It's not often I would say this. But today I love New York. Big Time Dick Cheney paid a visit to Yankee owner George Steinbrenner and sat in Steinbrenner's private box at Yankee Stadium. When the Yankees flashed Cheney's image on the big screen Yankee fans booed. The story is at nytimes.com:

During the singing of "God Bless America" in the seventh inning, an image of Cheney was shown on the scoreboard. It was greeted with booing, so the Yankees quickly removed the image.

Jimmy Breslin tells it like is once again at commondreams.org. Mr. Breslin is talking about the asinine torture policy pursued by the Bush administration:

The American torture of Iraqi prisoners was not especially helpful to Army Spc. Keith M. Maupin, who was shot dead by "the Sharp Sword against the Enemies of God and his Prophet." Torture is a two-way street. Nor does it seem so helpful today to U.S. Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun. He has been missing since June 21 and now he is being shown on Arab television with a sword over his head. Voices say they will cut off his head. This is simultaneously impossible to contemplate and yet so familiar that you flinch at the mention.

When Bush and company talk about their record of job creation just remember that most of the new jobs being created are dead-end, low-paying, service sector and temp jobs. People who work at low wage jobs don't earn enough money to spend and stimulate the economy. It's nothing to celebrate. This story is at usatoday.com:

Jobs in lower-wage industries and regions are growing at a faster pace than higher-wage jobs, suggesting job growth is less potent for the economy because the majority of new work isn't accompanied by fat paychecks.

As I've noted before, I'm not a real Howard Stern fan. But I admire Stern for taking a strong stand against censorship and against the Bush administration. Stern announced that he is remaining on regular broadcast radio and not going to satellite. One of the new markets he just added is in Fresno. The story is at money.cnn.com:

Stern said his show will also air in Houston and Austin, Texas, West Palm Beach and Tampa, Fla., and Fresno, Calif., bringing to 45 the number of stations that broadcast his morning show. Of those, 27 are Infinity-owned.

There are those letters in The Fresno Bee that not only get DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY status, but make your blood boil. That's the case with today's missive. This jerk implies that Democrats and al-Qaeda are on the same side. He uses the rather lame logic that the bombing in Madrid, with terrorists demanding that the U.S. leave Iraq, means there is a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. When we, as Democrats, want out of Iraq we are, therefore, on the same side as al-Qaeda. If al-Qaeda suddenly endorsed peace, under this logic, then everyone everywhere would also be on the same side as al-Qaeda. Let our deranged commentator speak: "The bombed train killing hundreds of women and children in Spain was done by al-Qaida. Their demands? Get out of Iraq. The four people beheaded by al-Qaida. Their demand? Get out of Iraq. No link? Tell the families who lost their loved ones there's no link."

Our letter writer probably wouldn't want to acknowledge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq played directly into Osama bin Laden's hands. It accomplished at least two things: it got rid of an old nemesis in the form of Saddam Hussein, never a friend of al-Qaeda, and it validated what Osama bin Laden had been saying about the United States, that we were the enemy of Islam and that we wanted control of Iraq's oil reserves. In acting as a recruiting tool for al-Qaeda, there was no one better than the Bush administration. Paul Krugman makes this observation at nytimes.com: "Let's say the obvious. By making Iraq a playground for right-wing economic theorists, an employment agency for friends and family, and a source of lucrative contracts for corporate donors, the administration did terrorist recruiters a very big favor."

So much for "cheese-eating surrender monkey" epithets. French president Jacques Chirac told off Bush when Bush tried to interfere with EU negotiations. The story is at guardian.co.uk: "Jacques Chirac bluntly told George Bush to mind his own business yesterday when the US president urged European leaders to give Turkey a firm date for starting EU membership talks later this year."

George W. Bush and his minions keep telling us that we're winning the war on terrorism. I wonder, then, why the army is recalling 5,600 discharged and retired soldiers in what once again amounts to an involuntary draft. The story is at apnews1.iwon.com: "The Army is preparing to notify about 5,600 retired and discharged soldiers who are not members of the National Guard or Reserve that they will be involuntarily recalled to active duty for possible service in Iraq or Afghanistan, Army officials said Tuesday."

Right-wingers who didn't seem to care about the Rwandan genocide in the mid 90s like to resurrect the issue to bash the Clinton administration. The Clinton administration and the rest of the world were lax in stopping the Rwandan genocide. But I wonder where those great conservative humanitarians are now that genocide is occurring in Sudan. As many as a million people may die there unless action is taken quickly. This story is at www.reuters.com: "Up to 1 million African refugees could die this year in Sudan's Darfur region due to government-supported ethnic cleansing, a senior U.S. official said on Tuesday.

International donors and relief organizations are racing to beat incoming rains to place food and medicine at camps for those driven from their villages in the world's worst humanitarian crisis."

Skeptical about the U.S. "transfer of sovereignty" to Iraq? So are lots of people. This story is at commondreams.org: "Despite the positive responses Monday from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan and members of the Security Council who praised the U.S. 'transfer of sovereignty' to an interim government in Iraq, Middle East experts and political analysts dismiss the regime change in Baghdad as a 'monumental fraud.'"

I haven't liked a number of the Supreme Court's recent decisions. But I think the Court should be commended for stopping the Bush administration's runaway train in the treatment of terrorism suspects. This editorial is from the nytimes.com: "Part of the 'new normal' that the Bush administration ushered in after Sept. 11 was a radically broader view of the government's power to detain people. The administration claimed the right to hold foreign terrorism suspects in an indefinite legal limbo in Guantánamo, and to designate American citizens as 'enemy combatants' and hold them for years without access to lawyers. Yesterday, the Supreme Court delivered a stinging rebuke to these policies. In a pair of landmark decisions, the court made it clear that even during the war on terror, the government must adhere to the rule of law."

The situation in Iraq is deteriorating even as we speak. The headlines say that some of the Iraqis fighting U.S. forces were trained by the U.S. What has Bush gotten us into? This story is from commondreams.org: "First Lt Omar is sworn to uphold the law and fight the insurgency that threatens Iraq's evolution into a free and democratic state. Instead, he is exploiting his knowledge of US tactics to help the rebel cause in Fallujah."

The Rehnquist Supreme Court is quickly establishing its legacy as the most repressive right-wing court in the nation's history. In yet another despicable decision that completely disregards the Constitution the Court ruled that Bush can hold an American citizen without charges. This story appears at apnews.myway.com: "The Supreme Court ruled narrowly Monday that Congress gave President Bush the power to hold an American citizen without charges or trial, but said the detainee can challenge his treatment in court.

The 6-3 ruling sided with the administration on an important legal point raised in the war on terrorism. At the same time, it left unanswered other hard questions raised by the case of Yaser Esam Hamdi, who has been detained more than two years and who was only recently allowed to see a lawyer."

Is there anything more loathsome in all of human history than a war profiteer? In nature, at least the animals and bacteria that consume dead flesh serve a purpose. But for humans to make money by building bigger and deadlier weapons intended to maim and kill seems particularly vile to me. Which brings us to Dick Cheney. There are a number of good quotes at interventionmag.com, but I particularly like this one: "[At Halliburton, Cheney] grew rich on government contracts and taxpayer-supported credits doled out by his old pals in the military-industrial complex. He also hooked up with attractive foreign partners - like Saddam Hussein, the 'worse-than-Hitler' dictator who paid Cheney $73 million to rebuild the oil fields that had been destroyed by, er, Dick Cheney.”-- Chris Floyd, CounterPunch, 3/29/03

PBS (you know, that "liberal" network) has a show called "Wall Street Week" and one of the gasbags there was talking about how Bush wasn't getting enough credit for the economic recovery. Maybe it could be because the "economic recovery" is mostly illusory. This story at workingforchange.com shows that things aren't as rosy as the Wall Street types would have us believe: "The April and May employment figures indicate that more than 532,000 jobs were created. When one factors March, it brings the total of new jobs to nearly one million. But of the 280,000 jobs created in April, over half were in part-time and temporary work that offered no health benefits. The May job figures show a similar trend. Even more striking: while the administration talks about economic growth and jobs created, unemployment remains unchanged at 5.6 percent."

The U.S. attack against Iraq was to "free the Iraqi people," and so on, according to the bombast we've gotten from the Bush administration. Others of us have had suspicions the war was motivated more by greed than it was for humanitarian reasons. This story at commondreams.org supports the greed motive: "A Christian charity has accused the coalition authority in Iraq of failing to account for up to $20bn (nearly £11bn) of oil revenues which should have been spent on relief and reconstruction projects.

At the same time, the Liberal Democrats are demanding an investigation into the way the US-led administration in Baghdad has handled Iraq's oil revenues. The coalition is obliged to pay all oil revenues into the Development Fund for Iraq, but according to Liberal Democrat figures, the fund could be short by as much as $3.7bn."

If you're in government, one agency you definitely don't want to alienate is the CIA. The CIA literally knows where the bodies are buried. The Bush crowd may have made the biggest mistake of all in outing CIA operative Valerie Plame and alienating the agency. There are rumors that major indictments are about to come down in the leak of Valerie Plame's name. This story is at fromthewilderness.com: "Mike Ruppert showed that Valerie Plame was no ordinary CIA employee; her work was part of at least one productive and well-established information gathering operation. The administration’s schoolyard bully approach to management – sending Joe Wilson to Niger for confirmation of a fake story, then punishing him for bringing back the truth – has brought them the contempt of the only organization in the government whose hand is always free; its impunity almost limitless; its memory long. Thirty years ago Richard Nixon was sacrificed for many reasons, not least of which was his hubristic competition with the CIA. When he set up his own intelligence operation in the basement of the White House, he stirred the wrath of Dick Helms, who took a dim view of the reluctant challenger. With their Office of Special Plans, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have signed up for the same pissing contest that Nixon lost. Though the administration’s boy at Langley has stepped down (along with his second in command), the agency has fangs and claws beyond the reach of such personnel decisions from Human Resources."

Former terrorism advisor Richard Clarke calls the Iraq war an "enormous mistake." Mr. Clarke points out that the United States exactly followed the script laid out by Osama bin Laden. We invaded an Arab country that didn't attack us. That Arab country happens to have enormous oil reserves. And we've compounded the evil by torturing Iraqis and committing other human rights abuses. This story is at news.yahoo.com: "The invasion of Iraq (news - web sites) was an 'enormous mistake' that is costing untold lives, strengthening al-Qaida and breeding a new generation of terrorists, former White House counterterrorism czar Richard Clarke said."

I have to say I like the style of the protesters in Ireland who have given George W. Bush a strong message that they don't want him there. When I think of Ireland I think of a strong literary tradition with writers like William Butler Yeats and James Joyce. Telling Bush to get lost by invoking Shakespeare just rings of class somehow. This story is at cnn.com: "Irish protesters used Shakespeare to blitz George W. Bush on Saturday, invoking Macbeth, a ghost and a witch to cast a spell on the U.S. president and drive him, symbolically at least, from Irish soil."

There was a recent report that George W. Bush kept Saddam Hussein's gun in the Oval Office as a trophy. I was wondering if George ever does any Barney Fife tricks like accidentally discharging the weapon. Can't you just see him twirling the gun around on his finger, playing quick draw, and getting the gun stuck in the holster and shooting himself in the leg? This satiric piece is at prospect.org: "At first, I have to admit, I was a little worried about the gun.

Not long ago, it was revealed that the president of the United States had taken as a souvenir the pistol found on Saddam Hussein when American forces pulled him, blinking and bearded, out of the earth. It was reported further that the president kept the confiscated firearm in the Oval Office. I became concerned."

The Bush administration has had a history of issuing optimistic reports, getting big headlines, and then suddenly issuing "corrected" reports that show the initial optimism wasn't justified. That has been particularly true of issues concerning the economy. We now learn that the last economic report was WRONG. According to the report, growth was far lower than initially reported, and inflation was higher. Let's hear the conservatives talk again about the "red hot" economy. The story is at nytimes.com: "The U.S. economy grew much more slowly than previously thought in the first quarter while inflation was higher, a government report showed on Friday.

The surprise downward revision to gross domestic product - which measures total output within the nation's borders - cut growth to a 3.9 percent annual rate in the first three months of 2004 from the 4.4 percent reported a month ago and below the 4.1 percent pace in the final quarter of last year."

Meanwhile, the "war on terror" continues. As you may recall, the State Department issued a report indicating we were winning the "war on terror." It turned out that, too, was a flawed report. Last year incidents of terrorism actually INCREASED. In The New York Times Paul Krugman writes, "The erroneous good news on terrorism also came at a very convenient moment. The White House was still reeling from the revelations of the former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, who finally gave public voice to the view of many intelligence insiders that the Bush administration is doing a terrible job of fighting Al Qaeda. Meanwhile, Mr. Bush was on a 'Winning the War on Terror' campaign bus tour in the Midwest."

Governor Groper isn't called the Terminator for nothing. In a move to supposedly save money, Arnold wants to kill stray animals quicker rather than hold them for a designated time. I'm sure there are areas where the budget should be cut, but killing animals seems really cruel and asinine to me. You don't have to be a member of PETA to care about animals. The Groper is more and more showing his true Republican colors. This story is at news.yahoo.com: "Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to repeal a state law that requires animal shelters to hold stray dogs and cats for up to six days before killing them.

Instead, there would be a three-day requirement for strays. Other animals, including birds, hamsters, potbellied pigs, rabbits, snakes and turtles, could be killed immediately."

Technology has its dark side. Organized crime groups are now using mainstream websites to install backdoor infections into the computers of visitors to the websites. This story is at news.zdnet.co.uk: "Surfers visiting trusted Web sites, such as banks and merchants, are falling victim to organised-crime groups that have exploited two Internet Explorer flaws to hide attacking code.

Security researchers warned Web surfers on Thursday to be on their guard after uncovering evidence that widespread Web server compromises have turned corporate home pages into points of digital infection."

You may want to think twice before you chow down on that hamburger, hot dog, or steak. A preliminary test on a cow in the United States shows the presence of Mad Cow disease. Department of Agriculture officials are pooh-poohing the test, saying that it's very likely the test for Mad Cow will be negative, and that the animal didn't enter the food chain. But when you have the big money of the beef industry and a corrupt administration like the Bush administration, do you really feel lucky? The story is at sfgate.com: "An animal in the United States tested positive in a preliminary screening test for mad cow disease, Agriculture Department officials said Friday.

John Clifford, deputy administrator of USDA veterinary services, said officials learned of the 'inconclusive' test result at 5:30 p.m. Friday. The carcass is being sent to USDA National Veterinary Laboratory in Ames, Iowa, for additional tests. Results are expected in 4 to 7 days."

Larry McMurtry is a novelist I respect. His novels such as "Lonesome Dove" are genuine works of literature. So, of course, I'm impressed that he offers praise for President Clinton's new memoir "My Life." Some of the so-called "liberal media" have trashed the book and right-wingers are as predictable in their response as Pavlov's dogs. This review is at nytimes.com: "William Jefferson Clinton's 'My Life' is, by a generous measure, the richest American presidential autobiography - no other book tells us as vividly or fully what it is like to be president of the United States for eight years. Clinton had the good sense to couple great smarts with a solid education; he arrived in Washington in 1964 and has been the nation's - or perhaps the world's - No. 1 politics junkie ever since. And he can write - as Reagan, Ford, Nixon and Lyndon B. Johnson, to go no farther back, could not."

I think it was country singer George Strait who recorded a song called "Unwound" a few years back. That could be the theme of the Bush administration as chaos, corruption, and ineptitude reign. According to a report at cnn.com, Dick Cheney hurled the mother of all four-letter words at Senator Patrick Leahy over Leahy's criticism of Halliburton. Decorum is supposed to reign among politicos on the Hill, but that was before the Bush administration came along. The report states: "Typically a break from partisan warfare, this year's Senate class photo turned smiles into snarls as Vice President Dick Cheney reportedly used profanity toward one senior Democrat, sources said.

Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont, who was on the receiving end of Cheney's ire, confirmed that the Vice President used profanity during Tuesday's class photo."

The chickens, as they say, may be coming home to roost. George W. Bush gave testimony to a special prosecutor in the Valerie Plame leak case. Bush had his personal attorney present. What is "Mr. Honorable and Decent" doing with a lawyer if he has nothing to hide? The story is at cnn.com: "President Bush was interviewed Thursday morning by a special prosecutor investigating whether anyone in the administration disclosed the classified identity of a CIA officer, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters.

This is the first time Bush has been questioned in a criminal investigation involving his administration."

As they say, you can't judge a book by its cover, and the soft-spoken peace activist may actually be a spy for the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Peace Fresno is a local organization of peace activists and peace is apparently a threatening concept to the Fresno Sheriff's department. Peace Fresno learned they had a spy in their midst when the man's obituary appeared in The Fresno Bee and the obituary stated he was employed by the Fresno Sheriff's Department. Now state Attorney General Bill Lockyer is looking into the matter. The story is at latimes.com: "Now, the activists are accusing the Sheriff's Department of infiltrating their group with an undercover detective. After months of lobbying by the group, California Atty. Gen. Bill Lockyer's office said this week that it was investigating their claim.

Fresno County Sheriff Richard Pierce won't confirm or deny that Kilner was spying on Peace Fresno. But he said in a prepared statement that his department reserved the right to conduct surveillance as part of its anti-terrorism efforts."

Mr. Anti-Choice makes another appearance in The Fresno Bee and gets our DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY award. Mr. AC's topic today is--sigh!--secularism and, once again, the claim that our country was founded on Judeo-Christian principles. Although conceding that the Founding Fathers were deists, Mr. AC goes on to say that their belief system was founded in Judeo-Christianity.

The salient point, however, is that they did not found a government based on Judeo-Christian belief. I have never read anything in the Bible about Constitutions, separation of powers, and all the other aspects that went into creating a federal government. One of the more absurd points Mr. AC makes is this, "Humanist propaganda would have us think we can advance as a culture by removing God from society."

I don't advocate the removal of God from society. I believe people should be free to practice their religious beliefs as stated in the First Amendment to the Constitution. However, there should be a clear and distinct wall of separation between religion and government, and that is the point that eludes people like Mr. AC. They want a government that advocates what their religion teaches, totally removing that wall of separation, and they want to force their idea of religious "truth" on everyone else.

Washington Post columnist E. J. Dionne writes about the apparently mythical connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Queda. Even after the 9/11 Commission said there was no evidence of a link, the Bush administration has continued to claim a link, and still tries to somehow connect Saddam Hussein to the attacks on September 11. There is no evidence of that either. Mr. Dionne writes, "If the administration has told us the truth, it should be willing to make public all it knows about the links between Saddam Hussein, al Qaeda and Sept. 11, and not just tantalize us with selective leaks. Tom Kean, the Republican chairman of the Sept. 11 commission, made that request over the weekend, saying he and his colleagues needed any new information 'pretty fast.'

The Bush administration should give us the proof or stop making claims it can't support. Put up or shut up."

It's hard to know what to believe anymore. You would like to believe what businesses tell you. You would like to believe in the integrity of religious institutions. You would like to believe the government tells the truth. Failing all of that, you would like to believe you can at least rely on the media to search out and report the truth. However, according to a new report, the media since the 1950s have sometimes acted as agents for the CIA. So much for that "Fourth Estate" stuff. This report is at www.upi.com: "Word leaked out that a new Pentagon office of strategic influence was gearing up to sway leaders and public sentiment by disseminating sometimes false stories. Facing censure, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld publicly denounced and disbanded it. A few months later, however, he quietly funded a private consultant to develop another version. The apparent goal was to go beyond traditional information warfare with a new 'perception management' campaign designed to 'win the war of ideas' - in this case, against those classified as a terrorists."

When you're driving do you ever have a Moron Alarm go off in your head? I have that happen if I see Rush Limbaugh bumper stickers or any right-wing bumper stickers. Today I got behind a SUV (of course) sporting a Mike Briggs bumper sticker (a right-wing troglodyte from this area), a bumper sticker saying to "Dump Boxer" (our Democratic Senator) and the really clever "Ted Kennedy's car has killed more people than my gun." I wonder if Mr. Bumper Sticker ever heard of a guy named Janklow, Republican Congressman, who sped through a stop sign and killed a motorcyclist. Speaking of killing, his guy George W. Bush is the master killer.

Back when Bill Clinton first ran for president the mantra was, "It's the economy, stupid." There are all kinds of issues John Kerry can use against Bush, but the economy should be something most of us can identify with. Moveon.org is highlighting the issue in an ad showing a formerly well-paid worker now flipping burgers. The Bush campaign counters with the usual nonsense about how they're creating jobs at better than average wages. I liked this paragraph from the story at washingtonpost.com: "'Despite the well-advertised pick-up of job growth, recent trends in real wage income remain very disappointing,' lamented Stephen S. Roach, chief economist at Morgan Stanley, in a June 7 memo to clients. 'This, in my view, underscores one of the most serious shortcomings of this recovery -- an unprecedented shortfall of the most important piece of personal income growth,' wages and salaries."

Shakespeare once wrote something about, "What's in a name?" These days with electronic data bases compiling information on each of us a name has much significance. The Supreme Court, in another really bad ruling, says that you have to give your name to a police officer if he asks, even if you haven't been specifically accused of anything. This story is at washingtonpost.com: "'YOU HAVE the right to remain silent.' At least, you did before the Supreme Court handed down a decision in the case of Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada yesterday. Now, when a police officer suspecting you of a crime stops you in the street and asks your name, you can be prosecuted for refusing to answer."

I remember reading an anecdote about the night Ronald Reagan was elected president. A group of oil men gathered together to celebrate. They had a cake in the shape of the Capitol dome. On the cake was the word "Ours." That pretty much describes government under the rule of conservatives. Big business owns the government. The Supreme Court validated that in a decision that says that you and I can't sue HMOs for big damages in state courts. This story is at nytimes.com: "The Supreme Court on Monday unanimously rejected efforts by states to give patients in managed care a right that Congress has so far declined to provide: the ability to sue managed-care companies for damages for refusing to cover treatment that a doctor has deemed medically necessary."

Since the Industrial Revolution, the human race has consistently marched forward in the areas of science and technology. Not all of that is good. We got things like pollution, for instance, by spewing foul air from our machines into the atmosphere. We also created a Pandora's Box with the development of nuclear weapons. And there are certainly dangers in biotechnology. But, for the most part, science has provided a light in the darkness of superstition that haunted the human race for millennia. George W. Bush doesn't care much for science, at least if it conflicts with his religious ideology. This story at abcnews.com contrasts the views of Senator John Kerry with those of Bush: "Democrat John Kerry, backed by 48 Nobel Prize winners, on Monday criticized President Bush for allowing ideology rather than facts to determine science policies and repeated his pledge to overturn the ban on federal funding of research on new stem cell lines."

Can the free market and democracy co-exist? There is some doubt, according to this essay at guardian.co.uk: "However implausibly, President Bush continues to reiterate his commitment to the early introduction of democracy in Iraq. Indeed, the idea of democratic reform in the Arab world has been central to the Anglo-American position on Iraq. There should be nothing surprising in that. Democracy has become the universal calling card of the west, the mantra that is chanted at every country that falls short (when politically convenient, of course), the ubiquitous solution to the problems of countries that are not democratic."

One of the more absurd right-wing talking points these days is that the economy is booming. A letter writer to The Fresno Bee even described the economy as "red hot." However, most of us wouldn't consider the economy "red hot" if unemployment is hovering near double digits. This story at reuters.com shows the real unemployment rate is close to 9.7%: "Buried inside the official U.S. employment report each month is a little-known figure that gives a much less rosy picture of the labor market than the headlines.

The government agency that produces the data also publishes an alternative measure that tries to capture the hidden unemployed, those who are not included in the official unemployment rate for various statistical reasons.

That broader measure is dramatically higher, at 9.7 percent in May, compared with the official level of 5.6 percent."

As if George W. Bush hasn't done enough damage to the federal judiciary, now we learn that he has nominated a guy who didn't even legally practice law. He didn't have a license, but practiced law for four years in Utah. The story is at washingtonpost.com: "Thomas B. Griffith, President Bush's nominee for the federal appeals court in Washington, has been practicing law in Utah without a state law license for the past four years, according to Utah state officials."

The Bush administration would like us to believe there is some value in the violation of human rights we've seen occurring at places like Abu Ghraib in Iraq and at the prison in Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. Some people are now questioning whether the people who have been abused in Cuba were ever a danger to us in the first place. This story is at nytimes.com: "For nearly two and a half years, American officials have maintained that locked within the steel-mesh cells of the military prison here are some of the world's most dangerous terrorists — 'the worst of a very bad lot,' Vice President Dick Cheney has called them."

If invading countries was justified by their interaction with terrorists, then the Bush administration made a big mistake in invading Iraq. According to the Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Pakistan and Iran have far more dealings with al-Qaida. This story is at www.chron.com: "The chairman of the Sept. 11 commission said Sunday that al-Qaida had much more interaction with Iran and Pakistan than it did with Iraq, underscoring a controversy over the Bush administration's insistence there was collaboration between the terrorist organization and Saddam Hussein."

One of the most horrendous ideas, among many horrendous ideas, to come from the Bush administration is the concept of preemptive war. It's a get-them-before-they-get-us-philosophy. I would equate it to something like this: you have a neighbor down the street you don't like very much. In fact, you might even be a little afraid of the neighbor. You think it's possible the neighbor may some day try to kill you or your family. You make a preemptive strike against the neighbor by killing him and his family first. How would that defense fly in our criminal justice system?

But that's essentially what the United States did by attacking Iraq. And it seems that much of the "intelligence" to justify this barbarity was flawed or outright wrong. Some of it came from highly dubious sources such as the now-vilified Ahmed Chalabi, friend of George W. Bush and apparent Iranian spy. This story shows just how absurd some of the intelligence was. The story is linked at latimes.com: "U.S. analysts also erred in their analysis of high-altitude satellite photos, repeatedly confusing Scud missile storage places with the short, half-cylindrical sheds typically used to house poultry in Iraq. As a result, as the war neared, two teams of U.N. weapons experts acting on U.S. intelligence scrambled to search chicken coops for missiles that were not there."

Maybe there is some hope after all if even the head of a big oil company thinks we need to address the issue of global climate change. Ron Oxburgh, the guy now in charge of Shell Oil, gave an interview found at guardian.co.uk in which he said: "I'm really very worried for the planet."

Right-wingers are leading the typically vitriolic attack against Michael Moore and his new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." But as much as they'll try to spin, the claims made in the film are legitimate. This article at editorandpublisher.com talks about the fact checking by New York Times reporter Philip Shenon: "Shenon says Moore 'is on firm ground' in arguing that the Bushes have profited handsomely from their relationships with the Saudis, including the bin Laden family and the Saudi rulers. He also notes that Moore is safe in charging that Bush paid too little attention to terrorism before 9/11, and suggests he is accurate when he claims that during Bush’s first eight months in office he spent 42% of his time on vacation (the source being The Washington Post."

George W. Bush once again shows his utter contempt for the intelligence of the American people. Within hours of the report by the 9/11 Commission stating that Iraq didn't have ties to al-Queda Bush sent an e-mail that lied about what the Commission said. This story is at thousandreleases.org: "According to Reuters, Bush sent e-mail today claiming that the '9-11 Commission Staff Report Confirms Administration's Views of al Qaeda/Iraq Ties.' This came just hours after the 9-11 commission reported that there was no evidence of a 'collaborative relationship.'"

After the 9/11 Commission issued its report that there was no Saddam link to al-Queda, Russian President Vladmir Putin claimed that his government gave intelligence to the United States saying that Saddam was planning attacks after 9/11. That report, however, is being met with skepticism. This story is at boston.com: "President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia said yesterday that his government had warned Washington that Saddam Hussein was preparing attacks on US soil and on American interests abroad before the US invasion of Iraq. But US officials expressed surprise at Putin's remarks."

As if there aren't enough concerns about George W. Bush--his lack of intellect, his lack of empathy, his lack of ethics--we now have to be concerned that he's delusional. Capitol Hill Blue, a publication that leans to the right, has this report about Mr. Bush at capitolhillblue.com: "The carefully-crafted image of George W. Bush as a bold, decisive leader is cracking under the weight of new revelations that the erratic President is indecisive, moody, paranoid and delusional."

If you're a working class person in this country, you know that things have gotten worse since Republicans have been the majority in Congress, have had the executive branch since 1981, except for Bill Clinton's eight years, and have controlled the judiciary. You know that big business has pretty much had its way during those two decades. This story at cbsnews.com shows the results of Republican control of the government: " U.S. workers have fewer legal rights to time off for family matters than workers in most other countries, and rank near the bottom in pregnancy and sick leave, a Harvard School of Public Health study found."

From its inception, the Bush administration has lied and bullied to get its way. Now a major attorney is flatly saying that the administration has intimidated lawyers and the media. The story is at alertnet.org: "A leading American lawyer accused the White House on Friday of intimidating reporters, attorneys and judges who question the Bush administration's 'relentless pursuit of power.'"

We got inundated with tales of the "Reagan legacy" following Mr. Reagan's death. A good appraisal of the Reagan legacy and its impact on most of us is at prorev.com. It reminds you of the tales of fire and sulphur raining down from heaven in the Bible. I liked this paragraph: "Corruption, both corporate and political, has increased to the point that it is no longer deviation but an assumed part of our culture. We all live in a Mafia neighborhood now."

Guess what? The economy under George W. Bush is "red hot" and better than the Reagan economy of the 1980s and the Clinton economy of the 1990s. That's according to our Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY. Our delusional writer says that the Reagan economy was built on defense spending and the Clinton economy on "overexuberance" in the tech sectors, etc. While there may be some truth to that, he then claims that the current economy, absent those factors, is stronger. See for yourself: "In the first part of this decade, we have had a horrific attack on our country right in the middle of a recovery from recession. Still, our economy is red-hot right now and it seems to be on solid footing, thanks to the tax cuts and optimism given to us by President Bush, and will maintain a very healthy growth rate for a long period of time."

Our economy is "red hot" if you're a fat cat. Unemployment is officially around 6%, but the real unemployment rate is probably at least 10%. We have record deficits and our balance of trade is severely out of whack. Up until now, George W. Bush has benefited from record low interest rates and low inflation. That is now changing. Inflation is threatening to roar back with the increase in energy prices and the Federal Reserve is planning to increase interest rates. An increase in interest rates rolls across the economy like a tidal wave. It hits the automobile and housing industries particularly hard and those sectors drive a large portion of the U.S. economy.

George W. Bush and Republicans are always pushing for things like "tort reform." That's a fancy way of saying that ordinary people can't get compensated by fat cats who have harmed them. According to this column by Bob Herbert at nytimes.com, Bush picked out a doctor, a fat cat, who had allegedly been victimized by "frivolous" lawsuits. From Herbert's description no amount of money taken from this guy would be frivolous: "If Mr. Bush was looking for an example of a doctor who was victimized by frivolous lawsuits, Dr. Girdharry was not a great choice. Since the early 1990's, he has settled lawsuits and agreed to the payment of damages in a number of malpractice cases in which patients suffered horrible injuries."

I wonder if our letter writer above would consider this part of the "red hot" economy. This story linked at buzzflash.com talks about the pay package for Richard Grasso, Chairman and CEO of the New York Stock Exchange: "Such pay disparities further skew the increasingly polarized distribution of wealth in this country, which is now at levels equivalent to the period just preceding the Great Depression (even in the current economic recovery, corporate profits have risen 62 percent since 2001, while workers’ take home pay has actually dropped by 0.6 percent, according to the Economic Policy Institute). Most other industrialized countries have a typical CEO-to-worker pay ratios closer to 25-to-1. In 1964, the US ratio was also approximately 25-1; in 1982 it was 42-to-1."

Poverty is an issue that strikes a major chord with me. I always remember my grandparents, two decent hard-working people, who were poor their entire lives. Despite being hard-working, honest, and relatively intelligent myself, I've had nothing but low-paying jobs my entire adult life. That's why this story by Bill Moyers linked at commondreams.org resonates with me: "She was born poor, and in spite of having once owned her own home and having earned a two-year college degree, Caroline Payne has bounced from one poverty-wage job to another all her life, equipped with the will to move up, but not the resources to deal with unexpected and overlapping problems like a mentally handicapped daughter, a broken marriage, a sudden layoff crisis that forced her to sell her few assets, pull up roots and move on. 'In the house of the poor,' [David] Shipler writes '...the walls are thin and fragile and troubles seep into one another.'

Quite often you will right-wingers prattling on about the "miracles of the free market" and other jive turkey nonsense. The free market is man-made. It's not some force of nature free of human control. Bill Moyers goes on, "The middle class and working poor are told that what's happening to them is the consequence of Adam Smith's 'Invisible Hand.' This is a lie. What's happening to them is the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious orthodoxy that in its hunger for government subsidies has made an idol of power, and a string of political decisions favoring the powerful and the privileged who bought the political system right out from under us."

You wonder why people aren't more outraged that George W. Bush lied when he claimed that Iraq had ties to terrorists. That lie persuaded many in this country to support the war that has resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths, drained our treasury, maimed and killed our own military, and created the perfect recruiting tool for terrorists worldwide. This lie has to be among the most craven and criminal in our history. The New York Times, which unfortunately bought into the Bush propaganda, has now come out with a strong editorial: "Of all the ways Mr. Bush persuaded Americans to back the invasion of Iraq last year, the most plainly dishonest was his effort to link his war of choice with the battle against terrorists worldwide. While it's possible that Mr. Bush and his top advisers really believed that there were chemical, biological and nuclear weapons in Iraq, they should have known all along that there was no link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. No serious intelligence analyst believed the connection existed; Richard Clarke, the former antiterrorism chief, wrote in his book that Mr. Bush had been told just that."

One almost wearies of the commentary on "secularism" in The Fresno Bee. Our DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY, however, continues on that subject: "Another comprehension problem: Of all those killed by witch hunts, inquisitions and crusades by self-righteous barbarians who never understood the teachings of Jesus, there have been millions more Christians, Jews and other innocents slaughtered by non-Christians."

Our writer didn't cite any specifics about the deaths of Christians. I suspect most of those deaths were not at the hands of people he calls "secularists," but by other religious folk, some of whom even call themselves Christian.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth and that situation has been exacerbated by war after war after war. The farmers there have found subsistence in growing opium poppies which are then turned into heroin. It would seem be in the interest of the United States to help the farmers there find another way to survive. Instead, since the latest U.S.-led attack on Afghanistan, the production of opium poppies has increased TWENTY times over what it was in the last year of the Taliban. This story is at abcnews.com: "One of the biggest problems facing Afghanistan's first elected post-Taliban government will be the country's illicit cultivation of opium poppies, which satisfied almost three-fourths of the world's opium demand last year. The trade, 20 times that during the Taliban's last year, brought in $2.3 billion, more than half Afghanistan's gross domestic product. Experts expect plantings to be bigger this year to a record level."

The Commission investigating the attacks on September 11 just issued a report saying what most of us know already--there was no connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Quida. The Associated Press story is linked at commondreams.org: "Bluntly contradicting the Bush administration, the commission investigating the Sept. 11 attacks reported Wednesday there was 'no credible evidence' that Saddam Hussein helped al-Qaida target the United States."

The raging debate about secularism continues in The Fresno Bee, so our DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY continues in that vein. Our writer makes a sweeping generalization, "The mark of a secular society is not dignity and freedom, as some mistakenly think, but a disregard for human life, followed by a steady descent into barbarism."

The United States has been a secular society, despite some religious trappings, for most of its history. If you want to mark the advent of secularism from the time the Supreme Court outlawed prayer in the public schools, you can even use that benchmark. During that time we've been more progressive for the most part in recognizing "dignity and freedom" than we were before school prayer hit the road. We've only begun to flagrantly to show a "disregard for life" under this fundamentalist administration, which claims to be Christian.

Science fiction writer Ben Bova has an interesting commentary on global warming at naplesnews.com. The story is linked at buzzflash.com and discusses how global climate change is not a boogeyman made up by wacko environmentalists, but a present and increasing danger to our planet. Bova writes, "As the headline in a recent issue of Science magazine put it, 'Getting warmer, however you measure it.' Pardon the pun, but global warming is a hot issue not only among politicians but among scientists, as well. Many have steadfastly refused to believe that the Earth's climate is heating up, even though measurements from around the globe show that the planet's temperature is steadily rising, so much so that changes in the arrival of spring in high northern latitudes are already noticeable."

Paul Krugman in The New York Times talks about the ineptitude and ethical lapses of Attorney General John Ashcroft. This is definitely the wrong guy in the wrong place at the wrong time to deal with terrorism. Krugman says, "First, there's the absence of any major successful prosecutions. The one set of convictions that seemed fairly significant — that of the 'Detroit 3' — appears to be collapsing over accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. (The lead prosecutor has filed a whistle-blower suit against Mr. Ashcroft, accusing him of botching the case. The Justice Department, in turn, has opened investigations against the prosecutor. Payback? I report; you decide.)"

The beat goes on. Back in the days of Richard Nixon there was a phenomenon known as "stagflation." It was a combination of high unemployment and high inflation, which is not supposed to happen in tandem, according to traditional economics. You have to wonder if we're headed in that same direction. Inflation took its biggest jump in three years last month and the Federal Reserve is hinting that interest rates will be on the rise. Watch out if you have variable rate loans. This story is at latimes.com: "Although the Labor Department reported that the Consumer Price Index surged 0.6% in May, the biggest monthly increase in three years, Greenspan said Fed officials still believed they could begin boosting short-term interest rates at a 'measured' pace. The first increase is widely expected later this month."

Someone once said that politics makes strange bedfellows and this story proves it. The Reagan family has declared political war against the Bush administration on the issue of stem cell research, and I'm in full agreement with the Reagan family. You get the feeling Mr. Bush would roll us back to a time when you use leeches and bleeding to cure people, or, even worse, prayer. This story is linked at buzzflash.com: "The family of former President Ronald Reagan declared political war on the White House yesterday over President Bush's ban on stem cell research."

In another tip of the hat to the Reagan years, it's Reagan redux at the Department of Agriculture. French fries (or Freedom fries if you will) are now classified a fresh vegetable. Back in Reagan's day catsup was a vegetable, so catsup and fries are two vegetables! The story is linked at commondreams.org: "Meir Stampfer, a professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, said it 'boggles the mind' that the USDA would label French fries a fresh vegetable since most commercial fries are prepared in oil laden with heart-clogging trans-fat."

Today in The Fresno Bee we get treated to another lecture about the country being founded on Judeo-Christian traditions. That's our DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY. Today's pundit tries very hard to come off like an intellectual, but most of the letter is just a fact-free attack on "secularists." Secularists are the people who believe in "moral relativism," yada, yada. He also manages to get in references to communists and fascists, implying that anyone denying Judeo-Christian traditions in the U. S. is a communist or fascist. Let our commentator speak: "Apparently, secularists think life spontaneously generated itself and there is no accountability to any authority over us, but us. Somehow mankind's intellect and reason are the source of our 'dignity and freedom.' This is actually an old pagan religious belief, 'having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.'"

Actually, the theory of spontaneous generation was discarded a long time ago and a "secularist" might not necessarily believe in evolution. There is frankly an avalanche of evidence that the Founding Fathers created this country as a secular republic. We are not a theocracy. Thank God for that (to use a pun). The very first words of the Constitution invoke "We the people," not a deity.

Our pundit also refers to pagan religious belief. I wonder if he is aware of how much pagan religion belief has been incorporated into Judeo-Christianity. Christianity's two biggest holidays, Christmas and Easter, are paganism wearing new clothes. The first chapters of Genesis seem to indicate a polytheistic God, rather than the monotheism we're so accustomed to hearing about. In Genesis, God actually walks upon the earth. He's not some far removed deity.

The other point I would make: if you want to believe the country was founded upon Judeo-Christian beliefs, so what? We're over two hundred years into this grand experiment. We've made a variety of changes since 1789, including the abolition of slavery and allowing women to vote. Those were good changes. When you look at the results of theocratic governments in history, it makes you think that maybe they're not such a good idea.

I just took a shower and I feel like another shower after going to a link at buzzflash.com. They have a link to newsmax.com calling for banning Michael Moore's new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." I wonder what Freepers are so afraid of. If they don't like something in Freeperville, it must have some redeeming value.

In a story from salon.com intelligence expert Thomas Powers says the Bush administration has created the greatest intelligence disaster in our history: "The U.S. is now waging three wars, says intelligence expert Thomas Powers. One is in Iraq. The second is in Afghanistan. And the third is in Washington -- an all-out war between the White House and the nation's own intelligence agencies.

Powers, the author of 'Intelligence Wars: American Secret History From Hitler to Al Qaeda,' charges that the Bush administration is responsible for what is perhaps the greatest disaster in the history of U.S. intelligence."

At a time of record deficits, high unemployment, and working class people struggling, aren't you glad to learn that the Reagan holiday declared last week cost a whopping $423 MILLION? I knew funeral directors gouged their customers, but this has to be some kind of record. It reminds you a little of Funeralgate when Bush was Governor of Texas, but that's another story. This story is linked at washingtonpost.com: "The Bush administration's decision to shut down most of the federal government Friday in honor of the late Ronald Reagan was in keeping with a tradition that stretches back more than 50 years. But it was also one that cost taxpayers millions of dollars in government employee wages."

The cowards on the Supreme Court strike again. They dismissed the suit of an atheist challenging the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, saying that he didn't have legal standing to sue. The story is linked at sfgate.com: "The U.S. Supreme Court brought two years of pleadings and passion over the Pledge of Allegiance to a crashing anticlimax Monday when it ruled that a Sacramento atheist, who challenged the phrase 'under God' in daily recitals in his daughter’s classroom, had no right to sue on her behalf."

Here's a textbook example of why we need a national health insurance plan. Something as essential as health insurance shouldn't be in the hands of profiteers in the insurance industry. This story is at latimes.com: "Here's a real worst-case scenario: In October 2002, doctors found a tumor in the brain of Diana Peek, a 43-year-old former secretary in Mt. Vernon, Ill. Her insurer, which charged her just $162 a month for individual coverage, had recently been taken over by Thousand Oaks-based WellPoint Health Networks Inc. According to a story in Business Week, the insurer announced that it would soon stop providing individual health coverage in Illinois. Her tumor was declared a 'preexisting condition' and she was forced into a plan that covered a smaller share of her care while nearly tripling her monthly premium, to $472. Peek's car and home were repossessed, and her neighbors and daughter struggle to cover her treatment costs."

We haven't heard a lot of talk about the Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his close connection to the Bush family and the Republican Party. But maybe it's time to start paying attention to the self-proclaimed Messiah and the owner of the right-wing Washington Times newspaper. This story is linked at smirking chimp.com: "Should Americans be concerned that on March 23rd a bipartisan group of Congressmen attended a coronation at which a billionaire, pro-theocracy newspaper owner was declared to be the Messiah – with royal robes, a crown, the works? Or that this imperial ceremony took place not in a makeshift basement church or a backwoods campsite, but in a Senate office building?"

As Molly Ivins might say, this story is almost enough to leave you "whomper-jawed." Twenty-six former diplomats and military officials, many of them appointed by the Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations, say THIS Bush should be defeated this November. This story is at latimes.com: "A group of 26 former senior diplomats and military officials, several appointed to key positions by Republican Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, plans to issue a joint statement this week arguing that President George W. Bush has damaged America's national security and should be defeated in November."

In The New York Times Frank Rich talks about how George W. Bush is really a Ronald Reagan wannabe. Bush has pursued the same cruel policies we saw under Reagan and even added to their dimension of cruelty, but he doesn't have the Gipper's style: "The orgiastic celebration of Reagan's presidency over the past week, an upbeat Hollywood epic that has glided past Iran-contra, Bitburg and the retreat from Lebanon with impressive ease, has brought into clear focus the size of the gap between the two men."

The zeal to kill Saddam Hussein in the early days of the Iraq war resulted in the deaths of countless civilians. This story is at nytimes.com: "The United States launched many more failed airstrikes on a far broader array of senior Iraqi leaders during the early days of the war last year than has previously been acknowledged, and some caused significant civilian casualties, according to senior military and intelligence officials."

The Times story goes on to discuss the "thinness" of American intelligence. It makes you think about those Weapons of Mass Destruction, doesn't it? The story goes on, "In retrospect, the failures were an early warning sign about the thinness of American intelligence on Iraq and on Mr. Hussein's inner circle. Some of the officials who survived the raids, including General Ibrahim, have become leaders of what the Defense Intelligence Agency now believes has been a planned anti-American insurgency, several intelligence officials said."

You've heard George W. Bush and his supporters claim that the "terrorists are on the run" in Iraq and Afghanistan. A recent report by the State Department indicated that terrorism was on the decline. HOWEVER, as is customary with this administration, we learn that report wasn't true. In this story at nytimes.com Secretary of State Colin Powell must sheepishly admit they were wrong: "A State Department report that incorrectly showed a decline last year in terrorism worldwide was a 'big mistake,' Secretary of State Colin Powell said Sunday."

George W. Bush has never been the legitimate President of the United States. He lost the popular vote in the 2000 election and I believe if there had been an honest counting of the votes in Florida he would have lost the electoral college vote as well. Instead of pursuing a moderate course, realizing he didn't have a mandate, Mr. Bush has pursued the most right-wing presidency in our history. Apparently, the Bush people thought that with enough arrogance, bullying, and deception they could get their way on almost anything. Let's hope this story at smirkingchimp.com exemplifies the disgust we have and should have about this administration: "It appears, for all intents and purposes, that Bush never had the faith and trust of the American people in the first place. His whole coming into office was under a cloud of win-at-all-cost trickery, when we consider the 2000 Presidential elections in Florida that embarrassed America in the eyes of the world, making it look like a corrupt banana republic electoral process in need of international observers."

Our candidate for The Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY today is a slam dunk. Our capitalist says that we don't have "exploitable labor" under capitalism. It's all "voluntary." To wit: "Even if relatively poor people end up working very hard for low wages, they wouldn't do it if they didn't see a benefit to themselves. There's nothing exploitative about it."

The "benefit," sir, is the same as the benefit slaves had. You work for low wages and lousy benefits because you have very little choice. There are certain basic needs humans have: food, rent, and clothing being the most obvious among them. In a society driven by money you can't have even those necessities without trading off your time and energy for the money to pay for them. I don't consider my efforts at a job I thoroughly dislike to be "voluntary." It's a matter of necessity.

When people want to get dewy-eyed and tell you about the legacy of Ronald Reagan, remember this part of the legacy. This story is at the Houston Chronicle: "His vision is still with us. It lives on in the $1.7 trillion in tax cuts enacted by the current administration, in the record deficits that have surpassed Reagan's own and in the feel-good projections that the country's finances will sort themselves out in about 10 years and everything will be OK."

At dailyhowler.com there is a discussion of the All Spin Zone of Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly's guest, Michelle Malkin, was talking about the Reagan funeral and says the scandals exploding from the Bush administration are "manufactured." Manufactured by whom, Ms. Malkin? If ever there was a "manufactured" scandal, it was the Monica 24/7 bloviating of a few years ago. Let Malkin lie, "Of course, the Democrats are mad about this. It sucked the oxygen out of all their manufactured scandals and out of the launch of Bill Clinton's book."

In a story linked at bushnews.com Jimmy Breslin talks about the real history of the Cold War, the history you won't hear from the Reagan Cult: "The Cold War was won by a long memo written by George Kennan, who worked in the State Department and sent the memo by telegram about the need for a 'Policy of Containment' on Russia. Kennan said the contradictions in their system would ruin them. Keep them where they are and they will tear themselves apart. We followed Kennan's policy for over 40 years. The Soviets made it worse on themselves by building a wall in East Berlin. When they had to tear it down and give up their system, Kennan was in Princeton and he sat down to dinner."

In all the eulogies about Ronald Reagan we've heard about the "great economic expansion" that occurred under his watch. Right-wingers like to attribute economic growth to the massive tax cuts for the rich passed during the first year of Reagan's administration. They don't mention the massive tax increases that followed during the next few years. Writing in The New York Times, Paul Krugman observes: "And the economic expansion under President Reagan did not validate his economic doctrine. His supply-side advisers didn't promise a one-time growth spurt as the economy emerged from recession; they promised, but failed to deliver, a sustained acceleration in economic growth.

Inflation did come down sharply on Mr. Reagan's watch: it was running at 12 percent when he took office, but was only 4.5 percent when he left. But this victory came at a heavy price. For much of the Reagan era, the economy suffered from very high unemployment. Despite the rapid growth of 1983 and 1984, over the whole of the Reagan administration the unemployment rate averaged a very uncomfortable 7.5 percent."

Haley Barbour, former chairman of the national Republican Party, recently became Governor of Mississippi. You knew bad things were bound to happen. Barbour has led an effort to cut medical benefits to people already desperately poor. According to Bob Herbert at The New York Times, "How's this for compassion? Mississippi has approved the deepest cut in Medicaid eligibility for senior citizens and the disabled that has ever been approved anywhere in the U.S."

Marriage made in heaven? I guess not. Rush Limbaugh is getting divorced for the third time. Tell us again, Rush, about those family values you guys are always lecturing us about. The story is linked at buzzflash.com: "Conservative radio commentator Rush Limbaugh announced Friday that he and his wife, Marta, were divorcing."

You've heard a lot recently about the improving economy. It's a little like being told it's getting cold when you're baking in 100 degree heat. This analysis linked at buzzflash.com shows that the methodology for calculating new jobs is highly suspect. The story says, "To arrive at a monthly estimate of nonfarm payrolls, the BLS [Bureau of Labor Statistics] creates a benchmark universe of jobs through compiling Unemployment Insurance records from all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This benchmark is updated each year, about eleven months after the fact. The latest benchmark data is March 2003, which was compiled in February 2004. Then, each month the BLS takes a random sample of the universe and counts the jobs found within. They then compare that figure with the corresponding figure from the prior month's sample. So if the latest month's sample found 26,000 jobs, and last month's found 25,000, then the conclusion is made that the job market grew 4%. They then multiply that percentage growth against last month's estimate of total jobs. But that's not where it stops. They then arbitrarily add a figure for jobs created by new businesses they imagine were created, based on the number of businesses went dead that month (which are signified by the number of businesses in the sample that either reported 0 employees or didn't report at all.) The assumption here is that a dead business in the sample automatically means another business was created that month that hadn't gotten around to report to the state unemployment insurance agencies. Of course this doesn't account for all those businesses who laid off their employees because their jobs were outsourced to India, but I'm sure that's not a problem. Right."

Watching the tableau that is the Reagan tribute I have to wonder if this is a little like when Elvis died. A lot of people don't really believe The King is dead. Will there be Ronald Reagan sightings or Ronald Reagan impersonators? This really just supports my theory that Republicans are really a death cult. They really love death. The death penalty, bombs, missiles, nuclear weapons, and torture make Republicans giddy.

The New Iraqi prime minister (U.S. puppet) sent people out to plant bombs and commit terrorist acts under the direction of the CIA, according to this story linked at commondreams.org. It's an outrage when terrorist acts are committed against U.S. citizens, but somehow acceptable when it's committed against Iraqis? The story says, "Iyad Allawi, now the designated prime minister of Iraq, ran an exile organization intent on deposing Saddam Hussein that sent agents into Baghdad in the early 1990's to plant bombs and sabotage government facilities under the direction of the C.I.A., several former intelligence officials say."

A letter in The Los Angeles Times offers an appropriate tribute to Ronald Reagan: "I propose we name the national debt in his honor."

Whatever else I might think of Ronald and Nancy Reagan, I have to admire their taste in who they invited, or didn't invite, to dinner. This story is at nytimes.com: "The Reagans, who moved in a circle of old Hollywood friends but were still an intensely private couple, never had the Bushes in for dinner in the private quarters of the White House, Republicans recalled."

The Reagan presidency was in many ways like the B movies he starred in during his Hollywood career. He took his B movie acting ability to the White House and a worshipful media helped perpetuate the myth. William Greider talks about the reality of the Reagan presidency at commondreams.org: "What's left out? For one thing, a chilling meanness lurked at the core of Reagan's political agenda (always effectively concealed by the affability), and he used this meanness like a razor blade to advance his main purpose-delegitimizing the federal government. Race was one cutting edge, poverty was another. His famous metaphor-the 'welfare queen' who rode around in her Cadillac collecting food stamps-was perfectly pitched to the smoldering social resentments but also a clever fit with his broader economic objectives. Stop wasting our money on those lazy, shiftless (and, always unspoken, black) people. Get government off our backs, encourage the strong, forget the weak. In case any white guys missed the point, Reagan opened his 1980 campaign in Neshoba County, Mississippi, where three civil rights workers had been murdered in the 1960s. His speech extolled states' rights. The tone was sunny optimism."

The right-wing hot air machine has for years claimed that Ronald Reagan "won the Cold War." Harvey Wasserman has an alternative explanation in this article linked at commondreams.org: "No greater nonsense will accompany Ronald Reagan to his grave than the idea that he brought down the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War.

Among the many causes of Soviet collapse two words stand out, and they aren't Ronald Reagan.

They are rock and radiation."

Ronald Reagan's recent demise was sure to inspire a gush of praise here in right-wing nut country, so selecting the Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY isn't an easy task. However, a letter suggesting that Reagan's face should be on Mount Rushmore meets all our criteria. Our Reagan worshipper even goes so far as to compare Reagan's "statesmanship" to that of Konrad Adenauer, Charles de Gaulle, and Winston Churchill. Mr. Right-Winger didn't include FDR, of course.

Statesmanship? What statesmanship? Creating a massive military build-up, spending ourselves into bankruptcy even though the Soviet Union was already on its last legs? That's statesmanship? Pushing for an expensive boondoggle like Star Wars was statesmanship? Supporting right-wing death squads in Central America was statesmanship?

I have some alternative proposals. Why don't we build a big moon base shaped like Reagan's face? We could make it so big that every time the moon is full people on earth will see Reagan's image. Or we could build a great Wall of Reagan, modeled after the Great Wall of China. We could make it so big it could be seen from space.

Since the administration of George H. W. Bush, Saddam Hussein has been characterized as evil incarnate. It's interesting, however, that during the Reagan-Bush administration that Saddam was a U.S. ally. This story is linked at commondreams.org: "As Americans mourn the passing of president Ronald Reagan, almost forgotten is the decisive part his administration played in the survival of Iraq's president Saddam Hussein through his eight year war with Iran."

Harold Meyerson writes in The Washington Post about the Reagan legacy his worshippers don't want to talk about: "But however much Reagan helped wind down the Cold War abroad, he absolutely revived class war here at home. Slashing taxes on the rich, refusing to raise the minimum wage and declaring war on unions by firing air traffic controllers during their 1981 strike, Reagan took aim at the New Deal's proudest creation: a secure and decently paid working class. Broadly shared prosperity was out; plutocracy was dug up from the boneyard of bad ideas. The share of the nation's wealth held by the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans rose by 5 percent during Reagan's presidency, while virtually everyone else's declined."

USA Today is certainly no left-wing publication. But even USA Today has an article about the growing number of working poor in the United States. Just remember, if George W. Bush gets back into the White House this November, this situation will worsen: "'There's no way of rationalizing a CEO making millions of dollars when workers don't get enough to support themselves. Something seems wrong,' says Beth Shulman, author of The Betrayal of Work: How Low-Wage Jobs Fail 30 Million Americans and their Families. 'Low-wage workers are subsidizing our lives. We can make better choices that really improve these jobs.'"

A friend has asked me to talk about John Kerry. Many on the left aren't enthusiastic about Kerry. It's much the same syndrome that bedeviled Al Gore in the 2000 campaign.

Why Kerry? many ask. The most glaring and obvious answer is that, of course, he isn't George W. Bush. George W. Bush is the most corrupt, most venal, and most dangerous man ever to occupy the Oval Office. I believe the survival of democracy itself may be at stake, and I believe the survival of life on earth may be at stake.

This isn't hyperbole. Perhaps the single greatest crisis confronting the human race now is global climate change. Evidence of the changes are all around us. At the very least, global climate change will destroy the homes and livelihoods of millions around the planet. It means more and deadlier tornadoes and hurricanes. It means periods of prolonged drought. It means parts of the world will be in perpetual deep freeze. It means the introduction of new tropical diseases that we may not have the resources to combat.

Recently, even the Pentagon issued a report stating that global climate change could lead to hostilities that will result in nuclear exchanges. Desperate people, dislocated by the change in climate, will try to relocate to more favorable areas. Countries, facing strains on their own dwindling resources, may very well do anything to stop an influx of desperate refugees.

Even if you want to consider the scenario of global climate change as alarmist, there are other dangers presented by four more years of George W. Bush. Mr. Bush has stated frequently that he believes he was put into the position of president of the United States by God. Mr. Bush believes in the "end times" prophecies in the Bible. He has the power to actually launch Armageddon. What if he does so in the belief he is fulfilling God's mandate?

Assuming we don't face that scenario, how about the continuous assault upon the Bill of Rights by the Bush administration? With laws such as the PATRIOT ACT, the federal government has assumed a depth and breadth of powers that would have alarmed the Founding Fathers. We know from several sources that the Bush administration has sought to make end runs around international law in the treatment of prisoners of war. We know that when John Poindexter was part of the administration there were several attempts to create a government data base on every person in the United States. The data base would have virtually every aspect of your life documented, from your medical records, your educational records, your financial records, even to what you purchase. It's an Orwellian nightmare come true.

I tend to view the world from a working class perspective. I'm working class and I come from working class people. There is no doubt that life for the working class always gets worse under Republican administrations and that has been especially true under the administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush. Taxes get cut for the rich, programs get cut for the poor, and the middle class, and our standard of living and our future prospects lie in ashes. Author and radio commentator Thom Hartmann has compared it to the feudalism that existed in the Middle Ages. Even if we aren't happy with the policies of a Bill Clinton or a John Kerry, we know we're less likely to lose ground. Under George W. Bush losing ground is a certainty.

With his "war on terror" George W. Bush has recklessly abused our military forces and stretched them to the limit. It's very likely that Bush will institute a new military draft to fill the gaps in an overstretched military. John Kerry is less likely to do so. Kerry is far more willing and more competent to form international alliances.

We're at a point in human history we should be moving away from racism, from homophobia, and from gender discrimination. With another Bush administration we're likely to go back to a crueler, more intolerant time. John Kerry would not be proposing a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage, which only fans the hatred and cruelty toward gays, just to illustrate one glaring difference between Kerry and Bush.

Those are just some of the reasons that anyone who is progressive should support John Kerry, despite reservations we may have. The old saying is that Rome wasn't built in a day. A kinder, gentler, fairer society also won't be built in a day. But as President John F. Kennedy said, "Let us begin."

The Fresno Bee's DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY is another right-winger pretending to be all-knowledgeable and pragmatic. Our commentator calls John Kerry "naive" for proposals Senator Kerry made about reducing the nuclear threat. Once upon a time, people were called wild-eyed dreamers when they suggested we could actually fly to the moon. Every great advancement in human history began when someone asked Why? and dreamed it could happen. I like John Kerry's approach far better than George W. Bush's, the guy who likes Star Wars technology, militarizing space, and "mini-nukes."

The Federal Reserve has ruled that banks can skirt laws about high interest loans by allowing so-called "overdraft protection" loans. The banks collect millions of dollars in fees by, once again, exploiting poor and middle class people. The story is at nytimes.com: "The Federal Reserve said yesterday that banks could continue controversial programs that consumer groups say function as high-cost loans used mainly by poor and middle-income people.

The programs enable, and in some cases encourage, customers with low balances to overdraw their checking accounts, allowing the banks to skirt credit laws and collect billions of dollars in fees. They are generally marketed as 'overdraft privilege' or 'bounce protection' and have grown very rapidly in the last five years, with at least 1,500 banks now offering them."

As you hear an endless Reagan hagiography, remember what happened in Central America as a direct result of Ronald Reagan's policies. This story is linked at americanpolitics.com: "An estimated 300,000 people died in Central America's civil wars, about half during Reagan's two terms in office. Many were civilians tortured and murdered by army troops or death squads linked to armed forces that received heavy U.S. support, human rights groups say.

'A lot of extremely nasty things were going on ... and the Reagan administration really defended and even actively supported some of the worst human rights violators in the hemisphere,' said Daniel Wilkinson of Human Rights Watch in New York."

Many in the Republican party like to represent themselves as "pro-life." They're "pro-life" if it means denying a woman the right to an abortion. But they're very pro-death in issues like capital punishment, environmental destruction, and in the killing machine known as war. This story linked at makethemaccountable talks about L'il Bush's meeting with the Pope: "Now, place that into perspective: According to iraqbodycount.com, more than 9,200 civilians -- often mothers and children -- have been killed in this conflict. Those are 9,200 murders, Dubya! That is blood on your hands, and that violates one of God's basic commandments: Thou Shalt Not Kill!

What the Pope did not say is that the position of the Catholic Church is that to be Pro-Life, you must oppose abortion, capital punishment, unjust wars, and euthanasia. All four! You can't pick and choose."

In The New York Times Paul Krugman writes about the irresponsibility of Alan Greenspan, the Federal Reserve Chairman, who betrayed the basic principles of his philosophy in endorsing the Bush tax cuts: "Yet in retrospect we know that Greenspan's 'judgment' -- that tax cuts were needed to prevent excessive budget surpluses -- was a misjudgment of Rumsfeldian proportions. In fact, the United States is headed for a budget deficit of more than $400 billion this year, more than half of it a result of tax cuts passed since Greenspan gave Bush his support."

The Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY claims that people who support Bush are "clear-thinking" and we on the left are "desperate." Oh, yeah. We're also anti-American. You're anti-American if you oppose unnecessary wars, lousy economies, bad environments, torture, outing CIA operatives, dismantling the civil liberties guaranteed in the Constitution, the mixing of church and state, and crony capitalism. Our bright light writes, "Those who write to The Bee and tear down our leadership, military and institutions are not the consensus but only a small portion of the population. These people get a disproportionate amount of attention, which the media are only too happy to offer."

I suppose it would be considered "anti-American" by some to mention that the military has lost track of a number of Stinger missiles. Those are the missiles that can be held on the shoulder and launched to bring down airplanes. This story is linked at buzzflash.com: "A still-secret congressional report detailing the Pentagon's inability to account for all of its Stinger shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles is causing consternation on Capitol Hill and raises the specter of terrorists using U.S.-made missiles to shoot down U.S. military or civilian airplanes."

We're getting the standard pabulum about the presidency of the late Ronald Reagan. It would be nice if history were written honestly, without the revisionism. Fans of Mr. Reagan won't like this commentary by Greg Palast linked at buzzflash.com, but it's a lot closer to the truth than the standard obituaries you'll see in the mainstream media: "The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected,'faith in small town America' and 'old-time values.' 'Values' my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million."

A Pentagon report last year asserted that George W. Bush could authorize torture. The story is linked at buzzflash.com and comes from bbc.co.uk: "A Pentagon report last year argued that President George W. Bush was not bound by laws banning the use of torture, according to the Wall Street Journal."

Let's let the history begin. Right-wingers have tried to put a rosy spin on the Reagan administration by giving credit to Reagan for "winning" the Cold War Robert Parry at consortiumnews.com has a more realistic look at the events of the 1980s. The Soviet Union was already tottering, ready to collapse, when Reagan came into office. We spent billions on weapons systems that were unnecessary. The United States funded and supported right-wing death squads in Central America, who gang-raped women, engaged in torture, and mass murder in our name. As Mr. Parry writes, "Yet absent from the media commentary was the one fundamental debate that must be held before any reasonable assessment can be made of Ronald Reagan and his Presidency: How, why and when was the Cold War 'won'? If, for instance, the United States was already on the verge of victory over a foundering Soviet Union in the early-to-mid-1970s, as some analysts believe, then Reagan’s true historic role may not have been 'winning' the Cold War, but helping to extend it."

A story linked at democrats.com says that the Taliban was willing to hand over Osama bin Laden. Once again, you have to question why the Bush administration didn't take bin Laden or terrorism seriously until after the attacks on September 11:

Reuters reports, "U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly almost a year before the 9/11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over bin Laden, according to a German TV report. U.S. and Taliban officials met secretly in Frankfurt almost a year before the September 11 attacks to discuss terms for the Afghans to hand over Osama bin Laden, according to a German television documentary. But no agreement was reached and no further negotiations took place before the suicide hijackings in 2001, which bin Laden subsequently hailed in a videotape as the work of his al Qaeda network." ZDF television says "Kabir Mohabbat, an Afghan-American businessman [quoted] the Taliban foreign minister, Mullah Wakil Ahmed Mutawakil, as saying: 'You can have him whenever the Americans are ready. Name us a country and we will extradite him.'"

The Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY suggests that the casualty figures in Iraq really aren't so bad when compared to World War II and to Vietnam. Our analyst writes, "That is a casualty rate of just 2.5%, and a mortality rate of only 0.3%. If you compare that to the casualty rates of about 6.5% for the first and second World Wars and for Vietnam, you can see how well our troops are doing in Iraq."

RESPONSE: First, I'm not sure how accurate the figures are that the Bush administration has supplied us about the casualty and mortality rates. This administration has a record of, ahem, not telling the truth. But the major point is that these deaths are UNNECESSARY. The whole pretext for this war was a lie. And our analyst didn't mention, once again, the casualty figures for innocent civilians in Iraq, which number in the tens of thousands. In this country the murder of two people, Laci Peterson and her unborn son, are a national outrage. But we calmly and sedately accept the deaths of thousands, including our own military personnel, like it's just a change in the weather.

One of the local high schools here is Hoover High School. I didn't go to Hoover, but evidently a speech at the Hoover graduation ceremonies this year caused quite a stir, judging from the letters written to The Fresno Bee. One speaker had the temerity! to criticize the Bush administration. Oh my Lord! The horror of it all. The complaining letter writers didn't feel it was "appropriate" that the speaker air his political views. Excuse me, but free speech is one of the hallmarks of this society (or it used to be). And people graduating from high school and getting ready to enter the "real" world are going to deal with the harsh realities created by this administration.

More alarming news on the environmental front. Right-wingers will continue to bury their heads in the sand and claim that global climate change is just a fabrication by us environmental wackos. The United Nations has just issued a new report documenting an alarming increase in CO2 gases, the gases most responsible for atmospheric warming. The story is linked at commondreams.org: "The secretary of the UN's paramount environment accord warned that climate-altering pollution emitted by burning oil, gas and coal was now growing at 'an alarmingly rapid' rate.

'Recent news about a disintegrating Arctic ice cap and the increased frequency of extreme weather events and associated damage have added to the sense of urgency' about climate change, Joke Waller-Hunter, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), said here."

There are strong indications that George W. Bush knew about the leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to columnist Robert Novak, who dutifully published it. Bush and his cronies wanted to get even with Ms. Plame's husband, Joseph Wilson, because he revealed that the administration was lying about Iraq purchasing enriched uranium from Niger. Revealing Ms. Plame's name endangered lives and U.S. security and is a crime. Bush is apparently concerned enough that he may be criminally implicated that he has hired an outside attorney. This story is linked at makethemacccountable.com: "Witnesses told a federal grand jury President George W. Bush knew about, and took no action to stop, the release of a covert CIA operative's name to a journalist in an attempt to discredit her husband, a critic of administration policy in Iraq.

Their damning testimony has prompted Bush to contact an outside lawyer for legal advice because evidence increasingly points to his involvement in the leak of covert CIA operative Valerie Plame's name to syndicated columnist Robert Novak."

I remember a line from my favorite movie "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Butch is talking to Etta Place and says, "I've worked hard all my life and it seems I can never get ahead." That should be the message scrolling across the TV screen every time George W. Bush speaks about the economy. This story linked at makethemaccountable.com shows who IS getting ahead these days: "According to the Economic Policy Institute, while corporate profits have risen by more than 62%, workers' take home pay has dropped by .6%. This follows an earlier report which shows that industries currently adding jobs pay 21% less than industries that are slashing jobs. Despite this wage crisis, President Bush is pushing to cut off an estimated 8 million workers from overtime pay protections, and supports efforts to outsource even more well-paid American jobs. Meanwhile, he refuses to raise the minimum wage, despite new research showing a minimum wage hike would not adversely affect businesses or consumers.

The story, of course, is different for the president's wealthy campaign donors. A recent study shows CEO pay exploded by 27% in just one year, all while the President lavished more than $1 trillion in new tax breaks on the richest 1% of the population. To put the contrast into dollars, the average worker takes home $517 a week and will receive about $400 in tax breaks from President Bush. At the same time, the average CEO takes home $155,769 a week and this year alone received well over $50,000 in new tax breaks from Bush."

A friend gave me a good tip about Bush axing the juvenile justice budget, among all the other things this administration has slashed and burned. For all the rhetoric about family values and leaving no child behind, the Bush administration has demonstrated an absolute lack of concern for children.

I see that former President Reagan died today. It's tempting when someone dies to eulogize them profusely. I didn't think President Reagan was a good president. I think his policies hurt a lot of people in this country. I still don't know if President Reagan was responsible or if the people around him were the primary culprits for the policies that emerged from his administration. I do have to say that, compared to George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan was vastly better.

Jobs, jobs, jobs. According to the new jobs report, about 248,000 new jobs were created last month. However, the unemployment rate remains flat at 5.6%. There's also word that the Federal Reserve plans to increase interest rates. We can't have an "overheated" economy, you know. The Bush administration will try to use the new jobs report data to claim that Bush's economic policies are a success. But bear in mind that we're only making up ground that has been lost during the Bush years. This story is at nytimes.com: "Still, the economy is far from the booming 1990s. Last month, 8.2 million people remained unemployed. While the overall jobless rate stayed at 5.6 percent, it was much higher among blacks, at 9.9 percent and Hispanics, at 7 percent.

The average duration of unemployment rose to 20 weeks last month, up from 19.7 weeks in April. Almost 22 percent of all jobless workers have been without work for 27 weeks or more."

The Bush campaign is attacking John Kerry--get this--for being rich. The party of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich has a problem with an opponent who is rich. The hypocrisy would be mind-boggling, except that it's standard procedure for this rotten bunch. This quote is from the story at washingtonpost.com: "Kerry campaign spokesman David Wade responded: 'Boneheaded attacks from this bunch are as insulting as they are ironic. It's downright hypocritical coming from the campaign of a president whose connections got him into a 'Champagne Unit' of the National Guard during Vietnam and whose path was paved with privilege from Andover to Arbusto oil to the Texas Rangers…This guy who was born on third base and thought he hit a triple is going to engage in a sad game of class warfare? . . . I don't think a lot of Americans remember Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy because of where they came from, they remember them for what they did to make America stronger. Good luck finding Americans who think that way about George Bush.'"

I suspect that like a lot of Americans I will never be able to afford a home. So I've lived my adult life in apartments. It's a roof over your head, nothing more. But one thing I've learned is that landlords are about at the bottom of the food chain. They own a building and by virtue of that they have immense power over people who don't have much money. They can raise your rent, they can sell the building, they can harass you until you move, or find any number of ways to make your life more difficult than it should have to be.

Fresno is "blessed" with a management company called WestCo Equities. I got really angry with WestCo Equities when they increased my rent by 16% in just six months. Today I learned they fired the apartment manager, who I like, without any notice and for what sounds like trumped-up charges. I don't know all the circumstances, of course, but my personal history with WestCo doesn't make me favorably disposed. What's even worse in this case is that the manager has just three days to move. So without any formal reprimands or any warnings of any kind, she loses her job, her livelihood, and even the roof over her head. There are any number of words to describe companies like WestCo, but let's start with the word "despicable."

What companies like WestCo do to a relatively small number of us George Bush has been doing to the planet. Bush has moseyed off to Italy and paid a visit to the Pope. At least you have to give the Pope credit for confronting Bush about the immoral war in Iraq. This story is at yahoonews.com: "The ailing pontiff complained about recent 'deplorable events,' an apparent reference to the abuse of Iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops. In the absence of a commitment to shared human values,'neither war nor terrorism will ever be overcome,' he said, struggling to speak."

I've never been confident in the intellectual capacities of George W. Bush. But, according to this story linked at buzzflash.com, Bush may literally be going over the edge: "President George W. Bush’s increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader’s state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as 'enemies of the state.'"

Moises Naim has a perceptive op-ed piece at latimes.com about the cavalcade of characters that led us into this unnecessary war in Iraq. The prime culprit is George W. Bush, but blame also goes to members of Congress who didn't stand up against the administration, and to the major media who might as well have danced around with pom-poms: "Don't put the blame for Iraq on President Bush alone. Nothing, it would seem, could have stopped the Bush administration from pursuing its long-standing plans against Saddam Hussein. But placing responsibility for the Iraq debacle solely on Bush's shoulders is too simple and even potentially dangerous. It blurs the responsibilities of others who contributed to an environment in which new, bad ideas were embraced while proven, good ones were shed."

Why would anyone serving in the military, or anyone related to someone serving in the military, support George W. Bush? The New York Times has this story saying that members of the military may have their tours of duty extended, which is, in effect, a draft: "The Army announced Wednesday that it would require soldiers to extend their active duty tours if their units were bound for Iraq and Afghanistan, a move that could keep thousands of troops in the service for months longer than they expected over the next several years."

This story is worth keeping an eye on. Mr. "Honorable and Decent" has retained an attorney in the Valerie Plame leak case. The story is at cbsnews.com: "President Bush has consulted an outside lawyer in case he needs to retain him in the grand jury investigation of who leaked the name of a covert CIA operative last year, the White House said Wednesday."

Let's see, the administration is supposedly making us safer from terrorism, right? How is freeing a known terrorist and letting him go to Syria, a bastion of terrorism, accomplishing that? This story is at yahoonews.com: "Nabil al-Marabh was No. 27 on the FBI (news - web sites) list of terror suspects after Sept. 11. He trained in Afghanistan (news - web sites) militant camps, sent money to a roommate convicted in a foiled plot to bomb a hotel and boasted to an informant about plans to blow up a fuel truck inside a New York tunnel, FBI documents allege. The Bush administration set him free — to Syria — even though prosecutors had sought to bring criminal cases against him and judges openly expressed concerns about possible terrorist ties."

Eric Alterman writes about a study by the Pew Center for Excellence in Journalism in a story linked at buzzflash.com. The survey debunks the right-wing propaganda that the media are liberal. Only about a third of journalists, according to the survey, describe themselves as liberal. Alterman writes, "The study has naturally not received much attention, save for its ideological findings. Among these are nearly sixty percent of journalists surveyed think the media has been far too easy on President Bush and just over a third of journalists identify themselves as 'liberal.' These two figures have driven the conservatives who control the cable TV and radio debates to distraction. This is surprising. True, thirty-four percent calling themselves 'liberal' is a bit more than the national average, but if I'm not mistaken, these same right-wingers have been crowing endlessly that the entire media was controlled by liberals. If the number is only a third — with fifty-four percent calling themselves moderates, then just what's the problem?"

This story from Scripps Howard News Service is linked at buzzflash.com and talks about how the Bush campaign is ignoring the traditional separation between religion and politics by recruiting churches to work for Bush. I have lots of reservations about churches receiving tax exemptions, and this only supports the case for eliminating those exemptions: "In an effort to woo religious-minded voters, President Bush's campaign is recruiting people in 'friendly congregations' to organize rallies in churches and distribute campaign material."

George W. Bush reminds you a little of Lizzie Borden, the famous murderer who wasn't convicted, but inspired the famous rhyme "Lizzie Borden took an ax and gave her mother forty whacks, and when she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." Mr. Bush swings the budget ax at programs like Head Start and gives the spoils to his rich pals. The New York Times editorializes: "It's hard to imagine any realistic approach that would have the nation achieve fiscal responsibility with the tax cuts in place. First of all, even all of the proposed cuts in the memo would barely begin to make a dent in the annual deficits, which are likely to range from $300 billion to $400 billion for the rest of the decade. Second, although the fate of specific programs has not been decided, there is no way the administration can take a multibillion-dollar whack out of the relatively small budget for domestic discretionary programs — a mere one-sixth of federal spending — without hurting services that are both popular and desperately needed."