Dean Speaks Truth But Cowardly Dems Side with Their Elite Corporate Cash Brethren

Gee, I guess Howard Dean speaks the truth that the Republican Party is a party of white Christian men. Eighty-seven percent of them are white and Christian. Ninety-nine percent of ALL Republican legislators across the entire nation are white, and the vast majority male, even in Texas with a 47 percent minority population. Americablog's John Aravosis has more from the book The Great Divide: Retro vs. Metro America by Dr. John Sperling.

So will this cause Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi to reconsider their traitorous statements distancing themselves from John Dean even as he speaks factually? Don't count on it. Remember, it's not about truth but about power, and the hacks who have lost the White House and the Congress and now the judiciary to the theo-fascist wing of the Republican Party are desperately trying to hang on to their tiny remaining shred of power. If that means betraying the working people they are claim to represent, not to mention decency, truth, and the American way, well, they've been inside the country club. They're not going to shake their sucking mouths off the teat of corporate cash and walk out through those gilded gates and shed their special privileges and to mingle and be responsible to the rabble that is us. Are you kidding? They're clinking glasses with their Repug pals and having a good laugh.

Inside the beltway, there is only one party, and it ain't yours or mine.

Where's Superman when you really need him, anyway?

Lying Liars and the Cowardly Cowards Who Blow Them

Good Lord! Read this excerpt from a press forum with the New York Times' Elizabeth "I Can't Lose My Elite Status!" Bumiller and USA Today's Susan Page. It explains what we mean by "kneepad press."

Here's my favorite part, which sort of sums up Ms. Bumiller's identification with her, and Georgie W's, class of powermongers and servants of fascism:

That’s why it’s very hard to write those, because you can’t say George Bush is wrong here. There’s no way you can say that in the New York Times.

Yes, it is taken out of context, so go read the exchange at the link above. But it just kills me that Bumiller gets indignant with the audience for challenging her authority. Of course, she well understands that one does not get to be an elite reporter with the corporate-serving NY Times by challenging authority, even in an alleged democracy with a Constitutional guarantee of freedom of the press. Of course, as I've said before, the right to a free press does not require the press to actually behave as if it is free.

Liars, cowards and whores! Oh, my!

What Makes the Democrats So Gutless?

George W. Bush is the most vulnerable president in my lifetime (over half a century, if you must know). When he speaks publicly, as with Tony Blair this last week, one gets the impression of a cartoon character who has been shot full of holes who insists that he's fine. Then, when he drinks a glass of water, it comes streaming out of him in all directions. This presidency is like a sieve when it comes to truth or integrity or faithfulness to the American people--it doesn't hold water. The question is, then, why the fuck don't the Democrats make hay and start taking back our government?

We've had to watch Dems like Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, who should be leading the assault, backing away from the only Democrat who seems to understand that attacking means being aggressive instead of assuming the kneeling position with hands held up in contrition. It's disgusting. So why are the Dems so weak-kneed?

They're in the club, that's why.

One of the interesting things about colonialism was the fact that after the European powers left Africa, for example, many leaders who emerged in those countries were horribly corrupt and bad news for their people, which seems puzzling, particularly when many of these leaders had come through oppressive colonial experience themselves. But what had happened to too many of them was that by the time they had gained power, they identified more with their elite white European counterparts than with the common people who they claimed to represent. Emperor Bokassa, Idi Amin and Sese Seko Mobutu are a few prime examples of this.

Now the Democratic Party in the United States once may have really been the party of the working class, but that was long ago. Now that someone like Howard Dean has the courage to go after the Republicans for the disaster that they are for this country, for the bigotry that grows from the extreme right-wing theological fanatics who have seized control, and for the corruption, cronyism and lies that this administration have made standard operating procedure, we can see the Democratic Party "leadership" for what it is--just another face of the elite class that runs this country and identifies with the working people only when they can be exploited for money or votes, but who have otherwise been abandoned in favor of the inside-the-beltway daisy chain that constitutes the ruling class in this country. Like the post-colonial leaders who had had too much of the good life under their masters, these folks, while mouthing words to soothe their betrayed constituency, are more frightened of losing the key to the executive washroom that the theo-fascists now control than they are of upholding the traditions and responsibilities of an opposition party.

They're traitors to their class. They disgust me.

The Welcome We Got

Arriving at Berlin Tegel airport for our European vacation, we were required to fill out no forms, make no declarations, and were issued no warnings about anything we might do or the official reaction thereto. When we crossed the border from Germany to the Czech Republic, a pair of officials representing each nation passed through the train for passport checks, but again, no forms, no warnings. So imagine my amusement at returning to my home country.

We were scarcely out of British airspace (after transfer from Prague at Heathrow) when the forms and regulations for entry in to the United States were introduced. In the seatback pouch before each passenger was a color-coded card explaining which immigration form non-citizens, non-greencard-holders and a few other categories needn't fill out, but those in the other categories had better have a grasp of boolean logic to figure all the "ands" and "ors" that directed them to either the white or the green form. But hell, what do I care? I just had to fill out a customs declaration. Easy. Just remember everything spent on goods coming back into the country, their itemized costs, etc. Fine.

But then there was this interesting bit of text written as the welcoming words to returnees and visitors alike, long before we had even set foot on the soil of the United States of America:

Please ensure you are in possession of the right form and have completed it correctly before arrival, failure (sic) to do so could result in a fine and cause you substantial delay on arrival in the USA.

Isn't that great? Aside from the comma-spliced sentence (which only embarrasses me in my role as an English teacher), I love the fact that folks start getting official threats of fine and detention before they even enter the country!

Welcome to America, where you can't even drink a beer on the sidewalk in front of your own house (open container laws) and where you still take off your shoes before boarding (not required in Prague or London, interestingly enough, since Richard "Shoebomber" Reid flew from Europe). I shouldn't bitch about the shoe thing though, because the "see through your clothing" X-ray glasses will soon eliminate that need.

I know I may seem petty for pointing this out, but the small things like this are manifestations of a fundamental view of the world, and I am sad to say that the "Land of the Free" seems far more obsessed with correct behavior and a continuous awareness of the presence of law and law enforcement than other places I have visited and lived. The tragedy is that it doesn't have to be this way.

A Nation of Atheists and No Devils in Sight

A week in Berlin, then a week in Prague was just about right for calming down. I got to drink decent beer, eat far too much schinken with wonderfully stinky Tilsiter cheese and Danish butter on black bread and reacquaint myself with Central Europe after far too many years. My internal clock is still not synched with local time here at home, and I yearn for more of those stinky sandwiches so I'm not yet anywhere near ready to reengage with the disasters that the Bushits are visiting upon the world, but there was something in Prague that really intrigued me.

You see, according to The Economist's annual fact book, and corroborated by Czech sources, over 85% of Czechs self-identify as atheists. Yet while there, probably much to the surprise and consternation of the American religio-fascists who read this, I witnessed no demons pouring like a pestilence from fissures in the streets, there was no mass bloodletting, and what you might expect to be more like a scene from a Hieronymus Bosch painting was quite the opposite. Women walked alone on late-night streets, children romped in city parks, the mail and phones and Internet worked, neighbor greeted neighbor and stranger alike, people enjoyed the unseasonably warm weather by dining alfresco and with no compulsion to eviscerate or defile the innocent. If the Rapture Index was in the "Heavy Prophetic Activity" range, just three points below "Fasten Your Seatbelts," the Czechs didn't seem concerned. For a country with so much vulnerability, not believing in invisible cloud beings and all, you'd think that Satan would be taking advantage of the absence of righteousness to get a head start on his reign of brutality. It was positively civilized, I tell you.

It's not like they haven't gotten the Word, of course. The Thirty Years' War started in Prague after all, and this part of Europe has had plenty of exposure to Catholic and Protestant fanaticism alike. But the good Czech people have simply opted out, and they aren't scared. What I want to know is why is James Dobson not doing something about this sinkhole of nonbelief, because it seems to completely refute his thesis about the only path to righteous living and being. Doesn't it bother him that there is a whole country that rejects his theology, and in fact all theology as the superstitious remnants of an earlier and far darker time? And these folks are not afraid to clearly and publicly declare this refusal of the Blood of the Lamb, which really must shave the buzz of the saved who await the front row seat for witnessing the unending torments of the rest of us when Christ returns. As Bill Moyers has observed, these loving, gentle people wet their pants at the prospect that come the Rapture, they "will be transported to heaven where, seated at the right hand of God, they will watch their political and religious opponents writhe in the misery of plagues—boils, sores, locusts, and frogs—during the several years of tribulation that follow."

But the Czechs just don't give a fuck. It was lovely, simply lovely to be among such people, even if only for a week. And the beer is divine and cheaper than soft drinks. Baby, the Rapture done already come!

Back in the Good Old USA

After a lovely week in Berlin, a second in Prague, it's home to the compound feeling a little too mellow, perhaps. After a self-imposed virtual news blackout, I may just mellow away completely. Ah, but tomorrow's Sunday and I'm sure a glance over the morning papers should end this blissful interlude, but who can tell? Perhaps my spleen is at last vented to the point of complacency, lethargy, boredom, apathy, and I can now turn the corner to stoogedom with an empty skull and an idiotic grin on my face.

We'll see.

Does This Make You Feel Proud?

Remember when Rush Limbaugh claimed that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were nothing more than the equivalent of fraternity hazings? I defy that fat, lying, morally bankrupt, anal-cyst-picking, drug addicted fuckwad to read this and claim that it's just the equivalent of fraternity hazing. And tell the Hillbilly Heroin Homeboy that it's not leftie propaganda; it's extracted from a 2000-page Army report, dig? Here's a sample that makes me, as a veteran, physically ill.

One captain nicknamed members of the Third Platoon "the Testosterone Gang." Several were devout bodybuilders. Upon arriving in Afghanistan, a group of the soldiers decorated their tent with a Confederate flag, one soldier said.

Some of the same M.P.'s took a particular interest in an emotionally disturbed Afghan detainee who was known to eat his feces and mutilate himself with concertina wire. The soldiers kneed the man repeatedly in the legs and, at one point, chained him with his arms straight up in the air, Specialist Callaway told investigators. They also nicknamed him "Timmy," after a disabled child in the animated television series "South Park." One of the guards who beat the prisoner also taught him to screech like the cartoon character, Specialist Callaway said.

Eventually, the man was sent home.

And I don't buy the Pentagon's bullshit that these are rogue warriors. This shit has official sanction, heavily implied when not explicitly ordered. That's how criminal regimes operate. One of the legacies of the Stalin regime is that Old Joe never actually signed a death warrant or any order explicitly calling for the death or imprisonment of enemies. His subordinates understood what they'd better do . . . or else. Since the Bushits are known for their extreme adherence to loyalty above everything else, what might be the likely outcome from El Presidente's utterances about prisoner treatment?

The platoon had the standard interrogations guide, Army Field Manual 34-52, and an order from the secretary of defense, Donald H. Rumsfeld, to treat prisoners "humanely," and when possible, in accordance with the Geneva Conventions. But with President Bush's final determination in February 2002 that the Conventions did not apply to the conflict with Al Qaeda and that Taliban fighters would not be accorded the rights of prisoners of war, the interrogators believed they "could deviate slightly from the rules," said one of the Utah reservists, Sgt. James A. Leahy.

"There was the Geneva Conventions for enemy prisoners of war, but nothing for terrorists," Sergeant Leahy told Army investigators. And the detainees, senior intelligence officers said, were to be considered terrorists until proved otherwise.

Voila! Bush is responsible for what happens under his watch, especially if his personal determination empowers his subordinates to commit war crimes.

He's bought himself and his cronies a ticket to the Hague as far as I am concerned.

Off to Get a Look Outside America

I don't know if anyone will notice, but for my one or two kind readers, I'm taking a research trip to Berlin and Prague over the next two weeks. The first part of the research is to give me the means to finish a short story collection about the Cold War. The second part is to get a perspective on the United States through the eyes of people not under the steady barrage of Michael Jackson coverage and surrounded by religious extremists trying to destroy the world before God summons them to his right hand in the Rapture. And third, perhaps I'm scoping out a home for future exile.

The Rapture Index, by the way, stands at 149, which means, according to Rapture Ready's website:

Rapture Index of 85 and Below: Slow prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 85 to 110: Moderate prophetic activity
Rapture Index of 110 to 145: Heavy prophetic activity
Rapture Index above 145: Fasten your seat belts

So tighten that sucker down, although if God is going to yank you out of your clothes, your toupee, your gold fillings and your pec implants, I don't see the need for a seat belt, but maybe I'm taking that warning too literally. Of course, that's the whole point for these folks, the "literal word of God," right? Well, they're full of shit, to put it bluntly. Here, from Matthew 24:35, they understood this much :

Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.

But they conveniently ignore the next verse, Mattew 24:36, which they also must take literally to be consistent, and of course we all know how consistency is a hallmark of the theofascist right wing, yes?

But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only.

No man and no angel know when God will bring the apocalypse, but please, please don't be a dick and spoil the fun of the Rapture Ready people, or puncture the false piety and pretended belief of the likes of Bill "Cat Killer" Frist, or Tom "Giant Flying Cockroach" DeLay or George "I'm a Lying, Simpering, Costume-Wearing Poser" Bush, who play on the hopes and fears of the ignorant to execute their monstrous plans for our country. The apocalypse they will someday experience, if God is indeed just, will be something beyond their most terrible nightmares. And if it buys me a few more turns on the fiery spit over the eternal flames of Satan's blackest pit, I'm still going to gloat when it happens.

Don't spoil the surprise. Get 'em, God!

I'll be blogging as much as I can from Berlin and Prague whenever an internet cafe with good coffee or excellent beer opens upon my path, provided the money holds out, so look for firsthand reports from the former frontier of the Cold War. Since my time there in the 1970s, I am anxious to see if it is still true that "Berlin bleibt doch Berlin."

Newsweek Should Tell McClellan and His Boss Bushie to Fuck Themselves, a la Emperor Cheney

So Newsweek magazine published a story that may (according to Scottie "Mynah Bird" McClellan) or may not (according to Gen. Richard Myers, head of the Joint Chiefs) have contributed to riots in Afghanistan that left 17 people dead. The Bushit administration is going all out nuts on this story, screaming about a disputable and quite indirect effect while still playing us all for suckers when confronted with lies and crimes that have killed tens of thosands of Iraqis, over 1600 Americans, and tens of other coalition soldiers, not to mention while concurrently destroying our credibility worldwide, bankrupting the country, and appealing to a core of the most bigoted extremists in the country.

Am I to believe, then, that an erroneous story about flushing a book down a toilet is more damaging to the US image in the Muslim world than an illegal war, the murder of tens of thousands of innocent Muslims, the systematic and widespread torture of Muslims, many of whom arrested and detained with no due process, in addition to the many treaties pissed upon (Kyoto, ABM, etc.), attempts to jam John "I'm a Fucking Maniac and a Liar" Bolton into the UN, and on and on and on. A few inches in Newsweek merit more attention from the White House than all of that as damaging to our image abroad.

I would say that this in itself is equally, if not more, damaging to our image abroad, because now they know we're a totally deluded nation lacking any sense of proportion or responsibility for anything while we swing our considerable weight arbitrarily around the globe leaving death and rubble in our wake.

But getting back to what may have happened at Guantanamo with regard to the copy of the Koran, Molly Ivins reminds us of what conservative Andrew Sullivan wrote earlier this year:

On Jan. 9, 2005, Andrew Sullivan, writing in The Sunday Times of London, said: "We now know a great deal about what has gone on in U.S. detention facilities under the Bush administration. Several government and Red Cross reports detail the way many detainees have been treated. We know for certain that the United States has tortured five inmates to death. We know that 23 others have died in U.S. custody under suspicious circumstances. We know that torture has been practiced by almost every branch of the U.S. military in sites all over the world -- from Abu Ghraib to Tikrit, Mosul, Basra, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

"We know that no incidents of abuse have been reported in regular internment facilities and that hundreds have occurred in prisons geared to getting intelligence. We know that thousands of men, women and children were grabbed almost at random from their homes in Baghdad, taken to Saddam's former torture palace and subjected to abuse, murder, beatings, semi-crucifixions and rape.

"All of this is detailed in the official reports. What has been perpetrated in secret prisons to 'ghost detainees' hidden from Red Cross inspection, we do not know. We may never know.

"This is America? While White House lawyers were arguing about what separates torture from legitimate 'coercive interrogation techniques,' the following was taking place: Prisoners were hanged for hours or days from bars or doors in semi-crucifixions; they were repeatedly beaten unconscious, woken and then beaten again for days on end; they were sodomized; they were urinated on, kicked in the head, had their ribs broken, and were subjected to electric shocks.

"Some Muslims had pork or alcohol forced down their throats; they had tape placed over their mouths for reciting the Koran; many Muslims were forced to be naked in front of each other, members of the opposite sex and sometimes their own families. It was routine for the abuses to be photographed in order to threaten the showing of the humiliating footage to family members."

The New York Times reported on May 1 on the same investigation Newsweek was writing about and interviewed a released Kuwaiti, who spoke of three major hunger strikes, one of them touched off by "guards' handling copies of the Koran, which had been tossed into a pile and stomped on. A senior officer delivered an apology over the camp's loudspeaker system, pledging that such abuses would stop. Interpreters, standing outside each prison block, translated the officer's apology. A former interrogator at Guantanamo, in an interview with the Times, confirmed the accounts of the hunger strikes, including the public expression of regret over the treatment of the Korans."

And by the way, Newsweek's source for their story, remember, was a government source.

I'm leaving for Berlin and Prague in a few days. I'm very interested to hear how Europeans view the ravings that pass for discourse in this country. I have the feeling that my little research trip is going to make my contempt for the mainstream media in this country so much greater that I may come back in an apoplectic state needing serious medication It is likely that my blog entries will be even more incomprehensible ravings. Consider yourselves warned.

Oh, and if you are one of those so offended by the Newsweek article, why don't you first weigh your outrage as if you were a Muslim: Newsweek mistake or tens of thousands of corpses. Come on, get that little peabrain working on it. Can you see the difference?

Back in the Saddle

Your pal Olaf, that is, I (and I shan't use the third person anymore, although it is tempting to adopt that style) have been off securing some semblance of a financial future by working across the divide between art and science. Yes, I've taken on a consulting job, which bangs the rust off some old technical joints and also will refuel the slowly depleting bank account. Although I'd thought I'd turned away permanently from the world of software engineering in late 2001 (terminal burnout combined with the tech implosion), an offer that I can't refuse and which will actually be fascinating and challenging work has plopped into my lap, thanks to an old friend whose generosity extends to giving me a chance to rehone my chops techwise.

So in the intervening days, I've been somewhat inattentive to the news, hustling around getting information, gear, and stuffing information into my noggin that actually will make me some money, as opposed to this solitary ranting that I send into the blogosphere in the hope that someone somewhere might actually read it. Then, after returning from a long day in the Big City, I happened to catch a rebroadcast of Bill Moyers' address last Sunday to the National Conference on Media Reform which had met in St. Louis. Watch this. Read the transcript. All the ranting I have made about mainstream media and how it has been coopted by power to oppress the working people is expressed by Moyers in such an eloquent, logical, and even entertaining manner that I have nothing to add. Here's a sample:

Who are they? I mean the people obsessed with control using the government to threaten and intimidate; I mean the people who are hollowing out middle class security even as they enlist the sons and daughters of the working class to make sure Ahmad Chalabi winds up controlling Iraq’s oil; I mean the people who turn faith-based initiatives into Karl Rove’s slush fund; who encourage the pious to look heavenward and pray so as not to see the long arm of privilege and power picking their pockets; I mean the people who squelch free speech in an effort to obliterate dissent and consolidate their orthodoxy into the official view of reality from which any deviation becomes unpatriotic heresy. That’s who I mean. And if that’s editorializing, so be it. A free press is one where it’s okay to state the conclusion you’re led to by the evidence.

You're going to hear a lot about this. Mr. Moyers is not going to retire quietly. He recognizes the danger we are in and he knows its source.

This speech is going to go down in history as the watershed moment for the left, and even more importantly, for the beginning of the end of the theofascist extremist attempt at a coup. Mark my words.

Oh That Bushie! So Presidentiumable

God forbid El Presidente's exercise regimen be disturbed. Check out this excerpt from the White House daily briefing, courtesy of Editor and Publisher:

Q: Scott, yesterday the White House was on red alert, was evacuated. The first lady and Nancy Reagan were taken to a secure location. The Vice President was evacuated from the grounds. The Capitol building was evacuated. The continuity of government plan was initiated. And yet the president wasn't told of yesterday's events until after he finished his bike ride, about 36 minutes after the all-clear had been sent. Is he satisfied with the fact that he wasn't notified about this?

McCLELLAN: Yes. I think you just brought up a very good point -- the protocols that were in place after Sept. 11 were followed. The president was never considered to be in danger because he was at an off-site location. The president has a tremendous amount of trust in his Secret Service detail. ...

Does My Pet Goat suddenly come to mind? Doesn't Bush's behavior in the minutes following his notification that the United States was under attack on September 11, 2001, pretty much explain why he wasn't told this time until the coast was clear? You may be able to conceal your shit-stained drawers in a dark suit, but in biking shorts, the crap is going to bulge the spandex and leak down your legs.

But the real message here is that nobody, not even his own cronies, trusts his judgment in a crisis. And McClellan (poor bastard--he looks like a baby seal being clubbed) has no hesitation with saying yes, Bush was satisfied that he wasn't notified. "Bein' prezdent is hard work. Ah don't want no distractions like air-o-planes trying to crash into buildings or nothin'."

What a fuckwad. And 59 million sorry-ass suckers voted for this.

On Blair and Powell and Becoming Bush's Bitches

From Sidney Blumenthal's column in the UK Guardian:

But, like Powell, Blair convinced himself that going along in public was essential to his efforts to influence Bush behind closed doors. Like Powell, every time Blair made a slight gain, he reinforced his delusion of influence. Both overvalued their leverage.

Doesn't this just smack of the naive women you've known who'll say, "Oh, sure he's an insensitive brute who uses me and then beats me, but I just know I can change him."

Time to run to the domestic violence shelter, you two. Your bruises and cuts can't be covered up with cosmetics anymore.

Iraq Is Doing Great! Uh, Well, Maybe Not

Actually, this is heartbreaking for me, knowing that our servicemen and women are putting their lives on the line in a war that they had no choice in fighting. Please remember that the military is only an instrument of policy and that the ultimate power is in the civilians who direct that policy.

Given this war was entirely one of choice and not necessity (if you still doubt this, go read some other blog that sychronizes with your fascist viewpoint), please read what it is heading toward in this Newsday piece:

"I think we are really on the edge" of all-out civil war, said Noah Feldman, a New York University law professor who worked for the U.S. coalition in Iraq.

Mr. Feldman's words become even more chilling further on.

The Sunni insurgents could win the battle if they persevere long enough to sour U.S. voters, Feldman said.

He said, "There is no evidence whatsoever that they cannot win."

"No evidence whatsoever." My heart aches for our soldiers who are in this Iraqi crossfire. According to this report,

Now the 140,000-plus U.S. troops in the country are mainly "a nuisance" factor in the insurgents' overall goal of preventing the new government from consolidating.

How destructive to our image and our power have the Bushits been? Think of George's crotch-enhancing flightsuit, his helmet under his arm, mincing across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln two years ago and standing under that "Mission Accomplished" banner. Think of him excusing his entire presidential record because "I'm a war president." Think of him standing before the White House press corps, unable to articulate a single mistake.

And now 140,000 of our best citizens are reduced to "nuisance" status in a region that we destabilized because of the ambitions and lies of a handful of extremist chickenhawks who consider the sacrifices of daughters and mothers and husbands and sons and brothers and sisters as not even worthy of mention or depiction.

This is a criminal administration, violating US and international law and decency. Bob Dole asked during his race for the White House against Clinton, "Where's the outrage?" Patriots should now be finding all the outrage they need. These motherfuckers must be stopped.

One Step Closer to Disgrace and Impeachment

At long last, what has been at play in the British press for the past few weeks has finally crawled into a couple of major US news outlets, showing up in the Los Angeles Times and on CNN's website. From the Times:

Labeled "secret and strictly personal — U.K. eyes only," the minutes begin with the head of the British intelligence service, MI6, who is identified as "C," saying he had returned from Washington, where there had been a "perceptible shift in attitude. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and [weapons of mass destruction]. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy."

Now for the moment hold that statement, "intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy" with this next tidbit, also from the Times:

[Foreign Minister Jack] Straw then proposed to "work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam" to permit United Nations weapons inspectors back into Iraq. "This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force," he said, according to the minutes.

Hold that as well, and then read this:

Excerpts from the paper, which Smith provided to the Los Angeles Times, said Blair had listed conditions for war, including that "efforts had been made to construct a coalition/shape public opinion, the Israel-Palestine crisis was quiescent," and options to "eliminate Iraq's WMD through the U.N. weapons inspectors" had been exhausted.

Lining up all these neatly we have:
1. Bush and company were fixing the facts to fit the desired policy.
2. The British would cook up an unacceptable ultimatum. Remember that Chief UN Weapons Inspector Hans Blix said there were no WMD in Iraq, so Straw knew Hussein would refuse inspections beyond a certain point.
3. Public opinion would be shaped accordingly, which was probably easier than they expected with our kneepad news media.
4. This occurred on 23 July 2002, eight months before the invasion.
5. Subsequent to this report, Bush repeatedly denied the plan or desire to invade Iraq and declared that he wished to explore all avenues, exhaust every option, leaving war as a last resort.

The Bushits have denied all this, of course, despite having continually shifted the reasons for war as each lie was exposed (WMD, nukes, mobile chemical weapons labs, links to Al Qaeda). They are now faced with documentation of the planning of what they deny doing. it seems, to quote Bush butt-boy George Tenet, a "slam-dunk" for indicting a sitting president, vice president, and anyone who can be stuffed back into the slime pit with them.

The one fear I have is that these minutes are a plant, to be used to lure and then discredit any news organization that falls for it, a la Dan Rather. I hope not. I hope these minutes are authentic and can be used to begin to pressure and turn key players to work up the chain to clear the vermin and their stench from the executive branch of our government. I imagine that there are a lot of CIA professionals who have a lot of payback they'd like to deliver to Cheney, Wolfowitz, Feith and Libby, and this could be the trigger. Having to feel the bootheels of first Porter Goss and now John Negroponte, the spooks must be seething in Langley while sharpening their knives. If there's anything I learned in my stint in the military, it was don't fuck with intelligence people. Cheney is probably public enemy number one in their books these days.

Let's hope that the tipping point is reached quickly and decisively so that even the sincerest bootlickers in the mainstream media will have to pick up the thread, not because they are courageous journalists but because they are gutless cowards who will run when their masters begin to fall. Count on your pretty boys and girls on cable TV to suddenly discover the story as if it's news to them.

Thanks to the LA Times and CNN for at least having the guts to put the story where some Americans might see it.

Congratulations, Graduates! Welcome to the Bush Economy

At the little university where I teach part-time, there is the springtime hubbub of graduation, with parties, teas, yard sales by departing students, beaming parents filling up the local hotels, a feeling of liberation and accomplishment and adventure. It's always a mixed emotional bag for me because I love teaching, and yet by the end of the semester I'm ready for a break too, although it means saying goodbye to a lot of students I've come to know, respect, and like. And, like many Americans, I have this second job of teaching to supplement my income a little as a hedge against what has been a down-spiraling economy for most people since the Bushits seized power.

Of course, there are indicators that things were looking up, despite the stagnation in the stock market, a lower savings rate than ever, an eroded dollar that may be the new model for Monopoly money, and the fact that there are actually fewer jobs in the U.S. now than when Bush was sworn in. But things were looking up, right? Our president said so, his economic spokespeople said so, and all the screaming financial heads on cable news said so. And yet in today's Financial Times, we learn this:

Real wages in the US are falling at their fastest rate in 14 years, according to data surveyed by the Financial Times. . .
Even after last month's bumper gain in employment, there are 22,000 fewer private sector jobs than when the recession began in March 2001, a 0.02 per cent fall. At the same point in the recovery from the recession of the early 1990s, private sector employment was up 4.7 per cent.

Since 2001 we have a net loss in jobs, and those jobs that are being created are 90 percent low-wage, entry-level types. So not only is this economy not improving, if one compares it to the Clinton-era recovery, any declaration of strength in the economy for the average workingAmerican is an outright lie. Surprise, surprise, as Gomer Pyle used to say.

So how are people compensating? That good old American institution--overtime.

Even with a slight rise in the hours employees are working, from 33.7 to 33.9, this suggests wages are struggling to keep pace with inflation. The gauge covers non-supervisory workers, about 80 per cent of the workforce.

Now, I don't want to sound all 1960s or anything, but what got me in this story was that non-supervisory workers constitute 80 percent of the work force. Can you imagine the untapped power that lies within that figure? Suddenly I feel like screaming, "STRIKE!!!" from the rooftops.

The working people of America, and of the world, really do hold their destiny in their hands. All that is required is organization. One well-timed national strike could send a level 10 Richter-scale shock through the executive suites in this country. Consider this: If all the executive vice presidents, CEOs, CFOs, CTOs and upper management types went on strike for a week, do you think you'd notice? Now imagine if every fry cook, hotel housekeeper, dry cleaner worker, construction worker, plumber's helper, copy editor, pressman, auto mechanic, factory hand, software engineer, trash collector, and so on stopped their labors for a week.

Who has the real power?

I think it's time to turn the tables. Save your pennies, clip some coupons to save on the grocery bill, search for bargains to build up a little extra dough. Let's get started. Labor movements can be fun!

Strike!

The Continuing Slide Toward Impeachment

The Washington Post reports that those moderate women who were suckered by Bush's aw shucks phony humility and simultaneously frightened by the suffocating smarminess of Kerry into committing the cosmically unpardonable sin of voting for Bush in 2004 are now regretting their decision.

There has long been a gender gap between the parties, with women tending to vote Democratic in disproportionate numbers. Bush all but closed that gap last year, losing the female vote to Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) by three percentage points. But the memo pointed to a March survey that found women favoring Democrats when asked which party's candidates they would support if congressional elections were held today.

Let's hope it's the old "Fool me once" aphorism at work and they're shaming Bush.

Please recall, by the way, that the sociopathic Bush couldn't even remember that simple old saw the one time he tried to use it, which according to Mark Crispin Miller is no trivial slip of the tongue but rather an indication of Bush's absolute inability to see himself as responsible for anything that does not glorify him.

As dim as the state of the nations seems, this is a small sliver of light for the left, but only if several things occur. For one, the Democratic Party leadership has got to get some spine and then use it to clearly distinguish their progressive roots and history while simultaneously attacking the Republicans on every single thing that is worse now than when they took office, which is quite a smorgasbord. The one thing that's actually better under this administration? The introduction of the national "Do Not Call" list. Everything else has gone to shit.

The left must be combative and relentless in assaulting the record of these thugs, in particular the war profiteering of Cheney cronies, the environmental destruction for profit, and most of all that we are still frighteningly vulnerable to terrorist attacks due to malfeasance, corruption and greed by the Bushits. This battle must slowly escalate, without letup, to peak in November 2006, resulting in (yes, I'm really fantasizing now) the Dems retaking both houses of Congress, and immediately initiating impeachment proceedings that will make Nixon and Clinton into impeachment footnotes while turning Bush into the most despised figure in modern American history, both by the left and the right--the former because, well he is the most despicable figure, and the latter because belatedly, while standing in the smoking rubble of their movement, the conservative extremists will realize that they really fucked up in thinking they could stage a coup with Bush.

In the process of trying to salvage the next election, the Bushits will stab their core constituency of theofascists and mouthbreathers in the back in an attempt to con the moderate conservatives into giving them another chance to repeal the Bill of Rights and wage more illegal wars. But things are going to be too grim for all but the most deluded and/or ignorant of the Bushit core group, which will at last be rendered in the popular media for the foaming curs that they are (and no disrespect meant to the canine world. I have two big black dogs that I dearly love).

In the immortal words of Popeye, a lot of moderates are going to be saying, "That's all I can takes and I can't takes no more." And the way Bush and his gang are going to go down will make the executions at Tyburn during the Tudor reign in Britain seem like a Disneyland parade down Main Street. It's going to be wonderfully, if metaphorically, bloody and messy, and the crowds will be calling for gore, gore, gore (no pun intended).

Get your tickets now.

Capitalists vs. the Christians

Well, well, well. Isn't this going to be fascinating to watch? As U.S. business is getting bitch slapped because of the nutwad image our nation getting courtesy of the religio-fascists, I wonder what sort of wedge this might drive between the more libertarian/pragmatist greed faction of the Republican Party and the snake-handling, Bush-as-Messiah, burn-the-nonbeliever Dobson wing, which has become so frothy around the piehole about gay marriage and Terri Schiavo that they ought to be put out of their misery for the mad curs that they are. Rabid seems too tame a label for the true believers. I don't know why they just don't spontaneously combust into holy smoke, so evil has our world become. What a relief to them, and particularly to us, that would be.

Anyway, the Financial Times had the following:

The US is losing billions of dollars as international tourists are deterred from visiting the US because of a tarnished image overseas and more bureaucratic visa policies, travel industry leaders have warned.

Granted, the tourism industry, while big, is not a tail by which to swing the dog, but it is symptomatic of our larger problem with having the sort of image the Bushits have created for us. Of course, the business community has largely remained blissfully and purposefully ignorant of any of the details so long as there are profits to be made from war or a tax-cut-injected spurt in the economy (remember, it's all red ink ultimately, so it will have to be paid sometime).

But the best way to get a profiteer's attention is to spank him in the wallet, so it will be amusing to watch the nutwads and the greedheads square off against one another. The nutwads have conveniently overlooked the porno, tobacco, and alcohol money that helps their political pals, but they have to draw the line somewhere when our business boys try to create an Amsterdam-like center of sex and reefer somewhere in the US to attract more tourists.

“The idea has gotten out that we've pulled in the welcome mat,” said Rick Webster, the association's director of government affairs.

Yeah, seeing Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, who would ever get such an idea?

Help Raise Funds for the Efficient Transport of "Spermatazoan-Americans"!

Oy, this is hysterical.

Does George W. Bush Know He's Going to Hell?

If George W. Bush is, as he claims, a born-again Christian, then for knowingly lying and repeatedly doing so, for signing death warrants, for waging war, for inflicting suffering on the poor, opening the environment even more widely to corporate rape, and on and on (the list is truly breathtaking), he must know that he's going to Hell. I mean, how many times does Christ have to continue to forgive someone, particularly one with such power to do good who instead knowingly chooses to do ill?

Of course, maybe George doesn't really believe in that stuff. It has been politically beneficial--brilliantly so--for him to claim he does, because Karl Rove understood the weight of a single unified block of anti-science, homophobic, speaking-in-tongues Americans was frighteningly large. But if Bush doesn't really believe he's going to Hell, then that means he's just punked the largest part of his constituency.

Either way, this life or the next, Bush ought to be damned.

Best Polite Indictment of the Corporate Press

I thought Craigslist founder Craig Newmark hits it on the head here:

But he believes the reason why newspapers are losing circulation is that too many traditional journalists are willing to quote politicians and business executives even if they're blatantly lying — merely for the sake of perceived objectivity. He'd prefer an "open source" model of journalism where legions of volunteers act as writers, assignment editors and fact checkers to challenge mainstream journalists.

"People are looking for attitude and guts in reporting — not full-on gonzo journalism, but hey, tell us what you think," said Newmark, who described himself as having Whig values — strong on defense, fiscally conservative but socially liberal.

Hardly some leftwing nutjob like me, right? Just when my hope was running dry as the corporate US media ignores the leaked British minutes, late on a Friday even, someone gives me reason to blog on, if only for its therapeutic value.