NOVEMBER 30, 2004

TORTURE STILL CONTINUES IN CUBA

I object strenuously to torture. I think it's not only anti-American, but anti-human to torture people, no matter how you may feel about them. Our Constitution prohibits "cruel and unusual" punishment. While we've had the death penalty, we haven't sanctioned things like thumb screws or the rack. And psychological torture is no less cruel. This article is at www.nytimes.com:

The International Committee of the Red Cross has charged in confidential reports to the United States government that the American military has intentionally used psychological and sometimes physical coercion "tantamount to torture" on prisoners at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.

The finding that the handling of prisoners detained and interrogated at Guantánamo amounted to torture came after a visit by a Red Cross inspection team that spent most of last June in Guantánamo.

DELUSIONAL CONSERVATIVES

Paul Craig Roberts is a former editor at The Wall Street Journal, and he calls the conservatives who blindly follow, almost worship, George W. Bush "delusional." This is an interesting commentary at www.lewrockwell.com:

Because of the triumph of delusional "new conservatives" and the demise of the liberal media, this war is different from the Vietnam war. As more Americans are killed and maimed in the pointless carnage, more Americans have a powerful emotional stake that the war not be lost and not be in vain. Trapped in violence and unable to admit mistake, a reckless administration will escalate.

The rapidly collapsing US dollar is hard evidence that the world sees the US as bankrupt. Flight from the dollar as the reserve currency will adversely impact American living standards, which are already falling as a result of job outsourcing and offshore production. The US cannot afford a costly and interminable war.

FALWELL'S LIES

Some of the people most responsible for hate rhetoric in the United States are religious leaders who call themselves Christians. Christian religious leaders, more than anyone, should exemplify the gentleness and compassion of Jesus Christ. Instead, we get hatred and bigotry from the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. This article shows Jerry Falwell lying about what he said after the terrorist attacks on September 11. The article is at www.mediamatters.org:

On the November 28 edition of NBC's Meet the Press, Reverend Jerry Falwell defended his September 13, 2001, remark that abortion rights advocates, feminists, and homosexuals, among others, were responsible for the September 11 terrorist attacks, falsely claiming that when he assigned that blame, he had "likewise" held responsible "a sleeping church, a lethargic church." Falwell also falsely claimed that the divorce rate is lower among born-again Christians than it is among all other Americans.

NUREMBERG REDUX

It wasn't really that long ago that Germany was defeated in the Second World War and its leaders were tried for their heinous crimes against humanity. The war crimes trials at Nuremberg set a good precedent, I think, in establishing that all of have a level of responsibility in how we treat our fellow humans even in war time. There is news now that Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, former CIA Director George Tenet, and other high officials in the Bush administration are being charged with war crimes in Germany. This story is at www.reuters.co.uk:

According to the group, German law allows war criminals to be investigated wherever they may be living.

Those to be named in the case to be filed at Germany's Federal Prosecutors Office include Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld, former Central Intelligence Agency chief George Tenet and eight other officials.

The group is due to present details of its case at several news conferences on Tuesday, according to invitations faxed to media organisations.

NOVEMBER 29, 2004


WHEN BLACK IS WHITE

One of the most astonishing things about reactionary rhetoric is how reactionaries can take basic facts and manipulate them into something you can't recognize. They're trying to do it with global warming. They'll claim that global warming isn't really happening, or if it is happening it's really a good thing. This story is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

Climate change is 'a myth', sea levels are not rising and Britain's chief scientist is 'an embarrassment' for believing catastrophe is inevitable. These are the controversial views of a new London-based think-tank that will publish a report tomorrow attacking the apocalyptic view that man-made greenhouse gases will destroy the planet.

The International Policy Network will publish its long-awaited study, claiming that the science warning of an environmental disaster caused by climate change is 'fatally flawed'. It will state that previous predictions of changes in sea level of a metre over the next 100 years were overestimates.

THINKING OF GUERNICA

In 1937 Hitler and Mussolini were making preparations for world war. The Spanish Civil War gave them an opportunity to test out their war machine, and part of their philosophy was "total war," which would consider civilians as combatants. Hitler's air force attacked the Basque village of Guernica, dropping an estimated 100,000 pounds of bombs and leveling the city. It has been compared to the recent U.S. attack against the Iraqi city of Fallujah. What strikes me is the "total war" philosophy. The terrorists who attacked on September 11 had no qualms about killing innocent civilians in their strike against the United States, and the Bush administration with its strategy of preemptive war has no problems with killing innocent civilians. This excerpt is from an article about the attack on Guernica and can be found at www.historylearningsite.co.uk:

In 1935, General Erich Luderndorff had published "The Total War" (Die Totale Krieg) in which he argued that modern war was all encompassing and that no-one could or should necessarily be spared by the military. He argued that civilians were combatants and should be treated accordingly. His ideas were backed up in Fascist Italy where General Giulio Douhet produced a pamphlet which stated that an army's advance might be suitably assisted by targeting civilians whose panic would severely hamper the ability of the enemy's army to mobilise itself. Such panic could be delivered by "air-delivered terror".

OUR MORAL VALUES

Right-wingers like to thump their chests proudly about their "moral values." Theirs are the moral values of the corporate balance sheet, the incredible rate of childhood poverty, the millions of people without health insurance, endless unnecessary wars, forcing a punitive religion on the rest of us and calling it Christianity, and the raping and pillaging of the planet. I don't think most people really share those "values." Here is a good piece talking about the values of progressives. The column is at www.berkeleydaily.org:

Beliefs in social and economic justice are moral values. Beliefs in equality and inclusion and compassion are moral values. Beliefs in honesty and integrity are moral values. A belief that each generation has a responsibility to leave a better world (environmentally, fiscally, educationally, socially) for their descendents is a moral value-in my view, it is the transcendant one.

THE FALLING DOLLAR IS BAD NEWS

I don't claim to be an economist, but instinctively I know that huge federal deficits and borrowing from foreign investors is a bad idea. Since George W. Bush was ushered into the White House, we've gone from an era of federal surpluses to massive deficits as far as the eye can see. Bush has worsened the problem with massive tax cuts for his rich friends even while we're spending billions on an unnecessary war in Iraq. As the old proverb says, you eventually reap what you sow. We're ready to reap big economic trouble. This is a commentary by former Labor Secretary Robert Reich at www.tompaine.com:

American exporters are cheering because a lower dollar makes everything they sell abroad cheaper. But it’s bad for the rest of us because as the dollar drops everything we buy from abroad -- including oil -- becomes that much more expensive. And these higher prices will ripple through the economy, threatening inflation and higher interest rates -- and, ultimately, reducing our living standards.

It’s one of the oldest of economic laws: When you’re living too high on the hog, eventually you’re gonna fall off and find yourself in pig slop.

ASSASSINATION STORY BEGINS TO UNRAVEL

You've heard the story. Our brave leader, George W. Bush, put his life in danger when he went to Colombia because some bad people wanted to assassinate him. Well, maybe not. From the beginning this story made me think of the claims that on 9/11 Air Force was targeted by terrorists. This story comes from the great state of Texas and is at www.chron.com:

Colombia's government on today backpedalled on a sensational claim made by the defense minister that Marxist rebels wanted to assassinate President Bush during a recent state visit.

A BARREL OF LIES FROM PARTY HACK

A local Republican operative I call Party Hack has a letter in The Fresno Bee claiming, among other things, that we failed to respond to terrorism in the 1990s and that led to the attack on September 11. As I recall, the people responsible for bombing the World Trade Center in 1993 were apprehended, prosecuted, and convicted. Richard Clarke, who advised both President Clinton and George W. Bush, published a memoir showing that it was Bush who didn't take terrorism seriously. Bush repeatedly ignored warnings of an impending terrorist attack. What is most galling about Party Hack's little tirade is the claim about Bush being tough on terrorism. Yeah, attacking a country that didn't attack us, killing innocent civilians, and letting the people responsible for attacking us get away really makes me feel more secure. Here's a sampling from this idiotic letter:

I sleep better at night knowing that we have a tough commander in chief, willing to ignore the soft underbelly of Old Europe and the weakness of America's liberals to stand up and enforce a simple doctrine. The world may never be completely safe ever again, but I guarantee you this, any attack on America or her interests will be met with "shock and awe."

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY IS CONSERVATIVE, POOR, AND DYSFUNCTIONAL

Party Hack made a big point of the high percentage of votes that went to Bush from the San Joaquin Valley. I don't think it's an accident that conservative areas such as the Valley tend to also have some of the worst living conditions, whether it be dirty air, dirty water, high unemployment, high childhood poverty, high rates of teenage pregnancy, or the production of methamphetamine drugs. Fresno has also been among the leaders in stolen cars. California Treasurer Phil Angelides had some observations about the Valley in this speech posted at www.treasurer.ca.gov:

We are gathered today at the center of the new global economy. Yet, if you travel 100 miles inland to the San Joaquin Valley, one in three children are in poverty. The unemployment rate is 5 percentage points higher than it is in any state in this nation. As we stand here today, the story of the Silicon Valley has not been the story of Compton and East Palo Alto and the San Joaquin Valley. We are in danger of becoming two societies and that, in the end, will tear at our social fabric and undermine our competitiveness in the global marketplace.

MORE ON THE RIGGED ELECTION

Online Journal ran a story a couple of days ago with allegations that the Bush campaign spent about $29 million in Enron and Saudi money to rig voting machines in various states around the country to swing the election to Bush. This story is a follow up. I wonder how long it will take the mainstream media to pay attention. The story is at www.onlinejournal.com:

Additional information on the buying of vote riggers with Saudi and former Enron funds has been obtained. The epicenter for the vote rigging operation is Dallas, Texas, and the operation may involve retired FBI agents who used a well-established "good ole boy" network to arrange for access to polling precincts by electronic voting machine technicians who took advantage of various November 2 security "lockdowns" to illegally alter the tabulation of votes in favor of Bush. Some of the retired agents may have used courtesy credentials issued upon retirement to fool unsuspecting polling place workers.

BUSH IS ALWAYS ON THE SIDE OF CRUELTY

I don't think my headline is overstating things. If it comes down to doing a progressive and compassionate thing, or doing something cruel and regressive, Bush seems to go for the cruel and regressive thing every time. This time it's failure to take action to ban landmines. Landmines have a nasty way of sticking around and hurting innocent civilians long after hostilities have ended. That's not to mention that they're cruel weapons to use even in war time. This story is at www.commondreams.org:

The United States, stung by insurgent attacks in Iraq, has urged the international community to consider banning all sales of antitank and other heavy landmines, but ruled out its participation in an international conference on mines designed to hurt primarily people.

NOBEL LAUREATE SARAMAGO BLASTS BUSH

Jose Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, has some sharp observations about George W. Bush. This story is also at www.commondreams.org:

At an earlier speaking engagement in Bogotá, Colombia, Saramago called Bush "the biggest liar on the planet." He added that if the U.S. president ever decides to focus on the region, Latin America should tremble with fear. "I could say the same about Africa, but I don't want to create an international panic," he joked.

Turning his attention to the rest of the world, Saramago told his audience in Caracas that the United States will never leave Iraq, "because it needs to control the Middle East, the gateway to Asia. It already has military installations in Uzbekistan."

SHOULD U.S. BE IMMUNE FROM WAR CRIMES PROSECUTIONS?

The Republicans in Congress are blackmailing other countries into ignoring U.S. war crimes by threatening to cut U.S. foreign aid. If the U.S. is so righteous and good, we shouldn't be worried about war crimes prosecutions. I think this is more about people like George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld than it is about troops on the ground. This story is at www.commondreams.org:

The Republican-controlled Congress has stepped up its campaign to curtail the power of the International Criminal Court, threatening to cut hundreds of millions of dollars in economic aid to governments that refuse to sign immunity accords shielding U.S. personnel from being surrendered to the tribunal.

WESTERN SUPERIORITY A MYTH

One of the frequent right-wing correspondents to The Fresno Bee likes to talk about "western civilization" and the dangers posed to it. Inherent as part of the idea of "western civilization" is the idea of western superiority. I thought this was an interesting essay about how western superiority is really a myth. The essay discusses the ideas in the book Guns, Germs, and Steel. The essay can be found at www.blucorncomics.com:

If we remember the first Thanksgiving at all, we picture the Pilgrims and Indians living in harmony. Of course, Europeans went on to slaughter the natives and conquer the land, but that's history for you. The Indians simply didn't have the right stuff to develop civilization.

In his book Guns, Germs, and Steel, biologist Jared Diamond demolishes this facile argument. He shows how geographic and ecological differences, not talent or virtue, led the West to domination. Let's see how Diamond's theories apply to the Indians.

Diamond starts by noting the New World's paucity of big domestic mammals. Whereas Eurasia had 13 species, the Americas had only one-the llama, limited to the Andes. Animals such as the bison proved impossible to domesticate widely, as modern attempts have shown.

"W" IS FOR "WEENIE"

I think George W. Bush is a coward. He's a bully too, but bullies tend to show what cowards they are when the chips are down. We have many examples of the yellow streak parading down George's back: his failure to do his duty during his Air National Guard service, the fact he won't speak before any possibly hostile people outside the United States, and the careful stagecrafting in this country by segregating protesters in so-called "free speech" zones. This is about Bush's terror at the thought of speaking before an hostile parliament in Canada. The column by Slinger is at www.thestar.com:

What evidence is there of Dubya's weenieness, apart from him chickening out when it came to going up against the filthy Commies in the skies over the Rio Grande during the unpleasantness in Vietnam?

JEFFERSON DAVIS, STONEWALL JACKSON, ROBERT E. LEE WOULD FEEL AT HOME

In some "alternative history" novels we're presented with a scenario where the South won the Civil War. What was once fiction is distressingly looking more like fact. The South didn't win with guns and bullets, but they're winning with venality, hatred, and bigotry. This is an interesting analysis by David Podvin at www.makethemaccountable.com:

It took awhile, but the South has finally won the Civil War. One hundred thirty nine years after Robert E. Lee surrendered to the Union Army, the Confederate philosophy reigns triumphant in the United States of America. The executive and legislative branches of the federal government are under the control of reactionary Southerners, and the judiciary is dominated by strict constructionists who embrace the Jim Crow view of states’ rights. Even those places in America that reject Southern-fried authoritarianism are currently under the dominion of the national Confederate ruling class.

UNARMED CIVILIANS KILLED IN FALLUJAH

I'm reminded of a line from the Al Pacino movie "And Justice for All." He said at one point about a grave injustice, "Don't you even care?" That's how I feel when I read about the atrocities committed by the United States in Iraq. We have been betraying everything we're supposed to stand for. We've tortured people at places like Abu Ghraib and in Cuba. We've slaughtered an estimated 100,000 innocent civilians in Iraq. We've killed innocent civilians in Afghanistan. This story talks about the atrocities in Fallujah. The story is at news.independent.co.uk:

Allegations of widespread abuse by US forces in Fallujah, including the killing of unarmed civilians and the targeting of a hospital in an attack, have been made by people who have escaped from the city.

They said, in interviews with The Independent, that as well as deaths from bombs and artillery shells, a large number of people including children were killed by American snipers. US forces refused repeated calls for medical aid for injured civilians, they said.

BUSH AND RUMSFELD CAN'T EVEN SIGN SYMPATHY LETTERS

This piece by Colonel David Hackworth says that sympathy letters sent to families of our military killed in Iraq and Afghanistan aren't even signed by Bush and Rumsfeld. Instead, they're machine stamped. More of that compassionate conservatism in action. This column is at www.sftt.org:

And now, apparently, Rumsfeld’s obsession with machines and their efficiency has translated into his using one to replace his own John Hancock on KIA (killed in action) letters to parents and spouses. Two Pentagon-based colonels, who’ve both insisted on anonymity to protect their careers, have indignantly reported that the SecDef has relinquished this sacred duty to a signature device rather than signing the sad documents himself.

PRIVATIZING SOCIAL SECURITY WILL CLOBBER WOMEN AND MINORITIES

At www.tompaine.com there is a link to a study of Bush's proposed changes to the Social Security system, which will mean no security for a large number of Americans. The whole "ownership society" concept favors people who already have the resources to invest in the stock market--and can afford to lose--and puts everyone else at a severe disadvantage. What Bush's plan will do is enrich the people who will rake in big bucks from broker fees. This item is at www.tompaine.com:

The president has said that privatizing Social Security is his priority for his second term, replacing the government system with private retirement savings accounts. (For more on this, visit The Institute For America's Future Social Security project ) But the costs to everyday Americans are huge: there's the management fees required for maintaining an account; the need to buy insurance to match the protection workers currently get under Social Security; and the costs of switching to an entirely new system. And the savings accounts would be tied to the stock market's performance-a risk for everyone. Even worse, women and minorities would lose twice, because they make less money to invest into retirement saving accounts. Economists at the Center For American Progress count the ways privatizing Social Security is a losing proposition. SEE THE REPORT

SAN JOAQUIN VALLEY'S NEW RURAL UNDERCLASS

When you think of the San Joaquin Valley in California you have to think about migrant farm workers. Back in the 1930s John Steinbeck wrote about the Okie migrants in his great novel The Grapes of Wrath. Later, the Okies were largely replaced by Mexican migrants who moved back and forth between the United States and Mexico. Now the migrants are staying because, ironically, tighter border security has made it more difficult for them to return to Mexico. The former migrants are now creating a new rural underclass enmeshed in poverty. This excerpt is from an article by Maggie Jones at www.motherjones.com:

At 4:30 a.m. in a dusty farming town in California’s San Joaquin Valley, the lights are on in a one-room house no bigger than a garage. Inside, Isabel makes tortillas and beans for the workday ahead, while her husband, Vicente, puts on his farmworker’s uniform of long pants, long-sleeved shirt, work boots, and a baseball cap. Much of the town of Arvin is awake by now: The local panaderias -- Mexican bakeries -- open at 5 a.m., as do the small markets where farmworkers buy gas and pick up coffee before heading to the fields.

SO MANY FORGOTTEN LIVES

I like Bob Dylan, but I've never heard the song mentioned in this article, and I didn't know about the incident the song describes. It's about the killing of an African-American woman servant by a white punk. The white punk got six months in prison and, apparently, went on abusing African-American people in other ways as he got older. This article is also at www.motherjones.com:

Do you know the Bob Dylan song "The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll"? Put it on now and listen to it, if you happen to have it on a CD or an album. If you don't, or you don't remember it, it's about a young society swell named William Zantzinger who, in 1963, killed a black serving woman named Hattie Carroll at a ball at a Baltimore hotel by striking her with a cane. Dylan was just 22 when he wrote it, and the lyrics show him at his high-energy, internal-rhyme-spinning peak:

MUCH ADO ABOUT NOTHING

It's a pity that people so traumatized by a promotional stunt on Monday Night Football aren't outraged by poverty in the United States, or exported jobs, or torture, or unnecessary wars. But they're just hyperventilating over the non-nudity of the promotional stunt where an actress drops a towel, shows a bare back (oh the horror!), and leaps into the arms of wide receiver Terrell Owens. Frank Rich has a good commentary at www.nytimes.com:

If we are to believe the outcry of the past two weeks, America's youth have been defiled en masse - again. This time the dirty deed was done by the actress Nicollette Sheridan, who dropped her towel in the cheesy promotional spot for the runaway hit "Desperate Housewives" that kicked off "Monday Night Football" on ABC. "I wonder if Walt Disney would be proud," said Michael Powell, the Federal Communications Commission chairman who increasingly fashions himself a commissar of all things cultural, from nipple rings to "Son of Flubber."

ALLEGATIONS BUSH CAMPAIGN PAID TO RIG ELECTION

I've been consistently amazed at the corruption of the Bush administration, thinking that surely this scandal or that scandal would bring them down, and the American people keep going merrily along supporting these thugs. I have to wonder if this story gets "legs," though, what the public reaction will be. There are allegations the Bush campaign paid operatives to rig the electronic voting machines used in so many places in the country. The story is at www.onlinejournal.com:

According to informed sources in Washington and Houston, the Bush campaign spent some $29 million to pay polling place operatives around the country to rig the election for Bush. The operatives were posing as Homeland Security and FBI agents but were actually technicians familiar with Diebold, Sequoia, ES&S, Triad, Unilect, and Danaher Controls voting machines. These technicians reportedly hacked the systems to skew the results in favor of Bush.

The leak about the money and the rigged election apparently came from technicians who were promised to be paid a certain amount for their work but the Bush campaign interlocutors reneged and some of the technicians are revealing the nature of the vote rigging program

HUMILIATING PAT DOWN SEARCHES OF WOMEN

I'm male, but I find this outrageous and offensive, that women are being forced to endure pat down searches at airports that amount to groping. They're often forced to endure this intrusive procedure even with men around. I know I wouldn't want to be given a physical exam in the presence of women. This column by Maureen Dowd is at www.nytimes.com:

Airport screening procedures are more reactive than imaginative. There's an attempted shoe bombing, so all passengers must shed their shoes. Two female Chechens may or may not have sneaked explosives onto Russian planes, so now some T.S.A. genius decides all women are subject to strips and body searches.

I get flagged for extra security every time I buy a one-way ticket, which seems particularly lame. Doesn't the T.S.A. realize that a careful terrorist plotter like Mohammed Atta could figure this out and use his Saudi charity money to pop for round trips even if the return portion gets wasted?

BUSH IS SUCH A CREEP

This article by Sidney Blumenthal talks about the opening of the Clinton Library in Little Rock, and the typical boorish manners of George W. Bush, who defied protocol and tried to push past President Clinton to be the first in line. This guy is very easy to dislike. This story is at www.guardian.co.uk:

Then, when the presidents were announced, Bush tried to push his way past Clinton at the library door to be first in line, against the already accepted protocol for the event, as though the walk to the platform was a contest for alpha male. In his speech, Clinton sought to clarify the present by his broad analysis of globalisation - "an age of interdependence with new possibilities and new dangers" - and the offer of conciliation: "America has two great dominant strands of political thought; we're represented up here on this stage: conservatism, which at its very best draws lines that should not be crossed; and progressivism, which at its very best breaks down barriers that are no longer needed or should never have been erected in the first place."

THE ROLE OF RIGHT WING THINK TANKS IN MAKING POLICY

This is an article about the growth and influence of right wing think tanks in the formation of public discussion and policy. These think tanks are extremely well-funded, adept at getting their opinion pieces published in the newspapers, talked about on television, and echoed repeatedly on right-wing talk radio. They were instrumental in shaping the policies of the Reagan administration and have had an even more pervasive effect with the current administration. This article is at www.straightgoods.com:

Today, think tanks like the Hoover Institution play a bigger role in setting Bush's agenda than the legions of faithful who trooped out to the polls at the command of their pastors.

Hoover specializes in foreign and defense policy. Its $25-million-a-year budget is funded largely by conservative foundations and big corporations like ExxonMobil, which has a lot at stake in Bush's Iraq and mid-East policies. Ford and General Motors are other backers.

THE STATES HAVE THE SENSE TO RAISE THE MINIMUM WAGE

The federal minimum wage has been stalled at $5.15 an hour for years now. During the entire Reagan administration the minimum wage wasn't raised even once, even though inflation was eating up even the paltry value of it back then. George W. Bush certainly hasn't made a priority of raising the minimum wage. California's Governor Groper recently vetoed a bill that would have raised the minimum wage in California. This article talks about the benefits of raising the minimum wage and keeping it indexed to inflation. The article is at news.yahoo.com:

But new research over the past decade shows that modest hikes to keep the low-paid abreast of inflation will cost few if any jobs. The point has been widely embraced since 1995 studies by University of California at Berkeley economist David Card and Princeton University economist Alan B. Krueger found no employment losses among New Jersey fast food restaurants hit with minimum-wage hikes. Given wide variations in costs around the country, the federal minimum should serve as a floor, which would allow high-cost states such as California or Alaska to set their own minimums higher if they wish. "Indexing doesn't improve conditions for low-wage workers, it just keeps them from deteriorating further as prices rise," says Robert Pollin, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst who led a study of the Florida initiative for its advocates.

DIRE ECONOMIC PREDICTION
An economist named Stephen Roach is predicting an "economic Armageddon" for the United States. We have Armageddon facing us on so many fronts with Bush in power: the economy, health care, retirement funds, women's rights, the environment, and preservation of the Bill of Rights. This story is at www.bostonherald.com:

Stephen Roach, the chief economist at investment banking giant Morgan Stanley, has a public reputation for being bearish.

But you should hear what he's saying in private.

Roach met select groups of fund managers downtown last week, including a group at Fidelity.

His prediction: America has no better than a 10 percent chance of avoiding economic ``armageddon.''

Press were not allowed into the meetings. But the Herald has obtained a copy of Roach's presentation. A stunned source who was at one meeting said, ``it struck me how extreme he was - much more, it seemed to me, than in public.''

HOW DO PEOPLE BELIEVE THIS STUFF?
I know millions of people have read the 'Left Behind" series of novels, including someone very near and dear to me. But the absolute hatred and bigotry of the authors is simply appalling. Their contention, based on scripture, is that anyone who is not a born again Christian will be hurled into a lake of fire by Jesus, no less. Is this the same Jesus who exemplified gentleness and mercy during his ministry? It should be noted, however, that the people predicting the end of the world is nigh have been wrong every time. As Nicholas Kristof points out in this column, the authors of the "Left Behind" books are also raking in millions. What good will all that money do them if they get Raptured? This column is at www.nytimes.com:

For starters, it's worth pointing out that those predicting an apocalypse have a long and lousy record. In America, tens of thousands of followers of William Miller waited eagerly for Jesus to reappear on Oct. 22, 1844. Some of these Millerites had given away all their belongings, and the no-show was called the Great Disappointment.

In more recent times, the best-selling nonfiction book of the 1970's was Hal Lindsey's "The Late Great Planet Earth," selling 18 million copies worldwide with its predictions of a Second Coming. Then, one of the hottest best sellers in 1988 was a booklet called "88 Reasons Why the Rapture Will Be in 1988." Oops.

BUSH IS UNITING THE WORLD AGAINST THE U.S.
In his quest for empire, George W. Bush is energizing a whole array of alliances against the United States. With flagrant disregard for human rights and international law, bullying the United Nations, staging preemptive war, and contemptuous behavior toward our allies Bush is creating a whole new international order, not one that will be beneficial to the United States. This story is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

The problem is the earmarked nation-state minions have other ideas especially after they've witnessed the chaotic debacle, which is Iraq, along with the Bush administration's disregard for international treaties and conventions, its contempt for the United Nations and the International Court, as well as the hubris with which it deals with friend and foe alike.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. America's self-styled war president should have been perceived as a victorious emperor of the free world, the champion of western values and democracy. Instead he is arguably the most internationally disliked US leader in history…

AMERICANS "CONCERNED" ABOUT BUSH AGENDA

According to a new poll in The New York Times, Americans are concerned about the Bush agenda over the next four years. Really? What gave them their first clue, do you think? The guy was a disaster over the past four years, but millions of Americans still voted for him in this presidential election. The story is at www.nytimes.com:

At a time when the White House has portrayed Mr. Bush's 3.5-million-vote victory as a mandate, the poll found that Americans are at best ambivalent about Mr. Bush's plans to reshape Social Security, rewrite the tax code, cut taxes and appoint conservative judges to the bench. There is continuing disapproval of Mr. Bush's handling of the war in Iraq, with a plurality now saying it was a mistake to invade in the first place.

DO RELIGIOUS WACKOS WANT TO FORCE US TO HAVE CHILDREN?

In the whole litany of propaganda about the "defense of marriage" most of the focus has been on gays. But this piece about the religious right's agenda is almost surreal. They don't like it when heterosexual couples choose not to have children. This article is linked at www.smirkingchimp.com:

"If those initiatives are part of a broader effort to reaffirm lifetime fidelity in marriage, they're worthwhile," he said. "If they're isolated - if we don't address cohabitation and casual divorce and deliberate childlessness - then I think they're futile and will be brushed aside."

THE CASE AGAINST MESSING WITH SOCIAL SECURITY

The Bush administration would like to partly "privatize" Social Security, allowing younger people to "invest" part of their Social Security money. We're told they could get a much greater rate of return with private investments than can be provided by Social Security. There are lots of problems with this. First, any "rate of return" will be impacted by broker fees that will be gobbled up by private investment firms. Second, the cost to transition to this system will be astronomical. And then there's the risk factor. What if the investments get destroyed by a market crash? Does that mean no retirement money? The dangers of the Bush proposal are illustrated here by a company called The Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, which is now asking for a government bailout. The story is at http://tcf.org/4L/4LMain.asp?SubjectID=4&ArticleID=774 in an article at The Century Foundation:

Are Social Security privatization and trouble at the PBGC related? You bet. The trouble at the PBGC illustrates the great risks involved in retirement planning, risks that have swamped enough private pension plans to require a Congressional bailout. Yet the Bush administration is proposing to wind down the only part of retirement income that is secure-guaranteed against the business cycle, inflation, and corporate malfeasance-and replace it with risky private accounts, with no guarantees at all.

REMEMBERING JFK

The early 1960s were tumultuous times. It was the time the U.S. got actively involved in the space race and began the path that would land a manned mission on the moon in 1969. It was a time when civil rights took center stage in American life and when African-Americans finally won rights that had been denied them for a hundred years. It was the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest we've come to all out nuclear war. It was the time we made deeper forays into Vietnam, a war that would claim over 50,000 Americans and millions of Vietnamese. It was also the time of John F. Kennedy, a visionary who might have made the world a better place had he lived.

After JFK's assassination in Dallas on this date in 1963 he was almost deified for a time. No human being could live up to the acclaim he received as Camelot took on mythical proportions. In the years since there have been a number of critical biographies suggesting that JFK really didn't accomplish much domestically, that he was a notorious womanizer, and as a Cold Warrior that he put the world at risk.

The best biography I've read about JFK is Robert Dallek's An Unfinished Life. While he acknowledges JFK's failings, he shows a man deeply committed to improving the lot of working people in this country, who wanted to make life better for African-Americans, who spoke out boldly about reducing the threat of nuclear weapons, and overcame much personal pain to perform his job as president. No one can know what would have happened had JFK lived, but I think the world would be a gentler, happier place now had he lived.

TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH, BUT MILLIONS GO HUNGRY

Why do the very rich in this country, who have more money than they can ever hope to spend, always need more money? Why do we have a government that will cater to this crowd when so many others are hurting? This story reveals that at least thirty-six million Americans went hungry last year. Let's hear it again about those "moral values" of the Bush crowd. This story is at www.cbsnews.com:

More than 12 million American families either didn't have enough food or worried about someone in the family going hungry last year, the Agriculture Department said Friday. Thirty-six million people experienced or worried about hunger.

Hunger-relief advocates said the figure, about the same as the previous year, showed a lack of progress. A department spokeswoman pointed to government efforts to sign up more people for food and nutrition assistance programs.

FORGET ALL THE CLICHES ABOUT WHO IS POOR

Republicans, at least primarily Republicans, who like to argue against the minimum wage claim that most low-wage workers are just kids in fast food restaurants, not the heads of families who need and deserve higher incomes. But the facts show that's not the case. Bob Herbert writes about poverty in America and how it doesn't have the sex appeal of steamy "Monday Night Football" introductions or other distractions. The column is at www.nytimes.com:

According to the study: "Most low-income working families do not conform to the popular stereotype of the working poor as young, single, fast-food workers: 88 percent of low-income working families include a parent between 25 and 54 years old. Married couples head 53 percent of these families nationwide. Important jobs such as health aide, janitor and child care worker pay a poverty wage."

PAUL KRUGMAN WARNS AGAINST BUSH ECONOMIC POLICIES

Conservatives have consistently gotten economics wrong. Since the Reagan era we've seen exploding deficits, high unemployment, and shredded social safety nets. You would think they could take a lesson from the most prosperous era in American history, the era that extended from the end of World War II, until the election of Richard M. Nixon. That was a time when the New Deal and liberal policies were in place. Since then things have gotten worse for everyone except the very rich. This article about Krugman is at news.yahoo.com:

"If you go back and you look at the sources of the blow-up of Argentine debt during the 1990s, one little-appreciated thing is that social security privatization was a important source of that expansion of debt," said Krugman.

In 2001, Argentina finally defaulted on an estimated $100 billion in debt, the largest such event in modern economic history.

BUSH IS AN EMBARRASSMENT IN CHILE

George W. Bush apparently intervened in a dispute between one of his Secret Service agents and Chilean security officials, and I guess it made him feel like a tough guy. This is an interesting account from www.washingtonpost.com:

Trotta walked in behind Bush, who looked enormously pleased with himself. He was wearing the expression that some critics call a smirk, and his eyebrows shot up as if to wink at bystanders.

Bush adjusted his right cufflink and muttered something to Lagos, took the first lady's arm and headed into the dinner of grilled fish.

BUSH ADMINISTRATION WANTS AMPUTEES BACK ON BATTLEFIELD

I thought I knew about callousness, but I didn't have a clue until the Bush administration came along. In this story it's revealed that the Bushies would like to get even amputees back on the battlefield. This story is from www.guardian.co.uk:

A state-of-the-art rehabilitation center opening next year at Walter Reed Army Medical Center seeks to return more amputee soldiers to a place once thought impossible: the battlefield.

Besides treadmills and stationary bikes, the $10 million Military Amputee Training Center will have weapons simulators, a climbing and rappelling wall and military vehicle simulators to help soldiers adapt their prosthetics to driving tanks and trucks.

THE MINIMUM WAGE IS AN OUTRAGE

In an era when corporate CEOs take home millions and members of Congress give themselves handsome raises almost every session, it's an outrage that the federal minimum wage is $5.15 an hour. Anyone who works hard and full time should be able to live above the poverty line. In terms of inflation-adjusted dollars, the minimum wage is totally inadequate. Bush, being Bush, supports raising the minimum wage just $1.10 an hour, which doesn't help much at all. This story is at www.thehill.com:

Despite Democratic losses across the board in the elections, organized labor is refusing to embrace President Bush’s offer to raise the minimum wage by $1.10 an hour.

"It’s insufficient, and it’s too little, too late," said Bill Samuel, director of legislation for the AFL-CIO. "This is an insult to workers whose wages have fallen so far behind that they can’t even afford the bare necessities."

BUSH TWINS TOLD NO TABLES AVAILABLE FOR FOUR YEARS

I don't know if this story is true, but it's amusing anyway. Reportedly, a popular New York restaurant told Bush twins Barbara and Jenna and their Secret Service guards that no tables were available for the next four years. The announcement came with cheers from the restaurant patrons. This item is at xnerg.blogspot.com:

freemans tuesday night the 16th of nov. the bush twins along with 2 massive secret service men tried to have dinner they were told by the maitre 'd that they were full and would be for the next 4 years upon hearing the entire restaurant cheered and did a round of shots it was amazing!!! [ed: we're hearing that this is actually true.]

WAR IS GOOD BUSINESS FOR SOME

Former President George H. W. Bush is a part of the Carlyle Group, an investment firm that specializes in defense contracts. So Bush I is profiting from the death and destruction waged by his little boy. This story is at www.publicintegrity.org:

The Carlyle Group, a Washington, D.C.-based private equity firm that employs numerous former high-ranking government officials with ties to both political parties, was the ninth largest Pentagon contractor between 1998 and 2003, an ongoing Center for Public Integrity investigation into Department of Defense contracts found.

A dozen companies in which Carlyle had a controlling interest netted more than $9.3 billion in contracts.

DESPICABLE PRACTICES OF CREDIT CARD COMPANIES

This article mentions MBNA, who I believe is the largest issuer of credit cards in the country. MBNA has this nasty little habit of offering you a low interest rate to consolidate your other debts. Then all of a sudden they want to "amend" your account and jack up your interest rates to loan shark levels. We can thank those wonderful folks who believe in deregulation for this too. This story is at www.nytimes.com:

When Ed Schwebel was whittling down his mound of credit card debt at an interest rate of 9.2 percent, the MBNA Corporation had a happy and profitable customer. But this summer, when MBNA suddenly doubled the rate on his account, Mr. Schwebel joined the growing ranks of irate cardholders stunned by lenders' harsh tactics.

Mr. Schwebel, 58, a semiretired software engineer in Gilbert, Ariz., was not pleased that his minimum monthly payment jumped from $502 in June to $895 in July. But what really made him angry, he said, was the sense that he was being punished despite having held up his end of the bargain with MBNA.

BUSH IS SUCH A BOOR

Several years ago there was a book called The Ugly American. If ever there was an apt description for George W. Bush, that's it. The man is arrogant, condescending, self-righteous, and snotty. This story is from The Guardian of London and at www.guardian.co.uk:

Hours after President Bush dove into a fracas to rescue his lead Secret Service agent from a confrontation with Chilean security officials, word surfaced of another security dispute. This time, an elaborate state dinner Sunday night was the casualty.

The dinner planned for Bush and 200 others by Chilean President Ricardo Lagos was reportedly scrapped after Chile was unwilling to accept security measures sought by the U.S. Secret Service, including a demand that all guests pass through metal detectors.

Leading Chilean newspaper El Mercurio reported that the disagreement led Bush and Lagos to instead hold a small ``social dinner'' with a handful of aides from each side.

CREATIONIST FANTASY

Talk show host Mike Malloy calls it "the talking snake theory of creation." It's the account in the biblical book of Genesis where God fashioned the first man Adam from the soil and later took one of Adam's ribs to create Eve. Many creationists who accept this account as literal and true also believe the earth is just a few thousand years old, despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary. I'm disturbed that people would want to accept fantasy as truth, but even more disturbed if they attempt to slap a veneer of science onto their beliefs. That's the gist of this story where the true believers claim the Grand Canyon was created by the Flood in Genesis. The story is at www.makethemaccountable.com:

At a park called Dinosaur Adventure Land, run by creationists near Pensacola, Florida, visitors are informed that man coexisted with dinosaurs. This fantasy accommodates the creationists' view that the Earth is only 6,000 years old and that Darwin's theory of evolution is false. Among the park exhibits is one that illustrates another creationist article of faith. It consists of a long trough filled with sand and fitted at one end with a water spigot. Above the trough is a sign reading "That River Didn't Make That Canyon." When visitors open the spigot, the water quickly cuts a gully through the sand, supposedly demonstrating how the Grand Canyon was created, practically overnight, by Noah's flood. That's nonsense, of course, but what else would you expect at a creationist park? Certainly, one might think, this couldn't be acceptable at, say, a National Park, right? Think again.

THE ANTI-CHOICE ZEALOTS MAKE A MOVE

I don't know if John Kerry didn't emphasize it enough, or if the danger of reactionary forces making all abortion illegal just passed over the heads of people, but the reactionaries in Congress are trying to pass anti-choice legislation embedded deep in a spending bill. You'd think they'd wait until they got their Supreme Court justice, which is all too likely now, but this is a more covert way of achieving the same thing. The story is at www.nytimes.com:

House and Senate negotiators have tucked a potentially far-reaching anti-abortion provision into a $388 billion must-pass spending bill, complicating plans for Congress to wrap up its business and adjourn for the year.

The provision may be an early indication of the growing political muscle of social conservatives who provided crucial support for Republican candidates, including President Bush, in the election.

MICHAEL POWELL'S OVERBEARING FCC

Just like George W. Bush used the tragedy of 9/11 to advance his agenda, FCC Chairman Michael Powell is using the Janet Jackson breast baring incident at the Super Bowl to squelch freedom of expression. Even if not explicitly stated, the threat of FCC sanctions is causing broadcast media to go to ridiculous lengths to censor what Mr. Powell might consider objectionable. Now the word "rights" is apparently taboo. This story is at www.newsobserver.com:

The use of a single word in a sponsor's on-air underwriting announcement has thrown a spotlight on a local public radio station's effort to remain politically neutral.

WUNC-FM recently informed Ipas, a Chapel Hill-based international women's rights and health organization, that the phrase "reproductive rights" in the group's on-air announcement could be interpreted as advocating a particular political position. The station required Ipas to use "reproductive health" instead.

WUNC made the change to avoid trouble with the Federal Communications Commission, general manager Joan Siefert Rose said. The FCC prohibits public radio stations from airing underwriting announcements that advocate political, social or religious causes.

NOW BUSH WANTS TO MURDER IRAN

As Yogi Berra once said, it's deja vu all over again. The Bush administration put out a steady stream of propaganda that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, that Saddam Hussein had "gassed his own people," that we were in imminent danger of a nuclear attack by Iraq. It was all lies (except the gassing part, which was partly enabled by the Reagan-Bush administrations). Now we're seeing the same script, but with Iran as the culprit this time. The last time the major media bought the Bush line without much question. At least this time The New York Times is raising questions in its editorial pages. Let's hope everybody raises questions. The editorial is at www.nytimes.com:

Stop us if you've heard this one before. The Bush administration creates a false sense of urgency about a nuclear menace from a Middle Eastern country. Hard-liners talk about that country's connections to terrorists. They portray European diplomatic efforts to defuse tensions as a feckless attempt to appease a rogue nation whose word can never be trusted anyway. Secretary of State Colin Powell makes ominous-sounding warnings about new intelligence, which turns out to be dubious.

That is how President Bush rushed the country into an unnecessary conflict with Iraq in his first term, and we have been seeing alarming signs of that approach all week on Iran.

THE LOUSY RECORD OF PORTER GOSS

New CIA Director Porter Goss, a Bush sycophant, shouldn't have been confirmed as CIA Director. He's already given ample evidence he's not up to the job. He's trying to remold the CIA into a boot-licking tool of George W. Bush. The Los Angeles Times talks about Goss and his lousy record in this editorial at www.latimes.com:

As a congressman, Goss ran interference for the White House whenever he could. As head of the intelligence panel, Goss and his aides, in contrast to the Senate, failed to release a bipartisan report on prewar Iraq intelligence. Goss opposed the creation of an independent commission to study the 9/11 disaster. And he savagely and falsely denounced Sen. John F. Kerry during the presidential campaign for trying to starve the intelligence agencies of funding. Now Goss and his assistants are at it again.

BLOOD ON CONDI RICE'S HANDS

As Bob Herbert points out, Condoleezza Rice has been a terrible National Security Adviser. There is nothing to recommend her for her next job as Secretary of State. Through ideological blindness or incompetence, Ms. Rice has been largely responsible for the bloodbath in Iraq. This column is at www.nytimes.com:

Ms. Rice's domain was the filter through which an awful lot of mangled and misshapen intelligence made its way to the president and the American people. She either believed the nonsense she was spouting about mushroom clouds, or she deliberately misled her president and the nation on matters that would eventually lead to the deaths of thousands.

MORE SWEETHEART DEALS FOR HALLIBURTON

It really pays to have your former CEO become the Vice President of the United States and to be a major mover and shaker in a corrupt administration. This article shows how Halliburton is even making money by a cozy legal arrangement that allows them to exploit Native Americans. The article is at www.motherjones.com:

Partnerships between multinational companies and tribal businesses, most of them Alaska native corporations, have skyrocketed in recent years-in large part because of a provision in federal law that exempts tribal companies from rules that apply to other minority-owned businesses. The system was established in the mid-1990s to help native communities, where unemployment rates often exceed 40 percent. But it has also become a way for large corporations with no Native American ownership to receive no-bid contracts, an avenue for federal officials to steer work to favored companies, and a device for speeding privatization. "It’s a loophole gone wild," Charles Tiefer, an expert in federal contract law, recently told the trade journal Washington Technology. "I have seen little evidence that this produces jobs in Alaska as opposed to profits for those entrepreneurs skillful enough to exploit it."

CAPITALISM AT WORK: OFF THE CLOCK WORK

This article shows how many businesses, including some large corporations, have pressured their employees to perform work "off the clock." Even though the people were still working, it wasn't officially recorded as work and they weren't paid for it. This article is at www.nytimes.com:

"It is prevalent," said Alfred Robinson, director of the wage and hour division of the Labor Department. "It is one of the more common violations of the Fair Labor Standards Act."

TEXAS RADIO HOST STARTS ANTI-GROPER CAMPAIGN

Arnie the Groper, our all image and no substance governor, is running for president. His supporters are running ads to advocate amending the Constitution to allow the foreign born Arnie to run. I don't think we want or need Arnie in the White House. I don't agree with some of the positions of the radio host mentioned in this article, but on the issue of Arnie we're in agreement. This story is at www.sanluisobisopo.com:

A Texas radio host launched a Web-based offensive Thursday against efforts to change the U.S. Constitution to allow Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to run for president of the United States.

Alex Jones, an Austin-based talk show host on the Burnsville, Minn., Genesis Communications Network, said the site raised $5,000 for an anti-Schwarzenegger campaign in its first two hours.

Jones, once voted Austin's favorite radio host and sometimes described as a "conspiracy theorist," said he's raising funds to run TV ads in Austin and Sacramento to counter those beginning this week by Schwarzenegger supporters hoping he'll run for president.

ECONOMIC VALUES ARE MORAL VALUES TOO

President Franklin D. Roosevelt, perhaps the greatest president in our history, advocated an economic bill of rights. Almost everything that affects a person's quality of life is determined by economics. There is something very wrong when people work hard and live below the poverty level. There's something not right about millions of children living in poverty and doing without health insurance in the richest country on the planet. There's something grossly out of sync when we spend billions on the military, but a pittance for schools. This article by Michael Zweig is at www.commondreams.org:

But class struggle exists, and the working class is losing. Over the past 30 years, as the Republican agenda of unrestricted corporate power has come increasingly to dominate this country, workers' living standards have declined in well-documented ways - lower pay, longer hours, less health care, ruined pensions, more insecurity. At the same time, and toward the same end, Republicans have banished all questions of economic justice from public conversation. They insist that economic outcomes are best left to the market - that the market is the best arbiter of winners and losers.

THE GROPER IS ALL REPUBLICAN

When I say "all Republican" it's not meant as a compliment. It's a little like being pond scum, except pond scum has more integrity. Arnie the Groper claimed that he would never take money from "special interests." Guess who is getting showered with special interest money? You win a cigar! The story is at www.sfgate.com:

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, after campaigning as a reformer who would cast special interests out of the Capitol, smashed every fund-raising record in his first year in office with a $26.6 million haul that doubled the amount raised by former Gov. Gray Davis in his first year.

The vast majority of the money came from special interests deeply vested in the outcome of legislative and regulatory decisions in Sacramento, including financial companies, auto dealers and manufacturers and health care concerns. In some cases, the governor, who took office a year ago today, has taken positions that benefited his contributors.

HAIR RAISING PREDICTION

A major scientist is warning that the human race could be extinct by the end of this century because of global climate change. Whether or not you think this is alarmist, global climate change should be on the top of our priorities list. This story is linked at www.makethemaccountable.com:

A top New Zealand researcher is using a prestigious award ceremony in Christchurch to warn that humans face extinction by the end of the century.

THE KING AND HIS COURT

The arrogance, the incompetence, and destruction of the Bush administration continues apace. Bush governs more like a king than like an elected official. The move is on in the higher levels of government to remove anyone who disagrees with His Majesty and to replace them with yes men or women (see Condi Rice). Maureen Dowd talks about King George in her column at www.nytimes.com:

Now, in the 21st-century reign of King George II, flattery is mandatory, dissent is forbidden, and erring without admitting error is the best way to get ahead. President Bush is purging the naysayers who tried to temper crusted-nut-bar Dick Cheney and the neocon crazies on Iraq.

THE ECONOMY CONTINUES IN WRONG DIRECTION

A predictor of future economic activity shows the economy still headed in the wrong direction. Tax cuts for the rich? Yeah, that will do the trick! This story is at money.iwon.com:

A key forecasting gauge of future U.S. economic activity fell for a fifth straight month in October, a private research group said on Thursday.

The Conference Board said its index of leading indicators fell 0.3 percent in October to 115.1, a fifth straight monthly decline. The index fell by a matching 0.3 percent in both September and August. The September figure was downwardly revised from a previously reported drop of 0.1 percent.

U.S. POLITICAL CLASS HAS NO SHAME

Bill Moyers, my idea of a real journalist, has an interesting column about the conflicts caused by religion, and about how the political class in Washington now seems to lack any conscience, compassion, or ethics. This column is at www.sojo.net:

Nothing seems to embarrass the political class in Washington today. Not the fact that more children are growing up in poverty in America than in any other industrial nation; not the fact that millions of workers are actually making less money today in real dollars than they did 20 years ago; not the fact that working people are putting in longer and longer hours just to stay in place; not the fact that while we have the most advanced medical care in the world, nearly 44 million Americans - eight out of 10 of them in working families - are uninsured and cannot get the basic care they need.

WE'RE NOT SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE WHAT WE SEE

Even though there is mounting evidence that Bush stole his second election, those who question the legitimacy are treated as fringe folk. Al Gore won the last election by over 500,000 votes, but he didn't really win, we were told. All kinds of Republican chicanery this time around, all kinds of conflicting reports about exit polls and final results, and missing ballots all over the place, but we're supposed to just go merrily along. This article by Mark Crispin Miller is at www.inthesetimes.com:

To nod agreement that this was indeed an honest win is to forget how Bush was shoehorned into office in the first place; to ignore the ease with which electronic totals can be changed without a trace; to suppress the fact that Diebold, Sequoia and ES&S—the major manufacturers of touch screen voting machines and central tabulators—are owned and run by Bush Republicans, who have made no secret of their partisan intentions; to deny the value of the exit polls, which turn out to have been "mistaken" only in the swing states; to downplay the weird inflation of the Bush vote in county after county, where the number of votes for president was somehow higher than the number of voters who turned out; to ignore the bald chicanery of the Bush supporters who ran the central polling station in Ohio’s Warren County and forced out the press and poll monitors so they could count the vote in secret; to forget the numerous accounts of vote fraud coast to coast throughout the prior weeks of early voting; to overlook the fact that every single "glitch" or "error" that has been reported favors Bush; to ignore the countless instances of ballots—absentee, provisional—thrown away or left uncounted; to forget that the civilian vote abroad (some four million Americans) was being mishandled by the Pentagon (which had somehow become responsible for doing the State Department’s job); and to ignore the many dirty tricks reported—the polling places quickly relocated at the last minute, the fake voter-registration drives, the thousands of Americans who found themselves not on the rolls, the police road-blocks, the bullying pro-Bush poll workers, the machines that kept translating votes for Kerry into votes for Bush. And so on.

BUSH'S EPA USING POOR KIDS AS GUINEA PIGS

This brings back memories of how the U.S. government has periodically used its people as guinea pigs in scientific experiments. We know in the past that predominantly minority groups were exposed to nuclear radiation, observed for the effects of syphilis, and so on. Now poor kids are being used to see the effects of pesticides. This story is at www.organicconsumers.org:

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), led by Bush appointees, is seeking input on a new proposed study in which infants in participating low income families will be monitored for health impacts as they undergo exposure to known toxic chemicals over the course of two years. The study entitled Children’s Environmental Exposure Research Study (CHEERS) will look at how chemicals can be ingested, inhaled or absorbed by children ranging from babies to 3 years old.

BUSH'S PURGE AT THE CIA IS HURTING U.S. SECURITY

Departing Secretary of State Colin Powell once used a colorful expletive to describe the neocons surrounding George W. Bush as "crazies." Bush likes people who resemble him to be in the corridors of power. In this column by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof we learn about the ramifications of Condi Rice moving into the State Department. The column is at www.nytimes.com:

It's fair to replace Mr. Powell, a political appointee, but the spies being pushed out at Langley are career professionals. The intelligence community's best assets aren't those spying for us in foreign capitals, but the thousands of Americans at the C.I.A., the D.I.A., the N.S.A. and the rest of the alphabet soup of spookdom. Their morale - already bad - will suffer a further dive, along with their effectiveness.

TOO MUCH MILITARISM IS DANGEROUS

I respect the members of the military, and I guess that applies in particular to the members of the "Greatest Generation" of World War II. But it's important to realize it's dangerous to deify the military. The military can be used as much for repression as for protecting the country. I think of the novel Seven Days in May which deals with a planned military coup of the United States. It's not the kind of world I would want to live in. This article by Pierre Tristam is at www.commondreams.org:

Soldiers are as much instruments of repression as of protection, depending on how they're used, and by whom. Romanticizing them doesn't honor them. It makes it easier to misuse them, as they are so effectively being misused in the folly in Iraq, while drowning reason and dissent in the thumbs-up submission of mass rallies.

RADIO LABELS ON MEDICINE BOTTLES

The excuse for putting little antennas on medicine bottle labels is to stop the counterfeiting of drugs like Viagra. It seems everywhere you turn there's some justification for invading our privacy. This story is at www.nytimes.com:

Privacy-rights advocates have expressed reservations about radio labels, worrying that employers and others will be able to learn what medications people are carrying in their pockets. Civil-liberties groups have voiced similar concerns about ubiquitous use of the technology in the marketplace. But under the current initiatives, the technology would not be used at the retail level.

ANOTHER REASON NOT TO LIKE THE NFL

I admit it. I'm a sports fan. Some of the happiest moments of my life have been when "my" teams have won championships. Some of my depressing moments were when they lost big games. But the incredible greed of sports team owners is getting hard to take. Although they would probably bill themselves as "rugged individualists," these guys love to feed from the public trough. And politicians are only too happy to oblige. Bob Herbert writes about the greedy owner of the New York Jets and the politicians queuing up to give him a spanking new stadium and the corresponding neglect of schools. The column is at www.nytimes.com:

Ah, but on the front page of the Sports section of that same paper comes a different story. It was a profile of the pampered billionaire owner of the New York Jets, Robert Wood Johnson IV, who is known as Woody to his close friends and those many public officials who stumble all over themselves trying to kiss his ring.

THE LIES ABOUT "TORT" REFORM

Things like tort reform sound just boring enough to make your eyes glaze over, but tort law is really important to most of us. It's what allows little guys to get their day in court against big corporations. Now big corporations, with snake oil politicians acting as their spokesmen, are claiming that litigation is just terrible and it's just escalating the cost of business something awful, especially in the health care field. In this article Anthony Sebok talks about "tort reform" and its consequences. The article is at writ.news.findlaw.com:

The phrase "tort reform," as currently used, refers to a campaign by allies of corporations, the medical profession, and insurers to reduce the amount of private litigation in U.S. federal and state courts. Tort reformers contend that the tort system has gone off the rails, and must be returned to its previous normal, "healthy" state. In a prior column, I discussed whether this contention is accurate. In this column, however, I want to simply consider the role tort reformers' tactics played in the election.

HARBINGER OF A DRAFT

Even though the spokespeople in this article give the impression this no big deal and just routine, it gives you an uneasy feeling that the apparatus for a compulsory military draft is being put into place. You don't have to be a Napoleon to realize that our military is stretched too thin, and if the neocons in the Bush administration have their way it will take a lot more bodies to fight all the wars. This article is at www.brownsvilleherald.com:

The Selective Service System (SSS) and the U.S. Department of Education now are gearing up to compare their computer records, to make sure all men between the ages of 18 and 25 who are required to register for a military draft have done so.
The SSS and the education department will begin comparing their lists on Jan. 1, 2005, according to a memo authored by Jack Martin, acting Selective Service director.

While similar record checks have been done periodically for the past 10 years, Martin’s memo is dated Oct. 28, just a few days before the Nov. 2 presidential election, a hard-fought campaign in which the question of whether the nation might need to reinstate a military draft was raised in debates and on the stump.

THE BIG MEDIA: SUCKERS EVERY MINUTE

P. T. Barnum famously remarked "There's a sucker born every minute." When it comes to the major media's coverage of George W. Bush you can see the truth in Barnum's statement. Bush has lied about everything under the sun, including the war in Iraq. But the major media pooh-pooh any notions that there was vote tampering in the last presidential election. Why on earth would they think Bush and his flunkies would tell us the truth about that? This story by Robert Parry is at www.makethemaccountable.com:

You might think that the major media that got suckered by George W. Bush’s Iraqi weapons-of-mass-destruction claims just last year would show some humility about its own fallibility.

But, no, the elite U.S. news media is now criticizing common citizens who have raised questions about voter fraud in the Nov. 2 election. The New York Times has joined the Washington Post and other major news outlets in scouring the Internet to find and discredit Americans who have expressed suspicions that Bush’s victory might not have been entirely legitimate. The New York Times' front-page story was entitled, "Vote Fraud Theories, Spread By Blogs, Are Quickly Buried." [Nov. 12, 2004.]

NEW WEBSITE EXAMINES REAL MORALITY OF REPUBLICANS

When you hear the condescending and patronizing tone of Republicans about "morals," direct them to this website. It shows just how hypocritical these people are. The site is called Red Morals and can be found at http://tesibria.typepad.com/redmorals/.

FIRST HAND REPORT OF CIVILIAN DEATHS IN FALLUJAH

This is a first hand account by an Associated Press photographer who saw civilians being slaughtered by the U.S. in Fallujah. If there are ever war crimes trials, Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld should be in the dock. This story is at abcnews.go.com:

"I decided to swim … but I changed my mind after seeing U.S. helicopters firing on and killing people who tried to cross the river."

He watched horrified as a family of five was shot dead as they tried to cross. Then, he "helped bury a man by the river bank, with my own hands."

"I kept walking along the river for two hours and I could still see some U.S. snipers ready to shoot anyone who might swim. I quit the idea of crossing the river and walked for about five hours through orchards."

ARE WE EXPORTING PRISONERS TO BE TORTURED?

According to this report from the British press, an executive jet is being used by the U.S. government to ferry prisoners to countries that routinely use torture in their interrogations. Although our government is denying this practice, we know how credible this administration is. This story is at www.timesonline.uk.co:

Countries with poor human rights records to which the Americans have delivered prisoners include Egypt, Syria and Uzbekistan, according to the files. The logs have prompted allegations from critics that the agency is using such regimes to carry out "torture by proxy" - a charge denied by the American government.

ZOGBY POLL : BUSH APPROVAL UNDER 50%

According to a new Zogby poll, George W. Bush has an approval rating of just 48%. I have to wonder how it's even that high, but anything less than 50% is ominous for an incumbent. So much for the "mandate." This poll is at www.zogby.com:

In a post-election survey conducted two weeks after President George W. Bush was elected to a second term in office, less than half (48%) of respondents give the President a positive job performance rating and 47% say that the country is headed in the right direction. The Zogby America telephone poll of 987 likely voters was conducted from Friday through Saturday (November 12-13, 2004). Overall results have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.2%.

. . . ABOUT THAT MORAL VALUES ISSUE

We've heard all the nonsense about "moral values" being the reason George W. Bush is back. But it seems the way questions were asked determined the results of the polls Christian evangelicals like to cite. The issues that really dominated were the war in Iraq and the economy. This story is at news.yahoo.com:

This presidential election has been described by many as one in which morality mattered most to voters. But that perception may be driven at least partially by how pollsters asked voters about their priority issues.

Whether voters named "moral values" their key issue partly depended on whether that subject was included in a list of choices provided by pollsters, according to a Pew Research Center analysis released Thursday.

GROPER IS ALL IMAGE, NO SUBSTANCE

This story talks about Arnold the Groper doing a photo-op for a hydrogen car that really didn't work. It was all part of the message of the day. I thought the most interesting thing about the story was how the Groper doesn't talk to the press. He's carefully shielded lest a reporter ask some inconvenient question. Sounds a lot like George W. Bush. This story is at www.bakersfield.com:

Like Ronald Reagan, the last actor-turned-governor, Schwarzenegger uses his star power to play up big, broad messages instead of focusing publicly on specific details. That often means trying to corral or ignore reporters to keep them from asking unpredictable questions that could stray from the governor's message.

THE CHILLING WINDS OF CENSORSHIP

ABC, which has aired the movie "Saving Private Ryan" before, aired the movie on Veterans Day. If you've seen the movie, what probably stands out are the realistic war scenes showing men getting limbs blown off and all the rest. A number of ABC affiliates refused to air the movie this time, claiming they were afraid of FCC sanctions in the wake of the "horrific" Janet Jackson breast baring incident. Bare breasts terrify us, four letter words send us into trauma, but a little killing is okay. The editorial talks about the matter in an editorial at www.latimes.com:

Private Ryan couldn't be Privatsaved after all, at least not in some of the nation's major TV markets on Thursday night. Given the Federal Communications Commission's ongoing jihad against indecency, ABC affiliates in Dallas, Atlanta, Phoenix and other cities yanked the Oscar-winning movie off the air. Never mind that the network had already aired the movie in 2001 and 2002. The nation is regressing.

TIME TO REVEAL THE TRUTH ABOUT CONSERVATISM

Since Ronald Reagan, and especially since the time of George Bush I, the word "liberal" has been demonized. From the sneering tone used by right-wing talk show hosts and pundits, you would think being liberal was akin to being a child molester. Maybe it's time to finally turn the tables and reveal the real "values" of conservatism: no jobs, lousy wages for the jobs that remain, no benefits, dirty air, dirty water, no rights to sue corporate criminals in the courts, a tax system heavily skewed in favor of the rich, racial discrimination, homophobia, hatred of the Bill of Rights, and on and on. This article discusses the issue. The article by Scott Galindez can be found at www.truthout.org:

The Challenge over the next four years will be to paint many Republican policies as immoral and against the interests of rural America. It is not time as some suggest to move to the right, that has been tried and has been a failure. What is needed is a concerted effort to communicate to people that liberal policies are in their interest. Democrats must stop running away from the word liberal and instead make it a good word again.

Democrats must stand up and say that universal health care, a living wage, protecting the environment, and protecting social security are liberal values and they are in the interest of rural America.

INCOMPETENCE IS AS INCOMPETENCE DOES

Bush crony Porter Goss was recently appointed to head the CIA, although he's clearly unqualified. His only qualification is that he will try to keep the bodies buried. Now the CIA is a mess, which is obviously a threat to U.S. security. This story is at www.washingtonpost.com:

The deputy director of the CIA resigned yesterday after a series of confrontations over the past week between senior operations officials and CIA Director Porter J. Goss's new chief of staff that have left the agency in turmoil, according to several current and former CIA officials.

John E. McLaughlin, a 32-year CIA veteran who was acting director for two months this summer until Goss took over, resigned after warning Goss that his top aide, former Capitol Hill staff member Patrick Murray, was treating senior officials disrespectfully and risked widespread resignations, the officials said.

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD

I guess I don't get the whole born again thing. Does being "born again" absolve you of any responsibility to follow the core of Christ's teachings, things like the Golden Rule? You get the impression from the fire and brimstone hatred exploding from the evangelical crowd these days. As I said in an earlier post, I don't believe evangelical Christianity is Christianity at all. It's a form of the fire and brimstone rampaging god of the Old Testament with just a veneer of Christianity for show. Maureen Dowd takes a look in her column at www.nytimes.com:

You'd think the one good thing about merging church and state would be that politics would be suffused with glistening Christian sentiments like "love thy neighbor," "turn the other cheek," "good will toward men," "blessed be the peacemakers" and "judge not lest you be judged."

Yet somehow I'm not getting a peace, charity, tolerance and forgiveness vibe from the conservatives and evangelicals who claim to have put their prodigal son back in office.

BUSH IS NOTHING MORE THAN A KILLER

I read about the nightmare in Fallujah and I'm horrified, but I know that at this safe distance there's no way I can truly understand the misery and the suffering there. I keep coming back to the question: Why? Why did any of this have to occur? For all his posturing about being a Christian, George W. Bush is nothing but a mass murderer. This story is at news.independent.co.uk:

Victory was being declared yesterday in the battle of Fallujah, with 1,000 rebels reported dead, hundreds more in custody and spectacular footage from embedded television crews, showing Marines charging through deserted neighbourhoods.

"It's like those pictures from the advance into Baghdad," said one watcher as the TV showed the view over a tank gunner's shoulder, with fire pouring down an empty street. But that comment unconsciously identified the real problem: more than a year and a half after George Bush declared major combat operations in Iraq at an end, the US military, backed by British and Iraqi forces, is having to fight the war all over again

DON'T BUY FROM WAL-MART

Wal-Mart, in a strange twist, represents 21st century capitalism. The treatment of their employees is right out of the 19th century,but they use 21st century technology to "data mine" their customers. In this story it's revealed that Wal-Mart was looking for profit opportunities in Florida even as Hurricane Frances was barreling in. They used "data mining" technology to ramp up the sales of beer and toaster pastries. The story is at www.nytimes.com:

Plenty of retailers collect data about their stores and their shoppers, and many use the information to try to improve sales. Target Stores, for example, introduced a branded Visa card in 2001 and has used it, along with an arsenal of gadgetry, to gather data ever since. But Wal-Mart amasses more data about the products it sells and its shoppers' buying habits than anyone else, so much so that some privacy advocates worry about potential for abuse.

ZOGBY POLL: ECONOMIC JUSTICE MORE IMPORTANT THAN ABORTION

From what you hear in the mainstream media, you would think that abortion and gay rights were the significant "moral" issues that drove the last election. Not so, according to a new Zogby poll. More Americans, including a significant number of Catholics, believe the war in Iraq and economic justice are more important. This story is at www.americanpolitics.com:

The Zogby poll shows that when voters were asked to list the moral issue that most affected their vote, the Iraq war topped the list (42%) – more than tripling the number that chose abortion (13%) or gay marriage (9%). Also, when asked to choose the most urgent moral crisis facing the U.S., voters chose ‘greed and materialism’ (33%) and ‘poverty and economic justice’ (31%) twice as often as abortion (16%) and gay marriage (12%).

BUSH IS TRYING TO MAKE CIA IN HIS IMAGE

With flunky Porter Goss in charge of the CIA, George W. Bush is trying to purge the agency of anyone who doesn't follow the company line. It appears Mr. Bush believes loyalty to him is more important than loyalty to the country. This story is at www.commondreams.org:

The White House has ordered the new CIA director, Porter J. Goss, to purge the agency of officers believed to have been disloyal to President Bush or of leaking damaging information to the media about the conduct of the Iraq war and the hunt for Osama bin Laden, according to knowledgeable sources.

"The agency is being purged on instructions from the White House," said a former senior CIA official who maintains close ties to both the agency and to the White House. "Goss was given instructions ... to get rid of those soft leakers and liberal Democrats. The CIA is looked on by the White House as a hotbed of liberals and people who have been obstructing the president's agenda."