BUSH: USING EXECUTIVE ORDERS TO BREAK THE LAW

Since the beginning of his usurpation, W's handlers have been using his ability to sign executive orders as a way to break laws that are on the books. You may remember the executive order that simply did away with 12-year limit on confidentiality of presidential papers, which was certainly done to keep hidden incriminating evidence against Poppy Bush from his time as Vice-President under Ronald Reagan. This 12-year limit was a law enacted by Congress, and executive orders cannot supercede established laws, or else the President would be above the law. (And by using the executive order as he has, W has become above the law. But that shouldn't surprise anyone; conservatives do whatever they want and then try to squirm out of their punishment later.)

So here is the story of another executive order issued by W in May of this year that essentially makes Cheney's oil-industry buddies, who have been given carte blanche by the Bushies in Iraq, completely immune from any sort of lawsuit stemming from any sort of wrongdoing they may commit in Iraq.

Bush: Letting Oil Companies Rape and Pillage at Will

Anyone who believes that we are still living in a just and equitable land with a living Constitution is utterly blind. We now have an administration, much like the Nixon administration but infinitely more brazen, that cares nothing for law, for the other branches of government, for the people, or for the Constitution. If they can't get what they want legally, then they simply "interpret" the law in their favor; if that doesn't work, they have W sign an executive order that nullifies the law that is in their way.

This is not a democracy anymore; it has become a tyranny.

CONSERVATISM: HOW IT RUINS PEOPLE'S LIVES

Here is an op-ed that shows how wrong-headed conservative policies are not merely forgiviable mistakes, because they actually ruin people's lives--which anyone with an ounce of compassion could tell would happen on first glance. (You may need to complete a free registration to access this article.)

Conservatives Hurting Americans

Because their policies are so blatantly and obviously harmful to the average person, conservatives have had to build up a monstrous media machine to keep blaring simplistic slogans, sophistic arguments, and deceptive disinformation at the uncritical public. Only with their overwhelming command of the media have conservatives managed to deceive about 50% of the voting public (largely dimwitted white males, but also dimwits from other demographic groups) into imagining that their uncompassionate and destructive policies are actually defensible.

Two things could turn this around: intelligence and satire. Right now, only John Stewart on Comedy Central's The Daily Show is providing this much needed antidote to conservative venom.

America needs many more John Stewarts. Let's start looking for them NOW.

BUSH: LYING REPEATEDLY DOES NOT MAKE IT SO

From top to bottom of this horrendous Bushista junta, those populating the offices of the executive branch have always used a single modus operandi: lie, lie, lie, lie, lie. If you tell the same lie enough, they seem to think, people will buy it. After all, the Republican media machine has proved that to be a fact for thirty years. And if the first lie stops working, come up with another one and try repeating that; and if that doesn't work, try another one.

It's this pattern of deception that has created the problems that are finally starting to take a toll on the Bushites. Of course there were a few intelligent people around to point out, over and over again, how virtually everything said by Bush and his handlers has been false. But no amount of lying seemed to strike the great mass of brainwashed Americans as important until now. Lying about tax cuts, lying about health care, lying about the environment, lying about labor laws, lying about affirmative action, lying about the judiciary appointment, lying about 9/11--none of it seemed to matter.

But now, finally, they have been caught out in a matter that even the lunkheads can't ignore: lying in order to take us to war and get American soldiers killed. That, it seems, is just about the only thing that could penetrate the cone of silence set up by Karl Rove and the conservative media to surround the great volume of evidence about Bush's breathtaking mendacity--evidence that goes all the way back to his AWOL "service" during the Vietnam War.

Here's an article by Helen Thomas noting what is now finally causing the brainwashed masses to get their first inkling of what anyone with discrimination has known from the beginning: that Bush and all his puppeteers are the most evil group of lying conservative thugs ever to grab hold of power in the US--and that includes Nixon and his henchmen:

Thomas: Bush Can't Lie His Way Out of This One

We here at the Hammer are trying to keep you informed of the destruction being dealt to our once great nation by the hellish minions of conservatism. But the task is far, far more work than any single information source can handle, because the sources of right-wing disinformation are so numerous that they blot out the few sources dedicated to revealing the truth about the thoroughly rotten administration that has usurped control of the executive branch.

So we urge you to keep yourself informed. Look for sources of information on the internet, the one medium not yet fully controlled by conservatives. Keep pressing to get past the ubiquitous spin of the conservative media that always paints the Bushites in the best--or at least the least damaging--light.

And keep watching this space for continued revelations about how conservatism and its vicious spawn in all three branches of government are working to destroy the rights of all Americans to resist the control of the wealthiest, most intolerant, most bigoted, and most ignorant elements in society.

BUSHITES: NO DEBASEMENT TOO LOW

A special update on today's information: the Bush people are actually intending to set up a "futures market" in which investors would bet on whether various world leaders might be assassinated, or various world landmarks attacked, or various world governments deposed.

Does this sound too bizarre and depraved even for the most morally bankrupt, ethically corrupt, and thoroughly evil administration in American history?

Well, it's not! Here is the link:

Bushites Become Bookies on Atrocities

We are sure that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, known as DARPA (the same people who brought us John Poindexter's outrageous Terrorism Awareness Program to spy on all Americans) has some theoretical rationale for this disgusting program--something to do with statistical analysis and high-level mathematics. But the difference between conservatives and decent people is that the latter know that there are some things that should not be done, even if they seem useful in the abstract to attain one's ends, because they are disgusting or repellant or devious or predatory.

Betting on people's deaths is certainly such a thing.

But we guess that the conservatives behind this plan wouldn't have any idea that this little invention of theirs lies deep within the realm of inhumanity. It's just not something that ever concerns them, since they always seem to get whatever they want, no matter how deviant their devices.

BUSH: NEW REVELATIONS

Just a short list of articles revealing more of the baseness endemic in the current administration of usurpers.

First, an article on the secret UK operation to "sex-up" Iraqi WMD reports:

Brits Made Up Intel for Bushite Lies

Second, an ex-CIA agent tears Dick Cheney's recent "defense" of the administration to shreds:

Cheney a Big-Time Liar

And third, a little piece on how even the TV pundits are starting to bite at the pants legs of administration shills:

Russert Bites Wolfowitz

Just our attempt to keep you informed of the evil done by this appalling "government" of ours.

BUSH: IRAQ LIES LAID OUT IN MAJOR NEWSPAPERS

Since the American press is either controlled by conservatives or a captive to its own storyline according to which the Bushites deserve complete suspension of disbelief on the part of all people everywhere, it fall to the relatively few wealthy people in the world who have functioning consciences to try to make a dent in the block-headed determination of many Americans to see nothing at all suspicious about the Bush boys.

So some rich people have gotten together to place full-page adds in major newspapers, just to try to make Americans AWARE of the numerous lies Bush and Co. used to get us into Iraq. Here is a link to a story about the ads:

Bush Lies Posted in Advertisements

It's like spitting into the wind, but nothing else has made a dent in the prejudice for W yet. Let's hope this makes some headway.

BUSH: ANOTHER STATE-OF-THE-UNION LIE

While the Bushistas are trying to make the Niger-uranium lie in W's State of the Union speech go away, yesterday's release of the 9/11 congressional report points up another lie in the speech that was intended to scare up support for the neo-con war-fever: that Iraq had ties with al-Qaida.

Here is the UPI story that debunks that lie:

Another Lie in Bush's State of the Union Address

And here is a significant passage:

"The report shows there is no link between Iraq and al-Qaida," said a government official who has seen the report.

Former Democratic Georgia Sen. Max Cleland, who was a member of the joint congressional committee that produced the report, confirmed the official's statement.

Asked whether he believed the report will reveal that there was no connection between al-Qaida and Iraq, Cleland replied: "I do ... There's no connection, and that's been confirmed by some of (al-Qaida leader Osama) bin Laden's terrorist followers."

The revelation is likely to embarrass the Bush administration, which made links between Saddam's support for bin Laden -- and the attendant possibility that Iraq might supply al-Qaida with weapons of mass destruction -- a major plank of its case for war.

"The administration sold the connection (between Iraq and al-Qaida) to scare the pants off the American people and justify the war," said Cleland. "What you've seen here is the manipulation of intelligence for political ends."

Just as a point of comparison, here is what W said in the aforementioned SOTU speech:

"Evidence from intelligence sources, secret communications and statements by people now in custody reveal that Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of Al Qaida."

Is that a lie? You judge. In one sense, hardly anything W says could be a lie because of his monumental ignorance. In order to tell a lie, one has to know what is true, and one has to intentionally say the opposite of that truth. But since little Georgie knows practically nothing, just about everything that comes out of his mouth could be sheer ignorance speaking instead of an intentional falsehood.

On top of that, there is the absolutely clear fact (clear, that is, to anyone with the intelligence not to be blinded by prejudice) that W will say anything his handlers want. Since he is a massive mouthpiece, it would be hard to tell whether he himself is aware of the lies his has been given to mouth.

But in that case, he is just a puppet, and the American people deserve to know that they were taken into war by the likes of Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Perle on an armada of deceptive lies.

All the members of the Bushist junta have been lying constantly from day one of the faux administration--from W himself to Ari Fleisher, from Cheney to Micheal Powell, from Rumsfeld to Condi Rice. All you need to do is arrange chronologically some of the statements from any one of these players and then match them up to reality, and you can see the deceptivenss quite clearly.

Here is an article that does the work for some statements of Condi Rice:

The Amazing Stories of Condi Rice

Shifting lies like this is very reminiscent of Watergate...

Speaking of which, you may want to take a look at this article from CBS News's Dick Meyer, who sees the same similarities:

George W. Nixon

CONSERVATIVES: PSYCHOLOGICALLY DAMAGED

As we have been pointing out in the space for months, the basis of conservativism is a thoroughgoing selfishness that cannot understand the notion of enlightened self-interest, so that it refuses to give up anything that it considers its own--even if relinquishing it might help everyone.

Now studies have been done that support our view of conservatism. Check out this article from UC Berkeley, in which researches conclude that people who lean to conservative views tend to have similiar psychological outlooks on life:

Conservatives Have Nasty Traits

The following brief passage from the article says a lot:

[A]t the core of political conservatism is the resistance to change and a tolerance for inequality, and that some of the common psychological factors linked to political conservatism include:

* Fear and aggression
* Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
* Uncertainty avoidance
* Need for cognitive closure
* Terror management

In coming posts, we will continue to analyze why conservative attitudes such as these are extremely detrimental to society as a whole, and to many individuals in society.

But let us note here briefly that the five asterisked traits listed above are the very LAST characteristics that one would want in a leader. And, unfortunately, our current puppet-in-chief has all of them in spades.

BUSH STACKING COURTS WITH EVER MORE HORRID "JURISTS"

Here's an article from the New York Times on William Pryor, W's latest nominee to a high court seat.

Bush Likes His Judges to be Conservative Lunatics

The article hits the high points of Pryor's unfitness for judicial work:

Mr. Pryor, who has been nominated for a seat on the Federal Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, based in Atlanta, has views that fall far outside the political and legal mainstream. He has called Roe v. Wade, the landmark abortion-rights ruling, "the worst abomination" of constitutional law in our history. He recently urged the Supreme Court to uphold laws criminalizing gay sex, a position the court soundly rejected last month. He has defended the installation of a massive Ten Commandments monument in Alabama's main judicial building, which a federal appeals court recently held violated the First Amendment. And he has urged Congress to repeal an important part of the Voting Rights Act.

Then it goes on to note how the Republicans are dealing with those who, disagreeing with right-wing crazies, oppose Pryor's nomination:

Moderates in the Senate and in the legal community have repeatedly called on the Bush administration to stop trying to stack the federal judiciary with far-right partisans like Mr. Pryor. But the White House and its supporters have chosen instead to lash out at these reasonable critics. In a shameful bit of demagoguery, a group founded by Boyden Gray, a White House counsel under the first President George Bush, has run newspaper ads accusing Mr. Pryor's critics in the Senate of opposing him because he is Catholic.

For conservatives, disagreement signifies perfidy. They don't seem to understand the notion of principled opposition; they require absolute obedience. And if they don't get it, they immediately resort to underhanded tactics to try to bully others into conforming.

And sure enough, that's what happened this morning when the Judiciary Committee had to vote on sending Pryor's nomination to the floor of the Senate. Chair and inverterate hypocrite Orin Hatch ignored a procedural rule that should have required the committee to investigate reports of Pryor's engaging in illegal fundraising tactics and perjuring himself in front of the Senate. He simply ignored the rule, and called for a vote, which predictably ended up being along strict party lines.

So now the nomination of this utterly unsuitable candidate will go to the full Senate. Thankfully, Democrats are determined to filibuster, and this may prevent the nation from having to suffer under the burden of yet another right-wing idiot who cannot understand the distinction between his personal religious beliefs and the law.

But if the filibuster should fail, we would have to rely on there being at least two Republicans in the Senate who have enough integrity to stand up to the bullying of the majority of their party members and vote against confirming Pryor.

We are not willing to put any money on that.

BUSH: STILL TRYING TO HIDE

In case you hadn't heard: the Bushites trotted out another scapegoat today to try to take responsibility for W's "misstatement" about the Iraq-Niger connection in the State of the Union speech.

Stephen Hadley, top aide to Condoleezza Rice, tried to get W and his boss off the hot seat by claiming that it was his mistake, not theirs.

Here's the link:

Who Moves Bush's Mouth?

If the Bushites, and W himself, had not mercilessly castigated Al Gore for "lying" about things he never said or dates that he mixed up, the current bumbling attempts to save W from his own mouth would just be pathetic. But having made so much of other people's purported faults, this attempt to save W's skin smacks of deep hypocrisy and deceptiveness.

On the one hand, one would be hard pressed to make the case that Bush was intentionally trying to deceive America; but that is only because he is so incredibly stupid that he probably actually believes everything that fits in with his own utterly ignorant views, especially if it is fed to him by his handlers. So if one wants to believe that W is "honest" by dint of his abysmal thick-headedness, then one could probably make a case for it.

On the other hand, the history of W's dealings and double-dealings, both as governor of Texas as resident of the White House, show that he often lies just to get what he wants. So he's not Mr. Honesty, no matter how much right-wing wackos wish it to be so.

What is worse, however, is that the Bushites are now having to admit that W is just a mouthpiece; it's the only defense he has. He was just reading what somebody else put in his speech. It's not his fault. But that means, as we have been saying in this space for a long time, he is just a puppet, a ventriloquist's dummy whose words are thrown into him by some off-stage puppetmasters.

So the Bushies are stuck with only two choices: either W is blameless for what he said AND he is a puppet; or W is responsible for what he said AND is to blame for misleading America. These are the best alternatives they have to work with--not an enviable selection.

But we who are not trying to defend him don't have to make a choice. We can combine the two propositions into something much nearer the truth: W is a puppet who is so maleable that he actually allows himself to be convinced by the lies of his handlers; thus he shares responsibility with them for not having the integrity or the self-awareness to know that he is utterly unsuitable material for the position of US President, and that the only reason he is in the office is that powerful people knew that he could be used to further their own ends.

Stupidity is sometimes blameworthy.

To end, here is a column by Richard Cohen underlining Bush's puppet status:

Bush: Useful Idiot

Here are the first few lines:

Is George Bush the Iraq war's "useful idiot"?

The phrase was coined by Vladimir Lenin to refer to gullible communist sympathizers who swallowed whole the party line. They believed what they were told, and what they were told was mostly lies.

It could be somewhat the same with Bush.

We think that is putting it generously. Sure W is stupid enough to believe whatever is fed to him, but he is also self-centered enough (a conservative trait) not to care what anyone else thinks--even when many other people's lives are at stake.

And that makes him, like many of the ultra-conservatives who admire his arrogant idiocy, extremely dangerous.

BUSH BACKTRACKING AGAIN

None of the excuses the Bushites have been using to try to get out of the Iraqgate brouhaha have worked so far. And rightly so--misleading the nation into war is a much more dastardly act than lying about consensual sex. But as Bob Graham noted, this Republican House of Representatives would not impeach W for ANY reason, certainly not just for getting thousands of Iraqis and hundreds of American troops killed. Such things are just the costs of "decisiveness" to a Republican.

But we detect that the tide is turning against the Bushites. Look at this link to an AP story:

Bush's Excuses Not Working

Check out the headline:

White House Credibility Defense Shifting

And the first two paragraphs:

WASHINGTON - The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others, stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it will go away.

So far, none has worked.

We were astonished to see such negative language about Bush in a mainstream media article. As we have often noted in this space, conservative control of the mainstream media has all but stifled critical coverage of the Bush junta. The 600-pound gorilla that is corporate media control blocks serious criticism by allowing a few liberal commentators of even-handed temperament to make mild critiques while having literally thousands of conservative mouthpieces in print and in talk radio and on cable TV and in numerous think tanks shout down any opposition with rabid attacks on any who would dare uphold liberal values.

The fact that such a negatively phrased article even exists indicates that things may be about to go sour for the Bushites, who have managed to hide their malicious activities in broad daylight by pulling the wool over the eyes of an incredulous public who bought all the media hype about Bush's "likeability" and "moral clarity." It's amazing how much bull people will buy if they are scared or just prejudiced. Of course 94% of Republicans still think W is the bee's knees. Their minds are closed as tightly as an airlock on the space shuttle. And many Americans went over to W's side as a result of 9/11: they were so scared that they had to turn to the only White House resident there was, and so he had to be good, strong, and true. (Despite a long track record of deceit, double-dealing, and bullying.)

But now it seems that some are starting to see more clearly. Not Republicans of course, but Democrats are starting to see that Bush was not worthy of the trust they put in him after 9/11, so the Democrat disapproval rating is going up to about what it was after the 2000 election. And what is even more encouraging, independents are turning away from the junta as well.

Perhaps this is the beginning of the end for this horrid regime. But there is still time for them to use their detestable tactics to try to hold onto their ill-gotten power. Another "unforseen" terrorist attack might quash the current mood for investigation. Of plain old bullying might put down the uppity masses.

Take for instance the intimidation tactic the Bushites have used against Joe Wilson, the formed ambassador who spilled the beans that Cheney had ordered him to go to Niger and find out the truth about the forged documents W cited in his State of the Union speech. In typical conservative fashion, the Bushistas retaliated against his family for this transgression: they outed his wife, a career CIA agent, endangering her, ending her career, and sacrificing a delicate mission she was on. Here is the link to the story:

Bushites Intimidate Potential Witnesses

Clearly the junta is sending a message: rat on us, and we will screw up your life REAL good.

That's democracy, conservative-style.

And that's why we need to take all power away from conservatives, whose selfishness extends to destroying others to protect their ability to misuse power.

CONSERVATIVE METHODS

As we have often mentioned in this space, the essential core of conservatism is a thoroughgoing selfishness that knows almost no restraint.

The Machiavellian gnomes who are currently in control of America--that is to say, the neo-con cabal that includes Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Perle, and many others (Bush himself is just too stupid, in our opinion, to be anything more than a congenial puppet of these malevolent trolls)--represent a deep vein of the conservative spirit. Their values are bedrock conservative values; they believe, as do most conservatives, that any means is fine as long as it attains the end. One would be hard pressed to find a conservative who would admit to believing that, but that's because hypocrisy is also a deep-seated conservative trait.

It is now no longer a secret that Cheney and his gang have been using the CIA for their own ends, as we pointed out in yesterday's post. Does it matter to them that the credibility of the CIA will be tarnished? Of course not. They got their war; it is irrelevant to them who got trampled on the way to it.

But it is not irrelevant to career CIA people. Here is a story from CBS News on how the CIA people feel about the deceptive use of selective intelligence data by the Bushites:

Bush People Stink Up Intelligence

One quotation from this article sums it all up:

Raymond McGovern, a former CIA analyst and supervisor, says, "Never before in my 40 years of experience in this town has intelligence been used in so cynical and so orchestrated a way."

Until Americans wake up to the horror that is their own government, until they take down this cadre of usurpers and replace it with leaders who actually have a care for the good of the people rather than their own aggrandizement, we will never see a return to the freedoms bequeathed to us by our founders.

BUSH: THE IRAQ LIE BEGAN WHEN CHENEY GOT INTO THE VP'S OFFICE

Here is an article that tells all one needs to know about the constant stream of lies, prevarications, misdirections, backtracks, non-responses, and so forth that have been streaming out of the White House about the Iraq debacle.

As soon as he was illegally installed by the Supreme Court, Cheney started creating "intelligence" that indicated Iraq was much more of a threat than it really was.

Here's the link, from the Chicago Tribune:

Stacking the Deck Against Iraq

The day will come when this administration will be presented in the history books as the most corrupt and vile government this nation has ever known.

We can't wait for that day.

BLAIR: STATELY BRITISH SOPHISTRY

Today's post was going to be a listing of some more deceit coming from the Bushites about the Iraq intelligence, like, for instance, this link showing Bush himself lying transparently about the the events leading up to the war when he claimed that Iraq did not let weapons inspectors into the country:

Bush Rewrites History Again

or this link that shows that George Tenet is not really taking the fall for the Bushistas, since he seems to have given up the neo-con Bushite liar who insisted on including the Iraq-Niger allegation in Bush's State of the Union message even though everyone knew it was spurious, namely (as if we couldn't have guessed), Paul Wolfowitz:

Wolfowitz Puts Lie Into Bush's Mouth

But that was before the stunning speech given by Tony Blair to a joint session of Congress this afternoon sucked all the oxygen out of the news cycle.

To give him his due, Blair took the breath away from the assembled politicians. They are not used to listenting to a leader who actually understands the words that are coming out of his mouth and can therefore deliver them with convincing force and cadence. They've been listening to the human mannequin W for three years, who can barely pronounce the words his handlers put in his mouth, let alone grasp their sense. So it's only natural that the Congressmen and Congresswomen would be impressed by the skills of someone who is a decent orator.

But that said, Blair's speech was nothing but an emotional appeal, an attempt to revive the sense of fear that was kindled by 9/11 and that led us off on a stomping spree to try to beat some little countries up out of vengeance for our suffering.

The only passage in the speech that really made an attempt to justify the attack on Iraq was notable for its sophistry. If we, that is Blair and Bush, were wrong about Iraq's WMD, said Blair, then the worst that has happened is that we have eliminated a brutal dictator--which action history will not judge harshly. If the critics who are blasting Blair and Bush for the use of pre-war intelligence were wrong, he said, and we had not taken action against Iraq, then the death and destruction that would have resulted from that lack of action will have been judged very harshly by history.

Very tricky. But don't be fooled. The apparent conclusion of Blair's rhetorical flourish is that it doesn't matter whether or not Saddam had WMD; in any case, history will judge that we did the right thing. But this is just the appearance of logic. In fact, Blair's own language gives away the game. Blair's use of the hypothetical "if" demonstrates the truth about all the Downing Street/White House lying that is going on: NEITHER BLAIR, NOR BUSH, NOR ANYONE ELSE ACTUALLY KNOWS WHETHER IRAQ HAD WMD. In other words, we attacked Iraq without knowing whether it really represented an imminent threat.

So history will have a different basis on which to judge the attack on Iraq: Whatever turns out to be the case about WMD in Iraq before the attack, the war was started on the mere SUSPICION that Iraq was a threat. Bush and Blair have the historical burden of being the first modern leaders of so-called democracies to set the precedent for preemptive war, and to establish the maxim that powerful nations may attack and subdue weaker nations on the mere suspicion of bad faith.

Pardon us for taking issue with such an illustrious speaker as Tony Blair, but we believe that history will judge Bush and Blair very, very harshly for setting this barbaric precendent.

Unless, of course, all history in the future is written by amoral, power-worshipping conservatives.

BUSH: LIES ARE COMING HOME TO ROOST

The Washington Post published a front-page story today that shows that virtually all the garbage used by W and his crew to scare America into their Iraq adventure was known to be false before last January's State of the Union speech. Here is the link:

Bush's Lies Coming Out into the Open

And here's a New York Times article that shows the White House strategy to fend off the nation's completely appropriate concerns that they were fed a load of bull by Bush and Company:

Bush Tries to Claim Furor Over his Lies is Just Politics

And here's an excellent blog-commentary on the above article:

Bush: Filthy Liar

And here's a commentary from Buzzflash showing that it wasn't just "16 words" that presented lies in W's State of the Union recitation last January:

Bush: Serial Liar

And here is Michael Kinsley's recent column that shows even Bush's "16 words" to have been a deceitful utterance.

Kinsley: Bush Can't Even Avoid Lying for Sixteen Words

Face it, America, you've been played by the most degenerate gang of conservatives ever to wrest power away from the decent people of this nation. We were around during Watergate, and we thought that Nixon's crew was the most despicable gang ever to hold the executive branch. But the Bushites outdistance the Nixonians by thousands of light-years.

This disgusting bunch of pathological power-mongers and deceptive creeps knows no parallel in the history of our nation. It does have a parallel in the history of Germany. Let us just hope we can uninstall them before they undermine every last vestige of democracy in our nation and establish their fascist dreams on the ruins of our liberty!

Let us end today's post with a prayer a la Pat Robertson (who recently commanded his congregation to pray that God remove three Supreme Court Justices so that W and his crooked Republican Congress can stuff the court with moronic ideologues in the image of Scalia):

Dear Lord of Hosts, Almighty Defender of the Downtrodden, Author of Justice and Tolerance, Thou Who reserveth Thy wrath for those among us weak human beings who presume to substitute their judgment for Thy Judgment and who enjoy condemning their fellows when they themselves are the vilest abominations of selfishness on the face of the earth; Dear Lord, for the sake of the poor and dispossed throughout the world who are soon to become even more destitute under the crushing weight of the arrogance now being displayed by the heinous usurpers of office in the most powerful nation our world has ever known; we humbly beg of Thee this gracious boon: that Thou mightest smite the Pretender George W. Bush, and his secret puppeteer Dick Cheney, that Thou also mightest smite their minions Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Condoleeza Rice, and Colin Powell, so that, showing Thy displeasure with the selfish and intolerant conservatives who are driving Your grace, mercy, and love out of the world, we might be better able to replace all conservatives in government, and finally usher in the age of Thy Peaceable Kingdom upon this earth. Amen.

Does that sound silly? You bet. But that's the kind of crap you get from nutbags like Pat Robertson and the rest of the religious right all the time.

Which points up what we have been saying all along: it's not just the Bushies that need to be gotten out of politics; they are only the tip of the iceberg. It's conservatism itself--the whole world view based on narrow self-interest and refusal to be governed by laws mitigating self-interest--that needs to be eradicated from the political scene. Only once conservatism has been expunged as a political force will our still young democracy be able to thrive once again.

CRIMINAL CONSERVATIVES

Just some brief notes today on criminal behavior by Republicans.

First, here's some more information on the legally adjudicated CRIMES committed by Republicans during the aftermath of the 2000 election. Note the secretive mystery man, and the refusal to answer questions about how high up in the Republican hierarchy the criminal behavior goes.

Republican Lawbreakers in Florida and Beyond

Second, continuing the comeuppance of the Bushites on their twisting of intelligence to get them into Iraq, a brief note on W's idiotic attempt to defend himself yesterday: he actually said that there wasn't any doubt about the intelligence on the Niger uranium issue until AFTER he gave the State of the Union Speech in January. Here's the link:

Bush Screws Up the Story Again

And here's an excerpt from the article:

Bush said the CIA's doubts about the charge -- that Iraq sought to buy "yellowcake" uranium ore in Africa -- were "subsequent" to the Jan. 28 State of the Union speech in which Bush made the allegation. Defending the broader decision to go to war with Iraq, the president said the decision was made after he gave Saddam Hussein "a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn't let them in."

Bush's position was at odds with those of his own aides, who acknowledged over the weekend that the CIA raised doubts that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger more than four months before Bush's speech.

The president's assertion that the war began because Iraq did not admit inspectors appeared to contradict the events leading up to war this spring: Hussein had, in fact, admitted the inspectors and Bush had opposed extending their work because he did not believe them effective.

The Bushites must be livid with their puppet, who is so massively stupid that he either can't keep the fabricated story lines of Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al. straight, or is so utterly uninformed that he doesn't even know what all these press people are on about.

In either case, he is an idiot, a dunderhead, a dimwit of the first water. Just what we need in a puppet president, no?

Hello, America? Do you get it yet? You've been taken by a bunch of mendacious conservatives, who, true to the conservative code, will do and say anything in order to get their way.

Can we dump them now?

BUSH: A PUPPET LYING

The Bush junta is still reeling from the blow of some Americans finally getting wise to their mendacity. The Sunday talk shows paraded Rumsfeld and Rice around; they made the usual unbelievable claims about the administration being above reproach. But they sure looked bad doing it. Rumsfeld especially was looking haggard and worn out from constantly having to contrive new lies. Both of them were parsing words more carefully than Bill Clinton. It was good to see them sweating for a change.

Rice at one point said that it was ludicrous to believe that Bush took us to war on the basis of the nuclear threat. And she's right. There are only two reason why the Bushites went to Iraq: 1. to fulfil the long-standing neo-con dream of American hegemony in the Middle East, which includes controlling the world price of oil and undermining all the Arab nations to the point of becoming vassels of the US, and thus making Israel safe from its neighbors; 2. to provide a bona fide "war" for W to preside over, to be used for political capital in the coming elections. Everything else this administration says about Iraq is bull dung.

Today W was once again asked about the pre-Iraq intelligence. Perhaps you saw this sound bite on the news: the faux commander-in-chief said that he thought the intelligence was "darn good," and then he presented to the camera that patented Howdy-Doody, utterly vacant half-smile that shows he hasn't a clue about anything in the world. If the American people cannot take just one look at this pathetic ignoramus and see that he is completely out of his depth and thus a puppet of more intelligent powers (especially Cheney, who is the real spider at the center of all the evil being done by this administration), then there is probably no hope for this nation. When so many people are so totally undiscerning, one cannot expect any outcome but tragedy.

DON'T GIVE US THAT RIGHT-WING RELIGION!

We were listening to C-SPAN's Morning Journal today and were unfortunate enough to hear their interview with Andrea Lafferty, Director of the Traditional Values Coalition. This group is a political front for a large group of right-wing religious organizations (sometimes called "churches"), which seeks to use secular-sounding language to inject their fundamentalist religious beliefs into public policy.

It was no surprise to hear that Ms. Lafferty's group is ecstatic about the performance of their adored leader, George W, who has pumped more ersatz Christianity into American politics than the religious right could ever have hoped for.

Although it was rather trying to have to listen to yet another religio who still, after over 225 years of American independece, does not get the idea that religious dogmas have no place in the enlighted politics bequeathed to us by the founders, it gave us the idea for today's commentary: the philosophical reason why right-wing religious fanaticism cannot fail to decline as a political force in the years to come.

The religious right has managed to capture a certain segment of the political discourse in America by trying to divest themselves of certain religious trappings. All the talk about "traditional values" or "family values" or "moral clarity" or "pro-life activism" or any of a thousand other euphemistic names used by the right are specifically designed to give the impression that the positions designated by these names are legitimate positions to take in the sphere of public debate. They could never expect to be treated seriously--nor should they--if they were to use names that correctly identify the religious beliefs that energize these positions. If they were screaming about "Christian values" or the "Christian family" or "Christian morality" or "Christian anti-abortion activism" they would be rightly cut off from public debate because religious beliefs, since they are by definition ultimately based on faith instead of reason, have no place whatsoever in the deliberations of a nation based on rational self-governance.

In addition to the gross unsuitability of religious belief as a basis for government, there is the arrogance of the Christian right's attitude. Their religion is the master religion; they may tolerate other religions, but they will never grant them equal status. That will not endure them to people of other faiths.

Finally, the pathetic ignorance and blindness of the fanatic fundamentalist mindset will eventually end up destroying the credibility of the religious right with the vast majority of decent people. When it becomes clear that the sort of simple-minded religiosity of someone like W is fine for getting us into wars we cannot get out of, fine for driving down the economic life of the nation, fine for consigning everyone who makes under $300,000 a year to a lifetime of static income growth, and fine for serial lying while screwing minorities, laborers, students, women, people of color, and anyone with an IQ above 60--that is, when the fruits of the right's labors at last create the living hell that they have in mind for most of America--maybe then we will once and for all be rid of the anti-democratic, inhumane mental illness called conservatism.

BUSH'S WATERGATE?

Yesterday's post noted that the flap over W's lies about Iraq in the last State of the Union speech were finally catching up with him.

The heat was getting too high, we guess, because last night, the Bushistas let loose one of their patented Friday night surprises. (The Bushites have taken to releasing their most mendacious spin just after work on Fridays, when the media A-team workers have left for the weekend, because that gives them two whole days--not to mention the Sunday talk shows--to control what goes out to the media by having their lackeys and stooges repeat the party line to B-team "reporters" who simply transmit their propaganda without critique.)

George Tenet, head of the CIA, after weeks of denying responsibility for W's lies about Iraq, suddenly changed his mind and fell on his sword for his fuehrer, claiming that he bore the blame for W's lie about the British intelligence claim that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material from Niger.

Like so many, many preposterous statements that come from this administration, this one is an outright lie. How do we know?

Check out this story, which shows that Tenet's CIA was trying to get British intelligence to retract its claims about Niger as early as September of 2002, four months before the State of the Union speech. If Tenet was willing to sign off on the claim in January of 2003, why was he fighting it the previous September?

Because the truth is that Tenet, as he had been saying up to Friday, did not stand behind the British information; that he told the Bushistas not to use it; and that Cheney, Rumsfeld, and Rice wanted to get it in the speech anyway, because they had no other evidence of nuclear capabilities on the part of Iraq, and they desperately needed a nuclear threat to scare Americans into letting them have their war.

The Republican mind-control machine is now repeating the line that this little dust-up should be considered over. The Niger information was, they say, just an aberration, a slip-up, of little consequence. No one should imagine, they say, that W had any intent to deceive the American people. But just for good measure, some of them are saying, Tenet should be fired.

W, of course, is making a show of standing behind Tenet. Oh how loyal is our magnanimous maximum leader! What mercy he bestows on his flawed deputies!

But if this pathetic lying gambit doesn't quiet the critics in a few days, Tenet can pack his bags, because they will sack him. We don't feel sorry for Tenet; he threw in his lot with the devil when he agreed to stay on to work for this morally bankrupt administration.

But we do think that dumping Tenet out into the cold will begin a series of attempts to blame and punish underlings for the nefarious actions of the principals in this faux government. If they can't manage to launch some sort of massive diversion for the media, such as another terrorist attack or another war, the whole affair will begin to be very much like Watergate. And sooner or later, some flunky being set up by the Bushites will figure that it's better for him to give up the goods on the thoroughly corrupt Bushites than to go down quietly.

Who knows? Maybe we will eventually get to witness a REAL impeachment! We hope so. Our entire staff would move to DC just to try to get tickets to the impeachment trial of W! It would be wonderful to see that little troll become as reviled as Nixon. No one deserves it more.

And perhaps we are on the way to that day. The latest Newsweek poll shows W's popularity ratings sinking even faster these days, since the daily toll of soldiers in Iraq is making even the dimwitted understand that our unelected leaders have gotten us into an unnecessary quagmire in Iraq. Here is the link:

Newsweek: Bush Ratings Tumble

The salient figure: W's approval rating is down to 55% from 61% last month and 74% the month before. Apparently the war gamble didn't work: the plan to make W into an unstoppable war-leader seems to have backfired. Not to mention the fact that it got several hundred good American soldiers killed.

Bush is a reckless, heedless, ignorant, amoral puppet of the forces of regression. He lied, and our soldiers died. And more will die every day for W's aggrandizement.

We must stop it, my friends. Join every group you can afford to that fights Bushite policies. Educate all your friends about the many evils begin perpetrated by this corporate shill administration. Sign up family and friend to vote. Sign them up as Democrats. And go out to vote against Bush and all Republicans in the next election. Maybe we can take our nation back from the fanatics who would run her aground.

BUSH: NO HERO

In yesterday's post we mentioned the fact that W skipped service in Vietnam. Judging from some irate email, some people out there are still so uninformed that they think it's outrageous to say such a thing about their beloved maximum leader.

Along these lines: a few weeks ago on CNN's Crossfire, Paul Begala remarked on W's ducking service in Vietnam. Robert Novak shot back that such a comment was libelous and unsubstantiated, and the Begala ought to be ashamed to have made it. Begala was not apologetic.

Nor should he have been. The facts about W's activities during the Vietnam war have been matters of public record since the 2000 election. There is no doubt that his family pulled strings to get him out of regular service, and that he did not even fulfil his obligations to the reserve unit to which he was assigned. But the lapdog conservative press have simply refused to make this information widely available to the credulous masses, who appear only too happy not to be bothered by facts.

There are many, however, even among the military, who know full well that their "commander-in-chief" wouldn't put his life on the line for his country. They might not have liked it when Clinton used his student deferments to get out of service in Vietnam, but they could write that off to his liberal degeneracy. Bush, on the other hand--with his smarmy moral superiority and his cowboy, tough-guy posturing and his aircraft carrier photo-ops and his willingness to have the aura of military patriotism rub off on his image--is an out-and-out hypocrite when it comes to military service. And the fact that he uses his "rugged leader" facade to whip up support to send our troops to their deaths for his gradiose political fantasies is utterly immoral and obscene.

So occasionally we see a letter like the following from a military person published in a local newspaper. This person is fully informed about the facts of W's military record, and lays the whole sordid story out quite clearly. We provide the link, but since its the last item on the page and rather difficult to scroll to, we also provide the whole letter:

Bush: A Coward by Any Other Name

Bush, military

President Bush's theatrics aboard an aircraft carrier were yet another effort to portray him as a warrior. This is his "military record":

--Despite scoring 25 out of 100 points on the National Guard's entrance exam, he jumped 500 qualified men for a commission.

--Former Texas House speaker Ben Barnes testified under oath that he exerted influence to get Mr. Bush a slot in the unit.

--In Mr. Bush's final year of obligated service (1972-73), he did not fly at all and absented himself from duty. He lost his flying status in 1972 after failing to appear for his annual physical.

--According to his commander, there was no record of Mr. Bush attending training for that period. We in the military call that being absent without leave.

--During Mr. Bush's presidential campaign, his staff couldn't provide any proof of service for that period.

Instead of being a top gun, Mr. Bush appears to be the little man who wasn't there.

The aircraft in which he landed was a Viking S-3, not a fighter jet.

What is most egregious is that Mr. Bush and his cronies denigrated real heroes such as former senator Max Cleland, who lost three limbs in Vietnam; Sen. John F. Kerry, D-Mass., holder of the Silver Bar, Bronze Star and three Purple Hearts; and Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a hero by any measure.

In their usual shallow ignorance, the media hyped the use of photo opportunities instead of presenting the truth.

Those of us who have worn the uniform and fulfilled our sworn obligations are offended by this cynical abuse of the uniform for political gain. Such abuse of an honorable symbol is despicable and deserves censure.

M.G. JOHANCEN
Annapolis

This is what W is: a fake leader, a fake tough-man, a fake human being.

BUSH: IRAQ LIE ADMITTED

Well, well, well. It seems that our selected leader is a liar, just as we have been saying all along. Take a look at this CBS report that reveals Bush knew that the intelligence on Iraq's buying nuclear material from Niger was false when he put the information in his State of the Union address to scare the American people:

Bush: Liar Brings Integrity to the Oval Office

The pathetic thing about this story is that the White House, when told by the CIA that the intelligence wasn't there to back up the Niger story, responded that they could get away with putting it in the State of the Union speech as long as they had W attribute it to a British intelligence report--which is exactly the script they had Bush deliver.

If this were not a matter of sending American soldiers to die for a trumped-up cause--that is to say, if this were not a high crime--it would seem almost juvenile. What can W say for himself? That TECHNICALLY he wasn't lying?

Puhleeze. He knew (or more accurately, his handlers and puppeteers knew) from OUR intelligence agency that the allegation was not supportable. He knew (they knew) that the allegation was frightening and incendiary. He knew (they knew) that the misleading information would win points with the American people. And he decided (they decided) to use it anyway.

That's the very definition of a lie: saying the opposite of what you know to be the truth.

And America bought it.

Bush's handlers don't care about this. "So we lied," they are saying to themselves. "What are you going to do about it? We got what we wanted, and you just have to lump it America."

Yes, they got what they wanted all right. They got the rest of the world to hate us. They got their war. They got their dead American soldiers. They got their own Middle Eastern Vietnam that will claim American lives and American treasure for as long as anyone can see. They got their deficit-financed military spending that will bankrupt our children and grandchildren. They got their photo-op of the "warrior conservative" atop an aircraft carrier.

And they got it all just by lying.

The conservatives will now find new ways to excuse little Georgie for his fib. John Warner, Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee (who until a few weeks ago was actually demanding that the White House come clean about what they knew before they conned the nation into invading Iraq, but who was then taken to the woodshed by Cheney and is now toeing the administration line) was on the radio yesterday with a new pitch: well, the line now goes, maybe this wasn't really true, but it was just one piece of a very solid case against Iraq.

Sorry, Senator, but that line isn't going to cut it. Where is ANY of the evidence that W and his handlers promised us? We now know the allegation about nuclear material from Niger was a lie. No biological or chemical weapons can be found. The mobile labs definitely located by Colin Powell have not been found either. Not even a nuclear weapon program has been detected. Their "case," far from being "solid," was a tissue of lies specifically designed to con America into giving them the war that they had been spoiling for ever since W was placed in the White House--the war that would establish W as a macho leader whom America can't afford to remove from office. This is what Republicans do when they get the presidency. Going to war is good politics for the party and good business for the military-industrial complex. And what are a few insignificant soldiers' lives really worth anyway when compared to holding onto power?

The corruption and degeneracy of this administration is wide and deep. It has all the vices of conservatism in general, and it adds to them the vices of tyrannical megalomania and fundamentalist zealotry. Not even Richard Nixon's administration, filled as it was with crooks, liars, and thugs, could hold a candle to this one for sheer viciousness or malicious intent.

Perhaps this admitted lie will be the straw that broke the camel's back. Perhaps the thick-headed mass of Americans who have been supporting this malevolent homunculus who sits in the president's office will finally begin to glimpse the fact that he and his handlers have been playing them for suckers ever since the Republican primaries of 2000. Perhaps they will begin to turn on him now that one of the thousands of lies he has told cannot be waved away. Perhaps they will turn on him and help the rest of us to get rid of him and his puppeteers.

But we're not putting any money on it.

FLORIDA: REPUBLICANS REALLY DID BREAK THE LAW IN ELECTION 2000

For those discerning people who smelled a rat in the Republican efforts to steal the 2000 election in Florida, the Florida Election Commission has now determined that a Republican election official violated numerous election laws by trying to mount a campaign to oust three members of the Florida Sumpreme Court while they were deciding the cases arising from the election fiasco.

The official, Mary McCarty, may be fined up to $450,000 for her illegal activities. Here is the link, which explains a lot about how crooked the Republican post-election effort was.

Republicans Really Did Break the Law in Election 2000

What is particularly interesting about this case is that McCarty claims that she was the "victim" of a shadowy Washington figure named Roger Stone. Here is an excerpt from the story:

[S]tate administrative law judge Harry L. Hooper, who presided over McCarty’s hearing in February on the campaign finance charges, concluded on May 1 that the former Palm Beach County Republican Party chairwoman was little more than a front for a Washington, D.C.-based campaign against the justices, which was organized during the 2000 presidential election recount battle.

That campaign, Judge Hooper found, was orchestrated by Roger J. Stone Jr., a Republican lobbyist and political operative who has said he worked for President Richard Nixon’s Watergate-era re-election committee and served as a campaign strategist for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Stone, who owns a $2.2 million bayfront mansion in Surfside, received $1.8 million from the Miami-Dade County Commission last year for political work he did for the county....

A complaint was not filed against Stone and no charges were filed against him. He never was questioned or offered testimony because neither the FEC [Florida Election Commission] nor McCarty was able to locate him to serve him with a subpoena.

No, America, you weren't dreaming. The battle over the 2000 election was very crooked on the Republican side. We may never know how crooked, because the crooks won. But the notion that the outcome we got was correct and fair is now pretty well debunked.

BUSH: LIES COMING OUT and REPUBLICANS: HOW TO STEAL MORE ELECTIONS

Just two quick bits of info today.

First, the information on Bush's lies on WMD in Iraq is starting to trickle out through holes in the dike of the conservative media. The following article from last week notes a little-mentioned, because the holiday distracted attention, witness's testimony that the Bushites knew the Iraq intelligence was faulty:

Kerr: Intelligence Cooked

But the following article supercedes it, because now even the White House has had to admit its complicity:

Bush Lied

Since the truth is starting to come out, the Bushistas are going to have to manufacture a distraction. Don't be surprised if another war should become necessary. Or if another terrorist attack just "happens" to take place.

And now for something completely different:

Some time ago in this space we warned that the next wave in Republican election stealing would be coming from rigged electronic voting machines whose inner workings cannot be examined by polling authorities, but is only accessible to the (Republican controlled) business owners who make the machines. It is possible that such machines were used to defeat Max Cleland last fall.

Well here is the article that explains how they are going to do it:

Republicans Rig Voting Machines

After reading this, anyone who still thinks that conservatives deserve a place at the table of American politics is truly delusional.

FRANKS: ANOTHER COWBOY

Today, outgoing commander of the Iraq adventure Tommy Franks thought that he could show himself to be just as tough as his commander-in-chief by repeating the same outrageous taunt made by W last week: "Bring it on!" Franks said, referring to Iraqi attacks on US soldiers.

Here's the link: Franks: I'm a Cowboy Too!

That W would inflame Iraqis against our troops was disgusting, but not unexpected from a person of his extremely limited intelligence. He can hardly speak at all without uttering improprieties. But that a senior commander in the military would reiterate the taunt in the full knowledge that our troops would take the brunt of it--that is as close to betrayal of the corps as can be imagined.

Whether Franks thought that this would help out his boss, who has been taking flak for the tasteless and dangerous macho remark (indeed, it wouldn't be surprising if the White House put Franks up to it to show that W is just like one of the military guys, though you'd never see his scrawny butt on the front lines now or in Vietnam, which he "skipped"), or whether he just liked the sound of it, he couldn't have exemplified better what conservatives just don't get about the real world.

Here is the open secret: you can't get what you want just by sounding tough, intimidating people, and throwing your weight around. Oh, it may work for a while. But when you finally cross enough people, they will band together and take you down.

The Bushites have brought the US into another Vietnam. And they are showing that there is difference between a Democratic administration and a Republican one: when faced with such a quagmire, a Democratic administration will try to rationalize it away in a way that may make the situation worse; a Republican administration will get cocky and inflame the situation for sure.

Conservative value No. 37: Always make tough, grunting noises to try to convince the other gorillas that you're the baddest.

BUSH:CORRUPTING THE CIA

Now that the childish self-congratulatory festival called "Independence Day" is over for another year, let us recall why Americans are now living in a pre-fascist state: because the mega-corporations that own Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and their puppet W have near-total control of politics and the media.

The last bastion against corporate control of the nation is the permanent civil service corps of the federal government. There are thousands of decent men and women working hard at keeping our country safe, our people healthy, and our future secure.

But they are being pressured hard by the Bushites to cow-tow to their insidious intentions.

And most of them do cave in. This is not to blame them. What would you do? They have your family's survival in their hands. They hold all the power. That is how tyrants always get their way.

Still some few stand up. Several career foreign service officers have resigned to protest W's arrogant treatment of other sovereign nations. A very few have tried to blow the whistle on shady affairs going on within their organizations on orders from Bushite higher-ups.

When these people could be brow-beaten by their bureaucracies, they have been. When that has not been possible, they have been pooh-poohed by Ari Fleishers people, and then relegated to the backwaters by the lapdog press.

Here is yet another reminder that we are dealing with the most corrupt and evil administration in history. They even have no qualms about cooking intelligence information. Here is the link:

CIA: Bushite Lapdog Agency

The CIA itself has become a political office of the Bushite junta. Nothing that comes from them can be trusted, anymore than a missive from the White House Press Office, or the RNC, or Rush Limbaugh. They are all working for the same end: the destruction of the American ideal that came into existence after the Great Republican Depression of 1929 and the Great Democrat Resurgence of the FDR-Truman years. Republicans have never forgiven America for choosing to discard their selfish ideologies and to become a progressive powerhouse in the postwar years. In their minds, we all have to pay for that clear-sightedness, and they will only be happy when the vast majority of Americans are once again near-slaves, without any federal laws to protect them against their corporate masters. And they are quite close to attaining their vile goals.

Yesterday's festivities were a tragic and ironic comment on America today. While everyone was watching the spectacle of the fireworks, and the dimwitted, thick-brained conservatives were thrilling to the voice of the idiot son W, who recited yet another propaganda speech he could never have written and could barely pronounce, no one was watching as democracy lay writhing in its death-throes at the feet of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and Ashcroft--whose faces all sported the same twisted smirk of triumph. Evil always enjoys watching the death of what is good.

CONSERVATISM: THE STUPID PERSON'S IDEOLOGY

Yesterday's post elicited the following response from a reader:

Jeez, That's One SCARY Article!
I have a question, though.

I think you wrote in your recent post about "being suspicious" whenever the conservatives do something that looks, on the surface at least, like a positive move.

What if you go deeper? What if you get suspicious about everything they do? What if you start to question the end-game? I mean, all these people have children. Some of these people have, or at least want, grandchildren. They're not stupid (with a couple of notable exceptions). They can see where they're heading, SURELY?

So, even just assuming all the above is correct for the moment, what on Earth are they up to?

The dilemma is resolved as soon as one realizes that conservatives ARE stupid, and that they cannot see the direction toward which their selfish policies tend.

There are several kinds of intelligence. In recent years, the notion of "multiple intelligences" has developed a way of looking at cognitive behavior that recognizes intellectual capacities of different kinds. For instance, one person may be exceptionally deft at spatial and topological mental skills, while another may be gifted at abstract reasoning. In the past, society has valued abstract reasoning more highly than other intellectual skills, and has often labelled those who don't measure up in terms of abstraction to be "stupid" or "challenged" or whatever it's called nowadays.

Something like this needs to be applied to the mental processes of conservatives in order to understand the way in which they are stupid. Take the old adage "Penny wise and pound foolish." This marks out a person who is very adept at scrutinizing the tiny aspects of life, but who is not capable of seeing the big picture and making sacrifices today for a future payoff.

It is in this way that conservatives are exceedingly stupid. Because their world-view is firmly rooted in selfishness, they are hardly able to grasp any proposition that entails relinquishing their selfishness for the sake of another payoff. So it makes perfect sense to them that tax-cuts are the solution to everything: they expect a few more dollars in their pockets (selfish); they regard it as only fair since it was their money (selfish) in the first place; they figure that they shouldn't have to kick in to help others (selfish again). What matters is short-term personal advantage--about that they are as intelligent as any Nobel Prize laureate.

But the concept of expanded self-interest, the notion that by giving up some of "their own" privileges they can make others less needy, provide services to the whole society, and thus make their own lives and those of their descendents more stable and more secure--this notion is beyond their limited vision. They are geniuses when it comes to getting theirs. They are dunces when it comes to getting theirs by giving some of theirs to the common good.

But what about their children and grandchildren? Why don't they seem to realize that their policies will destroy any chance at the good life for them? Because, once again, of their myopic notions about what constitutes the good life. They think that they can secure the good life for their dependents by amassing as much as they can, handing it on, and rigging the system so that their descendents will never be forced to contribute to the public good either. By acting this way, they just create a new generation of greedy, selfish conservatives who still fail to see the possibility of a better life for all through mutual small sacrifices. More stupid, short-sighted conservatives.

So we hope that the stupidity of conservatives has been elucidated. They are not necessarily lacking in shrewdness or intellectual acumen. It's just that their perspective is severely limited by their bedrock selfishness, so that they are like morons when it comes to seeing the virtues of generosity and benevolence--even when it comes to their own families.

Perhaps Socrates said it best in Plato's Euthydemus: Even if all the gold in the world were to be delivered to us without any effort at all on our part, it would be utterly useless to us if we don't have the wisdom to use it wisely. That's conservatism: the skill of getting and keeping money in order to use it poorly, both in one's own life and in the life of one's country.

BUSH: SWAGGERING COWBOY BRAVADO IMPERILS TROOPS

Just a brief update on the idiocy of our divinely inspired "leader": Bush is now so arrogant that he is taunting our enemies to kill our own soldiers! Hard to believe? We don't think so--not for a political puppet who hasn't enough sense to keep his mouth shut and let his handers do all the talking for him. Here's the link:

Bush: Come Get Our Boys!

They really ought to just seal him up somewhere and not let him out in public. He's a disgrace to everything decent, and a powerful symbol of the decline in every aspect of American life that has been engendered by the stupidly self-interested conservatives in American politics.

Next post: Why conservatives are stupid. (A response to a reader comment.)

BUSH: THERE AREN'T ENOUGH HOURS

The Bushistas have made a wild artform of destroying everything good about this country. They take so many destructive actions in a single hour that no one can keep up with all the evil that comes out of the administration. It would seem that even the administration itself can't possibly know what all the malicious foxes they have sytematically put in charge of the henhouses are up to at any given moment. When we finally do get rid of this pathologically greedy, deeply mean, and insanely distructive bunch of fascists, the nation that is left will not bear much resemblance to our once proud land.

P. M. Carpenter has chonicled JUST 48 HOURS in the democracy-demolition machine that is the Bush administration. Here is the link:

Carpenter: There's too Many of Them!

Really, if the Democrats can't make hay with all the devastation W and his handlers have done to this country, they just don't deserve to survive.

Some Democrat should just stand up tell the truth to the dimwitted morons who support the tiny tyrant W: you fools have hitched your wagon to a star whose course is destined to take him to the deepest pits of Tartarus; for some ungodly reason, you have chosen to join with a group whose every instinct is to make life intolerable for other people, and whose every solution to every problem is the wrongest possible notion. Their prescriptions for education will leave American children stupider than ever; their prescriptions for economics will leave American workers poorer than every; their prescriptions for the environment will hasten its ultimate destruction; their prescriptions for social security, health care, retirement security, investment, business, media--whatever you can name--will end in destruction.

We, this Democrat should say, We, the Democrats, are telling you all this for your own good. But you in your foolish wisdom continue to believe the Republican snake oil that will take you to your doom. You continue to treat the ignorant, amoral, lying tyrant W like a hero. You continue to elect more and more Republicans to destroy your lives more and more quickly. We are just telling you that we see where they are taking you, even if you don't. And when you finally wake up from your self-induced dream of conservative heaven to find yourself in conservative hell, we will be here for you to turn to for help. But we can't make any guarantees. The longer you let those bastards lose in the halls of government, the more damage they can do; there may be nothing left for us to turn around if you don't stop them soon.

That would at least let people know where the Democrats stand.

Somebody ought to say it.

BUSH: SON OF GOD, and MISCELLANEA

A few days ago, we quoted Chris Floyd in the Moscow Times who quoted Ha'aretz, which quoted Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas, who quoted W himself talking about his preternatural connection to God Almighty.

For those who like to look at the sources, here is the original Ha'aretz article. the quotation is at the end:

Bush: Me and God, Tight and Right!

Today we only have time to point to two links that thoughtful people who see the desperate dangers being foisted upon us by the Bush junta might be interested in. Here's an op-ed by Ted Rall on the complicity of American Democrats in the horrendous pestilence being speard across the globe by W and his handlers:

Rall: Where are the Heroes?

And here is a piece by Charlie Reese that nails the adolescent thinking processes of the conservative cult:

Reese: Don't Confuse Me with the Facts!

Enjoy!