BUSH: HIS IMBECILITY IS NO NEW THING

Although W is perhaps the lowest-level thinker ever to capture so high an office in America, the rest of his gang, despite their pretensions of seriousness and intelligence, are low-level thinkers as well. David Hume described their type quite succinctly some centuries ago in his book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding:

The greater part of mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinions; and while they see objects only on one side, and have no idea of any counterpoising argument, they throw themselves precipitately into the principles, to which they are inclined; nor have they any indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments. To hesitate or balance perplexes their understanding, checks their passion, and suspends their action. They are, therefore, impatient till they escape from a state, which to them is so uneasy: and they think, that they could never remove themselves far enough from it, by the violence of their affirmations and obstinacy of their belief. But could such dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding, even in its most perfect state, and when most accurate and cautious in its determinations; such a reflection would naturally inspire them with more modesty and reserve, and diminish their fond opinion of themselves, and their prejudice against antagonists.

Fits them to a tee, don't you think?

BUSH: WAR AS DISTRACTION

Lest anyone think that W's handlers can't keep several balls in the air at the same time, the horrendous wounds being inflicted on the nation's budget during this time of war should provide more than enough evidence that the Republican machine continues to pursue its evil agenda while the unjust war rages. In fact, this sort of thing is typical conservative politics: create disasters that distract all the attention of the news media, then ram through outrageous policy changes while no one is looking.

This article from the American Prospect shows them in perfect form:

Robert Kuttner: Republicans Savage the Nation Under Cover of War

These policies will certainly bankrupt the country. But long before that happens, misery will set in for veterans, senior citizens, the homeless, women, children, minorities, the mentally ill, the working poor, farmers, small business people, and the entire middle class--all constitutencies that Republicans couldn't care less about, except at election time.

Given the track record of Republicans from 1980 on--massive deficits, soaring social dislocation, economic instability, war and destruction--no sane person could give any one of them the time of day. So either we are a nation of insane people, or the insane people have taken over all our channels of information and association, exerting a control that they should not have if their actual numbers were being counted.

I expect that the latter is the case. Despite all the ranting on talk radio and on conservative-controlled television and in the largely conservative-controlled print media that conservatives cannot get their voices heard, the truth is that conservative ideology dominates more than 70% of public opinion outlets. This is vastly out of proportion to the numbers of conservatives in the actual population, which is probably only about 20%. The red states have very few people in them!

The real Americans have to stand up to this media manipulation. They need to speak out against the minority conservative opinion in order to counter the disproportionate conservative dominance of the media. This takes a great deal of courage, because conservatives cannot stand to be contradicted, and they think nothing of using intimidation and force to silence their opponents.

But if we do not stand up now, there won't be anything left to stand up for in a few years.

WAR, COWARDICE, AND PEACE

War is only a cowardly escape from the problems of peace.
--Thomas Mann

As is the custom on Sundays, the Hammer tries to rest his arm from the week's relentless swinging at the profoundly iniquitous machine of the Bush junta, and reflect in a thoughtful vein about the events of the day.

The text for today comes from Coventry Patmore, a British poet of the nineteenth century:

Fortunately for themselves and the world, nearly all men are cowards and dare not act on what they believe. Nearly all our disasters come of a few fools having the "courage of their convictions."

The chorus of pro-war voices that have been raised since troops invaded Iraq include, and in most cases are organized by, a segment of die-hard conservative activists who view any Republican administration as God's chosen people. A persistent strain repeated by callers on talk radio these days (one always wonders whether these echo-chamber opinions are planted by political hacks or whether they just well up out of collective ignorance and mindless emotionalism) is how grateful American should be to have a "president" who takes a stand, stands by his principles, and does what he says.

Passing over the apparently heredity blindness preventing such people from seeing that the regular and completely overt methodology of the current administration has always been to advocate utterly outrageous policies that go very, very far beyond the bounds of morality, let alone common decency, and THEN--only when the cry is raised against them--to retreat to a stance that is merely very far beyond the bounds of morality; passing over, that is, the refusal of such people to acknowledge that this administration routinely does not do what it says, but rather sucker-punches everyone over and over; passing over all this, we wish only to point out that standing by principles is only virtuous if the principles themselves are virtuous. Otherwise, taking a stand is a vice. Whether it is foolishness, arrogance, stubbornness, unconcern for others, or even a worse vice depends entirely on circumstances.

Now the principles on which contemporary conservatism plants its flag are almost entirely wrong. The inner core of conservatism is nothing but SELFISHNESS, and every single principle conservatives espouse can be traced back to this vice. Oh sure, they get some extremely intelligent people to construct vast cathedrals of fact, logic, and reasoning in which to hold their rituals of self-justification; and to the less intelligent and the less spiritual, such cathedrals appear very imposing. But they are all houses of cards.

"We need to drill in ANWAR; our national energy resources are at stake." But they wouldn't be at stake if we weren't so selfish, if we didn't demand the right to waste energy thoughtlessly, if we didn't put the profits of the energy corporations before prudent resource-managment, and if we just invested a little of the nation's political capital into creating non-polluting energy sources.

"We have to attack Iraq; we must stand up for the freedom of the Iraqi people." But why did this justification take so long to emerge in the build-up to war? Answer: because it's not the real reason. Yes, perhaps a by-product of our invasion of Iraq may be greater freedom for the Iraqi people. (This is not certain: the track record of America's "liberations" is a dismal one that usually ends with an even worse dictator in control of a country that we then have to "liberate" again.) But that possible good is utterly vitiated by the reasons why we chose to eliminate this particular dictator instead of any of the other dictators whom we either tolerate or even support. And these reasons are all vices: because we have a "score to settle" with Saddam; because Iraq is debilitated and thus an easy target; because the opportunity of controlling a centrally-located Arab state with vast oil reserves provides us with strategic advantages for controlling the surrounding Arab states in the future; because we are still smarting from 9/11, even though Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11.

Every one of these reasons is self-centered, self-indulgent, and just plain selfish. Of course, as we said, that's the essence of conservatism.

But the last reason is worse than just selfish, its cowardly. We got hit hard by dirty fighters on 9/11. So what is our response? Find someone to hit back. This is not the response of a courageous nation. A courageous nation faces death and does not let a vicious attack alter its character. But we have jettisoned our courage; we have allowed ourselves to indulge our fears and our leaders to play on our fears; we have overthrown all our commitments to international law in order to hit back hard and hit back first. We are afraid of death, and we are now willing to destroy anyone and anything--even our own souls--to try to avoid it. Which is, of course, madness: the wise man knows he has to die, so he does not let fear of death alter his behavior in any way. We have become cowards who are pretending to be strong, to be principled, to be undeterred, to be persistent. The rest of the world doesn't buy this self-justification, because they are not invested in hiding American cowardice. They see clearly, as Americans cannot, that all this bluster is only Americans trying to conceal their cowardice from themselves.

The self-interest of those who persist in blowing this sort of smoke is staggering. If they could just see beyond themselves for a moment, they could not possibly carry on this way without shame. Look just at what all this war-mongering does to our own innocent children (not to mention the innocent children we are bombing into freedom half way across the world): it teaches them, along with all the gangsta-rap vileness they inhale every day, that the way to live is to hit hard, hit first, and never look back. The following article in today's Baltimore Sun by a child psychologist is a stinging indictment of the hard-core conservative--that is to say SELFISH--stand on the war:

Daniel Kleiner: Another Voice in the Chorus of Violence

My friends, let us not pretend that we have the answers. Let us not pretend that our way of life makes us superior to our fellow creatures. Let us not allow the blindness of our leaders and of the most selfish among us to paralyze us with fear and stop us from protesting against the evil that is being perpetrated in the name of freedom.

Let us instead go forth in numbers all over the earth and cry out to heaven against all those, including Americans, who believe that might makes right. Let us shame selfish conservatism back into the closet where it belongs. We can do it. The people of the earth, who love peace, can take the world back from those vicious leaders who want war.

There are no warlike people, just warlike leaders.
--Ralph Bunche (1904-71, US government official and UN diplomat)

Thus endeth the sermon.

BUSH: FEED THE MORONS WHAT YOU WANT THEM TO HEAR

The American media completely failed in its responsibility to inform the American people of Bush's mendacity in his push for war in Iraq. As they have done since he was nominated, the press let him get away with uttering flat-out falsehoods, not just once, but over and over and over again.

Why are the media determined to allow Bush to get away with deception, fakery, duplicity, hypocrisy, and evil? What do they get out of the agreement that he is never to be contradicted, never shown up, never asked a tough question, and never criticized? Ratings? Or is it that they get to keep their jobs?

Eidtor and Publisher magazine has done a great service in showing just how abysmal was the media coverage of Bush's pre-war lying campaign. Here's the link:

Media Fails to Inform Public about Bush's Lying

Another sad commentary on these latter days: Americans are such morons that they can even be swindled by a loser who couldn't make a dime as a businessman, and who probably couldn't get the world's biggest sucker to buy a used car from him.

BUSH: GREASING THE PALMS OF HIS PALS

And if you still think W is a tower of moral integrity (of course you must be blind, deaf, or seriously delusional), check out this report from the Center for Public Integrity, which shows that the Defense Policy Board, a big hawkish quasi-governmental income enhancer for defense-industry speculators, is not only rife with conflicts of interest, but also is protected from public scrutiny by the cover of classified disclosure forms:

Moola Machine for the Bush Junta

What a great country America is!

The Roman poet Martial saw all this millenia ago: "Nowadays," he said, "wealth is given only to the wealthy."

There is nothing new under the sun. It's just sad that the world's best hope for rational self-government has devolved into an imperial oligarchy in less than 25 years of conservative activism. That how lethal conservatism is!

BUSH: THE EMPIRE STRIKES AGAIN

Another day, another evil. Bush and his boys never stop coming up with novel ways to erode the people's control over their government. It's not enough that they established a iron cloak of secrecy around the executive branch from the first day they were in power. Not enough that the Patriot Bill stripped all sorts of controls on government secrecy out of existing law. No, we need even more secrecy: let's give Chaney the right to classify anything he wants without review! That'll sure lead to more transparency in government!

Here's the article:

Closing the Shutters on Top of the Doors on Top of the Bars

On the other hand, a force may be evolving to counter the empire, and all conservative grasping everywhere. Here is the link:

Jonathan Schell: The Other Superpower

Enjoy!

NBC SHILLS FOR BUSH

Here's a great article on how the corporate media use the "50-50 myth" to pump up the appearance of conservative opinion. The actual numbers of people in this country that hold to hard-core conservative stances is somewhere around 12.5%. But the medial constantly use strategies that give the impression of near to 50%. This is good for ratings--it gives the impression of evenly divided, and thus hard-to-resolve, conflict--AND it keeps the conservative corporate bosses smiling.

Cheryl Seal: Katie, Godess of War

MEDIA: LETTING BUSH WIN

To anyone who isn't a mind-controlled conservative robot, the media in the US look like what they really are: an arm of the right-wing propaganda machine. The mainstream media are all owned by mega-corporations (and where know where their hearts are), and even if the rank-and-file reporters lean liberal, they go way overboard not to let their liberal biases show, both to serve their own consciences and to help them avoid being canned by their conservative bosses.

Well at least one media outlet is beginning to catch on to this. Of course it is in Canada, not the US. But maybe speaking the truth will catch on, even in benighted America.

Here's the link:

Media Shill for Bush

Enjoy. And keep fighting the tyrant!

NEO-CONS SCREW UP, SO CONSERVATIVE MEDIA CHANGES ITS TUNE

The neo-conservative warmongers that control the Bush administration have screwed up "big-time" in their predictions about Iraq. Because they all believe that might makes right, they just assumed that if they went into Iraq with their Rumsfeldian stripped-down, swift forces (an idea that the real military men have been against ever since Rumsfeld started pushing it ) the Iraqis would just see the power and cow-tow. And why wouldn't that work? After all, it works that way in American politics. It's worked that way for them their whole lives.

Unfortunately, "might makes right" is not only wrong, it's monumentally stupid. The people bullied by such strongmen may shut up and give them their way, but they never forget; and when events turn against the strongmen, their victims look for ways to get back at them. The Iraqis may eventually comply with the overwhelming force being rained down upon them, but they will never forget. Neither will the rest of the Arab world. When they find an opportunity in the future to strike back at America, they will. This is the natural cycle: if you use force to get your way, force will be used against you to bring you down.

And the same is true of domestic politics, although conservatives have not had to face their comeuppance for the last twenty-three years. But because they always rely on threats and underhanded tactics to force their regressive and self-centered agenda on their opponents, the day will come--sooner or later--when the number of people screwed by them reaches a critical mass. When that day comes, the country will be astonished by the sunami of revelations concerning Republican corruption, illegality, and viciousness. Not only will those who have suffered under the conservative yoke come out on the attack, but the rats will turn on one another to cut deals for themselves. If the dominos begin to fall in the corrupt house of cards that is the Bush administration, there will be no lack of hyenas to rush in and bite off a pound of flesh from all the neo-con bullies who have gotten to the top by blackmail, intimidation, and force.

But when will the dominos begin to fall? So far, no matter how much the Bushites screw up, the conservative American media find a way to cover it up, trivialize it, or simply ignore it, even though a few news outlets still have the guts to tell the truth. For instance, here is a story that shows the unbelievable chutzpah of the neo-cons in ignoring real military advice because they were so in love with their fable of a weak and compliant Iraq, which would easily fall to a few bombs and bullets:

What Generals? We Can't Hear Them.

And here is a recent article showing that the neo-cons were astoundingly wrong about the Iraqis and about the ability to wage war quickly and cheaply anywhere the US wants:

War Defies Rumsfeld. Bad War.

And here is an article that shows how the corporate-controlled conservative media morphs its neo-con cheerleading pitch day-by-day to fit the needs of their "leaders":

War Not Going As Planned? Change the Pitch to Fit Events.

These people are madmen. Perhaps, if there is a God, he or she is arranging that the madmen will be stopped by their own success. If they keep bombing Baghdad for months, if they keep starving the poor people of Iraq, if they keep making images of American cruelty available for the whole world to see for weeks and weeks, perhaps even their brainless, knee-jerk supporters in the "red states" will get the message that America has become the ugliest, most vicious brute among the nations of the earth.

Even if the red-state Bush-backers get the point, they will never admit that THEY, through their backing of the viciousness of their "moral" Republican "leaders," are the cause of all this evil. But perhaps it will be enough if they are shamed into turning against the Bushites. At least the current scourge could be lifted. But the future of the world depends not just on ousting this particular bunch of hard-core regressivist maniacs, but on making the whole notion of conservativism suffer the eternal defeat that ought to be reserved for all such soul-crushing, uncompassionate, self-serving, power-worshipping ideologies.

BUSHITES: LET'S TAKE ALL THOSE TOWELHEADS

Here is a great article that explains the true motivation behind the invasion of Iraq. And then, Iran...then Syria...then--the sky's the limit!

Chaos Is The Plan!

There has never been a more powerhungry, more bloodthirsty, more avaricious gang of little tyrants than the Bush gang.

ASHCROFT: BE AFRAID. BE VERY AFRAID.

Another one of the thousands of reasons to hate Bush and his junta: transformation of the US into a police state by the totally whacked-out, pseudo-Christian, apocalyptically ignorant, deeply disturbed John Ashcroft.

Read and weep:

We Don't Need No Stinking Rights!

REPUBLICANS SEEK TO BAN PROTESTING

As the Alice-in-Wonderland descent into the bowels of hell continues in America, we now confront the spectacle of Republicans so emboldened by the flagrant wrongdoing of their "president" that they think they can simply legislate away all dissent from their regressive, ideological cant.

In Oregon, Republicans are trying to pass a law that would define protesting as terrorism, and make it punishable by life in prison.

Here's the link:

Republicans Outlawing Inconvenient Dissent?

It's hard to believe that in two short years Bush has taken the world from relative peace and prosperity to utter chaos and recession. You wouldn't think it would be possible to do this much evil in so short a time.

Hardly a day passes when Bush or someone in his junta doesn't break or suspend a law. But the media--who were unbelievably scandal-sensitive during the Clinton years--doesn't even bat an eyelash.

For a great compilation of Bush's evildoing, see this site:

The George W. Bush Scorecard of Evil

Here you will find a chronological listing of the countless evils perpetrated by this abysmally corrupt, mendacious, and morally degenerate administration.

Remember them when election time comes. Or better yet--join the movement to impeach George W. Bush! Here's the website:

Vote To Impeach!

BUSH: "F____ Saddam. We're taking him out."

Just when I think there can't be any more evidence of George W. Bush's contemptible character, a new revelation pops up. And not just in the alternative media, but in the pablum mainstream press.

Here's a TIME article from last weekend that demonstrates both W's vulgarity and mean-spiritedness, but also his mendacity. He's been lying about "not having decided" attack Iraq since at least last year.

Bush the Crude

A liar, a vulgarian, a loathesome creep...But wait! I forgot! W is the second coming of Christ, hero to all downtodden American conservatives whose 25% of the world's resources just aren't enough to keep them happy.

America makes me sick. I am ashamed that the worst of my country has taken over the best. And I will do my best, along with all right-thinking Americans, to see that the current junta is removed. I urge eveyone to work for impeachment. But failing that we'll have to work toward the next election.

Let us hope we still have free elections when the time comes!

SCHWARZKOPF: NO JUST WAR

Bush and Rumsfeld keep talking about how the Iraqis are committing serious violations of the "rules of war" by dressing in civilian clothes, using human shields, and so forth. This is the normal attempt to demonize the enemy that is part of the jingoistic thumping of war drums. The other side of that demonization is the implication that OUR soldiers are brave and true and upright, and that they fight fair.

But Norman Schwarzkopf, maximum leader during BushWar I, inadvertently indicated the true nature of war--even American war--while discussing the Iraqi violations. He said that the Iraqis were relying on American assertions that great care will be taken to avoid "collateral damage"; knowing that the Americans would be reluctant to attack places of worship or civilian areas, they place their weapons and troops in those areas for protection.

At this point, however, Schwarkopf revealed the truth about combat. "This is war," he said, and in war "you complete the mission; you protect the troops; everything else is tertiary."

I have no doubt that he is correct. The lives of civilians are not highest on the priority list once war starts. That's the way it has to be.

That is why we have to find a way to stop war once and for all. Because once it starts, evil envelops everything until it ends.

BUSH: FEAR IS ALL HE'S GOT

Fear has finally given Bush the popular backing for the war that had eluded him since he first began campaigning for it. Less than six months ago, barely 20 percent of Americans told pollsters that they would approve a war on Iraq without the backing of allies or the UN. Now that support is more than 70 percent, even though the UN has refused its backing and the allied support ranges from the plausible, like Britain, through the symbolic, like Iceland, to the ludicrous, like Azerbaijan or Eritrea.

The above quotation is from an opinion piece by R.C. Longworth, a senior Chicago Tribune commentator, in yesterday's paper. Here is the whole piece:

R. C. Longworth: Bush and Fear Are Almost Synonyms

The reason why conservatives always resort to fear in order to keep their grip on power is not only because it is an effective device, but it is also because fear is the true core of their inner experience. Everything surrounding conservative beliefs, outlooks, and values grows out of a single stem, their unquestioned, inarticulate, but deeply ingrained attempt to "hold on." They spend their whole lives trying to "hold on" to influence, "hold on" to power, "hold on" to wealth, "hold on" to the old order.

But reality is not kind to this desire. All things pass away, and even the most determined efforts to prevent this are ultimately futile. So conservatives are permanently filled with fear that they will lose (as they must) what they want so much to "hold on" to. Where there is so much to "hold on" to, there are so many who might take some of it away; thus conservatives add to their store of fear a store of distrust that eventually festers into hatred of anyone who seems too "different"; for anyone that does not share the fear and distrust must be out to get some of the "holdings."

People filled with fear and distrust radiate it just as much as people filled with joy. So George W. Bush, a man just seething with fear and insecurity (as evidenced by his twitchy manner and his hair-trigger touchiness), once fraudulently placed in a position to be seen by much of the world's population on a daily basis, has taken less than two years to radiate his desperate fear to the four corners of the earth, as it had engulfed his home state of Texas while he was governor there. The entire world is now insanely fearful, because we Americans let an insanely fearful man take control of the most powerful nation in the world.

The world will have nothing to thank us for until we remove him from the office he should never have obtained.

BUSH: IRAQIS HATE HIM TOO

So much for the Bushites' claim that we're "liberating" Iraqis. Here's the truth:

Why Are You Here?

They don't want us there. And we wouldn't be there if it weren't for the neo-con cabal that pulls W's strings.

MEDIA: TAMPING DOWN THE APPEARANCE OF DISSENT

On NBC's Today show this morning, the news copy being read by Soledad O'Brien was deliberately designed to minimize the effect of the recent anti-war protests.

During the 8AM news, she read that protests had occurred all over the country yesterday, "some" for the war and "some" against it.

During the 8:30AM news, she read that protests in New York had drawn "more than 100,000 protestors, both for and against the war."

This is sheer editorial dissembling that in no way reflects the true facts of what happened. As anyone knows who has followed the news from a number of sources, both domestic and foreign, the vast majority of the protestors in America are anti-war. It is the anti-war rallies that are grassroots campaigns, spread by word of mouth and organized by volunteers. The so-called "support the troops" rallies are almost always ginned up by talk-radio personalities with the backing of ClearChannel, the right-wing media monopoly.

The New York protest yesterday pulled at least 200,000 people, as estimated by the police. The organizers estimate more, of course. And only a handful of those who showed up were supporting the Bush administration.

This sort of media cravenness--whether to save themselves from the fire of the rabid right-wing nut cases or to cow-tow to their corporate bosses--is the infection that has set in and corrupted the entire body of the American media.

Here is a website that is documenting the servility of the media:

Cheryl Seal: Media Watcher

Check it often if you care about the truth.

It is no longer conceiveable that someone like Edward R. Murrow will arise from the ranks of the media lapdogs and just point out the plain and obvious truth: the emperor has no clothes.

Of course, he doesn't have a brain or a heart or common sense either, but we'd be willing to let that go if there were even one media person with the guts to take notice of his stark nakedness.

WAR: MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR EVIL

Making war is evil, and those who take part in it are tainted with evil, no matter how just the cause. But sometimes it is necessary, and those who are reluctantly forced to counter evil with evil make a great sacrifice by being willing to do evil in order to stop evil.

This sacrifice is not always clear to soldiers going into battle, because they are always told, unjustly, that they are doing something good and noble. The truth, however, is that they are doing something evil but necessary. Their indoctrination makes them think they are engaged in an action that is an unqualified good, when in fact it is only a very, very qualified good. When they find out that the whole enterprise is suffused with the evils of treachery, death, and destruction; when they find out that none of the so-called "rules of war" does anything but mitigate the evil that is all around them; they sometimes realize that they have been duped. Those soldiers return from war, if they return, with an abiding sense that war must be eliminated.

Others, like the Quakers, see the essential soul-destroying capacity of war so deeply that they refuse to engage in it. The true believers in non-violence will not let anything force them to give up their principles; they will not let anything force them to do evil--not even under pain of death.

This stance is explained well in the following passage from Aldous Huxley's masterful anthology of spiritual teachings called The Perennial Philosophy:

For the Quakers, soldiering was and is a form of wrong livelihood--war being, in their eyes, anti-Christian, not so much because it causes suffering as because it propagates hatred, puts a premium on fraud and cruelty, infects whole societies with anger, fear, pride, and uncharitableness. Such passions eclipse the Inner Light, and therefore the wars by which they are aroused and intensified, must be regarded, whatever their immediate political outcome, as crusades to make the world safe for spiritual darkness.

Reflecting on the animosity that has already enflamed the world in hatred against America, and looking ahead to the animosities that will continue to be fostered by the hubris of the thugs currently holding power in America, a clear-sighted person can only conclude that George W. Bush's little war is a crusade to make the world safe for spiritual darkness.

ALICE WALKER SEES THE TRUTH

The Hammer has been quickly besieged by inquiries arising from the mention of Alice Walker in the last posting. We herewith enlighten those of you who do not know who she is:

Alice Walker is a prolific writer and poet who has become an activist in recent years. She is perhaps best known as the author of The Color Purple. She is also a spiritual teacher.

On Monday of this past week, Ms. Walker appeared on The Diane Rehm Show, which is a talk show that is syndicated by NPR and originates at WAMU, the radio station of American University in Washington DC.

In speaking about the need for non-violent resistance against the current American government, Ms. Walker pointed out that G. W. Bush is a profoundly ignorant man--and by that she meant not only that he is unaware of the subject matter of history, geography, political science, theology, philosophy, and so forth, but also that he is "spiritually ignorant."

When Diane Rehm asked what she meant by "spiritually ignorant," Ms. Walker replied, "George thinks that this war will make him happy. It won't."

Of course, the show was barraged immediately by spiritually ignorant callers who chastized Ms. Walker for disrespecting "our president." Like W, these callers think that berating those who speak the truth will make them happy. It won't.

No one in recent history deserves disrespect more than George W. Bush. He has disrespected the nation's ideals, its laws, its courts, its legislature, and its people. He has squandered its treasure, its soldiers, and its good will. He has created animosity and fear among the disenfranchised. His ruthless savaging of everyone who dares to disagree with him has made enemies at home and abroad.

This is karma. You get back what you put out, and W puts out fear and hatred. So he will not be happy with this war; instead he will get more fearful, and will hate even more than he does now. And he will end as a caricature of the "strong" leader he tries to project: a small, fearful homunculus propped up by enabling toadies and string-pulling puppeteers.

THE CYCLE OF FEAR, VIOLENCE, AND FEAR

It is difficult for the Hammer to stop swinging this Sunday. The monstrous evil that has been unleashed in the name of the American people cries out for denunciation. While our forces wreak unprecedented devastation upon a nation that has already been decimated by years of sanctions, the architects of this new world order based on overwhelming force gathered yesterday for a celebratory breakfast at the American Enterprise Institute. They congratulated themselves on finally having wrested the American government away from its people; they praised their own cleverness on having coopted a stooge "president" to do their bidding no matter what the cost in lives, treasure, and support from the civilized world; and they chattered about their great new designs to "take out" the governments of Iran and then Syria, and then to ultimately "force" the Palestinians into complete subjugation.

The sight of such twisted minds bent on strewing hatred, fear, and violence throughou the world makes the gorge rise in the throat of every decent person. If one had the power to wield God's blazing thnderbolt, one would be sorely tempted not to throw it into the midst of this gathering, so that these warmongers--almost none of whom have ever been in war--might get a taste of their own medicine.

But it is Sunday, and the Hammer tries to remember these words of Alice Walker's mother: "If they knew better, they would do better."

So instead of more vitriol, we post here the entirety of Mark Twain's classic piece called The War Prayer.

THE WAR PRAYER

by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and sputtering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spreads of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country and invoked the God of Battles, beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpouring of fervid eloquence which moved every listener.

It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came-next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their faces alight with material dreams-visions of a stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender!-then home from the war, bronzed heros, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation -- "God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest, Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!"

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was that an ever--merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory -

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there, waiting.

With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal,"Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside -- which the startled minister did -- and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said

"I come from the Throne-bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd and grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import-that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of-except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two- one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of His Who hearth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this-keep it in mind. If you beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer-the uttered part of it. I am commissioned by God to put into words the other part of it-that part which the pastor, and also you in your hearts, fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. The whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory-must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God the Father fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle-be Thou near them! With them, in spirit, we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with their little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it-for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause)

"Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits."

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

BUSH: COVERING HIS TRACKS

I heard a woman--clearly an ideological Republican--who called in to C-SPAN Radio this morning perplexed at how many anti-war callers she was hearing, and flabbergasted at the fact that so many people "don't trust Bush." She just couldn't account for this animosity toward her beloved "President."

Here are four reasons why people don't trust Bush.

1. His lackey John Ashcroft made it one of his first actions to direct ALL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES to routinely reject requests for information under the FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT. Doing so nullified in practice a duly enacted law of Congress. An INTELLIGENT person would have to ask, "What are they trying to hide?"

2. Bush nullified another act of Congress by ordering that the presidential papers of Ronald Reagan would not be released to the public as scheduled by Congressional law, but would be kept secret. Only historians tried to bring this illegal action to Congress and to court, but the effort was swamped by 9/11 and "war." An INTELLIGENT person would have to ask, "What is he trying to hide?"

3. Bush and Colin Powell presented false and substantially misleading evidence to the world about their Iraq adventure. American media ran Colin Powell's address to the UN without significant rebuttal; almost no Americans know that they based that report on outdated, forged, and merely alleged information. The American media did not run the reports of the Iraq weapons inspectors, who checked out every specific US allegation AND FOUND ALL OF THEM TO BE UNTRUE. An INTELLIGENT person would have to ask, "Why are they lying?" or, at the very least, "Why are they so incompetent?"

4. Now we learn that Bush is about to prevent even more information from becoming public. This article shows that W is about to issue an order that will allow all government agencies to simply cease plans for declassifying documents, and will even allow the government to REclassify documents that have already been DEclassified.

Adam Clymer: Bush Covers His Tracks

An INTELLIGENT person would have to ask, "What is he trying to hide?"

These are only four of thousands of reasons why so many decent Americans don't trust W any more than they trust Satan: because he lies constantly, because he pursues evil policies, because he covers up his true intents and actions, and because he wraps it all up in a phony "Christian" dressing that is morally, ethically, and even physically disgusting.

The revolting Richard Perle was on the Today show this morning saying that Saddam is "on the wrong side of history." I hope that the sequel to Perle's beloved use of overwhelming force--the political, military, and moral chaos that will engulf the world and lead decent people everywhere to overwhelm the proponents of power--will show before too long that Saddam was on the wrong side of morality, but that Bush and his cronies were on the wrong side of history.

THE BUSHES AND THE DEATH OF DECENCY

This is an email response that I just sent to a friend who asked me whether I was watching the ongoing devastation of Baghdad.

Yes. It's terribly depressing. But I remember thinking the same thing during Gulf War I, and there was more justification for that. (Only the tiniest smidgen more, however: Bush the elder suckered Saddam into invading Kuwait by having his ambassador over there--April Something-or-Other--let Saddam know that it wouldn't bother us if he went into Kuwait. After he did it, then Bush called in the Marines. He needed a war because his poll numbers were in the third circle of hell, and Republicans always stage a war at some point to let people know how tough they are.)

By the way, W's poll numbers appear to be spiking: Gallup reports a flash poll showing a 67% approval rating since the war began, as opposed to 52-54% before. Americans are such pathetic sheep.

I know it's all tremendously saddening. Try to keep imagining that this is what will bring them down eventually: the visible brutality and lack of concern for decency can't go on forever. (Check out this commentary by Richard Perle--a vicious snake of a "man"--in the UK Guardian.

Richard Perle: Death to the UN!

This kind of unseemly gloating over the defeat of forward-thinking people everywhere will eventually do them in.)

We can only weep for this hapless world and bemoan the cycle of sadness created by vicious fools like Perle, and Wolfowitz, and Bush.

Yours,

The Hammer

BUSH: IMPEACHMENT IS TOO GOOD FOR HIM

"Will Bush be impeached? Will he be called a war criminal? These are not hyperbolic questions."
--Paul Craig Roberts, nationally syndicated columnist, 20 February 2003

The Washington Times, the ultra-conservative "news" outlet in Washington, DC, has published the following opinion piece by Paul Craig Roberts. In it, Roberts raised the spectre of impeachment--the first mention of it of which I'm aware from a nationally syndicated columnist.

Paul Craig Roberts: Impeach Bush?

Former US Attorney General Ramsey Clark has been trying to gain support for impeaching Bush since at least last January. Here is the website of his impeachment drive:

Ramsey Clark's VoteToImpeach.org

It was terrible enough for the first two years of the tiny tyrant's reign when he was only trashing American laws and the American Constitution. Now that he has defied international law and is about to make himself ABSOLUTE DICTATOR of another nation (and this is no hyperbole: once his military captures Iraq, he alone will be the ultimate arbiter of what happens in that country; not even Congress can stop anything he wants to do there, except by impeaching him) the sane and peace-loving people of this nation have to remove this maniac and his enablers from all positions of authority.

VOTE FOR IMPEACHMENT NOW!

BUSH: ENEMY OF FREEDOM

G. W. Bush made America a hated and feared nation throughout the world today, and for many years to come.

The only thing that will repair the image of America now is the utter defeat of the entire Republican party, and a relegation of their regressive, anti-social, hyper-selfish world-view to the scrap heap of history.

Let us work tirelessly, throughout the world, for the defeat of G. W. Bush the tiny tyrant and his minions of fear and hatred.

BUSH: EMPEROR OF IRAQ

"Today I weep for my country." --Sen. Robert C. Byrd, 19 March 2003

It is difficult to express the revulsion and disgust with which many of us Americans have been seized by George W. Bush's tyrannical assault against Iraq. I have encountered person after person today--people I would normally only say "hello" to--who have taken the time to stop and tell me how upset, how outraged, how impotent, how depressed they feel. I heard talk-show caller telling the host how surreal this all seems to him: how could it happen that a morally bankrupt, nearly moronic, faux-Christian, ex-playboy and failed businessman could (1) steal an election, (2) cut off access to public government information, (3) appoint enemies of government to ALL government offices, (4) appoint enemies of justice to ALL federal judgeships, (5) drive the present economy into the ground AND devastate the future economy through massive tax cuts, (6) oversee the outrageous failure of intelligence that led to 9/11, (7) promote and propagandize a wholly fictitious rationale for using military force against a defeated enemy, (8) ignore all international agreements, international public opinion, and the UN, (9) start a war on his own say-so, AND NOT BE IMPEACHED! What cruel God would allow every impediment to be rolled aside as this monster stomped toward Armageddon?

The world today is much, much more unstable, depressing, fearful, and deadly place than it was on January 19, 2000, the day before W was installed. The little twitch who was put in office by wealth and stealth has lost no time in transforming the external world into a mirror image of his inner life. All of his macho strutting, his pretense of calm and self-confidence is belied by his twitchy facial contortions, his inappropriate body language, his pathetic attempts at coherent speech, his nervous eye-shifting when something unexpected comes his way. Inside, W feels that he does not belong where he is; he feels that his whole life has been delivered to him on a platter without his doing anything to deserve it; he feels his meanness, his pettiness, his selfishness, and his viciousness; and he fears--desperately fears--that the rest of the world will figure it out. Hiding all this from himself and world is too difficult a task. So instead, he makes the world take on his inner turmoil, and then he pretends (to himself and his true believers) that he is going to rid the world of the turmoil. If only we could get him a shrink, the rest of us wouldn't have to suffer.

Whatever Bush the moron may imagine is going on in Iraq, the truth is that this is a war of conquest and the beginning of American empire. Here are two trenchant exposes of the real reasons for this war. The first is by Leon Fuerth, who gives a brief account of the administration's reasons for seizing control of Iraq at this time:

Leon Fuerth: An Air of Empire

The second is a long article by Pat Buchanan, in which he details the neo-conservative blackmail that has forced Bush's people to accept a might-makes-right imperial attack plan of stunning proportions that begins by establishing a huge military presence in Iraq, to be followed by attacks on Iran, then Syria, and finally against the Hezbollah, in order to make the middle east safe for Israeli neo-conservatives.

Patrick Buchanan: Whose War?

It is terrifically sad reading. How will we get our nation back? How will we ever eliminate the poison of regressive ultra-conservatism from America and from the world? Are the people of the world ready to take it away from the fomentors of hatred, war, and death?

If we go out in the streets, if we demand peace, if we stop them from doing business as usual--will that do the trick?

Or is it too late now for all of us?

I too weep for my country...and for the world.

BUSH NOW PUTATIVELY ABOVE CRITICISM

On tonight's CROSSFIRE, they played a tape of Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle saying on Monday that he was "saddened" that Bush's failure of diplomacy has forced us into war.

Now Daschle is not right about this: even though the Bushites' faux diplomacy failed, nothing is FORCING us to go to war with Iraq. Bush just wants it done. As Alice Walker, the author and poet, said yesterday, after remarking that Bush is a "spiritually ignorant" man, "George thinks it will make him happy. It won't."

Daschle is wrong, but that's not good enough for the Right. Tucker Carlson immediately declare the statement indefensible, and implied that Daschle was being Anti-American, unpatriotic, and defiling the honor of our military men and women.

James Carville went ballistic, and provided a rousing defense of Daschle's perfect right to speak his mind about Bush's failings without the Right trying to stifle his dissenting voice.

Here is a letter I'm sending to CROSSFIRE to support Carville:

Dear James:

I would like to applaud you for your impassioned defense of Sen. Daschle's right to remark on Bush's diplomatic failure. Tucker's labelling it "indefensible" is just the beginning of yet another round of liberal-bashing from the ultra-conservative right. "How dare you!" they will spew at all dissenters. "You cannot criticize Saint George now, while our boys and girls fighting!" Bovine platelets! The Right never stopped criticizing Clinton while he was using the military.

Bush's elective war will be just as wrong after the fighting starts as it was before. There is no reason why those of us who are intelligent enough to see through his charades should stifle our voices. It is perfectly possible to support our troops in their perils AND to excoriate the man who sent them to meet those dangers so arrogantly, so heedlessly, and so conveniently before the start of the next election cycle.

May our servicemen and -women be safe, AND may W be removed from office as soon as possible!

BUSH: LUNACY EXPLOSION

Today's events have been utterly surreal. If you had put the story of the past two years in a screeplay in 1999, it would have been trashed as being completely unbelieveable. A pathetically unfit political hack manages to buy his way in the American presidency and begins dismantling all government safeguards and civil rights, becomes arrogantly bellicose, alienates the whole world, and finally launches an attack on another nation pre-emptively, for the first time in history. The people and their representatives sit back and watch it all happen in a stupor, as though it couldn't really be going on. It's lunacy. I'm speechless.

Here is the story of the future from someone who isn't speechless.

Lies Now Become the Norm

I'll be back tomorrow, if I can speak.

PHILOSOPHY OF WAR

As per our usual Sunday habit, no hammer blows directly to W's head today. Instead, a philosophical disquitision on war. Let us try to understand the fundmental ethical status of war.

We begin with this question: Generally speaking, and without qualification, is it right for human beings to use force to attain their ends? Decent people agree that the answer to this question is NO. There are always some who try to maintain that the answer should be YES; but they only believe it as long as they have the power to force others. When they lose it, they no longer see things that way.

So far, then, we can agree that, generally speaking, the use of force to attain goals is wrong.

Now war, considered again generally, without qualification, and without regard to any particular ends, is a human activity that uses force to attain goals.

Therefore, speaking generally, war is wrong.

Consequently, all activities and prepartions for the purpose of waging war are, generally speaking, wrong; for where the end is wrong, the means are as well. This means that, generally speaking, all military activities--from training and support to commanding and killing--are wrong.

But once we descend from the heights of generality, however, it turns out that some situations make the use of force necessary. In particular, situations in which others are using force fall into that category. In such situations, war becomes a regretable necessity. We call such a war a "just" war.

But "just" does not mean "right" in this context. It does not mean that the conscience of a belligerent should be as free and guiltless as if he were doing something virtuous. The activity of war remains wrong; the fact that you are only doing it to stop someone else from doing it does not make it right. This is why in some old-time westerns the hero, after shooting the villian, sometimes stands over the body and says something to the effect of "Why did you make me do it?" He feels that he has done something wrong, even though it was necessary. And he has. Two wrongs do not make a right.

The father of what is called "just-war theory" was Thomas Aquinas. In his Summa Theologica, Aquinas establishes that war is a sin opposed to peace, which is an act of charity. In other words, war is wrong because it violates the virtue of love, which is the central core of all virtues. But, recognizing that some situations require war, he asks, "Is there some sort of war that is permissible?" (Summa theologica, Secunda secundae partis, Q. 40.) His answer is that there is a sort of war that is permissible, namely a just war, which has three characteristics. First, it must be authorized by a proper authority. (Private persons are not qualified to wage war; they must go to law.) Second, it must have a just cause, namely, that those attacked deserve to be punished for some fault. And third, the belligerents must be warring with the right intention, namely either to promote good or to stop evil.

Whether all these characteristics are present in the current push to attack Iraq is arguable. But even if they are, waging war itself is an evil that infects everything that happens during the process. There is no way to make war "right." International conventions and rules of conduct only serve to try to mitigate the dominant evil that pervades the whole war-making process from start to finish. That is why there are thousands upon thousands of "ethical questions" surrounding war: it simply isn't possible to put decent people into such a thoroughly evil context and expect that contradictions will not occur.

Because of all this, the only truly rational solution to the problem of war is simply not to allow it. Immanuel Kant put this forth in his 1784 article called "The Idea of a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent," in which he says that the moral capacities of the world's people have not and cannot develop to their full potential until the nations of the world solve the problem of law-governed international relations, because in a world where the most powerful continue to resort to force to attain their ends, the people have neither a good example to follow nor the peace in which to develop their sense of lawfulness.

What Kant foresaw was the possibility of a United Nations that would someday, perhaps through decades or even centuries of concerted effort, make it possible to eliminate war and solve all disputes by reason.

Let us hope that this possibility is not being destroyed by the current leaders of the most powerful nation on earth.

BUSH: ARROGANCE ON DISPLAY

Here is an article from a Turkish newspaper that shows the arrogance of W and his handlers:

Bush's Threats to Turkey Backfire

"We can't take it any more," says Bush. Who the hell is he to tell foreign leaders and their people that they have to do what he wants?

This is the sort of arrogance that makes lasting enemies.

And in less than two years, Bush has made America a lot of lasting enemies around the world. Thanks, W! Great Job!

BUSH: MEDIA JUST AN EXTENSION OF THE AGITPROP MACHINE

Those of us who recognized George W. Bush as a puppet leader from the moment he was propped up as a Republican candidate have followed his nefarious activities with horror for a long time. We have asked ourselves over and over, "How can it be that, day after day, W and his outrageously hyper-partisan string-pullers commit dozens, if not hundreds, of absolutely horrendous sacrileges against the Constitution and against all decent behavior, and yet no one notices?" Of course we all know the answer.

The American press stopped doing their job the day W announced his candidacy for President. If the press had pursued at least an even-handed investigation of W, we would never have had to suffer the rule of such an ignorant, self-aggrandizing, utterly unqualified "leader."

Last night, on CNN's MoneyLine with Lou Dobbs, Howard Kurtz actually maintained that it is not the job of the press to aggressively question the President. He held that only some people regard it as the press's role to try to make the President explain himself. He was content with the few pointed questions that were asked at the recent press conference. It doesn't seem to bother him that none of the reporters were allowed to get an ANSWER beyond the canned garbage that W had been programmed to say by his handlers.

This is a prime example of the lapdog press in action: Kurtz's self-image doesn't allow him to see himself as a lackey, so he justifies the lackey-like behavior. But just compare the press corps' behavior last week with ANY of the 30 press conferences that Bill Clinton held by this point in his presidency and you will see that aggressive questioning and FOLLOW-UP questioning was the absolute norm. All that ended when W ascended to the Republican candidacy. From that point on, the press knew that they wouldn't get access to W unless they sucked up to him. And so they all started sucking up to him. (On top of this, their corporate bosses wanted W treated with kid gloves and Al Gore slashed to pieces. The press corps is base, but not stupid; it divined its masters' wishes quickly and gave them what they wanted. Of course members of the press always say that no one coerces them, but who are they kidding? How many people do you know who make a point, day after day, of presenting their bosses with work that they know their bosses don't want to see? There aren't many of them in any other walk of life, and there aren't many of them in the press corps either.)

Here is an article from BUZZFLASH and POYNTER.ORG that demonstrates just how debased the Washington press corps has become. They now write almost nothing that is not preapproved by Karl Rove and Ari Fleisher.

ROVE/FLEISCHER CONTROL PRESS

We are only months away from a perfect tyranny. It will become perfect when we officially lose the ability to get rid of these monsters that have usurped our once proud democracy, and it will happen when the conservative-owned voting machines deliver a resounding Republican victory in 2004 although other polls show that only 25-30% of the voters actually voted Republican.

BUSH:DISSEMBLING ONCE AGAIN

It's no surprise to anyone with the wits to see that the emperor never had any clothes that W will say anything his handlers tell him to say. Truth has nothing to do with it; the goal is everything.

So, as one might have suspected, the real government experts--as opposed to the warhawks--have no brief with the "democratic domino theory" being floated by Wolfowitz, Perle, Bill Kristol and other right-wing American supremicists, and which they in fact have been pushing for over a decade.

Here is the report on the truth:

GOVERNMENT REPORT DISCREDITS DOMINO THEORY

The report is, of course, confidential. The Bushites won't let the people see this, because it adds yet another straw to the massive pile of anti-democratic, outrageously unconstitutional stances and actions this administration has heaped up in the past two years--a pile that somehow seems to go unnoticed by the mainstream press, and therefore by most of the people.

WORDS OF AUTHORITARIANISM FROM BUSH'S FAVORITE CHIEF JUSTICE

The astoundingly regressive nature of the beliefs that support and maintain the conservative cause in America should not, at this point, be a revelation to any decent person.

As another case in point, here is a quotation from Antonin Scalia, W's favorite Supreme Court Justice, who spoke on the topic of capital punishment at the University of Chicago in February of 2002:

"The reaction of people of faith to this tendency of democracy to obscure the divine authority behind government should not be resignation to it, but the resolution to combat it as effectively as possible."

It is pathetic enough that America has allowed conservatives to rewrite history so that the Founders' aversion to mixing religion with government has been completely transformed into the expectation that government without religion is evil. (I mention only one of several passages against religious government in the Federalist Papers, where the topic under consideration is the way to prevent faction: "If the impulse and the opportunity be suffered to coincide, we well know, that neither moral nor religious motives can be relied on as an adequate control. They are not found to be such on the injustice and violence of individuals, and lose their efficacy in proportion to the number combined together; that is, in proportion as their efficacy becomes needful." [The Federalist, No. 10.])

But now we have a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court who is not content with the Founders' attempt to set up a government of men, designed by men for men; no, he wants to root out the foundation of the first and most successful experiment in rational self government and replace that foundation with the rule of miracle, mystery, and authority that tyrannized over human beings for millenia before the Age of Reason.

Wake up, America! If you hand your freedom over to those who would confound church and state, you will wake up one morning to find the jackboot of pious militarism poised to crush your head.

Here is an article from Buzzflash that analyzes Scalia's momentous reactionism:

Scalia's Divine Authority

Enjoy!

"FAITH-BASED": SYNONYM FOR "STUPID, WASTEFUL, BIGOTED, AND SELF-RIGHTEOUS"

Just passing along another tidbit from the net.

Here is an article that shows the pathetic results of turning over governmental functions to churches. W turned the state over to "Christians" while he was governor, and state services are now in the crapper.

Don't Have Faith in "Faith-Based" Services

Enjoy!

BYRD: WORDS OF WISDOM

The Hammer is hammering away at taxes today, so postings to this blog will not pick up again until tomorrow.

In the meantime, here is Sen. Robert Byrd's most recent speech against the madness being perpetrated by our faux government:

Speech of Sen Robert Byrd

Enjoy!

WAR: BRITS TAKING CONTROL OF THEIR GOVERNMENT?

It looks like the political pressure on Tony Blair may be taking its toll. CBS News gives this report of the possibility that Britain may not send its troops in to do Bush's dirty work:

Brits Backing Out?

If only Americans could put a stop to Bush! But the Bushites wouldn't capitulate even if the only person supporting the war was W himself.

RIGHT-WING DEMAGOGUERY

Also on last night's CROSSFIRE was Senator James Inhofe (R-OK), who spouted the most blatantly dissembling right-wing demagoguery heard since Ari Fleischer's afternoon news conference. When asked if he favored the destruction of the United Nations--a goal openly avowed by a number of Republican leaders--Sen. Inhofe at first evaded the question; instead he replied that he thought it was outrageous that a President of the United States should have to ask permission of the UN in order to protect this country.

Of course that's a garbage argument, but it's typical of Republican idiot-speak: when your position it outrageous, say something to outrage your intellect-challenged shock-troops and get them riled up against reasonable discourse.

Sen. Inhofe--and all Republican "leaders"--know perfectly well that no nation has to ask permission of the UN before defending itself. International law recognizes the right of every nation to defend itself against imminent threat.

The problem that Inhofe and his reactionary colleagues, including George W. Bush, have with their position on jumping into war is that Iraq does not present an imminent threat to the United States. And no amount of fist-banging, finger-pointing, stern grimacing, repeated mantras, and faked "evidence" is going to convince a reasonable person otherwise.

If Iraq clearly presented an imminent threat, Bush should not have wasted time playing with the UN. He should have struck Iraq and let the chips fall where they may. That would have been the part of a true leader.

But instead the Bushites have courted world opinion and tried to bribe other nations to come along with us in this elective war. The fact that they have taken the time to do all this is the surest proof that they are utterly insincere about the threat posed to the US by Iraq. Of course, their completely inconsistent public pronouncements also add up to indicate their mendaciousness: no one who had any care for the truth would be claiming at one and the same time that Iraq was an imminent threat AND that we need to make a preemptive (or, to use the administration's current NewSpeak, "preventive") strike. Either we are defending ourselves against a nation that is about to attack us or we are not.

All this is typical of right-wing irrationality and crowd-incitement. They have been doing it since the late nineteenth century. Unfortunately, they are once more in a position to get American men and women killed for no other reason than fear-mongering political gain.

And once again, decent people are trying to stop them. Perhaps, if we succeed, the influence of reactionary conservatism will once again be driven out of American politics for fifty or sixty years.

ROBERT NOVAK: RIGHT-WING MEAN-MASTER

On CNN's CROSSFIRE this evening, co-host Robert Novak--ancient right-wing firebrand--delivered a mean-spirited, insulting, offensive, and disrespectful screed against former President Jimmy Carter. Why? Because Pres. Carter had the temerity to speak his mind about the injustice of our current warmongering chief executive's Iraq adventure.

Novak said that there was a time when former presidents kept silent about the policies and deeds of their successors, and he opined that Pres. Carter lacked courtesy, decorum, and decency for daring to voice his belief that the attack presently contemplated against Iraq is neither moral nor just.

For good measure, he also took a cheap shot at former President Clinton for appearing on 60 Minutes with former Senator Bob Dole. Clinton, said Novak, was another indecorous ex-President who was just cashing in on the big money.

But, as usual with right-wing nut-bags, they only mention enough of the world to make their fellow reactionaries livid, while they ignore anything that gives the lie to their crapola.

Novak knows full well that the first President to cash in big on the lecture circuit was Ronald Reagan, the right-wing saint who returned conservatives to the political holy land after 50 years of wandering in the desert as punishment for their attacks on the welfare of the average guy during the first decades of the 20th century. And just this weekend, Bush 41 gave a speech at Tufts in which he criticized the way his little boy is handling the whole Iraq thing.

But I guess it's only DEMOCRAT ex-Presidents who are ill-mannered in Novak's eyes.

Maybe--just maybe--that's because he's a fanatical right-wing bigot?

Just guessing.

BUSH: IGNORANT AND COWARDLY

Fear is the great motivator of conservative causes. When conservatives are out of power, they make you try to fear their opponents; when they are in power, they try to make you fear everyone except themselves. Fear is the way thay gain and maintain power.

Despicable isn't it? But it has always been so.

Bush's entire stance on his Iraq adventure is based on fear and fear alone. And yet he has to swagger in order to convince the mud-minded, macho war-monkeys that he's a brave leader.

But why are we attacking Iraq? Because Saddam might, someday be in a position to hurt us.

Oh, is bully boy so afraid of the big, bad Saddam? "He might hurt us someday, so we gotta exterminate him."

America used to be bigger that that. America used to understand that being hurt, and even being killed, is not a reason to abandon its principles. America used to understand that power is best preserved by not using it, and that we can't force everyone in the world to bend to our will without losing our moral authority.

This administation loves to prance about, doing dances of morality. But at the core of all their actions is a lack of moral sensibility that rivals that of the greatest dictators the world has ever known.

The great nineteeth-century British essayist Thomas Macaulay put it best:

"Governments, like men, may buy existence too dear. Propter vitam vivendi perdere causas, [To lose the reason for living, for the sake of staying alive] is a despicable policy both in individuals and in states."

--From Thomas Babington Macaulay, "Speech in Parliament on the Government of India Bill, 10 July 1833," Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G.M. Young (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), pp. 716-18.

BUSH: ONE WOMAN STANDS UP TO HIS COWBOY ARROGANCE

I don't think any but the most anti-Republican Americans (and I count myself proudly among the number) imagined how much damage could be done to the underpinnings of democracy in a few short years by letting a few ideological neanderthals get control of the White House. When W was installed by the Supreme Court, I said to my wife, "This is the beginning of fascism in America." Even she--a staunch liberal--thought I was catastrophizing at the time.

Now she has to admit that not only was I right, I was underestimating the evil that could be done by utterly conscienceless men who never doubt their right to get their own way.

Will they get their own way on this war with Iraq?

Here is an article by a woman who is actually taking W to court for sending troops into "war" without a Constitutional mandate.

A Call to Action by Laura Johnson Manis

This will not stop them; after all, since the courts have been packed with Federalist Society judges since 1980, the conservatives own the courts.

But the more voices that are heard against these montsters, the more likely it becomes that brain-dead Americans may look up from the sex and videotapes and turn against them.

We can only hope.

BUSH: HE WON'T ATTACK?

Here is a prediction that Bush won't be able to attack Iraq this month from the great blog MyDD.com [www.MyDD.com]:

No Dice

OK, a prediction. The US/UK will not invade Iraq this month.

It's too late for Bush and Blair to ignore the vast majority against a unilateral invasion, whom are growing stronger each day. Blair has the support of only 15% in the UK for attacking Iraq without the UN's approval. In the US, Bush has the support of only 35% for invading Iraq without the UN's approval. In Spain, there is less than 5% support for invading Iraq without UN support. It's not just the numbers though, it's just too late.

It's too late to blow off the UN. The fallout would be too great. The US and UK have invested too much into the UN to be able to ignore their failure. The world will not. Even with a decisive victory over Iraq, it would be hollow.

Cameroon, Mexico, Chile, Angola, Guinea and Pakistan have not given any hint of support for the U.S. resolution, and all have called for continued inspections. It's been weeks, and not a single of the six has budged. Pakistan's UN ambassador, Munir Akram, just said, "We believe there is no imminent threat to international peace and security. The cost of delay, in our view, will be much less than the cost of war."

Already, Germany first, then France, then Belgium, then Russia, then China, then Turkey have all called for Bush's hand. Let's hope that Bush keeps his word and doesn't wimp out on a UN vote, here's to a 11-4 vote against. There's power in numbers, and the numbers are defiant.

"They know there are other interests engaged," said one US official, referring by way of example to a U.S.-Chile free trade agreement that must be approved by the U.S. Congress.

Does anyone really believe that the Republican Party, bought and paid for by Big Business interests, is going to get in the way of a free trade agreement? The Republicans are going to stop free trade over this? Sure, dream on neo-con chicken-hawk DeLay, you are bought and paid for to do business.

Sorry warmongers, no dice for your roll at this time.

How does Bush back out? Catching Osama is a possibility, so is Hussein stepping aside, so is a Nuke going off in some far away region... or maybe something else, because under the current set of dynamics war will not occur.

JB Armstrong on Mar 9 @ 12:04 AM

BUSH: BLAIR'S GOVERNMENT COMES UNDONE

Here is an article on the wave of resignations about to hit Tony Blair's government.

Blair Faces Wave of Resignations

The world is not going to stand for the same old brandishing of power. Conservatives may be in for a surprise: the world may be starting to wake up to rational government.

TWO RELIGIONS

As is our practice on Sundays, the Hammer tries to soften its blows, and we merely point out that the religious fervor that supports the current American administration is a negative aspect of religion born of a fundamental misunderstanding of the authentic religious impulse.

Today's sermon: "Two Views of Religion"

There are two different approaches to religion. One perpetuates and intensifies human suffering, the other eliminates it.

The first view sees religion as a rigid, inflexible system of rules dictated by God to prophets and inscribed by divinely inspired stenographers into sacred books. Adherents of this view, believing that their possession of these God-given rules makes them superior to those who do not acknowledge these rules, and holding that no one can be moral without professing these rules, regard themselves as authorized to demand that others live their lives according to the same rules. This is the source of all religious wars and of many political wars as well. It is also the source of civil strife in nations which fail to separate religion from politics.

The second view of religion is encapsulated in Christ's remark: Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin: And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. (Matthew 6:28-29.)

Like Christ, the greatest spiritual teachers of all times and places regard the highest aim of the inner life to be the death of the ego or the self, so that Life or God or the Spirit can flow though unimpeded, as the earth and the heavens and everything in them except human beings flow and create and grow and die--without thought for the future or the past, and without defacing the universal handiwork, which is perfect.

But getting most people to see the perfection of the handiwork is impossible. They are far too wedded to their own beliefs to give them up, even when they and everyone they know suffers from their desperate attempts to hold on to their self-centered, arrogant, and false certainty. They would rather kill others than admit that they might be wrong in any particular.

This is the whole sad tale of human misery in a nutshell.

Maybe some day, a critical number of people will wake up from this nightmare, and their descriptions of reality may conduce others to wake up as well.

Until then, there is no end of writing tragedies.

Thus endeth the sermon.

CLOUDY CONSERVTIVE MEMORY

Once a line gets put out into the wind by the conservative opinion-generating engine, the lemmings lap it up and regurgitate it uncritically.

It is indeed curious how few conservatives remember that there was quite a bit of protest over Bill Clinton's bombing of Baghdad after the UN inspectors withdrew. That protest came from the Left--from church groups, activists, civil rights and human rights organizations, anti-globalism forces, and the like. The Right pumped out plenty of political criticism, but it was all part of its orchestrated anti-Clinton blitzkreig; it had nothing to do with concern for the people of Baghdad.

Conservatives don't remember the protest it because it wasn't covered in the conservative-owned media, which was going full-bore, 24/7 at promoting Ken Starr's witchhunts and stirring up the shock troops with its usual hate-mongering. (By the way, we wouldn't be hearing much about the current peace protests if it were up to the American conservative press. The media tried very hard to ignore the large protests in Washington, New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and elswhere last October, and only gave them minimal coverage after hundreds of thousands of people barraged the NY Times and the Washington Post with letters critical of their blatant attempt to downplay the anti-Bush sentiment in the nation. If the protests this winter hadn't been overseas as well, they would never have made such a splash in this country; but the media here couldn't ignore the stories coming out of foreign media outlets: it would show their conservative bias all too clearly if the rest of the world were running huge stories that the American media refused to cover.)

Those who care about the people under the bombs have always been out there protesting, no matter who the leader dropping the bombs happened to be.

But most conservatives don't understand that kind of total commitment to decency and human rights. Their fanatic ideology is too inflexible, their "with us or agin' us" mentality is too simplistic, and their blindingly self-righteous moral superiority prevents them from even entertaining the possibility that their "leaders" might be wrong.

HOPE AND DESPAIR

Today was a warm spring day. For the first time in weeks the slanting sun, inching northward by daily increments, spilled through windows hazy with winter grime. The cat stretched out on the sofa's back to languish in the sunlight; her flank nearest the sunlight was almost hot to the touch.

The mounds of snow grew shorter with each hour, and long trails of runoff snaked away from them, flowing together into a streamlet at the base of the drive, which ran down the street into the stormdrain.

Early in the morning, hundreds of blackbirds took up stations in the tall, bare trees of the neighborhood. The chattered busily to one another for twenty minutes before deciding, all at once, to be up and away.

Today the little world around here was warm, and slow, and quietly beautiful.

It was almost enough to make one forget that a madman is about to use the overwhelming power of the world's mightiest nation to destroy the hopes of humanity.

BUSH: VENAL THROUGH AND THROUGH

Here's a little article that shows, once again, the caliber of person who holds the most powerful office in the world.

Bush Demands Applause

Such a petty creature--and so dangerous!

BUSH: HIS IGNORANT AND INHUMANE PUPPETEERS IN LACKEY'S CLOTHING

Here is a wonderful article by the articulate Jack Beatty of The Atlantic demonstrating the loathesome inhumanity of the Bushistas.

http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/polipro/pp2003-03-05.htm

What saddens me beyond words is the insensitivity of so many Americans to the cold, uncompassionate character of these revolting, snakelike creatures. Has the steady diet of violence, hatred, and vengeance presented as "entertainment" finally burned out American sensibilities? How can ANYONE--let alone the 26% of Americans who will follow the Puppet-in-Chief off any cliff--give these reprehensible specimens the benefit of the doubt?

Most spineless of all are the members of the press, who turned overnight from the mindlessly overzealous investigators of Bill Clinton's sneeze, to the mindlessly uncritical stenographers for the most criminally fascist government we have ever known. If Bill Clinton had produced even ONE of the thousands of anti-democratic Presidential orders produced by Bush, if he had had even ONE of the thousands of shady connections to big-business criminals, foreign dictators, and media emperors clinging to Bush's skin, he would have faced continuous impeachment proceedings instead of the single one he had to face.

This country has become a travesty of a democracy--the biggest bully of banana republics in all of recorded history.

BUSH: DANGEROUS MORON IN CHARGE OF AN INVINCIBLE ARSENAL

It is with great sadness that I watch the final moves in the destruction of world peace and rational government.

The voices of the people cry out from every corner of the world: "No war! Stop American aggression!" but the cries fall upon deaf and arrogant ears.

I fear that the United Nations will cave in to some diplomatic face-saving resolution that will, in the end, give the U.S. a legitimacy which it does not deserve.

I fear that my power-mad government will unleash a hurricane of fear and distrust across the earth, making trust between nations impossible, and ushering in a new dark age in international relations.

I weep with the decent men and women of this planet, and I raise my voice to the heavens: "God visit upon the heads of our mendacious, tyrannical, hypocritical, and evil "leaders" a plague commensurate with the heartless and gutless assault they are about to launch upon a nation that is no threat at all to us."

And God forgive all of us who could not find way to stop them.

BUSH: MORE LIES AT THE UN

That's it. I've finally decided that America has gone totally insane.

We are headed to war without any explanation that makes any sense. The press refuses to subject those in control of our government to any meaningful scrutiny or to ask them any tough questions and insist on answers. The people just drift along either blindly following a leader they think is "moral" and "sincere" (and therefore justified no matter how wrong he is) or they watch in anger at the coming trainwreck while doing nothing the pull the brakes.

Today Hans Blix and Muhammad elBaradei essentially said that progress is being made in Iraq and that all the US allegations about weapons of mass destruction are unfounded.

Then Colin Powell sits up and spouts the same tired list of now discredited charges that Bush, the Liar-in-Chief, recited last night--and then demands war.

What has happened? Where did we leave reality behind and enter this psychotic fantasy world of Bush lunacy?

America is etherized. Native stupidity combined with lack of education combined with regressive conservative brainwashing has left Americans witless and without a moral compass. Britain's government, though not its people, has been coerced somehow by Washington. (What do the Bushites have on Tony Blair that makes him their puppet?) No hope can come from these countries.

If the world is going to be spared this nightmarish descent into naked aggression and military empire-building, hope can only come from Old Europe, from those countries whose people have experienced the Enlightenment and held onto its lessons, unlike Britain and the US, who have forgotten the rational principles of justice and world government while chasing power and the almighty dollar.

Please help us, Old Europe! Convince the UN to send emergency peacekeepers into Iraq to hold the line against the US and Britain. Tell the aggressors that they will have to kill UN members in order to have their filthy war.

BUSH: MORON MANAGES TO STAND

Well I have to say that I am astounded at Bush's press conference.

I was completely wrong about the staging of the event. Although most of the questions were softball, they were not all planted in advance. And two or three of them really did try to put Bush on the defensive, something that the press corps has not been willing to do until now.

I am very surprised by Bush's showing; for the first time in my memory his did not make a fool out of himself by trying to answer questions as if he could understand them. That is bad news for humanity, because it allows his moron followers to cheer about his "leadership" and his "confidence" without having to defend his abysmal ignorance.

I was complete correct, however, in predicting that Bush would simply repeat the lies he's told for the past four months: the lack of a link between Saddam and Bin Laden is in fact a link; the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is in fact proof that the weapons exist; the failure of the world to agree with the Bush warmongers is in fact proof that the warmongers are right; and so forth. Whenever he started to get stuck for an actual answer, he simply reverted to one of the four or five points he had memorized.

Still, I have to hand it to Rove and the handlers. It must have taken them months to program their robot for this performance.

BUSH: DESTROYER OF NATIONS

It is now clear that Colin Powell has lost his bid to restrain the maniacal Bush-hawks, and that the attack against Iraq will being next week.

It will be a horrendous conflagration. The original "shock and awe" strategy called for raining 800 missiles down upon Baghdad in two mights of terror before beginning a ground assault. This would be the equivalent in destructive power of the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima.

But this plan was recently deemed insufficiently terrifying; so the revised plan calls for 3000 (that's right, THREE THOUSAND) missiles to hit Baghdad in two nights--the equivalent of a hydrogen bomb. It seems unlikely that there will be any survivors in the ancient city.

Is the world going to snap to order after Bush wipes out 5 million Iraqis? Will the world proclaim Bush justified, a liberator, a hero?

If it does, the long dark age of world fascism begins immediately.

BUSH: A WHISTLEBLOWER NOW COULD SAVE MILLIONS OF LIVES

Now that the warmongering Bushites have finally renounced their hypocritical attempts to use the UN to justify their lunatic militarism and intend to launch their war next week, the time has come of a hero to step up.

Somewhere in the recesses of the Bush Gestapo there must be one appointee, one military officer, one aide whose consciene is disgusted with what the Bush cartel has done. There must be one person who knows specifics of how Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Ashcroft have lied, broken laws, and destroyed people in order to have their politically and economically motivated war.

Please, whoever you are, please turn yourself and your information over to the Democratic leaders of the Senate immediately. There are only days left to stop these power-mad lunatics from realizing their imperial ambitions, killing millions of innocent people abroad, and demolishing civil rights at home in order to secure their grip on the government.

A grateful world will thank you.

Please.

BUSH: A PRESS CONFERENCE?

Bush, the least intelligent creature ever to hold the office of President of the United States, is holding a news conference? Since when?

He only did it once before, and he got so burned by not being up to the reporters' soft-ball questions that he didn't try it again.

It will be interesting to soo how the event is staged. My own bet is this: the Moron-in-Chief will swagger out to the podium, lean on it like an arrogant punk, and read an utterly self-serving statement full of the same lies he's been telling since last summer. Then he will pretend to open the floor to questions, take two or three that have been planted for him by willing or coerced reporters, then cut off the event and swagger out of the room.

I'd be astounded to see anything else. The moron makes a fool out of himself whenever he actually tries to respond to a real question, and Karl Rove can't allow that to happen when the stakes are so high. So I'm betting on a fully scripted performance that the evil ones will spin as spontaneous.

We shall see!