The Fresno Bee hasn't featured any good candidates for DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY for a few days, but you know if you're patient enough you'll see one just as surely as it gets hot in the summertime. Today's candidate actually makes the claim that George W. Bush hasn't lied to us about Iraq. I wonder what you call it when the administration made claims about Weapons of Mass Destruction that have never been found, or suggesting that Iraq was on the verge of developing a nuclear weapon when it's obvious that wasn't true.

Bush Supporter talked about how the country was behind FDR during World War II. In that war we were actually attacked by Japan. Iraq never attacked us. He also says that when we "flew under the Christian" banner we were the greatest country, etc. We never "flew under the Christian banner." Our Founders were very careful to make the Constitution a secular document and establish a wall of separation between church and state. It's since we got stuck with a wacko fundamentalist administration in Washington that we've declined and, ironically enough, since that administration hasn't practiced the most basic tenets of Christianity.

It's interesting to me that big corporations who push Social Darwinism to the max when it comes to things like employee salaries and benefits are only too happy to promote and accept corporate welfare from taxpayers. This story from alternet.org shows how hypocritical Wal-Mart is: "A new report [PDF] released from Good Jobs First this week shows that Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, has received more than $1 billion in economic development subsidies from states for its stores and distribution centers. The subsidies have come as many states are forced by White House tax cuts and reductions in federal grants to make tough budget decisions. A report by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows states are cutting subsidies for publicly funded health insurance, child care, federal employment, both higher and lower education, and programs aimed at public safety and people with disabilities – all this while ponying up taxpayer dollars to subsidize a retailer that took in more than $200 billion in revenue and netted nearly $9 billion in profits last year, even as it paid workers near-poverty wages, drove out local businesses and violated environmental regulations."

Can you say high crimes and misdemeanors? Ahmad Chalabi, good buddy of the Bush administration, whose lies helped justify the attack on Iraq, may have given intelligence secrets to Iran. This story is from sfgate.com: "Ahmad Chalabi, a former Iraqi exile who recently lost his standing as a special friend of the Bush administration, told Iran that the United States had broken the code of its intelligence service, according to broadcast and published reports."

You really don't need a crystal ball to see the future if George W. Bush's economics prevail. We can expect a deteriorating standard of living for most Americans. Our children and their children will be impoverished thanks to Bush's transfer of wealth to the rich. This story is linked at makethemaccountable.com: "Recent and proposed fiscal policies—the tax cuts, proposals to make them permanent, and the medicare prescription drug bill—will hurt economic prospects for most of today's children and all future generations. The programs will leave economic growth largely unchanged, but will redistribute resources from future to current generations and, within each generation, from low- and middle-income families toward an affluent minority. These effects exacerbate the impact of underlying federal budget trends and processes that will place significant, imminent pressure on funding for children's programs. An expanded program of investments in children is both feasible and desirable."

The defenders of George W. Bush will claim that some recent job creation validates his economic policies, although we know that the net job loss under this administration rivals that of Herbert Hoover. This story from the Madison Capitol Times puts the figures into perspective: "One of my e-mail pen pals sent a note the other day asking if I was now going to apologize for my columns that said that George W. Bush's tax cuts haven't created any jobs.

He pointed out that in each of the last two months, the Labor Department has reported significant job growth, putting total growth for the first four months of 2004 at 900,000 jobs.

Therefore, I was wrong, he insisted, and I need to admit it.

Let's put it this way: I will admit I'm wrong when and if I'm proven to be. But 900,000 jobs the past four months is, frankly, chicken feed for a tax cut that has thrown the U.S. budget into the biggest hole it's ever been in."

When you hear the Horatio Alger fantasies of how everyone can make it economically in the United States--if you save, work hard!, and are a good person--keep in mind these statistics. This is from bloomberg.com, showing that the vast majority of Americans aren't doing very well financially: "The largest group, 38,133,248, reported adjusted gross income of under $15,000. The next largest group of taxpayers, 29,964,349, made between $15,000 and $30,000. That group of taxpayers making between $50,000 and $100,000 is the next largest in size, 26,686,687. There were 24,556,060 in the between $30,000 and $50,000 group.

Even The Washington Post admits that the Bush campaign's attack ads against John Kerry are "misleading." Why would Bush feel the need to push the envelope on lying if he had anything positive to run on? The lying is just Bush being Bush: "Scholars and political strategists say the ferocious Bush assault on Kerry this spring has been extraordinary, both for the volume of attacks and for the liberties the president and his campaign have taken with the facts. Though stretching the truth is hardly new in a political campaign, they say the volume of negative charges is unprecedented -- both in speeches and in advertising."

A few days ago we talked about a story showing that if he gets back into the White House Mr. Bush plans to cut programs that help the majority of us so that he can give more tax cuts to the rich. New York Times columnist Paul Krugman expands on this, "That agenda is to impose Dooh Nibor economics — Robin Hood in reverse. The end result of current policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year."

One of the things that bothers me most about capitalism is how people can exploit the misfortunes of others. As one who has lived in California a very long time, I can remember the energy crisis from a few years ago when we got treated to rolling blackouts and when energy rates skyrocketed. Many small businesses got clobbered and were forced out of business. But the deregulatory system given to us by Republicans made some people at Enron very happy. This story is from cbsnews.com: "Four years after California's disastrous experiment with energy deregulation, Enron energy traders can be heard – on audiotapes obtained by CBS News – gloating and praising each other as they helped bring on, and cash-in on, the Western power crisis."


I wonder how New York Times reporter Judith Miller sleeps at night. Her shoddy and biased reporting to ramp up support for the war on Iraq is in part responsible for the deaths of thousands of innocent civilians. This story is from editorandpublisher.com:
"NEW YORK In a lengthy profile published today in New York magazine, writer Franklin Foer paints an extremely unflattering portrait of star New York Times reporter Judith Miller, less than a week after an editors' note in her newspaper criticized some of her Iraq-related reporting (while not naming her). He also identifies former Executive Editor Howell Raines as the key enabler for some of her shoddiest work."

I do believe in ghosts! I do! I do! I do! - The Cowardly Lion in "The Wizard of Oz"

The Cowardly Lion makes you think of the Bush Cult. I do believe in Bush! I do! I do! I do! The true blue Bush Cult members believe no matter how inconvenient the evidence.

It's Memorial Day and time to remember how difficult it was to create and maintain this country since we won the Revolutionary War against the British. It's time to pay tribute to all those who have laid their livelihoods, their honor, and their lives on the line to defend the principles in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. I find it ironic in a way that George W. Bush was standing at the World War II memorial in Washington talking about the "greatest generation" that took us through the Great Depression and won the war against fascism in World War II. I think Mr. Bush has far more in common with the fascists than with the veterans of that conflict and it demonstrates, once again, his absolute lack of shame.


Dick Cheney has denied that his past cozy relationship with Halliburton has influenced the awarding of government contracts, but Time magazine has uncovered a paper trail that suggests otherwise: "Cheney's relationship with Halliburton has been nothing but trouble since he left the company in 2000. Both he and the company say they have no ongoing connections. But TIME has obtained an internal Pentagon e-mail sent by an Army Corps of Engineers official—whose name was blacked out by the Pentagon—that raises questions about Cheney's arm's-length policy toward his old employer. Dated March 5, 2003, the e-mail says 'action' on a multibillion-dollar Halliburton contract was 'coordinated' with Cheney's office. The e-mail says Douglas Feith, a high-ranking Pentagon hawk, got the 'authority to execute RIO,' or Restore Iraqi Oil, from his boss, who is Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. RIO is one of several large contracts the U.S. awarded to Halliburton last year."

George W. Bush is such the man, isn't he? He's the guy who talked about "smoking out" Osama bin Laden, getting him "dead or alive," who paraded around on the deck of the Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit, who snuck into Baghdad in the dead of night to deliver a plastic turkey to the troops on Thanksgiving, and now keeps Saddam Hussein's pistol as a trophy. We learned not long ago that Rumsfeld kept a piece of the fuselage from the plane that flew into the Pentagon on September 11. These guys love war souvenirs without actually putting their own tails on the line. Anyway, I found this story linked at salon.com: "President Bush keeps in his White House offices a trophy of one his high points in the Iraq war, the pistol that Saddam Hussein held when soldiers pulled him from his underground hideaway."

I don't like George W. Bush, I don't think he should be elected this November, and I don't think I should have to pay for his campaign stops. But that's just what I and millions of others are doing. Mr. Bush declares a trip official and voila! you and I get the "privilege" of financing the trip with our tax dollars. This story is at newsday.com: "President George W. Bush is using Air Force One for re-election travel more heavily than any predecessor, wringing maximum political mileage from a perk of office paid for by taxpayers.

While Democratic rival John Kerry charters a plane to roam the country, Bush often travels at no cost to his campaign simply by declaring a trip 'official' travel rather than 'political.'"

I remember those ads where the "wimp" kid got sand kicked in his face by the big, burly jock. That's a little like this story about rich communities that have suffered some hurricane damage getting money from the federal government to replace beach sand! It's not enough that the rich already have most of the money, almost all of the power, that programs for working class people get slashed and burned, but now we're supposed to pay for sand for their ritzy resorts. This story is from The Washington Post: "The bulk of the money was used to clear debris and pay for emergency workers' overtime. Hundreds of thousands of dollars, however, were used to repair flagpoles, signs, bike paths and ball fields. And, in what some environmental groups and regulators say is a troubling development, the federal agency is paying for an estimated $15 million worth of sand."

The New York Times has recently come out with a mea culpa of sorts about its coverage leading up to the Iraq war. Times reporter Judith Miller, in particular, seems to have acted as a press agent for the Bush administration. The Times should go back even further and examine its coverage of the 2000 presidential campaign. Al Gore got trashed consistently by the mainstream media, while George W. Bush got away with lie after lie after lie. Papers with major influence such as The Times have a tremendous responsibility, not only as a newspaper, but as a guardian of democracy. And in its failure to cover the 2000 presidential campaign with due diligence and fairness, and in its acting as a propaganda vehicle for the U.S. government in the Iraq war coverage, The Times betrayed democratic values.

This story is from Editor and Publisher and linked at makethemaccountable.com: "The New York Times' editors' note that called attention to problems with several of its Iraq-related stories elicited mixed reactions from newspaper editors and journalism observers alike. Most supported the effort to come clean, but they differed in opinion about the severity of the Times' reporting gaffes and the way the newspaper revealed its mistakes. Some said the episode was worse than the Jayson Blair scandal."

I have on occasion seen letters to The Fresno Bee defending former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. The writers like to talk about the economic reforms enacted under Pinochet, which would be a fantasy come true for right-wingers in this country, and his overthrow of Salvador Allende. The same people who have condemned Saddam Hussein for torture and murder had no problem with Pinochet. A story also linked at makethemaccountable.com talks about U.S. complicity in overthrowing Allende, installing Pinochet, and setting in motion the torture and murder of thousands of people in Chile: "Henry Kissinger told President Richard Nixon days after the 1973 coup in Chile the United States helped create the conditions for the ouster of socialist President Salvador Allende, newly declassified transcripts showed on Wednesday."

I've been reading the Kevin Phillips book "American Dynasty" about the Bush family. In one chapter Phillips talks about George W. Bush's affiliation with the Christian Right. Bush uses so-called "double coding," words that mean one thing to secular listeners and have a special significance to listeners on the Christian Right. Phillips talks about this when he says, "Biblical scholar Bruce Lincoln's line-by-line analysis of Bush's October 7, 2001, address to the nation announcing the U.S. attack on Afghanistan identified a half dozen veiled borrowings from the Book of Revelation, Isaiah, Job, Matthew, and Jeremiah. He concluded that for those with ears to hear a biblical subject, 'by the [speech's] end America's adversaries have been redefined as enemies of God and current events have been constituted as confirmation of scripture.'"

Crony capitalism has been rampant under the Bush administration. Halliburton is just the most obvious example. In a story linked at buzzflash.com Representative Henry Waxman talks about life under the Bush Cartel: "'Increasingly, the administration is turning over essential government functions to the private sector, and it has jettisoned basic safeguards like competition and supervision that are needed to protect the public interest,' he said in a statement."

I don't know what took so long, but the Washington Post is finally starting to take a stand against George W. Bush. Maybe the prison scandal in Iraq is the tipping point at last for this corrupt administration. The Post editorializes, "PRESIDENT BUSH'S persistence in describing the abuse of foreign prisoners as an isolated problem at one Iraqi prison is blatantly at odds with the facts seeping out from his administration. These include mounting reports of crimes at detention facilities across Iraq and Afghanistan and evidence that detention policies the president approved helped set the stage for torture and homicide. Yes, homicide: The most glaring omission from the president's account is that at least 37 people have died in U.S. custody in Iraq and Afghanistan -- and that at least 10 of these cases are suspected criminal killings of detainees by U.S. interrogators or soldiers."

Kevin Phillips quotes an analyst named Michael Klare on what was the likely motivation for war on Iraq: "Controlling Iraq is about oil as power, rather than oil as fuel. Control over the Persian Gulf translates into control over Europe, Japan, and China. It's having our hand on the spigot."

The old saying is that hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. But in the case of Sharon Bush, ex-wife of Neil Bush, I don't mind some fury. According to a story linked at buzzflash.com, Sharon Bush will reveal some interesting stories about the Bush family in a book by Kitty Kelley due for release just weeks before the election. The story says, "A new book on the Bush dynasty is set for release just six weeks before November's knife-edge presidential election. The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty by Kitty Kelley will have an initial print run of 500,000, and the main source is believed to be Sharon Bush, the ex-wife of Neil, President George W Bush's wayward brother."

You probably remember that old ditty about the knee bone being connected to the thigh bone and so on. It's a lot like the way our economy and our culture work. The reason it works that way depends on your perspective. For example, people who commit crimes and get warehoused in prisons, according to right-wingers, are just scum and they're just "getting what they deserve."

But if you look at who inhabits the prisons you see that the majority are poor and people of color. Conservatives would just claim that people are poor because they're lazy and if you use the "Bell Curve" explanation you would believe that people of color are intellectually inferior. So what you can do when that's just the nature of things?

I think some other explanations are valid. I think the economy is rigged against the poor and against people of color. There are rotten people of every race, and those people belong in prison when they've committed crimes. But you have to wonder if the way the system is rigged creates criminals out of people who ordinarily would live decent, productive lives. When you're painted into a corner you may have to break the rules and walk over the fresh paint.

Buzzflash.com has a really good link to a column by Betty Baye at courier-journal.com. As she points out, the abuses in Iraq that have caused worldwide outrage are pretty much standard procedure in the American prison system. As she observes, "Sexual humiliation of men and women prisoners here in the U.S. is 'standard operating procedure,' according to [H. Bruce] Franklin, who compiled a book that's hailed as the definitive collection of 20th-Century American prison writing."

Possibly the best website doing media analysis is dailyhowler.com. There's a really astute analysis of the pundits' reaction to Al Gore's speech in which Gore called for the resignations of several top Bush administration officials. The pundits are shocked! shocked! that someone would be so openly critical and say the emperor wears no clothes. The Daily Howler says, "But then, that’s the shape of your post-affluence press corps. Overpaid, pampered, perfumed and powdered, they’re good at one thing–reciting spin. There seems to be little in which they believe, and they seem to get nervous someone shows 'passion.' They know they’re supposed to 'make fun of Gore,' and it bothers them when a speech gets too loud. Empty, vacuous, dumb to the core, they rise up in righteous fury when a speech gets too loud–or too lengthy."

The vast majority of us who work and live paycheck to paycheck have a major interest in voting against Republicans. Republicans stick the shaft into the backs of working people every chance they get. This story at smirkingchimp.com tells of a common sense strategy to get rid of George W. Bush and Republicans: "USUALLY, THE outcome of a presidential election 'depends on the turnout of the Democrats.'

So says Nelson Polsby of Berkeley. For once, I agree with a political scientist. By 'Democrats,' I think Polsby means 'most people' - those with hourly jobs, high-school dropouts, high-school grads, single moms, single dads - anyone at or below the median household income.

But let's narrow 'Democrats' to mean people way down the income ladder, whose voting rate is usually less than 40 percent. Waitresses. Claims adjusters. College kids with loans. If the turnout among these people hits 50 percent, the Republicans are in trouble. Get it up to 60 percent, and Bush won't even come close."

The Atlantic Monthly online has an article talking about what a tragedy the whole Iraq escapade has been. The link is at http://www.theatlantic.com/cgi-bin/send.cgi?page=http%3A//www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2004-05-19.htm. It has been couched in terms like "bringing democracy to Iraq" but the reality is lots of blood on U. S. hands: "Tragically, any good the US could have obtained from bringing democracy to Iraq has been vitiated by the mayhem Wolfowitz's obsession with toppling Saddam Hussein has inflicted on the Iraqi people—the 7,000 to 10,000 civilians killed, the torture victims, the populace so brutalized and humiliated by an occupation to which Wolfowitz appears not to have given a thought that over 80% want us out now. And those are just the short-term, intra-Iraq harms. Long-term, according to the ranking member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Joseph Biden, US interests in the Middle East have been set back a decade by Abu Ghraib."

Paul Krugman writes in The New York Times about George W. Bush's problems in telling the truth. Bush defenders have always tried to portray him as a moral, Christian man, a "straight shooter" in contrast to that wicked Bill Clinton. The truth is that Mr. Bush has always been a liar. The story is linked at http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/28/opinion/28KRUG.html?hp. As Mr. Krugman observes, "The truth is that the character flaws that currently have even conservative pundits fuming have been visible all along. Mr. Bush's problems with the truth have long been apparent to anyone willing to check his budget arithmetic. His inability to admit mistakes has also been obvious for a long time. I first wrote about Mr. Bush's 'infallibility complex' more than two years ago, and I wasn't being original."

This story shows more compelling reasons for why the Bush Cartel needs to be booted from office. All kinds of programs that help you and me are on the chopping block if Bush gets back into the White House this November. The story is from USA Today. The article notes: "The Bush administration has told officials who oversee federal education, domestic security, veterans and other programs to prepare preliminary 2006 budgets that would cut spending after the presidential election, according to White House documents."

Issues of life and death are the most difficult we mortals have to face. I believe a woman has the right to choose an abortion. I believe the death penalty is wrong in most cases. I believe that war is a sometimes necessary evil that should be pursued only as a last resort. And I believe that a terminally ill patient has the right to assisted suicide. It's interesting that conservatives who always howl about "big government" are so ready to use state intervention in so many intimate and intensely personal decisions. An appeals court has made the just and decent ruling on assisted suicide. The story is linked at sfgate.com: "A federal appeals court ordered the Bush administration not to meddle with a state's assisted suicide law, ruling Wednesday that doctors in Oregon may prescribe lethal doses of medication to terminally ill patients."

Do you ever feel inadequate or unworthy because you're not wealthy? We always hear that anyone who is willing to work hard in the United States can make it. Well, maybe there are other factors involved. I found this link at democraticunderground.com. The link is http://home.att.net/~Resurgence/L-richmerit.htm. It's a study showing the primary reasons the rich are rich: "Many conservatives and libertarians defend the current levels of income inequality on the basis of merit. They claim the rich got rich because they worked harder, longer or smarter than the rest. However, researchers have conducted a vast number of empirical studies on what factors contribute to success, and in what proportion. A classic example of one of these studies is the 1972 book Inequality, by Christopher Jencks. (1) And these studies show that the meritocrat's position is not just arguably wrong, but clearly wrong."

Hal Crowther has another powerful column about the Bush Crime Family that is linked at buzzflash.com. As he writes, "This scandal, concurrent with Iran-Contra, was briefly called 'Iraqgate,' and, yes, among the names of those officials implicated you'll find most of the engineers of our current foreign policy. (They also signaled their fractious client, Saddam, that it might be all right to overrun part of Kuwait; you remember what happened when he tried to swallow it all.) Does any of this trouble you? Does it worry you that Dick Cheney, as president of the nefarious Halliburton Corporation, sold Iraq $73 million in oilfield services between 1997 and 2000, even as he plotted with the Wolfowitz faction to whack Saddam? Or that Halliburton, with its CEO's seat still warm from Cheney's butt, was awarded unbid contracts worth up to $15 billion for the Iraq invasion, and currently earns a billion dollars a month from this bloody disaster? Not to mention its $27.4 billion overcharge for our soldiers' food."

Some good news about liberal talk radio. According to The Daily Kos, Air America Radio is a ratings hit. The myth that has been promulgated for several years is that people just won't listen to liberal talk radio. We're too "wonkish," too much like NPR, and so on. I think Air America could be even better. I would like it to be more hard-hitting. Randi Rhodes is the most hard-hitting host I've heard, but I miss Mike Malloy and Peter Werbe.

Now for a personal rant of sorts. A couple of days ago I mentioned the Fresno Police Department. I e-mailed the department about my displeasure about what I feel is a speed trap at the intersection of Dakota and Blackstone. Initially, I thought I didn't get a response. But a fairly polite response came, indicating that the department was trying to lessen traffic fatalties and other good things. I still have to wonder why motorcycle cops have to hide in the bushes with radar guns to accomplish that, but on to my other points.

Then I responded that I thought a warning would be sufficient in the case of someone who had a good driving record and that speeding tickets are not a good way to engender support for the police department. I got back a rather snotty response this time talking about taking "personal responsibility" and then passing on responsibility for an abnormally low speed limit to traffic engineers.

Then there was a rather curt and dismissive statement that the proper venue to resolve the issue was the courts. That's fine if you have lots of money and lots of time and are prepared for an almost inevitable loss. How much chance does an ordinary person stand in court against a police radar gun? And I might add that my message to the department wasn't about resolving this specific case, which is pretty much a fait accompli, but to tell them what a lousy, stinking policy they have, which looks suspiciously like a way to generate revenue for the City of Fresno. I think the Fresno Police Department should take some "personal responsibility."

The quagmire in Iraq shouldn't be a surprise to any policy makers in Washington. Many people were warning about what we see happening now. The Army War College was so accurate it's uncanny. This story is at yahoonews.com: "'Any expansion of terrorism or guerrilla activity against U.S. troops in Iraq will undoubtedly require a forceful American response. Such U.S actions could involve a dramatic escalation in the numbers of arrests, interrogations, and detentions of local Iraqis. While such actions do improve security and force protection, they seldom win friends among the local citizenry. Individuals alienated from the U.S. occupation could well have their hostility deepened and increased by these acts,' the paper warned."

I have a great deal of respect for Amnesty International in its efforts to stop human rights abuses around the world. Anyone who cares about human rights should be concerned that Amnesty has condemned the United States in a new report. The story is linked at commondreams.org: "The United States has proved 'bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle' in its fight against terrorism and invasion of Iraq, human rights group Amnesty International charged in a scathing report."

In a story linked at buzzflash.com the rightful president Al Gore gives a searing indictment of the Bush administration. It feels good to hear the truth: "So today, I want to speak on behalf of those Americans who feel that President Bush has betrayed our nation's trust, those who are horrified at what has been done in our name, and all those who want the rest of the world to know that we Americans see the abuses that occurred in the prisons of Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo and secret locations as yet undisclosed as completely out of keeping with the character and basic nature of the American people and at odds with the principles on which America stands."

Newsday has a story about a survey done by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting about the sources used by National Public Radio. Recently a smug conservative wrote The Fresno Bee and claimed that NPR is liberal. The study indicates otherwise: "Despite a perception that National Public Radio is politically liberal, the majority of its sources are actually Republicans and conservatives, according to a survey released today by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a left-leaning media watchdog."

The attacks on 9-11 and whether they could have been prevented continues to haunt us. A story at counterpunch.org raises some serious questions about the Bush administration's culpability: "The implications of the accumulated evidence is that the Bush administration was complicit in the events of September 11th, and not merely a victim of structural problems or incompetence on the part of the intelligence establishment. In a nuanced discussion of 'complicity', Griffin distinguishes eight possible levels, from the lying about events to maximize political ends, through intentionally allowing expected attacks, to actual involvement in the planning of them."

I like this quote from Michael Lind. Mr. Lind wrote a really good book a few years ago called "Up From Conservatism": "George W. Bush began and ended his speech with a brazen lie.
He claimed that the United States is in Iraq to fight al-Qaida...
The shamelessness is matched only by his contempt for the intelligence of the American people."

"Republicans, we hear, are frustrated by polls showing that the public has a poor opinion of George Bush's economic leadership. In their view, the good news about Mr. Bush's economic triumphs is being drowned out by the bad news from Iraq." So begins Paul Krugman's column in The New York Times. I have to wonder just where this "good economic news" is. I haven't seen it. I still see high unemployment, record trade deficits, record fiscal deficits at home, gas prices that are becoming stratospheric, and grocery prices now going through the roof.

Mr. Krugman summarizes the full record of Bush economics: "The bottom line, then, is that Mr. Bush's supporters have no right to complain about the public's failure to appreciate his economic leadership. Three years of lousy performance, followed by two months of good but not great job growth, is not a record to be proud of."

Remember the tragic story of the U. S. firing on an Iraqi wedding party a few days ago? The military was quick to respond that it wasn't a wedding party, but it seems we've been lied to once again. This story is linked at commondreams.org: " A videotape shows a dozen white pickup trucks speeding through the desert, escorting a bridal car decorated with colorful ribbons. The bride wears a Western-style white bridal dress and veil. The camera captures her stepping out of the car but does not show a close-up."

There are indications the neocons in Washington were manipulated into the Iraq war by Iran. Ahmad Chalabi, once beloved of the Bush administration, may have been a spy for Iran and may have passed on phony intelligence to the United States. The neocons thought they were so brilliant--and they were already arrogant--and look what they've led us into. This story is linked at commondreams.org: "An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday."

In an article linked at makethemaccountable.com we learn of George W. Bush's demeanor just minutes before he announced the war against Iraq. The story deals with footage in Michael Moore's new film "Fahrenheit 911": "He is sitting at his desk in the Oval Office. A makeup woman is doing his face. And Mr. Bush is having a high old time. He darts his eyes about and grins, as if he were playing a peek-a-boo game with someone just off-camera. He could be a teenager goofing with his buds to relieve the passing tedium of a haircut."

Another quick note about Fresno. I e-mailed our crack police department about their despicable speed trap tactics. No response from Fresno's finest. What a surprise!

In his book "American Dynasty" Kevin Phillips quotes "Time" magazine correspondents Michael Duffy and Dan Goodgame on the kind of economic policy you can expect from the Bushes. This quote was about George H. W. Bush, but is just as true of the current Bush: "Bush believes that in economic policy what is good for wealthy investors and business executives is good for America. He believes that taxes must be kept low on capital gains and on top marginal incomes, so that members of the educated and monied elite--which he sees as the creative force in the economy--will have an incentive to risk their capital. . . . He believes, implicitly, that taxes need not be low on the wages or savings accounts of ordinary Americans, who are not a creative force in the economy and who anyway have no choice but to work and to scrimp."

Isn't that a philosophy that just drips with contempt for people like you and me? We aren't a "creative force." Good economic policy, Bush style, is to cut taxes for the very wealthy, to send our military, made of up poor and middle class kids, off to wars to fight for oil for those "creative" monied elites.

CBSnews.com has a story about Bush's dropping poll numbers. What I want to know is how 41% of the poll respondents could approve of the job Bush is doing. He has made most of the world hate us, he has ripped apart the economy, he has worsened education, trashed the environment, slashed civil liberties, and lied about the war in Iraq. What is there to approve? "Growing public concern about the war in Iraq, the coming handover of power to Iraqis on June 30, and the prisoner abuse scandals there, have taken their toll on evaluations of President George W. Bush. And the last few weeks have provided no good news on the domestic front: Americans have lackluster expectations for the economy, and the new worry of rising gas prices. The President’s approval rating has dropped to a new low of 41 percent, and more than six in ten say the country is heading in the wrong direction."

Our Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY is a real doozy. Here is another conservative going into major contortions to justify the torture of prisoners in Iraq. Let's do this a few sentences at a time:

(1) Our torture defender starts with "They [Muslims] upset me when they slaughtered almost 3,000 Americans on September 11 and when they beheaded Nick Berg."

RESPONSE: Nineteen hijackers were responsible for September 11, not all Muslims. Even if you factor in the entire al-Queda network, you're talking about a few thousand people out of millions of Muslims worldwide. Timothy McVeigh was a Catholic. Timothy McVeigh was responsible for the Oklahoma City bombing. Do we therefore blame all Catholics for the Oklahoma City bombing?

(2) "Humiliating terrorists is hardly comparable to prisoner treatment by Saddam Hussein who drilled holes through hands, cut tongues out, cut ears off and lowered bodies into vats of acid."

RESPONSE: As we've noted before, the vast majority of prisoners in Iraq are not terrorists. They were people in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don't know what specific torture methods Saddam Hussein used, but using the Saddam yardstick doesn't seem a very good idea in justifying torture by us.

(3) Our torture enabler quotes Senator Joseph Lieberman about apologies. Lieberman said, "And those who murdered and burned and humiliated four Americans in Fallujah never gave an apology to anybody."

RESPONSE: I don't think Hitler, Mussolini, Josef Stalin, or Pol Pot ever apologized either. It seems that an apology for obvious violations of human rights is a good thing. It separates you from the vile dictators in human history.

(4) "Sens. Ted Kennedy and John Kerry should be apologizing to the family of Nick Berg and to the American people for policitizing the unfortunate event."

Senators Kennedy and Kerry weren't responsible for Nick Berg's death. The conditions that created Nick Berg's death were created by the immoral war launched by George W. Bush. According to people like torture enabler, even legitimate criticism of Bush is "politicizing" a tragedy. If it's "politicizing" to stop an ongoing tragedy, then I say let's politicize away.

Installation of George W. Bush into the White House was the same as letting big business have whatever it wants. An example of this is the story linked at commondreams.org: "President Bush has installed more than 100 top officials who were once lobbyists, attorneys or spokespeople for the industries they oversee." Can you say one hand washes the other?

Commondreams.org has a story about the hot air coming from right-wing radio talk show hosts. You can see much of the rhetoric reflected in The Fresno Bee's DUMB LETTERS OF THE DAY. As the article shows, "Still, for several weeks now, right wing radio talk show hosts, like Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage -- who dominate the airwaves and much of the political debate across the American heartland -- have been hammering home the idea that our enemies are far more inhumane than anyone on the U.S. side."

There is an interesting commentary at latimes.com by Francis Wheen about attacks on the Enlightenment over the past two decades: "Over the last 25 years or so, after two centuries of gradual ascendancy, Enlightenment values of reason, secularism and scientific empiricism have come under fierce assault from a grotesquely incongruous coalition of radical deconstructionists and medieval flat-earthers, New Age mystics and Old Testament fundamentalists."

Also at latimes.com Anthony Lewis calls for the resignation of Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld: "By the normal standards of business or government, Donald Rumsfeld should long since have resigned or been fired as secretary of Defense."

Just a note for Fresno readers. Be VERY CAREFUL if you drive along the corridor from First Street along Dakota to Blackstone. It's an apparent speed trap. You would think the city could devote its resources more effectively than looking to parcel out tickets for minor speeding infractions, but, of course, this is the city of Fresno we're talking about.

In another example of the waste of taxpayer dollars and the contempt for human life we learn that a Halliburton subsidiary in Iraq transported empty trucks across the country, putting the lives of drivers at risk. The story is linked at buzzflash.com:

"A Halliburton Inc. subsidiary sent empty flatbed trucks crisscrossing Iraq more than 100 times this year, putting their drivers and military escorts at risk and handing taxpayers the bill with a little added profit.

The drivers were in peril of insurgent attack while taking empty rigs on the 300-mile resupply run from Camp Cedar in southern Iraq to Camp Anaconda near Baghdad, said 12 current and former drivers for the company."

A story at motherjones.com talks about the middle class has fared under the Bush administration. As if we needed to be told, the results haven't been good. A report from the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy shows who has supported the middle class and who hasn't:

"The Senate, overall, earned a B grade, but the average obscures disparities: while 96 percent of Democratic senators got an A, a quarter of Republicans got an F 'for their failure to support the middle class.'

The House, says the report, 'did a poor job of voting with the middle class,' rating a C overall. Here, too, there were big disparities: 36 percent of House members received an failing grade, while 21 percent got an A. The former group was almost entirely Republican, the latter entirely Democratic."

Business Week online has a story about the working poor, of which I could probably count myself a member (or hovering right around there). In the neoconservative version of America this is as good as it gets: no paid sick days, minimal vacation time, poor or no health insurance, and nowhere to go: "Overall, 63% of U.S. families below the federal poverty line have one or more workers, according to the Census Bureau. They're not just minorities, either; nearly 60% are white. About a fifth of the working poor are foreign-born, mostly from Mexico. And the majority possess high school diplomas and even some college -- which 30 years ago would virtually have assured them a shot at the middle class."

I'm coming to the conclusion that any letter that uses the phrase "liberal media" should automatically get DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY status. But using that criteria in The Fresno Bee would mean multiple dumb letters, so we have to go a bit further. Our DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY takes the position that the media want to get rid of George W. Bush. That's pretty laughable when you consider how the media have pretty much given Mr. Bush a free ride until recently when the torture scandal broke.

Other stories that should have gotten major play have been more or less buried. Think of Mr. Bush's shady business practices, for instance. Everything seems to indicate he broke insider trading laws in the Harken Energy matter, but where's the major investigation by the media? Where is the major investigation into his dealings with Enron? Why hasn't there been a more comprehensive investigation of Mr. Bush's failure to prevent the attack on September 11? Why hasn't more attention been paid to the Valerie Plame leak? Where are the major media in investigating Mr. Bush's suspicious departure from the Texas Air National Guard?

There have been brief stories that have floated like balloons and then blown far far away, but I can only imagine the whirlpool that would be sucking Bill Clinton down for far less.

Our DUMB LETTER claims that the torture at Abu Ghraib was mere hazing and that the story about the hazing is just to disparage George W. Bush. I guess, with that logic, that talking about anything bad in Iraq or the U. S. is just for the purpose of disparaging His Highness.

Our writer, who probably doesn't have a clue about life in the Middle East, calls it the "terrorist world." He goes on to tell us that about the common torture methods there, which are, of course, far more horrific than anything the U. S. has done.

An op-ed piece in The New York Times by ADAM HOCHSCHILD explains some of the torture techniques used by U. S. interrogators in Iraq. These include "sleep management," which is a nice way of saying sleep deprivation, sometimes for days and days. "Water boarding" is holding a prisoner under water until he or she almost drowns and then repeating the process. "Stress positions" is restraining a person into a permanent crouch, such as cuffing his or her hands behind the knees. You can imagine how uncomfortable this would be for a few minutes. Imagine hours and hours.

A story linked at bushnews.com reveals the casualty count of Iraqi civilians to be over 11,000. One candidate for the DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY mentioned 3,000 American deaths on September 11. We have surpassed that total several times over in killing people in a country not even responsible for September 11. The story notes: "This brings to something like 11,500 the number of civilians who have died since March last year. Greater precision is not possible. America and Britain have not only declined to count the number of civilians killed, but have obstructed any attempts to discover the total. The Iraqi Health Ministry tried to collect data on deaths several months ago, but was ordered to stop."

In a story linked at commondreams.org Cynthia Tucker asks a very good question: "How can we expect Iraqis to adopt a democracy like ours and live by its principles when so many of us seem unwilling to live by those same values?" The theme running through right-wing rants lately is that talking about U. S. wrongdoing in Iraq is tantamount to helping the enemy.

I just got my copy of "American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush" by Kevin Phillips. Mr. Phillips summarizes the Bush family history pretty nicely in the preface: "Four generations of dynasty. . . has infused the Bush family's hunger for power and practices of crony capitalism with a moral arrogance and backstage disregard of the democratic and republican traditions of the U.S. government."


Remember the mad cow story from a few months back? The Washington Post has a story that shows how the Bush administration is more interested in protecting the beef industry than in protecting consumers:
"Agriculture Department officials acknowledged yesterday that the agency quietly and improperly allowed millions of pounds of Canadian 'processed' beef into the United States, despite an often invoked ban against importing that type of meat."

Kevin Cloyd talks about how the Right doesn't mind outright theft. The article is at democraticunderground.com.: "The right seems to have few qualms about outright theft under certain circumstances. Rush Limbaugh played his theme song 'My City was Gone' by Chrissy Hynde and the Pretenders thousands of times without ever paying one penny in royalties. No doubt as recovering Oxycontin addict Rush felt morally superior to Chrissy, a recovering heroin addict. Only after a lawsuit was filed did he finally reach an agreement with the author of the song. From the petty cheapness of using a song without paying royalties to the plundering of the Treasury of the United States of more than a trillion of dollars to finance tax breaks to the wealthiest Americans, the right seems not to have any great moral problems with lining their own pockets at the expense of others."

You'd like to believe that slavery is one of those institutions that died a century or more ago. But, according to a story from The Taipei Times linked at americanpolitics.com, slavery is still a reality in the United States: "As many as 17,500 people each year are brought to the US by human traffickers who trap them in slavery-like conditions for forced sex, sweatshop labor and domestic servitude, the US Department of Justice reported on Tuesday."

The Bush administration hasn't been successful at much of anything, but they have succeeded in making most of the world hate us. Now people in Asia are turning against the United States. This story is linked at commondreams.org: "Anti-American sentiment is rising in Asia, in sharp contrast with the dramatic improvement in government-to-government ties between the United States and the region, experts told a forum convened here to gauge America's role in Asia."

A story by David Podvin at makethemaccountable.com reveals the real Colin Powell: "Throughout his career, Secretary of State Colin Powell has been the sacred cow of American politics. Liberals have been reluctant to attack Powell because they perceive him as being that rare Republican who is almost civilized, while conservatives consider him to be a useful racial implement with which to establish their humanitarian credentials among voters. As a result of being spared the harsh scrutiny that usually accompanies political life, Powell is one of the most widely admired men in America."

Things in Iraq, in case you haven't heard, aren't looking rosy. In a story linked at commondreams.org, General Joseph Hoar doesn't see any silver linings: "I believe we are absolutely on the brink of failure. We are looking into the abyss," General Joseph Hoar, a former commander in chief of US central command, told the Senate foreign relations committee.

A lady who worked in the office where I work was fired today. This was not one of those stealth, behind closed doors types of firings, the way they usually happen in the business world. I don't know what precipitated an argument, but she was yelling at the boss lady, "Why are you talking to me this way?" The boss lady screamed, "You're fired!" before the whole office. This kind of thing illustrates the power vacuum between most of us who work for wages and the people who have the money. In case you aren't already aware of just how hard it is to make it on low wages in America, read Barbara Ehrenreich's book "Nickel and Dimed."

All we've got is cotton, and slaves and ...arrogance. -- Rhett Butler in "Gone With the Wind."

Rhett Butler could have been summing up current conservative politics. I was reminded of the Rhett Butler quote when I saw The Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY. Conservative pundit took the typical, smug approach of lecturing us who are "clueless" about international affairs. "Clueless" means objecting to prisoners being tortured, to Halliburton being awarded no-bid contracts, Halliburton being closely connected to Vice President Cheney, and a few other award-winning non-sequiturs such as:

National Public Radio is not middle-of-the-road reporting. First, I wonder, how many people are getting their information about Iraq from National Public Radio? Second, Fox is not middle-of-the-road reporting.

Humiliation is not the same as decapitating an innocent prisoner. No, I suppose not. But, then, there are reports that rape and murder have also occurred with prisoners in U. S. custody. And we should point out, once again, that most of the detainees held by the United States are not terrorists, according to the International Red Cross. But, hey, that's just a minor detail.

Not everyone agreed with previous U. S. wars such as the Revolutionary War, Civil War, Korean War, and World War II. I would point out there was at least some rational reason for those wars. We weren't attacking a virtually helpless country that didn't attack us and had no plans to attack us.

Cathy Young at Boston.com has a good answer to our DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY: "And yes, it's quite true that the humiliation, mistreatment, and in some cases outright torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib did not sink to the level of hacking off heads. That's a reason to pat ourselves on the back? If you find out that a close relative of yours is a rapist, the fact that he's not Jack the Ripper is not exactly cause to feel much better."

A story in Newsweek says the White House's top legal counsel warned two years ago that the Bush administration's treatment of detainees could be considered as war crimes: "May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for 'war crimes' as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue."

An Associated Press story today reveals that U. S. forces fired on an Iraqi wedding party and killed at least forty people, including women and children. The story is linked at buzzflash.com. Aren't you pleased we've "liberated" the Iraqi people? "A U.S. aircraft fired on a house in the desert near the Syrian border Wednesday, and Iraqi officials said more than 40 people were killed, including children. The U.S. military said the target was a suspected safehouse for foreign fighters from Syria, but Iraqis said a helicopter had attacked a wedding party."

The Washington Post has an editorial about those "compassionate" conservatives in the Republican party and the latest outrage in giving big tax breaks to the affluent and virtually nothing to the poor: "THE HOUSE of Representatives plans to take up a bill this week that would provide new tax breaks to families earning as much as $309,000, while doing next to nothing for those at the low end of the income scale. The bill, which could come up as early as today, is the most egregious part of a House tax-cutting spree that altogether would add more than $500 billion to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to estimates by the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center."

In a story linked at buzzflash.com a company called Timken in Canton, Ohio, is slashing 1,300 jobs. Just last year George W. Bush visited the plant as part of the campaign to promote his job growth and tax cut programs. As the article states, "Ironically, it was a little more than a year ago when President George W. Bush visited Timken's world headquarters heralding his tax cut and job creation plan. Now this very company's job cuts will be a major blow to the economy in Canton."

Roger Ebert talks about the new Michael Moore film "Fahrenheit 911" in The Chicago Sun-Times: "The film shows American soldiers not in a prison but in the field, hooding an Iraqi, calling him Ali Baba, touching his genitals and posing for photos with him. There are other scenes of U.S. casualties without arms or legs, questioning the purpose of the Iraqi invasion at a time when Bush proposed to cut military salaries and benefits. It shows Lila Lipscomb, a mother from Flint, Mich., reading a letter from her son, who urged his family to help defeat Bush, days before he was killed. And in a return to the old Moore confrontational style, it shows him joined by a Marine recruiter as he encourages congressmen to have their sons enlist in the services."

Michael Tomasky at prospect.org talks about the collapse of conservative "morality": "But it is clear that conservative moral arguments -- chiefly about Iraq, but on other fronts as well -- are losing their hold on people. It's a shame it took this much mayhem, and a set of photographs, for this to happen. But it is happening, and it couldn't happen to a nicer bunch of people."

You have to conclude, from their history at least, that Republicans love to kill. I've struggled with the death penalty issue, but I have no doubt that executing someone who is mentally ill is reprehensible. Let Texas Governor Rick Perry join the pantheon of fascist killers. This story was in The Los Angeles Times: "A mentally ill killer was executed Tuesday evening after Gov. Rick Perry rejected a parole board's highly unusual recommendation to commute his death sentence or delay the execution."

Is The Washington Post actually going to do some real journalism? We can hope, at least. The Post has a story about George W. Bush and the various people who have aided him in getting into the Oval Office and becoming the worst president in our history. The Post has an interesting graphic about Bush's circle of influence.

The dam that is the Bush administration is cracking and a flood of scandals is beginning to pour through. Now Newsweek magazine has joined the fray in the prisoner abuse scandal. According to the Newsweek story, "Bush along with Defense Secretary [Donald] Rumsfeld and Attorney General John Ashcroft signed off on a secret system of detention and interrogation that opened the door to such methods." Not only are these people unethical, liars, and scumbags, but they're not very bright. In the age of digital cameras and the Internet, how long did they think they could cover this up?

There is a report that during an interview with NBC's Tim Russert an aide to Secretary of State Colin Powell, who was being interviewed, turned the camera away from Powell when the questioning got a little too intense. It turns out the aide who took umbrage is named Emily Miller. Ms. Miller formerly worked for the Bug Man Tom Delay and was a participant in the Florida vote recount charade in the 2000 presidential election.

William O'Rourke observes in The Chicago Sun-Times: "So many disasters in recent history have been the for-want-of-a-nail sort: a chunk of foam falls from the space shuttle's tank and fatally wounds the craft, more or less ending the U.S. manned space program. The FAA doesn't bother to change the hijacking protocol, and 19 men with box cutters and mail-ordered Mace bring down the World Trade Center buildings and smash a wall of the Pentagon. Looters in Iraq do more damage in Baghdad with their hands than all our modern weaponry managed to do, and Rumsfeld declares 'Stuff happens.'"

At buzzflash.com there is an article by Allan Wood and Paul Thompson from the Center for Cooperative Research analyzing the movements of George W. Bush on September 11. They write: "So why, at 9:03 a.m. - fifteen minutes after it was clear the United States was under terrorist attack - did President Bush sit down with a classroom of second-graders and begin a 20-minute pre-planned photo op? No one knows the answer to that question. In fact, no one has even asked Bush about it."

You know that irritating, misleading phrase Republicans like to use about "tax and spend" Democrats? Guess who is raising taxes these days? A op-ed piece at yahoo.news.com shows it's Republicans who are busily raising taxes. The story notes: "The Republican Party, long the champion of less government and low taxes, has backed large boosts in spending and taxes in many states where the GOP controls the legislature, the governor's mansion or both. On average, the largest spending increases from 1997 through 2002 occurred in states where Republicans controlled both branches, according to a 2003 analysis by USA TODAY."

Even Disney can't keep the truth down, according to a story by David Germain that is linked at sfgate.com. Michael Moore's new movie Fahrenheit 9-11" is a big hit at the Cannes Film Festival. Germain writes: " As promised, Michael Moore lit a powder keg Monday at the Cannes Film Festival: His incendiary 'Fahrenheit 9/11' riled and disturbed audiences with a relentless critique of the Bush administration in the post-Sept. 11 world."

Buzzflash.com has an item about Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas speaking to the graduating class of Ave Maria School of Law. In a blast of incredible hypocrisy Justice Thomas told the future lawyers to make decisions by "principle." This is coming from a man who keeps his own principles and obligations to the Constitution very much at bay.

CNN.com has an item about the developing and disturbing humanitarian crisis in Sudan that is getting scant attention from our government. People who are already incredibly poor are having their few possessions stolen or destroyed. They're being killed or raped and children are dying of preventable causes like diarrhea. We can invade a country like Iraq that didn't threaten us, spend billions of dollars there, but the dispossessed in Sudan get little or no help.

The stench of the Bush torture scandal just gets worse. Investigative reporter Seymour Hersh has another article in The New Yorker documenting that torture was a policy initiated by Rummy Rumsfeld. As Hersh writes, "No apologetic testimony or political spin last week could mask the fact that, since the attacks of September 11, President Bush and his aides have seen themselves as engaged in a war against terrorism in which the old rules did not apply."

In a column linked at buzzflash.com Hal Crowther has an eloquent indictment of the Bush Crime Family. Mr. Crowther observes, "The irreducible truth is that the invasion of Iraq was the worst blunder, the most staggering miscarriage of judgment, the most fateful, egregious, deceitful use of power in the history of American foreign policy." Then Mr. Crowther really nails it, "They have betrayed no familiarity with the concept of shame."

Prospect.org has an article documenting the shameful AARP sellout on the Medicare Prescription Drug Bill. This bill was a massive giveaway to the pharmaceutical industry and a major step toward the Republican dream of privatizing health care. AARP started moving toward being the GOP's helpmate when a guy named Bill Novelli became head of the organization. Mr. Novelli had a record of doing things like working for Richard Nixon. Mr. Novelli and Newt Gingrich apparently developed a cozy relationship and the result was the monstrosity the Republican Congress rammed through.

Buzzflash.com has an interesting piece about so-called "echo politics." This is the new strategy of using people called "influentials." They're primarily people who listen to the Limbaughs and the Hannitys and get all their news from Fox News. One lady quoted in the piece was talking about "socialism" if John Kerry gets elected president. These are the wingnuts who write the hateful, distorted letters to the editor and tell Rush Limbaugh "mega dittoes." There are "influentials" on our side too, of course, but we have a ways to go to combat the massive and slick propaganda campaign of the Right.

The Washington Post has an important article about the Bush money machine. According to the article, Bush has raised $296.3 million since 1998. At least one-third of that money, possibly one-half, was raised by 631 people. The really good money raisers are called Pioneers and the super money raisers are called Rangers. Are these people just good patriotic Americans doing their best to make the country better? I'm glad you asked. According to The Post, 104 Pioneers (40%) ended up with a job or appointment in the administration. It brings back memories of the old spoils system. But the most important payoff, according to the article, ". . . entree to the White House and upper levels of the administration." Think Enron, think Halliburton, think pharmaceutical industry.

One of the themes of the Republican attack machine is to brand John Kerry a "flip-flopper." An opinion piece in today's (May 16) Los Angeles Times shows that George W. Bush has done plenty of flip-flopping. One important case is on the issue of terrorism. The author of the piece, Jonathan V. Last, quotes Bush on terrorism: "If any government sponsors the outlaws and killers of innocents, they have become outlaws and murderers themselves." Later, however, Mr. Bush amends his definition of outlaw regimes: "Where terrorist groups exist of global reach, the United States and our friends and allies will seek it out and destroy it." The important phrase there is "global reach." As Mr. Last points out, "The important clause of 'global reach' was added to justify ignoring regional terrorism in Ireland, Spain, Chechnya, the Philippines, and Israel."

The Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY features commentary from a guy who claims he's a Marine veteran of Iraq. He has a problem with anti-war people saying they support the troops. He claims, in essence, that it's impossible to be anti-war and also support the troops. I disagree. War is a political decision. War, as a whole, can be criticized as a political action, the same way you can criticize economic policy, social policy, environmental policy, or any other major action by the government. The troops in Iraq and elsewhere are there because of a political decision. In the case of the Iraq invasion, I think the political decision has been a disaster. The best way to support the troops has been always to oppose a political decision that put them unnecessarily into harm's way.

Our commentator was also upset because he suggests that being anti-war is to suggest that people have died in vain. That has frequently been the case in human history. The hundreds of thousands of Confederate troops in the American Civil War fought for a cause that was morally wrong and that cause was defeated. They died in vain. I would suspect that many of the Germans who fought for Adolf Hitler believed they were fighting for a good and just cause, but they died in vain just the same. Japanese military fighting for the Emperor in World War II undoubtedly believed in their cause, but they died in vain. One hopes that some good will emerge from this mess in Iraq, but that remains to be seen.

In my reading recently I came across mention of a great essay by George Orwell called "Shooting An Elephant." The essay talks about Orwell working in Burma and being responsible for stopping an escaped elephant. As he carries his rifle and follows the elephant he attracts the attention of the local residents, who follow him. It becomes less a case of stopping the elephant than fulfilling a role as a representative of a colonial power. Orwell describes shooting the elephant, which may not have needed to be shot, and the long time it took for the elephant to die. Then he says, "I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys."

That sounds a lot like the United States and our deepening quagmire in Iraq. We have described as ourselves as liberators, as the shining city on the hill, and we have staged an illegal and immoral preemptive war. We have become the torturers we condemned. In a very real sense we have destroyed our own freedom.

Forbes.com has an article talking about the increase in CEO pay. A survey by Corporate Library reveals that in 2003 CEO pay jumped 27%. Contrast that with the average 4.5% increase in pay for most working people.

A link at democraticunderground.com talks about an editor named Andy Byrnes, editor of The Adirondack Mountain Sun. Mr. Byrnes says a contact in Washington told him that George W. Bush signed an "executive finding" last August that authorized the use of torture by employees of the United States government. I don't know the source, or how highly placed the source is, but this is just one thread in the rope that may hang the Bush administration.

Smirkingchimp.com has an article talking about Colin Powell's recent statements, seeming to indicate Secretary Powell's disenchantment with the administration. George W. Bush has claimed that he wasn't aware of torture going on in places like Abu Ghraib, but Secretary Powell seems to contradict that. He's quoted as saying, "We kept the president informed of the concerns raised by the ICRC [International Committee of the Red Cross] and other international organizations.. ."

The Washington Post picked up on a story referenced by David Sirota. The Post rather dismissively talks about Sirota as a "Democratic operative" and doesn't explain the full implications of what Sirota turned up. The story deals with a man named Jonathan J. Bush, an uncle of George W. Bush. Jonathan J. Bush is a top executive at Riggs Bank. Riggs Bank just paid a $25 million fine for violating laws intended to stop money laundering. Worse than that, we're talking about Saudi money that may have been funneled to terrorists. We know that the Saudis are the primary funders of terrorists and we know that the Saudi royal family has close connections to the Bush family. Check out the Craig Unger book "House of Bush, House of Saud."

In an item I spotted at democrats.com Henry Kissinger--Henry Kissinger!--once called Donald Rumsfeld the most ruthless man he ever met. That's pretty amazing commentary coming from a war criminal like Kissinger.

The Nick Berg murder continues to dominate much of the discussion. There are any number of anomalies in this case and I haven't had the time or energy to analyze them all. But lies abound from someone. The Bush administration and its faithful puppies in the press are trying to paint Berg, the victim, as being primarily responsible for what happened to him. Berg was a young man, naive, seeking adventure, we're told. We're told he had a chance to get out of Iraq. With the Bush administration's record, I'm inclined to believe the opposite of what they say.

Right-wingers are only too happy to use Berg's murder to support their case about those evil barbaric Muslims. The murder is also a handy distraction from the prisoner abuse scandal. We're supposed to be more outraged over Berg's murder than what was going on in the Iraqi prisons. I think we're actually capable of being outraged about BOTH things, aren't you? Berg's murder by some thugs doesn't in any way excuse the systematic violation of the Geneva conventions by the United States.

Not long ago an Italian named Fabrizio Quattrocchi was also beheaded by terrorists. Where was the hue and cry about his murder? Oh, I forgot. He wasn't an American, so it's not the same.

The Daily Kos has one of the best summaries of Republican administrations I've seen. Kos writes, "All we have to do is look at the country today to see the 'Republican message.' Recession. War. Joblessness. Corporate corruption. Divisiveness. Loss of international prestige. Failures in the War on Terror. Torture. All topped off with cowboy rhetoric."

A sobering article at buzzflash.com talks about the hatred within the military for Rummy Rumsfeld. The article talks about the military coup of 2012. It's very scary when you think about the scenario in the book "Seven Days in May" coming to fruition. We have to get Bush out of office, preserve our constitutional system, and avoid a military takeover. Civilian control has worked pretty well for the life of this country, more or less, until this corrupt, inept administration. Let's get back to our traditions.

Our Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY gets ***. Conservatives are taking the approach of saying our torture isn't as bad as Saddam's torture. You know, Saddam had those rape rooms, put people into wood chippers, and so on. I have no illusions about Saddam being a swell guy, but I have to wonder, once again, how much is true of what we've been told. In any case, murder, rape, and torture is no more acceptable if done under the red, white, and blue than it was under Saddam's regime.

There's nothing like a "website not responding" message after you written a column to really make your day. You don't know if the blog will post, or if you should try again, or if you'll do something and get exactly the same result. Yesterday I had the same blog, more or less, publish three times.

In case the same thing happens today, let's just be brief. The Fresno Bee DUMB LETTER OF THE DAY comes from a True Believer. True Believer doesn't believe Bush lied about WMDs in Iraq because the lie would be found out.

People who lie consistently don't really care if their lies will be found out. And when you have a compliant media and, worse, unethical media types like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity to put a spin on everything, you really don't care about lying. After the right-wing spin machine gets through, you don't recognize the truth anymore. Black has been transformed into white. White is transformed into black. Just look at the recent treatment of John Kerry and his sterling record in Vietnam. Kerry was made to appear the liar, the miscreant, and Bush, who dodged service in Vietnam, comes out smelling like the proverbial rose.