A woman working in Iraq named Tami Silicio took photographs of U. S. coffins on a transport plane that got sent to a friend, who in turn arranged for publication in The Seattle Times. It seems publishing photos like this is in violation of Pentagon policy, supposedly out of respect for the dead soldiers' families.

It's a little hard to accept that explanation. The unfortunate soldiers in flag-draped coffins are anonymous, almost as anonymous as they were as soldiers in life. I think the American people should see the photos of the coffins. They should know just what they're supporting when they support the Bush administration's "war on terrorism." They should know what the expenditure of their tax dollars is really costing this country.

Even though George W. Bush has claimed that comparisons to Vietnam are unfair to the military in Iraq and Afghanistan, you can't help seeing the parallels. The government lied repeatedly to the American people about Vietnam. We were told "light was at the end of the tunnel." We were told the sky would fall if South Vietnam fell to the Communists. Richard Nixon was elected mostly because he promised to end the war in Vietnam. He allowed it to drag on for years and thousands more American lives were lost, and countless Vietnamese died.

When I heard about the former NFL star Pat Tillman dying in Afghanistan I kept flashing back to a scene in the movie "Coming Home." Bruce Dern gets off an airplane, sporting a limp from a wound he got in Vietnam. In the background you see a conveyor belt filled with body bags. It was ironic in a way that right-wing sports talk radio was talking a great deal about the Tillman story.

Tillman forfeited millions of dollars in NFL salary to volunteer for the military, where he made $18,000 a year. On sports talk radio we kept getting reminded of how we take freedom for granted, extolling the sacrifice made by Mr. Tillman. I couldn't help thinking that Tillman exemplified the liberal ideal of putting country ahead of personal gain. Conservatives like to tell us about rugged individualism, about those heroes of the marketplace, those warriors of capitalism. In Mr. Tillman we had a man who put idealism ahead of making money.

In her column today New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd talks about the obsession with body language in the high ranks of the Bush administration. There are several snippets from Bob Woodward's book about people interpreting body language. Bush supposedly likes to rely on his "gut" rather than intellect when making decisions. That's when he's listening to God, no doubt. If someone kills in this country, claiming they were told to kill by God, they get locked up. If Bush kills, claiming he was told to kill by God, he gets high approval ratings.

Matt Bivens in thenation.com has an interesting take of one of the nuggets from Woodward's book. Bush was asked if he had consulted his father about the attack against Iraq. W replied that his father wasn't someone you turned to for strength. He said he relied on another "father." Maureen Dowd has commented several times on this strange father-son thing between the first Bush and his offspring. I don't think we need to see these psychological dramas played out on the world stage. Trying to out macho your old man is one thing; using the power of the United States military to accomplish it is something else.

I guess the right wingers thought they would find something insidious in John Kerry's military records. It's hard for them to attack Kerry when you look at their guy's apparent AWOL record. Kerry released his records and, according to the headline in The New York Times, Kerry was a "highly praised officer." Kerry was getting wounded in Vietnam while Mr. Bush was otherwise occupied, although George certainly has a record of sending other young men off to die.

In an article linked at commondreams.org, Pierre Tristan makes the case that the 9-11 "attacks were preventable." Mr. Tristan points out that in the first eight months of the W administration attention was focused on an already archaic missile defense system, on cold war threats that didn't exist anymore, and on the drug war. This was despite the fact the outgoing Clinton administration warned W and his gang that terrorism would be their number one national security issue.

The sorry state of United States foreign policy got worse when Jordanian King Abdullah abruptly canceled a meeting today with Bush. People all over the Arab world are incensed at Bush licking the boots of Ariel Sharon and giving Israel anything it wants, even if it means stabbing the Palestinians in the back. Gotta get those Jewish votes this November, though.

There are two nominees for DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY in The Fresno Bee. The first correspondent is distraught that Senator Kerry and others have attacked the Bush Iraq policies. He suggests that critics go "sit in the president's chair." I think that's Senator Kerry's intention. Our second nominee gets a ***** rating. It's from a prominent local Republican politician who represents himself as a member of the Campaign For California Families, another anti-gay group. It's one of those innocuous sounding names that suggests something like a love for warm puppies, hot chocolate, and Fourth of July picnics.

Our politician makes some pretty astounding and sweeping generalizations such as implying that gay marriage means indifference to monogamy, exposure to mental instability, and drug and alcohol abuse. We know, of course, that straight marriages never have any problems. Mr. Bigot didn't bother with any evidence supporting his astounding claims.

Call them environmental wackos, Rush! The U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy, whose members were appointed by Bush, have released a study saying the coasts and oceans are in serious trouble. The story is linked at sfgate.com.

More impressive Bush foreign policy--Poland and Spain are pulling their troops out of Iraq. Aren't you glad the "adults" are in charge?

The news about Bush taking a lead in major polls has been trumpeted over the corporate media. What the media are not mentioning is that in eight of ten polls released since April 1, Senator Kerry leads Bush. The two major polls favoring Bush are the Associated Press and Washington Post polls. The Washington Post has a distinct pro-Republican bias, so it has to be taken with a certain amount of skepticism. If Bush wins the election in November, we will truly have entered Bizarro World. It means we don't care about the economy, about lying to go to war, about protecting the environment, about women's rights, about workers' rights, or in simple justice.

No nominees from The Fresno Bee for the Dumb Letter of the Day. But like ants at a picnic, we can count on the brain-dead right-wingers to make their presence known. It is nice to get a break if even for a day.

I'm glad to hear that Bob Woodward taped the interviews he used for his new book. The Bush administration is spinning like crazy now, saying that Bush planned the Iraq war in March, not January. I still haven't heard much comment about the money diverted from Afghanistan to prepare for war against Iraq. It is clearly an impeachable offense and Democrats in Congress should be hammering the adminsitration on it.

According to an article by Sean Gonsalves, the touted Bush tax cuts have been mostly tax shifts from the very wealthy to people in the working and middle classes. While there has been a minute reduction in federal taxes for most people, states have been filling their budget gaps by raising taxes, which mostly hit the working and middle classes. Federal taxes have for some time been progressive, meaning that the most affluent pay more in taxes. State taxes are highly regressive, what conservatives like to disguise as a "flat tax."

In the article Mr. Gonsalves points out that the Bush tax cuts gave $197.3 billion dollars in tax breaks to the top one percent (people making $337,000 a year or more). In the meantime, states have faced a budget shortfall almost equal to the tax breaks for the rich. The states have faced budget deficits of about $200 billion.

Mr. Gonsalves also points out that payoll taxes, paid mostly by working people, have risen as a share of federal tax receipts from 17% in 1962 to 40% today. When Republicans talk about tax cuts check your wallet.

It's time for a new feature for this little blog. I want to rate the dumb letter of the day to The Fresno Bee. There are the rare days when The Bee doesn't publish a letter from a right-wing lunatic, but those days are rare. So I'm fairly confident there will be a dumb letter of the day most days. Our rating system will go from one star to five stars, with five stars being REALLY, REALLY DUMB.

Our dumb letter today gets ***. The writer says, "the president's word means something." Huh? Which president are we talking about here? Bush lies about the time of day. The theme of winger letters to The Bee lately is that "we're glad Bush is president" and "looking forward to his reelection." There's usually some little comment about Saddam's Iraq being a haven for terrorists, which shows you how ill-informed these people really are, whether intentionally or not.

Secretary of State Powell has been out on the hustings doing damage control after the new Woodward book revealed Powell had doubts about the Iraq adventure. According to Mr. Powell, he was on board all the way. I hope Woodward has good notes, good transcripts, things on tape. In any event, Mr. Powell has completely destroyed any credibility or integrity he ever had.

At csmonitor.com there's more information about how big corporations have passed the tax burden on to people like you and me. In the boom years 1996-2000 major corporations, for the most part, paid little or no income tax in the United States. Something like two-thirds paid no income tax. By major corporations we're talking assets of $250 million or more. According to the article at csmonitor.com, "corporate taxes have fallen from 5% of gross domestic product. . . in 1946 to 1.4% now."

The New York Times has a feature about one of my favorite writers, John Steinbeck. I admire Steinbeck for writing about working class people. The article concerns the Salinas Valley, the Steinbeck Center, and the final, grudging acceptance of Steinbeck in his home town. He was hated by many of the big growers in the region for books like "The Grapes of Wrath" and "In Dubious Battle." Right-wingers have always been pretty much the same. When I visited the Steinbeck Center three years ago I saw a review attacking "The Grapes of Wrath" because it presented working people in a favorable light and the big growers as the exploiters they were.

The big news of the day seems to be the new Bob Woodward book about Bush's plan to start a war against Iraq. The Washington Post is publishing excerpts from the book. There are some interesting revelations. The biggest scandal, as I see it so far, is that Bush was planning war against Iraq even as the war was going on in Afghanistan, and he took money appropriated by Congress for Afghanistan to use in preparation for Iraq. Without Congressional authorization, that is very similar to what happened with the illegal funding that took place in the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan years. But that's the Bush administration--another day, another impeachable offense that gets ignored.

According to Mr. Woodward, Colin Powell had a darkly cynical view of Dick Cheney and Cheney's subordinates. Powell referred to them as the "Gestapo office."

The Fresno Bee's DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY features a guy who says he was at Tarawa in the Second World War, one of those islands where the Japanese fought fiercely, demonically, and thousands of Americans and Japanese died. The writer's attitude about the deaths in Iraq seems to be so what? Compared to the slaughter of World War II, of course there aren't as many casualties. But that doesn't in any way diminish the tragedy, especially when you consider that the blood in Iraq is unnecessary. We got pulled into a totally unnecessary war that has killed thousands of Iraqi civilians and created a charnel house for our own military. Poet John Donne wrote that the "death of any man diminishes me." You would think that someone who had seen the absolute horror of Tarawa would be more sympathetic, more empathetic to the dead of Iraq and their families than those of us who haven't seen combat first hard. I have to be suspicious of the writer's claims because he throws in that old bit of right-wing red meat about "the liberals."

I've started reading the memoirs of President Ulysses S. Grant. As a general in the American Civil War, Grant knew the horrors of war as well as anyone. Early in his career, Grant served in the U. S. war against Mexico, which he considered "unholy." Grant could just as easily been writing about the war in Iraq when he wrote, "It was an instance of a republic following the bad example of European monarchies, in not considering justice in their desire to acquire additional territory."

The Fresno Bee has a penchant for publishing letters from really stupid right-wingers, but today's letter went way beyond stupid to absolutely, incredibly inane. The author claimed the Clinton administration didn't do anything to stop terrorism and cited attacks on the Khobar Towers, the embassy attacks in Kenya and Tanzania, the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993, and the attack on the U.S.S. Cole as examples. He didn't bother to mention the attacks that were thwarted, such as an attack planned on LAX as we entered the millenium.

If we wanted to use similar logic, we could talk about various attacks that have occurred under the Bush watch such as the bombing in Indonesia, the various bombings in Iraq, the bombing in Madrid. How has the Bush "war on terror" done anything to truly thwart terrorists?

Our commentator claimed that Bush has established better contact between the FBI and CIA (with no proof), set up the Homeland Security Department (which Bush opposed until the political heat intensified), and stepped in to stop Saddam Hussein's "support of terrorism." Excuse me. There is no credible evidence to this day that Saddam Hussein was involved in any state-sponsored support of terrorism.

The writer also said he was "disgusted" by attacks by Senator Kennedy, Senator Kerry, the "liberal media," etc. I'm sick and tired of right-wingers beating the dead horse of the "liberal media." It doesn't exist. It's a convenient canard for these wackos to blame every time the news is bad for their side. They have no problems with the media when the reports concern stained blue dresses.

Bob Woodward's new book reveals that Bush was planning the war against Iraq even while the war was going on in Afghanistan. Bush also took $700 million in money appropriated for Afghanistan to use in preparation for Iraq, even though this was not authorized by Congress. This smells like the illegal funding of the Contras by the Reagan administration back in the 80's. How many impeachable offenses is this guy going to be allowed?

There was a good comment by a letter writer to The Los Angeles Times. He observed that Bush didn't see anything "actionable" in the August 6 Daily Presidential Briefing, but had no problems with extremely flimsy "evidence" of Iraq trying to buy enriched uranium from Niger. It was a document, as it turned out, that was phony.

In the letters section of The Fresno Bee a defender of George W. Bush claimed that Mr. Bush took his oath of office seriously, particularly the part about defending the United States. If ever a president was contemptuous of his oath of office, it's Mr. Bush. He has trampled all over the Constitution and it was under his watch that the worst attack in history occurred on U. S. soil.

The fact an attack succeeded against us was bad enough, but the mountains of evidence showing that the attack could have been prevented are not only a cause for sadness, but an incitement to rage. Playing golf, talking to the cows on his "ranch," and chopping wood were more important for Mr. Bush than attending to the duties of his office.

News out of Iraq now is that Iraqi nuclear facilities haven't been properly guarded and nuclear material has been taken out of the country. Perhaps the greatest man-made nightmare we face now is a terrorist group or rogue nation successfully building a nuclear weapon. People who don't hesitate to use airplanes as suicide weapons would have no qualms about killing hundreds of thousands or millions by exploding a nuclear weapon.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has said he's surprised at the number of casualties in Iraq. That's pretty incredible. If anyone should understand war, it's the Secretary of Defense. War isn't a video game. It's not a John Wayne movie. There is real blood and shattered limbs and exploded buildings and innocent people dying.

An organization called askquestions.org has done some research about who pays the taxes in the United States. The story is linked at commondreams.org. In the article by Cheryl Woodard it's revealed that the richest Americans pay 30% less in taxes than middle-income households. What was that about class warfare?

Hello (cough!), this is from Fresno (wheeze!), part of the great Central Valley of California, now distinguished as having the worst air quality in the country, according to a story in The Fresno Bee today.

In her column in The New York Times today Maureen Dowd talks about the FBI learning about wannabe terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui wanting to learn to fly just two weeks after the August 6 memo that reached Bush. But no one, NO ONE, seemed to "connect the dots."

Molly Ivins talks about the "resolute" George W. Bush. You know, the guy who never flip-flops, but who really does. Now Mr. Bush is happy to take credit for the Homeland Security Department, but he opposed it initially. He is also happy to take credit for the 9-11 Commission, but he vehemently opposed it (for obvious reasons, it seems).

An article linked at commondreams.org by Holly Sklar talks about our very skewed tax system. Warren Buffett, the world's second richest man, is quoted as saying, "If class warfare is being waged in America, my class is clearly winning." Ms. Sklar talks about how federal tax revenues have fallen to the lowest level since the 1950's and writes, "We can't have a 21st century country with 1950 tax revenues."

You have to wonder sometimes if right-wing ideas are really part of a cult. LIke most religions, you have to accept many things strictly on faith. A good example today in The Fresno Bee was a letter claiming that the economy, contrary to what we all see, is "hot."

The writer says the unemployment rate is about what it was under President Clinton (not quite). The writer calls the Clinton economy a "crack high" and uses the word "debauchery" to describe the 1990's. If it means jobs and rising wages, I hope you'll pardon me for liking debauchery.

We had another anti-gay marriage screed. It must be a right-wing talking point now to say that gay marriage has not been a constitutional right under any "civilized" nation. I think I'd like a definition of "civilized." It might also be noted that constitutional forms of government are relatively rare in human history. We have the oldest Constitution and it was ratified in 1789. Our own "civilized" nation considered African-Americans 3/5's of a human being, slavery was legal, women were not allowed to vote, Native Americans were slaughtered under the slightest pretext, and we had lynchings of African-Americans not that long ago. I think I would be careful about using the word "civilized."

United For a Fair Economy released a new report showing that CEO salaries have skyrocketed, while the salaries of people like you and me have barely kept pace with inflation. According to the report, CEO's now make 301 times the amount made by the average worker. CEO's are taking home the nifty sum of $155,769 a week, while average workers scrape by with $517 a week. If the minimum wage had increased at the same rate as CEO pay, the minimum wage would now be $15.71 an hour.

The smirking boy gave his first prime time press conference in over a year, and I didn't watch. There's something about George W. Bush that makes my skin crawl. It's like a bad allergy. You try to avoid what causes your skin to itch and break out in a rash.

But I did hear some clips, the most notable where Mr. Bush says something "will pop into my mind." That's pretty much the standard for the Bush administration on everything from tax cuts to foreign policy. It's those "voices" speaking to him.

Crisco Boy John Ashcroft testified before the 9-11 Commission and claimed that 9-11 was really the Clinton administration's fault. Supposedly, there were just too many legal restrictions for Mr. Ashcroft, the FBI, and the whole apparatus of the federal government to stop the terrorists on 9-11. You mean knowing that known terrorists were living openly in San Diego wasn't something the FBI could do something about? Or there wasn't something to be done when guys were going to flight school and didn't care about learning to land the airplanes? There was nothing that could be done about guys taking box cutters on to jet airliners?

E. J. Dionne has a column in The Washington Post saying that responsibility starts at the top. Not in this administration, of course. The buck stops everywhere else. I'm not as forgiving as Mr. Dionne. He says that if Bush confessed l the American people would be likely to forgive. I think the absolute incompetence and venality surrounding 9-11 are absolutely unforgivable.

Matthew Miller in The Los Angeles Times talks about the skewed arguments right-wingers make about the federal income tax. You know the argument. It goes something like "the top one percent pay a whopping one third of the federal income tax." Mr. Miller points out, once again, that the federal income tax is just a portion of the revenues collected by the federal government. Most of us not-rich schlubs pay a substantial portion of the payroll taxes. The very rich pay just a tiny portion of payroll taxes. A right-winger in Madera accused me of "muddying" the waters by mentioning the very same facts. Better to "muddy" the waters than to pollute them the way right-wingers do.

Tompaine.com has a good piece contrasting Costco with Wal-Mart. Costco pays its employees substantially better than Wal-Mart pays its employees. And Costco largely outperforms Wal-Mart. They have an obviously better employee retention rate and better productivity than the Wal-Mart misers.

Another day in the Bush administration, another announcement of thousands of jobs lost. DuPont has announced it is cutting 3,500 jobs.

Let's call the guy Party Hack. Party Hack is a local Republican functionary who spews way to the right venom on a myriad of subjects. Today P.H. was attacking the citizens of Inglewood, California, who told Wal-Mart to shove it. P.H. opines that it's unions and other "outsiders" who thwarted the retail giant (isn't Wal-Mart an outsider? They're based in Arkansas, after all.) It's amusing, in a surreal way, that P.H. talks about the number of welfare recipients in Inglewood (Wal-Mart is going to alleviate that?) when the Central Valley, a conservative outpost, has among the highest poverty rates in the country. We also consistently, in good national times and bad, have among the highest unemployment rates in the country. If those good conservative "values" really worked, you would expect the Central Valley to be a virtual paradise of good jobs, low teenage pregnancy, low drug abuse, low crime rates, and all the rest. Unfortunately, it's quite the opposite.

Our groping Governor, Arnie the Great, emulates George W. Bush in many ways. Arnie likes to take vacations. He has recently been in Hawaii. Arnie also hasn't attended a single funeral of a soldier killed in Iraq. That's according to a story in sfgate.com.

In The New York Times there's a good piece by David Cay Johnston, an expert on taxation matters. Mr. Johnston writes that tax enforcement against major corporations has fallen markedly under the Bush administration. He says, there has been "virtually no effort to prosecute corporate tax crimes."

According to his article, the 11,200 corporations with $250 million or more in assets have seen their rate of audits by the IRS go from more than 50% before 1996 to 33.7% in fiscal 2002, and down to 29% in fiscal 2003. Corporations have all kinds of tax loopholes already, but now they're getting away with not paying even the miniscule share they're still responsible for. Thomas Jefferson wrote that "all men are created equal." Under the Bush administration you're reminded of George Orwell's "Animal Farm" where "some animals are more equal than others."

I'm not sure who dubbed the Sunday morning pundits "the gasbags," but it might have been Jim Hightower. I can't stand to watch the John McLaughlin types, but it will be interesting to see the summaries of what the gasbags have to say about the release of the August 6 memo, and the continuing horror in Iraq. It seems the current spin is that the memo didn't mention a specific date or time or that planes might be used as missiles. I guess the terrorists should have been more forthcoming in their plans.

A dumb letter in The Fresno Bee complained that Senator Kerry doesn't address George W. Bush as "Mr. President" enough. Senator Kerry, according to the writer, uses the phrase "the president." She has the audacity to say that the president is elected by the people (not this one) and that Senator Kerry, based on four months of combat service in Vietnam, doesn't have the experience to be president. She even goes on to say that Mr. Bush spent a lot of time learning to fly airplanes. You have to wonder, really, if this letter is tongue in cheek. Sometimes good satire seems like real commentary.

Saturday Night Live featured Janet Jackson playing Condoleezza Rice last night. I didn't see much of SNL, which is mostly unwatchable anymore, but you long for the good old days when they really did some good political satire.

A headline at buzzflash.com pretty much says it all: "Iraq Is In Flames and Bush Is On Vacation." You would think vacation, or the perception of vacation, would be the last place Mr. Bush would want to be right now. It brings back vivid memories of August, 2001, when he was on vacation, also in Crawford, Texas, got a memo about an impending terrorist attack, virtually ignored it, and then we got September 11.

It's amazing the spin the right-wing media has put on the Condoleezza Rice testimony before the 9-11 Commission. Suddenly the right-wing pundits are concerned about black women. Poor Condi was being abused, you see, just because she's black and a woman. I for one couldn't care less about her gender or her race. I care about the fact that she and her boss didn't do their jobs. They are responsible for 3,000 preventable deaths on 9-11. And that event led to the attack on Afghanistan, where thousands more have died, and the excuse of the "war on terror" led to the attack on Iraq, where thousands more have died.

It makes you think of what Joseph Welch told Senator Joseph McCarthy, "Have you at last, Sir, no shame?"

I'm convinced that right-wingers are a lot like Pavlov's dogs. You know the experiments that Pavlov did. He would ring a bell and then feed the dogs. After a time, the dogs would begin salivating when the bell rang. For right-wingers, it's just a knee-jerk reaction to smear liberals for any problems we're facing.

In The Fresno Bee's stupid letter of the day a right-winger was complaining that high gas prices are the fault of liberals like Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, and John Kerry. They have the temerity, you see, to oppose the Bush administration of giving Big Oil anything and everything it wants. There was no mention, of course, that a major refinery in California was closed by Shell, even though the refinery is profitable. There are never enough profits for Big Oil.

The other point the winger noted was our dependency on foreign oil. Duh! Liberals have talked about this for years and the need to find alternative energy sources. I remember President Carter talking about this issue back in the 1970s. Drilling for oil in Alaska, destroying one of the most pristine areas on earth, for about a six month supply of oil isn't going to solve our energy problems.

In his column today Paul Krugman noted that, despite all the fanfare about last month's job growth, it was nothing extraordinary by historical standards. It was the equivalent of an average month during the Clinton years. He noted that in the Clinton years we had eight years of steady and consistent job growth. In the Bush years we're wading in red ink and we've had one good month of job growth. Whose policies do you think worked?

The Washington Post has an item about the effects of the No Child Left Behind nonsense. Despite all the bloviating about states' rights, the Bush administration has imposed strict federal standards on local schools. It seems to me it's more about learning by rote than learning critical thinking. But in any event, even recess and field trips are getting cut now so that more time can be spent on getting kids to pass tests. Whether they really learn anything seems to be secondary.

Today was the big event in the 9-11 Commission hearings. The elusive Condi Rice made an appearance and delivered her well-rehearsed lines. She demonstrated the qualities that typify this administration: arrogance, ignorance, and contempt for the American people.

The biggest whopper I've read from her testimony was that the infamous August 6, 2001, Presidential Daily Briefing to Bush while he was at his Texas "ranch" didn't mention a threat about al-Quida. What? The briefing was entitled "Bin Ladin Determined to Attack Inside the United States." I wonder if someone had drawn a diagram, if that would have changed things.

Michael Lind, author of several books, has an interesting piece that was linked at buzzflash.com about the weird people around Bush who have shaped this arrogant and disastrous foreign policy. The names include: Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Douglas Feith, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, John R. Bolton, Elliott Abrams, James Woolsey, Richard Perle, and more indirectly the publishing mogul Rupert Murdoch and the very strange Reverend Sun Myung Moon and his newspaper The Washington Times. The so-called "intellectuals" such as Wolfowitz and Perle remind Mr. Lind of Trotskyites. Mr. Lind theorizes that the weird lurch in our foreign policy is more about protecting Israel than about protecting our own country. You have to wonder. Iraq is a lot closer to Israel than it is to the United States.

It's hard to know which emotion is dominant when you see the news out of Iraq--sadness or outrage. The headlines are blaring that U.S. forces attacked a mosque, killing forty people. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if the Iraqis attacked a Christian church, or a synagogue? And the death toll for U.S. forces in Iraq continues to escalate.

Some good news on the home front. Voters in Inglewood, California, gave a resounding No to Wal-Mart. Wal-Mart tried to make an end run around local government to build one of their so-called supercenters, those behemoths that cause traffic congestion, damage the environment, pay lousy wages, and destroy small businesses. David beat Goliath in Inglewood.

A long article in Vanity Fair magazine discloses that the former British ambassador to the United States, Christopher Meyer, confirmed the allegations in Richard Clarke's book. Bush was pressing Tony Blair to attack Iraq just days after 9-11. On September 17, 2001, Bush signed a two and a half page directive for the Pentagon to draw up invasion plans.

During the profits boom from 1996-2000 two-thirds of U.S. corporations paid no taxes, according to a story posted at americanpolitics.com. Apparently, foreign corporations also live off the public bounty, but don't contribute in taxes. Why do people making middle class incomes or below pay substantial amounts in taxes and corporations don't? Let's see the right-wingers spin themselves silly trying to explain that. If it's to create jobs and all the rhetoric, it doesn't work. The tax cut and deficit administration of George W. Bush has lost over two million jobs.

A good piece by Nicholas von Hoffman in The New York Observor talks about the "leadership" of George W. Bush on 9-11. Much of what Bush said is demonstrably untrue, such as his claim that he saw the first plane strike the World Trade Center while watching television. Far from demonstrating heroism and leadership on that day, Mr. Bush was flying to Nebraska to a bunker to get out of harm's way.

I don't know if hell exists, or it does exist what it looks like. But you can't help thinking hell would look a lot like the pictures we're seeing out of Iraq. You see the burning vehicles, the crazed people toting guns, and the hatred just leaping out of the photographs. The latest word today, April 6, is that at least twelve Marines have been killed. The United States is now fighting on two fronts against Shia and Sunni militants. What we've created in Iraq is akin to taking a baseball bat and smashing a beehive.

A good website for the roiling Bush scandals is www.crisispapers.org. The insights are provided by Bernard Weiner. What comes through very strongly is that, according to the Bush people, we don't need no stinking privacy!

Fearless Leader attended the home opener of the St. Louis Cardinals and minced out the mound to make the customary first pitch. According to an item provided to a St. Louis columnist, the Cardinals were so concerned Bush would be booed they piped in artificial applause.

In what should be yet another major scandal, but will probably get short shrift in the mainstream media, is the manipulation of data about mercury by the Bushies. In The New York Times there is a report that White House staff members played down the toxic effects of mercury in an Environmental Protection Agency study. Coal-fired power plants are particularly guilty of dumping mercury into the environment. Mercury poisoning has particularly deleterious effects on children. In December,2000, EPA said mercury from power plants should be classified as a hazardous pollutant. In December, 2003, the Bush administration reversed that finding.

During the Clinton years right-wingers liked to yammer on about "character." After three years in the wilderness under the Bush administration, what can we say about the character of this man and his administration? Sometimes the way a person interacts with others tells us a great deal about his character.

Mr. Bush was interacting with reports and took great offense that a reporter dared call him "Sir." I think use of the word "Sir" is properly respectful, but not for His Highness. He sneered and put the reporter on the spot until the reporter used "Mr. President." Mr. Bush seems to think the rest of us should be kissing his derriere.

This isn't the first incident of this type. A man in the crowd at a Bush appearance once told Bush he didn't like the job Bush was doing. Bush's response was, "Who cares what you think?" On a trip to Europe Bush was miffed that a reporter asked the French president a question in French. The reporter was trying to be "intercontinental," according to Mr. Ignoramus. What's astounding is that so many people in this country like to believe this arrogant bumpkin is somehow one of us, just a common guy, a good Christian. He's none of those things.

Call it censorship. The White House is planning to vet the 9-11 Commission report "line by line." I wonder how much information critical of the Bush administration will be allowed to see the light of day.

Bank of America is planning to lay off 12,500 people as a result of its merger with Fleet Bank. Banking, once upon a time, was a fairly safe occupation. The money wasn't great, but at least it was stable. Not anymore. Name any industry that is really stable now. Being in the workforce is like standing on tectonic plates that are constantly rubbing against each other and shifting. The lesson of today's capitalism is that, if you're a worker, you're very expendable.

The environment is all around us and it affects every thing on earth. But we take it for granted. It's amazing how major stories affecting the environment--the very basis of survival on this little blue planet--get so little attention in the mainstream media.

In a story linked today, April 4, at commondreams.org we learn that the Bush administration has been sending out "talking points" to Republican members of Congress about global warming. It doesn't serve the political or economic agenda of Bush or his supporters to admit global warming is a reality. The talking points memo sent by the administration uses the reasoning of a small cadre of scientists who are in the back pockets of the oil industry and puts out the Panglossian spin that the world's forests are spreading, that water is cleaner, and that global warming hasn't been proven.

You have to think a little of the research of Elizabeth Kubler-Ross about death and dying. She said one step on the path to dying was denial. We now have denial from the fossil fuel industries that their industry and the world it has created are dying. At the very best, we have just a few decades left of a fossil fuel driven economy. The oil is running out. Far scarier, though, is the way the climate is being affected by our use of fossil fuels. Our environment may be destroyed even before the fossil fuels are depleted. The fossil fuel extraction industries could take the lead in finding alternative energy solutions, but they choose instead to sink into denial or, perhaps worse, outright lying.

As a Central Valley resident and a country music fan, I've long been a fan of Merle Haggard. It's encouraging that Hag is now critical of the Bush regime. It bothers me to some extent, though, that Hag, who has been an advocate for the working man, is a supporter of people like Nixon, Reagan, and Bush. There seems to be a major contradiction there. How can you support people who make life miserable for working people, while claiming to be an advocate for the working man (or woman)? Country music musicians, the purveyors of "white man's blues" should be more in touch with the disadvantaged and the working class than almost any other genre, but so many country music musicians are ready to wave the flag, spout jingoistic rhetoric, and betray the very people they claim to represent.

Whoops! Secretary of State Colin Powell now concedes that information he presented to the United Nations to justify a war against Iraq might have been "flawed." Mr Powell made a major presentation suggesting that Iraq had mobile weapons labs and now it turns out that information was wrong. Of course, it's not the administration's fault. It's those incompetents over at the CIA.

Oops! The jobs report, hailed as a "surge" by The New York Times and other major media, isn't quite as grand after all. According to a report produced by an analyst for Wells Fargo Bank, most of the new jobs are part-time. The report says, "In fact, the increase in part-timers accounted for the vast majority of the increase in employment." Part-time jobs are not what this country needs. We need full-time jobs with good wages and full benefits.

In an example of karma coming around, our governor, Arnie the Groper, is getting sued by a British TV presenter named Anna Richardson for groping her and libeling her. I wonder how many of those right-wingers so distressed about President Clinton's sex life will be similarly perturbed about Arnold the Barbarian.

Right-wingers are never lacking in chutzpah. In today's Fresno Bee a winger was lamenting the "familiar odor" of the "politics of personal destruction" coming from the Kerry campaign. Supposedly, President Clinton conducted attacks against his opponents and Kerry is following in those footsteps. All the Bush administration has done, when it's not starting unnecessary wars or getting tax cuts for its rich buddies, is try to destroy people. Do the names Valerie Plame, Paul O'Neill, and Richard Clarke sound familiar?

At commondreams.org a story is linked talking about a FBI translator who says she saw papers showing senior administration officials knew of a planned attack by al-Quida.

Bush and the wingers will trumpet the newest job report. Major newspapers like The New York Times and Washington Post are calling it a "surge." But I won't be convinced until we have several months of significant job increases. And you have to beware of "revised" figures from this administration. After the initial flurry, it seems that reports unfavorable to the administration get "revised" with the new unfavorable statistics getting far less attention.

Former Senator Gary Hart says he warned the White House at least twice about an impending terrorist attack.

Remember the story that emerged about the low-ball figures on the Medicare prescription drug plan? The White House twisted arms and lied like crazy to get a gift for the major pharmaceutical companies. After the bill was passed, it seems the administration knew its cost estimates were too low. Congress made sounds of investigating why it was lied to--once again--but now the White House is shutting down an inquiry. Congress shouldn't take no for an answer, but we'll see.

It's April Fool's Day, which is somehow emblematic of the Bush administration. After a terrible incident in Iraq yesterday where four American contractors were murdered, their bodies dragged through the streets, and hung from a bridge the response from our government is vengeance. It's deplorable what happened to our fellow Americans, but the administration just doesn't seem to understand why people in Iraq should be so enraged to commit such atrocities. And the response is more of the same, ratchet up the hatred and the violence.

The right wing letter of the day in The Fresno Bee said that holding Bush accountable for 9-11 was like holding FDR accountable for Pearl Harbor. There are many, of course, who have tried to claim FDR had foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbor attack. I don't believe there is any credible evidence to support that charge. In Bush's case, however, there is plenty of evidence that the administration was at best negligent in preventing the 9-11 attack. We learn now that National Security Advisor Condi Rice was going to give a speech on 9-11 about missile defense. Nary a word about al-Quida or the terrorist threat.

Jimmy Breslin has a very good column that points out that the people we are fighting are different from the traditional nation states and the motives are different when he writes, "Ideology and religion are the enemies."

Word now is that Arnie the Groper might be forced to raise taxes in California. Boy, what a shocker that is. Gray Davis was recalled because of raising the "car tax" and Arnie came on like the calvary over the hill promising he could magically reduce waste, cut government spending, and lead us all into the promised land. You would think people would finally learn about the typical Republican bait and switch tactics.

I've noticed right-wingers love to throw around the word "hypocrisy." Today's featured letter in The Fresno Bee used the word "hypocrisy" to describe critics of Fearless Leader in not preventing 9-11 and then criticizing him for starting the war in Iraq. The Bee's correspondent seems to think the war in Iraq was all about fighting the war against terrorism. How many times do we have to say it? Saddam Hussein didn't have connections to al-Quida. Saddam Hussein wasn't connected to the attack that occurred on 9-11.

In fact, the obsession with Iraq from the beginning of the Bush administration diverted time and resources from dealing with the terrorism threat posed by al-Quida. Almost within hours of the attack on 9-11, Bush was pressing counterterrorism expert Richard Clarke to find some shred of evidence linking Iraq to the attack, so Bush would be justified in launching an attack. This was despite the fact the administration knew, even then, that the attack was orchestrated by al-Quida. But as Donald Rumsfeld said, Afghanistan didn't offer the tempting targets that existed in Iraq.

The news out of Iraq today is very disturbing. In Falluja four American contractors were shot and killed. Their vehicles were set on fire. Their bodies were dragged through the downtown streets and hung from a bridge over the Euphrates River. Five American marines were also slaughtered in a separate attack. The Bush administration has truly put us into a box. We started an unnecessary war, we have failed to stomp out al-Quida, and we've provided the perfect recruiting tool for terrorists all over the world. But we're supposed to believe that Mr. Bush is standing stalwart and true in the fight against global terrorism.

Condi Rice will appear under oath before the 9-11 commission after all. What happened to all those claims of executive privilege, those hoary tributes to "precedent"? It couldn't be the political heat was getting too intense, could it? Of course, this is contingent on Fearless Leader and the Puppet Master not having to testify in public.

Paul Krugman, the excellent New York Times columnist, has a good piece about the hypocrisy of the Bush administration going full bore after its critics, such as Richard Clarke and Paul O'Neill, citing national security and all the rest, but ignoring the scandal of Valerie Plame being outed as a CIA operative. There is a pattern here of course. The administration goes after its critics. Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame's husband, dared say that the administration lied about Iraq trying to buy enriched uranium from Niger. National security be damned! He made the administration look bad.

Lynne Cheney, shrewish wife of the Puppet Master, authored a lesbian romance novel that is scheduled to be re-released by Penguin Books. Let's stigmatize gays, let's use gays as a wedge issue, let's incite hate crimes against gays, but, hey, there's a buck to be made here.

Robert Scheer, columnist for The Los Angeles Times, talks about the Bush administration's cozy relationship with Pakistan. This is the same Pakistan that was a sponsor of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a haven for al-Quida, and now a major source of nuclear weapons technology for North Korea. We go to war for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but are bosom buddies with the people supplying weapons of mass destruction to North Korea. Go figure.

Lookee here. John Kerry quoted the Bible and the Bushies were outraged! Kerry dared quote a passage that suggests "compassionate conservatism" is a fraud and not in accordance with what the Bible says. It's amusing that the Bush crowd thinks they have a monopoly on the Bible too.

Condi Rice is bobbing and weaving and refusing to testify under oath before the 9-11 commission. She dares cite "principle" as the justification for refusing to testify. This is coming from an administration that has a major credibility problem when it comes to principle. I think the primary principle of the administration might be the old Leo Dorocher maxim, "Nice guys finish last."

A man close to the Bushies, and a member of the 9-11 commission, named Philip Zelikow, has been quoted as suggesting the Iraq war was launched to protect Israel. The story is linked at commondreams.org. Well, well, another reason for the war that wasn't presented to the American people.

Another disturbing environmental story is linked at commondreams.org about "dead zones" in the oceans. Dead zones are oxygen-deprived areas where fish and plants can't live. According to the story, the dead zones are being created by the use of nitrogen-laced fertilizers that run off into the ocean. The nitrogen causes an explosion in the growth of algae. When the algae dies and sinks to the ocean bottom it decomposes and uses up the oxygen in the water. We humans are destroying our little planet, and we'd better start doing something to stop it.

The New York Times has a wonderful feature called First Chapters. First Chapters features excerpts from a variety of both fiction and non-fiction books. Today I was checking out the excerpt from Richard Clarke's book.

Mr. Clarke talks about how the Bush administration was obsessed with attacking Iraq almost immediately after September 11. He talks about an encounter with George W. Bush in which Bush is practically demanding that Clarke find anything, any shred, of evidence connecting Iraq to the September 11 attack. As has been reported, he talks about how Donald Rumsfeld wanted to attack Iraq because "there were no good targets" in Afghanistan. Most eloquently, I thought, he talks about the loss of his friend John O'Neill in the attack on the World Trade Center.

O'Neill had left the government months before because of his frustration that the government was ignoring potential terrorist attacks. He took a job as head of security at the World Trade Center.

In the wacko letter of the day in The Fresno Bee the pontificator was upset that "liberals" have suggested George W. Bush is paranoid about terrorism. The writer was pleased at an editorial cartoon depicting foreign leaders who oppose Bush as being akin to terrorists themselves. He went on to suggest a parallel between Winston Churchill warning about the dangers of Adolf Hitler and Bush's preoccupation with Saddam Hussein. Bad comparisons all.

I don't think Bush is paranoid about terrorism. I think he has used fear of terrorism to advance a cynical and ruthless agenda that neoconservatives have wanted all along. They want to control oil, a dwindling and precious commodity. The control of oil and other precious resources is to world control what nuclear weapons was back in the Cold War. Now the weapon is economic.

Churchill saw Adolf Hitler clearly from the beginning, that Hitler was a charismatic, ruthless leader who could lead a great industrial power that had already engaged in one world war and had the capacity to do so again.

Saddam Hussein never had the resources to conquer the world. He failed miserably in a far lesser encounter during the Gulf War. Iraq had been under severe sanctions for years. Iraq's ability to successfully engage in a war with anybody, much less a super power like the United States, didn't exist for all practical purposes. That was proven by how easily the United States conquered Iraq in the latest war. And it should be clear by now that you can't fight terrorism with conventional warfare. Terrorists who use suicide bombers, who turn ordinarily benign objects like box cutters and airplanes into weapons, who recognize no national boundaries, and have a religious agenda, not a political one, are not subject to the discipline of a political device like war.

It's almost surreal that the Bush administration acts like there's no way they could have known that al-Quida planned an attack on the United States and that the use of airplanes in an attack was a strong probability. Warnings were everywhere. Harley Sorenson has a good column from the sfgate.com website talking about how Attorney General John Ashcroft quit flying commercially on July 26, 2001, because the warnings were there.

Republicans are trying to spin George W. Bush's "joke" about looking for weapons of mass destruction as just a bit of harmless frivolity. With thousands dead and Iraq in chaos I don't find it particularly funny. I haven't searched the historical record, but I doubt that any other presidents have "joked" about matters with such life and death consequences. Did FDR joke about World War II, or Harry Truman about Korea, JFK or LBJ about Vietnam, or even Nixon? Did even the first President Bush talk lightly about the Gulf War? Did Bill Clinton quip about the war in Kosovo? I do remember Ronald Reagan "joking" when he thought he was off mike about the missiles being launched against the Soviet Union. So there's your Reagan-Bush Jr. connection.

Today, March 27, buzzflash.com has a really good interview with David Cay Johnston, a New York Times journalist, who has written a book about our rigged tax system. Mr. Johnston makes the interesting point that in ancient Athens tyranny existed when there was what we would call a flat tax. Once the tax system became more progressive, based on the ability to pay, democracy triumphed. He also points out that taxes have been a necessary component of civilization all through human history (so much for Ayn Rand and her ilk). On the issue of wages Mr. Johnston states, "America is the only nation in the modern world that is driving down wages."

I'm not an Alan Autry fan. Autry, a former actor, is the mayor of Fresno and about as conservative as you would expect in this area. But there was an interview published in The Los Angeles Times where Autry is extremely critical of our Governor Groper. He was a supporter of Arnie back during the election, but has seen Arnie pull a doublecross or two since getting into the governor's office.

Another good item in The Los Angeles Times was a commentary by Peter Singer about George Bush's mercurial ethics. Mr Bush claims to be a good Christian, for example, but has no problems with sending U.S. forces into Afghanistan and Iraq to kill and maim thousands.

Somewhat along the same lines, Molly Ivins has a column about Mr. Bush's about-faces on various legislative issues. As Governor of Texas, Mr. Bush vehemently opposed a patients bill of rights, but took credit for it when it was passed. He has continued this pattern as president.

At commondreams.org there is a story about medically unfit soldiers being sent to Iraq. The military has been so stretched that men who shouldn't be anywhere close to combat are getting sent to the front.

Perhaps the most disturbing item of the day is a commentary by Jeremy Rifkin posted at commondreams.org about an economic "perfect storm" brewing for the United States and the world. It all hinges on our dependency on oil and the increasing price of that commodity. Mr Rifkin argues that the U.S. is between a rock and a hard place. To keep the OPEC countries from increasing oil prices, we need to make the dollar stronger. Making the dollar stronger, however, will put a serious damper on the domestic economic recovery. Looming over all of this is the staggering debt created by the Bush administration.

The 9-11 Commission and its hearings roll on. Today Richard Clarke, the subject of vitriolic White House attacks the past few days, testified before the commission and verified what many of us have felt all along: the Bush administration was derelict in its duty in preventing the attack on September 11. There are still numerous questions about what Bush knew, when he knew it, and why there was no major effort made to stop the attacks. I would also be curious about events after September 11, such as members of the bin Laden family being flown out of the United States.

In the charming style of so many conservatives, a right-winger attacked the group Peace Fresno today. The attack was the old "America haters" line. Why is the concept that you can disagree with the government and still love the country seem so alien to conservatives? They certainly had no problem with pillorying President Clinton over eight years. Liberals weren't questioning their patriotism.

The "under God" controversy has reached the Supreme Court. About a year and a half ago the Ninth Circuit Court ruled that the words "under God" violated the constitutional separation of church and state. Piety was raised to a crescendo. I believe it's obvious that the words "under God" are a government endorsement of religion. If you read the Constitution, there is no doubt it's a secular document and meant for a secular government. We have never been, and I hope we will never be, a theocracy.

The Bushies have maintained that raising taxes on those making $200,000 a year will hurt small businesses. Not true, it seems. In a story linked at buzzflash.com it's revealed that most small businesses make far less than $200,000 a year. There was an earlier story about how the Bush people would like to classify billionaires making income from renting a ski chalet as "small businessmen." All that concern for rich people and none for people who struggle paycheck to paycheck. That's the compassion of Bush's compassionate conservatism.

The Letter of the Day in The Fresno Bee came, I'm almost certain, from a libertarian. The scribe said he was "amused" at the letters from both the right and the left, and he advocated a third party solution. He also talked about the evils of "entitlements," all of which sounds very libertarian. As crazy as the far right is, libertarians probably do them one better.

The Ayn Rand school of thought would have us believe that the best society has no government at all. Everything would be privatized. I can see it now, having to pay to use a road every time you walk or drive, having to pay the fire department for putting out the fire burning down your house, paying the cop to come out an investigate the burglary or prevent the murder, everybody "home schooling" kids, whether qualified or not. I don't know of any society in human history that has functioned under the libertarian utopia, but it's easy to be pious and judgmental when you know your system will never be tried.

The September 11 hearings began today, with various parties predictably trying to cover their backsides. Donald Rumsfeld was his usual annoying, psychopathic self. I can't believe the jargon that comes from these guys. In the Nixon days the phrase "that point in time" gained popularity. Rumsfeld was throwing around the word "stovepipe."

The attacks on Richard Clarke have been coming hot and heavy from the right. They are, as he has said in various interviews, throwing up flak rather than answering the central points of his charges. They accuse him of being "disgruntled" or wanting to sell books or "being out of the loop." But Mr. Clarke hasn't been alone in the things he's stated. With this administration's history of lying and then smearing whistleblowers, we should take note.

To show how much significance the Bush administration placed on counterterrorism, it's illuminating that funding for counterterrorism was cut by almost two-thirds just days after the 9-11 attacks. We had to pay for those tax cuts for the rich somehow, didn't we?

This post may appear in triplicate because I'm experiencing technical difficulties. I misstated the name of the security firm hired by the Bush-Cheney campaign. It should have been Vance International, not Vanguard International.

In a previous post I misstated the name of a security firm hired by the Bush-Cheney campaign. It should have been Vance International, not Vanguard International. My apologies for the error.

In the interest of accuracy, I need to make a correction for a previous post. I stated that "Vanguard" International had been hired as a security firm by the Bush-Cheney campaign. It was in fact Vance International. My apologies for the error.

In the wake of the Richard Clarke interview last night on "60 Minutes" the Bush administration is acting like fishermen trying to bail out a boat leaking so badly it will quickly sink. Clarke, a former terrorism adviser, has stated that the Bush administration was focused on Iraq from the very beginning and paid too little attention to the real threat that existed in al-Quida.

We knew that al-Quida was willing and capable of executing attacks because of previous attacks in Africa and on the U.S.S. Cole. We knew that horrific attacks were possible on our own soil from the Oklahoma City bombing. Although Oklahoma City was the work of a domestic terrorist, it should have roused the attention of a new administration about the possibility of being attacked by foreign terrorists.

Instead of dealing with al-Quida, Mr. Bush took the longest presidential vacation in history on his "ranch" in Crawford, Texas, in August of 2001. After the attack on September 11, the Bush administration still didn't focus on al-Quida. The emphasis was on Iraq, even though nothing suggested Iraq was involved in the attack.

Former President Carter, who deserves enormous respect, has attacked both Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair for lying about the reasons for a war against Iraq. Thousands are dead, thousands are maimed, and terrorists are stronger than ever thanks to George W. Bush and his administration.

The theme of the day is punks. The New York Times has a story about members of the punk subculture that supports Bush. Most punks, who are by definition anti-establishment, tend to be more on the left side of the political spectrum. But along comes a punk like the main character of the story, one Nick Rizzuto, who sports the slogan "Vote Bush" on his left arm and expounds on the virtues of capitalism, the death penalty, the war, and the outstanding qualities of George W. Bush. When you think about it punks and Republicans do have a certain symmetry. Chains, banging in mosh pits, violent song lyrics, piercings, and swastikas seem very Republican to me.

Along the same lines, we have the story in The Daily Kos about how the Bush campaign has hired a security firm called Vanguard International. Vanguard is well known for participating in violence during labor disputes and has a strong similarity to the Pinkerton Detective Agency of old. It was standard practice for companies to hire goons to beat up labor protesters and organizers. According to the item in The Daily Kos, the Bush-Cheney campaign has so far paid Vanguard $750,000.

Close to home there was an anti-war protest in Fresno yesterday and the lovable Freeper contingent of our community harassed a peace activist named Ken Hudson. They even managed to get Mr. Hudson arrested. The story linked at americanpolitics.com has photos of Mr. Hudson, other protesters, and the proud member of the Fresno Police Department who made the arrest.

Time magazine has an item about how employees of the Homeland Security Department have been told to look for favorable photo op opportunities for George W. Bush. They want to pose Mr. Bush in settings that emphasize how the administration is protecting us from those dreaded terrorists. The fact this is illegal is evidently of little concern.

Maureen Dowd talks about Antonin "Fat Tony" Scalia and his obvious conflict of interest in not recusing himself in a case involving Dick Cheney. It's okay, Mr. Scalia says, to take a trip with the Vice President, to get the perk of flying on the Vice President's plane, and then hearing the Vice President's case before the Supreme Court. We're obviously just nitpicking RoboIntellect when we dare to question his ethics.

There was a great line in a letter to the editor in The Los Angeles Times. The writer noted that Dick Cheney recently popped out of his hole, saw his shadow, and now we have four more years of war.

It's interesting that the right-wing reaction to the vote in Spain is that Spaniards are now "appeasers" for throwing out Bush supporter Aznar. The fact is that Aznar never represented the will of the people, who opposed the Iraq war all along. And it should be reiterated that Iraq has not been linked to al-Quida. Supporting the war against Iraq wasn't supporting a war against terrorism.

An item at almartinraw.com should be front page news but, as usual, isn't being picked up by the mainstream press. A retired Navy Lt Commander and 28-year veteran of the Department of Defense has alleged that the CIA tried to "plant" WMD's in Iraq. The story is linked at makethemaccountable.com and discusses the very serious charges by Lt. Commander Nelda Rogers.

It seems that the Bush campaign store has been selling merchandise made in Burma, although Bush signed an order banning the sale of such merchandise. Burma, now known as Myanmar, is a military dictatorship with some of the worst human rights abuses in the world. People there earn seven cents an hour for producing the kind of merchandise sold in the Bush store.

I didn't really need official confirmation, but I just found another strong indicator of how this is right wing country. There is a website called www.fundrace.org that shows campaign donors and to whom they donated. In my zip code the donations were overwhelmingly to Bush. There were a couple for Howard Dean, which means not everyone here is a fascist.

Richard Clarke, a former White House anti-terrorism adviser, says that Bush wanted to bomb Iraq within days after the 9-11 attack. Bush wanted to attack Iraq even though the administration knew al-Quida was responsible and no evidence linked Saddam Hussein's regime to al-Quida.

Molly Ivins wrote in a column that George W. Bush has received $440,000 and the Republican Party has received $3.6 million from the corporations that have outsourced the most jobs from the United States. Outsourcing and contributions to Republicans go hand in hand.

Back to Iraq for a moment. Roger Cressey, an anti-terrorism adviser, said in the early days of the Bush administration al-Quida was not even a blip on the radar screen. This was despite the attack on the U.S.S. Cole just months before, known to be perpetrated by al-Quida. The Bush administration sat on its hands, doing nothing to deal with terrorists who were known to have intentions of attacking the United States.

The guy I call Mr. Anti-Choice made his periodic appearance in The Fresno Bee today. His object of ire today was gay marriage. Mr. Anti-Choice doesn't want women to have control of their own bodies and he equates gay marriage to incest and polygamy. I don't see the similarities myself. A relationship between two consenting adults isn't polygamous and, unless they're blood related, it's definitely not incestuous. Mr. A.C. also made the claim that homsexuality has always been condemned by "civilized" societies. Really? How about the ancient Greeks? They didn't seem to have a problem.

It seems that in Crawford, Texas, Bush's home town and site of his "ranch," you can get arrested for just wearing an anti-Bush button. Mr. Bush likes to stand tall and proclaim his love for freedom, but that love doesn't extend to his home town apparently.

In a remarkable bit of audacity and hypocrisy Justice Antonin Scalia is refusing to recuse himself in a case involving his buddy Dick Cheney. Scalia makes the claim that judges would always be having to recuse themselves because friendships in Washington make it impossible not to hear such cases. If this were a liberal justice spending time with a liberal politician, can you imagine the howls on right-wing hate radio?

The president of Poland has stated that he was "misled" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Let's not beat around the bush (no pun intended), Mr. President. You were lied to.

We sure are winning the war on terror, aren't we? A few days ago there was a massive terrorist attack in Madrid, which helped influence the outcome of the election and throw out a Bush ally. Today there was a horrific bombing of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, and so far there are twenty-seven reported dead. We will no doubt get the usual platitudes from Mr. Bush and minions, but no explanation, no apology for sowing the seeds that have created these attacks.

Make no mistake; the terrorists themselves are the primary culprits, the criminals, who have taken innocent life. But the Bush administration pursued an unnecessary war in Iraq. Thousands have died or been maimed. You can blame "bad intelligence" if you want. I believe this war was something Bush and company really wanted. I don't think they have a high regard for life. Profits and hegemony were there to be grabbed.

Bank of America, which has merged with Fleet Bank, announced there will be 13,000 layoffs. That's 13,000 more to add to the gargantuan total of jobs lost in this administration. But we'll hear about the "growing" economy and "prosperity" and how raising taxes on the wealthy will destroy job creation. We might reasonably ask: what job creation?

According to a new Gallup poll, 60% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. That makes me wonder about the other 40%. What could they possibly see as right about our current course? It's like saying the Titanic was right to take a course that crashed into an iceberg. Give a listen to talk show host Thom Hartmann, who has many keen insights about how the radical right is destroying the American middle class.

We sure are winning the war on terror, aren't we? A few days ago there was a massive terrorist attack in Madrid, which helped influence the outcome of the election and throw out a Bush ally. Today there was a massive bombing of the Mount Lebanon Hotel in Baghdad, and so far there are twenty-seven reported dead. We will no doubt get the usual platitudes from Mr. Bush and minions, but no explanation, no apology for sowing the seeds that have created these attacks.

Make no mistake; the terrorists themselves are the primary culprits, the criminals, who have taken innocent life. But the Bush administration pursued an unnecessary war in Iraq. Thousands have died or been maimed. You can blame "bad intelligence" if you want. I believe this war was something Bush and company really wanted. I don't think they have a high regard for life. Profits and hegemony were there to be grabbed.

Bank of America, which has just merged with Fleet Bank, just announced there will be 13,000 layoffs. That's 13,000 more to add to the gargantuan total of jobs lost in this administration. But we'll hear about the "growing" economy and "prosperity" and how raising taxes on the wealth will destroy job creation. We might reasonably ask: what job creation?

According to a new Gallup poll, 60% of Americans think the country is on the wrong track. That makes me wonder about the other 40%. What could they possibly see as right about our current course? It's like saying the Titanic was right to take a course that crashed into an iceberg. Give a listen to talk show host Thom Hartmann, who has many keen insights about how the radical right is destroying the American middle class.

A post at democraticunderground.com concerns vandalism of a Sikh temple in Fresno. It's interesting that the link came from the L. A. Times. The vandals undoubtedly think anyone who wears a turban is an Arab and either a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer. I've seen Sikhs around town from time to time and I've often thought it takes a certain courage to wear their native dress in a time when bigotry is like a tinder box ready to flare up.

A story in The Washington Post today shows how much the world now hates and fears the United States because of the Bush administration. Bush is incredibly unpopular in France and Germany and even in Britain, our closest ally, Bush is largely despised. The newly-elected Spanish Prime Minister has openly said he hopes Bush is defeated this November.

Good Morning America had a feature about Howard Stern's "jihad" against the Bush administration. Stern has been advising his listeners to vote against Bush. Stern was a strong supporter of the Iraq war and other Bush policies, so it's not a good sign for Mr. Bush that Stern has made an about face.

The mass murder story is continuing and will continue for some time. I am not much of a crime junkie personally. I grieve for the victims and their families and I know that any "justice" for the murderer will never be enough. The innocent victims are gone forever regardless of what happens to the murderer.

Sometimes when you read the letters to the Fresno Bee you can't help but think of the movie "Dumb and Dumber." Today we had a spectacular case of conservative idiocy on display. The author was ticked off at a proposal to allow fourteen to seventeen year olds to vote. He used that old tried and true phrase "commie pinko" to describe supporters of this idea. I thought Communists were opposed to democratic things like voting, but that subtlety was probably lost on this moron. He went on about how the fourteen to seventeen contingent would vote for "giveaway" programs. Why don't we hear about conservative giveaway programs to corporations and to the rich?

I have reservations about lowering the voting age. I'm not sure fourteen to seventeen year olds are mature enough or informed enough to vote. But that same criticism can be leveled at many adults too, particularly those who vote Republican. The people who voted for Arnold the Groper didn't show any more maturity than a teenager. They were just as swayed by his alleged star power.

There is a good piece in today's Washington Post about no correlation existing between tax cuts and job creation. In fact, when taxes have been higher there have typically been more jobs. The typical Republican mantra of tax cut, tax cut, tax cut benefits mostly those who have most of the wealth. Those of us in the working class who buy into this sham are like the citizens of Troy who welcomed the Trojan Horse inside their gates. They were participating in their own slaughter.

News about Fresno's worst mass murder in history continues to get more bizarre. Police have suggested that the accused murderer may have had a polygamist relationship with several women and may have had an incestuous relationship with one or more daughters. He apparently fathered his own grandchildren. Police chief Jerry Dyer has described the accused suspect, Marcus Wesson, as articulate and intelligent.

Fresno actor-turned-mayor Alan Autry was interviewed on a local television station yesterday. Obviously distraught, Mr. Autry mentioned how God had been removed from our lives. Excuse me. It appears this mass murder may be directly related to belief in God or gods. There is no evidence that failure to believe in God had anything to do with these crimes. When you think of David Koresh or Jim Jones you think of a belief in God, twisted as it may be.

Maureen Dowd has another good column in The New York Times in which she tells George W. Bush to look in the mirror. Mr. Bush doesn't want to assume responsibility for anything in his administration. The 9-11 attack, the lousy economy, world hatred of the United States, the failure to find weapons of mass destruction, none of it is the Bush administration's fault. I believe almost all of it is directly attributable to the crass and arrogant polices of this administration.

David Broder has a good column in The Washington Post talking about Congressman Barney Frank and ideas about the "jobless recovery" we're experiencing. The very wealthy can now get wealthy without creating jobs. Government policies on trade and taxes have made it possible for the very wealthy to increase their wealth by pursuing methods that hurt our society as a whole. For instance, "outsourcing" of jobs to cheaper labor markets makes the rich richer, but hurts our domestic economy and our own people.

There are hints that the Bush administration may be pursuing a selective military draft. The primary targets now appear to be IT professionals and linguists. If the Bush administration again claims power in November, we can probably count on a draft. The military is stretched now to the breaking point and the idea of a selective military draft is probably just the beginning.

Yesterday Fresno experienced its worst mass murder in history when a man apparently killed nine people. Seven of the victims were children and at least the majority of them were the man's children. So far the police haven't determined or released to the public the cause of death. Murder is not so abstract when it occurs in your own back yard.

Is there a correlation between the political orientation of an area and the incidents of dysfunction? I think there is. Extreme violence seems to occur far more often in areas that lean politically right. Conservatives are reactionary in that they believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, that war is better than negotiation, and any sign of weakness if fatal. The worst incidents of violence in this country have usually had a link to right-wing political ideology. Tim McVeigh is the classic example. Abortion clinics have been bombed by right-wing zealots. Lynchings of African Americans were committed by people who wanted the old ways of slavery and subjugation. Violence against women is often committed by those who want woman to "know their place."

A story linked at commondreams.org reveals how the Bush administration may still be busily trying to overthrow Hugo Chavez, the president of Venezeuela. Mr. Chavez was deposed once before.

One of the issues Mr. Bush will hammer in the election campaign is national security. But it is apparent that he and his administration have weakened our national security when you consider how much of the world now hates us. The Bush administration, acting like a playground bully, has stomped across the globe, arrogantly, callously, and maliciously destroying the rights and lives of millions. It has made us all targets.

Yesterday Fresno had its worst mass murder case in history. From all appearances, a man killed nine people, two adults and seven children. He was the father of at least most of the children. So far the cause of the deaths either hasn't been determined or released to the public. There are suggestions the murders may be cult related. Murder seems an abstract thing until it occurs in your own back yard.

I have thought about the correlation between violence, lousy living standards, and the political orientation of an area. You rarely hear of horrific murders in areas dominated by liberals. The mass murders in this country are usually committed by conservatives like Timothy McVeigh. I haven't done the research, but I believe you would find incidents of domestic violence, hate crimes, teenage pregnancies, rapes, suicides, and al the other dysfunctions in human society occur predominantly in areas dominated by right-wing political ideology. Violence is the basic and core credo of right-wing conservatism. War is the answer, not negotiation, guns are the answer, not dealing with the conditions that cause crime and violence. One of the worst things in the world, according to the conservative world view, is to be considered weak.

In a story linked at commondreams.org it appears the Bush administration is still busy like little beavers in toppling other governments. Hugo Chavez, president of Venezeula, believes the Bushies are planning to try to oust him.

A op-ed piece in The Boston Globe points out how Mr. Bush has alienated much of the world. Many in the world hate the United States because of the arrogance, brutality, and dishonesty of Mr. Bush. This is a national security issue. It makes the United States more of a target to more and more people who view us as the bad bully on the playground.

We passed the stage of Absolute Outrage even before George W. Bush was sworn in as president on January 20, 2001. Mr. Bush arrived at the position because of an obviously partisan and corrupt decision by the United States Supreme Court.

But things haven't gotten better. That rape of democracy seems like ancient history now because we keep learning of new outrages every day. At Yahoo News there is a story revealing that Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and some FBI officials kept "souvenirs" of the September 11 attack on the United States. According to the report, Mr. Rumsfeld kept a piece of the airplane that crashed into the Pentagon. How sick and macabre can you be? I'm beginning to think this administration is made up of Body Snatchers.

In a story linked at commondreams.org we learn that Richard S. Foster, chief actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, has stated he would be fired if he revealed the true cost of the Bush administration prescription drug benefit Medicare program. Several conservative GOP members of Congress were balking on supporting the bill because they felt it was too expensive. The report indicates that the administration knew the costs were bogus months before the bill was debated on the floor of Congress. This was the bill where the GOP leadership violated the rules and allowed extra time for the vote. Considerable arm-twisting and possible bribery were also involved.


Another item concerns an alleged Iraqi spy who is the cousin of White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. You can't really blame Mr Card if his cousin is a spy, of course, but I just wonder how this would play if this occurred in a Clinton or Gore administration.

We Americans frequently have our eyes glaze over when the discussion turns to foreign affairs. There are all those faraway places that we don't where to find on a map and all those strange names we can't pronounce. But there is a new book about the House of Saud and its connection to the Bush family that should engage our attention.

The book is House of Bush, House of Saud by Craig Unger being serialized in salon.com. Among the most troubling themes of the book is that Saudi Arabian ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz was an al-Quida go-between and may have had foreknowledge of the attacks that occurred on September 11. We know that fifteen of the September 11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, so there is already a strong connection to the Saudis.

The book discusses how many prominent Saudis, including members of the bin Laden family, were flown out of the United States in the days immediately following September 11. This was at a time when there was a lockdown on civilian air travel, so authority for the Saudis to fly from the United States had to come from the highest levels of the United States government

In what is being called "Khan-gate" we have to deal once again with hard-to-pronounce names and faraway places. The protagonist of this story is one A. Q. Khan, called the father of the Pakistani nuclear weapons program. Mr. Khan, over the past several years, has been busily exporting nuclear technology all over the world. The Bush administration has virtually ignored this nuclear proliferation. But Mr. Bush will present himself as a defender of America and try to portray Senator Kerry as weak on defense.

Another threat that the Bush administration has not addressed is genetically modified food. You know about GMO's. Those are the tomatoes with a fish gene or a potato with a built-in pesticide. A few years ago there was a scare when StarLink corn contaminated corn meant for human consumption. StarLink corn, another GMO, has not been approved for human consumption. We're seeing our food supply contaminated by so-called Franken Foods and all with the approval of the Bush crowd.

The Clinton administration seems like a galaxy far, far away now. Remember how in those halcyon days the Republicans and right-wingers foamed at the mouth over White House coffees and sleepovers? It seems that George and Laura Bush have had a few sleepovers of their own, mostly from big donors. The Bushes have hosted their guests both at the White House and at Camp David. Where is all that Republican outrage now?

The Hubble telescope has provided us with our most distant look at the universe yet. But Mr. Bush wants to sacrifice the Hubble to pay for his fantasy trip to Mars. This is a crime against science. I would love to see a manned mission to Mars, but there are more pressing priorities here on Terra right now. In the meantime, we could still have the Hubble for far less than any manned mission would cost. Of course, major contractors benefit from missions to Mars, whether they succeed or not, and the money just isn't there if we keep the Hubble.

With the Martha Stewart convictions and the scandals at big corporations like Enron, Global Crossing, and others you have to wonder about the steadiness of capitalism. Big shareholders, the insiders, hold all the cards. Most Americans own very little or no stock anyway, of course. We're too busy paying the credit card bills, the rent, the rising gas prices, and so on. But even if you had a few bucks to plop into the stock market you can't be sure you're getting the straight scoop about a company's finances now. Without trust, investing is more of a gamble than moseying down to your local casino.

It's with some amusement and some nausea that I see an ad for Bush at the top of this published blog. "Compassionate conservative" indeed. If ever there was an oxymoron, it's that phrase.

Lots of interesting stuff in the media today. Paul Krugman had a good column in The New York Times talking about the wishful thinking of the Bush job projections. A chart provided in Krugman's column shows how far off the mark the projections have been. You would think--and hope--people would finally realize you can't believe any economic projections emanating from this administration.

Jon Carroll in sfgate.com has a good column about attempts by the Bush administration to make war on science, particularly in teaching evolutionary theory. I come from a background where evolution was a truly evil doctrine. The religion I belonged to believed the human race was about 6,000 years old. They got around the ages of the earth and the universe by saying that the biblical "days" weren't defined in the Bible. They could be millions or billions of years old, according to that rationale. I have come to realize that the overwhelming evidence supports the theory of evolution unless you want to subscribe to a belief in miracles that changed physical laws at convenient times in our history. I have yet to see a miracle, so I side with science.

In a news clip I saw of George W. Bush he was reading some quip written by one of his speech writers about Senator Kerry. It went something like, "My opponent has strong beliefs for a little while." The strategy of the Bush campaign is to paint Senator Kerry as indecisive in contrast with Fearless Leader, who provides bold and decisive leadership. The truth is somewhat different. Fearless Leader has consistently flip-flopped on a number of issues ranging from global warming, to commissions on 9-11 and the Iraq intelligence debacle. Combine that with a trail of broken promises and it's difficult to see how anyone can trust this man.

Since Mr. Bush likes to paint himself as a Christian, I was thinking of the issue of religion and government. In the First Amendment the Founding Fathers stated clearly that the government would make no law regarding an establishment of religion or the free exercise thereof. Thomas Jefferson outlined the doctrine of separation of Church and State. Right-wingers like to claim that the phrase about church and state separation doesn't appear in the Constitution. But it's clear from reading the work of the Founding Fathers that the wall of separation was clearly intended. The Constitution itself states that there will be no religious test for public office.

Now we have Mr. Bush and the Christian Right doing their level best to turn our government into their version of a Theocracy. It reminds me of the campaign of John F. Kennedy in 1960. There were major concerns among some people that Kennedy's Catholicism would interfere with his duties as President. Kennedy stated clearly that if he ever faced a conflict, he would resign the presidency.

While I do not advocate religious bigotry, I think it's appropriate to ask candidates about their religious beliefs and how those beliefs would affect their performance in public office. I have great concerns about candidates who believe in the Rapture or Armageddon or some other life-ending event on earth. Would such a candidate start a nuclear war, for instance, in fulfillment of some prophecy? Would such a candidate pursue aggressive military actions in the Middle East because that is the setting for much of the Bible and the Koran? I do not believe that a candidate who can in fact create an apocalyptic event--who believes he's fulfilling some mandate of God --should occupy the Oval Office.

The Bush administration in many ways is illusory. The latest example is the campaign ad trumpeting Mr. Bush's "leadership" after September 11 The ad showed firefighters at Ground Zero. It turns out the firefighters weren't even real. It's fitting somehow, because Mr. Bush's "leadership" was also an illusion.

Karl Rove is the satanic mastermind behind much of the Bush administration's policies. It seems that Mr. Rove is an admirer of William McKinley and McKinley's mastermind, Mark Hanna. Back in McKinley's and Hanna's day the policy was also to reward the rich, devastate the environment, and cede as much power as possible to big companies such as railroad and mining interests. After McKinley was assassinated, along came the progressive, muckraking Theodore Roosevelt. Let's hope that this despicable administration will also be followed by a progressive administration that will deal with the "malefactors of great wealth."

It is, as they say in the media business, a slow news day. The Bush administration is talking about handing over power to the Iraqis in June. What it will really be is a puppet U.S. regime that gets power, but it will be touted as a major advancement for democracy.

George W. Bush stands firmly in favor of tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts. He always likes to use the phrase "the American people," but he's really talking about the very, very rich.

The rest of us don't count for much in the universe of Mr. Bush. It has been reported that the arrogant little rich boy, while at Harvard, derided the poor as being poor because of being lazy. That's easy to say when you're born with a silver spoon in your mouth and have never had to really work a day in your life. I get a little weary of being lectured on the value of hard work, thrift, virtue, etc., by people who have never had to struggle, who don't have to get up early to go to a miserable dead-end job, who don't have to juggle kids, school, housework, paying bills, and all the rest. They can take their lectures and shove it.

Jimmy Breslin has a great column about Bush using images of 9-11 in his campaign ads. Breslin calls it "molesting the dead." Today's crop of conservatives do seem to have a bit of necrophilia in them. They love bombs, missiles, torture, napalm, Stealth bombers, nuclear weapons, and any other instruments of mass death.

I'm actually seeing a fairly large number of letters critical of George W. Bush in The Fresno Bee lately. It's amazing. Someone today made the excellent point that today's conservatives seem to have a major problem with our Constitution. They're always wanting to amend it for some reason, whether it's to ban flag burning or to prohibit same sex marriage. The tradition of our country until recently has been to expand freedom, not to restrict it.

There's no doubt that the exercise of freedom is going to offend someone somewhere. You especially realize that when you look at political speech and at artistic expression. Sometimes I don't like what I see or hear, but I want the freedom to express myself even if that might offend someone. So it's a two way street.

George W. Bush was once quoted as saying, "Sometimes there's too much freedom." Mr. Bush was offended by a parody website, but just think of how chilling that statement is from a political leader. Bush's people are now trying to prevent critical television ads produced by moveon.org from airing on television stations. They're using the excuse that the ads are "illegal" use of soft money. I don't claim to know all the legalities involved, but once again it appears "there's too much freedom."

Martha Stewart got convicted on four counts today for what is essentially insider trading. Martha's crime is penny ante compared to the insider trading George W. Bush did at Harken Energy several years ago, so you have to wonder why Mr. Bush isn't up on charges.

I am glad to hear that telephone records from Air Force One are being subpoenaed in the Valerie Plame case. Valerie Plame, an undercover CIA operative, was "outed" by columnist Robert Novak in an apparent act of revenge by the Bush administration against her husband, Ambassador Joseph Wilson. Wilson dared to suggest the administration lied about Iraq purchasing enriched uranium from Niger.

Mr. Bush made another campaign swing through California the past couple of days, making grandiose claims about the benefits of his tax cuts for fat cats. In the meantime, a report said that only 21,000 jobs were created in the U.S. economy last month. If this is success, then heaven help us. When we're all one teeming unemployed mass in the streets that will be the Republican idea of utopia, I suppose.

If you're in the desert or anywhere else there are great circling carrion birds, think of the Bush administration. The first ads out of the box for Bush's campaign feature footage of firefighters at Ground Zero. It is beyond cynical, it is beyond obscene, that this administration has built its entire filthy policy on the deaths of 3,000 innocent people at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001. It is beyond comprehension when you realize that September 11 should have been prevented. The administration had an abundance of intelligence that a major attack was going to occur. Even as the planes were being hijacked, the administration failed to respond. We know the rest.

Bush shill Karen Hughes rode her broom in for an appearance on Good Morning America. Ms. Hughes said Democrats are basing their entire campaign against Bush on anger. I would suggest there is plenty to be angry about. Anger is a rational response to the venality, lying, incompetence, and sheer audacity of this administration in raping the environment, raping the Constitution, and destroying the lives of Americans and others around the world.

Professional sports are certainly not the most pressing issue facing us, but sports are a major part of American culture. The issue of steroid use by professional athletes has become a major topic on sports talk radio, primarily because the hero of sports talk personalities, George W. Bush, mentioned steroid use in his State of the Union Address.

It's interesting how right-wing rhetoric even permeates sports talk radio, which you would think would be largely free of politics. On the Tony Bruno Show, broadcast on the Fox Sports Network, there have been constant mockings of Governor Howard Dean and his "scream" during a pep talk to his supporters after the Iowa caucuses. But Mr. Bruno was offended that there might be any talk of politics at the Academy Awards by Sean Penn or other opponents of the Bush administration.

Jim Rome has also made great use of the "scream" audio, although I will give Mr. Rome credit for criticizing Bush for failing to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Another Fox personality named Mike Lamb, who is from the Fresno/Clovis area, interviewed Marvin Miller, former head of the Baseball Players Association, today about the issue of steroids. Mr. Lamb was apparently terribly offended that Marvin Miller referred to Attorney General John Ashcroft as a "dangerous man." Mr. Lamb might want to take a look at things like the PATRIOT ACT, detaining terrorism suspects without due process, operation TIPS, and the Carnivore system that compiles data on Americans without their knowledge, consent, or any evidence of wrongdoing. After the interview Mr. Lamb got a number of callers angry at Marvin Miller and none of them seemed to recognize that Mr. Miller may have had some valid points.

News of more horrific bombings in Iraq and now in Pakistan. Iraq appears to be headed for civil war. So much for the hearts and flowers promised by the Bush administration.

Now Haiti is in chaos and it appears that President Aristide was forced out of the country by the administration. Haiti serves stratetic purposes for the United States, particularly if moves are going to be made against Castro's Cuba. And any anti-Castro activitiy appeals to the hard right-wing base of Cuban exiles in south Florida, which Bush desperately wants to win in the 2004 election (whether by hook or by crook).

It appears that Senator John Kerry has secured enough delegates to be the Democratic nominee against Bush this November. Kerry has a good liberal voting record in the Senate. The big money behind the Bush campaign will try to use that as a negative issue. In truth, Kerry is not as liberal as I would like, but I will certainly support him in this election. It is essential for this country and the rest of the world that George W. Bush and his administration be defeated in this election.