Nitwit Planet

"We Didn't Start The Fire" Done To GOP Scandals.

2009-04-16T20:22:00.000-07:00

A few months before the 2008 election I was listening to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start The Fire". I always dug the song, it was so catchy. But when I sat down to read the lyrics I thought it was well, shitty. Not that it's really Billy Joel's fault, writing lyrics in that way is really freaking hard.

But suddenly an idea came to me...I'd bet you could rewrite the lyrics to this song, and have them refer to some of the many scandals from the Bush administration. After laboring for several days, this is the result. For kicks, try singing along with the song to these new lyrics.

Scooter Libby, Neal Horsley, Tom DeLay, KKK
Shell, BP, and Amoco, Halliburton
Judith Miller, New York Times, Jesse Helms, Phil Gramm
Ken Lay, Kissinger, and Berlusconi

George Bush, Pretzels, wiretap, Abramoff
Billo, Geraldo, torture in Guantánamo
Reaganomics, privatize, global heating suicide
PNAC, Trent Lott, Cialis on my TV set

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
Well, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Wal-Mart, AIPAC, The IMF, World Bank
Negroponte, death squads, occupation
9/11, bomb blasts, tax cuts, getting rich
Anthrax, Saddam, and free speech zones
Al Qaeda, My Pet Goat, SAVAK, “Stay the course.”
Fallujah, Lebanon, Mussolini’s here again
New Orleans photo-ops, TSA sippy cups,
Gonzo, Karl Rove, blacks kicked off the voting rolls

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
Well, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Yellowcake, Tim McVeigh, Downing Street, CIA
Diebold, black box, Honey bees are dying off
Columbine, Virginia Tech, the SOA, the deficit
Terri Schiavo, Bill Frist, health care is getting sick

Fox News, culture war, Faith based, Goss’ whores
Lieberman, Safavian, Falwell kicks the can
Free trade, Katrina, FEMA, treason
Russert, Tobias, Cheney shot someone in the face

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
Well, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Downing Street, Hardball, Osama, Panama
Rumsfeld, Enron, Rush Limbaugh’s on heroin
Robertson’s diamond mines, It’s Giuliani time
Randy “Duke” Cunningham, Condi’s buying shoes again
Stem cells, landmines, Bolton’s at the UN,
Mumia’s locked away, what else do I have to say?

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
Well, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Consolidation media, Bechtel’s in Bolivia
Darfur, Dubai, Walter Reed, Swift Boat
Foley and Gannon, Claude Allen’s stealing
Clear Skies, doughnut holes, Tillman killed in Afghanistan
Shia-Sunni genocide, vets committing suicide
Chalabi taking Iranian bets, color-coded homeland threats
China exporting everything, Arms race is back again
Never ending terror wars, I can't take it anymore

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
But when we are gone
Will it still burn on, and on, and on, and on...

We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
Well, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it
We didn’t start the fire
It was always burning
Since the world’s been turning
We didn’t start the fire
Well, we didn’t light it
But we tried to fight it

Useless Democrat Double Whammy.

2007-11-06T16:30:00.001-08:00

Some people have sent me angry e-mails after I posted an entry in which I said I now refuse to vote. To which, I point out today’s useless Democrat double whammy.

First, the backstabbers in the Democratic Party in the Senate voted to couldn’t even bother to press Diane Feinstein (D-CA) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) not to vote to confirm Bush Attorney General (read Torturer-In-Chief) Nominee Michael Mukasey, even after he said he could not give an “opinion on the legality” of waterboarding.

Not to be outdone by the backstabbers in the Senate, the House then voted to kill a move by Representative Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) to launch impeachment hearings against Vice President Dick Cheney for lying and distorting intelligence to take the United States to war in Iraq.

Again, I ask: Why do I even bother to vote? Here’s a better question: Why do you?

I Ain’t Voting Anymore.

2007-10-29T00:56:00.000-07:00

I never thought I’d say this, but I’ve decided to finally join the real majority of my American brethren…the ones who don’t vote. I’ve decided that I ain’t gonna vote no more. No way, no how, period.

My first introduction to this idea came from the great funny man George Carlin. Ten years ago, when I heard his wonderful Back In Town album, I was kinda shocked to hear the only comedian I truly idealized say he favored not voting. This, of course, was in 1996. I was an young and idealistic adult and I eagerly waited to cast my first vote ever in my life.

I knew Bill Clinton was useless, and he royally pissed me off by being the cowardly spineless Democrat he was, but I figured he had to be better than Bob Dole. I stood in that voting booth for a long, long time, looking at Clinton’s name. Finally, I said to myself, “fuck this asshole,” and voted for Ross Perot instead. Why did I vote for Perot? Just so I could flip the bird to Clinton.

Then we got Bush. I gleefully supported Nader over Gore, and I never apologized for it. Even after these 7 long nightmarish years of Bush, I still don’t regret it. You know why? Because Nader didn’t cost Gore shit. Hell, if Gore had bothered to run as a candidate for the Presidency instead as a spineless worm to replace another spineless worm who got a blowjob, then maybe he would have gotten enough votes in Florida that would have made it harder for the Supreme Court to steal the election.

Then came Kerry. I would have loved to have voted for someone like Dean. Really, I was holding out for Kucinich. Of course, that didn’t matter because we got Kerry, thanks to the right wing attacks on Dean. And like Gore, Kerry would have won in Ohio if he’d had enough spine to say, “yo, stop stealing the election in Ohio.”

Then came 2006, where every progressive in the country worked their asses off to get a Democratic Congress. I was one of them. We put in long hours and lots of money to get two things: an end to the war and Bush impeached. A year later what have we gotten? We get spineless cowards like Pete Stark apologizing to Bush for telling the truth.

I could blame the Republicans and their supporters for being nutcases and jackasses who are ruining the country. But that’s like blaming a snake for biting you. I could blame the Democrats in Congress for being cowards, but that’s like blaming worms for being invertebrates. The reality is that the politicians are just puppets. Dangling like marionettes for all to see. Meanwhile, everyone ignores the puppeteers, best known as The Fortune 500.

So I’m done with the great American Illusion. I’m staying home on election day. When Americans are ready to do something about the puppeteers, let me know. I’ll bring a rifle.

Bush’s World Bank Pick Is Delusional.

2007-06-17T10:32:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post is reporting that President Bush’s pick to head up the World Bank is concerned over growing economic troubles in Venezuela under President Hugo Chavez’s leftist government.

“It’s a country where economic problems are mounting and we are seeing [that] on the political and press side it’s not moving in a healthy direction,” Robert Zoellick told a news conference in Mexico City.

Chavez’s critics say that his policies have hindered job creation and are scaring businesses. Chavez drew further criticism recently when refused to renew the broadcast license of a television station that had publicly encouraged an overthrow of Chavez in a US-backed coup attempt in 2002.

Despite Zoellick’s criticism, the Venezuelan economy grew by 10.3% last year, the fastest in the region, and poverty rates in the country has continued to decline. Furthermore, when one actually look at the numbers coming out of Venezuela, they do indeed look far more rosy then Chavez’s critics claim.

In the 6 years prior to Chavez coming to office, total GDP growth in Venezuela was just 2.1%, averaging 0.4% per year. Since Chavez took office in 1999, the GDP growth rates in Venezuela is up a whopping 30.3%, or nearly 4% a year. In comparison, under the first term of the Bush Presidency, growth rates in the United States averaged 2.10%.

Zoellick’s “concern” over the Venezuelan economy may be affected by Chavez looking into withdrawing Venezuela from the World Bank. Chavez has said that the World Bank is a tool of the United States to keep poor countries poor. Chavez is looking into setting up an alternative economic institution to the World Bank that he says will free poor countries from high interest rate loan strangulation.

One thing not mentioned by The Washington Post is Robert Zoellick’s history. After all, who is this guy that Bush has nominated to head the World Bank? What makes him qualified for the position he has been nominated to?

As it turns out, Robert Zoellick is one of the founding members of The Project for a New American Century, the neo-conservative organization whose members include John Bolton, Donald Rumsfeld, and former World Bank head Paul Wolfowitz. Zoellick was one of the signers to a letter to President Bill Clinton in 1998, encouraging him to launch a war with Iraq.

So what would you expect from the Bush administration? Replacing one short-sighted neo-con who disgraced the World Bank with another short-sighted neo-con who has yet had the chance to disgrace the World Bank?

A note to Mr. Zoellick: To avoid being completely discredited, you should avoid criticizing third world countries for having “economic problems” when their growth rates out pace the growth rates in the United States under Bush. Just a thought.

Is “Legally And Peacefully” Still An Option?

2007-05-29T14:18:00.000-07:00

When I look back on the past two years I wonder if I should have bothered to be an activist. I wonder if I should have given money to the DNC for the 2006 election. I wonder if I should have bothered to go to peace protests. Maybe instead I should have been considering other options.

On the right there are primarily two major elements in their base. The Christian nutcases and the business elitists. In the last 6 years the GOP has given their base everything they’ve asked for. But what about the DNC?

Despite that 75% of the population supports “Democratic” positions such as ending the war, raising the minimum wage, protecting the environment, and establishing national healthcare, what has the Democratic party delivered? They have said impeachment is off the table, and don’t even have the gumption to push a meaningless “no confidence” vote on Gonzo.

The Dems were elected for 2 reasons: ending the war and impeaching Bush. On the later they have steadfastly refused, and on the former they have shown the kind of spinelessness I thought that was humanly impossible.

Instead of refusing to fund the war as 70% of the US population demands, the Dems have instead funded the war so they won’t look “weak” to the 25% of the country still supporting Bush.

So I have to wonder...when are the Dems going to stop trying to win over Reich wingers by being Republican-lite and start working for OUR interests? Suppose for a moment that Bush declared himself dictator for life and the barricades went up. How much opposition do you think you can count on from the Dems?

I don’t think jumping ship to the Greens will help any. I don’t think getting “better” Dems into office will help. What we are looking at is the complete breakdown of the representative theory of government.

In short, the overwhelming majority of the American populace has just been spat upon by the very people we just put into power just a short 6 months ago. I think we need to figure out some way to get the Dems to represent and work for OUR wishes and OUR demands. And I’m beginning to wonder if there really is a legal and peaceful way to do that.

Cheap Labor Conservatives.

2007-05-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

When you cut right through it, right-wing ideology is just “dime-store economics” – intended to dress their ideology up and make it look respectable. You don’t really need to know much about economics to understand it. They certainly don’t. It all gets down to two simple words.

“Cheap labor”. That’s their whole philosophy in a nutshell – which gives you a short and pithy “catch phrase” that describes them perfectly. You’ve heard of “big-government liberals”. Well they’re “cheap-labor conservatives”.

Once you understand the general concept, you will frequently find yourself in debate over specific issues, like healthcare, social security privatization, public school vouchers, the “war on drugs” and of course the war in Iraq. What better way to put your conservative opponent on the defensive than by exposing the true motivation for his position – “cheap labor”. Can you really find the “cheap labor” angle in every conservative policy initiative, and every conservative position on any particular issue?

Yes, you can. Here is a catalogue of some of the major issues on the national agenda. In every single one of them, the conservative position advances the cause of “cheap labor”. I defy any conservative reading this to show me one single conservative position, belief, principle or policy that has any tendency to boost the earning power of labor.

1. DUBYA’S TAX CUTS AND RESULTING BUDGET DEFICITS

Twenty years ago, cheap-labor conservatives claimed that tax cuts would stimulate the economy, and lead to balanced budgets. They don’t even bother spouting that crap any more. Now they say that deficits “aren’t so bad”, they don’t drive up interest rates, and they don’t create inflationary pressure.

Here’s the real skinny. The purpose behind tax cuts and budget deficits is to bankrupt the government.

Conservatives hate “social spending”. That’s what they mean by “big government”. They want you naked in as harsh an economic environment as they can create. But here’s the problem. Most ordinary people aren’t so ruthless. Most people think life is for living, not working your ass off until you drop. So if we the people can provide some basic social infrastructure for things like a basic retirement, assistance for higher education, unemployment compensation to get you through those Republican periods of high unemployment – well, most people support all of that stuff. Conservatives lose elections when they talk about undoing it.

So the manipulative sons of bitches – who don’t really believe in your right as a citizen in a democracy to establish institutions that do you any good – have come up with a “stealth plan” to get rid of our entire social welfare infrastructure. It’s called “bankruptcy”, and it is not an accident that the first thing Dubya did when he took office was bring back the deficits Bill Clinton had eliminated.

2. OPPOSITION TO EVERY IMPROVEMENT IN WAGES AND WORKING CONDITIONS IN US HISTORY

This is obviously directly related to “cheap labor” and doesn’t require much further explanation. In fact, the heading serves as the “One Sentence Response” – and I would stress the “every improvement in US history”, all the way back to abolition of slavery, and such obvious reforms as child labor laws. Cheap-labor conservatives have never been the friend of working Americans. Ever.

3. OPPOSITION TO ANY SORT OF NATIONAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM

Health care costs are outrageously expensive, and threaten people with financial ruin. Also, health insurance is primarily provided by employers through “group plans”. So if you lose your job, you lose your health coverage. This is not quite as a big a problem, since the passage of COBRA – which was opposed by guess who? That’s right, the cheap-labor conservatives.

In short, national health insurance would provide a huge measure of security for working Americans from potential financial catastrophe – which catastrophe is therefore no longer a force keeping you suitably intimidated by your employer.

4. SCHOOL VOUCHERS, OPPOSITION TO THE FEDERAL DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION, OPPOSITION TO LOCAL BOND ISSUES, ETC.

Way back in the late nineteenth century – where the cheap-labor conservatives are trying to take us – conservatives opposed universal public education. You can go to “Freeper” right now and find cheap-labor conservatives who still oppose it. And the reason is simple. Ignorant and illiterate people have fewer options in life, making them fit subjects for “industrial serfdom”.

In other words, an ineffective public education system is necessary to create a semi-literate workforce of “industrial serfs”, which accounts for cheap-labor conservative opposition to increased teacher pay, smaller class sizes, improvements in physical infrastructure, and anything else that might actually work.

Let’s just propose a simple thought experiment. Suppose we had 95% functional literacy, with similar high school graduation rates, and vast numbers of those high school graduates going to college, or receiving specialized technical training. When everybody is properly educated, who is going to ride on the back of the garbage truck? Who is going to pick tomatoes? Who is going to digger footers on construction sites? And what kind of wages are such workers – who are in short supply and smart enough to know it – going to command?

But wait, there’s more. Let’s consider your average dittohead “wannabe” living in the suburbs. Does he really want his children competing with those “brown” children for a seat in the university? What interest does he have in universal education that actually works? And you know how conservatives are about their “self-interest”.

Well, he can’t very well advocate “resegregation”. So here’s what the cheap-labor conservatives came up with. “Vouchers”. Some of those “brown” children can escape from failing schools – but not all of them. As for the one’s that are “left behind”, well there’s a garbage truck with their name on it – assuming they don’t wind up in jail.

5. “LAW” AND “ORDER”

According to cheap-labor conservatives, the only legitimate function of government is to protect the fortunes and privilege of the “haves”. Economic progress like “full employment”, living wages, and first rate education system, all improve the living standards and prospects of the “working poor” – and the “cheap-labor conservatives” can’t have that, can they. So that leaves prison as the only “social program” the conservatives support. They say we “throw money at every problem”. Well “cheap-labor conservatives” throw prison at every problem.

6. “FAMILY VALUES” AND THE “CULTURE WAR”

They say they are defending American “culture” – but that “culture” is the culture of the corporate “middle class”. It features conformity, hierarchy, “respect for authority”, regimentation and other “values” of the industrial work place. In fact, America was founded by a group of decidedly undisciplined nonconformists. But that won’t do at all, if you want a docile workforce who will work cheap.

7. RACISM AND OTHER FORMS OF BIGOTRY

This one is amazingly easy to understand. Dividing working people against each other along racial, gender and ethnic lines keeps them from uniting along class lines. Consider the following example. In 1990, the nation was suffering under yet another period of Republican high unemployment. That was the year that Jesse Helms ran his famous “angry hands” commercial against Harvey Gantt, former African-American mayor of Charlotte. “You needed that job, but they had to give it to a minority.”

This gambit is 150 years old. The cheap-labor conservatives produce a high deficit, high interest rate, “structurally sluggish” economy – then tell struggling white wage-earners that the “problem” is “unqualified minorities”. It was classic “scapegoating”, when the real culprits were the cheap-labor conservatives who liked that sluggish economy.

And in case you doubt whether they liked the sluggish economy, consider the eight year tantrum they threw as President Clinton undid the deficits, brought interest rates down, and fueled an eight year economic boom, bringing unemployment to a 30 year low. Naturally, throwing a wrench into that economy was the first order of business after Dubya’s inauguration.

8. “RIGHT TO BEAR ARMS.”

Since prison and punishment are generally ineffective to reduce crime, and since the “cheap-labor conservatives” will hear of no economic improvements that are effective, “self defense” is about your only protection from crime. Instead of better schools, full employment and other improvements in social conditions, the cheap-labor conservative solution is “buy a gun”.

9. THE “WAR ON DRUGS”

Maybe you don’t see the cheap-labor connection. It’s there. The “libertarian” position on this is that what you choose to voluntarily ingest, is your business. And of course, marijuana isn’t nearly as bad for you as say, alcohol abuse. But cheap-labor conservatives don’t give a rat’s ass about you’re health, anyway.

What they do care about is delegitimizing the “counter-culture”. If they could do it, they would outlaw deviations from the conformist culture of the “corporate middle class”. They can’t do that directly, so they have come with a “back door” method. They find cultural practices – like smoking a joint – and punish those. Today, they deny education benefits if you have any drug conviction – even for simple possession. They have also encouraged this “privatized” harassment of corporate workers through drug screening, etc. in an effort to economically marginalize the “counter culture”. It is really an exquisitely efficient means to keep the industrial work force intimidated.

10. “PRO OIL” ENERGY POLICIES

Answer this question, why don’t we have efficient cost effective renewable energy systems? Why didn’t we follow Jimmy Carter’s advice in 1979, and undertake the “moral equivalent of war” for energy independence. The technology has been around for decades. In the case of hydrogen fuel cells, the first one was invented in 1843 – that’s “eighteen forty three”.

Energy is like labor in its central importance to the economy. But while conservatives want “cheap labor” they want “expensive energy” – in sources they can monopolize and control. Unfortunately, sunlight is like air. It’s kind of hard to “corner the market” on it. Meanwhile, the biggest beneficiary of “cheap energy” is the work force – who pay a larger portion of their income for energy. Well, we can’t have that. Lowering a wage earner’s “balance of payments” is just like giving him a raise. The same logic, by the way, motivates a “high interest rate” environment.

Now you know why conservatives bad mouth “renewable energy”, and claim that the government “has no business” subsidizing R&D into this technology – as if the government hasn’t subsidized R&D into virtually every piece of high tech gadgetry in your house. Meanwhile, there is one form of “alternative energy” they like. Nuclear power. Why? Because nuclear power is horrendously expensive, and can be monopolized by the huge corporations selling it.

Meanwhile, they support destruction of pristine habitats like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and unlawful invasions of sovereign nations – sitting on a “sea of oil” to use the words of Paul Wolfowitz. All of which proves that the cheap-labor conservatives will do anything – and I mean anything – to prevent any improvement in the wage earner’s economic circumstances, including making sure he doesn’t have access to “cheap energy”.

11. THE INVASION OF IRAQ AND THE “BUSH DOCTRINE”

Perhaps, you thought this should be first – since it is highest on the national agenda right at the moment. Actually, the War in Iraq is an aggregate application of a number of simpler “cheap-labor” policies. First of all, Republican “demonization” notwithstanding, Saddam Hussein was a “target of opportunity”. Paul Wolfowitz said so. Saddam sat atop a really odious regime, in a country sitting atop a “sea of oil” – to again quote Paul Wolfowitz. As for global opposition to the US invasion, that was not an “unforeseen complication”. It was another ”opportunity”. In fact, one of the objectives was to demonstrate to the world that the US can do whatever it wants.

But what about the “cheap-labor” angle, you ask. The invasion of Iraq is the first step in establishing a US led global corporate empire, with a wealthy corporate elite living off of a global pool of “cheap labor”.

Don’t’ believe it? Go to whitehouse.gov and look at the National Security Strategy of the United States. This remarkable document lays out the “cheap-labor” foreign policy of the United States. In addition to the doctrine of “pre-emption – which is nothing new, we’ve been doing it for fifty years – there is the general strategy of “forward deployment” of US forces in the middle east and east Asia, along with the express goal of “discouraging” the emergence of a military rival.

But the National Security Strategy doesn’t stop there. It goes on to discuss which internal policies of other nations the US will “encourage”. Guess what those policies are? The very same policies they are promoting here, including “free trade”, “flattening” tax rates, shifting taxes away from passive investments, reducing the “public sector”, and generally paving the way for corporations to dominate other societies.

The US military will be the “police force” for this global “corporate order”, and Iraq is nothing more than the start of establishing the “military pre-eminance” of that “global police force”. Notice that the neocons are specifically intent on destabilizing international organizations that don’t promote corporate dominance. The conservatives don’t like the World Court, the United Nations or similar organizations. But GATT, the IMF and the World Bank don’t bother them a bit – since those organizations undermine the ability of third world nations to establish anything like our “New Deal mixed economy". And don’t forget, the cheap-labor conservatives are busy destabilizing our own “New Deal mixed economy”, in favor of an economy that strongly resembles present conditions in say, Argentina.

In short, the invasion of Iraq has nothing to do with any “threat” of weapons of mass destruction. Neither do the cheap-labor conservatives really care about a “dictatorial regime” – since they prop plenty of them up, and even supported Saddam Hussein in years gone by. The real purpose of the invasion of Iraq is to provide a demonstration of American military “pre-eminance” – which will ultimately translate into global corporate “pre-eminance”. If you want another word for this “cheap-labor” foreign policy, try “corporate feudalism”.

These aren’t the only examples of “cheap-labor conservative” policies and positions. While I will be supplementing and expanding this list from time to time, you should be getting the idea. Anytime a cheap-labor conservative takes a position on anything at all, take a look at the details. See if somewhere in those details there isn’t some way the wage-earner loses out. I have not yet failed to find the connection. Either the conservative position undermines the bargaining power of the wage earner, limits his economic options, harasses the wage earner in some way, raises his cost of living, increases his economic vulnerability or accomplishes some combination of the above.

Now you can see how, in specific examples. More importantly, you have new tool to use to analyze cheap-labor conservative rhetoric, ideology and policy.

This piece originally posted at: Conceptual Guerilla.

It’s Interesting To Note Who Still Supports The Iraq War.

2007-05-08T09:39:00.000-07:00

ABC News is reporting that “Al Qaeda’s No. 2 Mocks The Iraq War Debate”. Which is interesting to note, because it is false on two fronts.

For one, the Egyptian-born pediatrician Ayman al Zawahiri isn’t Al Qaeda’s No. 2 man. He is, in fact, the mentor of Osama bin Laden.

And secondly, al Zawahiri isn’t mocking the Iraq War debate in the United States. He is, in reality, a full and complete supporter of the Iraq War.

Al Zawahiri stated in his latest video release, “This bill will DEPRIVE us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap.”

It is suspected that the latest video release by Al Zawahiri was made after the passage of The Iraq War supplemental which included pull-out language in the bill. But was made prior to President Bush’s veto of that bill.

Al Zawahiri continued saying, “We ask Allah that they only get out of it after losing 200,000 to 300,000 killed, in order that we give the spillers of blood in Washington and Europe an unforgettable lesson.”

So the mentor of Osama bin Laden wants us to STAY in Iraq so that his supporters will have the “opportunity” to kill thousands of American soldiers. Isn’t it strange that Reich wing nutcases find a lot of common ground with Islamic nutcases?

The Gipper Won’t Win This One.

2007-05-03T09:43:00.000-07:00

By Robert L. Borosage

As Republican contenders for the presidential nomination gather for their first debate Thursday night at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum, they are caught between a rock and a hard place. The vast majority of Americans have given up on George Bush, the sitting conservative president. But the die-hards who still support him are loyal Republican primary voters that no Republican candidate can afford to offend.

How can the contenders distance themselves from Bush’s failures without alienating their own base? Expect them to invoke the conservative icon Ronald Reagan early and often. They’ll call for a return to the faith, pledge to follow in the footsteps of the Gipper and promise a new “Morning in America.”

But the Gipper can’t save them. Bush’s signature failures—the war in Iraq, Katrina, Enron and the corporate scandals, failed tax and trade policies, the attempt to privatize Social Security, the posturing around Terri Schaivo and stem cells – can be traced back not simply to the conservative ideology and ideologues that sired them—but to the core conservative doctrine that Reagan championed. The Gipper can’t lead Republican candidates out of the wilderness because, to paraphrase him, his conservatism is not the solution to their problem; his conservatism is the problem.

Over the last six years, with Bush in the White House, Tom DeLay ramrodding the Republican Congress, and Karl Rove focused on mobilizing the Republican base, conservatives have largely had their way. Bush pursued the core ideas of each strand of “movement conservatism” largely to catastrophic effect. In each case, he was simply walking in Reagan’s footsteps.

The neo-cons got the Iraq war they plotted for, and produced the worst foreign policy debacle in U.S. history. Their toxic mix of militarist unilateralism, scorn for allies and the United Nations, dismissal of international law, embrace of an imperial presidency above the law was Reagan’s opening act. In his first term, Reagan scorned détente, arms control, the U.N. and global accords. Reagan also fecklessly exposed U.S. troops in Lebanon—and had the intervention literally blow up in his face. He just had the good sense to cut and run, and then pick on a target easier to deal with—hapless Grenada in the Caribbean.

Under Bush, corporate conservatives took charge of economic policy and pushed through top-end tax cuts, Wall Street trade policies, deregulation and privatization, crony corporate staffing and subsidies, open assault on labor unions, rollback of consumer and environmental protections. The results were stagnant wages, a corporate crime wave, Gilded Age inequality, the worst trade deficits in the annals of time, billions squandered in subsidies to Big Oil and Big Pharma—and an economy now dependent on the good will of Chinese and Japanese central bankers. But Bush was only ordering from the Gipper's menu. He first served up the same noxious policy cocktail—and got the same results, even including the corporate plunder culminating in the savings and loan rip-off that cost taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

Small government conservatives didn’t get much from either president, since both favored top-end tax cuts and military spending over balanced budgets. But both Bush and Reagan cut back on spending on the poor and on domestic programs. Both disdained the civil servants they were elected to lead. Both starved vital infrastructure investments from levees in New Orleans to sewers in our cities. Both stocked regulatory agencies with corporate lobbyists intent on gelding the agencies that monitored their former clients. For Reagan, the scandals ranged from the Department of Housing and Urban Development to the Interior department. Bush was less lucky, as Katrina exposed the terrible price of conservative scorn for government.

Under Bush, fundamentalists got mostly gestures and a politics of division—posturing on gay marriage amendments, gag rules on family planning and birth control abroad, curbs on stem cell research, intrusion into the personal tragedy of Terri Schaivo. But Reagan first practiced that playbook, using race to divide, invoking conservative values but ducking pitched battles over them.

Why is Reagan popular and Bush dismissed? Much comes from personal nostalgia for the old performer and from the right-wing campaign to deify him. Unlike Bush, Reagan avoided losing a war. He talked tough but was actually cautious in the use of military force, much to the dismay of the neoconservatives who assailed him. He was also saved by his adversaries – the USSR’s Mikhail Gorbachev who essentially sued for peace, and Democrats in Congress who blocked many of Reagan’s domestic excesses—like the talk of gutting Social Security. Bush had no such luck. His catastrophic occupation of Iraq has provided al Qaeda and its franchises with recruits across the world, and for the last six years, his allies controlled the Congress and followed his lead.

So what will Republican candidates do? Stay loyal to a failed president? Embrace Ronald Reagan, whose conservative ideology is at the root of Bush’s failures? Adjust the right-wing catechism, or choose doctrine over experience?

Perhaps there’s one lesson the Gipper can offer. Republicans are going to need someone with Reagan’s ability to peddle the unpalatable. No wonder a yet-undeclared TV actor—Fred Thompson—is emerging as their new best hope.

Robert L. Borosage is the co-director of the Institute for America's Future. This article was first published in the Chicago Tribune.

LAPD Brutality On May Day.

2007-05-03T06:36:00.000-07:00

To many people in the world, myself included, May Day marks one of the most important days of the year. May Day was the original Labor Day, and is recognized by most of the developed world as such. Not so much in the United States, despite that the celebration of May Day originated here.

Given the history of this worker’s holiday, it is only fitting for untold thousands of immigrant workers to march for better working conditions. And march they did. If the anti-war movement had a fraction of the organization and dedication that these non-English-speaking immigrants did, then chances are our soldiers would be home by now.

However, the May Day march in Los Angeles didn’t go off without a hitch. In fact, the marchers were attacked by the Los Angeles Police Department. “They were merciless”, said KPFK radio host Ernesto Arce, who took part in the march. For 30 minutes hundreds of activists and bystanders were shot with rubber bullets and beaten with night sticks. The cops “chased us through the park firing at anyone who might have been an obstacle. I witnessed many people who were shot at from the back,” Arce said.

Which, of course, given the well documented history of racism inside the LAPD, it isn’t all that surprising that the LAPD would attack peaceful protesters. This is the same police department that has ties to white supremacists, who hires cocaine smugglers, who shoots and kills African-American 13 year olds, 19 month old Hispanic toddlers, and 13 years after the history of the Rodney King beating, still clubs black men when they are surrendering to police.

Given this history, this kind of behavior by the LAPD won’t change until they are forced to change. Perhaps if police officers had to run for public office to keep their jobs, then maybe they wouldn’t be so quick to beat and kill their constituency. Until then, perhaps the immigrant community can learn a thing or two from the Black Panthers of yesteryear. Arm yourselves.

I’ve Been Having Strange Conversations Lately.

2007-04-30T13:17:00.000-07:00

I was talking to a friend of mine on AIM, and had a pretty startling conversation. I have several people that I debate politics with. For that reason, I’m friendly with quite a few conservatives. I hadn’t heard from one of them in a while and so I decided to send him an instant message to see how he was doing. The conversation that ensued floored me.

(Note: This is the real conversation we had. Nothing has been changed except our screen names, which has been replaced for obvious privacy reasons.)

Me: hey man
A Conservative Guy: hey
Me: how you been doing?
A Conservative Guy: eh, ok. You?
Me: pretty much the same.
Me: this Iraq stand off is beginning to look like a game of chicken.
A Conservative Guy: I honestly don't know anything about it
Me: oh yeh...that's right. you refuse to watch the news right?
A Conservative Guy: just weather
A Conservative Guy: though I usually just go by weather.com
Me: i'm too much of a news junkie
A Conservative Guy: I can't watch
Me: why not?
Me: i mean...you could scream at the tube. I did it for 6 years.
A Conservative Guy: It makes me too depressed to see certain things.
Me: well...now the bushies are getting caught with hookers.
A Conservative Guy: I really can't talk about it
Me: well...it's funny.
A Conservative Guy: I don't think any of it is funny. it's sad.
Me: well you have to laugh...or i'd be pissed and depresseed all the time. so I just laugh at it all.
A Conservative Guy: I just stay away from it all now
Me: were you planning on voting anymore?
A Conservative Guy: no
Me: damn man.
A Conservative Guy: It's lose lose, if I vote for what I think is best for the country, I get called names and ridiculed and eventually trhe people I don't like get into power, if I don't vote, the people that are opposed to what i think is best get right in. So what's the point in voting?
Me: well...you have a republican representing you still right?
A Conservative Guy: yeah
A Conservative Guy: unless he was forced out
Me: what district are you in?
Me: I still have a republican representing me. I was pissed about that.
A Conservative Guy: 15th District.
Me: dave weldon? does that sound like the republican in your district?
A Conservative Guy: Yes, that's him
Me: well he's still there.
A Conservative Guy: ok
Me: and not voting would be just like giving a democrat an extra vote in your district.
A Conservative Guy: like I said, it doesn't matter.
A Conservative Guy: either way I lose
Me: well, power isn't absolute. the more power the republicans have the less the dems have.
A Conservative Guy: I would rather spend the last few days of this country being as it was intended ignorant and in my own little world rather than listen to it being demiolished from within.
Me: you expect it's going to be demolished?
A Conservative Guy: it was last time I was watching, I don't expect it's any better, and quite frankly I don't want to see it go like that.
Me: well, what if the country actually gets better.
A Conservative Guy: last I checked, it wasn't, just losing what little was left of what we once had. Soon we'll be a part of europe again, just another satellite state
A Conservative Guy: I'm pretty sure I'll be dead by then, and glad of it.
Me: i don't think europe wants us
A Conservative Guy: Europe has always wanted our power and influence, ever since they lost it. They'll be more than glad than to belittle and take us apart, and to help those within trying to do so, until they can be over us once again
Me: well, the thing is that the old power structure of europe is dead and gone. there is no more great in great britain. the empires are history. the european union is too diverse and democratic to be impirialist. China might take our spot..but that's it.
Me: mostly we're loosing the domestic side of things. people are better taken care of in europe. that's where we're really lagging behind to an embarrassing amount
A Conservative Guy: I can't talk about this, it's exactly what I'm talking about.
Me: we can't even keep up with Brazil now. they've got bio-fuels to run their cars.
A Conservative Guy: There was a time when people wanted their country to be great, but now all they want is to be taken care of. Americans have lost their spirit. That's why I can't talk about it, it depresses me to see us become Rome.
Me: well, if we as a people are well taken care of, isn't that the same as all of us taking care of each other? isn't that great?
A Conservative Guy: maybe it's inevitbale in any powerful civilization
A Conservative Guy: to fall apart under the weight of it's own greed and selfishness.
A Conservative Guy: bred and circuses to keep the masses happy until the government goes broke buying them bread and circuses
Me: well, our greed and selfishness has been hurting us for a while...but i think most common regular americans on the street are pretty compassionate
A Conservative Guy: most jsut want to be coddled, well now it can take care of me, too I just don't care
Me: well, we haven't been taking care of each other, and we're broke now by 8 trillion.
A Conservative Guy: it doesn't matter, might as well be 15 trillion, no one cares about the debt as long as they're aken care of.
A Conservative Guy: I just can't tgalk about it anymore, man, no more
Me: we need to raise taxes like crazy and cut spending like crazy.
Me: yeh man.
A Conservative Guy: It makes me sad, I can't talk about it anymore. I have to just stay out of it
Me: man, I don't mean any offense. but have you considered that what you think is best for the country might not be?
A Conservative Guy: I can't talk about it, I believe we've lost our spirit and surrended to our want for life to be easy. I can't talk about it.

The First Democratic Debate.

2007-04-27T09:41:00.000-07:00

The mainstream media has concluded that in the first Democratic debate there was no clear and decisive winner. However, the Rubert Murdock owned The Times of London seems to have concluded that Hilary Clinton was the only real winner.

What debate were these corporate hacks watching? As far as I could see, it was a half dozen candidates bantering in group-think, while Congressman Kucinich played with them like mice. But Kucinich wasn’t the only cat on the prowl the other night on MSNBC. I was particularly startled by a guy the media has managed to ignore so well that even I had never heard of him. That’s right: Former Alaska Senator Michael Gravel.

Who is Michael Gravel? For one, he was one of the key Senators who ended the Vietnam war by cutting off the war funding for miserable part of US history. In addition, he was one of the guys who put what’s now known today as The Pentagon Papers into public record. Gravel is also a proponent for a National Initiative which would give every US citizen equal lawmaking power with Congress. Hell yes!

To get a taste of this guy, which him respond to the other candidates when discussing ending the Iraq War.

From An Angry Soldier

2007-04-24T10:06:00.000-07:00

I came across this on Craigslist and thought it was only fitting to post it here as well.

I’m having the worst damn week of my whole damn life so I’m going to write this while I’m pissed off enough to do it right.

I am SICK of all this bullshit people are writing about the Iraq war. I am abso-fucking-lutely sick to death of it. What the fuck do most of you know about it? You watch it on TV and read the commentaries in the newspaper or Newsweek or whatever god damn yuppie news rag you subscribe to and think you’re all such fucking experts that you can scream at each other like five year old about whether you’re right or not. Let me tell you something: unless you've been there, you don’t know a god damn thing about it. It you haven’t been shot at in that fucking hell hole, SHUT THE FUCK UP!

How do I dare say this to you moronic war supporters who are “Supporting our Troops” and waving the flag and all that happy horse shit? I’ll tell you why. I’m a Marine and I served my tour in Iraq. My husband, also a Marine, served several. I left the service six months ago because I got pregnant while he was home on leave and three days ago I get a visit from two men in uniform who hand me a letter and tell me my husband died in that fucking festering sand-pit. He should have been home a month ago but they extended his tour and now he's coming home in a box.

You fuckers and that god-damn lying sack of shit they call a president are the reason my husband will never see his baby and my kid will never meet his dad.

And you know what the most fucked up thing about this Iraq shit is? They don’t want us there. They’re not happy we came and they want us out NOW. We fucked up their lives even worse than they already were and they’re pissed off. We didn’t help them and we’re not helping them now. That’s what our soldiers are dying for.

Oh while I’m good and worked up, the government doesn’t even have the decency to help out the soldiers whose lives they ruined. If you really believe the military and the government had no idea the veterans’ hospitals were so fucked up, you are a god-damn retard. They don’t care about us. We’re disposable. We’re numbers on a page and they’d rather forget we exist so they don’t have to be reminded about the families and lives they ruined while they’re sipping their cocktails at another fund raiser dinner. If they were really concerned about supporting the troops, they’d bring them home so their families wouldn’t have to cry at a graveside and explain to their children why mommy or daddy isn’t coming home. Because you can’t explain it. We’re not fighting for our country, we're not fighting for the good of Iraq’s people, we’re fighting for Bush’s personal agenda. Patriotism my ass. You know what? My dad served in Vietnam and NOTHING HAS CHANGED.

So I’m pissed. I’m beyond pissed. And I’m going to go to my husband funeral and receive that flag and hang it up on the wall for my baby to see when he’s older. But I’m not going to tell him that his father died for the stupidity of the American government. I’m going to tell him that his father was a hero and the best man I ever met and that he loved his country enough to die for it, because that’s all true and nothing will be solved by telling my son that his father was sent to die by people who didn’t care about him at all.

Fuck you, war supporters, George W. Bush, and all the god damn mother fuckers who made the war possible. I hope you burn in hell.

What can I anyone say to this? I understand your pain? I don’t. I haven't lost anyone in Iraq. All I can say is I feel ashamed that I didn’t do more to stop this bloodbath in Iraq. As an American, every day it gets harder for me to look in the mirror knowing the blood I have on my hands. Every day I wish I lived in a country where I wasn't morally responsible for the deaths of over 600,000 innocent people who have never done a damned thing to me. How much longer will we, as Americans, have to put up with this? I guess the only thing I can say is, I'm so deeply sorry.

What’s The Big Deal With The Virginia Tech Shootings?

2007-04-17T02:04:00.000-07:00

I turned on the news today and heard about a school shooting. “Another one?”, I asked. This time not in some far off place like Columbine, but this time at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg. “Hey don’t I know some people who graduated there?” I asked myself. “Yes. Yes I do.” I answered. “Well, I guess it’s a good thing they’ve graduated now.” I told myself. “Yes, indeed.” I told myself. “Friends have a tendency to be a little less social when they’re filled with lead.” I noted. “Yes, that’s true. But sometimes they’re more interesting though.” I answered.

School shootings. Again. Why am I not surprised? Hell, if the Amish can shoot each other, why should I expect any different from some Virginia computer geeks? In fact, this entire story gets a 9 on my yawn-o-meter. It would get a 10 if it wasn’t for the fact that it took place in the same state I live in.

The last time I visited Virginia Tech me and some friends stopped off in Staunton, Virginia, off I-81 to get some food at a convenience store. The old guy at the counter, pushing social security age, was hitting on one of the customers, a local girl who looked like she might be barely out of high school. They were discussing a murder that happened there locally, and judging from the conversation it had something to do with a black male killing his white wife. The guy told this chick, “well that’s what happens when you mess with those niggers. I’d like to kill him myself, but this girl had it comin’, marrying a guy like that.” The girl nodded in agreement, although I don’t know if she genuinely agreed or not. The chick leaves the store and I get to the counter, and I’m trying to keep my eyes from popping out of my head having just heard this. The old guy leans over on the counter with a big grin and says softly to me as he’s scanning my little bag of pistachios, “I’d love to have a piece of her, but I think I might be a little old for her.”

At this point I was wondering if I should drag this guy out of the store and just clobber the shit out of him, just on plain principal. Instead, I glance over to the newspaper headline that had stirred the racist conversation between this old fuck and the girl. The headline read, “Man Arrested After Assaulting Wife, Alcohol Involved Police Say”. Turns out that black guy didn’t murder anyone, he just beat his wife after he got drunk.

This is America folks. A bunch of fucked up insane jackasses who shoot first and ask questions later. And at the same time 33 white kids get gunned down in Virginia, 36 Iraqis get killed in 6 separate bombings across the country. Anyone give a shit? Why should anyone give a shit at this point? In the state of Virginia it is perfectly legal to carry a concealed firearm, so long as you have a license to do so. To get such a license, all you need to know how to do is show to your local law enforcement that you know how to handle and shoot a gun. Is there any requirement for you get a psychological exam to make sure you’re not fucking nuts before you can get such a license? No.

So here’s what I’ve decided to do. Stop caring. It works for me, and chances are it’s been working for you too. If the people of this country is going to kill 600,000 Iraqis and feel no shame about it, much less risk killing all life on this planet just so we can have the convenience to drive our big fat American asses to the mall, then the least we can do is stop caring when some more of our death-cult-culture comes-a-shooting on American campuses. Because the American people seem to be dead set on that we have the right to bear arms, but graduating college without a 9mm slug your chest is a privilege. So fuck it, let the bullets fly. Maybe it’s just nature’s way of thinning the herd by getting rid of some of the crazies.

But why should American technical schools have all the fun? Like hell they should. So I’ve decided to make things interesting. I am embarking on a mission, not to take firearms out of the homes of every American. Hell, who has the time for rational solutions? No, instead I’m going to embark on a mission to give semi-automatic weapons with plenty of ammunition to homeless people. Yes, homeless people. Do you really think you’ll tell that crazy black guy with a long gray beard to buzz off and get away from your car with that window squeegee if he’s also got a glock pointed in your direction?

Maybe if we can get every thug, homeless guy, and crazy in the ghetto an Uzi, then maybe white America will finally wake up and say, “we’ve got to do something about guns in this country.” After all, it’s not like that hasn’t been tried before, has it? Maybe we should throw in some money for bus fare to the white suburbs while we’re at it.

But until that time comes, keep this crap off my television. 33 killed at Virginia Tech. Like I give a fuck assholes. I’ve got better things to do than hear this shit. Isn’t a new episode of COPS on?

Don Imus Looses His Mind.

2007-04-10T09:25:00.000-07:00

These kind of stories I typically avoid, simply because they’re not as important then they’re made out to be by the media.

But I leave it at this: Don Imus shouldn’t loose his job, nor should he be suspended.

Instead, what he should have to do is do his radio show out on the street in Brooklyn and have Paul Mooney over for one segment per week.

What we should be wondering, is why is the Reich wing media trying to turn Imus' comments into a political issue? You find this each and every time among Reich wingers. There is a never-ending attempt to try to legitimize racism. And they will try to legitimize it by any way they can.

Recently, Democrats have managed to prevent having Democratic presidential debates on the Fox Noise Channel. Then it looked like the Congressional Black Caucas would sponsor another debate on Fox, but Barack Obama backed out of it, effectively ending that debate.

So I have something to ask of our fellow Americans of African decent. If the Reich wing media is going to try to make traction by defending the racist comments of Imus, then no black American should go on the Fox Noise Channel.

Not that this will prevent the Fox Noise Channel from defending racist comments…but they will look like the freaking jackasses they are when the only person they can get on the air to talk about Imus’ crap is Michael Richards.

The Insanity Of Sex Offender Registries.

2007-04-08T17:41:00.000-07:00

The idea seemed simple enough: establish public sex offender registries so that if you happen to live close to someone who molests children, who know where they live. The idea was to give the community power over sexual predators, so that they would be less inclined to commit similar crimes in the future.

Yet, one thing that wasn’t addressed, that while sexual predators are indeed a problem, state laws that define sexual crimes are often ridiculous, if not absurd. Further, it tends to treat a complicated set of circumstances narrowly.

For instance: I came across this story recently.

Man sentenced for sleeping with wife when she was 15

A 23-year-old Barnesville, Minn., man was ordered to register as a sex offender but spared jail time for having sex with his 17-year-old wife when she was 15.

David Anthony Cox began the relationship before the two were married. He was 20 at the time.

Clay County District Court Judge Michael Kirk gave Cox an 18-month stay of imposition of sentence and ordered him to pay $582 in fines and court fees for the third-degree criminal sexual conduct charge.

Minnesota law prohibits sexual relationships between someone older than 13 but younger than 16 with someone more than 24 months older, regardless of consent.

Under the sentence, Cox will be on supervised probation for up to 15 years and will be required to serve the 18-month sentence if that probation is broken.

It is utterly ridiculous that anyone should have to deal with the indignity of being processed through the legal system, and having his register as a sex offender for having sex with someone they are in a relationship with. Further, this guy will also have to deal with the fact that he must now, and for the rest of his life seek a job as a sex offender for sleeping with his wife.

Perhaps, such insanity can be discarded, simply because the system doesn’t work correctly 100% of the time. However, consider this:

Murders Put Focus on Sex-Offender Registry Policies

Nobody knows why Stephen Marshall killed two men who were on the sex-offender registry in Maine. Immediately after, he took his own life.

One of the men Marshall killed, Joseph Gray, was on the registry for raping a child. The other, William Elliott, was listed because he'd slept with his girlfriend before she turned 16.

These deaths and others raise troubling questions about the public sex-offender registries which every state has. And they highlight the fact that many states list hard-core predators alongside people who may pose little risk to the community.

When Mark Perk read about the men murdered in Maine, he thought the same fate might have befallen him. “They put my name and address on there,” Perk says. “Anyone can find me. Yeah, it scared us.”

Perk is on Illinois’ sex-offender registry for having a sexual relationship with a 15-year-old girl. She’s now his wife and the mother of their two children. Perk says he knows he broke the law -- but he says he’s no child molester. He’s just treated like one.

And thus, we have a problem. Not only are certain people being singled out for having a consenting sexual relationship, but they are violating peoples’ rights of privacy. If someone is a sexual predator, and is indeed a danger to the community, then remove them from the community. If they are not, then leave them the hell alone.

A great deal of the problem is that state laws governing sexual practices were written decades, sometimes centuries ago. To give my readers how some of the laws read in my home state of Virginia, check this out:

Under Virginia state law, § 18.2-63,

If any person carnally knows, without the use of force, a child thirteen years of age or older but under fifteen years of age, such person shall be guilty of a Class 4 felony.

However, under Virginia state law § 18.2-67.5:

An attempt to commit aggravated sexual battery shall be a felony punishable as a Class 6 felony.
An attempt to commit sexual battery is a Class 1 misdemeanor.

Yes, folks. Attempted sexual battery, even if it’s aggravated, is not quite as bad as having consensual sex with someone a day younger than 3 years your junior if you happen to be 18. This gets better.

Virginia state law § 18.2-361 is known as the “Crimes against nature” clause. What counts as such a horrific crime to be labeled “against nature”?

If any person carnally knows in any manner any brute animal…he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony.

Okay, you got me there. Fucking chickens, sheep, and cows is fucking gross. And yeh, I suppose you could call that unnatural. Just don’t tell anti-abortionist nutcase Neal Horsley that. But that same Virginia state statute continues:

[If any person] carnally knows any male or female person by the anus or by or with the mouth, or voluntarily submits to such carnal knowledge, he or she shall be guilty of a Class 6 felony…

In short, in the eyes of the law in the state of Virginia, it is just as bad for you to have your wife give you a blow job then it is for you to fuck Mr. Ed. And it is equally as bad for your wife to give you a blow job than it is for you to try to commit aggravated sexual battery.

But here is the kicker: Under Virginia state law § 18.2-346

Any person who offers money or its equivalent to another for the purpose of engaging in sexual acts…and thereafter does any substantial act in furtherance thereof shall be guilty of solicitation of prostitution and shall be guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.

So lets review: fucking a minor who’s a day younger than 15 when it’s completely consensual, Class 4 felony bad. Aggravated sexual battery, Class 6 felony bad. Fucking your neighbor’s cow, also Class 6 felony bad. Fucking your wife in her ass, your wife giving you a blowjob, or you dining at her Y, all Class 6 felony bad. Soliciting a ho, Class 1 misdemeanor.

Oh, and as for the Virginia sex offender registry, yes, there are people up there for committing “crimes against nature”. There is no indication of what specific crime against nature that was violated, but I would bet there’s at least one guy up there who was getting head from his girl when a cop came tapping at the window.

Bill O'Reilly Looses His Lower Intestine On The Air.

2007-04-05T20:10:00.000-07:00

I was watching some of the latest clips of one of my favorite sites, crooksandliars.com, and couldn’t believe the latest from Bill O’Reilly.

Bill literally lost his lower intestine and popped a few blood vessels in his forehead screaming at Geraldo.

I really don’t know what the hell they were talking about, and really don’t care. I was just hoping both of them would pull out a rifle and off each other on the air. It’s hilarious.

The best line is when O’Reilly accused Geraldo of being an anarchist. Classic gold. Enjoy.

Republicans Cut And Run!

2007-04-03T07:08:00.000-07:00

A week ago, on Sunday March 25th, Vice President Dick Cheney addressed a gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition in Manalapan, Florida.

As usual, Cheney’s rhetoric was harsh against Democrats on the heels of the House Iraq War funding bill that demands a pull-out from Iraq by September of 2008. Cheney said of the Democrats:

Twisted logic is not exactly a new phenomenon in Washington -- but last month it reached new heights…this may be the first time in history that a Congress voted to send a new commander into battle and then voted to oppose the plan he said was necessary to win that battle.

When members of Congress pursue an anti-war strategy that’s been called “slow bleed,” they’re not supporting the troops, they’re undermining them. And when members of Congress speak not of victory but of time limits, deadlines, or other arbitrary measures, they’re telling the enemy simply to run out the clock and wait us out…

If they really support the troops, then we should take them at their word and expect them to meet the needs of our military on time, in full, and with no strings attached…

The terrorists do not expect to be able to beat us in a stand-up fight…The only way they can win is if we lose our nerve and abandon the mission -- and the terrorists do believe that they can force that outcome…

A sudden withdrawal of our coalition would dissipate much of the effort that has gone into fighting the global war on terror, and result in chaos and mounting danger. And for the sake of our own security, we will not stand by and let it happen.

While this kind of talk is nothing new from Dick Cheney, what is new is that Senate Republicans are looking at the writing on the wall, and are shitting their pants.

Last Sunday on the Chris Matthews’ show, guest Andrew Mitchell spilled the beans on the Republican pants shitting, saying:

The Republicans were against the surge but they felt it was fait accompli, and that they were willing to give Petraeus until August. He told them there will be real progress by August. They have told him at a caucus meeting as very, very recently, that if there isn’t progress by August — and real progress means not a day of violence and a day of sanity — that they will pull the plug.

As Bob Fertik noted over on Democrats.com, this revelation is so stunning it needs to be broken down piece by piece.

1. Republican Senators met alone with Gen. Petraeus. Is it common for commanders to meet separately with a Congressional minority? Or is this just another example of the GOP putting raw partisan politics ahead of national security?

2. Republican Senators micromanaged Gen. Petraeus. Isn’t this one of the absolute unbreakable Republican rules, practically handed down to Moses with the Ten Commandments - that politicians should never micromanage commanders?

3. Republican Senators set a deadline for Iraq. How many times have Bushco shrieked that a deadline guarantees the humiliating defeat of our forces and the victory of terrorists? Why do Republican Senators hate America and love the terrorists?

4. What exactly do Republicans mean when they say “pull the plug”? The Supplemental Appropriations bills approved by Democrats in the House and Senate both call for phased withdrawals over the next 12-18 months. Would Senate Republicans support a Democratic plan, or would they offer a plan to leave Iraq even sooner?

5. Given this Republican betrayal, why did Bush repeatedly attack Democrats in his weekly radio address? Is he unaware his fellow Republicans are planning to "pull the plug" on Iraq?

That, of course, leads me to a question of my own. Does Vice President Dick Cheney know that his fellow Republicans in the Senate are willing to “let the terrorists win” just so that they can win re-election in 2008?

My Thoughts Exactly.

2007-04-02T15:31:00.000-07:00

Is Life Too Weird Or What?

2007-03-31T10:34:00.000-07:00

It’s sometimes interesting to just take a look around at government websites. You sometimes find the strangest things. Like today, I was looking at The White House’s website discussing those lovely Health Savings Accounts.

True, health care in the United States is now so poor that Cuba has a lower infant mortality rate than the United States, but things are changing soon in the good ole US of A with the wonders of Health Savings Accounts.

It seems that the idea behind these HSAs is that when the health insurance industry comes to rape you when you get sick, at least you’ll have a savings account to help ease the pain of their health care wonder worms forcefully penetrating your diseased unmentionables. We should also forget for a moment that these HSAs could prove to be quite pointless as the net savings rate of Americans are now in the negative numbers to begin with, not to mention that the cost of treating cancer today costs somewhere in the half a million dollars price range.

What’s interesting though, is that the White House has a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy concerning issues of health care. Who better to discuss with you the easing of your health care rape than that special assistant having the name of Julie Goon. Is life too fucking weird or what?

The End Of The Iraq War Is Now In Sight.

2007-03-27T19:35:00.000-07:00

Defying the veto threat from the White House, the Senate has joined the House in setting a pull out date in the Iraq War.

On Tuesday, the Senate voted 50-48 to call for a withdrawal from Iraq in the war spending bill. The Senate version of the bill calls for the US to pull out of Iraq by next spring, sooner than the House bill proposed, which called for a pull out to be completed by September of 2008.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said, “Setting a date for withdrawal is like sending a memo to our enemies that tells them to rest, refit and replan until the day we leave.”

However Senator Majority Leader Dick Durbin (D-IL) said the move would bring “the worse foreign policy mistake of our time” to a close. “Now it’s time for us to make it clear to the Iraqis it is their country. It is their war. It is their future,” he said.

President Bush denounced the House bill on Friday as “political theater”. While the Democrats don’t look like they have the votes to overturn a veto of the bill, the veto would also prevent any new funding for the war. This puts the White House in a sticky situation with the new Democratic Majority in Congress. The only question is: who will blink first?

Remains Of 9-11 Victims Were Used To Fill Potholes.

2007-03-26T08:25:00.000-07:00

By Thomas Zambito
New York Daily News

NEW YORK - The pulverized remains of bodies from the World Trade Center disaster site were used by city workers to fill ruts and potholes, a city contractor says in a sworn affidavit filed Friday in Manhattan Federal Court.

Eric Beck says debris powders - known as fines - were put in a pothole-fill mixture by crews at the Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, N.Y., where more than 1.65 million tons of World Trade Center debris were deposited after the Sept. 11 attacks.

"I observed the New York City Department of Sanitation taking these fines from the conveyor belts of our machines, loading it onto tractors and using it to pave roads and fill in potholes, dips and ruts," Eric Beck said.

Beck was the senior supervisor for Taylor Recycling, a private contractor hired to sift through debris trucked to Fresh Kills after the trade center attacks. Before the arrival of Taylor's equipment at Fresh Kills in October 2001, the debris was sifted manually by workers using rakes and shovels.

Beck's affidavit was filed by lawyers for the families of Sept. 11 victims who are suing the city in hopes of creating a formal burial place for debris that they say contains human remains.

"It's devastating," Norman Siegel, an attorney representing the families, said of Beck's statement. "When the 9/11 families found about this, they were wiped out."

The families argue that the cleanup was hurried and slipshod, with the result that more than 400,000 tons of debris weren't properly combed for human remains.

The city recently asked Manhattan Federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein to dismiss the lawsuit, and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said he would like to turn the garbage dump into a "beautiful park."

In his first few months on the job, Beck said Taylor's mechanical sifters found 2,000 bones per day. He recalled finding "bones, fingers, skulls, feet and hands" as well as a man's chest and "the full body of a man dressed in a suit." The remains were catalogued and turned over to the city, he said.

But Beck said he was pushed to sift the debris quickly, and that remains may have been missed.

"I was constantly told . . . to move the job, to run the conveyor belts faster and to keep the tonnage up," Beck wrote.

Other affidavits support Siegel's claim that the sifting process was shoddy.

One comes from Theodore Feaser, the retired director of mechanical operations for the city Sanitation Department.

"From my experience at Fresh Kills, I am absolutely convinced that if the City of New York unearthed, resifted and washed the debris at Fresh Kills . . . it would find hundreds of human body parts and human remains," said Feaser, a 20-year veteran who supervised the recovery effort at Fresh Kills for the Sanitation Department.

Diane Horning, the president of WTC Families for Proper Burial, urged Hellerstein to allow the sifting to continue so that loved ones' remains will be found.

"There is no place to leave flowers," said Horning, whose son Matthew, an employee of Marsh and McLennan, was killed on Sept. 11, 2001. "There is no feeling of solace or closeness to your loved one."

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Confesses.

2007-03-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

In the mist of an over widening number of scandals coming out of the White House involving illegal FBI surveillance on the American People and the firing of an a number of US attorneys investigating Republican corruption, the Pentagon has released a “transcript” of the military tribunal trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in which he confesses to planning the terrorist attacks of September 11th.

What is startling about this, is that this directly violates the official story of the September 11th attacks, as the official story is that Osama bin Laden planned the attack.

According to Fox News, Mohammed stated that, “I was responsible for the 9/11 operation from, A to Z.” Additionally, Mohammed had acknowledged, according to The Pentagon, that Mohammed also stated that he was responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, a plot to assassinate Bill Clinton in 1994, plotting the terrorist attack in Bail, Indonesia in October of 2002, the shoe bomber operation, the Filka Island Operation in Kuwait that killed two US soldiers, plotting to destroy the Library Tower in California, The Sears Tower in Chicago, the Plaza Bank in Washington, and The Empire State Building in NYC, planning to destroy the Panama Canal, planning to assassinate former President Jimmy Carter, planning to destroy suspension bridges in New York, and a number of other attacks. Fox News finishes by stating that “Mohammed was captured in Pakistan 4 years ago.”

However, other news sources dispute this. On October 30th, 2002 -- which would be four years ago -- stated in a story, A Chilling Inheritance of Terror, that “Ever since the frenzied shootout last month on September 11 in Karachi there have been doubts over whether Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the self-proclaimed head of al-Qaeda's military committee, died in the police raid on his apartment.”

And that “Now it has emerged that Kuwaiti national Khalid Shaikh Mohammed did indeed perish in the raid, but his wife and child were taken from the apartment and handed over to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), in whose hands they remain.”

All I can say is draw your own conclusions.

Libbygate: Now Let’s Get To The Real Story.

2007-03-07T10:17:00.000-08:00

by Dave Lindorff
Published on Tuesday, March 6, 2007 by Common Dreams

So Scooter Libby has taken the fall.

Three and a half years and a long bloody war after he and a gang of war-mongers in the White House and Blair House, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, set out to undermine and trash the reputation of an Iraq war critic, former ambassador Joseph Wilson, Libby has been found guilty of perjury, lying to the FBI and obstruction of justice by a Washington jury.

Now maybe special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and what passes for journalists in the mainstream media can get down to the real business of finding out just why the entire White House smear operation was unleashed upon a minor state department official and why they went so far as to violate federal law and expose his CIA-operative wife, Valerie Plame, in the process destroying her entire network of contacts for monitoring the spread of nuclear weapons in the Middle East.

Because that’s what this whole Libby story is really about.

The whole focus of the media in this case has been on the narrow, inside-the-Beltway question of who leaked information about Plame to the media.

Entirely forgotten or ignored has been what this leak was all about to begin with.

For that, you have to go back and look at what Wilson did in the first place that so enraged or frightened the Vice President and the President.

And that was to go to Niger, one of the poorest nations in Africa, to prove conclusively that there was no truth to a set of forged notes on the letterhead of the Niger embassy in Rome, purporting to be receipts for 400 tons of Niger uranium ore allegedly being sought by Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.

Wilson knew those documents were cheap forgeries--the name of the mines official on the papers was someone who hadn't been in office for years--but he went to Niger anyhow, just to make doubly certain that no such purchase attempt had been made.

None had.

So the real question then is, who is behind those forged documents?

There is an interesting story here--and an important mystery to be solved.

As it happens, way back in early 2001 there was a pair of burglaries at the Niger Embassy in Rome and at the home of the Niger ambassador. Police investigating the crimes found that the only things stolen were official stationary and some official stamps, used to make documents official. A cleaning lady and a former member of Italy’s intelligence service were arrested for the crimes. They were odd burglaries to be sure, since there is precious little one could use, or sell, such documents for, given the country involved. I mean, it might make sense to steal official stationary from the French Embassy in Rome, which a thief might use to finagle a pass to the Cannes Festival. But Niger?

Jump to October 2001. A few weeks after the 9-11 attacks, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, accompanied by his ministers of defense and intelligence, made a visit to the White House. There he reportedly handed over the forged Niger documents (they were on Niger government stationary, and had Niger government stamps!), which appeared to be receipts for uranium ore, made out to Saddam Hussein. Now forget the matter of why either Hussein or Niger's government would want paper receipts for such an illegal transaction, and forget the matter of how Hussein would have transported 400 tons of yellow dust across the Sahara to his country without somebody noticing. The simple fact is that Bush’s own intelligence experts at the CIA and State Department promptly spotted the forgeries, and they were dumped.

We know this because we know, from the likes of onetime National Security Council counterterrorism head Richard Clarke and former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill, that Bush was pushing for war with Iraq almost as soon as he finished reading My Pet Goat following the attack on the Twin Towers. Surely if the White House had even thought those Niger documents might be legit, they would have leaked or broadcast them all over creation.

They didn’t. The documents were deep-sixed, and mentioned to no one.

But according to some dedicated investigative reporters at the respected Italian newspaper La Repubblica, they resurfaced before long at a very suspicious meeting. This meeting occurred in December 2001 in Rome, and included Michael Ledeen, an associate of Defense Department Undersecretary for Policy Douglas Feith and a key figure in the White House's war-propaganda program, Larry Franklin, a top Defense Intelligence Agency Middle East analyst who later pleaded guilty to passing classified information to two employees of the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), convicted Iraqi bank swindler Ahmed Chalabi, then head of the CIA-created Iraqi National Congress, and Harold Rhode of the sinister Defense Department Office of Special Plans, that office set up by the White House and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld under Feith’s direction to manufacture “evidence” to justify a war on Iraq. Also at this peculiar meeting were the heads of the Italian Defense Department and of SISMI, the Italian intelligence agency.

According to La Repubblica, it was at that meeting that a plan was hatched to resurrect the forged Niger documents, and to give them credibility by recycling them through British intelligence.

And that is what Bush was referring to when, in his 2003 State of the Union address, he famously frightened a nation by declaring, “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Bush lyingly implied that this was new information, when in fact he knew--had to know--that the “evidence” in British hands was the same set of documents he had been offered by Berlusconi almost a year and a half earlier, which had been declared to be bogus.

No mainstream American media organization has pursued this story, or even published the details as reported in Italy. Most Americans, consequently, don't even know what a grand lie Bush and the White House perpetrated upon them and the Congress in order to win approval for an attack on Iraq.
Perhaps now that Libby has gone down for his part in this grotesque crime, some editor will ask the obvious question: Why did the White House and the Office of Vice President go to such extraordinary lengths to attack Wilson and his wife? And more importantly, who was behind those Niger embassy burglaries and the forged uranium ore sale documents? And what was OSP doing meeting in Rome in December 2001 with the head of Italian intelligence?

Make no mistake: this whole story has the odor of a “black op” designed to target the American people.

If so it was an act of high treason.

It is not just Libby who should go to jail for this crime. It is the president and vice president.

At this point, whether or not the mainstream media decide to do their job, one has to hope that Fitzgerald, with Libby in the bag, will take the next step and hold the prospect of a lengthy prison sentence recommendation over the convict’s head in order to try and win from him a promise of cooperation with the prosecution.

Because Libby knows who was behind all of this.

And that’s the real story that needs to be told.

Maybe We Outta Rethink This Iran Thing.

2007-03-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

The American Left has been predicting that Bush would go after Iran for the last 3 years, and now it seems that they’re working on an attack at this very moment. And just like what Dubya did with Iraq, he's claiming that Iran is trying to acquire a nuclear weapon. This despite their repeated claims that they are interested solely in developing nuclear energy, which would leave Iran free to sell their oil reserves to the rest of the world. Of course, the ever delusional neocons aren’t buying. So before we stick our heads into the deep fat fryer that is Iran, maybe we should check on what the United States is actually capable of at this point.

We should remember that when the US invaded Iraq, the country had been under an embargo for 12 years, which saw almost 10% of their population die as a result. Iraq was a country that had suffered being blown to bits in the 1990 Gulf War, and had continued to be intermediately bombed from 1990 to 2003. Prior to 1990, Iraq had suffered nearly 10 more years of war with their neighbor that saw even larger sectors of their population die. And prior to that the country had been in steep decline economically for 15 years. Given all this, how well has the US invasion of Iraq gone?

So let’s put some statistics on the table and compare Iraq to Iran, just in case we need to invade the country.

Iraq: 432,000 sq km
Iran: 1,636,000 sq km

Iraq: 26 million population; 60% Shi’a, 40% Sunni
Iran: 70 million population, 90% Shi’a, 8% Sunni, two-thirds of which are under the age of 30

Iraq: heavily bombed from 1990 to today
Iran: has been at peace since 1988

Iraq: suffered under an embargo since 1990 that killed 1-2 million adults and 600,000 children.
Iran: has suffered no embargo, but the US made it illegal for US companies to trade with Iran, a mandate that Vice President Dick Cheney violated when he served as CEO of Halliburton.

Iraq: The economy of Iraq has been in decline for the last 30 years.
Iran: The economy of Iran has been growing steadily for the last 20 years.

Iraq: Has had little industry other than the petrochemical industry for the last 20 years.
Iran:Has a growing automobile, aerospace, consumer electronics, petrochemical, pharmaceutical, biotechnology, nanotechnology, and nuclear industry.

Iraq: Short of some oil trading under the UN embargo, Iraq had virtually no trading partners.
Iran: Major commercial trading partners include China, Germany, S. Korea, France, Japan, Russia, Italy, India, South Africa, Turkey, and Pakistan.

Iraq: literacy rate 40%
Iran: literacy rate 86%

Iraq: Armed forces under Saddam, 2003: estimated 389,000 with 650,000 reserves (high end estimate)
Iran: 545,000 total armed forces, 300,000 reservists, and some 11 million who could be mobilized.

Given how well Iraq went, do you get the sinking feeling that if we went after Iran we’d get our asses kicked? Of course, militarily-wise we’re still the strongest power on earth…but after the 5 year fiasco that has been Iraq, do you really think our commander-in-chief has the ability to win such a war?

To put this in another historical context, I can’t help but asking, how many Iraqis have ever held the World Wrestling Federation Heavyweight Championship? The answer is zero. However, the only man that could take that very championship from an Iranian, The Iron Sheik, was none other than the legendary Hulk Hogan. And George Dubya Bush is no Hulk Hogan.

I Must Escalate! I Must Escalate! Part II.

2007-02-01T01:35:00.000-08:00

Back in November, I shared with all of my fine readers out there the joys of being a customer of Earthlink and their fine quality customer service. Well, the saga with Earthlink continues.

The latest saga began last Christmas. For reasons I won’t go into, mostly because I don’t fully understand them, my room mate decided she was no longer going to pay her phone bill, without telling anyone. I thought it was strange that people stopped calling the house. I soon discovered that the phone had been turned off. No big deal, the DSL still worked. Well…that was until the cord got unplugged from the wall. Once the signal was interrupted, it couldn’t be re-established without an active phone line.

Fine then. So I went and got the phone hooked back up and put it in my name, and contacted Earthlink to let them know that we have a new phone number that we’re hooking up our DSL from. Earthlink, in their creepy reassuring way, said that was fine and everything was okay, and that it would take just a short three to five business days to get everything turned back on.

This left us a bit puzzled. Three to five business days to figure out that we still live in the same house, but the phone number has changed? Ok, whatever, we have to wait three to five business days for Verizon to hook up the house phone anyway. And, of course, Earthlink promised to give us a call once everything was a go for the DSL.

Two business days pass and Verizon gets the phone turned on. Lovely, we now have internet access again after nearly a month without anything. Of course, it’s back to good old AOL dail-up, but at least it’s something. Three business days pass, no word from Earthlink. The DSL is still dead. Four business days pass, still dead. Five business days pass, and it’s still dead.

We call up Earthlink to find out what the status is on our DSL getting re-established. Earthlink says their ENTIRE DATABASE IS DOWN and they can’t find out what’s the status of anything. But again, in Earthlink’s always creepy reassuring way, tells us to call them back later that night. So we call back later that night to find out what the deal is, and their entire database is STILL down. At this point we’re beginning to think the Earthlink freaks are using hamsters to power their shit.

Six business days pass onto seven business days, and we’re still under the assumption that Earthlink will call us just as soon as the DSL is turned back on. By the eighth business day, we call Earthlink back to find out what the fuck is going on. Earthlink says that everything is good to go and the DSL is back on. We plug the Ethernet modem back up and viola! the DSL line is still dead!

So we call Earthlink back and we’re put on hold for fifteen minutes. Finally, we get a customer service freak on the line to tell us in broken English with a thick Indian accent that her name is Shirley. Yes, Shirley. Not Habibita, but Shirley. Shirley then tries to figure out why our DSL isn’t turned on. The problem is Shirley has no fucking clue either. So Shirley tries to call up some other department over at Earthlink who presumably is some kind of technical office. Technical, of course, meaning that it’s their job to feed the hamsters on the regular basis.

So Osama bin Shirley puts us on hold waiting for the tech freak to bother to pick up the phone. But you know how hard it is to feed hamsters, so the guy doesn’t pick up the phone for twenty minutes. At this point, Osama bin Shirley is worried about losing her job because she’s kept us on the phone for what’s pushing an hour now. So she lets us know that she’ll get the hamster feeder to call us back as soon as he’s free.

Fifteen minutes later Hamster Feeder calls us back. He informs us first that they have no record on file of our new phone number. When that gets his ear chewed out a bit he then tells us that the whole problem is that Verizon has yet to update their information indicating that our new phone number is coming from this address. Huh? Does this sound like bullshit to you? It’s a new freaking account with Verizon! Why would they need to update their information, since everything is up to date when the account was created and the phone got turned on?

So Hamster Feeder lets us know that we need to call Verizon and let them know to update our information. So we ask, so as soon as Verizon updates our info, how long will it take to get the fucking DSL turned back on? Hamster Feeder lets us know, that it’ll only take….yes you guessed it…a short five to seven more business days.

Air America Finds Buyer

2007-01-30T07:39:00.000-08:00

According to the Associated Press, Air America Radio, the premiere liberal radio talk network, said it had reached an agreement with a buyer for the network.

Stephen Green, the founder and chairman of SL Green Realty Corp., has agreed to buy the network, which filed for bankruptcy last fall after reaching an impasse with one of its creditors.

Green, the prospective buyer of Air America, is the brother of Mark Green, who has frequently appeared as a guest on the network.

Additionally, Air America host Al Franken will be leaving the station, presumably to pursue a possible run for the US Senate in 2008. Franken recently took a leave from the network in order to do a USO tour for the troops in Iraq, in which Air America syndicated host Thom Hartmann took over the noon to three time slot. AAR plans to replace Franken’s noon to three time slot with Hartmann after Franken’s last day on the air, which is expected to be February 14th.

Air America Radio went on the air with much fanfare in 2004 as an alternative to conservative talk which has dominated the air throughout the 1990’s. Today Air America in joined by other liberal talk networks Head On Radio based out of West Virginia and Nova M Radio, which was founded by the same people who found Air America, and is the home of the no holds barred Mike Malloy Show. Others liberal talk show hosts have seen a large degree of success outside Air America, such as Ed Schultz, Bill Press, and Stephanie Miller, who are all syndicated by the Jones Radio Network.

Why Do Conservatives Support States’ Rights?

2007-01-24T23:58:00.000-08:00

Politics is a funny thing. The position of any particular political party may vary depending on where we are at as a nation in any particular time period. Political reality, however, does not. It was not always the case that conservatives belonged to the Republican party and liberals belonged to the Democratic party. In fact, the Democratic Party had become the conservative party by the 1840’s, and didn’t transition fully to the liberal party until after the Civil Rights movement. In the 1860’s the Republican party was the liberal and progressive party.

This well understood history has seemed to baffle conservatives as of late, as they frequently try to take credit for liberal progress when the vast majority of the society has seen the benefits of that progress. Nothing could be more clear about this than with the issue of slavery that plagued our nation since its birth.

While conservatives revere themselves in that Lincoln was the first Republican President of the United States, they miss that Lincoln, as was the rest of the Republican party at that time, were all radical liberals. While the knuckle-draggers will certainly have doubt about this, I simply offer this: excerpts from the Republican Party Platform of 1872.

The Republican party of the United States, assembled in National Convention in the city of Philadelphia, on the 5th and 6th days of June, 1872, again declares its faith, appeals to its history, and announces its position upon the questions before the country…

During eleven years of supremacy it has accepted with grand courage the solemn duties of the time. It suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emancipated four millions of slaves, decreed the equal citizenship of all, and established universal suffrage. Exhibiting unparalleled magnanimity, it criminally punished no man for political offenses, and warmly welcomed all who proved loyalty by obeying the laws and dealing justly with their neighbors. It has steadily decreased with firm hand the resultant disorders of a great war, and initiated a wise and humane policy toward the Indians…

Note the use of words such as “equal citizenship of all” and “universal suffrage”. The Republican party that once stood for a wise and humane policy towards the Indians. What is the Republican position towards Mexican Indians in this country today? This gets better.

Menacing foreign difficulties have been peacefully and honorably composed, and the honor and power of the nation kept in high respect throughout the world. This glorious record of the past is the party's best pledge for the future. We believe the people will not intrust the Government to any party or combination of men composed chiefly of those who have resisted every step of this beneficent progress…

Imagine a Republican party that once utilized peacefully and honorably composed diplomacy to deal with foreign difficulties? Those days are long gone. It gets even better.

We are opposed to further grants of the public lands to corporations and monopolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people…

Holy shit! Imagine that, a Republican party that once wanted to eliminate giving public land to corporations and instead eliminate the problem of homelessness by giving everyone in the country a free home that needed one! Not even Howard Dean has the balls to suggest that one.

The annual revenue, after paying current expenditures, pensions, and the interest on the public debt…should be raised by duties upon importations, the details of which should be so adjusted as to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor…

No free trade fundamentalism in this Republican party of old. They believed that trade tariffs should be specifically calibrated in order to increase the wages of working Americans…

[T]he Republican party recognizes the duty of so shaping legislation as to secure full protection…for labor—the creator of capital…

The Republican party being run by a pack full of raging Marxists? Who would have thunk it?

The Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom. Their admission to wider fields of usefulness is viewed with satisfaction, and the honest demand of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration.

Just imagine. The Republican party: the country’s first feminists.

And that was the Republican party in the era of the post Civil War days: Raving Marxists, feminists, and abolishionists. In short, radical liberals and progressives. And that is where the Republican party remained for the most part all the way up to the 20th century when things began to shift. It wasn’t until Franklin Delano Roosevelt came in to save the nation from the Great Depression that the Democratic party took a major shift back to its origins as the liberal party. When FDR’s successor, Democratic president Harry Truman desegregated the US military and endorsed Civil Rights legislation, southern Democrats, or Dixiecrats, were outraged enough to form a third party; The States’ Rights Democratic Party.

The importance of the States having a great deal of power came a great deal out of the ideals of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, who sought to establish a nation that placed a great deal of local power in the hands of the local people, the idea being that local politicians would represent a smaller number of people, and would therefore be more democratic. This idea came largely out of the government structure of the Iroquis Confederacy, a democratically-controlled Indian government based out of the Ohio River Valley region. The Iroquis combined several tribes together under one government for mutual benefit, but made the individual Indian nations under the confederacy sovereign and powerful.

However, making our nation more democratic wasn’t what the States’ Rights Democratic Party had in mind. Rather, they existed for one primary purpose, as their slogan proudly proclaimed, “Segregation Forever!”. But what other ideas did the Dixiecrats have? Here are excerpts from the States’ Rights Democratic Party platform of 1948:

We stand for social and economic justice, which, we believe can be guaranteed to all citizens only by a strict adherence to our Constitution…

We oppose…centralized bureaucratic government…

We stand for…the constitutional right…to accept private employment without governmental interference…

We oppose…the control of private employment by Federal bureaucrats…

We favor home-rule, local self-government and a minimum interference with individual rights…

We oppose…regulations of private employment practices…

What party sounds like THAT today? Ultimately, there was only one reason why the States’ Rights Democratic Party supported states rights without interference from the federal government. That was for the sole reason to have the ability to continue the plague of racial discrimination in the southern states.

And to Trent Lott’s dismay, Harry Truman won his re-election for President of the United States in 1948, and the modern Civil Rights movement began just 6 years later with the Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Board of Education.

And whatever happened to the prominent Democrats who broke off into the failed States’ Rights Democratic Party? Like Reagan, both Jesse Helms and Phil Gramm switched their party membership from Democratic to Republican.

So to address the question that began with, why do conservatives support states’ rights? The States’ Rights Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, Strom Thurmond, could have easily have told you this, even while he was engaging in one of his favorite hobbies of raping black women; and that is simply this:

“Segregation Forever!”

Thank You People’s Cube.

2007-01-04T13:02:00.000-08:00

Recently a group of Reich wing nutcases over at The People’s Cube were kind enough to do a write up on a previous post of mine, The Mental Illness Of Conservatism.

I just want to thank all the freaks over there for their kind remarks. I am truly honored. I genuinely mean that.

In that spirit, I’d like to share with the readers of Nitwit Planet with some more fascist lore.

The American Heritage Dictionary’s (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983) describes fascism as:

(1) “A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership, together with belligerent nationalism.”

The Pocket Oxford Dictionary (Oxford University Press, 1984) has a similar entry:

(2) “Extreme right-wing totalitarian political system or views, as orig. prevailing in Italy (1922-43).”

Of course, we all know that dictionaries are notorious for their left-wing bias. For that reason, for the modern American to genuinely understand fascism, it is beneficial to examine it’s key characteristics. Dr. Laurence Britt examined those characteristics and found 14 similarities among various fascist regimes of the 20th century. There are:

1.) Powerful and Continuing Nationalism
2.) Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights
3.) Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause
4.) Supremacy of the Military
5.) Rampant Sexism
6.) Controlled Mass Media
7.) Obsession with National Security
8.) Religion and Government are Intertwined
9.) Corporate Power is Protected
10.) Labor Power is Suppressed
11.) Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts
12.) Obsession with Crime and Punishment
13.) Rampant Cronyism and Corruption
14. Fraudulent Elections

While this may give one pause, we must also remember that professors like Dr. Britt often have a worse left-wing bias than those damned dictionaries. For this reason, sometimes it is necessary to go straight to the horse’s mouth.

In the 1932 Enciclopedia Italiana Benito Mussolini co-wrote with Giovanni Gentile the entry on fascism:

“Fascism, the more it considers and observes the future and the development of humanity quite apart from political considerations of the moment, believes neither in the possibility nor the utility of perpetual peace. It thus repudiates the doctrine of Pacifism -- born of a renunciation of the struggle and an act of cowardice in the face of sacrifice. War alone brings up to its highest tension all human energy and puts the stamp of nobility upon the peoples who have courage to meet it.”

Mussolini continued saying:

“Fascism is the complete opposite of Marxian Socialism, the materialist conception of history of human civilization can be explained simply through the conflict of interests among the various social groups and by the change and development in the means and instruments of production....Fascism, now and always, believes in holiness and in heroism; that is to say, in actions influenced by no economic motive, direct or indirect. And above all Fascism denies that class-war can be the preponderant force in the transformation of society.”

The madness continues:

“Fascism combats the whole complex system of democratic ideology, and repudiates it, whether in its theoretical premises or in its practical application. Fascism denies that the majority, by the simple fact that it is a majority, can direct human society; it denies that numbers alone can govern by means of a periodical consultation, and it affirms the immutable, beneficial, and fruitful inequality of mankind, which can never be permanently leveled through the mere operation of a mechanical process such as universal suffrage.”

The beneficial and fruitful inequality of mankind? Sounding a bit like the Ayn Rynd freaks yet?

“Fascism denies, in democracy, the absurd conventional untruth of political equality dressed out in the garb of collective irresponsibility, and the myth of "happiness" and indefinite progress....Given that the nineteenth century was the century of Socialism, of Liberalism, and of Democracy, it does not necessarily follow that the twentieth century must also be a century of Socialism, Liberalism and Democracy: political doctrines pass, but humanity remains, and it may rather be expected that this will be a century of authority...a century of Fascism.”

A century of authority? By this anarchist’s way of thinking that leads us right back to where we began: The Mental Illness Of Conservatism.

Can a great American who kicked some fascist ass help us out here?

“The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is Fascism -- ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any controlling private power.”

-President Franklin D. Roosevelt

So for the knuckle draggers among us tonight, I afraid I must repeat my plea, not only for the health of our nation, but for your own mental stability. You are a Reich Winger. Seek professional help immediately.

Goodbye Republican Majority.

2007-01-03T09:12:00.000-08:00

Today, January 3rd, 2007 is the last official day of the 109th US Congress, and the last day of the Republican Majority. This is the last day that the legislative branch of our nation acts as a tool of the White House. This is the last day in which Bush is immune for his crimes against the Constitution. This is the last day the GOP can give Bush a blank check in Iraq and massive taxpayer-funded no bid contracts to Halliburton. This is the last day that the Reich wing can spy on American citizens with impunity in violation of the 4th Amendment. This is the last day that government officials hired by the GOP can write business-friendly legislation or executive rulings and then immediately be hired by the very businesses they were supposed to regulate. The Christian fundamentalists have been locked into their cages. Tom DeLay is looking at possible prison time. Randy “Duke” Cunningham is living life behind bars. Bob Ney has resigned his post and plead guilty to conspiracy to defraud the United States. The Republican reign of terror is over.

With the new Democratically-controlled Congress the first Muslim and the first two Buddhist Representatives will serve. The first woman to serve as House Speaker will head up the new Democratic Majority. 16 Women will serve in the US Senate, the highest number in US history.

The Democrats have quite a task ahead of them. Wages have stagnated for millions of Americans and the minimum wage hasn’t been raised in 10 years. The federal budget is screwed to hell with massive deficits, spending is out of control, and trillions of dollars in tax cuts have been made for those Americans who can most easily afford to pay them. No oversight exists with private war contractors and profiteers. Our nation’s election system is still vulnerable to electronic hacking. Health care CEOs are making billions in yearly salaries and millions of Americans have no health care at all. Record numbers of personal bankruptcies are being filed to pay health care bills. And last but certainly not least, George W. Bush has acted with impunity for 6 years against the American People.

Make no mistake. Things are about to change, and change real quick. Just about everyone now has heard Pelosi state that “impeachment is off the table”. Is that really the case? Will it be possible to keep impeachment off the table once investigations begin? I’m guessing it won’t be long before we all find out.

Happy Holidays From Nitwit Planet!

2006-12-22T09:53:00.000-08:00

I just want to wish everyone a very Merry Yulemas and a Happy New Year! I’ll see you all next year! Until then, sing a Crassmas Carol with me.

Capitalist Economy Vs. The Social Welfare State.

2006-12-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

We’ve heard it for years. Deregulated markets creates competition. Free trade creates jobs. Lower taxes creates more tax revenue and wealth for the people as a whole. Is it true?

While market deregulation in the United States began most clearly during the Carter administration when he deregulated the airline industry, that deregulation philosophy has been accepted as an absolute truth; that all industries with lower regulation perform better. Since that time the energy, media, and health care industries have been deregulated. Has it produced increased competition or monopolization? The answer is so clear as it is absurd to mention it.

The free trade myth of capitalist economy today almost holds as little credibility as the deregulation myth. It doesn’t take a social scientist to see that nearly everything for sale in the United States is made in China. The United States now has record trade deficits thanks to free trade. Domestic manufacturing in the United States is now at 11.7% of US Gross National Product, a figure so low that you must go back to the pre-industrial days of the Civil War to find similar numbers. To date, free trade with Mexico has led to a flat Mexican economy and a flood of Mexican immigrants searching for better economic conditions north of the Rio Grande. Free trade has led to more dangerous problems, that sees China now holding trillions in US bank notes, notes they could dump onto the market tomorrow and destroy to value of the dollar, sending the US into hyperinflation. Even traditional conservatives such as Phyllis Schlafly and Pat Buchanan have now come out against free trade and globalization.

While these two myths have been virtually destroyed, other myths still hold despite their obvious fallacy. The first part of this myth is that lower taxes create higher tax revenues. On the surface this plainly seems idiotic. It would be akin to telling a worker a cut in pay will lead him to a bigger bank account. Yet this is precisely the GOP mantra, even citing the increase of national tax revenues for the 2005, and attributing it lower taxes. Yet, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities note, the increase in 2005 revenues occurred because temporary tax cuts had expired. In short, taxes went up. For instance, the accelerated depreciation tax cut of 2002 expired by 2005, a tax cut that was estimated to have cost the treasury $51 billion a year. Additionally, US businesses were taxed for their foreign-held profits for 2005 (and 2005 only) at just 5.25%, when normally these profits are not taxed at all.

If all of these capitalists myths are indeed untrue, then one has to ask, does a capitalist economy produce more wealth for the people as a whole in comparison to a social welfare state? The answer isn't all that surprising. The United States spends the least amount of all industrial nations as a percentage of their GDP to the poor, and as a result has the highest poverty rates in the industrialized world. High-taxed social welfare states such as the Nordic nations of Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland sees poverty rates that are half that of the United States.

The Mental Illness Of Conservatism.

2006-12-20T13:26:00.000-08:00

I came across this recently from a conservative writer who will remain nameless. It is repulsive. He wrote:

WHY AMERICAN SOCIETY COLLAPSED

It must be admitted that all this was partly the result of extraordinary crafty tactics on the part of Liberals on the one hand, and obvious official stupidity or naïveté on the other hand. The Liberals were too clever to allow a simultaneous attack to be made on the whole of their Press. No one section functioned as cover for the other. While the alternative newspaper, in the most despicable manner possible, reviled everything that was sacred, furiously attacked the State and Government and incited certain classes of the community against each other, the national papers, also in Liberal hands, knew how to camouflage themselves as model examples of objectivity. They studiously avoided harsh language, knowing well that block-heads are capable of judging only by external appearances and never able to penetrate to the real depth and meaning of anything. They measure the worth of an object by its exterior and not by its content. This form of human frailty was carefully studied and understood by the Liberal Press.

I believe that our present generation would easily master this danger if they were rightly led. For this generation has gone through certain experiences which must have strengthened the nerves of all those who did not become nervously broken by them. Certainly in days to come the Liberals will raise a tremendous cry throughout their newspapers once a hand is laid on their favorite nest, once a move is made to put an end to this scandalous Liberal Press and once this instrument which shapes public opinion is brought under Conservative control and no longer left in the hands of Liberals and enemies of the people. I am certain that this will be easier for us than it was for our fathers. The scream of the twelve-inch shrapnel is more penetrating than the hiss from a thousand Liberal newspaper vipers. Therefore let them go on with their hissing.

By means of the Liberal Press, the Liberals spread the colossal falsehood about ‘American Militarism’ throughout the world and tried to inculpate America by every possible means, while at the same time the Democratic Party refused to assent to the measures that were necessary for the adequate training of our national defense forces. The appalling crime thus committed by these people ought to have been obvious to everybody who foresaw that in case of war the whole nation would have to be called to arms and that, because of the mean huckstering of these noble ‘representatives of the people’, as they called themselves, millions of Americans would have to face enemies ill-equipped and insufficiently trained.

What soon gave me cause for very serious consideration were the activities of the Liberals in certain branches of life, into the mystery of which I penetrated little by little. Was there any shady undertaking, any form of foulness, especially in cultural life, in which at least one Liberal did not participate? On putting the probing knife carefully to that kind of abscess one immediately discovered, like a maggot in a putrescent body, a little Liberal who was often blinded by the sudden light.

In my eyes the charge against Liberalism became a grave one the moment I discovered the Liberal activities in the Press, in art, in literature and the theatre. All unctuous protests were now more or less futile. One needed only to look at the posters announcing the hideous productions of the cinema and theatre, and study the names of the authors who were highly lauded there in order to become permanently adamant on Liberal questions. Here was a pestilence, a moral pestilence, with which the public was being infected.

I was happy at last to know for certain that a Liberal is not an American.

Are you a conservative? Do you think this writer is spot on? Are you ever upset that Liberals call conservatives “fascists”?

If you answered “yes” to all the above questions, then perhaps you should know that me personally calling YOU a fascist is more apt than you might think. Why? Because the following piece came directly from none other than Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, with the words “Germany” changed to “America” and “Jewish” changed to “Liberal”.

You are a Reich Winger. Seek professional help immediately.

Is There Really A War On Christmas?

2006-12-16T02:25:00.000-08:00

Is there really a war on Christmas? The simple answer to this question is “it depends on who you ask”. But what is most startling to me is that in the name of fighting a perceived “War On Christmas”, people on both sides of this issue have forgotten what the Christmas spirit is all about. In my view, that was the intension from day one for all those over at Faux News, because the Christmas spirit of giving to others for no reason other than just to do it, is in fact a notion embodied by liberal philosophy. Indeed, the Christmas spirit is one in the same with the liberal spirit.

But what isn’t well noticed, although it has been noted from time to time in the past, is that our entire society does not embrace the Christmas spirit, and not just during Christmas, but all year long. If the Christmas spirit of giving to others, and caring for others was indeed held as an ideal for our nation to endear ourselves to, the question would soon arise that a middle class that is worker harder for less and less while another class is protected in it’s wealth concentration is indeed the epitome of the Christmas Grinch.

Rather, a nation that really has embodied the Christmas spirit would operate and function quite differently on several levels. For instance, in the state of Georgia a new law on the books permits gun carriers to be legally able to use deadly force against anyone they “think is a threat” to them. While I can somewhat understand if this was the case if this law applied to your homestead, in the state of Georgia it applies anywhere including public streets. This gives “road rage” a whole new meaning. And yet, in the very same state, in Atlanta, Georgia, as Nitwit Planet noted some time ago, panhandling is illegal. If the Christmas spirit were applied to the state of Georgia, then perhaps the myriad of the homeless in Atlanta, many of whom are veterans and indeed victims of America’s past ill-begotten wars, would instead have a roof over their head, and the residents of Georgia would feel safe enough not to need to carry a handgun to ward off the occasional hungry homeless man.

Not to pick on Georgia. It’s only one example from parts all over the country. One does not need to look far from the Mississippi and Louisiana Gulf Coast to see that no one in this nation of plenty is in more need of the Christmas spirit then those who are still left in Katrina’s wake. An untold number of Americans are still there living in nothing more than over-priced poorly built FEMA trailers; trailers that have left our American brothers and sisters sickened from formaldehyde residue and are insufficient even to keep out the cold in the winter. Sarge, who writes over at Unreported News, speaks frequently on the subject, and from first-hand experience often must tell stories of horror that are still going on today 16 months after the storm made landfall. And yet our nation seems to have forgotten our own countrymen in the plague of horrors that is the Gulf Coast. Instead we focus ourselves on the health of a Democratic Senator from South Dakota, not because we are concerned for his health, but because if his health falters the new found Democratic majority in the Senate could come into question. Ledgering against a man’s life does not embody the Christmas spirit, rather it is a key indication of a nation gone mad, if not wholely sadistic.

But it isn’t just what you see in the national news. It is the small, not-so-well noticed things. I was reading my local paper and came across this story of a bust at a brothel in my hometown. What struck me about it was that this took place a scant 2 miles from my home. It is quite puzzling that we live in a nation that awards men with metals and places adjectives of heroism and honor upon their heads for turning Iraqi children into splatters of blood and bone thousands of miles away, and yet just 2 miles from my front door people are put under arrest for giving someone an orgasm in exchange for money.

We live in a sick, sick world in perhaps the sickest nation in that world. And until we as a people address that fact, we have no business celebrating the Christmas spirit, much less to malign those who put up a “Happy Holidays” banner in front of their business.

"I Have Cancer, Three Kids, Please Help!"

2006-11-30T13:47:00.000-08:00

There’s nothing like the holiday season for giving. It’s a beautiful time of year when we all say, “hey, what the hell, we all love each other, here, have a gift.” Pretty cool holiday, no matter how you cut it.

Of course, the cognitive dissidence of the holiday season and the reality in this country sometimes bites you on the ass and shakes you by the shirt collar. This precise thing happened to me yesterday, while I was Christmas shopping.

Here I was driving around town where I live here in Woodbridge, Virginia, driving down the Prince William Parkway. I pulled into the left turn lane so I could go to Panera Bread to get some lunch, but I just missed the green arrow. That’s when I noticed there was a guy standing on the grassy median strip, right next to my car.

I shot a glance at this guy and I could see that he wasn’t just some guy who was homeless doing some panhandling. We rarely see that here in Woodbridge anyway, with our $400,000 mini-mansions. This guy looked like he was in his late 40’s to mid 50’s, and he was decently dressed and well groomed. He looked like he could be some blue-collar worker, or a maybe an office worker.

I looked into his face and saw nothing but desperation. He was holding a cardboard sign, with a message written in black marker that read:

“I Have Cancer, Three Kids, Please Help!”

I sat there in my car looking at this guy, feeling like complete shit because I had nothing I could think to do to help him. Maybe I could have told him to collect $8,000 and move to Canada where he’ll get free health care. Maybe I could have directed him to some public resource unbeknownst to me that would help him with his dilemma. Hell, maybe just walking up to the guy and giving him a hug would have helped.

But there I sat, at the red light, not knowing what to do, looking at this guy who was desperate and quite possibly looking forward to a very short future that ends in misery and death. That red light seemed to take an eternity. I thought about what possibly could have led this guy to have to swallow his pride and stand out on the street corner and beg for help.

When this is the kind of thing that goes on in this country, we must admit to ourselves that our health care system, as it is currently manifested is a dismal failure. When we have people who must spend the last of their days on this earth begging for someone to help them, then we must say it’s time for a new way of doing things.

If there is anyone out there who knows who this guy is, perhaps there is something we can do collectively to help him. Hell, maybe we can even save his life. What better gift can anyone give for the Holiday Season?

Shot By Police Fifty Times.

2006-11-27T05:20:00.000-08:00

On Saturday morning Sean Bell, the father of two young children, was preparing for his big day on Sunday, when he planned to marry Nicole Paultre, his high school sweetheart and the mother of his two children.

The wedding never took place because the New York Police Department shot at Bell’s car 50 times. Four bullets ripped through Bell’s throat and torso, killing him. The shooting took place around 4 a.m. in the Jamaica section of Queens outside Kalua Cabaret, a strip club where Bell was having his bachelor party. Two of Bell’s friends were also wounded, Joseph Guzman was shot 11 times, and Trent Benefield was shot three times.

According to the NYPD the shootings occurred after Bell got into his car and bumped into a unmarked minivan that an uncover cop was sitting in. However, that account of events was disputed by one of the witnesses who wasn’t shot, Trini Wright, who works as a dancer at the club. Wright told the New York Daily News that Bell didn’t bump the unmarked minivan with his car, but that officers “jumped out shooting” from their vehicle and that there was “No ‘stop.’ No ‘freeze.’ No nothing.”

Bell’s execution-like death comes after NYPD officers killed unarmed African immigrant Amadou Diallo by firing upon him in his apartment 41 times in 1999. Four years later, Ousmane Zongo was killed by police in a raid on a warehouse where Zongo worked repairing musical instruments. Zongo was shot four times, twice in the back by officer Bryan Conroy. Conroy was in plain clothes and drew his weapon without identifying himself, and Zongo ran. Zongo’s killer, officer Conroy was convicted of criminally negligent homicide and was sentenced to five years of probation.

One does not have to look far to find other instances of police brutality against minorities to outright premeditated murder. But if we are to live in a society where we decide that we must have a group of citizens who are above the law to supposedly protect us, perhaps we should require that they can no longer carry firearms until they show the public that we can trust them enough to do so.

Until this is addressed, Sean Bell’s children will never stop screaming in horror for what was taken from them.

I Must Escalate! I Must Escalate!

2006-11-21T09:29:00.000-08:00

One rarely stops to think about it, but there are just so many benefits every American enjoys everyday from the glories of outsourcing our jobs overseas. The benefits are virtually limitless. We Americans can get cheaper goods, at cheaper prices, at cheaper retail outlets, who luckily pay their workers cheaper wages. And since all those goods are made overseas the liberals among us will be happy as peaches because the US no longer has any domestic industry. Why would that make them happy? Because that means all those manufacturing plants that pollute the air will no longer be dirtying up Amurican air.

But with all these benefits, one thing we rarely think about, is the occasional joy we Americans get when we get to talk to one of those very people who have an outsourced job that some American once had. Sure, we don’t get to come across it often, but when we do, it’s always a pleasant gem to angrily discuss some technical issue with someone who has only the faintest grasp of English.

Since this is such a rare experience in modern American society, I thought I should share such an experience I had recently, when contacting a representative from Earthlink, who I poised the daunting question, “Why is my DSL service downloading slower than your average dail-up?” Here is the actual conversation that followed, with the sole edits being our handles and my personal information:

Welcome to Earthlink LiveChat. Your chat session will begin shortly.

Not at home and you want to read your email? With EarthLink Web Mail you can check your email from any computer with an internet connection!

Chat Information 'Earthlink Puke' says: Thank you for contacting EarthLink LiveChat, how may I help you today?

Me: I have a slow connection, and I've had it since last Friday. I tested my speed and it's at 27 kbps. That’s downstream. Upstream is at 130.

Earthlink Puke: I apologize for inconvenience this may causing you. I assist you, let us work and find the cause and resolve issue. Do you have a router?

Me: a router?

Earthlink Puke: Through router we can connect multiple computers.

Me: no, I have an external modem and I only connect with this computer

Earthlink Puke: Open Internet Explore window click on Tools ---->Internet Options ---->Click on Delete cookies and click OK then click on Delete files and click OK.

Me: alright. generally speaking though I use mozilla as my browser.

Earthlink Puke: Okay, please delete cookies in browser.

Me: alright. done.

Earthlink Puke: Make sure your DSL device is not near any of the following as they can cause interference...

Halogen lamps
Fluorescent lights
Scanners
900 MHz cordless phones
Cell Phones
Ham radios
AM radios
Electrical interference (don't put the router near a Monitor, UPS or motor driven device)
Dialup Modem, fax, or other device on the same phone line
Microwave oven
A shoddy phone cord
Home security/Alarm system#PFR#/BBT/Wir/Gen/IntermittentSync

Me: it's not. I haven't changed my setup recently since my connection slowed to a crawl. I was getting around 3 megs downstream last Friday.

Earthlink Puke: Have you installed any antivirus software in your computer?

Me: no, I haven't.

Earthlink Puke: What is most likely causing this problem is that your system resources are too low for your computer or some program running in the background is conflicting with the rest of your system. Remove the unwanted programs from StartUp using the below steps.

Me: ok…

Earthlink Puke: I will provide you with the steps. Remove the unwanted programs from StartUp using the below steps.

01. Click on Start button
02. Click on Run
03. Type msconfig
04. Click Ok , click on Startup tab.
05. Remove the check from program you don't want to start with the
Windows Startup.
Note: Please make sure that you uncheck files, those are not necessary for normal system startup.
You may uncheck any file, where you find the File path something like "C:\Program Files\ ..."
06. Click OK.
07. Restart your computer.

This will resolve the issue.

Me: Yes, I know how to do a start-up configuration. That’s not the problem. I just checked my task manager and i'm only using 2 to 4 percent of CPU usage. I suspect it's more of a network issue.

Earthlink Puke: In order to fix the issue I need to escalate the issue.

Me: You need to do what?

Earthlink Puke: I have to escalate the issue, I need some information.

Me: Okay. I don’t know what that means, but what information do you need?

Earthlink Puke: 1.Let me know the Preferred Contact phone number: (cell phone if available)
2.Does contact number have an answering machine or voicemail on preferred contact number?
3.Let me know the Earliest and Latest Contact Time at Preferred Contact Number.
4.Let me know the Latest Contact Time at Preferred Contact Number.
5.What is the Time Zone?
6.Let me know Preferred Email Address for Contact.
7. Do you stay in house or appartment

Me: :::giving this nutball my personal information:::

Earthlink Puke: Thank you for information.

Me: welcome.

Earthlink Puke: I have escalated the issue to our engineers they will check the line status will resolve the issue.

Me: alright.

Earthlink Puke: This is the Case number for further reference: :::6 didget number::: For further reference contact. Our Ticketing response operations network department.

Ah, the joys of quality customer service. Hey you Comcast assholes, when are you gonna lower your prices?

Meet James Carville, Republican Stooge.

2006-11-17T03:34:00.000-08:00

Thanks to Howard Dean, and his 50 State Strategy, the Democrats have retaken the House and Senate. With a victory like that, you’d think that everyone in the Democratic Party would be pleased as punch that this year was ours. And, you’d be wrong.

Enter “The Cajin Grump” James Carville. Carville’s been bashing Howard Dean for not putting enough DNC money behind Carville’s DLC Congressional candidates.

And yet, as the Democrats top strategist during the Clinton era, the only thing Carville seems to have ever managed to accomplish is to win a 3-way Presidential race, lose both Houses of Congress to the Republicans, and barely stage off Clinton’s removal from office after his Impeachment.

Both Carville and Paul Begala criticized Dean time and time again, saying he couldn’t raise any money. What did Dean do? He raised record amonts of money, and the D.N.C. spent three times as much money in the 2006 campaign as they did in the last mid-term election. Begala and Rahm Emmanuel criticized Dean’s 50 State Strategy, with Begala saying funds were just going to OPEN state party offices to hire people to “stand around and pick their nose.” All that nose picking lead to massive Democratic victories in districts that were previously non-competitive, with massive Democratic victories in North Dakota, Indiana, and Montana.

What’s most disgusting about Carville’s criticism is it’s utter hypocrisy. It was Rahm Emmanuel, controlling the DCCC that poured 3 million extra dollars into Tammy Duckworth’s campaign, and yet she lost by 5 percentage points, and yet Emmanuel held funds from Democratic candidates all over the country simply because they were opposed to the Iraq War. Time after time, progressive Democratic candidates had to beg for funds from Air America listeners because Emmanuel wouldn’t produce a penny.

So Carville wants a new chairman at the head of the DNC, apparently for doing what Carville has never managed to do…win. Could this be because Dean knows that if you are to win you must put money into and hands of the grassroots to build the party from the ground up instead of stuffing Carville’s and Begala’s pockets? Or is it that Carville knows that Step One was to win back both houses of Congress, and Step Two will be the purging of the Democratic Party with the Republican-lite crowd at the DLC?

And since I’ve been in a creative mood as of late, I certainly think that Carville’s hypocrisy deserves a video montage.

Goodbye Republicans!

2006-11-15T00:50:00.000-08:00

Here is a little video montage I did dedicated to the Republican majority of 1994 to 2006. America bids you farewell, and good riddance.

And to the rest of America who did the firing: Mission Accomplished.

Candidate Gets No Votes -- But He Voted For Himself.

2006-11-11T17:09:00.000-08:00

I saw this at CNN, and thought it deserved a reprint.

WALDENBURG, Arkansas (AP) -- Randy Wooten figured he would get at least one vote in his bid for mayor of this town of 80 people -- even if it was just his own.
He did not. Now he has to decide whether to file a formal protest.
Wooten got the news from his wife, Roxanne, who went to City Hall on Wednesday to see the election results.
"She saw my name with zero votes by it. She came home and asked me if I had voted for myself or not. I told her I did," said Wooten, owner of a local bar.
However, Poinsett County results reported Wednesday showed incumbent William H. Wood with 18 votes, challenger Ronnie Chatman with 18 votes and Wooten with zero.
"I had at least eight or nine people who said they voted for me, so something is wrong with this picture," Wooten said.
Poinsett County Election Commissioner Junaway Payne said the issue had been discussed but no action taken yet.
"It's our understanding from talking with the secretary of state's office that a court order would have to be obtained in order to open the machine and check the totals," Payne said. "The votes were cast on an electronic voting machine, but paper ballots were available."
A November 28 runoff is scheduled to decide the mayor's race.
"It's just very hard to understand," Wooten said.

How much more evidence do we need before we get rid of these goddamned voting machines?

Election 2006.

2006-11-09T09:31:00.000-08:00

A day before the election Bill O’Reilly claimed that the election turnout for 2006 would be quite low. The “surprise” is that the mid-term elections had record turnout. In the state of Virginia, we saw an all time record turn out for a mid-term election, with a total turnout being comparable to a Presidential election year, at a total turnout of about 40% of the total registered voters. In comparison, the 1994 election that swept Republicans into control of Congress saw a turn out of only 27% of the registered voters.

As everyone now knows, it seems the American People actually did like the Democrats, as they took a commanding control of the House, taking out nearly 30 Republican incumbents. In the various governorship elections across the country the Democrats won 6 more seats, commanding a healthy majority of state governor offices. And in the Senate the Democrats unseated 5 incumbents, and looks set to unseat a 6th in Virginia’s George Allen seat, giving the Democrats a 51 seat majority in the Senate.

It turns out that sometimes democracy does work. And to the Republicans, let me just say this…neaner neaner neaner.

The Fix Is In From Virginia.

2006-10-29T00:15:00.000-07:00

On October 29th, 2002 Congress passed The Help America Vote Act, which encouraged every state in the union to purchase electronic voting machines. In 2002 Virginia voters were told that this would be the last year in which they would be voting on the mechanical machines that they have used for decades, with little problem.

For this reason, many Virginia voters opted to vote via absentee ballot in the 2004 election, myself being one of them. The process was simple and straight forward: go to the voter registration office at the DMV, fill out an application, receive your paper ballot, and vote. The bonus being that you could vote and have a paper trail.

Fast forward to September 2006 when I received a letter in the mail from my Congressman representing the 11th district of Virginia, Republican Tom Davis:

Confused? Why would a Republican incumbent encourage anyone to vote via absentee ballot, “to make sure your vote is counted”, when overwhelming evidence has shown that “errors” in electronic voting machines have always favored Republicans?

I found out the answer to that question today when I cast my absentee ballot. Virginians who opt to vote absentee this year will not be able to vote using a paper ballot, but will cast their vote using the same electronic voting machines used on Election Day.

Is Business A Solution To Anything?

2006-10-22T16:34:00.000-07:00

In the last 400 years that capitalism and markets have been used to determine how goods and services are allocated among the people we have seen drastic changes in wealth and it’s accumulation. I think it’s high time that we ask ourselves what has been the fruits of that very system itself.

In order to do this, we should examine if capitalism does what its advocates say it does. Without trying to be overly presumptuous, I think we can safely say that its advocates suggest that capitalism:

1. Encourages competition
2. Makes our society more efficient
3. Produces what consumers demand
4. Creates wealth
5. Creates economic liberty

Well, does it?

Additionally, capitalists suggest that the “free market” performs better without outside influence from other forces, such as government. So, logically, we can examine if regulations upon markets are lifted if competition increases or is eviscerated.

If we were to examine the media market a striking juxtaposition appears between what Capitalists suggest and what history demonstrates. Nothing shows this more clearly than the 1996 Telecommunications Act, passed by the GOP Congress and signed into law by Democratic President Bill Clinton.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act deregulated media ownership rules, and the GOP’s advocates for that provision suggested that it would foster competition. However, quite the opposite occurred. Ten years prior to the Telecommunication Act being passed the number of major media companies in the United States was about 80. Ten years after the Act was passed that number has dwindled down to just 5, creating a semi-monopoly.

But perhaps the media market is an anomaly. If that could be the case, then it makes sense to examine other industries that were once highly regulated and have since been de-regulated. One of those such industries is the airline industry.

Pushed by theories coming out of the University of Chicago in the 1970’s by conservative economist Milton Friedman and Ludwig von Mises, Congress passed the Airline Deregulation Act and was signed into law by President Jimmy Carter on October 28th, 1978. Prior to the passage of the ADA there were over 50 airline companies in the United States. They included such big names as Pan American, TWA, Eastern, Braniff, Republic, Western, AirCal, Aspen, Capitol, Hughes Airwest, National, North Central, Pacific Southwest, Southern Airways, Transamerica, and Western. All of those companies have since seen bankruptcy or mergers and no longer exist. Today the airline industry is dominated by “The Big Six”, American, Continental, Delta, Northwest, United, and US Airways.

As deregulated capitalism is a more “pure” or laissez-faire form of capitalism, we can see that competition is eviscerated under a capitalist economic system. We in fact see that the inverse happens, that highly regulated capital markets are more likely to be more prone to competition.

Next we must ask, does capitalism make our society more efficient? Going back to our previous example of the media industry, how has deregulated media markets increased efficiency? Consumers of media don’t think so. According to Robert McChesney in The Problem of the Media, “cable industry rates for consumers have…shot up, increasing some 50 percent between 1996 and 2003.” That’s not all. Complaints about cables services have also hit all-time highs. And according to the Colorado Attorney General, of the top 10 complaints his office receives from Coloradoans, cable and satellite television companies and telephone companies rank as number 1 and number 2 on the list, respectively, even beating out the number of complaints on debt collection agencies.

To venture into the question of the efficiency of the airline industry seems to be a exercise in redundancy, as the long lines, repeated government bailouts, and cancelled or delayed flights are as frequent an occurrence as the flights themselves. The cost of airline tickets have gone down 9% since the tragedy of 9/11, but this cut in costs has only occurred with flights between major metropolitan areas such as flights from New York City to Los Angeles. However, a flight from Washington, D.C. to Tampa, Florida costs considerably more, despite that it’s a shorter distance, marking a stark contrast to universally affordable airline tickets anywhere in the country prior to the passage of the ADA in 1978. Despite the high cost of gasoline, it is still cheaper to rent a car and drive from Washington, D.C. to Winston-Salem, North Carolina than it is to fly there.

Thirdly, we must ask, does capital markets produce what consumers demand? This is a tough question to answer, as how can we prove that consumers want something that the market has not produced, and thus, does not exist? Bearing in mind this difficulty, I approach this question carefully. Despite this, I am reminded of a humorous anecdote I once had with a friend of mine. His telephone had become something to ignore as 99% of the calls made on it came from telemarketers. I noted to my friend that you can now buy a product called “the Zapper” that blocks calls from telemarketers. My friend shook his head in disgust saying, “I hate capitalism. First they make you buy a telephone so you can use the public telephone lines. Then they make you pay to use the publicly-owned telephone lines so they can make a profit off of it. Then they use those lines that they’re making a profit off of in order to sell you more of their junk. And the only way to stop them from doing so is to buy another piece of junk just to keep them from selling you their junk.” This occurred before the government created the federal do-not-call list, a service that market never created despite the overwhelming demand for it by the public.

Additionally, public opinion polls indicate that the public desires a verity of things that the market does not produce. One of those things are commercial-free public television. Virtually 100% of the public agrees that it dislikes commercials, and does not want them, however the market continues to produce media riddled with advertising, sometimes even putting product placement in the television shows themselves.

When one closely examines this question, there are a variety of products that it only seems logical that the public wants and demands that the market does not produce. Demand for automobiles running on alternative and cheaper fuels have existed for decades, and yet the market does not produce electric-powered, solar-powered, water-powered (splitting oxygen from hydrogen and burning the hydrogen), and for the most part bio-diesel powered automobiles. Only recently has US markets made hybrid automobiles available, and that only came when Japanese imports forced US manufacturers to follow suit. Despite that the demand for Japanese hybrid autos are so high that one has to be put on a waiting list just to buy one, US manufacturers are still producing massive gas guzzling SUVs even though GM’s sales have fallen dramatically.

And with the US taxpayer increasingly having to flip an ever larger bill for that nation’s transportation infrastructure, such as the construction of ever wider roads, more Americans are having to commute farther to work, and spending more of their time sitting in traffic. If there was anything that 100% of the American public wanted to market to produce, it would be a solution to our nation’s traffic congestion. To date, the market has not produced any such solution, however there is a market, known as the oil and automobile industry, for making the problem worse. Meanwhile, the US railway system continues to crumble, and our European counterparts can go wherever they like on the entire continent on high-speed bullet trains. Similarly, this highly efficient transportation system is utilized by the Japanese as well with an amazing degree of success and affordability in one of the most densely populated regions in the world. Both the Japanese and European bullet train systems was a product not of the market, but of government innovation.

Which leads us to our next question, does capitalism create wealth? Capitalists will nearly universally say yes. And their argument on the surface may seem to be correct. There are more millionaires and billionaires today than there has ever been in US history. The top 1% of households are wealthier today than they have ever been. But does that mean that more wealth has been created? Despite, the wealthy being richer than they have ever been, it now takes two incomes to keep the average US family above the poverty line when one income sufficed just a generation ago. And according to the Federal Reserve, debt held by US consumers has increased by an astounding 1,101% since 1983. The poor and debt-ridden in the US aren’t alone. Inequality around the globe has drastically increased in the past 50 years. According to the UN Development Program, in 1950 the gap between the average income in the richest and poorest country was about 35 to one, while by 1992 it had widened to 72 to one. And per capita incomes fell in 50 countries in the last decade, most of them the poorest countries. Despite this, many of those very same poor countries have increased their exports to the west and to industrialized nations generally, varying from oil and minerals, to fruits and vegetables. So why hasn’t the poorest nations in the world who are exporting to the richest nations in the world seen their own wealth creation? The answer is quite obvious. Markets do not create wealth. Wealth, just like all others, is a finite resource. If wealth was not a finite resource then it would not have any value. Rather markets are a system of wealth usurpation, by which the wealth of the many is re-distributed to the few.

Which leads us to the final question, of does capitalism create economic liberty? One needs look no further than the Nike sweat shops in Indonesia where children as young as 14 work 12 hours a day behind armed guards and barbed-wire, sometimes facing rape and molestation from their supervisors, in order to earn a few pennies to feed their hungry families. It is an economic system that Simon Lunguet declared to be “even worse than slavery”, writing as far back in 1767 that “it is the impossibility of living by any other means that compels our farm labourers to till the soil, whose fruits they will not eat, and our masons to construct buildings in which they will not live. It is want that drags them to those markets where they await masters, who will do them the kindness of buying them. It is want that compels them to go down on their knees to the rich man in order to get from him permission to enrich him. What effective gain has the suppression of slavery brought him? ‘He is free,’ you say. That is his misfortune. These men, it is said, have no master. They have one, and the most terrible, the most imperious of masters: that is, need. It is this that that reduces them to the most cruel dependence.”

“Property is theft!“ -Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Calling All Wing Nuts.

2006-07-07T12:41:00.000-07:00

Earlier today I came across this wonderful site called Calling All Wingnuts and found it absolutely hilarious. The guy who does the site regularly calls every Reich wing radio show he can and gives them a piece of his mind. What a wonderful idea!

Then, I got to thinking, why don’t all of us do this? Suppose that just a fraction of us who read Daily Kos or Democratic Underground did this on a semi-regular basis? And it would be fun!

Just out of curiosity I went on over to the GOP’s website. Right on the webpage they have this interesting link. It is a listing of every Reich wing radio show I could think of, and their call-in numbers. I wonder why the RNC had to do this, perhaps they need all the callers for their shows these days that they can muster. Actually, I would bet ya that if you asked them to pay you to call into these programs they probably wouldn’t mind breaking off some bread with you.

But that’s neither here nor there. So in the spirit of Ann Coulteresque plagiarism I decided to copy and paste all their listings here. For those of you with a not-so-Nazi bent, feel free to use these listings to your heart’s desire. Of course, the Reich wing nut bags do regularly screen the other side out as much as possible, but I’ve found that if you accuse the talk show host of being “too liberal” on whatever issue you want to talk about, they’re be more than glad to let you on.

The Rush Limbaugh Show 1-800-282-2882
Sean Hannity Show 1-800-941-7326
The Laura Ingraham Show 1-800-449-8255
Hugh Hewitt Show 1-800-520-1234
The Mike Gallagher Show 1-800-655-MIKE
Imus in the Morning 1-800-370-4687
Michael Reagan Show 1-800-468-MIKE
G. Gordon Liddy Show 1-800-GG-LIDDY
The Michael Medved Show 1-800-955-1776
The Lars Larson Show 1-866-509-LARS
Neal Boortz Show 1-877-310-2100
Glenn Beck Show 1-888-727-BECK
Rusty Humphries Show 1-800-449-8255
Bill Bennett's Morning in America 1-866-680-6464
The Radio Factor with Bill O'Reilly 1-877-9-NO-SPIN
The Jim Bohannon Show 1-866-505- 4626
Dr. Laura 1-800-DR-LAURA
Janet Parshall's America 1-800-343-9282
Michael Savage Show 1-800-449-8255
The Larry Elder Show 1-800-222-5222
The Dennis Prager Show 1-877-243-7776
News Beat with Blanquita Cullum 1-800-510-TALK
Dateline Washington with Greg Corombus 1-800-510-TALK
Battle Line with Alan Nathan 1-800-510-TALK
Hot Talk with Scott Hennen 1-800-279- 9329
The Bob Grant Show 1-800-321- 8828
The Dolans Show 1-800-321- 0710
Good Day USA 1-877-541-5250
Jason Jarvis Show 1-860-676-8306
Common Sense Radio With Ollie North 1-888-99-NORTH
Point of View 1-800-351-1212
The Don Kroah Show 1-888-293-9282
The Ken Hamblin Show 1-800-462-6479

Ken Lay Dies, The World Gets Lighter.

2006-07-07T07:42:00.000-07:00

When Karla Faye Tucker was executed the Reich wing media rejoiced in the death of a black woman who had been convicted of the felony of murder in the state of Texas. When Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls was gunned down the Reich wing media rejoiced in the murder of two “gangsta rappers” who “preached hate”. Now, we are to believe that Ken Lay has died, from a heart attack while vacationing in Aspen, Colorado, awaiting his sentencing for being found guilty of felonious crimes that put 4,000 people out of work and left thousands of Americans with nothing. How has that very same Reich wing media reacted to such news?

I came across this USA Today article which explained:

Former Enron CEO Ken Lay, 64, whose sunny optimism and Ph.D. smarts enabled him to convert a sleepy Texas pipeline company in the mid-1980s into a global powerhouse, died Wednesday of a heart attack just over a month after his rags-to-riches career ended in a criminal fraud conviction….

As sudden and unexpected as Lay's death was, government prosecutors were studying the possibility that legal precedent might require the indictment against him to be dismissed, and his conviction erased. Under that scenario, the government could not collect the $44 million it demanded he forfeit in a court filing last week.

Former prosecutor Ellen Podgor, a law professor at Stetson University College of Law, said, "It's a very strong precedent, as clear as it could be. In the Lay case, it will mean he does not die as a convicted felon. It will be as if his conviction does not exist."

Let me try to get this straight. Because Lay died before he could be sentenced for his crimes that literally ruined the lives of thousands of people, Lay has suddenly become an innocent man? What would have happened if another rich man like Tupac Shakur has been arrested and convicted of a few felonies? What if he died of a “heart attack” before he could be sentenced? Would there be any talk of his death suddenly making him an innocent man?

Sometimes it's nice just to pretend
there's real justice in this world.

The double standard is absolutely disgusting. Lay worked all his adult life to deregulate energy markets. When that deregulation came Lay’s company, Enron, intentionally took power grids down in order to create an artificial shortage of electricity, so that energy subsidiaries of Enron could charge customers whatever they liked per kilowatt hour. Those customers were the poor, the retired, those on fixed incomes. How much of their lives were ruined for Lay’s web of criminality that he did solely to line his pockets? How many Enron workers and shareholders will be left without careers or anything to fall back on? How many will commit suicide from the shambles Lay left their lives?

Lay’s estate shouldn’t be left with a dime. Every last penny should go to all the people Lay screwed, all the people who lost their jobs, all the power line workers who lost their 401(k)s, every Californian whose electricity bill went up by 5000% in a single month while suffering brown outs and black outs.

Of course, that’s only if you believe the guy is actually dead. If the turn of events mean that Lay’s estate will be able to keep his cash, it would seem that Ken Lay “dying” was just one last business decision. After all, Aspen, Colorado isn’t the only vacation resort in the world. Just ask Rush.

The Hillybilly Heroin Addict Is At It Again.

2006-06-26T22:39:00.000-07:00

Hillybilly heroin addict Rush Limbaugh was detained today at the Palm Beach International Airport when customs agents inspected his luggage and found what is reportedly 29 Viagra pills that was not prescribed to him. According to the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, Limbaugh’s attorney, Roy Black, made a statement saying that the prescription was issued not to Limbaugh, but his physician “for privacy purposes.”

Limbaugh had arrived to the airport on his private jet coming from the Dominican Republic U.S. Customs said. Agents searched the plane doing routine customs inspections and found the pill bottle of Viagra.

The Palm Beach County sheriff declined to arrest Limbaugh on what could be a class 2 misdemeanor. However investigators said they will be sending the evidence to the Palm Beach County State Attorney’s Office, who will determine if charges will be filed.

This comes just a month after Limbaugh signed a deal with Florida prosecutors in an investigation into allegations of Limbaugh doctor shopping for prescription pain killers hydrocodone and OxyContin. The deal requires Limbaugh to 18 months of supervision and a continuation of rehabilitation with a painkiller addiction therapist. The deal also requires Limbaugh to pay $30,000 towards the cost of the investigation, and during that time Limbaugh can not own a gun, use “intoxicants to excess”, and must remain gainfully employed.

I Have A New Friend.

2006-06-23T01:00:00.000-07:00

About an hour after my previous post I received an e-mail. I guess my post struck a nerve since I never receive e-mails from readers of Nitwit Planet, typically they’re smart enough to leave their comments in the comments section of the blog. I can only assume he (and they’re almost always a “he”, minus the wrinkles) didn’t want his words seen here. In any case, this is what my new friend sent. I’m including his e-mail address for your…ahem…convenience.

Subject: Page One
Date: 6/22/2006 11:14:49 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: chaslowe@bellsouth.net
To: GSFU@aol.com

I just read every word on your front page. You know about 1/3 of what you think you know. Do you drink heavily? Drugs maybe?

For those who have read Nitwit Planet for some time know, I am rather free with letting people who disagree with me comment on my blog. I have even patiently and extensively debated a troll or two in my time, despite their striking inability to fathom anything outside of Rush. Leftists are usually forced to debate these people not on facts but on what Reich wingers say they believe. When their beliefs fail them, they start with idiotic innuendo or personal insults like this nitwit. The “you’re a drug user” insult is practically patented by these people.

For about three seconds I considered debating this guy, but damn, what do I debate? Whether or not I’m a drunk? And if I managed to win him over to my side, what then? Do I really what a jackass like this on our side? So I responded in the only appropriate way I know how:

Subject: Re: Page One
Date: 6/22/2006 11:59:32 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: GSFU
To: chaslowe@bellsouth.net

You know you Reich wing nutbags are always so amusing. Why don't you do our great nation a favor and stuff a rifle in your mouth.

Fuck off piss ant.

Alva Goldbook

I figured with a retort as sharp as this, this creep would leave me alone. I figured the very suggestion of his suicide being a patriotic act would all by itself be enough of an incentive to keep him from replying. Well, what can I say? I was wrong.

Subject: Re: Page One
Date: 6/23/2006 12:23:31 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: chaslowe@bellsouth.net
To: GSFU@aol.com

"Fuck off piss ant." <--- Impressive vocabulary Alva. Two words with four letters each, and two words with three letters each. Alva ... how many total letters do we have in the whole sentence?

And the only Reich Wing nutbags you could name are in the Sunday comics. I have to go now. You see, I own a business that employs the people who work and pay taxes that support Socialists like you.

In our next lesson I'll explain to you that the word Reich is associated with the Nazis, who are Socialists, like you. Nitwit.

Fuck you half-witted dolt.

What can one possibly say to a cretin like this? Should I even bother to point out his hypocrisy? Is it even worth the effort? Of course this guy couldn’t help but throw another Reich wing cliché in here, claiming to be a “business owner”. If every retard on the net actually owned a business who claimed they did, Mexican illegals would be getting fifty bucks an hour. Next up he’ll tell me that he’s rich thanks to tax cuts and the stock market.

So I decided to say the only thing I could say.

Subject: Re: Page One
Date: 6/23/2006 2:32:47 AM Eastern Standard Time
From: GSFU
Reply To:
To: chaslowe@bellsouth.net

What part of “fuck off piss ant” don’t you understand? If I wanted to debate you I would have. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in puss-brained sycophant jackasses like you. Suck a fucking tailpipe, make an appointment with Doctor Kevorkian, fix yourself a pine box sandwich. Make this country you pretend to give two rats ass of a damn about better and fuck off and die.

Merry shivs you waste of space,
Alva Goldbook.

So will this be the end of our beautiful friendship? Stay tuned!

The Mark Of The Beast?

2006-06-22T18:14:00.000-07:00

Symbols have a long and meaningful history in American culture. Anyone who looks at a US dollar bill can tell you that. The majority of our nation’s Founding Fathers were of various religions, but were primarily Deists, and symbols were of particular importance, not only in their culture but their beliefs.

When the US flag was first designed it had thirteen 5-pointed stars in a circle, representing all thirteen of the original states. The 5-pointed star has a long history that dates back over a thousand years, but has long been associated with positive energy. It has also been associated with mankind and the number five. Today it is a known as an American symbol, as part of the American culture, experience, and history.

Leonardo da Vinci drew a picture of the 5-point star,
showing it’s representation of man.

On the other hand, the inverted 5-point star, with one point facing to the ground, has long been associated with negative energy. Also known as the Sigil of Baphomet, it has been associated with the goat, and was later adopted as the trademark of the Church of Satan. More importantly, it is associated with the number six.

The Sigil of Baphomet,
which is the trademark of the Satanic Church.

Given this, one should wonder why the stars of the logo of the GOP Elephant are all upside down. Not only are they all upside down, but there are three upside down stars, all representing the number six.

The GOP Elephant logo, 6-6-6.

Is the GOP’s logo the mark of the beast? It would appear so. Given the way they govern, it would seem entirely apt.

Why Illegal Immigration Is Funny.

2006-05-03T11:35:00.000-07:00

On the immigration issue, everyone on the left should put this in perspective.

The common compliant is that illegals are taking our jobs. But WHOSE jobs? The vast majority of all illegals who come through the Mexican border live in the south. At the same time that this has happened significantly over the last 12 years much of our domestic manufacturing has gone overseas to find cheap labor. But within the United States itself there’s been another shift by manufacturers who are moving south to find cheap red neck labor. While Detroit and Flint, Michigan has been left in ruins by General Motors’ abandonment of Michigan, Hyundai has opened a factory in Montgomery, while Mercedes-Benz has opened another factory in Vance, Alabama. Is anyone complaining about the red necks who are taking our jobs?

With more and more illegals coming through our borders, most of the jobs they are taking are the jobs of white men who live in the south who vote overwhelmingly Republican. Latinos, on the other hand, vote 70% of the time with Democrats (yes, it‘s true!). This means that illegals are making life harder for red neck Republicans, and since the GOP is running all three branches of our government (please, kill me now!) then that makes them that much more likely to direct their anger at the GOP for making them compete with José.

Meanwhile, the GOP is falling apart. The smart nazis who want cheap labor for their business cronies are having to fight with the moron nazis who are beholden to their racist constituents. This entire issue is a blessing for the left, and nobody seems to realize it. Those of us on the left should be doing one thing and one thing only…that is stay as silent as possible, while giggling our asses off. That way later we can be free to blame the GOP on both sides of the issue.

If anything, we should be pushing for even more illegals to come into the border. Open the floodgate, and…here’s the kicker…give them all the right to vote before November.

Sean Hannity Defends Oil Companies.

2006-04-25T15:42:00.000-07:00

For the last two days on Sean Hannity’s radio program, he has relentlessly defended oil companies. Despite the massive profits oil companies have been seeing, Hannity has defended them lock-stop for the last two days. What is the real culprit to the high cost of gas in Hannity’s eyes? You guessed it. Democrats and environmentalists. Big surprise. Or is it?

Strangely, Hannity has even been lambasting Republicans on this issue, for “not sticking to principal”, and for “sounding like little Democrats”. Easy for “Mister Principal” to say, as he isn’t looking at a pink slip in November.

But criticizing Republicans for “not sticking to principal” is quite ironic for Hannity. For the last two days he has criticized the high cost of gas on “government taxes” and “environmental extremists” who don’t want new oil refineries built. Strangely, these talking points closely resemble those stated by oil giant Conoco Phillips, who have made the same talking points in their own media relations webpage. These rants tend to be in between commercials advertising how wonderful propane is. Conflict of interest?

Hannity’s explanation is simply without logic. As gas prices have soared, gas taxes have remained fixed, thus as the gas prices increase, the gas companies are paying a smaller percentage in gas taxes in ratio to the price at the pump. This is an institutional incentive for gas companies to raise prices, which could be fixed in a heart beat, simply by changing petrol tax law from a fixed amount to a percentage of the cost at the pump. Additionally, gas companies have no reason to build more refineries, as doing so would cost them money to increase supply, a formula for oil companies to invest in losing money. And while Hannity bloviates about massive gas taxes, he fails to mention the billions in tax-payer dollars that was given to the oil giants as a gift in last year’s energy bill.

Hannity has even exclaimed the “outrageous” proposal by Maryland Senator Chuck Schumer to break up some of the oil giants, contradicting his supposed support for “free market competition”. Instead of placing the blame on oil giants like Exxon-Mobil for the high cost of gas, he has put the blame of Senator Schumer, for reasons only known to Hannity himself.

Additionally, Hannity has claimed that petrol taxes “don’t produce anything”, despite that gas taxes are the primary revenue resource funding the nation’s highways, and additionally mass transit infrastructure. Considering that the gas companies must have roads for their consumers to drive on, petrol taxes are simply nothing more than a massive subsidy to the oil giants.

Further parroting Conoco Phillips’ talking points, Hannity has said that the profits per dollar on gasoline are far behind that in many US industries, including food and beverages. What Hannity, and Conoco Phillips fail to point out, is that Americans do not have a need to purchase 20-50 gallons of soda pop on a weekly basis. But if gas companies make so little profit off a gallon of gas, as Hannity claims, then it makes one ponder why has gas companies’ profits skyrocketed at the same time that prices has risen at the pump? You could ask Hannity for the answer, but he would likely be parroting oil industry PR flacks. The truth is everyone knows the answer, as it couldn’t be clearer.

Terrorist Attacks At An All-Time High.

2006-04-24T23:34:00.000-07:00

The Associated Press is reporting that according to the US Government’s own figures, 2005 saw the most terrorist attacks since the government began keeping tabs on such numbers since the 1980’s. The National Counterterrorism Center, to release official figures soon, has said that worldwide terrorist attacks for 2005 have reached an all time high, exceeding 10,000 incidents. A NCTC official said that over 50% of the total increase of terrorists attacks happened in Iraq.

As Nitwit Planet noted in August of last year, the National Counterterrorism Center saw a massive spike in terrorist activity in 2004, with a total of 3,192 terrorist incidents, 60% of the 10 most deadly terrorist incidents occurring in Iraq. In 2003, the same year that the US went to war with Iraq, the Patterns of Global Terrorism report listed just 208 terrorist incidents.

Is it just me, or is a five hundred percent increase in terrorist attacks in just three years -the same years we have been in Iraq, where most of the terrorist incidents are occurring - seem to indicate that the Bush administration’s method of fighting a global war on terror has been a complete and total abysmal failure?

Once again, it has been proven, that the best way to fight terrorism, is to stop being terrorists.

Why Natalee Holloway Is Lucky.

2006-04-24T00:24:00.000-07:00

I saw this on News Hounds the other day, and thought it was so brilliant, that I could not help but repost it.

Why Natalee Holloway Is Lucky She Is Not Around to Make Accusations
Reported by Judy - April 20, 2006

Natalee Holloway is lucky she is not around to make accusations against anybody who may have done her harm. Why? Just look what has happened to the woman who says members of the Duke lacrosse team gang-raped her. Fox News has turned her into the criminal, attacking her credibility and rallying to the defense of the white privileged defendants in the case. It's all about the underlying political agenda of Fox News.

Everything on Fox News has a political agenda -- even coverage of missing white women, which we all know far exceeds the coverage of missing people of any other gender or race on this network. But what is the Fox News political agenda regarding missing white women and how does Fox News coverage of the Natalee Holloway disappearance and the alleged gang rape of a woman by members of the Duke lacrosse team exemplify that?

The thinking of Berkeley linguist George Lakoff -- Don't Think of An Elephant -- helps explain Fox News' political agenda in these matters. Fox News' editors and reporters subscribe to a world view in which men rule -- what Lakoff calls the strict father paradigm. The father is the boss in the family, and by extension, George Bush is the boss in the country, the world. Family members are subject to the strict father's severe discipline, which they need in order to learn how to survive in the world. Besides meting out discipline, the father's job is to protect the famly members from the dangerous outside world.

Lakoff contrasts this view of the world (he calls it a "frame") with the world view of progressives. Progressives see the family as made up of nurturing parents who are both equal and equally responsible for raising children in a loving environment that stresses empathy and caring over strict discipline. Now, according to Lakoff, most people have both world views embedded in their psyches but using certain words or phrases can activate one frame or another. When the strict father frame is active in viewers, George Bush and conservatives win. It is Fox News' job to keep that strict father frame active in its viewers at all times.

Within this world view, Fox News recognizes only two kinds of women -- victims and sexual deviants/whores. Natalee Holloway represents the first kind. In Fox News' world view, we can feel sorry for her because she has been a victim of the dangerous outside world. More importantly, we can feel sorry for her because she is no longer around to level charges against her accusers.

Suppose Natalee Holloway had been able to escape her attackers that night and go to the police with her story of what happened? Then Natalee Holloway would have slipped from the category of victim to sexual deviant -- the same Fox News category that encompasses the alleged victim in the Duke lacrosse gang rape case, the female teachers who have sex with their students, and most progressive women politicians, such as Hillary Clinton and Dianne Feinstein.

Why would Holloway have switched categories? Because her going to the police would necessarily have entailed making accusations against males. And unless those males were non-white, by making an accusation against a male, Natalee Holloway would have been challenging the authority of the strict father figure, which is the touchstone of so much conservative thinking. Strict father figures are to be obeyed, not challenged. Once a woman, even a likely victim such as Natalee Holloway, challenges that authority, they must be destroyed through character assassination, and the targets of her accusations must be defended at all costs because they are society's supreme authority figures -- privileged white males.

Fox News' agenda was never so clear as on "Dayside" on Thursday (April 20, 2006). The program featured first a segment on developments in the Duke lacrosse gang rape case. "Dayside" co-hosts Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy interviewed Russ Ferguson, the student body chief of staff at Duke University, who said the campus mood has switched from sympathy for the accuser to support for the lacrosse players. Issues of class and race of the accuser and the accused make that no surprise, but the decision of defense attorneys to begin aggressively spinning evidence, which they never make public, in favor of their clients also accounts for some of the switch.

Then Huddy and Jerrick went to questions from the audience, and who is the first person they call on? A guy from New Jersey who just happens to have known the family of one of the accused, Reade Silbermann. The New Jersey delivers a character defense of Silbermann, unrebutted in any way by a spokesperson for the victim or women's advocates, and laments how Silbermann will never be able to get his good name back when he is cleared. The audience applauds. (Amazing,isn't it, that Huddy and Jerrick were able to find this guy randomly in the audience on the first try? Is Fox News actively working with defense attorneys in this case to skew public opinion in favor of the defendants?)

Then "Dayside" went immediately to the Holloway case in Aruba. Julie Banderas cried no tears about the potential impact of trying the case in the press for the defendants in the Holloway case. In fact, she still is trying to implicate Joran van der Sloot even though police have arrested someone else.

The difference in treatment of the back-to-back stories was jarring and cried for an explanation.

Because Holloway is not around to make allegations, she can safely remain in the victim category. She is not challenging male authority, thus she is a "safe" victim. If she were alive and making allegations of a horrific experience at the hands of male attackers on the beach that night, Fox News would drop her like a whore with syphyllis. Natalee Holloway would become the issue to a much greater extent than she has so far -- what her sexual history was, what she told police and any inconsistencies that existed in her story, what kind of a woman goes to the beach with guys she doesn't know, and on and on -- and the white male suspects would become the victims.

There have been other cases of the strict father frame at work on Fox News. John Gibson's attack on CBS legal analyst Wendy Murphy on Wednesday (April 19, 2006) is one of them. His contempt for the victim was visceral. You could almost feel his outrage at the challenge to his authority as a strict father figure.

Which brings us back to Fox News' political agenda. Strong progressive women fall into the sexual deviant category not because of their sexual activity necessarily, but because of the threat they pose to the strict father paradigm. They are sexual deviants because they don't fit into the conservative frame of a family where the father rules without challenge. They must be attacked and destroyed unmercifully because every right-wing male knows that if Hillary Clinton is ever elected president, his authority within his own family is at risk -- or so he fears.

The challenge for progressives, according to Lakoff, is to avoid activating that strict father paradigm in American voters at all costs. In the case of women who cry rape, that means focusing on caring and compassion for the victim, in hopes of activating that nurturant parent frame that exists in many Americans' psyches and deactivating that strict parent frame.

The strict father frame never sleeps on Fox News. And that's why Fox News' watchers should not sleep either.

Link Of The Day.

2006-04-17T15:52:00.000-07:00

Here is the link of the day. Enjoy.

GOP Trashed in Special Elections.

2006-04-17T10:58:00.000-07:00

This from In These Times:

GOP Trashed in Special Elections
March 17, 2006
By Hans Johnson

Democrats are winning, often overwhelmingly, in districts and states that have backed Republicans in recent elections.

A drumbeat of corruption, deficits and war dead has begun to haunt Republican candidates as they hit the campaign trail. The macabre cadence is playing more widely than just federal races: Since November, it has become the background music in a series of state special elections.

Democrats are winning, often overwhelmingly, in districts and states that have backed Republicans in recent elections. The results show that state-level progressive candidates are better poised than at any time in the past 14 years to benefit from a defection of moderate conservatives and a slight left turn in the electorate.

In central Texas, nurse and former school board member Donna Howard beat Ben Bentzin in a Feb. 14 special state House race in suburban Travis County, outside Austin. Howard’s win signaled that Democrats can stand tough even in Republican-tilted districts imposed by “the DeLay-mander,” a revamping of federal districts now under scrutiny by the Supreme Court.

“People were receptive to the idea that someone was willing to talk about going into the legislature and actually making hard decisions, rather than following in lockstep with the failed leadership,” Howard told the Austin American-Statesman. Like other Democratic triumphs of late, her 58 to 42 percent victory came in a district that broke for the GOP in ‘04.

The same day in Kentucky, in a race that drew media attention and doorknockers from three states, Perry Clark, a veteran and Boy Scout volunteer, took the 37th state Senate seat. He won 54 to 46 percent in a district that snakes inland from the Ohio River on the southwest side of Louisville. It too was carried by the GOP in 2004.

Labor households were galvanized by recent Republican efforts to undermine Kentucky unions through a “right-to-work” law. In addition, Republican Gov. Ernie Fletcher is under investigation for filling state jobs with cronies in violation of rules on merit-based hiring. Both dynamics boosted Clark.

Next door in Virginia, Mark Herring took a state Senate seat in the D.C. suburbs that Democrats hadn’t even contested in 2002. The landslide 62 to 38 percent win on Jan. 31 sent shockwaves through the GOP, already reeling from a blow just three weeks earlier. In Jerry Fallwell’s stomping ground of Lynchburg, Shannon Valentine rode to a 58 to 42 win for a seat that also hadn’t drawn a Democratic challenger last time around.

Missouri, a battleground that rates as the best bellwether of presidential elections, has seen Democratic victories in conservative districts as well. In February, down in Ashcroft Country, the state’s southwest corner, Charles Dake claimed a state House seat, 56 to 44 percent, that his party hadn’t even sought in 2004.

Jane Bogetto got the ball rolling Nov. 8, beating the widow of the previous seat-holder in a district west of St. Louis. Bogetto, an adoptive mother of three who spotlighted her family in all her campaign mailings, faced smears trying to link her to late-term abortion and same-sex marriage. She prevailed 58 to 42 percent in a district the GOP had held for a generation.

“The hate stuff fired up the people working in my campaign, and it backfired. It just really turned off a lot of moderate Republicans,” Bogetto told the Webster-Kirkwood Times.

“I never thought I’d see a Democrat elected to the legislature,” local political analyst John Pohlmann told the Times. “A lot of suburbs all over the country are starting to trend to the Democrats, mainly because of women voters.”

That trend held in Minnesota. On Nov. 22, Terri Bonoff won a race for the 43rd state Senate seat in the collar communities west of Minneapolis. Once again, her 54 to 46 percent win was a reversal from the previous result, in 2002, favoring the GOP. Then, on Dec. 27, Tarryl Clark took a Senate seat in working-class St. Cloud, another turnaround from the ‘02 outcome. In both races, a novel coalition of environmental, housing, low-income, pro-choice and gay-rights activists used their lists and shoe leather to get out local voters. Their win not only put a hitch in right-wing plans to ram an anti-same-sex-marriage amendment through the legislature and onto the ‘06 ballot; it also produced a blueprint for an even better collaborative program this fall, when a U.S. Senate seat, U.S. House seats, the governor’s mansion and the state House are all up for grabs.

Finally, over the past three months in New Hampshire, where GOP activists still face charges for jamming opponents’ phones during the ‘02 campaign, candidates John Robinson, Penn Brown and Jim Aguiar won special elections for state House seats in districts that were swept by the GOP just a year earlier.

Between general elections in 1992 and 1994, then-Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour ballyhooed Republican wins in disparate states during the period and proclaimed a grassroots mandate against the Clinton administration. The trend foreshadowed huge GOP gains in November ‘94. Now this pattern is playing out again—for the other side.

It’s Time To Strike.

2006-04-14T14:44:00.000-07:00

With our nation headed down the tubes, with the war on the middle class, with an endless bloody war in Iraq, and the Squatter in the White House trying to whip up a nuclear war with Iran, many progressives are feeling uncomfortable, frustrated, and even helpless. I have heard so many say, “I don’t know what to do.”

But the answer is simple. Progressives made one major mistake in 2004. We put all our eggs in one basket, that was, do everything possible to get John Kerry elected. It worked, but the election, again, was stolen, this time in Ohio. This left 50% of the country holding a bag with broken eggs. Should we do the same thing this time, just waiting and hoping that the Democrats can take back the House and Senate? Obviously, that should be something we all should be working for, but we must not make the same mistake as we did in 2004.

What is utterly amazing to me is that the answer which so eludes us is right under our noses. All we must do is take a good hard look at the war machine that is the US Military Industrial Complex, and simply say, “I’m not going to participate anymore.” It starts with all of us, right here, right now. It is a nation-wide general strike.

One would have to wonder that a general strike would be the most difficult thing we could possibly pull off, just imagine the organization involved! But really, it’s not that difficult. All you have to do is just say, “Stop”. Stop consuming. Stop going to work. Call in sick if you can. Make your living costs drop to zero. Turn off the power in your house. Don’t call anybody on the phone. Don’t buy any groceries, but if you do, just buy what you absolutely need. Don’t drive your car unless you have to, besides it’s a nice time of year to start walking. Don’t buy gas. Don’t go to the mall. Don’t do anything. And most importantly, don’t wait for your neighbor to join you. Right here, right now, just stop.

No one seems to stop and think about it, but the war machine that is killing Iraqis, killing our fellow Americans, and waging a relentless war on the middle class, can only do so with our assistance, our labor, our participation, and ultimately, our acquiescence. All you have to do is stop participating in that machine, and it will crumble. I, for one, have long ago grown tired of the blood on my hands. How about you?

President Bush: In His Own Words, Part Duh.

2006-04-12T03:44:00.000-07:00

We have all long suspected that President Bush stepped out of line when God was handing out brains. This week, our suspicions, if any of us were still in doubt, were put to rest. In a move that could well prove that Bush’s handlers are quite possibly as dumb as he is, the President addressed students at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), a division of Johns Hopkins University on Monday. One could hardly think of a worse audience for Bush to address: smart kids studying American foreign policy.

The worse mistake was for the Q & A session, in which Bush repeatedly made an imbecile out of himself. But this question’s answer, was unbelievable.

A student asked:

“Mister President, I agree with your assertion that Iraq is going to serve as a model for reformers - democratic reformers - in the Middle East, but at the same time I believe that whenever the seas are rough that despots of the Middle East keep their heads down until the winds blow, and then they continue to do the exact same thing that they’ve been doing for generations. So, I’m wondering sir, what pressures are we putting or planning to put on these despots, some of whom are our allies?”

Fairly reasonable question, right? It hardly seems like this would stump anyone. Hell, President Chucklenuts could just blither on for a minute or two about the importance of diplomacy, right? Here was Bush’s answer. Read very carefully, as it’s a bit hard to make sense of it:

“I believe that it’s very important for people to be, to listen. And, uh, therefore I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m, I’m a person who does a lot of my work in private. This is a defining moment in my judgment on these debates. I got a pretty good antennae. You know, I’m able to get a pretty good sense of how people are trending. And, uh, it’s a, uh, I would hope that out of this school comes people who are confident in American values, and confident in our ability to compete. Now we gotta do smart things, and uh, and so, we just hope, I hope, look I’m not telling you what your curriculum is, but uh, it’s something worth talking about. These are, these happen to be the big trends of our society. And, and it’s gonna take in my judgment a future generation of people standing up not losing our, look at the 1920’s in our country’s history. We shut down immigration. We had huge trade tariffs, and, uh, we were isolationists. They didn’t serve our country well in my judgment. Alright, I gotta go to work.”

If you can’t believe your eyes, then here, go ahead, and believe your ears, if you can.

The only thing this leaves me with is one unanswered question, that perhaps the students at SAIS might be somewhat more qualified to answer than anyone in the Bush administration. Is stupidity an impeachable offense?

Are Republicans Child Molesters?

2006-04-10T03:58:00.000-07:00

Last week it was revealed that the deputy press secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, Brian J. Doyle, 56, was arrested on charges that he attempted to have sex with a 14-year-old girl via the internet. Doyle, who was actually soliciting an undercover Florida detective, was arrested at his Silver Spring home on 7 counts of using a computer to seduce a child and 16 counts of transmitting harmful materials to minors.

According to the Polk County Sheriff Department, Doyle had given the detective his office phone number, and urged her to buy a web cam so he could watch her defile herself.

Amazingly, this isn’t the only time DHS has had some problems with staff members engaging in sexual activity with minors. Frank Figueroa, special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tampa, Florida, is facing trial on charges of exposing himself to a teenage girl at a mall.

As disturbing as this is, later in the week a similar sounding sexual scandal came to light. Republican Steven Baden, an Ohio commissioner for Henry County was arraigned on charges of stalking 14 year-old Shyane Miller. According to Miller, Baden got out of his car at the Broadway Food Center in South Toledo and said, “come here little girl,” before chasing her on foot. The girl’s mother said that Miller is now terrified to alone and will need counseling.

Ohio commissioner Republican Steven Baden
will not be stalking 14 year-old girls anymore.

After hearing this, I began to wonder if this was a coincidence. Is this just the reality we live in today in a society of loose sexual standards and morals? Or is there a specific pattern of deviant sexual behavior among certain kinds of people? I was shocked to find the latter in a very big way.

As Armchair Subversive has well documented, that behavior pattern is exhibited by a certain group of people in a very significant way. For instance:

Republican benefactor of conservative Christian groups, Richard A. Dasen Sr., was found guilty of raping a 15-year old girl. Dasen, 62, who is married with grown children and several grandchildren, has allegedly told police that over the past decade he paid more than $1 million to have sex with a large number of young women.

Republican County Constable Larry Dale Floyd was arrested on suspicion of soliciting sex with an 8-year old girl. Floyd has repeatedly won elections for Denton County, Texas, constable.

Republican judge Mark Pazuhanich pleaded no contest to fondling a 10-year old girl and was sentenced to 10 years probation.

Republican Party leader Bobby Stumbo was arrested for having sex with a 5-year old boy.

Republican teacher and former city councilman John Collins pleaded guilty to sexually molesting 13 and 14 year old girls.

Republican Mayor Philip Giordano is serving a 37-year sentence in federal prison for sexually abusing 8- and 10-year old girls.

Republican Mayor John Gosek was arrested on charges of soliciting sex from two 15-year old girls.

Republican County Commissioner David Swartz pleaded guilty to molesting two girls under the age of 11 and was sentenced to 8 years in prison.

Republican legislator Edison Misla Aldarondo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping his daughter between the ages of 9 and 17.

Republican Committeeman John R. Curtain was charged with molesting a teenage boy and unlawful sexual contact with a minor.

Republican anti-abortion activist Howard Scott Heldreth is a convicted child rapist in Florida.

Republican zoning supervisor, Boy Scout leader and Lutheran church president Dennis L. Rader pleaded guilty to performing a sexual act on an 11-year old girl he murdered.

Republican campaign consultant Tom Shortridge was sentenced to three years probation for taking nude photographs of a 15-year old girl.

Republican pastor Mike Hintz, whom George W. Bush commended during the 2004 presidential campaign, surrendered to police after admitting to a sexual affair with a female juvenile.

Republican legislator Peter Dibble pleaded no contest to having an inappropriate relationship with a 13-year-old girl.

Republican advertising consultant Carey Lee Cramer was charged with molesting his 9-year old step-daughter after including her in an anti-Gore television commercial.

Republican Congressman Donald "Buz" Lukens was found guilty of having sex with a female minor and sentenced to one month in jail.

Republican fundraiser Richard A. Delgaudio was found guilty of child porn charges and paying two teenage girls to pose for sexual photos.

Republican activist Mark A. Grethen convicted on six counts of sex crimes involving children.

Republican activist Randal David Ankeney pleaded guilty to attempted sexual assault on a child.

Republican Congressman Dan Crane had sex with a female minor working as a congressional page.

Republican activist and Christian Coalition leader Beverly Russell admitted to an incestuous relationship with his step daughter.

Republican Judge Ronald C. Kline was placed under house arrest for child molestation and possession of child pornography.

Republican Committee Chairman Jeffrey Patti was arrested for distributing a video clip of a 5-year-old girl being raped.

Republican activist Marty Glickman was taken into custody by Florida police on four counts of unlawful sexual activity with an underage girl and one count of delivering the drug LSD.

Republican legislative aide Howard L. Brooks was charged with molesting a 12-year old boy and possession of child pornography.

Republican Senate candidate John Hathaway was accused of having sex with his 12-year old baby sitter and withdrew his candidacy after the allegations were reported in the media.

Republican preacher Stephen White, who demanded a return to traditional values, was sentenced to jail after offering $20 to a 14-year-old boy for permission to perform oral sex on him.

Republican talk show host Jon Matthews pleaded guilty to exposing his genitals to an 11 year old girl.

Republican anti-gay activist Earl "Butch" Kimmerling was sentenced to 40 years in prison for molesting an 8-year old girl after he attempted to stop a gay couple from adopting her.

Republican Party leader Paul Ingram pleaded guilty to six counts of raping his daughters and served 14 years in federal prison.

Republican election board official Kevin Coan was sentenced to two years probation for soliciting sex over the internet from a 14-year old girl.
Republican politician Andrew Buhr was charged with two counts of first degree sodomy with a 13-year old boy.

Republican politician Keith Westmoreland was arrested on seven felony counts of lewd and lascivious exhibition to girls under the age of 16 (i.e. exposing himself to children).

Republican anti-abortion activist John Allen Burt was found guilty of molesting a 15-year old girl.

Republican County Councilman Keola Childs pleaded guilty to molesting a male child.

Republican activist John Butler was charged with criminal sexual assault on a teenage girl.

Republican candidate Richard Gardner admitted to molesting his two daughters.

Republican Councilman and former Marine Jack W. Gardner was convicted of molesting a 13-year old girl.

Republican County Commissioner Merrill Robert Barter pleaded guilty to unlawful sexual contact and assault on a teenage boy.

Republican City Councilman Fred C. Smeltzer, Jr. pleaded no contest to raping a 15 year-old girl and served 6-months in prison.

Republican strategist and Citadel Military College graduate Robin Vanderwall sex from boys and girls over the internet. was convicted in Virginia on five counts of soliciting sex from boys and girls over the internet.

Republican city councilman Mark Harris, who is described as a "good military man" and "church goer," was convicted of repeatedly having sex with an 11-year-old girl and sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Republican director of the "Young Republican Federation" Nicholas Elizondo molested his 6-year old daughter and was sentenced to six years in prison.
Republican congressman and anti-gay activist Robert Bauman was charged with having sex with a 16-year-old boy he picked up at a gay bar.

Does anyone see a pattern here? As I have noted on Nitwit Planet previously, conservatives often show several symptoms of clinical psychopathy, particularly being egocentric, having a lack of remorse, guilt, or empathy, and are deceitful, manipulative, and impulsive.

Is there a link between psychopathy and child molestation? According to The Journal of American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law, there is.

“When the relationship between psychopathy and deviant sexual arousal was evaluated in [incest offenders, child molesters, and rapists], several significant correlations emerged. However, a finer analysis of these correlations revealed that child molesters evidenced a significant correlation between psychopathy and the Rape Index and psychopathy and the Pedophile Index.”

So, in conclusion, not only is there a link between child molestation and psychopathy, but there is a link between psychopathy and conservatism. Which leads us to our original question. Are Republicans child molesters? The evidence seems to point in that direction.

Our Incompetent, Idiot, Liar President.

2006-03-17T02:47:00.000-08:00

The non-partisan Pew Research Center has found that President Bush’s approval ratings are now at a record low of 33%. It leads one to wonder, “Georgie, how low can you go!”

But that isn’t the most interesting thing the Pew Research Center discovered. When asking the public to give one-word descriptions of President Bush, in May of 2003 52% of the public used a positive word, the most popular being, “Good”, “Christian”, and “Honest”.

Three years later, only 28% of the public used those words, or any positive words to describe him. In March of 2006 48% of the public used negative words to describe him, the most popular words being “Incompetent”, “Idiot”, and “Liar”. Others described him as “Arrogant”, “Ass”, “Jerk”, “Stupid”, “Selfish”, and “Untrustworthy”.

Remembering The Iraq War’s Pollyanna Pundits.

2006-03-16T02:44:00.000-08:00

This from Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting:

“The Final Word Is Hooray!”
Remembering The Iraq War’s Pollyanna Pundits.

Weeks after the invasion of Iraq began, Fox News Channel host Brit Hume delivered a scathing speech critiquing the media's supposedly pessimistic assessment of the Iraq War.

"The majority of the American media who were in a position to comment upon the progress of the war in the early going, and even after that, got it wrong," Hume complained in the April 2003 speech (Richmond Times Dispatch, 4/25/04). "They didn't get it just a little wrong. They got it completely wrong."

Hume was perhaps correct--but almost entirely in the opposite sense. Days or weeks into the war, commentators and reporters made premature declarations of victory, offered predictions about lasting political effects and called on the critics of the war to apologize. Three years later, the Iraq War grinds on at the cost of at least tens of thousands of lives and hundreds of billions of dollars.

Around the same time as Hume's speech, syndicated columnist Cal Thomas declared (4/16/03): "All of the printed and voiced prophecies should be saved in an archive. When these false prophets again appear, they can be reminded of the error of their previous ways and at least be offered an opportunity to recant and repent. Otherwise, they will return to us in another situation where their expertise will be acknowledged, or taken for granted, but their credibility will be lacking."

Gathered here are some of the most notable media comments from the early days of the Iraq War.

Declaring Victory

"Iraq Is All but Won; Now What?"
(Los Angeles Times headline, 4/10/03)

"Now that the combat phase of the war in Iraq is officially over, what begins is a debate throughout the entire U.S. government over America's unrivaled power and how best to use it."
(CBS reporter Joie Chen, 5/4/03)

"Congress returns to Washington this week to a world very different from the one members left two weeks ago. The war in Iraq is essentially over and domestic issues are regaining attention."
(NPR's Bob Edwards, 4/28/03)

"Tommy Franks and the coalition forces have demonstrated the old axiom that boldness on the battlefield produces swift and relatively bloodless victory. The three-week swing through Iraq has utterly shattered skeptics' complaints."
(Fox News Channel's Tony Snow, 4/27/03)

"The only people who think this wasn't a victory are Upper Westside liberals, and a few people here in Washington."
(Charles Krauthammer, Inside Washington, WUSA-TV, 4/19/03)

"We had controversial wars that divided the country. This war united the country and brought the military back."
(Newsweek's Howard Fineman--MSNBC, 5/7/03)

"We're all neo-cons now."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"The war was the hard part. The hard part was putting together a coalition, getting 300,000 troops over there and all their equipment and winning. And it gets easier. I mean, setting up a democracy is hard, but it is not as hard as winning a war."
(Fox News Channel's Fred Barnes, 4/10/03)

"Oh, it was breathtaking. I mean I was almost starting to think that we had become inured to everything that we'd seen of this war over the past three weeks; all this sort of saturation. And finally, when we saw that it was such a just true, genuine expression. It was reminiscent, I think, of the fall of the Berlin Wall. And just sort of that pure emotional expression, not choreographed, not stage-managed, the way so many things these days seem to be. Really breathtaking."
(Washington Post reporter Ceci Connolly, appearing on Fox News Channel on 4/9/03, discussing the pulling down of a Saddam Hussein statue in Baghdad, an event later revealed to have been a U.S. military PSYOPS operation [stunt]--Los Angeles Times, 7/3/04)

Mission Accomplished?

"The war winds down, politics heats up.... Picture perfect. Part Spider-Man, part Tom Cruise, part Ronald Reagan. The president seizes the moment on an aircraft carrier in the Pacific."
(PBS's Gwen Ifill, 5/2/03, on George W. Bush's "Mission Accomplished" speech)

"We're proud of our president. Americans love having a guy as president, a guy who has a little swagger, who's physical, who's not a complicated guy like Clinton or even like Dukakis or Mondale, all those guys, McGovern. They want a guy who's president. Women like a guy who's president. Check it out. The women like this war. I think we like having a hero as our president. It's simple. We're not like the Brits."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 5/1/03)

"He looked like an alternatively commander in chief, rock star, movie star, and one of the guys."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, on Bush's 'Mission Accomplished' speech, 5/1/03)

Neutralizing the Opposition

"Why don't the damn Democrats give the president his day? He won today. He did well today."
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, 4/9/03)

"What's he going to talk about a year from now, the fact that the war went too well and it's over? I mean, don't these things sort of lose their--Isn't there a fresh date on some of these debate points?"
(MSNBC's Chris Matthews, speaking about Howard Dean--4/9/03)

"If image is everything, how can the Democratic presidential hopefuls compete with a president fresh from a war victory?"
(CNN's Judy Woodruff, 5/5/03)

"It is amazing how thorough the victory in Iraq really was in the broadest context..... And the silence, I think, is that it's clear that nobody can do anything about it. There isn't anybody who can stop him. The Democrats can't oppose--cannot oppose him politically."
(Washington Post reporter Jeff Birnbaum-- Fox News Channel, 5/2/03)

Nagging the “Naysayers”

"Now that the war in Iraq is all but over, should the people in Hollywood who opposed the president admit they were wrong?"
(Fox News Channel's Alan Colmes, 4/25/03)

"I doubt that the journalists at the New York Times and NPR or at ABC or at CNN are going to ever admit just how wrong their negative pronouncements were over the past four weeks."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/9/03)

"I'm waiting to hear the words 'I was wrong' from some of the world's most elite journalists, politicians and Hollywood types.... I just wonder, who's going to be the first elitist to show the character to say: 'Hey, America, guess what? I was wrong'? Maybe the White House will get an apology, first, from the New York Times' Maureen Dowd. Now, Ms. Dowd mocked the morality of this war....

"Do you all remember Scott Ritter, you know, the former chief U.N. weapons inspector who played chief stooge for Saddam Hussein? Well, Mr. Ritter actually told a French radio network that -- quote, "The United States is going to leave Baghdad with its tail between its legs, defeated." Sorry, Scott. I think you've been chasing the wrong tail, again.

"Maybe disgraced commentators and politicians alike, like Daschle, Jimmy Carter, Dennis Kucinich, and all those others, will step forward tonight and show the content of their character by simply admitting what we know already: that their wartime predictions were arrogant, they were misguided and they were dead wrong. Maybe, just maybe, these self-anointed critics will learn from their mistakes. But I doubt it. After all, we don't call them 'elitists' for nothing."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 4/10/03)

"Over the next couple of weeks when we find the chemical weapons this guy was amassing, the fact that this war was attacked by the left and so the right was so vindicated, I think, really means that the left is going to have to hang its head for three or four more years."
(Fox News Channel's Dick Morris, 4/9/03)

"This has been a tough war for commentators on the American left. To hope for defeat meant cheering for Saddam Hussein. To hope for victory meant cheering for President Bush. The toppling of Mr. Hussein, or at least a statue of him, has made their arguments even harder to defend. Liberal writers for ideologically driven magazines like The Nation and for less overtly political ones like The New Yorker did not predict a defeat, but the terrible consequences many warned of have not happened. Now liberal commentators must address the victory at hand and confront an ascendant conservative juggernaut that asserts United States might can set the world right."
(New York Times reporter David Carr, 4/16/03)

"Well, the hot story of the week is victory.... The Tommy Franks-Don Rumsfeld battle plan, war plan, worked brilliantly, a three-week war with mercifully few American deaths or Iraqi civilian deaths.... There is a lot of work yet to do, but all the naysayers have been humiliated so far.... The final word on this is, hooray."
(Fox News Channel's Morton Kondracke, 4/12/03)

"Some journalists, in my judgment, just can't stand success, especially a few liberal columnists and newspapers and a few Arab reporters."
(CNN's Lou Dobbs, 4/14/03)

"Sean Penn is at it again. The Hollywood star takes out a full-page ad out in the New York Times bashing George Bush. Apparently he still hasn't figured out we won the war."
(MSNBC's Joe Scarborough, 5/30/03)

Cakewalk?

"This will be no war -- there will be a fairly brief and ruthless military intervention.... The president will give an order. [The attack] will be rapid, accurate and dazzling.... It will be greeted by the majority of the Iraqi people as an emancipation. And I say, bring it on."
(Christopher Hitchens, in a 1/28/03 debate-- cited in the Observer, 3/30/03)

"I will bet you the best dinner in the gaslight district of San Diego that military action will not last more than a week. Are you willing to take that wager?"
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 1/29/03)

"It won't take weeks. You know that, professor. Our military machine will crush Iraq in a matter of days and there's no question that it will."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"There's no way. There's absolutely no way. They may bomb for a matter of weeks, try to soften them up as they did in Afghanistan. But once the United States and Britain unleash, it's maybe hours. They're going to fold like that."
(Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, 2/10/03)

"He [Saddam Hussein] actually thought that he could stop us and win the debate worldwide. But he didn't--he didn't bargain on a two- or three week war. I actually thought it would be less than two weeks."
(NBC reporter Fred Francis, Chris Matthews Show, 4/13/03)

Weapons of Mass Destruction

NPR's Mara Liasson: Where there was a debate about whether or not Iraq had these weapons of mass destruction and whether we can find it...

Brit Hume: No, there wasn't. Nobody seriously argued that he didn't have them beforehand. Nobody.
(Fox News Channel, April 6, 2003)

"Speaking to the U.N. Security Council last week, Secretary of State Colin Powell made so strong a case that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is in material breach of U.N. resolutions that only the duped, the dumb and the desperate could ignore it."
(Cal Thomas, syndicated column, 2/12/03)

"Saddam could decide to take Baghdad with him. One Arab intelligence officer interviewed by Newsweek spoke of "the green mushroom" over Baghdad--the modern-day caliph bidding a grotesque bio-chem farewell to the land of the living alongside thousands of his subjects as well as his enemies. Saddam wants to be remembered. He has the means and the demonic imagination. It is up to U.S. armed forces to stop him before he can achieve notoriety for all time."
(Newsweek, 3/17/03)

"Chris, more than anything else, real vindication for the administration. One, credible evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Two, you know what? There were a lot of terrorists here, really bad guys. I saw them."
(MSNBC reporter Bob Arnot, 4/9/03)

"Even in the flush of triumph, doubts will be raised. Where are the supplies of germs and poison gas and plans for nukes to justify pre-emption? (Freed scientists will lead us to caches no inspectors could find.) What about remaining danger from Baathist torturers and war criminals forming pockets of resistance and plotting vengeance? (Their death wish is our command.)"
(New York Times' William Safire, 4/10/03)

Dan Rather, who certainly wasn’t no Edward R. Murrow, has stepped down from his post for “getting his facts wrong” on one story. When will the rest of these nazi apologists step down?

President Bush: In His Own Words.

2006-03-12T21:39:00.000-08:00

I would like to apologize to my readers for not updating my blog for some time. I have been quite busy as of late, and will continue to be, while my band records our new record.

That aside, I heard a clip of President Bush the other day on the Mike Malloy show, and was so utterly shocked by it, that I couldn’t help but sharing it with all of you.

Speaking of the devastation that STILL is not cleaned up in New Orleans, President Bush said:

“A lot of Mississippi has been cleaned up because a lot of the local folks decided to take that tact. Now the problem in Louisiana as far as debris clean up, is that, like in the lower Ninth, a lot of the people haven’t come back to their homes yet to seen the devastation. They’ve been displaced around the country. And until people are able to come home, and until people are clear about what the rules will be, and what the funding mechanism will be, you know, the debris removal will be slow. When we first got down there, the government will remove debris from public property, but not private…will pay to remove debris off of public property, but not private property. Simplest way to explain why not is you start removing debris off of private property and a guy shows up and says, ‘Where’s my million dollar necklace.’”

Don’t believe it? Here’s the audio.

Does anyone doubt that this nitwit jackass in the White House is white supremacist?

Democrats: Get Up and Walk Out.

2006-01-26T02:57:00.000-08:00

By William Rivers Pitt

MEMO
To: Congressional Democrats
From: William Rivers Pitt
RE: A bold maneuver
- - - -
I have a wild and crazy idea.

George W. Bush's delivery of the State of the Union address will take place on Tuesday, January 31, a little more than a week from now. It is my strong belief that every single Democrat present in the House chamber for the speech should, at a predetermined moment, stand up and walk out. No yelling. No heated words. Every Democrat should simply stand silently and leave.

Crazy, I know. Crazy, and possibly the best idea ever put before a body of Democrats since the New Deal.

Understand this, congressional Democrats, and understand it well: you are not dealing merely with a body of political opponents in the GOP. You are dealing with a group of people that want you exterminated politically. The days of walking the halls of the Rayburn Building, sharing a bourbon with a colleague from the other side of the aisle, and hammering out a compromise are as dead as Julius Caesar. Collegiality is out. Mutual respect is out. They want you gone for good. Erased. Destroyed.

And you have been far too polite about this. The writing has been on the wall for a while now. Back in 1995, Republican Senator Phil Gramm said, "We're going to keep building the party until we're hunting Democrats with dogs." That was eleven years ago. If you listen close, you can hear the beasts baying in the distance, waiting to slip the leash. Your limp tactics in the face of the assault upon you, your vacillation, your strange hope that maybe the GOP will be nicer tomorrow, has left you all smelling like Alpo.

For the love of God, you are being compared to Osama bin Laden all over network television because some within your ranks have had the courage to question the war in Iraq. It hasn't been subtle. Bin Laden, according to the right-wing talking heads, is getting his talking points straight from Howard Dean. These are the out-front spokespeople for the folks running the GOP right now. If you think there is compromise to be had with these people, if you think there is quarter to be given to you, then I have a nice, big red bridge to sell you in San Francisco.

I know you believe the Abramoff scandal is going to be your bread and butter in the upcoming midterm elections. I hate to break it to you, but you have already been outflanked. The television nitwits have flooded the airwaves with the meme that this is a "two-party scandal," despite the fact that Abramoff would have sooner lit himself on fire than give money to a Democrat. As you have been collectively incapable of setting the record straight in public, with the exception of a two-minute crunch between Howard Dean and Wolf Blitzer on CNN that left Blitzer spluttering impotently, understand that "this scandal affects both parties" is now commonly accepted fact all across the land.

Oh, yeah, P.S., the investigation is being run out of the Department Justice. If this scandal does touch some sixty Republican officeholders, as Abramoff's donation history indicates, do you really think this White House is going to let the investigation get far enough to do real damage? If so, I again need to mention that big red bridge I have for sale.

In all likelihood, however, the White House won't even need to derail the Abramoff investigation to save Republicans from their ridiculous greed. Did you see the Washington Post headline from Friday? It read, "Rove: GOP to Use Terror as Campaign Issue." In reality, the headline should have read "GOP to Use Terror as Campaign Tactic." Once again, the Republicans are going to try to win midterm elections by scaring the hell out of the American people. This time, the fear factor will center around Iran and nuclear weapons.

The intelligence specialists in the United States, Germany and Israel all agree that Iran is between three and five years away from being able to manufacture nuclear weapons. This, of course, is based on the premise that such manufacture is Iran's goal. Take it as a given that it is, and we have at least three years to use diplomacy, economic pressures and possibly sanctions to keep them from creating these bombs.

But "three to five years" isn't going to help the GOP win the midterm elections. They need things to be scary, and they need things to be scary now. The same right-wing groups that ginned up the fantasy that Iraq was laden with weapons of mass destruction, and was an imminent threat, are now at work building up a martial froth about Iran. They did this in time for the midterms last time, and are preparing to do it again.

United Press International carried a story last Thursday about a group called the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. This group, according to the UPI story, claims that, "Tehran is planning a nuclear weapons test before the Iranian New Year on March 20, 2006." FDI, according to the story, offered absolutely no proof to back this claim. But that's not three to five years. That's less than ten weeks. Scary stuff, right?

Take a closer look, however, and you can see the fingerprints of the architects of our current Iraq boondoggle all over this. The Foundation for Democracy in Iran is run by a man named Kenneth Timmerman. Timmerman is umbilically connected to the godfather of right-wing think tanks, the American Enterprise Institute. It was the American Enterprise Institute that spawned the Project for the New American Century, the think tank that gave us Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, the original noise about Iraqi WMD, and the idea that a military takeover of the entire Mideast is a bully idea. The same people that terrorized the American people into unnecessary war in Iraq are preparing to do the same with Iran, and all in time for the midterms.

One must also note the irony of the suggested date for this Iranian nuclear test. March 20, 2006, for those not paying attention, is the three-year anniversary of our invasion of Iraq. And round and round we go.

You've been outflanked, Democrats. Abramoff won't help you, and the noise machine is preparing to terrorize the American people into such a distracted state that anything you say in the next ten months will be lost amid the howling. The midterms are pretty much a done deal, and your continued marginalization will proceed at speed.

You can stomp your feet and yell at the wall. You can put your head in your hands and weep. You can sit silently and be simply satisfied that your own job-for-life is secure, thanks to your friendly district back home, and be damned to actually doing anything of substance. In other words, you can continue to do what you've been doing since this outrageous assault on basic American democracy began.

Or you can stand up.

It takes a spine to stand up. Find yours. Get up and walk out of the State of the Union speech. Turn your backs on the blizzard of lies and empty promises that are sure to pour forth from that podium. Give it exactly what it deserves.

Walk outside to the steps of the Capitol Building and hold a Counter-State-of-the-Union. Lay out your plans for a better future. Explain how you will reform the system that spawned Mr. Abramoff. Demand answers and explanations about what is happening in Iraq, what is happening over at the National Security Agency, and why this administration believes itself to be completely above the law.

I can even offer a bit of text for your opening statement. "Three years ago during this very speech," your leading spokesperson can say from those steps, "Mr. Bush told us that Iraq was in possession of 26,000 liters of anthrax, 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin, 500 tons - which is one million pounds - of sarin, mustard and VX nerve agent, 30,000 missiles to deliver the stuff, mobile biological weapons labs, al Qaeda connections, and uranium from Niger for use in a robust nuclear weapons program. He said all this three years ago, during this all-important annual address, and all of it was a lie. The American people deserve an explanation."

See? It's easy. All it takes is courage.

What I am talking about is political theater on a grand scale. No opposition party in American history has ever turned their backs on a President and walked out of a State of the Union address. No opposition party has faced the degree of potential extermination the Democrats face today. The stakes have never been higher. You are dealing with a President who wants to make his Executive powers absolute, and with a Republican party that has been usurped from soup to nuts by extremists that would be cartoonish if they were not so very real.

Abramoff won't help you. The fear factor will subsume you. You can sit there and take it, clapping politely as the ram rolls towards you, or you can stand up and make yourselves relevant again. To walk out of the speech would be a huge statement, bold and potentially dangerous. But if you don't do something bold, something grand and unprecedented, something to take back the initiative, you will join the Whigs in the dustbin of history.

Stand up. Walk out. You have a week to get this organized.

Further GOP Lobbyist Corruption.

2006-01-11T05:29:00.000-08:00

Bloomberg News With Tom DeLay having stepped down from the House Majority Leader position, Republicans are preparing to elect a new leader in the House in just 3 weeks. The clear candidates are the current acting majority leader, Roy Blunt (R-MI) and John Boehner (R-OH). But the question should be asked, are Blunt and Boehner just as corrupt as DeLay?

Blunt, who had tapped DeLay to be his chief deputy in 1999, have several things in common. Both men’s political action committees employ Jim Ellis, who was indicted with DeLay. DeLay’s PAC gave Blunt’s PAC $150,000 in 2000, and Blunt’s PAC gave $10,000 to DeLay’s non-profit foundation in the same year. Both PACs have employed Alexander Strategy Group, which included indicted lobbyist Jack Abramoff as a former partner. Additionally, Blunt served as the GOP’s official liaison to K Street, having rounded up 200 lobbyists last April at the Capitol to discuss their party’s agenda.

But is Boehner any better? The top donor to Boehner’s PAC was the Reston, Virginia based student-loan company Sallie Mae. Sallie Mae contributed $65,000 to Boehner’s Freedom Project, as the House Education and Workforce Committee, which Boehner chairs, prepared to write new legislation governing student loans. In ‘95 Boehner handed out campaign checks from the tobacco industry to members of the House floor when Congress was considering eliminating a tobacco subsidy.

Tom DeLay Is Denied Again.

2006-01-11T05:02:00.000-08:00

Two days after former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay was forced to relinquish the House leadership position, Texas’ highest criminal court denied DeLay’s request that the money laundering charges be dropped against him.

This comes as the Alexander Strategy Group, one of K Street’s biggest lobbying firms has announced that it will be forced to close over its ties to Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff. Additionally, the firm employed DeLay’s wife, Christine DeLay for four years.

US Spends More On Health Care Than Ever Before.

2006-01-11T04:10:00.000-08:00

The latest government calculations has found that due to rising costs, health care now consumes 16% of US economic output, the highest proportion ever. Health care costs has continued to rise substantially faster than inflation or wages, increasing nearly 8% in 2004 alone. In that same year inflation rose by 2.7%, while wages remained essentially unchanged.

About a third of the American population have no heath care at all, with large number of them being minorities and the poor.

From 1993 to 2004 the cost of health care has doubled, and many companies are complaining that employee and retiree health costs are making them less competitive, in comparison to other nations who have national health care systems.

New Jersey Suspends Executions.

2006-01-10T06:02:00.000-08:00

New Jersey lawmakers voted yesterday to suspend all executions while a task forces examines the fairness and the cost of imposing the death penalty. The outgoing Governor, Richard J. Codey is expected to sign the bill before leaving office later this month.

The measure would create a 13-member commission to study the death penalty in New Jersey, and release their findings in November.

New Jersey has become the third state, behind Illinois and Maryland to suspend executions to examine the fairness of the death penalty.

State Senator Republican Diane Allen said that, “We’ve heard about people who have been put to death and were then found to be innocent. We’ve looked at the cost, which is enormously more for someone on death row than for a person who’s imprisoned for life without parole.”

In light of several recent cases in which death row prisoners have been exonerated, at least 12 other states have appointed commissions to study the fairness in which the death penalty is carried out. 38 states permit people to be sentenced to death.

Americans Want A Democratic Congress.

2006-01-10T05:46:00.000-08:00

A new AP-Ipsos poll has found that Americans want a change in which political party controls Congress, preferring that Democrats take majority control. The poll found that Americans favored a Democratic controlled Congress to a GOP controlled Congress by 49% to 36%.

With President Bush’s job approval at 40%, and approval of Congress at only 34%, Americans are increasingly growing tired of the scandal-laden Republican Congress. While only a third of the country believes the United States is heading in the right direction, 63% of Americans disapprove of the job Congress is doing.

The War On The American Middle Class.

2006-01-09T06:03:00.000-08:00

US household income has been stagnant for the last 5 years. US infant mortality rates are on the rise. Millions of Americans have slipped into poverty. There is an unspoken war being waged against the American middle class, a class war that the world’s 2nd richest man Warren Buffett says that his class is winning.

The purpose of this war is nothing more than to redistribute as much wealth as possible from common Americans to the richest men in America, in an organized system of servitude to the American corporate elite.

No American is free from this war, not even your average McDonald’s burger flipper. Meanwhile, the US leads the industrialized world in gun shootings, robberies, infant mortality, and a long list of several other categories. And while the Reich Wingers may blame this on race, perhaps it is actually the cause of this very class war.

So what would we find out if we compared the standard of living between a McDonald’s burger flipper living in San Antonio, Texas to your average McDonald’s burger flipper in France, and translated it into US currency?

For one, our McDonald’s worker in France spends 5 more hours a week with his family. In France a full time work week is 35 hours, as compared to the US’s 40. That gives that worker, if he has children, more time to rise them and make sure they are going to school, and staying out of trouble.

But that’s not all. If you are a woman and you have a child in the United States you will be granted 6 weeks off the job. But you will get no pay in that time. This law, the Family Medical Leave Act, was the first bill President Clinton signed into law. Conservatives have been outraged by it ever since. But what about a McDonald’s worker in France who has a child? She has a choice of two options. She can take a year off of work, and be paid $1000 a month, or she can take 3 years off at $700 a month. Additionally, families with two children receive an extra $350 subsidy in order to rise their children.

But that’s still not all. Should your child be born with some medical problems, you’re simply up the river without a paddle. Chances are that you simply cannot afford medical insurance for yourself or your family working at McDonald’s in San Antonio, Texas. That very same health care in France, and indeed in every other industrialized nation in the world is free to all their citizens. And not only that, but child care in France is free as well. Child care for the Texan mothers? How much can you afford?

But that’s still not all. That McDonald’s worker in San Antonio can work there for the rest of their lives, and will never get a paid vacation. Even for American workers who do get vacation, it is usually 1 to 2 weeks a year. What about that McDonald’s worker in France? After a year of employment, that worker will get a guaranteed 5 weeks off in paid vacation.

As your child starts to grow up, in San Antonio you can send him to public school, which is free from kindergarten to high school. Of course, conservatives have been fighting this for the last 20 years. But what about that child in France? Public education is available there from pre-school all the way up to earning your PhD in college.

Should you loose your job at McDonald’s, in San Antonio, Texas you might be able to get unemployment insurance, which would only be about 450 bucks for 26 weeks. Should the same happen to you in France, you will get a thousand dollars per month until you get another job.

But what about the cost of putting a roof over your head? In San Antonio, a two bedroom apartment for you to live in is roughly $700 a month. But in France, housing for low wage workers is only $200 a month.

And after years of working at McDonald’s in San Antonio you can retire at the age of 67 and collect social security. What is the retirement age in France? 60. Furthermore, life expectancies are longer in France than the United States, so in France you will be able to enjoy more of your golden years before you eventually kick the bucket.

And finally, what about pay? We all know that McDonald’s workers are scraping the bottom of the barrel…at least in the United States. In San Antonio, Texas a McDonald’s worker doesn’t have to be paid no more than $5.15 per hour. On average, McDonald’s tends to pay new hires between $5.25 and $5.75 per hour. But what about that McDonald’s worker in France? Adjusted for US current dollars, new hires at McDonalds in France make over $9.00 per hour.

And if that didn’t give you a moment to pause, then get this: The top 10 richest people in the United States, three of whom are from Microsoft, and another three who are from Wal-Mart, are worth $228.3 billion dollars. In France, the top 10 richest people are worth just $68.2 billion, and the richest person in the country, Liliane Bettencourt, is a woman.

2005: Twelve Months Of Hell For The GOP.

2005-12-30T08:53:00.000-08:00

2005 has been one hell of a year, particularly for the GOP. Republican Congressmen and Senators have seen themselves entangled in scandal after scandal, President Bush has seen his approval ratings tank, with calls for impeachment, and GOP Governors have been found guilty of ethics violations. 2005 saw so much trouble for the GOP, that it’s hard to remember it all. For this reason, Nitwit Planet takes our readers on a quick stroll through Memory Lane, to relive the year that was 2005.

January 2005 saw the inauguration of President Bush’s second term. But it wasn’t pain free. Due to widespread reports of voter fraud, Senator Barbara Boxer signed to contest the Electoral College count in Ohio. The House was forced to certify the election, so Bush could get his frat party on January 20th. On that freezing cold day, 10,000 peace activists took to the streets, lining Pennsylvania Ave., forcing the fat cats paying for the party to deal with the People. Some of those fat cats included CheveronTexaco, Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and Northrop Grumman. Who wouldda guessed?

But the news in January didn’t get better. A Freedom of Information Act request obtained by USA Today found that the Bush Administration paid conservative pundit Armstrong Williams $240,000 to promote Bush’s No Child Left Behind act. Bush’s Secretary of Education, Roderick Paige called the illegal propaganda an “outreach effort.”

The National Intelligence Council for the CIA couldn’t produce good news for the GOP either. They found that Iraq would be the training ground for the next generation of terrorists. Then a 220 paged Pentagon report entitled “Transition To And From Hostilities” said that the Bush administration needed another 350,000 troops in Iraq to bring a proper transition to peace in the nation. Furthermore, the David Kay report found that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction after all. Opps.

Shortly thereafter, a joint investigation by the Financial Times and the Italian business daily Il Sole 24 Ore found that the United States too was involved in the Oil-For-Food Scandal. It seemed that the Bush administration permitted 7 million barrels of oil be transferred to Jordan so that the nation could build up its reserves prior to going to war with Iraq. The transfer allowed a third of the $150 million dollar sale to go the Saddam Hussein.

A poll by the New York Times found Bush’s approval rating to be 49%, entering his second term with the lowest approval rating of any President in 50 years.

Bush nominated Condi Rice to be our next Secretary of State, which put Rice in the uneasy position of a Senate confirmation hearing. Senator Barbara Boxer was there to prove Rice was a bald face liar, using her own words against her:

“It was a case that said he was trying to reconstitute. He's trying to acquire nuclear weapons. Nobody ever said that it was going to be the next year.” -Condi Rice 7/30/2003

“The intelligence assessment was that he was reconstituting his nuclear program; that, left unchecked, he would have a nuclear weapon by the end of the year.” -Condi Rice 10/10/2004

It wasn’t long before the Secretary of Defense was on the run too. Rumsfeld was forced to cancel a trip to Germany to avoid being charged with War Crimes in a German court.

All of this didn’t look good, and it wasn’t long before the Bush administration attempt to push it’s “political capital” and proposing privatizing Social Security, a move so radical that the Republican chair of the House Ways and Means Committee Bill Thomas, and Republican Senator Olympia Snow both publicly opposed the plan. The proposal went steadily down-hill from there.

In February things seemed to be getting better for the GOP. At least until it was revealed by left-wing bloggers that a conservative White House Press Corp “journalist” Jeff Gannon was actually a homosexual prostitute, being paid to throw softball questions to Scotty McClellan.

By March things were looking rougher for the GOP, which meant that the President had to go on vacation again. Looking at their dipping poll numbers, and increasing criticism on the proposed Social Security privatization proposal, Bush cut his vacation short in order to sign into law the Terry Schiavo bill. A “talking points” memo was leaked that the move will rally pro-life America behind the GOP. Polling finds that the overwhelming majority of Americans are disgusted with the move.

By April the fallout of the Schiavo fiasco set even more eyes on House Majority Leader Tom DeLay. Republican Congressman Chris Shays was so disgusted with DeLay that he called on him to resign his post.

But DeLay wasn’t feeling the heat alone. The EPA under public pressure was forced to cancel a program that gave poor Florida families a thousand dollars in exchange for documenting the effects of poisoning their children with pesticides.

In May the GOP saw things begin to crumble. The Times of London published The Downing Street Memo, showing that the Bush administration had fixed the pre-war intelligence to fit their policy of invading Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney informed the American People that the Iraqi Insurgency was in its “last throws.”

On the lighter side, Alan Colmes talked to Republican anti-abortion activist Neal Horsley on his radio program, who admitted on the air that while he was growing up on the farm in Georgia his first girlfriend was a mule.

By July it was revealed in Newsweek that White House advisor Karl Rove had spoken to Time Magazine reporter Matthew Cooper about Valerie Plame just days before Robert Novak leaked Plame’s identity in a column. The GOP’s response was to release “talking points”, distributed by RNC Chairman Ken Mehlman to discredit Plame’s husband Joe Wilson. Days later, after Wilson was interviewed on Meet the Press, Republican Congressman Peter King said that Tim Russert ought “to be shot.”

In August US forces had seen an average increase of 50% in insurgent attacks from the year prior. A special election in Ohio’s 2nd Congressional District showed that Republicans were in deeper trouble than they thought. In a district that had not sent a Democrat to Congress in 40 years, with the previous Republican always easily winning the seat by 72% or more, the special election proved to be highly competitive. Democrat Paul Hackett, an Iraq War vet, who heavily criticized Bush, barely lost the election with 48% of the vote. The Republican candidate, Jean Schmidt, who barely won the election had spent $300,000 on attack ads against Hackett. It marked her first, but not her last attack on a war veteran in 2005.

In August the bad news kept coming for the GOP, as an AP-Ipsos poll found Bush’s approval ratings had slipped to 38%. As usual, when times are bad, the President responded by again going on vacation. Unfortunately, for him, he had some unwelcomed guests in Crawford, as dozens of military families from Alabama to Arkansas, Georgia to Missouri, New Jersey to Washington joined Cindy Sheehan in demanding an answer to her question: “For what noble cause did my son die for?”

Things grew worse as federal prosecutors subpoenaed the Treasurer of the Republican National Committee, Robert Kjellander on corruption charges involving an Illinois state pension fund and The Carlyle Group. Kjellander, who had headed up Bush’s re-election campaign in three states was paid $3 million by Carlyle to land contracts with the company controlling the pension fund.

But Kjellander wasn’t the only one in legal trouble. Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff was indicted for fraud for ripping off millions of dollars from Native Americans.

But massive fraud wasn’t just happening in the United States. In Iraq investigators discovered that more than $1 billion worth of weapons was embezzled in kickbacks for middlemen. An audit found that at least $500 million in funds for Iraq has disappeared.

And days after RNC Chair Ken Mehlman announced a “zero-tolerance” policy against voter fraud by GOP operatives, the RNC decided to pay $722,000 in legal bills to defend a former RNC official James Tobin who was charged with 4 felonies involving voter fraud.

Things got weirder for the GOP, as the Associated Press found that to keep our nation safe from terrorist attack, infants with similar sounding names to those on the no-fly list were barred from boarding air planes.

And as Cindy Sheehan’s peace protest continued to grow in Crawford, on August 17th one thousand, six hundred and twenty seven individual candlelight vigils were held all over the nation honoring the troops who have died in Iraq, and calling for our brave men and women to be brought home.

Meanwhile America continued to grow even more insecure. The National Counterterrorism Center assembled new terrorist attack statistics showing that 2004 saw a marked spike in terrorist activity world-wide. In 2003 the Patterns of Global Terrorism report cited 208 terrorist incidents, but that number had jumped to 3,192 terrorist incidents in 2004. The Bush administration’s response was to stop publishing the annual report. But Muslims weren’t the only ones carrying out terrorist attacks. The US News & World Report found that in the ten years since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, 60 terrorist plots have been uncovered and prevented in the United States, plots all planned by extreme right-wing groups. The Bush administration’s response was to spy on left-wing animal rights activists.

And in Ohio the Republican Governor Bob Taft was charged with four ethics violations, marking the first time in Ohio’s history that a governor had been charged with a crime. Taft saw his approval ratings drop to a measly 15%. Mark Rickel, a spokesman for Taft, said, “The governor doesn’t govern by polls.” The Ohio Governor would later in the year be found guilty of those charges.

And then came Hurricane Katrina and New Orleans drowned. And Bush, still on vacation, strummed.

In September, as New Orleans and the entire Gulf Coast was left abandoned by the GOP, revelation after revelation was revealed about FEMA’s gross negligence of the rescue effort, if not intentional abandonment of those in need. Five days after the hurricane struck Mississippi towns had still yet to see any federal aid arrive in areas that had seen 90% of the buildings destroyed. Despite the destruction, President Bush, Condi Rice, Vice President Cheney and White House Chief of Staff Andy Card were still on vacation days after the hurricane hit. On FEMA’s website, the agency listed Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing as one of the top three charities to donate relief funds to, despite the organization’s checked past of human rights violations in Africa.

International aid offers came pouring in from around the globe. Venezuela’s Citgo Petroleum Corporation pledged a million dollars in aid. Russia offered to dispatch rescue teams and other aid, but was rejected by FEMA. Japan, Canada, France, Honduras, Germany, Jamaica, Australia, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Greece, Hungry, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Mexico, China, South Korea, the United Arab Emirates, and NATO all made international aid offers. Israel offer hundreds of doctors, nurses, and trauma experts, as well as field hospitals, medical kits, and temporary housing. None of the aid was accepted. The UK shipped 400,000 rations of food to feed Katrina survivors, rations that the Food and Drug Administration burned, along with additional food aid from Israel, Spain, and Italy.

Meanwhile 2 million people were left without power, tens of thousands remained trapped in New Orleans with no food or water, and corpses littered the streets and floated through the flood waters. The headline in the New Orleans Time-Picayune read “Help Us, Please.”

Meanwhile the USS Bataan sat docked on the port of New Orleans, with doctors, hospital beds, food, and the ability to produce 100,000 gallons of water per day, and the Bush administration refused to give the order to permit the Bataan crew to help the people of New Orleans.

Leaked FEMA memos showed that FEMA director Michael Brown only bothered to dispatch 1,000 Homeland Security personnel to the region, two days after the hurricane struck, and that the employees were not expected to help those in need but to “convey a positive image of disaster operations” to local government officials and to the public.

FEMA’s response went from bad to worse, as they prepared flights out of town for evacuees, sending them to wrong locations. FEMA’s response was so slow that Vancouver-based Canadian rescue teams arrived in New Orleans five days before American rescue units. When FEMA contractors arrived, some of them were arrested for looting in Plaquemines Parish. President Bush made an executive order preventing federal contractors from paying local workers prevailing wages who were attempting to rebuild. Gas prices around the nation soar to $3.00 to $4.00 a gallon and ExxonMobil announced it expected it’s 2nd quarter to be the single most profitable quarter for any company ever, making an average of $4.5 million dollars per hour.

As the nation became increasingly enraged with FEMA and the Bush administration, Republicans played the race card, blaming the African Americans left in the city. House Speaker Republican Dennis Hastert questioned if New Orleans should be rebuilt at all, and Republican Senator Rick Santorum suggested punishing those left behind in the city. Republican Congressman Richard Baker said of the disaster, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” On his radio program, Conservative talk show host Rush Limbaugh called the New Orleans mayor “Mayor Nager.” Bill Bennett on his radio program said that if every black baby was aborted in America the crime rate would go down. And Louisiana state Senator Republican Craig Romero visited Washington, D.C. to garner support for his run for Congress in the 3rd district of Louisiana. Romero went to drum up support to prevent Katrina victims from moving back home, because he said without New Orleans residents the seat would go solidly Republican.

Meanwhile, the White House’s chief procurement officer, David Safavian was arrested for obstruction of justice, in the investigation of Jack Abramoff. But Safavian was just small fries. Soon the Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist found himself being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission for insider trading. This was followed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay being indicted on conspiracy charges, and then for money laundering. DeLay was forced to step down as the House Majority Leader, who pushed for Congressmen David Dreier to take his place. But because Dreier is a homosexual, the GOP choose the House Majority Whip Roy Blunt to replace DeLay.

As the summer ended and October came, the GOP began to prepare for Halloween, and in this case didn’t involve tricks or treats, but for calling for foreign leaders of sovereign nations to be assassinated. The Christian Right apparently forgot the 6th Commandment (“Thou shall not kill“), and Pat Robertson called on the democratically elected President of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez to be killed. Fox News pundit Bill O’Reilly soon joined Robertson by saying that the US ought to consider assassinating the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad if the country failed to help our war effort in Iraq.

Meanwhile MSNBC reported that when the FBI was using roving wiretaps to spy of suspected terrorists, the FBI may have mistakenly listened in on wrong numbers. A Justice Department Inspector General report showed that the FBI had a backlog of 38,514 hours of conversations. And the Secret Service took a visit to Currituck County High School remove a photo of President Bush with a thumb tack stuck in his head. It seems that the photo was part of a class project in which the students were to demonstrate their Constitutional Rights. It seemed that the Secret Service thought otherwise.

Then Raw Story reported that because of the government no-bid contracts to Halliburton, Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options soared an astonishing 3,281%.

But the worse was yet to come. As the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq topped 2,000, the White House was looking to make some good PR on the war front. In an event billed as a “conversation with our troops”, President Bush held a teleconference with 10 soldiers with the Army’s 42nd Infantry Division. The event went on without a hitch, that is until the media ran a segment that they had taped showing Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary Allison Barber coaching the soldiers in giving the precise answers the White House wanted to hear. The staged event disgusted the public so much that Bush’s job approval ratings fell to an all time new low of just 29%.

With figures that low, things weren’t looking good for the GOP with several state elections to be held in November. In Virginia Democratic candidate Tim Kaine won the Governorship. In New Jersey the GOP lost another Governor’s race. In Dover, Pennsylvania voters kicked out eight school board members who had been shoving Christian Right “intelligent design” down their children’s throats. Pat Robertson promptly called down God’s vengeance upon the town. And California Governor Republican Arnold Schwarzenegger saw every single one of his ballot initiatives, most targeted against the Nurses’ union, voted down.

Behind the scenes top Pentagon brass, angered over the crippling of US defenses from the war in Iraq, looked elsewhere for a leader to voice their concerns. Knowing the President would silence them, they chose a hawkish Democrat, and Marine vet, Congressman Jack Murtha to disengage from the Iraq war. The move prompted an angered reaction by the GOP. Ohio Republican Jean Schmidt, who had spent $300,000 earlier in the year on negative campaigning against an Iraqi war vet Paul Hackett in order to get elected, came out and called Rep. Murtha a “coward” on the House floor. In less than a week Schmidt was forced to apologize on that very same House floor.

But still problems mounted with the GOP. After years of investigation, Vice President Dick Cheney’s Chief of Staff Lewis “Scooter” Libby was indicted on five counts of obstructing justice in the investigation into who leaked the identity of undercover CIA agent Valerie Plame.

Republicans began to feel somewhat relieved with the indictments, thinking that the worse was behind them. That was until another Downing Street memo appeared in The Daily Mirror of London, showing that Tony Blair had to talk George Bush out of bombing Al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. The White House called it “outlandish”, despite that the US military had bombed Al-Jazeera bureaus in Afghanistan and Baghdad in 2001 and 2003. This didn’t come as good news for the Pentagon, as it was further revealed by the Washington Post that the Counterintelligence Field Activity, a little known Pentagon agency was set up to spy on American citizens domestically.

But all the GOP’s woes didn’t come from the federal level. In Kentucky, it was revealed that Republican Governor Ernie Fletcher had hired his personal friend Jimmy Holiday to do nothing but answer phones for the state’s Department of Transportation. The problem came when Holiday refused to do this simple task, despite a handsome salary. The entire incident may never have been noticed if it hadn’t been for that the Governor had run on a platform against “making work for friends”.

And if that wasn’t disgraceful enough, Republican Congressman “Duke” Cunningham was forced to resign his post after admitting he took $2.4 million dollars in bribes from defense contractors in exchange for favorable government contracts.

And to top all of this repugnant behavior off, right-wing pundit Bill O’Reilly said on the air that Al-Qaeda should blow up Coit Tower in San Francisco.

It hasn’t been a good year for the GOP. 2005 has been marked with more scandals, indictments, and guilty verdicts than an elephant can shake a stick at. But with the 2006 Congressional elections coming up next year, 2006 could be remarkably worse.

Merry Winter Solstice!

2005-12-26T07:11:00.000-08:00

Christmas may now be over, but with Bill O’Reilly’s “war on Christmas”, I thought now would be a good time for a little history lesson to begin.

What exactly are we celebrating during Christmas? Gift-giving? Mistletoe? The birth of Jesus?

The Christian faith pronounces Christmas as “the mass of Christ” (thus the name of the holiday), a celebration of Jesus’ birth. But is there any historical, much less biblical evidence that Jesus was born on December 25th, much less during that time of year?

In the Gospel, the book of Luke gives the most detail of the birth of Jesus’ and his early childhood, and I have personally found nothing which would indicate what time of year Jesus was born. The book of Luke, Chapter 2 states:

The angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid. And the angel said unto them, “Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord. And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying in a manger.” And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

But there’s nothing about what month or day this took place. So why do we celebrate Christmas on December 25th ?

The first scholarly text showing the practice of December 25th as Christmas was in the Roman Empire in the year 325 A.D. The practice had been first decreed by Emperor Aurelian in 274 A.D. However, a celebration around December 25th had been taken place for centuries prior.

Winter Solstice comes around every December 21st , marking the shortest day of the year. Solstice, coming from the Latin words “sol” (sun) and “sistere” (to make stand still), in the Winter was a celebration to call the sun back to give new life for the next year. Yes, Christmas originated as a form of Sun Worship.

Before it was Christmas, the Romans called it Dies Natalis Invicti Solis, the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun. The ancient Roman celebration of Saturnalia was practiced, a holiday named after the god Saturn, who ruled over agriculture. Typically Saturnalia was celebrated for 7 days, giving praise to Saturn after the crops had been sown. It was considered the greatest holiday of the year. Work was suspended, schools were closed, the army rested, criminals were not executed, homes were decorated, and friends would visit one another bringing good-luck gifts to each other. Lamps and fires were kept burning to ward off the spirits of darkness, and evergreen trees were decorated, to celebrate their life and strength, which remained green throughout the winter months.

But the Romans weren’t the only ones celebrating Winter Solstice. In Scandinavia, which was still pagan, the people celebrated the winter festival of Yule. Yule logs were burned throughout the night, it believed to have a magical effect to help the sun shine more brightly. If the fire burned out, it was considered bad luck, and the next year would bring trouble. Mistletoe, which grew on the most sacred oak tree, was cut in ceremony and hung in doorways for good luck. Hanging it in rooms was an offer of goodwill to visitors and kissing was a pledge of friendship.

But the Scandinavians weren’t alone either. In Ancient Greece the Winter Solstice celebration was called Lenaea, the Festival of the Wild Women! On this day, the harvest god Dionysus (represented by a man) was torn to pieces and eaten by a gang of women, and the ritual would conclude with Dionysos being reborn as a child. Human sacrifice was eventually replaced with the killing of a goat.

But Europeans weren’t the only ones celebrating the Winter Solstice. In Iran Shabe-Yalda is celebrated. The celebration of Yalda, which predates Islam, originated in the Zoroastrian faith. The name of Yalda refers to the rebirth of the sun, a celebration where people gather at home all night to tell stories and eat pomegranates, while bonfires are lit outside.

But Westerners weren’t the only ones celebrating this time of year either. The Native Americans celebrated Winter Solstice as well. The Pueblos observed Winter Solstice rites, praying for the rebirth of vegetation. The Hopi celebrated 20 days of Soyal which included purification rituals, feasts and blessings. The Chumash celebrated Winter Solstice as well for several days. The Incas celebrated a festival of the sun, honoring the sun god Wiracocha. The celebration continues today by the Quecia Indians in Cusco, Peru. And in Vermont a 20 acre sized stone amphitheatre was built centuries ago by native peoples. In the center of the structure a series of vertical rocks are formed, shining a shadow onto the side, which has notches set to mark the Winter Solstice.

Celebrations of Winter Solstice predates the Christian faith by thousands of years, by peoples all over the globe. It’s origins have nothing to do with Christianity. It has been a celebration of life and rebirth, of giving and good times, of feasts and wishing goodwill onto others. Is that not the real meaning of Christmas? Or should the holiday be simply reserved for getting into somebody’s face and screaming at them when they say “Happy Holidays”? You can be sure that in a year’s time, Bill O’Reilly will have the answer for you.

Bush Administration Was Denied Spy Authority.

2005-12-24T05:59:00.000-08:00

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle has disclosed that while he was the Senate Majority Leader, he denied the Bush administration the legal authority to eavesdrop on American citizens. While the White House has claimed that it was granted the authority to violated the Fourth Amendment of the Constitution in a joint Congressional resolution authorizing military forced after 9/11, Daschle says the administration requested the authority, but was denied.

Former Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle said:

"Literally minutes before the Senate cast its vote, the administration sought to add the words 'in the United States and' after 'appropriate force' in the agreed-upon text. This last-minute change would have given the president broad authority to exercise expansive powers not just overseas -- where we all understood he wanted authority to act -- but right here in the United States, potentially against American citizens. I could see no justification for Congress to accede to this extraordinary request for additional authority. I refused."

Meanwhile, the Justice Department has admitted that the spy program does not comply with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

And The New York Times is reporting that the NSA has collected massive volumes of telecommunication data without court-approved warrants, far exceeding what the White House has already acknowledged.

According to the Times, the program approved by President Bush granted the NSA to extensive spying using US telecommunication arteries, with the cooperation of American telecommunication companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company said that the NSA’s access to backdoor streams gives the spy agency “the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data.”

Jack Abramoff Set To Squeal.

2005-12-24T05:50:00.000-08:00

According to the New York Times, Indicted Republican lobbyist Jack Abramoff is close to a plea deal in which he would provide testimony against former political and business associates. The deal could come as early as next week.

Abramoff has been the center of a vast corruption probe that has implicated several Republican legislators in Washington, including former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX).

How The House Spells P.A.T.R.I.O.T.

2005-12-24T05:47:00.000-08:00

The House of Representatives has rejected the Senate’s proposal to approve a six-month extension on the USA Patriot Act, and have decided to grant only a one-month extension instead. Senate Democrats had been hoping to only grant a three month extension, but compromised on six-month extension instead. The White House had lobbied hard to make the Patriot Act permanent. The House move will force the White House and Senate leaders back into negotiations.

Wal-Mart To Pay $172 Million To Employees.

2005-12-24T05:38:00.000-08:00

A California jury has awarded over 110,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees $172 million dollars for illegally denying them lunch breaks.

The jury found that Wal-Mart violated California state law that guarantees an unpaid half-hour lunch break to workers who work at least 6 hours, and grants then an extra hour’s pay if the break is denied. Wal-Mart says it will appeal the ruling.

Across the country, Wal-Mart is accused of about 40 other workplace violations.

Good Luck On Your New Endeavor.

2005-12-22T14:00:00.000-08:00

I would like to wish our resident Reich winger, Miamimiami, good luck on his new blog, Squirrel Wars.

I think the tag line to his blog is “Where Conservatives Can Let Their Hair Down, And Act Bat-shit Crazy,” but don’t quote me on it.

I also would like to invite all my readers to take a look at his blog, and leave some kind comments for him, to give him all the encouragement he needs to keep on posting.

Hopefully, it will keep him busy for at least a month before he starts trying to spam NP again. We can only pray.

Man You Are A Big Pussy…A Message From MiamiMiami.

2005-12-22T09:32:00.000-08:00

Subject: Man you are a big pussy
Date: 12/22/2005 12:14:12 PM Eastern Standard Time
To: GSFU@aol.com
From: jginzo@bellsouth.net

I see that you have prevented me from posting. It’s ok. But remember this if you will. You speak so much about freedom of speech that you can’t handle it when someone consistently hands you your own ass. If it weren’t for folks like me giving you counter point I don’t think anyone would have even read your silly rants. But I guess by “banishing” from posting on your blog I guess your fear of the truth is finally confirmed.

I will tell you what though. I am a generous person. Whenever I do post my own blog I will give you free reign to post at will and even encourage your debate because I do understand the freedoms of speech. I helped protect them. So as far as I am concerned enjoy the silence.

Miami,
By all means, feel free to comment however you like. However, your comments must follow the guidelines I laid out. Thank you for your comments to my post Welcome Back COINTELPRO!, however since you could not be 1. Polite and courteous, and 2. Copy and paste entire paragraphs of what was previously said, I was forced to delete them. Feel free to try again, this time following the commentary guidelines.

You’re A Mean One, Mister Grinch.

2005-12-22T09:08:00.000-08:00

In a move showing the blackness of Republican hearts, the Senate voted yesterday to approve of cutting the federal budget by $39.7 billion over the next five years, for programs designed to help the most needy in our country.

With the vote tied at 50-50, Vice President Dick Cheney, in his dual role as President of the Senate, cast the tie breaking vote.

The cuts would impose premiums and co-payments on millions of low-income Americans covered by Medicaid. It also makes it more difficult for the elderly to qualify for Medicaid coverage for nursing home care. The move also freezes Medicare subsidies for home health services.

Recipients of welfare (the human kind, corporate welfare is left alone as is) are subject to stricter work requirements. If you’re a single mother on welfare who is trying to work and raise your child, much less better yourself by taking evening college courses, then you are simply screwed. Additionally, states are subject to penalties (yes, penalties) if they don’t throw more people off of welfare. Meanwhile, those single mothers get the shaft again, as aid to help states collect child support from dead-beat dads are reduced.

But those hardest hit by the bill are college students. 32% of the budget “savings” will be paid by college students having to pay higher interest rates on their loans.

Those reductions in the budget is expected to become mute point by February however. The GOP plans to extend tax cuts to the rich by an additional $70 billion dollars, while the Pentagon budget has grown by an additional $50 billion to a total of $452 billion.

This Christmas season it seems that the GOP is endlessly crowing about a “war on Christmas”, while giving the Spirit of Christmas a final nail in the coffin.

Clinton/Carter Executive Orders Didn’t Authorize Warrantless Searches Of Americans.

2005-12-21T13:23:00.000-08:00

From ThinkProgress.org:

The top of the Drudge Report claims “Clinton Executive Order: Secret Search On Americans Without Court Order…“ It’s not true. Here’s the breakdown –
What Drudge says:

Clinton, February 9, 1995: “The Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order.”

What Clinton actually signed:

Section 1. Pursuant to section 302(a)(1) [50 U.S.C. 1822(a)] of the [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance] Act, the Attorney General is authorized to approve physical searches, without a court order, to acquire foreign intelligence information for periods of up to one year, if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that section.

That section requires the Attorney General to certify is the search will not involve “the premises, information, material, or property of a United States person.“ That means U.S. citizens or anyone inside of the United States.

The entire controversy about Bush’s program is that, for the first time ever, allows warrantless surveillance of U.S. citizens and other people inside of the United States. Clinton’s 1995 executive order did not authorize that.

Drudge pulls the same trick with Carter.

What Drudge says:

Jimmy Carter Signed Executive Order on May 23, 1979: “Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order.”

What Carter’s executive order actually says:

1-101. Pursuant to Section 102(a)(1) of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 (50 U.S.C. 1802(a)), the Attorney General is authorized to approve electronic surveillance to acquire foreign intelligence information without a court order, but only if the Attorney General makes the certifications required by that Section.

What the Attorney General has to certify under that section is that the surveillance will not contain “the contents of any communication to which a United States person is a party.“ So again, no U.S. persons are involved.

America’s Culture Of Death Got It Wrong Again.

2005-12-21T12:05:00.000-08:00

Meet Harold Wilson. In 1989 Wilson was found guilty of three murders. Wilson was given the death penalty. Now after 17 years in prison, Wilson has been completely exonerated based on DNA evidence. He was released just over a month ago, on November 15th, 2005.

In 1989, Wilson was convicted by a Pennsylvania jury. He was sentenced to die three times, one for each murder. Ten years later, Wilson’s death sentence was overturned because it was found that he had had an ineffective defense attorney. His defense attorney, Willis Berry, has since become a judge.

Despite that his death sentence was overturned, he stayed on Death Row, sometimes being force to endure freezing temperatures, a tactic used by the guards in order to maintain discipline. One of the guards at the prison was later found guilty of torturing Iraqis at Abu Gharib.

Wilson had originally been prosecuted by former Philadelphia Assistant District Attorney Jack McMahon. In 1997, the courts began to re-examine Philly’s jury selection process after McMahon’s role in a training tape revealed him instructing colleagues to keep poor blacks off of juries because they were less likely to convict.

In 2003 Wilson was given a new trial after it was found that McMahon had used racial bias to eliminate black jurors. On October 31st, 2005 Wilson got a new trial, this time with DNA evidence being presented for the first time. Sixteen days later Wilson was acquitted of all charges and set free.

This isn’t the first time, and it surely will not be the last time that those who are sentenced to face the barbaric death penalty have been found innocent and set free. For some, their innocence have only been found until after they have already been executed. The United States is the only first world nation to execute its citizens, but still has the highest murder rate in the industrialized world.

We Are A Community.

2005-12-21T05:38:00.000-08:00

When I started Nitwit Planet, just over a year ago, I envisioned the comment section as a place on the web for all of us to share, and to have a free and open dialog where we can all freely share our opinions, whether we agree with each other or not.

I am happy to say that the comment section has served this purpose quite well, even among those of us who are extreme right wingers.

Unfortunately, someone have abused this system, and used it as if the comment section was their own blog. Out of the last 57 comments that have been made, 40 of them has been from one individual.

I have received several e-mails, and had it expressed to me several times, from several people with their displeasure that one individual is essentially ruining the reading experience for all of us, but I have defended this person’s right to say what he wishes, time and time again.

It occurs to me that things cannot continue as it has in the past, lest my faithful readers become utterly disgusted with it.

For this reason, I have come to a decision, and not lightly, that there will be some slight changes made to the comments section. I hate to have to do this, but it seems there is no other way around it.

From now on, all comments must be approved by me. Unfortunately, because of this, comments will no longer be made in real time, but will have a delay until I can review them, and approve them. This is how the journalspace site has worked from day one, and it has worked quite well. There is typically only a 24 hour wait for approval.

Unfortunately, only one person has strayed from what is courteous and polite in the comments section. For that reason, here are the following guidelines that all comments must follow:

1. All comments must be courteous and polite.
2. Everyone is welcomed to link whatever they wish to the comments section, but the links must work at the time of posting.
3. Copy and pasting news stories will not be permitted. If you wish to link a relevant news story, feel free to do so. If you need any help with linking such a news story, let me know, and I will gladly help you out.
4. Copy and pasting entire paragraphs of the posts will not be permitted.
5. Spamming the comments section will not be permitted. If you have a lot to say, do it in a concise manner, and do it with 1 to 2 posts.
6. Everyone is still completely welcomed to comment, so long as they are courteous enough to follow these guidelines.

Welcome Back COINTELPRO!

2005-12-20T03:50:00.000-08:00

Remember the good ole days of Richard Nixon, and our fabulous FBI Czar, J. Edgar Hoover? Remember how wonderful it was to have the FBI spy on Martin Luther King, on the basis that he was a communist? Well you can relive your glory days all over again, with the all new Presidential home game, Welcome Back COINTELPRO!

Watch how fun it is to have the Pentagon engage in its own spying of American citizens! See all the joys and laughs when they are forced to admit that they aren’t looking for terrorists, but for peace activists! And most fun of all, a joy that the whole family is sure to love, watch and see how fun it is for the President of the United States authorize the National Security Agency to spy on American Citizens!

See how fun it is to watch the President explain his actions as Constitutional! Watch him say:

"As president and commander in chief, I have the constitutional responsibility and the constitutional authority to protect our country. Article II of the Constitution gives me that responsibility and the authority necessary to fulfill it…We know that a two-minute phone conversation between somebody linked to al Qaeda here and an operative overseas could lead directly to the loss of thousands of lives. To save American lives, we must be able to act fast and to detect these conversations so we can prevent new attacks. So, consistent with U.S. law and the Constitution, I authorize the interception of international communications of people with known links to al Qaeda and related terrorist organizations.”

See all the zany hi-jinks that result when the American People frantically read Article II of the US Constitution!

Article. II.
Section. 1.
Clause 1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows

Clause 2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.

Clause 3: The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted. The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President. But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.

Clause 4: The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.

Clause 5: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.

Clause 6: In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the Vice President, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.

Clause 7: The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

Clause 8: Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:--"I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."

Section. 2.
Clause 1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.

Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.

Clause 3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.

Section. 3.
He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.

See the bewildered reactions of the children when they realize there is no provision in Article II of the US Constitution to permit the President to spy on US citizens! Watch the hilarious reactions of family and friends when reading over the Constitution, they find the little-known Fourth Amendment when reading over the Bill of Rights!

Article [IV.]
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

And finally, see the nods of understanding, when the American People finally find the relevant section of the Second Article of the Constitution that President Bush must have been talking about!

Article II
Section. 4.
The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.

Until next time kids, be careful what you say on the telephone! Someone might be listening!

Bush Admits Iraq Intelligence Was Faulty, But Was It?

2005-12-16T09:52:00.000-08:00

President Bush said on Wednesday that the responsibility for invading Iraq was based in part on faulty intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. Bush said, “It is true that much of the intelligence turned out to be wrong.”

But was the intelligence really faulty?

Bush went on to say that foreign intelligence agencies, including several governments who didn’t back his decision to invade Iraq, also believed that Saddam Hussein had possession of WMDs.

But did they really say that?

We do know that the Bush administration was quite wrong on Iraq’s supposed stockpile of WMDs. We know that Vice President Dick Cheney was wrong when he said on March 17th, 2002 that “We know they have biological and chemical weapons.” We know that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was wrong when he said on January 29th, 2003 that “[Saddam’s] regime has the design for a nuclear weapon, was working on several different methods of enriching uranium, and recently was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” We know that former Secretary of State Colin Powell was wrong when he said on May 16th 2003 that “In fact, we have found a couple of items of equipment, some mobile vans, so that with each passing day the evidence is clearer to us that they were used for biological weapons purposes.” And we know that President George W. Bush was wrong when he said on May 1st, 2003 that, “The liberation of Iraq is a crucial advance in the campaign against terror. We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda.”

But was the Bush administration simply wrong because our intelligence services had given them faulty information? Or did the Bush administration fix the intelligence to their pre-determined policy of going to war with Iraq?

Vice President Cheney had said that we know that Iraq has biological and chemical weapons, however the information the Vice President received from the intelligence community was an “estimate”. Former CIA Director George Tenet said, “it is important to underline the word estimate. Because not everything we analyze can be known to a standard of absolute proof.” Furthermore, Cheney’s statement flew right in the face of the Defense Intelligence Agency, whose position on the subject prior to the war was that, “There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.”

And while Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld was claiming that Saddam’s regime had “the design for a nuclear weapon”, and “was discovered seeking significant quantities of uranium from Africa,” the CIA was waving red flags about the claim. In two memos sent to the White House, one of which was addressed to National Security Advisor Condi Rice, the CIA was expressing serious doubts that such a claim was accurate. CIA Director George Tenet warned against using such a claim in the State of the Union Address, which Rice claims “we forget to take it out.”

But did she simply forget to take it out? On July 13th, 2003 Secretary Rice said that, “knowing that apparently there were concerns swirling around about this, had we known that at the time, we would not have put it in…And had there been even a peep that…George Tenet did not want that sentence in…it would have been gone.” One can only conclude that a personal memo sent to the White House, addressed to the National Security Advisor of the President of the United States simply does not count as “a peep.”

The CIA had expressed doubts on the Niger claim for good reason. More than a year before Bush declared the claim in his 2003 State of the Union address, French intelligence was warning the CIA that there was no evidence to support the allegation. After extensive on-the-ground investigations into Niger and other former French colonies, where uranium mines are controlled by French companies, French officials concluded that there was no evidence that Iraq had obtained yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Former French official Alain Chouet said the CIA had contacted French intelligence several times on the allegation, including a mid 2002 inquiry that Nigerian officials had agreed to sell 500 metric tons of uranium to Iraq. Chouet had dispatched a team to double-check any reports of a sale or an attempt by Iraq to purchase uranium. The team found none.

Furthermore, Niger Prime Minister Hama Hamadou told Britain’s Sunday Telegraph newspaper on July 28th, 2003 that “Niger had never had diplomatic or bilateral relations with Iraq.” Hamadou said that the US and British governments had been mistreating his country, which had sent 500 troops to support the 1991 Gulf War.

And while Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that US forces had found “some mobile vans” that showed “evidence” that they were “used for biological weapons purposes”, the Defense Intelligence Agency had come to radically different conclusions. Engineers at the DIA who had examined the trailers concluded that they were most likely used to produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons.

And despite that on May 1st, 2003, when President Bush said, “We’ve removed an ally of al Qaeda.”, Anthony Cordesman, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies said that there were “no evidence of any Iraqi effort to transfer weapons of mass destruction or weapons to terrorists.” Additionally, Andrew Wilie, a former Australian defence analyst resigned his post as the Iraq war began, saying that the links between Saddam Hussein and terrorists were a “concoction.”

US intelligence was well aware that Iraq did not possess any weapons. Saddam’s own son-in-law, General Hussein Hamel had said under US detention that he personally oversaw the destruction of all of Iraq’s biological, chemical, and nuclear capabilities.

But the Bush administration didn’t have to rely on Saddam’s own son-in-law for the information. All they had to do was ask the US Army. Before the war began, Delta Force, Task Force 20, a covert specialized army unit, had scoured Iraq for weapons of mass destruction. They found “no working conventional munitions, long-range missiles or missile parts, [or] bulk store of chemical or biological warfare agents or enrichment technology for the core of a nuclear weapon.”

If the Bush administration was so wrong then, would it follow that they would be wrong now? This Wednesday, President Bush claimed that several foreign intelligence agencies, including several governments that didn’t back his decision to invade Iraq, believed Saddam had WMDs. However, on February 25th, 2003, a month before the war began, the Guardian reported that Russia, China, France, and Germany offered a “counter-proposal” to the US draft resolution before the UN to go to war. The memorandum offered by the four nations stated: “While suspicions remain, no evidence has been given that Iraq still possesses weapons of mass destruction or capabilities in this field.”

But if France, Germany, China, Russia, Australia, Niger, the CIA, the DIA, George Tenet, and Saddam Hussein’s own son-in-law could not convince the Bush administration of the obvious, then you would think that the Bush administration would at least pay attention to their own National Security Advisor and Secretary of State.

Long before the events of 9/11 took place, in February 2001, Secretary of State Colin Powell said, “[Saddam] has not developed any significant capability with respect to weapons of mass destruction. He is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors.” In July of 2001, National Security Advisor Condi Rice said, “We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt.”

So was the pre-war intelligence on Iraq’s supposed weapons of mass destruction faulty? Or did the Bush administration simply manipulate it and cherry pick it for their own benefit? Surprisingly, our very own Secretary of Defense can quite possibly shed the most light on this quandary.

“There are a lot of people who lie and get away with it. And that’s just a fact.” - Donald Rumsfeld.

The American Culture Of Death Strikes Again.

2005-12-13T05:11:00.000-08:00

Despite a world-wide call for his clemency, Republican Governor of California, Arnold Schwarzenegger decided to execute Stanley Tookie Williams earlier this morning. At 12:01 a.m. PST, Williams was executed by lethal injection, for a crime that he said he never committed.

Schwarzenegger, under pressure from the GOP, decided to carry out the execution, despite that a material witness had come forward, swearing to an affadavit that he had heard an inmate claim that he was going to frame Williams on murder charges, in order to receive a reduced sentence offered to him by the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office.

Williams had been one of the founders of the Crips street gang in Los Angeles, but from behind bars managed to arrange a truce from the rival street gang the Bloods. A prolific author, William’s work lead him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

The United States stands as the only industrialized nation in the world that executes its citizens.

A Day That Will Live In Infamy.

2005-12-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

64 years ago, a growing fascist threat in Europe and Japan struck the United States, destroying large portions of our Navy, stationed in Pearl Harbor. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in an address to the American People said, that this day, December 7th, 1941 will be a day that lives in infamy.

At 7:55 a.m., Sunday morning, Japanese fighter pilots destroyed and sunk five of the eight battleships docked at Pearl Harbor, and the remaining three were considerably damaged. On that day over 2,400 Americans paid the ultimate price in the service of their nation.

But it wasn’t just the United States that would look back on December 7th as a day of infamy. Thirty years ago, December 7th, 1975, Indonesia invaded and annexed East Timor. The next 24 years would see Indonesia slaughtering over 200,000 Timorese, a third of the total population, in one of the worse genocides of the 20th century.

East Timor had been a Portugal colony since the 17th century, but in 1974 Portugal began to give up it’s colonial holdings. With an independent East Timor, President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger [pgs. 16-17] visited with Indonesia’s military dictator, General Suharto on December 6th, and approved of the Indonesian invasion. Worried that the invasion might cause some political embarrassment for President Ford, the administration requested that Suharto wait to invade until Ford had left. The next day President Ford left, after striking a deal with Suharto to give Indonesia all the weapons they needed for the annexation of East Timor.

For women and children, the Indonesian forces often resorted
to using starvation as a weapon against the domestic Timorese population.

As the invasion began, the Timorese attempted to bring the situation to the attention of the United Nations. Unfortunately, the United States made sure that no significant resolution would be passed to prevent the slaughter of the Timorese. The US ambassador to the United Nations, Daniel Patrick Moynihan later said, “The Department of State desired that the UN prove utterly ineffective in whatever measures it undertook: This task was given to me, and I carried it forward with no inconsiderable success.”

With the situation worsening in Timor, the Australian journalist Greg Shackleton made this report from East Timor, saying, “That’s all they want, for the United Nations to care about what is happening here.” The next day Greg Shackleton, and Australian journalists Gary Cunningham, Malcolm Rennie, Brian Peters, and Tony Stewart were all killed by Indonesian forces. Indonesia moved to start executing Timorese en masse. Washington doubled its military aid.

Australian journalist Greg Shackleton
reporting from East Timor, for Channel 7 Melbourne,
the night before he was murdered by Indonesian forces.

16 years later, with the genocide continuing, two American journalists, Allan Nairn and Amy Goodman traveled to East Timor to report on a special delegation from the United Nations and Portugal to examine the situation in East Timor. Unfortunately, the United States pressured the delegation into not going, and Indonesian forces killed a young male named Sebastiao Gomes, who had taken refuge in Dili’s main Catholic church, the Moteal.

Indonesia death squads would sometimes proudly deplay their kills.
Here they gladly hold up the severed heads of two Timorese.

November 12th, 1991, two weeks after Gomes’ murder, a memorial mass was held at the Moteal, followed by the Timorese masses coming out into the street, demonstrating, in a land where public assembly had been forbidden for 16 years.

As the demonstration proceeded, more and more Timorese joined in, some 5,000 strong, all marching to the cemetery, where Timorese laid flowers upon Gomes’ grave. It wasn’t long before hundreds of Indonesian troops came toward them, marching with American-made M-16s drawn in front of them.

Journalists Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn, still there to report on the UN/Portuguese delegation that never came, was with the Timorese as the Indonesian forces approached. Hoping to act as a shield to protect the Timorese, Goodman and Nairn moved in front of the crowd, with microphones and cameras in full view, hoping that the sight of foreign journalists would prevent any violence.

Allan Nairn recalled the events: “The soldiers marched straight up to us. They never broke their stride. We were enveloped by the troops, and when they got a few yards past us, within a dozen yards of the Timorese, they raised their rifles to their shoulders all at once, and they opened fire. The Timorese, in an instant, were down, just torn apart by the bullets. The street was covered with bodies covered with blood. And the soldiers just kept on coming. They poured in, one rank after another. They leaped over the bodies of those who were down. They were aiming and shooting people in the back. I could see their limbs being torn, their bodies exploding. There was blood spurting out into the air. The pop of the bullets, everywhere. And it was very organized, very systematic. The soldiers did not stop. They just kept on shooting until no one was left standing.”

Amy Goodman recalled: “A group of soldiers grabbed my microphone and threw me to the ground, kicking and punching me. At that point, Allan threw himself on top of me, protecting me from further injury. The soldiers then used their rifle butts like baseball bats, beating Allan until they fractured his skull. As we sat on the ground, Allan, covered in blood, a group of soldiers lined up and pointed their M-16s at our heads. They had stripped us of all of our equipment. We just kept shouting, ‘We’re from America!’ In the end, they decided not to execute us.”

The Santa Cruz massacre had only just begun. As the Timorese ran, the soldiers kept on firing, moving into the cemetery to shoot or beat those hiding behind graves. Inside the cemetery, Max Stahl, a filmmaker from Yorkshire TV caught all the carnage on tape. As the Indonesian soldiers moved into the cemetery, Stahl buried his videocassettes into a fresh grave. Minutes later he was arrested by Indonesian troops.

After nine hours of interrogation, Stahl, under the cover of night, went back for his videocassettes, and managed to successfully smuggle them out of the country. Amy Goodman and Allan Nairn was forced to leave the country and Allan had to seek medical care. Amy Goodman and Pacifica Radio told the story to the world.

Finally, with public pressure building among some key activist groups within the United States, and indeed around the world, and worsening economic woes in Indonesia, General Suharto was forced to resign in 1998. His successor, BJ Habibie, reportedly under pressure from President Bill Clinton, called for a free election to be held in East Timor, for the Timorese to vote for independence. Despite that the vote was delayed twice, and Indonesian forces terrorized Timorese who wished to vote for independence, on August 30th, 1999 75% of the Timorese voted for Indonesia to end their occupation of East Timor.

After the election, the Indonesian military went on a rampage, kidnapping, murdering, and forcing mass evacuations of a third of the population from their homes. Aid workers, UN workers, and foreign diplomats became targets, forcing President Bill Clinton to cut off US military aid to the country in September.

As the Indonesians left, the UN took temporary control in the administration of the state. Finally, on May 20th, 2002, the Timorese flag was finally raised and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan officially handed over power to Timor’s first democratically elected president, Xanana Gusamo.

December 7th, indeed does live on as a day of infamy. But unlike the Japanese, those who committed the crimes of aggression and crimes against humanity have never been held accountable, and brought to justice. How long will the world be forced to wait, is anyone’s guess.

God Rest Ye Merry Torturers, A Children’s Story.

2005-12-07T00:00:00.000-08:00

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all was still through the house. Not a creature was stirring, except those American prison guards with sharp knives…Gather around the campfire, boys and girls, Uncle Alva has a story to tell.

It’s all about a man named Benyam Mohammed. Wouldn’t you like to hear Mister Mohammed’s story, children? I’m sure he would certainly like to tell you all about it.

Mister Mohammed is a 26 year man from a place called London, England, who has spent the last two and a half years in prison as a “ghost detainee,” after being arrested three years ago in a very scary place called Pakistan.

The people who arrested him, who are called “US intelligence officials”, said Mohammed was a mean, mean man, who wanted to set off an al-Qaeda “dirty bomb” in a US city. How did these US intelligence officials came to such a conclusion? Gather around, boys and girls, for Mister Mohammed has quite a story to tell.

“They cut off my clothes with some kind of doctor’s scalpel. I was naked. I tried to put on a brave face.” Unfortunately children, for Mister Mohammed, he needed more than a brave face. “One took my penis in his hand and began to make cuts. He did it once, and they stood still for maybe a minute, watching my reaction. I was in agony. They must have done this 20 to 30 times, in maybe two hours. There was blood all over.”

But don’t worry, children. Mister Mohammed’s story of Christmas carnage was far from over: “They cut all over my private parts. One of them said it would be better just to cut it off, as I would only breed terrorists. I asked for a doctor.”

Benyam Mohammed spent the next 18 months in Morocco suffering. He would get the scalpel treatment, be given some time to heal, and then it would be back to the slicing and dicing. Doesn’t that sound like fun, boys and girls?

“There were even worse things. Too horrible to remember, let alone talk about. About once a week or even once every two weeks I would be taken for interrogation, where they would tell me what to say. They said if you say this story as we read it, you will just go to court as a witness and all this torture will stop. I eventually repeated what was read out to me.”

After this, all became quite throughout the house again. Days passed and nothing happened. But then late one night, on the rooftop, you could hear a clicky-click! And coming down that great big chimney, was old Saint Nick! With him, was Dasher and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen, Comet and Cupid, Donner and Blizen! But who could forget, but three mean-looking men wearing black masks!

“Then three men came in…It seemed to go on for hours. I was in so much pain I’d fall to my knees. They’d pull me back up and hit me again. They’d kick me in my thighs as I got up. I vomited within the first few punches…After that, there was to be no more first-class treatment. No bathroom. No food for a while.”

I guess we sure know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, don’t we, children? “For 18 months, there was not one night when I could sleep well. Sometimes I would go 48 hours without sleep…They continued with two or three interrogations a month. They weren’t really interrogations, more like training me what to say…I suffered the razor treatment about once a month for the remaining time I was in Morocco, even after I’d agreed to confess to whatever they wanted to hear. It became like a routine. They’d come in, tie me up, spend maybe an hour doing it…Then they’d tip some kind of liquid on me - the burning was like grasping a hot coal. The cutting, that was one kind of pain. The burning, that was another.”

And the lesson we have all learned children, from this story? As one US interrogator told Benyam Mohammed, “We’re going to change your brain.”

Then on Monday, children, our very own Secretary of State, Condoleeza Rice said, “The United States does not permit, tolerate, or condone torture under any circumstances…The U.S. does not transport and has not transported detainees from one country to another for the purpose of being tortured. The United States does not use the airspace or the airports of any country for the purpose of transporting a detainee to a country where he or she will be tortured.”

And Mister Mohammed I’m sure would agree with Condi, children. Make 30 long deep slits into a man’s penis for two hours, and he’ll say whatever you want him to.

Until next time boys and girls, remember that freedom isn’t free, and two plus two equals five.

Bush’s Plan For A Never-Ending Occupation.

2005-12-05T16:03:00.000-08:00

We’ve all seen the banners, and we’ve heard the tired old message. We must “stay the course” because we just need a little bit more time to train the Iraqis to defend themselves.

But what does Bush’s “Plan for Victory” really mean? And why, after three years, and 2,000 dead American soldiers later are we now just learning that the Bush administration have any “plan” for “victory”?

Bush has only one “plan for victory”. And that is to occupy Iraq forever, or at least until we can pump out all the oil out of the ground. Bush’s plan means nothing more than more death, more debt, and more destruction.

But do the Iraqis really need further training to defend themselves? Or are they simply unwilling to fight for George W. Bush? If training is all that’s needed for the Iraqis to defeat the “insurgency”, then one should wonder, who the hell trained the insurgents?