Eat At Joes

2007-12-04T18:30:00.000-06:00

Images: Tom Paine and I.F. Stone

At a National Press Club event earlier this week, NBC White House correspondent David Gregory argued that, because there is so much polarization in politics today, “people try to divine or assign our motives” for asking certain questions at the White House press briefings. When Helen Thomas asked Gregory what was responsible for the polarization, Gregory answered:
I think it’s because of the internet largely. The polarized atmosphere in the internet and blogs and whatnot have been a major contributor to that. Think Progress, 12-2-97

Hard Rain Journal 12-3-07: David Gregory Meet I.F. Stone and Tom Paine x 10,000

By Richard Power

Yes, of course, it was the bloggers who polarized the US body politic.

The bloggers spent $50 million plus on Ken Starr's rogue investigation, which was coordinated with the work of the privately funded, reich-wing "Arkansas Project."

The bloggers shackled Susan McDougal and sent her to jail.

The bloggers impeached a popular President at a time of peace and economic prosperity over testimony in a civil suit involving sexual intercourse.

The bloggers issued that voluminous report on Bill Clinton's dalliance with Monica Lewinsky, and posted it on the WWW.

The bloggers ignored accurate US intelligence on Al Qaeda pre-9/11, leading to the slaughter of thousands of innocents at the WTC, and the bloggers distorted accurate US intelligence on Iraq post-9/11, leading to the deaths of thousands of US military personnel, and the maiming of tens of thousands more.

The bloggers swift-boated John Kerry in 2004, morphed Max Cleland's face into Osama bin Laden's in 2002 TV ads, and smeared John McCain in South Carolina in 2000.

The bloggers gutted the surplus, and took the leash of the federal deficit.

In 2000, the bloggers stopped the counting of the ballots ordered by the Florida Supreme Court, and installed the man who lost, as the counting, finished later by researchers, would confirm.

In 2004, the bloggers made sure there weren't enough voting machines in the poorest and blackest districts of Ohio.

The bloggers caged voters. The bloggers purged voters from the rolls.

The bloggers intimidated voters.

The bloggers jammed the phones of the Democratic Party on election day 2002 in New Hampshire.

Yes, it was the bloggers who wasted seven years the planet could not afford to waste clinging to denial and disinformation about the nature, causes and implications of global warming.

The bloggers prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned former Alabama Governor Don Siegelman on false charges.

The bloggers fired eight US Attorneys for pursuing Bush-Cheney associates and not pursuing Bush-Cheney adversaries. The bloggers made Habeas Corpus and the Bill of Rights optional.

The bloggers established a Gulag system, instituted torture and rendition, and started disappearing people. The bloggers stayed on vacation while New Orleans drowned.

The bloggers blocked federal funding for stem cell research.

The bloggers tried to make certain that the brain-dead Terri Schiavo would be kept on a feeding tube indefinitely.

The bloggers betrayed US secret agent Valerie Plame, and then made certain that I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby -- the man who was convicted of obstructing Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation -- would not spend a single day in prison.

Yes, of course, the bloggers have polarized us all.

The sad fact is that if the David Gregorys of the US mainstream news media had fulfilled their special responsibilities as the "fourth estate," which are articulated in both the US Constitution and the writings of the Founders, most us who have served as citizen journalists and commentators would never have gone into blogging.

Blogging is really simply the pamphleteering of our age.

If Tom Paine were alive today, he would, of course, be a blogger.

But this time there is no need for a revolution, only for the restoration of the democratic institutions that were won in the revolution, including a press free of both governments and corporations.

In the 1960s and 1970s, we only need one I.F. Stone; because, in large part, the US mainstream news media still did its job, at least on some stories concerning egregious wrongs, e.g., Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. But now, after decades of media consolidation, we need an Internet-based Information Rebellion, and that is what we have delivered.

What David Gregory is really saying is that he and those who write his checks are scared of the future. And they should be. They are on the wrong side of the digital barricades, and the wrong side of US history.

For Words of Power's archive of posts on Corporate News Media Complicity, Power of Alternative Media, Propaganda & Freedom, click here.

Interesting Q & A Between a Son and Father About Iraq Invasion

2007-08-03T18:39:00.000-05:00

Q: Daddy, why did we have to attack Iraq?
A: Because they had weapons of mass destruction.

Q: But the inspectors didn’t find any weapons of mass destruction?
A: That’s because the Iraqis were hiding them.

Q: And that’s why we invaded Iraq?
A: Yep. Invasions always work better than inspections.

Q: But after we invaded them, we STILL didn’t find any weapons of massdestruction, did we?
A: That’s because the weapons are so well hidden. Don’t worry, we’llfind something, probably right before the 2008 election.

Q: Why did Iraq want all those weapons of mass destruction?
A: To use them in a war, silly.

Q: I’m confused. If they had all those weapons that they planned to usein a war, then why didn’t they use any of those weapons when we went towar with them?
A: Well, obviously they didn’t want anyone to know they had thoseweapons, so they chose to die by the thousands rather than defendthemselves.

Q: That doesn’t make sense. Why would they choose to die if they had allthose big weapons with which they could have fought back?
A: It’s a different culture. It’s not supposed to make sense.

Q: I don’t know about you, but I don’t think they had any of thoseweapons our government said they did?
A: Well, you know, it doesn’t matter whether or not they had thoseweapons. We had another good reason to invade them anyway.

Q: And what was that?
A: Even if Iraq didn’t have weapons of mass destruction, Saddam Husseinwas a cruel dictator, which is another good reason to invade anothercountry.

Q: Why? What does a cruel dictator do that makes it OK to invade hiscountry?
A: Well, for one thing, he tortured his own people.

Q: Kind of like what they do in China?
A: Don’t go comparing China to Iraq. China is a good economiccompetitor, where millions of people work for slave wages in sweatshopsand help make U.S corporations richer.

Q: So if a country lets its people are exploited for American corporategain, it’s a good country, even if that country tortures people?
A: Right.

Q: Why were people in Iraq being tortured?
A: For political crimes, mostly, like criticizing the government. Peoplewho criticized the government in Iraq were sent to prison and tortured.

Q: Isn’t that exactly what happens in China?
A: I told you, China is different.

Q: What’s the difference between China and Iraq?
A: Well, for one thing, Iraq was ruled by the Ba’ath party, while Chinais Communist.

Q: Didn’t you once tell me Communists were bad?
A: No, just Cuban Communists are bad.

Q: How are the Cuban Communists bad?
A: Well, for one thing, people who criticize the government in Cuba aresent to prison and tortured.

Q: Like in Iraq?
A: Exactly.

Q: And like in China, too?
A: I told you, China is a good economic competitor. Cuba, on the otherhand, is not.

Q: How come Cuba isn’t a good economic competitor?
A: Well, you see, back in the early 1960s, the US government passed somelaws that made it illegal for Americans to trade or do any business withCuba until they Stopped being Communists and started being capitalistslike us.

Q: But if we got rid of those laws, opened up trade with Cuba, andstarted doing business with them, wouldn’t that help the Cubans becomecapitalists?
A: Don’t be smart.

Q: I didn’t think I was being one.
A: Well, anyway, they also don’t have freedom of religion in Cuba.

Q: Kind of like China and the Falun Gong movement?
A: I told you, stop saying bad things about China. Anyway, SaddamHussein came to power through a military coup, so he’s not really alegitimate leader anyway.

Q: What’s a military coup?
A: That’s when a military general takes over the government of a countryby force, instead of holding free elections like we do in the UnitedStates.

Q: Didn’t the ruler of Pakistan come to power by a military coup?
A: You mean General Pervez Musharraf? Uh, yeah, he did, but Pakistan isour friend.

Q: Why is Pakistan our friend if their leader is illegitimate?
A: I never said Pervez Musharraf was illegitimate.

Q: Didn’t you just say a military general who comes to power by forciblyoverthrowing the legitimate government of a nation is an illegitimateleader?
A: Only Saddam Hussein. Pervez Musharraf is our friend, because hehelped us invade Afghanistan.

Q: Why did we invade Afghanistan?
A: Because of what they did to us on September 11th.

Q: What did Afghanistan do to us on September 11th?
A: Well, on September 11th, nineteen men - fifteen of them SaudiArabians - hijacked four airplanes and flew three of them intobuildings, killing over 3,000 Americans.

Q: So how did Afghanistan figure into all that?
A: Afghanistan was where those bad men trained, under the oppressiverule of the Taliban.

Q: Aren’t the Taliban those bad radical Islamics who chopped offpeople’s heads and hands?
A: Yes, that’s exactly who they were. Not only did they chop offpeople’s heads and hands, but they oppressed women, too.

Q: Didn’t the Bush administration give the Taliban 43 million dollarsback in May of 2001?
A: Yes, but that money was a reward because they did such a good jobfighting drugs.

Q: Fighting drugs?
A: Yes, the Taliban were very helpful in stopping people from growingopium poppies.

Q: How did they do such a good job?
A: Simple. If people were caught growing opium poppies, the Talibanwould have their hands and heads cut off.

Q: So, when the Taliban cut off people’s heads and hands for growingflowers, that was OK, but not if they cut people’s heads and hands offfor other reasons?
A: Yes. It’s OK with us if radical Islamic fundamentalists cut offpeople’s hands for growing flowers, but it’s cruel if they cut offpeople’s hands for stealing bread.

Q: Don’t they also cut off people’s hands and heads in Saudi Arabia ?
A: That’s different. Afghanistan was ruled by a tyrannical patriarchythat oppressed women and forced them to wear Burqas whenever they werein public, with death by stoning as the penalty for women who did notcomply.
Q: Don’t Saudi women have to wear Burqas in public, too?
A: No, Saudi women merely wear a traditional Islamic body covering.

Q: What’s the difference?
A: The traditional Islamic covering worn by Saudi women is a modest yetfashionable garment that covers all of a woman’s body except for hereyes and fingers. The Burqa, on the other hand, is an evil tool ofpatriarchal oppression that covers all of a woman’s body except for hereyes and fingers.

Q: It sounds like the same thing with a different name.
A: Now, don’t go comparing Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis areour friends.

Q: But I thought you said 15 of the 19 hijackers on September 11th werefrom Saudi Arabia ..
A: Yes, but they trained in Afghanistan.

Q: Who trained them?
A: A very bad man named Osama bin Laden.

Q: Was he from Afghanistan?
A: Uh, no, he was from Saudi Arabia too. But he was a bad man, a verybad man.

Q: I seem to recall he was our friend once.
A: Only when we helped him and the Mujahadeen repel the Soviet invasionof Afghanistan back in the 1980s.

Q: Who are the Soviets? Was that the Evil Communist Empire Ronald Reagantalked about?
A: There are no more Soviets. The Soviet Union broke up in 1990 orthereabouts, and now they have elections and capitalism like us. We callthem Russians now.

Q: So the Soviets - I mean, the Russians - are now our friends?
A: Well, not really. You see, they were our friends for many years afterthey stopped being Soviets, but then they decided not to support ourinvasion of Iraq , so we’re mad at them now. We’re also mad at theFrench and the Germans because they didn’t help us invade Iraq either.

Q: So the French and Germans are evil, too?
A: Not exactly evil, but just bad enough that we had to rename Frenchfries and French toast to Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast.

Q: Do we always rename foods whenever another country doesn’t do what wewant them to do?
A: No, we just do that to our friends. Our enemies, we invade.

Q: But wasn’t Iraq one of our friends back in the 1980s?
A: Well, yeah. For a while.

Q: Was Saddam Hussein ruler of Iraq back then?
A: Yes, but at the time he was fighting against Iran, which made him ourfriend, temporarily.

Q: Why did that make him our friend?
A: Because at that time, Iran was our enemy.

Q: Isn’t that when he gassed the Kurds?
A: Yeah, but since he was fighting against Iran at the time, we lookedthe other way, to show him we were his friend.

Q: So anyone who fights against one of our enemies automatically becomesour friend?
A: Most of the time, yes.

Q: And anyone who fights against one of our friends is automatically anenemy?
A: Sometimes that’s true, too. However, if American corporations canprofit by selling weapons to both sides at the same time, all thebetter.

Q: Why?
A: Because war is good for the economy, which means war is good forAmerica also, since God is on America’s side, anyone who opposes war isa godless un-American Communist. Do you understand now why we attackedIraq?

Q: I think so. We attacked them because God wanted us to, right?
A: Yes.

Q: But how did we know God wanted us to attack Iraq?
A: Well, you see, God personally speaks to George W. Bush and tells himwhat to do.

Q: So basically, what you’re saying is that we attacked Iraq because George W. Bush hears voices in his head?
A: Yes! You finally understand how the world works. Now close your eyes,make yourself comfortable, and go to sleep. Good night.

Good Night, Dad….!

From hem.com.np

Muslim Grad Student Sacrificed Self for Another Student at Virginia Tech

2007-04-22T19:40:00.000-05:00

Another tale of heroism this time a Muslim graduate student named Waleed Shalaan, who was already wounded by the Virginia Tech killer, deliberately distracted the shooter long enough to allow a fellow student to escape.

This on the heels of the story of Jewish Professor Liviu Librescu who shielded his students from the killer.

Both men died protecting others.

In the Midst of Chaos Israeli Hero Gives Life to Save His Students

2007-04-17T22:06:00.000-05:00

Liviu Librescu, a professor at Virginia Tech, bolted to the door of his classroom holding a table against the door and eventually blocking it with his body – preventing the gunman from entering until his students could escape through the windows. He was shot dead, but his actions saved his students who made it to safety. Librescu had held the shooter at bay long enough to ensure their survival.

While we mourn the victims of this senseless violence let us remember a man who selflessly and courageously laid down his life for the young people under his care.

But who was this man? Librescu was born and raised in Romania; he suffered under the Nazis surviving the holocaust as a Romanian Jew. Then he suffered further under Soviet domination of Romania until he and his family emigrated to Israel in 1978. He moved to the US to teach engineering sciences and continue his research. Ironically he died on Holocaust Remembrance Day.

As we remember the fallen on this sad day, let us take a moment to reflect upon this outstanding example of heroism and bravery.

Liviu Librescu is survived by his wife of 42 years and two sons. He was 76.

Right-Wing Front Group “Catholic” League Violated Tax Exempt Status

2007-02-13T18:26:00.000-06:00

Right-Wing Pundit Bill Donahue, president of tax exempt political group, the Catholic [sic] League, may have violated the IRS laws forbidding such religious non-profit groups from interfering in political campaigns. Donahue has appeared in many TV and radio shows in his role as president of the group demanding that presidential candidate John Edwards fire two members of his campaign. Furthermore the “Catholic” League used its official website to pressure Edwards to fire the pair as well. It worked. One of them resigned today. However by interfering in a political campaign Donahue has technically forfeited his group’s tax exempt status.

Now as an American Donahue is free to use his right of free speech anyway he sees fit. But he can’t get out of paying the taxes that all other Americans pay. The law is clear that 501(c)(3) tax exempt organizations, as Donahue’s group is, cannot interfere in political campaigns. And the evidence that Donahue’s group did just that is overwhelming.

The IRS is under President Bush. He is legally bound to have the IRS investigate Donahue’s group and pull their tax exempt status if they find evidence of violating the 501(c)(3) tax laws. Evidence that is amply available.

Previously President Bush used the IRS to go after a church in California that preached against war based on the teachings of Jesus Christ. The Bush Administration is still threatening to remove their tax exempt status. Although it’s obvious he is simply punishing them for being anti-war.

Let’s see if Bush does his constitutional duty to enforce the tax laws in the case of the “Catholic” League. If he does not, he is violating his oath of office and it will become further grounds for impeachment.

I’m not holding my breath that he’ll uphold his oath of office and enforce the law.

UPDATE: The second targeted Edwards Campaign staff member has resigned citing pressure from Donahue and the "Catholic" League's ideological attacks on her. Well done, Mr. Donahue. You've broken the law! Let's see if Bush has the balls to enforce the law. I'm thinking...NO!

Proof Oil Companies Purposefully Lowered Gas Prices In Run Up To the 2006 Election

2007-02-09T06:18:00.000-06:00

A new study by a consumer watchdog group found that Exxon, Shell and Marathon Oil slashed fourth quarter refining profit margins to temporarily lower pump prices in the run up to 2006 General Election. Exxon dropped margins 18% in the run up to the election. Shell dropped theirs by 23%. In addition the oil companies flooded the market with extra oil to drive the prices down before the election. The prices went back up after the election. These same Oil Companies contributed far more to Republican candidates than to Democratic candidates.

Also after the election President Bush thanked the Oil Industry by introducing new policy that would increase the price of gas. He doubled the amount of oil that the government buys to keep in surplus resulting in a huge drop in supply sending prices (and oil company profits) skyward.

More analysis of the oil industry collusion that resulted in lower gas prices before the election and increased prices after can be found here.

Consumer Advocate Jamie Court, president of the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights, had this to say:

Now, the oil industry claimed pump prices fell because crude oil prices dropped. But gas prices dropped far more steeply than crude oil. Crude oil comes in barrels. There are 42 gallons in a barrel and the price of each gallon was down 10 cents this October over last. But gas prices fell 61 cents a gallon over the same time last year. In other words, in the run-up to the election, oil companies cut gasoline prices 500 percent more than their raw material cost fell. And it wasn't because refining and distribution costs rose. They're relatively stable. Oil companies simply took less profit from their refineries for a short period of time. Could it have been to influence a political outcome? Well, right after election day, the price of gas suddenly rose after two months of sharp decline. Post-election, refineries have slowed down, inventories are shrinking, and gas prices are climbing.

I hope the new Democratic led Congress will investigate what amounts to election tampering on the part of the Oil Industry. There is evidence that the industry has done this in previous elections as well. Even if no law was broken the American people deserve to know that the Oil Industry has been manipulating the price of gas to change the outcomes of US Elections.

Bush Administration Lying About Number of Wounded US Troops in Iraq

2007-02-03T16:47:00.000-06:00

The Bush Administration has found a perfect way to reduce the number of casualties in Iraq…They have changed the definition of “nonmortal casualties” which means troops who have been wounded, but not killed, so that the number of casualties is lessened by 16,164 troops. Yes, that’s right. The Bush Administration has found by changing what “casualties” is defined as they can lie to the American people about the number of American men and women injured in the Iraq War. The definition that has been on the books for generations is now modified to hide 16,164 men and women and make the Iraq War seem less dangerous. They have already subtracted the 16,164 troops from the official counts.

This will make any comparisons to prior wars comparing apples and oranges and bias any comparisons in favor of the Bush Administration.

In addition it conceals the real cost of the Iraq War. Paul Sullivan, director of research and analysis of Veterans for America and formerly a project manager at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said that the department was not prepared to provide the health care that returning veterans would need for mental and physical disabilities.

Don’t you feel safer? Neither do I!

Impeach Bush and Cheney NOW!

Bush Made Same “Mistake” Eleven Times in the Last Three Months Alone

2007-01-30T06:32:00.000-06:00

As reported here Republicans (and their minions in the Media) have been using a McCarthy Era Propagandistic term labeling the Democratic Party as the “Democrat Party.” President Bush did it again in his state of the union address the other night. He did it in his CBS interview on 60 Minutes the week before. Yesterday he was interviewed on NPR and the interviewer asked him about it. President Bush said that his calling the Democratic Party the Democrat Party in his State of the Union Address was just an oversight. The problem is he’s made the same mistake at least eleven times in the last three months alone.

In the State of the Union Address he mentioned the “Democrat Majority.” He now says that was just an oversight. Although, the speech was written for him to say “Democratic Majority” and the official version on the White House web site was changed to say “Democrat Majority” later. Okay, it was one oversight. A one time mistake. Right? But wait…

President Bush, November 8, 2006:
Yesterday, the people went to the polls and they cast their vote for a new direction in the House of Representatives. And while the ballots are still being counted in the Senate, it is clear the Democrat Party had a good night last night, and I congratulate them on their victories. This morning I spoke with Republican and Democrat leadership in the House and Senate.

President Bush, November 5, 2006:
On these issues, the Democrat party has adopted a clear strategy of opposition and obstruction. Recently the House Democrat leader explained the advice she's been following since I was reelected in 2004. She said, you must take him down. That him would be me.

President Bush, October 30, 2006:
As a matter of fact, the top Democrat leader in the House made an interesting declaration. She said, we love tax cuts. But given her record, she must be a secret admirer. (Laughter and applause.)...Time and time again, when she and the Democrat Party had an opportunity to show their love for tax cuts, they voted no. If that's the Democrats' idea of love, I sure wouldn't want to see what hate looks like. (Laughter and applause.)

President Bush, October 20, 2006:
There is a difference of opinion between what we ought to be doing with your money, see. There are people in the Democrat Party who think they can spend your money far better than you can.

President Bush, October 19, 2006:
It's interesting, if you look at the history of tax cuts, the Democrat Party always -- didn't always feel the way they feel today. Back in the '60s, the Democrats understood that our economy grows when Americans keep more of what they earn, when Americans make their own decisions about how to save, spend, or invest.

President Bush, November 7, 2005:
And one area that we need to make progress on is with the Democrat Party. The Democrat Party is a free -- for many sessions was a free trade party.

That’s eleven times just over the last three months. And those are just speeches. They don't include interviews where he used it. Either he’s just that stupid (which I don’t believe for a minute) or he’s lying to the American people.

We report. You decide.

Hat tip to the Horse’s Mouth for this.

Update: There’s a good discussion on the pros and cons of objecting to the misnaming of the Democratic Party. My favorite is calling the Republican Party the Repub Party (stress on the first syllable of the word Repub is important--as in REpub). If they want to shorten our party name we’ll shorten theirs. Which sounds worse to your ears the Democrat Party or the REpub Party? ‘Nuf said.

Iraqi Leaders and Iraqi People Prefer US Democratic Party to Republicans

2007-01-29T06:00:00.000-06:00

Numerous recent polls in both the US and Iraq have shown that a majority of the people prefer the ideas of the Democratic Party regarding the war in Iraq to those coming out of the White House. Now, reports from Baghdad show that the Iraqi leaders themselves prefer the Democratic Party to the Republican Party in how to move forward in that country. This report from the Iraqi capital shows just that.

Many pointed out advantages to the Democrats' increased sway over Iraq policy. Government officials said they had generally found the Democratic position on handing over security to Iraqi forces sooner rather than later closer to theirs. Almost all agree on Democratic Party initiatives, squashed when Republicans controlled Congress, to prevent the building of permanent U.S. bases here. They note news reports of Democrats acknowledging the suffering of the Iraqi population.

"I see that the Democratic ideas are more related to reality," said Ammar Tuma, a lawmaker who serves in Maliki's ruling Shiite coalition. "They talk about the real problems that the Iraqis are facing every day."

To date, government officials said, they've also found Democratic visitors such as Pelosi, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois less parochial, more culturally sensitive and more willing to listen to Iraqi concerns than Republicans.

"Before, Bush used to order Iraqi officials to do this and that," said one member of Maliki's Islamic Dawa Party, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "The Republicans were dictating the political process in Iraq. With the Democrats in control of Congress, the Republicans are now less influential than before. It helps us in a sense to breathe a bit more and to have more freedom."

Many of the Shiites around Maliki still harbor bitterness about the Bush administration's push to remove then-interim Prime Minister Ibrahim Jafari from his post last year. They considered the pressure inappropriate interference in Iraq's domestic affairs. They were also angered by recent remarks by Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice questioning whether Maliki was up to the job of leading Iraq.

Jafari as you will recall disagreed with the Bush Administration and the Bush Administration forced him out of office despite his being elected PM by the Iraqi people. After that, it took months for anyone else to accept the position until Maliki finally did. Then the Bush Administration leaked an internal memo that they didn’t have confidence in him. Meaning agree with us or you’ll be out of office like your predecessor. Some model of Democracy.

No wonder Iraqi people in general and Iraqi leaders in particular prefer the Democratic Party to the Republican Party.

This quote courtessy of http://www.crooksandliars.com/.

Bush to Give State of Union Speech Tomorrow – Time to Raise the Threat Level Another Color

2007-01-22T15:58:00.000-06:00

President Bush is set to deliver his State of the Union speech tomorrow. An overwhelming number of Americans disapprove of his handling the Iraq War, distrust him personally and disapprove of the escalation of US troops he has called for. Time to increase the Threat Level to RED ALERT. ABC News reports that the White House has just leaked that it has uncovered plans for al Qaeda in Iraq to send terrorists posing as students into the US to strike at us. The problem is that the documents were discovered over six months ago when Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed and the plans were only in their “earliest stages” and there is no evidence of an imminent attack on the US. Suspiciously, this half a year old information is being leaked on the eve of the first State of the Union where a majority of the American people don’t trust President Bush.

Hmmmm.

I predict that Bush will cite this six month old news as a reason for his escalation in Iraq when he delivers the SoTU address tomorrow night and he may possibly use it later (some time after the SoTU) to bolster his case for declaring war on Iran. Even though Iran and al Qaeda are enemies.

I’d like to be proved wrong. But after the Terror Color Level being raised every time the Bush Administration dipped in the polls for so many years, I’m cynical now. As the President famously said, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, uh, um, uh, you can’t get fooled again.”

You said it Mr. President! We won’t be!

You Can’t Criticize Condi Rice Because She’s Black!

2007-01-19T21:58:00.000-06:00

A number of times in the last six years whenever Condi Rice has come under criticism Republicans bring up the point that she is black, and claim that Democrats shouldn’t criticize her because of this. They further say that to criticize her is racism. Rush called criticizing her a “lynching.” That’s the same term used to counter criticisms of Justice Clarence Thomas’s professional behavior during his Senate confirmation hearings. He used it to fend off criticism and the rest of the Republican world echoed his claim. This has become a familiar refrain. Countless time Republicans have made the claim that Democrats shouldn’t criticize Condi or other prominent black Republicans because they are black. Bullshit! That claim itself amounts to racism. Saying that you can’t criticize a person on the basis of their race is as racist as criticizing them because of their race. On this the week of Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday it is important to remember his words that our American Dream is that one day people will be judged not on the color of their skin but on the content of their character. If someone in a prominent position of serving the American people is screwing up, that needs to be pointed out. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what their race is. If they are doing a good job again it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what their race is. Saying that we can’t point out the failures of Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas or any other person of color is itself racism. Calling criticizing of a person’s professional behavior a “lynching” is racism. You wouldn’t call criticizing a white person a lynching would you? No. It’s racism plain and simple.

This week Senator Barbara Boxer pointed out that she has no one in her immediate family at risk in Iraq since her children are too old and her grandchild is too young and Condi Rice has no close family member at risk in Iraq either. Republicans pounced on this saying that she was deriding Condi for not having children and besides…wait for it…Condi Rice is black! Listen to every Republican statement on this and you will hear them mention that Condi is black. Like that gives her carte blanche against any criticism. Does Condi’s race have anything to do with this? Of course not. It’s maddening. I’ve heard my Harvard educated brother-in-law make this lame claim. I don’t know whether these people are really that stupid or they think the rest of the American people are that stupid that we won’t see this as the racism it is.

And by the way, you can't criticize me for this, because for all you know I may be black.

Think the Mainstream Media is “Liberal”? Why Do They Use McCarthy Era Republican Propaganda Terms?

2007-01-17T06:10:00.000-06:00

This is something that has been bugging me for many years. Republican Party Propagandists have since the 1990s been calling the Democratic Party the “Democrat Party.” The name of the party is the Democratic Party. They only use this bullshit name, Democrat Party, because Newt Gingrich and his fellow Spin Meister and Republican pollster Frank Luntz determined that it could get them more votes to misname the Democratic Party. That’s because the word democratic is good. Everyone wants to be democratic. So they decided to change the name of the Democratic Party to something else to mislead the America people. Before Newt, Senator Joseph McCarthy who took our country into the dark days of McCarthyism used it repeatedly. The Republicans thought it worked then, so they misnamed the Democratic Party anew and kept repeating the mistake getting more and more Republican Propagandists to join in. Including the Mainstream Media itself. The so called liberal media uses the term even though they know it’s wrong.

The President uses this incorrect term. But he is by his own admission not very good with words. So maybe we could give him a pass. But the Mainstream media continues to use this McCarthyism propagandist term even though it is NOT the name of the party and the word democrat isn’t an adjective at all. It’s a noun. Anyone who studied journalism would know that. Should know that. Must know that if they are to inform and not help mislead the American People.

Fox News Channel (which isn’t a true news outlet – jut a propaganda mill) started using it as soon as they went on the air. But it is heard on ABC (which aired a propaganda film on 9-11 before the election), NBC, MS-NBC (both owned by defense contractor GE), CNN, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, the Associated Press and even on the most watched news program on CBS the other night. Media Matters has a good post on how CBS used this propagandistic term instead of the correct name of the Democratic Party while interviewing the President on 60 Minutes. Media Matters had an earlier post on the propagandistic use of “Democrat Party” back in August. Here is a New Yorker article on this as well.

I propose we call the Republican Party the Rethuglican Party. If they start using the correct term so will we.

US War with Iran to Begin Soon If Not Already

2007-01-11T06:23:00.000-06:00

Conservative Reagan Republican, former Reagan Administration Official and former Editor of the Wall Street Journal, Paul Craig Roberts, explained in an article published before President Bush’s speech last night that Bush and his Administration were gearing up to start a war with Iran and soon. They have moved aircraft carriers into the Persian Gulf and set up Patriot Missile batteries inside Iraq. The insurgents don’t have scuds or other missiles to warrant Patriot Missiles. Fighting the insurgents doesn’t require aircraft carriers. They have no airforce. Bush’s recent appointment of a Navy Admiral to be in charge of the War in Iraq and the War in Afghanistan (despite their both being desert wars) seems to support the conclusion that a war with Iran is in the works. An Admiral would know just how to launch an air and sea war with Iran. And those Patriot Missiles would be useful in one.

Israel is gearing up for this war, too. And they’re ready to go nuclear. Bush’s appointed US Ambassador to Israel says that the US will support such a move.

Last night in his speech announcing his plans to escalate the War in Iraq by sending 21,500 more US troops into combat situations, he also threatened Iran and Syria with military action.

Today US troops broke into an Iranian Consulate in Iraq and took documents, computes and took six Iranian Consulate employees (possibly with diplomatic credentials) as prisoners. This is internationally considered an act of war and was considered as such when Iranian students invaded the US Embassy in Iran in 1979. So I guess technically we are already at war with Iran or rather they are at war with us as Constitutionally it would require the US Congress to declare a war on Iran.

I Learn Something New Every Day

2007-01-05T19:55:00.000-06:00

I just learned that conservatives predilection to invoking comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis when attempting to rescue argumentative positions which have long since lost their logical basis is actually called Godwin's Law it is closely related to reductio ad Hitlerum, a term ironically enough coined by father of Neo-Con Ideology, Leo Strauss.

Seriously it’s more likely due to Cognitive Dissonance (if I remember from Psych classes in college) which requires them to demonize all who disagree with them the more they discover the holes in their own arguments. Or perhaps what we are witnessing Benford's Law of Controversy which is newer, but possibly more apt: Passion is inversely proportional to the amount of real information available.

I learn something new every day. I love the Internet!

3000 Americans Have Died in Iraq War

2006-12-31T19:44:00.000-06:00

As 2006 draws to a close and Americans prepare to celebrate New Years tonight let us reflect on the more than 3000 American men and women who have died in the Iraq War. Let us bow our heads and pray that this madness does not continue much longer.

Conservative Counterterrorism Expert Richard Clarke Assesses Bush Foreign Policy – It’s Not Good

2006-12-31T09:11:00.000-06:00

Richard Clarke, former anti-terror czar under the current Bush Administration as well under Clinton, is respected for his knowledge and expertise of foreign policy by both conservatives and liberals alike. In this article he assesses the Bush Administration’s policies. It is so enlightening I have posted it in its entirety.

While You Were at War . . .

By Richard A. ClarkeSunday, December 31, 2006

In every administration, there are usually only about a dozen barons who can really initiate and manage meaningful changes in national security policy. For most of 2006, some of these critical slots in the Bush administration have been vacant, such as the deputy secretary of state (empty since Robert B. Zoellick left for investment bank Goldman Sachs) and the deputy director of national intelligence (with Gen. Michael V. Hayden now CIA director). And with the nation involved in a messy war spiraling toward a bad conclusion, the key deputies and Cabinet members and advisers are all focusing on one issue, at the expense of all others: Iraq.

National Security Council veteran Rand Beers has called this the "7-year-old's soccer syndrome" -- just like little kids playing soccer, everyone forgets their particular positions and responsibilities and runs like a herd after the ball.

In the end, there are only 12 seats at the conference table in the White House Situation Room, and the key players' schedules mean that they can seldom meet there together in person or on secure video conference for more than about 10 hours each week. When issues don't receive first-tier consideration, they can slip by for months. I learned this firsthand: In the early days of the Bush administration, I called for an urgent meeting to discuss the threat al-Qaeda posed to the United States. The Cabinet-level meeting eventually took place -- but not until Sept. 4, 2001.

Without the distraction of the Iraq war, the administration would have spent this past year -- indeed, every year since Sept. 11, 2001 -- focused on al-Qaeda. But beyond al-Qaeda and the broader struggle for peaceful coexistence with (and within) Islam, seven key "fires in the in-box" national security issues remain unattended, deteriorating and threatening, all while Washington's grown-up 7-year-olds play herd ball with Iraq.

Global warming: When the possibility of invading Iraq surfaced in 2001, senior Bush administration officials hadn't thought much about global warming, except to wonder whether it was caused by human activity or by sunspots. Today, the world's scientists and many national leaders worry that the world has passed the point of no return on global warming. If it has, then human damage to the ecosphere will cause more major cities to flood and make the planet significantly less conducive to human habitation -- all over the lifetime of a child now in kindergarten. British Prime Minister Tony Blair keeps trying to convince President Bush of the magnitude of the problem, but in every session between the two leaders Iraq squeezes out the time to discuss the pending planetary disaster.

Russian revanchism: When Russian President Vladimir Putin and Bush leave office in rapid succession in 2008 and 2009, it seems likely that Russia will be less of a democracy and less inclined to cooperate with Washington than it was six years ago, when Bush stared into the eyes and looked into the heart of the Russian leader. Given her extensive background in Soviet studies, Condoleezza Rice would have been a natural to work on key U.S.-Russian issues, first as national security adviser and now as secretary of state. But the focus on Iraq has precluded such efforts, even as the troubling issues multiply: Russian governors are no longer elected, but appointed; dissidents die mysteriously and probably at the hands of the new KGB; opposition media are suppressed; and corporate leaders are jailed or hounded out of the country.

Meanwhile, Moscow plays petro-politics by dramatically raising the cost of energy to former Soviet republics that do not toe the Kremlin's line, and by threatening to turn off the pipeline to European nations that don't cooperate. If Bush hoped that turning a blind eye to all this would help win Russian cooperation in Iraq and Iran, the strategy failed.

Latin America's leftist lurch: In the years before the Iraq war, U.S. presidents were welcomed at summits throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. Indeed, the attacks of Sept. 11 found then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in South America, visiting one area of the world where U.S. policies had worked. Friendly, democratic governments were in power in every nation in the hemisphere except Cuba. Formerly debt-ridden economies were implementing pro-market reforms, and the United States was welcomed as a partner. Washington seemed confident that if and when Fidel Castro died (there was always some doubt), even Cuba might join the democracy/free market club.

Today, Castro has been replaced, but not just by another Cuban dictator. The leader of the hemisphere's new anti-Yankee alliance is Hugo Chávez, the democratically elected president of Venezuela. Chávez's anti-U.S. campaign is supported by Cuban intelligence and Venezuelan oil money. By 2006, Venezuela and Cuba were not alone in their opposition to Washington; kindred spirits have been elected in Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua. Having begun his administration pledging new cooperation with Mexico, Bush backtracked after Sept. 11, focusing instead on tightening immigration and border controls.

Africa at war: The genocide spilling from the Darfur region of Sudan into neighboring Chad has captured attention in the United States mainly because of (belated) media coverage and an aggressive advocacy campaign by concerned groups, but the prospects of Washington dealing with the problem seem slim. Darfur, however, is only one of a pox of conflicts that, together with HIV/AIDS, are depopulating parts of Africa and robbing it of potential wealth from mineral, oil and gas deposits. Wars have also raged in Chad, Congo, Liberia, Sierra Leone and Somalia. Were it not for the Iraq war, Washington may have acted to stop what the Bush administration admits is genocide in Darfur, or taken steps to prevent the chaos sweeping Somalia after a group affiliated with al-Qaeda took over the country and left Ethiopia no choice but to invade in hopes of preventing a more disastrous war. Unfortunately, even designating a small presence of U.S. Special Forces to lead a U.N.-approved peacekeeping force in Darfur appears beyond the capability of the badly stretched American military.

Arms control freeze: Once atop several administrations' national security agendas, international arms control has received little White House attention since the Bush administration decided early on to walk away from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. National security adviser Stephen J. Hadley has extensive government experience working on arms control and he began to focus on this turf in early 2001, when he was number two at the National Security Council. But after 9/11, Hadley has had little opportunity to advance international efforts to control biological weapons, nuclear testing and proliferation, or the threat of nuclear or radioactive terrorist weapons. For a long time, the White House outsourced dealing with Iran's nuclear weapons to the Europeans, just as the onus of stopping North Korea's nuclear development was placed on Asian nations. The sustained senior-level attention that is needed to stop two nuclear weapons programs at the same time has simply not been available -- because of Iraq.

Transnational crime: In a nationally televised address in 1989, President George H.W. Bush held aloft a bag of cocaine that had been sold near the White House and declared a "War on Drugs." That initiative was later enlarged to target the international criminal cartels engaged in human trafficking, gun and contraband smuggling, money laundering and cyber fraud. The momentum from these efforts produced international treaties to combat hidden global crime conglomerates, but the White House leadership necessary to coordinate dozens of U.S. agencies and mobilize other nations has dissipated. Moreover, the world's international crime cartels received a major shot in the arm with the occupation of Afghanistan by NATO forces. From relatively low levels of heroin production in 2001, Afghanistan's economy is now dependent upon the widespread cultivation of heroin that is flooding black markets in Europe and Asia. With most of the U.S. Army either in Iraq, heading to Iraq or returning from Iraq, insufficient U.S. forces were available to prevent the once-liberated Afghanistan from morphing into a narco-state.

The Pakistani-Afghan border: Afghanistan increasingly receives the attention of senior U.S. policymakers, not because of the narcotics problem, but mainly because the once-defeated Taliban again threaten Afghan and coalition forces. However, if there is a solution, it lies on the other side of the Khyber Pass where a sanctuary has emerged, a Taliban-like state within a state in western Pakistan. Dealing with that problem is more than Washington has been willing or able to handle, for it involves the complex issue of who governs nuclear-armed Pakistan and how.

Thus far, Washington has accepted Gen. Pervez Musharraf's half-hearted measures for dealing with the nuclear proliferation network of A.Q. Khan, addressing the terrorist involvement of Pakistani intelligence and controlling the Taliban/al-Qaeda bases in Waziristan. Getting Pakistan to do more would require a major sustained effort by senior U.S. officials, including addressing the longstanding tensions with India. Because of Iraq, Washington's national security gurus do not have the hours in their days to manage that -- nor the troops needed to secure Afghanistan.

As the president contemplates sending even more U.S. forces into the Iraqi sinkhole, he should consider not only the thousands of fatalities, the tens of thousands of casualties and the hundreds of billions of dollars already lost. He must also weigh the opportunity cost of taking his national security barons off all the other critical problems they should be addressing -- problems whose windows of opportunity are slamming shut, unheard over the wail of Baghdad sirens.

Richard A. Clarke, former national coordinator for counterterrorism, is chairman of Good Harbor Consulting and author of "Against All Enemies" (Free Press) and "Breakpoint" (Putnam).

2006-12-28T19:00:00.000-06:00

Read the dirty truth behind the dreaded Liberal Media.

This is why my brother-in-law and so many others think liberals hate America. I tried to explain to him that corporate pressures bias the news we get in ways that supposedly liberal reporters couldn’t. Many journalists report that their best work is spiked (not printed or broadcasted) because it may offend someone higher up. After a while to get anything in print or broadcast and keep your job you produce what the bosses want. Simple as that. The fact that many journalists have blogs or contribute to blogs (many anonymously to avoid being fired by those same bosses) in which they try to get the information that doesn’t pass through the corporate censor gives me hope. The increased readership of these blogs does the same. In fact the Time Magazine person of the year is us. Let’s not blow it. Blog on America. We can make our nation the best it can be.

Further Reflections on My Dinners with Brother-In-Law

2006-12-28T06:29:00.000-06:00

One other thing about my Christmas Eve and Christmas Day political discussions with my brother-in-law that struck me was the frequent appearances made by Adolf Hitler. Not in the flesh of course but in reference. Every two minute or so he would mention Hitler, fascism, or Mein Kampf. It was usually Muslims, especially Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran (who I will admit is a nut-case and a Holocaust denier), to Hitler; the word Islamic always followed by fascism; and book sales of Mein Kampf among Palestinians was brought up more than once.

There are a few problems with these. Ahmadinejad has very little real power in Iran unlike Hitler in Germany. Ahmadinejad is not the commander of the military; the Ayatollahs control the military. Fascism is a blending of Corporatism with Government and the Islamists are staunchly against Corporatism in favor of Theocracy. If anything the last six years have seen a blending of Corporatism with Government in the US. The story of the sales of Mein Kampf in the West Bank is based on a brief spike in sales many years ago. Today far more copies of the Arabic edition of Mein Kampf are sold in London than in the Palestinian territories. And the English edition outsells the Arabic edition by orders of magnitude. More copies of Mein Kampf are sold in the US than anywhere else. Not only to Skinheads and Klansmen but to college students in universities where that book is studied in its historical and social context.

I don’t mean to single out my brother-in-law. Many Bush supporters I talk to, see on TV, read the posts of on the Internet, etc, do the exact same thing. They incessantly bring up Hitler and Nazis and fascism when addressing critics of Bush but rail at any mention of those topics in relation to the Bush Administration itself. I understand the American Right-Wing’s fascination with Hitler since he was such a powerful Right-Wing leader, but their use of him to demonize their ideological opponents smacks of transference (if I remember that term correctly from psychology classes in my college days).

My brother-in-law like many Right-Wingers kept harping on comparisons made between George W. Bush and Hitler. I informed him that people had compared Clinton to Hitler and invited him to Google Clinton Hitler and see for himself that there are more than a million hits. I did the same afterwards and was amazed to learn that nearly every US president since Hitler has been compared to Hitler by opponents. In the last few years I have heard and read many Right-Wingers compare all sorts of Democrats to Nazis. It was only a couple of months ago that Donald Rumsfeld compared critics of the Bush Administration to Nazi Appeasers. My brother-in-law made the same comparison in almost the same breath as he bemoaned those who would dare compare Bush to Hitler. Supporters of equal rights for women have been labeled FemiNazis for years. But the Right’s hypersensitivity to Bush being compared to Hitler or serious parallels between actions of the Bush Administration with policies taken in Germany in the 30s and 40s conjure up the phrase methinks they doth protest too much.

Saddam to be Executed Within 30 Days

2006-12-26T18:28:00.000-06:00

Saddam Hussein, who has several trials accusing him of crimes during his reign yet to be tried, must be hanged within 30 days according to the highest Iraqi appeals court. The Iraqi judges were selected by the Bush administration and the trial was paid for with our tax dollars.

In the next few days or weeks, President Bush is expected to announce an escalation of US troops in Iraq. This will be very unpopular as 82% of Americans want us to reduce troop strength in Iraq and work toward withdrawing our soldiers and marines in 2007 or at least by 2008.

President Bush will be giving his State of the Union address to the nation right after Saddam will be put to death. The execution will be after the unpopular announcement of the troop build-up.

You do the math.

Oh, and it is believed that the Sunni reaction to Saddam’s execution will be huge and likely costly to our troops. I pray for them.

My Christmas

2006-12-26T17:49:00.000-06:00

Merry Christmas. Happy New Year. Happy belated Hanukah. Happy Kwanza.

I spent the day before Christmas Eve with my side of the family. It was a wonderful day. My wife’s family are great people, too. Most of them.

I had to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my brother-in-law. He’s a die-hard conservative Republican Bush supporter. He is supposed to be well educated: bachelors from the University of Virginia and a law degree from Harvard Law School. I have no proof he actually earned these degrees, but I have to give him the benefit of the doubt.

The Christmas Eve political debate at dinner was as turbulent as I expected. As usual he spent most of the time shouting over me and interrupting me. If you ever watch Bill O’Reilly (one of my brother-in-law’s heroes) interview someone he disagrees with, you will see the same technique. Conservatives, I believe, secretly realize that many of their arguments are without merit or have only a tenuous connection with reality, so screaming and interrupting those they disagree with is the only way to “win” an argument. They must interrupt and talk over their opponents because they fear the inadequacies of their own positions will become apparent to others.

Christmas Day’s discussion was more civil because I bent over backwards trying to find some common ground between us. I found that after about 40 minutes of doing this (and it was a struggle to find agreement points, but I did find some) his tone lowered to a normal level, and his interrupting became less frequent but did not entirely disappear. I believe I calmed him and convinced him that I was not going to topple his house of cards, and in the end he granted some concession points that I was pleasantly surprised to receive.

My sister-in-law and brother-in-law know that I have voted for and supported Democratic candidates, but I usually avoid political discussions with him (I don’t relish being shouted at or interrupted) and have never used the L word in his presence. It causes him to explode.

During the Christmas Eve debate he went on about how all Muslims are evil and you can’t rationalize with them and they only understand power so you have to utterly destroy them in order to have any success. Naturally I disagreed with this. He countered by saying that if Iran exploded a nuclear bomb destroying Chicago the liberals (the dreaded L word) wouldn’t allow the US to retaliate.

“Bullshit!” I said, “We’d blow them to kingdom come.”

“Oh, no.” He maintained, “Liberals won’t do anything that might result in innocent civilians being killed. So the liberals would allow Iran to nuke us and get away with it!”

“Bullshit!” I repeated, “I’m a liberal and if any country nuked us we’d bomb them back to the Stone Age.”

As I said “I’m a liberal” there was an audible gasp from my brother-in-law. The Stone Age part he had no problem with, but the liberal part caused him to sputter.

“He’s really a conservative liberal, honey.” My sister-in-law tried to console her husband.

“Liberals hate America. Liberals think everything America does is wrong and evil. They’d never retaliate if we were nuked.” He insisted; his eyes now slits looking at me askance.

“Well, there are probably some liberals who would retaliate.” My sister-in-law interjected, “But Kerry and Gore certainly wouldn’t.”

“They were the Democrat’s candidates for President.” He crowed.

“We’ve done it before.” I announced. “Liberal Democratic president FDR approved plans for the nuking of Japan and Democratic president Truman executed those plans. Both Kerry and Gore would definitely attack any country that nuked the US.”

“No they wouldn’t. Liberals hate America.” The Harvard educated man muttered.

“It’s just that he loves his country.” My sister-in-law explained.

“I love my country too!” I said.

“Oh, I’m sure you do.” She responded.

“I’m not!” He scowled, “All liberals hate America.”

Given his supposed level of education and the fact that he allegedly attended Harvard I was most surprised by the two-dimensional cardboard cut-out idea of a liberal he had. I explained to him that his was a straw man liberal who didn’t exist or if he did, did not represent the views of most of us. I further explained that there are a myriad of views on the left, but we simply disagree with many of President Bush’s policies and actions and certainly do not hate America.

“Well, guess what?” he gloated, “Bush’s policies are the policies of the United States! And if you don’t like America’s policies you don’t like America!” The look of satisfaction didn’t remain long on his face once I responded.

“Why is it?” I asked, “That when Clinton was president those who didn’t like his policies were never called un-American, but as soon as Bush became president, anyone who disagreed with his policies was anti-America and unpatriotic? George Bush is not America. He is simply a man hired to do a job of representing all of the American people in the position of president.”

“Disagreement with any president is not un-American.” Another guest said.

“You can disagree with Bush’s policies.” My brother-in-law then reversed.

“Well, I do.” I said.

“That’s fine. It’s a free country. I never said you couldn’t.”

And on it went. I’ll add more of our discussions as time allows. They are most enlightening.

The long and short of it is that both liberals and conservatives believe in the old adage my country right or wrong. It’s just that we progressive liberals believe we must address the wrong parts and make them right in order that our country will be the best it can be. That’s really loving your country. The modern crop of conservatives, like my brother-in-law, believes that we must ignore the wrongs because to draw attention to them will make America appear weak or lessened in the sight of other nations. I don’t think that’s loving America.

Whenever I pointed out areas where we need to improve he countered by stating the obvious that America is better than Hitler’s Germany and life under the Taliban. For liberals it isn’t good enough for America to be better than the worst. We have to strive, really work at being the best we can be. Always improving and pushing forward. That’s progressivism and is central to liberals’ outlook. For the new crop of conservatives it is good enough for America to simply be better than the worst. It wasn’t good enough for the conservatives of a generation ago. It wasn’t good enough for conservative Barry Goldwater whose views are echoed in John Dean’s book Conservatives Without a Conscience which is based on discussions with Goldwater. It wasn’t good enough for progressive Republican Teddy Roosevelt who believed so much in the right and responsibility to criticize the President that he said to not allow such dissent is morally treasonous.

My brother-in-law brought up that many (he says 70%) of the Muslims in the world believe that it was not really Muslims who committed the September 11 attack. I pointed out to him that they were in denial because they didn’t want to believe that people of their faith could do something so horribly immoral. By the same token people like my brother-in-law are in denial about wrongs committed by the Bush Administration and the Republican Party. They refuse to believe that people of their party do the things they do. So they find others to blame. Usually it is liberal Democrats who bear their blame just as the Muslims he speaks of say Bush and Israel were behind 9/11. Conservatives convince themselves that they alone love America and that liberals hate our country. Therefore liberals should not be listened to, and conservatives despite whatever failures they may have are the only ones to listen to.

I’ll try not to follow either of these models. The Democratic Party has made many mistakes, and I will point out any the new majority in Congress make, here in this blog. I’ll leave denial as a river in Egypt.

Bush Lied – Tony (the Poodle) Blair Kept His Lies Secret – US Dragged Into War under False Pretenses

2006-12-15T05:36:00.000-06:00

Documents just released show that prior the start of the Iraq War, both the Bush Administration and Tony Blair’s Administration knew that Saddam had no Biological, Chemical or Nuclear WMD and that Iraq posed no serious threat to its neighbors, the US or the UK. Britain has kept these documents suppressed and locked up for years under their “Official Secrets Act,” but they have now been deemed not a threat to Britain’s National Security and have been released.

Carne Ross, Britain's key negotiator at the UN said in late 2002 that he "discussed this at some length with David Kelly", the weapons expert who a year later was found dead after he was named as the source of a BBC report saying Downing Street had "sexed up" the WMD claims in a dossier. A British government (whitewash) inquiry into Kelly’s death ruled it a “suicide” and the (whitewash) Butler inquiry cleared Blair and Downing Street of "sexing up" the dossier. Publication of the Carne Ross evidence will cast fresh doubts on its findings.

Read about them here. And further information can be found here, and here and here. A different instance of false information used to justify the Iraq War is covered here.

Update: As of December 27, the US Corporate Mainstream Media has not picked up this information vital to the American people. Don’t hold your breath. They won’t report it. Still think we have a liberal media?

Hate To Tell You We Told You So

2006-12-13T06:29:00.000-06:00

In the lead up the Iraq War, I wrote several letters to the President of the United States expressing my belief that we were rushing into a war that was not in our nation’s best interest. I had great faith that with the threat of an invasion and the pressure of UN weapons inspectors we could rid Iraq of any WMD and ensure that Saddam would not be a threat to the Middle East. Why did I have faith, because it was already working. Fearing the wrath of our troops Saddam caved in and began destroying his al-Samoud missiles based on those UN weapons inspectors’ insistence that he do so. Even though they were not WMD they were a threat to the region. Saddam knuckled under. But, when the invasion began the inspectors were forced out of Iraq and Saddam stopped his destruction of his missiles.

In those days the media and the pro-war pundits both in the administration and outside cast those of us who disagreed with the Iraq War as unpatriotic, un-American and unsupportive of the troops. Everyone I knew who opposed the Iraq invasion was very supportive and grateful for our troops. I wrote about a dozen letters to the editors of American newspapers explaining this and thanking the troops for their sacrifices. Only one, The Stars and Stripes, the official newspaper of the US Military had the courage to print such a letter. The others refused to print my or any other letter from dissenters expressing appreciation for our troops because it didn’t match the image of us they wanted to project: those critical of Bush must not support our troops.

Paul Krugman’s most recent column highlights some warnings about the Iraq War given by Democrats prior to the war’s start. They, too, were cast as unpatriotic, un-American and unsupportive of the troops. In recent years they have been labeled “cut and runners” by Bush and his supporters. Now with 82% of the American people wanting our troops out of Iraq within two years and most, 70% wanting them out by 2008, it is time to re-read the warnings of these American patriots who took claims of being un-American, unpatriotic and unsupportive of the troops on the chin:

They Told You So
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: December 8, 2006
New York Times

Shortly after U.S. forces marched into Baghdad in 2003, The Weekly Standard published a jeering article titled, “The Cassandra Chronicles: The stupidity of the antiwar doomsayers.” Among those the article mocked was a “war novelist” named James Webb, who is now the senator-elect from Virginia.

The article’s title was more revealing than its authors knew. People forget the nature of Cassandra’s curse: although nobody would believe her, all her prophecies came true. And so it was with those who warned against invading Iraq. At best, they were ignored. A recent article in The Washington Post ruefully conceded that the paper’s account of the debate in the House of Representatives over the resolution authorizing the Iraq war — a resolution opposed by a majority of the Democrats — gave no coverage at all to those antiwar arguments that now seem prescient.

At worst, those who were skeptical about the case for war had their patriotism and/or their sanity questioned. The New Republic now says that it “deeply regrets its early support for this war.” Does it also deeply regret accusing those who opposed rushing into war of “abject pacifism?”

Now, only a few neocon dead-enders still believe that this war was anything but a vast exercise in folly. And those who braved political pressure and ridicule to oppose what Al Gore has rightly called “the worst strategic mistake in the history of the United States” deserve some credit.

Unlike The Weekly Standard, which singled out those it thought had been proved wrong, I’d like to offer some praise to those who got it right. Here’s a partial honor roll:

Former President George H. W. Bush and Brent Scowcroft, explaining in 1998 why they didn’t go on to Baghdad in 1991: “Had we gone the invasion route, the United States could conceivably still be an occupying power in a bitterly hostile land.”

Representative Ike Skelton, September 2002: “I have no doubt that our military would decisively defeat Iraq’s forces and remove Saddam. But like the proverbial dog chasing the car down the road, we must consider what we would do after we caught it.”

Al Gore, September 2002: “I am deeply concerned that the course of action that we are presently embarking upon with respect to Iraq has the potential to seriously damage our ability to win the war against terrorism and to weaken our ability to lead the world in this new century.”

Barack Obama, now a United States senator, September 2002: “I don’t oppose all wars. What I am opposed to is a dumb war. What I am opposed to is a rash war. What I am opposed to is the cynical attempt by Richard Perle and Paul Wolfowitz and other armchair, weekend warriors in this administration to shove their own ideological agendas down our throats, irrespective of the costs in lives lost and in hardships borne.”

Representative John Spratt, October 2002: “The outcome after the conflict is actually going to be the hardest part, and it is far less certain.”

Representative Nancy Pelosi, now the House speaker-elect, October 2002: “When we go in, the occupation, which is now being called the liberation, could be interminable and the amount of money it costs could be unlimited.”

Senator Russ Feingold, October 2002: “I am increasingly troubled by the seemingly shifting justifications for an invasion at this time. … When the administration moves back and forth from one argument to another, I think it undercuts the credibility of the case and the belief in its urgency. I believe that this practice of shifting justifications has much to do with the troubling phenomenon of many Americans questioning the administration’s motives.”

Howard Dean, then a candidate for president and now the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, February 2003: “I firmly believe that the president is focusing our diplomats, our military, our intelligence agencies, and even our people on the wrong war, at the wrong time. … Iraq is a divided country, with Sunni, Shia and Kurdish factions that share both bitter rivalries and access to large quantities of arms.”

We should honor these people for their wisdom and courage. We should also ask why anyone who didn’t raise questions about the war — or, at any rate, anyone who acted as a cheerleader for this march of folly — should be taken seriously when he or she talks about matters of national security.

GOP Reaching Out to Minorities

2006-11-16T06:47:00.000-06:00

In the Tennessee senate race the Republicans ran race-baiting ads insinuating the black Democratic candidate slept with white women and featuring African drums in radio ads every time his name was mentioned.

Now the Grand Old Party has elected Trent Lott (who last time he was in the news was praising segregationists) to the position of “minority whip.” Not too subtle there.

And they wonder why so few black people vote Republican and why the few black Republican candidates they can find have to masquerade as Democrats to try to get votes.

Fox News Gave $2 Million to Terrorists Who Bought Weapons to Kill Israelis

2006-11-15T06:53:00.000-06:00

Word is out that Fox News Channel gave $2 million to a Middle East terrorist group responsible for kidnapping two Fox reporters. The terrorist group has claimed they used the money to buy weapons which they are using to kill Israelis.

According to laws passed under the Bush Administration, any group which gives financial aid to a terrorist group is a terrorist group itself and will be prosecuted as such under American law. Their assets will be seized. The Bush Administration has seized the assets of people who contributed far smaller amounts to Muslim charities that the authorities believed were fronts for terrorist groups. This is a clear instance of a US corporation giving millions directly to a terrorist group and that terrorist group used the money for weapons to be used in the War on Terror. Will they seize the assets of Fox News Channel?

Will the Bush Administration follow the laws they put in place and prosecute as terrorists Fox News Channel which has been for six years the mouthpiece of the Bush Administration? In related news, Fox News Channel was hunting for any Iraqi insurgents who might say they would be happy that the Democrats won back Congress as this internal memo proves. The memo (and hundreds of others exposed in the film OutFoxed) clearly shows that Fox is merely a Republican propaganda spin factory.

Isn’t giving aid and comfort to our enemies treason? And aren’t the terrorists our enemy in the War on Terror? And if the Bush Administration is serious about fighting the War on Terror, wouldn’t they go after an American company that gave $2 million to a terrorist group regardless of the politics of that company?

We shall see. My guess is that the Bush Administration will not prosecute Fox News Channel because they are not really interested in going after those who fund terrorists; they are only interested in rhetoric which will win them elections and hold onto power.

You’re either with us or against us, George. Which are you? Which is Fox?

Payback’s a Bitch

2006-11-13T20:08:00.000-06:00

For the last weeks of the election President Bush was saying that those who vote for Democrats would be supporting the terrorists. He stepped up the rhetoric in the final week before the election.

On Tuesday a majority of Americans voted for the Democrats.

Today a poll showed the Bush’s support among Americans had dropped to 31% (an all time low).

Let’s think about that a moment shall we: you call a majority of the American people terrorist supporters and the next thing you know they don’t like you.

Who’d a thunk that?

Black GOP Candidate Bribes and Tricks Homeless Blacks into Lying to Black Voters

2006-11-09T19:07:00.000-06:00

Michael Steele, Luitenent Governor and Senate candidate in Maryland (who happens to be black) and Bob Ehrlich , the white governor of that state, bussed hundreds of homeless people from Philadelphia to hand out campaign documents that lied to black voters in a heavily Democratic area telling them that the two politicians (Republicans of course) were in fact Democrats. The Philly Homeless people didn’t know they were handing out lies and when they found out they were very upset and felt used. The homeless people were promised food and money, but the GOP stiffed them. The GOP didn't provide the homeless people the ride back to Philly that they promissed them either. So the homeless people protested and then the GOP tried to pay them off but investigators who came down because of the protests witnessed the homeless recruits being paid off. It turns out the two Republican candidates did the same thing back in 2002. The Governor's wife even greeted the busloads of homeless when they came to Maryland.

I hope they are put away in prison for years to come. We have a small payback in that Steele lost his bid for Senate. Steele is now making a bid for Republican National Committee Chairman. Fits right in I'd say.

Black Republicans using homeless blacks to trick black voters by lying to them and then cheating the homeless out of the food and money they promised. Truly disgusting! There are absolutely no depths that the Republican Party won’t go to try to hold onto power.

Thank God that the GOP lost control of the House and Senate!

Update: The Republican Party offered Steele the position of National Committee Chairman. He is expected to give them an answer this coming week. The Republican Maryland Governor who was involved is blocking any investigation of Steele and himself.

Update 2: Due to increased focus on Steele and his hoodwinking black voters in Maryland, the RNC has decided to offer the chairmanship to Sen. Mel Martinez (R-FL) who has connections with Jack Abramoff and his bribes of Republican Congressmen Bob Ney who just stepped down from Congress after pleading guilty.

Martinez was also the one who passed around the memo that Republicans were going to exploit Terri Schiavo to win votes. He accidentally gave a copy of the memo to a Democrat and then tried to say the whole thing was a forgery until his staff admitted it came from his office.

Is there any Republican who isn’t a crook and a liar?

Bush Calls Terrorists! Is NSA Listening to the Calls?

2006-11-08T07:10:00.000-06:00

For weeks President Bush has been saying that if the Democrats win, then the Terrorists won. Over and over he spread that message. When Democrats won the House of Representatives, Bush called them and congratulated them. He called Nancy Pelosi and asked her to come by for lunch with him. So if the Democrats are Terrorists and Bush is calling them are those calls being monitored by the NSA?

I’m just askin’.

Republicans Found Lying to Democratic Voters – Telling them Their Polling Place Has Changed – And Worse!

2006-11-06T07:02:00.000-06:00

Republicans are calling registered Democratic Voters and telling them that their polling location has been changed when it hasn’t. This in an obvious effort to suppress Democratic Voter turnout in the 2006 election. This went on during the 2004 elections as well, but the Mainstream Media barely covered it. I expect they will barely cover it again.

More on the Republicans calling voters pretending to represent the Democratic candidate and harassing them so that they will vote Republican can be found here. Another good article can be found here. This is happening across the country. One pissed off voter recommends calling the National Republican Congressional Committee back at 202-479-7000 and harangue them the way they are harassing voters while pretending to the the Democrats. If you are receiving these harassing calls from the Republican Party complain to the FCC at 202-418-1440, phone number or their fax number at 202-418-0232. Unfortunately the FCC reports to President Bush so there is little they will actually do, but you can get your complaint recorded.

Republicans believe they can only win by cheating. And they’re right.

Vote the Cheaters Out of Office. Vote Democratic Tomorrow November 7.

Update: The exclusively Republican Company, Conquest Communications, that the Republican Party has been using to harass voters and make them believe it was the Democrats calling them has removed their contact information (phone number, address, etc.) from their web site because people were calling them back. Gee, the Republicans can call voters dozens of times posing as Democrats to piss them off into voting Republican, but they don’t want anyone calling them back to complain. So instead call the National Republican Congressional Committee at 202-479-7000 to complain about their Un-American and Illegal Dirty Tricks to try to Steal this election.

Update: Josh Marshall and Atrios are reporting that CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are each ignoring the GOP's nationwide campaign of false-flag robocalls meant to harass voters and fool them into thinking the calls come from Democrats. If it were Dem on GOP, if it were on Drudge, the cable nets would be on it wall-to-wall. As it is, they're content to ignore it.

That's because the powers-that-be in the mainstream media are in the tow of the Republican Party. The Halperins and Crowleys of the news biz are all part of the same corruption.

Welcome to the USSR. Why do the Republicans even bother holding elections? Why not just declare themselves Kings and get it over with?

Get out and vote tomorrow. It may be our last chance to do so. Our only defense against tyranny is hugely strong voter turnout to turn the criminals out of office. We’ll work on forcing the criminals out of the Media after that. If you are asked to vote on an electronic terminal, demand to have a printed ballot. Vote early so they still have printed ballots for you to vote on. If you are forced to vote on an electronic voting terminal, have a video camera or a cell phone with the ability to store video capture your attempts to vote and if the machine changes your vote, send a copy to the local newspapers, TV and radio stations, send copies to the Democratic Party, to the FBI, etc. Get it out there so that they can’t duck this.

We will take back our country!

Proof Saddam’s Verdict and Sentence Were Timed for US Mid-Term Elections

2006-11-06T06:51:00.000-06:00

It has come out today that the court that found Saddam Hussein guilty and sentenced him to death hadn’t completed the document that lists what he was accused of, and how the court arrived at the guilty verdict. They won’t be done with that until Thursday!

Earlier the Iraqi Court trying Saddam said that they would not have a verdict before the November 7 US Elections, but this past weekend miraculously they managed to have it done except they’re still working on the paperwork and so they’re not really done after all. The Bush Administration claims that they did not pressure the Iraqi court to announce the verdict before the election, but the fact that they won’t be done compiling the charges against him until Thursday (two days after the election) exposes the truth behind this.

Saddam's trial took place in a country under U.S. occupation. The courtroom where he was tried, convicted and sentenced was established with $75 million of American taxpayers’ money, the "Iraqi" tribunal (judges and jury) were approved by the Pentagon and the State Department not the Iraqi government or the Iraqi people. The Bush administration has been calling the shots throughout the trial. Three defense attorneys have been killed and the chief judge resigned in protest against US Government involvement in the trial.

Saddam was a tyrant and he committed crimes against humanity, and because of that he should have been tried in an international tribunal that was not controlled by the United States if we wanted any shred of credibility in the verdict. Now the rest of the world knows that this was a US show trial. The fact that the verdict and sentencing were rushed before the US mid-term elections when the specific charges and manner in which the court determined his guilt (which must precede the verdict and sentencing according to Iraqi law) were even written down, exposes this to the world as a US political stunt to benefit the Republican Party.

Saddam would certainly have been found guilty before the Hague or any other International Tribunal, but they probably wouldn’t rush the verdict to help out a political party so that is why we ran the court ourselves.

We the American People have been made a laughingstock before the world by this obvious political ploy.

Republicans Harassing Voters Pretending to be Democrats – Voter Fraud!

2006-11-05T15:27:00.000-06:00

Throughout the country voters are being called by “robo-calls” automated calls claiming to be from the Democratic Party but in fact they are from the Republican Party harassing voters so that voters will be so mad at Democrats they will vote Republican. This is against the law as it is a form of voter fraud, but the Republicans are confident that they won’t have to pay the piper until after the election when angry voters try to punish who they think is harassing them. This is what they’ve stooped to. The Republican Party continues to pay the legal fees for some of their people who were convicted of felony voter fraud like this in the 2002 election. The Republicans hired them back to help with the 2004 elections. And now they're at it again in 2006. Journalist Josh Marshall has devoted his own web site to uncovering these ploys.

Don’t be fooled! If you are being harassed on the phone it is in all likelihood the Republican Party. These people are criminals and don’t deserve to hold public office. Vote the crooks and cheaters out of office on Tuesday.

Of course if you insist on voting for the criminal Republican Party, wait until Wednesday to vote. You’ll have the day all to yourselves, and there won’t be any of those icky liberals around. Just kidding.

Republicans Divert Money From Troops to For Profit Companies Driving Down Troop Morale

2006-11-05T10:37:00.000-06:00

Billions of our tax dollars which were intended for our troops are being re-routed to line the pockets of well connected companies that just happen to be huge donors to Republican candidates. Surprise surprise. Our troops have to work along side employees of these well connected companies getting paid five times what are troops are being paid for doing the same work. Our troops’ morale is in the toilet over treatment like this. Republicans in Congress and the White House keep pouring our tax dollars into the hands of these companies instead of our service members.

Watch this short interview Movie WMP Format Movie MOV format.

Support our troops: Vote Democratic on Tuesday, November 7.

Monday will be a Red Letter Day

2006-11-04T16:41:00.000-06:00

On Monday Saddam Hussein will be sentenced to die. The timing set for right before the US Mid-Term Elections to buy more GOP votes, but is expected to result in many deaths including American Troops serving in Iraq. But those deaths won’t be counted until after the election so Bush is going ahead with it. This may be in lieu of the usual video from Osama right before the election to buy GOP votes. But maybe we’ll get an Osama video as well just to be safe.

On Monday The Army Times, The Navy Times, The Marine Corps Times and The Air Force Times are set to publish an editorial calling on Bush to fire Don Rumsfeld for screwing up on the Iraq War.

Neo Cons including Richard Perle the Architecht of the Iraq War blasts the Bush Administration for screwing it up in and interview in Vanity Fair which comes out on newsstands Monday.

Monday’s New York Times is expected to include an interview with Bush Administration hero and spy for Iran, Ahmad Chalabi, in which Chalabi will blast the Bush Administration for screwing up the Iraq War.

Watch for these and many other news bites on Monday, November 6, 2006, the day before the election.

Republicans in Congress Gave Nuclear Weapon Blueprints to Terrorists - Had Enough?

2006-11-03T20:03:00.000-06:00

Back in March, Republican Leaders in Congress demanded that thousands of documents confiscated in Iraq be put on the Internet. This was because seasoned professional US intelligence analysts found no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq leading up to the Iraq War. There was WMD prior to the First Gulf War, but by the time of the current Iraq War there was none. Republican Leaders in Congress wanted to give right wing bloggers and everyone else on Earth a chance to comb through the confiscated documents in hope of finding evidence of WMD. Intelligence Professionals objected to some of this information being put on the Internet. Even Bush’s head of Intelligence John Negroponte refused, but Republicans in Congress and the President overruled our nations Intel experts and so the information was made available to the world. Now it comes out that at least a dozen of the documents were blueprints for creating nuclear weapons and terrorists around the world had access from March until this week.

So Bush and the Republicans in control of Congress gave blueprints for constructing nuclear bombs to any terrorist with an Internet connection for months. Why? They were hoping someone would find justification for the Iraq War. For this they endangered the United States of America and our allies.

Had enough?

I have!

Vote the Republicans out of office on November 7, 2006.

Latest GOP Election Ad

2006-11-01T06:04:00.000-06:00

Actually US Intelligence Agencies in June intercepted an al-Qaeda communiqué that proves that al-Qaeda wants the Republican Party to win the 2006 Midterm Elections. “Prolonging the war is in our interest,” wrote “Atiyah,” one of bin Laden’s top lieutenants. If Democrats win and can decrease the US troop presence in Iraq it will hurt the terrorists’ best recruiting tool: encouraging angered Muslims to fight US and kill our troops in Iraq.

Each election Republicans trot out Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda as a reason to vote for them. Obviously bin Laden and al-Qaeda wholeheartedly agree. Usually they release a video or audio tape to help the GOP out (I fully expect that in the next days).

Want to piss Osama bin Laden and the rest of al-Qaeda off? Vote the Republicans out of office and take away the terrorists’ best recruiting tool.

Breaking: Senator George Allen (R-Virginia) Has His Staff Attack a Marine (One of Allen’s Constituents) Who Asked Him a Question at a Public Event

2006-10-31T19:52:00.000-06:00

Earlier today Republican Senator George Allen of Virginia had his staff attack a Former US Marine, Mike Stark, who is one of Allen’s constituents when Stark asked Allen a question at a public event. The three Allen staffers put a head-lock and a choke-hold on the Marine, wrestled him to the floor and pushed him out of a hotel where he had simply asked his senator a question about matters of public record that Allen refuses to answer. Allen, who never served his country in the armed services, is running against a decorated war hero and former Marine, wounded in Vietnam and winner of the Navy Cross who was also a Reagan Administration Official (now a Democrat) named Jim Webb. Stark served our nation in the US Marines for four years and is currently completing law school at the University of Virginia.

Senator Allen responded, “Well, those things happen.”

Our US Constitution guarantees Americans the right to petition our government including our elected officials. It guarantees us the right of Free Speech.

So why was a US Marine choked, manhandled and physically thrown out of a public place by a US Senator’s staff? “Well, those things happen” when the elected official is a Republican who feels he is above the law and doesn't need to answer his constituents.

Read about it here and view a video here.

Support Our Troops: Vote the Republicans out of office on Tuesday, November 7!

Republican Vote Hacking Going On Across the Country – a Very Scary Halloween!

2006-10-31T18:41:00.000-06:00

Throughout our nation voters are reporting that when they vote for one candidate, a different candidate (always the Republican candidate) is being displayed as having received the vote. Only a small percentage of the voters are noticing that their votes are being hi-jacked. This is going on in South Florida, St. Louis County, Missouri, Arkansas, San Antonio and Dallas. There are even more reported here. There are more cases of it happening here and here and here.

In every instance of Vote Hopping, the votes are hopping over to the Republican candidates. They are never hopping over to the Democratic Party candidate or any other party. Imagine that. Every single time, the Republicans benefit from this “error.”

This happened all across the country in the 2004 elections especially in the Swing States. The Electronic Voting machine companies tried blaming on voters being confused, but in many cases the elections judges witnessed the problems. Then the Electronic Voting machine companies said that they had fixed the problem. But guess what? It's happening in the 2008 election. No wonder President Bush and Karl Rove are certain that the Republicans will win the election.

It is a statistical impossibility that every single “random error” would benefit the Republican Party. Let’s not be naïve, we all know what is going on here. We expect that in the USSR, but not the USA.

Our only defense is to vote early and demand a paper ballot that can be recounted accurately afterwards. They will run out of these paper ballots, so that is why you must vote early. If they refuse to give you a paper ballot, contract your local newspaper, radio and television stations complaining that they refused you a paper ballot to insure accountability. Bring a video camera and if you have to vote on an Electronic Voting machine, video record your voting on it. If your vote hops to the Republican candidate, that is the evidence we will need to prosecute these criminals.

It is time for the American people to take our nation back. If they will not let us do that by allowing us to vote them out of office, we must publicize their voter fraud. Eventually every American will know. We will take our nation back.

Vote to take our country back on Tuesday, November 7, 2006!

This Halloween Beware the Anti-Christ and his Supporters

2006-10-31T06:36:00.000-06:00

What I don’t understand is why all Christians aren’t opposed to the death penalty and torture. Jesus himself was the victim of the death penalty: an innocent man executed by the state. The only other time Jesus was presented with the death penalty is when religious leaders brought a woman caught committing adultery before Him to be stoned to death according to the law. Jesus got her accusers to drop the issue and their stones and Jesus pardoned her. Jesus himself was the victim of torture being scourged at the pillar, crowned with thorns, stuck with a spear and nailed to a cross hanging there until he died.

Jesus never advocated the death penalty and in fact opposed it. Jesus never advocated torturing enemies and instead said that we must love our enemies and pray for our persecutors. He said this more than once as it appears in slightly different versions in different Gospels and fundamentalists believe the Bible is inerrant and therefore it couldn’t be that a particular Gospel writer got it wrong. Jesus had to have said it at least twice. So how do Bible-believing Christians square support for the death penalty and torture with their claim that they follow the teachings of Jesus? They sometimes raise the fact that the Old Testament says an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but Jesus himself refuted that:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto thee, that ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turned him the other also. Ye have heard that it hath it said, thou shalt love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you and pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you. (Matt. 5: 38 -44)

As well as:

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God. (Matt. 5:9)

And

Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy. (Matt. 5:7)

It’s clear that Jesus is anti-war, anti-death penalty and anti-torture. So Bible-believing Christians’ support for war, execution and torture of detainees is based on what? The opposite of Jesus’ teachings. And who is the opposite of Christ? The Anti-Christ. Who is the biggest proponent of war, the death penalty and torture? The president, who took us into a preemptive war, executed more people than any governor in history and fought so hard for torture and retains the right to declare anyone an enemy combatant and to define what is and what is not torture despite what the Geneva Conventions says. In short: the Anti-Christ is George W. Bush. Will Bush’s supporters be caught up in the rapture or are they caught up in their support of Christ’s opponent?

We report. You decide.

The Republicans keep saying that if the Democratic Party wins on November 7, then the terrorists will have won. But if the Republicans win on November 7, the Anti-Christ will have won. Which is worse? As the Republicans political ads say: Those are the stakes.

Vote on November 7 to put a stop to the Anti-Christ from winning.

Why You Must Vote to Change Congress on Nov. 7

2006-10-29T11:57:00.000-06:00

Every day we learn about more corruption committed against the American people by our leaders in Congress. For too many years they have arrogantly thumbed their noses at the people and at our nation’s laws in order to line their own pockets (Hastert’s land deal and Frist’s stock deals to name but two) and the pockets of rich lobbyists (Jack Abramoff and his dozens of congressional paid off lackeys including Tom DeLay and let us not forget Randy Duke Cunningham now in prison for taking bribes from lobbyists to win them illegal contracts). Three Republican members of Congress have now been identified as preying upon underage boys for sex and the Republican leadership let it go unchecked and covered it up for years. The lists of documented lies, cover-ups and crimes are too long to list here: all taking advantage of the American people who pay their salaries and expect them to represent us not the lobbyists.

Congress has failed in their sworn duty to provide oversight on the White House and bled our tax dollars and our sons and daughters’ lives in a war of convenience that has made us less safe from terrorists.

The lists of documented lies, cover-ups and crimes are too long to list here: all taking advantage of the American people who pay their salaries and expect them to represent us not the lobbyists.

Enough!

It is time to take back our country from these criminals.

There is a very good chance that many electronic voting terminals and vote counting machines will be hacked to throw a percentage of the votes to the Republicans. They have been found stealing votes from Libertarians as well as Democrats. But if enough Americans vote for change, they will need to steal percentages of votes in the double digits. Exit polls will expose this as they have in illegal voter fraud ridden elections all over the world. They were caught stealing single digits in key swing states in the 2004 election, and doing so raised suspicion (and will hopefully result in investigations and prosecutions). But if they have to steal 10, 20 or more percent of the vote and the exit polls show this, the theft will be obvious. They will either lose the election or will expose themselves to the nation and the world as criminals and the media will have to report such an outcome. We the people will demand it.

If you are a patriotic American registered to vote (and you better have registered if you care about our country) you must vote on Nov. 7. Vote early. If you have to vote on an electronic terminal ask for a paper ballot that can be recounted accurately afterwards. They may run out of these so that is why you must vote early. If they refuse to give you a paper ballot, contract your local newspaper, radio and television stations complaining that they refused you a paper ballot to insure accountability. If they are going to try to win this they are going to have to be painfully obvious about the theft to the nation and to the world.

Vote for change on November 7, 2006!

It is your patriotic duty to our nation.

Mainstream Media Suppresses News in US

2006-09-25T20:26:00.000-05:00

In the rest of the world Newsweek magazine’s latest (Oct. 2) edition carries a cover and cover story on how we are losing the war in Afghanistan. In the US edition it has a cover on celebrity photographer Annie Leibowitz who snapped the pictures of Tom Cruise’s baby Suri.

More on this incident of censoring the news from American eyes can be found here, but there are oh too many other cases.

Armitage: I Meant Bomb Them to Bronze Age—Not Stone Age

2006-09-23T16:34:00.000-05:00

Bush Administration Official, Richard Armitage, today announced that the Bush Administration had only threatened to bomb Pakistan to the Bronze Age not all the way back to the Stone Age. “In the Bronze Age they had the rudiments of metallurgy.” Armatige continued. “Granted it wasn’t the Iron Age or the Industrial Age, but heck the Bronze Age was way better than the Stone Age!”

Pakistan Prime Minister Musharraf has apologized profusely for his unfounded accusation and says that he and the rest of Pakistan look forward to relearning how to form and use primitive bronze tools once the bombing completes.

Right Wing Conservatives Decry Convictions of Terrorists Demand International Court of Justice Overturn Government Convictions

2006-09-20T07:27:00.000-05:00

Michelle Malkin and other Right Wing Conservative are livid that the government has convicted three terrorists convicted of masterminding a massacre of 200 people despite, in Michelle's words, "grave doubts raised over the fairness of the trial."

She and other Right Wing Conservative are insisting that some witnesses weren’t listened to in their trials and evidence was used that was rejected by the court and so they are demanding (and have gotten their way) that the International Criminal Court in Geneva will review the case and may overrule the government’s conviction of the three terrorists.

These Right Wing Conservatives are very concerned that the rights of the three convicted terrorists, convicted of masterminding a massacre of 200 people, were trampled upon and are hopeful that the International Criminal Court may restore their rights. It is unacceptable in their minds that the government would treat suspected terrorists this way.

Strange that Right Wing Conservatives are fighting for the rights of convicted terrorists opposing the government’s trampling of their rights and insisting that International Criminal Court has the power to overrule those convictions.

Oh, did I mention that these convicted terrorists were Christian and had killed 200 Muslims? Or that the government that convicted them was the Indonesian Government not the US Government?

Read all about it on Glenn Greenwald’s site Unclaimed Territory.

President Bush: “It Is Unacceptable to Think”

2006-09-19T18:16:00.000-05:00

On Friday, President George W. Bush let it be known that in the United States of America it is unacceptable to think in ways that compare and contrast the policies of his administration and their tactics in executing those policies with the tactics of our enemies. Not only is it unacceptable to speak such comparisons, which his followers have already informed us it is un-American, unpatriotic and traitorous to do so, but we, the American people, must not even think of comparing tactics. Said our president from the Rose Garden of the White House, “It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.”

I certainly hope that the behavior of the United States of America is nothing like the actions of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective. But why is it unacceptable to think of it and confirm that no American has done anything in anyway comparable to these “Islamic extremists” of whom the president speaks.

Isn’t this a free country? Aren’t all Americans afforded the constitutional right to say things as long as they do not endanger others or are slanderous? Aren’t we allowed further to write and read such things and consider them? But President Bush tells us that we are not allowed to think certain things. Granted the US Constitution does not explicitly grant a right to think. But don’t we assume that if we have a right to speak we also have a right to think upon those things of which we might say?

Not so, says the president, who has already instituted “free speech zones,” areas where those who dissent from his viewpoint are relegated away from the public and media’s eyes during public speaking engagements. Will we now see “free thought zones” allowing Americans to consider the possibility of similarity between US and enemy behavior? Apparently not since President Bush has stated plainly that, “It’s unacceptable to think that there’s any kind of comparison between the behavior of the United States of America and the action of Islamic extremists who kill innocent women and children to achieve an objective.”

With increasing limitations placed on those dissenting from the president’s viewpoints this does seem to follow.

Keith Olbermann puts it better than I can here.

Think happy thoughts all, OR ELSE!

Bad News, Dude: NBC Says US at War with 118 Countries Including India, Pakistan, and Thailand

2006-09-16T17:16:00.000-05:00

Brian Williams, host of NBC Nightly News began last night’s newscast by saying, "Good evening from Havana, Cuba, the host city for what is called the Summit of Non-Aligned Nations--in short, all of the enemies of the United States, really, gathered in one room."

Hmm. The Non-Aligned Nations are a group of 118 developing countries including India, Pakistan, and Thailand among many others. So when did India, Pakistan, and Thailand become enemies of the United States? Are we at war with them, too, now? NBC Nightly News thinks so.

Thanks to Talking Points Memo for this heads up on our new enemies.

You Must Listen to This

2006-09-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

You owe it to yourself as an American citizen to listen to this. You may have to watch a very brief commercial before the video. Believe me it is worth it. After listening to this song I believe that this man is the Bob Dylan of our age. Paul Hipp has a second song found here. I hope to hear more from him and those like him who speak with the voice of the American people and express the passion we feel in our hearts.

Update: here are some more of his songs

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-hipp/im-a-happy-bomb-maker_b_26368.html

http://-paulhipp-.cf.huffingtonpost.com/SUBIRAQIAN%20HOMESICK%20BLUES%204.html

http://myspace.com/paulhipp

Anti-terror Chief Richard Clarke a Main Character in Film Says Disney/ABC’s “The Path to 9/11” is Politically Motivated Fiction (i.e. Propganda)

2006-09-11T18:21:00.000-05:00

Comments by Richard Clarke, former counterterrorism czar under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, highly respected by both Republicans and Democrats, current ABC News consultant and one of the main characters in The Path to 9/11:

As someone who was directly involved in almost every event depicted in the fictionalized docudrama, "The Path to 9-11," I believe it is an egregious distortion that does a deep disservice both to history and to those in both the Clinton and Bush administrations who are depicted.

Sadly, ABC's Entertainment Division hired a production company and screen writer who were apparently unqualified to deal with this historically important subject matter. That error appears to have been compounded by the failure of some of the docudrama's consultants to insure that the account was accurate. Some of the most outrageous scenes were removed after a recent senior level review. What remains, however, is not the true story as told by the 9-11 Commission.

Although I am not one to easily believe in conspiracy theories and have spent a great deal of time debunking them, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the errors in this screen play are more than the result of dramatization and time compression. There is throughout the screenplay a consistent bias and distortion seeking to portray senior Clinton Administration officials as holding back the hard charging CIA, FBI, and military officers who would otherwise have prevented 9-11.

The exact opposite is true. From the President [Clinton], to all of his White House team, and NSC Principals (Lake, Berger, Albright, Tenet, Reno) there was a common fixation with terrorism, al qaeda, and bin Ladin. The President approved every counter-terrorism operation presented to him, including many that CIA proved unable or unwilling to implement. He increased counter-terrorism spending by 400% and initiated the first homeland security program in forty years. Even though the US had taken relatively few casualties from al qaeda at the time, the President repeatedly authorized the use of lethal force against bin Ladin and his deputies and personally requested the US military to develop plans for "commando operations" againstthem. Even though he knew the timing of an attack aimed at killing bin Ladin would be labeled by critics as a political diversion, Clinton decided to follow the advice of his national security team and pay the price politically.

All of us who worked on these issues, then and now, hold some responsibility for the failures to stop al qaeda. I bear that burden every day.

But if history is to know where to assign some of that culpability, it should not be guided by this fictionalization. It might better focus on leaders of the FBI who held back John O'Neill, leaders of the CIA's Clandestine Service whose risk aversion prevented the Counter Terrorism Center from doing its job, and senior generals who strongly urged the Commander-in-Chief not to use our military to go after the al qaeda leaders in Afghanistan. Somehow, all of that is missing from this not too subtle televised politicization of history.

As is so often the case, the best advice about how to think about these things comes not from people like me or others in Washington, but from the families of the victims of 9-11. Several family members issued this statement, which I strongly commend to all:

"Families of September 11 believes the best way to honor those who were lost is to make sure that what happened to them never happens again. As such, we must understand exactly what took place, and not allow "entertainers" to promote misleading or incorrect information as fact to the public.

"If we do not learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it. Any depiction of 9/11 that is not accurate and factual propagates myths, myths that may cause us future harm. In order to make our country safer and more secure, we owe it to those who were lost to acknowledge that which took place, so that we can ensure it never happens again."

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There you have it. Bush’s own Counterterrorism Czar who also served under Clinton, works for ABC and has a unique and highly respected (by both Republicans and Democrats) vantage point to view this says that it is no accident that Disney/ABC’s docudrama “The Path to 9/11” got so many things wrong and all of them falsely damning of the Clinton Administration. Disney/ABC was warned repeatedly throughout this project and once it was completed that they were misleading the public on key issues of the September 11 attacks. Disney/ABC’s president, Robert Iger, promised to correct those deliberately misleading parts of the film and did not. Therefore this was a political hack job and a misuse of our citizen-owned airwaves. And therefore ABC deserves to have the licenses of every station that aired this GOP fantasy revoked. Furthermore Disney should pay dearly for deliberately misleading the American public about the most important day in US history. Disney should be run out of business.

* Update: Max Blumenthal has the back story of the Reich Wing group behind this piece of propaganda and how Disney and ABC president Robert Iger is directly responsible for the lies to America. Contact Disney Chairman of the Board George Mitchell at george.mitchell@dlapiper.com telling him that Robert Iger must be fired as a start! Disney must admit to the American people that they deliberately lied and mislead them about the September 11 attack in a political act to help Republicans. And they must do this publicly before the November election. If they do not do this before the November election, it shows that they are unrepentant and wish to sway the public into voting Republican on false pretenses and therefore deserve to be boycotted out of existence. Fess up, Mickey or it’s bye bye. Demand the truth from or the end of Disney!

ABC needs to have all of its Licenses Revoked Throughout the US

2006-09-10T13:57:00.000-05:00

Get ready for a hastily written RANT: I have been too busy to post to this blog recently, but not too busy to write several emails to Disney and ABC president Robert Iger (and others) expressing my utter disappointment and disbelief with their plans to air piece of fiction swift-boating and blaming the Clinton Administration for September 11 using patent lies as their basis. These lies contradict at least seven key points of the 9/11 Commission Report and yet Disney/ABC has the balls to claim that their “docudrama” (or crockudrama as it should be more correctly called) is “based on the 9/11 Commission Report.” It dreams up scenes of Sandy Berger calling off CIA and tribal Afghanis who had surrounded bin Laden (never happened) hanging up on the CIA when they were trying to get permission to get bin Laden (never happened and was actually adlibbed during filming so they kept it because it made Democrats look bad). They said Clinton was too busy with the Lewinski case to focus on al Qaeda (the 9/11 Commission Report found just the opposite). They said that Madeline Albright tipped off the Pakistanis that the US was firing missiles on al Qaeda (completely made up—the Pentagon testified that it was them who tipped off the Pakistanis and waited until the missiles were on their way cruising through Pakistani airspace and only tipped them off so Pakistan wouldn’t think India was firing on them). I could go on and on.

The trailers for this film shown in the US and in all English speaking countries from the UK to Australia to New Zealand (it has just aired in New Zealand and didn’t have the disclaimer ABC said it was going to have explaining that it was fiction—lying sacks of shit) claims to be the true story behind 9/11 and shows what wasn’t done by the Clinton administration that could have prevented the attack and shows Clinton’s face superimposed on fire and devastation. Thousands of Americans have written Iger, ABC, Disney, Disney’s Chairman of the Board, George Mitchell, local ABC affiliates, signed petitions, contacted Scholastic which produced teaching materials to be used in US schools with instructions that students should watch this piece of fiction blaming the wrong president. The film was released for review to conservative journals and right-wing blogs, but suspiciously not to moderate or liberal reviewers. When non-Right Wing reviewers finally did see it and pointed out that it contradicts the very report it claims to be based on Disney/ABC said all criticisms of it are wrong because the film is still being edited.

Look, when you send 900 copies out to reviewers and TV stations around the world and prepped hundreds if not thousands of ABC affiliates in the US, you weren’t still editing! If any edits are being done now (six hours before show time in the US) it represents back peddling and ass covering to keep from being sued out of existence. I’m sure Disney/ABC’s lawyers have put a tiny 3 second disclaimer (that’s exactly what they did in New Zealand which just broadcast it) to cover their sorry legal asses, but the deal is that ABC and all broadcasters get to use our citizen-owned airwaves free of charge and they make billions of dollars selling advertising on those airwaves in exchange for which the law says that they must use the citizen-owned airwaves in the public’s best interest. And lying to the American people on the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks if not in the public’s best interest, It is in the Republican Party’s best interest because they are in danger of loosing Congress in about ten weeks when we hold the midterm elections.

The head of Disney’s Public Relations, Zenia Mucha, was Republican Governor Pataki’s political advisor nicknamed the Director of Revenge, and she was Communications Director for nasty Republican Senator Alphonse D’Amato. The writer and producer of the swift-boating 9/11 film, Cyrus Nowrasteh, is a famous conservative political activist. Right Wing nutjob David Horowitz put up the money for this political assasignation. Sieg Heil, Mickey!

The Republican Party made CBS back down and not air a “docudrama” about Ron and Nancy Reagan because they felt it made him look bad, but they are jumping up and down celebrating that a docudrama lying to America about the events leading up to 9/11 is about to air. It has been shown that Disney/ABC did not make this piece of propaganda by accident. They sent it to only right-wing reviewers. They were warned repeatedly by people working on the film that it contained lies and didn't correct them. This is a purposeful misuse of our airwaves for pro-Republican propaganda purposes. ABC is violating the spirit if not the law covering their free of charge use of citizen-owned airwaves and we Americans need to demand and not rest until ABC loses every broadcasting license it holds. I am all for free speech, but this is NOT a free speech issue. You cannot hide behind “free speech” and libel someone as Disney/ABC has done. You cannot deliberately mislead the American people about 9/11 which is the equivalent of yelling FIRE in a crowded theater!

Disney/ABC has not responded to any of the emails they received. Nor has Scholastic (I am contacting my local school districts insisting that they not use teaching materials rom Scholastic connected with The Path to 9/11). Families of the victims of 9/11 have asked ABC to not show the film. Disney/ABC just thumbed their noses at all who demand they act in a responsible manner in this.

Disney/ABC needs to be punished for this deliberate act of political swift-boating. We the American people need to make an example of this brazen act of Stalinism on Disney/ABC’s part. Please contact your local ABC affiliate if they aired The Path to 9/11 and let them know that you are contacting all of their advertisers and telling them you will not buy their products as long as they advertise on an ABC station. Contact the FCC and demand that they review your local ABC affiliate’s license with an eye to revoking it because of misusing our airwaves. Contact ABC Corporate and let them know. Contact Disney and tell them you will not visit any Disney theme park, you will not buy or watch any Disney video, you will not buy any Disney product. I know Disney has in the past been a fine company and ABC used to be a respectable network, but right now I truly want Disney run out of business and as God is my witness I want ABC to lose every broadcasting license they hold. I will not be happy until both companies are out of business.

This kind of State Sponsored Television rewriting history to glorify the ruling party may have cut it in the former Soviet Union, but this is the United States of America and real Americans will not stand for the Sovietizing of the USA!!! If you are willing to allow the US to become the USSR, GET THE HELL OUT YOU UN-AMERICAN PIECE OF SHIT!

We real Americans will fight to save our country from State Controlled Television. I am deadly serious about this!

*Update: ABC promised that throughout the entire broadcast of their fake-umentary, the Path to 9/11, they would have an onscreen message that it was a work of fiction. When it broadcast earlier today in New Zealand it had no such message and only a 3 second blurb at the beginning. Well, I turned on my TV and put on my local ABC station and guess what? ABC lied! There was no onscreen message that it was entirely a work of fiction. Disney/ABC are lying sacks of shit! They deserve to have every license revoked for deliberately misleading the American people in preparation for the November mid-term elections.

Disney gets huge tax breaks from Florida courtesy of Bush’s brother Jeb. They paid him back today. Just like the lobbyists paying bribes to Republican Congressmen who gave them special deals at taxpayers expense, Disney and Jeb give each other bribes and the American people are tricked into thinking the crock-umentary is based on truth. The mainstream media has been reporting that the film is completely true even though it contradicts the 9/11 Commission Report and other official documents and the writer, a conservative political activist, admitted he made much of it up. We need to get out the truth to the American people and put these lying mother-#$@%ers in jail.

**Update 2: Disney and ABC president Bob Iger personally promised Clinton’s lawyers that he would remove the false and defaming information contained in the original version of the film that aired in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

Iger lied!

He didn’t remove the deliberately false and defaming material from the film and engaged in a willful misleading of the American people who after watching the fiction think they know the “truth about 9/11.” When they actually only know the Reich Wing Propaganda about 9/11. Disney should be driven out of business and ABC should be stripped of all licenses to use our citizen-owned airwaves in perpetuity. When the truth about Bush is known by the American people, I hope they know and long remember that Disney/ABC was a willing partner in lying to America.

Disney is dead to me. ABC is dead to me. I will never watch another ABC or Disney program or buy any Disney goods or visit any Disney owned property ever again.

To me deliberately misleading the American people about 9/11 makes Disney/ABC as despicable as the Nazis who ran the concentration camps and gassed six million Jews. I know there are Jewish people who will be offended by my saying that, and I apologize if you are offended, but fascism is fascism and the Bush Administration and the Republicans who run Congress are every bit as much fascists as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Bush’s Grandfather and Great-grandfather even financed Nazi Germany and were prosecuted under the Trading With the Enemy Act in 1942. In fact the Bush family and their business partners began financing Hitler in the early 1930s and are largely responsible for Hitler’s rise to power. Bush family business partner Fritz Thyssen boasted in his 1941 book "I Paid Hitler" that he was the Nazi Party's first and greatest financial backer. So any Jewish person offended that I compare Disney/ABC to the Nazis should be far more offended that Bush’s family are responsible for Hitler coming to power.

Disney/ABC’s relationship with Jeb and George Bush and their appeasement of the Bush family in this swift-boating of Democrats shows which side of history they want to be remembered on. The same side as Bush and Hitler. Time will be the judge of all of these players.

Republican Leaders in Congress (and Bush) are Making it Easier for Criminals to Commit Crimes in America Because of Lobbyists

2006-09-03T09:19:00.000-05:00

This isn’t a single item; it is part of a series of actions Republicans in Congress and the Bush White House have taken to make it easier for criminals to attack Americans using guns.

In September of 2004 Republicans in Congress let the Assault Weapons Ban expire despite police forces throughout the nation begging Congress to renew the ban to allow them to keep criminals from using deadly assault rifles on citizens and law enforcement officers in the commission of crimes. This was done to appease the NRA. Democrats tried to heed the call of police, but Republicans who control Congress blocked the renewal.
Law enforcement agencies used to be able to access gun sales data to track sales to criminals and the flow of weapons to gangs in order to protect communities. In 2003 Republicans in Congress ended the collection of that data bowing to the pressure of the NRA. Again this was done against the will of police and the Democrats tried unsuccessfully to stop this. But Republicans control Congress so the NRA won and police and citizens lost. Bush signed the law blocking the collection of this data from the hands of law enforcement.
Republicans in Congress are now working on a bill to block the federal government from being able to release gun crime data of any kind.
Republicans in Congress are working to pass a bill making it a felony for police in one department to pass on tips on gun crime to another jurisdiction. Again the NRA, a powerful lobbying outfit in Washington, are behind this.

Read this article for more information.

Time and time again we see how Republicans in Congress are doing the bidding of Washington lobbyists often committing crimes in doing so. For many years they have been working to make American streets less safe and allow guns (including assault rifles) in the hands of dangerous criminals including gangs.

It is time for Americans to take back our government from these special interests. Vote the bums out of office and take the guns out of the hands of criminals. Vote Democratic in November.

British Authorities Keep Asking Bush Administration to STOP LEAKING CLASIFIED INFORMATION ABOUT WAR ON TERROR TO THE PRESS!!!!!!

2006-08-20T21:02:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration just can’t stop leaking classified information about British activities to stop terrorists. The British are furious with them for flapping their lips to the press giving away key information they need to wage the war on terror. Last week the British angrily accused the Bush Administration of rushing them to arrest suspects before the suspects had bought tickets, gotten passports or made any bombs. The British have had to let go two of them without charge and may have to release several others according to Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott. The British accused the Bush administration of jumping the gun on linking the suspects to al Qaeda according the conservative Times of London. In that report British officials accused the Bush Administration of leaking things to the press in an effort to win in the November election for Republicans. Loose lips sink ships and the Bush Administration’s lips are like pudding spilling sensitive classified details to the media damaging National Security for political gain.

We need someone in charge who will wage a true war on terror and not a propaganda war on the Democratic Party. Vote Democratic in November. We don’t need loose lips sinking our ship of state any longer.

Questioning the Bush Administration is Now Blasphemy and Sinful – Commandment XI Thou Shalt Not Question the Lord Thy Bush!

2006-08-16T21:42:00.000-05:00

Daithí Mac Lochlainn over at Gaelic Starover reports: Last week, David Ray Griffin appeared on the Tucker Carlson’s show on MSNBC.Mr. Carlson states that it is “wrong, blasphemous and sinful” to entertain suspicions about the events of September 11, 2001 and to seek the truth."Blasphemy" and "sin" are theological terms and "theology" is, of course, the study of God.

Theologian Francisco Suárez defined blasphemy as “any word of malediction, reproach, or contumely pronounced against God”. Most theistic religions seem to define blasphemy similarly, often extending it to include offenses against prophets and saints.

It is quite disturbing to hear anyone suggest that exercising one’s First Amendment right and daring to question elements within the Federal Government are “blasphemous”. Mr. Carlson’s statement is in itself blasphemous, idolatrous and indicative of the spiritual debauchery of this new century.

-- Daithí

I don’t know if I buy Griffin’s claims. I haven’t read his books, but it is interesting that so many Republicans think questioning Bush is blasphemous and sinful. Tucker Carlson is by no means unique in that feeling although this is the only video I’ve seen of a Republican actually saying that questioning Bush is blasphemous and sinful and therefore: Bush is God. But the implication that questioning Bush is sinful is quite prevalent from the right wing. And therefore the implication that Bush is a type of deity is equally prevalent among his supporters whether voiced or simply held in their hearts.

No one during Clinton’s time in office was stupid enough to say that of those critical of him. But as soon as Bush became president those critical of his policies were branded as un-American, unpatriotic, and now blasphemous and sinful.

There have been many leaders of the past who believed they were a god: the Emperor of Japan, the pharaohs of Egypt to name but two. President Bush has now become a third. Interesting to note that the pharaohs of Egypt fell from power crushed by Rome and the Emperor of Japan was forced to shamefully admit to his people that he was not a god when Japan suffered humiliating defeat at the hands of the allies in World War II. I hope the US does not suffer a humiliating defeat because Bush or his supporters entertain delusions of godhood.

Report: Airport X-rays DON’T detect explosives - Bush has been Making Americans Take off their Shoes Off for Nothing

2006-08-16T06:11:00.000-05:00

The Associated Press has learned that airport x-ray machines are unable to detect explosives in shoes according to a Homeland Security report that the Bush Administration has had since April of 2005. On Sunday the Bush Administration made x-raying shoes of passengers mandatory, but most airports had been doing it since 2001.
In its April 2005 report, "Systems Engineering Study of Civil Aviation Security — Phase I," the Homeland Security Department concluded that images on X-ray machines don't provide the information necessary to detect explosives.
So even though the Bush Administration has known that x-raying shoes is useless in detecting explosives in shoes for more than a year they continued to have passengers take off their shoes and have now made it mandatory. How much more ineptitude and absence of true protection from terrorists can the American people take?

Vote for change this November.

Is the FBI investigating the Lieberman campaign? If not, why not?

2006-08-15T18:08:00.000-05:00

David Sirota reports:

Totally honest question: will Joe Lieberman's Senate campaign be prosecuted by federal authorities? As you may recall, the Lieberman campaign accused Ned Lamont's campaign of hacking its website on election day. Lieberman's campaign has since admitted it had no evidence to support the claim. The major verifiable evidence that has been uncovered (here and here) shows that Lieberman's campaign skimped on its web service, and that its claims of losing email service on election day may have been lies. And as TPM Muckraker reported, the FBI said that if Lieberman's hacking allegations prove false, "the FBI and federal prosecutors could pursue charges against those who reported them." Specifically, if the charges were fabricated to slander the Lamont campaign, "there's Title 18, Section 1001, which is providing false statements to an FBI agent. That can be prosecuted at the discretion of the U.S. Attorney's Office."

Lieberman campaign spokesman Dan Gerstein has a long record of issuing public lies, as documented by Media Matters. And let's be clear - this is no small issue. Making deliberately dishonest claims about a campaign supposedly engaging in Watergate-style tactics goes beyond just the usual tit-for-tat and into pretty serious legal areas. Yes, yes, I know Gerstein has said slandering other Democrats as terrorist sympathizers "is what campaigns are all about" - but clearly, the law is pretty straightforward when it comes to making deliberately dishonest election day charges of fraud. Put in Gerstein's language, the law says that's "not what campaigns are all about" and, in fact, could land people in jail.

So again, not knowing if anyone has conclusively figured out why Lieberman's campaign website died on election day, my honest question: is the Lieberman campaign going to be prosecuted by federal authorities if their hacking charges prove false?
-- David Sirota

Keep in mind that President Bush has all but endorsed Lieberman by refusing to endorse the Republican candidate for Senator in the race, and the Republican National Party Chairman Ken Mehlman has refused to endorse the Republican candidate in that race, too. So the odds that the US Attorney (who reports to Bush through the Justice Department) will actually investigate let alone prosecute Lieberman for violating Title 18 are between slim and none, but if no evidence surfaces that Lieberman’s site was hacked as he claimed, let along hacked by his Democratic opponent as Lieberman’s site led voters to believe, then we all will know that Holy Joe broke the law and deserves to be thrown on the ash heap of politics. Whether the Bush Administration decides to follow the law and prosecute him or not. I don't care if he goes on TV and says, "I am not a crook." He still will be. And so will Bush if he doesn't prosecute him.

Joe

Israeli Officials Blame Bush for Israeli Attacks in Lebanon

2006-08-13T20:33:00.000-05:00

Many Israeli officials are blaming Bush for egging Prime Minister Ehud Olmert into the ill-conceived military adventure in Lebanon. "Bush even urged Israel to attack Syria, but the Olmert government refused to go that far, according to Israeli sources."

Israeli newspaper Haaretz is predicting that Olmert will be forced out of office because of the Lebanon adventure. I disagree with some aspects of the editorial that basically says that Olmert has to become even more of a warmonger to hold on to his office (like that’s a good thing). The comparison with Golda Meir is very apt, though, but Henry Kissinger in his memoirs and others of that era judged that Meir’s intransigence toward a peace process delayed the eventual peace between Israel and Egypt. Sadat was willing to deal, but Meir wanted blood according to Kissinger. Arafat was only too glad to continue fighting and actually bragged that an overwhelming Israeli sense of nationalism was their (the PLO’s) greatest ally not the other Arab states. Arafat wanted continued fighting and knew he’d be cut out of a peace deal as he was when Begin and Sadat eventually signed the Camp David Accords a few years later in 1978. I do, however, think that the main thrust of the editorial is spot on: that Olmert will end up losing his job as Prime Minister for this.

The kicker is that Israeli officials blame Bush for their public relations catastrophe in Lebanon. While Corporate Mainstream Media in the US has been very sympathetic of Israel in this war, the press and the people of the rest of the world are pretty united in their disapproval of Israel’s many attacks on civilians and Lebanese infrastructure that seemed unconnected with Hezbollah. Israel has gotten a HUGE black eye in view of the world over this. Americans have been shielded from most of this reporting, though. Olmert will pay the price for this. I only hope that the Labor party can gain control of the government although that is less than certain.

Like those Israeli officials the people of Lebanon also blame the US for this war. At last the Israelis and the Lebanese are in agreement: it’s our fault. Lucky us.

Bush Administration Politicizing British Success Arresting Terrorists and Endangering Americans at Home

2006-08-12T20:53:00.000-05:00

British officials involved in the break-up of the terrorism plot say that they wanted to continue surveillance for another week to increase the number of terrorists arrested, but the Bush Administration pressured them to arrest only the first 21 terrorists a week early. They were forced to arrest them before the terrorists bought plane tickets or got passports. Apparently the Bush Administration needed news of the capture just after Ned Lamont’s victory in Connecticut to torpedo his campaign.

As I posted below the Bush Administration and leaders of Congress knew about the danger of liquid explosives aboard planes for months (or years as this report says) but did nothing until now. Conservative Aviation Security Expert, Michael Boyd, explains (in this video and in this Congressional Report) that the Bush Administration is still doing little to protect Americans from airline terror.

Right wingers here in the US are trumpeting the British arrests as evidence that Bush’s warrantless wiretapping of American citizens worked. The only problem is that all of the wiretaps in this case were the result of court issued warrants proving that warrentFUL wiretaps work stopping terrorists. Again these arrests prove that getting warrants leads to successful arrests of terrorists. British law enforcement officers got warrants in British courts and US law enforcement officers got warrants from the FISA courts for wiretaps. Just the way it’s supposed to work—and IT DID WORK! Proving there is no need for warrantless wiretaps.

Conservative news host Lou Dobbs reports that the Bush Administration Defense Department and FAA lied to America and the 9/11 Commission about the events of September 11 and the two men Bush appointed to lead the 9/11 Commission agree saying Americans still don’t have the complete story from the administration.

ABC News reports:

While the British terror suspects were hatching their plot, the Bush administration was quietly seeking permission to divert $6 million that was supposed to be spent this year developing new homeland explosives detection technology.

Congressional leaders rejected the idea, the latest in a series of steps by the Homeland Security Department that has left lawmakers and some of the department’s own experts questioning the commitment to create better anti-terror technologies.

Homeland Security’s research arm, called the Sciences & Technology Directorate, is a "rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course," Republican and Democratic senators on the Appropriations Committee declared recently.

Think about that: the Bush Administration tried to divert the money to detect the type of explosives British terrorists tried to smuggle aboard US bound planes and Homeland Security’s research arm is a rudderless ship without a clear way to get back on course to protecting Americans according to both Republicans and Democrats in Congress.

Do you really trust your family’s safety to Bush and the Republicans who repeatedly ignore threats to US safety? If not, you need to vote for change in November for a safer tomorrow. Your life and your family’s lives may depend upon it.

Read the editorial here.

!!!!!! Update !!!!!: British officials are furious with the US Administration for “jumping the gun” by declaring that al-Qaeda was behind the airline terror plot according to British sources.

It is understood that Britain asked the US to avoid making any such assertion, but diplomats believe that the request was ignored by Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security chief. There is suspicion that the speed with which the US linked al-Qaeda to the plot was motivated by political considerations because, before the November mid-term Congressional elections, Republicans are keen to stem voter anger against the Iraq war by focusing on national security.

One senior UK source said that with the fifth anniversary of the September 11 attacks approaching, “al-Qaeda is a term which is understood by swing voters”. He added: “We regard this as simplistic.”

On Thursday morning Michael Chertoff, the Homeland Security Secretary, used a press conference to point the finger of blame directly at al-Qaeda. Initially, he picked his words carefully, saying that the sophistication of the operation was “suggestive of alQaeda”, while acknowledging this was a “sensitive area for the British legal system”.

He later said that the plan was reminiscent of that “hatched by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed [the al-Qaeda mastermind behind 9/11] in the 1990s” to blow up aircraft travelling over the Pacific.

Chertoff and other Bush Administration officials were saying the same thing on all of the news programs on Sunday in the US. Once again PROOF POSITIVE that the Bush Administration is politicizing terrorism to try to get votes in the 2006 election. If a Democratic president tried to pull this crap he'd be impeached!

None of the US news programs on Sunday featuring Chertoff and other Bush Administration officials making these claims were challenged by reporters. The Subservient Lapdog Corporate Mainstream Media in the US just airs these claims without question. Any wonder who the Corporate Owners of those stations favor? I didn’t think so. Why is it that British people get this news (from the conservative Times of London no less), but American voters are shielded from this information? Vote Democratic in November and write to the media telling them that you won’t buy from their advertisers as long as they continue to censor the news from American viewers.

Bush Administration Knew Liquid Explosives Danger to Airlines Months Ago—Only Barred Liquids Aboard Flights AFTER British Terror Plot Became News

2006-08-11T21:41:00.000-05:00

Back in October of last year through January of this year the Governmental Accountability Office conducted tests (at the request of Democrats in Congress) and found that liquid explosive components could be smuggled aboard US airlines in 21 US airports. The non-partisan GAO delivered a full report to Congress in March of this year and that information was shared with the White House. The Bush Administration and leaders in Congress sat on that information since March of this year. It wasn’t until yesterday when British law enforcement stopped a plot to blow up planes bound for the US that the Bush Administration banned passengers carrying liquids aboard flights although this report from March shows that the GAO and the 9/11 Commission begged the president to do so months ago.

I reported about this in this blog back in March given what information I had at that time. Keith Olbermann of MSNBC’s Countdown had more as this video shows. Bush and Congress had even more information.

Thanks to Keith Olbermann for warning Americans in March and again today. Video – Windows Multimedia Video version Video – Quick Time version

Today Bush and his administration (as well as Joe Lieberman) are telling Americans that they alone can be trusted to protect America from terrorists and yet they ignored warnings about the very type of plot the British terrorists planned 5 months ago when they were warned in the GAO report and warned by the 9/11 Commission about this very danger.

Within hours of the British arrest of the terrorists the Republican Party started sending out email fundraising appeals mentioning it to get concerned Americans to contribute to the Republican Party! “In the middle of a war on terror, we need to remain focused on furthering Republican ideas more than ever before,” former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani said in a letter that asked for donations to the Republican National Committee. “Freedom is never free, and we must never be complacent in defending it,” House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., said. Echoing the GOP's election-year message, Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, R-Tenn., added: “We must be on alert so that our nation does not suffer another attack like 9/11.”

Think about that: they did nothing for 5 months after being warned until terrorists almost blew up planes bound for the US, and yet they ask for money and tell us to trust them to protect us from terrorists? Sorry you lying sacks of shit! We Americans no longer buy your pack of lies!

This November vote Democratic for a change. A change that may save your life!

Republican Party Caught PhotoShopping Hitler Mustache on Howard Dean’s Face on their Web Site

2006-08-10T21:07:00.000-05:00

An alert blogger grabbed a screenshot of the GOP Home Page with Howard Deans face PhotoShopped to have a Hitler mustache. They have since removed the Hitler mustache when people complained. This was what the Official Republican Party Web Site looked like:

Here’s the undoctored (no pun intended) image:

The GOP’s official Web Site PhotoShopped a Howard Dean picture shadowing in a Hitler mustache. Think about that. Remember all the fuss the GOP had when some people tried to enter Hitler ads on MoveOn.Org and MoveOn removed them as soon as they learned that a regular American had put it on their site. The Republicans still complain about this, they continue to call Democrats Nazis and compare them to Hitler. And now they shadow in Hitler mustaches on prominent Democrats. After complaints they have now changed the picture on their site to the original non-Hitler mustached version.:

The GOP was caught red-handed lying to America.

More on this at this site. There is even more information here. TPM found that Deans hair was also made more Hitleresque in the GOP's first photo. Study the two photos. They contacted the Republican Party who have chosen not to respond to this hoping the media will ignore it. They're right.

This should be a front page story and would be if the Democratic Party PhotoShopped a Hitler mustache on Bush or any other Republican and posted it on their website, but because the Republicans did this to a Democrat the Subservient Lapdog Corporate Mainstream Media Whores will obediently ignore this as they have so many other stories.

Instead the media says, "What should we tell the American people now, Mr. Rove?"

Coming this Fall: the Lieberman Senate

2006-08-10T06:12:00.000-05:00

According to the Daily Show, Joe Lieberman announced that not only will he disregard the results of the Democratic primary by running in November as an independent; if he loses that election he will declare himself the majority leader of his own Senate. If not nominated he will run and if not elected he will serve. Lieberman compared his loss in the primary to losing the first half of a game not the entire game. Reporter Samantha Bee compared it to a guy who is told by the girl he likes that she doesn’t want to go out with him and he responds that he will pick her up on Tuesday. He’s not persistent; he’s a stalker.

Video - WMV (hi quality, 14 megs) Video - WMV (low quality, 5 megs) Video - QT (high only, 14 megs)

What Liberal Media?

2006-07-28T18:54:00.001-05:00

Of televised news programs in the US only MSNBC’s Countdown with Keith Olbermann and Lou Dobbs Tonight have bothered to report that the non-partisan American Bar Association conducted a study and released a report and testified before congress that President Bush is violating the US Constitution by his signing statements (more than 800 bills) in which he said he may violate them if he decides to. President Bush has claimed that some of these laws he thought were unconstitutional, but if that were the case he is duty bound by his oath of office to veto them and inform Congress of what needs to be changed to make them constitutional. He has not fulfilled his duty and instead has declared himself and his administration above the law more than 800 times. The Constitution requires that he enforce all laws passed by Congress and signed into law, but he is reserving the right to ignore that duty for more than 800 laws he himself signed into law. ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN (except for Lou Dobbs Tonight) and MSNBC (except for Countdown with Keith Olbermann) have not bothered to inform the American people about this. Several newspapers have reported this (with the exception of the LA Times which has not), but few Americans get their news from newspapers. So TV news is their only source. And if they didn’t happen to watch the episode of Lou Dobbs or the episodes of Countdown that reported this Americans were uninformed that their president is violating the Constitution placing himself above the law almost a thousand times in his five and a half years in office.

We need to contact ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox News, CNN and MSNBC and demand that they cover this issue. Also thank CNN for Lou Dobbs covering it and thank MSNBC for Keith Olbermann covering it.

Contact information:
ABCE-mail: Contact page
ABC News 7 W. 66th St. New York, NY 10023

CBSE-mail: E-mail form
CBSNews 524 W. 57th St. New York, NY, 10019

CNNCNN
One CNN Center,
Box 105366, Atlanta, GA 30303-5366
Phone: 404-827-1500
Fax: 404-827-1906

Fox News Channel
FOX News Channel
1-888-369-4762
Comments@foxnews.com
1211 Avenue of the AmericasNew York, NY 10036

MSNBC
viewerservices@msnbc.com
MSNBC TV
One MSNBC Plaza Secaucus, N.J. 07094
MSNBC contacts
NBC
viewerservices@msnbc.com
NBC News
30 Rockefeller Plaza New York, N.Y. 10112
NBC News contacts

Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles Times
202 W. 1st St. Los Angeles, CA 90012 (213) 237-5000

When contacting the media, please be polite and professional. Express your specific concerns regarding that particular news report or commentary, and be sure to indicate exactly what you would like the media outlet to do differently in the future.

Courts Uphold Justice and the Rule of Law Again

2006-07-13T21:38:00.000-05:00

On Monday Chief U.S. District Judge Thomas F. Hogan ruled that the FBI was acting legally when they searched Democratic Congressman William Jefferson’s congressional offices as they had a legal search warrant issued by a judge. This is a victory for America, Americans and the Rule of Law. FBI agents searched Jefferson’s offices for eighteen hours looking for evidence connected to bribery charges pending against him. House Speaker Dennis Hastert insisted that US Congressmen’s offices could not be searched by FBI agents even with legal search warrants while investigating crimes. Several other members of Congress also objected and claimed that members of Congress were above the law. Judge Hogan called bullshit on these claims. Thank you, Judge Hogan, for restoring law and order on Capitol Hill at least in this small issue. Members of Congress who thought it was fine for the NSA to track the phone calls of 200 Million Americans without warrants and with no probable cause, were aghast that their offices could be searched with warrants while actually investigating criminal activity.

Nice try dimwits! Some Republican leaders in Congress threatened to reduce funding to the FBI in retaliation for this. How dare you! They were investigating a crime and had search warrants. Neither Congress nor the President are above the law. Thank you again, Judge Hogan.

Hastert only objected to this Democrat’s office being searched because he knows that far more Republicans are going to be found connected with criminal activity and he doesn’t want their offices searched for evidence of wrongdoing. Democrats called on Jefferson to step down from his committees when it came out that he was involved in bribery. He has yet to do so. He should do so immediately.

Bush Wasting Tax Payers' Money on Lessons He Never Learned

2006-07-12T20:20:00.000-05:00

From America Blog:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) offers a few more lessons learned:

Mr. Speaker, yesterday the President said we continue to be wise about how we spend the people's money.

"Then why are we paying over $100,000 for a 'White House Director of Lessons Learned'?

"Maybe I can save the taxpayers $100,000 by running through a few of the lessons this White House should have learned by now.

"Lesson 1: When the Army Chief of Staff and the Secretary of State say you are going to war without enough troops, you're going to war without enough troops.

"Lesson 2: When 8.8 billion dollars of reconstruction funding disappears from Iraq, and 2 billion dollars disappears from Katrina relief, it's time to demand a little accountability.

"Lesson 3: When you've 'turned the corner' in Iraq more times than Danica Patrick at the Indy 500, it means you are going in circles.

"Lesson 4: When the national weather service tells you a category 5 hurricane is heading for New Orleans, a category 5 hurricane is heading to New Orleans.

"I would also ask the President why we're paying for two 'Ethics Advisors' and a 'Director of Fact Checking.'

"They must be the only people in Washington who get more vacation time than the President.

"Maybe the White House could consolidate these positions into a Director of Irony."

Why Do So Many US News Sources Refer to 14-Year-Old Rape and Murder Victim as a Woman?

2006-07-11T18:54:00.000-05:00

In recent days it has become known that five US soldiers allegedly raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and killed her 5-year-old little sister and their parents and burned the bodies to cover up the crime.

Some news agencies including Reuters were able to prove that she was only 14 using her passport and identity card. The doctor examining her remains said she was 14. Records show that she was born August 19, 1991. A picture of her in 1993 shows her as a 2-year-old child.

In spite of this many US news media sources continue to refer to her as a woman. Why?

This has been bothering me for days. I just checked Fox News, CNN, the BBC, NBC and CBS as well as many print news sources continue to refer to the little girl as a woman. I wasn't able to check ABC.

Sarah Weber writing in Editor and Publisher takes up this point in this article entitled When is a 14-year-old girl a woman.

I’m glad Ms. Weber wrote the article because this has been bothering me since it came out that the victim was only a child. What is the rational for so many US news outlets continuing to call her a woman? It seems to be a consented effort among many of them. Who is pressuring them to continue this?

The Lawrence Journal-World, published a letter from a reader which read: "I really can’t decide what is more disheartening about the news story regarding the 'young Iraqi woman' who was allegedly raped and killed by U.S. soldiers: the fact that there are armed Americans running around Iraq who evidently don’t view Arab females as human, or the fact that the news media tries to mitigate the magnitude of their alleged crime by referring to the victim as a 'woman. Let’s keep the facts straight here, and let’s not soften the horror by aging the victim semantically. She was a 14-year-old girl."

Hear hear. I'm glad I'm not the only one concerned by this.

An updated aticle from Editor and Publisher can be found here. Again, who is behind the push to call this 14-year-old little girl a woman in the media reports?

2006-07-10T06:36:00.000-05:00

That way politicians can focus on addressing the needs of a handful of Corporate CEOs and ignore the needs of the vast majority of Americans.

Much as they do now!

Joe

Bush Family Position on Truth-telling

2006-07-06T06:45:00.001-05:00

“The truth is useless. You have to understand this right now. You can't deposit the truth in a bank. You can't pay rent with the truth. You can't buy groceries with the truth. The truth is a useless commodity that will hang around your neck like an albatross-all the way to the homeless shelter. And if you think that the million or so people in this country that are really interested in the truth about their government can support people who would tell them the truth, you got another thing coming. Because the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth don't have money.”

- Jeb Bush in 1986 explaining the Bush family philosophy extremely succinctly

Hey, at least he was being honest there!

- Joe, one of the million or so people in this country that are truly interested in the truth

Happy Independence Day!

2006-07-04T09:31:00.000-05:00

On this day in 1776 the American people declared themselves independent of King George, a head of state who overreached his authority over the American people. The American people rejected George’s interference in their lives and his view of how America should be run. It was a long hard battle, but the result was a free nation with a constitution that has been the model and envy of the rest of the world. The US Constitution has provided us with the Rule of Law and a balance of power among the three branches of government that is vital to the survival of the United States of America. Many people risked and lost their lives winning and preserving the rights detailed in our constitution. These liberties are symbolized in our flag and other symbols of the USA, but the rights they symbolize are far more important than the symbols themselves.

Let us remember this Fourth of July the sacrifices made by US troops over the history of our nation especially the more than 2,500 soldiers and marines killed and as many as 20,000 wounded in Iraq. Let us remember their families who will have to spend the Fourth of July without these brave men and women.

Americans stood up to King George then and have resisted his authoritarian ideology throughout our history.

Let us remember that and celebrate.

Why Do the Editors of the National Review Hate America?

2006-07-02T18:38:00.000-05:00

The editors of the National Review penned a piece of &#$%! Friday regarding Thursday’s Supreme Court decision in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld. It’s not worth reading. I’ll save you the trouble: the Supreme Court Justices are lucky their not up for election because they illegally applied a mere treaty (the Geneva Convention) to the rule of law and they didn’t have jurisdiction in the case anyway because of the Detainee Treatment Act (DTA) passed last December.

What the editors of the National Review fail to understand or worse deliberately mislead their readers about is that Article VI of the US Constitution makes all treaties ratified by the United States (and the Geneva Accords are treaties ratified by the US) equal in stature with the Constitution itself as the “supreme law of the land” in the words of Article VI itself.

Furthermore the War Crimes Act of 1996 passed by a Republican Congress declares violating the Geneva Conventions and in particular Common Article 3 which the Supreme Court declared the Bush policy to violate to be a war crime. “The law applies if either the victim or the perpetrator is a national of the United States or a member of the U.S. armed forces. The penalty may be life imprisonment or death. The death penalty is only invoked if the conduct resulted in the death of one or more victims.” And the general in charge of Abu Ghraib has stated that Rumsfeld and other top administration officials ordered that inhuman treatment and torture be conducted as part of a deliberate strategy. Treatment that led to the deaths of several of those detainees thus fulfilling the requirement for the death penalty for those responsible for the war crimes. So the Supreme Court was correctly ruling on existing law.

As to the claim that the Detainee Treatment Act took Hamdan out of the federal courts hands, discussions before the law was passed mentioned that that specifically, because the Hamdan case was already in the courts prior to the DTA’S passage. Those discussions stated that DTA did not take Hamdan out of the federal courts for this reason.

Senators Lindsay Graham and John Kyl inserted into the Congressional Record a phony debate after the law was voted on to make it seem as if it was Congress’ intention that Hamdan would not be in the federal courts jurisdiction. The senators submitted an amicus brief including this faux debate. The Bush Administration’s lawyers used this in their arguments before the bench. But Hamdan’s lawyers were able to prove to the Supreme Court that Graham-Kyle Colloquy was inserted after the fact by showing the video of the debate in which Graham and Kyl’s comments are missing. In the brief Graham and Kyle indicate other material that was not discussed before the vote, but do not indicate their colloquy was also inserted after the fact giving the impression that it was part of the deliberation leading up to passage of the DTA. The amicus brief was to convince the Supreme Court that Congress had intended Hamdan to be out of judicial hands in the lead up to the vote.

So Senators Graham and Kyl and the Bush Administration lawyers are a party to an attempt to sway the Supreme Court using false testimony. In a true republic this would be deemed as perjury, and one of the justices writing in the majority decision mentioned this as a warning shot across Graham and Kyle’s bows not to try anything as unconscionable as that again. I hope they and the rest of the GOP get the hint that lying to the Supreme Court in an attempt to get your way will not be tolerated.

This ruling was a victory for the Rule of Law, not for the terrorists. If we surrender our legal system the terrorists will have won. Thursday the terrorists lost and the American people won regardless of whether the National Review chooses to recognize the victory.

Help Fund the War on Terror – Sponsor a Missile

2006-07-01T19:51:00.000-05:00

With the cost of the War in Iraq expected to top half a Trillion US Dollars and our nation’s birthday fast upon us, it is incumbent on all patriotic Americans to come to the aid (financial aid) of their country in this time of need. Please watch the linked public service announcement and do choose to sponsor a missile. Thank you for your patriotism.

Public Service Announcement from a member of the Bush family.

And thank you for your support.

The Choice Before Us

2006-06-26T20:09:00.000-05:00

Brit Hume of Fox News Chanel: Amnesty for All Insurgents who Killed Americans is No Big Deal

2006-06-25T14:19:00.000-05:00

Brit Hume tells us today that amnesty for all that killed Americans is not a serious problem.

Chris Wallace: ..killing Americans or attacking Americans should be…

Hume: This is not a serious policy issue. This is a political issue and it’s mostly a political issue in the United States and in my judgment it’s not worth much.

The lives of American soldiers and marines aren't worth much and are just a political issue? What the hell?

(Read the rest of this story…)

Republican Running for Congress in Utah has a Tough Opponent -- Claims Satan is Working Against his Campaign

2006-06-25T13:47:00.000-05:00

John Jacob, Republican candidate for Congress, is claiming that Satan, the devil himself, is working against his getting elected. He is running against other Republicans in the Primary so apparently Beelzebub is pulling for another Republican (not an entirely unlikely situation at all now that I think of it). Jacob claims that Satan has been bedeviling his business deals as well.

“There's another force that wants to keep us from going to Washington DC,” he said. “It's the devil.”

These tribulations included deals gone bad, accusations that he illegally employed a Chilean couple, and statements against him by disloyal friends. Read more from Utah here. And even in the UK they are talking about him.

Don Goldwater, nephew of the late Sen. Barry Goldwater and Republican gubernatorial candidate is calling for creation of a forced labor camp for illegal immigrants to use them “as labor in the construction of a wall and to clean the areas of the Arizona desert that they're polluting.”

“Build us that wall - now!” Goldwater said, referring to a proposal to add 700 mile wall along the US-Mexico border. He promised then that if elected, he would put illegal immigrants in a tent city on the border and use their labor to build the wall.

Pentagon Becomes the Front Line in the War on the Democratic Party

2006-06-22T06:38:00.000-05:00

Republicans have used the Pentagon to produce a 74-page briefing book for Republicans in Congress to be used as ammunition for what White House officials say will be a central line of attack against Democrats from now through the midterm elections. Our tax dollars and our US Military is being used to produce Republican campaign material. Can anyone say, "Soviet Union?"

The booklet was meant to be sent only to Republicans but was accidentally sent to a couple of Democrats by mistake. The Pentagon under the Bush Administration can’t afford to supply body armor and vehicle armor for our troops in Iraq, but somehow they find the money and time to produce a 74-page Republican campaign booklet.

If a Democratic president were using the Pentagon to produce material to be used to defeat Republicans in elections the news media and talk radio hosts would be screaming a blue streak about abuse of power and with very good reason. Yet this obvious abuse of power by the Republicans gets no play on the news and no mention from talk radio hosts 90% of whom are Right-Wingers.

America is goose stepping down the toilet, and the Soviet Premier in the White House and his Politburo in Congress are leading the charge (to mix a metaphor). The Republicans have definitely Sovietized the United States of America.

Afghan Government Threatens Press to Report Good News Or Else – Hey, It Worked for Bush in the US!

2006-06-21T06:41:00.000-05:00

Kabul, Afghanistan --The war against the Taliban has gone badly these last months, but Afghanistan's national intelligence agency has devised a secret plan to reverse the tide of bad news.

In a coordinated action this week, the intelligence operatives drove up to TV stations and newspapers in muscular SUVs and dropped off an unsigned letter ordering journalists to report more favorable news about the government.

In particular, the letter said, they should avoid "materials which deteriorate people's morale and cause disappointment to them."

The country’s warlords are not to be criticized or called "warlords" -- a common term in Afghanistan for the more powerful among them, the letter specified. And Afghans called back by Karzai from exile abroad to take posts in the government are not to be called "westernized."

The men from the National Security Directorate would not give their names, and to better ensure secrecy, the letter instructed journalists that "publishing or copying this document is unauthorized."

Read the whole article here.

Limbaugh Uses Death of US Soldiers to Lie to America about Liberals

2006-06-20T21:59:00.000-05:00

As most of the Left half of the Blogosphere commented with sadness and grief on the report that the two missing US soldiers had been found dead, Rush Limbaugh used the news to spread lies claiming that we, the truly patriotic Americans, were happy that our troops had been killed and perhaps tortured. Leave it to Limbaugh to use the deaths of these two men to lie again to America. I only hope the estimated 13.5 to 15 million Americans who listen to Rush will be sickened by his exploiting the tragedy of these two fine Americans. But I really doubt it. He has committed too many similarly unconscionable exploitations of Americans’ suffering and dying, and his audience remains behind him. They must either be incredibly stupid or unthinkably hate-filled.

May God help us.

A Moment of Silence and Prayer for Two US Soldiers

2006-06-20T20:30:00.000-05:00

The bodies of two US soldiers believed to be Pfc. Kristian Menchaca, 23, of Houston, TX and Pfc. Thomas L. Tucker, 25, of Madras, Ore. were found south of Bagdad. There are as yet unconfirmed rumors that they were the victims of torture. The Left half of the Blogosphere pauses for a moment of silent tribute and prayer for the two.

Our thoughts and prayers are with their families and the families of the more than 2,500 other Americans who have died in the Iraq War.

To Defend Bush's Low Poll Numbers, Limbaugh Lies About Clinton, Reagan and Carter

2006-06-18T14:50:00.000-05:00

This from JABS blospot

It often amazes me how conservative pundits create alternate realities for their listeners. These fact-challenged realities make great radio -- no one lies to weaken an argument -- but ultimately do listeners a great disservice.

Case in point: On the June 6 edition of his popular radio show, Rush Limbaugh so desperately wants to defend President Bush's continued unpopularity that he offers a "parallel" to former Presidents Bill Clinton, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter that simply doesn't exist.

LIMBAUGH: The latest USA Today/Gallup update on George W. Bush's presidential job approval rating finds 36 percent of Americans approving of the job the president's doing; 57 percent disapprove. This represents a modest improvement in that measure from recent weeks, a finding mirrored in several other national surveys. In early May, just 31 percent approved of Bush, marking the low point of his administration to date. ... (I)f you went back and looked at several other second-term presidents at this time in their terms, you'd find almost parallel poll results. We know that Bill Clinton was down in the 20s at one point. Jimmy Carter was way down. Reagan was down. This is really -- really not unique.

Let's look at the stupidity of this argument. First, of course, is that Jimmy Carter never had a second term.

But what about Clinton and Reagan? Did Americans ever give them approval ratings of 36% -- the poll figure Limbaugh cited -- in their second terms? No.

According to the polling archive of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, Clinton's lowest approval rating was 36% -- in his first term. In his second term, Clinton's approval rating never dropped below 52% in any poll. And in the "parallel" year -- the second year of his second term, or 1998 -- Clinton's approval ratings ranged from 53% to 73%.

What about President Reagan? His lowest approval rating was 35%, in 1983 -- again, in his first term. In his second term, Reagan's approval rating never dropped below 43% in any poll. And in the "parallel" year -- the second year of his second term, or 1986 -- Reagan's approval ratings ranged from 47% to 64%.

Limbaugh has long praised himself as being among the most influential players in politics today, and has been given credit for providing momentum to help usher in the "Gingrich Revolution" of 1994, when Republicans took 75 seats to gain control of the House of Representatives.

Roughly 13.5 milion people listen to Limbaugh daily -- more than the number watching the nightly news on any of ABC, CBS or NBC. Want to know why surveys have found that listeners and viewers of "conservative media" are consistently less informed than, say, listeners of NPR or viewers of PBS? Limbaugh's "parallel year" argument is a clear example why.

There are thousands of such instances where Rush Limbaugh and his like have deliberately misled American listeners. 13.5 million Americans here in the states don’t realize that they are being lied to, and keep in mind that under the Bush Administration only right wingers like Rush can be broadcast to our troops oversees on Armed Forces Radio. They are afraid to let our troops hear moderate or progressive talk radio. Only right wingers like Rush Limbaugh. Now that Americans have challenged this practice the Bush Administration is planning on removing all talk radio from Armed Forces Radio and replacing it with rap and hip-hop because they can’t afford to let our troops hear another viewpoint than the right wing. Aren’t our troops fighting for Democratic ideals like Free Speech? Over 2,500 Americans have already died in Iraq. More than 20,000 have been wounded with half of those crippled for life. Why is the Bush Administration afraid of the very freedoms our troops are fighting and dying for?

Joe

My Response to a Reader of this Blog

2006-06-16T18:33:00.000-05:00

A reader of this blog, Andrew Pass asks, “My only real question is how could a civilized government ever possibly win a war against terrorists?”

Well, Andrew, you don’t win it by lowering yourself to the level of the terrorists by torture and indefinite detention. Terrorism is caused by people who feel aggrieved against those they inflict terror or some other persons on whom they cannot inflict terror so they find another victim. Many who support terrorism feel that it is their only avenue for airing their side of the argument at the core of this grievance. Leaders of terrorist groups often play upon ignorance of their supporters and prejudices that their supporters have toward the target of their terrorism. Often the poverty of supporters adds to their anger and they turn to the terrorists as their champions to raise them out of their mean existence. The Islamic terrorists don’t “hate our freedom” as President Bush, his administration and his apologists in the media claim. They hate elements of US foreign policy and they perceive the growing American cultural intrusion into their society as a morally lacking cancer leading the people away from a more right-wing conservative religious stance (yes, Islamic fundamentalists are right-wing conservatives in their culture) to a more liberal viewpoint approaching that of Americans.

Also you cannot “win” a war on terrorism anymore than you can “win” a war on murder or theft. You can reduce the incidents of the above, but you will never eliminate the possibility. I think that may be what you were getting at by your question.

You can decrease the support for terrorists by understanding the arguments the terrorists use to gain the assent of their supporters. Learn the source of the grievances and address those feelings letting the supporters know that their side can be told and understood without resorting to violence. Some terrorist leaders have ulterior motives and are only using the grievances of their supporters as means to gain more power for themselves. Addressing the source of the problems removes from the terrorists their greatest recruitment tool. Without the support of the masses the terrorists are viewed as bullies and villains by the people they claim to be fighting for.

This would be the closest thing to winning the war on terror. But we would need a leader willing to think like this. Willing to use diplomacy over the military option. Our current leader thinks that it is possible to bomb and shoot the masses into submission. This will only strengthen support for the terrorists and drive that support underground where it will be impossible for us to track.

I hope we someday have a leader willing to mount a true War on Terror, but that day for now must remain in our future.

Joe

Read the News

2006-06-15T06:09:00.000-05:00

Al Qaeda documents show they want US to go to war with Iran – Will Bush obey the terrorists?

Read it here.

100 leading American foreign-policy analysts both Republicans and Democrats say Bush is losing the War on Terror and has made the US and the World less safe. These experts include an ex-secretary of state and former heads of the Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency, along with prominent members of the U.S. foreign-policy establishment from both parties. 62 per cent identified Saudi Arabia as the premier incubator for terrorists. So few experts think Iran is a threat and so many regard Iraq as a mistake that it "turns the administration's policies on their head."

Read it here.

6 in 10 Americans say that because of the Iraq War the image of the U.S. is "worse off," with only 11% saying it is "better off."

Read it here.

On Monday, the Bush administration told a judge in Detroit that the president's warrantless domestic spying is legal and constitutional, but refused to say why. The judge should just take his word for it, the lawyer said, because merely talking about it would endanger America. Today, Senator Arlen Specter wants his Judiciary Committee to take an even more outlandish leap of faith for an administration that has shown it does not deserve it.
Specter wants the committee to approve a bill he drafted that tinkers dangerously with the rules on wiretapping, even though the president has said the law doesn't apply to him anyway, and even though Mr. Specter and most of the panel are just as much in the dark as that judge in Detroit. The bill could well diminish the power of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, known as FISA, which was passed in 1978 to prevent just the sort of abuse committed during the Nixon Administration that Mr. Bush's program represents today.

Read it here.

President Bush To Legally Blind Reporter: ‘Are You Going to Ask That Question with Shades On?’

Read it here.

Karl Rove Helped Raise Money for Illegal Vote Suppression Tactics -- And the Mainstream Media Couldn't Give a Hoot

Read it here.

Bush’s War on Terror increases risk of terrorist attacks according to UK think tank echoing findings of US foreign policy experts above (2nd item)

Read it here.

House Majority Leader Boehner’s Confidential Strategy Memo for Thursday’s Iraq Debate:

1. Exploit 9-11
2. Attack anyone who criticizes Bush policy
3. Create a false choice between supporting Bush or supporting terrorists

Read it here.

"War on Terror" "briefing book" just issued by Donald Rumsfeld's office to help Republicans use the 3,000 dead from September 11 to win the congressional elections in the fall advise GOP about “Osama bin Landen” No wonder they can’t find him. They don’t know his name.

Read it here.

I haven’t seen any of these stories on the evening news where 90% of Americans get their information on current events. Why haven’t these and other stories so important to the US been broadcast to the American people?

Bush Turned Down At Least Three Opportunities to Take Zarkawi Out

2006-06-13T06:33:00.000-05:00

It is very good news that Zarkawi is no longer able to threaten our troops or the Iraqi people. But it must be remembered that the US military offered several plans to take out Zarkawi and his terrorist organization before the start of the Iraq War, but the Bush White House turned them all down fearing that it might lessen support for invading Iraq according to terrorism expert and former Bush Administration National Security Council member Roger Cressey. At least three separate times the military begged the Bush White House to let them take Zarkawi and his terrorist organization out and every time the White House refused because it might lessen international support for invading Iraq. So they let him live and his most heinous activities occurred after that point until his death this month.

Zarkawi was operating a terrorist training camp in Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq north of the No Fly Zone in an area that Saddam had no control over because UN sanctions prevented him from sending his fighter planes there and without air cover his ground troops wouldn’t survive in the Kurdish North. Even Colin Powell while he was Secretary of State and pushing for war in Iraq admitted this was so. Bush refused to take out a known terrorist after September 11, in an area that Saddam didn’t control because it might have drawn attention to a terrorist group set on overthrowing Saddam.

At the time that Bush had a chance to take out Zarkawi, Zarkawi was working with an al-Qaeda aligned and Kurdish supported terrorist group set on overthrowing Saddam Hussein. After Saddam was overthrown by our forces, Zarkawi turned his hatred on the US and committed his most vile atrocities.

Zarkawi was a known terrorist in 2002, when our troops wanted to take him out. Bush put aside his desire to punish al-Qaeda linked terrorists in favor of ousting Saddam and the result was that al-Qaeda linked terrorists outside the area of Saddam’s control moved in to fill the vacuum and became much stronger in Iraq and the world. Bush also pulled US troops who had cornered bin Laden in the mountains of Afghanistan sending them to Iraq well before the start of the Iraq War. This is why bin Laden is alive today and why Zarkawi was allowed to become such a bloodthirsty butcher in Iraq.

More information about Zarkawi is available from these articles: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/capitalgames?pid=89600
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/5058262.stm http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abu_Musab_al-Zarqawi
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/eric-alterman/getting-zarqawi-four-year_b_22545.html

US Military Admits Exaggerating Zarqawi’s Importance

2006-06-11T06:07:00.000-05:00

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, worked to overthrow Saddam Hussein in the years leading up to the Iraq War. He and his al Qaeda connected terrorist camp operated in Kurdish controlled Northern Iraq North of the No Fly Zone, an area where Saddam was not able to control because US sanctions prevented his planes from entering the region. Prior to that Zarqawi tried to over throw the government in Jordan and was imprisoned there for his attempted coup in Jordan. In April senior US military intelligence officers admitted that the Bush Administration was conducting a psyops (psychological operations) campaign to make Zarkawi seem more important than he actually was. Although Army Col. James A. Treadwell will only admit that the Iraqi people were the target of the psyops campaigns concerning Zarkawi, internal military documents and officers familiar with the program show that the US Home Front was a target of these disinformation campaigns as well. Videos produced for this purpose were shown not only on Iraqi TV, but also on Fox News Chanel here the United States according to this article from April, 10. Zarkawi was killed in a US bombing mission this past week.

The point here is not whether Zarkawi was an evil terrorist, he most certainly was. The point here is that under Bush the US Government targeted the American people for a psyops disinformation campaign designed to deliberately mislead us. These are the types of campaigns used against an enemy. Under Bush the enemy is us, the American people.

US Intelligence Agents Admit Bush Administration Knew Niger Documents were Forgeries Long Before Bush Lied to America in State of Union Address

2006-06-07T20:45:00.000-05:00

Vanity Fair article also available here reports on the fact that the Bush Administration canceled the fact that the Niger documents President Bush used in his State of the Union Address to push for war in Iraq were forgeries. It was the “cornerstone of a highly successful ‘black propaganda’ campaign with links to the White House” designed to mislead the American people.

In addition, Vanity Fair has found at least 14 instances prior to the 2003 State of the Union in which analysts at the C.I.A., the State Department, or other government agencies who had examined the Niger documents or reports about them raised serious doubts about their legitimacy—only to be rebuffed by Bush-administration officials who wanted to use the material. "They were just relentless," says Wilkerson, who later prepared Colin Powell's presentation before the United Nations General Assembly. "You would take it out and they would stick it back in. That was their favorite bureaucratic technique—ruthless relentlessness."

All of which flies in the face of a campaign by senior Republicans including Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, to blame the C.I.A. for the faulty pre-war intelligence on W.M.D. Indeed, the accounts put forth by Wilkerson and his colleagues strongly suggest that the C.I.A. is under siege not because it was wrong but because it was right. Agency analysts were not serving the White House's agenda.

20 Separate Federal Agencies of the Bush Administration “planted fake news stories on American TV”

2006-06-06T19:30:00.000-05:00

This article is available by subscription here and for free, here. This news is being reported around the world, but surprisingly not in the Mainstream Media in the US.

By Andrew Buncombe in Washington for the British newspaper the Independent
Published: 29 May 2006

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Investigators from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) are seeking information about stations across the country after a report produced by a campaign group detailed the extraordinary extent of the use of such items.

The report, by the non-profit group Centre for Media and Democracy, found that over a 10-month period at least 77 television stations were making use of the faux news broadcasts, known as Video News Releases (VNRs). Not one told viewers who had produced the items.

"We know we only had partial access to these VNRs and yet we found 77 stations using them," said Diana Farsetta, one of the group's researchers. "I would say it's pretty extraordinary. The picture we found was much worse than we expected going into the investigation in terms of just how widely these get played and how frequently these pre-packaged segments are put on the air."

Ms Farsetta said the public relations companies commissioned to produce these segments by corporations had become increasingly sophisticated in their techniques in order to get the VNRs broadcast. "They have got very good at mimicking what a real, independently produced television report would look like," she said.

The FCC has declined to comment on the investigation but investigators from the commission's enforcement unit recently approached Ms Farsetta for a copy of her group's report.

The range of VNR is wide. Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

Many of the corporate reports, produced by drugs manufacturers such as Pfizer, focus on health issues and promote the manufacturer's product. One example cited by the report was a Hallowe'en segment produced by the confectionery giant Mars, which featured Snickers, M&Ms and other company brands. While the original VNR disclosed that it was produced by Mars, such information was removed when it was broadcast by the television channel - in this case a Fox-owned station in St Louis, Missouri.

Bloomberg news service said that other companies that sponsored the promotions included General Motors, the world's largest car maker, and Intel, the biggest maker of semi-conductors. All of the companies said they included full disclosure of their involvement in the VNRs. "We in no way attempt to hide that we are providing the video," said Chuck Mulloy, a spokesman for Intel. "In fact, we bend over backward to make this disclosure."

The FCC was urged to act by a lobbying campaign organised by Free Press, another non-profit group that focuses on media policy. Spokesman Craig Aaron said more than 25,000 people had written to the FCC about the VNRs. "Essentially it's corporate advertising or propaganda masquerading as news," he said. "The public obviously expects their news reports are going to be based on real reporting and real information. If they are watching an advertisement for a company or a government policy, they need to be told."

The controversy over the use of VNRs by television stations first erupted last spring. At the time the FCC issued a public notice warning broadcasters that they were obliged to inform viewers if items were sponsored. The maximum fine for each violation is $32,500 (£17,500).

This is Real -- "Christian Right" Creates Video Game to Teach Kids to Kill Catholics and Non-Christians

2006-05-31T06:06:00.000-05:00

From Talk2Action.org:

Imagine: you are a foot soldier in a paramilitary group whose purpose is to remake America as a Christian theocracy, and establish its worldly vision of the dominion of Christ over all aspects of life. You are issued high-tech military weaponry, and instructed to engage the infidel on the streets of New York City. You are on a mission - both a religious mission and a military mission -- to convert or kill Catholics, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, gays, and anyone who advocates the separation of church and state - especially moderate, mainstream Christians. Your mission is "to conduct physical and spiritual warfare"; all who resist must be taken out with extreme prejudice. You have never felt so powerful, so driven by a purpose: you are 13 years old. You are playing a real-time strategy video game whose creators are linked to the empire of mega-church pastor Rick Warren, best selling author of The Purpose Driven Life.

The game, slated for release by October 2006 in advance of the Christmas shopping rush, has been previewed at video game exhibitions, and reviewed by major newspapers and magazines. But until now, no fan or critic has pointed out the controversial game's connection to Mr. Warren or his dominionist agenda.

This game immerses children in present-day New York City -- 500 square blocks, stretching from Wall Street to Chinatown, Greenwich Village, the United Nations headquarters, and Harlem. The game rewards children for how effectively they role play the killing of those who resist becoming a born again Christian. The game also offers players the opportunity to switch sides and fight for the army of the Anti-Christ, releasing cloven-hoofed demons who feast on conservative Christians and their panicked proselytes (who taste a lot like Christian).

Is this paramilitary mission simulator for children anything other than prejudice and bigotry using religion as an organizing tool to get people in a violent frame of mind? The dialogue includes people saying, "Praise the Lord," as they blow infidels away.

The designers intend this game to become the first dominionist warrior game to break through in the popular culture due to its violent scenarios and realistic graphics, lighting, and sound effects. Its creators expect it to earn a rating of T for Teen. How violent is that? That's the rating shared by Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell - Chaos Theory, a top selling game in which high-tech gadgets and high-powered weapons - frag grenades, shotguns, assault rifles, and submachine guns -- are used to terminate enemies with extreme prejudice.

Could such a violent, dominionist Christian video game really break through to the popular culture? Well, it is based on a series of books that have already set sales records - the blockbuster Left Behind series of 14 novels by writer Jerry B. Jenkins and his visionary collaborator, retired Southern Baptist minister Tim LaHaye. "We hope teenagers like the game," Mr. LaHaye told the Los Angeles Times. "Our real goal is to have no one left behind."

The game, Left Behind: Eternal Forces, is based on scenes from the first four novels in the series. The game was developed by a publicly-traded company called Left Behind Games, according to SEC records. The developers obtained the license from Tyndale House, the Christian publisher of Left Behind.

Tyndale also publishes Bringing Up Boys and The Complete Marriage and Family Home Reference Guide by Focus on the Family founder James Dobson, PhD.

Left Behind Games CEO Troy Lyndon, whose company went public in February, says the game's Christian themes will grab the audience that didn't mind gore in "The Passion of the Christ." "We've thought through how the Christian right and the liberal left will slam us," says Lyndon. "But megachurches are very likely to embrace this game." Though it will be marketed directly to congregations, Forces will also have a secular ad campaign in gaming magazines.

As part of its marketing pitch, Left Behind Games hypes the realism with which it portrays the neighborhoods of New York City. There is, for the most part, a remarkable verisimilitude except for one detail - all of the ambulances have 911 painted on their roofs. In the reality-based world, most ambulances have a red cross on top. Yet the game designers make prominent use of these 911 ambulances to evoke the tragic events of September 11, 2001. The historical context of 911 is invoked as if to say, We are living in the End Times, and Muslims are among the kinds of infidels whom you should fear, whom you should be prepared to kill for your cause.

For game enthusiasts, there is also a multi-player mode, in which you can go online and battle to take territory from other players. If you happen to blow away a neutral party - and collateral damage is inevitable in the End of Days - then you will lose "Spirit Points". But you can power back up with merely a brief timeout for prayer, or by converting one of New York's terror-stricken citizens.

Now compare the above with the actual teachings of Jesus Christ on how we should treat our enemies and those who harm us:

From Luke Chapter 6 Jesus tells us:

Love for Enemies

27“But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. 29If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. 30Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. 31Do to others as you would have them do to you.
32“If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ love those who love them. 33And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ do that. 34And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you? Even ‘sinners’ lend to ‘sinners,’ expecting to be repaid in full. 35But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. 36Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.

Judging Others

37“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. 38Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
39He also told them this parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? 40A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.

41“Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 42How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye.

A Tree and Its Fruit

43“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. 44Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thorn bushes, or grapes from briers. 45The good man brings good things out of the good stored up in his heart, and the evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in his heart. For out of the overflow of his heart his mouth speaks.

From Matthew Chapter 6 Jesus tells us:

An Eye for an Eye

38“You have heard that it was said, ‘Eye for eye, and tooth for tooth.’ 39But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. 40And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. 41If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. 42Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.

Love for Enemies

43“You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44But I tell you: Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47And if you greet only your brothers, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.

From Paul in Romans Chapter 12 we have:

14Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse. 15Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn. 16Live in harmony with one another. Do not be proud, but be willing to associate with people of low position. Do not be conceited.

17Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everybody. 18If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. 19Do not take revenge, my friends, but leave room for God's wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. 20On the contrary: “If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.” 21Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.

Notice the difference?

Jesus Isn’t Magic

2006-05-21T18:51:00.000-05:00

Too many self-proclaimed “Christians” in America have no idea what it means to be a follower of Christ and to practice his commands by living out his teachings. Instead they think saying the sinner’s prayer is a magic wand or golden ticket from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory entitling them entry into heaven without bothering to embody the teachings of Jesus as relayed to us in the Gospels. To many of them, Christianity and an American nationalistic political ideology are indistinguishable: Jesus is John Rambo his chest crossed with bands of ammo and an AK-47 in each arm. To these I offer Karen Horst Cobb’s essay, “Jesus Isn’t Magic.”

Jesus Isn’t Magic
by Karen Horst Cobb

Recite the sinners prayer, get baptized, and abracadabra a member of clergy or laity proclaims you are saved. No matter what the magicians of the church have told you Jesus’ words and actions have meaning! He taught us how to live in love in a world dominated by oppressive, possessive and heavy-handed power. Governments seek to use his identity to rally the people but “believing in his name” demands a change of allegiance. To be alive in Christ requires being dead to ego identity. Formerly self -serving, a follower of Jesus now serves him by serving others. When he said believe in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved he was not referring to the letters of the English alphabet. J…E…S…U…S

His name is not just part of religious craft to conjure up an eternal spell. Instead, he was referring to character traits. He is the Son of God and he explained that we are his brothers and sisters if we live by his principles of love, compassion and surrender.

Many Christians in America prayed the Sinners Prayer in a stadium at a Billy Graham crusade or at a church alter while the choir sang “Just as I am with out one plea…to rid my soul of one dark blot…..I come.” In the prayer the person says, I know I’m a sinner, I believe you sent Jesus to die on the cross and rise again so I can be forgiven, I want Jesus in my heart so all my sins are forgiven, help me in my walk in faith. …… Abracadabra I‘m in! (I added that last part). The prayer is a good beginning but the core of what it means to take up ones cross and follow Christ seems to have gotten lost with sleight of hand.

Being saved is not about entering into the cosmic magician’s disappearing chamber until the dramatic moment. It is about accepting forgiveness and freedom from guilt by faith. That, however, is just the beginning. Dieing to self-interest, ego and all other identities requires courage and risk. We die to family identity, national identity, racial identity, religious identity. All that is not Love must die. The magic Jesus enters the heart by hocus pocus. The revolutionary Jesus enters the heart in surrender of self interest. Now you see him now you don’t is the reality of the magic Jesus but a steady light shining in the darkness reveals the living God to the world.

In the sinner’s prayer, “lead me in my walk of faith” alludes to some sort of service on behalf of humanity but it is unclear and certainly not the main motivation to become a follower of Christ. The focus again and again is on what one gets in exchange. Let’s see… I just admit I’m a sinner and then in return I get to feel less guilty, I get to be blessed by God, I get to go to heaven where there are streets of gold, I get to avoid eternal damnation and burning of my flesh forever. In many churches now I am promised I will get rich and I have political power. Hmm… seems like a good deal. I’ll take it. Abracadabra A-men!

Rather than the magic Jesus, there is a very real and powerful Christ whose teachings continue drawing the world to his kingdom community from many neighbors. Ironically, many who preach about absolutes and literal interpretations use situational ethics and complicated arguments to explain that Jesus did not mean what he said. The leaders of magical Christianity have a horrible dilemma. How can people be manipulated and controlled if they believe in the radical love of Christ and his forgiveness? Some have said that the opposite of love is indifference and some say the opposite of love is control. What we see in the church today is control and indifference. There is a desire to control others and indifference to their suffering. People who want to be followers of Christ must love their neighbors, love their enemies and love the living God.

Love your neighbor as yourself sums up all the commandments. Every one knows neighbors can be a good source for tools or an occasional cup of sugar . But, where does our neighborhood end? Is it the houses on each side or the whole street? When Jesus was asked how far this loving has to go he wisely told a story of the good Samaritan. He was speaking in Galilee which had continually been at war with Samaria. He selected the clan and class of people who were most hated and despised by the upstanding Jewish community in Galilee.

The first to come by the beaten bleeding man was a priest who did not want to defile himself by touching a dead person. Since he did not know if the man was dead he walked on by, choosing the law rather than love. The second was a Levite whose concern was money and the collecting of tithes. He too looked and “passed by”. The third was the Samaritan who was considered to be an enemy, of a different race and religion. Unlike the others, he had empathy and compassion. He administered first aid and then took the victim to an inn and paid all the current and future expenses. He was not limited in his love by religious law, concerns of risk or the cost.. He was a neighbor because he loved and he loved because he was a neighbor.

The teachings of Jesus do still have meaning! It’s not just magic. Our neighbors are everywhere. They are in Iraq, they are in Iran, they are in Israel, they are in Palestine, they are in Mexico, they are in our border towns and in our work places. They are black, white, homosexual, heterosexual, Democrats, Republicans, Christians, atheists, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Pagans…..The neighborhood of the kingdom of God is ever increasing and the command to love our neighbors and our enemies is just as important today as it was in Galilee 5,000 years ago.

The consequence of loving our neighbors around the globe is likely to result in a peaceful neighborhood but that is not why we love. Everyone knows that stealing and destroying the homes of our neighbors will bring retaliation. Magical Christians justify stealing natural resources from distant lands and destroying homes and families while identifying religious and political righteousness as entitlement. Jesus reminds us that our righteousness is as filthy rags. Many caught up in the acts of the magical Christians just remain silent and pass by their neighbors in Iraq, Palestine and Iran like the Priest and the Levite. They have accepted stage magic for the redemptive love of Christ. There are dangerous and fearful people who will stop at nothing to fight for what they want. Jesus taught us how to respond to them as well.

He said that under old testament law you can only do to others what they had done to you. An eye for and eye or a tooth for a tooth. Jesus however, taught a radical risky approach to violence which is the opposite of “human nature. “ God nature teaches us to “love your enemies, bless those who curse you, pray for those who despitefully use you.” Christians who are waiting in the magician’s box with the false bottom are waiting to reappear in heaven after Armageddon. They argue that Jesus never meant his words to be taken literally. They explain it would be crazy to take them at face value because it defies human nature. Exactly, it is Christ’s nature- the whole point or redemption. Ironically, the most revolutionary admonition of Christ which holds the key to the Kingdom is dismissed. Which enemies are we to love? Perhaps for magic Christians “an enemy” is just the woman at work who consistently snatches the last doughnut or gossips about them.

Jesus was talking about brutal painful acts of violence (eye for an eye- tooth for a tooth) not the just the office gossip. He clearly explained the cost of following him. Sometimes a soft word turns away wrath but history has also shown us that sometimes it doesn’t. The outcome does not determine the righteousness of the action. Magic Christians clearly have hidden the meaning of this command up their sleeves. Today they justify violence against enemies explaining that we are dealing with good verses evil and never in history has there been such a battle as the one which rages today . They explain we have “evil” people who be-head others, and suicide bombers who kill innocent people. They quake in fear saying our culture is debased and sinful unlike any in the history of human kind.

This is blatantly false! Be-headings are as old as time. Magical Christians throughout history beheaded many and thought they were righteous. Brutal attacks on Jesus’ followers were common and many were killed for sport. Domination and control of others is as old as time. The “culture wars” have been waging since the word of God spoke the world into existence. Women have always known which herbs and interventions end pregnancies. All societies have had interests in managing the population. Homosexuality also has always existed in societies. At times there were homosexual prostitutes in the temples as in ancient Canaanite ritualistic practices. There have always been territorial disputes, religious fighting, and someone is always threatening the annihilation of others. Jesus said “do not fear those who can destroy the body but be concerned about those who can destroy the soul.“ The sleight of hand stage magic Christianity has done a lot of hocus pocus with Jesus’ commandments to love our neighbors and our enemies and distorted what it means to love the living God.

The love of God is gone from the hearts of those who call themselves by his name. Magical Christians are nervous when fiction writers question the church, when archeologists announced they found the book of Judas, or scientists claim to disprove long held details of Christian belief. If Jesus is just about a magical carpet ride to heaven to escape damnation then it really matters what people say or science proves. Their lives depend on it! But, if Jesus is about character and the meaning of his words and life are written on our hearts we remain unshaken. A million “discoveries” could be made about his life but the truth and power of his words and actions remain. If Christian magicians believe they possess absolute truth why do they fear the questions?

Loving God, loving our neighbors and loving our enemies is the only way to respond to power, fear and oppression. It is not a strategy but a commandment. The powers of this world seek to divide us from one another and foment fear and hatred between us. Radio and television personalities who carefully chose their words are increasingly choosing words to outrage, stir up vitriol, and foment race wars and religious wars. Followers of magic are led along by emotion and succumb to the situational ethics and justifications for violence and hatred. Those who seek to manipulate through fear to dominate, control and wield power promise to safeguard our race and our people and the freedom and independence of our homeland. These are the same promises Hitler made to the good German people. Those who seek to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for Christ’s love will find it. (Matthew 16:25) Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul. (Matthew 10:28)

Jesus isn’t magic. His love and teachings are revolutionary.

NSA Concerned Over Pattern of Calls to Domino's Pizza

2006-05-16T06:10:00.000-05:00

Courtesy of whatstrikesme.blogspot.com:

As part of the warrantless surveillance program, the NSA has been mining data on the number of calls to Domino’s by some demographic populations. The calls are concentrated in mostly liberal cities that are known as college towns.

Conservative commentators, putting the pieces together, are calling for investigations. They believe that such a high concentration of calls could indicate that the liberal 18-22 year old demographic is supporting terrorist causes.

Rush Limbaugh, the conservative talk-show host, chimed in on the issue on his show yesterday. “Have you ever called a Domino’s? You know,” he said, “I’ve been calling them for years, sometimes twice in one day, and I’ve yet to speak with one American.”

Limbaugh continued, “The NSA says a lot of these calls are going out just before midnight straight from college campuses. Let’s see if we can make a connection here. Liberals calling foreigners at astonishingly high rates at odd hours? You do the math, folks.”

The NSA said its data mining project has turned up high-value information in the fight against terror, but it was very concerned about the data missing from the area dominated by Qwest, which refused to hand over the phone records.

An NSA spokesman said, “Qwest, headquartered in Denver, CO, is the carrier for the University of Colorado at Boulder. CU Boulder is known for its party atmosphere and occasional rioting after football games. We can only assume the pattern of late night calls to Domino’s is present there, but we don’t know who is doing it. To be without this data about calling patterns there is cause for grave national security concern.”

“We know they hire males of Middle East descent,” the spokesman continued, “and we’re concerned that the transactions they do, which are usually all in cash and sometimes involve tips of up to two dollars, may be going to fund terrorists. This money is untraceable”

Another NSA official, speaking to us on the condition of anonymity, said, “We called a Domino’s in Boulder, trying to get the information any way we could. There was a guy named Muhammad answering the phone. We asked for call recordings, but he insisted on getting our delivery phone number first, and we had to abort the operation.”

President Bush, speaking in the Rose Garden, said, “Just this one patternistic finding justifies the whole program, and I think the American people realize that we’re doing everything in our power to protect them from the evil-doers—no matter where they’re hiding.”

Tim Russert Once Again Shows He’s a GOP Shill and Anti-American Scum

2006-05-15T18:35:00.000-05:00

I get so damn tired of that little pussy Russert. Read that link and weep. All the blog columns in the world couldn’t list how many times he deliberately misleads his viewers. He should be the president of Fox News. Hey Rupert, Timmy’s doing your job better than Brit Hume and the rest of your disinformation con-artists. Hire him away from NBC!

This article is also worth reading. It tells how Cheney and Rumsfeld were behind the NSA tapping the phones of Nixon's enemies, too. It worked 30 years ago before the FISA laws were passed. Why not do it again?

Bush Tapping US Reporters’ Phones – We Now Live in the USSR!

2006-05-15T18:26:00.000-05:00

Sources in federal law enforcement have admitted that the CIA under Bush has been monitoring phone calls of American reporters covering political stories. For the past six years the Corporate Mainstream Media has been giving the Bush Administration a pass on most issues. I wonder if this revelation that they are being targeted by the feds snooping on their calls will embolden them to stand up and do their jobs honestly reporting the American People what Bush and his people have been up to, or whether this will frighten them further into an even more passive roll (if that is possible).

“Under Bush Administration guidelines, it is not considered illegal for the government to keep track of numbers dialed by phone customers.” That’s Americans calling Americans in the US.

Update: When this was first posted ABC News was saying that the monitoring of reporters phones was because the “CIA was also disturbed by ABC News reports” of their activities, and I assumed that they were saying that it was the CIA that was monitoring their calls. The CIA isn’t allowed to monitor purely domestic calls by American citizens. Since then it came out that it was the FBI. Now I have a lot of respect for FBI agents and all law enforcement officials. If they received a court order to monitor reporters’ calls to investigate the commission of a crime, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. The FBI claims that they are investigating the reporting of classified information, such as the news that the Bush Administration was monitoring the domestic calls of American citizens who have nothing to do with terrorism. Which you have to admit is a little ironic (not to mention circular) if part of their alibi for monitoring Americans’ calls is that some Americans revealed that they are monitoring Americans’ calls.

Bush’s HUD Secretary: I Just Made Up That Thing I said About Breaking the Law

2006-05-10T22:37:00.000-05:00

Bush’s HUD Secretary bragged to a group at a speaking engagement about cancelling government contracts if the CEO of the contracting company wasn’t pro-Bush. Now that he realizes that is a violation of the law and the First Amendment he says he made it up. And he regrets that he said it. But his spokesperson said it was true. She said that the contractor deserved to have their contact canceled because their CEO had “trashed” Bush (i.e. used his Constitutionally guaranteed right of free speech in disagreeing with the president’s policies). Then when that story didn’t work out for her, she also said that the HUD secretary made the whole thing up. Now HUD says she’s on leave and can’t be reached. Hmmm.

Josh Marshall commenting on HUD Secretary, Jackson's claim that he made it up and regrets ever saying it has it right:

“This reminds me of the time I walked into a bank and told them I'd stolen a bunch of their money even though I hadn't. I really regretted that.

“Or the time I told a good friend I'd slept with his girlfriend even though I hadn't. I really regretted that too.

“Alphonso Jackson. HUD Secretary.”

Bush Admin Says Taliban NOT Terrorists and Never Were!

2006-05-09T19:49:00.000-05:00

The Bush Administration recently issued a report on Terrorism and according them the Taliban are not terrorists. Worse it seems that the Bush Administration has never considered the Taliban to be terrorists. They just harbored Osama bin Laden and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the architect of the September 11 attack, and the rest of the merry band of al Qaeda, but no, the Taliban aren’t terrorists says Bush. Maybe that’s why Bush diverted troops who had bin Laden cornered in Tora Bora, and sent them to Iraq before he began the Iraq War. Maybe that’s why bin Laden is still alive and on the loose.

NBC, CBS, Fox and CNN all Edited Out Rumsfeld Lies from News

2006-05-07T17:30:00.000-05:00

I noted earlier that Fox and CNN edited out Rumsfeld being caught lying about his statements on Iraq and WMD. It turns out that CBS and NBC also edited it out. Some “liberal media.”

A Voice From History

2006-05-06T09:36:00.000-05:00

The function of the press is very high. It is almost holy. To misstate or suppress the news is a breach of trust.
— Louis D. Brandeis (1856-1941), U.S. Supreme Court Justice

The US Mainstream Media suppresses and/or misrepresents so many stories that the American people deserve to hear. They are no longer worthy of our trust.

Bush’s CIA Director Suddenly Resigns after News of Involvement in Hookergate

2006-05-05T18:30:00.000-05:00

Porter Goss, the man Bush appointed as Director of the Central Intelligence Agency and who has been driving out all CIA officers with Democratic sypathies (Goss was a GOP congressman before coming to head CIA), promptly resigned today. Recently Goss was named as one of the participants in parties in which convicted lobbyists provided Republican members of Congress with prostitutes. This Hookergate scandal is directly related to the Duke Cunningham bribery scandal. A spokesperson for Goss originally said the charge was preposterous, but when more evidence came out Goss suddenly resigned.

Goss promoted Kyle "Dusty" Foggo to the number 3 spot at CIA. Foggo is a longtime friend of lobbyist (and criminal co-conspirator) Wilkes who received corrupt contracts with both the CIA and the Pentagon under Bush. Foggo was in charge of giving out those contracts at the CIA and has attended the parties Wilkes threw. Goss is believed to have met Foggo at these parties. These are the parties with prostitutes that gives Hookergate its name.

Crooks and Liars has more on the subject here.

Fire Dog Lake has more here.

Josh Marshall has more here and elsewhere on his site.

Pensito Review has some more.

Want to clean up the corruption in Washington? Vote Democratic for a change.

Rumsfeld Caught Lying to America

2006-05-04T18:32:00.000-05:00

From www.CrooksAndLiars.com:

At the start of the Iraq War on March 30, 2003 Sec. of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld was being interviewed on ABC’s THIS Week with George Stephanopoulos

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, weapons of mass destruction. Key goal of the military campaign is finding those weapons of mass destruction. None have been found yet. There was a raid on the Answar Al-Islam Camp up in the north last night. A lot of people expected to find ricin there. None was found. How big of a problem is that? And is it curious to you that given how much control U.S. and coalition forces now have in the country, they haven't found any weapons of mass destruction?

SEC. RUMSFELD: Not at all. If you think -- let me take that, both pieces -- the area in the south and the west and the north that coalition forces control is substantial. It happens not to be the area where weapons of mass destruction were dispersed. We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.

ABC’s THIS Week transcript from March 30, 2003

Today, Ray McGovern, who was in the CIA for twenty seven years, asked Rumsfeld why he lied about the run-up to the Iraq war. Rumsfeld then proceeded to lie to McGovern to cover up his earlier statements about WMD's being in Iraq. He also tries to use the troops in his defense, a terrible strategy, but not uncommon unfortunately. Notice, at the end of the clip, Ray gets vilified for asking Rumsfeld some pointed questions.

Video-WMP Video-QT

Here's what it says:

Rumsfeld: ...it appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

McGovern: You said you knew where they were.

Rumsfeld: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and...

McGovern: You said you knew where they were. Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words.

Rumsfeld: My words-my words were that-no-no, wait a minute--wait a minute. [At this point Rumsfeld’s people start dragging McGovern out and Rumsfeld says] Let him stay one second. Just for a second..

Rumsfeld continues to deny what he said about WMD and then says, “Why do you think the US troops put on protective gear to keep out chemical weapons? Don’t you think they thought there was WMD?”

Of course the troops thought Saddam had WMD, that’s what Rumsfeld and Bush told them. The fact that the troops were as misled as the American people doesn’t get Rumsfeld and Bush off the hook.

Rumsfeld said at the beginning of the war that they knew where the WMD were. “We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” We have him on tape saying that. The US State Department’s own US Embassy site has a transcript of him saying that. The Department of Defense also has a transcript of him saying it! That’s the department that Rumsfeld himself leads! But today he denies he ever said it.

That’s lying! Plain and simple! He not only lied in 2003, but today he is lying about the fact that he said what he said in 2003.

It turns out now that Inteligence agencies were telling Rumsfeld, Bush and Cheney that there wasn’t evidence of WMD in Iraq all along and now we know that intelligence was correct. So why did Rumsfeld say that not only did Saddam have WMD, but that the Bush Administration knew exactly where they were? And why does he lie today about ever having said that?

Because he knows that the Lapdog US Corporate Media will not expose his lies. And he is right. Rumsfeld has had this quote thrown in his face other times by patriotic Americans and always just denies it, knowing that the press will not hold him or anyone else in the administration accountable for their statments to the American people.

But we bloggers will!

Tired of lies? Vote Democratic.

Update: Fox News Channel edited out the part where Ray McGovern called Rumsfeld on his lie echoing Rumsfeld’s own words from 2003 back at him and Rumsfeld again denied his own statements. Fox also reported that McGovern “said he worked at the CIA for 27 years” as if that was a lie. It’s not, and records prove he’s a 27 year veteran of the CIA. Is there any wonder why studies keep showing that Fox News Channel viewers are the least well informed Americans? They don’t have a clue that they’re being lied to on a regular basis. And I believe that Fox News Channel is broadcast to our troops overseas to keep them in the dark, too. Isn’t that nice.

CNN also edited out the part where McGovern repeated Rumsfeld’s own words and Rumsfeld denied them, but at least CNN didn’t deliberately mislead their viewers into thinking that McGovern hadn’t worked for the CIA. CNN did neglect to mention that he’s a 27 year veteran of the CIA, though. In studies of Americans and their knowledge of the issues, viewers of CNN did slightly better than viewers of Fox News Channel who scored dead last.

Stop the lies to American civilians and our brave troops fighting overseas: Vote Democratic! Vote for change.

Bush and Singing the National Anthem in Spanish: He Was For It Before He Was Against It

2006-05-02T18:40:00.000-05:00

Think Progress reports that: On Friday, President Bush blasted the idea of singing the Star Spangled Banner in Spanish. But Bush’s highly-scripted 2001 inaugural ceremony actually featured a rendition of the national anthem sung in Spanish by Jon Secada. From Cox News Service, 1/18/01:

The opening ceremony reflected that sentiment. A racially diverse string of famous and once famous performers entertained Bush, soon-to-be First Lady Laura Bush, Vice President-elect Richard B. Cheney and his wife, Lynne, who watched on stage from a special viewing area.
Pop star Jon Secada sang the national anthem in English and Spanish.

Apparently, Secada singing the anthem in Spanish was a regular feature of the Bush campaign. From the 8/3/00 Miami Herald:

The nominee [Bush], his wife Laura, erstwhile rival John McCain and his wife Cindy joined Bush on a platform where children sang the national anthem - in “Spanglish,” Secada explained.

This morning, ThinkProgress revealed that, according to Kevin Phillip’s book American Dynasty, Bush himself sang the national anthem in Spanish. Looks like Bush’s conviction that “the national anthem ought to be sung in English” was something he acquired very recently.

We have a word for that: hypocrisy. Or do you prefer Flip-Flop?

Tired of the Bush Flip-Flops? Vote Democratic.

More on the Intentional News Blackout on Stephen Colbert's Send-up of Bush and the Lapdog Press

2006-05-02T18:38:00.000-05:00

http://www.seeingtheforest.com/ comments that when “Don Imus was the speaker at the 1996 Correspondent's dinner and his talk insulted President Clinton along the lines of the ongoing "conservative movement" narrative. Whitewater, Susan McDougal getting payoffs, Clintons getting indicted, missing billing records... The press had a field day -- coverage everywhere. NY Times, TV Notes;Imus in the Spotlight” Mike Wallace of CBS's 60 Minutes was beside himself with glee. The rest of the media hawked it to death.

“This is no big deal, except when compared with this week's press response to Stephen Colbert's appearance Saturday. The only way to describe the press response is: intentional blackout. The New York Times, for example, wrote an article about the dinner and did not mention Colbert in the article at all. A scan of Google News finds almost no coverage outside of the blogs.”

“In 1987 Ronald Reagan ordered the FCC to abolish the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcast media to provide balanced coverage of issues. Majorities in the Congress voted to restore the Fairness Doctrine and were blocked by Republican vetoes and filibusters. (Any time you hear a Republican complain about the "liberal media" ask them why it is Republicans, not Democrats, who oppose the Fairness Doctrine.) Following that, Republicans began to allow fewer and fewer large corporations to control more and more of these information channels. (PLEASE click the links. More here and here.)”

Read more about this here.

Remember if you don’t like the bias of the media, Vote Democratic to reinstate the Fairness Doctrine to restore balance and accountability in the media.

Update: Remember last year at the Washington Correspondent's dinner, President Bush presented a video comedy routine where he was looking for the WMD that inspired him to invade Iraq and cause 2400 US service members to die and 18,000 of our troops to be wounded: many of them blinded, or maimed for life. In Bush’s side-splitting gag he was looking under the cushions in the Oval Office saying, “Gee, I’m sure those WMD are around here some place.” The Washing Press Corps went wild laughing hysterically at this. Yeah, that’s comedy. Joking about the reason we started a war that’s cost almost as many American lives as September 11, and caused between 30,000 and 120,000 Iraqi civilians to die. But Stephen Colbert making jokes about the press failing to do their job reporting on the Bush Administration and about the Bush Admin’s incompetence at doing their jobs is going over the line. So while the press gushed over Bush’s jokes about why we are at war and Don Imus’ skewering of Clinton they are silent or dismissive of Colbert.

Bush Admin Endangered National Security and Damaged Ability to Collect Intelligence on Iran's Nukes

2006-05-01T19:41:00.000-05:00

Intelligence sources reveal National Security was damaged when Valerie Plame-Wilson's identity was leaked by the White House. She worked with gathering intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction. The outing of her identity specifically damaged the ability to collect intelligence on Iran's nuclear capabilities. The White House damaged National Security and our ability to track Iran’s nukes for political pay-back because Ambassador Wilson (Valerie Plame-Wilson's husband) informed Americans that Bush’s claim about Iraq buying Uranium to build nuclear weapons was untrue. The claim was based on documents easily shown to be forgeries. For that National Security was damaged and our ability to keep Iran from going nuclear was sabotaged by Bush’s White House.

Want real National Security, not loose lips sinking ships? Vote Democratic.

Senate Republicans Screw Troops Yet Again

2006-05-01T19:22:00.000-05:00

In the years since Republicans seized control of all branches of the US Government one thing they have consistently done is to cut funding and services to active military personnel and veterans. Well, they’re not done screwing the troops yet! Senate Republicans voted to cut nearly $2 Billion from money earmarked for body armor, tools to defeat improvised explosive devices for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and training the Iraqi security forces. A Democratic amendment to keep the funding for our troops was overturned on a vote of 54-44 with Democrats voting for and Republicans voting against. The Democratic amendment that the Republicans defeated was to keep funding for troops and allow emergency funding for border security. The Republican measure that they passed cut the funding to our troops by nearly $2 Billion. Read it and weep for our service members who will die because Republicans have the nerve to give away Corporate Welfare to oil and tobacco and pharmaceutical companies and tax breaks to the richest 1% of Americans, but take away the needed funding from our men and women in uniform.

Support the troops: Vote Democratic!

Stephen Colbert Skewers Bush Admin and Lapdog US Mainstream Media

2006-05-01T18:30:00.000-05:00

The truthiness hurts! Stephen Colbert's brilliant performance unplugged the Bush myth machine -- and left the clueless D.C. press corps gaping by Michael Scherer

Watch Stephen Colbert's sensational White House correspondents’ dinner performance.

The Daou Report explains how Stephen Colbert displayed more guts in ten minute of performance at the White House Correspondents Dinner than the Washington Press Corps and entire Bush family.

How is the mainstream media reacting to someone exposing their lack of a backbone in reporting on the Bush Administration and the news they are too cowardly to report? Why they simply ignore it and instead report how witty Bush was.

Cowards to the end. The end of journalistic integrity in America unfortunately.

Had enough of Bush and Congress' BS? Vote Democratic for a change.

Update: White House aides close to Bush say he was furious at Colbert’s airing the truth in Bush’s presence. A former top aide to Bush on the scene said, "I've been there before, and I can see that he is [angry]. He's got that look that he's ready to blow." The US News and World Reports chose not to use the alternative word the aide used for angry. I think it starts with a “P.” Look for Colbert to be declared an enemy combatant taken to Gitmo and tortured.

The US Corporate Mainstream Media especially the Washington Press Corps that Colbert skewered showing their soft complicit underbelly continues to downplay or ignore his lampooning of their lack of journalistic integrity. The media doesn’t like it when someone else shines a spotlight on their lapses. Too bad!

We need more people standing up and exposing the lack of real news reporting we get here in the US. Well done, Stephen Colbert. Well done!

Mystery of the Unaccounted 7% of America

2006-04-25T19:53:00.000-05:00

A recent survey found that only 32% of Americans approve of the job that Bush is doing as president. On a related note 25% of Americans think that aliens from outer space have come to earth and are secretly communicating with the government. My questions is: what’s up with the other 7%?

Bush Admin Blocking Our Troops Access to Information unless it is Right-Wing

2006-04-25T18:49:00.000-05:00

The US Air Force is blocking airmen from accessing progressive (read more favorable to the Democratic Party) web sites but allows airmen to access hyper-right-wing (read rabidly pro-Republican Party) web sites. A number of airmen trying to access www.dailykos.com, www.talkingpointsmemo.com, atrios.blogspot.com and other progressive sites are getting a “very scary screen to pop up, warning the user that a regulation or policy or some such has been violated and the address of the computer has been logged.” “On the other hand, Free Republic and Little Green Footballs [two of the hyper-pro-Republican sites] came through just fine, thank you very much.” So far no incidents of right-wing sites being blocked have been reported only progressive ones.

Previously complaints that Right-Wing-Nut Rush Limbaugh and others are being broadcast to our troops worldwide courtesy of our tax dollars, but not broadcasters from the other side of the isle arose. The Bush Administration toyed with the idea of giving our troops both sides of the debate on issues they are risking their lives for, but decided that only the pro-Republican side counted.

Support our troops by censoring any view but Bush’s. That’s what the USSR, oops, I mean the US is all about.

CIA Analyst Gives Good Analysis of Recent Intelligence Leaks

2006-04-25T06:41:00.000-05:00

Larry Johnson, a 21 year veteran of the CIA and State Department’s anti-terror groups says, "There is a fundamental moral and ethical difference between someone who leaks information in order to serve the public good [such as alerting the public that people are being tortured or that Americans are being spied upon in violation of law] and someone, like George Bush, who authorizes leaks only for the purpose of saving his sorry political ass."

Man Who Pardoned Nixon Pans Generals Criticizing Rumsfeld

2006-04-23T20:57:00.000-05:00

Gerald Ford, the man who pardoned Richard Nixon preventing prosecution of the person who was until now the most detestable criminal to hold the office of US President, has come out against retired US generals calling for Rumsfeld to resign or be fired for gross ineptitude in mismanaging the Iraq War.

Right. Go back to hitting people on the golf course, Fleet-Foot!

Another Life-Long Republican and Former Bush Admin Official Warns US about Bush and the Neo-Cons and the Republican Led Congress

2006-04-23T17:37:00.000-05:00

Lawrence Wilkerson, life-long Republican, retired Army Colonel and former chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell, warns America about the dangers of allowing the Bush Administration to continue leading our nation down to disaster, “In January 2001, with the inauguration of George W. Bush as president, America set on a path to cease being good; America became a revolutionary nation, a radical republic. If our country continues on this path, it will cease to be great - as happened to all great powers before it, without exception.”

“From the Kyoto accords to the International Criminal Court, from torture and cruel and unusual treatment of prisoners to rendition of innocent civilians, from illegal domestic surveillance to lies about leaking, from energy ineptitude to denial of global warming, from cherry-picking intelligence to appointing a martinet and a tyrant to run the Defense Department, the Bush administration, in the name of fighting terrorism, has put America on the radical path to ruin.”

He warns that Bush and his like will set us back “800 years” to the days before the Magna Carta. His essay is required reading for all Americans.