Saturday

Tuesday, December 31, 2002

George Orwell Bush says that an attack on the US by Iraq could cripple the economy. Are there still people out there who believe this clown? A country 6000 miles away, that the US beat decisively in a conflict twelve years ago destroying much of its military might, and which has been further crippled by years of sanctions, inspections and bombings, poses a threat to the country with the world's largest military by far, protected by two giant oceans? George W. Bush is the biggest threat to the US economy and world peace.
posted by Bob at 3:38 PM

"Hey Rocky! Watch me pull a number out of my hat!"
"Again?"
"Oooh: $50 to $60 billion for a war in Iraq!"
"Gee, Mr. Daniels, Mr. Lindsey said it would cost a lot more!"
"That's why Mr. Lindsey doesn't hang his hat here anymore, Rocky."
(http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/31/politics/31BUDG.html)
posted by Bob at 10:16 AM

Rangel calls for draft: Congressman Charles Rangel (D-NY) writes in the NY Times today that Congress should reinstate the military draft. He says that neither the administration nor Congress would be in such a rush to go to war if their own children were likely to be involved (he says that there are only a few officers and one enlisted soldier currently in the armed forces who are children of members of Congress). Rangel is a dove who voted against the Iraq war resolution in October, so this is clearly a ploy to get the public more involved in opposing the war. I hope that it at least makes George W. Bush think about the prospect of having his twin daughters go through bootcamp: he wouldn't get any sleep at all! ("But Daddy, that awful man made me do pushups! (Sob.) And not only do I have to wear these horrible boots, I have to shine them! Do something, Daddy!") Six months stationed in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait might open their eyes a bit, too.

However, it's a high-stakes game. I'm guessing that the Bushies will downplay it, saying that "our all-volunteer military does a wonderful job and is quite capable of dealing with all of the challenges facing it." They might embrace it, though, thanking (i.e. blaming) the Democrats for introducing the idea, seeing it as a way to accelerate their plans for global empire. This would then put other Democrats in the awkward position that Rangel is trying to put Bush and the other Republicans in: seeming to be protecting their own children from military service by opposing the draft.

At this point, things are getting bad so quickly that this is probably a useful strategy: Rangel's bill will be hard to ignore, and if things go well it will mobilize a large portion of the country that has been either silent or stupidly flag-waving to this point.
posted by Bob at 9:14 AM

Monday, December 30, 2002

Doonesbury weighs in on civil rights.
posted by Bob at 12:59 PM

Too little, too late? The Washington Post ran an article yesterday describing the major role that the US, under the Reagan and Bush Sr. administrations, played in the buildup of the Iraqi military and its development and use of chemical and biological weapons. It mentions Donald Rumsfeld's key meeting with Saddam Hussein in 1983, offering him US support even though it was known at the time that Iraq was using chemical weapons. It also mentions something rarely covered in the US media, that the Kurds gassed in northern Iraq in 1988 were probably collaborating with Iran. So while not justifying the gassing, it makes the "gassed his own people" claim dubious at best. The article describes how the US government allowed and even encouraged the sale of chemical, biological and "dual-use technology" (items that could be used in a nuclear program) by US firms. It even dares mention the infamous meeting of US ambassador at the the time April Glaspie with Saddam in July of 1990:

When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations," according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq."

Unfortunately, the article refrains from mentioning the so-called "green light" that Glaspie gave Saddam when she stated that the US had no opinion on the Iraq-Kuwait dispute. While Saddam did not tell her that he was planning on invading Kuwait a week later, he certainly must have been surprised at the vehement "worse than Hitler" response from someone who had "no opinion" and who "wanted better and deeper relations." Unless, of course, as many in the Middle East believe, Saddam has been a US agent all along, providing a ready excuse for the ever-increasing military presence in the region. Saddam has stayed alive and in power, either with US help or due to US reluctance (or whatever it was that stopped Desert Storm from storming Baghdad in 1991), while the Iraqi people pay again and again and again: war with Iran, Gulf War, sanctions, no-fly zone bombings, Desert Fox, and now, probably, Gulf War II.

I don't know what the truth is, but I am quite sure that what the Bushies are telling us is lies, just as it was in 1990. Saddam is not a threat to the US: he's a convenient ongoing excuse.

posted by Bob at 12:53 PM

Sunday, December 29, 2002

Sending the troops in: While Iraq continues to jump through every hoop that Bush throws in its path, the buildup of forces continues. Even if, as I sincerely hope, they don't see combat, the expense of just sending them there is enormous. Meanwhile, back home, the states are facing massive budget deficits which will cause cutbacks in schools, hospitals, welfare, roads...you name it. George W. Bush should be impeached for flagrant dereliction of duty: worst president ever, leaving his wimpy daddy in the dust.
posted by Bob at 8:04 PM

Bin Laden, Shmin Laden: This is what the Afghan war was all about: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Turkmenistan on Friday signed a framework agreement for a $ 3.2 billion gas pipeline project passing through the three countries. What an amazing coincidence that the Bonn conference of a year ago picked Hamid Karzai to be Afghanistan's president, and Karzai made this pipeline a priority, well ahead of establishing any sort of control over Afghanistan. Thanks again to Polizeros for the link.
posted by Bob at 7:48 PM

If it ain't broke...Huey recycles last year's predictions for the new year in Boondocks.
posted by Bob at 12:38 PM

Saturday, December 28, 2002

Gag! I just saw an ad on TV for Bowflex (a home gym device), with two US Army soldiers, apparently active, doing the pitch. They say something like "We needed to stay in top physical and mental shape in Afghanistan, so we took the Bowflex with us." There is a huge American flag in the background, and martial drums going throughout. Maybe some pilots can do ads for speed next.
posted by Bob at 11:14 PM

We've got convicted felons who didn't do the time in high-ranking posts in our government (John Negroponte, Elliot Abrams, John Poindexter), but other convicts who have served their time aren't allowed to even visit their mothers! Fourteen years in jail is not enough punishment for this kinder, gentler nation of compassionate conservatives. Ex-cons can't live in public housing, can't hold certain jobs, and aren't allowed even to vote in many states. Most grew up in rough neighborhoods, did something stupid when they were teens (or got framed), somehow survived several years in America's brutal prison system which is a giant training camp for crime, and when they get out they are third-class citizens with very few rights. What a recipe for failure!
posted by Bob at 10:51 PM

Air Force bombs house in Texas: Just a friendly reminder that no one is safe.
posted by Bob at 10:38 PM

Jobless benefits end for 820,000: Compassionate conservatism at work; actually, laid off.
posted by Bob at 1:39 PM

Yemeni man set free in Michigan:
U.S. Magistrate Judge Steven Pepe said prosecutors didn't prove Mohamed Alajji willfully intended to defraud the government when he applied for multiple Social Security cards. Although Alajji faced possible fraud charges, the government's true reason for having him detained was that it believed he was a terrorist threat.The ruling came after a six-hour preliminary exam to determine whether the government had probable cause to charge Alajji. Pepe ordered Alajji's immediate release.
Maybe there's still hope for justice in this country.

posted by Bob at 1:36 PM

Friday, December 27, 2002

Stop the presses: I agree with President Bush!
President Bush is "deeply" troubled by efforts to clone human beings and wants Congress to ban the practice, the White House said Friday after a French scientist claimed her company had produced the first clone. (CNN)

I don't know about you, but I get awful chills when I see the words "Bush" and "clone" in the same sentence. Brrrrrrr!
posted by Bob at 8:08 PM

Go to class, or go to jail: The INS has arrested several Middle Eastern college students in Colorado for not enrolling in a minimum of twelve hours of classes.
posted by Bob at 7:57 PM

Proof? We don't need no stinkin' proof! Ted Rall points out that 15 months after 9/11, the Bush administration hasn't provided any proof that Osama, al Qaeda and the Taliban were actually behind the attacks, even though Colin Powell and Condi Rice promised us evidence. Rall says there are three logical explanations:

Al Qaeda and the Taliban had nothing to do with 9/11. Possible, but unlikely. Who else would have done it?

What with the war and all, the Bushies simply forgot to write up a report. Impossible. If proof existed, the Administration would have released it to make people like me shut up.

The evidence is circumstantial at best. Now we're talking. More likely than not, American intelligence strongly suspects bin Laden et al. but can't prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

As a matter of fact, FBI Director Robert Mueller admitted in a speech last April that he has no evidence: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot. The hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind."

So, as Rall points out, we've killed 3500 civilians and 10,000 Taliban soldiers in Afghanistan without any evidence. And it's on to Iraq, based on allegations of a crime, possession of weapons of mass destruction, of which the US is the world's leading violator. And we are given no evidence that Iraq is not obeying the UN resolutions, outside of Rumsfeld's "obviously they aren't."

posted by Bob at 11:40 AM

Thursday, December 26, 2002

Are Americans really this stupid? George W. Bush was named their "most-admired man" by 28% of Americans in a CNN poll, far more than any other (Jimmy Carter was second with 9%).

Just a brief reminder about how W got where he is, on the off chance that one among those 28% might be reading this blog (chances are, they read nothing at all). I've been meaning to make a cartoon out of this, but I'm not really much of a cartoonist. So I'll just make it a little dialogue between the wealthy corporate powers-that-be and our thought-challenged president:

(1986)
Harken Execs: Well, Mr. Bush, your little Spectrum Oil Company has had some rough times lately. How 'bout we buy it out for much more than it's worth and give you a place on the Harken board? It pays really well, and you don't have to do anything.

W: Cool!

Harken Execs: Oh, and say "Hi" to your father the Vice-President for us, won't you?

(1990)
Harken Execs: Well, George, we all know Harken stock is going in the tank in a few months, but because we like you so much, we've arranged a secret buyer for your stock so you can cash in now while the price is still high. Go buy a baseball team or something, and say "Hi" to your dad in the White House, okay?

W: Excellent!

(1997)
Co-owners of the Texas Rangers: You know, Governor Bush, we've been glad to have you on our team as we've grabbed private land at taxpayer expense to build this fancy new ballpark. Never mind that the Rangers never win anything: your work is done here. Here's your ownership share in the Rangers back, and an extra twelve million for being such a swell guy. Don't forget about us back at the governor's mansion, or if you ever move to a bigger house--in Washington, say.

W: Cool!

(August 2000)
Republican Party Leaders: Well, George, we've paid an ungodly amount of money and slandered a war hero to buy you the nomination for president, overcoming your obvious lack of qualifications. Don't you forget who paid to get you here!

W: Don't worry--I love you guys!

(December 2000)
Supreme Court: Mr. Bush, since you came in such a close second in the election, we're awarding you the presidency! Of course, some of us wouldn't be here if it weren't for your dear old dad--say "Hi" to him, will ya?

W: Cool!

(September 2001)
American Public: President Bush, since you happened to be vacationing in Texas while intelligence about a massive terrorist attack sat on your desk unread, leading to the worst attack on American shores since the Civil War, we're giving you this gigantic mandate to do whatever insane things pass through that little mind of yours. Kill, maim, or detain innocent people anywhere in the world, destroy the constitution, destroy the environment: whatever you want.

W: God bless America.

(November 2002)
American Public: Mr. Bush, in less than two years you have taken a nation that was wealthy, confident, and at peace, with a budget surplus, and turned it into one which is struggling, afraid, at war, and broke. Therefore, we're giving you Republican control of both houses in Congress.

W: Excellent! You ain't seen nothin' yet. Let's roll!

Moral to the story: Nothing succeeds like failure.
posted by Bob at 10:44 PM

Bad year for retailers: Good! Buying worthless imported crap from community-destroying big-box stores is supposed to be good for the country. It isn't. A bad retail season is the opposite of the Bush tax cuts--it hurts the rich the most. When manufacturing and retailing return to being local concerns, employment will rise and pollution will fall. A "good" retail season would have meant more money for the world's richest family (Wal-Mart's Waltons), along with increased high-interest debt for much of the working class. Buy local, buy used, don't buy at all: it's GOOD for the country!
posted by Bob at 7:26 PM

Update from the "War of Terrorism":
According to Americans with direct knowledge and others who have witnessed the treatment, captives are often "softened up" by MPs and U.S. Army Special Forces troops who beat them up and confine them in tiny rooms. The alleged terrorists are commonly blindfolded and thrown into walls, bound in painful positions, subjected to loud noises and deprived of sleep. The tone of intimidation and fear is the beginning, they said, of a process of piercing a prisoner's resistance. -- from the Washington Post.

Read the whole article for a reminder of what the "land of the free and home of the brave" is doing to mere suspects detained in our name.

posted by Bob at 7:15 PM

Big Sister (Kroger) is watching: I've already torn up my Kroger Plus card and boycotted that Orwellian grocery chain for many months now. And now they're introducing fingerprint checkout. So some geeky programmers (completely different from totally cool programmers like my brother and me) will have access to your name, address, credit card number and fingerprint on the Kroger computers. If you'd like to be framed for some terrible crime, you'll be well positioned. Even if Kroger's computer people are completely honest and well-intentioned, they could be blackmailed or extorted into sharing that information, and not just by Ashcroft and Poindexter. Go to the CASPIAN web site for more on Supermarkets' invasion into our privacy, and stay away from Krogers!
posted by Bob at 6:11 PM

Big Brother (the FBI) is watching ... (from a letter to the editor in the Bellingham (Washington) Herald)

The FBI now can get our list of library books, e-mails, telephone records and so on. When I was worried about an overdue book after the library closed, I called the FBI for help.

"Please check on a book for me, will you," I told the agent.

"What? Do you think we work for you?"

"Is Bernard Lewis's book on the Middle East overdue?" I pleaded.

"Well, okay, I'll look it up. Hey, you've also checked out 'Lawrence of Arabia.'"

"It's a great book," I protested.

"Did you see the movie, too?"

"Yes," I said.

"Have you checked out the video - never mind, I'll check. Yeah, just last week."

"Honest," I replied, "I wanted to see the restored version."

"A doubtful story. And, yes, you're overdue on the book."

"Darn," I said. "I guess I'm not getting my mail on time."

"Mail? Well, let me check. Nope, no card from Bellingham library, but your long-distance phone bill shows you've called Mahoud's Diner. Who's Mahoud?"

"He's a great cook and what are you doing with my phone bill?"

"Just checking. By the way, you are behind in the phone payment. Want me to pay it from your credit card?"

"You've got my credit statement?"

"Of course. There, I charged it on your card."

"Thanks," I said. "What a service."

"Saved you a penalty. Anything else we can do for you?"

"Yes," I replied. "Did my neighbor pay cash for his new car?"

"What! Do you think we spy on people?"

Lyle E. Harris

Bellingham

posted by Bob at 12:24 PM

What logic and compassion couldn't do, impending bankruptcy accomplishes quickly: Michigan, along with many other states, is eliminating harsh mandatory sentences for drug crimes. Fiscal emergencies are forcing states to find ways to cut costs, and the outrageous expense involved in locking up non-violent offenders for ten or twenty years is a compassionate and logical place to start. From the NY Times.
posted by Bob at 11:23 AM

Rooting Out Evil: Mission USA

In the new year, Rooting Out Evil will be sending a team of volunteer weapons inspectors into that greatest of rogue nations, the United States of America.

We have selected the US as our first priority based on criteria provided by the Bush administration. According to those criteria, the most dangerous states are those run by leaders who:

1) have massive stockpiles of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons;
2) ignore due process at the United Nations;
3) refuse to sign and honour international treaties; and
4) have come to power through illegitimate means.

The current US administration fulfills all these criteria. And so, again following Bush’s guidelines, Rooting Out Evil is demanding that his administration allow immediate and unfettered access to international weapons inspectors to search out their caches of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

If they refuse to comply, we will assemble as many volunteer weapons inspectors as possible at a major border crossing between the US and Canada and attempt to cross into the US on a mission of peace. We will be greeted on the US side by Americans who favour true global cooperation, an end to weapons of mass destruction, and a regime change in the US at the next election.

Go here to sign up as a volunteer inspector and lend support, in person or in spirit, to our Canadian friends trying to bring a little sanity across the border.

posted by Bob at 9:55 AM

Look out Coke and Pepsi, here comes...

Don't drink idiotic anymore, drink committed. -- Motto for Mecca Cola, which gives ten percent of either revenues or profits (my French isn't that good) to Palestinian causes, ten percent to European causes. According to an Indonesian blogger, Mecca Cola is selling out in Europe.
posted by Bob at 12:18 AM

Wednesday, December 25, 2002

Protest! It's good for you!

Taking part in protests and demonstrations can be good for your physical and mental health, a new British study suggests. -- from Reuters.
posted by Bob at 11:44 PM

Don't you hate it when good columnists go bad? I was ticked off yesterday when I read Nicholas Kristoff's op-ed from yesterday entitled "In Praise of Snowmobiles," but couldn't quite form a coherent rant about it. Well, I think I can, now.

Kristoff praises the Bush administration for allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone National Park. He says that the new four-stroke snowmobiles are much quieter and less polluting than the two-stroke variety, and I'm sure that's right. But Kristoff claims that "when the roads are closed in winter, the only alternative to snowmobiles is snow coaches, which are like vans on treads." This is a lie: Yellowstone is open to cross-country skiing and snoeshoeing, according to its web site. He makes another statement which is true, but still ridiculous: "It's pretty clear that without snowmobiles very few Americans will get the thrill of seeing Yellowstone in winter." Ridiculous, because even with snowmobiles, very few Americans will see Yellowstone in winter. I couldn't find the numbers for snowmobile rentals in Yellowstone, but I would hazard a guess that the number of Americans partaking in this is far below the number of Americans who will get the thrill of seeing Iraq this winter. Kristoff claims that animals don't run from the newer, quieter snowmobiles because he saw some. Well, Nick, you didn't see the ones that did run, now did you?

We have boxed nature into tiny little corners in this country, and now Bush and his publicist Kristoff think that it's okay for us to use our expensive toys to trample around even in those little corners. Rather than allowing snowmobiles in Yellowstone, we should be eliminating them, along with SUV's and cars in general, from more and more places, so that Americans won't have to go to Yellowstone to experience nature.
posted by Bob at 11:07 AM

I hope that, somewhere, Bing Crosby is happy:

Merry Christmas, everybody!
posted by Bob at 9:20 AM

Republican Logic:
See if you can follow the logic behind a proposal to cut taxes on dividends:
Republicans close to the White House said there were several reasons why officials were attracted to the idea of letting taxpayers exclude about half of all dividend income from taxes. Eliminating all taxes on corporate dividends would drain so much money from the Treasury — about $300 billion over 10 years, according to some estimates — that President Bush would have no room for other tax cuts. Reducing dividend taxes by about half, to about 20 percent for people in the top tax bracket, would not only reduce the drain on revenue to the Treasury but also bring dividend taxes in line with those on capital gains. (NY Times)

It's sort of like a doctor explaining to you why he is amputating your left arm by saying "if I amputated both arms, you would be in really bad shape." That is, they are comparing their stupid idea to an even stupider idea, rather than to the already stupid enough status quo. Another comparison, which I'm surprised Bush hasn't used already: "We have to attack Iraq because if we attacked Atlanta I would probably lose votes."

You know, you Republican corporate drones, you could also bring dividend taxes in line with those on capital gains by raising both to 90%, which would mean that those who make money by having money would have to pay more taxes than those who make money by working.

posted by Bob at 8:06 AM

Tuesday, December 24, 2002

Just say NO to Joe
With Gore dropping out, Senator Joe Lieberman is now considered one of the favorites for the Democratic nomination for president. A good choice, if you're trying to make Bush look too liberal. This guy is a super-hawk, a shill for the insurance companies, a co-inquisitor with Lynne Cheney in her witchhunt for "un-patriotic" Americans. Progressives need to make it clear to the Democrats that we're all going Green if this polite monster is going to be the Democratic nominee in 2004. From the NY Times:
"I think the party is open to a different kind of Democrat," he said. Mr. Lieberman said that while he "may be more conservative, more pro-defense, more pro-security than a lot of Democrats are," for the most part, he was "in tune with the mainstream of my party."

Mr. Lieberman sponsored the Homeland Security Act, and was at Mr. Bush's side last fall as he pushed through a Congressional resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq. By noting that he had also voted in favor of the first resolution authorizing the use of force against Iraq, in 1991, Mr. Lieberman drew an unstated contrast with other Democrats in the race like Representative Richard A. Gephardt and Senator John Kerry, who opposed that resolution.
posted by Bob at 4:54 PM

Thom Saffold, a fellow member of the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace and publisher of the Street Wall Journal sent the following message to our group:

Friends,

Today I am ashamed to be a Christian. Tomorrow will be worse.

The center of my spiritual life is Jesus, a/k/a the rabbi, Yeshua bar Yusef who--according to Himself--was NOT the Son of God, but came "to give [humanity] the power to become the sons and daughters of God"; can you imagine how different the world would be if we recognized that all people--regardless of our differences--are truly sons and daughters of the Creator? We might actually relate to and treat everyone else as our sisters and brothers, even if they were Muslim, even if they were Iraqis.

Tomorrow is the anniversary of the birth of Yeshua in Beth-lehem, the city of bread, a town under military occupation, governed by a corrupt and hypocritical king, backed by the Empire of Rome. The infant Yeshua grew into a man who embraced the finest teachings and characteristics of Judaism/the faith of the Hebrew people and became known as the Prince of Peace. His radical philosophy of equality of all people (including women, eunuchs, and the poor), of the necessity of resistance to injustice (he made it a condition of discipleship), commitment to what we call creative nonviolent direct action/civil disobedience, and devotion to love--even love of enemies--got him crucified, but also inspired Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr.

The Church, beginning in the Third Century when it sold out its principles to Constantine in return for worldly power, has consistently perverted Yeshua's message and meaning, despite the fact that a few each century (like Dr. King and many of the civil rights activists) have rediscovered His essential message and sought to manifest it. The Church, in response, has tended to kill such "heretics," of course.

And so it is that tomorrow, good Christian Church folk in nearly all the churches in our area will sing Christmas carols about the Prince of Peace and Bethlehem, and IGNORE their responsibilities as followers of Yeshua. They will be ignorant of (or is it, rather, out of callousness) the fact that the real, live, flesh-and-blood people of Bethlehem are today living under a brutal military occupation, run by a corrupt and hypocritical government backed by the Empire of Corporate America.

The overwhelming majority of these Christians (apparently "Christ" has NOTHING to do with Yeshua!) will celebrate their holiday by engaging in a consumeristic orgy and then eat too much, and go to bed feeling very self-satisfied. They will NOT be organizing or demonstrating or committing acts of civil disobedience to stop Bush's insane vision of total, unending war, or to stop US funding of Israel's cruelties. And after tomorrow, they will continue to be blind to the reality of what's happening in the world, and to the true meaning of their faith.
posted by Bob at 3:01 PM

It looks like the Sierra Club leadership has finally decided to oppose war--sort of. It has signed on with other groups, including the NAACP and NOW, in a watered down anti-war message. According to the press release, The new group, Win Without War, represents millions of Americans and seeks to prevent bloodshed and loss of life on all sides by slowing the Bush Administration's apparent rush to war so that U.N. Arms Inspectors have time to carry out their mission.

While I would have preferred a stronger statement, it is good to see that the pressure put on the Sierra Club leadership by the Utah and San Francisco area chapters had some effect. Who knows, maybe I had a little impact, too. When I read about the objections raised by local chapters to the Club's apparent support of war (which, admittedly, was just as watered-down as this new opposition), I had a Sierra Club fundraising request on my desk. I wrote "No more $ until oppose war" on the form (there wasn't room for complete sentences) and put peace signs all over the envelope, and mailed it back without a donation. I mean, you can recycle until the genetically-modified cows come home and you will do less to preserve the environment than stopping just one "little" war. So I'm glad to see the Sierra Club tiptoe over the line from mildly supporting war to mildly opposing it. I've got another envelope on my desk now; I'll give them something now. I mean Bush hates the environment almost as much as he hates Iraq, and the Sierra Club is the biggest environmental group out there. We've got to keep pushing them not to sell out.
posted by Bob at 2:58 PM

Molly Ivins on Bush's new economic team:

According to The Wall Street Journal, "In Dec. 2000, nine months after he took over, Mr. Donaldson told investors that the company's problems with skyrocketing medical costs were finally under control and projected rosy 2001 earnings, driving Aetna's stock price up.

"It turned out that Aetna's system for calculating costs was out of whack (oops!). In April, four months after Mr. Donaldson's upbeat predictions, Aetna announced that earnings would be 'significantly lower' than expected, driving its stock price down by 18 percent in one day.

"Mr. Donaldson had retired 10 days before the profit warning. Aetna's board months earlier had set his compensation for his 10 months of service as CEO in 2000 at a $1 million salary, a $6 million bonus and more than $11 million in restricted stock and options." Our kind of guy.
...
But what a payoff on the investment! A mere $5.9 million in campaign contributions over 13 years and they got $164 million in the last four years in tax rebates without ever paying taxes. I'm telling you, this guy Mr. Snow is a genius, and I have perfect faith that as the Bush team moves ahead to cut more taxes for the rich, fight a $200 billion war and increase defense spending, the books at Treasury will balance nicely. It all makes perfect sense to me.

posted by Bob at 2:28 PM

One of five technically legal signs that can be posted in a library to warn patrons of intrusions on their privacy. Politics in the Zeros has more.
posted by Bob at 1:52 PM

Monday, December 23, 2002

Harboring Terrorists

Most controversially, at the request of Jeb, Mr Bush Sr intervened to release the convicted Cuban terrorist Orlando Bosch from prison and then granted him US residency.

According to the justice department in George Bush Sr's administration, Bosch had participated in more than 30 terrorist acts. He was convicted of firing a rocket into a Polish ship which was on passage to Cuba. He was also implicated in the 1976 blowing-up of a Cubana plane flying to Havana from Venezuela in which all 73 civilians on board were killed...Bosch now lives in Miami and remains unrepentant about his militant activities, according to Bardach. -- from a Guardian article about the book Cuba Confidential: Love and Vengeance in Miami and Havana, by Ann Louise Bardach. Read the whole artice; it will give you a good idea of the criminal nature of the whole Bush clan. Probably a good idea to read the book, too, but I haven't done that yet (reserve requested at the library).

I may have been wrong months ago when I said that the biggest mistake this country ever made was readmitting Texas to the Union after the Civil War. Florida may have been even bigger. When you've got a chance to lose corrupt Bush-voting cesspools like these, you've got to take advantage. Or, to paraphrase Trent Lott, if the Navy hadn't pulled George H. W. Bush out of the Pacific after his plane went down in WWII, we wouldn't have had all these problems. No October Surprise, no Iran-Contra, no "read my lips", no Panama invasion, no Gulf War I, no Gulf War II, no World War III.

posted by Bob at 11:21 PM

Plane Crashes in Iran, Killing 46

The report said the plane was carrying aerospace experts from the Ukraine. The Arab satellite station Al-Jazeera said there were 46 victims, most from Ukraine. It was not immediately clear why the plane crashed. -- from AP. I should have you trained well enough by now to read between the lines of that one.

posted by Bob at 4:45 PM

Two Wars? No Problem, says Rumsfeld. Happy Holidays. Rummy says we can take on Iraq AND North Korea at the same time.

Asked about Baghdad's assertions that it is complying fully with the United Nations, Mr. Rumsfeld said, "Well, they obviously aren't."

That's what passes for proof in the Bush administration. Obviously.
posted by Bob at 3:59 PM

Promise Breakers

PLA points out how the Bushies broke their promise to the 9/11 families on the makeup of the commission investigating 9/11. The families had been promised that they could pick one of the five Republican members of the commission: they picked former senator Warren Rudman. But all five Republican places are now filled: former Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, Fred Fielding, a former White House lawyer, former Sen. Slade Gorton of Washington and John Lehman, former Navy secretary. No Warren Rudman.

The reason the families wanted to pick Rudman was that they wanted six of the ten commission members to be independent of the White House, thereby increasing the likelihood that key administration figures like Attorney General Ashcroft, CIA Director Tenet, and even W himself might be subpoenaed. Clearly Bush is more dedicated to his cult of secrecy than he is to keeping a promise to victims of his own administration's incompetence. Absolute, total sleazebag.

PLA further suggests that the promise made to moderate Republican senators Chaffee, Snowe and Collins that the porkbarrel provisions added to the Homeland Security bill would be revisited in the new congress in January. Those provisions included the incredibly sleazy protection of drugmaker Eli Lilly from lawsuits over thimerosal, the mercury-containing vaccine additive which may be linked to autism. (PLA is the father of an autistic child and blogs on the issue a lot.)
posted by Bob at 3:48 PM

US jails Arabs who comply with new law

-- Headline from an article in a South African newspaper.
posted by Bob at 2:32 PM

The United States administration has dismissed as a stunt Iraq's offer to admit CIA agents to assist United Nations arms inspectors. A White House official said the burden of proof rested with President Saddam Hussein to show that he was not developing weapons of mass destruction. On Sunday, Iraq said it was ready to answer any questions raised by the US and UK governments on its weapons declaration to the UN. An adviser to the Iraqi leader, General Amir al-Saadi, said all available information had been provided. He invited CIA personnel to direct arms inspectors to any suspect sites. But the White House official rejected the offer, saying Baghdad appeared "not to have made the strategic choice" to renounce weapons of mass destruction. "While we have not given up on disarming Iraq through the United Nations, we are now entering a final phase in how we compel Saddam Hussein to disarm," the official told Reuters news agency. -- from BBC

{SARCASM}Ari Fleischer added that the administration believed that the Japanese surrender on the battleship Missouri in 1945 was "all hat and no cattle," and that the burden of proof is on Japan to show that it has stopped fighting World War II. He also said that it is "way past time" for Great Britain to recognize American independence, and that Paraguay had better come clean about its ladder to Saturn or "face the consequences."{/SARCASM}

The Iraqis have called Bush's bluff, but it looks like Bush will insist on knocking the table over before anyone sees the cards. This is soooooo embarrassing! Why did we elect this clown? (Oh, right, we didn't.)

posted by Bob at 2:18 PM

Last month the Jordanian government asked the Israeli government to formally renounce any idea of mass expulsions. Sharon's government refused.

The first transfer in 1948 was replete with massacres large and small. This one would be even more violent. Palestinians are much more determined not to leave now. On the Israeli side their Prime Minister is a man who has personally led the slaughter of Palestinians for 50 years and who has never suffered any long term political reverses because of it.

Let me lay out a possible scenario, the U.S. invades Iraq, a huge bomb goes off in Israel and the the IDF moves into action. Village after village is marched to the Jordanian border. The Jordanian Army refuses to let Palestinians cross the border and the IDF bombards them until they retreat. Then the Palestinians are driven across the border.

Impossible? A nightmare? Well, who would stop Sharon? Bush might if he thought it harmed the pulverizing of Iraq. If the war's going well, however, would he even lift a finger? -- from Stanley Heller.
posted by Bob at 11:59 AM

Michigan Democrats and Republicans claim to agree that sprawl is bad. Let's hope they're serious about this: with the state, like every state, facing a budget crisis, I hope they use taxes to discourage sprawl. A big increase in the gas tax and hefty property tax surcharges on greenfield development could make existing communities relatively more attractive to developers and commuters.

At the root of the problem, as I see it, is that communities on just about every scale are in competition with each other, to just about everyone's detriment. Indonesia and Bangladesh takes jobs from Mexico which went there from the US fifteen years ago. Alabama gives Hyundai $126 million in corporate welfare so they'll locate a plant there instead of in Kentucky (Michigan? Forget about it!). People looking for a house are lured to new subdivisions in Livingston County because of low land costs, lower taxes, low gas prices, and no tolls on the highways, to the detriment of Ann Arbor and metro Detroit, despite their existing housing and infrastructure. Competition has its place, but the government must not only provide a level playing field (which it rarely does); it must prohibit competition which is generally bad for the public welfare. Sprawl is one such form of competition. While the farmer may get more for his land than he would otherwise, and the developer makes a lot of money, and many of the people who buy houses there will at least claim to be happy, the overall impact of sprawl on society is negative, so it should be stopped.
posted by Bob at 11:11 AM

Sunday, December 22, 2002

The violence was triggered by a Palestinian uprising for statehood that began in September 2000. -- That's Reuters' summation of the Israel-Palestine conflict: a simple blame-it-on-the-Palestinians. Ignore the ongoing and increasing occupation and the humiliation and inconvenience it causes, the arrests of Palestinian leaders, the killing of civilians. Ignore Sharon's many provocations.

I've been remiss in not giving more attention to the Palestine situation. I tend to rant about what I read in the paper, and this isn't getting much attention anymore. Maybe the Trent Lott thing was intentional just to keep focus off of this brutal issue until the troops are in place and it's a new moon over Iraq. But the fact is that there is a brutal occupation going on in the West Bank and Gaza, and there is talk of relocating the Palestinians (again); basically, ethnic cleansing. Many people in the Ann Arbor Area Committee for Peace are justifiably outraged over this issue and the fact that the US continues to support Israel monetarily and militarily. Of course there is some blame to be placed on the suicide bombers, but this isn't too far removed from blaming the guy in Tienamen Square who faced down the Chinese tanks. The Israelis have the power, which means they have the power to choose between peace and war. The Palestinians are left with a choice between dying or dying while fighting.

So every day, while the Republicans are picking a new senate leader and Bush tells more lies about Saddam's lies, people are being killed in Palestine by US-funded bullets, bombs and grenades.
posted by Bob at 9:54 PM

Download and print a Holiday poster for Peace for your window or door.

posted by Bob at 9:23 PM

In most cases, it is apparent that the INS arrested men who were simply waiting for approval of their green card applications, or those with minor visa problems caused by incompetence in the agency itself, which has been plagued by an inept bureaucracy for years. In but one example, the San Diego Union Tribune reported on July 27, 2002 that the agency recently failed to process more than 200,000 change of address forms and then unceremoniously dumped them in the largest underground records facility in the world – an abandoned mine near Kansas City – putting hundreds of thousands at risk of wrongful arrest and deportation for failing to report a change of address. -- from the ACLU.
(Emphasis added)
posted by Bob at 9:16 PM

Oh give me a home
Where the poppy seeds grow
And Russians and Taliban played
Where never is heard
A woman's word
And the sky's filled with contrails all day.

In their apparently infinite lack of compassion, the INS is deporting a 29-year-old Texas woman to her native Afghanistan, which she left when she was 15. She works in a restaurant in Texas, and is currently the primary caregiver for her elderly mother. Having no male relative to watch out for her in Afghanistan, she will have no rights and will be lucky to survive even a year. Thanks to Ampersand for the link.
posted by Bob at 8:59 PM

Airport security insanity: Airport cops feel up guy's pregnant wife, guy objects, gets arrested. Ugly story from George Bush's America.
posted by Bob at 6:45 PM

How did this guy get into the Bush administration?

He's actually going after the monsters of the highway: (from the NY Times)

"The theory that I'm going to protect myself and my family even if it costs other people's lives has been the operative incentive for the design of these vehicles, and that's just wrong," said Dr. Runge, the administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (known by its abbreviation and pronounced NIT-sa), in a recent interview.

"Not to sound like a politician, but that's not compassionate conservatism."

Now Dr. Runge's agency is reviewing several safety issues involving sport utility vehicles that could have wide-ranging implications for motorists and automakers. Detroit's Big Three, especially, derive a lopsided share of their slim profits from these vehicles.

Intent as he is on attacking the dangers of S.U.V.'s, Dr. Runge is still part of an administration that is not enamored of regulation. Yet he says that if he cannot address this nettlesome problem, his agency has little purpose.

posted by Bob at 6:27 PM

ABC's 20-20 show last night featured a segment on US Air Force pilots being required to take speed for long flights. The two pilots responsible for killing four Canadians, and wounding eight others, were both wired on speed when they dropped the lethal bomb. While our government is running ads blaming teenagers for funding terrorism and killing children because they smoke some pot, they are at the same time pushing uppers on the pilots of the most lethal machinery anywhere, all to make Afghanistan safe once again for producing heroin.
posted by Bob at 12:06 AM

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The trap is set: We ask, "Why Iraq?" Certainly if it is terrorism we are concerned about, then Saudi Arabia and Pakistan have clearly been far more involved in supporting terrorists, especially al Qaeda, than Iraq has. If it is weapons of mass destruction, Iraq might have a few, along with some primitive delivery systems, but Russia, China, Israel, Pakistan, India, France, England and maybe some others have fully developed nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them. Invaded other countries? Certainly Iraq is not alone in this--the US invaded Afghanistan just last year. Killed, abused, tortured, imprisoned its own citizens? Big club there. We mention all of this hoping to point out the simple-mindedness and incoherence of Bush's push for war. Why this particular dictator at this particular time? Our hope is that others will see that it doesn't make sense and that war can be averted. But now I'm afraid that the Bushies are just setting a trap. A year or so after a muddled, bloody and inconclusive attack on Iraq, W will be making the case for attacking Iran, or Syria, or Saudi Arabia, and he will have all of these quotes from us liberals to support his case. The Bushies are using 1984 as their guidebook for world domination, and an endless series of wars is very much part of the plan. While our arguments about the Saudis, Pakistanis and others are valid, we must be clear that we present them only to debunk the Iraq war plan, not as implied support for any future wars.

It's Friday the 13th! Are you superstitious? Well, George W. Bush is President, Dick Cheney is Vice President, John Ashcroft is Attorney General, and Donald Rumsfeld is Secretary of Defense. If that isn't bad luck, I don't know what is. It's like the whole world broke a mirror while walking under a ladder to avoid stepping on a black cat.

They've defied UN resolutions for years. They have weapons of mass destruction. They are a threat to their neighbors. We're invading Israel! (And the US is next.)

Congratulations to Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris! Twenty-two months after the 2000 election debacle and Florida is still clueless as to how to do elections. And now it looks as though Katherine is on her way to Congress, where she can teach Tom DeLay to chicken dance.

Free trade and free markets have proved their ability to lift whole societies out of poverty — so the United States is working with the entire global trading community to build a world that trades in freedom and therefore grows in prosperity. -- George W. Bush (supposedly) in today's NY Times.

Name one, W. Go to Buenos Aires or Rio and try saying that! Or Flint, Michigan!

No double standard! Noelle Bush was busted again. This time it's cocaine. The Supreme Court recently upheld part of a 1998 drug law which causes public-housing tenants to be evicted when any family member is caught selling or possessing illegal drugs. Well, Noelle's father lives in public housing, specifically the Florida governor's mansion. So does her uncle, at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington. Out on the streets, boys!

It is not the role of the United States to pick leaders around the world. The United States does not impose its will on other nations. The United States does not designate one individual to be the leader of another country. -- Presidential Spokesliar Ari Fleischer, from the NY Times

Water Fight: While downstream communities were banning lawn watering and car washing, Golden, Colorado kept watering and washing until a court ordered it to get with the program. Meanwhile, even though some Michigan communities are already on water rationing, I still see Pfizer and several apartment complexes in Ann Arbor watering lawns, sidewalks and streets in a glorious demonstration of wealthy arrogance. I'm afraid that most Americans seem to agree with Homer Simpson's statement from Sunday night: "If we conserve, then the environmentalists win!" They also seem to agree with Homer's implication that nothing could be worse than that. Unfortunately, they will soon find out otherwise.

I doubt if Ted Rall is getting any flack over this one. It's even more warped and cynical than my cartoon!

There will never be a day when we can declare terrorism stamped out for good. It will be more like fighting crime, where success is always relative and victory is never final, than like fighting a war. And the metaphor we use to describe our struggle matters: some things that are justifiable in a temporary time of war are not justifiable during a permanent fight against crime, even if the criminals are murderous fanatics...

The point is that our new, threatened condition isn't temporary. We're in this for the long haul, so any measures we take to fight terrorism had better be measures that we are prepared to live with indefinitely. The real challenge now is not to stamp out terrorism; that's an unattainable goal. The challenge is to find a way to cope with the threat of terrorism without losing the freedom and prosperity that make America the great nation it is.

We have set up a world where great men do not get nominated for the presidency--only ruthless, power-mad pols with hollow centers, surrounded by political mercenaries. We have set up a world where the candidate with the more effective liars and more cutthroat scoundrels wins. -- Jake Tapper, from the conclusion to his book Down & Dirty: The Plot to Steal the Presidency

Actually, the book is not a compelling read. It documents a lot of the sleaze on both sides of the Florida fiasco, but it is rather hard to follow. But if you've read Stupid White Men and are looking for a more thorough, even-handed account which thoroughly impeaches both sides, Down & Dirty might interest you.

I hate this war that's coming in Iraq. I don't think we'll be proud of it. Oppose this war because it will create a millennium of hatred and the suicidal terrorism that comes with it. You talk about Bush trying to avenge his father. What about the tens of millions of Arab sons who will want to finish a fight we start next spring in Baghdad? -- from Chris Matthews, of all people!

Interestingly, both headlines refer to the same report. Even more interesting is that the Times headline said something like "Iraq could have nuclear weapons within months" just a few hours ago. I swear I am not making this up--the Times changed its headline to the more dovish one sometime this afternoon. Now, I like the change, but I'll bet some of the thousands of warmongering reporters, senators, web sites, and TV/radio pundits will be all over the Times for this fairly obvious change of spin. And those people who get most of their news from TV will only get the equivalent of a headline, and it will probably be closer to the Post's than the Times' new one. Incidentally, the report basically says both things: Iraq doesn't have nuclear material, but they probably could make a bomb in a period of months if they obtained some, probably on the black market from Russia or the Ukraine.

It's not going to end with a definitive judgment on whether Osama bin Laden is dead or alive, but it will end when the terrorists realize they don't have the resources or the will to attack. -- George H.W. Bush (aka Senior, 41, Poppy, wimp, etc.)

Unfortunately, as with all of the Bushies past and present, Poppy focuses on denying terrorists the resources and the will, while completely ignoring the motive. The reasoning is, I guess, is that if we remove their motive then the terrorists will have won. Maybe so. But we will have won, too.

Congresswoman Lynn Rivers responded to one of my many anti-war e-mails by sending me a copy of a letter. She says "My colleagues and I" sent this letter to President Bush, but unfortunately she doesn't identify how many colleagues were involved. I hope it was more than Rivers, Cynthia McKinney, Barbara Lee and Dennis Kucinich, but I'm willing to bet that Tom DeLay didn't sign it. Below is the text of the letter--I have highlighted the parts that I liked, mostly so this wouldn't be just a lame copy rant:

The Bushies are all reading from the same script now. It doesn't make their "evidence" against Iraq true, it doesn't make an attack easy or safe, and most of all, it doesn't make it right. Bush, Cheney and the rest of them are scum, willing to kill thousands to tighten their stranglehold on power in the world.

If we conserve, then the environmentalists win! -- Homer Simpson in tonight's episode. Finally, someone has clearly and succinctly stated the Bush energy policy.

Guess what! I'm not the only fan of the Veep from the Deep, Useless Dick Cheney! Check this guy out!

I promise you I will listen to what has been said here, even though I wasn't here. -- George W. Bush, Waco, Texas, Aug. 13.

Fortunately, after a wimpy supposedly patriotic hiatus from highlighting the nonsense emanating from our language-impaired president, Slate's Bushisms page is being updated again! And if you are feeling too lazy to click the link and read them all, consider this gem:

"If you don't have any ambitions, the minimum-wage job isn't going to get you to where you want to get, for example. In other words, what is your ambitions? And oh, by the way, if that is your ambition, here's what it's going to take to achieve it." -- Speech to students in Little Rock, Ark., Aug. 29, 2002

Karzai update: Karzai was in Kandahar for his brother's wedding. Attending an Afghan wedding? The man clearly has a death wish.

Whose weapons of mass destruction should we really be worried about? Ours! There was a terror alert today at a facility in Utah which houses 1300 tons of VX and 6100 tons of mustard gas, among other delights. Apparently, an unauthorized person was spotted in the perimeter of the facility, and he hasn't been caught yet. At least these WMD's aren't under the control of a madman who ignores UN resolutions and defies world opinion to pursue his own ... wait ... but ... ohmygod!

By discussing the economy, Bush was able to split the cost of his fund-raising between taxpayers and the GOP. -- from the NY Times.

That's right--by babbling a bit of nonsense about more tax cuts for the rich, W can pass part of the cost for his partisan fundraising efforts on to those of us who still have to pay taxes. And if these Republicans he is campaigning for get elected, they will probably pass a bill allowing W to spend three months a year on vacation and nine months a year fundraising, all at government expense. It could be worse, though. He could be trying to govern.

I am confused, however. What is it about that smirking twit that makes Republicans pull out their checkbooks? I understand that he does everything that they want and that they get far greater returns on campaign contributions than they do on any other investment, but they knew that before they went to the fundraiser. I would think that hearing him in person would only plant doubts in their closed little minds. I guess the main thing is that he sees them so he knows who the bosses are and whom he owes favors. They let him speak just to humor him (and to let him charge part of the trip to the government).

Presidential Press Secretary Ari Fleischer revealed today that the CIA now believes that the field in western Pennsylvania where United Flight 93 crashed on September 11 was the true target of the terrorists. "Al Qaeda sees open fields as despised symbols of freedom," Fleischer said. "This gives a true picture of the type of evil that we are up against." The CIA's information came from an un-named detainee at the Camp Delta prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. "The detainee told us that the hijacker-pilots of the other three planes were basically incompetent," Fleischer continued. "They couldn't be in the simulator for more than ten minutes without crashing into some building or other. The guy on flight 93 was the best by far. All four planes were supposed to crash within a half-mile of each other in Pennsylvania, forming a unique crop circle." Fleischer added that this same detainee was the one who told agents about Jose Padilla and the dirty bomb, as well as Iraq's nuclear program and ties to al Qaeda. "Therefore, we have no reason to question his credibility," according to Fleischer.

Belligerent and divisive voices now seem to be dominant in Washington, but they do not yet reflect final decisions of the president, Congress or the courts. It is crucial that the historical and well-founded American commitments prevail: to peace, justice, human rights, the environment and international cooperation. -- Jimmy Carter

Tom Tomorrow links to this article which features this interesting example of doublethink on the part of the Bushies:

It is interesting that the oligarchy presents Iraq as (a) a terrible threat to the world with unlimited capacity for raining down death and (b) a nation with a demoralized and scattered army that we can take over in a matter of weeks using our fine new weapons systems and maybe a soldier or two.

President Bush ... told wary U.S. allies their "credibility is at stake" as they decide whether to back his plans. -- from the Washington Post.

Mr. Bush's credibility would also be at stake--if he had any. Worthless Bush and Useless Dick continue to dream up new lies and other nonsense in their apparently never-ending pursuit of war. Read the rest of the Post article for some vintage examples of Bush-speak.

Ever get the feeling that maybe your life is wasted, that you aren't doing anything worthwhile, that there might be some better way to use your time? Well, it could be worse. Check out what this idiot has been doing for the last three months. I have a lot of respect for people who break records in well-known, relatively universal pursuits against serious, determined competition. Achieving the record should involve skill, determination, perseverance, and performing at a very high level throughout. Michael Johnson's record in the 200 meter run and Lance Armstrong's amazing victories at the Tour de France are good examples. Cal Ripken's consecutive-game streak fails my test mostly because he did not perform at a high level throughout; he played through slumps that would have benched any other player. (It was also in baseball, which is to real sport as what George W. Bush does is to real governing.) The balloon guy's around-the-world thing is shaky, too, because it was rather self-defined, extremely expensive, and while it depended a lot on his skill and perseverance, it depended even more on which way the wind was blowing. But riding a roller coaster ten hours a day for 104 consecutive days (to break your own dumb record!) is just plain insane. No skill or performing at a high level--just dumb determination and some poor rich parent to pay the VISA bill (priceless).

Homeland Insanity: Continuing to milk 9/11 for all it's worth and then some, the Bushies and the Senate are once again considering establishing a "Department of Homeland Security." The Senate, led by poser-in-chief Joe Lieberman, is using the issue to show that they are "tough on terrorism" while continuing to ignore the killers of many times as many Americans: guns, cars, pollution, and lack of access to health care. (And if W gets his way, you can add war to that list.) The Bushies, meanwhile, having hijacked the DHS issue from Lieberman a few months ago, are using it as an attempt to break unions and the civil service system. The good of the public is not even remotely an issue in this debate.

ConocoPhillips just joined ExxonMobil, ChevronTexaco, and BP-Arco-Amoco in the ever more monopolistic oil business. The FTC just approved the Conoco-Phillips merger yesterday. I vaguely recall learning something about anti-trust laws in the past--you know, Teddy Roosevelt, breakup of AT&T, etc. But the government has completely abandoned its responsibility to protect us from monopolies for about 20 years now. While it could be argued that these mega-corps have not used their monopoly power to raise prices out of reach, I believe that the greatest danger in having so few companies involved in most of our most important industries is the immense amount of political clout that they have. Unfortunately, what the CEO and board of ConocoPhillips think about conservation and alternative energy sources means a lot more to our elected and appointed scumbags in Washington that what any of us thinks. And the monopolization of the media industry is even more scary, since those swine are engaged in serious mind control.

While Mr. Bush has not expressed an opinion on that issue, a White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, told reporters today in Crawford that "our goal is disarmament," and added, "we know that we can't verify disarmament." -- from the NY Times

How very convenient it is to have an unverifiable goal! Why bother inspecting at all? Even regime change isn't enough now. How can we be sure that the next Saddam won't be making nasty weapons? We won't! So we'll have to bomb him, too! At one of my old jobs, we had some management guru teach us about "SMART" goals, where "SMART" was an acronym. I don't remember all five letters, but I'm pretty sure "M" stood for "Measurable" and "A" stood for "Achievable." The guru's point was that if you can't tell when you've gotten there, it wasn't a goal at all. But I think the Bushies have a different guru who promotes "STUPID" goals.

"The capture and detention of enemy combatants during wartime falls within the president's core constitutional powers as commander-in-chief, which, in the present conflict, are exercised with the specific support of Congress," the motion said, adding that court precedents "firmly" establish that citizenship of detainees is not relevant to whether they can be detained.

"Nor is it significant that an enemy combatant is captured within United States territory in civilian dress rather than in uniform or on a foreign battlefield," the motion said. "In a time of war, an enemy combatant is subject to capture and detention wherever found."

Prosecutors also argued that courts should defer to the president's judgment on designating enemy combatants because "such determinations involve highly sensitive intelligence information and judgment calls about the credibility of foreign intelligence sources."

from CNN. Federal prosecutors are arguing that during wartime (something which the president defines), any person, citizen or not, in uniform or not, can be arrested anywhere, anytime on the judgment of the president based on secret evidence, without the right to a lawyer or due process. Welcome to the Soviet Union. I would strongly oppose this even if we had a competent president.

Maureen Dowd recognizes that yesterday was Hypocrisy Day as well. Of course, when you're a Bushie, every day is Hypocrisy Day.

The more television people watched, the fewer facts they knew; and the less people knew in terms of basic facts, the more likely they were to back the Bush administration. -- from Martin Lee and Norman Solomon, quoted in How PR Sold the War in the Persian Gulf, by John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton. The article, actually a chapter from their book Toxic Sludge is Good for You, describes how the first Bush administration and the Kuwaiti government-in-exile used a massive and deceitful PR campaign to sell the Gulf War to the American public. As Harry Truman said, "the only new thing in the world is the history you don't know." The current Bush administration is relying on the generally abysmal knowledge of history by Americans as Bush II attempts to peddle Gulf War II to them. (Only if we are lucky will it actually be known as "Gulf War II." "World War III" is more likely.)

Later in the article, Rampton and Stauber describe a CBC documentary made after Gulf War I which included an interview with a PR exec who had conducted opinion polls and focus groups to find the messages which would have the most impact on the American public. Their conclusion?

The theme that struck the deepest emotional chord, they discovered, was "the fact that Saddam Hussein was a madman who had committed atrocities even against his own people, and had tremendous power to do further damage, and he needed to be stopped."

With a poorly informed public and deeply cynical and malicious leadership, the same broken record is being played again.

"I don't care what anyone but a court of law thinks," he said. "Until a court says otherwise, if I say it's constitutional, it's constitutional." -- Wilmington, DE Mayor James Baker, from this article. Wilmington has established its own Department of Pre-Crime, a database of people without criminal records that it believes may commit crimes. We really should know by now not to trust somebody named James Baker. He's obviously working to get a job in the Bush administration.

Malignant Growth: George Monbiot questions the whole "growth is good" nonsense. I have to agree. Eleven years ago I spent a week in a poor town in Jamaica, and the people there seemed generally happier than the people here. One of the books I read (probably Affluenza) said that polls indicated that the highest percentage of Americans saying that they were happy occurred in 1957. I was a little offended, having been born in 1958, but it makes you wonder what all of the supposedly wonderful economic growth of the past 45 years has really accomplished. Did we work that hard just to be more miserable? Why do we continue? (Of course, maybe I'm just justifying my own laziness. Most of what I've accomplished today at work is on this page. But this is Hypocrisy Day, so why not?)

Bushies continue to celebrate Hypocrisy Day: The White House is trying to prevent the disclosure of documents relating to the controversial pardons granted by President Clinton in his final days in office. Really. Makes you wonder whom they are planning to pardon. The Unabomber, maybe? Certainly they won't pardon any of their detainees or enemy combatants. I don't know all of the rules behind pardons, but I think you have to have been convicted to get one, which means you had to have been tried, which means you had to have been charged with a crime. Tough luck, guys, as Ted Rall points out.

Water: the real deal. Contrary to common econobabble, we can survive without oil. In some ways, we would be better off: less traffic, less pollution, fewer wars. And sooner or later, we'll have to survive without oil. The liquid we can't do without is water. Already a major international issue in the Middle East and a divisive social issue in South America and China, water wars may soon make oil wars seem pretty Bush league. Of course, with the assistance of free-trade maniacs like Clinton and the Bushes, multinational corporations are already laying claim to much of the world's fresh water supply. The New York Times concludes a four-part series on water tomorrow; you can read the first three parts now.

For my fellow Michiganders, water might well be the best reason to vote for Jennifer Granholm for governor. As more and more of the west experiences drought and water restrictions, there will be calls from western senators to pipe some of the Great Lakes water to the southwest. While I suspect that both Posthumus and Granholm would oppose this, I think that Granholm's superior oratorical skills and ability to think on her feet might make the difference in fending this off. Frankly, I won't have much sympathy for Arizona until they've shut down every golf course and otherwise decided to make peace with the environment they've chosen to inhabit. I'll give California a little more sympathy because I've got family, friends, and readers there. Well, northern California, anyway.

The Washington Post continues to peddle nonsense about the US role in central Asia. In an article full of BS about supporting "democracy," the author offered this enormous whopper:

The powerful nations of the world with interests in the neighborhood all see stability as the antidote to the tendencies they fear -- Islamic extremism, violent opposition to sitting regimes, ugly contests for power and wealth.

Perhaps he doesn't consider the US to be one of the "powerful nations of the world," since the Bushie Iraq policy is a very ugly contest for power and wealth involving violent opposition to a sitting regime which will likely lead to a huge increase in Islamic extremism.

No such thing as bad publicity: Katherine Harris is releasing her book about the 2000 election just before voters decide whether being an over-made-up good-for-nothing party hack who put her party ahead of her job qualifies her to be in Congress. Despairingly, I'm afraid it most certainly does. Not only do those qualities qualify her, they are practically required these days.

Speaking of Ms. Harris, I read in Jake Tapper's book about the Florida shenanigans that Katherine was once, about ten years ago, an assistant for a lounge act (a Vanna White type, according to Tapper). Apparently, her main responsibility was teaching the crowd to do the chicken dance. In a truly just world, that alone would disqualify someone from running for public office. I mean, how many overweight butts have been wiggled obscenely at sporting events around the country due to that chicken dance? I'll bet Rome had chicken dances just before it fell. And chicken-dance pushers like Katherine Harris should be dealt with severely to rid our culture of this scourge! And not by electing them to Congress.

Federal Court Upholds Open Hearing in Rabih Haddad Case: A three-judge panel of the 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Cincinnati was unanimous in rejecting the government's appeal Monday. ``A government operating in the shadow of secrecy stands in complete opposition to the society envisioned by the framers of our Constitution,'' it said. -- from AP

Federal officials sought a closed deportation hearing for Haddad on national security grounds, arguing that opening the session to the public and news media would help terrorists understand the government's strategy.

Do the Feds really believe that terrorists are so smart that they can understand something that no one else can?

Anyway, let's hope that this leads quickly to freedom for Haddad and the others held illegally by the Bushies.

Conclusive proof that baseball hasn't a clue: George W. Bush has been put on a list of 60 non-players being considered for baseball's Hall of Fame. Because he was the figurehead "owner" of the powerhouse Texas Rangers from 1989-98. Because they bilked the Texas taxpayers out of millions to build the Ballpark at Arlington. Because they traded Sammy Sosa. Because he got paid $13 million for watching baseball games. Because he was appointed to a very powerful job and another totally screwed-up industry is trying to buy his favor.

I'm sending another e-mail to the senators--care to join me? Here's mine; feel free to copy it directly or alter it.

I read in the news that the Bush administration believes that it does not need congressional approval for going to war against Iraq. I think that they are wrong, but I am not a legal scholar and I do not know the details of the War Powers Act and the Gulf War resolution of 1990. I think that the best solution is for Congress to immediately act to clarify the situation by superceding any questionable passages in these documents with clear and unequivocal language stating that the President is required to get a declaration of war from Congress before undertaking any further attacks against Iraq. It should be made clear that any unapproved aggression would be considered an impeachable offense. You are our elected representatives; the President is not. Do something, please! The cycle of violence must be stopped, and you are the ones to do it.

Finding the dark cloud around this supposed silver lining: New home sales climbed in July to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 1.02 million, the highest monthly level on record, according to this article. Spurred by low interest rates, sprawl-divisions are springing up everywhere. So while the "growth is good" folks are excited about all of the jobs in construction, real estate/finance, landscaping/lawn maintenance, home improvement manufacturing and retail, etc., I'm bummed by the loss of open space, the destruction of wildlife habitats, the increased traffic and pollution, the flight of money from city to suburban schools, and the addition of a million families to the voting rolls who have a six-figure stake in keeping gasoline prices artificially low. And, of course, almost all of this new housing is going to people who were already adequately housed.

On a related subject: I recently read a book called Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony. It documents the wastefulness involved in the typical American grass lawn, especially in climates not well suited for it. The mowing, watering, fertilizing, spraying, and reduction of biodiversity involved in a pretty green lawn can all be harmful to the environment. While lawns are great for some activities (I love playing soccer, for example), there are many attractive alternatives in most situations that are much more environmentally friendly. One of the most obvious, to me, is just to reduce the size of the lawns. So many of the new sprawl-divisions have houses on half-acre, one-acre, or even larger lots. Many of them are just huge expanses (expenses) of grass, much of which does nothing except grow and get mowed. Even worse, to me, are the industrial-park-style factories, office buildings and warehouses. These are usually spread-out one-story buildings with large parking lots and even larger lawns. Occasionally you will see a picnic table or a volleyball net on a small part of the lawn, but for the most part the lawn just grows and gets mowed. My office building is being surrounded by buildings belonging to drug behemoth Pfizer. They have been building, remodeling and landscaping their campus for the two years that I have been working here, and they have bought even more land in the neighborhood. After the construction work is done, they put in huge areas of grass with built-in sprinkler systems. Teams of mowers and trimmers are working on it pretty much all of the time, adding to the noise and pollution in the area. Why not just cut drug costs a little instead?

Get involved the easy way: Several progressive organizations have web sites which enable you to quickly send e-mails or faxes to congress and others expressing concern about important issues. Here are a few that I have been using:

All of these allow you to choose which issues to act on and to edit the text of your e-mail or fax before sending it. I don't know how much effect these e-mails and faxes have, but I would guess that sending just one is as important as whether you voted in the last election. You are showing congress that you are paying attention and that you care about what is going on, and that they might not get your vote next time if they ignore your wishes. By showing that our votes may be based more on issues than on campaign ads hopefully lessens the impact of campaign "donations" by corporations, giving our representatives the courage to vote the right way.

Nothing has subverted Middle East democracy more than the Arab world's and Iran's dependence on oil, and nothing will restrict America's ability to tell the truth in the Middle East and promote democracy there more than our continued dependence on oil. Yet, since Sept. 11, the Bush-Cheney team has not lifted a finger to make us, or the Arab-Islamic world, less dependent on oil. -- Thomas Friedman in today's NY Times

Some friendly reminders, lest anyone forget: Cheney energy plan secrets. Warning signs of 9/11 ignored. Bombing of Red Cross, Canadians, innocent civilians, cluster bombs still waiting to go off, etc. Brutal treatment of POW's in Afghanistan. Shadow government. Enron ties to Bushies. Osama probably still on the loose. Bush's Harken shenanigans. Cheney's Halliburton shenanigans. Illegal detentions. USA Patriot Act. Repeal of estate tax. John Ashcroft. And, of course, the frigging stolen election which made it all possible!

Detroit Free Press sports columnist Drew Sharp says that the main hope for downtown Detroit is the success of the Tigers and Lions, especially the Tigers. How depressing. Sharp demonstrates more insight into Detroit's woes than most of the non-sports columnists in the paper.

The World Socialist Web Site documents the ongoing preparations for war in Iraq even as W claims that no decision has been made. Where have all the soldiers gone? According to WSWS, "US soldiers, sailors and airmen are now stationed in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, Yemen, Eritrea and Kenya, with naval forces offshore in the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea and the Mediterranean." They also say that, in addition to the ongoing bombing of Iraq, there are already US Special Forces personnel operating in Iraq right now.

The Bushies won't force meat producers to clean up their act for Americans, but for the Russians, that's a different story. Not to be chauvinistic or whatever, but I think most Americans would assume that the food in American supermarkets is generally safer than what you would expect to find in Russia. But the Russians didn't think so. They have insisted that chicken and turkey legs shipped to Russia meet higher standards, and the USDA has agreed. The article doesn't really say much about it, but I think the gist of it is that Tyson and the other evil butchers will be shipping safer meat to Russia than they will to Krogers. This is the New World Order: the Russian government takes a stand to protect its citizens while the US government gives in to protect the corporations. Just one more reason to be a vegetarian.

Conservative former Congressman John LeBoutillier blasts Frankenbush. Explains the generation gap between Poppy and Junior, and the parallel one between Scowcroft and Condi Rice.

Follow-up: It should come as no surprise that Vinson & Elkins also represents Halliburton, according to this article. Mob lawyers.

Molly Ivins, author of Shrub, writes a nice well-rounded Bush-bashing op-ed piece. Here are some choice quotes:

Well, I'm not just any fool, but I decided to check out the V&E website. Here is the part that Ivins was referring to:

The firm also assists in structuring financings for purposes of (a) achieving true-sale and off-balance-sheet treatment for accounting, bankruptcy or state law purposes (while, in many cases, maintaining loan treatment for federal income tax purposes), (b) assuring the bankruptcy remoteness of each structure, and (c) minimizing adverse state or foreign tax consequences. -- from http://www.vinson-elkins.com/practice_areas/practice_areas.cfm?prac=9. (emphasis added)

I'm not an accounting expert, but I think that means that they help companies borrow large amounts of money and make sure that neither stockholders, state governments, nor other creditors know about it, while still obtaining big deductions from federal taxes. This is the type of service they provided Enron, and they are advertising it to other corporations even today. In my dream world, the one where Bush and Cheney are dishwashers at Denny's, all of the lawyers at V&E will be assigned as unpaid court-appointed lawyers to defend the "detainees" at Guantanamo Bay. They will be allowed to chase ambulances ten hours a week to buy food. They can return to their previous careers as corporate shysters once every last detainee is either free or convicted in a court of law (and the conviction confirmed on appeal, all the way to the International Criminal Court, if necessary).

Every Disaster an Excuse to Give the Corporations What They Want: W is using the forest fires in the west as a reason to let the timber industry increase logging on national forest land. I guess the idea is--no forests, no forest fires. Don't save for tomorrow what you can destroy for profit today.

Telling us off: Canadian W.R. McDougall chastises America in a big way. Don't miss this one! (Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for the link.)

The Exterminator Speaks: Not to be deterred by the defection of fellow Texas Republican Dick Armey from W's Iraq Attaq, world-class scumbag Tom DeLay spoke out in favor of war, war and more war today. I would highlight the worst parts for you, but it would be like trying to pick the most disgusting turds in the sewer. Here's the link if you've got the stomach to dive in.

Plum scary: A strike at the Department of Agriculture's Plum Island research center off of Long Island is raising concerns. Plum Island does mostly secret research into infectious animal diseases, some of which are transmissible to humans. It appears that replacement workers may not know how to properly operate the water system, threatening the hygiene of the place. The article mentions that Plum Island was mentioned in the movie "Silence of the Lambs;" it was also the title island in a Nelson DeMille thriller.

Too bad about Cynthia McKinney: The congresswoman from Georgia lost in her Democratic primary yesterday and will therefore be leaving the House after ten years. She was, I think, the only member of congress to publicly point out the obscene profits being made by Bush campaign contributors from the so-called "War on Terror" and to question the motives behind it. For being one of the few people on the Hill to speak up, she gets her political head chopped off. Even more than the Rivers-Dingell race here in Michigan, this campaign was flooded with outside money and influence. On the plus side, neanderthal congressman Bob Barr also lost his primary (see same article).

Bob's fearless predictions of the results of the Granny Patrol described below:

Actually, those aren't "fearless predictions." I'm afraid they may be much too accurate.

EPA-taph: Eric Schaeffer, the head of enforcement at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) until he resigned in protest in February, tells how the Bushies have done far more damage to the environment than they have to al Qaeda, even with the Granny Patrol (next).

With the help of $81,772 in federal money, 150 senior volunteers will patrol three lower-income areas in Polk County [Florida]. They'll be on the lookout for terrorists, who local officials say may find it easy to blend into neighborhoods where people frequently move in and out. -- from the Lakeland, Florida Online Ledger

Thanks to Michael Moore's web site for the link to the article. As far as I can tell, this is not a spoof, although National Lampoon or the Onion would be hard-pressed to come up with something sillier. Maybe they should send the granny patrol over to Tampa, where Tommy Franks and the other terrorizers of Afghan weddings lurk.

"As with all sovereign nations, we respect Iraq’s independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity.” -- Donald Rumsfeld, 1983, from MSNBC. Thanks to Tom Tomorrow for finding that one!

The White House on Tuesday condemned an obscure Iraqi opposition group for occupying the Iraqi embassy in Berlin, saying it undercut ``legitimate efforts'' to overthrow Saddam Hussein. ``Actions like this takeover are unacceptable. They undermine legitimate efforts by Iraqis, both inside and outside Iraq, to bring regime change to Iraq,'' said White House spokesman Ari Fleischer. ``As for the particular group involved, we had no prior knowledge of this group and no contacts with them.'' -- from the NY Times

I guess what Ari is trying to say is: How can Republicans benefit politically if someone else overthrows Saddam? And, the Bushies would look even more hypocritical overthrowing the regime that overthrew Saddam to get Iraq's oil than they would (will?) look overthrowing Saddam themselves. He doesn't explain how occupying the embassy in Berlin endangers Saddam, nor what makes other efforts "legitimate" compared to this one. But one expects to hear nonsense when listening to the hired liar for an idiot, and Ari rarely disappoints.

My fifteen minutes of fame continued today, as I appeared on the Channel 7 Action News at 6. I was interviewed at my house by reporter Val Clark, and was filmed riding my bike and preparing a salad. They decided to interview me after reading the Wall Street Journal article from August 8. I talked about conserving energy as a key to preventing war, or something like that.

This article from Common Dreams discusses one of my favorite rant topics: the unholy competition between states and cities for the "privilege" of having a large corporation set up shop and pay no taxes for years while providing a few low-wage jobs before moving on to even cheaper pastures, probably overseas. Apparently a group called Good Jobs First is documenting the reality of these corporate welfare schemes: how much economic benefit the states or cities get in return for their enormous tax breaks and outright bribes. This should really be a federal issue under the interstate commerce clause of the constitution. Access to raw materials, transportation, and markets are legitimate factors for companies to use in deciding where to locate or re-locate a factory. Cheap labor, tax breaks and government subsidies are not legitimate factors, and it should be the responsibility of the federal government to see that they are not, whether it is Alabama competing with Kentucky for an auto plant or California competing with China for a semi-conductor factory. The feds unfortunately abandoned their interstate commerce role decades ago, causing textile jobs to leave New England for North Carolina and auto jobs to leave Michigan for Texas. More recently, the international "free trade" agreements (GATT, NAFTA, WTO, and the proposed FTAA) have resulted in the departure of many of these same jobs from Carolina and Texas to Mexico, Malaysia, China, and elsewhere. State governments are put in the awful position of having to choose between paying millions of dollars for a few jobs or having no jobs at all, and the federal government, rather than working to ease the states' burden by tightly regulating the competition between them is instead exacerbating the burden by facilitating international competition.

Asked why the C.I.A. failed to find the archive before CNN, Bill Harlow, the agency's spokesman, replied, "There are more of them in Afghanistan than there are of us, and they are paid better." from the NY Times article about the supposed al Qaeda videotapes found by CNN reporter Nic Robertson.

This is rich! Maybe the best, most comprehensive Bush-bash yet! Frank Rich tells it like it is in today's NY Times! Some choice quotes:

Following my lead, Arianna Huffington has compared the Bushies' Whacko Waco Econoforum to David Koresh and the Branch Davidians. She called them "Brunch Bushians" while I called them "Ranch Dubyans." Whatever you call them, they're all just a bunch of nuts. (Sorry, I'll try to regain a little bit of high-road eloquence soon.)

Perles of stupidity (pronounced "pearls," not "purrless" like the former MSU football coach who was also know for his pearls of stupidity).

"The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse of confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism." -- Chief Warmonger Richard Perle

"Maybe Mr. Perle would like to be in the first wave of those who go into Baghdad." -- Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican from Nebraska

Both quotes are from the NY Times. Perle's argument is particularly, well, something. "What the president said" about Iraq is mostly stuff that Perle told him to say, and now he's saying that the crap he's been saying has backed the President into a corner he can't get out of. I suggest that Perle be the first and only wave to go into Baghdad, and that W start listening to Colin Powell, the Joint Chiefs, Hagel, Dick Armey, and maybe some of those brave souls like Dennis Kucinich, instead of listening to chickenhawks Perle, Cheney, and Rumsfeld.

In your dreams, Dubya! Nixon and Clinton will be there before you are. You might beat out Poppy, though, if you just take a nap and don't do anything else stupid for your remaining two and a half years.

Bob Herbert continues his tour of screwy southern justice with this article about how three retarded black people in Alabama were all convicted for killing a baby that never existed.

"However, I do think that due process requires something other than a basic assertion by someone named Mobbs that they have looked at some papers and therefore they have determined he should be held incommunicado. Just think of the impact of that. Is that what we're fighting for?" -- U.S. District Judge Robert G. Doumar, quoted in the Washington Post, debating with government lawyers in the Hamdi case.

More on campaigns (Moron campaigns?): After ranting about the outside influence of Cheney and others in congressional races, I just received an e-mail from progressive activist group Moveon.org asking me to donate to the campaigns of several candidates across the nation (none of whom are in Michigan). Featured are senators Tom Harkin of Iowa and Paul Wellstone of Minnesota, who is running against the Cheney-selected Norm Coleman mentioned in my essay below. So should I donate? I want these candidates to win, and I know the Republicans are doing it, but I don't want to be a hypocrite, and I am a cheapskate at heart. Please give me some feedback!

Chasing links again--Tom Tomorrow led me to August Pollack, who led me to this: a large collection of old war posters altered for the "war on terrorism."

"Enemy Combatant" is apparently neither. According to Newsweek, the Feds have no case against Jose Padilla, but that doesn't mean they are going to let him go anytime soon. Welcome to the Soviet Union of Ashcroft. And Ashcroft isn't content with just depriving Padilla and Hamdi of their rights. He envisions prison camps full of "enemy combatants." To quote Jonathan Turley from the LA Times: "Ashcroft has become a clear and present threat to our liberties." (Read Turley's op-ed for a whole lot more.)

I think the Senate is the next stop for us. We need to encourage all of those USA Patriot voting, Under God posturing presidential candidates that it is time that they honored their oaths of office and took two steps necessary to protect the Constitution. First, a declaration of peace. Bush, Cheney, Ashcroft and Rumsfeld (the axis of evil) use "we are at war" as an excuse for all of their unconstitutional, repressive measures. The Senate should firmly declare that the war in Afghanistan is over and that America is at peace. Take that ridiculous cover out of their arsenal. Second, remove Ashcroft from office. He clearly is not interested in upholding his oath to protect the constitution, and should be given a one-way Amtrak ticket to St. Louis.

I hope Donahue stays on MSNBC, or maybe gets promoted to NBC--tonight's show was spectacular, with Breitweiser and Stupid White Men author Michael Moore. Also on was French intelligence analyst Jean Charles Brisard shares his theory of the real story behind 9/11. Brisard's book, "Bin Laden: The Forbidden Truth," made headlines in France, alleging that the Bush and Clinton administrations put oil and politics before security in the months preceding the attacks. I missed that part, but I'm recording the 3 am replay of the show so I can see it. Transcripts of Donahue shows are available at http://www.msnbc.com/news/MSNBCTRANSCRIPTSMAIN_Front.asp, usually a day later.

The Bush Effect: On July 9, W lectured Wall Street on corporate responsibility and the Dow dropped 400 some points. Today, he holds his economic forum and claims that the economy is sound, and the Dow drops 200 points. AFL-CIO Prez John Sweeney tells what is really going on in the economy. I certainly don't have the answer to economic problems, but I do know that an economy based on consumption and waste on a planet with limited resources and limited capacity to absorb heat and pollution is bound to collapse sooner or later. Our choice is between a relatively painless and peaceful transition to sustainability starting right now, or a massive train wreck destroying much of the earth and killing millions or billions later. Trying to "revive" our economy without redirecting it is a choice for the latter option. So I guess I hope that W continues to speak to try and prop up the economy, since I think that only a significant recession or depression will lead to the structural changes necessary for the shift to sustainability. But it is so annoying to listen to him!

Here's a current article relevant to my essay below. Apparently, Rep. Cynthia McKinney's race for re-election is becoming a microcosm of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I'm considering submitting an essay to TomPaine.com for one of their "op ads" in the New York Times. (See http://www.tompaine.com/feature.cfm/ID/6173 for details.) Here is my first draft, which is based on one of my rants of a few months ago. Please e-mail me with comments and criticisms--the deadline for submission is August 23.

So is the FBI's case hat empty, or Hatfill? I watched Steven Hatfill's press conference on Sunday, and I have to say he was pretty convincing. If he is the anthrax mailer, he's a very good liar. Nicholas Kristoff sort of apologizes for fingering Hatfill without actually naming him, but then pretty much accuses him again. If Hatfill is, in fact, innocent, he has definitely been screwed by all of the attention. Of course, innocent or guilty, if he were of Arab descent he would have been declared an "enemy combatant" a long time ago and never heard from again.

Strange where logical speech comes from these days. While the President, Veep, most of Congress, and most of the media speak either complete nonsense or meaningless doubletalk, voices of reason are coming from Pat Buchanan, Dick Armey (see below), and today from President Mohammad Khatami of Iran. Without apparently referring once to "the Great Satan" or other inflammatory rhetoric, he says that the US has "created a war-like and rough atmosphere throughout the world." Smirking rejection from W pending.

Ranch Dubyans: Back in 1993 a bizarre group gathered in Waco, Texas to discuss their own strange interpretation of the bible. Today, another bizarre group gathered in Waco to discuss their own strange interpretation of the economy. No word as to what the FBI and Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms were up to this morning. Paul Krugman has some choice words, though.

Monumentally bad: Where is Maya Lin when the Russians really need her? I don't mean to turn this into an art-criticism page, but...yecch! This is the Russian memorial for the Kursk submarine, which sank two years ago, killing everyone on board:

"The timing of my loan was wholly coincidental with the co-sponsorship of bankruptcy reform," Mr. Moran said. -- from the NY Times. That is Representative James P. Moran, Democrat from Virginia, who received a $447,500 loan from credit-card giant MBNA shortly before becoming a co-sponsor of the bankruptcy bill which would protect MBNA and other credit card companies from losses due to bad loans. Interestingly, the American Heritage Dictionary lists two definitions for "coincidental:"

What do you bet that Mr. Moran has an industrious staffer with a dictionary to help him answer questions? How convenient to have a word that means basically both "I'm innocent" and "I'm guilty as sin" at the same time! Or maybe he has a copy of the Republicans' manual (next item).

Where do they get this stuff? Here's where! The Republicans have a "how not to answer tough questions" manual for congressional candidates.

The Moyers' documentary pointed out that foreign corporations could even use Chapter 11 to overturn U.S. Supreme Court decisions. -- From an anti-"free-trade" column, referring to a Bill Moyers documentary about NAFTA's not nearly infamous enough Chapter 11, which allows Canadian or Mexican companies to challenge local, state or federal laws in the US which they claim restrain trade by increasing environmental, labor or consumer costs of doing business. Now, I think NAFTA is a total screw-up and every congressperson who voted to give W "fast-track" trade authority to make NAFTA-like deals elsewhere should not only be immediately impeached (or whatever you do to congresspeople), but forced to work 75 hours a week in a Chinese Nike sweatshop for the rest of their miserable lives, starting with Joe Lieberman and Trent Lott. But the quote above makes me think that NAFTA may have some use after all. Perhaps a Canadian steel or agricultural company could show that the recent steel tariffs or farm bill that W supported unfairly restrict trade, and this was due to the Supreme Court's decision to install W as president in the first place. It would be supremely delicious to see Bush tossed out by the same free-trade crap he's been pushing for. (Hey, a guy can dream, can't he?)

Good column from Arianna Huffington on the myth and reality of corporate reform.

The New York Times has more quotes from Dick Armey. I had always heard that he fit right in with Phil Gramm, Tom DeLay and W himself as compelling reasons for forcing Texas to re-secede from the Union (biggest mistake in US history was letting Texas back in after the Civil War). But here he is, talking very good sense in complete sentences!

Why did the WTC towers collapse so quickly? This article suggests poor design and avoidance of building codes may have killed the majority of the victims of 9/11.

See the PowerPoint presentation given to the Defense Policy Board last month declaring that Saudi Arabia is the enemy. (See below for more on this.)

The Rush to Insanity: Rush Limbaugh's idea of how to commemorate September 11 is by invading Iraq. I kid you not.

I was quoted in today's Wall Street Journal. Check it out! I'm not holding my breath that they will be running my rants as a regular feature, however.

Be sure to check out the links in Tom Tomorrow's linkfest from yesterday today! Flying high--the US Air Force!

This challenge is to recognize and act upon the conclusion of any objective analysis of global power: namely that the greatest threat to world peace is not Saddam Hussein, but George Bush. -- George Monbiot in the Guardian of London

Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday he'd like to serve a second term "if the president's willing and if my wife approves." -- from the Washington Post

Ahah! I thought so! Five people picked our current excuse for a president--now apparently only two will be allowed a say in picking our vice president. (And I can't think of any two people I'd less like to have picking anyone in our government than George W. Bush and Lynne Cheney.) Nowhere in the article does the Veep from the Deep mention that the American people are supposed to get a vote in the matter.

I just finished reading Jim Hightower's book If the Gods had Meant Us to Vote They Would Have Given Us Candidates. Written shortly before the 2000 election, it describes the total corruption of all of the Republicrat candidates (and Reagan, Bush I and Clinton) by corporate campaign financing. It also has good chapters on the negative impacts of merger mania and globalization. If, despite my best efforts, you can't quite recall why we should all be furious, this book will remind you. It's very entertaining, as well--an easy read.

The Ann Arbor Ad Hoc Committee for Peace prepared a signature ad which ran in the Ann Arbor News on June 9. If you look closely, you will see that your humble blogger, moi, was one of the signers. The Committee sent a copy of the ad to the White House, prompting the following truly enlightened and appropriate response to our message of peace:

Can't they at least take the time to prepare more than one form letter? This one was obviously written last September or October, and was sent without paying any attention to the message of our ad. Have all the time, money and lives expended in the last eleven months been of so little value that there is no need to change the form letters? (Hint: correct answer is "Yes.")

"In the way they're kind of writing it right now out of the Senate Finance Committee, some people could spend their entire five years on welfare - there's a five-year work requirement - going to college. Now, that's not my view of helping people become independent, and it's certainly not my view of understanding the importance of work and helping people achieve the dignity necessary so they can live a free life, free from government control." -- "Education President" George W. Bush

Tom Tomorrow and August Pollack were both ranting on the Saudi Arabia story (below) at about the same time that I was. Great minds think alike! Ours too!

Saudi Arabia is the enemy: This article describes a briefing given to the Defense Policy Board, which advises the Pentagon. It described Saudi Arabia as "the kernel of evil, the prime mover, the most dangerous opponent." Amazingly, the article does not mention that most of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudis, but it describes an apparently growing sentiment within and around the administration. I'm sure it has more to do with the Saudis' reluctance to support war on Iraq than with their support of terrorism (after all, without terrorism the Bushies would have a hard time selling any of this crap), but it is interesting to see attention finally focused on a much more obvious culprit for 9/11 than Afghanistan.

And I could agree with them on most of this. I say, "Well obviously, our relationship with Saudi Arabia has brought us nothing but trouble. We should boycott Saudi oil (heck, let's boycott all foreign oil!) and institute some serious conservation efforts here. Once the oil money is gone, the House of Saud will crumble and the people of the region will have the opportunity to revolt and establish governments of their own choosing. The money for terrorists will disappear as well, and the world will be at least slightly closer to liberty and justice for all."

But that's not what these yahoos are thinking. No, they are just drooling over making Saudi Arabia our next war after Iraq. They want the entire Persian Gulf region (and probably the Caspian region as well) to be the Oil Colony of the American Empire.

Vote! Anyone in Michigan reading this should get out and vote today, but only if you agree with most of what I say here. For the rest of you, the election is tomorrow (heh, heh--I'll bet I fooled them!). If you're in my gerrymandered congressional district, please vote for Lynn Rivers!

Protecting the mega-corporations against the little guys--your tax dollars at work:

The United States has asked a federal judge to block a lawsuit against Exxon Mobil for alleged rights abuses in Indonesia, saying a guilty verdict could damage bilateral relations and undermine the war on terrorism. The State Department said in a July 29 letter to the District Court in Washington that allowing the lawsuit to proceed would ``risk a seriously adverse impact on significant interests of the United States, including interests related directly to the ongoing struggle against international terrorism.'' -- from AP

This comes after the administration's promise to give Indonesia $50 million to "fight terrorism." The lawsuit alleges that "Exxon Mobil knew of human rights abuses by the Indonesian military guarding its facilities there. The suit claims the villagers were victims of torture, kidnapping and rape by military guards." It seems as though the best way to fight terrorism in Indonesia would be to cut off all money and arms to its brutal military which is responsible for countless atrocities in Aceh (like those alleged in the lawsuit) and especially in East Timor. But this would "risk a seriously adverse impact on significant interests of the United States," namely the corporate scum running ExxonMobil. Whatever happened to anti-trust, anyway? How can there be an "ExxonMobil?"

Unbelievably, there is a bigger warmonger than W or Rummy or maybe even Richard Perle, and that is world chess champion Garry Kasparov. Kasparov writes in the Wall Street Journal that not only should the US destroy Iraq, but also Syria, Iran and Saudi Arabia. I say we arm Garry, W, Rummy and Perle with boxcutters and parachute them in to downtown Baghdad. If they successfully take out Saddam, we can consider letting them have a go on the rest of Garry's agenda.

Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Gore's focus on "old class warfare" was a major reason the Democrats no longer hold the White House. "It was the old, failed politics that helped him lose that last election," Lott said on ABC's "This Week." -- from AP.

That takes a Lott of nerve! Gore "lost" the election with only 600,000 more votes, the second highest vote total in American history (Only Reagan in 1984 got more votes than Gore in 2000). And I think that if Gore had truly run a class warfare campaign he would have won in a landslide.

Watching the pathetic, mealy-mouthed response of President Bush and his State Department to Egypt's decision to sentence the leading Egyptian democracy advocate to seven years in prison leaves one wondering whether the whole Bush foreign policy team isn't just a big bunch of phonies. Shame on all of them. -- Thomas Friedman from today's NY Times

Egypt, our $2-billion-a-year ally, has just sentenced a 63-year-old man to seven years in jail for "helping to teach Egyptians how to register to vote, how to fill out a ballot and how to monitor elections." Of course, we didn't allow that sort of thing to go on in Florida, either.

Al Gore also spoke his mind in the Times today. If he'd been as forcefully opposed to the big-business buyoff of government during the 2000 campaign as he is in this essay, the Republicans might have had to rig the vote in several more states to steal the election. Unfortunately, Al was accepting contributions from many of the same corporations as W was, and the Clinton-Gore legacy of protecting "the people" against "the powerful" was pretty pathetic.

"Be honest and aboveboard in all dealings and truthful in reporting profits and losses." -- Veep from the Deep Dick Cheney, speaking at a fundraiser in Houston across the street from Enron. This from a man who spends most of his time in undisclosed locations and won't answer reporters' questions. Useless Dick has been traveling around the country raising money for Republican congressional candidates. This is so wrong on so many levels--the evil genius behind the throne is bringing in the bucks from the corporate swine so that his GOP buddies will control both houses of Congress next term. This will allow him to do pretty much anything he pleases, which will of course be anything that the corporate swine wants. While American businesses have made some bad investments in the past decade or two, there is no questioning the return they get on campaign contributions (aka bribes). A $100,000 contribution can easily lead to a $50 million contract or the squashing of reform legislation that might hurt the bottom line. And what conceivable right does a sleazebag politician from Wyoming who was second on the ticket that was second in the election have to exert his enormous ill-begotten influence in congressional races in Texas, California, or anywhere else? This is very far from how democracy should work. Our government is for sale to the highest bidder, and most of us don't have enough money to even get into the auction.

Rumsfeld was buddying up to Saddam at the same time as Saddam was gassing Iranians. Maybe Saddam needs to go, but I don't think the people who helped sustain him in power 18 years ago are the ones to do it. Everything about the Bush administration is illegitimate and corrupt. These are many of the same people who made a shambles of our foreign policy--they should no longer have any involvement in it.

"Since when did the al Qaeda become our role model for labor-management relations? I thought we were out to destroy al Qaeda--not emulate them."--Robert Byrd (as reported in the Wall Street Journal), in response to Budget Director Mitchell Daniels Jr., who tried to defend the administration's union-busting Homeland Security provisions by noting that "al Qaeda doesn't have a three-foot-thick" book of labor regulations.

That's Tom Tomorrow's Quote of the Day, which clearly drops this quote to second place: "We are losing better" -- Detroit Tigers' manager Luis Pujols. (from the Detroit Free Press)

A Dangerous Darkness: I guess Senator Levin is good for something. He has been hounding (if you call a letter every four months hounding) Attorney General Ashcroft for information on the thousand or so people detained after September 11, and inquiring as to why their hearings are secret. The silly Department of Homeland Security and Fast Track Trade Authority are given the fast track by Congress, which appears to be willing to wait until the Jenna Bush administration for answers on unconstitutional detentions, energy plan discussions, shadow governments, anthrax murders, Harken misdeeds, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera...

Why did Saddam Hussein kick out UN weapons inspectors? One of the reasons was that they included US spies who were looking for more than weapons, including possible ways to assassinate Saddam. This was news briefly back in 1999 but seems to have disappeared from consideration. It is generally claimed that the only reason Saddam could have for kicking the inspectors out was that he had the weapons and didn't want them to find them. The whole idea of war with Iraq is stupid and evil, and we need to stop it. Please contact your senators now while Senator Biden's committee is investigating the issue.

President Bush condemned the bombing and said it was perpetrated by "killers who hate the thought of peace and therefore are willing to take their hatred to all kinds of places, including a university." --from the NY Times

W constantly amazes me by his apparently complete lack of awareness that so much of what he says could be applied directly to him. This from a man who has recently talked up pre-emptive strikes at West Point and used Nazi-style crowd control at Ohio State.

One grave I'll be dancing on: Rumor has it that Ford will eliminate the humongous Excursion from its line of monstrous SUV's.

Mr. Bush's greatest triumph, Afghanistan. -- Actual quote from the NY Times, in a supposed news article. Bombing the crap out of the poorest country in the world in retaliation for an attack by 19 people, none of whom came from there, killing thousands of civilians and thousands more soldiers brutally and unnecessarily. Letting the supposed arch-villain escape, apparently. That's your greatest triumph, Mr. Bush? I mowed my lawn tonight--it took more guts and made more sense than your precious war in Afghanistan. And shame on you, NY Times, for perpetuating that nonsense.

So what's it all about, really? Another $10 million contract for Halliburton for more cells at the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp. I'm sure they've already reported the $9.7 million of the contract plus $12 million or so of probable cost overruns as income.

This rant page being neither official nor widely read, I feel somewhat free to speculate on some issues where I could be way off base. One of these is the string of wife-killings at Fort Bragg, North Carolina by Special Forces personnel (Green Beret, Delta Force), three of whom had recently returned from Afghanistan. My speculation is that their actual mission was so far removed from what they thought they had trained for that they snapped. Just as Tim McVeigh questioned his own patriotism and turned into a terrorist after his involvement in the Gulf war, these soldiers may have done things so abhorrent in Afghanistan that they were unable to reconcile them with their life back home. Perhaps they were involved in the massacre of POW's at the Qalat-i-Jangi fort near Mazar-i-Sharif, or one of the brutal raids on supposed al Qaeda-Taliban fugitives who turned out to be innocent civilians, including children. Two of the soldiers committed suicide after killing their wives. I wonder if any of these highly-trained and potentially dangerous soldiers will turn on somebody besides their spouses sometime soon, as McVeigh did. Again, this is pure speculation on my part, but it is just one of the many dangers associated with taking on a poorly-defined war like the "War on Terrorism." In general, I have a lot of respect for soldiers. I believe that their dedication is real--in fact, I know it is for the special forces, since they all volunteer and the training is brutal. And I think in most cases their patriotism is sincere--they believe they are fighting for truth, justice, and the American way (not realizing you can't do all three at the same time these days). And in the case of the special forces, I'm quite sure that they are all very intelligent as well. This makes it very traumatic for them when they get involved with something that seems so wrong to them--they have worked very hard for something they believe in, only to find that much of it isn't true. When they return home, they are disillusioned and angry, and given their intelligence and training, this can make them very dangerous.

Why are they giving this moron more power? If there ever was a president who should never be allowed to do anything on his own, George Worthless Bush is it. But now Congress is giving him the "Swindle Formerly Known as Fast Track," which goes by the symbol of an upraised middle finger.

So who is Mr. X anyway? W's selling of his Harken stock, quite probably on insider information, and failing to report it for 34 weeks is bad enough. But he didn't just call his broker and say sell--a special, secret buyer was found for him, and the sale occurred outside of the official stock market. This buyer was probably aware that Harken was in financial trouble, making this purchase basically a bribe. What do you bet that Mr. X is one of those voters who is way more equal than you are?

MSNBC ran the second hour of the Donahue show from Houston tonight (I think they filmed it Wednesday after showing the first hour live). Phil Donahue, Ralph Nader, Molly Ivans, Kurt Eichenwald, and all of the screwed-over former Enron employees were just ripping into big business and the government that serves it. It was pretty cool seeing what was probably a pretty redneck group of Texans (maybe I'm biased a little) cheering public financing of elections, unions, jail time for corporate crooks, and a bunch of other progressive sentiments. One guy even asked if the panelists thought Bush was using the "War on Terrorism" to distract attention from all of the corporate scandals. Unfortunately, the panelists punted on that one. But the guy did get a pretty good round of applause from the audience for asking the question. And Molly Ivans scolded Texans in general for repeatedly electing representatives to Washington who continually attack all forms of government regulation. A transcript of Wednesday's show is available at http://www.msnbc.com/news/785565.asp; I assume tonight's show will be posted soon.

Paper or plastic? And do you have your Kroger Plus card so that John Ashcroft can examine your purchases to see if you're a terrorist? I was so mad a few years ago when I went into a Farmer Jack's grocery store to buy some Diet Coke. The sign said it was $2.49 for a twelve-pack, but when I got to the register it rang up at $4.39. I explained to the cashier that the sign said $2.49, but she said I had to have a Farmer Jack's Savings Card to get that price. I filled out the stupid paperwork, got the lower price, tore up the card, and I haven't shopped at a Farmer Jack's since. So I was really PO'd a couple of years later when Kroger introduced their "Kroger Plus" card. My main objections were that it was deceptive and inconvenient. Deceptive because of the situation I experienced in Farmer Jack's--you don't see the little logo indicating that you need the card to get the price, and inconvenient because it takes me 15 seconds to pull the stupid card out of my wallet, as it does for everyone in line in front of me at one of the few checkouts open. Also, it's one more piece of junk in my wallet. I boycotted Kroger for a year and complained to the store managers and the 1-800-Krogers customer line. Finally I caved--there's a Kroger right on my way home from work. I wondered about the privacy aspect, but I used my old address and phone number. Now I read that some grocery chains are giving their records to the FBI so they can search for shopping patterns matching suspected terrorists. Fortunately, the local Busch's and Meijer supermarkets don't use the cards. I think I'll tear up my Kroger Plus card and resume my boycott.

Slightly later--I followed the link in the Village Voice article to the web site of CASPIAN - Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering. They echo my arguments and add a bunch of others. Krogers, you are history! My card is destroyed and I won't be around no more no more!

Colorado Inmates Are Fed Recalled Beef. Colorado prison officials knowingly used beef that had been recalled for E. coli contamination in meatloaf served to inmates.

Giant sucking sound: It's business as usual for Congress even as they pretend to crack down on corporate crime. The House and Senate agreed last night on a "fast-track" trade bill giving the president the authority to negotiate trade agreements without congressional input. The "compromise" reached provides unemployment and insurance benefits to workers whose jobs leave the country because of these trade agreements. Who benefits? Corporations and politicians. Who pays for it? Everybody else.

Credit card debt piling up? Bankruptcy won't be an option any longer, so you'll have to run for Congress. MBNA and other credit card companies have been pushing high-interest cards on consumers for years, and then complain when some declare bankruptcy. But if you're in Congress, they'll give you a low-rate bill consolidation loan like they did to Representative James P. Moran Jr., Democrat of Virginia. Four days after Moran received a $447,000 loan from MBNA he became a lead sponsor of the legislation agreed on last night. There are few more clear-cut examples of the rich stealing from the poor than the credit scams, and now the government is making it even easier while pretending to get tough on corporate crime.

Bush Threatens Veto of Homeland Security Bill: Seriously! That's what the headline says. Apparently W is upset the Congress is trying to give employees of the new Department of Diversion (from Enron, connect-the-dots, shadow government, anthrax, Harken, Halliburton, the election, the shear idiocy of the alcoholic-in-chief) the same civil service protections as employees in other government agencies. So he's threatening to take his ball and go home. Go George! Get outta here! We didn't want your stupid Gestapo anyway! Remember, W opposed the new department until May when all the connect-the-dots stuff hit the fan, and then he was running around begging for it to divert attention from the obvious ineptitude of his administration before 9/11.

The "War on Terrorism"--How Halliburton is going to cover all of that asbestos liability Cheney bought for them. The Veep from the Deep has been feverishly working to fix his screw-ups as CEO since he became Vice President. Halliburton has contracts with the military all over the world, including the prison at Guantanamo Bay and providing logistical support for our poor troops in Uzbekistan. I really felt sorry for our troops a few months ago when Rumsfeld was visiting the base in Uzbekistan. One of the soldiers asked him "How long will we be here?" Rummy replied "As long as it takes." He didn't say for what. I wonder how many new Tim McVeighs will return home from the "War on Terrorism" with advanced weapons training and decidedly unpatriotic agendas?

Speaking of McVeigh, it should be recalled that Osama bin Laden wasn't the only person turned into an anti-American terrorist by the last war against Iraq. Ramsi Youssef and the other perpetrators of the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993 were certainly responding, at least in part, to the Gulf War. And McVeigh was super GI Joe, one of the top gunners in the Bradley Fighting Vehicle who had risen rapidly from private to sergeant. He was profoundly disturbed when he was ordered to destroy a badly outgunned Iraqi bunker and the three Iraqis in it without giving them a chance to surrender. Four years later, he blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. Just one more reason not to invade Iraq to counter the zero reasons to do so.

Donahue! A few months ago, I read an essay on Common Dreams in which the author was encouraging MSNBC to become the network for progressives to counter the center-right approach of CNN and the radical-right focus of the FoxNews channel. Knowing that MSNBC is owned by General Electric and Microsoft, I figured there wasn't much chance of this happening. I sent the author an e-mail applauding his sentiments, but warning him that while Bill Gates appears to be suffering from a little corporate guilt and might go along, I couldn't see the moguls at GE having anything to do with a network which might have Noam Chomsky, Tom Tomorrow, and Ralph Nader as pundits. Fortunately, it appears that I was at least partially wrong. Last week MSNBC started running the "Donahue" show, starring long-time talk show host, Nader supporter and unrepentant progressive Phil Donahue. I wasn't really pleased with the first few shows, in that they used the typical shouting-from-both-sides format and gave way too much equal time to right wingers like Alexander Haig and Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona. But tonight's show was excellent. Phil broadcast the show live from Houston with an audience of mostly screwed-over former Enron employees and stockholders. His pundits were NY Times writer Kurt Eichenwald, Texas columnist Molly Ivans (the author of the W-bashing book Shrub), and...Ralph Nader! Everybody just sat around chatting about what scum these CEO's are and how it was all made possible by the paid-off scum on Capitol Hill and in the White House. Ralph even took a shot at Houston congressman Tom DeLay for his role in enabling Ken Lay and the other Enron crooks to do what they did. So if you've got cable, tune in to MSNBC at 8 pm for a little Donahue from time to time.

The F-16 pilot is still alive, so it isn't terrorism: The Israeli attack on Gaza killed 11 and wounded 100, including many children. It doesn't justify suicide bombings, but neither do suicide bombings justify this. Murder is murder. And I'll bet Israel didn't get that F-16 from Iraq, Iran, or North Korea.

Stealing my thunder again! The lead editorial of the NY Times today concludes with this sentence:

If TIPS is ever put into effect, the first people who should be turned in as a threat to our way of life are the Justice Department officials who thought up this most un-American of programs.

Replace "officials" with "morons" and "programs" with "pogroms" and it would sound just like me! However, the editorial says that Dick Armey is opposed to TIPS, so I may have to look at it more closely. It is good to know that there are civil libertarians on the right (like the Cato Institute) as well as on the left. The Bushies uncompromising, secretive approach will eventually piss off just about everybody.

Less need to rant today--the front page of the New York Times has been doing a pretty good job of it lately. Some of the headlines:

If there's a future terrorist attack in America "and they come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Center, you can forget about civil rights," [U.S. Civil Rights] Commission member Peter Kirsanow said.

That's from the Detroit Free Press. Kirsanow and another member of the commission were in Detroit defending the Bushies response to 9/11. Kirsanow went on to say that internment camps for Arabs are a distinct possibility.

Drum and Dummer: The Dow goes down and down, so the talk of war goes up and up. W was at Fort Drum today drumming up support for his criminal first-strike policy, and, appropriately enough, reiterating his opposition to the International Criminal Court.

Bush released from jail. The smallest-time crook in the family is the one who got locked up, though not for long. I'm still wondering when the law requiring relatives of drug offenders to be evicted from government housing is going to get Jeb Bush kicked out of the governor's mansion. Heck, even uncles shouldn't be exempt, especially ones who stole elections to get into their fancy government homes. You've got 'til Monday, George!

I was volunteering in a booth for the Ann Arbor Ad Hoc Committee for Peace last evening at the Ann Arbor Art Fair. We were getting people to sign a petition opposing war against Iraq. We got lots of signatures. I didn't get any nasty remarks, although I saw a few Bush-like smirks on a few Bush-like faces. I know this is Ann Arbor, not Mobile or Peoria or Denver, but it was still encouraging to see so many people actually opposing the insanity of needless war. And one of the artists stopped by to sign the petition and told me this joke: "What's the difference between Jimmy Carter and Jeb Bush? Answer: Jimmy Carter was smart enough not to let his idiot brother run for president."

Beef Recall: ConAgra is recalling 18 million pounds of beef. According to the article, the beef was produced between April 12 and July 11. How much of that April beef do you think they'll actually get back? I'm sure some of it was frozen and might still be around, but most of the April, May and June production has probably been consumed by now. For those of you still eating meat (I've been a vegetarian since December), aren't you glad to know that industry and the government are right on top of the food quality issue?

So where do I want all this to go? I wonder myself sometimes. I read the news, looking for some new evil or silliness on the part of the Bushies that I can rant about. But how do I want things to turn out? Do I want W to be impeached or resign? Yes, but Cheney has to go with him. A Cheney administration would be just as evil but much less entertaining. Do I want the "War on Terrorism" to fail? No, I want it to stop. It's going to fail anyway. Terror is a response to aggression and repression; by employing these tools to defeat terrorism we are guaranteeing that terrorism will continue.

In a relatively simple sense, I would be pleased to see public opinion changed to the point that people would be clamoring for a large tax on gasoline and other fossil fuels. A $5 per gallon gas tax would seriously rearrange people's priorities, making expenditures on mass transit preferable to buying SUV's. It would practically eliminate our need for foreign oil and fighting wars for it. It would give the environment a chance. It would work in the so-called free-market system, and it would place the higher tax burden on those who are using the most services. People could still drive, but they wouldn't do so frivolously, and they certainly wouldn't consider 30-mile commutes acceptable anymore. Obviously this won't be possible with a Bush in the White House.

In a more revolutionary sense, I hope someday to live in an America that is sustainable, where food, clothing, shelter and health are the important things, not money, jobs, earnings or capital gains. Things would be produced only when needed, not just to keep the economy going. This certainly will require even more than a new president--it will require changing the "United We Stand" attitudes of millions of Americans and their indoctrination that our current American economic system is the best possible way to go. Frankly, I don't know what would be the best way to get there, but I know that the Bushies are taking us in exactly the wrong direction.

"Take a look at this realistically; when did this corporate abuse start?" said Ronald Eibensteiner, the Minnesota Republican chairman. "It didn't start when George Bush became president. If there ever was a decade of greed, it was the 1990's when Bill Clinton was president. There was this whole culture of, if you can get by, that was O.K. And if you got caught, just stonewall. When the president of the United States, Bill Clinton, did that, other people began to think, `Hey, we can do that.' " --from http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/18/politics/18REPU.html

Other people like, say, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of the Army White, SEC Chairman Pitt, and of course W himself. When the Republicans are in power, they are eliminating the rules. When they are out of power, they are breaking the rules.

Good scathing editorial from the Boston Globe about Ashcroft's Operation TIPS. I don't get it. Ashcroft lost his bid for re-election to a dead man. He was then appointed Attorney General by a man who lost an election to a man barely alive (Al Gore). Ashcroft was confirmed by the Senate by a narrow margin. While he was busy going after compassionate doctors in Oregon and whores in New Orleans, an agency in his department (the FBI) was missing all of the clues about the upcoming terrorist attacks. With a mandate and record like that, how can he get away with trying to turn this country into one with all the religious tolerance of Saudi Arabia, all the privacy and civil liberties of the old Soviet Union, and all the guns of Afghanistan?

Read item four on this page. Maybe I'd better be more careful with my jokes about the Sesame Street connection. You might be seeing an on-location O'Reilly Factor straight from Oscar's garbage can on FoxNews one of these nights.

Don't believe anything he says! George W. Bush is a sleazy influence peddler who steals from the public for the benefit of himself and a few buddies. You can be sure that there is an ulterior motive to everything he does, and it sure isn't the general well-being of the American public.

``I provided my services as a soldier to the Taliban last year from about August to November. During the course of doing so I carried a rifle and two grenades,'' [John Walker Lindh] said.

``He will now spend the next 20 years in prison -- nearly as long as he has been alive,'' Ashcroft said.

One guy from California takes some faith-based initiative, and this is how he is rewarded. There are plenty of oil executives and CIA guys who provided much more support to the Taliban than Lindh did: how do they plead? I find it hard to believe that the government accepted this plea; Lindh volunteered to join the Taliban before they were declared to be enemies of the US. I don't know exactly what the law is about US citizens volunteering for foreign armies, but I'm pretty sure that there are plenty of former "soldiers of fortune" living freely in the US today, voting Republican. And for Ashcroft, Mr. NRA, to gloat over someone being convicted on a weapons charge...

I mean, really, they only had a case against Lindh if they could show that he meant to fight against Americans. He has pleaded guilty to two offenses which are arguably not crimes at all.

One more step towards our very own Gestapo: Operation TIPS. Better learn how to fix your own gas, water, and electricity. The utility company repair person may well be an Ashcroft deputy who will report you for having "Nader for President" buttons or boxcutters lying around. Next thing you know, you get that knock on the door at 3 am.

Don't miss Tom Tomorrow's blog (link) about Halliburton selling pulse neutron generators to Libya.

During his chairmanship of Halliburton, Cheney criticized U.S. sanctions against "rogue" nations such as Iran and Libya in a 1998 speech. According to a July 26, 2000, Washington Post story, Cheney complained the sanctions "are nearly always motivated by domestic political pressure, the need for Congress to appeal to some domestic constituency." -- from the Washington Post

It's the stupid economy: Americans work more than anyone so that they can buy more, drive more, waste more, and pollute more. Much of what we do is pretty unnecessary, and a lot of it is downright bad for the world, the environment, even for us. Politicians of all sorts are always claiming that jobs are the key issue: we can't restrict pollution because it will cost jobs, etc. But we have enough stuff to last a long time, food does grow on trees, and there are other things to do besides work. Let's chill awhile and figure out a way to get us all fed, housed and clothed without destroying the earth in the process. You obviously don't have to work to healthy and wealthy. I mean, just look at George W. Bush! Multimillionaire, seven-minute miles, never worked a useful day in his life.

Total deaths in US from gun violence (homicides, suicides, accidents) in 2001: over 30,000.

The response: Tens of billions of additional dollars for the military for the "War on Terrorism," restrictions on many of our civil liberties, with the notable exception of our gun rights, and official government encouragement to buy cars to keep America rolling. We can debate whether the response to 9/11 was due to the emotional and spectacular nature of the attacks, the fact that foreigners were more to blame than Americans, or whether it was cynical opportunism on the part of the Bushies to do what they wanted to do all along (my guess). What seems beyond debate to me, however, is that the response is completely out of proportion to the real threat to America from terrorism when compared to the other, more mundane threats that we live with (or die with) all of the time. The "War on Terrorism" is political grandstanding of the worst and most criminal type. Well, maybe not quite the worst. There was a provocation, and Osama was apparently in Afghanistan at some point, so maybe there was the slightest excuse for pulverizing that poor country one more time if you were willing to ignore the less violent and probably more successful approaches available. The last and next wars against Iraq are actually the worst and most criminal types of political grandstanding.

Ayez un jour heureux de Bastille! Have a happy Bastille Day! (Translation courtesy of AltaVista.) Do you think there will ever be a Guantanamo Bay Day? (Not that I'm suggesting it, Dick, so just chill! Go back to your undisclosed location and count your Halliburton thefts.)

More Sesame Street innuendo: Have you ever seen VP Cheney and Oscar the Grouch together? That on those rare occasions when the Veep from the Deep is presiding over the Senate that Oscar never seems to be in his garbage can? Today's innuendo is brought to you by the letter "W."

Halliburt 'n' Ernie: While Veep from the Deep Cheney's old company is trying to cover its accounting tracks, it is also covering its debts through its huge defense contracts, courtesy of the friggin' "War on Terrorism." Remember Bert's links to Osama? Rumor has it that there appears to be a secure, undisclosed location down on Sesame Street, and Ernie is frequently seen running in and out, then heading to the airport. Kind of makes you wonder. And where was Big Bird on the morning of September 11?

The Don't Tax But Spend a Lot Republicans are back! $165 Billion deficit this year, or about $620 for every American. Better throw in a little extra for those CEO's and corporations that won't be paying their share. Maybe you can get a loan from your company. All so we can break up wedding celebrations and spread cluster bombs and depleted uranium around South Asia and the Middle East as payback for the nasty things done by those 19 guys who just happen to be completely dead already and who were from totally other countries from where we are bombing. But to show you that they care, the Bushies are planning on spending a bunch of that money they don't have to give you all the attention you could ever want, and then some. Smile for the camera! And don't forget your local Mom & Pop agribusiness on the corner, not growing soybeans to protect our freedom for only a few billion dollars. God bless 'em!

Well, no kidding, Rummy! We've already got a Statue of Liberty, although your buddy Ashcroft is trying to have it torn down. How about modeling for a new "War Crimes Monument?" You'd be perfect for that.

Facts on the Ground. I've ranted about it before, but every time I'm out in what used to be the country I am shocked to see more six-bedroom mansions on acre lots being built. These houses are a quarter-mile from their nearest neighbors, several miles from schools and shopping, and probably 20 to 40 miles from the workplaces of the people who are paying on that $400,000 30-year mortgage. I hate the loss of open space, I hate the increased traffic, I hate the wastefulness of it all. Worst of all I hate that the people who live out there will be dead set against any changes which threatens their way of life. They will oppose higher gas prices and taxes, they won't support funding for mass transit in cities (or for anything at all in cities), and they will support any moron politician willing to go to war to keep the oil flowing to power their SUV's and air conditioners. These developments are much the same as the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza. Once people live somewhere for a while, they believe they are entitled to live there forever and will be adamantly opposed to anything, no matter how necessary, that threatens to force them out. Sprawl is a direct threat to our environment and to anyone living in a real city. If the stock market really crashes and takes us into depression, the buyers of these starter mansions will likely lose one or both of the incomes paying the mortgage as well as the mutual fund wealth backing it up. While I dream about the day when most of these developments have been torn down and returned to farms or forests, I shudder to think about the ugly battles, political and real, between now and then. And every day that the realities of environmental degradation, global warming, and resource depletion are ignored means that those battles will be that much uglier. And the mansions in the countryside are the facts on the ground that guarantee that the battles will be ugly.

Dan Quayle was George H. W. Bush's life insurance policy. In a different way, Useless Dick Cheney is W's. Read all about the Veep from the Deep here. It would be hard to imagine a worse president than W if it weren't for Cheney. I guess Ashcroft would be pretty scary as well. Lucky us! We've got them all! :-(

Looking for sovereignty in all the wrong places: While the Bushies insist that future American war criminals be immune from prosecution at the International Criminal Court, they continue to support NAFTA, the WTO, and the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) "free trade" agreements. These agreements give a practical veto power to any company in a member country on federal, state or local laws concerning the environment, labor rights, consumer protection, or anything else which could possibly cost the company a few more dollars than operating in, say, China. It even seems possible that someone in Canada or Mexico may object to some of W's proposed laws to curtail corporate fraud using NAFTA. He may even know that, or even be encouraging it. "See?" he'll say, "I tried, but free trade is important to our country, so what can I do?" If it comes to this, I hope that Congress and the US public are smart enough to realize that the new laws should stay while Bush, NAFTA and the WTO are sent to be tried by the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity. See Bush Invokes Sovereignty Wrongly, Sacrifices It Recklessly... for more on this subject.

Oh where, oh where has the anthrax news gone? And how about the intelligence failures preceding September 11, including Rumsfeld's canceling of the Predator following Osama bin Laden and Ashcroft's cutbacks in funding for counter-terrorism? Or the shadow government? Or all the Enron crooks still working in the administration? The illegal detention of hundreds, including several US citizens? The brutal treatment of POW's in Afghanistan? The stupid Pledge of Allegiance is more important than all this stuff?

Coming soon to a freeway near you: Nuclear waste! Thanks to the Republicrats in the Senate, including Michigan's own deplorable Carl Levin. I sent Carl "W" Levin an e-mail tonight, and I'll share it with my reader(s) (anyone still out there?):

(That rejected senator, by the way, is now Energy Secretary Spencer "W" Abraham.)

One nation under God: An 11-year-old was badly beaten by a Baptist pastor and his brother in Texas. Can't leave all the fun to the Catholics, I guess. Also, one more reason to kick Texas out of the Union. The biggest one left Austin a year and a half ago to inflict a bit of Texas on all of us.

From Time, referring to the International Criminal Court: To U.S. Under Secretary of State Marc Grossman the new court is "an institution of unchecked power" that "undermines the democratic rights of our people and could erode the fundamental elements of the United Nations Charter."

Even more confused! Sanjay pointed out to me that ABC ran several stories about Hatfill in the past two weeks, indicating that he was under investigation. I certainly got the impression from Kristoff and WSWS that the major media was suppressing stories about Hatfill. Sorry if I misled anyone with the stuff below. I am still wondering what in the world is actually going on.

The World Socialist Web Site today actually identified the leading suspect in last fall's anthrax mailing. His name is Stephen Hatfill, and he's a former Green Beret and a former researcher at the army's Ft. Detrick research center. He also was a part of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq before they were thrown out by Saddam Hussein. Amazingly, I have seen no follow-up to Nicholas Kristof's column of Tuesday or the two reports from the WSWS in any of the major media, including the New York Times. I guess Hatfill must not be Islamic, or he would probably be in jail. Anyone have any idea what is really going on here?

A guy shoots up an El Al ticket counter at LAX on the Fourth of July, but the government insists it isn't terrorism. "There is no evidence, no indication at this time, that this is terrorists," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. (Washington Post) Hundreds of soldiers fighting for another country 8000 miles from the US in what is basically a civil war are captured and whisked off to Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where they are labeled "terrorists" and held indefinitely without charges or trials. I think Mr. George W. Bush should be required to define "terrorism" once and for all and be made to stick to whatever definition he comes up with. He'd better be real careful, though, to avoid including himself and most of his administration.

Uncle Sam and Aunt Thrax: Nicholas Kristof's editorial in yesterday's NY Times and today's follow-up by the World Socialist Web Site are certainly enough to get you scratching your head. There are only a few possible suspects for the anthrax mailer, the government appears to know which one it is, but no arrest has been made. The perpetrator is apparently roaming the world freely, perhaps even on government assignment. Your tax dollars at work.

I actually updated my cartoons page! Two new strips to further enlighten and distract you!

``There cannot be the use of that kind of firepower and not have mistakes and errant weapons exist. It's going to happen. It always has and I'm afraid it always will,'' [Rumsfeld] said. (from the NY Times)

Of course, Rummy is implying that mistakes will happen, so we should all just shut up about it. I say we turn it around. AC-130 gunships and B-52's are weapons of mass destruction, and should not be used indiscriminately. It is hard to believe that what few Taliban or al Qaeda people are still lurking in the hills of Afghanistan pose much of a threat to us. We are trying to get cockroaches out of the house by burning the house down. The roaches have already fled the house, and the mostly innocent rightful inhabitants are the ones getting burned. The endless pursuit of Taliban soldiers is particularly cruel and bizarre. Almost none of them had any knowledge of or participation in the 9/11 attacks. Many were practically children indoctrinated in radical Islam from an early age; others joined the Taliban as the only alternative to being killed when the warlord they were fighting for was defeated by the Taliban. They ceased to exist as an army in November, and individually pose no threat to America. But Rummy feels it is necessary to exterminate every last one of them. The North did not pursue and arrest or kill every Confederate veteran after the Civil War; neither did the Allies pursue every last Nazi or Japanese soldier after WWII. But now we are apparently willing to risk killing dozens or hundreds of civilians on the off chance that we might kill a few former soldiers from a defeated army. Did somebody say "war crimes?"

CNN says "unknown number of civilians had been killed." The NY Times says at least thirty killed, many more injured. The Guardian (London) says "at least 250" killed or wounded. Make a note of it somewhere: Do not invite the US military to your wedding reception.

Good choice of words there, Mr. Secretary (referring to Cleveland's school voucher plan upheld by the Supreme Court):

Bush's education secretary, Rod Paige, went even further, hailing Cleveland during his remarks here as "ground zero for freedom of choice in public schools."

I think he is saying that Cleveland is a pile of rubble where women can get abortions while they attend classes. Of course, I may be mistaken.

Just flying around, looking for people to kill: US bombers bring more death to Afghanistan. If this had been done to Americans or Israelis by a suicide bomber, imagine the reaction. But these are Afghans, so they don't count to the Bushies. At least it is getting major coverage from the NY Times and CNN.

The SEC also is investigating Halliburton Co. for its accounting practices in 1998, when Vice President Dick Cheney was its chief executive. Asked if the administration's tough stand on the responsibility of corporate bosses would apply in that case, [SEC Chairman] Pitt said: ``We don't give anyone a pass. If anybody violates the law, we go after them.'' (from http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/business/AP-Pitt-WorldCom.html)

I don't believe him for a second, but it sure would be sweet to see the Veep from the Deep locked up in a medium-security disclosed location for five to ten.

Short memory! Referring to the recent ruling on the Pledge of Allegiance: "There may have been a more senseless, ridiculous decision issued by a court at some time, but I don't remember it," Lieberman said. That from Senator, should be Vice President Joe Lieberman, who was kept out of a secure, undisclosed location by a senseless, ridiculous decision of the Supreme Court in December 2000.

Transparent, my Ashcroft! While W is telling the Palestinians that they must have a government that is "transparent," among other fairly impossible demands, his Department of "Justice" just got the Supreme Dolts to issue a ruling that immigration hearings could continue to be secret. The government claims that open hearings would give "terrorists" crucial information about investigations. More likely, it would give the public a clue as to how the government has absolutely no case against most of these people and is basically just holding them hostage to keep the fear factor up. In any case, it is hard to imagine that the events of September 11 would have happened if the various warnings had been published in leading newspapers instead of covered up by the sports section on W's desk. Maybe something else would have been tried, but at least the FBI and the CIA would have both known what the other knew. The Bushies secrecy is not protecting the US from al Qaeda: it is protecting the Bushies from the American people.

File size was getting big, so I just moved everything before June to my Archive page.

If you donate enough money to enough causes, you get on some strange mailing lists. In the last eight months I have made donations to the Sierra Club, Doctors Without Borders, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the ACLU, and probably a few others. In response I've gotten solicitations from many other groups, including Bill Clinton looking for money for the Democrats and a wide variety of environmental groups. But sometimes the wires get crossed: today I got a letter and questionnaire from the Republicans. They included a business reply mail envelope, so I am going to stuff it with their questionnaire and some random mailings from some of the groups listed above. Hopefully I can get it up to half a pound or so. I'll wait until next week to mail it, after the postage rates have gone up. Just doing my part to cost the Bushies some money.

Okay, I think I know how I got on their list: I voted for McCain in the Michigan primary in 2000, since my main priority was no Bush, no Gore. It is scary that there are so many people out there who would answer "yes" to most or all of those questions.

Just a reminder: we are not at war, since only Congress can declare war, and they didn't.

Another reminder: Over 2.3 million Americans died last year. Only about 3000 died from terrorist attacks, and this was way above the yearly average, even if you consider attacks on military targets like the Cole to be terrorism. Many, many more were killed by guns, by auto accidents, and by preventable diseases, as they are every year. While the "War on Terrorism" is almost certain to increase the number of terror attacks on America, these will still be relatively insignificant in the big picture, with most Americans still at much greater risk from drunk drivers or spouses with handguns. Taking away our freedom here and killing people abroad is a stupid, immoral response to a spectacular but in reality minor threat to our well being. And don't forget that the previous Bush's administration was responsible for the Gulf War, protecting one corrupt Arab regime from another after giving the invasion a green light. The Gulf War was directly or indirectly responsible for pretty much every terrorist attack since then. Osama bin Laden was not anti-American until we stationed troops in Saudi Arabia and left them there, even though we promised to remove them as soon as possible. Timothy McVeigh was a soldier in the US Army, and his orders to gun down heavily outgunned Iraqis contributed to his distrust of the government. If you go out of your way to kill people (and Iraq and Afghanistan are certainly out of our way) then you make other people angry. Kill lots of people, make lots of people angry. Massive military response hasn't freed Israel from terrorist attacks, and it never will. It won't work for us, either.

The satire would be funny if the danger were not so real. Two articles from Common Dreams in reaction to Bush's bizarre speech of yesterday:

W stands for war. He believes that with enough repression at home and provocation abroad, WW III will start, and he will "win" it. His speeches and actions are practically begging Osama for another hit so he can rev up the repression and militarism even more. I can't tell if Bush is so completely ignorant of how easily so much of his policy reflects back on him (calling for "democracy" in other countries while destroying it here, for example). He's dumb, but is he that dumb? I think he knows and does it just to be provocative, knowing that unrest abroad and at home provides further opportunities to bring out the guns, and he has more of them at his command than anyone. How did we get in this mess so quickly? And how can we possibly get out of it? I'm still holding out some faint hope that Colin Powell will finally get so pissed off that he will throw off his soldierly obedience and resign and begin speaking out against the administration and its deadly policies. Powell always struck me as an intelligent, compassionate, and honest reluctant warrior, and I hope he is. But Powell and most of Congress appear to be completely bought or threatened off, as is most of the media. And while the Bushies will almost certainly be largely to blame for the next bad thing that happens, you can be sure that they will use it to their advantage, which most assuredly will not be to ours.

Continued provocation, continued terror, eternal war. The continued threats against Iraq certainly give Saddam Hussein an incentive to develop nasty weapons, and an attack on Iraq will likely cause him to use them if he has them. The warmongers in Washington will then claim they were justified in attacking. And Sharon's policy of grabbing even more of the West Bank is almost certain to provoke further suicide bombings, thereby justifying further land grabs. While it seems clear that Hamas and other extremists among the Palestinians are as interested in perpetual war as Sharon is, Bush and apparently everyone else (the leaders of Egypt and Jordan, for instance) continues to blame Arafat and his three or four cops who haven't been shot by the Israelis for not stopping the bombings. Meanwhile, the average Palestinian lives in perpetual terror and the humiliation of curfews and checkpoints and the average American still stands united and clueless as the government does everything possible to provoke additional terror attacks.

Krug is the man! Paul Krugman writes one of the clearest denunciations of the Bushies I've seen in a major newspaper. W's clowns keep calling for "regime change" in Iraq, Palestine, Venezuela, etc. The Bush administration is the regime most in need of changing if there is to be any hope for peace, freedom, or the environment. Krugman notes that they intend to exempt their idiotic new Homeland Security Department from both whistle-blower protection and the Freedom of Information Act. This means we will be unable to find out what our secret police are up to, either from within or without. Meanwhile, they will know exactly what we are up to: the FBI has begun searching library records to see what we might have been reading, under the unconstitutional terms of the USA Patriot Act.

Dave Barry is always funny, but rarely serious. I do detect some real anger and disgust with his latest column about the ridiculous Farm Security Act recently passed by Congress.

Global warming is here, and Emperor W is fiddling with the Constitution and the frigging "war on terrorism" while Arizona burns. W is successfully accomplishing one thing: Before 2000, history might well have judged George Herbert Walker Bush as our worst president ever. I think W is doing a great job of keeping Daddy out of last place. Let's make Amtrak work, get the SUV's off the road, and get serious about the real threats facing us.

If a lie is repeated often enough and long enough, it will come to be perceived as truth. -- attributed to Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels

This quote relates directly to this story about a reference to one of his own campaign statements by George W. Bush. W says that he said during the 2000 campaign that he would allow deficit spending only in case of war, recession, or national emergency. He says now that he never dreamed we would have the "trifecta" (one thing he is not claiming enough credit for). The curious thing is that there is no record of his having said anything like that during the campaign. This was pointed out to him several days ago, and the White House hasn't provided any evidence that he did say there were conditions under which he would approve of deficit spending, but W continues to repeat the lie. He probably doesn't have time to memorize any new lines this week.

The so-called "Justice Department" claims that people labeled "enemy combatants" have no rights, period. This is Nazi stuff, and it has to be stopped.

“There is no right under the laws and customs of war for an enemy combatant to meet with counsel concerning his detention, much less to meet with counsel in private, without military authorities present,” the Justice Department wrote.

I'm sure there is no specific protection under the constitution for "remotely silly willywankers" or "moodlemoodlers", and there appears to be no one in Congress willing to deny the Bushies the ability to label any of us any of these things. The Bill of Rights protects people, with some additional protections granted to US citizens. Jose Padilla happens to be both a person and a citizen, and the Bushies are claiming that he has no rights at all. This could happen to any of us. Bush took an oath to preserve and protect the constitution: he is deliberately attempting to destroy it, and he should be impeached. Capital punishment might be in order, but the Supreme Court yesterday ruled that the retarded cannot be executed, which is otherwise a good thing. I'd say maybe we buy W a nice retirement home in Jenin.

September 11 hijackers were trained by US military: This article describes how an Air Force officer is being disciplined for claiming that Bush new about 9/11 before it happened and allowed it to happen for political gain. The officer had known one of the hijackers when he was a student at the military's Defense Languages Institute in Monterrey California.

The Bushies have made no secret of their intention to use secret methods to overthrow Saddam Hussein. Were it not for all of the other bizarre nonsense they are spouting this would seem to be a strange development: a highly publicized secret operation. This article explains why: Iraq has always been suspicious that UN weapons inspectors were actually spying for ways to eliminate Saddam. Now that W has stated clearly that we will use sneaky means to promote "regime change," there is no way that Saddam will allow weapons inspectors back. And that will be used to justify the war that W so badly wants.

Government for sale: Drug companies give Republicans lots of money; Republicans give drug companies a lot more back.

Ohio Nazi University: No matter what Ohio State students may have studied in their four or five years of school, they were given a graphic education in current reality at commencement when W came to speak:

(An eyewitness account from the website: http://www.turnyourbackonbush.com/ [actually, I couldn't get the link to this report to work, so I am copying it here from an e-mail sent to me--BG])

Classified investigations of the Qaeda threat now under way at the F.B.I. and C.I.A. have concluded that the war in Afghanistan failed to diminish the threat to the United States, the officials said. Instead, the war might have complicated counterterrorism efforts by dispersing potential attackers across a wider geographic area. -- from the New York Times

Rogue State: The Bush Administration is openly advocating a strike-first policy against Iraq and other nations it finds convenient to obliterate. This violates all principles of international law and can only mean more anger and hatred directed at the US and its citizens. Our claims to moral superiority were always dubious: this policy puts us in a class with Germany's blitzkriegs in World War II and Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor. And the focus on Iraq is so bizarre: The only "evidence" I can find of any attack by Iraq on the US is that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta may have met with some Iraqis in Prague in 2000. From what I have read, Atta did a lot of traveling in the two years leading up to September 11: Germany, Spain, Egypt, the US. Chances are he met with people from those countries and many others during this travel. We are pretty sure that he met with his fellow hijackers from Saudi Arabia and Egypt. None of these are being used to justify starting a war (or using the CIA to force a "regime change") against these other countries. Nor should they be. If Iraq is in fact developing dangerous weapons, the most obvious reason is that the world's only superpower continues to bomb and threaten them with little justification. (The US basically gave Saddam a green light to invade Kuwait back in 1990, and even if Iraq did deserve to be punished for that, they have been for 11 years now.) Aside from the alleged meeting in Prague, Iraq has not been tied to September 11, nor to the attack on the Cole, the embassies in Africa in 1998, the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993, or any other terrorist attack on the US.

In addition, just as the "war on terrorism" has been used to justify increased violence against Palestinians by Israel and scary talk of war by India, our claiming the right to pre-emptive strikes is sure to be used by other countries as well. This will soon lead to the complete collapse of any semblance of international law, and quite possibly to World War III. The Bush administration is quite possibly the most dangerous threat to world peace since the Nazis, and the American people and their representatives need to put a stop to this crap right now.

Pouring gasoline on the fire: India and Pakistan are on the brink of war, so the US does what it usually does--arms both sides. This WSWS article describes recent US support for India, which hasn't gotten as much attention as the support for Pakistan in the "war on terrorism." We were squarely on both sides of the bloody Iran-Iraq conflict in the '80's, overtly supporting Saddam and Iraq while covertly supporting the Ayatollah and Iran. Besides increasing the frequency and violence of wars around the world, the US role as arms merchant to the world is clearly anti-democratic since it gives additional deadly power to those already in power, making it easier for them to suppress any opposition. As if that weren't enough, Bush has offered to assist governments in "fighting terror," which they are pretty much free to define any way they want.

Computer problems, Stanley Cup, World Cup, Can't Wake Cup: All contributors to my rant-out this week. Congratulations to the US Soccer Team, 3-2 winners over highly-rated Portugal in their first World Cup match. First time I've been proud of the old USA in a while. And also congrats to the Red Wings for evening up the series with Carolina. It's tough going up against all that hockey tradition!

And now for something completely different: As the press and congress finally start catching up on the multitude of misdeeds committed and good deeds omitted by the Bushies, said Bushies are spastically throwing new issues out almost daily in what is to me a blatant attempt to change the subject. Certain, massive and frequent terror attacks to come. FBI reorganized. CIA reorganized. Global warming is real. No it isn't. New cabinet department. Maybe a fling with an intern if things get really desperate. I guess it is understandable. If congress and the press focus in on any one issue: Enron, foreknowledge of 9-11, Cheney's energy policy (or pretty much anything Cheney), or the 2000 election they will find plenty to discredit, impeach, and possibly indict most of the White House staff (including W) and the cabinet. So not only do the Bushies keep moving the shells around, they keep adding shiny new shells to the game.

India-Pakistan and Israel-Palestine creep closer to war, and in both cases W's "war on terrorism" is being used as justification. Not only that, Bush's rhetoric actually encourages war through threats: "If they don't act, we will." (Approximate quote from the State of the Union Address.) I am just appalled by the way the Bushies seem to just say something and it happens. I was always under the impression that our system of checks and balances made it difficult to move quickly, which was sometimes a hindrance but usually a protection from hasty action. It appears now that instead of having Hillary put together her task force and study health care reform for months, Bill Clinton could have just decreed that we would have universal health care and that would have been that. All he had to do was declare a war against someone, anyone, after the first World Trade Center attack.

India-Pakistan. Israel-Palestine. I versus P. What's next? Indonesia-Philippines? Italy-Portugal? Indiana-Pennsylvania?

That's more like it! Last week I bemoaned the fact that Common Dreams ran back-to-back articles attacking Bushie conspiracy theories. Today they've got a good one supporting those theories.

First Safire (below), now Buchanan: I know Pat Buchanan has lots of ideas which I detest, but this column is so completely right on that I say "Thanks, Pat!" His point: the price of empire is terror. We give up our imperial tendencies, we get to keep our cities and our lives. As Buchanan says: "Evil though they may be, Islamic killers are over here because we are over there."

Safire takes on Ashcroft: William Safire must be one of the best columnists around. His columns almost invariably make me mad. Sometimes I am furious at Safire. For instance, his columns highlighting the supposed meeting between hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague is the only hint of a legitimate excuse for the war plans against Iraq. But today's Safire column makes me mad at its target, Ashcroft and the FBI (okay, making me mad at Ashcroft is about as hard as making W inarticulate). He points out that there are few if any physical barriers to the FBI finding out what you buy, what groups you belong to, and what your thoughts are, especially if you have your own rants page. Our main protection has been rules prohibiting such fishing expeditions on the part of the FBI, rules which Ashcroft and FBI Director Mueller decided last week were hindering the "war on terrorism." So I'm with Nixon's former speechwriter on this one: Safire away!

Global Warming is Happening, Fossil Fuels are to Blame, But Let's Not Do Anything About It Except Drive Our SUV's to the Mall to Buy More Summer Clothing. That's the basic gist of the U.S. Climate Action Report 2002 released by the government. I suspect that this will be followed by research grants to companies to improve building and automotive air conditioning, payments to realtors to compensate for prime beachfront property turning to coral reefs, and additional payments to oil companies as they convert their drilling rigs in low-lying areas to offshore rigs. I guess I'm taking the half-empty rather than the half-full view. That the Bushies are admitting that global warming is happening and that fossil fuels are to blame is a big step in the right direction.

Conspiracy against conspiracy theories? One of my favorite websites, commondreams.org, has run articles (The September 11 X-Files... and Crude Politics of Scandal...) the last two days critical of people like Rep. Cynthia McKinney who are suggesting that there was something more sinister than bureaucratic bungling on the part of the Bushies in the months preceding 9/11. I certainly don't know for certain that they suppressed investigations or otherwise allowed 9/11 to happen. My strong anti-administration stance was based initially almost entirely on the public statements of Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft. Their excuses for the war in Afghanistan, the "war on terrorism" in general, and the crackdown on civil liberties immediately struck me as illogical, deceptive, and hateful. This certainly put me in a more receptive frame of mind to hear and believe that they had a grand plan which had been prepared well before 9/11, and I have ranted about many of the possibilities on this page. I don't think that W or Ashcroft are smart enough, nor is Colin Powell evil enough, to have created this grand plan. But when I hear Cheney or Rumsfeld speak I do hear the voice of intelligent evil. The same goes to some of the people behind the throne: George H. W. Bush, James Baker, and Newt Gingrich. These are people who seem to honestly believe that they should run the world, and that the sacrifice of a few thousand Americans or a few million non-Americans is worth making to achieve their goal. So while I'm sure that many or most of the conspiracy theories are false or exaggerated, I am dismayed to see supposedly progressive authors working so hard to discount them. The "X-Files" article shoots down several paper tigers that I hadn't even heard of, while the "Crude Politics" articles basically tells McKinney and others to shut up. The "War on Terrorism" fits too neatly with the agenda that the Bushies wanted to follow, and they have benefited too much politically and probably financially, for the possibility of foreknowledge of or even involvement in 9/11 to be ignored in any investigation. I think there is enough to discredit and possibly impeach Bush without that foreknowledge or involvement, but the debate will never focus on their actual failings and crimes unless the possibility that they could be worse is raised.

The good news: W is sending Rumsfeld to Pakistan. The bad news: W is apparently going to allow him to return to the US.

Conyers leads anti-Ashcroft chorus. Rep. John Conyers is saying basically what I said this morning (below) in a powerful bid to join my list of acceptable presidential candidates.

The FBI screwed up, so we have to suffer. FBI Director Robert Mueller has now admitted that the Bureau might have been able to stop the 9/11 attacks. His response, while late, seems appropriate. He thanks whistleblower Coleen Rowley for her memo which was critical of Mueller and FBI headquarters, admits mistakes on his part, and has come up with a plan intended to improve the Bureau's handling of information to make it more likely that they will "connect the dots" next time. To his credit, he didn't blame the failure on restrictions imposed by Congress or the courts.

Unfortunately, his boss Attorney General John Ashcroft has used the FBI's screw-ups as an excuse to give the Bureau more power and further restrict our civil liberties.

"These new guidelines say to the American people that you no longer have to be doing something wrong in order to get that F.B.I. knock at your door," Laura W. Murphy, director of the national office of the A.C.L.U., said. "The government is rewarding failure. It seems when the F.B.I. fails, the response by the Bush administration is to give the bureau new powers, as opposed to seriously look at why the intelligence and law enforcement failures occurred." -- from the New York Times

I must say I am confused. I was always under the impression that major changes in government policy required legislation and/or a court decision. Even Nixon and Reagan, when they wanted to immediately change US policy by throwing a coup in Chile or funding terrorists in Nicaragua by selling weapons to Iran, thought that they had to be secret about it because they were breaking the rules. Now I'm sure that the Bushies are breaking plenty of rules that we don't know about, but the idea that Ashcroft, of all "people," can simply decree that 27 years of official policy against domestic spying can be simply thrown out at his request is shocking, as is his pronouncement or whatever it was regarding the Second Amendment a few weeks ago. Pain-in-the-Ashcroft lost his bid for reelection to the Senate in a landslide to a dead man, and barely squeaked through his confirmation hearings. Now, he is using the failures of the FBI, an agency under his control, as an excuse for eroding decades and even centuries of civil rights protections.

In Ashcroft's perfect America, all of us will die in one big shootout in prison. Please contact your senators and representative and ask them to pull the reins in on Ashcroft, preferably through impeachment. He's hiding a lot more than nipples.

Probably getting carried away again^*, but...Robert Mueller took over as head of the FBI just one week before 9/11. Is there something fishy about that timing?

*Sorry, but I basically write this blog from the bottom up, so this item was written after the one below. Technically this phenomenon is known as "the blogger's dilemma."

Probably getting carried away here, but...I was reading Tom Tomorrow's blog (link) where he mentioned W's asking the president of Brazil "Do you have Blacks too?" Tracking this down led me to a transcript of a CNN Crossfire program, where James Carville described W's question and Condi Rice's explanation to him that Brazil, in fact, has more blacks than any country outside of Africa. But I also found in the Crossfire transcript a discussion of campaign violence in Kentucky, where several candidates for local office have recently been shot and/or killed. Pursuing this, I ended up at the website of the Lexington Herald-Leader, and in browsing the Local page I came across this article about terrorist bombings in West India. This news didn't make it to the international page of the New York Times, although after thoroughly searching their AP wire page I did find it. Interesting to see that a state in which it is risky to run for county clerk considers India to be local. Like I said, I'm probably getting carried away.

Virtual Virtual Reality: The Web is infested with bogus sites posted by PR firms working for evil-doing corporations. Many of these claim to be environmental or consumer groups but are actually pushing corporate agendas opposing protecting the public from pollution or dangerous chemicals. This article describes an incredibly tangled web woven by PR firms working for Monsanto and the other GMO storm troopers. One part of the article of interest to me was the mention of the "Center for Consumer Freedom." My friend Sanjay sent me a link to their site a few months ago where they were attacking Eric Schlosser's book Fast Food Nation. After browsing their site for a while, I sent them an e-mail basically telling them what I thought of them (I was mostly polite, however). I did get a more reasonable and informed response than I expected, especially in comparison to the articles on their site. I'm unclear what can be done about crap like this, but it seems as though our only real hope is for all large corporations to be broken up into tiny little companies, locally owned and controlled. I predict that eventually this will happen, but it sure would be nice if it happened peacefully instead of after the many military and environmental disasters staring us in the face have run their course.

If you haven't read FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley's memo to FBI Director Mueller, read it now! Here's a small quote from it:

I feel that certain facts, including the following, have, up to now, been omitted, downplayed, glossed over and/or mis-characterized in an effort to avoid or minimize personal and/or institutional embarrassment on the part of the FBI and/or perhaps even for improper political reasons.

I'm hereby adding Special Agent Rowley to my list of acceptable presidential candidates. It seems clear that as stubborn as the "Justice" Department has been in refusing to allow the hundreds of Islamic hostages in jails around the country since September to prove their innocence and gain their freedom, it was equally as stubborn in preventing FBI agents from tracking down and jailing those few who were clearly dangerous before September 11. This certainly explains the Bush administration's obsession with secrecy: they have a whole lot to hide.

On a lighter note, I don't think there is any doubt who should star in the Coleen Rowley movie: Jodie Foster, come on down! I think we'll call it "Silence of the Feds."

Water you gonna do about it? I've often fantasized about writing a novel. The only half-decent plot I ever came up with was something I was going to call Civil War II. It would have the intelligent, determined residents of the beautiful, self-sufficient Great Lakes states facing the golfing, SUV-driving, gun-toting, Bush-voting yahoos of the American southwest in a battle over water. As you can probably tell, it would be an unbiased, even-handed approach to a difficult topic. I see an introduction featuring a face-off between governors of the Great Lakes states and Federal marshals at some planned spigot-turning ceremony. Arizona's governor would scream that the Great Lakes governors were attempting to deprive Phoenix caddies of their livelihood, and the rhetoric would escalate until the first shots were fired. I would then backtrack through a few chapters giving background on water issues and the history of the (so far) fictional aqueduct taking Great Lakes water to the southwest. I would then describe in exciting detail the course of the war starting with the Battle of Chicago and climaxing with the decisive Los Alamos campaign. The happy ending would involve a sort of affirmative reaction. All of the southwestern states which would have gotten water from the aqueduct would be combined into a single state, thus depriving them of their oversized voice in the Senate. Anyone involved in golf course ownership, management or who lived in a golf community would be forced to work in northern Wal-Marts for $7 an hour for two years, and their land would be returned to Native Americans. I'm hoping Ashley Judd will play the governor of Michigan and political leader of the Great Lakes in the movie, with George Clooney as commander of the Great Lakes Combined Militias. Jennifer Lopez will play the reporter for the Phoenix Gazette who is slowly won over to the justice of the Great Lakes cause.

I bring this up because the water issue was discussed in the Michigan gubernatorial debate last week. All six candidates, even the sleaziest Republican, said they would oppose any access to Great Lakes water by southwestern states. And then today I came across this (so far) three-part series on the ongoing drought in Santa Fe, New Mexico. We have had decades of federal subsidies to the west: homestead lands, free land to the railroads, low-cost or free mining, timber and grazing rights on federal land, and lots of massive and expensive dams and aqueducts. I see similarities to the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Gaza: the cities and golf courses of the west are "facts on the ground" that don't belong there, but which people won't give up without a fight.

That clears that up, I guess: Assistant Secretary of Defense Victoria Clarke sent a letter to the editor of the Washington Post, supposedly trying to clarify Donald Rumsfeld's remarks to a Senate committee recently. Clarke complains because the Post "characterized as inevitable that there would be terrorists armed with nuclear bombs or other weapons of mass destruction." To "set the record straight," Clarke quotes from Rumsfeld's testimony: "...terrorist networks have relationships with terrorist states that have weapons of mass destruction, and that they inevitably are going to get their hands on them." I've read the whole letter about five times now, and I still can't see how Clarke can claim that the Post's paraphrase is not accurate. Can you?

On this Memorial Day, let us not only remember those who gave their lives making the world safe for freedom and democracy in the past, but also those who will misguidedly do just the opposite in the "War on Terror" in the future. And while we can only remember and weep for the dead of past wars, it is not too late yet for most of those who will die if the Bush-Cheney vision for the future prevails. It is up to all of us to see that it doesn't.

It is pretty disgusting to see chickenhawk Bush speaking anywhere, but it is definitely stomach-churning to see him speak at Normandy.

So what does Bush know? That inciting fear of terror and hyping a war on terror are effective means of stifling debate, intimidating opponents, and pushing reactionary, corporate-sponsored, ideologically-correct and politically-partisan social, economic, and anti-environmental programs. The terrorist attack of September 11 changed a lot in this country. What it has not changed are the pre-9/11 public policy goals of the Bush Administration. -- from Marty Jezer

Corporate Squeeze on Independent Publishers: BankOne and Borders have launched an assault on small publishers. BankOne has called in a loan, which was not behind in payments. Numerous small publishers were unwittingly connected to the loan and now have to scramble to find the funds to stay in business. Borders is turning over much of its book selection process to several big publishers who are unlikely to give much shelf space to smaller publishers. The corporate bosses have already made it impossible to hear alternative, or even accurate, viewpoints on TV or radio. They are now moving on to books.

Merrill Lynch "regrets that there were instances in which certain of our Internet sector research analysts expressed views which at certain points may have appeared inconsistent with Merrill Lynch's published recommendations." -- Molly Ivans points out that Merrill Lynch has thus apologized for the fact that some of their analysts told the truth, not that Merrill's published recommendations were self-serving lies. Time for a Merrill Lynch mob, methinks!

Rather obvious! Dan Rather is pointing out how all these new terror warnings are just an attempt by the Bushies to change the subject. Where were you when we needed you last September, Dan? Still, better late than never. Dan made his name going after one scumbag Republican president (Nixon). Maybe he can reclaim it by going after another.

If Rumsfeld’s claims are true—that after a decade of wars and despite a new and massive expansion of the US military, terrorist counterstrikes of catastrophic proportions are unavoidable—then the net result of the militaristic policies he embodies has been to doom the American people to death and destruction on a horrific scale. - from the World Socialist Web Site.

The entire article that this came from is worth reading. I went to a meeting last night where someone compared the Bushies approach to the frog in the water on the stove. If Rumsfeld had made his dire predictions last summer, when they were probably more justified, instead of last Sunday, the public might have dismissed him as the warmongering old coot that he is. Instead, they keep turning up the heat by raising the level of fear, and the public never realizes when they have passed the point where they can no longer jump out of the pan. Rumsfeld's point about the "asymmetrical advantages of the attacker as opposed to the defender" to me make a clear case for doing what we can to stop pissing people off. It makes a terrible case for all of the various wars we are starting and continuing.

So many scandals, so little time! The list just keeps growing, but the Bushies still act as though they are entitled to do whatever they want at all times. These scandals may not be as much fun as cigars and stained dresses, but their impact on the country and the world is much worse. While "what did he know and when did he know it" is getting maybe 25% of the coverage that it deserves, the other scandals seem to fade into the background. So here's a reminder:

It's no wonder that the Bushies are so obsessed with secrecy. It appears that there is nothing that they do that could withstand full scrutiny.

LBJ, GWB: Overzealous, under-informed Texans surrounded by yes men, leading us blindly into war. Good opinion piece from Richard Cohen.

Where's the beef? Hiding under the salmonella. Fortunately, the word from the American Meat Institute should provide comfort to those of you still daring enough to eat a burger or steak: "If the presence or absence of salmonella on a raw product were a measure of whether a product is safe or unsafe, then the government would be forced to require that only canned and cooked foods be sold." Why isn't Ashcroft going after the meat producers? They are obviously assisting suicides here.

This may not be a worthy rant, since its basis is a suggestion from a William Safire column to W on things he should say to President Vladimir Putin when he is in Russia, but if the suggestion is taken it will be just one more example of the administration insisting that other countries behave better than we do. The quote:

Bush, one hopes, will stress the need for sanctity of contracts and the end of wholesale bribery to attract investors.

Things would be a lot better here if someone would stop the use of bribery to attract investors. States have been pitted against each other for decades, stealing industry from each other through anti-union legislation, laxer environmental and worker safety laws, lower taxes, and outright gifts of land and money. The winners are the corporations; the losers are the workers and taxpayers of all the states. Bribery is probably too nice a word for this behavior, but most of our elected officials have supported it by "finding ways to compete for jobs for our state" rather than working at the federal level to make this competition unnecessary, perhaps even illegal. And GATT, NAFTA and the WTO just extend the madness worldwide. Admitting Russia to the WTO just adds another couple of hundred million people in direct competition for your job.

So Bush is calling for openness to opposition parties in Cuba, and Safire is telling him to end bribing of investors in Russia. Bush should remember that he was appointed to be president of the United States, and that he is doing one god-awful job of it.

Doomsday approaches: India and Pakistan are ready to go at it again, with nuclear armageddon a possibility. To build on what I wrote yesterday, it is very scary when avoiding nuclear war will require the sustained diplomatic efforts of intelligent, peace-seeking world leaders (let me know if you find any), while starting nuclear war is in the hands of any lunatic with some semtex or an assault rifle.

"What did the President know and when did Dick Cheney explain it to him?" -- stolen from Tom Tomorrow, who stole it from Jay Leno.

As for the national news media, top editors may still think it’s patriotic to shield George W. Bush’s limitations from the eyes of the world. But a greater danger might rest in creating an image of Bush as a competent leader when the reality is different. -- from Robert Parry

Minutes before the questions for the candidates began, Brighton police went on stage to forcibly remove Doug Campbell, who is running for governor on the Green Party ticket. Campbell had tried to be included in the forum, but organizers said it was open only to candidates running in the Aug. 6 primary. Campbell was taken from the stage and would face charges of trespassing and disorderly conduct, Brighton Police Chief Mike Kinaschuk said. "He was given ample time and opportunity to leave of his own accord" but refused to get out of the chair set up for another candidate on stage, Kinaschuk said.

How are we ever going to get good government when we are restricted, apparently by force of law, to choose between the scumbag Republican who raises the most money and the scumbag Democrat who raises the most money? W was calling for giving opposition parties the freedom to organize and speak just yesterday! But that was in Cuba--he has no interest in bringing democracy to Michigan. I saw this covered on the local Fox News tonight; they fortunately made Campbell's removal the highlight of their story on the debate. The section I pulled from the AP report was buried way down in the story, and Campbell's removal wasn't mentioned in the headline. To show how much the "environmental" movement has been co-opted by the major parties, here's another quote:

Lana Pollack, who heads the Michigan Environmental Council in Lansing and is a member of the MLCV board, said the fact that all six major party candidates attended the forum is an indication that environmental issues will be important in the gubernatorial campaign. "As an environmentalist, my heart is lifted. It is singing, because I hear candidates fighting to be the best environmentalist," she said.

Sorry Lana, but the candidate who would actually be the best environmentalist was forcibly removed and arrested. The Greens are the only party truly interested in the environment, and the head of the Michigan Environmental Council has a singing heart when the Greens are denied the opportunity to debate environmental issues.

Along these lines, I went to Borders this evening to hear a talk given by John Stauber, co-author of Trust Us, We're Experts! He described how corporate-backed PR firms subvert and distort environmental and consumer causes through greenwashing and a variety of disinformation campaigns. Stauber and Rampton's previous book, Mad Cow USA, is available as a free download from their website. Like most arguments for being a vegetarian, the possibility of contracting mad cow disease or one of its relatives is completely convincing by itself. Eating meat is not only killing animals, it is also destroying the environment, exacerbating hunger worldwide, and is quite possibly a form of slow suicide. To quote from the PR Watch website:

On May 12, 1997, ABC World News Tonight reported that "people may not be contracting Alzheimer's as often as we think. The bad news is that they may be getting something worse instead. . . . This is about Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. It is fatal. It destroys your brain, and what is worse, it is infectious."

In England, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) has already become a household word because of its association with that country's epidemic of mad cow disease. In 1996, the news that young people were dying from eating infected beef shook England and all of Europe.

Rampton and Stauber, authors of the critically-acclaimed Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies Damn Lies and the Public Relations Industry, reveal how mad cow disease has emerged as a result of modern, intensive farming practices whose true risks are kept hidden by government and industry denials.

The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror... -- Franklin D. Roosevelt

This article makes the point that the recent bizarre actions of the Bushies, especially Cheney's warnings that another terrorist attack is certain, are both inspired by fear and intended to increase fear. As with so much of what they do, it reminds me of Orwell's 1984, where rocket bombs hit various parts of London every day or two, apparently random, supposedly sent by the current enemy, although no one really knows where they come from. The fear supplies the justification for further restrictions on civil rights and for ever increasing expenditures on weapons, soldiers and police.

Scary thoughts for the day: With US, Indian, Israeli and other powerful militaries on hair-trigger alert, and with government leaders promising us that more terrorist attacks are coming, the stage is set for all sorts of catastrophes. I was intrigued by reports that said that the recent suicide bomber in Netanya was dressed as an Israeli soldier. None of the reports suggested that it might actually have been an Israeli soldier. I doubt if it was, but my point is that by having these massive weapons ready to go at any provocation, fanatics on any side of any issue now have the power to start or continue wars. If only a few Israeli soldiers were fanatically devoted to the destruction of the Palestinians, assisting or even committing suicide bombings in Israel would be a much surer path to achieving that goal than just following orders and being good soldiers. Similarly, the massive mobilization of US forces and all the talk about the axis of evil and the 50-year "war on terrorism" give inordinate control to all sorts of fanatics all over the world.

Here is one really scary scenario: imagine a nuclear explosion in some city in Iraq. Saddam Hussein would immediately blame the US, with some plausibility, since US jets bomb Iraq all the time. Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the warmongers in Washington would immediately claim that Saddam had once again used weapons of mass destruction against his own people, saying that the city destroyed was home to a leading opposition group within Iraq. While both explanations are possible, it would be difficult or impossible to determine the truth. The resulting US-Iraq war could be the desired goal of the real perpetrator, who might be Osama bin Laden, the Palestinians, the Israelis, the Iranians, or some hard-line communists from the former Soviet Union looking to regain superpower status for Russia.

Similarly, any new terror attack in the United States will lead to more calls for bombing countries, restricting civil liberties, and increasing defense spending. There are certainly some nut cases in this country who think that an even-larger war against, well, anybody is a desirable thing worth sacrificing the lives of hundreds of Americans for. The world is one big nuclear reactor, metaphorically and literally, and we are close to pulling out too many carbon rods and having the reaction go critical.

Not to be too humble or anything, but Maureen Dowd's column in Sunday's New York Times echoed pretty much what I was saying on Friday. For example:

Even if all President Bush learned at his Crawford briefing on Aug. 6 was that bin Laden was gearing up for hijackings here, why not order tougher airport security and fortified cockpit doors? After all, the 9/11 attacks started as old-fashioned hijackings.

Dick Cheney suggested that Democrats asking questions were unpatriotic. But that suggestion is anti-American. Maybe there has been too much bipartisanship lately. You can't get the truth that way.

Leaving diplomacy to the former presidents: Lacking any diplomatic skill or desire of their own, the Bushies have left our relations with Cuba and East Timor to former presidents Carter and Clinton. Here are some well-deserved kudos for Carter. I think we should give him another chance as president in 2004. As the article says, he's the best ex-president we've ever had. It says a lot, all of it bad, about our system that his presidency was not more of a success. For probably the first and only time ever we had a President who was honest, intelligent, and cared deeply about all the people of the world, and he got run out of town. So my list of acceptable presidential candidates for 2004 now includes Ralph Nader, Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKinney and Jimmy Carter. If at least one of these is not a major candidate I'm going to tell everybody to go back to their smoke-filled rooms and not to come out until they get it right! Bush-Gore, Bush-Daschle, etc. are totally unacceptable and must be rejected. Unfortunately our undemocratic two-party system is almost guaranteed to give us one of these or something equally disgusting. Maybe we can bring in Jimmy Carter to supervise our elections and see that they are fair this time.

Mr. Bush is personally and politically committed to a hard-line policy toward Cuba. In his speech today, he conditioned any easing of this policy on Cuba's adoption of democratic reforms, such as freeing all political prisoners and giving opposition parties the freedom to organize and speak. (from the New York Times)

Does that include freeing the political prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, George? And if you are so in favor of giving opposition parties the freedom to speak, why did you and Gore block Ralph Nader from the debates in 2000? You wouldn't even let him in the building, even though he had a ticket! And don't make me laugh by suggesting that the Democrats are an "opposition" party. You and Gore said almost exactly the same things on most issues; Al just used bigger words.

W went on to talk about free and fair elections in Cuba. Good idea, George! Let's try it here next time, too!

[National Security Advisor Condoleeza] Rice said the intelligence that discussed bin Laden, tucked in a 1½-page terrorism report given to Bush, mentioned bin Laden's al-Qaida network and "hijacking in a traditional sense" -- not suicide hijackers slamming fuel-laden planes into American landmarks. -- from AP

Pretty lame excuse if you ask me! If they had taken appropriate precautions to stop "hijacking in a traditional sense" it would have stopped the "untraditional" hijackings of September 11. What is the rest of the excuse here? We didn't pay much attention since probably only two or three hundred American lives were likely at risk from a "hijacking in a traditional sense?" And the possibility of crashing planes into buildings should not have been new to the administration. It was discussed by some of the conspirators in the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, it was attempted by a disgruntled FedEx employee in 1994 who tried to crash a DC-10 into FedEx headquarters in Memphis, and it was described in Tom Clancy's novel Debt of Honor in 1995 where a Japanese pilot crashed a 747 into the US Capitol killing the president and most of congress and the administration. To paraphrase Lloyd Bentsen: I've known Jack Ryan from his early days hunting Red October right up through being our kick-butt president in Tom Clancy's fictional universe. And I must say, Mr. Bush, you're no Jack Ryan.

I'd rather that Dan had said this earlier, but it is good to hear CBS anchor Dan Rather speak out against the blind patriotism that he and other news leaders practiced following September 11 by not asking tough questions or demanding more access to the war in Afghanistan.

To me, much of the recent furor over the advance warning about September 11 is misdirected. While it would have been great if the information available had led to the thwarting of the plot and the 3000 people hadn't died, I'm willing to concede that the information may not have been complete or consistent enough to stop the attacks, even with a good-faith effort. The key point that has come out but is given only minor attention in the NY Times and Washington Post articles that I've read is that the "war on terrorism" was planned before September 11, with its real motive being US control of oil and natural gas resources in the Persian Gulf and Caspian regions. The World Socialist Web Site wrote about this back in November. The Bushies knew that starting a world-wide war and instituting a drastic domestic program of curtailing civil rights and arresting Arabs on the flimsiest of excuses would have been very unpopular last July, probably driving Bush's approval ratings from 50% down to 20% or less. Diligently and intelligently thwarting terrorist attacks before they happened would have denied them their excuse for war and repression. The scandal is not that they might have been able to piece together the plans for September 11 and stopped them; the real scandal is that their agenda may have caused them not to try.

I mentioned in my May 15 rant that little makes me madder than the undeserved praise directed at the president. Well, I've found something that does, and not surprisingly it comes from the Veep from the Deep, Useless Dick Cheney:

Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking in New York tonight, came to Mr. Bush's defense, calling "incendiary" any suggestion that the White House had advance knowledge of the attacks. He added, "Such commentary is thoroughly irresponsible and totally unworthy of national leaders in time of war." (from the New York Times)

You know, DICK, that we are at war because you warmongers chose to go to war, that you planned to go to war before September 11, that this plan gave you motive for downplaying or ignoring the warnings you were receiving, and that you have extended the war far beyond any rational response to 9/11. Not questioning your actions is what would be thoroughly irresponsible, and I don't blame anyone for not wanting to wait fifty years until your bloody war is over to question whether it is necessary or could have been avoided. Go crawl back in your cave and stay there until your pacemaker gives out, DICK!

McKinney for President! Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney gets in an "I told you so!" on the Republican morons who practically accused her of treason when she called for an investigation into the events leading up to September 11. You go girl!

Delay Tactics: In French or Spanish "de" means "of." So "DeLay" means "of Lay," which is exactly appropriate for Texas congressman Tom DeLay. He was a powerful tool in Enron's rise to power (so to speak) and their bilking of California, the country, and pretty much anyone else who had the misfortune of dealing with the slime of the century. He has been controlling PAC money, doling it out to fellow Republican congressmen who please him and denying it to those who don't. Read this for more.

Are the flag wavers paying attention? As yesterday's rant mentioned, the Bush administration was at best extremely lax in protecting the country from terrorist attacks, and at worst allowed or even provoked the attacks to allow the Bushies to pursue their world-domination pursuits. We've got evidence, and this article makes a good case for motive. The story of John O'Neill is almost too bizarre. After spending much of his career investigating Osama bin Laden and the attacks on the World Trade Center in 1993, the African embassies in 1998 and the U.S.S. Cole in 2000, O'Neill quit his job at the FBI in protest since his warnings were being ignored by the bureau and the administration. Just weeks before September 11 he started his new job as head of security for the World Trade Center. He was one of the nearly 3000 who died there on September 11. The article describes how the Bushies had already threatened the Taliban with a "carpet of bombs" before 9/11 if they didn't accept our "carpet of gold" to build Unocal's pipeline across Afghanistan.

Little makes me madder than to hear some senator or columnist praise Bush for the "moral clarity" and "resolve" of his confused, brutal and incomprehensible response to September 11. To summarize: after 15 Saudis, three Egyptians and one UAE citizen attacked the US, Bush orders that Afghanistan be bombed, focusing not on the suspect, Osama bin Laden, but on the government and citizens of that country. Bush declared a general "war on terrorism" which is little more than an offer to repressive regimes to assist them in repressing. Now more evidence is appearing showing that there were warnings in Bush's briefings about the attacks before they happened. I remember Jimmy Carter's presidency crumbling because of the Iranian hostage situation, which was by any measure nowhere near as bad as September 11 (although the secret dealings of the Reagan-Bush campaign with the Iranians to prevent an "October surprise" before the 1980 election made it worse). George W. Bush deserves an F-minus for his first 16 months in office; the American public should take pride in the fact that they did not elect him.

Drained state worse than stained dress: The Bushies did nothing to stop Enron's theft of billions of dollars from California, and they still have Enron parolees on the payroll. They should give California every penny of campaign money they received from Enron, and they should give the American people back the election they bought using it. Add Bermuda, the Cayman Islands, Switzerland and Texas to the axis of evil to get back the money from Ken Lay's secret accounts. These guys are crooks, and they should pay. Read my May 6 rant for my suggestion of an appropriate punishment.

I went to hear Barbara Ehrenreich talk about her book Nickel and Dimed this afternoon. Entertaining and provocative. I don't know for sure what will work, but anyone who claims that our current economic system works is either ignorant or lying. Many of the hardest working people in this country are borderline or literally homeless because housing costs are so high compared to wages. Ayn Rand's book Atlas Shrugged featured John Galt, who was the anti-Robin Hood, stealing from the poor to give to the rich. I'm simplifying way too much--I actually liked the book and it is much more complicated than that, but Galt did see Robin Hood as the worst villain in history since he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. In any case, Wal-Mart and the other megacorporations are the anti-Robin Hoods of today, with the full complicity of the government and the media (three sides of the same triangle). Wal-Mart's low prices and high profits come on the backs of their low-wage "associates", the much lower-wage factory workers in China, and the no-wage Americans who lost their factory jobs to those Chinese slaves largely due to Wal-Mart pressure.

Scary reading! Newt Gingrich and his buddies sitting around at the American Enterprise Institute planning wars for the rest of our lives: http://www.aei.org/past_event/conf011029b.htm.

So much crap, so little time to rant about it! The National Rifle Ashcroft is insisting that the second amendment protects the rights of Americans to bear arms anytime, anywhere. Minions at the State Department are trying to make a case for war on Cuba. And nuclear war between India and Pakistan remains a distinct possibility. Congress has given away the farm to the corporate farmers while they're looking to pass "fast-track" trade legislation giving W pretty much a free hand to negotiate trade agreements without any pesky congressional input. We've never had a president more in need of oversight on everything he does than W, and never has a president gotten less.

Recommended reading: Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America. Ms. Ehrenreich went "undercover" as an hourly worker and tried to survive on the $7 per hour wages currently offered at Wal-Mart and other employers. The book is full of insights into the massive injustices in our system (particularly housing) and the huge barriers in place to block changes. Very entertaining and provocative reading.

I haven't written my democracy rant yet, but the Green Party platform contains many of the ideas that I favor (see the Grassroots Democracy and Fair Elections sections). Reading Ralph Nader's book Crashing the Party has strengthened my belief that our current corporate-sponsored, two-party, winner-take-all (or loser-take-all for the 2000 presidential election) system has little to do with the ideals of true democracy.

No link between Iraq and September 11, according to Newsweek. The planned invasion of Iraq appears to be simply the most outlandish attempt to affect mid-term elections in the history of the country. Read this article for more. At least this explains the repudiation of the World Court by the Bushies--without some sort of justification the attack on Iraq will be one of the biggest war crimes in history.

Spend a few days in Indonesia and you'll find many people asking you a question you weren't prepared for: Is America's war on terrorism going to become a war against democracy? -- Opening sentence of Thomas Friedman's opinion piece in the NY Times today. While the article as a whole is great, especially coming from the usually pro-Bush Friedman, this sentence assumes an incredible naiveté on the part of his readers. The war on terrorism has been a war against democracy since the very beginning. Had it been around in the 1770's, Bush's war on terrorism would have been supporting the British in detroying the terrorist infrastructure of those al Qaeda colonists like Washington, Adams and Jefferson whose rhetoric causes their followers to dump tea in the harbor and shoot at redcoats from behind fences.

America needs to be aware of how its war on terrorism is read in other countries, especially those in transition. Indonesia is the world's biggest Muslim country. Its greatest contribution to us would be to show the Arab Muslim states that it is possible to develop a successful Muslim democracy, with a modern economy and a moderate religious outlook. Setting that example is a lot more in America's long-term interest than arresting a few stray Qaeda fighters in the jungles of Borneo.

Don't believe in vast right-wing conspiracy theories? Then you haven't researched the Carlyle Group. This investment club (minimum investment is reportedly $2 million) has George "Read My Lips" Bush and Osama bin Laden's father as investors, and has former Secretary of Defense Frank Carlucci as chairman, former Secretary of Treasury and State James Baker as Senior Counselor, former SEC chairman Arthur Levitt as Senior Advisor, and former British Prime Minister John Major as head of its European operations. Here's a quote from Carlyle's Global Strategy page:

We pursue transactions where our firm has a clear edge and, throughout the globe, focus on adding value to our investments through Carlyle’s expertise and access to global resources.

I assume a "clear edge" would be having the world's leading terrorist and the world's leading terrorist denouncer as sons of major investors, working together to ratchet up fear throughout the world and increase sales in weaponry supplied by companies in which the Carlyle Group is heavily invested. If you want to know who the real enemy is, the Carlyle Group is a likely candidate. Interestingly their web site makes a big deal of their high ethics, just like Enron's web site did.

Jury of Their Fears: Are you opposed to the death penalty? You can't be on a jury in a capital crime case then--your "bias" against capital punishment disqualifies you. Therefore, juries in capital cases tend to be more willing to convict, which is part of the reason why prosecutors push for the death penalty. They may know that the punishment doesn't fit the crime, but the jury required in capital cases is more likely to convict. See this article for more.

Middle America: The Welfare States. Paul Krugman makes the case that the "heartland" of America is on life support at the expense of the rest of the country, especially with the outrageous new farm bill. That bill also has serious negative consequences internationally as dirt-cheap subsidized American crops undercut farmers in developing countries. (See http://www.commondreams.org/views02/0506-09.htm)

The "Death Star" strategy, as described in the memos, allowed Enron to be paid "for moving energy to relieve congestion without actually moving any energy or relieving any congestion." And the "Load Shift" strategy allowed Enron to generate about $30 million in profits in 2000 using techniques that, according to the documents, included creating "the appearance of congestion through the deliberate overstatement" of power to be delivered in one part of the state. -- From a NY Times article describing documents recently released by Enron which show that California's energy shortage in 2000 was mostly the work of Enron. In a truly just world, Kenny Boy Lay, George Worthless Bush, his brother Just Elect Brother Bush, father George Read My Lips Bush and Veep Useless Dick Cheney would all have to live together in the tiny trailer in Key West that Barbara Ehrenreich described in her book Nickel and Dimed while trying to get by as dishwashers at Denny's working for ornery bosses from Guatemala. Of course, Enron has already sold off the division which did this crap, and since it is a corporation it can't be thrown in jail, or even forced to work at Denny's. As Howard Scott said: A criminal is a person with predatory instincts without sufficient capital to form a corporation. (from Sam Smith's wonderful quotation page).

This just in from AP: President Attends Church and Jogs. (Sorry, but the link has been changed to another inane Bush article. But honestly, there was an article describing W's Sunday morning with details of the sermon he slept through and the course he jogged on. And yes, I've heard that prepositions are not the words to end sentences with. That's what other words are for.) Since reporters can't get close to the action in Afghanistan or the West Bank, can't find out who Cheney met with, and don't know who planned the coup in Venezuela, this is the type of crap they give us. This is the Associated Press in the New York Times, not National Lampoon. Is there any room left for National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, or other satirists? The "real" news is its own satire.

I've been reading Ralph Nader's book Crashing the Party, which chronicles his 2000 presidential campaign. Ralph makes more sense in one paragraph than Bush or Gore have in their entire miserable lives. I for one will never forgive Al Gore for staying in the race, thereby splitting the liberal vote and allowing Bush to get close enough to steal the election. (That's a more valid argument than the similar one that Gore used, since Nader offered a substantial alternative to Bush and Gore did not. Why settle for "not quite as awful" when you can have "infinitely better?")

Secure, undisclosed location comes to MSU. Is it too late for me to change alma maters? If they can't come up with somebody better than the Veep from the Deep to speak at commencement, they should just cancel it.

Poll shows majority of Americans are still idiots. A University of Michigan poll said that "Seven in 10 Americans said they were willing to give up at least some of their civil liberties to improve security" and that "nine in 10 Americans favored having more police assigned to patrol public places and additional powers to permit the military to work with local police to conduct anti-terrorist activities." Blacks and Arab-Americans already know that Bush and Ashcroft are much greater threats to their life and liberty than Osama bin Laden ever dreamed of being. The rest of America will find out all too soon if they don't quickly realize that America is turning into a police state. Just like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union it will all come crumbling down eventually, but most of us will live longer and happier lives if we stop the repression now. Unfortunately, most of us don't know that.

Michigan, Ohio and Alabama aren't the only places being extorted by auto companies (see below) for the "privilege" of having polluting factories in their midst. Mitsubishi is putting the squeeze on Australia, threatening to move their plants out of down under if they aren't handed some dough under the table. Congratulations, taxpayers, your government has used your tax dollars to bribe a corporation to locate or remain in your community so that maybe you'll still have a job so you can keep paying taxes so your government can continue to bribe corporations. Don't expect to get paid too much for that job, though. The car company can still move to Malaysia or Bangladesh if labor costs get too high.

Bush-league logic: Ashcroft must be doing a good job as Attorney General because liberals hate him so much. See Molly Ivan's latest.

Here's a good one: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper – either here in the U.S. or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere – that mentioned any aspect of the September 11th plot. The hijackers had no computers, no laptops, no storage media of any kind." -- That's from FBI Director Robert Mueller in a speech made at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco on April 19. So what exactly did the administration show to Tony Blair and Musharraf and others to convince them that the poorest country in the world needed the crap bombed out of it? Read the WSWS article about this.

Nevada: It's the bomb! Maybe we can get napalm plates here in Michigan to commemorate Dow's contributions to the Cold War. How do you draw napalm?

The constitution is slowly creeping back into the picture. In a ruling today a US district judge ruled that material witnesses cannot be detained for grand jury investigations, which could set free many who have been held for months without charges. The "Justice" Department is of course planning to appeal. Let's hope it doesn't go to the Fascist Five on the Supreme Court; they appointed this cesspool of an administration and probably aren't inclined to correct it. I'm hopeful that this will lead to Rabih Haddad's release--the last I heard is that he is being held solely as a material witness.

Interesting analysis of what the Saudis might be up to from William Safire. It refers to the quote from an unidentified Saudi source that I quoted last week.

``At that point everyone is clapping and cheering,'' Clark said. Clark was a passenger on US Airways Flight 335, which was turned around and told to return to Philadelphia on Sunday after taking off on its way to Orlando. The FBI says this was because several men of Middle Eastern descent had bought one-way tickets with cash. The plane landed back at Philadelphia less than an hour later and the suspect gentlemen were harassed and cleared. After two hours on the ground at the Philly airport the FBI finally tells the remaining passengers what is going on, which precipitates their cheering. Three cheers for the FBI! They managed to use racial profiling to embarrass several people and inconvenience many others, but still the plane was allowed to take off and be well on its way to Washington before being told to turn around, which it probably would not have done if it had been hijacked. What could it possibly take for them to earn the disapproval of the brain-dead American public?

This nonsense has got to stop! The state of Ohio has offered Ford an $83 million incentive package to build Mercury SUV's at its Avon Lake Assembly Plant near Cleveland. GM recently threatened to move assembly of its silly Chevrolet SSR (V8 powered two-seat roadster pickup mutant) unless Lansing, Michigan agreed to lower pollution standards. Politicians in Montgomery, Alabama were ecstatic that Hyundai agreed to build a 2000-job assembly plant there for only $133 million in state and local bribe money. That's $66,500 per job! Corporations have pitted city against city, state against state, and with NAFTA and WTO, country against country in a bidding war for jobs. Ralph Nader, in his book Crashing the Party, describes a recent case where Daimler-Chrysler squeezed millions out of Toledo and Ohio to locate a Jeep plant in Toledo. Entire neighborhoods were destroyed to build the plant, and an economic downturn resulted in far fewer jobs being created than were promised. I don't know all the answers, but it sure seems like corporations should be paying states substantial fees for the privilege of doing business within their borders, not the other way around. There is now more real competition between Michigan, Alabama and Mexico than there is between Ford, GM, and Daimler-Chrysler. This benefits the shareholders and executives of the corporations to the detriment of the citizens of the states and countries. We need to realize that we have more than enough stuff and that economic activity and jobs aren't the necessities--food, clothing and shelter are.

All they are saying is give peace no chance: The Bush administration is planning this massive war against Iraq, unprovoked, with no legitimate excuse. Congress should insist that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Ashcroft be in the front line; nobody should be allowed to so flippantly and premeditatedly plan a war without putting their own Republican butts on the line.

Here's a copy of my letter to my senators and representative. If you agree with me, please copy it into your e-mail and send it to your congresspeople.

Note on Updates: I occasionally read through my rants and discover errors in things I wrote a few days ago. I'll try to keep corrections to things like spelling and grammar--it seems wrong to make changes to my takes on issues if events prove me wrong. If this happens I will write a new correction at the top of the page rather than editing my previous rant, as was Winston Smith's job in Orwell's 1984. One correction I made a couple of days ago was to change my April 17 reference to the "Alaska National Wildlife Refuge" to say "Arctic National Wildlife Refuge," which seems to be the majority opinion (NY Times and most others) as to what ANWR abbreviates. A google search, however, turned up several articles referring to "Alaska National Wildlife Refuge", including this one from the State Department quoting a Bush speech.

Newark, New Jersey: Joseph Schmeckledink of Newark was arrested today after it was determined that he shaved the beards off of two of the 9/11 hijackers on September 9 of last year. He is charged with barbering terrorists.

Another note on my Maginot Line rant from Tuesday: If there are al Qaeda evil doers in Cuba, it's because we brought them there!

Senator Hollings on Free Trade and Fast Track. "Free trade" is bad for most Americans and for many of the workers overseas. It is bad for the environment. Giving W "fast track" authority will only enable him to make things worse faster. So why are so many in Congress in favor of it? Because they represent the corporations and other moneyed interests, not the rest of us. Don't tell the Bushies, but hopefully none of the Tahoe landholders who sued for compensation due to zoning restrictions was from Canada or Mexico. If they were, they could use NAFTA's Chapter 11 to accuse the local governments of restricting "Free Trade." NAFTA and the WTO take control out of the hands of people at the local level and give it to a group of secret judges working for the multi-national corporations. Al Gore's strong support for NAFTA is one of the reasons that I don't think he would have been much better than Bush--they're both working for the same guys.

A dividend of endless war, or Caught between Iraq and a Hard Place: This quote comes from a Saudi official close to the Crown Prince, according to the NY Times:

"It is a mistake to think that our people will not do what is necessary to survive, and if that means we move to the right of bin Laden, so be it; to the left of Qaddafi, so be it; or fly to Baghdad and embrace Saddam like a brother, so be it. It's damned lonely in our part of the world, and we can no longer defend our relationship to our people." (I believe he is referring to the Saudi-US relationship.)

Bush lost the "Arab Street" a long time ago; now he's managing to lose the "Arab Palace" as well. If Bush has an ounce of reason in him he will have to choose either to forego the war on Iraq to maintain the oil flow, or to institute some serious energy conservation in this country. I would see this as a positive development, since the current plan is war on Iraq without conservation, but I'm afraid that W doesn't have an ounce of reason in him. He is more likely to add Saudi Arabia to his "axis of evil" (their credentials are better than the current members) and attack Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran all at once, thereby starting World War III.

A win for the good guys! The US Supreme Court (yes, that Supreme Court) actually ruled in favor of the public and the environment today. In a case involving Lake Tahoe, the Court ruled that zoning and environmental restrictions on property do not constitute a "taking" for which the owners must be compensated. Had they ruled the other way it might have been an even more damaging ruling than their infamous Bush v. Gore ruling of December 2000. Pretty much any zoning or pollution control ordinance would have been under fire for "taking" property rights, resulting in an even greater assault on our landscape and environment than we have now. Fortunately Sandra Day O'Connor and Anthony M. Kennedy joined the liberal supremes John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer in this decision. Of course Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas opposed.

Another Maginot Line. The Senate passed a bill on Friday to ban visitors from Cuba, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Sudan and North Korea. "We know the chances of another terrorist attack are great, and we know it is unconscionable for our systems to allow entry of another terrorist into the United States," warned California Democratic Senator Dianne Feinstein, one of the sponsors of the bill, during the debate preceding the vote. Excuse me, Senator, but I believe I heard that 15 of the 9/11 perps came from Saudi Arabia, three from Egypt, and one from the United Arab Emirates. Their countrymen can still get in! And while I'm aware of one terrorist attack on Cuba by someone now living in Florida (see below), I can't recall any terrorist attacks on the US by Cubans. (Can you? Admittedly I didn't research this, but I recall reading that the first WTC attack in 1993 was the first terrorist attack by foreigners on American soil.) And I don't notice many Americans afraid to get on a bus because "that guy might be North Korean." Personally, I'm more afraid of a white guy from New York in a Ryder truck than I am of any Sudanese I might come across. Thanks to August Pollack's blog for spotlighting this latest bit of legislative nonsense which, by the way, passed 97-0.

The dirty deed is done. The US has ousted the head of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, Brazilian José M. Bustani, ostensibly because we don't like his management style. As mentioned here before, the real reason is that Bustani might have succeeded in resuming inspections in Iraq, thereby possibly denying the Bushies their main excuse and thwarting their lust to step up the war on Saddam Hussein. We have also been meddling with the UN inspectors for the same reason. Rarely have so many done so much to avoid peace. (More on this)

Representative Cynthia McKinney (D-Georgia) is calling for a full investigation into the intelligence failures which preceded the September 11 attacks. She implies that the huge financial gains by George H. W. Bush and others close to the administration resulting from the "War on Terrorism" are fishy at best. While even I question whether the Bushies are evil enough to have knowingly allowed the attacks to occur, I am firmly convinced that their cynical "United We Stand" response of bombing the crap out of Afghanistan and the "axis of evil" nonsense is complete opportunism for the benefit of the Carlyle Group and other warmongering profiteers, not to mention their own political fortunes. The stench is strong enough that a full investigation should be made. Rep. McKinney is being blasted by Republicans and the right-wing press. You can give her some support by sending her a message at http://www.house.gov/mckinney/guest.htm.

French fascist to face Chirac in election. According to the NY Times, Mr. Chirac, a conservative, had 19.6 percent of the vote, Mr. Le Pen 17 percent and Mr. Jospin 16 percent. The top two, Chirac and Le Pen, will face each other in the primary election. While the French system is different from ours, it still allows for undesirable results as ours does (see picture above). I'm working on a big "democracy rant" which I'll post in a day or two. Stay tuned!

From the Washington Post: "The organizers did an outstanding job," said Ramsey... "If it stays this way, it will be the best one we've ever had. . . . This is really what protest ought to be." I thought this was interesting praise for the anti-war, anti-Israeli-occupation, anti-globalization rally in Washington, since it came from D.C. Police Chief Charles H. Ramsey. I was one of about 40 who participated in a similar, though much smaller, rally in Ann Arbor on Saturday. No praise from our police chief that I've heard yet, unfortunately.

The whole point of training is to learn from your mistakes. The Americans don't seem to learn. They just keep killing people. --from a Canadian soldier quoted by the CBC, as reported in the Washington Post.

Andersonville, Bataan, Shebergan. Prisoners captured in the Afghan war are still being held by the thousands in abominable conditions. Most are malnourished, many diseased, and many have already died in captivity. They are being held by the "Northern Alliance," the brutal American ally. The Bush administration apparently has no interest in mitigating this humanitarian disaster. As I have said before, if even one percent of the people who have been killed or held captive in the "War on Terrorism" had had any role or even prior knowledge of the September 11 attacks, even the CIA would have heard something about them. These prisoners were engaged in a civil war thousands of miles from America. Many were drafted or forced into fighting for the Taliban. In no way do these people deserve to be treated this way. No one does. Just one more answer to "Why do they hate us?"

Don't know where Osama is, so let's bomb some Canadians instead. Sorry, that's slightly unfair, but only slightly. Of course, no one really knows what is going on in Afghanistan, including Secretary of Offense Donald Rumsfeld. He says that he has never had enough info on OBL's whereabouts to go after him. So I guess you just go after whatever. The approach seems to be to have heavily-armed planes flying over Afghanistan day and night, and if they see gunfire or tall people they are to shoot or bomb first and ask questions later, if ever. This in a country where the only semi-organized opposition military, armed with deadly Toyota pickups, was destroyed five months ago. When your only tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Read Tom Tomorrow's and August Pollack's take on Rumsfeld's remarks.

He told us his "War on Terrorism" would take a long time, and, by George, he's telling us again! In a speech today, W pledged to keep fighting, "terrorist by terrorist." He refuses to recognize that terrorists are best defined by their acts, and that his war is likely to drive more people into desperation, leading them to commit acts of terror and thereby becoming terrorists. Pretty much all terrorist attacks on the US in the last ten years can be traced to the Gulf War; I shudder to think how many will result from the "War on Terrorism." There's little worse in the world than a wrong-headed, obstinate, dim-witted, un-elected son-of-a-Bush!

ANWR heading for a vote! Please e-mail your senators asking them to vote no on drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. For Michigan residents, our senators are Carl Levin (senator@levin.senate.gov) and Debbie Stabenow (senator@stabenow.senate.gov). The vote is scheduled for tomorrow, so bug them today!

According to George Monbiot in the Guardian, the US intends to oust the leader of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons this coming Sunday because he apparently intends to resume inspections in Iraq, and it seems possible that Iraq might let him. As with the possibility of the resumption of UN inspections (see below), this would undermine the Bushies justification for attacking Iraq, which seems to be the only consistent element in their current excuse for a foreign policy. There were few legitimate reasons for daddy Bush's war on Iraq eleven years ago; there are none at all now.

The Fourth Reich: Otto Reich was appointed as assistant secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs by W a few months ago. This is like if Nixon had appointed George Wallace to be in charge of African affairs, or if W had appointed Spencer Abraham to be secretary of energy; i.e., incredibly inappropriate. W managed to get Reich into the job while avoiding Senate confirmation using some sleazy trick, no doubt aided and abetted by the spineless nature of the Senate in general. Reich is a Castro-hating, contra-loving Cuban-American with links to Orlando Bosch, a man who was convicted in Venezuela in 1976 of blowing up a Cuban airliner, killing 73. Bosch has even been convicted of terrorist acts in the US, but he was pardoned by Bush the Elder in 1990 and now lives in Florida. (So who is harboring terrorists?) It now appears that Reich was involved with the recent failed coup in Venezuela. See this Guardian article for the background on Reich and Bosch, and this NY Times article for the so-far incomplete story of Reich's possible involvement in the coup. W is right--there is evil in the world. A whole lot of it is in his administration.

Playing chicken with the Russians again. Maybe pressure from the Russians can make Tyson and other filthy US butchers clean up their act. Don't count on it, though.

Watch Fort Sumter--South Carolina is preparing to secede again! And I don't blame them one bit this time. Last time it was Abraham Lincoln they were battling, this time it's Spencer Abraham, the Energy Secretary. South Carolina Governor Jim Hodges is opposing Abraham's plan to ship plutonium from Colorado to South Carolina, vowing to use state troopers to stop the shipments, or even to lie across the highway himself. Maybe they can reach a compromise--store the plutonium on the campus of Bob Jones University, covered with shredded Confederate flags.

Maybe they can correct the election while they're at it: Transcripts of Bush speeches are being "scrubbed" of Bushisms. Another 1984 element. Big Brother is infallible. If you think Big Brother made a mistake, you are mistaken. Although I guess I am somewhat guilty of this myself--I just edited my rant from yesterday. Of course, no one noticed, since I haven't gotten a single reply to my plea for readers to let me know they exist (below). Do I feel pathetic or what?

Senate adopts "Conserve by Bike" amendment. Who'd a thunk it? Of course, I think that bicycles should be treated like ambulances and fire trucks. When one is coming down the road, everyone in a motor vehicle has to stop at the side of the road to allow the bike to pass. I'm afraid that wasn't in the bill, however.

Unlike yesterday's editorial on Venezuela (see next rant), the Washington Post is to be commended for today's editorial defending the rights of Yaser Esam Hamdi. Hamdi was arrested in Afghanistan and sent to Guantanamo Bay, where it was discovered that he was born in Louisiana, and therefore a US citizen. The Justice Department (is that newspeak or what?) doesn't have any evidence against Hamdi, so the Post is suggesting that he should be released. I do, however, take issue with the Post's reasoning that his US citizenship matters. The Bill of Rights protects persons, not citizens, and the fourteenth amendment states: ...nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws. Hundreds of people are currently being held without charge in this country, in Guantanamo Bay, and in Afghanistan, and the Bush administration has said that it may not release them even if they are acquitted in a trial or tribunal.

A Washington Post editorial yesterday (before Chavez's return to power in Venezuela) claimed that no one was saying that the US was involved in the coup that caused Hugo Chavez to be arrested. Apparently they aren't reading my rants (below), nor have they talked to my brother or his friend at work or seen the World Socialist Web Site. Of course, one can understand the Bush administration's distaste for democratically-elected presidents.

It appears that war against Iraq is now the primary goal of the Bush administration. All or the bizarre flip-flopping on the Israeli-Palestinian issue seems driven mostly by the hope of keeping another war on Iraq possible. This Washington Post article describes how Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz had the CIA investigate the leader of the UN weapons inspection team which is seeking to investigate Iraqi weapons programs. Wolfowitz hopes to discredit the UN man in hopes of avoiding a peaceful solution to whatever our problem is with Iraq. The completely ignored call for Israel to "withdraw without delay" and Powell's visit to Arafat were both done apparently only because the Bushies hope to build a coalition to attack Iraq. They seem so excited about the prospect that they would give up most of the other parts of their insane agenda just for the pleasure of killing Iraqis once again. Unfortunately there is no serious opposition to war on Iraq in congress; otherwise Bush would probably give up on the Alaska drilling and the tax cuts and might appoint three liberals to the supreme court to win over congress. I think even W's war-crazed father at least pretended to be reluctant to start a war--W is positively excited by wars and doesn't try to hide it.

Venezuela: Does this one smell like a CIA job or what? After a swift coup ousted democratically elected president Hugo Chavez, the US State Department immediately releases a statement basically supporting the coup. The coup was supposedly started by employees of the national oil company. Amazingly enough, oil prices are dropping again, recovering from the shock of Iraq's embargo. Here's an excerpt from what Secretary of State Colin Powell told Sen. Jesse Helms two months ago:

Briefly, we have been concerned with some of the actions of Venezuelan President Chavez and his understanding of what a democratic system is all about. And we have not been happy with some of the comments he has made with respect to the campaign against terrorism. He hasn't been as supportive as he might have been. And he drops in some of the strangest countries to visit. And I'm not sure what inspiration he thinks he gets or what benefit he gives to the Venezuelan people from dropping in and visiting some of these despotic regimes. We've expressed our disagreement on some of his policies directly to him, and he understands that it is a serious irritant... (from http://www.ciponline.org/colombia/02020501.htm)

In case anyone has any doubt, US foreign policy has very little to do with democracy or justice, and a whole lot to do with oil.

Be sure to read Tom Tomorrow's blog about the talk given by Tariq Ali, especially the quote from a 1933 speech by Marine General Smedley Butler. I'll add my own quote from Harry Truman: "The only thing new in the world is the history you don't know." (10 bonus points for me! After I typed that quote in, I decided I'd better search the web to see if I got it right. I did, exactly! http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/presidents/nf/teach/truman/trumaniq.html. The next one in that list is relevant today as well: "Secrecy and a free, democratic government don't mix.")

Let's give the Republicans some equal time here: "Possibly my hatred of war blinds me so that I cannot comprehend the arguments that its advocates adduce. But, in my opinion, there is no such thing as a preventative war...War begets the conditions that beget further war."-Dwight Eisenhower, 1950

Another Eisenhower quote: "Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed."

And one more: "In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. "

Think gas prices are high now? Read the news! Saddam Hussein has announced an oil embargo, with other Arab countries likely to follow in response to the Israeli war on the Palestinians and the incoherent US response to it; labor unrest in the Venezuelan oil business (a major supplier of US crude), a pipeline rupture in Louisiana. It won't bother me much personally--I buy about 9 gallons of gasoline a month for my Escort, and I can cut back further as the weather gets nicer for biking. But I feel sorry for those folks who commute 35 miles from their $350,000 starter castles in their $40,000 SUV's. Actually, no I don't. They deserve what's coming to them. My greatest fear, which seems depressingly likely, is that Bush will just keep expanding the war on everything in an attempt to fuel the wasteful American lifestyle for another few years, as daddy did in 1991. If he fails, millions of people, including lots of Americans, will die, and the American era of consumption will be just a disgraceful chapter in the history books. If he succeeds, more resources will be wasted, more greenhouse gasses will be generated, and millions of people, including lots of Americans, will die, and in ten or fifteen years the whole thing will happen over again. Eventually it will fail, and the American era of consumption will be just a disgraceful chapter in the history books.

The Detroit Tigers and the Palestinians--They just can't win: I came across this New York Post editorial claiming success for the Israelis because there have been no suicide bombings for a few days. It concludes "But there have been none for the past several days, which underscores the essential utility of making it difficult for the terrorists to achieve their deadly aims - by reducing their ranks." Of course, the constant Israeli demand has been for the bombings to stop. Now that they have, it is being used as justification for the massacre of hundreds of Palestinians and the arrest of thousands more.

Limited membership in axis of evil? This article says that the US will begin a dialogue with North Korea. Perhaps the Bushies only have three slots available, and recent rhetoric (that "for or against terror" crap) makes it sound like they want to add Syria to the list while keeping Iraq and Iran there. So they're going to move North Korea to the back burner for a while. I'm probably giving them too much credit in thinking that they really have any plan at all. Just bluster and bomb, bluster and bomb, overthrow governments, on and on and on.

Remember a few weeks back when Ari Fleischer suggested that the trouble in the middle east was caused by the efforts of the Clinton administration? He apologized the next day, saying that no US president was to blame for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Sorry, Ari, I must disagree. Our current "president" has definitely created an atmosphere supportive of large-scale military action, which when dealing with someone like Sharon is akin to pouring gasoline on a napalm fire (probably literally).

I plan to be there last January. Here's the opening sentence in the Ann Arbor News article on the ruling in the Haddad case: A federal judge on Wednesday ordered future and past deportation hearings against jailed Ann Arbor Muslim leader Rabih Haddad open to the public... I imagine there will be some difficulty working out the logistics of that.

Some moron from the Michigan Coalition for Responsible Gun Owners wants to "make Michigan the envy of gun lovers in Florida, Nevada and Texas." Here's the article. Ross Dykman, the Coalition's director, was proud to note that "Michigan was the first state to pass legislation relaxing standards for carrying concealed weapons" following the Columbine massacre. Frankly, I'm much more fearful of getting shot by an imbecile like Dykman than I am of any al Qaeda terrorist attack.

Some good news: Federal judge Nancy G. Edmunds ruled that the Justice Department's policy to close immigration hearings is unconstitutional. The ruling means that Rabih Haddad's hearing should be open to the press and the public. Of course, the Justice Department has indicated that it will appeal, probably hoping to get it to the Supreme Court, which no longer makes any pretense of protecting the constitution. This also probably means that Haddad will be stuck in jail even longer before his hearing. He and his family had taken the appropriate steps to reinstate their immigrant status many months ago, including paying $5000 in fees/penalties. As the visas for the 9-11 pilots demonstrated, the INS does not always process things in a timely manner, so when Ashcroft's minions decided they didn't like Haddad they were able to use his visa status as an excuse for arresting him. As far as I can tell, they've come up with nothing else, which may be why they are so insistent on secrecy for the hearings. In any case, thanks to the Detroit News, the Detroit Free Press, the Metro Times, and Congressman John Conyers for bringing the suit on behalf of Haddad. I've read many descriptions of how things were in the Soviet Union when the KGB would arrest people and hold them indefinitely, frequently without charges. I thought how terrible it would be to live in that kind of system. Well, Rabih Haddad lives in my city, and it has happened to him. Ashcroft should be impeached, along with W for nominating him and every senator who voted to confirm his appointment. Ashcroft took an oath to protect the constitution, but he has done nothing but attempt to destroy it in his 14+ months in office.

Glimmers of hope from the tragedy: The crisis in Israel/Palestine clearly has the Bushies rattled. Their statements seem to fluctuate several times a day between the old hard-line backing of Sharon and some criticism of him combined with some sympathy for the Palestinian cause. While this may well be making the current crisis even worse, it indicates that the Bushies are now responding in some degree to international criticism, a welcome change from their previous approach. One example was Rumsfeld's strong denial that the recently captured al Qaeda leader would be taken to Egypt and tortured. Three months ago, I doubt if he would have said "Yes, he will be tortured," but he might well have said something like "He's evil and is responsible for many deaths; we are keeping all options open. I won't elaborate further." So maybe they are listening a bit and becoming aware of how dangerous it is to keep pursuing their "war on terrorism" unilaterally.

I bought Stupid White Men today and have started reading it. Apparently Harper Collins doesn't deserve too much credit. They tried to get Michael Moore to tone the book down, but he refused. He also apparently hasn't received any royalties yet, even though it is the best-selling book in the country. Interestingly, Harper Collins is owned by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation, which also owns the right-wing Bush-adoring Fox News Channel (we distort, you recite).

Another example of eroded democracy: In Michigan, the Republican party leadership is selecting their gubernatorial candidate long before the primary. As in most elections recently we'll be left to choose between two miserable party hacks. The two-party system doesn't benefit the people of America--it just benefits the two parties. Of course the Republicans are trying to do away with it, but I don't think a one-party system will be an improvement.

Oh little town of Bethlehem, how ill we see thee lie
Above thy bleak and bloody streets Israeli jets go by
And in thy buildings rageth the everlasting fight
The hopes and fears of all the years are crushed in thee tonight.

More on the Rabih Haddad case. In jail without charges since December 14, the government is trying to keep his hearings secret. Fortunately, the Detroit News, Free Press, Metro Times, and the ACLU are suing to force the hearings to be public. The Bush administration has seriously confused public and private. Government business, hearings and trials are supposed to be public; personal phone calls, conversations and people's homes are supposed to be private, as are conversations between lawyers and their clients. With the unconstitutional "USA Patriot" act and sheer arrogance, aided and abetted by the mindless "patriotism" of much of the American public, the Bushies have largely reversed it.

Liberal dilemma: I desperately want to read Michael Moore's book Stupid White Men, but I'm also trying to immunize myself from "affluenza" by spending as little as possible. I've got a reserve request for the book in at the library, but it may be months before my number comes up given the book's popularity. Also, I want to support authors like Michael Moore and publishers like Harper Collins who are willing to publish leftist literature. So I'll probably head to Borders tonight and buy it, but I'll try to pass it on when I'm done. Life is a series of compromises, I guess. In the meantime, I've been reading Moore's web site. I enjoyed his open letter to George W. Bush regarding Enron.

They're after us, and most Americans are still clueless to the Bushies full-scale assault on liberty and democracy. Here's an article about how financial companies are discussing how to use credit card and financial data to "profile" terrorists. It's not right even if all of their data were 100% accurate, and you know it isn't. Maybe the first round is looking for donations to Arab charities. Once those people are gone, those of us who donate to Amnesty International and the ACLU will be profiled. Once we're gone, it will be Volvo buyers, then people who invested in international stock funds (after all, a lot of those terrorists seem to be foreign), then democrats, Catholics, liberal republicans, moderate republicans, etc. Our liberty is being threatened and if we don't do something about it soon we won't have any.

Insanity Inside: I guess if I keep referring to Tom Tomorrow's blog, you'll start reading it before you read mine (I know I do). But here's another rage-provoking article Tom has led me to--Intel is suing a non-profit organization because its name, "Yoga Inside," sounds too much like "Intel Inside," and apparently there's some ridiculous corporation-protecting law that lets them do it.

Blogjam! Tom Tomorrow's blog led me to August J. Pollak's blog, which has an interesting summary view of the Mideast situation (crisis? war? apocalypse?). You'll have to scroll down a ways on Pollak's blog to where it says "Let's argue about the Middle East, pt. 1."

Not to be too trite about it, but using explosives to kill people is bad. Maybe there are times or targets for which it is more justified than others, but the "terrorist" label being applied to people who personally deliver the explosives and not to those who use planes, rockets or guns to deliver them is nonsense.

I found the link referred to below about US agents being involved with the "rendition" of supposed terrorist suspects from countries such as Indonesia to Egypt where they can "get information from terrorists in a way we can't do on U.S. soil." In other words, US agents are basically kidnapping suspects and transporting them halfway around the world to be tortured. Why do they hate us? This is one of many reasons.

It is truly disgusting that the development described in this article could even be considered. Golf courses in the desert are prime examples of the complete disregard for the environment by many Americans. And calling the college the "World Trade Center University" is such pathetic groveling for support. I can see the headlines now: "Environmentalists block construction of University honoring September 11 victims" or some such. The article doesn't explain why the university needs its own golf course for visiting professors when they are planning on building 11 other courses. Of course, the country club's seven courses will probably be off-limits to everyone except Republican politicians and donors who were involved with approving the development.

I would normally try some sort of April Fools' joke at this point, but I can't think of anything ridiculous enough that might not be true the way things are in the world right now. Every day is April Fools' Day if you're George W. Bush.

You deserve e.coli today, so get up and get away, to...you know where. I don't want to get sued by one of the world's true evil doers like the woman in Chile who claimed that here son got food poisoning from a hamburger. Article from NY Times. Did somebody say salmonella?

From today's press conference: BUSH: Well, you may recall, the vice president has just returned from the region. This is a significant outreach. We're spending a great deal of time. It's our capacity as the leader of the coalition against the war on terror to continue not only our war in Afghanistan and elsewhere, but also continue to fight terror in this region. (emphasis added)

Well George, as someone who has been against the war on terror since the beginning, let me say "Welcome to the Coalition!" So now that you are against the war on terror, how about stopping it?

And more: BUSH: All of the countries in the region must condemn terror, speak clearly about terror.

Read the transcript of the press conference and tell me if you think that W has any right to ask anyone to speak clearly about anything.

Spine Transplant: Frank Rich of the New York Times decries the sorry state of the loyal opposition (aka Democrats).

Torture: For me the lowest point in an otherwise abominable movie, There's Something About Mary, was when Ben Stiller's character was arrested in a southern state and had his head banged repeatedly on a table by a stereotyped southern sheriff. There is nothing funny about torture in any form, and it should be opposed vigorously wherever and whenever it occurs. I can't find the link now, but I recently read an article about US agents (CIA, I think) arresting (kidnapping?) "terrorists" in countries like Indonesia and flying them off to Egypt or Jordan where torture is used to try to extract information from them. I've read historical accounts of torture as practiced by the Nazis, Soviets, the Spanish Inquisition, and others, as well as fictional accounts from George Orwell, Tom Clancy, and more. We all are aware that we will die someday, but everyone should be able to live without fear of being tormented by unbearable pain and coerced into turning on friends and loved ones through physical and mental abuse. It is terrible enough that the country founded on the principles that all men are created equal and are endowed with inalienable rights should count the brutal regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Uzbekistan, and elsewhere as allies. It is absolutely abhorrent that that country is actively participating in bringing people to the torturers. Nothing justified the attacks of September 11: there is even less justification for any aiding or abetting of torture. Please join or contribute to Amnesty International and let your congressional representatives know that there is no excuse for the US having anything to do with torturing human beings.

Anniston isn't looking so bad now: A report of serious problems with the Davis-Besse nuclear power plant near Toledo Ohio doesn't exactly have me radiating with joy.

From AP: Maj. Gen. Michael Dunlavey, who oversees interrogations at Camp X-ray, said not to feel sorry for the detainees. "I would fail in my duty to the 3,000 people who were murdered on Sept. 11 and the 14,000 orphans that were created that day ... if I released one of those persons out there and somehow the next time I saw them they had an AK-47 in their hand," he said.

Everyone should note that this same illogic could be applied to anyone, anytime. You get arrested by mistake and the cops figure they'd better not let you go, since you might go commit a crime. By this logic we'll all soon be locked up--after all, most criminals are people! And could someone explain to me where the 14,000 orphans number comes from? I'd heard 10,000 before, and that was supposedly the number of children who lost one parent, not both. That still seems outrageously high, considering that the 3000 were mostly New York area residents, largely yuppie broker types, many of whom were certainly childless. For this group to have over four and a half children each on average seems impossible. And you have to lose both parents to become an orphan, unless you lost one earlier. Aren't good journalists supposed to point out factual errors in quotes that they print? Of course, that question assumes too much.

Civil libertarians have argued that the people held at Guantanamo Bay should be designated prisoners of war and accorded their rights under the Geneva Convention. The Bushies prefer the word "detainees." The accurate term is "hostages."

From the Washington Post: One incident involved a Jan. 23 raid on two suspected enemy compounds, in which U.S. troops killed 16 and captured 27 who later turned out to be neither al-Qaida nor Taliban. The 27 were later released.

"The investigation concluded that there were no systemic errors in the targeting process, mission planning or mission execution," according to a summary of the investigation released before Franks' briefing.

Since there were no systemic errors, I guess that means that the system is intended to kill civilians who are neither al-Qaida nor Taliban. I think General Franks just convicted our military of terrorism. When's the tribunal?

It gets more ridiculous. Secretary of Offense Rummy Rumsfeld indicated that even if he ever gets around to staging the kangaroo court tribunals for the "detainees" at Guantanamo Bay, and even if they somehow manage to be acquitted, he still won't let them go. As Congresswoman Lynn Rivers, one of only 60 house members to vote against the blatantly unconstitutional USA Patriot Act last fall, pointed out last night in an informal speech in Ann Arbor, the whole detainee business is blatantly unconstitutional. The rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights and the 14th amendment extend to all persons in the jurisdiction or control of the US, not just citizens. The "detainees" are entitled to due process of law and should be tried in open court as soon as possible and released immediately if acquitted. By the way, only one senator, Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, was honorable enough to vote against USA Patriot. Rep. Rivers was asked last night why no one is lining up at the courthouse to challenge the constitutionality of USA Patriot like they did immediately following passage of campaign finance reform. She said that the ACLU was planning a challenge but they hadn't found an appropriate test case. Finding it is probably hindered by the secrecy surrounding all of the detentions.

Who gets help? Malaika Finkelstein points out in this article how victims of the earthquakes in Afghanistan are getting more and faster relief than are the victims of "collateral damage" from US bombing. I guess she hasn't read Tom Tomorrow's blog from yesterday about the possibility that US "bunker-busting" bombs exploded deep inside Afghani caves may have triggered the earthquakes. So maybe victims of collateral damage are getting aid, but it's all by mistake.

Sweet Home, Alabama. As an employee of the Alabama Historical Commission from 1984 to 1988, I traveled extensively throughout that state. I recall visiting Anniston, a small city in the northeast part of the state, close to Talladega. It's pretty country, with wooded hills and lots of rivers and streams. Unfortunately, some of those rivers and streams are heavily polluted with PCB's and other toxins--there has been a lot of controversy in the last few years surrounding a General Electric subsidiary plant in Anniston which has poured toxins into streams in Anniston, killing the fish and quite possibly many of the human residents of the town. (I'll see if I can find an article with the specifics of this case. Update: Here's one! And our genetically-modified friends from Monsanto are involved too!) Today I decided to see what was happening in Alabama, specifically to see if there are any rumblings of dissent about the terror wars or the attacks on our civil liberties. Before I got that far I saw the headline for today's Montgomery Advertiser: Feds to hand out 35,000 gas masks. It turns out that the Army is planning to burn some nerve gas (to destroy it) at a plant in Anniston, and they are issuing the gas masks "just to be safe." I think if I lived in Anniston I would consider moving immediately, perhaps to Mars. It seems to me that just like the gun in the drawer for security kills more family members than it does intruders, our own weapons of mass destruction pose a greater threat to Americans than anything the "axis of evil" can put together.

Campaign Finance Bill Signed. Just like the CAFE fuel-economy standards, this is a weak answer to a massive problem. At least this one passed. Hopefully it will open the door enough to get a foot in and get more meaningful legislation passed and enforced. I'm not convinced that we'll get very far as long as we have our very undemocratic two-party system. With meddling from national parties like Cheney's Minnesota shenanigans I noted a while back, we will forever be stuck with choosing between two bought-and-paid-for party hacks. I offer the last several presidential elections as evidence. I probably don't agree with Minnesota Republicans on a lot of things, but I do think they should have more of a say in who the Republican candidate for Minnesota senator is than the veep from the deep does. Turns out, their opinion doesn't count at all. Democracy in America is mostly an illusion.

The terrorists are getting what they want! In a bizarre twist, the US Air Force is moving its Persian Gulf base from Saudi Arabia to Qatar in order to pursue war against Iraq. The Saudi government opposes using Saudi bases to attack Iraq, so we're moving the show to Qatar. The presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia since GWI (Gulf War I) is generally recognized as the main reason for OBL's jihad against America. In 1990 Defense Secretary Cheney promised the Saudis that US forces wouldn't stay a minute longer than necessary. Of course, our veep from the deep has different definitions for words than most of us.

Clearing the air. After a court decision, the EPA now says that it will start enforcing air pollution standards established in 1997. We'll see. Industry has a long history of ignoring pollution laws for as long as possible and then negotiating them away at the last minute, with little fear of any serious consequences. Let's hope that something actually happens here and we actually get cleaner air.

Thank you, Paine Webber! You can't spell "broker" without "broke" and you can't spell "Paine Webber" without "pain." PW fired a broker last summer after Enron complained to his bosses that he was recommending to his clients that they sell their Enron stock. Just in case anyone still has any doubts about who brokers really work for.

I think it was Tom Tomorrow who said it, or maybe he was quoting someone else, but you always appreciate humor when you get all the references. And I think I got all the references in Ted Rall's latest cartoon. I've been reading 1984, which points out the usefulness of perpetual war for the ruling class, and I recall Patton's quote after beating Rommel in North Africa in WWII: "Rommel, you magnificent bastard--I read your book!" So anyway, I think Rall's latest is cool. I still don't like or really get the point of his Terror Widows cartoon which attracted such wrath, but I think the current one and this one from November are right on target.

Best show ever! I just got back from Amazin' Blue's 15th Anniversary Concert, and in my humble opinion it was the best show ever done in the history of the universe! Of course, if you don't like really tight, really awesome a cappella, talented gorgeous women (or men), and shows that totally click from start to finish, you might not agree with me. Even so, if you've got a bit of the hopeless romantic in you, you would still have loved tonight's show. About three songs after the intermission, one of the guys in AB (Amazin' Blue) announced that they were going to do a song to embarrass a friend or family member from the audience (similar to what Wayne Brady does on "Whose Line Is It Anyway"). They pulled a name out of a cup, and he said it was his brother's girlfriend Saleesha. (I think that was the name--something like that.) So AB sang the Aiesha (changing it to her name) to her, making little jokes along the way. While this was going on, the AB guy whose brother is the boyfriend ran off stage and came back with a bunch of roses. All the AB members (13, I think) took a rose and handed it to Saleesha, one at a time, while they continued singing the song. The last rose was presented by the AB guy's brother as the song reached the big chorus. He then got down on his knees and proposed right on stage! I've heard about some fancy and/or romantic proposals, but I think they put the bar out of reach with that one. The audience all stood and cheered.

Sorry, I am a hopeless romantic. But I was thinking even before that happened that it was the best show I'd ever seen. Wherever you are, you have to see Amazin' Blue perform sometime. My nephew Paul was in AB back in the early 90's, and they were awesome then. I've seen many world famous orchestras, rock bands, big-time musicals in London, and lots of other shows, but I think that every AB show I've ever seen ranks ahead of all of them. They exude energy and life. One of the singers, Chelsea Krombach, is just incredible. Imagine the energy of an excited, hyper teenage girl. Now keep that energy but focus it in an incredibly talented young woman with an outrageously powerful voice who is just completely ecstatic to be singing. Then triple it, and you're getting close to Chelsea. I guess I'm a fan.

For those of you who tuned in for more cynical rants about W and the other Bushies, that Bob will return tomorrow. Tonight he's on an Amazin' Blue high.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Dang--That's probably the most radical thing yet on this web site, and it's 226 years old! Do you think the Thought Police will come after me for posting it? I've been re-reading Orwell's 1984, and, as I noted a few weeks ago, it appears to be the program for the current government show. The state of eternal war (Cheney said the "War on Terrorism" might last 50 years), the frenzied hatred of a demon enemy who used to be our friend (OBL or Saddam, take your pick), the constant and growing surveillance, the restrictions on liberty, the "disappearing" of people, the repetition of meaningless or false slogans ("United We Stand"), the martial music, the Ministry of Love (Homeland Security), Ministry of Truth (Ari Fleischer), Ministry of Peace (Pentagon), and Ministry of Plenty (WTO, IMF, the Fed, etc.). One of the 1984 slogans, "Ignorance is Strength", is an accurate paraphrase of a common argument used to claim that W is a good president. If the "Bush is the right president for these times because he's not too smart" argument is believed, perhaps a hamster running around on a world map would be even better--wherever he poops, we bomb. The hamster might be even less inclined to have second thoughts, or even first thoughts, than W. And he could certainly incite a little terror just by walking over some country, especially after a good meal.

And 50 years, Dick? Since most real or imagined terrorists seem to be young men in their twenties, that means we foresee ridding the world of some people whose parents haven't been born yet. This indicates that we intend to keep pissing off the rest of the world for at least another 30 years.

Two sure things in life: death and taxes. Of course, neither one applies if you're a corporation.

Interesting discussion on Tom Tomorrow's blog regarding "chickenhawks", those being ardent militarists like Bush and Cheney who managed to avoid military service but are always willing to send others off to fight. Check out the Chickenhawk Database.

Thanks to Eva for guiding me to the Woomera (Australia) protest website, which led me to xborder, which has this interesting globalization page. It points out one of the chief fallacies in the "free trade" argument, or at least its current means of implementation. Under the current system, capital is free to go wherever it chooses, while people are not. People attempting to flee war, disease and starvation are either forbidden entry into wealthy countries or arrested and detained indefinitely. The real crime is that much of the wealth in the rich countries has come from displacing these refugees to exploit the resources in their homelands.

More Bush luna-cy. Strange connections between the Bushes, Rumsfeld, axis of evil member North Korea, and the Reverend Sun Myung Moon.

Power play at EPA. Continuing its policy of systematic abandonment of all protection of the environment, the Bushies are letting polluting power companies off the hook once again. Twenty-five years after passage of the Clean Air Act and it is still mostly act and very little clean air.

It's all so wrong! W and the rest of his administration have been out campaigning for house and senate candidates, using the power of their undeserved positions to strong-arm local politics. Not only are they talking up Republican candidates, they are actually picking them! The NYT article describes how Tim Pawlenty was about to announce his intention to run in the Republican Senate primary in Minnesota when he received a phone call from Dick Cheney urging him not to run. According to the Times,

So our shadow-government Veep from the Deep and his un-elected President sidekick, rather than the people of Minnesota, are deciding who gets to run for Senate. Not satisfied with their stolen thrones, they now intend to handpick their own politburo. I guess we have something in common with Afghanistan--these are the same people who picked their government. And of course there's a backup plan. If their boys somehow fail to get elected, Bush and Cheney will just put them in the cabinet, as they did with John Ashcroft and Spence Abraham.

Exiled King Zahir Shah, whom America intends to restore to the throne of Afghanistan, said the U.S.-led war in his nation was "stupid and useless" and should be called off. From Eric Margolis in the Toronto Sun. Good thing there are other countries or we'd never find out what's going on, and not just in the Olympics. I didn't see a thing about this in the Times or the Post, and I'm betting that Tom, Dan, Peter and Paula forgot to mention it as well.

Is the bulletin board at your workplace littered with motivational, seven-habits type crap? Check out despair.com. Sort of Dilbert for posters.

Paul Krugman's March 15 opinion piece in the New York Times says that the main reason for the Administration's push to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) is simply to piss off environmentalists for the pleasure of right-wing morons like Rush Limbaugh and Trent Lott. From a purely business perspective, drilling ANWR isn't very attractive to big oil. Of course, big oil has never operated from a purely business perspective. As with all big corporations, their best investments have always been in buying sleazy politicians like Lott, Cheney and Bush. When the government does what you want, any fool project can become profitable, like Occidental's pipeline in Colombia. Pay off the politicians, and the world's largest military becomes your insurance policy. You also get propaganda telling Americans that SUV driving is a constitutional right and that environmentalism is downright un-American. Unfortunately, most Americans are buying this crap because they get to feel good about themselves without changing anything. The true axis of evil is right here in the USA in the government and the corporations.

Welcome to Bushistan: Why don't Americans care? For me the initial reaction to September 11--"either with us or with the terrorists"; "no distinction between terrorists and those who harbor them"; attacking Afghanistan when no Afghans were involved in the attacks--was enough to convince me that the whole approach was wrong and probably being done for purposes far removed from the stated goal of preventing further terror attacks. But I can see how some people could be at least partially swayed by the massive death and destruction of 9/11 and W's arguments for the necessity of retribution. Since then, however, there have been numerous additional reasons to question the Bush approach: the killing of Afghan civilians; the brutal treatment of "detainees"; the expansion of the war into every nook and cranny of the world; the USA Patriot Act and other restrictions on civil liberties; the apparent escape of OBL; the increasing violence in Israel/Palestine and between India and Pakistan; Enron; the shadow government; and the secret nuclear plan. Any one of these should be enough to be a major scandal seriously eroding confidence in the president; taken together they are overwhelming grounds for impeachment. But most Americans seem willing not to think about it, to put flags on their vehicles and sing God Bless America while their president leads them into World War III. The carnage in Afghanistan has already greatly exceeded that of September 11, and if the Bushies have their way the coming death tolls in Iraq and elsewhere will dwarf 9/11. It is remotely possible that the US military can defeat the whole world, but millions of Americans and hundreds of millions of others will die in the effort, and what little of the world survives will not be a pleasant place in which to live. But the American public can't seem to get as upset about this as they did about the tawdry affairs of our previous president. Welcome to Bushistan, the world's biggest, baddest banana republic ever!

No defense against missile defense: Plenty of evidence that Star Wars won't work, but the missile defense system goes forward.

Happy Birthday to brother Jim in California! I hear he is having a flantastic birthday dinner!

Fox got its highest ratings of the year for the "Celebrity Boxing" show, with the marquee matchup being Tonya Harding versus Paula Jones. I didn't watch it--even I have some standards! The producer was excited because he thinks the success of the show will encourage other notorious celebrities to participate in the next show. I've got some suggestions! How about Ken Starr versus Bill Clinton? Monica Lewinsky versus Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton? O.J. Simpson versus Homer Simpson? Jamie Sale versus the French Judge (which would be a great name for a WWF wrestler)? George H. W. Bush versus Saddam Hussein? Dick Cheney versus Osama bin Laden? Sharon versus Arafat? Margaret Thatcher versus Nancy Reagan?

Two of the September 11 suicide pilots, Mohamed Atta and Marwan al-Shehhi, were just approved for student visas so they could take flying lessons. Some headlines I expect to see soon: "McVeigh Explosives Permit Issued"; "OJ, Nicole Get Marriage License"; "Columbine Shooters Graduate"; "Oswald Gets Firearms Permit"; "John Wilkes Booth Gets Season Pass To Ford's Theater"; "Judas wins 'Best Disciple in a Supporting Role' award". I guess our Homeland Security Forces ("Ministry of Love") are too busy arresting Arabs at random to bother to check government records.

It occurred to me that the massive suburban sprawl in this country compares, in a slightly less violent way, to the Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. Since the energy crisis of the 1970's, there has been massive development across the country which is totally automobile-dependent. This has created a huge constituency to support the destruction of the environment and the wars fought in pursuit of cheap oil. Just as any Israeli politician who suggests withdrawal for the occupied territories faces the anger of hundreds of thousands of settlers, so too does any American politician who supports lessening our dependence on oil face the wrath of millions of suburban SUV drivers.

Drivers are so rude! Ann Arbor is supposedly a liberal, bike-friendly community, but it isn't. If I ride my bike in the street, which I have every legal right to do, people honk and yell at me. If I ride on the sidewalk as they sometimes suggest, they ignore me entirely, never yielding the right-of-way at driveways and cross streets. I'm constantly torn between the safer but more confrontational approach of always riding in the street and the why-can't-we-all-just-get-along, but highly dangerous, approach of riding on the sidewalk. Drivers should realize that cyclists help keep their gas prices low, don't steal their parking places, don't release greenhouse gasses, and do reduce our dependence on foreign oil.

Interesting article and discussion about vegetarianism and veganism in today's Washington Post.

Both of these topics demonstrate, in my biased view anyway, that the majority is frequently wrong (the 2000 presidential election being an exception). I look forward to the day when people feel guiltily compelled to explain every car trip they make and every burger they eat, eventually deciding that neither is worth the hassle. Unfortunately, this is what happens today with too many cyclists and vegetarians, even though they want to protect the environment and to prevent cruelty to animals.

(From http://www.nytimes.com/2002/03/12/international/12PREX.html) "Terrorist groups are hungry for these weapons, and would use them without a hint of conscience," Mr. Bush said. The US has these weapons, and appears willing to use them. And if anyone can see a hint of conscience in Bush or Rumsfeld, he's got better eyes than I do.

Bush continues (in the same article): "We face an enemy of ruthless ambition, unconstrained by law or morality," he said. "The terrorists despise other religions and have defiled their own. And they are determined to expand the scale and scope of their murder." Like so much of what Bush says, this reflects so easily back onto him and his administration. It could practically be a transcript of one of those OBL videos.

Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep? Anywhere it wants. The US is the 800-pound gorilla in the world today, and Bush and his controllers believe that this gives them the right to do pretty much anything. A secret Pentagon document leaked yesterday indicates that the Pentagon has plans for using nuclear weapons in a much broader context than was considered before and against targets including China, Russia, Syria and Libya in addition to Bush's "axis of evil." Uproar in the British parliament threatened to upset Tony's Blair Bush Project.

Common Dreams has two good articles related to the true meaning of the "War on Terrorism:" War on Terror Masks Bush's Grand Strategy and Bush's Nuclear Madness. America is powerful enough to take on the world. It may be powerful enough to defeat the world. But in doing so lots of people, including lots of Americans, will die, and when we are done, we won't be America anymore. Everyone reading this needs to contact members of congress to encourage them to take a stand against the war, against the USA Patriot Act, against the energy plan, and against the Bush administration in general (General Powell, General Franks, General Dynamics, General Electric, etc.).

I finished reading John Robbins' book The Food Revolution yesterday. Looking for some gentle reinforcement for my recent switch to vegetarianism, I got that and a whole lot more. Particularly troubling was the lengthy discussion of genetically modified organisms (GMO's), such as Monsanto's "Roundup Ready" soybeans. These plants have been genetically modified to be able to survive massive sprayings of Monsanto's Roundup herbicide, enabling farmers to clear their fields of weeds without killing the crop. The problems with this are many, including the fact that much of the soybean crop is now, in fact, sprayed with massive amounts of Roundup. There is also the possibility that the Roundup-resistant trait will be passed to weeds, thus compounding the problem. Since most of the soybeans grown in this country are fed to livestock, anyone eating meat is almost certain to ingest large quantities of GMO material. Even vegetarians have to seek out organic tofu and soymilk to avoid the man-made plague of GMO's. To paraphrase Nancy Reagan: Just say no to GMO's, and buy organic!

More media consolidation. I wanted to see how MSU was doing in the Big Ten basketball tournament today, so I went to espn.com. To my surprise, ESPN now comes under the heading of MSN, the Microsoft Network. If you go to MSN and click on news, it takes you to MSNBC, which is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC. The problem (well one of the problems) is that Disney owns ESPN (and ABC and the minds of millions of children of all ages), while General Electric owns NBC. So basically two of our five media conglomerates (the other three are News Corp. (Fox), Viacom (CBS), and AOL Time Warner (CNN)) are being tied together by Microsoft. Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one (AJ Liebling), and soon that will be just one company.

"Since the beginning of September, more than four times as many Americans have fallen to guns as to terrorism"--Nicholas D. Kristof's Op-Ed piece in the New York Times. Guns turn arguments into murders, depression into suicide. Unfortunately, a lot of Americans think they can stop planes from crashing into buildings with handguns, which they are buying in record numbers since September 11. Just as the Bushies are abandoning the wrong international treaties (ABM, Kyoto instead of NAFTA and WTO), they are destroying the wrong amendments in the Bill of Rights (basically all of them except number two).

Orwell's 1984 was meant as a warning, not a how-to book! Ashcroft's recruiting of Neighborhood Watch is one more step in turning neighbor on neighbor and destroying what's left of our civil liberties after the USA Patriot act. The "Misery from Missouri" AG tops my personal "Axis of Evil" list.

Focusing on the wrong Tyson. There's an article in today's Washington Post about a controversy involving Tyson. Unfortunately it involves Mike Tyson, a small-time scumbag who competes in a brutal sport which makes figure skating look like a model of objectivity and fairness. This Tyson has done some major damage to several individuals, including the woman he raped and Evander Holyfield, who had a piece of his ear bitten off by this Tyson. Undoubtedly there are many more that I could find if I bothered to research this further, and others that would go undiscovered. But as far as brutality and damaging people's lives is concerned, Mike Tyson is truly small-time compared to the other Tyson, Tyson Foods, Inc. They slaughter millions of animals (chickens, cattle, pigs) daily in bloody slaughterhouses staffed by overworked, underpaid, frequently illegal-immigrant workers, many of whom are injured daily, some severely. The products produced are usually riddled with antibiotics and other chemicals, and frequently infected with salmonella and other potentially fatal bacteria. Even the "clean" meat contributes to obesity, high cholesterol and heart disease in the people who eat it. Tyson's near-monopoly on large portions of the meat industry allows them to squeeze ranchers and chicken farmers to subsistence levels, and the waste from the feed lots is poisoning many of America's rivers. I guess it says a lot about our country's priorities that the small-time black thug gets all of the negative press, while the huge corporate thug hardly gets any attention. Read Fast Food Nation and/or Beyond Beef for more about Tyson (noting that Tyson bought IBP (Iowa Beef Packers) last year).

Good movie! Last night I watched Life and Debt at the Michigan Theater. The movie documents the negative effects that "free trade" and the International Monetary Fund have had on Jamaica. Having gained its independence from colonial (British) rule in 1962, Jamaica struggled with some success to become more self-sufficient. Harsh loan terms from the IMF and the flooding of the market with cheap imports have destroyed much of the local Jamaican agriculture and industry and returned it to a colonial condition, except this time it is corporate colonialism. As Roger Ebert says in his review, referring to the WTO protestors in Seattle and elsewhere, "If you're curious about why the demonstrators are so angry, this is why they're so angry." I was in Jamaica eleven years ago, and my feeling was that the rest of the world would be a better place if it was more like Jamaica. Unfortunately, the IMF and "free trade" have been forcing Jamaica to be too much like the rest of the world.

I'm hoping the Bush's recent decision to impose tariffs on imported steel will help to expose "free trade" for the hypocrisy and greed that it is. There is a place for markets, but preventing countries like Jamaica from closing their markets to imported subsidized milk from the US, destroying the local dairy industry, and forcing their banana growers to compete with Chiquita bananas subsidized by near-slave labor in Latin America isn't "free," it's criminal.

All Aboard Amtrak! Planes, trains, and automobiles. Which is most efficient? The one the government refuses to subsidize. The one which might actually be able to make a profit on its own if the other two were not so massively subsidized. This article points out the lunacy of our government continuing to support highway and airport construction while forcing Amtrak to fend for itself.

From a Washington Post Editorial: Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill recently testified that cutting global trade barriers by one-third would be "equivalent to a tax cut of $2,500 per year for the typical American family." What SECTREAS doesn't say is that the $2500 is the difference between the taxes you have to pay if you have a good job compared to those you have to pay if you have a Wal-mart job. That is the general effect of "free trade" on American workers. What it does overseas is much worse. W could quickly make up much of the damage caused by abandoning international accords like Kyoto and ABM by also abandoning NAFTA, GATT, and WTO.

Speaking out against Bush: Mary McGrory writes in the Washington Post about Nevada Senator Harry Reid taking on W in a face-to-face over the Yucca Mountain nuclear waste repository, one of the hundreds of appalling actions that the Bushies are trying to sneak under what little press radar remains. The opinion article goes on to summarize many of the other crimes being committed in the "War on Terrorism."

Aaaaargh! Read this article, if you dare, about the provision of the USA Patriot Act which allows the feds to find out what you are reading from bookstores and libraries. We are in real trouble, and if we don't get congress to immediately stand up (out of their current bent-over position) and try to regain control of the country it may be too late. We certainly can't count on the Supreme Court to do anything about the unconstitutionality of the whole thing--they're largely responsible because of their behavior in deciding the 2000 election. I'm glad to see that Daschle is finally getting mad, although he still prefaces everything he says with the usual platitudes about supporting the president.

And what about this shadow government business? As if our government weren't shady enough as it is. But even congress didn't know about it! The government of the people, by the people and for the people is perishing rapidly right now. This is the stuff of fiction, like Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six, but unfortunately it's real. A small group of people is attempting to overthrow our democratic form of government from within by deceiving most of us and intimidating the rest.

There is renewed fighting in Afghanistan, the violence between Israels and Palestinians keeps increasing, hundreds are dying in religious violence in India, and US troops are setting up shop in the Philippines, Georgia, and Yemen. Somebody please tell me something to cheer me up!

Soldiers, soldiers everywhere, and not a stop to think. It's becoming an almost daily occurrence--an announcement that US forces are heading for another country. It's good to know we'll be helping to arm and train troops in Yemen; next time they attack a US destroyer that won't have to resort to tacky rubber boats. If we would stop arming all of our friends du jour, maybe they wouldn't be so well armed when we turn against them. In this case it appears that W has used some "with us or against us" extortion: do you Yemenis want to be Pakistan, or would you rather be Afghanistan? I'm sure they would rather be Switzerland, but we're not giving them that choice.

Sprawl Rant--Because we are getting older. I'm a long-time anti-sprawl person. I like cities, I like country, but I despise suburbs. The huge number of roads built, miles driven, lawns mowed, and trees, fields, marshes and other natural habitats destroyed by the suburbanization of America is appalling. I have lots of reasons for feeling this way, but one that I don't hear discussed much is how brutal this landscape is going to be to all of us baby boomers as we become senior citizens. Most seniors struggle with declining abilities in vision, hearing, reaction times and memory, all of which make driving more difficult and dangerous. Combining this with the ever-increasing traffic caused in large part by the sprawl, it will be almost suicidal for many of us to attempt to drive when we are in our seventies and above. Unfortunately, sprawl has had the effect of moving basic services such as groceries and drug stores farther from our homes and has practically eliminated public transportation as an option. In many of the newer "estate" subdivisions, even walking next door to visit a neighbor will seem like an impossible task. Even healthy seniors with their houses paid for and adequate finances will have to consider leaving their houses and moving to retirement communities. What a shame that most new "neighborhoods" in America are built without considering that people get old.

Arrogance! While the US is justifiably demanding justice in the case of murdered journalist Daniel Pearl, Rumsfeld refuses to investigate the killing of Afghan civilians by US forces. A good Washington Post editorial.

Georgia on my mind--US equipment and advisors are going to the former Soviet republic of Georgia to help fight against Chechyn rebels with supposed al Qaeda ties. While I don't think Afghanistan is in any way a success, I guess it could be argued that it is not quite as bad a quagmire as many, including me, feared. Not to be deterred, the Bush administration continues to expand the "War on Terrorism" in search of a true quagmire. It seems so bizarre that for years the US, led by Reagan and Bush I, was willing to support any group of loonies such as the Contras or the Mujahadeen who claimed to be fighting the Russians. Now we are helping the Russians put down rebels in Chechnya. Many marveled at the ease with which Afghan warlords changed sides during the overthrow of the Taliban. I'd say they've got nothing on us!

All locked up and no place to go. Ann Arbor Islamic leader Rabih Haddad is still being held without charges more than two months after being arrested. Bush and Ashcroft both lost their elections in 2000. What gives them the right to do crap like this? (Not that a legitimate victory by a large majority would make it any less wrong. The constitution was designed in part to protect the minority from the tyranny of the majority. The USA Patriot Act was designed to repeal the constitution.)

No nukes is good nukes. W is getting the nuclear arms race going again in a big way. No medals to be awarded in this event.

Congress opposes Bush's war plans! (Well 1/535th of congress does, anyway). Ohio Representative Dennis Kucinich speaks out against the plans for indefinite war both abroad and at home.

The real rogue state. Weapons of mass destruction, disregard of international law, attacks on civilians...

Sorry, I don't think I can remain civil in commenting on this article. So I won't comment.

While reading this article about Missouri's intention to go ahead with the execution of a death-row inmate even though all witnesses against him have recanted their testimony, I found Missouri Governor Bob Holden's online e-mail form. Under "Subject" there are three choices: Legislative Affairs, Executions, and Other. Do you think maybe Missouri is killing a few too many of its citizens when "Executions" is one of the main subjects of the governor's e-mail? I sent him a note, even though he probably has all "Execution" messages marked as junk mail.

Is the San Francisco Chronicle reading my rants, or am I just ahead of the curve? This February 24 article echoes my February 20 comments (below).

Finally getting on Sharon's case--a Washington Post Editorial. It mentions something I had wondered about--how is Arafat supposed to round up terrorists when the Israelis keep killing his cops?

How refreshingly open and honest for the Pentagon to reveal, in advance, that it is developing plans to disseminate false news items to foreign media organizations ("Pentagon Readies Efforts to Sway Sentiment Abroad," front page, Feb. 19). Unless, of course, that news is itself false, in which case the government might instead be planning to spread the truth covertly. Perish the thought.
GARY A. ALEXION
Brooklyn, Feb. 20, 2002

From the New York Times: "Let me explain why I made the comments I did," Mr. Bush said in a joint news conference with Mr. Kim. The president said he spoke out because he believed in freedom and was "troubled by a regime that tolerated starvation.

"I worry about a regime that is closed and not transparent," he added. "I'm deeply concerned about the people of North Korea." -- I guess we can now expect the Veep from the Deep to tell us who wrote his energy plan: we can't have a regime that is closed and not transparent! And if toleration of starvation is an "axis of evil" criterion, then the membership is a lot bigger, and probably doesn't include Iran.

W continues: The word "evil" resurfaced again before the speech on a tour of the DMZ, where Mr. Bush reacted in disgust when he learned that axes used to kill two American servicemen were in a museum across the border to the north. "No wonder I think they're evil," he said. I wonder if he is aware that the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber which dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, was on display from 1995 until 1998 at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington and will be again starting in 2003. And how about the thousands of planes, tanks, cannons and other weaponry on display at museums, military bases and armories throughout the US? Certainly some of these weapons killed people, most likely including American servicemen through friendly fire incidents. No wonder they think we're evil. I'm not saying that I have a problem with these museum displays, just that W is the Olympic Champion stone thrower in the glass house competition.

More media consolidation, less freedom of the press. A court ruling allows cable operators to own local TV stations. Of the zillion scary things about the corporate control of everything, control of the media is perhaps the scariest. I don't trust Fox, CBS (Viacom), NBC (GE), CNN (AOL Time Warner) or ABC (Disney) to give us the straight story on everything. Once they own all of the cable networks, TV stations, radio stations, newspapers, web sites, publishers and studios, there will be no way to find out what is going on. And they are already very close. The more I read about NAFTA, GATT, WTO and other "free trade" agreements, the madder I get at how the mainstream media allowed these things to happen without turning them in to massive scandals leading to impeachments and indictments. The trade agreements probably head the list of the many real scandals of the past 30 years, followed by the various "demon" wars (against Noriega, the Sandinistas, Iraq, al Qaeda, etc.), the Savings and Loan debacle, the 2000 election, and probably four or five others we'll never hear about. Compared to these Watergate, Whitewater, Monicagate, Chandragate and the other sleazy little scandals don't even rank. But the media (I was going to say "state-run media", but I think "media-run state" is more accurate) either ignores or completely distorts the big scandals while spending months on the sleaze. With these huge corporations owning the content source and all of the distribution methods, what chance do we have? If you are willing to dig on the Internet or in the library you can still learn something, but the corporations and the Bush administration are already making threatening noises about these outlets. Learn all you can and encourage others to do the same; hopefully it's not too late for people to retake control of our society.

Almost any blame game seems plausible when it comes to Enron these days. Take the Internet sendup of those Sprint PCS ads that blame “bad cellular” for laughable miscommunications: here’s the Enron version. “The Arthur Andersen partner said, ‘Ship the Enron documents to the Feds,’ but the secretary heard, ‘Rip the Enron documents to shreds’.” Yes, it’s a joke. But not everyone is laughing.

Let's go cold turkey on imported oil! (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/02/18/opinion/_18MON1.html) Let's have a complete boycott of all foreign oil and new domestic sources (i.e. ANWR). Think of the boost to the economy as Americans scramble to develop mass transit, solar energy, and other technologies needed to convert the US to sustainability! (Shhhh...don't wake me up! This is a pleasant dream.)

Big Brother is watching you. Maybe most Americans don't see the need for some spirited opposition to corporate government policies, but when they finally do, they won't have a chance.

The Two Enron System. Heading the Republican Party: Former Enron lobbyist Marc Racicot. For the Democrats: Former Global Crossing consultant Terry McAuliffe. Just further proof that the two-party system is bankrupt.

Check out Common Dreams' Top Ten Post-9/11 Essays. Especially scary is the part in Bill Moyers' article about what would have happened if planes had hit a nuclear power plant instead of the World Trade Center.

There are three well-known stories in the bible where God tests people with excruciating moral dilemmas. In Genesis 22:1 to 12, God asks Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. Abraham follows the instructions until he is about to bring down the sword on Isaac, when an angel of God stops him. In First Kings 3:16 to 28, two women argue over a child before King Solomon. Solomon orders the child cut in half. One says "sounds fair to me" (or words to that effect) while the other woman says "don't kill him! Let her have him!" Whereupon Solomon gives the child to the second woman, discerning that she is the true mother. The third is the book of Job, where God allows Satan to test Job by taking away his wealth, his family, and his health, but Job remains faithful to God.

Now I'm not one to question God, but I can't say that I "like" these passages. Moral dilemmas big and small occur all of the time to everyone; most of us just ignore most of them because giving them our full attention is quickly incapacitating. But I think that an appropriate corollary to the "Golden Rule" (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) should be that one should not burden others with moral dilemmas, particularly combined with threats of violence to them or their families. I don't want to be forced to choose between whether I will die or someone else will die; therefore I think it very wrong that I should force the same choice on someone else. Forcing people to make such decisions is a key factor in repressive regimes such as the Spanish Inquisition, Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union under Stalin. "Either squeal on your neighbor or you will be next!" is the common threat.

Much of the rhetoric coming from the Bush administration since September 11 has been along these lines. "Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists." What if you oppose violence? What choice do you have? And Bush's threat to other countries is that if they don't eliminate "terrorists" in their country, we will, and probably overthrow the government as well. "Kill some of your own people or we will kill them and you" is the implication. "Just look at what we did in Afghanistan! That could be you!" And some of the rhetoric, especially from Ashcroft, has started to turn on Americans who are exercising their constitutional right of dissent to oppose the "War on Terrorism."

Happy Valentines Day! House passes campaign finance reform! Let's hope that Speaker of the House Hastert was right and this is Armageddon for Republicans.

Workin' on the Cheney Gang: NYT columnist Maureen Dowd takes on the Veep from the Deep.

"Whenever there's a Bush in the White House, many people die, and the rest of us are threatened." -- punk rocker Jello Biafra from an interview in Progressive Magazine.

Speak now or forever mourn for peace: Bush Blunder Shows It's Time for Dissent . W barely lost the election even with the support of criminals like Enron. He didn't deserve to be president, he wasn't a good president before September 11, and he's been even worse since. Let your congresspersons know that you support their opposition to further war, the military and "homeland security" buildup, the Bush energy plan. It is not unpatriotic to speak out against a stupid and dangerous president. Let's roll back!

Bob's take on the Olympic Skating Controversy: The Russians were great. The Canadians were great. They all got medals, and they've gotten way more attention (and probably endorsements) because of the controversy. The decision was still way more valid than the 2000 US Presidential election. Just like the Oscars compound the tragedy of horrible films like Gladiator and Lord of the Rings (my personal opinion), judged awards in general do more harm than good. Let the audience and the critics decide who is the best, or just let everyone enjoy the spectacle of fine, graceful athletes performing.

Rooting Out Evil: Mission USA

Protest! It's good for you!

I hope that, somewhere, Bing Crosby is happy:

Harboring Terrorists

Plane Crashes in Iran, Killing 46

Promise Breakers

US jails Arabs who comply with new law

How did this guy get into the Bush administration?

Ann Arbor's own military unit.

Roundup in California

Intrigue in the Senate:

Bill Maher's new book:

Smiling White Faces

Anti-personnel land mines. Aargh!

High-flying risk takers

Raising the bar on arrogance. Unbelievable!

Ari says size doesn't matter

'Tis the Season for some New Words to Old Tunes

Good News!!!!

Got Crap?

It takes one to pardon one!

KEEP BIG BROTHER'S HANDS OFF THE INTERNET

Where is this?

You won't believe this:

Official story: Osama Lives

Quote of the Day, from W himself:

Why are these men smiling?

Aaaaaarrrrgh!

Birds of a feather:

Aaaargh!!!!!!

Aaaargh!!!!!!

Metaphor Alert!

Football Team Added to List of Terrorist Groups

Paul Wellstone, 1944-2002

A Common Misconception:

Bush Admits "War on Terror" is a Complete and Utter Failure

Massive Crash on Wisconsin Interstate: Fiery Accident Kills at Least Seven.

Woman, 2 Children Die In Md. Minivan Crash: 4 Youngsters Hurt as Vehicle Slams Into Trees

Some quotes and rants about the dock lockouts and Bush's using Taft-Hartley to end it:

So this is what happens when you elect a moron to be your president...

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Bush Shocked by German Minister's Comparison to Hitler

From the New York Times:

Campaign Finance Reform

Unifying the world

Even Bill Gates is questioning "Free Trade" (actually, I guess that doesn't surprise me)

Massive Crash on Wisconsin Interstate:
Fiery Accident Kills at Least Seven.