IRAQ FUNDS, 27 INQUIRIES

You don't like to be cynical, but you can't help thinking that Iraq has been just one big cash cow for a lot of people. We have our military fighting, dying, getting maimed for life so a few people can make big bucks. We know that Halliburton Corporation, good friend of Dick Cheney, has wasted millions of dollars. Now we learn there are twenty-seven different inquiries about the misuse of funds in Iraq. This story is at commondreams.org:

A comprehensive examination of the U.S.-led agency that oversaw the rebuilding of Iraq has triggered at least 27 criminal investigations and produced evidence of millions of dollars' worth of fraud, waste and abuse, according to a report by the Coalition Provisional Authority's inspector general.

The report is the most sweeping indication yet that some U.S. officials and private contractors repeatedly violated the law in the free-wheeling atmosphere that pervaded the multibillion-dollar effort to rebuild the war-torn country.

SELECTIVE STATISTICS

Since George W. Bush doesn't have a real record to run on, we can expect all kinds of statistical chicanery in the next few months in an attempt to show things really aren't as bad as they seem. One example is the economy. Bush has proclaimed that over the past several months we've had the greatest economic growth in twenty years. This piece at commondreams.org gives the real perspective:

"Our economy since last summer has been growing at the fastest rate in 20 years" said President Bush in a speech last week. The word went out from on high, and soon it began to spread: the fastest-growing economy in 20 years! A very important discovery for this election season, with voters none too pleased about the state of the economy. During a TV talk show (CNBC's Morning Call) on which I appeared, this claim was repeated to me.

Is it true? Well if you pick the right three quarters -- the first quarter of this year and the second half of last year, to be exact -- it is technically true. Over these three quarters the economy grew by 5.4 percent, which is faster than any other 9-month period in the past 20 years. But not by much. For the last 9 months of 1999, for example, the economy grew by 5.1 percent.

But why take 9 months? If we look at the last year, it's not any record at all. Similarly for the last two years. And since the recession ended in the last quarter of 2001, the economy has grown by 3.6 percent. This not bad, but not particularly strong growth for a recovery from a recession -- when the economy usually grows at a much faster than normal rate.

THE CORPORATE CROWD MAKES OUT LIKE BANDITS

In this piece at villagevoice.com there is a discussion of some information gleaned by United For a Fair Economy. It shows how CEOs and corporate types are doing very, thank you, while the rest of us go over the cliff:

OK, but what has happened during George W. Bush's rule? Here are a few other factoids:

Large-company CEO pay rose 9.1 percent from 2002 to 2003.

Production-worker pay rose 2.1 percent from 2002 to 2003.

The average worker took home $517 a week in 2003.

The average large-company CEO took home $155,769 a week in 2003.

LOVELY LITTLE METAPHORS

I have a friend who leans to the right. My friend sent me an update on the old story of the grasshopper and the ant. It's the story where the grasshopper frolics during the summer, laughing at the hard-working ant, but when winter comes the grasshopper finds himself in big trouble because he hasn't planned for the cold. In the update the grasshopper is most of us, especially the drug abusers and people who depend on social services, and the ant is theoretically those wonderful, virtuous, hard-working rich people.

It bothers me that most wealth in this country accrues to very few people. Are we really to believe that just a few people are hard-working enough, smart enough, virtuous enough to deserve almost all the wealth, while the rest of us are just indolent scofflaws? Are we to believe that has been true throughout American history? In the whole history of this nation, how many have truly been rich?

I keep thinking about a song by Dave Rovics that asks the question, what would happen if all the minimum wage workers went on strike? Those "achievers" would suddenly have to fix their own cars, run their own offices, pick up their own garbage, provide their own transportation, do their own accounting, cook their own meals, and on and on.

Most workers produce far more in profit for their employers than they receive back in compensation of any kind. We're told the employer is taking "risk" and deserves the reward for taking the risk. But isn't it risky being an employee? We work for "at will" employers, which means you can be fired for any reason at any time. Many employees work in extremely dangerous occupations such as mining, or stressful occupations such as air traffic controllers. Where is the compensation for the risks they take? I don't object to wealth honestly obtained, but I do object to exploitation, and that's what we're seeing in abundance in the American economic system.

HALLIBURTON IS RIPPING OFF U.S. TAXPAYERS

You hear conservatives talk about the efficiency of private enterprise, as opposed to that big bloated, inefficient machine called government. But there is nothing worse that private enterprise that sucks off the government as is proven by the Halliburton Corporation. Dick Cheney’s old company doesn’t have to care about efficiency or honest accounting because you and I pay the bill. This story is at www.chron.com:

Halliburton Co. has lost $18.6 million of government property in Iraq, about a third of the items it was given to manage, including trucks, computers and office furniture, government auditors claim.

The auditors couldn't account for 6,975 of 20,531 items on the ledgers of Halliburton's KBR unit, according to a report by Stuart Bowen, auditor for the coalition provisional authority inspector general.

U.S. ECONOMY SLOWS DRAMATICALLY

Rich people can easily say money is no object. The rest of us can’t say that. Higher gasoline and food prices helped to drag the economy down to a crawl. I’m really impressed at how well those tax cuts to the rich are stimulating the economy, aren’t you? This story is at news.yahoo.com:

The U.S. economy slowed dramatically in the spring to an annual growth rate of 3 percent, as consumers, worried about higher gasoline prices, cut back their spending to the weakest pace in three years, the Commerce Department said.

The April-June advance in the gross domestic product, the country's output of goods and services, was below the 3.8 percent increase many economists had expected and was significantly down from a revised 4.5 percent growth rate in the first three months of the year.

WHO IS REALLY IN THE MAINSTREAM?

Republicans have thrown around the word “liberal” as though being liberal is something disgraceful, something foul and unworthy. The fact is that almost all the great accomplishments for ordinary people have been thanks to liberals. In recent years conservatives have liked to paint liberals as outside the mainstream. We don’t have the proper “values,” they say. E. J. Dionne in this piece linked at workingforchange.com addresses this:

If John Kerry is elected president, his speech accepting the Democratic nomination will be only part of the story. At least as important will be the antidote that Democrats brought to market at their convention this week to combat three decades of Republican attacks around social issues, "values" questions and patriotism.

JUST SAY NO

Back in the Reagan administration First Lady Nancy Reagan’s special cause was an anti-drug message. “Just say no,” we were told. Now we have Republicans telling us we should take Prozac if we’re unhappy with our jobs. If one took Prozac for everything evil the Bush administration has done, we’d all be on Prozac. This story is at news.yahoo.com:

A campaign worker for President Bush said on Thursday American workers unhappy with low-quality jobs should find new ones -- or pop a Prozac to make themselves feel better.

Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?" said Susan Sheybani, an assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry Holt.

Senator John Edwards talked about "two Americas" in his speech at the Democratic National Convention. It's an America of the few haves and the many have-nots. It reminds me of a scene from Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" where George W. Bush is talking to a group of his typically wealthy supporters. Bush refers to them as the "haves" and the "have mores" and then calls them his base. According to a piece at nytimes.com, the income Americans reported to the I.R.S. has shrunk for two years in a row. It's the first time this has happened since the modern income tax system began. The story is at nytimes.com:

The overall income Americans reported to the government shrank for two consecutive years after the Internet stock market bubble burst in 2000, the first time that has effectively happened since the modern tax system was introduced during World War II, newly disclosed information from the Internal Revenue Service shows.

While most of us are losing ground, however, executives are doing very well. This story is at news.ft.com:

Executive pay in the US is rising faster than previously thought, according to a new analysis which includes the value of cashed-in stock options.

Capitol Hill Blue is a publication that leans right. So there's no liberal bias here. They're reporting that Bush is taking drugs to control depression. I remember a Democratic Vice-Presidential candidate being destroyed because it was revealed he had seen a psychiatrist and taken treatments for depression back in the days of the George McGovern candidacy. I bet you Bush won't get the same treatment. This story is at capitolhillblue.com:

Bush is taking powerful anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia, Capitol Hill Blue has learned.The prescription drugs, administered by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician, can impair the President’s mental faculties and decrease both his physical capabilities and his ability to respond to a crisis, administration aides admit privately.

It's fashionable in some circles to hate trial lawyers. The Bushies are making a big thing about John Edwards being a trial lawyer. But if you look at the total picture, we common folk benefit from trial lawyers. Businesses don't like people like John Edwards because it's people like John Edwards who make them pay for their crimes against the rest of us. This is a good commentary at www.detnews.com:

Before John Edwards launched his run for the vice presidency, the Bush campaign said it was itching to run against a trial lawyer. "Bring on the ambulance chaser," then-White House spokesman Ari Fleischer beckoned. Last week, Vice President Dick Cheney was on the stump in Ohio blaming rising health-care costs on "runaway litigation" and backing a $250,000 cap on medical malpractice awards, a tort reform proposal that the Kerry-Edwards ticket opposes.

It's no time to get complacent, but a current Zogby poll has good news for Kerry supporters. According to the poll, Kerry would win the electoral vote if the election were held now. But let's not take anything for granted. Let's keep the momentum going. The story is at www.zogby.com:

In a two-week stretch in which there was very little going on around the world or domestically, the race for the White House has followed suit, settling down a bit, the latest edition of the Zogby Interactive poll shows. Democratic challenger John Kerry of Massachusetts retains his Electoral College lead over President Bush, but the race in many key states is too close to call as Democrats gather in Boston for their quadrennial nominating convention.

If you had to rate the vilest of the right-wing pundits, how would you rank them? I think Limbaugh is the worst, Sean Hannity next, and then comes Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly and Michael Moore got into a verbal slugfest, and it sounds like Michael Moore handled himself just fine. The story is at pagead2.googlesyndication.com:

Controversial filmmaker Michael Moore's already sizzling presence at the Democratic convention reached the boiling point Tuesday when he appeared on the Fox News cable network in a spirited debate with host Bill O'Reilly.

I know the focus of the Democratic National Convention is to keep a positive message, and I really don't have a problem with that. But I still have to applaud Senator Edward Kennedy for briefly laying out how rotten the current administration is. This story is at newsday.com:

And in a rhetorical riff that triggered his biggest ovation, Kennedy said: "If each of us cared about the public interest, we wouldn't have the excesses of Enron. We wouldn't have the abuses of Halliburton. And Vice President Cheney would be retired to an undisclosed location. Soon, thanks to John Kerry and John Edwards, he'll have ample time to do just that."

There's nothing like your computer crashing to disrupt your Internet lifestyle.  A strange message appeared "AssocIsDangerous" and I couldn't access Windows.  Several days after sending my computer to a technician I have it back.  I hope to get back to the serious business of defeating Bush in the next few days.

President Clinton's speech at the Democratic National Convention was magnificent.  I didn't get to see the speech by Barack Obama, but early reviews are laudatory.  I can't help contrasting Democratic candidates with their Republican opponents.  Democrats like Bill Clinton, Al Gore, Jimmy Carton, and Barack Obama are decent, intelligent people who care about what's best for the majority of Americans and for the rest of the world.  Contrast that to the Neanderthals they're running against.  Isn't it terrific to hear a speech by an intelligent man like Bill Clinton, a speech where real ideas are presented, and not just a parade of empty platitudes?

On a personal note, a lady where I work got fired today.  This place is possibly the most brutal I've ever worked.  You have to keep track of every second of your day.  You have to be constantly worried about your "numbers."  They don't pay anything either.  They are so generous they give you one week of paid vacation a year and just six paid holidays.  I estimate that at least two thirds of the staff has rolled over in a little over two years.  They know they can get away with lousy treatment of their employees because the Bush economy makes people desperate for jobs, any jobs, no matter how terrible they may be.  One of the first steps we can take to empower the working class in this country and around the world is to vote against free market conservatives.

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BUSH THE BIGOT

George W. Bush is a bigot. Who knew? Everyone who isn't a total Bush partisan. But it's refreshing to see a newspaper actually come out and say it. The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin, calls a bigot a bigot. The editorial is at www.madison.com:

President Bush is a bigot.

That's tragic.

What's worse, however, is that he has chosen to insult Wisconsinites by expounding upon his bigotry in Wisconsin, which has a tradition of tolerance and common sense.

Bush identified himself as a bigot during this week's campaign swing through eastern Wisconsin, when he attempted to justify his support for the so-called "Federal Marriage Amendment" (FMA). The FMA would, for the first time since slavery days, use the Constitution to require discrimination against a group of Americans.

TAKE AWAY THEIR TAX EXEMPTION

When churches enter the political arena they should lose their tax exemption status. I have to pay taxes, more taxes than I should, because people like Jerry Falwell don't pay enough taxes. What's even more galling is that they use their freedom from taxes to push an agenda I find onerous. This story is at nytimes.com:

Hoping to send a warning to churches helping the Bush campaign turn out conservative voters, a liberal group has filed a complaint with the Internal Revenue Service charging that an organization run by the Rev. Jerry Falwell has violated the requirements of its tax-exempt status by endorsing Mr. Bush's re-election.

DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY

In the first paragraph of this letter the writer informs us that he has voted Republican the last several years. It's really unnecessary information because the rest of the first paragraph is so moronic we already knew. Observe:

Who should I vote for in the November election? I have voted Republican over the last several years but I am thinking about voting for Kerry/Edwards. I like Sen. John Kerry's idea about opening talks with Osama bin Laden and the other terrorists to see just what their problem is with us. Maybe we could resolve our differences with them; you know, hug and kiss and make up.

I've never heard even a suggestion from the Kerry campaign about trying to negotiate with Osama bin Laden or other terrorists. This guy is either getting his information from the typical liars in the right-wing media network, or he's off his rocker. But this is typical of the smarmy, sarcastic, holier-than-thou stupidity you get from conservatives.

OUTFOXED

I suspect our letter writer is a partisan of the "fair and balanced" Fox News Network or some similar propaganda organ. There's a new documentary about Fox talked about in this story at alternet.org:

He's as creatively talented as Michael Moore and even more of a political activist, but to this point practically unknown by comparison. Now, though, his documentaries are about to become just as controversial as those of Moore. He's Robert Greenwald, the Hollywood movie and television director/producer/provocateur. Unlike Moore, Greenwald stays behind the camera, but suddenly this week his name is everywhere because of the ambush-style release of his latest documentary, "Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism."

DAVID KAY SAYS NO JUSTIFICATION FOR WAR

David Kay, the former weapons inspector in Iraq, has said there was not a clear case for a war against Iraq. The story is at news.yahoo.com:

He told Britain's ITV network that Bush and Blair "should have been able to tell before the war that the evidence did not exist for drawing the conclusion that Iraq presented a clear, present and imminent threat on the basis of existing weapons of mass destruction."

"That was not something that required a war," he said.

NO FREEDOM OF SPEECH FOR RONSTADT

In Bush's America you can't even say you like a movie. Linda Ronstadt got booed and fired from a casino for recommending Michael Moore's movie "Fahrenheit 9/11." It's really something to contemplate after all this country has been through, all the people who have fought, died, and put their lives on the line, and this is what it comes to: that you can't even praise a movie and dissent with the government. The story is at commondreams.org:

Singer Linda Ronstadt not only got booed, she got the boot after lauding filmmaker Michael Moore and his new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11 during a performance at the Aladdin hotel-casino.

Before singing "Desperado" for an encore Saturday night, the 58-year-old rocker called Moore a "great American patriot" and "someone who is spreading the truth." She also encouraged everybody to see the documentary about President Bush.

YMCA ANYONE?

I thought disco was dead.  Maybe I was just too optimistic.  Like the vile conservatism that rose from the ashes with Ronald Reagan and has morphed into the monster we see today, disco lives on in a combination of bad music and conservative politics. Colin Powell was doing his YMCA act the other day.  The story is at atlanta.creativeloafing.com:

The Republican right puts on a show every day that is weirder than anything the director of Fahrenheit 9/11 could imagine. If I were a Republican politician these days, I'd make sure I had a tan and a good haircut in case some hidden Moore wannabe decides to catch my shtick on video.

I'm particularly reeling from the sight of Colin Powell in construction worker drag, singing and dancing to the Village People's "YMCA" at an international security conference in Djakarta a few weeks back. Five other U.S. diplomats impersonated the rest of the Village People.

IT'S NOT A MOVIE SCRIPT, GROPER

Our esteemed Governor Groper was calling politicians who don't endorse his budget plan "girly men."  What incredibly sophisticated behavior, Arnold.  What's next, saying their mamas wear army shoes?  I don't know about you, but I'm really tired of bad former actors who become politicians and try to govern with lines from movie scripts.  Maybe they should stay in the movies where they belong and leave the governing to people who are well--competent.  This story is at www.latimes.com:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger mocked his opponents in the California Legislature on Saturday as "girly-men," and called upon voters to "terminate" them at the polls in November if they don't pass his $103 billion budget.

Using tough rhetoric that borrowed from his days as a body-builder and movie actor, the governor said that lawmakers are telling "lies" and are "back to their old habits" after a post-recall burst of bipartisan collaboration.

REAGAN REDUX

A great post at corrente.blogspot.com talks about how Bush is trying to emulate Ronald Reagan's dirty covert war in Latin America in the Middle East.  As filthy and disgusting as Reagan's war was, the war in the Middle East has far greater stakes for the entire planet.  We're talking possible nuclear blowback against the United States.  Read about it:

Bush has taken Ollie North's "covert, off-the-shelf" operations capability off the shelf, and He's using it to run a dirty war in the Middle East. Let's connect a few dots:

MORE BLOOD ON HIS HANDS

In his mad ideological pursuit against abortion George W. Bush's policies are directly responsible for the deaths of at least 80,000 women.  Bush is denying funding to the U.N. Population Fund for the third straight year.  You can see the story at www.dailykos.com:

The Bush administration announced yesterday that it is withholding the United States' contribution to the UN Population Fund for the third straight year, once again accusing the family-planning organization of supporting coercive abortion in China.

The decision to withhold $34 million -- about 10 percent of the fund's total budget -- from the world's largest international source of funding for family planning came on the last day of the International AIDS Conference in Bangkok, where US officials emphasized abstinence as an important way to combat AIDS.

MINNESOTA GOP LOVES BIG BROTHER

The Minnesota Republican party is apparently developing a data base for its activists to use in compiling information about their neighbors.  This is supposedly to find out about the issues that "animate" people.  The information gathered is also being taken without the permission of the neighbors.  How very Orwell of them.  Read about it at www.washingtonpost.com:

The project, dubbed WebVoter, gives GOP activists the names and addresses of 25 people who live, in most cases, within a couple of blocks from them. The party has asked 60,000 supporters from across the state to figure out what issues animate their neighbors and where they stand in the political spectrum, and report that information back to the party -- with or, possibly, without their neighbors' permission. 
 

Fresno is not an easy place to love.  It's hotter than you know where in the summer.  It's murky and cold in the winter.  It's flat and so smoggy you can't see the Sierra Nevadas most of the time.  People waste water here, even though water is a precious commodity.  When I take walks sometimes I see gallons of precious water gurgling down through the storm drains.
 
I've come up with another reason not to love Fresno.  It's a rotten place to have car trouble.  My car developed some serious illness on a Friday afternoon.  I kept it over night and then had it towed to a place within walking distance of where I live.  The guy there didn't bother to tell me it wouldn't be ready on Saturday afternoon.  It will be Monday.
 
Try, if you will, to get a rental car in Fresno on a Saturday afternoon.  The places are closed, they won't go farther than five miles to pick you up, or they don't have any cars available. 
 
 Fresno's airport is called Fresno Yosemite International.  We're international in the sense of having lots of  migrant workers, lots of Hmong refugees, and lots of areas where you need to speak Spanish.  But we're also international in the sense a lot of Third World cities are international.  I wonder how long we'll have phone service that works or water that doesn't make you sick.  We could talk about corrupt police departments, but that's another story.

NO STINKING MODERATES

George W. Bush has run the most right-wing presidency in our history.  He has pandered to the religious right on almost every issue.  Now, though, with the election nearing Bush is trying to appear moderate.  It reminds you a little of those white guys who used to put on black face.  No one really believed they were African-Americans, did they?  This story is at latimes.com:

Bush and his aides are learning a hard lesson: It is a delicate balancing act to rally the GOP's conservative base while reaching out to moderate, undecided voters, who could prove equally important this November.

INFLATION UP, WAGES DOWN
 
If you look at the history of Republican and Democratic administrations, you know that working people always get slammed under Republican administrations.  That's especially true with the reactionary crowd in charge now.  This story at nytimes.com shows how working people take two steps backward for every step forward:

The amount of money workers receive in their paychecks is failing to keep up with inflation. Though wages should recover if businesses continue to hire, three years of job losses have left a large worker surplus.
"There's too much slack in the labor market to generate any pressure on wage growth,'' said Jared Bernstein, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute, a liberal research institution based in Washington. "We are going to need a much lower unemployment rate.'' He noted that at 5.6 percent, the national unemployment rate is still back at the same level as at the end of the recession in November 2001.

WHERE'S THE ACCOUNTABILITY?

In one particularly poignant scene in Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" Lila Lipscomb reads the last letter she received from her son, who was killed in Iraq.  She says, "I can't make him alive again."  That's true of hundreds of U.S. military who have died in this unnecessary war.  There are thousands more maimed for life, psychologically and physically.  There are countless Iraqi civilians dead and maimed.  And for what?  Washington Post columnist  Colbert King brings up the question of accountability.  Bush losing the election this November isn't enough.  I hope a Kerry administration will pursue all legal means to prosecute Bush and the members of his administration responsible for this war.  The column is at washingtonpost.com:

'Tis true, if Bush loses in November, Condoleezza Rice, Colin Powell, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Vice President Cheney will be out of a job. But who thinks they won't land comfortably on their feet, making more money and living higher on the hog than they do now? They will be the toast of the lecture and talk show circuit, in great demand in the academy and in policy circles, when not attending corporate board meetings on private jets. No red jump suits or unemployment lines for them. 
 

According to this report at an Australian website, our new man in Baghdad killed six people in cold blood.  How is this situation better than Saddam?  This report is at www.smh.com.au:
 
Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

They say the prisoners - handcuffed and blindfolded - were lined up against a wall in a courtyard adjacent to the maximum-security cell block in which they were held at the Al-Amariyah security centre, in the city's south-western suburbs.

I just heard a clip on Air America Radio where George W. Bush is talking about gun rights.  Bush said the way to control crime is to lock up more criminals and not to deny constitutional rights.  Excuse me?  This guy and his administration have stomped all over constitutional liberties.  The First Amendment is in shreds thanks to this guy.  And we already have more people behind bars than just about anyone.  I don't think some gun control is unconstitutional or an infringement on anyone's rights, especially when you're talking about things like assault weapons.  The late John Lennon once wrote a satirical song called "Happiness is a Warm Gun."  He was talking about the loony gun nuts and the pandering politicians like Bush. 
 

In a story sure to warm the cockles of little right wing hearts (assuming they have hearts that is), Bank of America has realized a huge profit since merging with Fleet Bank of Boston. They've also eliminated 3,800 jobs, according to this story at nytimes.com:

In a conference call with analysts, chief financial officer Marc Oken said the bank has eliminated about 3,800 jobs as a result of the merger. The bank expects cost savings from the merger to total as much as $750 million by the end of 2004, he said.

Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh says the U.S. has tapes of boys being sodomized in Abu Ghraib prison.  This is what the Bush administration has reduced us to.  The story is at radioweblogs.com:

Seymour Hersh says the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.
"The worst is the soundtrack of the boys shrieking," the reporter told an ACLU convention last week. Hersh says there was "a massive amount of criminal wrongdoing that was covered up at the highest command out there, and higher."

At nytimes.com Barbara Ehrenreich talks about "groupthink."  It's one of the great ironies in a country that worships the idea of individualism.  "Groupthink" is getting credit or blame for getting us into the Iraq debacle:

I trace the current outbreak of droidlike conformity to the immediate aftermath of 9/11, when groupthink became the official substitute for patriotism, and we began to run out of surfaces for affixing American flags. Bill Maher lost his job for pointing out that, whatever else they were, the 9/11 terrorists weren't cowards, prompting Ari Fleischer to warn (though he has since backed down) that Americans "need to watch what they say." Never mind that Sun Tzu says, somewhere in his oeuvre, that while it's soothing to underestimate the enemy, it's often fatal, too.

Cnn.com has a story about a former Bush aide and potential Senatorial candidate who engaged in lewd behavior while serving in the White House.  I just love those family values Republicans, don't you?  Read about it:

A potential Republican candidate for the Senate seat from Illinois - where the party's nominee withdrew over sex club allegations - engaged in ``lewd and abusive behavior'' while she served as a top official in the White House drug policy office, an internal inquiry found last year.

In front of her staff, Andrea Grubb Barthwell made repeated comments about the sexual orientation of a staff member and used a kaleidoscope to make sexually offensive gestures, according to the findings of a March 19, 2003, ``hostile workplace memorandum'' prepared by drug policy office staff. The Associated Press obtained the memorandum.

George W. Bush loves to do military photo-ops, such as his famed carrier landing, and he loves to spout rhetoric about freedom and democracy.  But the man doesn't care in the least about the death and  destruction he has unleashed.  Jimmy Breslin nails it once again in this column at linked at commondreams.org:

This president, with a face of rich boy smirks and sneers, who lives on the dark side of truth, does not deign to be present. He is not a man for mourning, this George Bush. Life is best when he struts onto a stage in front of an overjoyed white audience in York, Pa., where he sputtered that the people fighting in Iraq had hijacked a great religion and now we would fight them anywhere. That great religion is Islam and it has 2 billion members worldwide and if he wants to fight them, let him go ahead; he likes it so much he was having his teeth cleaned when he was eligible to face bullets. 
 

Faith may have its place in human existence. I'm divided on that issue. However, a presidency should be based on fact. The Bush administration likes to dismiss fact, especially when it conflicts with the ideological faith of Mr. Bush and his administration. Jon Carroll writes about this at sfgate.com:

This is what a "faith-based" presidency turns out to be. If the facts interfere with the faith, go with the faith. Better yet, suppress opposing viewpoints entirely, so people won't even have to perform the distressing chore of separating faith from truth.

I wish Fresno would follow the example of this south Florida radio station in switching from Fox Sports to Air America Radio. The story is at sun-sentinel.com:

The game is over for Fox Sports Radio.

WRFX (940-AM) will switch its format from sports to politics when it joins the Liberal Talk Radio network Monday.

Harold Meyerson writes at washingtonpost.com about George W. Bush's priorities. Hint: it isn't about you and me.

This is not a president who has it in him to spend money on improving the education of poor children or to side with consumers over such mega-donors as the drug industry. In a similar vein, the administration's on-again, off-again attempt to increase its support among Latino voters by backing a pseudo-immigration reform that offered residency but not citizenship to the immigrant workers it would cover hasn't yielded any increase in its Latino backing, either.

So the GOP outreach strategy for November focuses on conservative churchgoers far more than anyone else. The Republican National Convention will showcase the party's otherwise marginalized moderates -- Arnold Schwarzenegger, John McCain -- for the great moderate audience. But I doubt the convention planners really believe that this late in the game they can fool anybody. The Republicans' campaign is all about scapegoating John Kerry for the ills of modernity. It's about exploiting homophobia, provincialism and cultural insecurity. Or, as they put it, values.

Sometimes I wonder if the Bush gang will talk about repealing the constitutional amendments prohibiting slavery. They've been on the march to take away overtime pay for millions of Americans. They supposedly "revised" the plan to make it less onerous. But a new study shows that at least six million Americans would still lose overtime. Massah Bush just doesn't think businessmen make enough money. The story is at cnn.com:

Revised changes to overtime rules proposed by the Bush administration will still fail to protect overtime pay for 6 million workers, according to a new study.

During the Republican national convention the dark lords who really run the party won't be much in the limelight. As columnist Paul Krugman points out, the kind of conservatism of people like Representative Tom DeLay isn't really very popular, but it's the conservatism that dictates the direction of the Republican party. Krugman's column is at nytimes.com:

Here's the puzzle: if Mr. DeLay's brand of conservatism is so unpopular that it must be kept in the closet during the convention, how can people like him really run the party?

In Mr. DeLay's case, a large part of the answer is his control over corporate cash. As far back as 1996, one analyst described Mr. DeLay as the "chief enforcer of company contributions to Republicans." Some of that cash has flowed through Americans for a Republican Majority, called Armpac, a political action committee Mr. DeLay founded in 1994. By dispensing that money to other legislators, he gains their allegiance; this, in turn, allows him to deliver favors to his corporate contributors. Four of the five Republicans on the House ethics committee, where a complaint has been filed against Mr. DeLay, are past recipients of Armpac money.

It may be just pop psychology, but some observers see our movie preferences as expressing the polarities that exist in the United States now. The two biggest hits of the movie season are "The Passion of the Christ" and "Fahrenheit 9/11." I think "The Passion," at least from the reviews, was a bloody exercise in sadomasochism. "Fahrenheit" presents a case for compassion in showing how far we have veered off course in beginning a war against a country that was no danger to us. The story is at nytimes.com:

The two most surprising hit movies of 2004 — Michael Moore's Bush-bashing documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" and Mel Gibson's religious epic "The Passion of the Christ" — offer an intriguing opportunity to examine the polarities among moviegoing Americans.

In the world of Bush you have to take everything with a grain of salt, even "intelligence" reports from the CIA. According to this report at tompaine.com, intelligence about Iraq was not only skewed, but was an outright lie:

Although it was clear to us that much of the intelligence on Iraq had been cooked to the recipe of policy, not until the Senate report did we know that the skewing included outright lies. We had heard of “Joe,” the nuclear weapons analyst in CIA’s Center for Weapons Intelligence and Arms Control, and it was abundantly clear that his agenda was to “prove” that the infamous aluminum tubes sought by Iraq were to be used for developing a nuclear weapon. We did not know that he and his CIA associates deliberately falsified the data—including rotor testing ironically called “spin tests.”

In Republican land the best qualifications for public office seem to be a career as a bad actor (Ronald Reagan, Arnie the Groper), or a sports celebrity (Jim Bunning, J. C. Watts). Now we can add Mike Ditka, former Chicago Bears coach and now a pitchman for an impotence drug. The story is at news.yahoo.com:

In a measure of the Illinois Republican Party's desperation and Chicago's devotion to Da Bears, a movement is afoot to draft the team's brash, tough-talking former coach Mike Ditka to run for the U.S. Senate.

If Bush and his minions have anything, it's unlimited gall. Bush has the nerve to talk about "values" after lying us into a war that has killed thousands of innocent people, after ignoring the effects of global climate change, after raping our treasury for the benefit of his rich friends, and after a series of shady business deals. Can you say scum? E. J. Dionne has this Bush quote at washingtonpost.com:

Bush gave a powerful speech in York, Pa., last week describing his "values." He declared: "The culture of America is changing from one that has said 'If it feels good, do it, and if you've got a problem, blame somebody else' to a culture in which each of us understands we are responsible for the decisions we make in life."

That all sounds very nice, but I guess it applies only to other people.

I finally saw "Fahrenheit 9/11" and, even though I knew much of what was in the movie, there's something profound in seeing images on the screen that you don't get from reading news reports. There are scenes that stand out vividly.

My heart was breaking for Lila Lipscomb, a patriotic American in Flint, Michigan, who lost her son in Iraq. I think of the scene where American tank drivers talk about hooking up CD players to play music while they're killing people. You think of the scene where heads of companies are talking about the money to be made in Iraq. It brings back memories of the movie "The Godfather" where the Mafia dons all assemble and talk about what would be good for business. The people who lied us into this war are evil, ugly thugs, and we, like history, should hold them in utter contempt.

If you're a true blue conservative, one of those people who believes in a strict constructionist interpretation of the Constitution, small government, fiscal responsibility, and a system of checks and balances, how can you support the Bush administration? Some conservatives are beginning to get the jitters. This story is at news.yahoo.com:

When an influential group of conservatives gathers in downtown Washington each week, they often get a political pep talk from a senior Bush administration official or campaign aide. They don't expect a fellow Republican to deliver a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the Iraq war.

The Bush administration is floating the idea of "delaying" the election this November if there is a terrorist attack. There should be absolutely NO WAY we let them get away with this. Call me cynical, but I wouldn't put it past this bunch to fabricate a terrorist attack. Then they would have carte blanche to continue in power until God knows when. We managed to have a presidential election during the Civil War, during the First World War, during World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. There's no justification for delaying an election now. The story is at news.yahoo.com:

A senior House Democratic lawmaker was skeptical on Sunday of a Bush administration idea to obtain the authority to delay the November presidential election in case of an attack by al Qaeda.

U.S. counterterrorism officials are looking at an emergency proposal on the legal steps needed to postpone the presidential election in case of such an attack, Newsweek reported on Sunday.

The finger pointing in the Iraq mess has been towards the CIA for providing "bad intelligence." The Bush administration should not so easily get off the hook. Our intelligence was certainly good enough to tell us that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on September 11, not Iraq. If we were going to go after the enemy that attacked us, the enemy was al-Qaeda. We know now from insider sources like Richard Clarke that Bush and company wanted to attack Iraq from the inception of this despicable administration. The 9/11 attacks gave them their excuse, not their justification. Bob Herbert writes about this at nytimes.com:

A government with even a nodding acquaintance with competence and good sense would have launched an all-out war against Al Qaeda, not Iraq, in the immediate aftermath of Sept. 11. After all, it was Al Qaeda, not Iraq, that carried out the sneak attack on American soil that destroyed the World Trade Center and part of the Pentagon and killed 3,000 people. You might think that would have been enough to provoke an all-out response from the U.S. Instead we saved our best shot for the demented and already checkmated dictator of Iraq, Saddam Hussein.

George W. Bush was contaminating the airwaves again with a push for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, but his administration is showing its "compassionate conservative" side by promoting marriage for poor women. Barbara Ehrenreich in a piece at nytimes.com points out that people tend to marry within the same socioeconomic group. That means that poor women would be marrying poor men. A better way to help might be promoting policies that lift poor people into the middle class, things like a progressive tax system, raising the minimum wage, making sure people have health care, things like that. Anyway, here's Barbara Ehrenreich:

If marriage were a cure for poverty, I'd be the first to demand that H.H.S. spring for the Champagne and bridesmaids' dresses. But as Horn acknowledged to me, there is no evidence to that effect. Married couples are on average more prosperous than single mothers, but that doesn't mean marriage will lift the existing single mothers out of poverty. So what's the point of the administration's marriage meddling? Jacobs thinks that the administration's mixed signals on marriage — O.K. for paupers, a no-no for gays — are part of the conservative effort to "change the subject to marriage." From, for example, Iraq.

John Kerry and John Edwards are featured in an interview with The Washington Post. They quite accurately point out that Bush/Cheney have lost credibility with the American people. I don't know why a series of lies about, well, EVERYTHING would hurt Bush's credibility. The story is at washingtonpost.com:

President Bush has governed in a dishonest fashion, trampling values on every issue except fighting terrorism and leaving voters "clamoring for restoration of credibility and trust in the White House again," John F. Kerry and John Edwards said in an interview.

The Bush campaign has tried to label John Kerry a "flip-flopper." But Bush has a lengthy record of flip-flops. See this piece and the long list at americanprogress.org:

From the beginning, George W. Bush has made his own credibility a central issue. On 10/11/00, then-Gov. Bush said: "I think credibility is important.It is going to be important for the president to be credible with Congress, important for the president to be credible with foreign nations." But President Bush's serial flip-flopping raises serious questions about whether Congress and foreign leaders can rely on what he says.

John Fogerty is one of my favorite singers, song writers, and musicians. His song "Who'll Stop the Rain?" said a great deal about the futility of the Vietnam war. Now with a new song "Deja Vu (all over again)" he addresses the situation in Iraq. The story is at azcentral.com:

"Did you hear 'em talkin' 'bout it on the radio.

Did you try to read the writing on the wall.

Did that voice inside you say I've heard it all before

It's like deja vu all over again."

Do we really have to be "fair and balanced"? Huh, do we? There's a new documentary soon to be released about the "fair and balanced" Fox News Network. It's the network of right-wing babble that serves as an echo chamber for the Bush administration, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and other creepy-crawlies of the far right. The story is at editorandpublisher.com:

With controversy already brewing over the soon-to-be-released documentary "Outfoxed," The New York Times Magazine, in this Sunday's issue, offers an exclusive preview. Writer Robert S. Boynton calls the film's "most stinging blow" to the Fox News "fair and balanced" claim a series of daily memos apparently sent to the entire Fox news operation by John Moody, a senior vice president.

Conservatives like to rant about the bureaucracy of government, its inefficiency and so on. The one place where they may have a good case, ironically, is military spending, the area where conservatives love to spend. The Pentagon has spent $19 BILLION a year and still can't find a way to track expenditures and people in the military. The story is at wired.com:

They've been trying for more than a decade. They've built more than 2,000 databases to do the job. They're spending nearly $19 billion a year. But, despite all that effort, Defense Department officials still haven't come up with a way to track the Pentagon's supplies, finances or people, according to a new congressional report.

It's a little like saying the dog ate my homework. A Senate investigation is trying to pin the blame for the Iraq war on the CIA and absolve politicians of any responsibility. I thought it was the politicians who controlled the CIA, not the other way around. There is absolutely no way all the blame for this mess should be placed on the CIA. The story is at commondreams.org:

The US intelligence community should not be made to shoulder full responsibility for misjudging Saddam Hussein's weapons capability ahead of last year's Iraq war, British newspapers said after a Senate investigation exonerated US politicians of blame.

An interesting article at nytimes.com shows a declining interest in reading among Americans. One of the most interesting tidbits is that readers are even more likely to be charitable than non-readers. That helps once again to explain how people can be Republicans. They don't read, they don't think, and they don't care:

Oprah's Book Club may help sell millions of books to Americans, and slam poetry may have engendered a youthful new breed of wordsmith, but the nation is still caught in a tide of indifference when it comes to literature. That is the sobering profile of a new survey to be released today by the National Endowment for the Arts, which describes a precipitous downward trend in book consumption by Americans and a particular decline in the reading of fiction, poetry and drama.

Senator Carl Levin is saying what many of us already knew--that Bush and his administration deliberately misled the world about a connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. The story is at news.yahoo.com:

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., during a news conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, July 8, 2004, holds a copy of a CIA report which finds 'no credible information' of a meeting between Iraqi intelligence officials and Mohammed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 highjackers. Levin said the finding 'demonstrates that it was the Administration, not the CIA, that exagerated the relations between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

George W. Bush never misses an opportunity to play commander-in-chief. He likes to don military gear and strut around like a warrior king. But questions have swirled around Bush's Air National Guard service back in the 1960s. From all appearances, Mr. Bush didn't complete his tour. In a time of war (Vietnam) that is called desertion, and desertion is a very serious offense when you're in the military. Now it seems that the Pentagon--ahem--has "lost" Mr. Bush's military records, so we can't verify if he did or didn't complete his service. The story is at nytimes.com:

Military records that could help establish President Bush's whereabouts during his disputed service in the Texas Air National Guard more than 30 years ago have been inadvertently destroyed, according to the Pentagon.

It said the payroll records of "numerous service members," including former First Lt. Bush, had been ruined in 1996 and 1997 by the Defense Finance and Accounting Service during a project to salvage deteriorating microfilm. No back-up paper copies could be found, it added in notices dated June 25.

Got health care? You probably won't if George W. Bush gets another four years. Those tax cuts for the affluent are more important than health care, you know. Paul Krugman at nytimes.com talks about the stark contrast between John Kerry and George W. Bush on the issue of health care:

Will actual policy issues play any role in this election? Not if the White House can help it. But if some policy substance does manage to be heard over the clanging of conveniently timed terror alerts, voters will realize that they face some stark choices. Here's one of them: tax cuts for the very well-off versus health insurance.

New York City's Mayor Bloomberg has said protesters at the Republican national convention can't assemble in Central Park because they will hurt the grass. It would never recover, he claims. Jimmy Breslin has a column about it at newsday.com:

Yesterday, the groundskeeper for the Shinnecock Golf Club, where the U.S. Open was played two weeks ago, said, "We had 50,000 a day for seven days on the grounds and the grass is back already. It's nonsense. You don't even know people were here."

"We're talking about a rally of 250,000 that would last a few hours on one day," I said.

"After the first day they're gone, you'd never know they were on the grass."

Technical problems tonight, so we'll just do a quick summary of some important points.

George W. Bush refused to answer questions about his relationship with "Kenny Bay" Lay of Enron. Mr. Lay has just been indicted. You have to wonder just where this story will lead and how it will implicate George W. Bush.

A good piece at latimes.com talks about the more sanitized way Americans have of killing Iraqis than the terrorists have shown in killing their victims. Right-wingers have the proverbial cow over the barbarity of beheadings, but seem not to be concerned about the deaths caused by "smart bombs" and other technology. Innocent people are just as dead if the weaponry is more sophisticated than knives and swords.

California Attorney General Bill Lockyer is investigating the case of apparent surveillance by the Fresno Sheriff's Department into a group called Peace Fresno. Peace Fresno was featured in Michael Moore's new documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11." Peace Fresno learned they had been infiltrated when the obituary of a former member appeared in The Fresno Bee. They recognized his photo and read that he was employed by the Fresno Sheriff's Department. The Sheriff's Department hasn't admitted spying on Peace Fresno, but has made the claim that they have to combat "terrorism."

The Republican smear machine was already geared up and ready to go when John Kerry announced that Senator John Edwards would be his running mate. But as Shakespeare once said, I think they "doth protest too much." I think they're afraid of a bright, articulate populist like John Edwards. E. J. Dionne at washingtonpost.com has some thoughts:

Republicans were in a foul mood because Kerry's choice of Edwards as his running mate muddied up all the story lines they were itching to trot out. To understand why Edwards was the best choice for Kerry, consider what the Republicans (and, yes, the media) would have said if the nod had gone instead to Rep. Richard Gephardt, the clear runner-up in the vice presidential stakes.

On the theme of "doth protest too much" how about the right wing reaction to "Fahrenheit 9/11"? If it's just "propaganda" and there's no truth there, why all the insane vitriol? It couldn't be that Michael Moore rolled away a rock and exposed the maggots underneath, could it? Mark Morford, one of the best columnists I've come across, has this to say at sfgate.com:

And you know it's working. After all, when's the last time a documentary filmmaker became the target of the full force of the GOP spin machine? When's the last time anyone made any sort of attempt to seriously question, in public, fearlessly, unapologetically, in a mass media format, the blatantly oily warmongering of a current administration?

Psst! A little closer, please. Did you hear there's class warfare in the United States? It's not against the wealthy, the way Republicans like to harp. It's against you and me and everyone who works for wages. Read this piece at baltimoresun.com:

Upper-middle- and upper-class families that constitute the top 10 percent of the income distribution are prospering while many among the remaining 90 percent struggle to maintain their standard of living. Further, a widening chasm separates the 13,400 families, who on average earn just under $24 million a year, from everyone else.

According to Bill O'Reilly, the rich pay an exorbitant amount in taxes. (sob!) It's just incredible how we working class types take advantage of those virtuous, hard-working, thrifty rich. Well, not quite. This piece is at mediamatters.org:

On his June 30 radio show, FOX News Channel host Bill O'Reilly tried to "blow off" the argument that wealthy Americans ought to pay more taxes by citing phony statistics about the tax burden the rich currently bear.

The story continues:

While O'Reilly is correct about the percentage of federal income taxes paid by the richest 5 percent of Americans, the stat is misleading because it omits payroll taxes (the burden of which rests more squarely on low-income and middle-class Americans). According to the Tax Policy Center, a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, the richest 5 percent of taxpayers will pay a more modest 40 percent of total federal taxes (including the payroll tax, income tax, corporate income tax, and estate tax) in 2004. (It's worth noting that they will also receive 34 percent of the total income in the United States.)

The 9/11 Commission would not be so undiplomatic as to say it openly, but they're calling Dick Cheney a liar. You'll remember that Cheney recently said the 9/11 Commission was wrong in saying that there was no al-Qaeda-Iraq connection. Cheney implied he had information not available to the 9/11 Commission. However, when the Commission asked Cheney to produce the evidence they got nothing but hot air. There was NO CONNECTION between Iraq and al-Qaeda. There were NO WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION. This war was ONE BIG LIE. Read the story at commondreams.org:

The Sept. 11 commission is standing by its finding that al-Qaida had only limited contact with Iraq before the terrorist attacks.

The 10-member, bipartisan panel issued a one-sentence statement Tuesday saying it had access to the same information as Vice President Dick Cheney, who suggested strong ties between ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

That assertion was one of the justifications the Bush administration gave for going to war with Iraq. In a preliminary report released last month, the Sept. 11 commission cited contacts between Saddam's regime and Osama bin Laden but said there was no "collaborative relationship."

The evidence is clear that George W. Bush and his administration wanted a war against Iraq, and that the "war on terrorism" was a handy pretext to launch that war. The war in Iraq is a crime against humanity and against our military, and it has weakened American security. While we attacked a country that had nothing to do with terrorism, the real terrorists, the people who are a danger to us, have been prospering. Read this story at motherjones.com:

President Bush's May 2003 announcement aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln that "major combat operations" had ended in Iraq has been replayed endlessly. What is less well remembered is just what the president claimed the United States had accomplished. "The battle of Iraq is one victory in a war on terror that began on September the 11th, 2001," he declared. The defeat of Saddam Hussein, he told the American people, was "a crucial advance in the campaign against terror." In fact, the consensus now emerging among a wide range of intelligence and counterterrorism professionals is that the opposite is true: The invasion of Iraq not only failed to help the war on terrorism, but it represented a substantial setback.

Now you can't show up for a Bush event if you're wearing an opposing T-SHIRT! We've gotten so-called "First Amendment" zones, we got the onerous PATRIOT Act, and now you can't even wear a T-SHIRT. This story is at news.yahoo.com:

Two Bush opponents, taken out of the crowd in restraints by police, said they were told they couldn't be there because they were wearing shirts that said they opposed the president. Supporters of Bush's presumed opponent in November's election, Sen. John Kerry (news - web sites), attended a picnic across the street from the capitol at state Democratic Party's headquarters.

The next story serves as a kind of counterpoint. The story linked at commondreams.org talks about how we Americans are getting concerned about the loss of civil liberties under this tyrannical administration. This is what it means to be an American:

The last three years have been difficult for thinking patriots - for those of us who believe that this grand democratic experiment demands dissent; for those who believe their duty is to form a more perfect union; for those who cannot forsake liberty in pursuit of security. We frequently have been denounced as traitors. . .

At long last, though, this wave of neo-McCarthyism seems to be receding. Americans may finally be shrugging off a propaganda campaign that sought to frighten them into surrendering their civil liberties. The people of this great nation seem to now understand that democracy is like a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger it gets.

Years ago there was a book about the power of positive thinking. That seems to be the mantra of George W. Bush and company on the war in Iraq and on the economy. I personally think reality tends to knock positive thinking out of the box every time. Paul Krugman at nytimes.com talks about the real state of the economy:

When does optimism — the Bush campaign's favorite word these days — become an inability to face facts? On Friday, President Bush insisted that a seriously disappointing jobs report, which fell far short of the pre-announcement hype, was good news: "We're witnessing steady growth, steady growth. And that's important. We don't need boom-or-bust-type growth."

In the universe of the Bush administration you evidently fight the war on terrorism by releasing convicted terrorists. That's according to this story at news.independent.co.uk:

Six Britons convicted on terrorism charges in Saudi Arabia were released last year as part of a secret three-way deal in which the US set free a number of Saudi prisoners being held at Guantanamo Bay. The deal was brokered to obtain Saudi support for the invasion of Iraq.

I listen to (bleeeh!) sports talk radio during my day at work because it's the most palatable (which says a lot about the Fresno radio market). Today there was a Neanderthal filling in for the regular host on the Fox Sports show called "The Drive." Mr. N. is ordinarily on local Phoenix radio, and I have a feeling the hot summers there have fried his brain. He mentioned that he's a fan of "Dubya." He was mocking John Kerry as "Lerch" and Senator John Edwards as "Opie." He claimed he had seen Michael Moore's documentary "Fahrenheit 9/11" and characterized the movie as "regurgitated lies." Of course, Fried Brain didn't have any specifics. Where does Fox come up with these idiots? I hope this guy crawls back to Phoenix and spends his time with the cacti and the rattlesnakes where he can't do any more harm.

I don't claim to be a biblical expert, but doesn't it say, "Judge not, lest you be judged"? George W. Bush, good Christian, seems to be think he's above that admonition, however. In this article at suntimes.com Mr. Bush is doing God's job for Him:

In a magazine interview, President Bush said evil people can become good, but as for al-Qaida mastermind Osama bin Laden, ''This guy's soul is so corroded, there's just no way.''

''As far as I'm concerned, there's nothing redeemable about him,'' the president told Ladies' Home Journal in an April interview at his Texas ranch and published in the magazine's new issue, with the cover featuring photos of George and Laura Bush and John and Teresa Heinz Kerry.

You wonder if those Fourth of July barbecues will someday come back to haunt the participants. There was a story a few days ago that a cow had shown some indications of having mad cow disease. The cow didn't get into the food chain, and now tests have come back showing it tested negative for the disease. But there are warnings that other meat that may be contaminated with the disease has gotten into the food chain. For a really good discussion of the meat industry, read Eric Schlosser's book "Fast Food Nation." This story is posted at makethemaccountable.com:

The U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Wednesday a cow that initially tested positive for mad cow disease has come back negative on follow-up testing, but a food industry consultant told United Press International he estimates there could be more than 100 cases of the deadly disorder in the country's herds.

About half of the cases will go undetected and passed on for human consumption, Robert LaBudde, president of Least Cost Formulation Ltd., a food industry consultancy in Virginia Beach, Va., told UPI…

The Bush administration is afraid of a lady named Sibel Edmonds. Ms. Edmonds is a translator knowledgeable in Turkish and Farsi. In the days before the terrorist attack on September 11, Ms. Edmonds discovered references to terrorist plots mentioning skyscrapers. After pointing out various security lapses, Ms. Edmonds was fired. The story is at smirkingchimp.com:

Sifting through old classified materials in the days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, FBI translator Sibel Edmonds said, she made an alarming discovery: Intercepts relevant to the terrorist plot, including references to skyscrapers, had been overlooked because they were badly translated into English.

Edmonds, 34, who is fluent in Turkish and Farsi, said she quickly reported the mistake to an FBI superior. Five months later, after flagging what she said were several other security lapses in her division, she was fired. Now, after more than two years of investigations and congressional inquiries, Edmonds is at the center of an extraordinary storm over US classification rules that sheds new light on the secrecy imperative supported by members of the Bush administration.

Bartcop.com often refers to the Bush family as "The Bush Family Evil Empire." I don't believe that is overstated. When you review the whole sordid history of this family and how it has used the U.S. government as a tool to enrich itself, you can feel nothing but contempt. Kevin Phillips does a great job of talking about the Bush family history in his book "American Dynasty" and so does Craig Unger in his book "House of Bush, House of Saud." This paragraph from a story at smirkingchimp.com summarizes things nicely:

These same laws of human nature apply to members of the Bush family. They have worked wonderfully, for example, at spit-shining the tarnished reputation of GWBush's dad, George Herbert Walker Bush. Not only are his grandchildren among the most embarrassing assemblage of spoiled rotten sociopaths with which any granddad has been cursed, his son Marvin is a front man for the Saudi and Kuwaiti ruling families, his son Neil was a major force in the savings and loan scandals that ripped apart the American financial community during the 1980s and is now a shady international dealmaker, playboy and whoremonger, his son Jeb is an election thief and lousy dad, and his son GWB is so miserably bad, so monumentally incompetent and dangerous that it makes his father's administration seem like a lost golden age by comparison. In fact, almost every assessment of Junior Bush's chronic mismanagement includes a reference to how his father's administration was a model of decorum and unity by comparison.

Mike Malloy on his show at ieamerica radio used to say, "Have I said tonight how much I hate these people?" in reference to the bullies, liars, and psychopaths of the Right. This piece, also at smirkingchimp.com, sums up conservatives in a nutshell:

Conservatives express their lust for control in three major areas: 1) the lust for military control, 2) the lust for economic control, 3) the lust for religious control. Politics, defined as "Who gets what, when, and where," is the connection between all three. A true conservative politician must have dominion over each of the primary lusts. The most successful dictators have arrogated to themselves control over all three.

Today we celebrate the day one of the greatest documents in human history was unveiled for that generation and for posterity: the Declaration of Independence. Even if Thomas Jefferson and the Founding Fathers had not accomplished anything else in their lives (and they accomplished so incredibly much), they should be revered for the ground-breaking ideas and resonance contained in the Declaration. Now we have an administration that is antithetical to the ideas and ideals contained in that Declaration. One of the strongest beliefs that Thomas Jefferson and the other Founding Fathers had was that church and state should be separate. There is a good discussion at time.com:

Whenever an argument arises about the role that religion should play in our civic life, such as the dispute over the phrase "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance or the display of the Ten Commandments in an Alabama courthouse, assertions about the faith of the founders are invariably bandied about. It's a wonderfully healthy debate because it causes folks to wrestle with the founders and, in the process, shows how the founders wrestled with religion.

Right-wingers like to depict the 1960s as the decade when America went wrong. We abandoned God, bought into a culture of free love, drugs, and rock and roll, and slid down the slope to decadence. I wish we could bring back the 1960s without Vietnam. Vietnam and its impact on our national psyche have dominated right-wing thinking, of course. To purge the bad taste left by Vietnam, right-wingers have manipulated us into three wars in the Middle East: the first Gulf War, Afghanistan, and now the second war against Iraq. Maureen Dowd talks about the results of conservative "leadership" at nytimes.com:

Once they returned to power, the Bush II team, dripping with contempt for Bill Clinton and oozing with "we know best" cockiness, thought they could use the sacking of Saddam to change the way Americans saw themselves and the way America was seen in the world.

Their swaggering determination to expunge the ghosts of Vietnam and embark on a post-cold-war triumphalism has backfired, leaving the military depleted and drawn into a de facto draft, and once more leaving America bogged down halfway around the world in a hostile nation.

Barbara Ehrenreich, also at nytimes.com, reflects on the parallels between King George III and our current version, George II:

It would be silly, of course, to overstate the parallels between 1776 and 2004. The signers of the declaration were colonial subjects of a man they had come to see as a foreign king. One of their major grievances had to do with the tax burden imposed on them to support the king's wars. In contrast, our taxes have been reduced — especially for those who need the money least — and the huge costs of war sloughed off to our children and grandchildren. Nor would it be tactful to press the analogy between our George II and their George III, of whom the British historian John Richard Green wrote: "He had a smaller mind than any English king before him save James II."

According to a CIA analyst, George W. Bush is losing the war against terrorism. The greed, incompetence, and immorality of the Bush administration is bankrupting our treasury, killing thousands of innocent people, sending civil liberties down in flames, and not even achieving the basic goal of capturing terrorists. This story is at realcities.com:

The number of CIA experts devoted to fighting Osama bin Laden and preventing new attacks by his network remains about the same nearly three years after the Sept. 11 strikes, according to a senior CIA analyst who has written a new book arguing that bin Laden is winning his struggle against the United States.

Moreover, the analyst warned in an interview with Knight Ridder, CIA specialists who have devoted years to studying and targeting bin Laden are worn out, and many are being shifted to other duties, moves that will dilute the agency's pool of knowledge about the Saudi extremist and his violent following.

Jimmy Breslin is quickly becoming one of my favorite columnists because he tells it like it is. Mr. Breslin is talking in this column about a convicted child killer who was finally released from prison. Some people are horrified--horrified!--that this killer of one person is free to walk the streets again. But where is the horror that the guy who resides at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue has killed thousands of innocent people? Mr. Breslin's column is at newsday.com:

Bush has the imagination of a stuffed chair. If you put all the things in which he has an interest into a book, it would be as thin as a slice of white bread.

In August of 2001, he was on the longest vacation of any recent president. He said he liked to look at cows on his ranch. In Washington, George Tenet of the CIA had memos and calls from agents who brought up the chances of aircraft hijackings. He did not tell this to Bush because, after all, the man was on vacation. Some days later, the planes hit the World Trade Center.

It seems that this didn't matter, because Bush was going to get this country into a war with Iraq, and he saw nothing the matter with it. This bin Laden could wait. He had to get at Saddam Hussein because "he tried to get dad killed, you know." That is a good reason for starting a war. Dear Old Dad. Some 20-year-old gets killed over that. Bush was absolutely marvelous when he made a famous State of the Union speech that said Iraq was trying to buy enriched uranium, or yellowcake, from the country of Niger. Soon, they would nuke New York.

Since the United States was created in 1789, millions have fought to protect the freedoms outlined in the Bill of Rights. We approach the holiday that celebrates our defiance of the British and our determination to create a government where everyone has the right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," as Thomas Jefferson expressed it. This piece at www.bigtimepatriot.com shows how it has taken just twenty-two people to put those rights in peril:

22 people took America's values and rubbed them in the dirt...
Think back to the year 2000. What if someone asked you then how many people it would take to make the American government make torture part of government policy? Would you have guessed an army of 1000's? A war against a country with millions of citizens?

Suppose in 2000 you were asked how many people it would take to make the American government start locking people up with no trial, no legal representation, no release date, and no evidence given beyond a press release (just like the USSR used to 'disappear' people, just like that)? Maybe a military coup with thousands of troops in revolt? Pretty far fetched...

Turns out it only took 22 people for those things to happen. 22 people stripped the proud history of American liberty and justice and replaced it with shame and cowardly surrender.

19 hijackers started the process, but they surely couldn't have done all this alone could they? But it turns out they had 3 conspirators in their attack on American Values. A defense secretary who thought these things were fine, an attorney general who thought these things were fine, and a President who either thought these things were fine, or was too cowardly to stand up to the other two thugs.

22 people took America's values and rubbed them in the dirt. The 19 hijackers are dead; the other 3 still need to be made to pay for their actions. When Election Day comes, you know what needs to be done.

A few years ago there was a movie called "Capricorn One" that starred, among others, the now notorious O. J. Simpson. The movie dealt with a plot by the government to deceive the world into thinking there was a successful landing on Mars. The "landing" was totally fake. It's a little like the toppling of Saddam Hussein's statue in Baghdad last year, according to this article. You can read about it at commondreams.org:

As the Iraqi regime was collapsing on April 9, 2003, Marines converged on Firdos Square in central Baghdad, site of an enormous statue of Saddam Hussein. It was a Marine colonel — not joyous Iraqi civilians, as was widely assumed from the TV images — who decided to topple the statue, the Army report said. And it was a quick-thinking Army psychological operations team that made it appear to be a spontaneous Iraqi undertaking.

I guess I just wouldn't make a good Social Darwinist. I for the life of me can't see that "outsourcing" jobs is a good thing for working Americans. Now we have the U.S. Chamber of Commerce President saying that "outsourcing" is really a terrific idea. And someday, somehow it's actually going to benefit working people. Once upon a time, guys in wagons visited towns selling elixirs that were supposed to be the cure-all for whatever ailed you. That's what this reminds me of. The story is at www.informationweek.com:

U.S. Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Thomas Donohue is promoting overseas outsourcing of jobs as a way to boost the economy and even increase employment--a stance that rankles jobless white-collar workers, particularly in the flagging technology industry.

Donohue, speaking Wednesday night to the Commonwealth Club of California, said he believes exporting high-paid tech jobs to low-cost countries such as India, China, and Russia saves companies money that they may use to create new jobs for Americans.

Is Bush nuts? That's a question that keeps popping up. I find it extremely disturbing that Mr. Bush has stated publicly that he believes he was put into the Oval Office because it was God's will. This piece at counterpunch.org addresses the subject:

Let's keep it simple: Stupidity alone cannot account for George Bush's behavior---especially when his behavior so well matches known pathologies. For example, if an ordinary citizen believed he was being directed by God to attack "the governments where the Bible happened," as he once described the Middle East, or thought that ordering the execution of a criminal was funny as hell, or saw everyone who disagreed with him as an agent of the Devil, he or she would be put on some heavy meds at the very least. Hell, I've been medicated for a lot less.

I remember Gomer Pyle used to exult, "Surprise! Surprise! Surprise!" When Gomer said "surprise" it was usually meant as a good thing. But when the Bush administration does it, it means bad things for lots of people. As we've noted many times before, beware of rosy economic forecasts from the Bushies. You know darned well the report will get "revised" and the real figures won't be so encouraging. It turns out job creation really wasn't all that wonderful in June, in contrast to the forecasts by the Bushies. This report is at bloomberg.com:

U.S. companies added 112,000 workers to payrolls in June, less than half the median forecast, and factory jobs fell for the first time in five months, suggesting businesses were turning more cautious entering the year's second half.

The unemployment rate held steady at 5.6 percent for a third month, the Labor Department reported in Washington. Job gains in the previous two months also were revised downward by a total of 35,000, to 235,000 in May and 324,000.

Advocate any progressive idea, such as caring for the environment, caring for minority or women's rights, or God forbid, workers' rights, and some right-winger will sneer that you're an elitist. Barbara Ehrenreich addresses that issue in an op-ed piece in nytimes.com:

My point is not to defend [Michael] Moore, who — with a platoon of bodyguards and a legal team starring Mario Cuomo — hardly needs any muscle from me. I just think it's time to retire the "liberal elite" label, which, for the past 25 years, has been deployed to denounce anyone to the left of Colin Powell. Thus, last winter, the ultra-elite right-wing Club for Growth dismissed followers of Howard Dean as a "tax-hiking, government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show." I've experienced it myself: speak up for the downtrodden, and someone is sure to accuse you of being a member of the class that's doing the trodding.

In another blow to privacy, a panel for the Court of Appeals for the 1st Circuit, has ruled that e-mail providers can read your e-mail. Better not put too much private information in e-mails. The story is at washingtonpost.com:

A company that provides e-mail service has the right to copy and read any message bound for its customers, a federal appeals court panel has ruled in a decision that could expand e-mail monitoring by businesses and the government.

If you're a Social Darwinist, these are wonderful days. Over twenty-four million people in the United States were without health insurance for over a year according to a new report. The report is at latimes.com:

The economy started creating jobs again last year, but the number of working-age adults who went without health insurance for more than a year jumped sharply, the government reported Wednesday.

An additional 2.6 million people ages 18 to 64 were uninsured for more than a year, raising the total to 24.5 million, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It's apparent that with the Bushies in charge Iraq never had a chance. It didn't matter whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction because Bush and his cronies wanted a war and they would find any excuse for one. According to this story at commondreams.org, the CIA was in effect told to "cook the books" to find any shred of evidence linking Iraq to al-Qaeda:

In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA analysts were ordered repeatedly to redo intelligence assessments that concluded Al Qaeda had no operational ties to Iraq, according to a veteran CIA counter-terrorism official who has written a book that is sharply critical of the decision to go to war with Iraq.