Nov. 1 - Nov. 20, 2006

Termites and Cockroaches


Loudmouth James Carville is demanding that DNC chairman, Howard Dean resign. (Story here)

What the hell's that all about?

Well, let me tell you what it's all about. It's about a cancer that has attached itself to the Democratic party, of which Carville is simply the most obvious lesion.

Let me explain.

In the early days of the mid-term race that just ended, DNC chairman, Howard Dean and DCCC chairman, Rahm Emanuel butted heads – big time. They argued so loudly one day that their shouts could be heard throughout the DNC offices. Then Emanuel stormed out.

Emuanel, a Clintonite, demanded that Dean spend DNC campaign money on targeted races. Dean refused, arguing that, if the Democratic party was going to become a national party again, as opposed to a niche party, it needed to run hard, honest races in every state of the union.

The incident got a little press during the campaign and then was quickly forgotten, until yesterday when Carville went straight for Dean's throat.

There are two forces being played out here, and they are both despicable.

First let me deal with James Carville.

I only met James once during a meeting in DC back in 2002. The meeting was to strategize on how Dems could capitalize on Republican ties to Enron.

James breezed in late, like a rock star, plunked himself down and launched right into a mouth-foaming diatribe.

“How many times did y'all have to sit through that video clip of Bill Clinton hugging Monica on the rope line?” he demanded, glaring at the assembled munchkins

“The Republicans found that footage and made goddamn sure every TV news outlet had a copy,” Carville continued. “Why hasn't anyone one found footage of George W. Bush hugging Ken Lay? Huh? How come? You gotta know it's out there somewhere. But no one has found it. That's why we keep losing and they keep winning. Republicans are just meaner than we are. They are better at that kind of stuff.”

Then he declared he wasn't "a meeting kinda guy" and left.

I took an immediate dislike to James. He was arrogant, loud, opinionated and rude. Of course, anyone who knows me will tell you that describes me as well. So, what's my problem?

I admit it... I am all those things and more. But, for starters, my wife wasn't "special counselor" to Vice President Dick Cheney.

Let's get right too it folks. I've had it right up to here with the Carville/Matalin routine. If George Burns and Gracie Allen had a set of evil twins, they would have grown up to become James Carville and his wife Mary Matalin.

These two characters have pulled off a hat trick politicians can only dream of -- never being out of “the game.” Whether Dems are in power or Republicans are in power, James and Mary are in power.

I thought O.J. Simpson had the market cornered on chutzpah, but he can't hold a steak knife to Carville and Matalin. James can rail with apparent genuine passion about Republican misdeeds on Meet The Press and then go home and slip between the sheets with Dick Cheney's very own version of Baghdad Bob.

Carville can pound his chest condemning the bloodbath the administration has created in Iraq, and still break bread that evening with the spokeswoman for Iraq's new Butcher of Baghdad, Dick Cheney. (Too strong? I don't think so. Since Cheney convinced Bush attacking and occupying Iraq was a good idea somewhere between 60,000 and 600,000 Iraqis have been killed. Pick your number.. but anywhere within that range qualifies as slaughter.)

James Carville nests with that black widow. (Hell, they even mated and he lived to tell about it.)

I don't know about you, but I have a problem with that. I've been happily married to the same woman for 35 years. We agree on some things and disagree on other things and our marriage has survived them all. However, should Sue come home one day and tell me she'd accepted the job of apologist for a guy who runs secret prisons, advocates torture, lies like rug and ginned up a war on false pretenses that has killed hundreds of thousands civilians... well, I'd have a problem with. Actually several problems.

I'd have a problem eating across a kitchen table from her wondering how she can even have an appetite after watching the evening news from Iraq. I'd wonder what she's teaching our children, particularly about issues of right and wrong, honesty and compassion. I'd wonder what she feels when she looks into our children's eyes and reflects on the thousands of completely innocent children her boss's war has killed in Iraq. And, when she hugged me, I would wonder if she had any thoughts or feelings for the tens of thousands of Iraqi women that can no longer hug their husbands, thanks largely to her boss.

And, of course, all the Viagra on earth would be unable to rekindle the fires of passion for such a handmaiden of massacre and mayhem.


However, Democrat James Carville appears to have no problem with any of that. Which is why I have a problem with him. He is an opportunistic political equivalent of the old-time patent medicine man. He lives, eats and sleeps with the enemy while preaching the opposite -- and gets away with it! (Eat your heart out Reverand Ted. )


And Mary, his wife, is a full and enthusiastic accomplice. They are the Bonnie and Clyde of politics. And their phoney Battling Bickersons, dog and pony show has paid off big. They've become what you'd get if you crossed the Beverly Hillbillies and Ferdinand and Emelda Marcos. If either party had an ounce of self-respect they'd have nothing to do with them.


I said there were two things afoot. That was one. Here's the other.

The reason Carville went after Howard Dean this week was not because Dean failed, but precisely because he succeeded. Rahm Emuanel is a ranking foot soldier in the Vast-no-wing Hillary Clinton Conspiracy. Hillary doesn't like Howard Dean because Howard refuses to drink the Hillary '08 Koolaid. Hillary didn't want Dean to succeed Clinton operative Terry McAuliffe, who took his marching orders straight from Clinton central.

When Emanuel argued with Dean over how the DNC should dole out money during the last campaign, it was not about the campaign. It was about the next campaign -- Hillary '08. It was about buying loyalty and collecting IOU's. But most of all it was about who was going to call the shots in the Democratic party.

When Dean's 50-straight strategy won the House and Senate back for his party that posed a direct threat for the Clintonian forces. When Godmother Hillary sent Rahm (Michael Corleone) Emanuel with marching orders over to the DNC, Dean showed no respect. Instead Dean went his own way. That's why James (Sonny) Carville was dispatched this week to whack Howard Dean.

Don't get me wrong. I liked Bill Clinton. I still do. But don't make the mistake of thinking for one second that Hillary Clinton is just Bill Clinton with breasts. She's not. Not even close. Once Bill was out of power Hillary rounded up the most obedient of Clinton sycophants and hangers on, like Carville, Begala, Emanuel, Lockhart and others. These folks had tasted White House moonshine, and loved it. And now they'd sell their own mothers into white slavery to get it back.

Those, like Carville, who make up the Vast-no-wing Hillary '08 Conspiracy are the Trotskyites of Democratic party. They are like termites. You think they are gone, but they aren't. They are inside the walls of the DNC, chewing, chewing, always chewing. They have been joined by refugees from the once ascendant, but now discredited, Democratic Leadership Conference – who are, of course, just Republicans suffering an identity crisis.

While Carville failed – at least so far -- to unseat Howard Dean, Rahm Emuanel has carved out a strong foothold in the new Democrat-controlled House were early signs are not good. First Democrats tossed John Murtha under the bus because, like Howard Dean, Murtha speaks his mind and refuses to take orders he doesn't agree with. Then the Democrat House leadership heaped disproportionate praise and credit on Emanuel for engineering their November victory.

Beware the Vast no-wing Hillary '08 conspirators. For they are chewing, chewing, always chewing.




November 15, 2006


Okay Dems – time for a history lesson. And there will be a quiz in January when you have to stop talking and start governing. If George the Younger had read what follows a few hundred thousand full term humans would likely still be up and taking nourishment.

George the Younger has called in George the Elder's consigliari and Middle East expert, James Baker, to get him out of the mess he got us into in Iraq.

History repeats itself... often in frightening similarity. Back in 1920, when the British were stuck in the same place, doing the same things and getting the same results, then Secretary of State for Colonies, Winston Churchill, called T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) in to get Britain untangled from Mesopotamia – later to be renamed, “Iraq.”

So Dems, put on your reading glasses, get out your yellow maker pens and cuddle up with this report. It was written long ago, about a land far far away by Lawrence of Arabia --- a man who had forgotten more about Arab/Muslim culture and politics than any British politician or general thought they knew.

We can only hope that James Baker can speak as much truth to power as Lawrence did 86 years ago.


A Report on Mesopotamia
Ex.-Lieut.-Col. T.E. Lawrence,
The Sunday Times, 22 August 1920

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

The sins of commission are those of the British civil authorities in Mesopotamia... They availed themselves of the necessary discretion of war-time to carry over their dangerous independence into times of peace. They contest every suggestion of real self- government sent them from home. A recent proclamation about autonomy circulated with unction from Baghdad was drafted and published out there in a hurry, to forestall a more liberal statement in preparation in London, 'Self-determination papers' favorable to England.

The Cabinet cannot disclaim all responsibility. They receive little more news than the public: they should have insisted on more, and better. they have sent draft after draft of reinforcements, without inquiry. When conditions became too bad to endure longer, they decided to send out as High commissioner the original author of the present system, with a conciliatory message to the Arabs that his heart and policy have completely changed.

We said we went to Mesopotamia to defeat Turkey. We said we stayed to deliver the Arabs from the oppression of the Turkish Government, and to make available for the world its resources of corn and oil. We spent nearly a million men and nearly a thousand million of money to these ends. This year we are spending ninety-two thousand men and fifty millions of money on the same objects.

Our government is worse than the old Turkish system. They kept fourteen thousand local conscripts embodied, and killed a yearly average of two hundred Arabs in maintaining peace. We keep ninety thousand men, with aeroplanes, armoured cars, gunboats, and armoured trains. We have killed about ten thousand Arabs in this rising this summer.

We are told the object of the rising was political, we are not told what the local people want. It may be what the Cabinet has promised them. A Minister in the House of Lords said that we must have so many troops because the local people will not enlist. On Friday the Government announce the death of some local soldiers defending their British officers, and say that the services of these men have not yet been sufficiently recognized because they are too few (adding the characteristic Baghdad touch that they are men of bad character). There are seven thousand of them, just half the old Turkish force of occupation. Properly officered and distributed, they would relieve half our army there.

We have not reached the limit of our military commitments. Four weeks ago the staff in Mesopotamia drew up a memorandum asking for four more divisions. I believe it was forwarded to the War Office, which has now sent three brigades from India. If the North-West Frontier cannot be further denuded, where is the balance to come from? Meanwhile, our unfortunate troops, Indian and British, under hard conditions of climate and supply, are policing an immense area, paying dearly every day in lives for the willfully wrong policy of the civil administration in Baghdad. The War Office has made every effort to reduce our forces, but the decisions of the Cabinet have been against them.

The Government in Baghdad have been hanging Arabs in that town for political offenses, which they call rebellion. The Arabs are not at war with us. Are these illegal executions to provoke the Arabs to reprisals on the three hundred British prisoners they hold? And, if so, is it that their punishment may be more severe, or is it to persuade our other troops to fight to the last?

We say we are in Mesopotamia to develop it for the benefit of the world. all experts say that the labour supply is the ruling factor in its development. How far will the killing of ten thousand villagers and townspeople this summer hinder the production of wheat, cotton, and oil? How long will we permit millions of pounds, thousands of Imperial troops, and tens of thousands of Arabs to be sacrificed on behalf of colonial administration which can benefit nobody but its administrators?


More Unheeded Advice from Lawrence:
"The beginning and ending of the secret of handling Arabs is unremitting study of them. Keep always on your guard; never say an unnecessary thing: watch yourself and your companions all the time: hear all that passes, search out what is going on beneath the surface, read their characters, discover their tastes and their weaknesses and keep everything you find out to yourself. Bury yourself in Arab circles, have no interests and no ideas except the work in hand, so that your brain is saturated with one thing only, and you realize your part deeply enough to avoid the little slips that would counteract the painful work of weeks. Your success will be proportioned to the amount of mental effort you devote to it."

T.E. Lawrence (of Arabia) (From his 27 Articles for Dealing with Arabs.. (Full Text)
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November 13, 2005

So, What Now?


Here's what I think. On November 7 voters did not vote for a Democrat government. And they did not vote against Republican government, either.

They voted for something that has been missing for too long -- a government.

The current Congress worked only 90 days during this calendar year. Nice job if you can buy it. The salary for a rank-and-file member of the House and Senate is $165,200. That comes to roughly $690 a day, or $86 an hour. (52 weeks x 5 work days, minus 10 days paid vacation, minus holidays = 240 workable days.) (More benefits)

Remember, this is the same congress that maintained without a hint of irony or guilt that raising the current federal minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, would "ruin the economy."

On November 7 voters basically said they want to start getting their money's worth out of Congress. They didn't vote for or against parties. In fact partying is precisely what they want congress to stop.. to stop partying and start governing.

Over the past six years there's been plenty to partying and precious little governing. Therefore a lot of governing has pile up. In the real estate business they call it “deferred maintenance. And sooner or later you either get around to it or the house falls down.

So, enough of all this who won and who lost last November. I am sick of it. Stop it and stop it now. It's just a prelude to more partying, and voters are quite partied out.

Here's a list of just some of the deferred maintenance voters want those well-paid public servants to roll up their sleeves and get to before the roof falls in on everyone.

New Congress' Honey-do List

Double the minimum number of days Congress is in session next year to 180 days.

Pass a binding “pay-as-you-go” budget law, that can only be exceeded when Congress formally declares war or a national emergency. That means choosing between cutting spending, raising taxes, or both when new federal expenditures are sought or required.

Raise the federal minimum wage to at least $8.00 an hour and. for christsake, this time index it to inflation.

Establish a truly independent ethics commission comprised of non-partisan scholars and retired judges. This commission would investigate claims of impropriety, make their findings public and recommend when the House and Senate ethic committees should act.

Pass legislation requiring that the Dept. of Health and Human Services negotiate bulk discounts for all drugs, products and services paid for, in whole or part, with federal Medicare and Medicaid funds.

Immediately following the prayer that begins each working sessions of the House and Senate, the next speaker should be required to read aloud into the record the number of American's that day that cannot afford health insurance ... currently 47 million and climbing.

Pass legislation redistributing the Bush tax cuts more fairly, by raising the marginal rate on the top 1% from it's current 35% to 39%. Use half the taxes raised by that increase to cut payroll taxes and use the other half to balance the budget and pay down our exploding national debt. (More)

Apply basic ground rules that mandate any “free trade” treaties always also be fair trade deals. Any countries wanting access to US markets for their goods and services must comply with a set of minimum standards regarding own workers pay, work conditions and safety and environmental protections.

Pass legislation requiring the executive branch submit fully and unconditionally to FISA court review and oversight of all domestic spying operations, if possible before such operations are launched, but if that is not prudent then within 30-days after such an operation is authorized.

Pass legislation that explicitly limits the authority of Presidential signing statements, noting that, while any president should have the right to state his/her reservations about a law being signed, such statements will have no authority under law. In such cases the president must fully enforce any law he/she signs rather than vetoes.

Dust off House and Senate committee oversight manuals and reintroduce members to their second most important job responsibility right behind passing legislation. (For example, just what did Halliburton actually do with hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in Iraq? And what did Dick Cheney and oil company executives decide was the best US energy policies five years ago? Did it work? And for whom did it work? ) There's all that, and so much more that has gone un-explored for too long. Lots of deferred maintenance there to work on.

Pass legislation that provides employers a fast, easy and dependable on-line system to determine the immigration or citizenship status of would-be employees. Once that system is in place increase fines and punishment for employers caught hiring illegal workers -- then, for a change, enforce those laws.

Pass a constitutional amendment banning all private money from presidential and congressional races and replacing it with federal campaign financing. Otherwise corporate and other special interest groups that prosper under the current system of legal bribery will continue doing so, only more so. (More)

Agree to a temporary moratorium on any legislation employing the following divisive words or phrases: flag burning, abortion, prayer in schools, cut-and-run, winning in Iraq, family values and gay-marriage. Only lift this moratorium once congress has addressed real problems like Iraq, health care and fairness in national tax policy.


Finally, there's "the war on terror." While the job of developing and exercising a strategy for national security and defense is largely in the hands of the Executive Branch, Congress pays the bill. And, as the old saying goes, “he who pays the piper calls the tune.” It's time for congress to call a new national security strategy tune. This administration's “war on terror,” has been unfocused and, worse -- counter productive. The proper strategy for countering the spread of aggressive, fundamentalist Islam is the same strategy that won the cold war. In a word – containment.

Only Arab nations themselves can stem Islamic terror. Only those nations can decide whether they want to be members of the modern world or the past. But before they can make that decision they must be faced with that choice and only that choice. Right now countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Syria and Iran have it both ways. They can trade with the West and placate Islamic fundamentalist within by harboring and even funding militant, anti-west Islamic movements.

Under a policy of genuine containment that would change. Arab nations would have to chose between two starkely different realities. If they continue trying to straddle the fence, then they get fenced in. That means no trade, no aid, no travel, no international banking relationships. We already know the power of containment in the region because it worked in Libya With persistence and patience it would work in other Islamic countries as well.

A policy of containment also means no US troops to shoot at, because we are not going to accommodate by sending them within range.

Critics will say that the international community, the UN and Europeans, would not support a truly effective policy of containment. That was true just a couple of years ago. But today every major European nation faces a greater threat from Islamic terror than the US. And, thanks to George W. Bush, the international community knows Uncle Same will (because we cannot) solve this problem for them through force.

Containment – real containment – is the only remaining choice.

That's my list. I have more, lots more, I'd like to see done, as I am certain you do as well. But if they just got all that done next term I would be dance naked in the street.

(PS: To those of you wondering why I did not include impeachment on my wish list, it's simple. The little bastard has only two years left in office. Impeachment would suck all the oxygen out of the air in Washington for that entire period, without any guarantee he'd get removed anyway. And if should he get removed we'd end up with Dick Cheney to fill out his term. Last week a court in Germany moved to indict Don Rumsfeld for war crimes. Good idea. Let's get some real stuff done during the next two years and then, once these guys are out from behind that impenetrable wall of power, do to them what the citizens of Chile have done to General Pinochet -- pursue them to their graves with human rights and war crime charges. )



November 6, 2006

A Final Word


However things turn out on Nov. 7 I'm going to shut up about it – for a week anyway. I figure adding my pipsqueak opinions to the din of, “We're number one,” and “We were cheated,” is the last thing you'll be needing. So don't look for me to return to pontification mode for at least a week after the election dust settles.

At this writing, a day before the deed is to be done, I have no clue whether Republicans will be successful in suckering enough dimwits into voting for them again. What I am sure of though is that Democrats will continue displaying the only talent they seem to share among themselves – an uncanny talent for losing un-losable races – usually at the last moment.

Watching Democrats run in races like this one is like watching an underdog leading in a marathon, only to see them trip over their own shoelaces ten feet from the finish.

With that in mind I am stocking up on disappointment juice and expecting the worst. But even if Democrats do win the House the tension will continue. In that case I will spend the next two years screaming at them to double-tie their goddamn shoe laces, for fear they will create a giant Democrat pile up just before the 2008 Presidential finish line.

The bottom line is that to be a Democrat is to worry. We're like Red Sox fans. We also share a nagging subliminal fear with Jews and African Americans – that no matter how well things might be going right now, it won't last. Trouble – big trouble – is just a lip-slip away. With the presidency up for grabs just 24 months after this election we Democrats will hold our collective breath each time we notice John Kerry eyeballing a network microphone. (Don't John... just don't. Keep it to yourself. Or write an well-thought out, well-edited op-ed piece. But stay away from the friggin microphone!”)

Then there's Hillary Clinton. God only knows how many triangulated incarnations Hillary is capable of in 24 months, but you can bet we'll have to bear witness to them all. Hillary, like Al Gore in his 2000 run, will change like the weather. The only difference will be that Al Gore changed his wardrobe. You remember, one day Al was Wall Street alpha-male in suit and power tie, the next day he was Earth Man, in jeans and open-collar sport shirt. Hillary won't be changing her wardrobe. Hillary will change her positions. Hillary has a little computer between her ears that, when poll results are mixed with a secret algorithm, spits out positions that appear to agree with everyone.

Polls one day before the election show the Democrats peaked about two nanoseconds before John Kerry put his feet in his mouth. It's been down hill ever since. Republicans, on the other hand are rising in those polls. Democrats still have an advantage, but it's narrowing as they approach the finish-- shoe laces flying loose.

So here we are: Republicans, running things singlehandedly for over six years, have made more a mess in the nation and beyond than Katrina made of New Orleans. They may not be able to do anything right, but the they have a gift -- the gift of blarney. Like Davy Crockett, they can sweet talk even scared voters out of their trees, into the voting booth and convince them the other guys are somehow worse.

Why is that? How do they get away with it?


Here's a clue. Democrats like John Kerry remind Red State voters of the smart kid in grammar school who'd raise his hand during tests too announce, “Miss Nelson, Dennis is looking at my answers.” Johnny is told keep his eyes on his own test paper. Later, at recess, Dennis would beat the living crap out of Johnny, to the delight a disturbing number of his classmates.

Would Johnny grow up to be a better, smarter and more honest leader than Dennis? Sure he would. Trouble is Americans seem to like the Dennis' better than the Johnny's. Johnny can be a real bore. He's smart for sure. But smart guys tend to make the increasing numver of under-educated Americans nervous. Smart people refer to “stuff” fewer and fewer American's understand, or even care about, like history. That makes a lot of voters feel they are being “talked down to.” And that makes the uneasy about themselves, which makes them hate Johnny.

If Dennis is anything he's not boring. Dennis is a Dukes of Hazard kinda guy. Damn the facts, it's peddle to the metal. Dennis knows better than to talk down to voters. He talks “with them” rather than “at them.” Dennis talks to them in their own language of fractured logic, a language characterized by a tone of unembarrassed, even smug, ignorance.

Dennis knows better than to confuse voters with nuance. He tells his voters what he knows they already believe ... like that that gays are trying to convince school children that gays are just like everyone else. Dennis wants voters to know he ain't buying it either. He wants voters to know that he knows that most people are not gay, And that he knows what that means... that if God wanted gays to be like everyone else He would made them like everyone else. And since He didn't... well, Dennis just wants them to know, he's with God on that one. No nuance about it.

Dennis knows that a voter base comprised of so many folks who can be meszmerized captivated for hours at a time by automobiles racing in a circle, are not the kind of folks you want to burden with too many facts. You don't want to even think about trying to explain the far-reaching geopolitical implications of America's war in Iraq. Instead Dennis asks them the important questions, like, “Do you love the American flag? Do you think people should be allowed to burn the American flag?” Dennis wants you to know that he thinks NOT! Dennis want voters to know he, like them, believes that allowing flag burning is a slippery slope that, if allowed would result in .... in.... something really bad. And Dennis wants you to know he's fore square again' all things really bad.

The Johnny v. Dennis dynamic explains why the polls are narrowing. Dennis is out there talkin' turkey with the sheep, and graining ground. His kind of voters tend to put off paying attention to such matters until the bill comes due. Only then do they tune in. Karl, another kid who cheated in school, knows that best. Which explains is why Karl has been smiling like a Chesser cat through dismal polls over the past few week. Karl knows his Dennis' are out there de-nuancing issues like Iraq and the economy in the final days of this race and pointing his voters towards the real issues, like gay marriage, flag burning, stem cell research and who is or isn't measuring drapes in Congress.

Dennis already took Johnny out for his beating, and the that got the attention of the knuckle-dragging Republican base. Coooool. That's their kind of politics. Dennis and Johnny, SMACK DOWN! Showed those smart-ass Democrats not to flub a joke and diss our troops. Oooooohaaaa!

Yeah, I know. There are folks in the Democratic Party who believe they must learn how to talk to Dennis voters in moron-speak too. And that progressives need to avoid saying things that make the Dennis voters feel “dumb.” In other words, let's not educate them, let's just herd them, like Dennis does. Valueless Democrat analysts point to the 60 million American's who describe themselves as evangelical Christians, and say Democrats need to convince them that progressives share and respect their nonsensical metaphysical views of reality.

Personally I would rather see America fade into history in a dignified way than to just hand it over to Dennis and his base of lower-common denominators. If that makes me a Johnny-smart-ass, so be it. But, damn it, they have been cheating. And, should they win again, they will continue lying, cheating and beating the crap out of anyone that rats on them.

I'm sorry, but I've already spent six years aboard that ship-of-fools, and I want off. If things don't change Nov. 7 just put me in a lifeboat and set me adrift. How much worse could that be?

I can't be entirely sure that Karl and Dennis' will succeed again. But if they do that will say something too disturbing about Americans for me to explain – or bear.





November 3, 2006

Unexpected Gifts


What's this? Did Christmas come early this year or something? Holy cow, I can't handle this much Karma coming home to roost in one day and not share. So, first enjoy this gift with me:

U.S. Web Archive Is Said to Reveal a Nuclear Primer
New York Times: Last March, the federal government set up a Web site to make public a vast archive of Iraqi documents captured during the war. The Bush administration did so under pressure from Congressional Republicans who had said they hoped to “leverage the Internet” to find new evidence of the prewar dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.....The campaign for the Web site was led by the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Peter Hoekstra of Michigan. Last November, he and his Senate counterpart, Pat Roberts of Kansas, wrote to Mr. Negroponte, asking him to post the Iraqi material. The sheer volume of the documents, they argued, had overwhelmed the intelligence community. (Full Story)

With the entire premise for launching the most reprehensible and misguided military adventure in US history -- Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction, in shreds -- desperate congressional neo-cons panicked. With mid-term elections looming in the months ahead they figured turning right-wing conspiracy nuts on the Internet loose on documents seized in Iraq would turn up something they could hang their delusional hats on.

Instead all they accomplished was to hand terrorist nuts on the Internet blue prints for a nuclear bomb. Nicely done gentlemen. Remember that the next time a GOP candidate warns that if you vote Democrat, “the terrorists win.” Seems to me the terrorists are going pretty damn good under GOP rule. Why would they want to change horses now when the one they've got has made Iraq into the University of Terrorism, complete with actual US troops for post-grad live-fire training?

And how more convenient can it be than to have a US government provided distance learning course on the Net that teaches the fundamentals of nuclear bomb design?

Wait, I think I hear a chant from the Terrorist U. student union:

“Four more years. Four more years. Ali Akbar..four more years for Booosh...”

Sweet, huh? Okay. Now for gift number two:

Top evangelist resigns over gay sex claims
The Republican party today was assessing the potential political fallout from a sex scandal that has forced one of America's most influential evangelical Christians to resign...The Rev Ted Haggard, who is married with five children, stepped down yesterday as head of the 30 million-member National Association of Evangelicals and as senior pastor of the New Life church in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after being accused of paying for sex with a male escort. (Full Story)

Anyone who reads this blog regularly will recall one of my favorite quotes. It's from a Faulkner novel and goes like this:

“The louder he spoke of his virtue, the faster we counted our spoons.”

Rev Haggard .. whom his parishioners simply call, “Reverend Ted,” because, after all, he's just a humble family man, serving the Lord. And a married man with children, whose mission on earth became making sure two men, or two women, in love be barred forever from joining in legally binding unions – also known as “marriage.”


Now it seems Rev. Ted has been using his staff to anoint more than just his wife. A few years ago it was another holy man with a similar sounding name, and similar hypocrisy, Rev. Jimmy Swaggart, was caught “sinning,” with a female prostitute. Now we have Rev. Ted Haggard allegedly employing the services of a male prostitute – for at least the past three years. Oh, and I did mention he snorted meth "to enhance the sexual experience?" Holy hypocrite, Batman...

You might have seen Rev. Ted on TV smoozing with George Bush. Rev. Ted is a one of George Bush's favorite Christian soliders who reportedly “confers” with White House strategists weekly. He huddles with them to give guidance on wedge issues like abortion, faith-based initiatives and, of course what the right sees as the second biggest threat toAmerica, right behind terrorism – gay marriage and beating off “the gay agenda.”

So, take that Red State “values voters.” Your family values standard bearers have been cheating on you behind your backs -- not to mention other peoples backs. They've been seeing different people.. and I mean “different people,” -- you know, the kind they've been warning are plotting to replace America's Ozzie and Harriet family tradition with one modeled after Sodom and Gomorrah.

Dudes, you've been two-timed -- again.

As Dr. Phil would say, “How do you feel about that?”


Finally comes this gift.

Bush says Rumsfeld, Cheney should stay
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Bush said Wednesday he wants Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vice President Dick Cheney to remain with him until the end of his presidency, extending a job guarantee to two of the most-vilified members of his administration....“Both those men are doing fantastic jobs and I strongly support them,” President Bush said.

By now most observant Americans understand that George W. Bush is not exactly a Rhodes Scholar. In fact he likes to portray himself as just the opposite – an ordinary country boy filled to the brim of his frontal lobes with the kind of rural wisdom that only comes from getting ones hands right down in the dirt.

So, while we shouldn't expect any profound, nuance-filled analysis out George, we should expect to see some of that country wisdom at work when it comes to his two closest advisor, Cheney and Rumsfeld. In particular this old rural truism;

“If ya keep doin' what you've been doin' yer gonna keep gettin' what ya got.”

That's it. I have go out now and buy a lottery ticket.


Cartoon of the Day


November 2, 2006

Help!
I'm Trapped in Bizarro-land


Ever get the feeling you're trapped in Bizarro-land? Maybe you haven't noticed, but you are. You can be excused if you didn't know. There's an old biology experiment (PETA will hate this) in which a frog is put in a pot of cool water that is being slowly heated to a boil. Since the temperature is changing so slowly the frog doesn't notice...until it's too late.

That's exactly how we ended up here, Bizarro-land. Over the past quarter century things have gotten crazier and crazier, but ever so slowly. Statements and actions that, just a few years ago would have been considered crazy, are shrugged off now as just the way things are.

But the crazy-train really gets rolling in election years, and I guess that's what got me looking around yesterday and asking, “Am I crazy or are the people talking to me through my TV crazy? Or are we both crazy?"

It was not an idle question. Because only in Bizarro-land could the following things be said by people in positions of authority and responsibility, without some one calling in an super-sized order for straight jackets:

How To Tell If You're Tapped in Bizarro-land

When the same people who boasted that the Iraq operation would be “a cake walk,” start lecturing those now asking why things are going so badly three years later for “not understanding that such operations are hard” and to "back off," -- and they get away with it.

When the very person now complaining to critics for not understanding that the Iraq operation would be “hard,” is the same guy, Don Rumsfeld, who dismissed the General in charge before the war when he tried to tell Rumsfeld that it would be so hard it would require at least 300,000 US troops – and he gets away with it.

When during the same month 105 US troops and 4000 Iraqis are killed in Iraq, the Vice President of the United States tells FOX News viewers that “things are going remarkably well in Iraq,” -- and he gets away with it.

When, on the same day the New York Times discloses a secret Pentagon report showing that the situation in Iraq “is approaching chaos,” the President of the United States lambastes Sen. John Kerry for a flubbed joke about the war – and he gets away with it.

When, during the very year 48 million mostly working Americans can no longer afford health insurance, politicians decide to establish their “family values,” bona fides, not by fixing the health care mess, but instead by banning Internet gambling -- and they get away with it.

When Republicans can claim that Democrats are just a bunch of “tax and spend liberals" while over the past six years “borrow and spend Republicans" added more to the national debt than all previous administrations, back to George Washington, combined – and they get away with it.

When Republicans can accuse Democrats of being weak on national defense even as Republicans are losing both the wars they started – and get away with it.

When Republicans can spend six years denying human activity plays any role in global warming even as they actively suppress reams of government funded science that says otherwise, – and get away with it.

When the top three officials in the US military line of authority, the President, Vice President and Sec. of Defense – none of which has ever shot at anything that could shoot back -- routinely smear and impute the motives, expertise and reputations of retired military officers with decades of combat experience, who speak out against the administration's failed strategies in Iraq and Afghanistan – and get away with it.

When six years of unfair trade agreements, rampant manufacturing and job outsourcing have all but gutted the once vibrant American middle/working class, Republicans point to the millions of low-paying, service sector jobs that replaced those higher paying jobs as proof that the Bush tax cuts and economic policies have been good for ordinary Americans, -- and get away with it.

When Republicans claim the Bush tax cuts benefited ordinary Americans despite reams of publicly available data showing that the portion of the national income accruing to the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled, the share going to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent has tripled, and the share going to the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent has quadrupled – and they get away with it.

When Republicans brag that their economic policies reversed a post-Clinton recession they inherited and have spurred robust job growth, when a glance at a chart showing average job growth over the past half century shows job growth under Bush has been, to put it kindly, sub par – nevertheless, they get away with it. (Chart below)

When Republicans claim they have made the world safer while Democrats would make us less safe, despite the reality that when Bush took office six years ago North Korea did not have a nuclear bomb and now they have several, and that when Bush took office Iran was not enriching uranium into bomb grade material, and now they are -- and they get away with it.

When Republicans repeatedly claim their “proactive,” preemptive military strategy to combat terrorism has been effective, even though their own intelligence analysts report that terrorism around the world has – excuse the pun – exploded since the US invasion of Iraq, -- and they get away with it.

When candidates make claims in campaign ads that are so false and misleading that, if they were instead advertising a consumer product they'd be fined by the Federal Trade Commission and the ads ordered stopped. Instead they get away with it.

When Republicans scorn the fiscal competence of the Clinton administration by dismissing them as "luck" ... the byproduct of the dot-com bubble, when this administration has benefited itself from another bubble – the housing bubble," -- and they get away with it. But wait! There's more on this one. While Republicans dismiss the Clinton budget surpluses as just a product of the dot.com bubble, in the same breath they criticize Clinton for having the good sense to at least make some hay while that sun was shinning, by raising taxes on the richest mericans. And while the Bushies criticize Clinton for that, what did they do with their opportunity to get a share of their boom for the US Treasury? They cut taxes on the wealtiest Americans, letting all that-gravy trickle back into the gravy bowl creating record budget deficits, -- and they get away with it.


Okay, enough. I could go on and on and on with such crazy-making non sequiturs. The question now is not “are we going mad,” because clearly, we are. The question is whether or not this progressive slide into group madness is reversible.

If the media were doing it's job we would at least have an antidote, but they're just as crazy as everyone else. It's like living in a version of the old 1950's horror classic, “The Body Snatchers.” Only now it's more like “The Mind Snatchers.” Every night I turn on my TV and bear witness to the snatching of another once respected news person as he or she rattle off some version of the crazy crap listed above. And, they do it with the same straight face and gravitas that once marked such greats as Morrow and Cronkite. Only these folks are crazy-enablers. You would think that one of them would, at least every now and then, jump up from their chair, look into the camera and say something like:

"Listen, folks, I really do know that this story is nuts. I have to read it, but I want you to know that I know it's crap. Thank you. Now, onto the next piece of silly crap."

But it rarely happens - In fact Keith Olbermann is the except that proves the rule. Today much of the stuff that comes out of the mouths of network anchors is goofy stuff created and peddled by goofy public officials who should know better, or connivers who are just plain lying. Then it's dutifully served up by the media to a growing demographic of voters increasingly tuned into the same goofy wave length. And another step along the road to crazy has been made.

Hey, did you hear the joke about John Kerry's joke? You know the one that was supposed to be a joke, but he flubbed it and it was all the news mavens could talk about yesterday, how it may have insulted the troops and how Kerry may have ruined his chances to run from president in 2 years, and how the Republicans, and even some spineless, conniving, triangulating Democrats, were demanding Kerry apologize... and..and..

And they got away with it.. again.


Average US Job Growth over the Last 50 Years




November 1, 2006


Choose
Your Bloodbath




Here's a question I bet you've never asked yourself.

How do you like your bloodbaths – long and ugly, or short and ugly?


I only ask because that's the only real issue facing the next leaders of Congress, be they Republicans or Democrats, when it comes to Iraq.

No one likes to say these kinds of things right out loud, especially politicians. So let me take the heat for it. Here's the three choices facing American policy makers for Iraq:

Option One: Force Iraqis to live peacefully together under a unity government:

If we continue trying to create and maintain some approximation of a unity government in Iraq we will be there for a decades doing so. Because there really is, and never has been, an “Iraq”. The place is an artificially created “vessel” filled with vinegar, water and oil. Unless someone is willing to continually shake the shit out of this vessel, those three ingredients separate. And, they hate the shakers, and will toil day and night to kill them. And, when they can't get their hands on the shakers, they kill one another, just to make the point that they are three separate, incompatible, unblendable elements..

What I've just described is the current state of affairs Iraq. Yesterday the Iraqi government – you can bet urged on by their American handlers – announced they would no longer count and report the number of daily civilian deaths – which have been averaging 130 a day, and rising. In October the US lost 103 troops, or roughly 3.5 shakers a day.

Even Democrats are afraid to suggest we stop shaking Iraq because doing so would “result in a bloodbath.” But would shaking avoid a bloodbath? Or would it simply result in a slow-motion bloodbath? Let's see.

Killed Iraqi Civilians: 130 a day x 365 days = 47, 450 a year
Killed US Troops: 3.4 a day x 365 = 1,241 a year

Total: 48,691

And those would just be the deaths we know about. Common sense and history tell us that the actual death toll -- from both direct military activities plus “collateral” deaths flowing directly form wartime civil and social deficiencies – is likely to double that number each year.

But, even without doing that kind of speculative math, or allowing for leap year, I think we can all agree that over 48,000 killed humans in one country in one year qualifies as a “bloodbath.”

And then onto 2007. Now it's 96,000 And 2008 -- 140,000. And so on, and so on and...... ?

In short, a strategy that tries to keep Iraq in one piece will require Americans accept a slow motion bloodbath without end. A successful and sustainable unity government for Iraq is as likely as a unity government was in the former Yugoslavia. It's a fiction. And a formula for a bloodbath.

Option Two: Forcefully partition Iraq.

This idea has been floated by Senator Joe Biden and others. Those who propose this solution say they too are trying “to avoid a bloodbath,” and feel partition is the best way to do that.

But this solution too is fatally flawed. Not because partitioning Iraq is a bad idea, it's not. But because westerners should not be drawing any more arbitrary boundary in that part of the world. In fact that's the very reason it's such a mess now. Because back in the early years of the 20th century the British decided to tidy up their budding Middle Eastern empire by drawing borders where there had been no borders before. When the British surveyors were done drawing lines the three warring tribes that had lived on that land for thousands of years were told they were now one tribe – Iraqis.

They were not – and are still not -- a-m-u-s-e-d.

If the US carves Iraq up into three parts we will spend the next hundred years defending those new borders as Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds “disagree” over their locations. And these disagreements will occur in a region that has more guns and explosives per capita than any similar sized piece of real estate on the planet.

The result of a US-enforced partitioning of Iraq would be non-stop bloodshed for as far into the future as anyone can predict. If you think the Israelis and Palestinians are at each other's throats over borders, wait until you see how Iraqi tribes fight over access to Iraq's oil-producing real estate.

Option Three: Let the Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds determine their own futures – (or lack thereof.)

This is the option no one dares suggest. Withdraw entirely from Iraq and let the three warring parties settle their beefs among themselves.

“Yikes, man! What are you suggesting? Just let these people kill one another? It would be a bloodbath!”

Yes it would be a bloodbath. But, ask yourself.. for how long? And how many would die? Would it last three, five, ten years, like the other two options? Not likely. Why? Because history tells us so. When we withdrew our troops from Vietnam there was the predictable flurry of score settling and then it was over. Next month Bush will travel to Vietnam to attend the Asian Pacific economic summit which Vietnam is hosting. Could there be a lesson in that for Mr. Bush? One would think.

And ask yourself how many would die in such a “let the Iraqis settle it themselves 'bloodbath?'” Would 48,000 die, 96,000, 140,000? Hard to say. But it would more likely be fewer than if we continue trying to force a unity government on them. And, however many die, the killing would end sooner. Admittedly this is brutal logic. But any more brutal than our current strategy is reaping now?

Yes, if we chose this third option all hell would break loose in Iraq. The fur would fly for sure. But with no American troops there to put these fires out for them when they get out of hand, behavior would change. It would soon become apparent to the three tribes that, unless they want to live perpetually in a world only Mad Max could love, they must come to some kind of accommodation. If the Shiites and Kurds refuse to share the oil with the Sunnis, the Sunnis will make sure the other two tribes don't get any oil either, by blowing up oil infrastructure.

However when Iraq is inevitably partitioned, those new borders must be drawn by Iraqis themselves, and with Iraqi blood, sweat and tears. That's how the US Mexican border was drawn, not by the French or the British but by US and Mexicans. It wasn't pretty. But it's peacefully held:

“With the exception of a small number of minor Rio Grande border disputes, since settled, the current course of the border was finalized by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo and the 1853 Gadsden Purchase.” (More)

It also took some bloodshed to settle the US/Canadian border. (More)

Bloodshed will be required to settle matters once and for all in Iraq as well. Or, more precisely, what we will come to call, “the region formerly known as Iraq.” Once we stop shaking the water – Kurdistan, the vinegar – Sunnistan, and the oil – Shiitstan, will bubble and boil apart, and it won't be pretty. At least initially there will “a bloodbath.”

The only question our newly minted members of congress need to decide when they take office this coming January is this:

Do we want to be part of a show-motion bloodbath that goes on for decades, to which we add US blood?

Or

Do we want to get out of the way and let the three antagonists with most to gain or lose settle the matter once and for all on their own, and without further loss of American lives?

To quote Dick Cheney, I think it's a no-brainer.

October 30, 2006

October 30, 2006
Cashing in on Democracy

Centuries from now when the history of America's experiment with democracy is written, historians may conclude things went pretty well, until the late 20th and early days of the 21st-centuries.

“Twentieth century Americans thought so highly of their 'one-person, one-vote' representative democracy that, at the dawn of the 21st century, they tried exporting it to the Middle East. But, even as they touted democracy's benefits to others, their own democratic institutions had become less bastions of democracy than facades, behind which a handful of media companies harvested billions of dollars during each election cycle. In short, American put a price on their democracy, and it was very high.”

Okay, so I can't really channel some future historian after all. I made up the “story” above. But the one below is completely -- and disturbingly -- true:

$2.6 Billion: Campaign spending up in U.S.
The Associated Press: Money talks in U.S. politics, and there is more of it talking this year than ever before in congressional elections.....The nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics predicts that, by the end of the year, candidates, parties and outside groups will have raised $2.6 billion for the Nov. 7 elections, 18 percent more than in 2002....Federal Election Commission figures show that as of Sept. 30 congressional candidates alone had raised $1.18 billion, up almost 15 percent from $1.03 billion in 2004. (More)

And that's just in a mid-term congressional election year! Estimates are that the 2008 presidential election year could see as much as $6 billion flow into the coffers of Big Media moguls.

Did I say “moguls?” How quaint. I sound like an old 60's lefty. Are there really any “moguls" still around? Well, you decide. Most of those billions of election year dollars are and will continue flowing into the hands of just ten media conglomerates:

1. AOL/Time Warner
2. General Electric
3. Viacom
4. Disney
5. Liberty Media Corp.
6. AT&T Corp.
7. News Corp.
8. Bertelsmann
9. Vinendi Unversal
10. Sony Corp.

Every year The Nation Magazine takes stock of what these media companies have gobbled up. For a real eye opener check out this year's charts. Just click on the small icons on the left side to see each company's stable of once independent media outlets.
( http://www.thenation.com/special/bigten.html )

There was a time in US history that the price of democracy was measured in lives lost to win and protect it. Today it's measured in cold hard cash – billions upon billions of dollars each election cycle. America's election cycles, once a celebration of democratic renewal, have become an every two-year flood of easy money for big media companies and their shareholders.

Whoa! Talk about creating a moral hazard! Ever wonder why campaign ads are getting meaner, less relevant and far less truthful? Because, when one candidate slings mud the other candidate needs to sling back. After all, you don't want to be the only candidate in a race wearing mud. Nope. You need to pony up some ad money for a counter ad, find (or make up) some dirt on the other guy and sling back - and so on. It's Big Medias version of a perpetutual motion money machine. Once they prime the thing it produces money by the bucket load.

Of course to sling mud effectively candidates need access to the best possible slinging machines. And, thanks to rampant media consolidation, those ten big media compains now own any slinging machine worth the slinging.

With that in mind, ask yourself, who now has the most at stake in US elections? If we we're talking good governance, well clearly it would be voters. But we're not. We're talking cold hard cash, and lots of it. Which means that as of today Big Media has the most at stake. The meaner the political mood, the more ad revenue rolls in their front doors.

Big Media's interest in democracy is decidedly different than yours and mine. What do we want?

* Good government,
* Fair taxes,
* Peace,
* Affordable health care,
* Good schools for our kids,
* A clean environment.

Large media companies want different stuff;

* Low to non-existent corporate taxes,
* Low to non-existent capital gains taxes,
* Low to non-existent regulation and oversight
* Low to non-existent enforcement of anti-trust laws

But most of all Big Media likes nasty, and the nastier the better. They like to sell nasty ads, then have hired pundits talk about how nasty they are. For Big Media, "can't we all just get along," is a formula for financial ruine. Acrimony, on the other hand, is money in the bank. And with every new election cycle it becomes more and more profitable for Big Media to make sure it stays that way.

Big Media's cynism is also entirely immune to embarssment. When you hear pundits on network or cable channels wringing their manicured hands over how “uncivil” and “mean” politics have become, remind yourself that those pundits are paid by the media outlet on which they cry those alligator tears. Pundits are paid to pick at social and poliitcal scabs to assure those wounds remain fresh. (God forbid, they ever heal!)

Even as those sage-sounding pundit's words waft through a Comcast cable to your TV set, that very same network's accountants are downstairs furiously trying to count the hundreds of millions of dollars they are harvesting --- precisely because politics is mean and uncivil these days. (Eat your heart out, George Orwell. Even your pessimism could not have imagined such a sorry state of affairs.)

All of which explains why your are being bombarded with political ads in the mainstream media that appear to have been written by a clutch of high school bullies. And don't let them try to tell you that all you are witnessing is a healthy exercise in free speech or the vitality of American politics. Give me a break! What you are really witnessing is a harvesting operation by Big Media. It's an election cycle harvest, and a bounty no less. It's the easiest money Big Media can make. Unlike product ads, which they have go out and sell and pay sales commissions on, political ads flow in every two years as like water from the receiving end of a fire hose. It's as close to free money as any corporation has ever pocketed.

So the next time someone asks you how much your democratic rights are worth, you'll know. Nothing. You don't own it any longer.

That's not to say America's democracy is worthless. Not by a long shot. This election cycle it's worth around $2.6 billion. Next time, it'll be worth more. A lot more.

(Oh, and if you are wondering what the cure for this situation is – click here – or not. It's still up to you – at least for a bit longer.)


Quote of the Day

"Over the last quarter century, the portion of the national income accruing to the richest 1 percent of Americans has doubled. The share going to the richest one-tenth of 1 percent has tripled, and the share going to the richest one-hundredth of 1 percent has quadrupled."
Jon Chait's New Republic

October 29, 2006

October 26, 2006

Of Jack and Jill



A few years back author June Stephenson wrote an interesting, though sadly overlooked, book entitled,
Men Are Not Cost-Effective: Male Crime in America. In her book Ms. Stephenson compared the rates of incarceration for men and women over the entire scope of white collar, street crime, violence, child molestation. And guess what, men won. Whoa, men didn't just win, it was a blow out. The hard statistics she listed in the book supported the title of her book.

I only bring this up because last night I was watching the news about the growing trend in some schools of separate classes for boys and girls for certain subjects.

Some experts argued that separate classes are a good thing because they remove social pressures that tend to be intimidated girls, especially in science and math classes. On the other hand, feminist groups worry that segregating boys and girls would return girls to the bad old days when teachers short-changed girls and favored boys in education.

First let me say I was boy myself for my entire childhood. And my wife Sue and I raised two of the little critters. So I know all about boys. Been there. Done that.

Girls, I'm bit fuzzy about. Except that my observations over the years tells me that, at any give stage of childhood development, girls are more mature and a more fertile ground for the seeds of education than boys.

I'm not dissing boys. I'm just saying we need to stop pretending that boys and girls are wired the same during their developmental years. They are not the same. They are different, and not just in the obvious ways. And, therefore, accommodating those differences should help both. And that does not mean a return to the bad old, pre-feminist days either. We've come a long way since then. Women CEOs, women in Congress and the Senate, women astronauts and women warriors.

So I agree.. it's time to reconsider same-sex classes. Why?

First because boys are disruptive. It's not their fault, we're born that way. Put a bunch of 10-year old boys in room together, close the door and force them to sit quietly in a small chair and pay attention for an hour. Go ahead – I double dare you. Just try it. Unless you're ready to sedate the little buggers you're going to have a squirming, snickering, spit-wad throwing, note-passing, kicking the desk in front of them, staring out the window day-dreaming, fest on your hands.

Now add ten girls to that same classroom and close the door. What? Are you out of your mind? Now you have all the above behavior plus a frenzy of showoff, oneupmanship as boys compete for the coveted Moe, Larry and Curly trophy.

It didn't used to be that way. There was a time, and not all that long ago, when boys behaved in school. Not because they wanted to, but because they feared the consequences of misbehavior.

I attended an all-boys Catholic high school. There was a dress code and a code of behavior and, for the most part, we behaved. Why? Because they hit us when we didn't. Oh, they didn't beat us or waterboard us or anything cruel. It was more along the lines of a dope-slap to the back of the head or getting slammed up against a locker when caught horsing around in the halls. I remember one football game during which the bleachers emptied onto the field when a fight broke out. One kid on our side came running down towards the field and was grabbed by the dean..

“And just where do you think you're going lad?” he asked.

“I'm going to join the fight, Father,” the kid replied.

“Oh you are, are you?' Father replied, after which he dispensed a fatherly whack.

“There, now you've been in the fight,” Father said, “Now get your butt back in the stands before I call you parents and tell them you've been expelled.”

Ah, those were the days. Today that kid would have had a team of ACLU lawyers and the Pope would be hocking St. Peter's to pay the judgment.

My point: To thrive in school boys need a different kind of classroom environment than girls, and a firmer hand -- preferably around the nap of the neck.

And, contrary to what some feminist groups fear, I don't believe girl-only and boy-only math and science classes would result in girls getting the short end of the stick. Just the opposite. The days when teachers used to believe girls were being prepared only to be either housewives or nurses are long gone. I believe girl-only classes have the potential of vaulting girls and young women past men. In fact, I believe this idea has the potential to create just the opposite problem – boys getting short-changed.

Of course I am speaking here in the broadest generalities. I fully understand that there are boys who are scholars and gentlemen right from the get go. And I know some girls are born hopeless little tarts who, no matter how much knowledge we pour into their empty little head, will still end up in prison or living in a trailer with some loser in wife-beater tee-shirt who can't hold a job.

But as a rule, girls do their homework, turn it in on time, have nicer penmanship and -- unless otherwise annoyed and distracted by some little Dennis dude -- pay attention in class. Which says to me that if girls had their own classes in subjects traditionally skewed towards boys, like math, science, physics and engineering, girls would not only do as well, but “get it” faster, than boys of the same age.

Already the number of girls attending and finishing college has soared ahead of boys.

College Enrollment Indicators
In the fall of 2000 there were 5,578,000 men and 7,377,000 women enrolled in college as undergraduates. In 1969 there were 4,008,000 men and 2,876,000 women undergraduate students enrolled in college. Between 1969 and 2000 the number of men undergraduates increased by 1,570,000 or by 39 percent. During this period the number of women undergraduates increased by 4,501,000 or by 157 percent. The number of women undergraduates surpassed the number of men in 1978. The share of college undergraduates that are men has declined from 58 percent in 1969 to 44 percent in 2000. (National Center
for Education Statistics) (More)

So, I'm all for separating the sexes for some classes when it makes sense to do so, at least in grammar school, to a lesser degree high school as well. But if we do that then we also need to turn our attention to the growing “boy problem.” Because if we don't ten or twenty years down the road we are going have a new glass ceiling, this one limiting the upward potential of young men.

If Ms. Stephenson were to update her book today I would encourage her to compare how much trouble those one-time little boys have caused as adults when elected to public office. I mean do you doubt for a second we've got Moe, Larry and Curly running things today – and with predictable results?

I don't know, maybe a constitutional amendment requiring the representatives in the House be female and Senators be male would at least put the brakes on some of the boyish mischief that got us where what we're stuck with today.

But I'd watch your back during those joint-secessions of the House and Senate, like the annual State of the Union. Spitballs will fly.



October 25, 2006
Bush Announces
A New (Wrong) Course

I was among the morons who bought the administration's claims that Iraq had WMD. So, initially, I supported the war. (Admitting that is part of an act of penance and contrition I imposed upon myself. I'm so sorry.)

But it' didn't last long. Not finding the WMD flicked my brain back on. That happened a long, long time – and about 2000 dead GI's -- ago. Almost immediately I could see clearly again. I saw the error of the Bush strategy and where it was heading. What I envisioned years ago was precisely what we've got in Iraq today – an artificially created nation, freed of the iron hand that forced its waring tribes to behave, flying apart.

I'm not claiming I am some smarter than average fellow. Hell, I flunked out of college in my freshman year -- junior college. No, my point is that anyone should have seen this coming. Anyone that is, but the folks in Washington.

Then when President Bush promised elections in Iraq would put the country on the path to democracy and stability, I saw a completely different outcome. I saw those three waring tribes, Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds, strapping on their guns to defend ancient territorial and tribal claims against this unfamiliar kumbaya form of western governance. Under this new form of governance the three tribes would “share” the nation, “share” the infrastructure and “share” the oil.

Excuse me, “share?” All the Sunnis ever wanted to share with the Shiites is misery, and visa versa. And the Kurds have never been interested in sharing anything with either of the other two tribes. Anyway, now they already have what they want, and it's called Kurdistan. The only message they want to share with the other two tribes is “NO TRESPASSING: Violators will be Persecuted.”

The elections we forced on the Iraqis simply threw these dogs, cats and chickens into a sack together. And the fur and feathers have been flying ever since. Lambs and lions lay down together only in fables.

Two years of bloodshed have now made that clear to anyone that reads the morning paper or watches the evening news . Which is why, ten days from a election Republicans are fixing to lose, the administration pivoted away from “stay the course,” to “change course.” Karl Rove hopes that hinting at a change in strategy will lull a few percentage of disgusted GOP voters back.

There's only one problem with that -- and it's the same problem. These guys are about to make another predictable mistake. This time their mistake is believing that increasing troop levels in Baghdad will turn the tide. Not. Not, NOT.

Pin this to your refrigerator so you can hold me accountable if they're right this time and I'm wrong.

If they send more troops to secure Baghdad, and succeed, all they will get for all the additional deaths, money and trouble will be a second Afghanistan.we also transplanted a western-style government in Afghanistan. The bad news is that Afghan government can't even begin to actually govern their unruly nation. Instead the US-supported Afghan government governs only Kabul, and even that just barely.

Securing Baghdad with additional US troops will simply free up Sunni and Shiites to get about the business of ethnically cleansing villages and cities throughout the rest of the country. This process has been underway already within Baghdad and, once the insurgents are forced out they will simply move their execution squads to other towns, as they already did last week when they struck in Amara.

If Bush's “change of course” plan, should it succeed, it would leave the region with two strategically isolated US-protectorates smack in the center of a hostile Arab world. Baghdad and Kabul would be rendered islands surrounded by a roiling sea of primitive, passionate, bloodthristy Islamic hordes. There they would be -- Kabul and Baghdad -- secure yet infinitely insecure, defended yet indefensible. Two foreign bodies, transplants being rejected by the very bodies they were intended to save.

It's abundantly clear to any one with a measurable IQ that we can't “win” anything in Iraq. Particularly if “winning” means Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds living peacefully together under a single coalition government. That's no more in the cards than it was that Yugoslavia would survive the end of General Tito's dictatorship. Both Yugoslavia and Iraq have more in common with Humpty Dumpty than civil war-era America. All the king's horses and all the kings men could not put Yugoslavia back together again, and they won't be able hold Iraq together either. Period. End of report.

If George W. Bush really wants to “change course,” he should call Rep. John Murtha and ask if he could expropriate Murtha's plan for a phased redeployment of US troops out of Iraq, leaving a significant contingent in Kuwait and other friendlier nearby countries. If al Qaida builds bases in Sunni territories of Iraq we can bomb them into rubble and/or send Special Forces in to clean them out and then leave again.

That's a plan for Iraq that the west can live with.

Afghanistan calls for the same kind of change of course. Afghanistan will remain a mess so long as Pakistan refuses to take full control of its now autonomous border areas where Taliban and al Qaida cells operate with impunity. Let NATO troops do what they can on the ground inside Afghanistan. But withdraw most US troops to nearby nations and, as in Murtha's Iraq plan, use them to launch surgical strikes against known al Qaida and Taliban bases along both sides of the Afghan and Pakistan borders. And when the Pakistanis complain that we are violating their national sovereignty, tell them that as soon as they stand up and secure their own side of the border, we will stand down.

The goal of a unified, self-governing Iraq, is already lost. Afghanistan hangs by a silk thread, ruled by a flashy dresser installed and kept in power by the US.

The administration likes to describe Pakistan as stable and “an ally in the War on Terror.” That would be funny if it weren't such a pernicious lie. In reality Pakistan is a potential Afghanistan, times 1000. The second President Musharraf is gone – Islamic militants have tried to kill him three times already -- Muslim terrorists aligned with bot al Qaida and the Taliban will take control of Pakistan. At that moment terrorist groups will be armed with nuclear tipped intercontinental missiles -- precisely the worst case scenario Bush claimed he was going to short circuit by invading Iraq.

When that day arrives -- thanks largely to this administration's fatally flawed policies -- it'll be too late to “change course.”

Heck of a job, Georgie.

October 13 - October 24, 2006

Mark today, October 20, 2006, on your calendar. When the history of George W. Bush's Iraq misadventure is written this is the day that will mark the beginning of the end. Today militias loyal to Iranian backed mullah, Muqtada al-Sadr, took over the southern town of Amara. Al-Sadr has been waiting for his Tet moment, and it came today. The fat man has sung. It's over. George W. Bush's vision of “a free and democratic Iraq,” will be replaced by an Iranian style Islamic theocracy.

Funny how things happen. Just yesterday I was cleaning old files off my computer when I came across a column I penned on August 23, 2005 – 14 months and several hundred dead US G.I's ago. This morning that file was still on my screen. For some reason I couldn't bring myself to delete it. So instead I read it again. And lo and behold, I didn't have to change a single word of it.

Here it is again -- because it's where we are now.

It's Boy!

Congratulations George W. Bush, you are the father of a bouncing baby Islamic Republic!

What-ya mean you want a paternity test? Who else could be the father? Saddam was a dictator and despot, but a secular one. He used to have troublesome mullahs whacked. Anyway, you have him locked up. So we know he didn't do it.

No, George, I am afraid you have to take responsibility for fathering the world's newest little mullah. Come on now, don't be ashamed, stuff happens. You thought you were just going in for some heavy petting and, wham ! – the next thing you know you've created a another Islamic brat that's going to blame you for everything that's wrong with the world. Sharper than a serpent's tooth, huh?

Of course you may have a hard time explaining this to your fundamentalist Christian “base” back home here. Lots of us tried to get you to abort this thing before it got to this point, but now it's too late. And you'll have to explain why a few thousand US kids had to die just so Iraqi men can marry girls as young as nine, and then legally beat the crap out of them if they don't toe the radical Islamic line. I have to wonder what your pal, the most reverend Jerry Falwell, will have to say about grown men marrying pre-teen girls?

But there's no escaping it George, it's your doing. Maybe you can make Rev. Jerry feel better if you explain that Muslims also oppose abortion. Now if some Iraqi guy knocks up some little girl, she'll have a playmate in nine months. You can tell Jerry that and see how it floats.

Half the humans on earth are women. But in your new Islamic Republic, George, half of all Iraqis will be less equal than the other half. Women will have to cover up or risk being beaten by misogynistic thugs masquerading as "religious police." Whatya gonna say when TV footage of that reaches Red State women voters -- they were asking for it dressing like that?

Maybe you should ask those women who camp outside your Texas ranch every August about all this. After all, their kids died helping deliver your new baby. You might first notice that none of those women are wearing burquas. It's hot in both Iraq and Crawford. But at least in Crawford women can wear shorts. Not so soon in your new Iraq where, despite temperatures over 100 degrees, women will be pressured to cover up in heat-absorbing black, head to toe – and not because black is slimming, either. As they sweat and look out at the world through eye-slits, they will have you to blame for that .... daddy.

You may also start thinking about how you are going to break some bad news to those in your administration hawking traditional marriage. They may be surprised to discover that under Islamic law, when a guy is done with a wife, all he has to do is say, "I divorce you," three times in a row, and she's out. Talk about quickie divorces! Eat your heart out, Nevada.

How about alimony? Forget about it. Women have no community property rights under Islamic law, not even the right to the children they bear during a marriage. But you may find some allies for this in Utah because Muslim men can have more than one wife – at the same time! (I wonder how your pal, Tony Perkins, of the Family Researach Council, will feel about that? Your evangelical base likes to chant that marriage means, "One man married to one woman." is a marriage. Yikes! Maybe you can soothe your born-again eligious base by reminding them that homosexuality is a capital crime under Islamic law. (Talk about don't ask don't tell!)

Oh George, George, George -- we tried to tell you to pull out early, but oh no, you just had to go all the way. Now you've done it – created a bad seed of a kid that's destined to grow up to become an ally of that militant Iranian gang next door.

It's too late to do anything about this now, George. But don't be too hard on yourself. You're not the first father to have a kid go sideways on him. Jeffrey Dahmer, Charlie Mason, Ted Bundy, O.J. Simpson, Adolf Hitler, Richard Nixon, all had daddies.

All you can do now is spend the rest of your life trying to convince history that you gave the kid every opportunity to straighten up and fly right, but he still went bad on you anyway. Of course, it won't work. History is cruel that way. There are no spin doctors in history books. Just facts.


You're under arrest
For what?
None of your business


As of yesterday we, all of us, are just one indiscretion, misunderstanding or set up away from disappearing.

Maybe that neighbor you pissed off a couple of years ago will be the reason. Or a phone call to an old buddy during which you vented your frustrations with the president. It could be an email someone sent you that you liked and forwarded to someone else.

But the reason you end up in federal custody, refused a lawyer, or a trial, may never be known, to you or anyone else.

“Get outta here, Pizzo. I'm a US citizen. That kind of stuff only happens to foreign terrorists.”

No. You get outta here. As of yesterday it can happen, and it can happen to YOU.

Here's the full text of the law President Bush signed yesterday. Read it yourself. Senator Chris Dodd did and concludes that,

"Anybody deemed by the president to be an enemy combatant or alleged enemy combatant can be arrested and held indefinitely," he said. "That's incredible. Today, an American president signed that bill into law. What a sad day for our country."

So, be warned. Today would be a good day to reconsider almost everything you think you know about what it means to be an American citizen. In fact, as of yesterday, common criminals... murderers, thieves, rapists, even child molesters, now have more legal protections than any American accused by the government of “providing material aid to terrorists.”

For example, if someone is accused of murdering their entire family, burning down their house and raping the family pets, they still have the right to:

* One phone call
* To refuse to answer questions without a lawyer present
* The right to a preliminary hearing forcing prosecutors to prove they have a case
* The right to Habeas Corpus
* The right to examine and refute the evidence against them -- all the evidence.
* The right cross examine your accusers - all accusers.

But, should the US government accuse you of "providing material aid to terrorists:"

* You have NO right to phone anyone – maybe ever again
* You have NO right to any kind of evidential hearing
* You have NO right to Habeas Corpus
* You have NO right to see the evidence against you
* You have NO right to confront, or even know the identity of, witnesses against you
* You haver NO right to a jury of your peers.
* And you can be subjected to extreme interrogation techniques the government says do not constitute torture, but refuse to describe.

Think I'm kidding? Nope. Even I'm not that sick. This is no joke. I wish it were. No this one is the real deal folks. And since it's now the law of the land, you better get rid of your pre-10/17/2006 thinking. It's a new day and a new way in Bush's America.

Piss off someone in government and you could find yourself in front of precisely the kind of military tribunals the US once condemned in other countries. Here are some of the “highlights” of the new law.

Who can be accused of being an “Unlawful Enemy Combatant?” Anyone they decide. And oh, by the way, it's retroactive (ex post facto) to boot.

“Determination of Unlawful Enemy Combatant Status Dispositive- A finding, whether before, on, or after the date of the enactment of the Military Commissions Act of 2006, by a Combatant Status Review Tribunal or another competent tribunal established under the authority of the President or the Secretary of Defense that a person is an unlawful enemy combatant is dispositive for purposes of jurisdiction for trial by military commission under this chapter.

And forget sentencing guidelines. Under this law your punishment can be affected by whether Don Rumsfeld is in a good mood that day or a bad mood.

“Punishments- A military commission under this chapter may, under such limitations as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe, adjudge any punishment not forbidden by this chapter, including the penalty of death when authorized under this chapter or the law of war.

And just who can convene a Military Tribunal under this new law?

“Military commissions under this chapter may be convened by the Secretary of Defense or by any officer or official of the United States designated by the Secretary for that purpose.

Who will judge you?

“In General- Any commissioned officer of the armed forces on active duty is eligible to serve on a military commission under this chapter.”

Once seated a Military Tribunal assumes a status once reserved only for the Pope: infallibility.

“ No authority convening a military commission under this chapter may censure, reprimand, or admonish the military commission, or any member, military judge, or counsel thereof, with respect to the findings or sentence adjudged by the military commission, or with respect to any other exercises of its or his functions in the conduct of the proceedings.”

Well, at least we can watch the proceedings, right? Forget about it.

“The military judge may close to the public all or a portion of the proceedings under paragraph (1) only upon making a specific finding that such closure is necessary...”

There's nothing in the new law that requires a speedy trial. So after months, or even years, of cooling your heels in solitary you may finally be led before a tribunal for your day in court. Will you find out now why you're under arrest. Maybe not.

NATIONAL SECURITY PRIVILEGE- (A) Classified information shall be protected and is privileged from disclosure if disclosure would be detrimental to the national security. The rule in the preceding sentence applies to all stages of the proceedings of military commissions under this chapter..... The privilege referred may be claimed by the head of the executive or military department or government agency concerned based on a finding by the head of that department or agency...”


And just who can claim the evidence against you is “privileged?”

“A person who may claim the privilege referred to in subparagraph (A) may authorize a representative, witness, or trial counsel to claim the privilege and make the finding described in subparagraph (B) on behalf of such person. “

In other words, anyone on the prosecution side of the case, including their witnesses against you, can declare that the evidence they have against you is privileged and therefore can be kept from you and your attorney.

K. broke off here and looked at the judge, who said nothing. As he did so he thought he saw the judge use a movement of his eyes to give a sign to someone in the crowd. K. smiled and said, "And now the judge is giving a secret sign to someone among you. There seems to be someone among you who is taking directions from above. I don't know whether the sign is meant to produce booing or applause, but I'll resist trying to guess what its meaning is too soon. It really doesn't matter to me, and I give his lordship the judge my full and public permission to stop giving secret signs to his paid subordinate down there and give his orders in words instead; let him just say "Boo now!," and then the next time "Clap now!". (Franz Kafka, The Trial.)

If there is anything more extraordinary than the law Bush signed yesterday it was the lack of commotion about it. It would seem American's, who once warned authorities “Don't tread on me,” are now resigned to a Kafkaesque future.

So, from today on, until and if a future congress and president repeals this assualt on “equal justice for all,” you all better watch your step -- and your mouth.


Brother, Sister...
Where Art Thou?





Hello. My name is __________________________. I am the Democratic Party's nominee for President of the United States of America, and I approved this message.

A growing majority of Americans feel the nation is on the wrong course in both it's domestic and foreign policies and actions. I would like to take just a moment of your time to tell you how, if elected, I would lead my party and our nation back onto the righteous, just and enlightened path that made America great and respected at home and abroad.

1) I would give the Iraqi government 180 days of additional US military assistance before I begin redeploying US troops out of that country. National Guard troops would be the first troops to leave Iraq, returning them to the states and communities they are supposed to serve. The balance of American troops will be redeployed to neighboring countries to provide security for those countries in the event Iraq descends into chaos.

2) I will provide Congress a plan for balancing the federal budget within 24 months of my election. This plan will require both spending cuts and tax increases. Tax increases would be aimed at the very top 2% of earners and will have no impact whatsoever on individuals making up to $40,000 a year or couples that earn less than $80,000 a year. (More)

3) I will provide Congress a plan for providing affordable health care coverage for every American citizen. My plan will sweep away the current inefficient and expensive maze of private health plans and replace it with a single payer insurance plan. This plan will blend the strengths of the private sector with the cost savings and bargaining power that can only be attained by a single heath insurance provider. Medicare and Medicaid will be slowly phased under this plan assuring adequate funding and converage for the poor and retirees into perpetuity. This national health plan will be run by the private sector but regulated by a federal agency - much the same way banks and the security industry's have been run for nearly a century. (More)

4) I will immediately reopen talks on the Kyoto Treaty, asking all participating nations to consider updating that treaty to expand it's limits on greenhouse gas emissions to all nations, including China and developing countries. I would commit the US to signing a Kyoto treaty and agressively implementing its provisions once so amended. (More)

5) I would ask Congress to rescend any authority it previously gave the executive branch that allows US troops or intelligence agents to employ dehumanizing, degrading or cruel interrogation techniques. I would also ask Congress to clearly establish that any person(s) captured in what has been come to be referred to as “the war on terror,” shall be considered a prisoner of war, as defined in the Geneva Convention and other international laws of which the US is a signatory. (More)

6) I would ask that Congress explicitedly outlaw military tribunals except for when there has been a formal Congressional declaration of war, as provided for in the US Constitution. (More)

7) I would ask Congress to update US immigration laws and enforcement. Key to these changes would be to, within one year, make sure that employers, large and small, have fast and accurate online access to information already on file with the US govenment that can confirm a employee's citizenship or immigration status. Once that service is in place I would then make sure INS and ICE agents are deployed in sufficient numbers to enforce workplace compliance. American workers and foriegn guest workers in the country legally, deserve nothing less.

8) I would ask Congress to raise the national minimum wage to $10 an hour and index further increase to inflation. (More)

9) I would ask Congress to pass legislation to double minimum millage standards for all cars and trucks by 100% in 10% increments over the next ten years. (More)

10) I would ask Congress to create a Manhattan Project for Energy Independence and fund it fully with the goal of discovering, developing and deploying energy solutions that would free the US from dependency on oil-based fuels by no later than 2020. (More)

11) Our democracy has been purchased by special interests. A democracy that can be bought is a democracy in peril. Therefore I will ask Congress to pass a constitutional amendment requiring that all campaigns for Congress and the White House be funded solely from public funds. (More)

12) My defense policies will reflect that we are the most technologically advanced nation on earth, and should therefore play to that strength. Sending troops halfway around the world made sense in the days before we had the ability to drop a cruise missile within 36 inches of any object or person on earth, but it makes no sense today. (And, as we have seen in Iraq, troops on the ground are no guarantee of victory anyway.) Therefore I believe the US needs to make it clear to our would-be adversaries precisely what kinds of behavior towards us is acceptable and unacceptable. Our goals should not be so much to "win" wars, but to modify behavior. So I will let those who would confront the US know where the red lines are. After that it would be up to them to decide if they want American products and technology delivered to them by Dell and WalMart or Lockheed/Martin. (More)

13) I will never employ signing statements. If I disagree with all or portions of a bill Congress puts on my desk to sign, I will veto that bill. It will then be up to Congress, as dictated in the US Constitution, to either override my veto, or revise the bill and send it back to me. I will also ask the US Solicitor to seek a definitive ruling from the US Supreme Court on the legality of Presidential signing statements so that no future president will ever again attempt such an egregious end run around Legislative Branch constitutional authority. Should the Supreme Court rule otherwise, I will ask Congress for a constitutional amendment explicitly banning presidential signing statements. (More)

14) I will ask Congress to pass legislation imposing a five year limit on the Patriot Act. This will allow future congresses to reconsider that act and adjust it's provisions to reflect both actual future threats and to adjust this controversial law to reflect future court rulings.

15) I will restate the American traditions that, for two centuries, considered it anathema the notion the US government should or could eavesdrop or spy on US citizens without a court order. And, restate clearly and unequivocally, that anyone accused of wrong doing by local, state or federal authorities has the right to a fair and open trial and the right to confront all the evidence and witnesses against them, and possess the inalienable right to Habeas Corpus. Anything less turns the concept of “innocent until proven guilty,” on it head, by forcing the accused to prove that they are innocent before their rights are returned to them.

That's my program. If you like it, vote for me and I give you my word I will work night and day to see each of those promises are kept and turned into US law and policy before my first term in office is over.

If you don't like those policies then don't vote for me. Instead vote Republican and guarantee at least four more years of what you've been getting.

It really is as simple as that.

Thank you.

_______________________________________________
Candidate for President of the United States of America

(EDITOR'S NOTE: Keep this and fill in the candidate's name when (if) one ever gives this speech.)



Why Republicans Should
Vote Democrat in November


We are less than a month away from what is arguably be the most important mid-term election in half a century. Voters will be faced with a tough choice. Should they continue letting Republicans control both houses of Congress, or put Democrats in charge of one or both?

Republicans have controlled both the executive and legislative branches of government for six years. So, there's little mystery in what they believe and what policies they support:

Taxes: GOP tax cuts benefit Americans in direct proportion to how much they earn. The more you earn, the more the GOP's tax cuts benefit them. The less they earn, the less they get out of them. Republicans argue that's just the way it should be, that it's unfair to ding the rich for a disproportionate share of the nation's upkeep. And – though they won't say so right out loud – Republicans believe -- but would never admit it) that, since the poor contribute less to society, they should get less from society.

The Bush administration and Congress have scaled back programs that aid the poor to help pay for $600 billion in tax breaks that went primarily to those who earn more than $288,800 a year....To offset the loss of the tax revenue, the administration has amassed record federal deficits and trimmed social spending....The affected programs — job training, housing, higher education and an array of social services — provide safety nets for the poor. Many programs are critical elements in welfare-to-work initiatives and were already badly underfunded. (More)
Foreign Policy: The GOP reduced American foreign policy to a simple, in-your-face, formula: “It's our way, or the highway.” Nice, if they could get away with it. The trouble is they can't, and they didn't. Our traditional allies around the world were offended. (Duh) And, while they not as strong as we are, they have retaliated by going passive aggressive on us when we turned to them for help when “the highway,” turned out longer and rougher than US smartypants Neocons figured.

WASHINGTON - The national security adviser under the first President Bush says the current president acted contemptuously toward NATO and Europe after Sept. 11 and is trying to cooperate now out of desperation to "rescue a failing venture" in Iraq and Afghanistan. (More)


Science: If they agree with scientific studies, they embrace them. If they don't agree, or their big-business contributors don't like the findings, they dismiss and/or suppress such findings. Like Big Tobacco before them, the GOP fights back with their own “science,” which, remarkably, produces results that support the political/social/religious beliefs of their conservative base. Global warming, the Morning After pill, stem cell research, evolution – all highly suspect as far as the GOP base – and their science-for-hire researchers -- are concerned. (If the Vatican had hired it's own astronomers rather than just jailing Galileo, we might still be teaching that the sun and all the planets orbit the earth.)

What sort of pluperfect arrogance prompts a scientifically illiterate MBA to reject the considered conclusions of 2000 world-class scientists, and then, to arrange the ouster of the scientist in charge of the intergovernmental panel that came to those conclusions?...Be advised, my fellow Americans, that this very arrogance resides in the Chief Executive of our Republic – or perhaps more correctly, among those who sponsor and "advise" that Chief Executive....But you knew that already, didn't you? To be sure, George Bush's indifference to informed scientific opinion is no secret. However, the extent of this indifference is not fully appreciated, even less the serious implications thereof. (More)

Iraq: Need I say more?

Human Rights: Republicans believe that human rights are conditional. They believe that some humans can, under certain circumstances, be mistreated in the name of national security. They reject the term “torture,” preferring the Orwellian, “Aggressive Interrogation Techniques.” And, they claim to be completely comfortable that these techniques are not cruel or a violation of international human rights – though they are apparently not comfortable enough with the techniques they authorized to describe them.

"Can’t the United States see that when we allow someone to be tortured by our agents, it is not only the victim and the perpetrator who are corrupted, but also everyone who looked away and said they did not know, everyone who consented tacitly to that outrage so they could sleep a little safer at night, all the citizens who did not march in the streets by the millions to demand the resignation of whoever suggested, even whispered, that torture is inevitable in our day and age, that we must embrace its darkness? Are we so morally sick, so deaf and dumb and blind, that we do not understand this? Are we so fearful, so in love with our own security and steeped in our own pain, that we are really willing to let people be tortured in the name of America?"


- Ariel Dorfman, a Chilean-American writer, professor at Duke University, author of "Death and The Maiden"


On the other hand voters have the Democrats. While we are now painfully aware of what the Republicans stand for, we have no idea what Democrats have up their sleeves. We don't know how they plan on getting us out of Iraq without making things worse. We don't know how, or even if, they would roll back the Bush tax cuts. We don't know if they would buck the US Chamber of Commerce and raise the minimum wage to a livable wage and index it to inflation. We don't know if they would seriously tackle our energy problems, by slapping down automakers, doubling CAFE standards over the next decade, and funding a Manhattan Project for energy independence, whose goal would be to have us entirely off oil by 2020.

I have no doubt such a platform would sweep Democrats to victory in this time and sweep them into the White House in 2008. But don't hold your breath. Democrats are notorious scardycats. Rather than risk taking a straight line position on a hot issue, they hedge their – which they call “triangulating.” By the time they fine-tune their position enough to touch all those bases there's very little there in it any longer.

Democrats have been AWOL from the fight for right for a decade now. We miss them. American workers have suffered, the poor have suffered, our national defense has suffered, our fiscal health has never been worse. At least “tax and spend Democrats,” understood you had to “tax” before you spent. Clinton understood that, raised taxes on those who benefited most from society and balanced the budget. Republicans did just the opposite and have left us, your kids and their kids saddled with biggest credit card bill in the history of mankind.

So what are voters to do on November 7?

Vote Democrat. Why?

Because voting Republican sends a message. It means saying okay to tax cuts that have benefited the wrong people. It means two more years of inaction on greenhouse gas emissions. It means no real pressure on automakers to more quickly switch to cleaner technologies. It means more international isolation. It means critical policies being decided and driven by junk science. It means fewer reproductive rights for women. It means further erosion of constitutional rights, more right-wing judges on the federal bench.. and.. well, you get the point. As the old saying goes, “Keep doin' what you been doin' and you'll keep getting' what you got.”

One more thing. I know a lot of people who voted for Bush are now having second thoughts. They don't like Democrats and have never voted for one of those critters. But they also don't like that Republicans have doubled our federal debt.. increasing it by $4 trillion in just six years. And while they may have supported Bush's invasion of Iraq, but are appalled by his incompetence that have gotten so many people killed for what is increasingly looking like nothing.

So reach out to the Republicans in your family and circle of friends. Encourage them to do something they never dreamed they would do... vote straight Democrat on November 7.

When they balk, and most will, explain that they are not voting for Democrats, but for the restoration of American democracy. Explain to them them that if Democrats get the House and/or the Senate genuine oversight of the executive branch will return to the legislative branch. The GOP Congress has avoided genuine oversight like the plague, giving the executive branch far more power than our founders intended. Simply put an unsupervised executive branch is un-American. I don't know exactly how to describe American governance over the last six years of GOP rule. It would be hysterical to call it a dictatorship. Maybe it's been more a kind of monarchy.

Whatever it's been, it sure as hell hasn't been a representative democracy.

Which is why even Republicans should vote Democrat this November. Even those who, after all this, still believe in President Bush's policies are just and right and defendable, then they should not be afraid to subject them to Democracy's crucible – congressional debate and oversight - genuine debate and oversight.

Also tell them that you agree with them about the empty suits calling themselves Democrats. And how potentially entertaining it could be to give two years during which they can't just talk, but have to either shit or get off the pot. Hey, I'd like to watch that show myself.

October 12, 2006

America the Frivolous


I hate it when that happens. There I was. It was 6 a.m. I was settling into my Barko lounger cradling that precious first cup of coffee of the day – cream, one sugar. I grabbed the remote and click the TV on and, while it warmed up, switched to CNN. As I brought cup to lip CNN's chattering weatherman, “Chad,” chattering in front of a large object covered with a blanket of some sort. Chad was beside himself. I had not seen him this excited since he lost it on the air during Katrina.

Anyway as I took my first sip of coffee Chad had the blanket removed to reveal what it was that had him so wound up. It was ..... ta.da.....

“Warrior One,” the Humvee CNN reporters had used to cover the invasion of Iraq. A California outfit called “Overhaulin,” had given “Warrior One,” a new paint job... No wait.. not just any paint job, no siree. This was one of those fancy airbrush artsy-fartsy custom jobs you see on those one-off custom Harley's. Atop a shinny new undercoat were added images of little army tanks a-tankin', little fighter jets a-jettin', tiny troops a-troopin' and CNN reporters reportin'.

Since Warrior One was about a close to combat as “Chad” had ever been the experience overwhelmed him. Microphone in hand he rushed around Warrior One gushing over each little airbrushed image of war. He was especially thrilled by the large logo emblazoned on each side announcing that this was indeed, “CNN - WARRIOR ONE.”

Monday, October 09, 2006

CNN Hummer Overhauled

Source: CNN Press Release: One of the Hummer off-road vehicles CNN employed during the war in Iraq returns to Atlanta after a major renovation project as part of The Learning Channel’s highly rated series, Overhaulin’.

Overhaulin’ co-hosts Chris Jacobs and Adrienne “A.J.” Janic and hot rod designer Chip Foose will present the refurbished Hummer – nicknamed “Warrior One” – to CNN employees on Thursday, Oct. 12, at 8:30 a.m. (ET) in front of the CNN sign on Centennial Park Drive. The Overhaulin’ program featuring the Hummer will premiere on TLC on Tuesday, Nov. 14, at 9 p.m. (ET/PT).

After the unveiling, Warrior One will tour military bases and other sites across the country before it is auctioned. Proceeds of the auction will be donated to a charity to be determined later.
CNN purchased the Hummer in 2002 from the King Hummer dealership in Kuwait . Network producers, video journalists and correspondents used the vehicle when they were embedded with coalition forces in the war in Iraq in 2003.

This summer, Overhaulin’ took the Hummer to the show’s workshop in Irvine, Calif. Crews overhauled the Hummer’s engine and body and installed an extensive entertainment system that includes a DVD player, four LCD monitors and a state-of-the-art sound system. Airbrush artists Dru Blaier, Mickey Harris and Mike Lavallee painted images of journalists and military men and women onto the vehicle as a tribute to those who served during the war in Iraq or covered the war.

I was dumbstruck. That first precious sip of coffee just dribbled down the front of my shirt. It was new low, even by CNN standards.


What the hell were they thinking? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know... it's a Learning Channel promotion. And the thing will be auctioned off for charity. But here it was on my TV, on CNN, being hawked and fawned over. Here was CNN, just a day after they reporting that researchers estimated since George W. liberated them, as many as 650,000 could have been killed.

Okay, so that number is suspect. I agree. There have been several lower estimates. George W. (Rainman) Bush contends it's “only” 36,000, “or so.” Others say 55,000, maybe 100,000. The truth is certainly somewhere between those numbers. But whatever the precise number, it's appalling.

So why was CNN participating in the memorializing of it's reporting on that ongoing slaughter with a tricked out Humvee?

CNN might argue that its reporters risked their lives covering the action over thee, so they have a right to glow in the reflection of their bravery.

Nonsense. I was a reporter and, let me tell you a dirty little secret -- reporters do what they do because they love it... every stinking second of it. And the gritter it gets, the more they love it. Reporters live a privileged lives. We get to actual experience up close the kind of stuff ordinary folks only see at the movies; crime, romance, glamor, glory, gore, war, the thrill of victory and agony of defeat. We love it all, because reporters are the biggest drama queens on earth.

And sure, sometimes reporters get hurt and even killed doing what they do. So do truck drivers, construction workers and farmers.

As for the corporate end of CNN/Time Warner, we know what they do during war -- they sell commercials between reports from the front. Duh.

CNN's “Warrior One,” really got me going... as you can tell. For me it represented, more than anything I've seen so far, just how frivolous America and Americans have become. We are simply no longer a serious people. We've become a spoiled, self-indulgent, self-congratulatory, self-conscious, frivolous and needy lot.

Partly that's the fault of our mass media. Because they've taken it upon themselves to airbrush reality from it. The mainstream media softens hard news from the front before it reaches us, so as not to spoil our dinners. We get to see cars and trucks laying in pieces on Baghdad streets after a roadside bomb goes off. But to look at American TV news reports from Iraq one would think it was war of the machines.There they are, the gearboxes, fenders, burning tires, dismembered chasis. But no dismembered occupants, or dismembered bystanders. Because our media's self-censors understand we we don't want to see that kind of stuff, especially at dinner time. It's hard to enjoy a medium-rare T-bone when confronted with a picture of ten pounds of raw flesh that, just minutes before, had been up and walking around.

Real reality can be, well, real upsetting. So American media kindly takes the edges off it for us.

Then we are left to wonder why so many of our young men and women come back from Iraq all screwed up; sad, angry, disturbed, changed -- forever.

But we brush that aside as well. After all, we have the VA to take care of them. We know that because CNN tells us so, generally in a reassuring way.

But what's really important is that you know CNN reporters covered the war in Iraq, and they covered it in Warrior One. CNN brought the war right into your living rooms and dinning rooms, every night, every morning, everyday. And, they even cleaned it up for you. (No humans were actually hurt during the making of this report.)

Hurricanes and earthquakes are okay. But war.. whoooah! Now you're talkin'. War is pure, unadulterated cable news nirvana.

And CNN was there baby, there in Warrior One. And Chad couldn't be prouder.

I don't know if any CNN reporters killed in Iraq. But I do know nearly 3000 US soldiers have died there so far and 45,000, “or so” have been wounded.

Meanwhile, Iraqi bodies pile up by the thousands each month, every month, month in, month out, year in and year out. Has it been 36,000, 55,000, 100,000 or 650,000? Who knows? Too many, that's for sure.

Maybe CNN can hire Overhaulin' to airbrush something cool on some coffins for them.

It's all so sad.

October 11, 2006

Burqa Babes Gone Wild




Have you been following the latest The West v. Islam flap? Last week British foreign secretary, Jack Straw, suggested that if Muslim women who have chosen to live in Europe wanted to lessen tensions they should consider getting rid of the full-body burqa, which westerners see as not only strange but demeaning and oppressive towards women.

Well, of course all hell broke loose as Muslims in Europe and around the world condemned Straw for being a bigot and anti-Islam, and worse. But Straw was right, and who would better know just how right than fatwa-beleaguered author, Salman Rushdie, who came out foursquare in support of Straw's remarks:

RUSHDIE: 'MUSLIM VEIL SUCKS'

LONDON: Writer SALMAN RUSHDIE has reignited the row over Muslim dress codes, insisting the veils worn by Islamic women "suck". Rushdie made the inflammatory comment after former British foreign secretary JACK STRAW sparked a scandal by asking Muslim women in the UK to remove their veils in order to integrate into Western society.

THE SATANIC VERSES author, who became the subject of a death edict issued by Iran's revolutionary leader AYATOLLAH RUHOLLAH KHOMEINI in 1989, backed Straw for raising the issue.

He says, "The battle against the veil has been a long and continuing battle against the limitation of women, so in that sense I'm completely on Straw's side. "He was expressing an important opinion, which is that veils suck - which they do."

Here's the deal. When Western women visit Muslim countries they wouldn't dream of walking down the street in a see-through blouse or a bikini. And if they did, they'd deserve what ever misery came their way. When female western journalists cover stories in Iran or Saudi Arabia they don't wear a burqa, but they do go out of their way to show respect for local sensitivities and customs by wearing a stylish head scarf.

That's really all Jack Straw was suggesting. Muslim women living in Europe don't need to dress like little tarts to get by. No one is suggesting that. But they also should not show up dressed like they're out tricker-treating and expect no one to take notice – or offense.

Nor should they expect to be treated like everyone else on the street in times like these. Here's someone clearly from a Muslim country walking around a western city in a full body disguise. Gee, no reason for worry there, huh? (Are those male eyeballs or female eyeballs? Only her – his - hairdresser knows for sure.)

Here's a handy tip for Muslim women planning a trip to the West: Westerners don't like talking to a set of disembodied eyeballs. Westerners like face time – preferably a whole face -- when they have to interact with another person, be it a man or a woman. Having to talk to a woman through, what amounts to mail slot, is a formula for inter-cultural friction.

I also understand that the burqa is supposed to be all about feminine modesty. Fine. I have no problem with that. But if a Muslim woman is so modest that she can't even show her face in public, the moving to the West is a bit like a born again Christian deciding to take a room in a brothel. Not a good idea.

Listen, I'm no xenophobic. I love cultural diversity. Hell, in my pre-teen years National Geographic Magazine was my reading material of choice – but I diverge.

The point I would like to make – and that Straw was trying to make as well – is that, as quaint and beloved as they may be back in the old country, there are some cultural habits that simply don't translate. Bikinis in Tehran – don't translate. Martinis in Damascus – don't translate. Pickled pigs' feet in Tel Aviv – don't translate. A beef slaughterhouse in New Delhi – forget about it.

And women dressed like the brides of Zorro roaming the streets of London – don't translate.