SUPREME COURT: WATCH OUT!

Were you surprised by the recent Supreme Court rulings? Did the tilt of the decisions in the direction of decent human rights startle you, coming from the conservative dominated court? Are you very excited that the most outrageous claims of the right concerning affirmative action and consensual sex among adults have not been vindicated?

According to Peggy Brunton, you shouldn't be so happy. You should be wary instead. She's got a conspiracy theory, and it sounds plausible to me.

But before we get to that, let me give you an illustration of why it is believable that this move to the left (that is to say, the center-right, which is where the left has allowed itself to be positioned by its implacably extreme opposition) is not really the good thing it seems to be.

We were watching ABC's This Week with George Stephanopoulos yesterday, and were amazed to find the up-till-now ever-predictable, fire-breathing, conservative sophist George Will actually making sense. He was criticizing the recall of Gray Davis in California, saying that it started right after he was reelected, and he found that crazy. The people of California bought the product, and they need to stick with it until the warranty expires.

Another commentator, Fareed Zakaria, argued that the current disastrous condition of the State of California is the result of government by plebecite. When that state started allowing everything to be dealt with by referenda at the ballot box, it undid the governmental principles established by the founders, who saw that it would be better to elect a government for a fixed period of time, let it deal with day-to-day policies, and throw them out at the end of the period if necessary that to allow the people, who are fickle, inconstant, and not particulaly good at making longer-term judgments, to continually put in their two cents and keep changing the ground rules whenever they feel like it.

Will agreed with all of this.

We were stunned. Was it really possible that George Will--GEORGE WILL!--could actually see the truth without having to falsify it? Where was the perverted self-interest that had chacterized his every utterance for all these years? Would we find ourselves actually having to agree with him?

And then it came. As the last word, we finally got the true reason why Will was so down on the recall movement. Not because it is part of a perversion of the founders' notion of rational self-government. Not because the dislocation it will create will cause an even greater disaster for the now suffering people of California. No. The real reason? California is in such bad shape that Will doesn't want to see a Republican become responsible for it.

There you go. At least George is consistent. He never says anything that doesn't have self-interest at heart. A true conservative's conservative.

Well, all of that is a preable to the Supreme Court conspiracy theory we want to pass on to you today. Conservatives almost always act out of self-interest. So when you find them doing something that seems directed at the rights of others, you should be very suspicious.

Peggy Brunton is very suspicious. Here is the link:

Brunton: Supreme Court Conspiring to Destroy America?

The thesis is simple. Karl Rove went to a few cocktail parties and dropped the word that a move of the Supreme Court to the center would be greatly appreciated by the President. That's all it took. The justices (excepting Clarence Thomas) are not dummies. They figured it out themselves: they throw a few civil rights bones to the left; that gets some of the liberals to let up their guard; at the same time, the rabid Scalia/Thomas faction stokes up the right to a fever pitch of activism; even more Republicans come into the Senate in 2004; Rehnquist and O'Connor resign; Bush continues to appoint ultra-rabid conservative judges; they use any excuse to take up cases to overturn not only the recent rulings, but all civil rights laws ever passed; and so on.

We believe it.

Don't you?

THE CONSERVATIVE MENACE, PART II

(Since I had to split this post into two, you should read the previous post, located just below, first.)

In addition to Jefferson's well-known stance against mixing church and state, the Federalist Papers also demonstrate a very low opinion of the role of religion in politics, pointing out that the experience of all nations is that religion has very little influence on the behavior of those in the halls of power. And then there is the Treaty of Tripoli, read by George Washinton, passed by unanimous vote in the Senate, and signed into law by John Adams, which states straightforwardly that the United States of America was not any any sense founded upon the Christian religion.

There is no doubt that the founders were extremely wary of the influence of religion on politics. Why? Because they had experienced at close quarters what happens to freedom when a leader can justify his actions not only on the basis of the power granted to his office, but also on the basis of divine sanction.

Were they right? Look no farther than George W. Bush for the answer. As we noted yesterday, he has now told the world in his own words that God tells him who to destroy. So who are we mere citizens to question his lying, his criminal withholding of information, his smiling but uncallous meanness to everyone but the wealthiest of our people? Anyone who questions him, the anointed scion of the Lord, is by that very act worthy of eternal damnation.

How did such a lunatic even get close to the presidency? Wealth and family influence, of course. But also by being governor of a large state--a state that had converted from a democratic form of government to a full-fledged theocracy under the domination of Republican conservatives who know that their power is more stable if they control the minds of the electorate through religion than if they allow the people to think for themselves.

But having once gained power, they are not about to allow the people to think for themselves. In a theocracy (as can be seen in any of the nations that have not embraced the Enlightenment ideal of rational self-governance) mind-control through religion is the principal concern of the state. Thus Texas Republican legislators are constantly trying to legislate what people can hear, read, and study in schools. Get their minds controlled early on, and they probably won't be able to break away later.

But Texas is only a microcosm of the grand conservative strategy for permanant dominace of American thought. The conservative movement, even after the treacherous ascent of Ronald Reagan to the presidency (remember that Reagan's people sent messages to the Ayatollah before the 1980 election that Reagan would deal with Iran more favorably than Carter--an act of treason), could not have sustained its popularity in the face of its disastrous policies if it had not contracted an alliance with the mind-controlled hoards of the Christian fundamentalist movements. The deliverance of these unthinking minions of hypnotic preachers into the hands of conservative politicians is what created and what sustains contemporary conservatism. Take the Christian right away from Republicans, and their support would crumble like a skyscraper made of cardboard.

Taking a longer historical view, this joining of religion and politics is an attempt to recreate the power politics of the pre-Enlightenment era, when aristocrats and churchmen held the people in thrall. That partnership was sundered by the formation of the United States, the first sovereign nation to have a government dedicated to justice, and therefore inimical to the control of the people through political power or through religious power. The founders split politicians off from churchmen so that they could not suppress freedom through combining their forces.

Modern conservatism has reestablished the partnership that the founders broke up. And, predictably, freedom is suffering, not only here at home, but now around the world. George W. Bush, God's own politician, is seeing to that.

The founders did not want such people to hold office in their new nation based on rational self-government. That is why they tried to keep religion out of politics.

Let us recommit ourselves to their vision of freedom from policial and religious power through rational self-government.

And let us begin by throwing out W and all those who support him in his lunatic vision of an all-consuming American theocracy.

THE CONSERVATIVE MENACE, PART I

(Since the new Blogger doesn't like long posts, I had to split today's into two parts.)

Yesterday's post seems to have generated an inordinate amount of interest, judging from the increased number of comments and emails we have received. Apparently there are a great many intelligent people out there who recognize that having a leader who regards himself as God's chosen son is not very good for the health of the nation. We hope that all of you are registered to vote, and that you will help America get rid of this dangerous, megalomanical moron at the next election. Get everyone you know to register to vote, and convince them to vote against ALL Republicans; it's the only way they will get the message that their vicious politics and policies are not wanted by the majority of decent people in our country.

But the interest in W's messiah complex brings us to today's comment, which is in the more philosophical vein we have established for Sundays. Today's topic is the pernicious effect that conservatism has promoted by trying to return to the combination of religion and politics that our nation was founded to separate.

Now we know that the card-carrying right-wingers will come out of the woodwork with so-called "facts" and conservative-reconstructed "history" to support their blind faith in religion as the foundation of politics. All this stuff is bull. It is the fruit of thirty years of ideological propaganda-mongering and media manipulation. None of it is true.

All anyone needs to know about the relation between religion and politics in the forming of the United States is this: the founders supported FREEDOM OF RELIGION, and they knew that one could not have this if the State promulgated CONTROL BY RELIGION.

There is plenty of evidence that large numbers of people at the time were unhappy with this enlightened, rationalist stance toward religion on the part of the founders. Many of these people were anti-Federalists for just that reason, and there are many speeches and pamplets still available from the era that show just how strong the sentiment for religious control of government was.

The conservative propaganda machine has fastened on these anti-Federalist documents and has foisted their arguments upon contemporary America as proof that the nation was founded on religion, and specifcally on Christianity.

But why should we pay any attention to the opinions of anti-Federalists? They LOST the battle over the Constitution, so their opinions carry no weight. By confusing the people about what side the anti-Federalists supported, conservatives have managed to get people to read into the Constitution the attitudes of people who were passionately committed to defeating it. This is how they have managed to keep anti-government, states' rights, theocratical sentiments circulating in America: by duping people into believing that these anti-Constitutional attitudes are in fact embedded in the Constitution.

Since some conservatives are also shrewd enough to understand that some people with independent judgment might catch them out on this sleight-of-hand trick, they have further muddied the waters by drawing up lists of favorable comments on religion by the founders themselves (that is, those who actually supported the adoption of the Consitution). But though the founders may have recognized the utility and the consolation provided by religion in one's personal life, that fact has no bearing whatsoever on the relation between religion and politics. The founders were pretty much against any such commingling, because they had seen firsthand its terrible consequences: religion in the hands of the state is a powerful weapon against the people; it can be used to silence opposition, stifle criticism, and crush reform. Pretty much how conservatives use it nowadays.

(Go to PART II, above.)

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BUSH: BUSH: A DANGEROUS DELUSION OF GRANDEUR

We have often in this space noted the insane recklessness with which W stikes out on any path. Parly this is due to his spoiled upbringing and his protected life: he has never had to pay the price for any mistake or evil he has done. But we strongly suspected that it was also due to his abysmally ignorant belief that he was somehow special.

Now we no longer have to suspect. W himself has confirmed his special station among all the world's people.

Here is an op-ed from Chris Floyd of the Moscow Times that quotes W himself claiming that he is God's anointed:

Bush: "God is My Ventriloquist"

This is so incredible that we just have to post an excerpt here. It shows why the Bushites are so secretive about everything W says and does: he must spout this kind of idiotic bull every time he opens his mouth, so they have to keep it from the American people lest they see what a total dipstick he is. Here's Chris Floyd:

Here are Bush's exact words, quoted by Haaretz: "God told me to strike at al-Qaida and I struck them, and then He instructed me to strike at Saddam, which I did, and now I am determined to solve the problem in the Middle East. If you help me, I will act, and if not, the elections will come and I will have to focus on them."

You can't put it plainer than that. The whole chaotic rigmarole of Security Council votes and UN inspections and congressional approval and Colin Powell's whizbang Powerpoint displays of "proof" and Bush's own tearful prayers for "peace" -- it was all a sham, a meaningless exercise.

No votes, no inspections, no proof or lack of proof -- in fact, no earthly reason whatsoever -- could have stopped Bush's aggressive war on Iraq. It was God's unalterable will: the Lord of Hosts gave a direct order for George W. Bush to "strike at Saddam."

. . .

And that's why Bush acts with such serenity and ruthlessness. Nothing he does can be challenged on moral grounds, however unethical or evil it might appear, because all of his actions are directed by God. He can twist the truth, oppress the poor, exalt the rich, despoil the Earth, ignore the law -- and murder children -- without the slightest compunction, the briefest moment of doubt or self-reflection, because he believes, he truly believes, that God squats in his brainpan and tells him what to do.

Do you get it YET, America? They installed an IDIOT LUNATIC in the White House when they stole the 2000 election, and he's leading the nation into the cesspit that is history's waste site for lunatic dictators.

Maybe all of this really is providential, but not in the way W thinks. Maybe the divine plan is for the conservatives to wreak such suffering and destruction on America and the whole world that they will forever be discredited as a legitimate politcal force. Maybe God intends a huge conflagration that will burn conservatism off the planet, so that the decent people of the earth can finally come together in peace to create one world, under law, with justice for all.

May we live to see that day!

COURIC: TAKING ON THE BUSHISTAS

This morning on NBC's Today show, Katie Couric was interviewing FCC Commisioner Michael Powell, who, together with two other right-wing zealots on the Commission, recently railroaded through a rules change without any serious public input (except 250,000 letters that were more than 95% against) that would allow the media mega-corporations to own even more TV, radio, and print outlets in the same markets.

The anti-democratic bent of such changes, which would bring about monopolies on the expression of opinion not seen since 1920s and 1930s, should be patently obvious to even a pointy-headed conservative. But since the conservatives think that their cause can only be aided by the stifling of dissent that the changes would bring about (since, of course, conservatism thrives on the psychological pressure of conformity), they are all for them. Consequently, the conservative media have gone out of their way to portray Powell's changes as actually deserving consideration, instead of the abomination that they quite clearly are.

Couric, however, went out of her way to ask Powell how he could even imagine that giving the giant media corporations the right to buy up even more of the market was a good thing for free speech. He tried to ditch the question, so she specified even further, asking if he didn't see the further consolidation and mergers that would result from new acquisitions as a bad thing. At that point, he just said that he didn't think that would be the outcome. Of course, that's a bald-faced lie; everyone knows that whenever you give a giant corporation the chance to buy up everthing in sight, it will. But Republicans are very practiced at lying with a straight face; their entire way a being requires them to do it constantly if they don't want to be shunned by decent people who would find their real motives outrageously, offensively immoral.

We applaud Couric's courage. She must know that her bosses don't want that sort of criticism to be voiced by their news "personalities." So it takes some fortitude to do it, even though she is not taking much of a risk of getting disciplined or fired; bosses can make life miserable in other ways.

But we wish that she and others at her level in the media would start to do more than take an occasional pot shot. The current administration is not just making mistakes. It is destroying everything that was once great and just about this nation. It is trampling on rights, it is ruling by intimidation and fear, it is destroying the nation's resources, it is undoing laws that protect us and creating new laws that will harm us, and it is determined to defund government until there are no programs left to help those among us who most need help. They have been at it since W's first day in office.

And yet the media remain silent. Or worse, they serve as apologists by refusing to ask critical questions, and by allowing the outrageous actions of the entire Bush regime be portrayed as reasonable choices instead of investigating them like the patently corrupt and destructive manipulations that they are.

Only someone of the stature of Katie Couric or Tom Brokaw or Peter Jennings--someone whose position in the world of journalism is completely secure--has the standing to start moving the press toward doing its job as the watchdog of our society. Only such a person could shame his or her colleagues into starting to question W instead of protecting him.

The nation would owe a great debt to the first major journalist who dared to lauch a real probe into the reality behind the virtual reality of the Bushist lies. Perhaps then the house of cards would begin to crumble. If once top newscaster would pull on just one string--the illegal suppression of presidential documents, the secret energy policy meetings of Cheny, the administration backing of the California energy boondoggle of last year, the lies leading up to the Iraq invasion--perhaps it would inspire some other intrepid journalists to start asking questions instead of just taking dictation.

Remember that it was Edward R. Murrow's stinging on-air critique of Joseph McCarthy that brought that swaggering conservative tyrant down. Maybe none of our current-day top broadcaster journalists is prepared to take that kind of risk.

But they should think of this: what would have happened if CBS had fired Murrow for his criticism of McCarthy? Surely it would have been the ultimate indictment of the network as being a McCarthy stooge.

Maybe Couric will be the Murrow of our time. Take courage, Katie!

BUSH: ARE THE CHICKENS FINALLY COMING HOME TO ROOST?

The strategy of scare-'em-and-fleece-'em that the Bushites have been using ever since 9/11 may be starting to wear thin. It is just possible that some well-meaning but extremely misguided individuals who work for and support W are beginning to understand the depth of the depravity that animates the Bushista crew, and can no longer continue to be part of it.

We grant that such transformations are not likely, since anyone who has stuck with the Bushies this far must be extremely obtuse not to understand the evil that they serve--or even worse, to actually think it is good. But that does not mean it could not happen: what is unlikely is not impossible.

As if to furnish proof: the recent resignation of Rand Beers, who was a special assistant to the president and senior director for combating terrorism. Mr. Beers left the Bush administration and starting working for--get this--John Kerry, the Democratic Senator running for President!

That was shocking enough for the conservatives, who cannot fathom a conscience with enough integrity to turn away from their flock of think-alike, selfish, greedy reactionaries.

But now comes another shock. Beers--one of W's top men in homeland security and anti-terrorism--has come out saying that Bush and his handlers have completely duped America into thinking that they are doing anything about security and terrorism.

Here's the link:

Bush Lying About Himself

Those of us who still have our wits about us know that this is not news. The daily news has been full of reports about the damage done by this faux administration. Not a week goes by when W doesn't misspeak some line he has been given in such a way that it's clear they will say anything at all, and hence have no problem lying. The evidence of W's treachery is out there for all to see.

The problem is that the press is going far out of its way not to connect any of the dots. Just look at how hard the entire media is working to try not to mention Bush's lies about Iraq in the run-up to the war. A few major columnists, like Paul Krugman and Nicholas Kristol, have documented Bush's prevarications, but even they prefer to use words like "deceptive" or "misleading" instead of "lying." And the rest of the conservative media is trying as hard as it can to downplay the constantly shifting reasons offered by W and his crew for going into Iraq or to simply avoid the issue with sensational distractions.

Why can't any of them say what is clear to anyone with eyes to see? Bush is a liar! In that he is not a whit different from the hated Bill Clinton. The only difference between them is Bill only lied about sex, while Bush lied about sending American troops to their deaths, about enriching his family, his friends, and himself (in years to come when he inherits his father's war-profiteering windfalls)

Oh, and he has also lied about every single policy issue he has ever attempted to push through, since he always says that they are good for America, when he knows (if a man that stupid can be said to know anything) is that they are only good for his own ilk--the deeply depraved, utterly selfish, completely uncompassionate cretins that populate the Republican party.

THEY ARE STEALING YOUR VOTE

Here's a story about the next wave in Republican dirty politics.

In Washington state, there is a great furor to install new electronic voting machines. As we have noted before, these machines generally have no paper records; they record the votes electronically and give totals.

Here is the insidious stuff: first, the software that runs these machines is "proprietary," which means no one can look at it but the company that manufactures it--not even the states who buy the machines and the polling workers; and second, most of the machines are manufactured by Republicans.

In the last election, three different Republican candidates in Texas got the exact same number of votes on three such voting machines in different districts. What is even more strange, three Democrats in different states who were ahead in the polls right up to the day before the election ended up losing according to these Republican-made machines. (Max Cleland was one of them.) Very strange, don't you think?

Here is the article:

Crooked Voting Machines Come to Washington State

Note well that prominent computer scientists strongly recommend that such machines be fitted to have a paper tape than can be checked after the fact, because they don't trust the software.

Be careful, America. If it looks too bad to steal elections outright, the Republicans will do it by high-tech stealth.

FINALLY A MAJOR COLUMNIST NOTICES THE DOUBLE STANDARD

Yesterday's Washington Post carried a column by Richard Cohen in which the outrageous protection of right-wing lunatics by the major media is noted.

Republicans have been throwing bombs into national politics for decades with the most beyond-the-pale antics. How any one of the right-wing crazies that make up the list of major movers in the Republican party can even get a hearing in decent society would be a mystery if it weren't for the simply fact--which continues to be ignored as a sort of openly acknowledged secret--that the media are almost completely controlled by conservative forces. Anyone who bolsters the conservative agenda--no matter how cretinous, how vicious, how benighted, how hatefu--is acceptable to the media bosses. Thus we get a neverending series of Rush Limbaugh clones parading through the media: Bill O'Reilly, Shawn Hannity, Joe Scarborough, Michael Savage, and so on, and so on, and so on--all of them parroting the same simple-minded gospel that holds above all things the destruction of "evil liberals" and the insane hatred of taxes.

It is the will of the conservative controlling forces that right-wing crazies be treated like decent, reasonable people, even if they lie through their teeth constantly, even if they spout ridiculous nonsense or vicious fabrications, and even if they show themselves to belong to the secret fraternity of racists, sexists, and reactionaries that are such a large part of Republican politics. (That hidden streak in the Republican party last surfaced when Trent Lott got caught forgetting to dissemble about true Republican values last winter.)

So it's a big deal when a writer for the Post actually takes note of the mysterious protection surrounding right-wing lunatic nut-bags like Newt Gingrich and Tom DeLay.

Here's a quote from Cohen's piece:

Isn't it just plain mysterious that Newt Gingrich continues to get respectful media attention when, really, on a given day he is half-mad and almost always blowing smoke? The same could be asked of Tom DeLay, who revived impeachment when the effort flagged for lack of compelling evidence and was determined to smash Clinton -- never mind what else he would destroy in the process. Yet he and other Clinton-haters wander the streets of Washington, unscarred, uncensored but, nonetheless, unhinged.

And here's the link:

Cohen: Unhinged GOPers

We have to note again that Americans seems to be sleeping through an surreal nightmare. Crazies like Gingrich and DeLay belong in an institution where they can't hurt people. Instead the conservative machine parades them in front of the nation in order to enflame other nut-cases and keep the lunacy going that buys them just enough votes to continue destroying everything good and decent about this country.

Please people, do something good with your short time on this earth! Wherever you are, work to remove a Republican or two from office! This country will only get back its commitment to justice and humanity when conservatism is soundly defeated again. We must work to make it happen soon!

ASHCROFT: DEPT. OF JUSTICE NOW THE GESTAPO

Finally, John Ashcroft has done what he always wanted to do: turn the executive branch into a modern Gestapo.

Jimmy Breslin recently wrote a sobering column on the secret police powers that Ashcroft--aided and abetted by the unscupulous Rebpulicans in Congress, the immoral members of the executive branch from Bush on down, and numerous right-wing judges planted in the courts over the past three decades for just this opportunity--has made a reality.

Now it has happened: an American citizen has been seized, tried, and sentenced on American soil in secret.

Here is the link:

Breslin: This is NOT America

Here is a passage from the piece:

I am thinking that it could be time for me to begin thinking about leaving this news business. It is not mine anymore. Let me tell you why.

Friday, the newspapers and television reported the following matter with no anger or effort to do anything other than serve as stenographers for the government:

On March 1, give or take a day, in Columbus, Ohio, the FBI arrested an American citizen they say is Iyman Faris. There wasn't a word uttered. He vanished. No lawyer was notified. He made no phone calls and wrote no postcards or letters.

He was a United States citizen who disappeared without a trace into a secret metal world.

This citizen's proper name was Mohammed Rauf....

In mid-April, again in deep secrecy, the government says Faris was allowed to plead guilty to plotting to pull down or blow up the Brooklyn Bridge. He was in a sealed Virginia federal courtroom. If he had a lawyer, that was some lawyer.

After that, he was sentenced. We don't know what the sentence was because it is sealed.

So now we are living with the spectre of a secret police that can scoop up even citizens, and wisk them off into secret hiding place, and send them to jail without even telling anyone what is really going on.

And the media scarcely take notice that America has become Amerika under the fuehrership of George W. Bush and his faithful head of the secret police, Johann Himmler Ashcroft.

No matter how frightened Americans are, to allow such evil men to turn our once proud democracy into a totalitarian police state is despicable. Everyone who supports them is guilty either of culpable ignorace or outright treason against the Constitution and the princicples it represents. Fear does not justify injustice. Only cowards try to protect themselves by abandoning justice. Bush and Ashcroft supporters--no matter how much they bluster and puff out their chests and wave their guns in macho posturing--are complete and utter cowards who have let the terrorists turn this country into a banana republic and a vast, tyrannical dictatorship.

It is time for them to go.

Nos oportet pugnare, nam hostes tam improbi sunt ut eos diutius feramus. (Fight we must, for our enemies are too evil to bear any longer.)

BUSH: NOW OCCUPYING THREE COUNTRIES
Today's Washington Post carries a front-page story about a prominent Iraqi Shiite cleric who has expressed exasperation with the ten-week old U.S. occupation of his country, saying that it's time for Iraqis to govern themselves. Here's the link:

Get Bush Out of My Country

Do you think that the Bushites will listen? The Hammer doesn't. After all, they've been occupiers since 2001. First they usurped the highest office in America by having their confederates on the Supreme Court intervene in the constitutionally appointed process for selecting a president.

(Right-wingers have two, and only two, responses to the fact that the Bushistas took the presidency illegally: 1) "get over it," which is a typical might-makes-right attitude revealing the absolutely amoral core of conservative ethics; and 2) "it's the electoral college, stupid," which is an ignorant, wholly sophistical self-justification overlooking the fact that, according to the Constitution, the fracas in Florida should have thrown the whole contested election into the House of Representatives to be settled in public by the people's elected officials. But the Republicans could not take the chance of being seen to wrest the presidency away from the people by means of their customary dirty politics, so the Bushites had their five bought-and-paid-for regressive Supreme Court Justices spare them the risks of showing their insidious intentions in daylight. There ought to be no statute of limitations on such treacherous disregard of the Constitution. No one should ever "get over it.")

Second, they destroyed and took over Afghanistan just to pound someone in the aftermath of 9/11. That made Bush a hero to all the witless machismo-worshipers who prefer violent vengeance to the rule of law.

So now that they've got control over the prize long sought by the vicious, bloodthirsty, oil-grabbing, power-hungry neo-cons who actually pull W's strings, they're not about to let it go just because the people to whom Iraq really belongs want their country back. Why should they? Might makes right, doesn't it? Didn't we learn that in the 2000 election?

Unless control of this country is wrested away from conservatives and turned over to people who actually understand justice, the rule of law, and human rights, no place on earth will be safe from the fascist militarism of the American right-wing.

Nobis pugnandum est dum vivamus! (We must fight as long as there is life!)

CONSERVATISM AND CAPITALISM

As usual on Sundays, the Hammer today considers a more philosophical aspect of conservatism instead of pounding on the Bush machine.

Today's topic is the curious understanding of capitalism propounded by conservatives.

If one listens to Bush and his ilk, one would get the impression that the master capitalists of the this country deserve much more consideration from the nation than the working stiff. That's why they get all the tax cuts, while the average guy gets peanuts--and then loses his government services on top of it!

Conservatives like to think that the capitalists are heroes for providing all those jobs to the average guys out there. That's why they actually think CEO's are WORTH the outrageous salaries and benefits they get.

But this shows a really twisted grasp of capitalism. The capitalist doesn't create jobs out of the goodness of his heart. He hires people because they will make him money. That's right: every job he creates makes him profit, or he doesn't create it. The whole point of capitalism is that the worker makes a profit for the capitalist. So the payoff for the capitalist is built into the system. His profit is his reward.

But that's not enough for conservatives. In addition to his profit, they seem to think, the capitalist deserves bonuses for his "risk." So conservatives trump up all sorts of tax benefits, incentives, and just plain giveaways to people who are already getting the benefits by the very nature of capitalism itself!

This system might even make sense if the capitalist really were risking something. But the people who get the real breaks are already so rich that no investment they make is going to hurt them too much. And so the rich get richer on the backs of all the rest of us, because conservatives admire wealth, no matter how it may be obtained (unless the wealthy person is a liberal). Just another in the long list of misplaced "values" that conservatives tout so highly.

If one were to go down the list of conservative beliefs--and one can certainly gather them from all over the place since the right-wing propaganda machine spouts them tirelessly--one would find that holding each and every one of them depends on being blind to reality, unconcerned about the needs of others, and uncompassionate toward everyone but conservatives.

It is possible for hard-core conservatives to repent and to reclaim their humanity. Adrianna Huffington, who used to be a fire-breathing conservative who was constantly on right-wing radio and cable, converted when she was actually confronted with people whose lives had been forever ruined by the vicious social policies of conservatism. Maybe that's the answer: every school should be forced by law to send all its students to the mental hospitals, the prisons, the drug ghettos, the welfare hotels, so that no one can sit on his pile of money and lecture to the rest of us about how cut-throat capitalism is the best economic and political system ever devised.

Conservatism is the religion of self-worship. It is a religion that must be eradicated, for the good of all mankind.

BUSH: HYPOCRITICAL CHRISTIAN, IMMORAL WAR-MONGER

Today's Baltimore Sun carries two letters to the editor that are remarkable for their concision and for their perspicacity. The first nails W and his right-wing fundamental backers on their hypocritical religiosity. Here is the link:

Bush Policies Betray Christian Values

but since you have to scroll down the page to find it, we are also posting it in its entirety.

Bush policies betray Christian values

President Bush touts himself as a "compassionate conservative," yet he recently signed a tax cut for the rich that excludes millions of America's poorest children ("House Republicans fire back on tax cuts," June 11).

Mr. Bush has said that Jesus serves as his role model. But if I recollect my Bible correctly, Jesus was a champion of the poor and disenfranchised. This only shows that Mr. Bush doesn't walk the walk when it comes to Christian values.

Mr. Bush is doing for America what Kenneth L. Lay did for Enron Corp. - leading it into bankruptcy. And to add insult to injury, the Republican-led Congress let stand billions in corporate tax dodges by allowing companies to continue to shelter money in offshore tax havens.

Yet to keep our minds off the real crooks in our society, prosecutors are going after Martha Stewart, a successful, independent woman, while the mostly male corporate pirates go free.

It's time to redefine immorality to go beyond the right-wing Republican definition limited to sex, drugs, music and movies and include lying, cheating and cold-hearted indifference to the neediest in our society.

Political leaders lying to the American public - about weapons of mass destruction or the benefits of tax cuts - is immoral and intolerable.

David J. Iacono
Westminster

A second letter goes after the immoral entry into the Iraq attack. The author quite rightly says that the focus on finding WMD is distracting the nation from the fact that Bush and Co. LIED to us about the imminent threat of Iraq, and without imminent threat--even if there were some WMD--there was no justification at all for attacking Iraq. The Bushites simply flouted international law (as they have done many times) and hoped that the fear they had carefully instilled in credulous Americans would inoculate them from suffering any consequences for their perfidy. So far, unfortunately, their plan has worked.

Here is the link again (it's the same as the one above):

Finding weapons won't justify war

Finding weapons won't justify war

These days, as I read and watch the columnists, politicians and talking heads debating whether weapons of mass destruction (WMD) will be found in Iraq and opining on the political ramifications ("It's too early to start using the 'I-word' about Bush," Opinion
Commentary, June 13), I shake my head in despair - not at the positions proffered, but because WMD are irrelevant as a justification for President Bush's illegal, pre-emptive invasion of Iraq.

The country has forgotten the issues that faced us before the invasion, when nearly everyone agreed WMD existed in Iraq but argued over what to do about them.

Remember? The hawks were saying, "Forget the United Nations. Saddam Hussein and his WMD are an imminent threat to the United States. We have 200,000 troops waiting and summer is coming. We have to invade now."

More rational folks were saying, "Mr. Hussein probably has WMD but we don't see the imminent threat. He's well-contained. Let's be patient and try working through the United Nations and its inspectors."

My fear: WMD have become the sole litmus test for the validity of this pre-emptive war. And if and when they are found, the administration and its supporters will be vindicated in the eyes of a majority of Americans.

The real issues - the bullying diplomacy, the rifts with our closest allies, the legality of the invasion, the Muslim backlash, the squandering of America's reputation as a fair and law-abiding superpower - will fall by the wayside.

But the discovery of WMD will never justify the way we went about finding them.

Scott Norris
Baltimore

There are plenty of intelligent people out there who see through the shameless posturing of the Bush junta. We only hope that enough of them get involved in unseating this hoarde of usurpers to put the whole crew (and especially the grand impostor W) out on the streets soon.

BUSH: ANTI-SCIENCE, ANTI-INTELLIGENCE, ANTI-TRUTH

As we mentioned yesterday, the typical conservative response to any findings of fact that do not fit their ideology is to deny the fact and create sham "evidence" that they use to pretend that they have other "facts" supporting their position. But of course there is only one kind of fact. A fact is a statement about reality that has been tested both by empirical and theoretical investigations and has been judged to be true by all those, or at least by the large majority of those, who have the best knowledge about the fact in question.

Since the rise of scientific research in the nineteenth century, and continuing until the middle of the twentieth century, all the facts determined by real investigative scientists and scholars in all field of research were turning out to undermine all the assumptions and superstitions commonly held by conservatives. By the beginning of the 1970s, conservatism was all but washed up as a credible political world-view, because all conservative assumptions about politics, economics, history, ethics, religion, and daily life had been shown to be simple-minded oversimplifications based on narrow samplings of reality by parochial, or even unintelligent, people.

Rather than adapt to the findings of the most knowledgeable, however, and admit that they needed to change their views in order to adapt to the real world, conservatives did what self-centered people everywhere do when confronted with situations they don't like: they got mad and decided to make everyone else accept their views so that they wouldn't have to change. This is not an intelligent adaptive strategy. If you don't accept reality as it is, reality will eventually make you sorry. But conservatives can't seem to think that far ahead; they just don't want to admit that they might be wrong, and then they are surprised when the real world doesn't respond as they expect.

So as we said yesterday, the conservative machine cranked up to generate new, conservative "facts" about science, economics, politics, history, and so forth. And what did we get? "Creationism," a theory that hasn't yet found a fact to suit it; "supply-side" economics, that resulted in the absolutely horrible economy that lost Poppy Bush and in the most horrendous deficit the country had ever seen until W; a conservative Christianity that hates so many other people that one finds it difficult to see who it doesn't hate; and a tidal wave of bogus science and scholarship that is drowning out the serious search for truth.

In every case, the conservative version of whatever position one cares to name is either poorly reflective of reality or completely contrary to it. All pragmatic tests vitiate the conservative beliefs as well. (Supply-side has been tried, for instance, and it failed miserably.) But that doesn't deter a conservative. They just can't be wrong, no matter how wrong they are.

Well all that is the lead-in to today's story of yet another Bushite repeal of the nature of reality. Just as we pointed out yesterday that the Bushies rewrote the most recent EPA report to be much, much, more congenial to their beliefs that it actually was (that is, they falsified reality--which normal people call LYING), today we discover that the Bushistas are quite well tied into the vast right-wing falsehood-generation machine that provides the sophistical flotsam and jetsam to confuse and befuddle those who are just seeking truth. Read it and weep some more:

Isn't "Conservative Truth" an Oxymoron?

We've been trying to get it across for months now, and we know from our comments and emails that some of you are getting the message, but too many are not getting it. So we'll say it again in caps:

THIS CROWD OF POWER-HUNGRY, GREEDY, UNSCRUPULOUS, MENDACIOUS WORLD-DOMINATORS WILL STOP AT NOTHING TO BEND SOCIETY TO THEIR WILLS. THEY WILL LIE SHAMELESSLY, FALSIFY ANY INFORMATION, CORRUPT ANY PROCESS, BUY ANY COOOPERATION, ELIMINATE ANY OPPOSITION, BREAK ANY LAW, EVADE ANY SUPERVISION, VIOLATE ANY RIGHTS. THEY HAVE CREATED A PRE-FASCIST SURREAL NIGHTMARE IN WHICH ALMOST NO ONE CAN KNOW THE TRUTH BECAUSE THEY OWN NEARLY ALL THE CHANNELS OF INFORMATION. WE ARE LIVING IN 1984. WE ARE LIVING IN THE MATRIX.

WAKE UP!

FIGHT THE BUSH MACHINE HOWEVER YOU CAN. YOUR VERY EXISTENCE IS AT STAKE.

HELLO? CAN YOU HEAR US?

BUSH: STILL HIDING THE TRUTH ON 9/11

Of all the innumerable despicable things the Bushistas have done since they usurped power, the lowest has to be their determined coverup of what actually happened up to and including 9/11.

The following article describes how family members who had a loved one die on 9/11 is suffering while the Bushies do everything they can to stymie the work of the 9/11 commission--after having done everything they could to make sure there would not be such a commission.

Bush is Lying About 9/11

Family members can't understand why the work of the commission is not being covered by any of the major newspapers or media outlets. They are invited repeatedly to be on news shows, but always cancelled before the event occurs. They don't understand why no reporters seem to be following their stories.

This neglect of serious news that is not favorable to the current administration is such a widespread pattern that the nincompoops and sheep that cannot think for themselves can't perceive it, because there is no news outlet that will present any conflicting information to them.

But it is not an accident. It is the direct consequence of conservative ownership of the media. For God's sake--why does W skate on every single stupid, mean, vicious, rotten, or incompetent thing he does? Why does the media still present everything he says as truthful after he has told so many different lies in so many different ways at so many different times? Why do they still treat him with deference and refuse to look into his actions after he lied the country into Iraq and killed thousands of people including our own citizens, whereas the entire media apparatus of the this country did nothing but scream incessantly and investigate continually during the whole Clinton administration?

The pattern is not difficult to discern if you are not mesmerized by the spin that the major media want to inculcate into you. The people who own the media are Bush-backers; they have already made billions on favors that the Bushites have done for them; they expect to make biillions more. So no upsetting the apple cart. Report little criticisms, but always take the edge off them by treating Bush respectfully (unlike the way they treated Clinton) and going beyond to the limits of journalistic ethics to make the irrational and mean-spirited policies of the conservatives actually sound plausible and public-spirited.

This is not to say that the media moguls owe any ultimate allegiance to Bush. Being the thoroughly cutthroat conservatives that they are, they would tear into Bush like Freddie Kruger at a teen girls' sleepover if one of his immoral or illegal actions finally becomes a story that they cannot hide, spin, or play down. "There is always another puppet where he came from, and since he's going down anyway, we might as well make money off that too."

It's up to us to give them the story they can't hide. And it's not like there aren't hundreds of impeachable offenses Bush has committed. We just have to latch onto one and not let go until they media have to follow us and do the investigating that they are supposed to do.

Please: pick you favorite Bush crime, and make it your crusade until the next election. Write letters to the editor, alert all your email buddies that you want someone to investigate, start pen-pal circles, give soap-box orations, find others who are just as outraged as you.

Maybe we can shame the media into doing their job on at least one issue. If they would just look into ONE Bush crime, the dam would burst. And they wouldn't even have to look hard to find thousands more, because the public record is full of them. (If you haven't seen the George W. Bush Scorecard of Evil at WageSlave.com, which is a public record of Bush's crimes, check it out here: Scorecard.)

I, for one, cannot wait for the day when the Bushites' arrogance, immorality, and superiority finally brings their house of cards crashing down into the pre-Cambrian muck where they belong. On that day--champaigne!

Utinam America libera esset! (Would that America were free!)

BUSHITES: HOW A REPUBLICAN LIES

Here's a story on how the White House completely altered their own EPA's report of the state of the environment to suit their pollution-creating cronies:

Bushites: We Just Say What We Like!

This is a public example of what conservatives have been doing for 30 years now with their "think" tanks, with their ideologically driven moles inside academia, and with industry-funded "research" institutes designed to spew out junk science to overwhelm legitimate scientific studies.

The problem that conservatives had back in the late sixties and early seventies, before they started building their massive propaganda machine, was that serious scholars and scientists were producing an overwhelming amount of information that debunked almost every knee-jerk conservative prejudice.

"Laissez-faire capitalism is the best economic system!" they screamed. Unfortunately, real economists learned that this is not true, when both studies and mathematical models showed that unrestrained capitalism leads to both economic and social disaster.

"Cutting taxes is the solution to every problem!" they yelled. Unfortunately, real social scientists, economists, and political scientists all came to the conclusion that a sound, progressive tax policy is far more beneficial to the nation as a whole than a serviceless government.

"America is Christian nation!" they shouted. But real historians knew better, and were able to point to the documents that prove the opposite.

The conservative "revolution" of the past thirty years has succeeded on the efforts of a phalanx of conservative money pouring into all sorts of fake scholarship, fake philosophy, fake economics, fake politics, and fake science--all designed to bury the truths that are already known under an avalanche of garbage. Don't like the real truth about how America history? Well, then, just get a bunch of fake historians to write a new history that buries the truth under a pile of half-truths, selective quotations, slanted writing, and even fabricated "scholarship." (Check out Lynne Cheney's rewritings of actual history for a good example of how this is done.)

The result: after thrity years, utter CRAP about what this country has done, how it was built, what its founding principles were, and how its democracy is supposed to work is now passed off by nearly half of the voting public as truth.

They can't fool all of the the people all of the time YET.

But they sure are working on it.

CONSERVATISM OUT OF THE CLOSET

The retrogressive, mean-spirited, and above all SELFISH character of conservatism are now starting to be paraded blatantly by those who have come to feel that the conservative agenda cannot be stopped.

One of the leaders of modern political conservatism, Grover Norquist, has stopped pretending that he has any concern for the public welfare, and has simply outlined the conservative agenda for the future for all to see: the destruction of everything that benefits anyone but conservatives. Now it is quite clear that his entire project has always been cut out the heart of American democrary and that all of his posturing about the public interest was just so much conservative hypocrisy--as we have said all along.

Here is David Broder's report on Norquist's coming out of the closet:

Broder: Norquist Reveals Plans for Conservative Tyranny

All nations have a rising trajectory that is eventually followed by a falling one. If we don't stop the conservatives soon, the descent will accelerate, and America will flame out.

Get involved. Do something to stop the bastards!

BUSH: DESPICABLE SHAM

There aren't many politicians out there who have the guts to tangle with the Republican message-enforcement machine that tries to ruin the lives of anyone who even thinks of dissing their puppet-in-chief, W.

Here is one. Max Cleland, who was probably beaten in the last election by vote-rigging of Republican-manufactured voting machines that could not be checked for accuracy after the election (according to the makers), was back speaking to a group of young democrats last weekend, and he pulled no punches on how reprehensible, vicious, and immoral W and his policies are.

If you want to see what courageous opposition is like, read this:

Cleland: Bush Tyrannus

I provide the ending just to give you an idea:

We know that we did not have enough adequate intelligence or coordination among our intelligence agencies to stop the terrorist attack on Sept. 11, 2001. Now we are learning that we did not have enough adequate intelligence in terms of knowing why we were going to war in Iraq. We went to war in Iraq because of weapons of mass destruction, but we have not found any yet. Is that a fault of our intelligence community? Or was it just plain deception on the part of the administration? Who knows? The Congress needs to fully investigate the rationale and outcome of the war and explain to the American people who knew what and when did they know it. If the Congress does not do its duty, the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States on which I sit should take the mission on itself. The American people need to know who was accountable for the war in Iraq and why the cream of American youth was sacrificed. To try to look for justification for the war after our young men and women are buried is immoral, unjust, and unacceptable Before we go to war the next time, the president must be fully truthful to the American people and the Congress, and we should know what we are doing and why. That includes straightening out the intelligence community.

These are just some suggestions that I feel should be taken seriously because we are in a serious war with serious consequences, and the young people of America have the most to gain and the most to lose by the successful defense of the greatest country in the world. To try to look for a justification for the war after our young men and women have been buried, is immoral, unjust and unacceptable.

Go get 'em, Max!

BUSH: MORE ON THE LIES

Today's Washington Post has an insider's story of how the Bushistas faked the evidence that their puppet used to lull laissez-faire Americans into condoning the attack on Iraq. If you want to be informed rather than just duped, read this:

Top Intel Officer Trying to Oust Bush

And as if to confirm everything said by those of us who are convinced the Bush and his boys are the most mendacious, power-hungry, thuggish caricatures of statesmen even to hold high office in the U.S., we learn today that they will not even investigate the secret Iraqi files that could tell the world whether there were any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq! Check out the story:

U.S. Not Interested in the Truth

Why aren't the Bushites interested? Maybe because they know that the files will show Iraq was not an imminent threat to anybody?

These people are bottom-feeders, folks. We need to start making serious plans to get rid of them as soon as possible.

OK, so now both Bush and Blair have been caught lying at the same time about the supposed WMC in Iraq:

Trailers Not Related to WMD After All

Get wise people: these guys have suckered their people into killing thousands and demolishing a nation that was no imminent threat. They should be removed from office immedicately.

BUSH: NO ONE TO BLAME

The Bush junta has made a mess of so many things in its short occupation of the government that America is now threatened with becoming a third-rate power in less than a decade. Of course, the conservative media has given W a pass on every screw-up. He's anointed by the media owners, so their underlings won't bring any real criticism to bear on him--though no chief executive in our history has ever needed more critical scrutiny.

Maybe the issue of the lies that got us into Iraq will finally be the issue the press can't ignore. They are trying very hard to ignore it, but perhaps enough of the American people still have the wits to understand that W's lies getting thousands of people killed is truly evil. Perhaps they will feel that he needs to be called to account for this particular evil in a way that they have not seen necessary for any of his other evil actions until now.

Here is an article showing that people are not going to allow the Bushites to pin the blame for their self-aggrandizing lies about Iraq on others.

CIA not Going to Take the Rap

If we can all just keep the focus on this one outrageous Bush action instead of being constantly distracted by the hundreds of outrages the administration is perpetrating every day, perhaps this issue will be the thin edge of the wedge that finally gets the media into a competent scrutiny of this tryrannous junta.

Vivat libertas!

BUSH: AT LEAST ONE DEMOCRAT IS ATTACKING

Here is the latest paper from Henry Waxman calling for a public investigation of the Bush junta's attack on Iraq. He's got all the info on Bush's repeated lies that set up the invasion, and why we must get to the bottom of their bloody operation before we all become slaves of the fascist conservative tyrants.

Waxman: Bush's Lies on Iraq

DOES ANYONE REMEMBER WHEN AMERICA WAS PROGRESSIVE?

Everyone under the age of 25 needs to read the following speech delived by Bill Moyers at the recent Taking Back American conference held in Washington. Moyers lays out the history of progress for working people and average folk that had been made in the twentieth century up until the conservative revolution of the 1980s.

Moyers: How It Was Before Conservatism

There is a better, a more charitable, a more just way to run things than the small-minded power-mongers of conservatism can ever imagine.

Let us change their minds for them by standing up against them and drowning them with the opprobrium their meanness deserves.

Dump Bush in '04. And all Republicans with him.

BUSH: STUPID IS AS STUPID DOES

The front pages of both the Washington Post and the New York Times have stories today about Bush's anger at Israel's bombing of the West Bank in spite of his posturing about the so-called "roadmap for peace" between Israel and the Palestinians.

These guys just don't get it. And it's not that hard to get: Bush has NO CREDIBILITY AT ALL in matters of peace any more, since he advocated and used pre-emptive force. When he took the U.S. into Iraq without the sanction of international law without any real evidence that Iraq was even planning an attack on the U.S., he showed the whole world that no nation should prefer peace to war if it feels it can get its way by war. Is any nation on earth going to restrain itself from using deadly force on the say-so of a person who has proven that he will use it if he feels so inclined?

This is just another of the long line of outrages perpetrated by the imposter president and his handlers. For a brief summary of the principal damage done since W usurped the office of chief executive, here is a speech given recently by Sen. Jim Jeffords (I-VT) at the National Press Club:

Jeffords: Bush the Moron; or, Does He Think We Don't Notice?

If Clinton's people had caused 1/1000th of the number of debacles or comitted 1/1000th of the number of crimes of this administration, the cost of special prosecutors would have exceeding the entire Federal budget. But W and his handlers get away with hundreds of impeachable offenses every month! Unbelieveable!

BUSH: THE IRAQ LIES THAT WON'T GO AWAY

As we have often pointed out in this space, the Bush junta is a lie machine that pumps out mendacity with shamelessness and in unprecedented quantities.

Why anyone in his right mind would give Bush any credit at all for even the minimal standard of truth-telling that could be called "decent" is beyond understanding. The man has spent his whole life lying about everything to everyone, even to himself. And he's so stupid that he often doesn't even know that he's lying to himself.

But the lies he told about Iraq--or, should we say, the lies he was told to tell about Iraq (since it is clear to anyone with eyes to see that W is not the author of any US policy, because that kind of thinking is above his brain grade)--will not go away. They will not be swept under the carpet by the spin and distraction generators in Carl Rove's office or at the RNC. These pollutors of public information cannot diminish the growing sentiment that Bush and his handlers lied us into war.

Why not? Because American soldiers--braver men than Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Perle and Wolfowitz, who never went near combat--are continuing to die half a world away while the pretext that sent them there to shed their blood continues to become thinner every day. More and more people are beginning to see that their deaths served no purpose but to aggrandize Bush and the Bushistas, both politically and financially.

Here is a link to an article written by an average guy asking simple questions about the debacle in Iraq, questions that anyone with a functional mind would be asking:

Do They Think We're Stupid?

It says a lot about the current state of the press in this nation that not one major journalist is asking any of these questions. Are they all brain-dead? Aren't they concerned at all that their reputations will suffer for their lack of intelligence?

The answer to both questions is no. The journalists know full well what they are doing. Their bosses don't want them crawling all over W the way they did over Clinton. And they won't antagonize their bosses, or diminish their prospects for advancement. They also know that their bosses have waged a thirty-year-long crusade to dumb down the American people to the point of uncritical submission to media images, so that virtually no one will call them on their abject dereliction of duty, on their cowardly avoidance of the virtually infinite number of stories that would make it clear to the entire world that W and his handlers are in the process of dismantling American justice and freedom in order to hand over the remnants to the wealthy and the powerful.

If you are more discerning than the majority of people who aren't even smart enough to vote, or than the minority of people who are so twisted and selfish that they actually see Bush as their savior, you owe it to yourself to investigate the following website, which is just about the only place to find out about the absolutely abysmal state of the media in America:

The Daily Howler

Please educate yourselves. The more you look at what the Bushites are doing, the more you will see how corrupt and degenerate they are.

Unless, of course, you don't WANT to see.

That would make you--how does one say?--"conservative"?

RETURN TO HAMMERING CONSERVATIVE BAD GUYS

The Hammer's brief hiatus was briefly prolonged due to unavoidable travel glitches.

But today we are back at our desks, once again detailing the misdeeds of the ideologically blinded right-wing luncatics who are temporarily in charge of our poor nation.

While we were away last week, the ever mean-spirited Tom DeLay (R-TX) let loose with yet another indicator of the true inclinations of today's conservatives. When it was revealed that Republicans in Congress had stripped the provision from the latest tax cut that would have provided the parents of 11 million poor children with a $400 tax credit (which, by the way, more affluent parents WILL be getting), even Republicans in both houses started scrambling to find ways to fix that obvious injustice.

Not the redoubtable DeLay, however. His response: there are plenty of "more important things" than that.

This is who the Republicans really are. Not only do they tell us that their tax cuts are good instead of evil; not only do they try to bribe everyone with some share of the spoils from their tax cuts; but then they fail to come through for the neediest portion of the population while shunting all the benefits to the rich. And then they have no shame about it.

Conventional wisdom in recent years is that there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That is flatly untrue. The main difference (discounting the fact that Democrats are not able to be nearly as corrupt as Republicans because their message of protecting the underprivileged doesn't appeal to the moneybags who fund the GOP with staggering amounts of graft) is that most Democrats still have a functioning sense of shame, while most Republicans have only a vestigial conscience. And quite a few of them, like DeLay, don't have any shame at all.

This is important. It means that there are some things that most Democrats won't do, some arguments that they can't make without giving themselves permanent pangs of guilt. This is NOT, as conservatives seem to think, a weakness. It keeps you honest. The person who has no second thoughts (like the current usurper in the White House, as we are told by Bob Woodward) is either a fool, or a dangerous lunatic, or (like the current usurper in the White House) both.

Republicans, on the other hand, spend so much of their psychic capital devising justifications for policies that are blatantly harmful to the average person that they can no longer distinguish what is just from what is unjust. And then they keep following leaders who have risen to the top precisely because they have no consciences, no ethics, and only sham morals--people like DeLay, Bush, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz--who keep providing them with ever changing, ever more sophistical justifications. It's hardly surprising that there is hardly a single Republican left who can see their leadership for the disgraceful collection of barbaric thugs that they actually are.

We need to get DECENT people, not sham, moralistic Machiavellis, into the important offices of this nation. Unfortunately for Republicans, this means removing almost all of them from office, because they are made indecent either by their mean-spiritedness or by their ignorance or by both. Perhaps another generation in the political wilderness will teach them that this nation does best when it tacks closest to its founding principles of justice and equality, not when it swings round them to promote the principles of power and privilege that should be foreign to the constitution of any DECENT citizen.

BUSH: THE PILE OF SHAME KEEPS GROWING

Today the Hammer is just going to put up several recent items that go on the top of the heap of evidence showing the current administration as the most corrupt and degenerate that America has even had to suffer.

Item 1: Bush and his handlers LIED REPEATEDLY ABOUT WMD IN IRAQ.

KRUGMAN: Lying SOP for Bushites

This piece is about a TRANSCRIPT of a conversation between Colin Powell and Jack Straw that took place on the day before Powell's "tour-de-force" at the UN. It shows that both of them knew the claims about WMD in Iraq were inflated.

Item 2: Michael Powell, Bush's head of the FCC and shill for the corporate conservative media, pushes through rules that will at last turn the public airwaves over to the greedy and propagandistic conservative media bosses.

PAINE: Son of Powell Sells Out the People

Powell was determined to do this ever since Bush gave him the job. No amount of public input would have deterred him; indeed he didn't seek any public input. (He also took plenty of media money for high-life trips to exotic destinations WHILE IN HIS POST.) He got plenty of input from outraged citizens, however: by some estimates, the FCC received three-quarters of a million letters and missives on the issue, the vast majority of which were against Powell's plans. But this obviously wasn't enough even to delay the vote. At any rate, Congress can change the outcome here, and it seems to be saying it will. (See this link from the office of Sen. Fritz Hollings: Hollings, Among Others, Set to Reverse FCC Rules Changes.)

Item 3: John Ashcroft, Bush's lunatic Old-Testament Attorney General, has trampled on rights since 9/11.

Ashcroft, Fascist Apparatchik

The Justice Department's OWN INVESTIGATOR says that Ashcroft is over the top vis-a-vis the Constitution! What's going on here? Are the Bushrats starting to be flushed out by the decent public-service professionals that have to live under their oppressive jackboots?

Item 4: Bush junta has appointed yet another fox to guard a henhouse--the creature put in charge of the Air Force Academy sex scandal is a (what else?) radical conservative who hates women in the military.

Making Sure the Military Don't Take Another Black Eye Like Tailhook

More standard operating procedure for the Bushites: put the WORST QUALIFIED PERSON POSSIBLE in charge of things, then act outraged when decent people question that person's fitness for the job.

Item 5: Bush is the worst performing chief executive ever.

The Numbers Don't Lie

The above link takes you to a series of charts that shows how deeply into the bovine excrement Bush has submerged the nation. Be prepared to see the massive underperformance of the nation under the "leadership" of our utterly ignorant, under-performing, sham president.

Item 6: And finally, a note about the sterling "character" of our posturing commander-in-chief--he's petty, venal, and stupid beyond belief.

THOMAS: Bush Just Loves Revenge

This says it all. Bush is the least competent, most vicious leader this country has ever had. No wonder the whole world hates us.

That's all for today. And for a while as well, for the following reason:

ANNOUNCEMENT FOR OUR REGULARS

The Hammer is going on vacation for a few days. We'll be posting again next Sunday if all goes well.

We are sure that the evil will continue unabated until then, and that the Bushites will give us more than enough to write about when we return.

CONSERVATISM: MORAL BANKRUPTCY WITH ATTITUDE

As usual on Sundays, the Hammer softens the blows on the Bushites to turn to more a general focus on the baseness of the conservative ideology. Today's topic is the utter amorality of conservatives with regard to their fellow human beings, and their hypocritical portrayal of their amorality as supremely moral.

This week, conservatives in Congress quickly and secretly stripped the child care credit provisions of Bush's massive tax=-cut bill from the most needy families in America, leaving some eleven million children in poverty without the benefits which will accrue to middle-class families. Of course, W signed the huge giveaway to the wealthy instantly, before complaints could arise. Then he went behind closed doors and signed a whalloping increase in the national debt to pay for the giveaway.

Here is one story that describes the last minute change to the bill in conference committee:

Republicans Shaft the Poor--Again

Republicans claim that they had to cut the poor out because of the Senate's refusal to vote for a tax-cut rated at more than $350 million. But if you read down in the story, you will see that they had a CHOICE: they could have reduced the dividend tax repeal--which is targeted, of course, at the most affluent--rather than cut out the poor.

Anyone who has lived in this country for the past century is a complete idiot if he doesn't understand that conservatives don't care at all about the general welfare. Conservatives fought desperately the antitrust laws that put an end to the robber barons of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. They fought fiercely against the labor laws that prohibited child labor and gave actual legal rights to the average working stiff. They fought doggedly FDR's New Deal, his work programs, his Social Security program, and his minimum wage program. You can follow the trail of mean-spiritedness and lack of compassion throughout the twentieth century, getting meaner and more pitiless from the rise of Reagan until now. But this is not a history lesson. Look it up.

With this long track record, it should come as no surprise to anyone that, when given a choice between the poor and the wealthy, conservatives will choose the wealthy. And that's what they've done again, true to form. It's selfish, it's uncompassionate, and it's dishonorable; but that's conservatism through and through.

Now it's bad enough that such people ever find themselves near enough to power to make the rest of society suffer, but to have to put up with their unremitting hypocrisy about their true motives is more than anyone should have to bear. It would be one thing if they would just own up to their base and self-centered beliefs, and say straightforwardly what they want, why they want it, and how they will use their devices to get it. But they can't because (1) the decent people in society would not let then get away with it, and (2) some of them need to hide their scurrilousness from themselves. The result is a culture of hypocrisy that makes their twisted souls even more gnarled and blackened.

So it's something of a refreshing twist when one of the conservative terminators simply comes out and acknowledges their complete unconcern for others, and their complete disregard of any standards of truth and public virtue.

Here is a link to an article that details one such refreshing moment:

Convervative Editor Admits Right-Wing Bias and Mind-Control Function of Media

Please give it a quick read if you want to understand how conservatives are twisting the national consciouness to their purposes. The last line give some hope to those of us who see the dangers of the current social climate, so let us leave you with it:

[W]hen conservatives can speak so openly about the emptiness at the heart of what they do, it's a sure sign that they've gotten cocky -- and as The New York Times is discovering, arrogance always precedes a fall.