Long national nightmare ended?

Has it? I don't know. The fact that enough people rejected the current political trend and punished the intransigence of the Republican leadership is a good thing. It shows that we're still awake here and, while slow to react, eventually will.

But already the political discourse is changing. Democrats have a real opportunity to show that they can be sane, rational and fair, which is what the electorate hopes they will be, I'm guessing. The last bunch just kept blowing sunshine up our proverbial until people finally saw them to be the fantastical creatures they are, and sent them packing. How awesome to see Rick Santorum sent home with 38% of the vote. Little disturbing that Corrupt Conrad (Burns) ran as close as he did after all his malfeasance, but at least he lost. And George Allen, oh that was awesome. One less blowhard to worry about running in 08.

The best of it was, for the most part, the Reps secret weapon, scurrilous attack ads didn't save them. Maybe in the Tennessee Senate where racist appeals seem to work, but no where else. They lost all the other toss up seats in the Senate. Maybe the end is in sight for these ugly attacks. ;-) Okay, I know better than that.

But maybe some balance has been restored. Can't wait for January.

Wow, I missed all of October

Got so busy at work that I missed all of October here at the ol' blog. Shame. Thought I'd check back in with a link to Keith Olbermann's latest attack on Bush and his ilk. It's a nice counter punch to the attack on Kerry's comments on getting stuck in Iraq in you don't get enough education. Of course, the right wing distortion machine claimed Kerry meant only ignoramuses join the military, when Kerry was talking about George Bush. Unfortunately, the mainstream media covered the right wing spin instead of stepping back and seeing exactly what Kerry meant. A friend of mine even sent me an email in disgust that Kerry had blown the election.

Whoa! No he didn't. Polls out today show Senator Macaca, Talent, and Dewine trending downward along with Tom Kean in NJ. Only Corker in Tennessee had good numbers. Zogby had him up 10 and Rasmussen only 1. Every other Republican Senate candidate is trailing. House polls look good too and 70 percent in a Time poll said Bush had no strategy to win in Iraq. The Kerry thing is a manufactured blip that shows both the power of the right wing distortion machine, and the desperation of Bush whose trying to rerun the 04 campaign by beating on Kerry and mentioned gay marriage. That's an attempt to get the base out volunteering and working hard for Rs in this campaign, as Rove hopes turnout with help the Rs eke out a save Tuesday.

So don't sweat it too much as that story if off the front pages and the Rove noise doesn't seem to be working that well this time around.

Senate Caves to President

The Senate passed the President's detention and torture bill. 34 brave Senators (32 Dems, Jeffords (I) and Chaffee (R), voted against this fear-based betrayal of our Constitution. Olympia Snow didn't vote. All the other Republicans voted yes along with 12 shameful, cowardly Democrats, some voting to immunize themselves against Republican attacks in the next 6 weeks (Menendez, Nelson, Nelson, Stabenow). Others live in Republican leaning states (Johnson, Landrieu, Pryor, Rockerfeller, Salazar). Can't figure Lautenberg from NJ or Carper from Delaware. Lieberman was predictable.

Apparently these spineless wonders don't think we can be safe while observing international standards against torture (which we helped write) and Constitutional standards that are the basis of the liberty they claim they are protecting. Of course we CAN be safe and free. This is all about power and the shameless fear mongering needed to seize it.

If Dems do win a majority in the Senate, where will these dirty dozen stand then?

The Real Path to 9/11

Keith Olbermann puts the lie to Bush administration claims that they couldn't have done more to stop 9/11. They examine the evidence in this report. Catches quite a few of the administration officials in bold faced lies. Enjoy.

Terroristic Threats, Olbermann, NY Post

Never mind that we live in a time when right wing wackos make terroristic threats against commentators for, uh, making comments, this story is a sad commentary on the state of the press in this country. The NY Post, a Rupert Murdoch flagship paper, did a hatchet job on Keith Olbermann when Keith reported to police that he had received a mailed threat with white powder in it. The mocking story is a sad episode but as Keith explains, it just gets sadder and sadder.

Email to Harry Reid

Will Harry Reid and the Democrats in the Senate poised to let the CIA-torture (I mean interrogation) bill pass without a fight, I sent this email to mister Reid:

No topic for Iraq or Terrorism? Odd. (I had to select a topic. Homeland Security was the closest I could find.)

Dear Senate staffer (as I'm sure the Senator will never hear of this message much less see it):

As pointless as the gesture may be, it is my only recourse in our political system. I am writing to ask the Democratic Party's leader in the Senate to not only oppose the President's torture, unlimited detention and kangaroo court bill, but to filibuster it.

No Democrat should vote for this abomination to the Constitution. No American should support it. What the President has done in the past with his CIA interrogation program is wrong and un-American. This bill, which can only be called a compromise in the sense the Senate caved in, not only authorizes torture, but exonerates the president, his staff and the CIA of past incidents.

This is outrageous. Dems should stand united against it and filibuster. Far from hurting you at the polls, it will show principle and spine that grass-roots Democrats like me are longing to see you demonstrate. Rove and his minions will attack you as weak on terrorism whatever you do. At least stand for principle so that your base can know you can be trusted to stand against tyranny and other bad ideas. If you vote for this, what is your message to voters in November? We don't have the guts to stand against the President, but vote for us anyway, because we're not quite as bad as the Republicans?

This is wrong. Say so. Go on the offensive. If you do not want to fight for Democratic ideals, then resign. The grassroots need leadership. Provide it. Oppose this President and his extremist moves, or resign so we can find someone that will.

Tom Chamberlain

Clinton Fights Back, Olbermann Kick Mas Butt

By now you've most likely heard about the Chris Wallace interview with Bill Clinton on Fox News Sunday. The cowardly Wallace said email from his viewers compelled him to ask why Clinton didn't do more to shut down Osama, again forwarding the proposition or at least implication that 9/11 was Clinton's fault. That's it, hide behind your viewers, Chris.

Bill then launched into a spirited and passionate defense of his policies toward Al Quaeda and lashed out at the ridiculous ABC show Path to 9/11 and at his neo-con critics in general. The right wingnuts have dubbed it crazed. You be the judge and watch it here.

Keith Olbermann then came to Clinton's defense. See that here.

But what kills me is this: Neo-Cons are so sure Clinton should have been able to get Osama when George Bush, with the whole world behind him, and twenty thousand troops, basing rights in countries that never would have provided them before 9/11, failed. And is still failing. But Clinton, with a balky CIA and FBI, a hostile Congress, no basing rights anywhere in the region, should have taken Osama out. Should have been easy. Huh. But then again, the right wingnuts have never let logic and reason come between them and their arguments.

More Olbermann Butt Kicking

Mr. Keith Olbermann is laying it on the President, again. The administration (Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld) have said that dissent is helping the terrorists, and that certain "thoughts" are unacceptable. Not actions. Thoughts and expressions of those thoughts. Keith has a response.

Most Skip Clinton-bashing ABC mini-series

Only 13 million watched that anti-Clinton screed on ABC last night.

See the story here.

5 Years Later... Conspiracy Theories Debunked

Here's a great link to an NPR prgramn that had the Popular Mechanics editor debunking all the conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11, in case the sheer improbability and contradictions inherent in them aren't enough.

Enjoy

Dueling fiction

No doubt by now you've heard of the ABC miniseries called The Path to 9/11, I was watching a football game last Saturday on ABC when I saw an ad for it. It claimed to be based on the 9/11 commission report. I thought that would be interesting viewing. But it turns out that it was written by right wingnut Cyrus Noratesh and based not on the commission report, which was compiled by folks honestly trying to get at the truth, but on right-wing fictions arguing that we are too free to be safe.

I was going to make a plea for sanity, as the post title suggests, and argue that we need to end the era of dueling fictions from the right and left that leaves us scratching our heads and trying to decide which is true. This nonsense does not serve us well. It is polarizing and dangerous, because it makes us suspicious of each other and immediately discount arguments that run counter to our inclinations. What we need is to focus on facts, things that really happened, and then have rational discussions from there. Dueling Joe Goebbels will not do.

I was gonna condemn slanted presentations and fabrications on either side, whether it be from Michael Moore or the yahoo who wrote this ABC nonsense. Actually, I hope I just did that. But as more and more facts come out about this miniseries, it becomes clear that this monstrosity needs to be vehemently condemned. And it is being condemned, roundly, by the folks that are being slandered like the Clinton administration, but also by the 9/11 commission members and counsels, and conservatives like Bill Bennett, not to mention regular people who've responded in huge numbers to protest.

Why? Allegedly, it contains a scene in which a CIA operative in Afghanistan has Bin Laden in his sights and is begging Sandy Berger, Clinton's NSA, for permission to take him out. Berger doesn't give it. Bin Laden lives and a few years later, almost 3000 die on 9/11. Bad Clinton administration, right?

Only that scene is just a right-wing fever dream. It never happened. We didn't have any CIA operatives anywhere near Bin Laden's camps. No one disputes that. Plus, former CIA officials say that Clinton approved every operational request they ever made concerning Bin Laden. Remember the missile attack on his camps following the embassy bombings in Africa? How does one square that attack with a reluctance to act on Clinton's part? If Bin Laden hadn't, on a whim, gone to Kabul that night instead of back to the camps, he'd likely be dead.

Further, and more perniciously, this show argues that Constitutional concerns made us too timid to act, implying that Bush's disregard for Constitutional safeguards is what's needed. We need to be less free to save freedom. Huh?

Interestingly, this "argument" is coming just as Bush is trying to scare the crap out of us again so that we won't kick his corrupt and radical allies out of the house and senate. He needs warrantless surveillance to keep us safe. Nonsense. No one has ever made a compelling argument that oversight of spying programs would compromise them. They say FISA court oversight is too slow and cumbersome even though it allows the spies to seek warrants 72 hours AFTER they spy, so they are not hampered in the heat of the moment. How is that burdensome?

No one says we shouldn't watch the bad guys, or act against them pre-emptively. All we ask is that there be oversight and that the President not claim dictatorial perrogatives to wage war. We can be safe and free. Paranoia is never an engine for sane and rational thought. We must never become a nation that thinks secret prisons, coerced confessions and secret evidence is okay. Those are precisely the things we rebelled against. Defeating the extremists that threaten us is not enough. We must do it the American way, always with respect to inalienable rights. The constitution says no "person" shall be denied due process, not no "citizen" or "American". If we forget that, we are not America anymore. What's right isn't always what's easy, but it is what separates us from other nations and makes us a good example of governance.

Anyway, back to the original theme. Can we please end this era of dueling propaganda and demonization and start acting like we're all in this together?

Clash of Civilizations

Interesting debate on Al Jazeera about why the Muslims are having problems. Go here

Keith Olbermann smacks Rumsfeld down

The admin is laying on the Iraq rhetoric thick. Don Rumsfeld said those who criticize the war are morally or intellectually confused. I would have laid into that nonsense here has Keith Olbermann not done so so articulately on Countdown on MSNBC. Here's the link to the transcript on his blog, but I highly recommend you watch the video, whose link is on the right side of the blog page. Since Keith has taken off the gloves, he's been perhaps the most intelligent and lucid critic of and commentator on this administration. Check him out.

It's not the drugs, and it's not senility--Nice Rant

My friend Lana sent me this. Don't know who Inland is. A blogger I suppose. But I thought it interesting especially since folks have sent me the dry-drunk and brain-disease theories before. Here's a new take on why Bush sounds like an idiot most of the time. Take it for what it's worth.

"Why Bush Can't Talk:

It's not the drugs, and it's not senility.
by Inland
Aug 24, 2006

Bush's press conferences and unscripted remarks are so painfully bad, it spurs the question: what is his PROBLEM?

People have remarked that he wasn't that way when he was the Governor of Texas, and therefore theorize that he has deteriorated due to premature senility or a lifetime of drug use.

I think the reason George Bush stumbles, ends sentences midway through to jump to another thought, rattles off non-sequiturs, and makes up words, is that George Bush is breaking under the strain of lying almost all the time about almost everything.

It's because lying is hard work, and he's trying to hold several different false scenarios in his head while not blurting out what he's really being told behind closed doors.

Bush looks like a person stumbling over the easiest things, but in fact, he's not a person unable to relate simple facts. He's a person trying hard to NOT relate simple facts. He's a person trying to avoid the pitfalls of saying what's on his mind, and trying to keep his stories straight.

As I lawyer, I see people trying to construct false scenarios all the time. But you don't remember lies the way you remember truth. It's easier to remember how fast you were driving than it is to remember the exact lie you told the police officer about how fast you were driving. People who lie have to put a lot of energy into keeping their lies consistent with each other and, well, consistent with undeniable facts.

My grand theory is that Bush's entire presidency, from the beginnings of his campaign until now, is based on his taking public stances that at least obscure goals and positions shared secretly. He and his Roves have always accepted that the majority of the country wouldn't want him if they knew the promises he made to the right-wing Christians and the rich, if they knew the actual effect of his tax cuts, if they knew the evidence behind environmental damage, etc. Now he's hiding the entire foreign policy fiasco: whom he is holding incognito, whom he's spying upon, what he knew before 9/11, and many other secrets.

If you had so much to hide, you too would only use canned speeches, carefully vetted by speechwriters who don't know the real story anyway, to keep it all straight, and you would stumble and hem and haw in all other circumstances.

Which explains why his problem wasn't so evident as Texas Governor. Bush's brand of crony capitalism and piestic christianism went down well in Austin, at least for a governor with no real constitutional authority: Bush only had to repackage himself for the national race, essentially submerge his real persona and his real ideas and his real goals and pretend to a compassionate, not-asshole conservativism.

You know how they tell you, on a date, just to be yourself? And how you think, no, I don't want her to meet that guy just yet? Bush and Rove have been saying that for six years, and Bush has been schizo, trying to send signals and winks and nods to his fundamentalist Christians and send money to his corporate sponsors while slinging a load of bull at the nation. Add to that all the bodies he has to keep buried, and you've got a guy who is in a state of flop sweat every time he has to open his mouth in public.

Bush isn't senile or drug addled. He's a lying asshole. And it's hard work. Only truly gifted and intelligent sociopaths like Rove and Cheney can rattle it off.

Bush can't."

Hypocrites

Ted Stevens, that conservative believer in smaller government, also known as the king of pork has been caught with his pants down. Check this out, from Howard Dean:

"Hundreds of billions of tax dollars go to private contractors every year -- a lot of it needless pork barrel spending. There's a bill to create a public database of every federal contract, but a Senator who famously fought for a "bridge to nowhere" won't let it come up for a vote. Demand accountability now and we'll deliver your message to Republican Sen. Ted Stevens.

With your help, we can make real change. Please join me by signing this petition:

http://www.democrats.org/page/petition/publicaccount/fturab

Thanks!"

It's our money, but he doesn't want us to know where it's going. Sounds fair.

Pluto and the Open Mind

This post harkens back to and is related in spirit to the Sunday post about the tyranny of moral certainty. Today it was announced that astronomers voted to declare the Sun has 8 planets, an untold number of dwarf planets and an other category, which includes asteroids and comets. Pluto, the object formerly known as a planet, is now a dwarf planet (perhaps it prefers to be called "little planet"). And that is how it should be.

How is this related to the earlier post? It makes my point that new data and evidence lead to new understandings, and that science is not about tradition, history or sentimentality. It is about reason. It has long since made sense to include Pluto with the other planets as it is more and more obvious that it more like the other small icy objects of the Kuiper belt than the 8 main planets. All this declaration (which really changes nothing important) does is recognize that fact and that is why it's significant. Pluto was made a planet because astronomy in 1930 didn't know any better. Now we do, and so astronomers have made the correction, and that should lead to a better understanding of the solar system in the future.

The sentimentality of the original planetary definition (trying to preserve Pluto's place as a planet proper) made little sense and was roundly rejected by the main body of the group. Bravo, and a good object lesson to the general public about scientific integrity.

War on Trial

Army Lt. Ehren Watada refused to deploy to Iraq with his Striker brigade recently, because, he told his superiors, the war is illegal and he had a duty to refuse to serve. He offered to go to Afghanistan, but was refused the compromise. Why? The Army argues that soldiers don't get to make that determination and if they did, Army discipline would unravel. He is going through an Article 32 hearing now, as an Army judge has to decide whether Watada should go to trial in a Court Martial.

If it does go to trial, Watada and his defense intend to put the war itself on trial. Go here for more info.

The Tyranny of Moral Certainty

It is distressing to me that I even have to write this.

The title of this post is self evident. Dogmatic, ideological loyalty must lead to tyranny. Either you are an adherent or an apostate. And the apostate inevitably becomes seen as evil or in league with it.

And yet many Americans have been seduced by the siren song of "moral certainty," as the neo-cons have labeled it. Good vs. Evil. We are good. Our enemies, evil. Everything we do is good, by definition. Everything they do is evil, by definition. That is why we can torture people, or at least hold them indefinitely without charge in maddeningly cruel solitary confinement. We are good and they are evil. We are protecting the good by any means necessary. And if you question this, you are abetting evil and standing against good. By definition.

That's the problem. Contradictory facts from the real world have no place to go if the mind is closed and the question already settled. Reason based on rational synthesis of the facts has no place. Minds cannot change if they are closed. Nor can they even understand the alternative way of thinking. Dogmatists believe in big unchangeable truths and the little truths that every day life reveals therefore have to fall in line to support the big idea already affirmed. The Earth is the center of the universe. Period. Never mind that evidence from new technology (telescopes) and mountains of data from observation required more and more tortured explanations to make the two fit. Some of these were admittedly pretty remarkable in their cleverness. But those who we free from the big truth were able to come up with a much simpler explanation (the Earth and other planets revolve around the Sun). One proponent, Galileo Galilei was called an agent of the devil for this heresy and tortured into recanting.

Even to this day, people reject ideas only because they conflict with a big truth. Public radio quoted a man as saying, "science is about facts, and evolution is only a theory, so it should not be taught as a fact." His mind can't even understand the alternative way of thinking. Science isn't about facts. Science rejects the idea of Dogma and Big Truth. Instead it focuses an open, sometimes called skeptical, mind on the little facts, tries to come up with a explanation that fits the facts best, and then makes predictions that can be tested and either confirmed or denied. Further, these test must be repeatable. So the tester has to reveal his methodology as well as the resultant data so that others can scrutinize it and evaluate it. That way, flaws can be found and corrections suggested. Scientific theories therefore are not written in stone, but are simply the best explanation given what we know at the moment. If new technologies bring about new discoveries and the new data doesn't fit the old explanation, scientists propose new theories that fit both the old and new data. Newtonian physics worked great for it's time, but as astronomy and physics revealed new data about the very large and massive parts of our universe that defied Newtonian predictions, it was clear his mechanics had limitations. Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, superseded Newton because it explained the old AND the new data better than Newton's theory. That doesn't mean Newton was wrong. NASA used Newtonian physics to make all the calculations necessary to send Apollo astronauts to the moon and back. It just didn't work on the truly massive scales we ecountered after Newton's death.

The idea is that nothing in science is the final word. You don't have to believe in science. You can demand and get an explanation for any scientific theory. And you must remain open to new data and be ready to accept new explanations that explain things better. Despite what the dogmatist say, there is no alternative scientific theory to evolution. In fact, the new discoveries in genetics are fully consistent with Darwin's ideas. Intelligent Design is merely dogma dressed in pseudo science. It is merely an untestable assertion and therefore is not science.

This is basic. Every student should understand this. The fact that they don't is an indictment of our educational system. Science is not magic. It is not the proclamation of someone called a scientist. It is simply a system of observation, prediction and repeatable testing. It must convince the open minded. Democracy requires that our political discourse follow those same ideals. Truth needs to come from the bottom up and not from on high. Hitler was morally certain. So was Stalin and Mao and Franco and Mussolini. That is the way of the tyrant. A democrat has to be willing to adapt to the truth as it is revealed to his or her open mind.

So questioning policy rationales cannot be evil. Good rationales must have good evidence behind them and should convince the open mind. Indeed, questioning is exactly how we find the weak rationales and root them out. Moral certainty is an illusion and worse, it can only lead to tryrany, which I would argue to your open mind, is bad.

More Good News from Iraq

Well, the Austin Illiterate Spaceman probably won't print my letter to the editor because it prefers to give space to regurgitated, uninformed drivel like the letters I responded to. At least it's published here, where hundreds, nay, thousands, will never see it.

More good news from Iraq that you won't hear on the mainstream media. The sectarian violence that has wracked that poor country since February has created 180,000 internal refugees. That's people forced from their home inside their own country. 20,000 registered in the last two weeks of July alone. Mixed areas are being homogenized in what one could imagine is the prelude to a partitioning of Iraq. Lucky the Coalition is there to provide stability, huh? We can't leave or there will be chaos, just like what is happening now. Brilliant logic. We are powerless, but we can't admit that. We're like a pathetic semi-functioning addict in that regard.

I want America back! Don't you?

My letter to the Austin American-Statesman

Here is the text of my letter to the Statesman in response to letters decrying Lieberman's defeat, dissent being unpatriotic, and Cheney claiming Connecticut's decision helped Al Quaeda:

Patriotism is Dissent
Re: Kevin Birdsell's and Rick Hill's letters to the editor, Tuesday, August 15, I thought Dick Cheney's comments about Ned Lamont's defeat of Joe Lieberman ties them together nicely. To paraphrase, Cheney said that by defeating Lieberman, Connecticut voters helped Al Quaeda. It is that kind of outrageous charge that folks who oppose the war object to. It is nonsense and polls show more and more Americans-Democrat, Republican and Independent-are seeing it as such, Mr. Birdsell. (By the way, a fact, by definition, is not arguable.)

Joe Lieberman wasn't rejected by his party because he was strong on defense as Mr. Hill says. He was rejected because he supported a war of adventure against a country that had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks, and continued to support it long after it was irreparably botched. The US military presence has long been irrelevant to how things will turn out in Iraq. The 300 bodies that show up daily in Baghdad morgues aren't victims of insurgents. They are victims of sectarian assassinations our military is powerless to stop. The situation there is in Iraqi hands now and we are pretty much irrelevant.

That's why we want the troops home as soon as possible. They're presence can no longer help matters and only makes them targets. Their absence won't fundamentally change the balance of power there, where militias are acting with impunity even now.
Instead of supporting the Iraqi adventure, Joe should have stood with other Democrats who pointed out we should finish the job in Afghanistan. You know, the place where the actual perpetrators of 9/11 were sheltered. Maybe if we had focus our efforts on wiping out Al Quaeda and the Taliban, Osama bin Laden and Mullah Omar would be dead or captured, and then we could have disarmed the warlords and controlled the opium trade. Instead, those criminals are strangling that poor country.

The Iraq war, far from making us safer, is a recruitment poster, swelling the ranks of radicalized young Muslims who want to kill us. Democrats wanted their leaders to be the loyal Opposition. Instead, Joe was a blind follower. That's why he was defeated. That democracy in action. McGovern has nothing to do with it, Republican propaganda aside.

We used to be the nation the world looked to for unbridled, even cockeyed, optimism. This administration and Congress has made us purveyors of the fear and smear propaganda campaign. Patriots should stand in opposition, remove these scoundrels, and get ready for the long hard work necessary to repair the damage they have done.

Here's the text of the letters I responded to:

The Fall of the Democrats
When U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman lost the Connecticut primary, the Democratic Party became the official anti-war party. The last time it wore this mantle, George McGovern was soundly defeated by President Nixon in the 1972 election.

A Democrat who supported a strong defense, Lieberman could stand shoulder-to-shoulder with other great Democrats such as Hubert Humphrey and Ed Muskie. Now after 30 years of public service, Lieberman has been kicked to the curb and the party has been taken over by the MoveOn.org fringe. President Lyndon B. Johnson and Sam Rayburn would roll over in their graves if they could see what has happened to this once-proud party.

RICK HILL

Buda

Free speech goes both ways
I am amazed when I hear on the radio, watch on television and read in the American-Statesman liberals and people who oppose this war using the unpatriotic card.

I did not realize exercising First Amendment rights is a one-way street. Somehow it is OK to call this president a liar, racist, war-monger, etc. But if a Republican dares to question their facts, opinions, etc., well, we must be questioning their patriotism.

If someone wants to question patriotism, they have every right to do that, too.

Quit crying about your patriotism being questioned, because that person has the same rights that you do to call President Bush a liar, racist and war-monger.

KEVIN BIRDSELL

Hutto

Great Rant on Lying Liars

They lie! They lie!

Check it out!

Post Lieberman-Lamont Spin Cycle

Didn't take long for Republican spin (propaganda) machine to get into gear to explain to the mainstream media what the Lieberman primary loss means. The Dems are soft on defense, isolationist, McGovern-like.

Ken "Larry Bud" Mehlman and Senate Majority Leader wannabe Mitch McConnell yapped up as soon as it was clear Lonely Joe lost and will now run in a new party with exactly one candidate-him (yep, they formed a new party called "Connecticut for Joe Lieberman" so that he won't be running as an individual against his former party.) The press, of course, dutifully reported it. Op ed columnist have taken up the talking points too. I read a particularly funny one in the Daily News. "Win for the Whackado Wing." Ha ha. Funny, but nonsensically off base.

How does opposing a war of adventure in Iraq make anyone soft on defense? We weren't acting defensively, as the evidence has shown. This was a nutty neo-con adventure in introducing democracy in the middle east at the point of a gun (or several hundred thousand). McConnell said the Dems have forgotten the lessons of 9/11. Huh? This wasn't about striking back at terrorists. There weren't any in Iraq before the war. Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. Only evolution/global warming deniers can deny this too. (Why lets facts get in the way of beliefs?)

This was the opposition party punishing an incumbent for not opposing this neo-con nonsense. Why do Hannity, O'Reilly, Limbaugh et al love Lieberman? Because he's moderate? No. Joe Biden is a moderate and they hate him. It's because Joe is onboard with neo-con extremism and double speak. Things are better in Iraq, really and they are getting better. Saddam isn't ethnically cleansing neighborhoods any more. The Iraqis are doing it themselves. Democracy in action. Bahgdad's morgue is a veritable Thor's Goblet of corpses right now. The finish burying yesterday's 300 dead and when they turn around, the morgue is full with the 300 newly murdered from today. And these aren't victims of the insurgency. They are the handiwork of Sunni and Shia death squads--some of whom operate with in the security forces that we are handing control of the country to.

Joe got this terribly, terribly wrong. The people see this. (CNN's new poll shows 61% against the war and over 50% saying we should start getting out.) They voted that way. That's all this election means. Democracy in action. Nothing more.

For those of you who argue that pulling out now is defeatist or will necessarily lead to chaos in Iraq, I say this: We removed Hussein. Mission Accomplished. We never intended to colonize Iraq, so how is leaving admission of defeat? Chaos has already gripped Iraq and we can't stop it. We are irrelevant there. Iraq will stabilize and moderate or devolve into 3 ethnic states whether we are there or not. If we couldn't prevent it up to now, how will staying any longer change that? Hmmm. What we are doing isn't working, so doing it for ten more years will fix it. Curious logic at best. Insanity at worst.

Liberal Inquisition, or Democracy in Action?

NY Times Conservative Columnist David Brooks, who sometimes makes a lot of sense, wrote a real head scratcher the other day. He called the insurgent campaign of Ned Lamont to unseat Joe Lieberman a "liberal inquisition." Huh?

He whines that liberals in the Democratic party are pillorying Lieberman for one issue alone-the Iraq war-and abandoning an otherwise good democrat. Hmmm. Folks in an opposition party are upset with a member of that party because said member abandoned opposition to the President on THE most important of issues, waging war, and that seems odd to anyone with a brain?

George Will has said the same thing but I've been scratching my head about him for sometime and didn't feel compelled to write. But enough voices have joined this curious chorus, Brooks' straw being the one breaking the camel's back, and I couldn't hold my tongue (or fingers!) any longer. I know they don't get this, but many of us saw this war as trumped up and adventurous. Many felt lied to and manipulated. Many see it as a tragic and stupid blunder. Many expected the leaders of the opposition party to OPPOSE it. Democrats don't have the right to hold a guy in the Democratic party responsible for abandoning them and instead joining and then steadfastly defending the madness?

I think they do, and I think it's called democracy. The people of his party in Connecticut are fed up with him and are saying, "you don't represent me anymore." That is their right. Hell, it's their duty. He may run as a independent when he loses, and he may well win the general election. (That's what the poll gods say.) But he will never represent Democrats again. Democrats are deciding that. It's the democratic way. And there is nothing wrong with that.

Nothing to do with Nothing

But it's fun!

Jeez, A whole Month?

Yep. Haven't been prolific, have I?

Oh well. After all nothing is happening. Mideast is quiet. Democracy and calm are the rule in Iraq. We are one big happy family at home as rationality and common sense rule over fear and superstition. What do I have to write about?

Let the Conspiracy theories begin...

It was reported yesterday that Enron Cheat-in-Chief, Ken Lay died of a massive coronary in Colorado while on vacation. How convenient. The 64-year old, who faced spending the rest of his life in prison, "died" while on "vacation" in or near Aspen. Oh, come on. Any good conspiracy theorist will tell you he obviously faked his death while in a small community where his family could buy off the authorities, have the old man declared dead and then slip out of the country with his still unrecovered stolen millions while the feds dally about how to collect them. You get a homeless dead guy to stand in, cremate him and no one is the wiser, as long as the Aspen authorities keep quiet. Mark my words. Kenny boy ain't dead.

It's worse than you think...

Salon's War Room sez Iraq is in worse shape than the media (which is biased, doncha know) is telling us. This according to Newsweek reporter, Rod Norland. See the whole story here. The Whitehouse has done a good job of cowing the media and the military is now reviewing stories of reporters that want to embed to weed out those it thinks have been critical, he says. They ask reporters, what their "slant" is, he says. What are they? Political officers like in the good ol' USSR military? Sigh.

Ann Coulter--Plagiarist

Ann's new book is full of unattributed material from other sources, claims the New York Post, that liberal bastion of Rupert Murdoch's Newscorp. See today's War Room on Salon for the full story. Her lame response in her syndicated column was the Post is harassing her (without mentioning the plagiarism charges) and saying it has sunk to "tabloid status." War Room contributor Tim Grieve gently reminds Ann that the Post IS a tabloid. Always had been.

Gore got it right

Though corporate hacks are trying the "big noise" theory in attacking Al Gore and his presentation on global warming portrayed in the movie "An Inconvenient Truth," the press is doing a good job of cutting through the haze and treating the movie fairly. The AP contacted 100 climitologists considered the tops in the field (including those critical of Gore) and asked their opinion of the facts in the movie. The 19 who've seen the movie and responded gave Gore high marks, even while pointing out small factual errors or oversimplifications. Here's a link to the full story.

Plus, the press is pretty good at exposing the oil company hacks such as S. Fred Singer, who lies about his ties to big oil. They are actually researching these guys' backgrounds and telling it like it is. Maybe the press is indeed getting their teeth back.

Desperate, Aren't they? Part 2

The pathetic grasping of the Republican congressional leadership continues. Rick Santorum, the soon to be defeated Senator from Pennsylvania and Peter Hoekstra, the chairman of the House Intelligence committee urged National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to release a report that 500 weapons containing Sarin or mustard gas had been found in Iraq so that they could claim WMD had been found and thus our reasons for war were vindicated.

Problem is these weapons were Iran-Iraq war era and are so degraded that they cannot function as designed. Former weapons inspector David Kay went so far as to say the Sarin would be less toxic at this point than stuff found under most folks' kitchen sinks. The mustard gas might still produce nasty burns but probably isn't lethal anymore. And these weren't stockpiles, but rather weapons found in ones and twos over many years, obviously not part of the Iraqi arsenal even for the first gulf war in 1991, much less this war. They were probably squirreled away and forgotten. Even the insurgency didn't know about them.

Sources inside the CIA confirm what Kay said. These were not the weapons we thought Iraq had prior to the war, and there continues to be no evidence of a reconstituted WMD program. Santorum and Hoekstra don't know when to stop making fools of themselves. Here's a link to the full story.

Muckrakers Unite!

I found this very interesting item on the War Room at Salon.com. Since the regular media isn't doing it, a group of modern-day muckrakers (the Sunlight Foundation) is checking the financial disclosure statements of lawmakers and finding interesting "co-incidences." Dennis Hastert and a few Rep. California reps bought rural land in the middle of nowhere, then pushed earmarks to build roads nearby and then sold the land at an enormous profit. They still need help. Ever want to be an investigative journalist or a do-gooding muckraker? Go here to volunteer!

It's also a great source of info on the culture of corruption. Check it out.

Ann vs. Adolph

Fun little quiz on this site. Fourteen quotes about liberals on it and you have to decide if Adolph Hitler or Ann Coulter was the originator. I got 11 of 14. (And in looking back, I should have gotten two more. Oh well.) I hesitate to use the "F" word for Ann and the rest of the hysterical right-wing mob of flappin' gobs, but if the quote fits....

New Speak and Global Warming

An Inconvenient Truth has once again brought the naysayers out of their hidey holes and in large and loud numbers. You may have read some of the op-eds or heard some of the Oil-Comapany sponsored ads. They do a pretty good job of confusing the issue, which is precisely what they want to do. They want you to believe that climatologists have not reached concensus on the issue (which they have) and keep throwing out irrelevant "evidence" to sow the seeds of doubt.

Do not succumb. These issues are addressed by the scientists themselves. For the Climatolgists perspective, go to RealClimate. They address the so-called thickening of the Anartic ice sheet and sea level decline in the Artic and well as the PR campaign against An Inconvenient Truth, which they call "Thank You for Emitting," a reference to Thank You for Smoking, a book/movie about the lengths industry PR folks will go to to confuse the issues.

That site has numerous links to other good sites following Global Warming and other science sites. Check it out. Very good information there.

Haditha and, unfortunately, more

The truth, once covered over by the US Marines, is slowly dribbling out about the Massacre in Haditha in November 2005. See this British media report.

Lies. Lies. More lies. We couldn't give enemies better ammunition.

Sigh.

He was the best of Presidents. He was the worst...

Sorry Charlie.

Quinnipac University poll of American humans said Bill Clinton was both the 2nd best prez since 1945 and the 3rd worst. See the Boston globe story here.

Bill was just 3 points behind the sainted Actor/Prez Ronald Reagan as best Prez.

Bill was one point behind Nixon at 16 percent and was therefore third worst. The worst at 34 percent? The current occupant. See. It's not just me.

Signs that we might have a future as a nation? 40 percent of 18-29 year olds rate Bill the best. They see through Reagan's image and the right wing's 8-year political assassination attempt on Bill. Good for them.

Could it be Satan? ... uh I mean Cheney?

Check out this commencement address by Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten. As a former denizen of the fourth estate, I approve.

Desperate, Aren't they?

As the news of republican-lobbyist-consultant pay for play sleaze continues to ooze from DC, the completely non-partisan FBI ;-)has done something, never, ever done in the past. It's raided a Congressman's office. More bad news for a Republican? No! This was on a black dem. Congressman from La., William Jefferson. How interesting that with all the Delays, Cunninghams, Neys, Burns and others out there implicated in slime, the FBI is trumpeting this case. No doubt the man is guilty. He was caught taking $100,000 payoffs and hiding the money in his freezer. Plus two guys who bribed him before are singing like canaries.

But it is clear that the Repubs wanted someone to cancel out Cunningham's conviction and distract from the Abramoff web of sleaze. I've already heard the yapping heads say the dems can't use "culture of corruption" any more to describe the Repubs now that one of their own has been snared.

Pathetic. It's like they don't understand what the word "culture" means. Jefferson is a lone bad wolf, working alone to enrich himself. What the Republicans have done is make moving your agenda in Congress dependent on contributions to get Republicans elected. That is a culture of corruption, by definition.

The great part is, no one is buying their claptrap and they look desperate. The sad, grand carnival continues.

An Inconvenient Truth

I was hoping to stop with all the "outrage" posts and actually compose a modest proposal, but life intervened this weekend and I didn't get to it. But here's a plug for an very interesting film about global warming, starring Al Gore, the former next President of the United States. (He's the guy most of you voted for, but was passed over by the Supreme Court in favor of King George IV.)

The movie is An Inconvenient Truth, and it is a film version of the traveling road show on global warming Al's been doing for sometime. What he does is present all the evidence and likely consequences in a simple and clear way. It opens May 24th on the coasts and here at the Arbor June 16th. For more info go here.

Pledge to see it the first weekend. Should be good.

Of course, the Oil companies aren't taking this laying down Their stooge, called the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose mission is to spin all science to match their credo that the Free Market is the answer to everything, is fighting back with ads running May 18 to May 28, that would make Joe Goebbels proud. Here's a expose of CEI.

Patently Corrupt and Pretty Stupid

I'm pasting a bit from an email I got from a Democratic agitation group:

"Alphonso Jackson, the Republican Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, told a story recently during a talk he gave in Dallas. Here's what he said, according to the Dallas Business Journal:

Jackson closed with a cautionary tale, relaying a conversation he had with a prospective advertising contractor.

"He had made every effort to get a contract with HUD for 10 years," Jackson said of the prospective contractor. "He made a heck of a proposal and was on the (General Services Administration) list, so we selected him. He came to see me and thank me for selecting him. Then he said something ... he said, 'I have a problem with your president.'

"I said, 'What do you mean?' He said, 'I don't like President Bush.' I thought to myself, 'Brother, you have a disconnect -- the president is elected, I was selected. You wouldn't be getting the contract unless I was sitting here. If you have a problem with the president, don't tell the secretary.'

"He didn't get the contract," Jackson continued. "Why should I reward someone who doesn't like the president, so they can use funds to try to campaign against the president? Logic says they don't get the contract. That's the way I believe.""

What he said he did is, uh, illegal. He later said the story was "anecdotal" (he meant apocryphal) and that the crime he admitted to in public never actually took place. Still, the last line is telling: "That's the way I believe."

So even if he never did what he said he did, he still admits that he believes in such corruption. So he's corrupt, stupid, and ignorant given he thought anecdotal meant apocryphal. Par for the course in this, the worst administration ever.

Can't be Safe AND Free?

When you complain about the lack of oversight of NSA spying, the right-wing rejoinder is better they "gather our phone number than our remains." This can only mean that without these programs, an attack will happen. Never mind that idea is not supported by anything but fantasy, the larger idea is that we cannot both be free AND safe. This is just as ludicrous. But I don't hear Tim Russert or any other objecting to this questionable logic. How would asking the NSA to submit to FISA oversight make an attack any more likely? We'd still be spying, just within the confines of the law. How is that bad?

I don't think that word means what you say it does

The NSA is conducting warrantless surveillance of calls coming from or going to suspected terrorists abroad. We are told nothing unlawful is going on. The NSA is collecting a massive database of every phone call ever made to look for "patterns" that might alert them to terrorist activities. This too we are told is lawful. These proclamations give me no comfort because the people making them don't mean the same thing I do when we use the word lawful.

This President and his legal advisors, especially Albert Gonzales, seem to have such an expansive view of presidential power that almost anything he does as commander in chief is legal as long as he says it is. Honestly, that was Gonzales's argument to congress defending the original NSA program revealed some time back. The president alone is the commander in chief and so if he says FISA doesn't apply to the "War on Terror," then it doesn't.

This is the same kind of logic his legal team uses in his signing statements. He signs a bill into law but reserves the right to ignore portions of it if he decides they unconstitutionally infringe on his perogatives.

So when I jump up and say, "Hey, you can't authorize the NSA to ignore FISA, and therefore broke the law," he might say, "No laws were broken in the application of this necessary program." But what he really means is "FISA infringes on my duty to wage war in defense of the nation and therefore I'm not subject to it." These are very different things. The second statement is far from settled. The Supreme Court hasn't weighed in on this and I believe it would not agree. If I'm right, then the administrations claim of "lawfulness" falls apart. It is based on this implied but rarely spoken premise. It is Orwellian double-speak at its finest.

Will any Senator, Dem or Rep, get this and bear this in mind as they question Michael Hayden during confirmation hearings? Will Arlen Specter bear this in mind during his hearings on signing statements in June? Stay tuned...

Outrage, latest

You may have heard that W has never vetoed a bill. Thanks to the reporting of Charlie Savage, political affairs report for the Boston Globe, we now know why. Go here to hear Terry Gross' interview with him. Or follow the link to original story.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=9-May-06

Savage says what he does instead is issue "signing statements," technical legal statements entered into the Federal Record (public records, there's a link to them on the Fresh Air site), that tell the executive branch how to interpret the law. He's done this 750 times to date. His Dad did it about 240 times in 4 years. Clinton issued 140-something in 8 years.

What he has done that is different than before is declare whether he will follow the law or not, based on his interpretation of the Constitution. In other words, he signs a very popular bill, like the torture ban, rather than take the political hit in vetoing it, then he instructs affected executive agencies that they can ignore the ban because only the President, as Commander in Chief, has the constitutional authority to instruct the military and preclude certain activities, like torture.

But it doesn't stop there. Bush has essentially set aside any law Congress enacts to restrict or instruct the executive branch. This includes affirmative action, whistle blower statutes, inspector general acts, and torture bans. Basically, Bush says the congress has no right to oversee or restrict what he or the executive branch agencies do. It's based on an extreme view of presidential power, call the Unitary Executive, which is not the prevailing view in the Judiciary.

Hmmm. I thought only the Supreme Court had the authority to interpret the Constitution. And they've said many times in the last 70 years that Congress does indeed have the constitutional authority to restrict the President's power and only the court is the arbiter of the limits of checks and balances.

Cleverly, Bush has made these interpretations in areas where no one with standing is likely to sue or challenge the law in court. After all, the Pentagon is not likely to challenge the President's telling them to ignore a restrictive law. And because, no one but them was reading these things, no one said boo. Until Savage. Now Arlen Specter has taken notice and will hold hearing on this in June. Hopefully moderate Republicans will join with Dems to resist this.

Otherwise, the President is a dictator. Nice.

Meet the Press Response

MTP sent me a reply to my email:

Dear Mr. Chamberlain,

Thank you for your email and your interest in "Meet the Press."

We are sorry you did not enjoy our program.
You might be interested in knowing that we had Mr. Colbert booked on "Meet the Press" last weekend but he canceled his appearance.

Most sincerely,

The Meet the Press staff

My email to Russert

I made the mistake of turning Meet the Press on Sunday. Of course, it spawned a letter.

"I was enjoying the exchange between Dan Balz and Todd Purdum on the May 7th show, when, inexplicably you bring in a Bush impersonator and give him an extraordinarily long time to promote his corporate event speaking business. The real news from the corespondents dinner was Stephen Colbert, but instead you give us this inoffensive hack. Nice.

April 30's show was even more maddening. How is having the Secretary of Energy, the head of the Oil Industry's trade organization and that Cramer guy on the panel with only Dick Durbin to balance their apologies for the oil industry fair? The Secretary of Energy says that Brazil is a model for efforts to become energy self-sufficient and you don't ask him what kind of lack of leadership in this country makes an emerging third world country more energy savvy than the leader of the free world?

And Frankly, your one on one interviews with politicians (Nancy Pelosi, Condi Rice for example) are worthless. They spout talking points and you play gotcha trying to catch them in contradictions. Makes me just want to switch the TV off. Panels are better and having more than one pol on is better to. At least then, the conversation doesn't seem so staged and follows a more organic path.

Please bring us balance, ask the tough questions and call people on their B.S. I wish you guys were more like the BBC shows."

Colbert, Cons turn on Bush, Homeland Insecurity

Curiously, the MSM seems to have failed to report on Stephen Colbert's slash and burn speech against the administration and the press.

Web agitators are demanding they address it. If you agree. Go here to sign the petition:

http://www.workingforchange.com/activism/action.cfm?itemid=20751&afccode=n49lk2

See the new and improved transcript of the tirade here:

http://dailykos.com/storyonly/2006/4/30/1441/59811

Bush's AP/Ipsos poll numbers hit new low as even conservatives and Republicans turn on him.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/republicans_ap_poll

Plus, I meant to mention Clark Kent Ervin's book "Open Target: Where America is Vulnerable to Attack" about how Homeland Security is screwing up. Ervin was the department's inspector general under Tom Ridge and is a conservative Republican. He's also a sharp critic. Go to the fresh air page for this interview.

http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=13&prgDate=2-May-06

Chasing Ghosts

Interesting interview with National Guard Lt. Paul Rieckhoff whose critical book, "Chasing Ghosts: A Soldier's Fight for America from Baghdad to Washington," has just come out. Here's the link to the show:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5382507

Proud soldier, but harsh critic.

Two things particularly struck me.

He said the "contractors" hurt moral and the mission. They (Halliburton, KBR, et al) don't report to military chain of command. Their services suck. They defy soldier's checkpoints, and they run from fights. One of the contractor commando units, dressed in black with no insignia were equivalent to death squads. Iraqis call them black death. Rieckhoff said they undermined Iraqi trust in his unit. Remember, contractors were implicated in Abu Gharaib, too.

Second, as the 3rd anniversary of Mission Accomplished came was this week, his still raw reaction to a question about this stuck in my mind. He was on the ground getting shot at while Bush was pretending to be a pilot. When he heard about it, he was incensed and you can tell he is still peeved about it now. He knew the job wasn't done and wasn't even close to being done. He said all the soldiers knew that. He said that maybe Bush didn't get that cuz he never "served on the ground." Ironic that Rieckhoff is National Guard too.

He's also the founder of the Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America, a service organization trying to see to the well being of those returning from war.

Colbert knifes President and Press Corpse

I hadn't seen it until today. Stephen Colbert was merciless at Saturday's White House Correspondent's Dinner. He savaged both Bush and his cronies as well as the press corps with biting sarcasm and cutting irony. Laura Bush wouldn't even shake his hand, probably because she's smart enough to know how badly he had ripped her man.

Of course, he ripped the press corps too for being meek, mild and timid, until recently. Only he did it subversively by chiding the press corps for finally finding a back bone and questioning the administration. He mocked the President's steadfastness by implying that the Prez stands his ground even as it erodes out from under him.

Here's a perspective on the performance:

http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/05/01/Colbert/

Try to find a clip of Colbert. It was breath taking!

W O4 god's sake!

I saw a bumper sticker aping the Bush W-04 sticker with the letters "tf?" added in smaller but same colored font under the W. I laughed out loud.



And being a talentless, unimaginative lout, I thought of some others along the same lines:

What a Maroon!

I liked this so much, I stole it. Enjoy!

Forrest Gump's Evil Twin

By Stephen Pizzo, News for Real. Posted April 21, 2006.
How extraordinary. Something is happening here that has never happened in America's history. A consensus is sweeping the nation. Not that the war in Iraq is wrong, or that oil companies are screwing us blue, or that the climate is going to hell, or that good-paying jobs are being replaced by low-paying jobs, or that our national health care system is a disgrace, or that that the rich are getting a lot richer while the middle class gets poorer.

While all that's true, and more and more folks are getting it, that's not the consensus of which I speak. Nope. This one is bigger, enormous, huge!

Here it is: The president of the United States is a moron.

Yes, stupid, dumb as common road gravel. And not figuratively, but literally. George W. Bush, president of the world's last remaining superpower, is a moron. Forrest Gump's evil twin.
I broached this possibility one year ago in a post entitled, "Bush: The Worst President Ever?" I was a bit early with that one. But what a difference a year makes! The cover story of this week's Rolling Stone Magazine reads, "The Worst President in History?"

So the jury is in: Bush is a moron. If stupid is as stupid does, he's stupid. A botched war on terror, exploding debt, his "what me worry" response to Katrina -- and the ongoing mismanagement of the recovery, North Korea has the bomb and Iran is on its way to its own nuke. Think about that for a second because it is definitive proof Bush is a moron. First he identifies three nations as his "Axis of Evil" in the world: North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Then he as a chance to whack one of the three, and he picks the only one that had no WMD. The only way he could look worse is if it were only two countries -- a coin flip -- and he still got it wrong.
Yes, Virginia, the current occupant of the Oval Office is no longer a crook or an adulterer. He's a moron.

As if that were not bad enough, we still face two and half years with this man at the controls. NFR reader Philip Bourgeois suggested an intervention launched by former Presidents Clinton, Bush Sr. and Carter. Not a bad idea, Phil.

Poppa Bush must be beside himself watching his kid screw up decades of diplomacy in just five short years. He could take sonny into that Oval Office alcove where Monica used to dispense her favors and administer a few long overdue dope slaps.

Bill Clinton could sit the moron down and give him a short course on how to balance a checkbook, teach him the difference between capital investment and undisciplined spending, and the virtues of saving for a rainy day.

Jimmy Carter could teach Junior the actual meaning of the word "compassionate," and how to walk that walk. Carter could reveal to him that giving the already comfortably rich even more money is not compassion. Giving more money to the growing number of those who work 60 hours a week or more, and still can't get by, is "compassion." And he could figure out how to cover the nearly 50 million Americans who cannot afford health insurance.

But none of that is likely to happen. One of the trademarks of a moron is contempt for facts that challenge the simple but comfortable fictions that rule their daily routines. You can drag a moron to a library, but you can't force him to learn.

In fact morons get downright testy when someone challenges what they think they know. We saw this trait earlier this week when Bush was asked if he thought Don Rumsfeld should resign. The moron lashed out at the questioner, dashed into his imaginary phone booth and emerged as The Decider. "I'm the decider," he pronounced, with Mussolini-like swagger. You see, scratch a moron and beneath that smirking, ignorance-is-bliss exterior, you discover a fundamental truth: Beauty may be only skin deep, but moron goes right to the bone.

I'm staying close to home until this guy is gone. Keeping my head down, my nose clean, and watching what I say in emails for friends. And I have a piece of advice for the Iranians too -- this guy really is crazy enough to "decide" that bombing the shit out you is a good idea. Yes, Bush is exactly as stupid as he looks, sounds and acts.

Doubt that at your peril. Fifty-one percent of American voters doubted it. And now we're screwed.

Stephen Pizzo is the author of numerous books, including "Inside Job: The Looting of America's Savings and Loans," which was nominated for a Pulitzer.

Should we be Worried?

According to Seymour Hersh's article in the New Yorker this month, administration officials consider Iran's President the equivalent of Adolph Hitler in 1935 and have moved beyond contingency planning for military strikes on Iran to operational planning, which is more detailed and serious. Also disclosed, one of the contingencies planned for was using tactical nukes to penetrate and destroy enrichment facilities 70 feet under bedrock. The pentagon got nervous and wanted to take that option off the table as plans went forward, but the administration refused. Bush just said today, that option is on the table:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20060418/wl_nm/nuclear_iran_dc;_ylt=Au.n.N734K9JYzjYAEYKy8tbbBAF;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NTMzazIyBHNlYwMxNjk2

Meanwhile Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the aforementioned Iranian president has not backed down an inch and basically said, "Bring it on," to Bush. (He really said he'd "cut the hand" of any aggressor, but same idea, right?)

I just watched an awesome documentary series from the BBC called: Nazis: A Warning from History that is still fresh in my mind as the Bush administration calls Ahmadinejad Hitler in 1935. After all, both are leaders of a humiliated nation that considers it's treatment at the hand of stronger nations as crimes. Both want to annihilate the Jews. (1935 was the year of the Nuremberg laws that stripped Jews of citizenship and banned intermarriage and so forth.) So the question arises, with Bush's stated policy of pre-emption, should we be worried?

If the UN doesn't act and/or Iran does not moderate or compromise, will dubya be the first President to nuke since Truman? Will he nuke to make the world safe from nukes? Do we really have anything to worry about?

Our intelligence about Iran's program and plans are no better and possibly worse than that we had on Iraq, prewar. And some believe Ahmadinejad is super-radical and would use nukes against Israel, to wipe it off the map. Others don't believe Ahmadinejad has any real power and that the mullahs, who do have the power, are more pragmatic. Still, it only matters what Bush thinks, doesn't it, since he's already proven he'll ignore info that doesn't fit his beliefs.

So, yeah. We should be worried.

Crazy

The interview on Fresh Air today touched a nerve. The guest was a ex-Washington Post Reporter name Early who's book, Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental health Madness, is just out. It is his account of his harrowing experience trying to get help for his psychotic son's illness when doctor's hospitals and insurance company's wouldn't because of the "imminent threat" test for coercive treatment. We've gone from commitments to large state mental hospitals that were often horrific places to a policy that makes treating a mentally ill person almost impossible if they don't want treatment.

It reminded me of my two-month long endeavor to get guardianship for my mother, whose dementia and psychosis have made it impossible for her to pay her bills, manage her money and take care of herself. I finally did get guardianship Thursday the 13th, but the hoops we had to jump through were numerous and frustrating.

Hundreds of thousands of homeless and prison inmates could be treated and kept in the general population if only we had mandatory outpatient commitment. That is, a court ordering that the patient could stay free as long as they consent to medical treatment. The time has come, I think.

More on the lying liar front

Remember those Iraqi helium trucks Bush and the Pentagon tried to tell us were mobile bio-weapon labs that noted liar Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress told us Saddam had? Turns out Bush and the Pentagon wasn't just mistaken when they told us that. Newly declassified documents indicate that they knew what the trucks were even while telling us what they weren't. For almost a year. Read it and weep for our democracy:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060412/pl_afp/usiraqweaponstrailer_060412153540;_ylt=Asdet3EywOteZX3raP5zym1X6GMA;_ylu=X3oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl

Can we believe anything that comes from this administration? We should check their birth certificates to see if they are giving us their real names.

Fantasy Land.

This from the AP:

"Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld said Tuesday he would not engage in "fantasy land" speculation about a possible U.S. attack on
Iran' name=c1> SEARCHNews News Photos Images Web' name=c3> Iran, though he said the Bush administration is concerned about Tehran's nuclear ambitions. "

This is wise. One should be involved in only one fantasy land at a time, and right now, that is an Iraq in which there is no civil war and in which we are making progress. In this magical place, lots of factions that hate each other will form a national unity government, and then the democracy fairies will sprinkle a special dust that will make the Mahdi Army, the Badr Brigades, Zarqawi and the former Bathists all put down their weapons and engage in civil national debate.

Meanwhile in the real Iraq, Shiite hit squads kill Sunnis and each other to the tune of 50 to 60 freshly executed corpses a day. Don't even mentions those killed by Sunni insurgents. Individual neighborhoods in Baghdad have armed their own militias and will fire upon Iraqi police if they try to come into neighborhoods without US or Iraqi Army escort. The leading trade in Iraq? Guns, ammo and RPGs.

Allawi, the former interim PM, whose ticket won 9 percent of the vote says his secular party in a minority government is the only hope for a united Iraq. Guess he isn't invited to fantasy land any more.

GW Bush Library

Yeah, I've read all the Bush library jokes. All two of them, Coloring books, yada yada yada.

The interesting thing to me is where it goes. Apparently 3 Texas universities want it. This for a guy who went to Yale and Harvard (who don't want it, by the way). Since he was never much into academics, why should it be at a university at all, or college, or juco or community college? Why not put it in a site already notorious for its association with dubya? Some suggestions:

Abu Gharaib. I really liked this choice, but then the US said they were abandoning it. Dang. Gotta find something more permanent.

Gitmo! There you go! What an awesome interrogation technique they be able to use on the grandchildren of the guys in there now. "Tell us what you know or we'll make you tour it again!"
Aiiieeeeeeee!!!

Ft. Leavenworth. Make it adjacent to the Federal Prison so that tourist can see live exhibits of former administration staff and the lobbyists who loved them.

How about the polar ice cap? Oh yeah, permanence problem again.

Anywhere but here. I like that one best.

Love your Neighbor. No. Love Thy Neighbor.

Driving home from SA Saturday, I had the SA NPR station on (89.1) and was listening to This American Life. The show's theme was Neighbors, and the opening was about a woman who ran a charity called Love Your Neighbor that helped homeless and poor folk. Turns out another good Samaritan was doing the same kind of work under the name Love Thy Neighbor. Apparently, the first lady was concerned that people who wanted to give to her charity would get confused and donate instead to the other charity--that did the exact same kind of work.

Being an American, she sued. The other guy was incredulous, having had to shell out $13000 in legal fees to fend off A Charity! that was suing his. He said he could provide a meal for 38 cents, so somewhat more than 30,000 meals to folks who needed it went to lawyers' pockets instead. The lady wouldn't appear on the show and provided her lawyer instead. Ira Glass, the host, asked her if she didn't get the irony of a charity of that name suing another for the naming rights. Of course, she didn't. The lady had the right to sue. Ira asks but was it right? Was it being a good neighbor? The lawyer said the other charity was the one infringing on the name and thus not neighborly. In the end they had to agree not to agree.

Overthrow

Interesting new book by former Times editor Stephen Kinzer traces the 14 regime changes the US had a direct hand in from 1893 to now. His thesis is that they succeed initially but eventually result in negative results for the good ol' US of A. Here's a link to an excerpt:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5325069

You'd think after 110 years, we'd learn. Of course when you President doesn't read, how is that gonna happen?

I can't contain my glee!

Ding dong the Dick is dead
Which old Dick?
The wicked Dick
Ding dong the wicked Dick is dead!

I broke out in spontaneous song, march around like one of the newly liberated guards when I heard Tom Delay will resign. What will I do when he's marched off to jail? Who wants to have celebratory drink?

Lies and the Lying Liars

Remember the mantra of the Bush administration and his lackeys in Congress that they didn't misrepresent intelligence because everyone had the same intelligence and thought the same thing because of it?

One journalist with the National Journal is putting the lie to that with his reporting. Check this article:

http://nationaljournal.com/about/njweekly/stories/2006/0330nj1.htm

Not only did they heat dissenting viewpoints from intelligence officials, they conspired to keep the facts secret until after the 2004 election. Stephen Hadley and Rove were the masterminds of this cover up. The real question is why isn't the mainstream press all over this? Damn liberal bias... Oh wait.

Green is the new Red, White and Blue

Very interesting interview with Tom Friedman on Fresh Air yesterday.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5311748

I think you should listen to the whole thing, but if you don't have time, move the cursor to about the last tenth of the interview and stream from there. Friedman talks about how Cheney and the oil folks have staked out energy "reality" by saying conservation is nice, but real men know we will need oil for the foreseeable future. Friedman then excoriates this position as playing into the hands of despots in Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, and so on, and that moving aggressively away from oil now will set the US up as the vanguard of alternative energy, which no doubt will be the industry of the 21st Century, keeping us economically relevant, oil independent, thus safer from the nutjobs who own the oil, and cleaner and greener. Good for the economy, defense and environment. Green is the new Red, White and Blue.

Unintended Self-deconstruction

Right-wing commentator Fred Barnes was on Fresh Air yesterday promoting his new book "Rebel in Chief," in which he argues W is a rebel transforming the conservative movement and America. The irony is I think Fred's right, but not nearly in the positive way he meant.

It was finished right around the time of W's second inaugural with all it's high-minded talk of spreading freedom and democracy around the world. Fred's writes about how wonderful the Iraqi elections were and how they will doom the insurgency and how the sky is the limit for George in his second term.

In actuality, the wheels have come off the Bush Presidency, and they started wobbling right after Fred finished his book. Social Security, Harriet Meyers, Katrina, illegal domestic surveillance, corruption scandals, more evidence of pre-war lies and misrepresentations have finally opened this country's eyes to the empty rhetoric and arrogance of this "rebel." Most Americans don't trust his word anymore (finally!) and most don't even think he is keeping us safe.

So it's amusing now to read Barnes' take on Bush. Only a year later, it seems anachronistic.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5306617

Bush snowed America. Now in the spring-time melt of his discontent.

Press cuts more Teeth

The mainstream press (NY Times) has finally done an in depth story on the whitehouse memo that shows Bush was intent on war even as he was claiming to be exhausting diplomatic efforts to avoid the war.

http://www.afterdowningstreet.org/?q=node/9779

Now only the ideologically committed believe this Presidents web of lies.

But maybe replacing Andy Card with Josh Bolten as chief of staff will turn those poll numbers around. Yeah, and I got some deck chairs that need rearranging while you're at it.

Is The Press Showing Teeth?

Yes! Associate Press Reporter Jennifer Loven dared do a story (March 18) about how the President misrepresents his opponents in his speeches.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060318/ap_on_go_pr_wh/bush_s_straw_men

And, of course, the right-wing bloggers are all over her.

http://powerlineblog.com/archives/013465.php

Why? It is obvious bias to point out that the President is using that 12th grade debate club technique of misrepresenting your opponents position as something outrageous and then courageously knocking it down. It's the ol' straw man approach. Some are actually calling for her dismissal. While I think the AP will stand behind her, those who value watchdog journalism should rally to her defense and tell the AP what they think.

Associated Press info@ap.org

Since Katrina, the press has rediscovered their spine. That's a good thing, in this land of the free press, whether you are right or center or left.

Wow! Look at all these new features! Gonna try the bloggame again. And this time I intend to stay current. Really. Truly.