The (liberal)Girl Next Door

The World's Most Exclusive Kennel Club Presents: The 2007 “Bark, Rollover and Play Dead” Competition

2007-10-25T22:58:00.000-07:00

Guest Post by Mark W. Bradley

“Live, from the WSJ Editorial-lined lobby of the Bob Ney Convention Center here in Washington D.C., conveniently located within easy dog-walking distance of the National Fire Hydrant (formerly known as 'The United States Capitol Building’), the World’s Most Exclusive Kennel Club presents: The 2007 'Bark, Rollover, and Play Dead' Competition.

“This Canine Sports Spectacular Presentation is brought to you this evening by AIPAC-brand 'Kibitz and Blitz', the official dog food of the Lakud Party and the United States Government. Like all AIPAC-brand products, 'Kibitz and Blitz' is made from 100% genuine negotiating table scraps ‘too good to waste on Palestinians.’ Every 'bunker-busting' bite is chock-full of bellicose goodness, guaranteed to make your saber-rattling, subservient solon sit up on his hind quarters and shamelessly beg for another heaping helping. And 'Kibitz and Blitz' now comes in two pooch-pleasing flavors: Rump Republican Red Meat Chunks (in the shiny crimson can featuring Mitch 'Mad Dog' McConnell gnawing on a half-eaten Persian kitty), and Lukewarm Liberal Lymph Node Pate (look for the grainy, black-and-white surveillance photo of Harry 'Hangdog' Reid furtively squatting in a doggie diaper). But no matter which flavor your Senator prefers, when you feed him 'Kibitz and Blitz', you’ll have the satisfaction of knowing he'll never again be tempted to tip over and rummage through your garbage can (unless, of course, his trainers at the NSA order him to sniff-out and retrieve your carelessly discarded cell phone bill). So do yourself a favor, and pick up a corporate contribution-size bag of 'Kibitz and Blitz.' After all, we're not just providing food for Straussian thought here, we’re feeding 'AIPAC' of dogs. And now, here’s your FOX-news anchor, Frank Mutz.”

“Hello, and welcome. I’m pollster Frank Mutz and I’ll be bringing you all the leg-humping excitement here at the Bob Ney Convention Center. I’m pleased to be joined tonight by the Democratic Party's chief leash-yanker and butt-sniffer, Rahm Emasculator...”

“Great to be here, Frank. This year’s top contenders will be vying for the coveted Triple Crown of Congressional Canines, the prestigious ‘Bark, Rollover and Play Dead’ triathlon. Many of these constitutionally-challenged curs have been in training for this event since their ‘hind tit sucking’ days back in the Doghouse of Representatives. I think it’s safe to say that quite a few of them are literally chasing their own tails, hoping to make a favorable impression on their owners here tonight. But before the actual competition gets underway, let’s get to know some of these Furry Federalist Fleabags, shall we? For that we send you down to everyone’s favorite newspuppy, Nora O’Doggerel, who’s been panting patiently around on the Soiled Carpet to present us with a special segment she calls ‘Up-close and Doggerel.’ Nora?”

“Thanks, Rahm. I’m here with two former Congressional dog trainers, Neuter Gingrich and Tom DeSpay. Gentlemen, thanks so much for joining us.”

“Thanks for having us, Nora.”

“Mr. DeSpay, let’s get your thoughts first. What’s going to be the key to victory in this competition?”

“Well, Nora, what makes this event so unique is that it requires an extraordinary array of rare talents. Take the barking competition, for example. Any dog can bark, but it takes years of practice for a dog to learn to bark out of both sides of his mouth and still keep from dropping his chew stick. In that regard, Senator Arlen ‘Fetch’ Specter has a distinct advantage. He’s a rare breed - a Wire-haired Water Retriever - and he’s been the Republican Party’s designated barker on the Senate Judiciary Committee for nearly 200 dog years. His bark is among the best in the business - ferocious, indignant, convincing. And that’s precisely what makes it such a great setup for his spontaneous rollover. It’s so spontaneous, you don’t even see it coming! One minute he’s growling away for hours at some Attorney General nominee or other on your TV set, so you get up to grab another bag of chicken bones and when you return, ‘presto’, his confirmation vote has been recorded and he’s down on all fours licking his bowl clean like nothing happened...”

“Tom’s definitely got a point there, Nora. Senator Specter’s bark-to-rollover time may be the quickest in the history of the sport. The problem is, he’s pulled it off so many times, I’m afraid he’s starting to lose the element of surprise. That’s why I’m gonna have to go with Judiciary Committee Chairman Pat “Trick Dog” Leahy on this one. Whereas Specter’s strength is his speed, Senator Leahy relies on a subtle combination of strident sincerity and quiet capitulation. His Herculean pronouncements (like the one threatening to hold up the Mukasey nomination), invariably lead to Lilliputian results. Like most purebred Hibernian Horehounds, his pugnacious growl belies a docile and compliant nature, which makes him the perfect watchdog to guard a booby-trapped room.”

“Gentlemen, you’ve identified two of the alpha males among the contenders. But who do you see as the alpha females in this competition? Neut?”

“Clearly the most formidable challenger is Hillary ‘Pharm Dog’ Clinton. Being a golden lab retriever (Pfizer Labs, Wyeth Labs, Amgen Labs), Hillary has a leg-up on the competition, so to speak. First of all, her bark is (strictly speaking) not a bark at all, but more akin to the blood-curdling howl of a hyena. Her bite, on the other hand, is quite harmless, especially when deployed against her erstwhile ‘enemies’ in the ranks of the ‘vast right-wing conspiracy.’ In fact, she appears to have mastered the difficult art of snargling (snarling and wagging her tail and the same time). But her rollover is truly a thing of beauty. More a slow-motion pirouette than a rollover per se, it occurs over a span of time tending toward the geologic, and is as subtly incremental as the blooming of a corpse flower.”

“Neut, pardon the expression, but I’m afraid ‘that dog won’t hunt.’ The ‘bitch’ to watch here (and I mean that with all due respect) is the Italian Lapdog Nancy ‘Nolo Contendere’ Pelosi. From 2001 to 2007 she howled, yelped, and barked incessantly about the crimes of the Bush Administration, but now that she finds herself in a position to do something about them, she’s become one mute mutt. I mean, her discipline is truly remarkable. Her one and only weakness is that she has a habit of passing directly from ‘barking’ to ‘playing dead’ without even a passing glance at a ‘rollover.’ One suspects she may be frozen in the supine position.”

“Which reminds me, gentlemen, you two have been uncharacteristically mute when it comes to making predictions about the ‘play dead’ phase of the competition.”

“Nora, I believe my colleague Neut will readily agree with me that Senator John ‘O’ Possum’ Kerry has a pit bull’s mandibular lock on that category. Not to say he is a pit-bull. In fact, I have no idea what he is, and I’m not sure he does either. While many professional breeders who’ve seen Kerry's papers report him to be a purebred Standard Poodle, others contend he is nothing but a well-coiffed dingo. Rumors abound that Kerry is actually a ‘Heinz 57’, but I find this notion preposterous. Only sustained inbreeding could have produced a dog so utterly useless for any purpose beyond inducing sleep in himself and others. He is the very nonpareil of ‘playing dead’”

“I’ll grant you that, Tom, but since his bark is indecipherable and his rollover appears to be as continuous as an electric spit, I question whether his ability to ‘play dead’ will be sufficient to allow him to catch the competition. Besides, ‘dead dogs’ are a dime a dozen. The real question is: can he come back to life?”

“That’s an excellent question, Mr. Gingrich. What do you think, Tom?”

“I suppose what Neut is referring to here is what we in the ‘dog eat dog’ political world call ‘canine resurrection’ (and we’re not talking about ‘doggie heaven’ here). Let me give you three examples of this phenomenon. First, there’s the story of Trent ‘Cracker Barrel’ Lott, a rare White-hooded Bloodhound once named ‘Dog of the Year’ by the Kaucasian Kennel Klub. Need I say more? And then of course we have the strange case of Senator David ‘Bird Dog’ Vitter, who is, I believe, a cross between a Ponchartrainian Poontang Pointer and a Bayou Beaver Retriever. (This hybrid, if left to its own devices, prefers to make its home in out-of-the-way cat houses.) ‘Nuff said about that, I suppose...”

“Excuse me Nora, but Tom failed to mention the most remarkable story of ‘canine resurrection’ on record, that being the case of Senator Larry ‘Dancing Paws’ Craig, the Snake River Canyon Cockapoo. Now the Snake River Canyon Cockapoo isn’t considered much of a breeding dog, as it is suffers from a congenital olfactory malformation that renders it unable to detect the smell of canine estrogen. It does, however, make a useful pet in many South Asian countries, where it is more aggressive than a mongoose at hunting wild snakes in a confined space. But what makes Larry ‘Dancing Paws’ Craig truly remarkable (even for a Snake River Canyon Cockapoo) is his extraordinary homing powers. No matter how far from home he gets dumped by his owners (and he has been dumped several times) Larry always manages to find his way back safely to the Senate Cloakroom...”

“Thank you, Neut, for that heartwarming story. Well, folks, we’ll be back in a moment to bring you more exciting coverage of the ‘Bark, Rollover, and Play Dead’ competition. But first a word about AIPAC-brand ‘Porkless Pork-Barrel Treats.’ They’re kosher, and they’re guaranteed to keep your Doghouse Member comin’ back for more! Most important of all, ‘Porkless Pork-Barrel Treats’ help keep your House pet in the peak of health by promoting strong teeth and gums (or, in the case of a Democratic House pet, just his gums). That’s AIPAC-brand, for Congressional canines who answer to a higher authority...”

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at: markwbradley@comcast.net.

Tom Friedman Puts On Dark Glasses and Discovers the Sun

2007-10-03T21:59:00.000-07:00

Guest post by Mark W. Bradley

Given the hectic pace of life these days, I suppose it should come as no surprise that we Americans are inexorably loosing our ability to think for ourselves. Social critics have long sought a definitive explanation for this phenomenon, but have so far failed to come up with anything beyond a working hypothesis. The prevailing arguments tend to fall into one of three basic categories. They are:

a.) Americans are too busy to make sense of the complex geopolitical realities of the modern world;

b.) Americans are too stupid to make sense of the complex geopolitical realities of the modern world; or

c.) Americans are too stupid to know they are too stupid to make sense of the complex geopolitical realities of the modern world.

Being the sort of person who would rather spread the darkness than curse a candle, I have come up with what I believe is a novel antidote to this debilitating condition. I call it the "Designated Thinker" solution.

This ambitious plan calls for each of us to adopt a really, really super-smart celebrity journalist/columnist of our choice to do the heavy mental lifting for us. (I like to pick mine from the Brahman stables at the New York Times, but hey, to each his own.) In my case, I rely on the prophetic and erudite visionary Thomas L. Friedman to pre-digest the steady stream of unpronounceable Arabic names and crazy-quilt geography coming out of the Middle East, and present it to me in an easy-to-comprehend format along the lines of Schoolhouse Rock. You know, something like:

America's the greatest, and there isn't any doubt,
But our choo-choos won't be chuggin' if the oil runs out!
Our little Shia brothers are just dyin' to lend a hand,
But if the Sunis don't agree, we're gonna gobble up their land...

But you get the idea. So let the ditto heads leech off the limbic system of Mr. Limbaugh; I'll take "Tom Terrific" of the Times any day. Now when somebody questions me about events in Iraq or Iran (or any of those irrational Muslamistic countries) I always answer with, "Well, Thomas Friedman believes that (fill in the blank)”, and boy are they impressed! But you know, the most satisfying part of this symbiotic relationship is that I get to feel like a real intellectual heavy-weight (without having to engage in any of the time-consuming bother of processing all that information myself), while Tom gets to flog enough copies of his books to comfortably cradle a nest egg the size of Qatar.

Imagine my delight, then, when I happened to catch my surrogate cerebrum on the cable news networks the other night. Apparently, he had called an impromptu news conference to announce his startling discovery of a gigantic flaming gas-ball in outer space that seemed to be orbiting our disk-shaped planet. Friedman first noticed this star-like object (which he has taken the liberty of naming "the Sun"), when the intense luminosity emanating from the incendiary sphere temporarily blinded him, causing him to fall clean out of the saddle of the Tactical Nuclear Cruise Missile on which he was riding, Major Cong-style, toward Damascus. When asked by reporters to identify the likely origin of this gaseous body, Mr. Friedman would only say that all would be revealed to us in over-simplified form in his upcoming best-seller, The Sun is Fat, and So is My Head.

This latest (and perhaps most profound) revelation to issue forth from the pen of my erstwhile muse comes on the heels of two other monumentally important discoveries made by Friedman earlier this year.

The first of these was his heroic (and ultimately successful) effort to pinpoint the precise location of his own derriere. As he described this defining moment in an NYT exclusive, “My head had become irretrievably lodged in a dark and malodorous place, but when I instinctively reached ahead of me with both hands, I was able to grasp my elusive posterior with surprising ease. Curiously enough, it had been right in front of my face the entire time! Who knew?...”

Friedman’s other recent journalistic coup, of course, was his scooping of the entire Western World last August with the breaking news that the invasion of Iraq was not such a good idea, after all.

Man, I wish I’d gotten an Oxford education! All I could wangle was Chico State...

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at: markwbradley@comcast.net.

Fun Facts About Invertebrates

2007-09-22T14:00:00.000-07:00

Guest Post by Mark W. Bradley

My ten-year-old granddaughter looked up from her science homework the other day and posed me a question she thought would be a real stumper.

"Grampa, what's the world's largest invertebrate life form?"

"That would be the Democratic Party," I replied. "Why do you ask?"

"Because my science book says it's the ‘giant squid.’ They can weigh up to 600 pounds."

Upon hearing this stupefying factoid, I was forced to concede.

"Then I guess your science book is probably correct, sweetheart. Even loaded down with frozen blocks of corporate campaign cash, most Democrats don't weigh that much!"

"I'll bet the Democratic Party is smarter than a giant squid, though," she offered, graciously allowing me to salvage some semblance of academic face.

"I suppose it would depend on the squid," I posited. “That, and the number of Democrats present at the time of the comparison.”

“Well, Grampa, what if there were a lot of Democrats, and they were all meeting in Congress, making a really good plan to get us out of Iraq? Who would be smarter then?”

“Definitely the giant squid,” I quipped with confidence. “You see, honey, believe it or not, the more Democratic Congressmen there are in a room, the greater the likelihood the entire quorum will be outwitted by a single marine mollusk, not to mention a reasonably alert jellyfish. Take the Senate Majority for instance...”

But before I could get into my stride, my granddaughter again shifted gears.

“But Grampa, at least Democrats are brave, right? I mean, they have more guts than a squid, don't they?”

“Well technically, sweetheart, we know a squid has guts, because we can see inside it. Squid are transparent, you see, and that’s one thing you could never say about Congressional Democrats. Oh sure, they all claim to have “intestinal” fortitude and the “stomach” for a fight when they’re on the campaign trail, but once they get voted into office they line up to be gutted like nihilistic sardines fighting to get into the can. And once Democratic politicians are eviscerated, they leave behind whatever vestige of moral courage they once possessed as thoughtlessly as a lobster sheds his carapace. They quake in terror at the mere mention of imaginary sea monsters lurking in the Strait of Hormuz, and spend most of their time groveling on bended-fin before a barnacle encrusted, not-very-lifelike cement statue of “King Neptune the Invincible”, something 71% of the other fish find laughable, if not utterly baffling. It’s the damndest thing...”

Still my intrepid granddaughter was undeterred in her valiant attempt to find a place for Congressional Democrats at the apex of the invertebrate food chain.

“There’s just one thing I don’t understand, Grampa. If big old slimy bottom-feeding squid monsters are so much braver, smarter and more powerful than Democrats, then how come one of them doesn’t run for the Senate?”

“One already has, sweetheart,” I replied. “Isn’t there a picture of Joe Liebermann in your science book?”

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at markwbradley@comcast.net

Why Can’t They All Just Get Along?

2007-09-13T20:47:00.000-07:00

Guest post by, Mark W. Bradley

Four years ago (shortly after moving into the neighborhood where I currently live), it was brought to my attention that a thoroughly unpleasant individual resided in the house across the street and two doors down from mine. Not only was he known to be crude and obnoxious in his personal habits, it was widely rumored that he routinely and mercilessly beat his three sons. These reports disturbed me, to say the least, so one day I plucked up the courage to go down to his place and tell him, in no uncertain terms, that he had better straighten up and fly right. He didn't, so I shot him.

Now I’m one of those people naive enough to believe that performing an act of kindness like this for three newly-liberated orphans would be enough to earn me their undying gratitude, but such was not the case. In fact, they seemed curiously mistrustful of me after that.

I suppose their reaction was understandable under the circumstances, and I must admit that I did feel a little responsible for the death of their father (I had killed him, after all). But as I told the children myself (once they'd calmed down a bit),"Look, are we going to continue to dwell on the past and spend a lot of unproductive time discussing 'how we got to this point', or are we going to sit down together like men and figure out how to move forward on this thing?" Before long, the boys (who, at that point, ranged in age from eleven down to six) took one look at the smoking gun in my hand and decided to take a fresh look at the facts as they then existed on the ground.

The truth is that once the rental truck finished hauling away all the unnecessary clutter that had sprung up during the unspeakable reign of their despotic father (including a completely outdated plasma TV, a Land Rover with dangerously under-inflated tires, a broken-down pallet of rat-infested gold bullion, and a frightfully miscataloged collection of post-impressionist paintings), the poor kids finally had enough room to run around the house without tripping over hazardous piles of stuff every time they turned around. And since I didn’t see anybody else volunteering to do it, I agreed to store the whole god-awful mess at my house, at least until the boys were old enough to have adult grandchildren capable of looking after it in a responsible way.

Anyway, like I said, it’s been four years since their father’s untimely demise, and even now I don’t feel I can trust them to act responsibly unless I’m personally there to keep an eye on them. For one thing, every time I go out to get them another bag of food pellets at the pet store, they reach through the steel bars on the windows like idiots and try to pick the padlock on the outside of the front door. Even worse, all I have to do is forget to feed them for a while, and within a week or so they start fighting amongst themselves. I just wish they’d learn to take responsibility for their own behavior, so I wouldn’t have to. After all, I only got involved in all this because I thought I could help out. The last thing I wanted was an “open-ended” commitment, for God’s sake.

As it happened, a few months ago, I finally settled on a new approach. I told the boys I’d be “willing to stand down as soon as they were ready to stand up.” They asked me what I meant, so I told them, “Look guys, it’s simple; If you can prove to me your willingness to pool your available resources and share them with each other in an equitable way, I’ll turn the house back over to you, and you can enjoy the boundless fruits of democracy.”

The good new is, they’ve all agreed in principle to the conditions of my offer. Make no mistake - it’s an important first step, yet difficult challenges lie ahead that will continue to test my resolve. Recently I presented the young men with a draft of changes they must agree to as a prerequisite to earning their full measure of personal sovereignty. These proposed rule changes I refer to collectively as the “Methane Resources Production and Sock Sharing Bill.” Here’s how it works:

Between them, the three boys own one-and-a-half pairs of socks. This means that if they simply stop their endless bickering and divvy up the socks evenly, they’ll find themselves in possession of one full sock each, which is more than sufficient to provide warmth and protection for one of their feet during the frigid winter months ahead.

And that, essentially, is all there is to it.

Yet (for reasons perhaps known best to them), the parties concerned seem unwilling or unable to agree to these simple terms. After months of contentious wrangling over various alternative methods of sharing out the three socks (each of which favors one of the boys at the expense of the other two) they have reached a virtual impasse. Given this unfortunate development, I can only hope that everyone involved will eventually discover in a comprehensive solution a satisfactory means of meeting his particular needs.

But whatever the obstacles that lie in my way, I cannot afford to abandon my efforts, as the well-being of these impressionable young people must continue to be my paramount concern, now, and for the foreseeable future. Failure is not an option...

Author’s note: In the past few days, some irresponsible persons have been posting flyers around the neighborhood accusing me of enriching myself at the expense of the young men under my protection. Some have even gone so far as to suggest that I should (at my own expense, I suppose) double the number of socks available, thus providing all three of them with an entire “pair” of socks. Needless to say, anyone familiar with the less well-publicized provisions of the agreement knows full well that such a profligate waste of cloth footwear is rendered utterly superfluous by Section 914B of the proposed agreement, which unambiguously stipulates that “each party to the said contract (insofar as he is designated a ward of the aforementioned ad hoc guardian) shall, as a show of good faith, undertake (at a time and place agreed upon by said guardian) to amputate his own right leg above the knee with a bacterially-infected oyster knife...”

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at markwbradley @ comcast.net

Even Karl Rove Has Given Up On Saving Bush’s Legacy

2007-08-13T11:56:00.000-07:00

I heard the news late last night that Karl Rove will be resigning at the end of this month, but rather than being happy about the Roving Pig’s departure, all I could think was, “how is it possible that this slimeball will walk out of the White House on his own terms rather than being led out in handcuffs?” The scum really does rise to the top.

For all of the damage that Rove has wrought on the political process, the good news is that his dirty style of politics has, in the end, hurt his team more than the others. The Republicans are left with a bad brand that no one wants to touch, they’re like Depends Undergarments, they may be useful, but you sure as hell don’t want anyone to see you with them and it’s a last resort after everything else has failed.

Although there is lingering resentment for the way this White House has corrupted Washington, our government and the political process, Rove’s departure is a reminder that the end is near. If there was anything possible left to accomplish, Rove would surely stay, but this lame duck president is bankrupt of political capital, his own Party despises him for what he’s done to their future prospects and his time left in office is dwindling. I’ve given up on the hope that he will be impeached (although not impeaching him is a huge mistake for the long term stability of our current form of government), but I’m finally able to imagine a time beyond Bush.

I’m comfortable with the legacy that will plague the Bush name in the history books and even though Karl Rove will get away with the crimes he’s perpetrated on this country, it’s comforting to know that even he has given up trying to polish the turd he once thought was his golden boy. At least there’s some political justice.

Liberals Give Democrats A Good Name

2007-08-09T14:32:00.000-07:00

On the heels of what I wrote about earlier today, here is a perfect example of what the Democratic Party can be, with a little help from the left. Darcy Burner is running for Congress in Washington’s 8th district and she is exactly what this country needs in the fight to take our country back from the inside the beltway, establishment politicians that run it now. In her newest campaign ad she takes on the Democratically controlled Congress and their inexplicable capitulation to Bush/Cheney yet again on the FISA bill.

Clearly Darcy Burner is no tool of the Democratic Party (check out these comments by Darcy on the FISA bill) and given the chance, will fight for us, even if that means taking on her fellow Democrats. Thanks Darcy, my hopefulness about the future of this country is buoyed yet again.

Momentum Toward The Left

2007-08-09T12:59:00.001-07:00

There are many upsides to the deterioration of the influence of the Right and the discrediting of Conservative ideology. The most immediate and obvious upside is that it appears the country isn’t going to elect a Republican President again anytime soon, but another silver lining on the dark cloud hanging over our country is that the progressive left is gaining ground and our ideas are suddenly not only taking hold in the Middle, but are infiltration the Right as well.

As I was falling asleep last night, I heard Mike Huckabee on Hardball discussing healthcare with Chris Matthews and the good Governor said something that, sliding out of the mouth of a Republican, nearly knocked me right out of bed. He said that the Republican Party must stop behaving as a “wholly owned subsidiary of big business.” I couldn’t agree more and that sentiment applies doubly to the Democratic Party.

In my view of things, right or wrong, the GOP has always served the interests of the rich and powerful, whereas the Democratic Party used to support labor, the disadvantaged and the middle and working class. That they now behave (and vote) as a “wholly owned subsidiary of big business” is, by comparison, so much more offensive.

Watching the Democrats debate the other night at the AFL-CIO forum was a breath of fresh air. First off, the crowd was raucous, even heckling when the candidates tried to answer questions not asked instead of the question posed to them. Working Americans are the backbone of this country and “politics as usual” isn’t flying with that crowd any more. We want real answers and we’re sick to death of talking points and slick answers that sound good but are never backed up with action. I think the Democratic Presidential hopefuls on that stage got a glimpse of what they’ll be facing in November of ’08.

I love to listen to Dennis Kucinich, he speaks the truth and puts forth the liberal progressive agenda in a concise and easy to grasp manner. When he addresses the healthcare crisis that is felt by each and every American, he talks about the only solution that makes sense, a not-for-profit, single-payer healthcare system, in other words, Medicare for everyone. When he talks about the war, he expresses what most Americans want, out of Iraq now. On education, it’s simple, we must provide for the education of our nations children from birth onward. The reality is, most people with children work and paying for childcare is a burden that keeps families down, doesn’t properly prepare our children for educational success and creates instability in the workplace. If the success of our economy depends on mothers and fathers going to work each and every day, it is in the best interest of the country to provide a safe, stimulating and educationally rich place for their children to be.

None of the this is rocket science and none of this is out of the mainstream, the real problem in getting these very simple things accomplished is that they run afoul of some very powerful and very well connected special interests with the deep pockets necessary to purchase insurance (in the form of politicians) that none of this ever happens.

I don’t know if Dennis Kucinich is the answer, and taking into account political realities he probably isn’t, but the fact that his very liberal ideas were met with roaring applause is encouraging. Sure, it was from a Democratic crowd, but it should serve to warn the rest of the candidates seeking to stake their claim to the middle ground that the “middle” has moved to the left. For the first time in a long time I’m encouraged. The push from the left is working and even though we’ve only moved inches and are only gaining ground we’ve already lost, it gives me hope that it’s possible. Possible to change course, possible to make a difference and possible to get a candidate that will actually understand where the country is, and more importantly, where we want to go.

Who Needs Terrorists When Our Own Neglect Will Eventually Accomplish The Same Thing?

2007-08-07T10:42:00.000-07:00

I was watching the wall-to-wall coverage of the bridge collapse in Minneapolis and one of the constant messages on the crawl was, “Homeland Security doesn’t believe this is terrorist related.” The first thing that came to my mind was, so what? Isn’t the end result the same? The same number of people died, were injured, and the same damage was done to a city and its infrastructure. Who cares if it was terrorist related?

If a power surge overwhelms our electrical grid and plunges the entire country into darkness and chaos, is it any less a national tragedy if it’s due to our failure to invest in critical infrastructure than if it’s the result of a well placed Al Qaeda bomb?

If a nuclear facility, oil refinery, airline or chemical plant cuts corners on safety to save money and something goes horribly wrong, is it somehow worse if it’s “terrorist related” than if it’s caused by deregulation and capitalism run amok?

Not only is this misguided administration creating more terrorists by way of their imperial foreign policy, but they also continue to waste our tax dollars that are desperately needed here at home. We have deteriorating infrastructure that is putting us all in danger, and the threat it poses far exceeds that of a possible terrorist attack.

We have antiquated water and sewer systems. There are roads, bridges, dams and levees all across this country in need of serious attention and we have an electrical grid that needs critical updating not to mention a whole host of other problems. We ignore them at our own peril while fixing them would be good for the flailing (for most of us anyway) economy and would even grow the shrinking middle class.

What we need in this country is a massive public works program that will put Americans to work at decent jobs for family wage pay while simultaneously investing in our critical national infrastructure. This would allow us to make use of new technologies (hell, even create new and innovative industries), make better use of our natural resources and provide better security, both personal and national. Too bad we elected a guy that can’t think his way out of a wet paper bag let alone navigate the maze of problems we face as a nation. To all of the Americans that voted for this man, all I have to say is, I hope that imaginary beer with Bush was worth all the trouble we’re in now.

An Explanation

2007-08-06T16:36:00.001-07:00

For all of you that have been wondering where I went and why I suddenly stopped blogging, I’ve finally decided to give explaining it a shot. Even though I didn’t plan it, you have to admit that my last blog post title turned out to be perfect.

I never intended to stop blogging altogether and I really didn’t think I’d be able to go very long without spouting off about one thing or another, but it turns out, even I have adapted to the Bush administration. I have not only come to accept that they will blatantly lie, thwart our constitution and exhibit generally undemocratic (not to mention sociopathic) behavior, but I expect it from them now. I don’t know where that step falls in the grieving process, but I’ve reached it nonetheless. The death of the country I thought I knew has affected me in ways I couldn’t have predicted.

My break from blogging started off innocently enough, I just wanted to take a few days to relax, read a few books and catch up on the piles of personal stuff that had accumulated on my desk. But with my kids home for the summer, family vacations, a business I’m trying to run and an exciting new project (of course involving political writing), I quickly became overwhelmed and a week turned into two, which turned into two months and the more time that passed, it became harder and harder to pick back up again. It really is as simple as that.

Although I haven’t been blogging, I’ve been keeping up on the news, but that’s no surprise. Getting a political junkie to stop talking about it is one thing, cutting off the fix is much harder to do. I don’t know if this is the beginning of me blogging every day again, but I have learned one thing during my absence. I may not need the blog to keep my sanity the way I once did, but I do feel a bit un-tethered when I’m not doing it. I suppose that was something I needed to learn.

…Then The Party Came To A Crashing Halt

2007-06-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

Let me state the obvious in terms that Republicans can relate to. The GOP is losing market share and they have a bad brand. With a large field of Republican wannabe Presidents all trying to claim the mantle of Reagan, yet Pat Buchanan is on television saying that Republicans in DC are driving Reagan Republicans “straight back to the Democratic Party,” I’d say the GOP is in trouble. Couldn’t happen to a nicer group of folks.

I’ve always given credit to the Bush administration for being politically astute, but as is usually the case, any credit extended to this incompetent group may turn out to be too much. Bush is left with an approval rating consisting solely of his base, yet he has decided to take on immigration reform in such a way as to increase the number of immigrant workers coming into the country at a time when jobs are becoming more and more scarce. The question that immediately comes to mind is why?

As far as I can tell, the main objective of this administration has been to increase profits of the biggest corporations and the wealth of the richest Americans. Apparently, creating a permanent under underclass that will provide a continuous stream of low-wage workers for industry that has come to rely on it to maximize their profits is worth pissing off the last 28% of Americans still propping up the Bush Presidency.

George W. Bush has used fear mongering as a preferred method of gaining support for what would otherwise be unpopular policies, and it has a been pretty successful tactic thus far. I find it amusing that he is now caught off guard by the venom with which his most gullible victims are reacting to his, in their mind, completely incomprehensible stance on immigration. These people are amongst the last Americans still supporting the continued occupation of Iraq because they have been tricked into believing that Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9/11, and they have bought into the threats that “if we leave Iraq now, they will follow us home.” Now that Bush has stirred up their fears that “the others” are coming to blow up our cities, it’s kind of difficult to get them to swallow the idea that letting in more “others” from across the border is a good idea. Oops.

In a related story, The RNC has fired all of their telephone fundraisers and closed its phone center. The RNC says it’s because of outdated equipment, but the fired workers tell a different story, they say that fundraising has dropped off significantly and the Party faithful are in full revolt over the immigration bill and are refusing to give money. Again, couldn’t happen to a nicer group of folks, not the fundraisers in the call center but rather the fear-mongering, self interested and greedy Republicans that have shaped policy for their own political and financial gain, the good of the country be damned.

Republican voters are disillusioned and unhappy with the slate of candidates they currently have to choose from. Fred Thompson is hoping to slide into the race and inspire the base in a way the current field has been unable to do. He’s an actor, so he may be able to schmooze his way into the nomination of his Party, but in the end, Republican voters will be as disappointed with him as they have been with the rest. It’s only a matter of time before the vast majority of voters who have ever leaned Republican will realize that the candidates aren’t the problem. The GOP and what it stands for has simply become outdated. What this country needs most right now is optimism, hope, innovation and real ideas to get us moving in the right direction so we can rejoin, and hopefully lead, the world again and that sure as hell isn’t going to come from the status quo Party lead by a bunch of old white guys with 20th century mindsets.

The Republican Party is all smoke and mirrors. Mitt Romney cooked the books in Massachusetts in order to make it look as if he turned a deficit into a surplus, but that can appear to happen when you overestimate the deficit, shift money from one place to another, don’t contribute to the “rainy day fund” (as mandated by Massachusetts law) and defer payments until after you leave office. Rudy Giuliani made a strategic blunder by placing the emergency command center in the one place in NYC that was most likely to be attacked (and did), yet somehow managed to make his walking through the rubble of his city to get there, appear brave rather than stupid. John McCain, a man who not long ago reportedly considered switching Parties, has positioned himself as the most radical neo-con of them all. Fred Thompson is being billed as the Bible belt’s golden boy, but what kind of paragon of Christian morality marries a woman young enough to be his grandchild?

The American people are tired of smoke and mirrors, fantastical thinking and policies based on wishful thinking. We’re looking for representation, not a false prophet. We’ve been saddled with one of those for the last six and a half years. No more throwbacks, we’re moving on.

The Middle Of Washington DC Is Not The Middle Of The Country

2007-05-24T10:14:00.001-07:00

I’ll give the Republican Party some credit, they may not know how to govern, but they sure as hell know how to hoodwink the media and the Democrats in DC into believing that their radical notions are “mainstream”.

The Democrats now control Congress and 63% of the American people want to see them bring an end to the occupation of Iraq and yet the winner in the standoff over continuing to fund the occupation is won by the discredited neo-cons led by a President with a 28% approval rating! And we wonder why more people don’t vote.

Sure, cutting off funding for the Iraq occupation is risky, but it’s not insurmountable. The risk is that the White House will beat Democrats over the head with the “you don’t support the troops” stick, but who cares? Aren’t they doing that anyway? And who the hell still believes the Bush administration on anything, especially the war?!

What the Democrats don’t seem to understand is that the American people are behind them. 63% of Americans want a timetable for withdrawal, exactly what the Democrats were attempting to do with the last funding bill that the President vetoed. 63% of the country isn’t the “anti-war base of the Democratic Party” no matter how many times Chris Matthews, Howard Fineman and the rest of the yak-heads say it. We are not a fringe group, that’s a term better applied to the 20 percenters still supporting this President and his disastrous war.

The problem is that the Democrats have bought into the rules of engagement that the Republicans set up while they were in power. We’re begging you, please, wake up! In case you missed it, you’re in power now, you get to make the rules, and for Christ’s sake, stop believing that you need Republican votes to win! You don’t. What you do need is to hold onto moderate Democrats and you need to sway Independents to win elections, but guess what? You’ve done that. You don’t have to convince voters that you’re on the on right side of this issue, you’re the only ones confused on this point.

Understand that the only people still supporting this war are 75% of Republicans! The moderates and Independents have already joined you so quit acting like the underdog! We’re all standing here, in the Middle, using our binoculars to see you, but you’re still a spot on the horizon to our right. Accept that you’ve been duped by the right wing fringe and start walking (sprinting) left toward the center. You are our Representatives and we’re waiting for you to represent us. All the distant yelling is coming from the middle, you’re just having a hard time hearing us from all the way over there.

Better Late Than Never

2007-05-15T10:47:00.000-07:00

Now that Republicans are starting to regain consciousness, I’ve been hearing statements like, “George Bush isn’t a conservative” and “these guys aren’t Republicans” and while these sentiments may be true, it doesn’t change the fact THAT CONSERVATIVES SUPPORTED “HIM” AND “THESE GUYS” UNTIL, LIKE...YESTERDAY!!!!

If Republican voters, and so called “life long Republican” politicians can be so easily manipulated by a bunch of whack-nut thugs, well, that doesn’t speak well of them and it’s all the more reason for reasonable people to vote for Democrats, hell Liberal and Progressive Democrats for far into the future. Just because the Republican Party has a penchant for authoritarianism and likes a “strong leader” (a term that adequately describes both Hitler and Mussolini), doesn’t mean the majority of Americans do. In fact, I think having a Republican majority in Congress and a Republican in the White House has repelled even those that have only a slight attraction to authoritarianism.

Authoritarian personalities will do as much as they can get away with. They will use all of the agencies in their control for political gain, they will use every lever of power to gain more, and they will down right steal from the till if given unfettered, uncontrolled, unchecked opportunity to lift that money, and will do so right out in the open. Despite the fact that liberals and progressives have been screaming about the corruption for years, it will take conservatives to actually make a difference. And believe me, if they want to take on the monumental task of reclaiming their Party from the thugs and common criminals (although I doubt they’ll take on the fundamentalist religious whack-nuts) that control it now, I couldn’t support them more in that effort, but that still doesn’t mean I trust their judgment. Simply stated, it shouldn’t have taken them this long to figure it out.

The so-called “real conservatives” can try to mitigate the damage to their Party at this point, but they cannot erase their part in facilitating it. George W. Bush by any other name is one of them all the same. Conservatives supported this President every step along the way and while those of us on the left knew that Republican voters were being hoodwinked, when we tried to warn them, they didn’t listen and instead called us moonbats for trying. If the damage this administration has caused was limited to the Republican Party instead of infecting our entire republic and the world, we could take some joy in saying “We told you so.” As we sit teetering on the edge, it’s the most hallow of victories.

So what if we’ve learned our lesson and are ready to throw the bums out? How will that change the way we address the larger issues? It has been a joke of history that at the exact moment we are facing several global crisis requiring immediate attention and action, we have been saddled with Republicans who hate government, running all three branches. Republican rhetoric and their constant peddling of fear have so debased our political discourse that most Americans are left unaware of the real problems on our doorstep and instead are bombarded 24/7 with “issues” like immigration, terrorism, war, abortion and gay marriage.

We have been sold a story about “terrorism” being the number one crisis we face in the 21st Century, when in fact that is nothing more than a convenient cover for perpetual war (and the profits to be made off it) and an economy based on debt that enriches those at the very top while reducing the rest of us to nothing more than indentured servants. Our country has accrued a staggering debt, but so too have American workers. We don’t own anything anymore, not even own our future, that belongs to the mortgage company that owns our house, the credit card company that owns everything in it and the bankers that make even more money off of our future debt. When most of the money is being siphoned off the top, We The People are left with nothing more than the guarantee of more debt and more work to pay it off. Shouldn’t we at least attempt to find a better way?

And what about Global Warming? We have two years left of the Bush administration and most scientists agree that we are rapidly approaching the point of no return. A global climate crisis is not a matter of if, but rather of when, and once the effects become readily apparent, it will be too late to reverse the process without heavy losses, of life, property and security. As we watch the Republican Party collapse and the Bush administration marginalized, we must keep in mind that they are still making the important decisions that will affect our future. They are still denying Global Warming, they are still refusing to take even small steps toward solving the problem (or at this point, mitigating the damage) and they still believe firmly in the Bush Doctrine that claims the right to the rest of the worlds resources, acquisition of which is accomplished through lies told to the American people about immediate threats to our national security.

While I understand that impeachment may not be politically expedient and that it could put a halt to the other important work that must be done, it comes down to a simple reality. We cannot afford to wait this President out. Two years is a long time and the damage this President can still do, could make his past disasters look minor by comparison. He’s destroyed several countries and an American city, what if he’s just getting started? We must use the constitutional remedies available to us and strip him of his power. The good news is, our conservative friends are slowly beginning to come to this realization as well. Better late than never.

Happy Mother's Day!

2007-05-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870
by Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe our dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Conservatism Has Failed

2007-05-07T09:30:00.000-07:00

Watching the Republican debate last week really highlighted the fact that conservatism is dead. Not so much in the sense that no one believes in it anymore (those 20 percenters are still hangin’ on), but that it has been discredited to the point that very few are willing to give it another chance.

How can you remain a Republican if you believe in smaller government, little or no foreign engagement (to the point of isolationism) and freedom from government intervention in private affairs? The truth is, you can’t, at least not if you want to retain any kind of intellectual honesty. And as much as I’d love to lay blame at the feet of the Bush administration, this one is not entirely their fault.

Conservative ideology has been given a chance, and it has run its course, to the detriment of the country and possibly to the near permanent hobbling of the Republican Party. Unfortunately, the rest of us were forced to suffer the injuries inflicted by its running its course straight into a brick wall, but the wounds will heal, and so will our nation.

The Right Wing think tanks, the Republican controlled Congress and the Bush administration, together implemented the conservative agenda, virtually unmolested by the Democrats, and here we are. It’s not quite the Utopia they thought it would be and while incompetence played a supporting role, the real failure belongs to the brains of the operation, and we all know that wasn’t George W. Bush. Iraq would still be a disaster even if it had been handled properly. The disparity in wealth we are currently experiencing is by design and the infeasibility of a financial structure based on debt is the legacy of conservatism in practice. There’s a reason the neo-cons have left the building, failure is the orphan these conservatives have no compassion for.

Think of the great experiments in liberalism, Social Security, Medicare, the Environmental Protection Agency, the five day work week, child labor laws (the list is a long one), all still going and despite conservative intervention (attempt to destroy them) over the years, all still working relatively well considering. On the other side you have experiments in conservatism, trickle down economics, perpetual war to feed the military industrial complex, the unitary executive that says the President is above the law and should be above the law in times of crisis (of their own making), all have failed and all are costing the average American time, money, security and peace of mind.

After six unfettered years of conservative rule, we work harder for less, with little or no security or opportunity to claim even a small piece of the American dream. We worry about our health because we have no healthcare, we worry about our food because it’s not properly regulated and we worry about our future because there is no security in working a job anymore. We worry about our children because a good education is harder and harder to come by and we worry about our parents because they don’t have security in retirement. This is what conservatism has wrought (rot?) and why an overwhelming majority of Americans say we are on the wrong track. Sure, the current crop of Republicans will attempt to eek out enough votes by pandering to religious fundamentalists and preying upon the fears they’ve instilled in voters of “the others” be they Mexican immigrants, Muslims or gays, but ultimately they will lose because there simply aren’t enough simple minded people that haven’t been clued into the fact that the words Republicans utter are simply words without meaning, and while words may be cheap, the actions, policies and experiments in conservatism that we have seen implemented, speak volumes. We can hear you now, we just don’t want what your sellin’ anymore.

We don’t want to live in a country where obscene wealth is accrued on the backs of hard working people that can’t afford to educate their children. We don’t want to live in a country where government serves only the top 1%, that celebrates war and shuns diplomacy and that cedes its moral authority by condoning and implementing torture. We don’t want to live in a country where leaders tell us we must give up our rights while they flagrantly violate the law. In short, we don’t want to live in a conservative Petri dish. If Iraq was the clean slate on which to write the conservative dream, I think we’ve seen enough to determine, conclusively, that we are not now, nor are we interested in becoming, a conservative country. We need to get back to our liberal roots, that is what will feed our future.

Old White Guys On Parade

2007-05-04T09:46:00.000-07:00

One of the negative side effects of being a political junkie is the overriding desire to watch a Republican debate that I know ahead of time will make my blood boil and cause me to swear in front of my children. Oh well, I’m somewhat calmed down now, 14 hours later.

Just looking at the stage last night, filled to overflowing with middle-aged white men, the difference between the Democratic debate and the Republican debate couldn’t have been clearer. There is no diversity in the Republican Party, and listening to them try to position themselves as the most regressive, most narrow-minded, and at times, most ridiculous, it’s not hard to understand why.

The most inane question asked and answered was, “Do you believe in evolution?” Are you kidding me? Not surprisingly, many of them said no and John McCain, who said yes, had to qualify his answer with, “but when I hike the Grand Canyon, I see the hand of God.” Puh-lease! I can’t believe that we are effectively limited to two Parties in this country, and that one of them caters to the cavemen among us, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so frightening.

The answer that made me scream the loudest came from Rudi Giuliani. While he was defending President Bush’s record on “the war on terra”, Giuliani went on and on about how important it is to be on the offensive and to make the rest of the world, Iran especially, fear us. That answer was to be expected, but what caught me off guard was his reference to Reagan, “When they looked into the eyes of Ronald Reagan, 5 minutes later, they let the hostages go.” That’s an amazing selective memory you have Rudy! We now know that the hostages were let go on Reagan’s Inauguration Day because there was a deal brokered ahead of time to sell them weapons if they did. I’m sure if President Carter had been willing to break the law in order to retain power, he could have, but that’s only a well tread road on the Republican side of the aisle. Bastards!

Besides the fact that I couldn’t be tempted to vote for any one of these knuckleheads if there were lots of money and a date with George Clooney in the offering, last night, these men looked like old, tired, worn down America. Be afraid, give us authoritarian power and we will protect you and bring back the good old days, before enlightenment, before democracy and before science. According to the Republican Party, all we need is God and a strong “leader” to lead the way. The only problem is, God is a myth and we live in a Representative Democracy. We don’t elect leaders, we elect representatives and I hope it becomes obvious to most Americans that the current field of Republican presidential candidates represent the past and will only hurt our future prospects. There are plenty of middle-aged white guys on the Democratic side too, far too many for my taste, but at least they’re not regressive middle-aged white guys.

A perfect example is John Edwards, who has taken the ballsy step of scrubbing the term “war on terror” from his lexicon and his web site. It’s about time the Democrats dismissed this frame instead of trying to fit into it! There is no war on terror, only a manufactured “long war” that provides opportunity for the military industrial complex and cover for the further erosion of our constitutional rights and freedoms. Voting for a Republican, any Republican, will mean more of the same, and as a country, we simply can’t afford it. Don’t be afraid of terrorism (then the terrorists win), there are logical ways to deal with terrorism that don’t involve bombing and invading sovereign nations thereby increasing anti-Americanism around the world. Instead, be afraid of marching toward the future with a President who had his back toward it.

It’s Getting Hot In Here

2007-05-01T10:40:00.000-07:00

I’ve been a bit worried lately that I’ve fallen victim to the Rovian plan of inspiring apathy in progressive voters. I’ve been angry and attentive for so long to every ill-advised policy decision, every illegal action, every incompetent incident, every attempt to usurp power not granted to the Executive branch as well as the reverberations that have spread throughout our social and political structure as a result, but the Bush administration has wore me down. Sustaining outrage is difficult when they continue to top themselves at every turn. I feel like the good German, realizing what’s happening around me yet feeling powerless to stop it. The erosion of our freedoms has been steady, but it has also been incremental, leaving far too many of my countrymen acting like frogs in a slowly heating pot of water. Content until it’s too late. I’m feeling pretty drowsy myself.

The scope of the damage this administration has inflicted is sometimes hard to comprehend. We are given bits and pieces but rarely are we able to step back and view it all as a whole. The Republican disdain for government at a time when they have controlled it completely, has made us less safe in so many ways, but while we tend to hear a lot about the instability created in the Middle East, the rise of terrorism, radicalism and violence that can be directly linked to Bush administration foreign policy, less attention is given to the direct dangers that this administration’s domestic policies have had on our personal well being.

Take for example our food supply. The FDA is tasked with protecting our health by making sure that the drugs we are prescribed are safe and effective and that the food we eat is safe for consumption. While the FDA has been a less than ideal and continually under-funded agency throughout it’s history, during the Bush administration it has been decimated and it’s mandate completely changed. No longer is the FDA’s prime responsibility to protect citizens from unscrupulous agribusiness and pharmaceutical companies looking to make a buck at the expense of public health, but rather the FDA currently acts as an agent for those unscrupulous businesses, turning a blind eye and helping them get around regulations thereby increasing their profits, public health be damned.

Our pets being poisoned by purposefully tainted food has been a big story, but the buried one (check out David Goldstein’s great post on the topic) is that human food is being purposefully tainted too, and not by some whackjob secretly adding poison for the sick thrill of it, but rather by food manufacturers adding melamine to their products in an effort to game the system and make more money on their “high protein” products. If we eat animals, what those animals eat matters to our health. Our pets are dying from eating this food. How long before our children (one small step up on the food chain) start dying too?

And how about public education? Have you heard anyone with a child in public school say, “Wow, that No Child Left Behind program has really improved our school! My child is getting the best education possible thanks to George W. Bush”? No, me neither.

One of the most basic functions of government is to educate the country’s children and we are failing at that in the most dramatic fashion. An education, let alone a good education, is fast becoming a privilege only the wealthy can enjoy. This is not because public education is inherently inferior to a private education, in fact studies have shown just the opposite, but it is because this Republican administration and the former Republican Congress, have such disdain for public institutions and have made it their goal to destroy any and all public programs that serve all the people, regardless of income or class. Government programs that serve the least amongst us are the first target of Republican ire, but a close second are those that serve the entire population, namely Public Education, Social Security and Medicare. They’ve made a dent (hell they’ve banged them up) in two of the three over the last six years and that last one is still on the short hit list for the next two years. The only thing saving us at this point is that the Republican Party is led by a bumbling, scandal mired, failing war president with a 30% approval rating. Thank goodness for small mercies eh?

Yes, I Have A Smoking Gun In My Hand, But It’s Not Mine, Although I Can’t Recall Who Handed It To Me. Am I Still In Trouble?

2007-04-24T10:57:00.000-07:00

Is it just me, or does it seem like the Bush administration is imploding? The weight of all of the scandals, the inappropriate use of government offices and the infusion of political priorities into every single aspect of our government is finally threatening to collapse the whole sordid structure they’ve built. The references to the Bush Crime Family have always seemed a stretch to me, but as the whole mess unravels, it appears more and more like racketeering all the time. Bush, Cheney, Libby, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rove and all the others, have not only acted inappropriately as representatives and employees of the people, but they have build an operating system that condones and facilitates all of their bad (illegal) behavior.

In an attempt to avoid Congressional oversight, the Bush administration, with the help of the RNC and big Republican donors, set up a shadow communications system within the White House. The theory was, that since the communications were made on a private system rather than a government system, the emails weren’t subject to public scrutiny. This theory, like the neo-con theory that led us into the quagmire of Iraq, was riddled with flaws and may just lead to their downfall. You see, private communications can remain private (unless of course you’re just an average American subject to spying by the NSA) as long as no crimes are committed. Once a crime is suspected, then the communications are subject to subpoena, and there is no executive privilege option for hiding emails that were routed through the RNC. Oops!

You can call it a conspiracy or a culture of corruption, but it’s worth pointing out the many and varied investigations that are either ongoing, or that have already resulted in convictions of Republican officials and operatives. They may seem on the surface to be unconnected, but the one thing they all have in common is electoral math. There’s Tom DeLay’s illegal redistricting plan in Texas, since struck down by the Supreme Court. Tom Noe’s illegal funneling of stolen money into the Bush/Cheney campaign (not to mentionhis wife’s questionable behavior as Chair of the Lucas County Board of Elections). There’s the firing of US Attorneys who refused to halt investigations into corrupt Republicans or refused to manufacture investigations into Democrats in key states. The NSA spying that appears to have had more to do with political intelligence than foreign intelligence. And the big one, the war that was supposed to provide George W. Bush with the political capital necessary to implement a neo-conservative (not to mention Chrito-facsist) agenda while providing cover for the behind the scenes war profiteering and shady maneuvers to ensure a permanent Republican majority, not through public acceptance of their tried and true ideology, but though manipulation of our electoral system from illegal redistricting to privately owned voting machines and more legal hurdles to voting.

There’s news today of a new sweeping investigation by the Office of Special Councel into Karl Rove and his entire political operation that used our government agencies to ensure Republican electoral dominance. The firing of US Attorney David Iglesias, the political pressure put on government employees to use their positions to further Rove’s political agenda, the missing emails and the shadow communications system are all on the table in this investigation. For the Bush administration, the strength of their ideas is not enough to ensure political victory, leaving manipulation and suppression of the vote as their best option for maintaining power.

It’s about time there was one sweeping investigation into how this White House operates, and the RNC communications network might very well be the thing that ties the many disparate investigations together. It might even lead to some answers as to what really happened during the 2004 election, although as I heard Noam Chomsky say in a speech recently, “that is mostly an elite affair” and he’s not wrong. Far too many people have ignored the very real possibility of a stolen election, either because it’s too frightening to contemplate or it just seems par for the course. But still, there is evidence emerging that suggests this same RNC system was used to count the votes from Ohio on Election Night. That is a huge development and it opens up the possibility that the OSC investigation could accidentally stumble upon the smoking gun. Now wouldn’t that be a nice turn of events?

The Bush Administration Plays Limbo With The Law: How Low Can They Go?

2007-04-21T10:47:00.001-07:00

When liars testify before Congress, surprise, surprise...THEY LIE. Alberto Gonzales is in hot water because he has repeatedly lied about his involvement in the firing of 9 US Prosecutors so why should we expect that he’d tell the truth under oath? The grilling Gonzales received from both Democrats and Republicans on Thursday did nothing to shed light on the truth, but the AG’s answers to the questions posed to him did highlight the lack of credibility of his current story which boils down to, ‘I fired them, but I don’t know how they made it on the list to be fired, but I can assure you that there were not improper motives for firing them, although I can’t tell you the proper reasons.’ In other words, trust me. Sorry Gonzo, checks written on your credibility account have been bouncing for years.

My favorite moment in the hearing was when Senator Chuck Schumer pointed out that the Attorney General had set the bar unbelievably low as to what constitutes improper behavior. Both Gonzales and his Chief of Staff Kyle Sampson stated multiple times under oath that it would be improper to fire a US Attorney in an effort to interfere with a specific case. No Mr. Gonzales, that would be ILLEGAL. One would think that what is improper would fall well below that egregious offense. But even that charge cannot be fully dismissed considering that Carol Lam was fired just as her investigation into public corruption had moved beyond the Legislative branch and was inching closer to the White House. While the interference in that case may very well be illegal, certainly firing Prosecutors that won’t carry out the political agenda as laid out by Karl Rove, is improper to say the least.

One thing we know about the Bush administration is that they suck at policy but they revel in politics. This administration has shown a willingness hell, an eagerness, to weaken government agencies in an effort to strengthen their political hand. It’s who they are. The fact that they have politicized the Justice Department, while not surprising, is detrimental to the functioning of our government on the most basic level. It recalibrates the dispensing of justice to favor a political party over the people. That is why this investigation matters and why we should care what it reveals. I don’t much care if Alberto Gonzales is nailed for the underlying crime, as long as he’s nailed for a crime and driven far away from our government and barred from dispensing his form of justice (torture and illegal wiretapping to name a few) ever again.

Like Lewis “Scooter” Libby’s obstruction of Justice, Alberto Gonzales’s lying to Congress could result in one more tumor excised from our ailing democracy. It doesn’t much matter how that tumor is discovered, just that it is removed. Now if we could just get Cheney for tax evasion (or war profiteering) and Bush for illegal use of prescription drugs (or reckless incompetence), then we’d really be on our way to a more perfect union.

Moving On Is Hard To Do

2007-04-16T11:06:00.000-07:00

Dennis Kucinich was on CNN last night, discussing the Iraq War. He proudly accepted the label “liberal” and stated boldly that he has always been against this war and has even voted against funding it all along. As he was speaking, the bottom of the screen read, “Rep. Dennis Kucinich D-Ohio." I turned to Man of American Dissent and said, “Ohio voters keep sending Kucinich to Congress and I’m supposed to believe that Ohio went for Bush in ’04? Puh-lease.”

All these years later, and I’m still not over it. I’ve still not read or seen anything that has changed my mind about what happened in Ohio in 2004. In fact, evidence continues to drip out that supports the argument that George Bush is an illegitimate president and that his campaign, along with Bush loyalists in key positions, with malice of forethought, rigged the election in his favor.

I remember reading reports of Ken Blackwell, in the months leading up to the election, purging the voter rolls of hundreds of thousands of Democratic voters. I remember him creating arbitrary rules about voter registration and the weight paper it must be printed on. I remember the long lines of mostly black voters in Ohio on Election Day. I remember the mysterious lock down by Homeland Security of the building in Warren County where the last of the votes were tallied. I remember the bizarre numbers coming out of Ohio in the days after the election, numbers that varied wildly from the exit polls. I remember being frightened by what had been revealed, and even more frightened by the silence of traditional media. It was a black time to say the least.

During the following weeks, I poured over election results, county by county, and none of it made any sense. I followed the re-count as it moved forward, out of the spotlight, the result of hard work and diligence by activists not willing to sit down and shut up about the possible thwarting of the democratic process. At that time, I still had hope that the truth would be revealed, and that a hand recount of the ballots would show that there was something rotten in Ohio. How naïve I was. Of course they rigged the recount too.

The silence of the media and the indifference of the Democratic Party forced this, possibly the biggest story of our lifetime, underground where it remains today. Perhaps it’s just too frightening to contemplate, too difficult to accept and the implications too great. But ignoring the continuing saga only puts us at greater risk of a repeat performance. It can happen here, and it has. Why wouldn’t it happen again?

The reason I bring this up now is because the firing of US Attorneys across the country is likely connected to this same rotten scheme. There’s no denying the electoral significance of the states that were targeted by Alberto Gonzales’s Justice Department. I was glad to see Robert Reich actually utter the suggestion on television this weekend that this White House wants to make it harder for Americans to vote. That is the real story behind the Attorney purge. It really is that simple.

I’m also rehashing this story because so much is left unrevealed and what is coming out is not widely reported. How many people know that the recount in Ohio was fixed? How many people know that election workers have been convicted of rigging that recount? Mainstream news reports of the conviction make sure to suggest that their actions did nothing to alter the outcome of the election, but that’s just ass covering. We will never know if the vote totals in Cuyahoga County were manipulated, and that is because these elections officials made sure that there would never be a hand recount. I don’t care what their motivations were, democracy was thwarted and the truth was buried.

How many people know that the 2006 election was riddled with “inconsistencies” as well? Who knows what the Rove machine is setting up for 2008? One election turning out right does not mean everything’s okay, it just means enough people voted to override any plan in place to thwart the will of the people. We still have voting machines that are vulnerable to manipulation. We still have a Republican crusade to make voting more difficult. We still have a media that is not at all interested in pursuing the story. The ballots in Ohio have never been counted so we don’t know for sure what happened in 2004, but the circumstantial evidence is enough to convict in the court of public opinion. Well, it would be if more people knew about it.

You can call me a conspiracy theorist and dismiss my concerns as the result of the overactive imagination of a hyperventilating liberal that can’t stand losing. You can, but you’d be wrong. I’m willing to accept that Bush legitimately won the election, I just want the glaring discrepancies and secrecy explained. I accept that enough Americans voted for Bush in 2004 to make it a close election, even if I have a hard time understanding why. I accept that he could have won, but what I know of that election and the amazing things (unexplained glitches, literally unbelievable vote counts and inconsistencies in exit polling) that occurred that have yet to be explained, I just don’t believe that he did. The fact that the Bush administration continues to manipulate any and all information relating to the integrity of our elections, is a good indicator that they’ve got something to hide. Again, it’s circumstantial, but criminals have been convicted on less.

Mission Impossible?

2007-04-11T08:53:00.000-07:00

Apparently, the Bush administration wants to appoint a War Czar to oversee the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but they can’t seem to find any takers. Gen. John J. Sheehan, Gen. Jack Keane, and Gen. Joseph W. Ralston have all reportedly been tapped for the job and all have declined with Sheehan stating bluntly, "The very fundamental issue is, they don't know where the hell they're going."

President Bush is looking for a way out and no one seems interested in helping him do it. The problem is, Bush isn’t trying to find a solution to the disaster in Iraq or finish the job he’s abandoned in Afghanistan, he’s instead looking for a credible name to sign onto his failed policy as he pushes forward aimlessly. With Dick Cheney still the most powerful force within the White House, any General tapped for the job will likely respond similarly to Sheehan who said, "So rather than go over there, develop an ulcer and eventually leave, I said, 'No, thanks.'" His mama clearly didn’t raise no dummies, too bad for the country that Babs Bush was working overtime on that front.

Every attempt to inject reason into Bush administration war policy has failed miserably. Most dissenting voices within the administration have been expunged, those that still remain are ignored, and the Iraq Study Group recommendations were quickly tossed aside in favor of an escalation plan opposed by just about everyone but John McCain. The sad truth is, as long as Bush and Cheney occupy our White House, there will be no resolution in Iraq.

Cheney continues to sell the war using the same old lines and Bush simply doesn’t have a clue how to run a country, form a coherent policy or execute a war. We do have a King and he’s a buck naked, bumbling fool who thinks he rules the world. We The People are the only ones left that can dispel him of that notion. That is our mission should we choose to accept it.

Buy A Politician! It’s Not As Expensive As You Might Think!

2007-04-10T12:49:00.001-07:00

Technology has really changed the way political campaigns function. We’ve seen citizen produced campaign ads take off like wildfire (like the Hillary as Big Brother ad) and we’ve seen grassroots fundraising skyrocket with the help of the Internet. Barack Obama’s campaign announced last week that 90% of his first quarter campaign contributions were under $100 and came from a whopping 100,000 contributors, half of them through the Internet. Since campaign finance laws have done little to erode the influence of big business and corporate special interests on political candidates and campaigns, We The People must join the party and buy some politicians of our own.

Recently, some bloggers and activists in Oregon decided that Republican Senator Gordon Smith needed to be challenged and they started a movement to draft Peter DeFazio to run against Smith for one of Oregon’s Senate seats. Please check out their most recent post at Daily Kos titled, “$5 Can Change The World” and consider helping out. At this point, they’re not trying to raise big money for the campaign, they are simply trying to show that there is support out there and that the people can deliver as well, or better, than corporate donors. They’ve already reached their first goal and are now on to phase II. The title of the post really does say it all, the money is less important than the statement it makes.

There is power in numbers and with the help of the Internet we now have an easy way to exercise that power. A little bit of money, when added together can create quite a war chest. That is a message we should be make sure our politicians receive loud and clear. If we want a responsive government, we need to make sure that we are the ones picking the candidates, not the fat cats with the deep pockets who expect more for their money than a “thank you”.

Just Another Offensive Old White Guy

2007-04-10T11:48:00.000-07:00

As a country, we are pretty fucked up when it comes to sex and race. I’m hearing rumblings from Man of American Dissent about a possible pending post on the topic (sparked by the outrageous comments made by Don Imus last week) so I won’t delve too deeply into the topic just yet. I hope he finds the time to get to it because I’m looking forward to commenting, but until then, I just have to throw in my two cents on Don Imus.

I don’t usually get angry over stupid white men gaffes, but this whole Imus thing has really pissed me off. I don’t care if his colleagues at MSNBC think he’s a “good man” and I don’t care that his most recent disgusting, racist, misogynistic rant was par for the course for his show, but I do care that a bigoted, sexist, disgusting old man has such a large audience and that our elected officials help him draw a crowd by appearing on his show.

Imus apologists claim that he should have latitude because he’s a comedian (although applying that term to Imus is a stretch) and that he shouldn’t be fired for a mistake that he’s apologized for. Fair enough, but I get to be outraged that a grown man would stoop so low as to disparage young women whose only crime is striving for athletic excellence. Such a man deserves the public flogging he’s receiving and if his show is cancelled and/or the rating plummet, good riddance. And really, how “good” of a man can he possibly be if these are the thoughts that lurk just beneath the surface? His colleagues clearly have a much different notion of what constitutes a good man than I.

Pretty Soon Bush Will Only Be Able To Speak In A Hermetically Sealed Bag

2007-04-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

Bush’s speech on Iraq that he gave in front of the troops yesterday was met with a deafening silence. Man, was that uncomfortable to watch. There was the usual applause as he thanked the troops for their service and welcomed home those just returning from Afghanistan, but after that, the applause lines fell with a thud. He even trotted out his favorite one-liners, “everything changed after 9/11” and “oceans can’t protect us” and “we can’t leave until the job is done” but this time, the troops weren’t buying it and while they can’t boo, they made an even bigger impression by remaining perfectly silent. We’ve known for a long time that President Bush only speaks to carefully selected crowds, but even those are proving difficult to impress at this point.

He can’t even throw out the ceremonial first pitch to kick off baseball season for fear of being booed. Of course the White House claims it was because of scheduling conflicts but anyone with half a brain can figure out why a president with an approval rating hovering around 30%, mired in scandal and further botching an increasingly unpopular war would chose to skip any appearance in front of a crowd not prescreened to include only the brain addled. His top advisor gets pelted with garbage and his vice president has to hide in the bushes away from the cameras during a press conference. I hate to keep asking the obvious but come on, how is it possible that these two haven’t been impeached yet? They’re quite possibly the most despised men in America.

And Bush keeps telling us over and over again that his job is to protect the American people. Please, I beg of you, stop protecting us! Your kind of protection we can do without, it’s too much like the kind of protection offered by the mob, pay us and we won’t hurt you. Actually, Bush’s protection is even worse since he takes our money AND paints a big target on our back by stirring up trouble at every opportunity and acting the bully all around the world. At this point, I’d rather take my chances on a hunting trip with Dick Cheney than suffer through more protection from Bush Jr.

Sticks, Stones and Chicken Bones

2007-04-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

The game of “Chicken” being played by the Congress and the White House just got a lot more interesting. With passage of the war supplemental by the Senate last week, the next move looked to be the President’s. Bush declared that he would veto any bill Congress sent to his desk that included a timetable for withdrawal of our troops from Iraq, and without the votes necessary to override a Presidential veto, it looked as if the Democrats would be forced to provide funding for the war with no stipulations. That may still be the case, but Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid upped the ante today by announcing that if the President vetoes the supplemental, he will cosponsor legislation with Senator Russ Feingold that seeks to cut off the funding for the continued occupation of Iraq. Way to go Harry, I didn’t think you had it in you. The only way to win this game is to commit, and floor it! Make President Bush choke on the chicken bone the way he did on that pretzel.

In an op-ed in Salon today, Senator Feingold compares the Feingold-Reid bill to one passed by the Senate in 1993 that cut off funding for military operations in Somalia. The White House and Congressional Republicans can continue to spew their faux patriotic crap about “supporting the troops” but with a real debate on ending the war that is put front and center by the Democratic Leadership, comes the possibility of solid and vocal support from the public. That the Republicans are engaging in the most hypocritical of arguments for allowing the Bush administration to continue on its disastrous course when they cut off funding for the troops in Somalia is to be expected, but exposing and harping on that hypocrisy can only be good for efforts to end the occupation. Nothing will convince the 20 percenters that Bush’s policies are NOT in fact ordained by God, but the other 80% can be made to shout, “Enough is enough already!”

The question has never been, will the public support cutting off funding for Bush’s failed Iraq policy, but instead has been, will the Democrats find the stones to do it? There is no one in the Senate with more credibility on Iraq than Senator Russ Feingold and I’m encouraged that leadership has finally decided to support his efforts (I suspect it was the carrot on the stick to secure Feingold’s support for the supplemental in the first place). I don’t know if Harry Reid’s skills are as honed as Nancy Pelosi’s when it comes to whipping the support necessary to get a bill passed, but I’m certainly looking forward to finding out.

This Is Not Your Father’s White House

2007-03-30T09:12:00.000-07:00

This from a Russian news agency courtesy of Raw Story:

"The Pentagon has drafted a highly effective plan that will allow the Americans to bring Iran to its knees at minimal cost," RIA Novosti's official said.

Yeah, that was the plan in Iraq too and we all know how well that’s working out. I don’t know what they’re smoking in the White House but whatever it is, it’s powerful shit and clearly induces delusions of grandeur. It’s stunning that the Bush administration could be so stupid as to think that attacking Iran is a good idea. Even a competent White House would face a losing battle sending ground troops into Iran, but the Bush White House isn’t at all competent and will surely lead us toward more failure but this time, on a much grander scale. It is simply frightening how adept this administration and their Republican enablers are at ignoring facts and reality.

I can see it now, as our troops are being slaughtered by the thousands in Iran, we’ll be hearing how great the operation is going (“the plan is working, we just need 6 more months to close the deal”) and Senator McCain will be telling us that we can stroll the streets of Tehran with no worries at all. Sure, and next you’ll suggest that General Patraeus drives around Baghdad in an unarmed humvee. Oh yeah, you already did! Apparently McCain has traded sipping for gulping when it comes to the White House Kool-Aid.

When the Bush administration gets into trouble, they simply up the ante. When your justification for war is exposed as a lie, start a secret and illegal domestic spying program. When that is discovered, just do away with habeas corpus. When it is discovered that you are torturing Iraqis and there are pictures to prove it, just start kidnapping people off of foreign streets and ship them to secret torture centers around the world. And when you get caught firing US Prosecutors for purely political reasons in an effort to secure electoral wins in key states in ’08, ATTACK IRAN. Why not? It’s not as if Congress will impeach him right?

Just like Al Capone felt untouchable, so too does George W. Bush. I just wish I thought he was wrong.

Fewer And Fewer Americans Claim To Be Republican!

2007-03-25T11:48:00.000-07:00

I can’t tell you how much I love this story. Results of a new Pew Research Poll shows that the Republican Party is in decline and that Democratic values are gaining wider support. I’m not at all surprised, it’s what I’ve thought for years, but it is nice to finally have some numbers to back up this general feeling of a shift in public attitudes.

What I find most interesting about the poll is that highlights the exclusive and extreme nature of the Bush administration and their policies. Under previous Republican rule, there has generally been a certain level of discontent from the fringe religious right of the Party that have always wanted their moral views, not only codified by leadership, but legislated as well. Not so under George W. Bush. It seems that since 2002, the only ones happy with the direction the Republicans have taken the country in IS the extreme religious right. Georgie Boy promised not to turn his back on them and they are steadfastly returning the favor.

So much for being a uniter, not a divider. Bush has maintained 30% support (an indictment or our educational system if there ever was one), but even that number is deceiving since that 30% most likely only includes Republicans with maybe a spattering of religious extremists that, for whatever reason, still register as Democrats. It’s more than a little ironic that the most immoral administration in the history of this country continues to enjoy the unflinching loyalty of the Holy Rollers. I just wish that these “patriots” would take the time to read their Bible AND our constitution. If they did, Bush surely wouldn’t have any support left.

So what are the Democratic values that are gaining favor with the public? Fiscal responsibility, taking care of the less fortunate among us, recognizing that healthcare is a universal right, defending our nation rather than using our military might to fight wars of aggression and protecting the planet we call home. It’s sad that the Republican Party has abandoned these values, they should be American values, but the greed and cronyism has metastasized and the public instead now understands them to be Democratic values. Republican values now consist solely of waging war against Muslims and hating gays. There’s certainly a constituency there, but not a large one. By playing ONLY to his base, Bush has damaged the country and decimated his Party. If it takes 50 years or more for them to recover, at least something good will have resulted from this disastrous presidency.

Two of the biggest crisis facing this country have been ignored and made worse during the Bush years, the reality of global warming and a for profit healthcare system that, while lucrative for those administering it, isn’t working for anyone else. The American people care about solving these problems, but not so much the Bush administration and by extension, the Republican Party. However painful their defeat at the polls this past November, they better get used to the feeling because it looks like it’s only going to get worse. Choosing an idiot to lead your Party has consequences and I’m going to enjoy watching you suffer them, for decades I hope.

The Democrats don’t get a free pass though. While the country is trending toward Democratic values, the Democratic Party has moved away from them. Call it fear of the Republican noise machine, political pandering in search of the donut hole referred to as the “political middle” or lack of true conviction, but whatever the cause, the Democrats we’ve elected to represent us have, for the most part, failed to do so adequately. 64% of Americans think the government should provide universal healthcare. 63% of the American people (and a staggering 73% of our troops serving in Iraq) want our troops out of Iraq by the end of 2008. 88% of Americans think that global warming threatens future generations. With overwhelming public support for the most critical issues we face as a nation, if the Democrats want to fare better than their Republican counterparts, they better get back to their roots and champion the causes most of us care deeply about. We’re tired of OUR government being unresponsive to our needs. We’re done having OUR government serve only the interests of the top 1%. We want OUR government back! The Democratic Party can either be the vehicle through which we do that, or they can suffer the same fate as the Republicans. I hope they choose wisely.

Maybe This Snowball Will Roll Down The Hill

2007-03-21T22:38:00.000-07:00

There are many “When Will Gonzo Be Gone” betting pools floating around, and I haven’t been able to pick a date as of yet. I was going to go with this Friday, but that was before Bush blustered his way through a press conference yesterday, clearly annoyed at having his unitary executive power questioned and looking every bit the obstinate child ready to hold his breath until he gets his way. I’m glad now that I didn’t take Friday, because I’m starting to think Bush will keep Gonzales indefinitely, just out of spite.

Of course there will be the pressure from members of his own Party, especially those facing re-election next year, that could play a role, but remember, this is a man that just sent a surge of troops into the middle of the Iraqi civil war against the advice of just about everyone, including the commanders tasked with executing Bush’s disastrous war. When Bush digs in his heels, any reason he may have had to start with (which we all know wasn’t much) goes right out his flaring nostrils.

Now that Congress has decided to spit on Bush’s offer for a glorified coffee klatch with Karl Rove and Harriet Miers and instead go ahead and issue subpoenas, the real fireworks can begin. While keeping Gonzales on as Attorney General is a clear political loser for the President, he seems to think he’s got nothing to lose by playing a game of chicken with the Congress on the subpoenas, and I’m afraid he might be right, at least in the short term. The damage it will do his Party though, well, that’s another story altogether, one I’ll happily read each night at bedtime since it has such a happy ending.

One thing we know for sure, the Bushies are hiding something. There are missing emails, lies peddled to Congress, misleading and contradictory public statements, improper communications (arm twisting and probably illegal pressure) between Republican politicians and Prosecutors, some pretty pissed off former employees and a President that has exhibited over and over again his inability to (not to mention lack of interest in) dealing with public policy while simultaneously relishing in political battle, collateral damage be damned. This story has everything any good newsperson could possibly ask for! But then again, so have all the other scandals that have died on the vine.

I’ve heard some describe this confrontation as “a constitutional crisis”, and while I think that’s a little extreme at this point, I certainly hope it turns into that. What this country needs more than just about anything at this point, is a constitutional crisis with two opposing sides. For the last six years it has been a steady shredding of the constitution with very few paying attention to it, let alone doing anything substantive to stop it. A showdown between Congress and the White House could actually pique the interest of traditional media that loves a good scandal, especially one that has serial drama potential. I’d love to see reporters and television “news” shows delve into every detail of this fight the way they did with the death of Anna Nicole and her multiplying baby-daddies (only the most recent of the serial drama cases they’ve glommed onto for no apparent reason). In fact, it would be so good for our democracy that it’s virtually guaranteed not to happen. Cynical? Sure, but you’ve lived through the Bush presidency too, can you really say you blame me?

Scapegoat Musical Chairs

2007-03-20T10:01:00.000-07:00

It must be tough being a Bush administration official now that we have a Congress again. After six years of rubber stamping the Bush agenda, facilitating an Executive Branch power grab and turning a blind eye to illegal action, I think we’re all a little stunned to see Congress act as a separate branch of government, but while the American people are comforted by the restoration of Congressional oversight, the Bush administration is like a deer caught in the headlights, stunned and unable to deal with the spotlight now shining on their smash and grab operation.

Alberto Gonzales looks like he might be quick on his feet, with his low center of gravity and relative youth, but apparently looks can be deceiving as Gonzo has suddenly found himself without a seat in the current White House game of scapegoat musical chairs. Even Bush’s attempt to pull the chair out from underneath poor Harriet Miers unexpectedly failed to secure Gonzales a seat in the game. Harriet’s survival though is likely less a function of her brilliant “strategery” than an indication that she’s simply got a little luck on her side. Bumble around long enough and you’re bound to bounce off of trouble eventually, kind of like a pinball that falls down the hole at just the right angle and is unexpectedly hurled back into the field of play. Don’t you love it when that happens?

It appears that Gonzales has hit the Justice Department “trifecta”, with the FBI’s abuse of the Patriot Act, the advice he gave to Bush while he was White House Council to shut down the probe into the illegal NSA wiretapping that, we now know, was focusing on HIM, and now his role in the firing of US Attorneys that refused to abuse their positions to do the Bush administration’s political bidding. With reports that the White House is floating names of possible replacements for Gonzo, it appears that his prize will be a quick kick to the curb. Bush better hope that Gonzales’s loyalty extends past the gates of the White House, but all indications are that they do. Lifelong yes-men of Gonzales’s caliber are rare, but they do exist, just look at Pat Buchanan. Ten years from now we can expect to see Pat and Al on Hardball still hocking their shticks, the former continuing to exalt Nixon and the latter lavishing praise on Bush Jr., while Chris Matthews sits in his chair nodding like a dashboard bobblehead doll on an off-road trip. I can hardly wait.

With all of my frustration at the lack of political will on the part of the Democrats to push for impeachment of President Bush, I can still see the value in having them in control of Congress. I have little faith that the Bush presidency will be ended early, but at least we will have investigations leading to, at the very least, public exposure of just how corrupt and dangerous this administration is. It is now being reported that John Conyers and Linda Sanchez appear set to issue subpoenas tomorrow for Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and others regarding the firing of the US Prosecutors. Let the investigations begin! It’s a start anyway.

Don’t Mind The Flames, They’ll Keep The Bed Warm

2007-03-15T09:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve been having a hard time blogging lately because, well, quite honestly, I’m suffering from outrage fatigue. The big story on the Bush administration right now is the highly politicized firing of 8 US Attorneys across the country. It’s clear that Karl Rove (and likely President Bush) was intimately involved in choosing the Prosecutors to be fired and also in choosing who would replace them. It’s also clear, at least to me, why this was done.

Karl Rove took a lot of shit for Republican losses in the ’06 election and he’s doing everything he can to ensure a win in ‘08. While I’m glad that this story seems to have legs and I’m happy to be hearing calls for the resignation of Alberto Gonzales, I just can’t get worked up over this scandal, especially when the Bush administration has done so many things over the past six years that have been far, far worse.

I mean, come on. When you’ve watched your country go down the drain, lost your constitutional right to privacy, right to vote, right of habeas corpus and seen your government condone torture, extraordinary rendition and preemptive war, all in violation of international law, and watched the President of the United States repeatedly break the law, lie to Congress and the American people, it’s hard to get worked up over a few lawyers getting the boot.

The only thing different with this scandal is that the Democrats now control Congress and that gives them the opportunity to exercise their oversight authority and conduct investigations and hearings into the whole sordid mess. Well, that and the pack mentality of a corporate news culture that has decided the blush has finally worn off of the Bush rose.

Back to the why. With the newly released emails between the Justice Department and the White House, the “no governance, all politics” culture of the Bush administration is finally being inspected by the media, but I still have little faith that they will actually delve into the purpose of these firings. In this administration, political appointees are just that, hand picked loyalists installed in important public offices for the sole purpose of furthering their political agenda. These US attorneys were not meant to dispense justice in their districts, they were meant to investigate Democrats, warranted or not, and cover up for Republican crimes, and the ones who refused to play ball, were canned and replaced with ones who would. Does anyone really think otherwise? Can anyone ignore the electoral significance of the Prosecutors who found themselves on the Bush administration enemies list?

The outrage I can seem to muster up at this point has to do with the way the Bush administration has changed our country for the worst. Loyalty, a good thing when invested properly, has been turned on its ear. No longer are public officials to be loyal to this country, to its laws or its people. Instead, they are only to be loyal to the Bush administration. When the highest ranking enforcers of federal law are no longer loyal to the people they serve or the laws and the constitution they swore to uphold, and instead act merely as conduits for political retribution, we can no longer consider this a free and democratic country.

But that reality was exposed with the 2000 selection of this President by the Supreme Court, AND with the thwarting of international law in invading Iraq, AND with the fraudulent case for war peddled to the American people, AND with corporate control of our media, AND with a fraudulent election in 2004 that was dutifully ignored by said corporate controlled media, AND with the “detention” of Jose Padilla (an American citizen held for three and a half years as an enemy combatant and denied access to our judicial system), AND the elimination of habeas corpus, AND….AND…AND…

I’ve reached the point where I fear enough will never be enough. We’ve put up with so much and yet show no signs that we’re not going to take it anymore. Impeachment, though warranted, seems to be a non-starter for the Democrats that are still afraid of their own shadow, and the American people seem content to just wait it out and hope that things don’t get much worse. We’ve made our bed and we’re apparently content to lie in it, even though it’s on fire.

Impeachment Rally, Seattle Style

2007-03-09T17:51:00.000-08:00

Washington For Impeachment is sponsoring a rally tomorrow (Saturday March 10th) at noon in Westlake Park, Downtown Seattle. Come out and show your support for the impeachment of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney for high crimes against the citizens of the United States. The rally is to help build support for SJM8016, a bill introduced in the Washington State Senate calling for the impeachment of George Bush and Dick Cheney. I'll see you there!

Late To The Party

2007-03-09T15:39:00.001-08:00

Congressman Obey rants about “idiot liberals” that want Congress to de-fund the Iraq War. Well Congressman Obey, if you stop voting like an idiot moderate when it comes to the war and instead spend your time explaining to the public what cutting off funding really means (and stop repeating idiotic Republican talking points), you might actually be able to accomplish what the American people sent the Democrats to Washington to do. Stop whining and start running, you’ve got a lot of ground to cover if you hope to catch up to the public on this one.

Stick That In Your Fox Hole

2007-03-09T15:37:00.000-08:00

The Democrats have decided to pull out of a Fox sponsored debate. I hope this is the beginning of the Democrats refusing to legitimize Fox “News” by appearing on their network. Sure, you can reach a lot of people if you go on Fox “News” shows, but if Fox viewers want real news, they need to change the channel.

Joe Conason (Kind Of) Does Seattle

2007-03-08T17:46:00.000-08:00

For those of you in the Seattle area, Joe Conason will be in town tomorrow for a book signing. I haven’t read his new book yet, "It Can Happen Here: Authoritarian Peril in the Age of Bush", but it is most definitely on my list. Joe will be signing books at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park tomorrow at 6:30pm (17171 Bothell Way NE). Go show him some love.

Pardon Me, Mr. President (Before You’re Impeached)

2007-03-08T10:43:00.000-08:00

One thing I’ve learned about the Bush White House over the course of the last six years is that they love to do the unprecedented and they love to do it in the most over-the-top way possible. Given that history, when it comes to the question of a Scooter Libby pardon, I’m of the opinion that it will come sooner rather than later.

So what if the move is politically dangerous? So what if Libby doesn’t qualify for a pardon under the Justice Department’s own guidelines? So what if the only reason to do it is to silence Libby and make sure he doesn’t take Prosecutor Fitzgerald up on his offer to chat further about the case? After being “re-elected” in an election plagued by fraud, mysterious vote counts and voting machines that “erred” in Bush’s favor 100% of time, Bush swaggered around talking about mandates and political capital. Mired in an unpopular war and presented with recommendations from the Iraq Study Group that called for a pullback of troops and increased diplomacy, the President instead decided to escalate the conflict. When caught breaking the FISA law, Bush just smirked as if challenging Congress to do something about it. Once Bush makes up his mind to pardon Libby, if he hasn’t already, he’ll simply do it without explanation. Remember, he’s the decider, he can do as he damn well pleases. Bush follows the rules until he doesn’t. That is his trademark.

The chances of Scooter Libby cooperating with Patrick Fitzgerald are slim to none, so Fitzgerald’s investigation is effectively over. Now it is up to Congress to continue the investigation. Congress can decide to take up the issue of pre-war intelligence and conduct a real investigation that can lead to the answers that Fitzgerald was unable to unearth because of Scooter Libby’s intentional and blatant lies. Congress must ask the important questions that this case has raised. Why was Cheney so intent on discrediting Joe Wilson? How far did the White House go in manufacturing evidence to support an invasion of Iraq? Did Silvio Berlusconi put the forged Niger documents into the hot little hands of President Bush? Did the White House endanger CIA assets and out an undercover agent in an effort to cover up the high crimes of manufacturing evidence and lying to Congress and the American people about their case for war? With the Democrats in control of Congress and the American people firmly against the continued occupation of Iraq, it is finally possible to at least attempt to get to the truth of this case. The Democrats just need to find the political will to do it.

With President Bush’s approval rating at another all time low of 30% and the Vice President’s Chief of Staff (and advisor to President Bush) now a convicted felon, it shouldn’t be too hard to find the political will to uncover Bush administration crimes. Any real investigation into pre-war intelligence will most certainly lead to impeachment proceedings, so the sooner they start the better. The Democrats should strike while the iron is hot, they have the wind at their back, the American people on their side, hell, there’s even a Republican using the word impeachment, and there are many more looking to put a little (or a lot) of distance between themselves and the Bush administration before they face the voters again in 2008. It’s hard to imagine a better set of circumstances for investigations into impeachable offenses.

It really is simple. Scooter Libby lied to the FBI and to a Grand Jury in order to protect himself and his boss Dick Cheney. If Scooter is willing to face a few years in jail for lying, the alternative must be worse and that is the nut that Congress must crack. It’s likely that there were serious crimes committed in the White House while they were building their case for war. It’s hard to imagine a case more worthy of investigation. If a blowjob in the Oval Office sullied the office of the Presidency, how could anyone argue that this behavior does not? If impeachment is to remain a constitutional remedy for criminal behavior by public officials, it is our duty to use it in the most egregious cases, not just the superficial political ones.

Update: Apparently Rep. Henry Waxman has at least decided to start the ball rolling in this general direction. Thank you Congressman.

Justice Is A Quaint Notion

2007-03-06T23:11:00.000-08:00

Listening to the right wing apologists on television, whining that Scooter Libby should be pardoned since all he did was lie about his part in a crime that never took place and that no one was ever charged with, has been making me crazy all afternoon. I've been racking my brain trying to recall the underlying crime that Bill Clinton was charged with when he was impeached. But then I remembered, THERE WASN'T ONE!! Unless you consider a blowjob a crime, and hell, even done wrong, most men wouldn’t put the provider in jail. I then also remembered that hypocrisy is the Republican’s stock in trade. All is right with the world for another day.

And what was with the motorcade that reportedly drove by the courthouse just after the verdict was announced? Was it Shooter reminding Scooter why he should continue to keep his mouth shut? I’m not implying anything, I’m just asking.

And one of my first, loyal, and most treasured readers sent me this quote by Rep. Henry Hyde:

It's important. It's critical. It defines our country for most of the countries throughout history, and anything that erodes, that taints, that corrodes, that diminishes the rule of law is something we ought to be mindful of and be very careful about. I don't want that torn down or diminished or turned into a piece of plastic that could be molded. I really believe that notion that no man is above the law. That's naïve of me, I suppose. There are some people who are above the law. But they shouldn't be. They shouldn't be. We should have a government of laws, not of men. And we're going in the other direction. All of the sophistries that I hear, rationales, justifications, everybody does it, it was just about sex, it's perjury - I swear to tell the truth - the whole system of justice depends on that, doesn't it?

Yes it does Mr. Hyde, and I expect that you’ll be making the rounds of the DC party circuit to remind your Republican friends that they should be heralding this jury for a job well done instead of writing checks to the Scooter Libby Defense Fund (which is now, I guess, The Lobbying For A Pardon Of Scooter Libby Fund). I also expect that Republican blog readers will be clamoring to post comments about how justice has now been served. Sadly, they’ll be the only ones since the rest of us are left to question the entire notion of justice given that we still have Bush/Cheney in the White House and Karl Rove is still walking around a free man.

Justice would be Dick Cheney being treated (or neglected and not treated) for his blood clot in the decaying wing of Walter Reed, the 24/7 news coverage of the Bush impeachment and Karl Rove forced to watch it all from his jail cell, snug in his tight-fitting orange jumpsuit, but believe me, I'm not holding my breath for that. Justice, at this point, is whatever Alberto Gonzales decrees, and that certainly won't be justice for anyone I know.

They Act As If No One Is Responsible!

2007-03-01T09:20:00.000-08:00

It’s hilarious to hear Ken Mehlman lament “the Bush-era culture of ferocity” when he has spent the last six years ushering it in and giving it a comfortable home. Republicans in DC, led by Mehlman, were happy to abuse their power, ignore their responsibilities, shut out the Democrats and turn our government into nothing more than a Republican haven for gluttony when they controlled all of the levers of power, so it’s a little convenient that they’d like to change the tone now! But it’s also typical, as is the Democrats’ tendency toward accommodating the request.

I understand that governing efficiently and fairly requires thought, consideration, debate and compromise, but God damn it, I’m still pissed at the GOP for what they have done to (and what they haven’t done for) this country, and like the Dixie Chicks, I’m not ready to make nice. Especially when the Republicans on the Hill whine about divisiveness at the same time they continue to block any meaningful legislation that will accomplish what the majority of this country wants (and what they know is right), an end to this war.

The Republicans were willing to steamroll the Democrats in their quest to erode our freedoms, strip us of habeas corpus, legalize torture, condone illegal domestic surveillance and other atrocious legislation, so I think it’s high time the Democrats did a little steamrolling in the other direction. The people disagreed with what the Republicans were doing yet they still got the job done. The Democrats, by contrast, have the support of the American people, I can’t think of a better time to run roughshod over the minority Party. Payback shouldn’t be the motivating factor, but it sure would be a nice bonus considering that the Republicans are only playing obstructionists to save their own political butts and to keep their lying, cheating, freedom hating, moronic President from destroying their Party for generations. There’s nothing noble in that.

So go ahead Democrats, kick a little dirt in those GOP faces, they certainly deserve it, but more importantly, it will help accomplish the most important item on the agenda, getting our troops out of the crossfire of the Iraqi civil war and bringing them home.

Death Follows Cheney While Destruction Follows Bush

2007-02-27T10:22:00.000-08:00

Dick Cheney’s visit to Afghanistan was met with a suicide bomber sent by the Taliban to the main gate of the American base there. Thank goodness the Vice President wasn’t hurt in the blast, but unfortunately 23 others lost their lives and 20 more were wounded. It seems no one is safe around Mr. Cheney, whether it be his friends who risk getting shot in the face or strangers who happen to find themselves in the Vice President’s vicinity when the rage he’s inspired in others comes to a head. No one is safe as long as this man remains in power.

The attack on the US base in Afghanistan highlights the growing violence and danger in that country. When we broke our promise to the Afghani people and abandoned them for the ill fated folly of attacking Iraq, we left a power vacuum that has allowed the Taliban to re-emerge as a powerful force and that has also resulted in a stronger and more virulent al Qaeda network in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Too bad General Schoomaker doesn’t think capturing Bin Laden is all that important, but that’s been the clear message out of this administration almost from the very beginning. The American people may think that bin Laden and al Qaeda are the targets of the “war on terror”, but not so the Bush administration. Iraq and now Iran are the targets and we, the American people, are the victims of this rogue administration’s crazy theories about how the world should work.

While the administration is being warned (yet again) that al Qaeda poses a serious threat to US security, the policies implemented by the Bush administration only further the agenda of al Qaeda and drive more and more people toward radical Islam (and radical Christianity and radical Zionism) at the same time they help silence more moderate voices. The clash of civilizations that Bush loves to talk about seems to be his goal to create. Conflicts are resolved by meeting in the middle, negotiating with an honest desire for resolution and by parties smart enough to understand the situation and the consequences of failure. It should come as no surprise then that this President is leading us further and further into chaos, creating more and more problems and conflicts that we may never be able to untangle once he’s gone. Ask a simple man to do a complicated job and you end up with a mess.

Our simple President is busy denying any plans to attack Iran (just like he denied his plans to attack Iraq) but who could possibly believe him? Conventional wisdom is being spewed by a myriad of "reporters" that goes something like, "Bush isn't crazy enough to attack Iran. It simply can't be done, it must be posturing." I don't know what in the last six years has given them that impression, but the fact that Generals are coming forward to say that they will quit in protest if the Bush administration does launch an attack on Iran should tell us that those in the know find Bush's craziness, if not probable, at least plausible. That should scare the hell out of all of us.

I Want To See Some Teeth And I Want To See Them Bared!

2007-02-23T10:04:00.000-08:00

I haven’t given Joe Biden much thought as a real potential Democratic Presidential candidate, but if he can successfully lead the way in ending the war in Iraq, he may just emerge as the real winner. Biden has been pushing a re-authorization of the war, in effect repealing the President’s current war authority and replacing it much more narrow objectives. Getting this through the Senate won’t be easy, especially when they can’t even pass a non-binding resolution to declare an escalation of the war “a bad idea”, but Biden can be a pretty smooth talker when his foot isn’t lodged firmly in his mouth.

I really thought that the Democrats were onto something with the idea of putting restrictions on the money being spent on the war, but it appears that “fear” has yet again deterred the Democrats from doing anything substantive to rein in this administration. The last election was a big winner for the Dems, but if they fail to act and continue to react to what they fear the Republicans will throw at them, it may prove to be the last election they ever win. We need some strong leaders willing to act. I hope the Democrats don’t leave that to the Republicans yet again, that’s how we got here in the first place.

Tying the money to troop readiness is a great idea and leaves the Republicans who vote against “funding with accountability” open to the charge of not really supporting the men and women who fight. The Democrats have got to learn to play the political game to win because even in the majority, they’re getting beat!

Stop sniping at each other and start aiming at the opposition for God's sake. If the Democrats can become as deft at throwing political hardballs at the Republicans as they are at out pandering each other, they could just make some serious progress toward bringing our troops home. Hope springs eternal, right?

The (Useless) Information Age

2007-02-21T11:19:00.000-08:00

Television “news” is virtually dead at this point. When one must watch hours of MSNBC or CNN to get any information about the current state of our “conflict” with Iran while simultaneously being bombarded 24/7 with pictures of Brittney Spears’ bald head and the growing line of Anna Nicole Smith’s wannabe baby daddies, I think it’s safe to say that on television, the information age consists solely of useless information. If only print news were any better.

With The New York Times continuing to peddle Bush administration talking points, providing front page placement for nothing more than White House propaganda and “analysis” of intelligence information on Iran that is never analyzed after it leaves the Vice President’s desk, I’m getting the sense that war with Iran is as unavoidable as was war with Iraq. Not because events are driving our two countries toward an inevitable confrontation, but because the Bush/Cheney war machine continues to be fuelled by a compliant (culpable) press. Thank goodness for the Internet.

But while many of us are turning to online news sources for information and alternative analysis of unfolding events, there are still many people in this country who don’t, but there is a beacon of hope. As television “news” becomes more and more indistinguishable from Entertainment Tonight, a few of our traditionally soft news and entertainment magazines are stepping up to the plate to fill the void (a trend I wrote about in the first months of my blog, albeit a bit sarcastically).

Last year, Rolling Stone published a great piece on the fraud ridden 2004 Presidential Election that provided hundreds of thousands of people the opportunity to read information that had been, up to that point, confined to the Internet. And now, it is GQ (yes, the men’s magazine) that has stepped up to offer what our newspapers should, a clear and concise case for the impeachment of Vice President Dick Cheney. I’m not one of the many that cite “President Cheney” as a reason for not impeaching George W., but impeaching them both is by far the best idea, even if we start with Cheney.

As I've written many times before, impeachment isn't an option so much as an obligation. We have a President and a Vice President that have both committed high crimes, violated the laws of our land AND our constitution, and it is our duty to impeach them. We cannot allow our executive branch to lie to Congress and to the American people. We cannot allow them to break our laws with no consequences. We cannot allow them to abuse their power, imprison American citizens and deny them their constitutional rights, violate international law with illegal wars, authorize torture in violation of Geneva Conventions and violate our privacy with illegal wiretapping. These are impeachable offenses. We have a duty to uphold the rule of law and we must make clear to future elected leaders that criminal behavior will not be tolerated. If we don't, we will get more of the same. It really is as simple as that.

If You Thought The Smash And Grab Was Waning…Think Again!

2007-02-19T09:39:00.000-08:00

Arthur Ruger over at Willapa View has a great post up about vulture capitalists and their economic terrorism of third world countries. That the wealthy and unscrupulous are preying on poor nations isn't a surprise, but what should be (but sadly isn't) is that our President refuses to do anything about it. Buth then again, why would he? These are, after all, his friends we're talking about and we all know that SOBs (Sycophants of Bush) will be protected by this administration, no matter the cost to the rest of the world. Go read Arthur's post and be prepared to get hoppin' mad.

The Well Tread And Bogus Path To War

2007-02-16T10:31:00.001-08:00

We’ve been marched down this same path before and the rhetoric is eerily and unimaginably, similar. Perhaps it’s just that this administration is a one trick pony, but more likely is that they’re just sticking with what works. They ginned up intelligence, preyed on public fears and perpetrated an all out media blitz to gain support for attacking Iraq. Sure, all of their lies have since been exposed and their plans have proven utterly disastrous, but that isn’t stopping them from using the same tactics against Iran. The Bush administration cares little about how the public (and certainly Democrats in Congress) feels about their actions, so long as the action takes place, and why shouldn’t they proceed that way? It’s not as if there have been any consequences for being caught with their hands in the cookie jar.

“Anyone who leaked classified information will no longer work in this White House.” Remember that doozy? Last time I checked (this morning), Dick Cheney is still Vice President and Karl Rove is still Bush’s political advisor. Sure, Scooter Libby resigned to defend himself against criminal charges of perjury and Ari Fleischer and Richard Armitage have retired (at least for now), but none of these men were fired for their part in leaking the identity of an undercover CIA operative, an operative working on tracking weapons of mass destruction and nuclear materials to and from Iran. As the drum beat for military action against Iran gets louder and louder, the connections between Valerie Plame and the case against Iran are starting to come into focus.

I’ve been hearing a lot of policy analysts, pundits and public officials claim that the Bush administration isn’t crazy enough to start a war with Iran. I’d like to know what in the last six years has given them that impression. Was it their preemptive invasion of Iraq? Was it the fact that they did no post-war planning, believed we’d be greeted as liberators and thought the war would pay for itself? Or maybe it was their insistence on labeling Iran, North Korea and Iraq the “axis of evil” at a time when we enjoyed unprecedented support and goodwill from those countries AND when we needed them most? I can’t help but think that anyone who isn’t terrified of waking up to headlines that this administration has started bombing Tehran, isn’t paying attention. If we can look back and see that we were sold a bill of goods on Iraq, we should be able to recognize the same slick (or not so slick) sales pitch this time around. What Bush “knows” about Iran is the same as what he “knew” about Iraq. Nothing.

Political retribution is a possible motive for the outing of Valerie Plame, but so too is the fact that she was in a position to build a case against Iran and wasn’t finding enough of what the White House wanted. If the Bush administration is as intent on attacking Iran as they were Iraq, Valerie Plame could have been a problem for them. If there’s no “there” there to find, best to get rid of the person who can prove it, and better yet, replace her with someone willing to create the “there” out of thin air.

What this administration doesn’t know could fill the new and improved Superdome, but what they claim to know (and don’t) is what concerns me. Just as they “knew” where the WMD were in Iraq, they “know” that Iran is supplying weapons and training to insurgents in Iraq (and how can they, at the same time, not know that Saudi Arabia is funding the Sunni insurgents?). Flimsy and invented intelligence is what they used to back up the former and exactly what they have so far presented for the latter. Few in Congress were willing to challenge the fraudulent case for invading Iraq when it was being put together. Please let them, not only recognize their failure, but atone for it, by not ignoring the signs this time around.

“I’m Not Touching You”

2007-02-15T00:09:00.000-08:00

By Man of American Dissent

I read this article earlier and the first thought that came to mind was that somehow the US was behind it. If I recall correctly, the vast majority of "insurgent" car bombers go down with the ship rather than ride away on motorbikes seconds before their explosives detonate. I have the distinct sense that a certain "element of instability" is trying to instigate a conflict with Iran.

It reminds me of games siblings play. Imagine two kids lying down at the opposite ends of a sofa engaged in playful, but competitive foot wrestling. The game goes on for awhile until one of them slips and the other gets kicked in the crotch. Then it's on. Kicks and fists go flying with head butts and the occasional bite soon to follow. Kids will do something similar on long driving trips. One will repeatedly touch the other until a fight (nearly) breaks out. Once a grownup has intervened, the toucher will then proceed to taunt the "touchee" by repeating the statement "I'm not touching you" in an effort to escalate the situation and provoke the other child.

My message to the children engaged in this very dangerous game is this. Do not make me stop this car. Stop touching/not touching, foot wrestilng and fake fighting now. Do not escalate. Use your words and work this out.

I Can’t Believe It’s Already Time To Talk About ‘08

2007-02-14T09:31:00.000-08:00

There will be light blogging around here for the next few weeks while I attend to projects that have been long neglected on the domestic front. Thanks to global warming, I can add clipping back all my plants and flowers to the list since many are already starting to bloom. Spring seems to come earlier and earlier each year, kind of like the race for the Presidency every four years.

I’ve been trying to ignore the fact that the race for the Democratic nomination has already begun, but that is getting harder and harder to do. I can’t imagine why anyone would want to be President, but I’m even more perplexed as to why anyone would jump in so early and add almost a years worth of scrutiny and attacks to an already long and grueling campaign. I’m just glad there are at least a few people out there crazy enough to want this job.

Last week I wrote about the blogger controversy over at the Edwards’ campaign and some took that as an indication that I’m pushing an Edwards ticket. Nothing could be further from the truth. I’m still looking, and there’s a lot I still need to know before I jump on anyone’s bandwagon. The only thing I know for sure right now is that it would take a lot for me to become okay with Hillary Clinton. I don’t think there’s enough I don’t know about Hillary for me to change my mind about her at this point. I don’t trust her, it’s as simple as that. I honestly believe that triangulation politics have weakened the Democratic Party and have resulted in the marginalizing of the left for far too long. Hillary Clinton appears to be following in her husband’s footsteps and triangulating for her political life, and I want none of it.

I appreciate that John Edwards is at least attempting to engage the country in a discussion about poverty and the growing disparity of wealth, but I still have some serious problems with his culpability in the Iraq debacle. Saying his vote was a mistake is great, but anyone who voted to authorize this war has shown that they have serious problems when it comes to judgment. While I like that he’s shining a spotlight on poverty at a time when poverty is America’s dirty little secret, I’m not convinced that John Edwards is the right leader for our critical times.

Barack Obama is simply captivating. He’s got a great personal story, he’s good-looking, charismatic and he’s capturing the imaginations of Americans searching for a new start. He’s young, he’s bright and he seems to be giving it to us straight. If his lack of experience is the one big mark against him, his authenticity and good judgment on the war are his two greatest strengths. Like Jesse Jackson said, “all of my heart leans toward Barack.” I’m just waiting for more details for my brain before I follow my heart that has lead me astray far too many times in the past.

The big question is still, will Al Gore jump into the race? It certainly seems as if his campaign is in full swing, albeit in a completely different way. If Gore decides to run for President, he doesn’t need to jump in early since he’ll land in the front of the pack as soon as he announces, whenever that is. And talk about the perfect leader for our times! The last six years have been nothing, if not proof of what a terrible mistake we’ve made. All of the damage that has been caused by Bush can be repaired by Gore. It would give the American people a chance for a do-over. Most Americans wish the Bush presidency were simply over already. Electing Gore could make it seem as if it never even happened. I’m not saying that that’s a healthy impulse, but hey, we’re not exactly the picture of health these days. We need someone who can hit the ground running, who has credibility on the world stage and who understands how government works. The last six years have been wasted when it comes to global warming, energy independence and peace in the Middle East. We need rapid movement on all of these fronts and Gore is already an experienced driver, pointed in the right direction.

Gore/Obama! Now that's a ticket I could get behind.

Win One For The Gipper

2007-02-14T09:30:00.000-08:00

Guest Post by Man of American Dissent

The writing is on the wall. Faced with a rock solid case presented by Patrick Fitzgerald, it seems almost certain that Scooter Libby is going to "Take One For The Team." It's no different than what happens with organized crime figures. In order to benefit the organization, folks just have to do the time when their number is up. Sure, they mount a defense and claim innocence, but that's all for show. Just think about it for a moment. What innocent person in their right mind waives their right to defend themselves in a criminal trial? The truth of the matter is that for their loyalty and sacrifice of doing time in silence, these guys get rewarded on the back end. Does anyone honestly believe that George W. Bush will not pardon Scooter Libby? It may not happen until December 2008, but it will happen.

By taking the hit now, Scooter is saving all of their asses. Bush, Cheney, Rove...the whole gang. When Scooter gets his orange jumpsuit and goes off to a minimum security Federal Facility, it will not be the last time we hear from him. Have no fear. He will be back. Just like John Poindexter and Elliot Abrams.

The Story of the Three Little Wolves

2007-02-10T07:20:00.000-08:00

A guest post by Mark W. Bradley

(Chapter One - "A New Dope")

Once upon a time in the Kantseatha Forest, there lived three hungry little wolves who set out to seek their fortunes. Their names were Dickie, Rover and Scooter.

Upon departing their respective dens of origin, the first challenge facing each of these ambitious little wolves was, of course, the task of building for himself a sunlight-proof shelter, each according to his eccentric appetite and innate ability to hide his true nature and underlying motives, even from himself.

Scooter Wolf, for instance, arranged for his house to be fabricated out of toxic mold-infested straw (although he seems not to have been entirely aware of this fact until it was revealed to him months later by his sometimes friend, Little Russ the Raccoon). Truth be told, Scooter could not exactly recall when (or even if) he'd been formally notified that his house was being built out of bales of moldy straw. On the contrary, he was pretty sure he'd been given categorical assurances by his friend, developer Dickie Wolf, that Dickie's construction company, Hellaporkin, was using a "state of the art" building material described as "steel-reinforced modules of highly compacted cellulose fiber aggregate", which, according to the color brochure, boasted an insulation factor in excess of R-19, and was guaranteed to be every bit as safe as an electric diaper.

Unbeknownst to Scooter Wolf, his friend Rover had also recruited Dickie Wolf and Hellaporkin to build his dream house. For this project, Dickie the Developer recruited a lodge of unlicensed, non-union beavers to built Rover a house made entirely out of twigs, or as they were described in the promotional video, "a rare and exotic collection of all-natural, chemical-free, rustic lumber stock, harvested under rigid guidelines consistent with the principles of environmental sustainability."

Surprisingly, when at last it came time for Dickie Wolf to construct a domestic dwelling of his own, he opted not to use the Hellaporkin Construction Company. Instead, he made an offer on an already existing, virtually impregnable 9,000 square-foot brick fortress originally constructed by a porcine acquaintance of Dickie’s he’d met in an earlier fairy tale. Unfortunately, while the transaction was pending in escrow, this very same fortress sustained extensive water damage in the catastrophic failure of an upstream beaver dam built years before by (guess who) Hellaporkin. The odd thing about the collapse was that the dam had just gotten a “thumbs up” from Dickie’s good friends at the Aardvark Corps of Engineers.

An even odder thing was that although the deceased owner - referred to in newspaper accounts simply as “Mr. L. Pigg III” - was presumed to have drowned in his living room during the ensuing flood, the complete lack of water in Mr. Pigg’s lungs initially cast some doubt on this section of the coroner’s report. This apparent discrepancy was later resolved, however, as the revised coroner’s report determined that the water that had originally saturated Mr. Pigg’s respiratory system had most likely drained out of his lungs through the hundred or so birdshot-sized holes in his back.

In due course, the badly damaged brick building was condemned, and declared forfeit under an arcane provision of the Law of Eminent Domain. Fortunately, Dickie Wolf was able to acquire the property for the affordable price of $1, as he turned out to be the sole bidder at a hastily arranged government auction conducted at an undisclosed location. Miraculously, this undisclosed location happened to be the very same undisclosed location where Dickie was holed-up at the time.

Dickie Wolf loved his new home. Built entirely out of high-density fire-proof bricks and reinforced with an estimated 32 miles of steel rebar, it contained an underground bunker roomy enough to accommodate up to fourteen guests/detainees. More importantly, the entire structure was sheathed in a 2" thick lining of sheet lead, a precaution against radiation leaks eminating from the plutonium-powered dual-purpose air pump and water purifier. Settling in comfortably, it wasn’t long before Dickie Wolf had stocked the place with items from his lupine survival kit: 150 packages of "flamin' hot” pork rinds, twelve cases of "Grey Goose" Vodka, two durable sets of industrial-strength defibrillator paddles, a salt lick, four tanks of Nitrous Oxide, and a 100% virgin wool sheep costume (XXL).

One day, Dickie Wolf and his friend Scooter were playing Dickie's favorite game, Extreme Risk, which involved a game board of the world, 2 trillion dollars in monopoly money, and a plastic box full of tokens, some of which showed a picture of a smiling wolf - dressed in bonnet and bifocals borrowed from someone's kindly grandmother - above the words Protectorate of Dickie Wolf. The rest of the tokens showed the words Property of Everybody Else under pictures of variously decorated baskets of goodies.

Dickie had no sooner arranged the game pieces on the board and filled his pockets with as much monopoly money as they would hold, than he began to feel despondent.

"What's wrong?" asked Scooter.

"It's not fair," grumbled Dickie. "This game reminds me that there are still a lot of animals in the forest who don't have the good sense to let me handle their affairs. It's almost as if they don't trust me..." He seemed genuinely hurt by this realization.

"Cheer up," said Scooter, unintentionally drooling wolf-slobber all over the game board. "There's nothing wrong with your furry face that a little prosthetic dentistry couldn't fix. In the mean time, what you need is a fig leaf."

"What's that?" asked Dickie, his wolf ears perking up.

"You know, a cover,” replied Scooter. “Someone amiable and non-threatening to act as a front for your enterprise.”

“Maybe you’re right,” uttered Dickie Wolf. “In fact, I’m going to find one right now...”

Dickie hadn’t traveled very far when he came across a fig tree growing in a swamp off to the right of the path. Actually, it was more of a stunted bush. The fruit on the bush looked scrumptious, so Dickie picked one and eagerly plopped it into his richly salivating mouth. It tasted like dog shit. Dickie began to barf all over himself.

He had convulsed himself well into the dry heaves when suddenly he heard a tiny little inarticulate voice that seemed to rise up from the ground. Dickie looked all around, but all he could see was an insignificant little fig leaf lying at the base of the bush.

“Howdy,” squeaked the leaf, “my name is Potus. Potus the Fig Leaf. What’s yours?”

“They call me Dickie Wolf,” sneered Dickie. “Say, how did you manage to get detached from that revolting fig tree, anyway?”

“The other leaves voted me off,” said Potus, sadly. “Said I was a drain on the root system. Wait a minute, did you just say your name was Wolf? I have a new friend with the same last name! Rover Wolf, he calls himself. He’s promised to make me a very powerful leaf and get me the respect I so richly deserve. Maybe you know him...”

Just then, Rover himself emerged from behind the obnoxious fig tree.

“Hello, Dickie. Long time, no see,” chuckled Rover with a drooling drawl.

“Hello, you mangy pile of overstuffed dog flesh,” said Dickie, good naturedly. “Your friend Potus here was just telling me how you’re going to make him a star. Perhaps you’d care to elaborate...”

“My pleasure, Mutton-Breath,” sneered Rover. “Actually, I’m the one who gave him the name Potus. His family always referred to him as Mr. Chlorophyll-deficient. Frankly, as far as fig leaves go, he has the mental capacity of, well, a fig leaf.”

“Makes sense,” offered Dickie, thoughtfully. “Thing is, I happen to be in the market for a fig leaf, and the less inquisitive it is, the better. Any chance we could collaborate on this kid’s political career?”

“Anything’s possible, for the right price,” hinted Rover Wolf.

“Is this enough?” asked Dickie, as he reached into one of his pockets and dumped a crumpled wad of monopoly money on the ground.

“Looks like we got ourselves a deal,” said Rover, with a toothy smile.

“Hurray,” shouted the fig leaf. "Does this mean I'm finally gonna get to be the King of the Forest?”

“That's what it means, kid,” chortled Dickie, as he chewed lustily on a gnarly strip of squirrel jerky. “We're gonna make you the biggest friggin' fig leaf of all.”

And so, with the help of Scooter, Rover and Dickie - the Three Little Wolves - Potus, the Nearly Inanimate Object, became the undisputed king of all he surveyed...

(Say, kids, don't forget to watch for Chapter Two - "The Three Little Wolves meet Wolf Blitzer”!)

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at markwbradley@comcast.net

The Right Wing’s Attempt To Swiftboat Bloggers Fails

2007-02-08T11:16:00.000-08:00

Ever since Senator Russ Feingold made his definitive decision not to run for President in ’08, I’ve been uninspired to join the debate over who should be the Democratic nominee. Hillary Clinton leaves me cold, Barack Obama, while new and exciting, so far seems a little too much like the same old Clinton era, free trade, big business Democrat for a lefty like me. Senator “MBNA” Biden is a non-starter, Bill Richardson is still holding on to the DLC way and Al Gore refuses to enter the race. That leaves John Edwards, who talks a good game AND has just backed it up with some action.

My best friend called me yesterday, all upset and angry about the whole brouhaha surrounding the possible firing of Amanda Marcotte (of Pandagon) and Melissa McEwan (of Shakespeare’s Sister) from the Edwards campaign. My friend is a loyal reader of Pandagon and was incensed at reports that Edwards had caved to right-wing pressure (over nothing) and fired these two bloggers. If Edwards will cave to the right-wing smear machine over nothing, why should we trust that he’d stand firm when it comes to the big issues?

But John Edwards didn’t cave! He did the right thing and kept the bloggers on, proving that he truly respects free speech, understands that swiftboat attacks cannot be allowed to work and that taking the short view is not enough to gather the support necessary to win an election. Those of us that write and read blogs are not interested in the short view, we are looking to make fundamental changes in the way voters interact with our government, elected officials, campaigns and with candidates. We want our voices heard and we want to steer the debate and possibly even affect policy, and yes, sometimes we’re quite passionate about the issues and we often use strong language to express our views. Does that make us unqualified to participate in campaigns?

Blogs provide unfiltered opinion from the bottom rather than polished opinion from the top, and that is exactly why blog readership is up, while newspaper readership is down. I couldn’t be happier that John Edwards recognizes and respects the value in people powered politics, but even though he made the right choice there is still something to learn here and John Edwards should ask himself why it became so important to right-wing bloggers that Marcotte and McEwan be fired.

Sure, it could be old-fashioned jealousy, but my bet is on fear. Bush “won” two elections because voters were attracted to his “authenticity” however manufactured it was. John Kerry lost (as would Hillary Clinton I fear) because of his lack of authenticity. The American people are tired of the slick politician, they want someone real, someone that will speak their mind, show some spine, and stick to their principles, even when they’re not popular. John Edwards must be authentic and he must act in a manner consistent with his views if he is to have a shot at the Presidency. Without the fundraising ability of Clinton or the star quality of Obama, Edwards will need a groundswell of support from ordinary people, and blogs are a great place to start in building that swell.

If John Edwards had wanted squeaky clean political consultants (as if there is such a thing), he would have hired some, but he didn't. He wanted to reach the people through blogging, and he hired two of the best to help get his message out. By standing with them when they were swiftboated by the Right, he's shown us that he is authentic and he's shown the Right-wingers that swiftboat attacks won't work on John Edwards. Nice job Senator.

I Love It!

2007-02-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

Kudos To Gay Rights Activists

2007-02-07T09:47:00.000-08:00

Last year, the Washington State Supreme Court ruled on a case involving gay marriage and asserted that the state can ban same sex marriage because the state has a vested interest in preserving marriage for the purposes of procreation. What a crock of shit!

In response to this ruling, initiative 957 was born. I-957 will require all married couples to file a “proof of procreation” within three years of the marriage. If the Supreme Court of Washington says marriage is for procreation, then that ruling has to apply across the board. I absolutely love this initiative, can’t wait to sign it and hope I get a chance to vote on it! If it takes an insane initiative to hammer home the pointlessness of excluding same sex couples from the institution of marriage, then by all means do it. Some people need to be hit over the head with their own hypocrisy before it sinks in, and vigilance is the most effective means of change.

I watched the Super Bowl last Sunday and I saw the Snickers commercial where the two men, eating from opposite sides of the candy bar, meet in the middle in a kiss, after which they proceed to rip out their chest hair (and other “manly” behavior) to prove their manhood. I thought the commercial was funny, not because of the kiss, but because the men were portrayed as ridiculous. I was a bit surprised by the uproar that arose from gay activists after the ad aired. My first reaction was, “lighten up”, but upon further reflection, I realized that they are exactly right to make a fuss and I was completely wrong in not seeing the problem instantly.

Disgust and violence, even when directed inwards, should never be portrayed as the appropriate response to homosexual behavior. That’s an incredibly dangerous message, whether subliminal or overt, especially considering that hate crimes against gays and lesbians are still prevalent. But perhaps even more importantly, analyzing and labeling this commercial as homophobic, moves the debate forward and challenges, very publicly, the fallacy that two men kissing is anything less than manly.

The ad has been pulled, a sign that we’re making progress on the issue, progress that has only been made due to the vigilance of gay rights activists, and I thank each and every one of them for that. As a parent, I want my children to grow up in a world that is not only tolerant of differences, but understanding and accepting of those differences. It is easy for heterosexuals to forget that those fighting for gay rights are fighting for us as well. Many of us will have gay children, and if our children are able to grow up unafraid of violent reactions to their sexual desires, proud of who they are and free enough to express their inner most feelings, we will have the gay and lesbian activists of today to thank.

So thank you to all who fight for equal rights for gays and lesbians. Thank you for moving this debate out of the closet and onto the pages of our newspapers. Thank you for your vigilance, thank you for your sacrifice and thank you for all of your hard work in making this country a better and safer place for all of our children.

All Together Now

2007-02-06T10:18:00.000-08:00

If the Democrats were the worst, least successful minority Party in history over the last 12 years, the Republicans have just shown that they’re determined to be the best.

The Democrats refused to filibuster a nominee to the Supreme Court that will cause our country to take a hard right (fascist) turn for the next several decades, and even more disgusting, they refused to filibuster a bill that wiped out our right of habeas corpus, but the Republicans have just successfully filibustered a NON BINDING RESOLUTION, simply because it would embarrass their President.

I'm hoping (probably against hope) that this last election changed who the Democrats are. One thing's for sure, it did nothing to alter the GOP. They will vote Party lines and circle the wagons to protect one of their own, same as it ever was. The Democrats must realize that there is no compromise when it comes to the war. Bush has made his stand, his men have fallen in line and the escalation goes forward, WITHOUT DEBATE. The question remains, what are they going to do about it? The people voted, now it's time to act.

Modern American Republican Christianity Confounds Me

2007-02-06T09:58:00.001-08:00

Those of us that look to logic, data and facts to explain the world around us, sometimes have a hard time understanding the rules of religion. I understand and mostly follow the teachings of the Bible, not because they are the words of God (that, as the VP would say, is hogwash) but because treating others as I would myself, generally seems like a good idea. I don’t need “God” to tell me that. It’s not the Bible that I find confusing, but rather the modern rules of Christianity as currently practiced by many Christians in this country.

I suppose it would be more accurate to describe them as Republican Christians because in many parts of this country, and certainly in the media, church has merged with the GOP. It may be a vocal minority of right-wing religious nutjobs (James Dobson, Pat Robertson, Phyllis Schlafly, the list seems endless), but there’s no denying that the most high profile Christian “leaders” have chosen to call the GOP home and in return, the influential fascists (George Bush, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, another disturbingly long list) have laid claim to Christianity. It’s a symbiotic relationship. The politicos frame their agenda as a religious crusade and the preachers turn their churches into campaign offices. The losers in this deal are the rest of us, including the true believers.

If this relationship weren’t so dangerous, it would be funny, if for nothing else than the confounded logic employed to explain away the bad behavior of politically minded Christian leaders. Take for example, this story in the news today. According to modern American Republican Christianity, as practiced by the former president of the National Association of Evangelicals Ted Haggard, putting your dick in the mouth of a male prostitute doesn’t make you gay. I guess that means God still loves good old Ted.

But Ted, what if you stick your dick in your wife’s mouth while pretending she’s a male prostitute? Is that okay? God knows your thoughts right? Or is it simply that you can engage in gay sex or fantasize about gay sex while engaging in heterosexual sex as long as you feel ashamed by your thoughts and behavior afterward? Surely God wants His followers to hide who they are, have plummeting self-esteem and feel shame for simply being human. Probably just as much as He wants political dogma preached in His house.

What we take away from any book has a lot to do with who we are when we read it. I guess the Bible isn’t special in that regard.

Democratic Tone Deafness Cured

2007-02-05T09:37:00.000-08:00

For the first time in a long time I’m starting to like the tone in Washington DC. One of the most persistent complaints about the Democrats since the Supreme Court installed George Bush as President has been their lack of opposition to the Bush agenda, courage of conviction and the spine to stand up for themselves, let alone the American people. What a difference an election can make.

Although I’d like to see the Democrats cut Georgie off at the knees and cut funding for this disastrous invasion, turned occupation, turned civil war, I do see that they are at least moving in the right direction. Chastising the President for his plans to escalate the war with a non-binding resolution is a start on that front, but the investigations into the selling of the war better lead to stronger action. With 58% of the American people simply wishing that the Bush Presidency was over, I’d say it’s time for the Democrats to give the people what they want and start moving toward impeachment. Not only is history crying out for justice (no President has ever deserved it more), but impeachment may be the only way to stop this reckless administration from attacking Iran, a move that would bring catastrophic consequences that, surprise, surprise, the ideologues in the White House are completely oblivious to yet again.

On the domestic front, I’m hearing snippets that suggest a Democratic Party going back to its roots. John Edwards is talking about poverty, Jim Webb is talking about the disparity of wealth and even Hillary Clinton is suggesting that the public has a right to some of the grotesque profits being made by the oil companies. She may be taking heat from the right-wing noise machine for even suggesting such a thing, but those of us not blinded by greed can see that she’s absolutely right. The middle-class has been paying more than its fair share while American corporations have been getting a free ride. As much as the possibility of “striking it rich” is part of the American dream, so too is the opportunity (mandatory though it may have to be) to give back and invest in the country that provided you your wealth. Republican rule has brought the rise of greed (as it always does, the opulent 80’s under Reagan comes immediately to mind) and the plummeting of responsibility.

Take, take, take may work for the few at the top, but the pleasure is temporary. It creates an unstable economy, but even more importantly, it erodes the moral foundation of society. Thomas Jefferson wrote in Notes On The State Of Virginia that the real danger inherent in slavery is the moral corruption of the master that results from one man owning another. I take issue with the importance he gave to this particular aspect of slavery, but the idea is a solid one and can easily be applied to our current situation where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening at an alarming rate. Something has to be done and I’m glad to hear Democrats at least starting to address this issue.

We have some very serious problems that must be addressed in this country, not least among them the very real danger of global warming. While the American Enterprise Institute offers money to anyone willing to pass out blinders by debunking the UN’s report on climate change, the rest of us better get serious about solving the problem. American industry (and obviously American over-consumption) has disproportionately contributed to the problem. Now they must be made to cough up the money to help fix it, and that starts with reinstituting some fairness in the tax code. It’s fine to start with going after the tax cheats, but it must end with a tax structure that forces responsibility, and limits the opportunity for excessive greed.

The changing tone in DC is encouraging, but action is what will really impress.

There’s A New Maverick In Town

2007-01-31T09:36:00.000-08:00

With all of the talk I’ve been hearing lately about what a great guy Chuck Hagel is, I thought it was time to pull out a post I wrote over a year ago on the topic. I’ve been hearing liberals laud Senator Hagel’s “bravery” for speaking out against this administration and his “maverick” tendencies when it comes to sticking to his convictions. Speaking truthfully may make him a maverick within the Republican Party, but it’s what Senators are supposed to do, he gets no credit from me for that and more importantly, I’m not convinced that this whole thing isn’t just political theater.

Chuck Hagel is a Bush administration “fella” and he’s got the voting record to back it up. He is one of the most conservative members of the Senate, supporting the Bush agenda a whopping 95% of the time. He may be speaking out against the President’s “troop surge” but that hardly takes political courage at this point. Any Republican who wants a shot at the White House in ’08 must be against this surge and for ending the occupation of Iraq. John McCain will find that out the hard way and he’ll likely find that he’s been duped by the Bushies yet again. By bringing McCain into the fold while simultaneously singling out Hagel as the “problem Republican” that just won’t toe the line, the Bush team has effectively stripped McCain of his maverick status and bestowed it upon Hagel. At a time when change is what the American people are looking for, the willingness to buck this administration is the best asset any candidate can have, and Hagel’s “outsider” status seems to be by Bush administration design.

So go forth and read my old post about Hagel from November 2005, it's even more relevant now than when I wrote it. Every once in a while my analysis is spot on and I'm convinced that this is one of those times. I'm leaving open the possibility that Chuck Hagel is authentic (although he'd still be an awful choice for President), but I certianly wouldn't bet money on it, unless of course I owned the machines that tallied the bets and determined the winner.

Dick In a Box

2007-01-30T06:45:00.000-08:00

Guest Post by Man of American Dissent

Dick Cheney is set to testify in the near future in the Scooter Libby trial. I heard a rumor that it could be today, but even if he’s not going to take the 5th, I mean stand today this is an historic event.

I wish there were cameras in this courtroom. I would love to see the face off between Dick Cheney and Patrick Fitzgerald. Will Cheney have the cojones to tell Fitzgerald that his questions are "out of line"? I'm envisioning the VP doing a Jack Nicholson in “A Few Good Men”. Unfortunately that just ain’t gonna happen. We’re much more likely to see a ”last throes” or smoking gun mushroom cloud style offering than we are a Harry Whittington hunting trip reprise.

Fortunately for the Vice President, he can say whatever he wants in court. He could say that Scooter had a wild hair up his ass and that made his lips get loose causing him to divulge classified information to every Tim, ‘Vak and Judy in town. I know he’ll swear to tell the truth and all that, but he also swore to uphold and defend the Constitution twice, and we can see how well that’s been going for the past six years. Besides, what’s the worst thing that can happen to the VP? Well, the worst thing would be a resignation in disgrace, followed by a pre-pardonment impeachment of George W. Bush and a “Sorry Dick you’ll need to serve out your sentence.” From President Pelosi.

He Will Always Be Cat Stevens To Me

2007-01-29T09:37:00.002-08:00

Here’s a little slide show of candid pictures taken in Iran. While Fox News is busy portraying Iran as a terrorist state, filled with a bunch of crazy, fundamentalist Muslims, it’s important that those false images are countered by at least a small dose of reality. We have destroyed one country already and it has made the world less stable, but we haven’t seen anything like the backlash that will occur if we make the same mistake with Iran.

As Evil Keeps Rising To The Top

2007-01-29T09:37:00.001-08:00

You know you’re in trouble when John Bolton starts giving you diplomatic advice and how much trouble are we in as a country when John Negroponte is the good guy!? I’m constantly reminded that this administration spares no effort in employing those at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to morality, truthfulness and decency.

The Trial Heats Up

2007-01-29T09:37:00.000-08:00

Today is a good day for watchers of the CIA leak case and the trial of Scooter Libby.  Today is the day that Ari Fleischer, former Bush administration Press Secretary (before the lying blob Scott McClellan and the practiced liar Tony Snow), will testify on behalf of the prosecution.  Fleischer has admitted leaking the identity of Valerie Plame to reporters and also sought an immunity deal with Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald almost as soon as the investigation began.  It appears that Fleischer was pretty sure he was in legal trouble from the very beginning and his discomfort over the leak may (I stress may) have been part of the reason for his sudden departure from the White House not long after.  If Fleischer thought he might be in trouble for leaking classified information about a covert CIA operative, it stands to reason that Cheney, Rove, Scooter and the rest of the leakers were also aware of the potential illegality of what they had done.  I’m waiting on pins and needles to find out what Ari has to say.

Last week, Raw Story put up a comprehensive timeline and investigative piece about the Bush administration’s building of a case for an attack on Iran.  It’s a great piece of journalism, but after reading it, I couldn’t help but feel that the Valerie Plame angle was missing.  There is a connection between the outing of Valerie Plame and the building of a case for war with Iran, I just feel it in my bones.  I suspect that the outing of Plame had more to do with a desire to derail her work, remember she was working on Iran, than about punishing her husband, Joe Wilson for his op-ed basically calling Bush a liar.  Is it possible that she was a cog in the war machine that had its sights set on attacking Iran?

I’ve long been hoping that Patrick Fitzgerald’s investigation would make public some of the connections between the forged document from Niger that Cheney used to justify the “Iraq is a nuclear threat” lie he inserted in the State of the Union speech, the shady cast of characters with a hard on for regime change in Iran (the same criminals, neo-cons and international arms (and lie) peddlers that brought us Iran-Contra), and the plans for preemptively attacking Iran.  It may be too much to hope for, but Patrick Fitzgerald is one of the few people with all of the information needed to connect the dots and prove that this rogue administration is guilty of lying to Congress and the American people for the most serious of reasons, to sell war.  We The People need to know what Fitzgerald knows, although at this point, the odds aren’t in our favor.

"The Involuntary Guest Worker Program" - America's Middle Passage Into the 21st Century

2007-01-25T00:14:00.000-08:00

A guest post by Mark W. Bradley

WARNING: A self-appointed committee of concerned trolls has determined that the following post may be hazardous to your hypo-allergenic sensibilities. It may contain one or more of the following substances: tacky stereotypes, pointless misdirected hatred, base generalizations, and/or calls for ideological genocide. Side effects may include the dehumanization of people the author does not understand. Persons on a low-satire diet should avoid this post, as it may cause them to experience temporary discomfort and/or a feeling of helpless malaise. Such symptoms have been known to occur in rare cases, but only among patients with a genetic predisposition to irony. Patients who lack such predisposition are at minimal risk in this regard.

ADDITIONAL WARNING: Contents under psychological pressure. Do not store in areas where temperatures may exceed 150 degrees Fahrenheit (late 21st Century Greenland, for example).

SPECIAL WARNING: Keep out of the reach of children, and/or adults with the kind of simplistic mindset generally associated with children. On second thought, don’t bother. It’s already out of their reach.

SPECIAL ADDITIONAL WARNING: If any of the facetious ideas contained in this post are accidentally swallowed, induce virtual vomiting immediately by metaphorically sticking both middle fingers down your own throat.

PLEASE NOTE: This post is guaranteed not to contain any of the following ingredients: heartwarming sincerity, inspirational guidance, meticulous compliance with rules of social etiquette, adolescent solutions to post-doctoral problems, magnanimous gestures of compassionate reconciliation toward the planet-fucking psychopaths gleefully ripping this country up by the roots and transplanting it into a bucket of cyanide, and/or artificial sweeteners of any kind.

"The Involuntary Guest Worker Program" - America's Middle Passage Into the 21st Century

I promised myself I would listen to Tuesday night's “State of the Union” speech with an open mind, and I must now report that armed with a rare combination of honeyed rhetoric and steel-trap logic, the president won me over entirely to his point of view. It’s an admission I make with no small degree of humility, as I have spent the past seven years mercilessly lampooning Mr. Bush, intimating that he's the sort of imbecile who could weather a brainstorm without getting the inside of his head wet. Now, of course, I feel compelled to recant such unjust pronouncements and offer him my sincere apologies. The president’s speech was brilliant, prophetic, and jam-packed with innovative and ingenious strategies designed to address a whole litany of seemingly insurmountable problems plaguing our beleaguered nation. In short, I liked what he had to say, and I loved the way he said it!

First of all, it was comforting to hear from the mouth of our stockholder-in-chief that the economy is on solid ground. This came as a welcome relief to me personally, as my wife and I recently borrowed 4.3 million dollars in the form of cash advances on our combined Citibank cards, which we in turn used to purchase variable-rate mortgages on several ski chalets atop scenic Mt. Kilimanjaro. I’m confident that this impeccably sound investment plan will provide the two of us with a fairly secure nest-egg for our retirement, but just to be on the safe side, I’ve decided to give up teaching and pursue a career in rhinoceros hunting. Not only is it safer, but given the provisions of Mr. Bush’s “No Child Left Behind” legislation, it frankly offers more job security.

Just as importantly, I was thrilled to learn that the president has at last come up with a bold initiative to do what most politicians lack the courage and foresight to even suggest - that is, accelerate and expand America’s Global War on Terror through the use of ever-more-vigilant domestic surveillance techniques, reform and reorganize Social Security and Medicare by placing them under the jurisdiction of the Nevada Gaming Commission, increase the size of our armed forces by 90,000 troops while continuing to conduct a rapidly escalating war in Iraq that shows signs of persisting well beyond the declining years of our grandchildren, arrest and reverse catastrophic global warming by researching and developing a wide range of alternative energy sources including a mysterious substance best described as “grassoline”, and balance the federal budget in less than five years, all without raising taxes. I dare any and all you “Doubting Thomas” types out there to try and find fault with a plan as carefully thought out as this one!

But how can all these ambitious goals be accomplished in one fell swoop, you ask? Well, given the kind of conventional thinking most world leaders are bound by, it would be an utter impossibility. But as President Bush and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales have successfully demonstrated on countless occasions, “thinking outside the constitutional box” can yield the most mind-numbing semantic labyrinths ever misconceived by the human imagination. In light of that history, what they are about to unveil in the coming weeks is guaranteed to confound their legions of critics and amaze an increasingly incredulous world.

It is a pilot program that has been dubbed “PIGSHIT” (The Project for Involuntary Guestworkers in the Service of Hegemony over International Trade). As we approach this program with an open mind, let us liberate ourselves from a lifetime of prejudicial thinking, and dare to re-examine one of the most economically successful social experiments ever attempted in the history of our country - the institution of slavery.

I know what you’re thinking. Slavery (if not regulated properly) can be a cruel, and in many ways inhumane form of labor management. But trust us - this is not your great-grandfather’s “Peculiar Institution.” With the kind of voluntary safeguards the Bush Administration has promised to put in place during this special limited trial period of compulsory servitude, the opportunities for the systemic abuse of involuntary guest workers will be drastically reduced. And for those of you who tend to have a knee-jerk reaction against the very idea of slavery, consider this. Remember the sort of revulsion we all used to feel at the very mention of torture? Well, somehow we managed to get over that little bit of squeamishness, now didn’t we? As Vice-president Cheney likes to remind us, 9-11 changed everything. Nowadays, EVERYONE expects the Spanish Inquisition...

So let’s just drop all the hypocritical outrage, shall we, and take an objective look at how modern slavery would operate. I know there are a lot of you (especially you African-American folks out there) who have understandably negative feelings about the institution of slavery. But you can relax. There are no plans currently on the drawing board to subject American citizens, black or white, to permanent enslavement of any kind. In fact, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which such drastic measures would ever be required to fill involuntary labor quotas.

After all, as the Romans discovered back in the 3rd Century B.C., the most effective way to provide for an aspiring empire’s infrastructural labor needs is to sally forth boldly and conquer other nations, preferably smaller, weaker ones. Once you’ve humiliated them with a series of crushing military defeats, disbanded their armies, publically crucified their deposed leaders, burned and trampled their crops, gutted their livestock, raped their womenfolk, and leveled their cities, you sort of have them over a barrel. Labor negotiations from that point on are pretty much a snap. There’s no real need to conscript slaves at all, as most of the ambulatory survivors are sufficiently traumatized to fall in line and volunteer at the nearest labor camp without asking the recruiters too many annoying questions. Fortunately, the only out-of-pocket expenses likely to be incurred by occupation army soldiers seeking to enslave large numbers of locals are those associated with the cost of human transportation. In most cases, ordinary shipping containers should suffice.

In fact, according to a recent study by the GAO, if the United States were to initiate this pilot program later this spring in a potentially hostile country (Iran, for example), by early summer we would be in a strong position to provide all the hotels, factories and corporate farms in America with a reliable work force made up of flexible, compliant, and accommodating employees exceedingly grateful for the opportunity just to escape torture, mutilation and death on a daily basis. And best of all, such a program would be guaranteed to alleviate the pesky and persistent problem of illegal immigration. Think about it - what kind of savvy corporate CEO worth his benefit package is going to pay “hard cash” when the “hard lash” works just as well at a fraction of the cost?

Slavery - it’s an American tradition. Let’s try it again for the first time.

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at markwbradley@comcast.net

Any Day Is A Good Day To Help A Friend

2007-01-25T00:08:00.000-08:00

Trying to make it as a blogger is tough business, let me tell you. Some of us sacrifice writing time at the alter of commerce and attempt to make money however we can, but some of us refuse to sacrifice that critical writing time and instead make the real commitment to the liberal cause and blog incessantly, leaving little time for anything else. While I fall in the former category, my fellow blogger, and in many ways my mentor, David Goldstein of the infamous Horse’s Ass, is of the latter.

David spends his days (and nights I think) ferreting out the dirt, distilling the news and generally wrecking havoc on the local (and sometimes national) political landscape by bringing the truth to the people of this great city, a job our local papers have apparently lost interest in. This week, David is having his first annual pledge drive at Horse’s Ass. Being a lowly blogger myself, I don’t have much to contribute to the cause, but because I enjoy his biting analysis and I find his blog indispensable when boning up on local issues, I can’t help but toss a few bucks his way. If you’ve ever read Horse’s Ass, I suggest you do the same. If you haven’t, WHY THE HELL NOT? It’s to all of our benefit to have a muckraker like David on the job 24/7!

POTUS Is A Putz

2007-01-24T09:23:00.000-08:00

There was no comic relief in this year’s State of the Union speech although I did find the very idea that George Bush gives a shit about providing healthcare for all Americans laughable.  Last nights address was one of the most partisan I can remember and to believe a single word of it is to ignore reality.

He talks of balancing the budget and reining in government spending while he keeps his $360 BILLION folly in Iraq off the books.  He finally mentions the term “climate change” and I’m supposed to be impressed that he’s acknowledged the danger our planet is in while doing NOTHING about it for six years and in all likelihood will continue to do NOTHING for the next two.  His big energy plan is to bulk up our strategic reserves of oil, in essence giving more tax dollars to the oil industry while raising the global price of oil at the same time.  The word that kept coming into my mind while I watched Bush speak last night is the same word running through my head now.  ASSHOLE.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from last nights address.

“Free people are not drawn to violent and malignant ideologies.”

Really Mr. Bush?  Have you read the PNAC documents?  The neo-conservative movement is nothing if not violent and malignant, but I guess that’s why those of us that truly love freedom find your authoritarian ideology abhorrent and why you cling to it so tightly.

“We did not drive al Qaeda out of their safe haven in Afghanistan only to let them set up a new safe haven in a free Iraq.”

No Mr. Bush, you left Afghanistan (high and dry) to start an unnecessary and ill-advised war in Iraq, allowing al Qaeda and the Taliban to reconstitute THERE and then you fucked up Iraq so badly that they now have even more room to spread their wings.

“The consequences of failure would be grievous and far reaching.”

On this point you are 100% right, the only problem is that YOU have already failed.  YOU made a terrible choice in invading Iraq in the first place and then YOU fucked up every single step along the way.  YOU have made our country unsafe, YOU have made us hated around the world and YOU have opened up the world to violence and hatred.  You’ve sown the seeds of anti-Americanism and have been the best recruiter al Qaeda has ever had.  We will be living with the grievous and far reaching consequences of YOUR failure for generations.

Sending more troops into, as Chuck Hagel described it, “that grinder” at this late date, escalating the conflict, engaging the Mahdi army and embedding our troops with Iraqi troops when we have no idea where their loyalties lie, will only get more of our young men and women killed.  The blood of the almost 3000 military men and women that have already lost their lives is on your hands Mr. Bush, and the blood of the additional 20,000 troops you are sending to the slaughter will fall on your head “Carrie” style, branding you with a scarlet mark that you will never be able to wash off.

Keep Digging George, And Don’t Worry, Those Dry, Cracked, Dirt Walls Look Perfectly Stable To Me

2007-01-23T09:11:00.000-08:00

Unless George Bush starts out his speech with the words, “We’re fucked,” I doubt we will get an accurate picture of the state of our union tonight.  Last week Tony Snow said that the speech would focus on domestic policy, but I heard last night on one of the talking head shows that the speech has been retooled to include more on Iraq.  I should hope so, the idea of giving a SOTU speech at this particular point and not talking about the disaster in Iraq and his ridiculous, doomed plan to escalate the war (even Bill Kristol, the administration cheerleader could only say that “there’s some probability it could work”) is preposterous.  I’ll channel our old friend Don Rumsfeld and ask, “Would it have been any more asinine than everything else we’ve done?  Of course not.”

It should be interesting to watch how Bush handles himself tonight.  I doubt that this speech will be as somber as his last one on Iraq a few weeks ago, but his face might show signs of stress as he tries to balance conciliatory with swagger.  Selling his escalation plan is going to be a tough go and he may not be able to keep his natural bullying tendencies under control as he addresses members of his own Party that are considering voting with the Democrats for a non-binding resolution that declares the escalation a mistake.  Bush is backed into a corner on Iraq and that makes him all the more dangerous to anyone even thinking of standing in his way.

Unless Frank Luntz (master of manipulation, slayer of the English language) has been locked in the White House for the past week, market testing each and every word and building the perfect speech designed for maximum emotional impact (which is difficult when they’ve overplayed the terrorist and 9/11 hand, one too many times) making sure to hit each and every fear, rage and bigot button, I expect this speech to flop.  Bush can make nice with the Democrats on immigration, he can mention global warming (without proposing anything substantive of course) and he can even talk about fixing health care, but the fact that he hasn’t done shit to address these national issues (except to make them worse) over the last six years won’t be lost on those listening at home.

Bush has made his presidency about Iraq and now that we’ve seen what his full attention can do to a country, it’s clear that we’ll be better off if we can keep him from doing anything on the domestic front.  We don’t need him to fix this country the way he has Iraq and we’ve elected a Congress to help mitigate the damage he can cause in his last two years.  Bush has dug himself a hole, I say, we leave him in there but take the shovel before he makes the ground all around us unstable.

Blogging For Choice

2007-01-22T09:36:00.000-08:00

Today is Blog For Choice Day, so that’s what I’m going to do.  My best friend, an avid advocate for women’s reproductive rights, sent me an email alerting me to Blog For Choice Day and I’m so glad that she did.  The right of women to have complete, unfettered control over our reproductive destiny is paramount to a just society.  We are human beings with hopes and dreams, talents and visions for our future and never should we be reduced to baby making machines.

Amanda Marcotte over at Pandagon, suggested that those of us Blogging For Choice today should tell our personal story of why we are pro-choice.  My story may not be that compelling, but here it goes.

I have never had an abortion.  I have been pregnant twice in my life, both planned pregnancies and both resulted in beautiful, healthy children born into a stable two-parent household, but I would be stupid to believe that that is the norm.  Life isn’t a nice, tidy experience and shit happens.  I credit my lack of an unwanted pregnancy to luck and my anal retentive tendencies in equal measure.

Having grown up with a single mother, I knew how hard that prospect was and from the time of my first sexual experience at 15, I was terrified of getting pregnant.  Not terrified enough to fight my raging hormones and choose abstinence over the ecstasy that was sex back then, but terrified enough to get on birth control pills before my first time and take them each day religiously.  But, even with the pill, I was convinced every other month or so that I was pregnant and the relief I felt each time I turned out not to be, was overwhelming and had more to do with the abortion I avoided than the prospect of a choice I would have to make.  I always knew I would have an abortion if I got pregnant at that time, I was just lucky enough to never have it turn out that way.

The closest I ever really came to having an abortion was when my daughter was nine months old.  I was still breastfeeding so my periods were all whacky and having just been pregnant, I thought I knew the signs and I thought for sure I was pregnant again.  I was devastated.  I was exhausted from taking care of my daughter, we were struggling financially and I was stretched to the limit with what I had on my plate and I just knew another child at that point would very likely send me over the edge.  I was already having fantasies of running away (mostly involving checking into a hotel and just sleeping!) and another pregnancy (I hated being pregnant) and another child to take care of would have sent me packing for sure.  As I sat in the clinic, waiting for the results of my pregnancy test with my baby on my lap, I was prepared to make an appointment for an abortion immediately if the test came back positive.  But my luck kicked in again and my test was negative.  Another dodged bullet.

I didn’t have any moral qualms with abortion, I still don’t, but nonetheless, I wasn’t exactly eager to have the experience either.  For me, it wouldn’t have been making a choice so much as availing myself of the medical options available to me.  Abortions are safe and legal in this country, safer in fact than carrying a child to term, and thank goodness for that.  Thank goodness we are evolved enough as a society to provide women with the whole range of medical options and allow women the right of self-determination.  Not all of us are mothers and not all of us mothers should mother children we don’t want.  Some can, but some simply can’t, and we have the right to make that choice for ourselves.  We are women not future mothers!  Some of us are both, but not all of us are, and even those of us that choose to be both have the right to order our lives in whatever way we see fit.  Only a devolving society would take that right away.

We Earn The Title Of “Stupid American” Each And Every Day

2007-01-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

Hat-tip to my father in law for sending me this YouTube video. Next time I find myself dumbfounded as to how this man has remained our President for so long, I will go back and watch this video. Jesus we need to fix our educational system in this country! All I can say is, I hope these people aren’t registered to vote, but we’re probably not that damn lucky.

Our Rogue President

2007-01-20T11:46:00.000-08:00

I’ve been going over in my mind the road we have traveled over these last six years and how little we resemble the country we were when Bush first took office. We are the stories we tell ourselves and our American story has been charred by the reckless behavior of a man that would rather burn books than read them. As the ’08 Presidential race gets prematurely underway, it’s hard to be seduced by the traditional rhetoric of “a better future” and our “better natures” when what we are as a country, our story that we’ve written together, has been so drastically altered. Whether or not our national identity was based on fact or fiction, we agreed to suspend disbelief and consider ourselves free, just, and if not altruistic, at least humane. What are we to tell ourselves now?

As Americans, perhaps we prefer to be lied to. We don’t want to know about our government torturing people, subverting democratic movements around the world or supporting brutal dictators once we’ve struck a deal to gain access to their resources. These practices must be hidden from the American people and they must be carried out in a clandestine way that work outside our domestic laws so that if they are discovered, We The People can absolve ourselves of any responsibility with the simple “truth” that it was done without our permission. Members of the Bush administration have been such bad liars, have not covered their tracks and have been so completely incompetent that they have implicated the American people in every single illegal, illogical and immoral move they have made. The result is that we cannot claim ignorance, nor can we sit idly by while they continue to engage in reckless behavior in our name. Iran must be taken off the table.

Tuesday, President Bush will give his State of the Union address and while usually I look forward to watching the train wreck that is any Bush speech, I’m not hearing enough of what will be covered in the speech to quell my fears that he is about to expand the war we are currently losing to include a country that he doesn’t understand. Sane people find this somewhat frightening, or as Senator Rockefeller put it, “This whole concept of moving against Iran is bizarre.” The move makes no sense from a strategic standpoint, is not backed up by the intelligence community and is not in the best interest of our country. The same was true about Iraq, so the Bush administration is almost sure to dive right in.

This president has got no game when it comes to domestic policy and the disaster in Iraq has consumed his presidency. I doubt that what’s best for America has ever factored into his plans and if he continues to use his office for the purposes of enriching his friends, sticking it to his old man, securing his place in history and playing geopolitical chess for the sheer fun of it, we can expect, at the very least an aggressive (provocative) statement on Iran and at worst, an announcement of pending air strikes against a country that is in the process of reining in their fundamentalist leader. I only hope we have the will to rein in our own.

Scooter On The Stand

2007-01-16T07:03:00.000-08:00

While I’m still waiting for the hearings to begin on Capitol Hill, into corruption, the lies told by this administration in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq and, hopefully, a full airing of the Bush administration’s blossoming distortions and lies that seem to be leading us into Iran in much the same way, it is the trial of Lewis “Scooter” Libby, or Cheney’s Cheney as he was dubbed inside the White House, that may be the source for headlines that will reignite the debate over why we went to war in the first place as well as highlight the Bush administration tactics and how they “get things done”.

As jury selection gets underway today, the defense will likely be hard pressed to find sympathetic peers in a city that is almost entirely Democratic and that sits in the shadow of power while having little access to it. Now that the country is overwhelmingly against continuing the occupation in Iraq at the precise moment that President Bush proposes an escalation and possible expansion of the conflict, a trial that highlights the flimsy case for war as well as the Bush administration’s hard-on for war and hardball tactics, could be just what this country needs right now. Congressional hearings are great for egghead political junkies, but criminal trials have a way of hijacking the public’s attention and television news can’t seem to get enough. I can only hope that Scooter Libby’s name is soon as recognizable as Scott Peterson’s.

There are many people, Democratic leaders included, who feel it is unnecessary or at least counterproductive to rehash how we got into Iraq when we are faced with the crisis that has resulted. I could see the value in “moving on” and focusing exclusively on fixing the problem instead of assessing blame IF this was a one shot deal. But with the President rattling his saber again, sending a second aircraft carrier to the region as well as a message through his new Defense Secretary that the troop “surge” is proof we can take on Tehran as well as Baghdad, it’s clear that a pre-emptive strike on Iraq was not a one shot deal, but rather the standard practice of the Bush administration. If the press, that seem at the moment, at least, to be in the process of climbing off the lap of President Bush, can hone in on the Libby trial and highlight the lies, distortions, scare tactics and emotional manipulation that was used to sell the Iraq War, perhaps the American people will recognize that they are being duped the second time around.

Escalation! Expansion! Empire!

2007-01-11T11:08:00.000-08:00

What I took away from Bush’s speech last night is that he is still isolated in his ideological bubble and intends to “stay the course” but with one slight modification, pick up speed.  He’s planning an escalation of the war in Iraq as well as an expansion of the conflict to include Iran and possibly Syria.  I guess Daddy Bush has no influence left with Junior, as his attempt to inject some reason into Junior’s foreign policy (via James Baker and the Iraq Study Group) has failed completely.  I find myself asking the same question, over and over again.  What now?

Nobody thinks sending an additional 20,000 troops to Iraq will even a small difference on the ground, which means that this is a purely political move.  As Lawrence O’Donnell explained on MSNBC last night after the speech, not all 20,000 will be on the street at the same time (some will be sleeping, eating, getting ready) and you must divide the number by 4 in order to determine how many extra bodies will be on the job at any given time.  5,000 additional troops in the middle of Baghdad in the midst of a civil war will only give the insurgents more targets to aim at, which is exactly why the commanders on the ground want no part of this “surge”.

I’m in a bit of a quandary as to what I think the Democrats should do about their sticky situation.  This is Bush’s war and the Republicans in Congress have aided and abetted him in every single disastrous decision along the way.  Why should the Democrats buy into this occupation now when it is on the verge of collapsing?  I screamed at my television last night when Pat Buchanan yelled, “It’s immoral for the Democrats to continue funding this war if they are convinced that it is already lost.”  Oh really Pat?  How moral is it for you to support an escalation that you know won’t do a damn bit of good?  I get that this is Bush’s “Hail Mary” pass into the end zone, but not in an effort to win the war or do right by the Iraqi people, no, his only concern is his legacy and running out the clock so he can pass this mess onto someone else, blaming them for the loss that he has cultivated through his delusional thinking, blind faith and utter incompetence.

Part of me thinks that the Democrats should just step aside and let the whole thing blow up in the faces of the neo-cons that dreamed it up, the White House that executed it and the GOP that championed this folly all along the way.  The only problem, and it’s a big one, with standing on the sidelines as Bush’s war circles the bowl is that real lives are at stake.  How can we sit idly by while more of our young men and women are sent into a war zone that they have no chance of affecting in any positive way?  How do we stay silent as they are asked to die for the legacy of man not worthy of their ultimate sacrifice?  However tempting it may be to want to wait for the moment when we are vindicated, when we are proven right and George W. Bush is humiliated in a defeat we knew all along was the most probable outcome, it’s not the right thing to do.

It’s important to always remember that this war was ill advised, unnecessary and immoral when it began, therefore the results can be laid squarely at the feel of this president, but we are also culpable as we are responsible for what our elected representatives do in our name which means that we must do all that we can to salvage the situation.  We have a responsibility to make sure that our young men and women in the military are not used as political pawns.  We have a responsibility to help the Iraqi people find some stability amidst the chaos that we have created all around them.  We have a responsibility as citizens of this country to do all that we can to hold our leaders accountable.  We are in uncharted waters now.  We have a president that has lost his mind, is out of control and is making decisions based not on facts or reality or advice from experts, but rather based on his personal desire to be loved, respected and above all, right.  We cannot afford to continue giving him the benefit of the doubt as his long list of failures has proven that doing so is the height of idiocy.  How many wars are we going to let him start, lose interest in and bungle before we say enough is enough?  I vote for two.  What about you?

Bring The Noise

2007-01-10T08:57:00.000-08:00

Guest post by Man of American Dissent

The Administration is set to reveal the “New and Improved” plan for Iraq tonight. We’ve heard the chart topping hits “Turn The Corner”, “Stay The Course”, “We Will Prevail” and “As They Stand Up (We’ll Stand Down)”. I wonder what it will be this time. Most certainly the polling samples and focus group data have been analyzed and thoroughly reviewed. The official language has been vetted. These guys have been taking a beating on the charts lately and they are feeling the need to make a comeback. This one has got to be a winner. It will be well crafted. I’m sure it will even seem catchy to many at first.

Any music business professional will tell you that your song needs a hook if it’s going to go anywhere. The problem is that every hook that these guys have come up with has been like an O’Shaughnessy in the scalp of the American People. President Bush is the political equivalent of William Hung. He’s flat out awful, essentially succeeding because of his failure and abject ineptitude, but for some reason people keep listening. Prepare yourself for the aural assault because I can practically hear it now. …“This is not about increasing the number of troops. We are engineering a decrease in the ratio of enemy fighters to American soldiers. Our ‘New Way Forward’ is not escalating the situation, but rather it is an insurgent violence reduction plan”.

In a nutshell, we’re going to “bring it on” under the guise of some handcrafted doublespeak. The news media will amplify, distort and infinite loop the story which will create enough noise to confuse most Americans, who to be frank aren’t paying much attention. The only way to cut through it will be to bring some noise of our own. Loud, clear and simple. Impeach the fool.

Divided or Not, a House on Fire Cannot Stand

2007-01-09T01:51:00.000-08:00

A guest post by Mark W. Bradley

Three months ago, I was one of those progressives who felt that preparing for a Democratic Party victory in the 2006 elections was about as practical a use of my time as, say, studying Mohican poetry, or learning to drive a Zamboni machine. The only excuse I can now offer for such careless shortsightedness is that somebody (either Karl Rove or myself) made a serious miscalculation when it came to those pesky voting machines. Nonetheless, whatever the cause of this astronomically unlikely outcome, it is now evident that an effective treatment for Neo-Conservatism (which medical science only recently identified as one of the lingering neurological symptoms of Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease), is finally within our grasp. But we must act quickly if we are to have any hope of curing “NC” in your lifetime.

To this end, I made a decision last Friday evening to sit down at my computer and compose a blogpost that would effectively add my cyber-voice to the growing chorus (or should I say cacophony?) of progressive pundits attempting to hold the Democrats’ congenitally cold feet to the fire. Unfortunately, just as I was in the process of composing a stunning oratorical masterpiece to be force-fed into the microphone of Senator Biden/Boxer/Feingold, I was interrupted by the sharp rapping of what sounded like at least six knuckles on my front door.

It turned out to be my ultra-reactionary neighbor who lives two doors down and across the street. For the sake of anonymity, I’ll henceforth refer to him only as “Dick C.”

“We gotta real problem on our hands here, Bradley,” he grumbled impatiently. “You need to come and have a look at this thing right away.”

“I’m in the middle of something important right now, Dick,” I told him. “I’ll be down in a few minutes.”

“I think you better check this out now,” he demanded. “A few minutes from now, things might already be pretty well out of control…”

“Alright,” I said, as I slid my feet into a pair of house slippers, grabbed my overcoat, and headed out the door.

I followed Dick’s footsteps down the street to a rundown, semi-abandoned house on the corner.

“See that?” he queried with obvious disgust.

“You mean Mahmud’s house?” I asked. “What about it?”

“Let’s face it, that guy’s a real menace, and so’s his pile-o-shit house!” Dick’s agitation seemed to grow by the minute. “The roof’s a shambles, the place is crawling with disease-infested rats, and any day now the wiring’s bound to short out and cause a major fire that’ll probably wipe out the entire neighborhood.”

“What do you propose we do about it?” I inquired.

“Haven’t decided yet. But (*) and I just want to know you’re with us in case we need get serious about confronting this Ahmed character,” Dick replied.

“Mahmud, you mean,” I corrected him.

“Whatever,” he tossed off dismissively. The (*) Dick referred to was his brain-damaged sidekick who lived across the street from Mahmud, dressed in mustard-stained camouflage sweatpants, and regularly combed his front lawn with a combination Geiger counter and metal detector. We’ll call him “Donald R.”

“Well, I guess I couldn’t say for sure I was with you guys on anything, at least until I knew what you were planning to do,” I said, with uncharacteristic caution.

“You know, it might interest you to know we’ve already talked to a bunch of your bleeding heart buddies down the street, and they’re with us all the way on this thing,” Dick uttered confidently.

“Personally, I’d avoid doing anything rash, if I were you,” I said, as I impatiently shuffled my way back to my own house.

Around 1:30 in the morning, I was nudged from my fitful sleep by the faint squeal of approaching (but still fairly distant) sirens. As I rushed out into the frigid dry air, I became aware of a bright orange glow illuminating the night sky. Mahmud’s house appeared to be totally engulfed in thunderous, crackling flames. Out of the corner of my eye, I happened to catch a glimpse of Dick C.’s gardener (we’ll call him Jorge W.) hastily stashing a one-gallon can behind Dick’s garage. Moments later, the pair of them were standing uncomfortably beside me, noticeably out of breath.

“You know that little problem we were talking about earlier this evening?” Dick mumbled under his breath. “Well, looks like it’s a hell of a lot bigger problem now. Damn fire’s gone and spread itself all over the place. If you don’t do something to stop it soon, it’s likely to end up all the way down to your house.”

Even as he spoke these unsettling words, I realized he was probably right.

As quick as I could, I organized the rapidly awakening neighborhood into an impromptu bucket brigade. Meanwhile, my “bleeding heart” friends (I’ll call them “John K.”, “Chuck S.”, and “Joe B.”) took me aside and reminded me that the smart thing to do was to join them on the sidewalk across from the exploding cauldron of sparks and cinders, and do like they were doing - wringing their hands in distraught agony and warning others in the vicinity to stay clear of what was clearly an “unfortunate situation.”

Meanwhile, “Dick C.” and “Jorge W.” had taken it upon themselves to build an impressive firebreak around the charred and smoking remains of what had so recently been Mahmud’s house, a feat which they accomplished by painstakingly setting fire to eight of the surrounding residences. Curious onlookers who dared to inquire what the two were up to were brusquely told to “stay out of the way”, and “leave the god-damned firefighting to the professionals.”

Throwing caution to the wind, I ran back to my house, gathered up my garden hose, dragged it back over to the scene of the fire, screwed it onto the neighbor’s spigot, turned the water on, and aimed the nozzle’s stream at the building’s smoldering, teetering frame. Within a matter of seconds, the added weight of the water I was applying brought the entire structure down with a resounding crash.

Just then, the fire department arrived at last to extinguish the cataclysmic inferno. Once the smoke had finally cleared, preliminary estimates of the damage were found to be in excess of 12 million dollars (not to mention the loss of my own home). Yesterday afternoon, the fire marshal launched his formal enquiry into the cause of the fire. While each of my neighbors rendered him a slightly different version of events as they unfolded in the wee hours of Saturday morning, there was one thing they all agreed on - my hasty decision to pour water on the fire was undoubtedly the proximate cause of the building’s collapse. My attorney called me on my cell phone this morning to inform me that I have, to date, been named as a defendant in no fewer than 43 separate lawsuits. He also advised me that “Dick C.” has been seen circulating a petition that would prevent me, in perpetuity, from seeking to reside within a 25 mile radius of what is now commonly referred to as “ground zero”.

Needless to say, the momentous article I set out to write just four days ago is in a state of more or less permanent abeyance. As I’m currently residing on a public golf course, bathing in an irrigation canal, and living mostly on a diet of lizard eggs and hawthorn berries, I can’t say for sure when (if ever) I’ll have the chance to finish it…

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at markwbradley@comcast.net

There Are No Accidental Winners

2007-01-08T09:41:00.000-08:00

When it comes to geo-politics and war, there are no accidental winners, but rather those who profit by design.  The best history teachers teach their students to “follow the money” when looking for the “why” of historical events.  Our invasion of Iraq is no different, although we didn’t have to wait decades for the “why” to become clear.

Amidst the media attention surrounding the bungled execution of Saddam Hussein and the anticipation of the details (rhetoric) of Bush’s “new way forward” in Iraq, the real story is the new law coming before the Iraqi Parliament this week that will open the oil spigots, allowing foreign oil companies (from the US and Britain of course) to seize control of Iraqi oil despite Bush’s repeated assurances that, “that oil belongs to the Iraqi people.”  But what our president says and what he does are often at odds.

Are we really to believe that the American oil companies that have been drooling for decades over the prospect of getting their greedy little hands on Iraqi oil fields are getting their chance purely by accident?  That with oil(y) men like Dick Cheney and the Bush boys at the helm, this war that made no sense to anyone outside their inner circle was not executed for this very purpose?  Sorry, but I’ve had several great history teachers in my life and I’m not buying that load of bull.

Now, what the rest of us have to come to terms with is that there are direct benefits to us once American interests take over the flow of Iraqi oil.  Yes it’s ugly, but it’s also true.  Even though this administration lied to Congress and to the American people about their reasons for invading Iraq, all of us, even the supporters of this war, had to know the truth, that this is a resource war.  We are rabid consumers of oil and we need more to sustain the lifestyle that we’ve become accustomed to.  We may not want to admit it, but it was either this (invading a sovereign nation and stealing their resources) or making adjustments to our lavish American lifestyle and, god forbid, practicing conservation and embracing sacrifice for the greater good.

Bush and Cheney made the choice for us, but like every other choice they’ve made, it wasn’t made with our best interests in mind.  They are steeped in the crude world, it is what they know and it is where their wealth comes from (well, that and greedily feasting at the public trough).  They can’t see a future without oil, but increasingly, the rest of us can’t see a future with it.

During the funeral services for Gerald Ford, there was a lot of talk about America getting “the right leader at the right time”, like Washington refusing the title of King, Lincoln fighting to preserve the Union, FDR inspiring the country out of a depression, Ford healing the partisan wounds after Nixon, but what we have now is the worst possible leadership for our times.  It’s almost as if we’re living through history’s little practical joke.  What we need more than anything is a radical realignment of how we produce and consume energy.  What we need is leadership that isn’t afraid to look forward.  We need a president that is able to absorb information, that has respect for science and that believes in the possibility of a better future on this planet.

What we don’t need is Bush, a man of questionable intellect, that lacks curiosity and that believes in fairy tale endings where the magic man in the sky will return to Earth and hoover up the true believers and install them in heaven.  What the fuck were we thinking?

You’ve Been A Bad Boy, No Allowance For You!

2007-01-05T10:37:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was an historic day with Nancy Pelosi sworn in as the first woman Speaker of the House.  Speaker Pelosi has made me proud to be a woman, now I hope she can make me proud to be a Democrat again.

I was thinking yesterday about how the Vietnam War changed this country’s view of what constitutes a winnable war, both militarily and politically.  The way in which the Vietnam War was handled by our elected officials and the fallout from the multiple disastrous decisions made (and not made) along the way must have had at least some personal impact on Democrats now serving in Congress, and I wonder how that will influence their tactics when dealing with the Iraq occupation.  History has proved that we should have stayed away from Vietnam and that once there, we stayed too long in an effort to avoid the inevitable.  We now find ourselves in nearly exactly the same situation, but this time, we aren’t in uncharted waters.

We have the benefit of hindsight this time around and despite the constant flow of White House rhetoric designed to ignite the “American spirit” of never give up that our obstinate president mistakenly takes to mean a free pass for whatever imperial exploit he cooks up in his little head, the American people have had enough.  We The People aren’t eager to repeat one of the biggest mistakes in our history as a country, and I’m starting to get the sense that Congressional Democrats are recognizing that they don’t either.

Cutting off funding for the war is the only power the Congress officially has that could stop this nightmare and Speaker Pelosi has said, like impeachment, that option is off the table.  But she is no shrinking violet, nor is she unaware of how the failure of Congress to stop the Vietnam War could provide the perfect cover for pulling the only lever they have to end the Iraq occupation.  Regardless of how Republicans may feel about John Kerry, his heartbreaking question to Congress almost 25 years ago strikes a chord in all of us, and sadly it is even more pertinent today, “How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”  When contemplating that question, Party affiliation doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.  That’s where the American people are and Congress better get there quickly, but that will require some pretty gutsy moves by the Democrats.  I know, it’s been a while, but ramp up slowly and it won’t be as painful as you might imagine.

New!!! Improved!!! More is More…

2007-01-04T08:54:00.000-08:00

Guest Post by Man of American Dissent

What does one do with a product that’s reaching the end of it’s life cycle, waning in popular appeal, oversold and perhaps even baited and switched one too many times? One answer is to reinforce the brand and make the product more modern and relevant. New and improved!!! Experience the difference. Ride the wave! Feel the surge! If current accounts are accurate, the Bush administration is about to blitz us with Stay The Course version 2.0. Now with more troops inside!

I don’t know about you, but when I reach into a bag of “New and Improved!” Cheezitoz snack food product, all I get is a bigger mouthful of the same old junk. To top it off, I wind up with an even more intense version of that bright orange dust all over my shirt and hands. I have the feeling that the same will be true if more troops are deployed to Iraq. The painful difference is that we’ll be dealing with even more blood on our hands as a result of what we have allowed our government to do. This plan is like the “New Coke” of policy, but worse. Problem number one is that there’s no classic formula that everyone already loves to revert to. Problem number two is that in the mid-term elections, the people spoke and escalating the conflict in Iraq is the exact opposite of what We The People have said that we want.

Let’s boycott this marketing campaign. I certainly am not buying that this “new way forward” is anything less than a “New!” agenda, now with 50% more failure. There’s only one way to move forward. We need to pull the administration’s head out of its ass so that it will stop running circles in the dark. The Democrats are taking their place in the majority in the House and Senate. Now is the time to keep them honest and make sure that our country adopts and implements a policy in Iraq that yields political and civil stability. Call and write your Senators and Congresspeople. Let them know “It’s the War Stupid.”.

Bush And His Barrels Full Of Bull

2007-01-03T09:20:00.000-08:00

There is much to be disgusted with in Bush’s Op-Ed in The Wall Street Journal today, but I’ll just pick out a few of the nuggets that pissed me off the most.  I won’t even bother with the fact that no one should listen to this man or his opinions considering he’s been wrong about everything, big and small, since taking office six years ago.  And since he virtually ignored his quagmire in Iraq, except to conflate Iraq with 9/11, I guess I will too, at least for today.

One of my favorite quotes in this op-ed comes with his justification for cutting government programs in order to give more tax cuts (to the already wealthy of course).  Bush explains, “I believe government plays an important role in helping those who can't help themselves. Yet we must always remember that when people are hurting, they need a caring person, not a government bureaucracy.”

When Man of American Dissent and I were new parents, adjusting to living on one income, it wasn’t a caring person that helped pay our electric bill, it was a government “bureaucracy” instituted by a caring government that did that.  It wasn’t a caring person that provided milk, cereal and dried beans to feed our child, it was WIC, a government “bureaucracy” that did that.  And it wasn’t a caring person that provided me with money to finish my college education so that I help provide a better future for my family, it was federal grants and federal student loans that made that possible.

It’s great to have caring people around us to help out when we need emotional support, but it is critical that we organize our government in a way that allows those who need it most, to access it easily.  Government programs work, especially if you have caring people supporting them.  If George Bush cared a little more about our government, and by extension the people our government serves, perhaps so many Americans wouldn’t be struggling to make ends meet and constantly fearing the possibility that the programs that are essential to our personal survival will be slashed or worse, done away with altogether.

This op-ed is just one more example of how out of touch our president is with the American people and with reality.  We want to know when he’s going to give up on his dilusion of “winning” in Iraq.  We want to know when the healthcare crisis is going to be addressed!  We want to know what is going to be done about the hemorrhaging of family wage jobs flowing away from our shores.  And there is no way in hell we trust this president with a line item veto!  It would just be one more power for him to abuse.

Perhaps the most disgusting part of this piece is the audacity of this president’s continuing effort to push the mythical connection between Iraq and 9/11.  It’s infuriating to have our president constantly lying to us, but it’s insulting when he tells the same debunked lie over, and over again.  What’s next, a press conference showing the video of Saddam hanging with a caption that reads “Final Justice For Osama bin Laden”?  He may be just that stupid, but the number of us that are willfully ignorant of this president’s failures, is shrinking.  By playing the same, sad hand, Bush will only accelerate his race to the bottom.  I still can’t believe it’s taken him this long to get there.

Some Thoughts on the Final Two Years of George W. Bush’s Presidency

2006-12-31T13:35:00.000-08:00

A guest post by Mark W. Bradley

Like nervous passengers on a roller-coaster carelessly assembled by a toothless carney bearing a broken crescent wrench in one hand and a canning jar full of homemade amphetamines in the other, the American people are finally starting to notice, with growing alarm, every fissure in every bolt that holds the rickety structure together, even as they fly helplessly past each one at breakneck speed. Perhaps they should have paid a little more attention to the fine print on their Diebold “optical scanner” ballot stubs that reads “Bush Brothers / Barnam and Cheney - Ride at your own risk.” Oh well, three laps behind us now, one lap to go. Hold onto your cookies, and whatever you do, don’t look down. Here are a few random thoughts to distract you during the last few harrowing dips and turns.

1. First of all, I have some advice for all of you aspiring presidential “talent scouts” out there. When it comes time for you to make your obligatory pilgrimage to Yale University with an eye toward selecting the next Intrepid Leader of the Free World, this time around make sure you interview all potential candidates on the “short” bus, not just the guy who sits next to the driver reading comic books out loud, and regaling other passengers with his realistic sounding fart noises. Remember, just because someone starts out with an I.Q. of 72 doesn’t necessarily mean it will stay that high forever. A steady diet of cocaine and Jack Daniels, for instance, can kill brain cells at an alarming rate. So while it’s true that every presidential handler worth his or her salt knows how difficult it is to control the behavior of someone whose intelligence qualifies him as “gifted”, it’s also important to remember that this is equally true of Irish Setter puppies who have eaten too much lead paint, for precisely the opposite reason.

2. Secondly, in retrospect, it probably wasn’t such a good idea for Dick Cheney’s elementary school teachers to allow the other children to beat him unconscious with shoes, rocks, and coat-hangers every day at recess. While this may have been standard operating procedure in Wyoming schools at the time, it now seems painfully obvious that such treatment inevitably led to more, not less, anti-social behavior on the part of the future vice-president. In particular, the persistent beatings appear to have fostered in him a significantly diminished capacity for human empathy, coupled with a morbid (yet detached) curiosity regarding the ability of others to withstand the sustained application of protracted and excruciating pain. Perhaps imposing occasional “timeouts” on the misguided boy might have resulted in a less catastrophic outcome for Mr. Cheney in particular, and for Earth and its neighboring planets in general.

3. Thirdly, I have recently come to realize that once a person learns to operate a chainsaw safely and correctly, cutting brush can be a satisfying, manly career for anyone who likes the great outdoors and enjoys strenuous but stress-free physical activity. Assuming you have the requisite aptitude, you, too, could become an “expert” brush cutter in just a few weeks, thus filling up otherwise empty spans of useless time, even as you indulge your energetic mind in endeavors of a more contemplative nature - such as planning exciting bike trips, memorizing clever bits of bathroom humor, and crafting vacuous and unimaginative nicknames for people you barely know.

4. Finally, it strikes me as an unfortunate twist of fate that Saddam Hussein and George W. Bush were deprived of the opportunity to be friends as children. Had they grown up together designing explosive suppositories for hapless animals on the mean streets of Sao Paulo, for instance, they might have become nothing more dangerous than a couple of gun-toting pimps whose combined total of cowardly and ignoble homicides might have numbered in the mere dozens. What an untold blessing that would have been.

Unfortunately (barring any unforeseen good fortune), we’re stuck with these two festering pustules of distemper (Bush and Cheney, I mean) for at least the next two years (perhaps more, should they choose to avail themselves of the ominous machinery of martial law they have so painstakingly constructed over the past six years). Fortunately, we can draw some measure of comfort from the fact that we are all precariously cradled in the misleadingly anthropomorphized imaginary “hands” of an entirely fictitious pseudo-deity whose lack of actual existence, by definition, makes it impossible for him/her/it to give even the tiniest modicum of a shit one way or the other whether we pathetic humans thrive amidst plenty, or perish without a trace.

But try not to think about any of that, and have a nice day.

Mark W. Bradley is a history teacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at markwbradley@comcast.net

A New Way Forward Toward A Mystery Goal That Was Only Ever A Mirage

2006-12-27T13:51:00.000-08:00

I am eagerly awaiting President Bush’s State of the Union address, first of all because there is always that WTF moment in every one of his speeches to the country (think “switch grass” and “animal human hybrids” and “steroids in baseball” in the midst of a failing war) but secondly, because I’m curious to see if the American people will see through his “new way forward in Iraq”. A slogan is not a policy, but the Bush administration is still ignorant to that fact.

While Tony Snow digested his Christmas turkey, Scott Stanzel took to the podium and gave this nugget to the press:

“President Bush will talk soon to our troops, to the American people and to the Iraqi people about the new way forward in Iraq that will lead to a democratic and unified country that can sustain, govern, and defend itself.”

Still aiming high eh?

Bush and the American people have never exactly been on the same page when it came to Iraq, I mean really, what interest did most of us have in using our children to avenge a failed attempt on his father’s life? But now that we have sparked a civil war in Iraq, and more and more of our young men and women are coming home without their limbs, or worse, in body bags, we recognize that there is no winning while the President still shoots for the moon.

If there was ever a common goal, it was supporting our troops while they are in harms way, but increasingly, the American people recognize that the only way to support our troops is to get them the hell out of Iraq. Meanwhile, rumor has it that Bush will argue for sending in more troops. And why? Certainly not because “winning” in Iraq is possible, or even because it is in our country's best interest, but because he must stay the course to save his legacy. Again, what interest do the rest of us have in that?

It is dangerous to have a President at the helm whose sole concern is his place in history. The troops on the ground in Iraq don’t care about that, nor do the General’s, the Joint Chiefs or the American people. If, in his State of the Union address, President Bush puts his desires above everyone else’s and proposes a troop surge to create a “democratic and unified” Iraq, he will prove that he is unfit to lead. I, for one, can’t wait to see what we do about that.

Are The Blinders Finally Coming Off?

2006-12-22T13:10:00.000-08:00

My schedule has been a little bit out of whack since the big windstorm here in Seattle last week.  My writing haven, a covered deck in the back yard rigged up with an outlet for my laptop (and a door to the cold outside between me and my kids), was ripped apart and I couldn’t seem to get my rhythm right.  So instead of reading news online, I was watching the cable news shows and although I felt less informed, I was encouraged by what I was seeing and hearing.

Mere weeks ago, the pundits and Bush administration surrogates (and apologists) were still putting a happy face on the Iraq occupation.  What a difference an election makes.  I was watching MSNBC earlier this week and I heard words like “delusional” and “impeachment” used in reference to President Bush, and that was on Joe Scarborough’s show!  There seems to be a fear setting in amongst Republicans and pundits that what those of us on the left have been saying for years, just might be true.  Namely that this President is crazy!  He is an End Times believer and an ideologue and he is in charge of our foreign policy!  It’s about time they started questioning his fitness to lead this country.

Bush’s “go it alone” mentality is no longer viewed as a positive, but rather as a sign that he has become completely isolated and his determination to stay the course in Iraq is increasingly seen as delusional, a word I’ve been using to describe dear leader for a long time.  I never believed that he was “listening to the commanders on the ground” and now it is becoming clear that he wasn’t.  His plan to send more troops into Iraq in an effort to secure (at least) Baghdad is insane and criminal.  No one (except the President) thinks there is any winning in Iraq, and sending more of our young people to die for an effort that is already lost is the same as shooting them himself, and more and more Republicans are wary of being accomplices to that kind of crime.

It was Republicans that made it possible to rid our government of Nixon, and it will be Republicans that finally rid us of Bush.  It’s about time they opened their eyes to the horror that is the Bush presidency and I’m encouraged that they now seem to be as scared as I am by this president’s inability to listen to reason and his determination to listen only to the voices in his head.  If Bush does in fact decide to ignore the advice of his Joint Chiefs, commanders on the ground, former Secretary of State, Congress and 88% of the American people and send more troops into Iraq, will that finally be the last straw?  Please let it be, and let it also destroy the careers of all the politicians, public servants, pundits and “reporters” that refuse to take their fingers out of the holes in the damn.

Everybody’s Doing It

2006-12-21T23:52:00.000-08:00

I had to laugh when I read the results of an exhaustive study on the sexual behavior of Americans. Can you believe it? 9 out of 10 Americans surveyed have engaged in premarital sex! It seems ludicrous that we would need to spend time and money to prove what most of us (9 out of 10 apparently) already know, but with the regressive Bush regime ramming abstinence only education down our throats, clearly spending the time and money was necessary.

I watched Tucker Carlson’s show on Wednesday and he led with a teaser on this story, asking the inane question, “What do these results tell us about our society?” I don’t know about you, but the first thing that occurred to me is that we apparently share this country with a bunch of hypocritical Christians. Speaking in round numbers, if approximately 90% of the American people consider themselves Christian, then at best, 80% of them are sinners in the eyes of their God. Forgive the rest of us for not wanting to legislate your particular brand of morality when you can’t even follow it yourselves.

I also heard Mr. Carlson on his show, pushing the meme that liberals hate abstinence education. We don’t hate abstinence education, what we hate is the head in the sand approach of “abstinence ONLY” education when dealing with our children. As a parent, I am all for teaching abstinence first to our teenagers, but ignoring the reality that they are hormonally charged little sex bandits is just plain stupid and we better arm them with as much information as we can about how to protect themselves if (or rather when) they do decide to have sex.

Christmas, Consumerism And Consequences

2006-12-20T12:00:00.000-08:00

This time of year is always a bit crazy and this year is no different. I haven’t had much of a chance to blog lately since I’ve been caught up in the Christmas rush. Both my husband and I come from families that love to celebrate Christmas and that love to give and receive presents and even though every year we swear we are going to downsize our next Christmas, it never seems to work out that way. So the last several weeks have been taken up with shopping, creating, wrapping and shipping gifts all across the country. We’re now done with that part, but since we have kids, there’s plenty left to do.

I try to live my life in a way that reflects my view of the world. I drive a biodiesel fueled VW bug that gets about 50 miles to the gallon, I give money to leftist organizations and local charities, I contribute time to causes that are important to me and I try not to consume too much in this consumer driven economy. That last one is the most difficult by far.

This year, we convinced our kids to give up their Christmas presents from us, and instead, use the money to buy gifts for children at their school that don’t have all that they need, let alone what they want. It wasn’t as hard a sell as I thought it was going to be and I was thrilled at the prospect of less shopping and less crap cluttering up my children’s rooms. But Santa Claus still comes to our house so I wasn’t let off the hook completely.

This past week has been crazy in Seattle. We had a major windstorm blow through and it caused damage and power outages all throughout the area. Living in a high-density area (not to mention an affluent zip code, which I hope doesn’t matter but I suspect it does), we were lucky to only be without power for a few hours, but the surrounding areas weren’t so lucky and many (200,000 at last count) are still without power and it’s damn cold here at night. I can’t help but think that the severe weather we’ve experienced this year in Seattle is related to global warming and I keep thinking about what Al Gore described as “the age of consequences” in his film An Inconvenient Truth. If fall is the new winter, I’m a little afraid of what tomorrow, the first day of winter, will bring.

Anyway, back to the Christmas stuff. I was running around, trying to finish up the Christmas shopping, which was a challenge with so many stores without power, and the one thing my kids wanted from Santa was the one thing the stores were out of. I called Man of American Dissent and had him check out what stores were open and what stores had the item in question and had him check the traffic situation as well. Having spent two hours stuck in traffic the night before in what should have been a ten-minute drive, I wasn’t eager to experience that again. When he called me back, the news wasn’t good. Wal-Mart had the item, in exactly the configuration we wanted, for $100 less than anyone else and it was a straight shot, no traffic. I could have killed him for even looking at Wal-Mart as an option.

So I got in my bio-bug, and headed for the freeway. Traffic was at a standstill heading South, but I was heading North to the suburbs on my way to Wal-Mart. As I sat at the light waiting to get on the onramp, I thought about my kids and all that they have. I thought about them giving up their presents and what that meant to them and I thought about diminishing that by rewarding them with stuff purchased from a store that makes their money by crushing small businesses and denying their employees health benefits. And as the light turned green, I envisioned my bio-bug with its “dubya, dubya, dubya dot liar dot con” and “Bio-diesel: No War Required” bumper stickers sitting in the Wal-Mart parking lot as I shopped for items my kids don’t need, and I just couldn’t do it. I turned left instead of right, waiting in the traffic with everyone else and slowly made my way to one last store in hopes of finding the one thing my kids wanted at a price that wasn’t so high.

I heard Thom Hartman say once on his radio show that we can’t shame the consumer for playing by the rules. I agree. We have to change the rules instead. We can’t allow the largest employer in the country to skate by not paying their fair share and we can’t continue to be a consumer-based economy, producing nothing, shipping our best jobs overseas and not protecting our workers here at home. It is Congress that needs to act, in providing universal healthcare, in enacting fair trade policy and in eliminating the corporate loopholes that allow corporations like Wal-Mart to thrive at the expense of the rest of us.

I decided a long time ago, never to shop at Wal-Mart again, but they make it so easy to say yes and so damn hard to say no. I almost shelved my principles for an evening because I was caught up in the Christmas consumption frenzy, the same frenzy I swear not to succumb to every year. I’m lucky though, choosing not to shop at Wal-Mart one night only cost me time and money that I could afford to give. If I’m a single mom, living paycheck-to-paycheck, trying to provide for my family on a shoestring budget with a 24 hour Wal-Mart right down the street, I don’t really have the luxury of shopping my principles.

As consumers, we can only do so much, but as citizens and voters we can hold our representatives accountable for what they do and what they don’t do. We can as individuals choose to consume less, but Congress needs to make sure that we, as a country, produce more. We must invest in this country, respect the American worker, enact fair tax policy and negotiate fair trade deals. Where we choose to spend our money matters, but it matters less than who we put in office and what they do once they get there. I won’t shop at Wal-Mart, but what I really want is for Congress to finally do their job and regulate how Wal-Mart does business. Only then will we see any real and lasting change.

You’re Not An Abused Puppy, You’re Majority Leader!

2006-12-18T10:23:00.000-08:00

Why would Harry Reid, incoming Senate Majority Leader, even consider providing cover for President Bush? This administration is trying desperately to come up with a plan (any plan) that will allow them to continue to occupy Iraq under the guise of “spreading democracy” that doesn’t look to the public like “staying the course”. The newest idea floating out of the White House is sending more American troops into Baghdad to help quell the civil war that is now in full stride. Even if we had the troops to send, it wouldn’t do a damn bit of good, it would only result in more American lives lost. At this point we have few options left, we can either choose a side in Iraq’s civil war, leave our troops in the middle taking fire from both sides or get the hell out. The American people voted for getting the hell out when they put the Democrats in charge of Congress. Harry Reid better get that straight.

President Bush is floundering, he’s got little or no support from the American people, he’s lost his rubber stamp Congress, not to mention the firewall against investigation of the lead up and execution of this war that the GOP Congress provided. In short, Bush is in trouble and I can’t figure out what Harry Reid gets out of supporting yet another White House fantasy, especially one that includes putting more of our young men and women in harms way.

Even if we didn’t like it, we could at least understand why the Democrats didn’t stand up to the President when they were in the minority, but now that they’ve actually acquired some power, there’s no reason to continue to roll over for this President. Majority Leader Reid better shed his abused dog mentality quickly and get on with what the American people elected the Democrats to do. Force this administration to engage diplomatically with Iraq’s neighbors, negotiate a peace and get our troops out of Iraq! If that doesn’t work, impeach the bastard, but under no circumstances should any more of his hair-brained schemes be met with anything other than condescending laughter. Neuter him and get on with mopping up his mess, but do not pretend that he has anything constructive to contribute. Sending more troops to Iraq is as dumb as it sounds and Harry Reid shouldn’t be afraid to say so.

Curious George Grows Curiouser and Curiouser

2006-12-15T00:05:00.000-08:00

A guest post by Mark W. Bradley

Now that the arduously compiled findings of the Iraq Study Group have been presented to a grateful nation (and summarily discarded by our decider-in-chief), the American people find themselves eagerly anticipating the next glorious chapter in what is beginning to look like the 21st Century’s answer to the Hundred Years War. Aside from President Bush’s pessimistic projections as to the probable duration of the current conflict, however, it would be a mistake to draw further comparisons between it and the aforementioned medieval war between England and France. The “Dark Lord” Richard Cheney, for example, can hardly be compared to the 14th Century’s “Black Prince” Edward Plantagenet, who was probably responsible for the snuffing of no more than 12,000 innocent lives across the entire length and breadth of France. For the vice-president, that’s nothing more than a moderately successful holiday weekend.

Yet inasmuch as our court-appointed war president is determined to seek any and all expert advice that bolsters his predetermined course of action in the Middle East, it is clearly the patriotic duty of every American to fall-in-line behind the administration and help provide the necessary “facts on the ground” to justify this policy as expeditiously as possible, so that our government can get on with the difficult work of killing everyone in the world who disagrees with it.

With this can-do spirit in mind, I recently asked the 8th graders at the middle school where I teach to come up with as many “facts” as possible to support the president’s strategery in Iraq. I assured the students from the outset that no idea, regardless of how ludicrous it appeared on the surface, would be rejected out-of-hand. I encouraged them to “think outside the box”, and promised extra credit for those who came up with ideas that transcended the bounds of conventional reality.

So without further ado, here are the results of our school’s exhaustive search for a “New Way Forward” in Iraq. A sampling of the proposed solutions contained in this historic document are presented below in simple “Q and A” format, which the children felt would be most user-friendly to the president. Since the spelling and syntax of junior high students tends to be a bit confusing to the uninitiated, I have taken the liberty of paraphrasing a few excerpts from the report:

“How to Win the War in Iraq Without Loosing it at the Same Time”
by
The Students of James Buchanan Middle School

(excerpt from page 7):

Q: The results of the 2006 elections strongly indicate that the American people are in favor of withdrawing our troops from Iraq as soon as possible. How can the president accomplish this goal without seeming to reverse his ongoing policy?

A: President Bush can withdraw any number of troops he chooses from Iraq and still have a force large enough to kill everybody in the country. In fact, the more troops he withdraws, the more he’ll have there! All he has to do is make sure that when he subtracts troops from the total, he subtracts a negative number. For example, if he starts out with a force level of 150,000 troops and then subtracts (-50,000), he’ll still have 200,000 in Iraq! (Thanks to Mrs. Probity’s algebra class for a very creative solution to this thorny problem.)

(excerpt from page 9):

Q: Some people say that the armed forces of the United States just can’t sustain current force levels without resorting to a military draft. If that’s true, who should be the first in line to serve?

A: One of the biggest obstacles to victory our country faces in Iraq is the so-called “peace movement” here at home. What with all the defeat-o-crat candidates swept into office during the recent elections, it’s a wonder our president can accomplish anything at all. In order to prevent similar outcomes in future elections, we propose that single women should be the first demographic targeted by any conscription effort. After all, they constitute the largest and most reliable voting block the Democrat Party has in its “cut and run” arsenal. The more of them you send to Iraq, the fewer will be left behind to undermine the war effort at home. (Kudos to Coach Dunderhead and the Boys’ Wrestling Team for this excellent suggestion.)

(excerpt from page 14):

Q: What innovative military strategies should the Pentagon adopt to insure a positive outcome for the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan?

A: The real problem here has been that the generals in charge keep looking for a “new” military solution in the Middle East, when they should be looking at an “old” one. Let’s face it, the last successful invasion of Afghanistan by Westerners was accomplished by Alexander the Great of Macedon in 330 B.C. Why not employ (with certain modifications) the tactics he used? Imagine a twelve-mile long phalanx of female aerobics instructors dressed in horsehair-crested helmets, leotards and leather shields advancing with their finely-honed javelins on a defenseless army of bewildered Talibani. What could the misogynistic miscreants do but flee in terror? In all likelihood, the entire country would be pacified in a matter of weeks, and we would be free to redeploy our Amazon Warriors to out-terrorize the terroristic enemies of freedom on the rubble-strewn streets of Baghdad. (Answer courtesy of Mrs. Petulana Bellacosa’s world history class.)

If you (or any member of your family) find these arguments compelling, perhaps you (or they) should consider a career with the State Department or the DOD. To obtain copies of the complete report, please contact our new vice-principal, Mr. John Bolton, c/o James Buchanan Middle School, 911 Deadend Street, Carthage, TX.

Mark W. Bradley is a schoolteacher and political satirist in Sacramento, California. He can be contacted at: markwbradley@comcast.net

What’s This War Doing Here?

2006-12-14T10:49:00.000-08:00

Bush talked with reporters yesterday about “how to win a war that we now find ourselves in” as if we just “happened” to stumble upon a war while we were out minding our own business. It seems that even the President, the “decider” that took us to war with manufactured evidence and lies, is attempting to run away from his disastrous war of choice. No wonder he’s postponed his big speech on Iraq, he and his political advisors need more time to figure out how to outrun the stink hovering around him.

The Washington Post reported a few weeks ago that Dick Cheney was effectively summoned to Saudi Arabia to receive a stern warning that if the US pulls out of Iraq, the Saudis will go in to protect the Sunnis. The trip was originally billed as Cheney on a diplomatic mission (an oxymoron if I’ve ever heard one) to get the Saudis to cough up money for the reconstruction effort in Iraq, but a few days later the story changed to Dick having to sit still for a dressing down by the Saudis. Better watch out Dick, I haven’t seen the President hold your hand in public, but we’ve all seen him holding hands with then Prince (now King) Abdullah as they strolled along the shady lanes of Crawford.

I’m disappointed that we’ll have to wait until the new year to hear Bush’s “new way forward” in Iraq, but it’s not at all surprising that he needs more time to put together a campaign to market staying the course as something new. He bristled yesterday that he “won’t be rushed” into making a decision on Iraq, after all, he has many interests to consider, the Saudi interests, the American oil company interests, the neo-con interest and most of all his personal interest in remaining disconnected from anything resembling reality. Whatever substance his puncture proof bubble is made of, he should consider using it to surround Baghdad. Not even an RPG could penetrate that.

No More Treading Water, It’s Time To Swim

2006-12-13T09:30:00.000-08:00

I’ve got a lot on my plate today and may not get a chance to blog until later (if at all), but I wanted to direct you to a great essay from one of my new favorite blogs, The English Teacher. In his post The Mothers of Democracy: Progressives, Activists, and the Future of the Party, he takes on the “liberal” versus “progressive” debate and encourages us to look back at our history in order to strengthen the movement as we prepare to take action in creating a better future for our country.

During the Bush years, we have expended so much energy in just trying to hold on that we haven’t had the luxury of looking ahead, let alone planning action that could make a positive difference in the continuing development of our country. Liberalism is not about maintaining the status quo and now that we finally have some breathing room with Congress no longer completely in the hands of the GOP, it’s time to start moving forward. We must begin the necessary process of realigning our thinking in a way that both honors the tradition of liberalism and that will make us more effective in instituting real and lasting change. I found The English Teacher’s essay to be the perfect starting point. I hope you do too.

“A New Way Forward” Is Just Orwellian Speak For Window Dressing

2006-12-12T09:58:00.000-08:00

With President Bush set to give a major speech on Iraq sometime before Christmas, we could be much closer to real talk of impeachment than ever before. Nancy Pelosi said before the midterm elections that impeachment was “off the table” but even she may not be able to stop the process from starting if the public reacts badly to the “new direction” the President is set to propose for Iraq. With only 21% of the public still supporting a continuation of the occupation of Iraq, the stage is set for a revolt within the Republican ranks if what the President proposes appears to be nothing more than window dressing.

All news out of the White House suggests that “staying the course” is exactly what the President intends to do. The Iraq Study Group’s report has sparked a new campaign in the White House, not to implement substantive changes to the policy, but rather to re-sell the Iraq War to the American people. Bush seems to still believe his own rhetoric and he gives every indication that he’s still convinced of the rightness of his mission and remains confident, despite all evidence to the contrary, that given enough time, he can make it work. Anyone with half a brain can see that winning in Iraq is no longer an option and if the Bush administration’s attempts to re-package the occupation fail, his fellow Republicans will pay the price. No one can win an election with only the support of the brain addled 21 percenters.

The case for impeachment has been made repeatedly and the illegal NSA domestic eavesdropping program authorized by the President is probably the best option on which to base a case, but in practice, impeachment isn’t a legal remedy, it’s a political one. Up to this point, talk of impeachment has been confined to the Left with legal scholars, constitutional lawyers and a few brave members of Congress weighing in, but the real threat to President Bush, is his own Party. This President will be impeached only if it becomes politically expedient for Republicans to support it, and if Bush chooses to stay the course while calling it a “new direction” and the American people don’t buy it, we may start to hear the “I” word tumbling out of the mouths of Republicans. Breaking the law, lying to Congress and the American people, and thwarting the constitution may not be compelling enough reasons for Republicans to consider impeaching this President, but breaking the Republican Party, well, that’s a whole other story.

George Bush Is A Failure Like No Other

2006-12-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

For anyone who’s read my blog before, the title of this post is redundant, I know, but now, for the first time since Bush was selected President in 2000, the country, the press and even most of the members of his own Party agree that not only have his policies failed, but that he himself is a failure as well. All we had to do was look at his track record to see that this was surely coming. He has failed at everything he’s attempted to do in his life, why would running (ruining?) this country be any different?

I’m struck, daily, by the change in tone of the discussions about Iraq and about Bush’s job performance in general. A few short months ago, Bush had his allies, on the Hill and in the press, on television every single day talking up the war and propping up this administration. Since the midterm elections, they all seem to have gone into their holes, hiding from their own lies that they willingly showered on the public. Many of us in the blogisphere have been screaming at the top of our lungs for the past year that this war is lost, but consensus takes time and even if it did take too long in my opinion, I’m glad to see the country unified in our distrust of, and disgust with, this President.

My gut tells me that the course in Iraq is set and Bush will not change his mind. He’s an obstinate, delusional boy with a dream and this boy has no regard for the fact that his dream has unleashed a nightmare on the rest of the world. This boy lives in his own reality (remember, according to them, the Bush administration creates their own reality) and his goal is at odds with what is best for this country as well as the one he has chosen to occupy. There may be a showdown in Congress and perhaps even within the Republican Party, but unless Bush is forced to accept defeat, he will continue to plug away at his plan to bring democracy to the Middle East at the barrel of a gun (and he’s not afraid to use it) leaving blood, death, mutilated bodies and devastated families in his wake.

The Iraq Study Group has presented its findings and charted a course for the President to follow. James Baker in testimony on the Hill yesterday said, "I hope we don't treat this as a fruit salad, and say, 'I like this but I don't like that.’" But with this President’s penchant for cherry picking, I think that is exactly what he will do with this report. Bush said as much yesterday in his press conference with Tony “lap dog” Blair. He will look at the report, pick just enough recommendations to implement in order to give the appearance that he’s listening to reason, and then go on his merry way shoveling more of our treasure into the sinkhole of Iraq in a quixotic attempt to save his legacy.

I’m having a hard time watching Republican Senators and Congressmen feign angst in front of the cameras as they pretend to come to terms with the devastating reality of what they have supported over the last few years. I don’t buy it for a second. Nothing in the Baker-Hamilton Report is news to them, they have known that this war is lost for a very long time, they just didn’t know that they’d be caught with their pants down and be forced to explain why they’ve been lying to the American people. Senator Gordon Smith, Republican from Oregon, gave a speech yesterday (TPM Muckraker has the transcript) in which he laments his collision with reality. He explains his silence regarding his concerns in how the Iraq occupation has been handled by quoting (several times) a soldier he met in Iraq who apparently told him, “Senator, don't tell me you support the troops and not our mission.”

Well Senator, if that is the logic that works for you, that makes such an impression as to silence you completely and prohibit you from voicing concerns about how this war has been handled, then try this one on for size. Don’t tell me you support this President and not “staying the course”. If you are going to stand on the floor of the Senate and support withdrawing our troops from Iraq (what those of us on the left have been advocating for all along), you don’t get to defend this President at the same time. You lament our having to pull our troops out of Iraq before the job is done, well you can lay this defeat squarely at the feet of President Bush. He failed in Iraq. He lied in order to get our troops there, he has lied every single day since in order to keep them there and you’d be hard pressed to cite one thing he’s done right in the execution of this war.

However bad an idea it was to go into Iraq in the first place, there were plenty of opportunities to make it turn out all right. This president could have studied history, he could have armed himself with knowledge of the region, he could have put the Iraqi people first and put them to work rebuilding their country, but instead he opened the doors to that country, invited his friends in to steal their resources while simultaneously collecting American taxpayer dollars for jobs not done. The premise was flawed and the execution was disastrous. While George Bush is no stranger to failure, I doubt even he knew he was capable of fucking up quite this badly. Anyone willing to give him the benefit of the doubt at this point is as obstinate and delusional as he is.

Having It All

2006-12-07T11:08:00.000-08:00

Don’t worry, I’m not going to suddenly shift gears and become a feminist blog (there are plenty of great ones already out there) and I will get back to the politics soon, but my own personal struggle with trying to organize my life in a way that satisfies my needs while simultaneously allowing me to contribute financially to my family and be there for my kids, has brought up a lot of issues that are worth exploring so I’m going to toss it out there today, just for fun.

I am a feminist and while my generation has benefited greatly from the movement, it is far from over and we have to find a way to provide further benefits to the generation behind us.  Choice is a huge part of the feminist agenda, choice of school, choice of career, choice of partner and of course, choice in whether or not we continue a pregnancy, but one thing that is less discussed, is the means to put our choices in a context that empowers us rather than simply leaves us feeling as if we must justify our choices.

One of the problems is that, as young women, we are taught that we can do anything in this country, but we are rarely given the whole picture much less the tools necessary to order our lives in a way that makes room for the things we must do, along with the things we choose to do.  Even if we believe in our ability to pursue any career we want, we are constantly reminded of the barriers we face.  There are aspects of women’s lives that are unique to our gender and while we have made great strides in transferring some of those responsibilities to the men in our lives, more men are taking on the day to day tasks of parenthood for example, we may never be able to transfer all of them, so instead, we must find a way to adjust our expectations of ourselves and accept that we simply start out with a lot on our plates.  We are important as mothers and caregivers and we cannot be replaced, so that leaves us trying to find a way to deal with the reality that we can only have it all, if we are willing and able to do it all.

Striking the right balance is the constant struggle of the American woman, but as I mentioned in a previous post, it's a high-class problem compared to what other women around the world face, but that fact makes it all the more difficult to discuss openly and honestly without feeling like we're whining.  I think many of us that grew up with feminist parents and influences have a difficult time ever feeling like we’re doing enough.  It was instilled in me that I could be anything I wanted to be if I simply worked hard, so I thought I’d be a lawyer (of course for the ACLU or The Southern Poverty Law Center) but I never contemplated how that would work with a family.  The reality is, I could become a lawyer, but at what cost to my family?  Obviously there are many women lawyers that are also fantastic wives and mothers, but that can’t be an easy life to manage and I’ve come to the conclusion that my own personal limitations prevent me from being able to do both well.

Choosing to be a stay at home mom in the post-feminist world, is a tricky bitch, and it took me years to be okay with being financially dependent on a man.  In fact, now that I’m finally making my own money, I’ve realized that I was never really that okay with it, I just learned to deal with the anger, frustration and powerlessness that came along with being in that situation.  In a country where our value is determined by our paychecks, it is difficult to feel valued without one, especially when you do it by choice.  I felt like I had to start from scratch in finding a way to reconcile my feminist ideals with my choice to be, essentially, a 50s housewife, the most reviled example of the oppressed female.  Nobody made me feel inferior for choosing not to return to work and instead staying home to raise my children, but I felt that way nonetheless.  We can tell women until we’re blue in the face that raising children is the most important job they will ever do and that we value their choice, but until we can help them find a way to believe it and provide an environment that proves we value motherhood through action rather than simply paying lip service to the idea, the compulsion to do too much, to be too much, to spread ourselves too thin, will continue to consume us.

Geniuses All

2006-12-06T12:29:00.000-08:00

Well, the Iraq Study Group finally presents their findings and what do you know, it turns out that Bush’s strategy in Iraq isn’t working and the situation there is dangerous and deteriorating. I’m so glad we put our best minds on the case. We could have saved a lot of time and money and asked my ten year old daughter how things are going in Iraq, she would have said the same thing, and a year ago at that! Unbelievable.

Even more unbelievable is the very real possibility that Bush still won’t listen (reason not being his strong suit and all) and this disastrous occupation will continue through the rest of his term (and if John McCain has his way, through eight years of a McCain presidency as well). This president is stubborn, obstinate and unable to get outside his own head enough to allow for the possibility that he isn’t the legend he thinks himself to be. This is a pivotal point, not to the extent that it matters what Bush decides to do with the information presented to him today, but insofar as his response to this report will make clear to the American people whether we as a country can survive the continuation of a Bush presidency. If he chooses to stay the course in Iraq, I don’t see how we can choose to do the same here at home. The cost is just too high.

An American Girl Trying To Find Her Way

2006-12-06T11:05:00.000-08:00

I have been a stay at home for the last ten years, not a job I ever envisioned myself doing, but a job I have done pretty well and have taken great pride in.  Financially speaking, choosing to stay at home and not go back to work after my daughter was born was a tough call and we definitely had to make sacrifices in order to make it work.  Through the Clinton years, we were able to take advantage of government programs that enabled us to claw our way into the middle class, even if it did take 10 years to get there.  I was able to go back to college, and by scrimping and saving, we were able to take some of my student loan money and pay for computer classes for my husband so that he could get a job that would support our growing family.

Things were tough back then, but we knew there was a way to make it though and there was even hope that we could come out the other end better off than before.  While I’m thankful that we were able to reach the promised land of middle class America, I can’t help but think of all the families that have had the bad luck to be struggling while George W. Bush is President.  Over the last six years, those programs that helped us find our way have been slashed or done away with completely and hope for a better future is in short supply.  Walking a tightrope without a net has a way of wearing you down and the stress of it all can eat you alive.  We had a net, young families today are not quite so lucky.

GOP domestic policies have not only made upward mobility virtually impossible, they have also made hanging on to middle class a constant struggle.  Like most good Americans, once we had enough money, we moved out of our rented apartment and bought a house of our own.  It’s great to have a home and a yard for the kids to play in, but holding onto it (again, without a net) is a whole other story.  One income is barely enough to get by, forget about putting money into a college fund for the kids, or luxury of luxuries, a retirement fund.  Good thing we’ve got Social Security right?!  Man, the future looks bleak.

So here I am, at the end of my stay at home mom years, at least as a full time gig, and I’m an unpaid blogger.  Not exactly an ideal situation.  I need to make money, but I also need to do something that I feel makes a difference in this world.  I’m struggling with trying to figure out how to make it all work.    Since there’s no money in blogging (at least not yet), I’ve had to start my own business.  Getting a job after being out of the workforce for 10 years, especially in this economy, simply wasn’t an option and the amount of money I would have had to make in order to pay for before and after school care for my kids and still come out ahead just wasn’t going to happen.  Besides, I want to be here when my kids get home, it’s hard to stay relevant in their lives as they get older and the best way I know to do that, is to be in their face as much as possible.  If they’re tripping over me, it’s harder for them to forget I’m here.

Why am I telling you all of this?  Because what I have is a high-class problem and as much of a struggle as middle class is these days, at least I made it, and all because I had the benefit of a government that worked at a critical time in my life.  Without it, I honestly don’t know where I’d be.

As much as the GOP likes to trash government, it has a role to play in our lives.  When government works properly and when it works for the people, it can mean the difference between hope and despair.  The Bush administration and the corrupt GOP controlled Congress have broken our government, just as they intended to.  It is bloated, inefficient and ineffective.  This administration has reorganized our government in the most dangerous of ways.  George Bush’s government has more authority than is legal in monitoring and restricting the rights of the American people while simultaneously giving up authority to regulate business (can you say Enron), protect the environment and serve the people of this country.  I hope we never again give the keys to our Capitol and our White House to men and women that have no respect for our government.  We’ve seen the damage they can do, I just hope we’ve learned from this horrific mistake.

Three Branches Of Government, Two Parties, One Decider

2006-12-04T10:51:00.000-08:00

The Bush administration is so corrupt and in such disarray that all this new Congress will be able to do is contain the damage and follow the ugly, sordid truth of the last six years.  Obviously, Iraq will be the main item on their agenda and all indications are that the President will continue to dig in his heels and press forward in his ill fated mission to “democratize” (read, turn over the management of Iraqi oil supplies over to American interests) Iraq.  His daddy’s pals may be trying to provide Junior with an out, but if he thinks that his legacy depends on “winning” in Iraq, he very well may stay the course.  What in his presidency would suggest “the decider” would do anything else?

The discredited neo-cons are whining that Bush took their great idea and messed it up, but that is just ass covering of the highest order.  The neo-cons simply don’t know what to do when their fantasy world collides with reality and we should make sure that they are forever branded with a scarlet N to signify the nutjobs they have proved themselves to be.

The Bush administration’s Holy War has spun out of control and the damage will last for generations, how many generations exactly will be determined by how quickly they can be forced to accept their failure in Iraq, because there is no winning and mitigating any further damage will only be possible once this obstinate administration is put down.  That can happen while Bush is still in office, but only if the Democrats are willing to flip the switch and take control, at the very least, of the public debate.

There are signs that traditional media may be ready to provide a forum for the Democrats to do just that.  Hell, even Tim Russert is trying to save face with his audiences by (finally) challenging the architects and executors of the Bush administration’s failed foreign policy.  As far as I’m concerned, Russert has already lost all credibility, but that he sees an opportunity to convince some of the American people that he is still relevant may prove to be a good thing.  After six years of a free pass, Russert’s attempts at confrontation of Bush administration officials may seem jarring enough to his audience to actually make an impression.

The reality on the ground in Iraq has made it impossible for anyone outside the Bush administration to continue to defend anything resembling a stay the course strategy.  Even John Bolton can recognize a lost cause when he sees one and now that he’s out as Ambassador to the UN, Bush is left holding the bag.  Our President can’t even convince his own Party that his policy in Iraq will work, so how in the hell could he possibly believe there is any way to convince the rest of the world?  Does he think he can manage that with his superior diplomatic skills?  I think not.

I like the synchronicity of finally being rid of John Bolton on the same day that Augusto Pinochet has a massive heart attack.  Both men have black hearts that appear to protect them from anything resembling introspection, remorse or empathy for their fellow (wo)man.  It’s true that power corrupts, but sometimes it’s simply a matter of evil rising to the top.  I don’t think these men were corrupted by the power they wielded, but rather sought power because they had an unquenchable desire to spread their vile ideology and conquer their corner of the world.  We’ll all be better off once men such as these are permanently denied any avenue to power or influence on world events.  That list is unfortunately, pretty long, but luckily many of them currently work in the Bush administration so they’ll be easy enough to find and neuter so they won’t be able to propagate their special brand of evil in the future.  Nature will take care of some of them, but political pressure and public action will be required to make sure the rest of them pay their debt to society and serve as a warning to future “public servants” with a desire to obtain power for the sole purpose of abusing that power for personal gain.

The Bush administration and Congressional Republicans hate government, it’s a cornerstone of their ideology, and they have had great success in destroying the institutions they were entrusted to protect and short changing the people they were sworn to serve.  The damage is so big and so deep and so wide that it will take many, many years to rebuild the many agencies and programs they infected.  Government is meant to serve the people and now that we have a Congress that at least believes in the government’s ability to do that, we should be on our way to a better day.  How good things get and how quickly that happens will still depend on how much effort we the people are willing to put into making that happen.

We can hope that the Democrats in the Senate and House provide a vision for a better future and we can even hope that a Presidential candidate emerges that will present a path that will take us there, but we must never again detach from our responsibilities as citizens the way we have in the recent past.  To make this country work, we must vote, we must educate ourselves on the issues and we absolutely must engage.  We have seen first hand the damage unchecked power can do and we must never again allow one branch of government to cede its power to another.

Common Sense Eludes The Talibangelicals Yet Again

2006-12-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

The American Family Association is shoveling a bunch of horseshit to their members and encouraging them to “take action” against Congressman Elect Keith Ellison for the simple act of daring to prefer to take his oath of office using the Koran instead of the Bible.  For a Muslim to take the oath of office by placing his hand on the Koran makes a hell of a lot more sense than him swearing on a Bible to uphold the Constitution.  It makes no sense at all, as far as I’m concerned, to bring religion into the swearing in process at all, but if we insist on continuing this outdated practice, we sure as hell better include all Holy Books as well as the option for none at all.

It’s not so much a question of fairness or an attempt to promote multiculturalism, which might as well be a four-letter word as far as the Christo-fascist brigade is concerned, but it is a matter of common sense.  If the purpose of using a Holy Book in the swearing in process is to use a member’s religious faith to further bind them to their promise to uphold the constitution and fulfill the duties of their office, then I sure as hell don’t want a Muslim placing his hand on the Bible while he’s sworn in.  If anything, that undermines his oath.

The whack-nut Right really must get over their obsession with America as a Christian nation.  It never has been and it never will be, and to advocate for it is quite literally un-American.

The Public Suffers Whiplash As The Media Turns On A Dime

2006-12-01T11:58:00.000-08:00

I’ve been having a hard time getting my bearings lately, partially due to the shift in the public debate that has been so sharp as to leave me reeling.  A mere month ago, the debate about Iraq was simplified by traditional media as “stay the course” versus “cut and run” with the Democrats playing the coward to Bush’s war hero.  What a difference a month makes.  Now, suddenly there is frank discussion by traditional media and the American people are finally being presented with the truth of just how bad things are in Iraq.  It must be a shock to those who don’t regularly get their news online, those of us that do have been aware of the scope of the disaster for some time.  For years, traditional media has all but ignored the reality of this Presidents failure in Iraq in favor of playing up the Bush administration’s false rosy picture of their democracy spreading.  When did it become the media’s job to insulate politicians from the effects of world events and the fallout from their own bad decisions?

It’s infuriating that honesty in reporting is dependent on where we are in the election cycle.  In the weeks leading up to the election, the violence in Iraq was attributed to terrorists, but in the weeks after the election, it is due to an escalating civil war.  Did the reality on the ground in Iraq change so dramatically over those weeks as to radically shift the debate, or was it simply that the corporate owned media held off on revealing the truth in an attempt to help the GOP, sorry, I mean not influence the outcome of the election?  Again, when did it become the job of the media to hold off bad news so as not to “influence” an election?

Aren’t we supposed to have access to accurate and reliable information so that we can make an educated decision when it comes to choosing our leaders?  Isn’t the press supposed to be the conduit for that information?  That we are seeing a more honest discussion about Iraq on television and in our newspapers now, after the election, just highlights the lack of an honest debate beforehand.  While I’m glad to see a more accurate picture of Iraq being presented to more people, I’m angry that so many were left out of the discussion, simply because they still trust that corporate “news” is an accurate, unbiased source of information.  Traditional media may provide that service sometimes, but that they don’t at critical times (arguably when it matters most), makes them unreliable and manipulative at best.  At worst, traditional media is simply a tool for powerful interests that have a dog in the fight, which leaves us to play the sheep.  If that’s the case, I’d almost prefer Fox News, at least they don’t bother with the sheep’s clothing.  I’d rather be driven off the cliff by a wolf than a wolf pretending to be one of us.

A Dollar Ain’t What It Used To Be

2006-11-29T11:29:00.000-08:00

Since the midterm elections have provided some much needed breathing room for those of us that felt as if the world was crashing down around us, and that a roundup of dissidents in this country was imminent, we now have the luxury of looking at the bigger picture.  The problem is, the big picture still looks pretty bleak.

I don’t know about you, but I’m very concerned about our economy and more specifically, the fairy tales that are being spun around it that seem more like a means for containing panic than an accurate picture of how “healthy” our economy is.  I’m not an economist, but common sense tells me that an economy based on spending and debt cannot remain stable forever and that the fall from the clouds will be painful indeed.  The dollar has hit a 15 year low now and I can’t see how that gets fixed without artificial enhancements that, in the end, are only fingers in the damn, holding off the inevitable.  There is a reason that working Americans have a very different opinion of the economy than the investor class, because we are already feeling the negative effects of a consumer based economy (fewer jobs, lower pay and perhaps most importantly, dwindling hope), but that pain will flow upward at some point.  Our futures are intertwined whether those at the top care to acknowledge it or not.

I really hope that the Democrats start talking about our two-tiered economy and the growing division between the haves and the have-nots, and I hope they talk about it loudly and often.  There are certainly signs that this will be a big issue in the ’08 Presidential election, at least on the Democratic side.  John Edwards was alone in his attention to what he describes as the “two Americas” in ’04, but he was clearly ahead of the curve.

I’ve heard Jim Webb say that addressing the gap between rich and poor is one of his main priorities once he takes his seat in the Senate, Barak Obama touches on it regularly and it is still the center of a John Edwards bid for President.  I hope this is an indication that the Democrats on the whole may finally be ready to go back to basics and champion the American worker and push a populist agenda.  The disparity of wealth in this country is sickening (and widening at an alarming rate under the Bush administration) and that is no longer just a liberal point of view.  Discussing the economy frankly and openly is not only the right thing to do, it also may prove to be politically advantageous to anyone willing to offer up a realistic picture of where we are, combined with a vision of where we ought to be.

Snowed-in In Seattle

2006-11-28T08:47:00.000-08:00

Guest Update By Man of American Dissent

It’s funny how less than an inch of snow and a touch of ice can shut down a major American city. As you may have read (or seen on Monday Night Football) we’re in a winter wonderland. LGND is “snowed in” with a spotty internet connection (thanks, Comcast) and some kids who are delighted to have a Snow Day. She’s going to be posting something as soon as possible.

We Have Frostbite From All The Polarization

2006-11-25T11:41:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week I was listening to Rush Limbaugh yammer on about the war in Iraq and those that want our troops out of that country. He calls the now 70% or so of us that are against continuing the occupation “the Left” and of course paints us as “America haters.” It must be nice to be Rush Limbaugh (and President Bush) and have the world easily divided into black and white so no thought is required. While I’m happy that Limbaugh thinks the Left in this country is so vast in numbers, his distortions of our motives are simplistic and dangerous.

Rush went on to explain to his audience that the Left is against any use of military force that furthers our national agenda. He claims that we are only for using our military in humanitarian efforts, but not in protecting our national interest. Of course he didn’t discuss the military action in Afghanistan that had nearly unanimous support and goes so far as to say that if the United States had any strategic interest in Darfur (for example if there was oil there), the Left would not be calling for US involvement to help stop the genocide currently taking place. The problem with this kind of rhetoric (besides the fact that it’s completely made up) is that his audience believes him and it only stokes the fires of their hatred of the Left (and who are the Left but 70% of their fellow Americans at this point). His listeners happily call themselves “ditto heads” more than suggesting that they will blindly follow Rush’s lead and believe any crap he shovels out. It has been difficult to listen to right wing radio, not because I disagree with most of what is being said, but because the format and presentation leave no room for thought, let alone discussion.

Polarization of the population is good for the Right, but bad for this country. This president has steered us into dangerous waters and it will take serious thought and reasoned action to get us out of this mess. We no longer have the luxury of simplistic notions of good and evil, black and white, and we need to pull together in order to successfully navigate this world of grey. Yes, we have a strategic interest in a stable Middle East as well as a national interest in energy independence, both of which have been damaged under the “guidance” of this president. The Bush administration has single handedly destabilized the region while simultaneously hindering any progress toward energy independence. Only in the bizzarro black and white world of Rush Limbaugh’s ditto heads can this be laid at the feel of “the Left”.

The American people are not as stupid as the ditto heads, and we voted earlier this month for change. We want our government to work (as in do something other than provide political theater), we want a new direction in Iraq (as opposed to staying the course that is only escalating the violence) and we want real oversight (instead of a rubber stamp Congress that acts only as an extension of the White House). We didn’t vote for more polarization or more of the kind of simplistic thinking that got us here. We understand that the world is complicated, made up almost entirely of shades of gray, and that it will take thought, discussion, differing views and hopefully consensus building in order to solve the problems we are facing. This president, with the help of his lap dog, do-nothing GOP led Congress, have made a terrible mess of things. We can only hope that by restoring the checks and balances so carefully constructed by our founding fathers, we can find some way of cleaning it up, or the very least, mitigating the damage as we extract ourselves from the hell we have created by turning our backs on the principles we were supposed to hold so dear.

The Iraqis Have Spoken, But Will We Listen

2006-11-22T11:23:00.000-08:00

Several new polls were released today by World Public Opinion and surprise, surprise, the Iraqis (still) want US forces out of their country.

Seven out of ten Iraqis overall—including both the Shia majority (74%) and the Sunni minority (91%)—say they want the United States to leave within a year.

Those numbers have risen significantly over the last year as the situation on the ground in Iraq has gone from bad to worse. We can argue over whether or not we should have started this war in the first place (but even that argument has quieted down as fewer and fewer of the architects of the policy are willing to defend it) but we can’t waste too much time arguing over whether or not we should leave, only how to go about it. Indications are that the President will attempt to stay the course which means that the Democratic Congress will have to stand up and speak for the majority of Americans that want an end to the occupation and the overwhelming majority of Iraqis that want the same.

The righties, demoralized by their election night loss, are lashing out all over the place, picking up where the White House left off in hurling insults at what they call “the left” but what is really “the middle” these days. Wanting an end to this ill fated occupation is not a fringe idea and those of us pushing for some common sense in our foreign policy to not “hate America” or “want us to lose”, we’re just smart enough to know that that is not possible and instead of punishing the Iraqi people further, we’d rather see those that caused this crisis to be punished instead.

Sure, there are problems that will arise from a US withdrawal of troops from Iraq and the left in this country and the Iraqi people are not unaware of the consequences, most especially the Iraqis living in Baghdad.

Nonetheless, the number of Shias in Baghdad who fear an upsurge in violence if U.S. troops withdraw within too short a time span has risen a dramatic 52 points since the beginning of the year. Six out of ten Shias in Iraq’s capital city (59%) believe that sect-on-sect killings would rise in the event of a speedy U.S. withdrawal. This view contrasts with that of Shias in the rest of Iraq, where a majority (64%) thinks such violence would decline if U.S. troops departed in six months.

The Bush administration has fucked this up royally and that is exactly why we should do exactly the opposite of whatever they propose. This President has no aptitude for problem solving nor the intellectual curiosity necessary to bring about a resolution to the problems he’s created. Bush’s only concern (and the sole purpose of the Baker Commission) is salvaging his legacy. At this point, that is as much a lost cause as “winning” in Iraq.

The Left Has So Much More Fun

2006-11-21T09:43:00.000-08:00

Okay, so, I don’t listen to right wing radio, because, well, I’m a liberal and with George Bush in the White House, I don’t need anymore aggravation in my life, but since I’m helping to keep the lights on over at Blather Watch, I felt compelled to listen to a variety of talk radio instead of my standard fare of Air America and The David Goldstein Show. Yesterday, the hot topic on talk radio was simultaneous orgasm for peace. I guess I picked a good day to start.

In case you missed it, there’s this couple in California that is attempting to organize a virtual orgy of sorts, a day (December 22, 2006) where everyone (who can) has sex and reaches orgasm while thinking about world peace. Hell, even if it doesn’t solve the world’s problems, I’m willing to give it a shot. And that right there is the big difference between having a liberal, as opposed to a conservative, view of the world, it’s positive rather than negative, it’s progressive rather than regressive and it’s about attempting to make the world a better place instead of sucking it dry for personal gain.

Rush Limbaugh was incensed by this whole idea, and of course, he had to make it seem as if the event was being organized by Nancy Pelosi, whereas on The Young Turks (my god, I had to listen to the left end of the dial by the end of the day just to feel clean) they made just as much fun of the idea, but instead of being angry about it, their take was, “go forth and orgasm for peace, it certainly can’t hurt.” Right?! When the world is in so much turmoil, what the hell is wrong with trying something positive, even if it is tilting at windmills?

On my first day of listening to talk radio for Blather Watch, I’m glad the talkers were taking on the big issues. Rush actually spent nearly two entire segments on this story and he used it as an example of “who we’ve put in charge of our government.” I guess I should be glad that that’s all he’s got right now. Once the Democrats officially take control of Congress, I’m sure there will be plenty of real and dangerous distortions dripping from his lying lips for the rest of us to untangle.

The Money Isn’t The End Of The Trail, It’s Just The Beginning

2006-11-20T09:15:00.000-08:00

This story is bigger than a corrupt and greedy Republican that bilked the state of Ohio out of millions of dollars, but the question remains, will anyone take a serious look at Tom Noe’s political activity?

Today, Tom Noe was sentenced to 16 years in prison for theft, forgery, corruption and money laundering but earlier this year he was sentenced to two years on a federal charge of funneling $45k into the Bush/Cheney re-election campaign and that is where the real story lies. In 2004, Noe was rich with money he’d stolen from the state’s workers compensation fund, he was illegally funneling money to the Bush campaign and his wife, Bernadette Noe, was on the board of elections in Lucas county Ohio, where there were significant “irregularities” and possibly fraud in the election results. Coincidence? I think not.

The rot is so deep, it will take decades to piece together the extent of this corrupt Republican Party’s criminal activity, but let’s toast to getting started!

A Fate Worse Than Death?

2006-11-20T09:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve agreed to help fellow Blogger Michael Hood keep his blog, Blather Watch, up and running while he’s on vacation in Central America so I will be listening to talk radio more than usual over the next few weeks and I’m giving you all fair warning that it may affect my writing in the weeks to come. Since the midterms, I haven’t been getting my daily dose of outrage, this should clear that problem up in a flash.

I try to stay away from right wing radio, what with all of the hate and none of the facts, but I’m going to do my best to listen to Limbaugh, Hannity, Savage and the rest of the cracked nuts in an effort to keep Blather Watch readers informed of the misinformation being disseminated to the masses of (willfully) uninformed right wing radio listeners, so that, as Michael says, they don’t have to. It’s a public service that Michael performs diligently and I guess it’s my turn to (wo)man the dial, so to speak. It could be worse, I could have to read the right wingnut blogs!

Why Didn’t I Think Of That?

2006-11-17T14:03:00.000-08:00

I posted last week my speculation as to why the Democrats were “allowed” to win enough seats to take over Congress, but I missed the most obvious one. Maybe they did fix the election, they just didn’t do a very good job of it.

The exit poll data has now been analyzed, and like 2004, the results don’t match the actual vote returns, but this time it appears that the exit poll data had to be weighted more heavily this time in order to make them work. There is speculation that a bug was installed to skew the count, but it was inserted into the machines a month prior to the election and that changes on the ground during that time made the fix not enough to keep the Republicans in control. I guess there weren’t enough Homeland Security agents available to “lockdown” enough vote counting centers in order to get the “right” result this time.

Studies like this one do not prove conclusively that the election was hacked, but they do shed light on the problems of electronic voting and on our vulnerable election systems as a whole. We really do need an overhaul of the system and we need private businesses out of the equation. We cannot have our votes counted on proprietary software! It should not be up to free and fair election activists to prove that our votes aren’t being counted accurately, it should be up to the private businesses that are making money counting our votes to prove that they are.

Redefining Winning In A No-Win Situation

2006-11-16T09:57:00.000-08:00

We’ve been hearing the word “bi-partisan” a lot this past week, but that’s always the case right after an election, but while the word may have meaning to us common folk, it means squat to those in power. The happy talk of working together will be replaced by partisan rancor as soon as James Baker unveils his “plan for victory” in Iraq. The question is, will the Democrats let Bush Jr. take one last stab at saving face or will they refuse to cooperate. There may be political benefit to giving Bush more rope with which to hang himself, but how many American lives are worth sacrificing for a political victory exactly?

As news trickles out from the Baker commission, I get the sense that this entire exercise is more about rehabilitating Bush’s presidency than finding a solution to the crisis we have created in Iraq. John McCain wants to send in more troops and there are rumblings that GW does too. Now that Baker and Cheney are coordinating in the effort, it looks more and more likely that the recommendations out of this commission will, initially at least, allow for one last push. The Generals have been asking for more troops for years, but Bush has been unwilling to take that political blow. Now faced with a Congress that will push back and demand more details on how, exactly, the president plans to “win” this thing, Bush finds himself ready to provide the Generals with what they’ve wanted all along. The only problem is, it’s too late.

So again, what do the Democrats do? They were given the keys to Congress in large part because they suggested (and some stated directly) that they would begin to put an end to the Iraq occupation. If the President wants to increase troop levels, I’m afraid that they are inclined to let him, if for no other reason than to allow the President to dig himself in deeper thus boosting their political standing, but by going along with the President on this one, they will be held responsible for each and every casualty we suffer as a result. From the public’s perspective, Bush is just being Bush by staying the course, where Democrats promised a vigorous opposition to Bush’s Iraq policy and if they fail to provide that, they will be viewed as failures.

What the Democrats must recognize is that the White House strategy at this point is to put the Democratic Congress in a no win situation. If they oppose Bush’s “strategy to win” especially when it is seconded by Baker and crew, they are preventing us winning in Iraq. And if they go the extra step and refuse to fund the war (an act I have no faith they would even entertain) they are putting our soldiers at risk. With Democrats still wary of showing any real spine (or conviction), it’s almost a foregone conclusion that they will opt out of making any real decision at all. That way, if the President succeeds, they were part of the solution and if he fails, they weren’t part of the problem. That may work for them politically, but morally, it’s more than a little questionable. Political fear on the part of the Democrats is how we got into this mess in the first place, and political courage is the only way out.

There isn’t a good solution to the mess we’ve created in Iraq, only finding the least repugnant option that will allow some semblance of stability. The Bush administration seems to have given up on the idea of democracy in Iraq and now will settle for anything short of total chaos. The problem is, this administration has a proven track record of creating chaos and has shown no ability to work with others or solve anything. Sending in more American troops will only escalate the violence. Until the effort to cobble together some sort of peace in Iraq is internationalized and includes the countries with the greatest influence in Iraq (Iran and Syria), there is no end in sight. We could send in an additional 20,000 troops each month and all we will accomplish is more death, more destruction and ensure that anti-Americanism spreads like wildfire. That may bode well for the Democrat’s chances of taking the White House in ’08, but it seems like an awfully high price to pay for a political victory.

To Impeach Or Not To Impeach, That Is The Question

2006-11-15T11:23:00.000-08:00

I have argued on this blog almost from the very first post that we need to impeach George W. Bush.  He has flagrantly violated our constitution, lied to Congress and the American people and has violated international law in the execution of his war of choice.  The only impeachable offense he hasn’t been caught perpetrating is getting a blowjob in the oval office.  The case for impeachment is not based in retribution for impeaching one of ours, it’s about being true to our constitution and proclaiming to the world that the rule of law matters, that we are a civil society and that no one, not even the president, is above the law.  It is also critical to send a message to all future presidents that we have no tolerance for the subversion of our founding documents and principles, and extra-constitutional powers cannot be claimed by the Executive Branch without it meaning the end of your presidency.

When Nancy Pelosi came out before the election and stated firmly that the Democrats, if they took over Congress, would not seek impeachment of this president, I was extremely angry.  How could she take impeachment off of the table?  How could she decide, before ever seeing the evidence, that impeachment is not warranted?  I understand that she made a calculated move to help her fellow Democrats win in tight races across the country, but I think she went farther than she needed to go.

All that said, I am not in a hurry to impeach this President.  I think it was easy to shout from the rooftops that Bush needed to be impeached when there was no hope or possibility that it would actually happen.  Now that it’s possible, we have more than just impeachment to consider.

If the Democrats are to retain control of Congress and set up a win for the Presidency in ’08, they have to have more than impeachment to offer.  Now that the situation isn’t hopeless and there is a chance to really start solving our national problems, I want that effort to be in the forefront.  I want Democrats to start passing legislation that will really help working Americans, that will start solving our healthcare crisis and that will help relieve some of the pressure that most Americans are feeling.  The Democrats must show, clearly, that they are capable of solving problems and by making the President veto good legislation that has the support of the people, they will have the added bonus of exposing the GOP as being callous to the challenges faced by the American people.  That is the perfect setup for the Democrats to take the White House in two years, and that is the only way that we will have even a small chance of repairing the damage the GOP has wrought over the last six years.

Please do not misunderstand me, I am still in favor of getting the impeachment ball rolling.  I want John Conyers to start his investigation and I want the subpoenas to start rolling out.  I want to watch the hearings on CSPAN, I want the truth to make it to the American people and I want the public pressure (and disgust and anger) to swell to the point that Nancy Pelosi’s promise becomes impossible to keep, but there are two tracks and both trains need to keep moving forward.  The current GOP led Congress was unable and unwilling to get any real work done and showed that they were incapable of doing more than one thing at a time (amending our Constitution to protect the flag and marriage being most important of course).  The new Democratic Congress must put them to shame and pursue an agenda that will make our lives better while simultaneously ferreting out the truth.  Once the truth is exposed, the question of impeachment becomes, as the Vice President is fond of saying, a no-brainer.

Says Who?

2006-11-15T11:22:00.000-08:00

Anonymous sourcing has become an epidemic in traditional media reporting and it is making it more and more difficult to decipher the news. Today, I read a report from Reuters that quoted a “senior US government official” who puts forth the idea that a preemptive strike on Iran by the US or “another country in the region” is likely in the future. Now, how are we supposed to read that and have any confidence that this information is accurate let alone decipher what it means when we know nothing about this person other than the fact that they work for our government?

Reuters didn’t cite a “senior White House official” or “senior Pentagon official” but rather just a government official, so I guess it’s possible that this report is based on a conversation a reporter had with an aide at the EPA or someone from the Department of Transportation, hell, it could have been an official from the office of Faith Based Initiatives for all we know. Knowing who is providing information for a news story is important, yet reporters seem to have abandoned the idea that their job is to inform the public. The overuse of anonymous sourcing has turned news reporting into mere gossip (or worse, propaganda), and we need more than that to truly be an informed citizenry capable of engaging productively with our government.