win and this little strategy could lead to his electoral downfall-- as well as his legal downfall.)

The same also showed that only 37% of the people in his district have a favorable opinion of the extremist, crooked DeLay and that 55% of the people in the district think the charges against him are either probably true or definitely true. (8% believe the charges are definitely false, the same 8% who probably believe Saddam bombed the World Trade Center with weapons of mass destruction and George W. Bush was a decorated fighter pilot.)

THE CUNNINGHAM SCANDAL JUST KEEPS GETTING WORSE AND WORSE

This morning when I read the WASHINGTON BLADE story about admitted felon, bribe-taking San Diego Republican Congressloon Randy "Duke" Cunningham also admitting to having had sex with men, I was so embarrassed that I kind of buried it in an inconspicuous update on an old Cunningham posting. I remember when I'd hear someone saying really reprehensible, villainous characters like Roy Cohn or Joseph McCarthy or even Hitler were homosexuals I would think "Oy, don't we already have enough problems with public perceptions without being associated with psychopaths like these?" But, of course, I guess it just goes to show that homosexuality fits no stereotypes and that along with caring, decent, normal gay people, there are also criminals and unsavory types like McCarthy and Cunningham.

Today Jason Vest over at GovExec.com has a story proving that the Cunningham bribery scandals have only scratched the surface. "Federal investigators in San Diego have made it clear that while just-resigned Rep. Randy 'Duke' Cunningham pled guilty last week to taking bribes from defense contractors, their public corruption probe will not stop at Cunningham. Numerous current and retired CIA officials say they will not be surprised if the investigation touches the CIA in general, and it's third-ranking official in particular."

The focus in DC has been on what the unscrupulous right-wing extremist did for his contractor pals as an influential member of the House Defense Appropriations subcommittee, but the real damage well may have been what he was able to achieve as a member of the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. CIA executive director Kyle "Dusty" Foggo, the guy who approves the contracts, has had a long, close personal relationship with Cunngham's two bribers, ADCS and MZM, Inc.
    

As I've been pointing out for months, the Cunningham scandal is FAR, FAR GREATER than a piddling few million dollars in bribes that he admitted to. His behavior goes to the pervasive Republican culture of corruption that the arrogance of power has allowed to flourish in the heart of our government. This man was advance-selling presidential pardons to convicted Republican criminals. And yet no mainstream media is willing to ask Bush what his cut was. Cunningham is going to prison but his misdeeds will still be under investigation when Bush pardons him as he leaves office.

And if Nancy Pelosi, and even a lowlife like Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), are worrying, publically, about the possibility of serious national security breaches coming out of Cunningham's avarice and treachery, there is probably a LOT more there than is in the newspapers.


MONDAY NIGHT UPDATE: MORE FILTH FROM CUNNINGHAM

Crooked Republican contractor Brent Wilkes served as San Diego campaign chairmen for every corrupt right-wing hack that came along, from George W Bush and Arnold Schwarzenegger to his best pal, disgraced Congressman Randy "Duke" Cunningham (who he gave at least $630,000 in bribes to, but probably much, much more). He has contributed over a million dollars in bribe money to the most notorious bribe takers in Congress, Tom DeLay and Jerry Lewis-- in return for around $100 million in sweet government contracts for his ADCS, Inc. Today's SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE paints a sickening picture for anyone, regardless of political party, who loves this country and brings up a certain high class whore house for Republican politicians he was running in DC.

Meanwhile southern California's newly right-wing-oriented L.A. TIMES has begun the whitewash, trying to engender sympathy for the vicious war-monger Cunningham by excusing his years and years of gross criminal behavior by speculating (idiotically) that he only started taking bribes-- or at least bribes in the 6 and 7-figure range-- after he was diagnosed with prostate cancer.

A NATIONAL DEMOCRAT WILLING TO TELL THE TRUTH! GUESS WHO!

Yesterday I was excited to see that a progressive anti-war candidate, Jonathan Tasini, is going to challenge Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for her New York U.S. Senate seat. I like it but I suspect that in the end progressives may have to actually run against war-supporting corporate Democrats like Clinton in the general elections, split the vote and let Republicans win. Sounds horrible, right? But what good does it do to have someone like Clinton in office? Just think of something she's good for.

At least Howard Dean, though under tremendous pressure from corporate Beltway careerist slime like Biden, Bayh and Lieberman to keep quiet for the sake of "party unity," has come out and said what most Democrats are afraid to say-- that there is NO WAY TO WIN THE WAR IN IRAQ, despite pie-in-the-sky scenarios painted by delusional Democrats like Wes Clark, Biden and Lieberman.

Dean was clear as a bell when he said in an interview on WOAI Radio in San Antonio that the "idea that we're going to win the war in Iraq is an idea which is just plain wrong. I've seen this before in my life. This is the same situation we had in Vietnam. Everybody then kept saying, 'just another year, just stay the course, we'll have a victory.' Well, we didn't have a victory, and this policy cost the lives of an additional 25,000 troops because we were too stubborn to recognize what was happening."

Instead of clearheaded, brave fighting Dems like Dean (and Murtha) we're stuck with a bunch of overly-cautious careerists like Kerry and Biden and Clark who are so nuanced and confused themselves that they confuse Americans into not knowing which is the war-crimes party and which is the peace party. Cindy Sheehan isn't confused. Today she endorsed Jonathan Tasini for U.S. Senate: "I am so pleased that Jonathan Tasini has stepped forward to challenge Senator Clinton and to take her on as an anti-war candidate. I encourage the people of New York to take a hard look at Mrs. Clinton’s dismal record on the illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. Then take a hard look at what Jonathan is saying. We as people who strive for peace and justice should not support a candidate who advocates for continued killing on the basis of flimsy reasoning. It is time to hold the pro-war Democrats responsible for what they are saying and doing also." Amen.

WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO WHEN DEMOCRATS WIN AND THEN ACT JUST LIKE RIGHT WING KKK REPUBLICANS?

It drives me crazy when a CNN talking head can say to a Democratic lawmaker-- like, say, right-leaning Nebraska Senator Ben Nelson (D-NE)-- "You Democrats are all over the map on this" (Bush's war and occupation of Iraq). That's what happens when there's no Democratic president to be a (more or less) final arbiter in defining party positions. If a strong president and most of the party's elected reps are all on one page, someone from the party with another point of view is just "a renegade" or a freethinker or even a rebel; no biggie. But today the news media can pick and choose any Democrat they want to make any point that the media outlet wants. Ergo, you see an awful lot of much-loathed Joe Lieberman (Likud-CT) masquerading as someone competent to give a "Democratic perspective" on an issue. Now this crap is bad enough. But it could be worse.

Believe it or not, the Democrats are the majority party in the Alabama House of Representatives. Yippeeee? Um... not necessarily. Last week, the Speaker of the House, Seth Hammett, and the House Majority Leader, Ken Guin, announced that early in 2006 they will push for a law that would allow local school boards to offer "Bible literacy" classes as elective high school courses.

And while Republicans are screaming that this is their issue and the Democrats ought to keep their mitts off it, people concerned about separation of church and state (original intent Constitutionalists? actual conservatives?) are plenty pissed off. "Anytime you specify the study of a specific religion, it just opens up the likelihood of abuse that it will turn into a devotional text rather than an academic text," said Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for the Separation of Church and State. "I just don't like the idea of taking one religion and singling it out for special treatment, even as an elective course, and, in addition, this book has problems, not as many as some, but it has problems nevertheless." Turns my stomach to see Democrats behaving like a bevy of backward, ignorant Buy-Bull-thumpin' Repugs!

HISTORICALLY ANTISEMITIC, PRO-NAZI FORD MOTORS JOINS VICIOUS ANTICHRIST DONALD WILDMON IN ANTI-GAY JIHAD

There was a time when half the people I knew didn't like the idea of buying a Volkswagen because the company had been so heavily implicated-- to put it mildly-- in the Nazi effort. (I didn't know anyone at the time who could afford a Mercedes so thinking about that company's participation in the far right's gift to mankind was moot.) Many of us did buy VW bugs and VW vans, mostly because they were cheap and cool and we allowed ourselves to be convinced that it was a new world, a new Germany, a new VW, a new day, etc, etc. To be honest, VW's non-Nazi mindset is a lot more believable than Ford Motors'. "Ford?" you ask. Oh yes, the company in Detroit whose management is asking for God only knows how much in tax dollars so they can keep collecting their outrageously high salaries and bonuses (while shipping more American jobs overseas). Thanks to the swell folks over at AMERICAblog and at THE ADVOCATE we are learning the details of Ford Motors' decision to boycott gay media after threats of a boycott from Donald Wildmon's Mississippi-based hate group, the mis-named "American Family Association."

Wildmon, a fake right-wing preacher and aggressive extremist who is best known, for his virulent campaigns against Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Robert Mapplethorpe, is claiming victory-- and is calling off his threatened boycott of Ford "for now"-- after forcing Ford to cease advertising in mainstream gay lifestyle magazines. Wildmon's obsession with spreading a message of hatred has made many people wonder if he is an actual antichrist. Those who have watched him in action over the years are convinced he is.

But let me come back to the vile Wildmon in a moment. First I want to give you a little context in terms of Ford Motors. This is a company that should know better, given their very racist and reactionary-- many say treasonous-- past. Henry Ford was not just a typical reactionary Republican robber baron; oh no. This one was as vicious and aggressive a Nazi pig in his day as people like Robertson, Phelps, Dobson, Falwell, and Wildmon are today. Ole Henry Ford published an antisemitic hate rag called THE DEARBORN INDEPENDENT which was distributed in Ford dealerships in the 1920s and, among other things, republished the antisemitic right-wing nonsense called "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion." Ford's paper was notorious not just for its virulent antisemitism but also for being anti-immigrant and anti-labor (see, the Republicans never change, although how many children and grandchildren of the immigrants Ford and other wingnuts were demonizing then are now hate-mongers themselves, even sitting and drinking beers with other fat Minutemen in Arizona, trying to terrorize desperate Mexican migrants?)

Anyway, auto manufacturer, and newspaper publisher Ford seemed to think he needed to do even more in a world he apparently thought was craving more hatred and bigotry. He also published and had his car dealerships distribute a book called "The International Jew, the World's Foremost Problem"-- and then he found a hero who he could really get behind: Adolf Hitler. Ford was an early financial backer of der fuehrer and his little right-wing politcal party and was always yammering on about what a great leader Hitler was and how we needed leaders like him in America. (Bush's grandfather, another far right-wing nutcase, was also a big Hitler supporter at this time.) Ford built factories in Germany-- using slave labor-- that greatly helped the Nazi military build-up and was rewarded with the Grand Cross of the Order of the German Eagle (see photo above), the first American to ever get such an honor from the Nazis; Bush's grandpa, a notorious money grubber, was a less august Nazi operative and he just got cash for his efforts.

Think about that the next time you think about buying a car. Unless you're gay or have gay relatives or friends. Then you can think about what Ford is up to now. Try to imagine a right-wing hate group (like the Nazis or the KKK or the Republican Party) contacting a major corporation and telling them to stop advertising in a progressive magazine or on Air America or in a newspaper that contradicts The Leader. Imagine that the KKK Grand Dragon goes to the head of Ford and says "Stop advertising in that left-wing, Jew-owned, Black-lovin', Bush-bashin' New York Times or we'll get every racist redneck in the Bible Belt to stop buying your trucks." What would Ford do?

Well you don't have to imagine! The Grand Dragon of the American Family Association, Donald Wildmon, called a boycott of Ford and, guess what Ford did! They informed gay media outlets on which they have been advertising-- which is what pissed the neo-Nazi Wildmon folks off-- that they were pulling their ads and would no longer be doing business with them. And the boycott got cancelled.

How embarrassing for Ford-- or was it conveniently coincidental considering who holds power in DC?-- that this should come to light just when Ford is begging the Federal Government for a bailout after years of dismal mismanagement and incompetence and greed as bad as anything demonstrated by FEMA!


MONDAY EVENING UPDATE

The January 24, 2000 issue THE NATION has a great piece on Ford and the Führer which all Jews, gays and progressives thinking about buying a car ought to read carefully.

IS GENERAL ODOM A TRAITOR TOO? ANOTHER PATRIOT AND NATIONAL SECURITY EXPERT CALLS BUSH'S DISASTROUS IRAQ "STRATEGY" INTO QUESTION

Despite the way partisan Republican propaganda-- whether from chickenhawks like Cheney and Limbaugh or from practiced professional slime merchants like Coulter and O'Reilly or just from a run-of-the-mill nasty psychotic like Mean Jean Schmidt-- attempts to slime anyone who opposes the Bush Regime's catastrophic policies, more and more patriotic and fearless Americans are bravely coming forward to tell the public that the emperor indeed has no clothes. Even in the brutal aftermath of Republican and Fox "News" attempts to debase decorated American combat hero John Murtha, Reagan National Security Advisor General William Odom stepped forward to write a piece explaining how the biggest obstacle to Bush's stated goals in Iraq (democracy and Middle East stability) is the American military occupation of Iraq. Just click on the link and read why a conservative Republican thinks Bush, Cheney and the neo-Con imbeciles they've surrounded themselves with have wrecked American foreign policy.

MOST AMERICANS AGREE THAT WHOMEVER THE NEXT PRESIDENT IS, HE OR SHE MUST BE COMPLETELY DIFFERENT FROM BUSH

According to a Time Magazine poll to be released Monday, 60% of Americans agree on one thing about the next president-- that he or she be "completely different" from George W. Bush. According to the poll 41% approve of the way Bush is doing his job (down 1% since this outfit did it's last poll, right after Bush was commending "Brownie" for the great job he had done after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans while Bush played a fiddle guitar).

Over three-quarters of those who disapprove of the job Bush is doing say they are "unlikely to change their mind"...ever. But whether they approve, disapprove, might change their mind, or will never change their mind, the vast majority of Americans want the next president to be someone NOT like Bush. (36% are certifiably insane-- or joking with the poll-taker-- and claim they want someone similar to Bush.) The poll also shows that if the 2004 election were held again, Kerry would win again, but by a greater margin.

The poll also found that although "blue states" residents are now favoring voting for Democratic congressional candidates by an overwhelming 55%/30% tsunami-strength margin, as many brainwashed, bucktoothed rednecks in "red states" are still willing to vote for a Republicrook (42%) as for a Democrat (42%); those damn Southerners are still holding a grudge over that whole civil rights thing.

On the normal questions that always pop up on these polls, 60% disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq, 50% think the U.S. was wrong to go to war against Iraq in the first place, 48% understand that Bush deliberately misled Americans to build the case for war (45% still haven't faced this), 60% still see the country going down the wrong track, and 57% think he's botching up on immigration (2% more than those who say he's screwing up the economy).

Bush's negative job approval ratings are so low because of specific problems that voters think he's failing to handle well. The ones he gets the strongest negatives on are: the federal budget deficit (39%), cronyism charges (39%), his handling of hurricane recovery in the Gulf coast (37%), his handling of the economy (35%), the failure of his social security initiative (32%), the indictment of Cheney's chief of staff Irving "Scooter" Libby (26%).

On the brighter side, for Bush, he still has 27% of Americans hoodwinked into thinking his ill-defined, confusing jumbled hodgepodge approach to illegal immigration is the way to go.

A modest proposal to speed up the process of getting congressional Republicrook leaders to (refuse to) probe congressional and other Republicrooks

Have you noticed how many of DWT's recent posts involve frustrated Democrats urging Republican leaders in Congress to investigate assorted Republicrooks in and out of Congress?

* There's Sen. Frank Lautenberg writing to Senate Majority Leader "Dr. Bill" Frist (as well as Minority Leader Harry Reid) urging an inquiry into the flagrant lies that that rogues' gallery of oil bigwigs told Senate committee members about their involvement with Vice President Dick Cheney's "energy policy."

(I believe the technical term for that involement is "being in cahoots with." And unless I missed it in the story, Senator Lautenberg was apparently too tactful to propose an inquiry into the conduct of committee chair Sen. Ted Stevens, who steadfastly--no, pugnaciously--shot down all efforts by his Senate colleagues to have the oil-company prevaricators testify under oath, on the oft-repeated non-ground that "it's my decision."

(Or maybe Senator Lautenberg was just recognizing that his colleague from Alaska hadn't broken any law--just every minimal standard of decency, honesty, conscience and professional responsibility. Senator Stevens could have cleared this up with a few simple words of explanation, such as: "These are my goddamn lying boys, and if I say they can lie their goddamn lying heads off to this goddamn lying U.S. Senate, my goddamn lying word is my goddamn lying bond.")

* Then there's House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi asking Speaker Denny "Old Tub of Guts" Hastert to look into more of the shenanigans of that disgraced erstwhile defense-industry shill, mercifully former Rep. Randy "Duke" Cunningham.

* And there's . . . well, frankly I can't keep track of all the Republicrooks who stand in need of prompt investigation, especially in the House since seemingly undisgraceable maybe-and-maybe-not-former Majority Leader Tom Delay turned the already-near-toothless House Ethics Committee into a knitting club.

I believe I have an eminently practical suggestion that might not bring about rapid results but would at least speed up the process.

As DWT points out, the GOP leaders to whom all these pleas are directed are themselves featured players in the 2005-06 Cavalcade of Falling Republicrooks, and may be lagging in their own races to their dates with justice. Can you blame them if they're not in an especially investigative frame of mind?

What if, for example, Senator Lautenberg had addressed the copy of his letter destined for the Senate majority leader to "Sen. 'Dr. Bill' Frist or Occupant"? Ditto with all those pesky "Dear Denny Why Doncha Investigate" letters on the House side. Wouldn't that beat having to return these letters stamped "addressee unknown" or "moved--left no forwarding address"?

Or, better, what if the Republicrook leaders were to have their soon-to-be successors chosen now rather than waiting till they're actually booted (or shamed) out?

In other words, have the Senate Republican caucus decide now who will step into Dr. Bill's shoes when the heat from his conflict-of-interest scandal becomes too intense. And get their House counterparts to decide now who'll inherit Dorky Denny's coach's whistle. Then let the winning loser deal with the mess.

It could be argued against my suggestion that guys clutching for dear life to their power chairs aren't likely to welcome having these succession battles waged while they're still chained to those chairs. Frankly, that seems to me an argument in favor of my modest proposal.

RUSSIAN CHESSMASTER TO AMERICAN LEARNING DISABLED CHILD: CHECKMATE, MY DEAR FRIEND