BUSH JUNTA: LYING ABOUT PATRIOT

Of course the Bushites just couldn't wait to get the Patriot act in order to amass more power. Here is an article that peeks into the scummy underside of the Ashcroft-inspired law that gave frightening new intrusive powers to the most ignorantly authoritarian Attorney General ever to hold the position:

NY Times: Despite Denials, Ashcroft Using Patriot for Non-Terrorist Investigations

This morning, the old conservative shill, Edwin Meese, who was on board with Ronald Reagan while he was doing his best to destroy America, was on NBC's Today show defending the Patriot act. He claimed that it had never been used improperly, that critics were just blowing smoke, that the Justice Department would never abuse citizens, and all sorts of similar cant.

Of course, he can't back up any of that, because the Patriot act makes it illegal in most cases to give out any information about what the government is doing. Doesn't that sound like a just and equitable law to you--give the government the power to snoop on anyone it likes and keep the people in the dark? We guess that it sounds just great to conservatives, who seem to be the only ones willing to defend it.

The Bush junta has been hiding its dastardly deeds from the day it took over the White House. By an executive order that contradicted a duly passed law of Congress (for which unconstitutional act alone he should have been impeached), W refused to allow the presidential papers of Ronald Reagan to be released to the public, no doubt to hide the criminal conduct of his father in the Iran-Contra affair. By threats and intimidation, Cheney and the neo-con gang have kept the lid on every challenge to their ideological myopia--from critical reports on the Energy bill written by industry for Cheney, to contrary evidence from the EPA undermining their position on global warming, to backlash from intelligence operatives against their bogus case for war in Iraq. Is it any wonder that such malevolent homunculi would welcome and relish the Patriot Act for its many opportunities to abuse the citizenry without oversight?

On another front: while the White House tries to figure out the most effective way to lie its way out of the Wilsongate scandal (i.e., that someone in Bushite inner circle outed the identity of an active CIA operative, which is a federal crime if not an act of treason [for the latest on this affair see this link, by the journalist who broke the story]), it is also having to lie its way through the continuing failure of the economy. Here is a link that shows consumer confidence at another historic low:

CBS News: Consumer Confidence Plunges

Now, of course, Bush is out there raising record amounts of cash to try to steal the next election as he stole the last (and don't you doubt that the Bushites will make it the most despicable campaign in American history, because the risk of their malfeasance becoming public if they lose power is way too high), and he has to keep repeating the mantra that all will be well once his massive tax cuts kick in.

But who is kidding whom? How can consumer confidence rebound significantly when all the liquid cash has been handed over to the wealthy for whatever purposes they deem in their interests, leaving none for the average guy? Anyone with an ounce of sense over the age of 30 knows that "trickle-down" just doesn't work. It's only the massive selfishness of thoughtless anti-tax absolutists that makes the "trickle-down" pitch successful at all, because they think, in their foolish, near-sighted ignorance, that everything is better if THEY pay less taxes, and they don't care if the rich pay less taxes too.

Of course, the moronity of that reasoning is obvious: when there is less tax revenue, services have to be cut, and maintenance has to be deferred, leading to crises and emergencies that require taxes to be raised, perhaps even higher than they were before they were cut. And forget about the idea of socking away cash during the flush times: how many states were able to convince their citizens that they should not take tax cuts during the boom of the nineties? And yet putting away the cash for the inevitable bad times only makes sense. But the anti-tax nutbags make it impossible.

So W is reaping the harvest that he and his handlers have sown. A humongous crop of lies is beginning to take its toll on this most mendacious of all administrations. A legacy of threats and intimidations is beginning to produce little acts of payback from the threatened and the intimidated, which--if there is any justice in the world--should mushroom into a full-scale revelation of the numerous evils perpetrated by this administration. And a lunatic rush to outrageous tax-cuts for the rich--designed to destroy both the services and the safety nets provided by the Federal government for the average citizen so that the working American will have to return to the capitalist serfdom that reigned in this country before the reforms of the first half of the 20th century--is beginning to unravel the greatest economy the world has ever known.

Can the Bush junta recover from this incipient avalanche? We can only hope and pray that they will not. But it is folly to underestimate the villainy of the Bushites in retaining their hold on power, or the ignorance of the uninformed Americans who continue to support such tyrants.

BUSHITES: LYING JUST CONTINUES

Even after being caught out lying about an Iraq--al Qaeda link before the war, Dick Cheney continues to push the same tired lie. And the press is finally--at long, long last--getting sick of letting the Bushites lie with impunity. Here is a link from today's Washington Post showing that they aren't going to let Cheney get away with it any more:

Cheney Keeps Pushing Lie

This kind of audacious lying is characteristic of the Bushites, and of many conservatives, who seem to feel that if you lie boldly enough people will believe you. Who knows? Maybe the Cheney's of this world actually believe their own lies. But if so, it's just another of the innumerable weaknesses that go hand-in-hand with conservatism.

On that score, let us mention a vignette from yesterday's news, when Bob Schieffer of CBS News was interviewing Howard Dean. Schieffer kept pulling up statements made by Dean years ago, contrasting them with differing statements made recently, and implying that Dean was a vacillating, mealy-mouthed politician.

Dean's response was candid and true in a way that one never hears from politicos. I am a physician, a trained scientist, Dean said. And in science, one learns that one must change one's opinions if the facts change. Therefore changing one's mind is actually a strength in some cases. But this is something that Republicans will never do: if the facts do not support their prejudices--then damn the facts!

So the "gotcha" journalism being practiced by Schieffer is not only crude, since it does not take into account the state of the facts, but it also plays right into the simple-minded prejudices of conservatives, who depend entirely on duping an uninformed and less-than-perceptive public.

Of course Cheney duplicity on the Iraq--al Qaeda link is only a small part of the Bushite mendacity surrounding their Iraq misadventure. Since they had to shift their rationale away from Iraq as an "imminent threat" (there having been none) to Iraq as "liberated victim of Saddam," the Bushites have been misleading the country about the opinions of the Iraqis regarding the American invasion and occupation of their nation. Today's Post also reveals the extent of the administration's misinformation campaign on this front:

Bushites Lying About Sentiment in Iraq

The truth, of course, is that the Bushites led us into a foolish quagmire in Iraq, for no other purpose than to try to establish the feckless, unintelligent, and incompetent George W. as master of the universe before the next election. Hundreds of Americans and tens of thousands of Iraqis have died for W's political ends.

On a different front, as we pointed out yesterday, the Bushites are no longer immune from criticism from the press. It is yet to be seen, however, whether media criticism will rise to anywhere near the level where it should be, given the fact that the Bush administration is the most wretchedly arrogant and power-abusing govenment this nation has ever had.

One item that may push media criticism in the right direction is the flap over the White House's outing of an active CIA agent in pique over her husband's public demonstration that the Bushites were lying about an Iraq--Niger connection. The press are not letting this scandal go--unlike the thousands of scandals that should have been followed up since the first day of W's usurpation. Here is a report saying that the White House says it will cooperate with the Justice Department probe:

White House Pretends to Cooperate

And if you believe that, W has some nice swamp land in Florida that he'd just love to let you have for a steal. The truth is that John Ashcroft will scotch any real investigation by his Justice Department. That is why Congressional Democrats are calling for an Independent Prosecutor. But the Republicans will never allow that, so in the end W will get away with this one too--unless the press keeps at it. So it really matters whether they have changed their stripes with regard to W, or whether their conservative bosses can rein in their lackeys. We poor, suffering citizens can only wait and see if this scandal, unlike the thousands that preceded it, will continue to see the light of day.

BUSH: CONSERVATIVSM FLAMING OUT?

George W. Bush just might be saving the world: by flaming out so spectacularly, he just might put an end to conservatism itself--which would usher in a new era of world peace and prosperity.

Before moving on to our usual commentary, the Hammer would like to apologize for the recent 10-day hiatus of this blog. A death in the family preventing us from filing.

Now to the main event.

With the recent turn in the press against W and his handlers, we believe that America has entered a political turning-point. If you have been following the news for the past two weeks or so, you probably have noticed that the media have been much more inclined to report negative stories on the Bushites than they were previously.

Perhaps this began with Dick Cheney's repetition on Meet the Press two weeks ago of the overused prevarication that Iraq had ties with al-Qaida before the war. After months and months of listening to this lie repeated endlessly by administration officials, for some reason the press finally got incensed and started filing critical stories. Even Rumsfeld, Rice, and W himself had to finally come out and repudiate the linkage that they had been insinuating for so long.

Whatever it was that at long last tipped the press's tolerance for Bushite mendacity, we now find ourselves in a new media environment. It is no longer taboo to criticize the Bushites in the major media. And for those of us who have been railing at their vile abuse of this nation since they stole the 2000 election, this is very good news, because there are mountains of unreported abuses that have piled up in the past three years. Perhaps now some of them will find their way into the consciousness of Americans, whose information sources have been controlled by conservative pressure for so long.

Take, for example, the three negative headlines on the front page of today's Washington Post. First, there is a story that the CIA is finally asking the Justice Department to probe the public betrayal by the White House of an active CIA agent. This happened some time ago: it was the Bushites response to former ambassador Joe Wilson's revelation that he had reported the non-existence of an Iraq link to nuclear weapons to Dick Cheney long before the administration decided to use the false link in its fictitious case against Iraq. The CIA agent in question was Ambassador Wilson's wife. The leak destroyed her CIA career, possibly endangering her life, and was clearly intended to intimidate anyone else who might be thinking of ratting on the Bushites. Here is the link:

CIA Goes After White House Traitors

Of course we all know what Ashcroft will do with the CIA's request. There isn't going to be any investigation of this White House under his thoroughly corrupt rule at Justice.

The second negative story is about the House's determination that the intelligence used to build the case for was against Iraq was weak. Talk about understatement! But at least we are beginning to get official acknowledgement that something was fishy about the whole Iraq venture. Here is the link:

House Begins to Smell the Bushites Stench

And the third negative story bears the title Putin Agrees In Spirit but Little Else, and it tells about Vladimir Putin's refusal to give Bush any real help for his Iraq fiasco. Two and a half weeks ago, this story would probably have been reported as "Putin Agrees to Support U.S. in Iraq" in an attempt to put the best face for W on the disaster he has created.

So, all in all, and agonizingly slowly, the truth about the Bushites is beginning to edge its way into the major media. We can only hope that the coming months produce more and more stories about the reprehensible damage they have intentionally done to our once proud nation.

But the real subject of today's post is the possibility that Bush and Co. are finally driving conservatism off the cliff. Perhaps, having been given enough rope, they are at long last beating the dead horse of conservative "values" to a pulp that can be flushed down the sewer drain of history, leaving mankind to a new and brighter future of hope and possibility.

We say this because it is now becoming clearer than ever that conservatives have NOTHING WHATSOEVER to offer in the field of government.

First, the once much-vaunted prowess of conservatives in the realm of fiscal matters has now shown itself to be non-existent: both the Reagan-Bush I and the Bush II "trickle-down" tax cuts have driven the economy into massive deficits and job losses. So it is clear that the single-track Republican mantra of "no taxes" is utterly incapable of supporting our economy.

Second, the once much-vaunted prowess of conservatives in the realm of national defense has now shown itself to be non-existent: Rumsfeld and his neo-con crew of advisers have ruined the military and have sent them on deadly fool's errands around the world.

And third, there is not an issue left in the whole political sphere on which conservatives hold any credibility. Take for example, their belligerent and completely selfish stand on environmental matters. As has been well known to those of us who are informed enough to see through the flurry of misdirection pumped out daily by the Bushites, this administration has waged a furious war against the environment since its first day in office. Now even the White House's own Office of Management and Budget (which traditionally spins for the chief executive) has had to admit that all the environmental legislation of the past 15 years, almost all of it passed over the rabid vitriol of conservatives, has been well worth the cost for the amount of protection that it has offered to the American people. Here is the link:

Bush Lied About the Environment

Naturally, the Bushites have been saying the opposite ever since they took office, and what is more, they intimidated the EPA into removing the truth from its reports so that they would seem to be following "the science" (i.e., the conservative propaganda created by ideological zealots posing as scientists). Here is a link that exposes an internal EPA memo showing how the agency withheld facts in order to minimize conflicts with the Bushites:

Bushites Lied About Climate Change to Push Conservative Agenda

After reading about such horrendous mendacity and abuse of power, can anyone seriously maintain that these amoral cretins in the Bush junta should be free to walk the streets of America--let alone in positions of authority?

Let us hope that the day of reckoning is coming for the Bushites, and let us especially pray that when they go down they take the whole regressive and inhumane ideology of conservativism with them, so that humankind can begin a new age of peace and prosperity through progessivism.

BUSH: KEEPING TRACK OF THE LIES

The Hammer tries to provide links to sources on Bush administration malfeasance. Apparently, according to your emails and comments, many of you appreciate this service. We understand, since it is very difficult to get information critical of the Bush junta from the largely uncritical, cowed, and conservative media.

One of the facts that is all too manifest to those of us who have long followed W's political "career"--can one call "a career" a work life that has been completely propped up by monied interests and for which the person in question has never shown any real interest, aptitude, or even curiosity?--is that he lies almost continually, day after day, on so many subjects that the mind just boggles at the sheer volume of mendacity that pours from his mouth.

What makes it so completely frustrating is that W, ignorant creature that he is, doesn't seem to understand what he's saying at any given moment, and, on top of that, he doesn't seem to grasp the concept of logical consistency at all. Consequently, he often utters incompatible statements, while the debased "press" never even so much points out the incompatibility.

If that wasn't bad enough, he also doesn't seem to get the notion that an assertion once made ought to be either held onto and defended or repudiated and rejected. He often says things that directly contradict earlier statements. And then his handlers come out and assert (either without argument or with smug sophistries) that there is no contradiction. (They would never let W himself try defend himself. If you let him talk extemporaneously for more than a few minutes he reveals his abject ignorance and his nasty temperament.)

One of the major causes of dejection among liberals since W took the White House is the almost total disregard of his prolific inveracity by the press. How can it be, liberals groan daily, tearing their hair, that W spews out lie after lie after lie and never gets called on it, while Howard Dean misstates a statistic and is hammered for days?

Well, if the press has been largely coopted by conservative control, it is up to the people to do the press's job. One great organization has stepped up to plate here: MoveOn.org, which has started an email service that alerts subscribers (free subscription!) to one of W's significant lies every day. Here is their description of the project:

The Resident says things that are misleading or just plain wrong every day, but most of these statements are never challenged. That's why we're launching Misleader.org, a new website and free daily email service for journalists and the general public to track George Bush's false statements. The daily dispatches will take a 'Just the Facts, Ma'am' approach -- no rhetoric, just a couple of paragraphs we'll email each morning on what the Resident said and why it was misleading or untrue. It's our hope that by doing some of the research for the press corps, we can ensure better coverage of Resident Bush's lies. To launch the site, we've taken out a full page ad in the New York Times titled 'Mis-State of the Union.' The ad reveals how the Resident mislead the nation in his State of the Union speech -- not just on Iraq, but on the economy, the environment, and other important issues. You can check the ad out at: http://www.misleader.org/pdf/nyt

We urge all of you who want to learn just how much this faux president deceives the public to visit Misleader.org and subscribe to the daily email notice from them. Here is an example of what you will see if you sign up--today's email notice:

President Bush Shortchanges Funding for His Own Emergency AIDS Program

The President heavily promoted his emergency relief for AIDS after announcing it at this year's State of the Union speech, signing a $15 billion law to be spent over five years.1 But while the President is publicly calling for full funding, he's actively seeking to underfund his own program.

The President said in Africa this July that "The House of Representatives and the United States Senate must fully fund this initiative, for the good of the people on this continent of Africa,"2 Less than a week later, he sent a letter to Congress asking for 1/3rd less than full funding.3

The law that Bush signed authorized $3 billion a year, but President Bush has requested only $2 billion in his 2004 budget.4 Despite the claim to fully fund the program in the State of the Union, the Bush Administration is now claiming that AIDS service organizations cannot absorb full funding immediately.5 The service organizations themselves disagree with the White House's position.

The Republican-led Foreign Operations subcommittee also disagreed when it approved a doubling of the commitment for the Global Fund to Fight AIDS from $200 million to $400 million, despite a letter from the White House requesting the lower figure. It was later scrapped by the full committee under White House pressure.6

And the bottom line? The president's push for $1 billion less than authorized by Congress (and promoted by the President himself) blocks 1 million people from treatment and nearly 2.5 million new HIV infections that could be avoided.7

Sources:
1. Public Law 108-25; "Activists Turn to United States and Hope," St. Louis Post Dispatch, 6/1/03, p. B4.
2. President's Remarks in Africa, 7/14/03; http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030712.html.
3. http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/press071603_additional.html
4. "US Seeks Cuts in Health Programs Abroad", Boston Globe, 2/5/03, p. A10.
5. Presidential News Conference, 7/30/03, http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030730-1.html.
6. Global AIDS Alliance, http://www.globalaidsalliance.org/press071603_additional.html.
7. Global AIDS Alliance.

Please visit Misleader.org for more information.

On a different topic: Yesterday we pointed out how Christine Amanpour commented on CNN's self-censorship in covering the Iraq "war." Today a followup: Amanpour was, of course, dressed down by CNN news chief for her unforgiveable candidness. Read about it here:

Amanpour Taken to Woodshed

Amazingly, a Fox News spokeswoman made this comment about Amanpour's little dust-up: "It's better to be viewed as a foot soldier for Bush than spokeswoman for al-Qaeda."

It's just like a conservative to see such a base dichotomy where in fact something much more serious is at issue. Amanpour's judgment about her employer is not about whether she is loyal or disloyal to the Bush junta. It's about journalistic ethics, about concern for the truth, about the transformation of an independent news organization into a propaganda machine for conservatives.

But this is characteristic of conservative mind-control. Above all, every explanation must be altogether simple, and cast in the form of "us vs. them." If a criticism is leveled, it must be relegated to the sphere of "them"--God forbid it should be heard, understood, and judged on its merits.

But we have already written about the sort of derangement that is modern conservatism. If it is not a full-fledged mental illness, it is at the very least a mental disorder characterized by paranoia, narcissism, excessive need for simplicity, high intolerance of ambiguity, self-righteousness, combativeness, lack of compassion, inability to imagine the views of others, and lack of empathy.

Case in point: the execrable Rick Santorum (R-PA), who, having cut billions in dollars in aid to one-parent families, said with a straight face on the floor of Congress that taking this money away was a good thing because struggle is good and builds character.

Did Santorum ever have to struggle as hard as these families he's condemning to continual poverty. Did any of the fat-cat conservative moneybags, for whose excessive tax cuts he's worked so hard, ever have to struggle that hard?

Another exhibit: George Will, arch-conservative, is fond of criticizing laws he considers as excessively liberal by claiming that they try to establish fairness where it isn't needed. His favorite line is "well, life isn't fair." As though that was some sort of argument against trying to make society fair! Of course the universe has no obligation to behave evenhandedly or fairly with its creatures. But human beings do. And if they didn't, then the entire basis for justice and the legal systems of the world is fallacious. But a conservative only cares for ethics when his own ox is being gored. Then there is the highest need for principles, for justice, for law. But if it involves someone else? Well, then, life just isn't fair.


It's this sort of callousness and self-ignorance that marks conservatism as an ideology for sick people.

BUSH: HAS THE UNRAVELLING BEGUN?

The Bushites have been lying non-stop since before election 2000. Maybe now the tapestry of lies is beginning to unravel. Today we highlight just a few articles that indicate the unravelling.

First off, this bombshell from the Times of London:

No Weapons of Mass Destruction In Iraq

The Same Story from the conservative Washington Times

The Times indicates that the report on WMD in Iraq due soon from David Kay has been delayed because there is no trace of such weapons. Bush and Blair must be in a quandary about what to do with such embarassing facts. But note that the Bushites are still denying the Times story, and they could make the denial stick by simply putting out the report and spinning it, as they habitually do with bad news.

Here is an except from a CBS News account of the Times story:

An interim report on the search for Iraqi weapons is due soon, but there are indications the reports findings might be inconclusive.

The Times of London reported this weekend that the report had been postponed because of lack of evidence. But CBS News has learned there is no delay.

The Times reports the decision by Britain and America to delay the report's release comes after efforts by the Iraq Survey Group, a team of 1,400 scientists, military and intelligence experts, to search Iraq for the past four months to uncover evidence of chemical or biological weapons ended in failure.

In July, David Kay, the survey group's leader, suggested that he had seen enough evidence to convince himself that Saddam Hussein had had a program to produce weapons of mass destruction. He expected to find "strong" evidence of missile delivery systems and "probably" evidence of biological weapons.

But last week, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he had met with Kay, and that the onetime weapons inspector had not informed him of any finds.

What will Americans think when they finally find out that the Bushites lied to them? Will they ever find out, or will the Bushistas use their press-control powers to prevent it?

Or will they start sending evil master-spider Dick Cheney out on more "spin and slime" missions like yesterday's interview on NBC's Meet the Press with Tim Russert? (Here is the transcript of that interview.)

To give you an idea of how loathesomely mendacious Cheney is, read this account of the Russert interview:

Buzzflash: Cheney Lies with Brazen Coolness

Here is one of Cheney's lies from the interview:

Same on biological weapons—we believe he’d developed the capacity to go mobile with his BW production capability because, again, in reaction to what we had done to him in ’91. We had intelligence reporting before the war that there were at least seven of these mobile labs that he had gone out and acquired. We’ve, since the war, found two of them. They’re in our possession today, mobile biological facilities that can be used to produce anthrax or smallpox or whatever else you wanted to use during the course of developing the capacity for an attack.

And here is Buzzflash's comment:

That Cheney would, once again, make the now totally disproven and discredited claim that U.S. forces seized mobile biological weapons vans is so fraudulent and brazenly dishonest, it's almost laughable. It's the kind of "in your face" repeated lie that you only dare to utter when you know that you can run over anyone in your way.

Cheney is the master liar of the Bushite junta. Perle, Wolfowitz, Rice, and Rumsfeld are major liars as well, but all of them get caught out occasionally. Cheney never blinks at inconsistencies, illogical arguments, or outright lies. And a whole lot of people cannot spot a liar who doesn't give off the body language of lying. That's what makes Cheney the most dangerous man in America.

On another topic: if you want to know why Americans cannot get the truth about what the Bushites are doing in Iraq, just read this piece from USA Today, in which Christine Amanpour, a veteran CNN reporter, explains how CNN was intimidated by the Bushites into reporting the war in a light favorable to the Bushies:

Peter Johnson: Amanpour Censored

And speaking about not getting the truth: The Bushistas have been hiding the true number of American soldiers wounded in Iraq by refusing to announce casualties unless they occur in an incident that involves a death. So soldiers evacuated for medical reasons and injuries sustained in a non-lethal encounter are simply not counted. Here is the link:

The Guardian: Andrews AFB Receives Hidden Casualties Under Cover of Darkness

Note that it takes an overseas newspaper to get us information about what is happening right here on American soil. That's press control.

Now two bits of good news.

First, a Federal Appeals Court has postponed the recall election in California, another Republican attempt to undo a legitimate election.

California Recall on Hold

And second, liberal books are outselling all conservative books combined this fall.

Boston Globe: Maybe the People Have Finally Had Enough of Conservatism

Does all of this add up to an unravelling of the Great Bushite Lie that has gripped American democracy for far, far too long?

We can only hope...

CONSERVATIVES CANNOT CONVINCE ON MERITS

Conservatism is such a bankrupt ideology that it can only convince by means of mind-control and force.

The latest conservative power grab in Colorado shows how desperate they are to take over all thinking people: Republicans in that state are trying to obligate the university system to hire more conservatives. In effect, they want the universities to put politics above education.

Here is the link:

Will Colorado Be the First State to Impose Republican Mind Control on Its Universities?

And here is an excerpt:

When is a quota not a quota? When it benefits Republicans, it seems.

The same party that's been squawking over race-based college admissions now apparently wants universities to check voter-registration rolls when hiring faculty to ensure more conservatives are added to the ranks.

How absurd.

Can't they just be content controlling the legislature, the governor's office, Congress and the presidency without needing more conservatives hired at Colorado universities? What happened to their rallying cry of getting a job based solely on talent and skills?

Republican state Sen. John Andrews has floated the idea of pushing an Academic Bill of Rights during the next legislative session that would encourage state colleges to hire conservative faculty and invite more guest speakers to campus with right-leaning views.

The flap began in January, when Gov. Bill Owens told KOA-Radio listeners that far too many political science professors were liberal lefties. Since then, he and other GOP lawmakers have met with David Horowitz, the conservative leader of Academic Freedom, which pushes for political diversity in academic hires. Horowitz, for his part, says his bill of rights has nothing to do with quotas.

And universities counter that it's only a myth that faculties are overwhelmingly liberal. That's about as laughable as the Republican desire to mandate hiring more Republicans. (A Denver Post survey of political science departments at four-year state schools found five Democrats for every one Republican.)

Owens, for now, says he thinks schools should only be encouraged to hire more conservatives.

Now it's no surprise that conservatives hate academia because its ranks are largely liberal. But, deluded creatures that they are, it never occurs to them that the reason the vast majority of highly educated people are against conservatism is a problem with conservatism, not with educated people.

It's really just this simple: a truly well-educated, widely informed, and benevolent person easily sees through the sophisms and convoluted, self-serving rationalizations of conservative ideology. That is why the vast, vast, majority of all scientists, scholars, and artists are liberal and will always be liberal.

To be truly liberally educated is really quite incompatible with conservatism, because the liberally educated person, at some point life, learns that it's always possible to be wrong. And knowing that makes one undogmatic, compassionate, and flexible.

Contrast this attitude with the masses of lock-step conservatives, utterly certain about their positions, bitterly rigid, harshly judgmental, and thoroughly self-righteous. Such people cannot stand to be within the walls of a true community of learning; they need a community of indoctrination. That is why they have established their own "universities," where conservative dogma can be spoon-fed to gullible youths without the interference of intelligent minds who see all too clearly the holes in the arguments, the bypassed questions, the hidden agendas.

So what is the Republican solution? As always, to try to stack the deck using power instead of persuasion. And they really have no choice, since they cannot persuade a truly open mind.

If conservatives ever begin to gain parity in the ranks of academia, you can be sure that this nation has lost its largest cache of thinking citizens, and the last bastion of resistance to the conservative political mind control that will turn American democracy into a vanished dream.

BUSH: THEY DON'T NEED NO STINKING JOBS!

Like his Iraq policy, W's economic policy (aka "rob the poor, give to the rich") is a disaster.

The Republican's have only one line on economics: get all the money into the hands of the rich as fast as you can. It's always the same old Reagan retread with them. Trickle down economics. It didn't work then, and it isn't working now.

Bush's push to dump money on the greedy capitalists he hangs with was supposed to energize them to create jobs, get factories moving, blah, blah, blah. This is the same garbage they always dish out, and it never works.

Here is the coverage of the latest failed attempt:

Bush Exterminates Jobs

Here's an excerpt:

In three years, Ohio has lost more than 160,000 factory jobs, representing one-sixth of its total. That is but a small fraction of the 2.7 million manufacturing jobs lost nationwide in those three years, many of them because of imports. Some economists say that even with a boom all those jobs are not likely to return.

It was the same in the 80s. Money kept rushing into the hands of capitalists, the deficit kept increasing, and finally the jobs dried up. The capitalists, who were supposed to use their "extra" money to keep workers working, instead used it to speculate on purely finacial transactions, and shipped jobs off-shore for extra profit. Trickledown doesn't work because it depends on the capitalists to be ethical and to care about workers. Yeah, right. For every upright capitalist (and there are a few), there are thousands of uncrupulous ones who don't give a damn about anyone but themselves and their kind.

This is the natural base of the Republican party.

Fast-forward 20 years. Here's W pumping money into the hands of capitalists. Here's capitalists stealing their own companies blind and going offshore to avoid getting punished for it. Sound familiar? That's because it's the one hymn that Republicans seem to know: When will I have ALL the money, God?

There are signs, though, that the people are long last starting to catch on. Here is the latest Gallup poll on W's numbers:

Gallup: Bush Battered

Scroll down a bit and look for "George W. Bush’s Job of Handling the Economy"--a chart that shows the following fact:

Bush receives a 45% job approval rating for handling the economy. This is seven points below his overall job approval rating, and the lowest of the four other approval ratings tested in the current poll.

So maybe people are starting to notice what those of us with a better eye for character knew from the start--that W and his handlers are snakes, swindlers, and amoral thugs. But the fact that it is just beginning to dawn on them means that they are liable to be distracted again. And distraction is the Bushite modus operandi. So we are not out of the woods yet by a long shot. We won't be until these cretins are ousted, and you can be sure that they will do ANYTHING to remain in power, because the scandals will float to the surface pretty fast if they are put out on the street. So expect a massive barrage of distractions to be flung up by every conservative-controlled media outlet for the next year as they try to focus the people's attention elsewhere than on W's mendacity and vices.

Remember what W himself said in a moment of foolish honesty: "You can fool some of the people all of the time--and those are the ones we need to concentrate on!"

What a leader, verdad?

BUSH: TOO BAD HE'S STILL HERE

W and his handlers used 9/11 for political gain, went to Iraq under false pretences of a connection to 9/11, and now have us bogged down in a quagmire that can only end with US humiliation.

For an insight into how Bush cheapened, and conintues to cheapen, 9/11 see this link:

Ted Rall: Bush Cheapened 9/11

And for the pile of lies the Bushites told to sucker the nation into Iraq, see the following link, which demolishes every contention in Colin Powell's bogus show in front of the UN last February:

Charles Hanley: Powell's Battle Cry Fails the Test of Time

On this beautiful autumn day, exactly like it was two years ago, let us remember the thousands of souls who left us then, and are now at peace. We miss them.

BUSH: SAME OLD CONSERVATIVE BS

Bush's worthless speech last Sunday night is finally causing America to wake up to his deceit and hypocrisy.

Those of us who have recognized him as a charlatan all along can only say, "What took the rest of you so long?"

More and more both commentators and comedians are starting to call him by the name he so richly deserves: liar. They are at long last coming to see that he lies constantly, and about far more serious matters than who he is or is not having affairs with. Sending men and women to suffer and die on a deceptive pretext of national defense--now THAT is a high crime deserving impeachment!

Yesterday's New York Times says the truth in the most concentrated form we've seen yet. Here is the link:

Bush a Pathetic "President"

And here is an excerpt:

Despite his tough talk, Mr. Bush seems incapable of choosing a genuinely tough path, of risking his political popularity with the same aggression that he risks the country's economic stability and international credibility. For all the trauma the United States has gone through during his administration, Mr. Bush has never asked the American people to respond to new challenges by making genuine sacrifices.

He committed the military to war, but he told civilians they deserved big tax cuts. He seems determined to remake the Middle East without doing anything serious about reducing our dependence on Middle East oil. His energy policy is a grab bag of giveaways to domestic oil and gas lobbyists. He refuses to ask for even the smallest compromise when it comes to fuel-efficient cars....

Even the administration's foreign policy reflects its tendency to go for quick gratification without much thought of the gritty long haul. The invasion of Iraq appears to have been planned by people who assumed that after a swift military assault, Saddam Hussein would be gone and Iraq would quickly snap into a prosperous, semidemocratic state that would be a model for the rest of the Middle East.

When it turned out that things were far more complicated, the president hedged on the price tag — apparently out of fear that if Congress knew how high the bill was going to be, there would not be enough votes for another round of tax cuts. Congress, however, was happy enough to be deluded until it was too late. Now we know the cost is going to be massive, with much of the tab to be paid by the future generations who will be saddled with the Bush debt....

Mr. Bush is a man who was reared in privilege, who succeeded in both business and politics because of his family connections. The question during the presidential campaign was whether he was anything more than just a very lucky guy. There were times in the past three years when he has been much more than that, and he may no longer be a man who expects to find an easy way out of difficulties. But now, at the moment when we need strong leadership most, he is still a politician who is incapable of asking the people to make hard choices. And we are paying the price.

We urge you to read the whole piece. It is a succinct account of why W never had any right to be anywhere near the White House.

On another topic, we accidentally deleted a comment yesterday from a reader. We don't know who the reader was, but we apologize for this mistake. We believe the record of comments should show all readers' responses. To make amends we will try to give a brief acccount of that comment.

The gist of it, as we remember it, was that our blog on W having to eat crow was too confrontational to be either useful or helpful. The reader said that he or she tried always to find the good in both conservative and liberal positions, and that our one-sided attack on conservatism would only serve to inflame matters further rather than join the two sides in discourse. We hope that we have reconstructed the opinion with some accuracy.

Obviously we disagree to some extent, or we wouldn't have written the blog. As we see it, the time for trying to find middle ground has long since passed. Conservatives long ago decided that the enlightment virtues of tolerance, rationality, honest argument, and republican democracy were just signs of weakness. They decided to use power and money to achieve their ends regardless of the best interests of anyone but those who see the world as they do--a place to get over on everybody else.

In the face of naked power politics and the use of force, only a fool continues to plead tolerance and consensus. Since 1980 the "middle" of American politics has shifted so far right that Barry Goldwater would think he was living in heaven if he were still around. When someone is beating you with a stick, it doesn't make sense to just keep taking the blows while appealing to the antagonist's sense of justice and fair play. He wouldn't be hitting you if he was a decent person.

So the liberal side must put up a fight or be beaten into non-existence. It must keep attacking until people begin to see how they have been conned into acquiesce by conservatives, until people begin to understand that they have to take back what they have ceded to conservatives in order to get back to a "middle" where both sides feel the need for rational compromise. Until conservatives are beaten back to that point (and they must be beaten back, because they have been and are trying to beat their way ahead), reasonable discussion is simply not an option.

Furthermore, in regard to the point about "finding the good in both sides" we have long ago explained that there is only ONE good idea in the whole conservative canon: the idea that what is good in the past should not be overthrown in a headlong rush into the future. Every other conservative idea is a base corruption of that essentially undeniable truth by combination with the vices of selfishness, greed, and ego.

So there really isn't much good to be found in conservatism. And liberals need to keep reminding the people of this, so that they can someday wake up to the fact that conservatives have cornered all the goods while pretending to distribute them to the people.

Consequently, the Hammer will not be looking for "common ground" with conservatives any time soon.

Another reader has called our "W eating crow" post just so much bs caused by our inability to recognize "objective reality," in which, presumably, there are good reasons in the actions of other nations for W and his handlers acting in the unconsionable and even criminal manner they have acted. He directed us to his own blog, which decries the limited intellectual capacities of those of us who have not ferreted out the nature of "objective reality," which seems to be crowded with facts unknown to regular people--facts that not only explain, but also justify the heinous behavior of the Bush junta.

We just point out that NO ONE--not even our perspicacious readers--can know everything, and that even if that were possible, it would still not be possible to decide on the proper response to that fully understood reality without first deciding what sort of person one wanted to be and what sort of world one wanted to live in.

Regardless of what other power machinations are going on among the nations of the world and their armies and their covert forces, the Bushites long ago decided that they were the sort of people who believed in power rather than right, and that they wanted to live in a world where power guaranteed all good things. This causes them to read the very same facts differently than would be the case with someone who believed that right SHOULD make might rather than the other way around.

And this "should," which is in fact the sole spark of hope in the whole of human history, is simply not compatible with any reading of "objective reality"--which is, in any case, a MISreading because of the inevitable gaps in the reader's knowledge. The "should" is the spirit of freedom, the vision of justice that goes out beyond all "objective reality" and reaches toward those ideals that keep humanity striving for progress. The "should" is what keeps pulling mankind upward. "Objective reality" keeps us mired in what is and what has been. The "should" creates all that is progressive, experimental, liberal, and hopeful. "Objective reality" creates all that is regressive, repetitive, conservative, and static.

The Bushites, and conservatives in general, long ago decided to be of the party of "objective reality" and to believe that might makes right because there are so many examples of it in the past and in the present. Had they not chosen to be such people, the events of the past two years might have been very different indeed.

We here at BUSH LUNACY are committed to taking as much power as possible away from the party of "objective reality," so that the party of creative possibility can once again put our nation on the path toward progress in human rights and liberal democracy, which seems to have been the true, if less than perfectly undertaken, historical mission of our nation from its birth.

BUSH: THE FAILURE OF CONSERVATISM

Bush's failure in Iraq is not just a personal defeat; it is the defeat of conservatism itself.

W marched into Iraq in defiance of the world and of all the norms of civilized modern societies on the wings of basic conservative attitudes that are fundamentally wrong and completely out of step with reality. No wonder he got slapped down.

In this case, it was the hard-core conservative belief that power and money are all that matter. With those two well in hand, a conservative feels perfectly confident that he can do whatever he wants, take whatever he desires with impunity.

So in typical conservative fashion, W and his handlers dissed the UN, blew off all critics and protestors, and stormed into Iraq with a criminal invasion, certain that no one could stop them because of their power.

The result: quagmire in Iraq, distrust or hatred from all civilized nations, and humiliation on the world stage.

The same thing happens wherever conservatives gain control. In Israel the Sharon bases his policies on the bedrock conservative notion that the nation will be just fine if enough power can be exerted to destroy its enemies. The result: the worst violence in a decade.

What is reality trying to teach conservatives? That their insistence on imagining that they can protect themselves without anyone's help is utterly ludicrous, for one thing. Now W has to go groveling to the UN, tail between his legs, to try to get the rest of the world to bail him out of the consequences of his arrogant and despicable attack on another nation. The moral of this is not hard to see for anyone intelligent enough to look at reality without ideological blinkers: we all need each other if we are to stay afloat.

But conservatives reject this absolutely obvious truth with a kind of instinctive response that is quite literally suicidal. It's pathological.

So maybe conservatives are killing themselves off. Maybe the advances gained by conservatives in the past 25 years, as destructive and regressive as they have been for the whole world, are part of the plan of Divine Providence to exterminate the infection of conservatism once and for all. By giving them more than enough rope, history perhaps will use their own pathetically misguided delusions to get rid of them.

George MacDonald once said, "Hell has only one principle: I am only my own." Conservatism believes and promotes this principle with all its might.

No wonder conservatives live in hell and bring hell to earth for all the rest of us.

BUSH: HOW DOES THE CROW TASTE?

Puppet-in-Chief George W. Bush had to eat crow last night about his abortive Iraq adventure. It couldn't happen to a more deserving cretin.

Here is the Washington Post's article describing Bush's "speech" on prime-time TV:

Dan Balz: Reality Bites Bush

And here is how the article begins:

After a string of setbacks, President Bush had to confront the obvious last night, that the postwar conflict in Iraq is not going well and that it will take considerably more time, money and sacrifice for the United States to prevail than he had told the country when he launched an invasion last April.

As usual, the Post is being too generous to W. He as royally screwed up everything he has touched, and Iraq is only the most visible and most deadly of his outrageous blunders. Now, long after nearly everyone in the world except American radical conservatives in denial knows how W and his handlers conned America into backing the criminal invasion of another nation, Bush is finally having to bow to reality.

The W of last night's speech was very subdued. No more cocky crapola; no more "we'll do as we damn well please" attitude. He stumbled around the delivery, as if he barely understood the words that were coming out of his mouth. Still he couldn't entirely lose the tone of moralistic imperialism. He doesn't seem to understand that it's incongruous to be telling people what THEY should do when one's own actions are clearly reprehensible.

But he understands one thing: he's going to have to kiss the UN's butt now.

It would be wrong to see this setback as a mere personal defeat for W. What got us into Iraq was not just W and his neo-con buddies; it was the fundamentally distorted attitudes of conservatism itself.

Tomorrow: how W's failures show that conservative ideology has nothing to do with reality.

BUSH: IS THE END IN SIGHT?

Destructive as the Bushites are, they are only a portion of the group of human beings infected with the illness of conservatism. Wherever this scourge of rationality and decency gets a foothold, it soon infects a large part of society, causing mass hysteria, suffering and death, as well as degradation of living conditions for everyone.

We noted some time ago that a study had been done showing the psychologically debilitating effects of conservatism on those who are infected with it. (See Conservatism a Mental Ilness, which is a summary in the form of a reply to ignorant conservative critics.)

Now commentator Phillip Jones has brought a world-wide perspective to this epidemic, noting that conservatism has seriously debilitated all the societies it has infected. Here is the link:

Conservatism Now an International Plague

And here is an excerpt:

The great con of the conservative parties of Australia, Britain and the United States is that of peddling the notion of "small" government. Election catchcries abound in promises to give freedom to the individual to get on with his/her life; to enjoy the fruits of a free, unfettered society.

"We'll get out of your hair and allow you to get on with your life," cry the Tories. The reality is the reverse. Peer through the smokescreen. Conservative governments go to extraordinary lengths to consolidate centralised power. The process is endemic to their authoritarian nature.

In Britain, Margaret Thatcher dissolved the statutory bodies of the Greater London Council and the Inner London Educational Association. Thus a democratic, grassroots control of the destiny of 12 million citizens was subsumed into an awesomely powerful, large, central Westminster government.

The Iron Lady enacted punitive legislation to limit the rights of gays. Her pitiless cruelty allowed Argentinians to drown after the Belgrano had sailed away defeated. She raised her eyebrows in astonishment when the Archbishop of Canterbury prayed for the souls of the enemy.

As Governor of Texas, George Bush presided over 160 prisoners on death row. The fact that (as revealed after a comprehensive statistical survey) a high proportion of these inmates were innocent, left him unmoved. His presidency was made possible by a conservative-stacked Supreme Court and by the nepotic machinations of his brother, the conservative Governor of Florida.

In Australia, John Howard has imposed arduous toil for millions of ordinary Australians by handing the poisoned chalice of tax collection to the nation's small retailers. He has strengthened the powers of ASIO to unnecessary, draconian limits, to fuel his lust for control over the prerogative of the individual. He jails the children of asylum seekers. As a prop to his political survival he fosters the anxieties of the so-called silent majority.

It is interesting to follow the media apologists for conservative dogma. Never before have they had such voice. The left is emasculated, so they aver. They despise the left. They are obsessed with its naivety, its muddle-headedness, its backwardness and its political correctness. Yet they cannot leave it alone. They worry it like a dog does a bone. Are they protesting too much? Is the Freudian unconscious tormenting them? Do they need treatment?

As an unrepentant conservative baiter, I say better the ingenuousness of the left than the cupidity of the right. I, for one, am unsurprised by the conclusions of the American shrinks. I have always known that the conservatives are sick.

The epidemic took hold in America about 25 years ago, and has led to deteriorating conditions in this country. An infusion of a little bit of liberalism in the 1990s was enough to improve symptoms, but the underlying disease was not eradicated, and it staged a virulent resurgence with the selection of George W. Bush in 2000.

Since stealing the White House, the Bushites have trashed nearly every aspect of American life. Only the most clueless of the clueless would maintain that they are anywhere near as well off today as they were when W usurped office.

There is finally news that this reality may be getting through to the apathetic citizens and moronic ideologues in the U.S. W's poll ratings are at last returning to where they were before the attacks of 9/11 artificially boosted them into the stratosphere. Here is the link:

Bush Takes a Dive in Two Polls

And an excerpt:

Bush, who faces a re-election fight in just over a year, saw his rating fell sharply from last month in a Zogby America poll of likely voters. Forty-five percent gave Bush positive marks for job performance in the new survey, down from 52 percent in August and the lowest since January 2001, the month he took office.

In a Time magazine/CNN poll of registered voters, the president's approval slid to 52 percent. The same poll recorded 63 percent approval for Bush back in May.

Indeed, it now seems to some that W cannot be elected, because he has fouled up everything so miserably. Here is Richard Reeves' take on the subject:

Reeves: Bush Can't Win

And here's an excerpt:

It could be argued now that President George W. Bush cannot be re-elected -- not after screwing up most everything he touches.

If you doubt that, look at the record. The poor guy is a disaster. I'll just list the first 10 reasons GWB looks like a lame duck -- or a dead duck:

1. GWB misunderstood the limits of the super power he inherited and over-reached around the world. He learned a bit about far places -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, North Korea -- and then personally declared war on them, war on the cheap.

A classified report being prepared for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, "Operation Iraqi Freedom Strategic Lessons Learned," obtained by Rowan Scarborough of The Washington Times, discusses the search for weapons of mass destruction and concludes: "WMD elimination and exploitation planning efforts did not occur early enough in the process ... Insufficient U.S. government assets existed to accomplish the mission."

2. In the process of going to war, GWB began mocking and pushing around old allies like a school yard bully. Then he was surprised when they -- beginning with France, Germany and Russia -- began pushing back.

3. Rushing in as fools are said to do, GWB has tied down the greatest military in the history of the world. Ours. Half our combat-ready army is looking for snipers and bombers in unruly countries that look as tribal as they were a century ago when the British failed as imperialists in the same sand and mountains.

4. GWB dissed the United Nations (and, again, our allies) and now is coming back to ask everyone else to help clean up the mess he made.

5. "He" -- we always overstate presidential power over the domestic economy -- has "lost" 2 million jobs here at home as the stock market went south....

8. GWB is running a "borrow as you go" government, exploding the national debt by hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars compared to Clinton-era surpluses. Given the choice of "tax and spend" or "borrow and spend," he has chosen to pass the bill on to new generations.

9. GWB's environmental record is comic, confirmed when Jon Stewart of "The Daily Show" showed him walking through a national park filled with "future two-by-fours."

10. GWB lies a lot.

At least, these are the things that Democratic candidates for president should be saying. The one coming closest is Howard Dean, he of thin credentials and not much to lose, and that has made him the Democratic front-runner at this moment.

Is it possible that we may be starting to see the unraveling of the Bushite junta? The usual conservative suspects on the Sunday talk shows today were not their normal cocky selves. They sounded shrill and defensive. And how could they not? Bush is starting to finally get the press he deserves: instead of ignoring his abysmal record, his non-existent experience, and his sub-chimp intelligence, the press is at long last beginning to point out that everything his handlers had him do has been an unmitigated disaster.

Is it possible this is the beginning of the end for the most corrupt "administration" in American history?

We can only hope.

9/6/03

RUMSFELD: SCREWING UP BIG-TIME

Rumsfeld went to Iraq for some photo-ops yesterday--a surprise visit "to see for himself" what's going on.

What he saw he probably didn't like. The soldiers hate him.

Here is a link to a story about the reactions of ordinary soldiers to Rumsfeld's visit:

Yahoo: Troops Dump on Rummy

And here are some excerpts:

"I don't give a damn about Rumsfeld. All I give a damn about is going home," Specialist Rue Gretton said, humping packs of water bottles on his shoulders from a truck.

"The only thing his visit meant for us was we had to clean up a lot of mess to make the place look pretty. And he didn't even look at it anyway," Gretton said after soldiers swept the dusty streets around the complex of lakes and mansions....

When the Armed Forces Network showed earlier footage of Rumsfeld saying that fresh U.S. troops were unnecessary in Iraq, soldiers at the base threw their hands in the air and shouted "No way" at the television.

"I ain't happy. No way am I happy seeing that," said Specialist Devon Pierce, whose wife was due to give birth to his first son in two weeks. "This tour is hard, real hard. It's too much. It should be six months."

Other soldiers said they could not complain openly about their long deployment for fear of being disciplined. Earlier this year, military leaders warned their troops they should not show disrespect for Rumsfeld after a rash of criticism from soldiers in Iraq appeared in the media.

When are people back here in America going to get the point? Bush and his handlers have, in less than three years, driven everything good about this country into the ground. This was only to be expected: the result of conservative policies is to turn the world into the conservative image of the world--a Hobbesian dog-eat-dog place in which only selfishness, hard-nosed power politics, and downright meanness matter.

Well, they got what they wanted.

Aren't the rest of us suffering enough yet to throw the bums out?

9/5/03

BUSH: IS HIS MALFEASANCE FINALLY BEING NOTICED?

The Bush junta and their puppet W have been turning over all of America to corporate interest and the wealthy since January 2001, but have been allowed to pose as bona fide public servants by an abjectly cowed press, a woefully uninformed public, and a minority of extremely narrow-minded, blind ideologues whose fanatical rabble-rousing makes people think their numbers are far larger than they actually are.

While intelligent citizens, seeing the reality behind the public relations crapola dished out by the Bushites, have been railing against this administration from the outset (after all, by the end of inauguration day 2001 W had already done more damage to America than his father did during his whole tenure in office), the apathetic majority, the macho male lunkhead demographic, and the fanatical right-wing lapped up the Bushista propaganda with gusto.

Now, however, the persistent evil decisions of the administration combined with their arrogance seem to be producing a dawning recognition that they have been screwing up ever since they started. And more public figures are beginning to take notice.

Today we wish to point you to only one story that may indicate a turning point in America's foolish besottedness with W, the emptiest of empty suits. Gen. Anthony Zinni spoke yesterday before an audience of senior military people, denouncing the Bushites for their abject unconcern for the welfare of the military, for their abuse of the Pentagon, and for their utter incompetence in handling the military in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Here is the link (you may need a free subscription to read this):

Zinni: Bush Incompetent, Arrogant, Bungling

You really should read the whole piece, but here are a few choice words:

In an impassioned speech to several hundred Marine and Navy officers and others, Zinni invoked the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War in the 1960s and '70s. "My contemporaries, our feelings and sensitivities were forged on the battlefields of Vietnam, where we heard the garbage and the lies, and we saw the sacrifice," said Zinni, who was severely wounded while serving as an infantry officer in that conflict. "I ask you, is it happening again?"...

[H]e implied that the Bush administration is now damaging the U.S. military in the way that Bush and Vice President Cheney during that campaign charged that the Clinton administration had done. "We can't go on breaking our military and doing things like we're doing now," he said....

Zinni's comments to the joint meeting in Arlington of the U.S. Naval Institute and the Marine Corps Association, two professional groups for officers, were greeted warmly by his audience, with prolonged applause at the end. Some officers bought tapes and compact discs of the speech to give to others.

If the military deserts Bush, there is no way he can win the next election. His close margin last time would certainly not have happened if he had not been able to hornswoggle so much of the military into thinking of him as caring about their welfare. Now they know better.

And they are not the only group to have learned their lesson about W. The other day we heard a radio report on the American Muslim community, which also supported Bush in large numbers during the 2000 election. An imam at a Virginia mosque said that the Muslim community backed the Bush campaign because they thought Bush would be more responsive than Gore. (How they--or anyone else--could imagine that Bush cares about anything but himself is a mystery to those of us who have the slightest good judmgment about character.) He said that the Muslim community now understands that it was wrong to support Bush; all of W's rhetoric about his concern for Muslims was only window dressing. If W loses the Muslims as well, his slim margin again is gone.

We can only hope that more and more of the people who somehow got suckered into viewing W as a decent guy are slowly beginning to sense reality. Maybe the fact that employers are continuing to cut jobs (job loss in August is highest rate since March: Yahoo: More Jobs Lost) will click with them. Or maybe the daily tragedy of continuing deaths and mutilations in Iraq (almost unmentioned in the national media, but more prominent in local newspapers) will begin to impinge on their imaginary notion of W.

Whatever causes America to finally lose their illusions about W will be late in coming, but all the more welcome for its tardy arrival.

HORRORS CONTINUE, BUT TWO FOR THE GOOD GUYS

No corner of government policy has been left unmolested by the avaricious and power-besotted ultra-conservatives of the Bushite junta. The minions of the Bush global-hegemony machine have perpetrated thousands of vicious affronts to the rights of citizens have been propagated since January of 2001--so many that a complete account would probably run as long as the US Tax Code.

Last week, for instance, on Friday, the Bush regime announced its "settlement" with the power companies that caused the California power crisis of last year by manipulating the energy markets and bilking the people of the Goldrush State our of billions of dollars. Anyone with an unbiased appreciation of the degradation that thoroughly infects the Bush administration could easily have predicted the outcome of this episode. After all, have Bush and Co. ever NOT let their buddies and big-time funders get away with murder?

True to form, none of the rapacious energy suppliers does jail time, and the fines they are given don't even amount to a slap on the wrist. Here is the link to the story, reported by Paul Krugman:

Krugman: Bushites Let Energy Buddies Off the Hook Again.

A salient passage:

Using methods widely accepted among economists, the California Independent System Operator — which operates the power grid — estimated that withholding by electricity companies had cost the state $8.9 billion. This estimate doesn't include the continuing cost of long-term contracts the state signed, at inflated prices, to keep the lights on during the crisis.

Yet the charges energy companies agreed to added up to only a bit more than $1 million. That is, the average Californian was bilked of more than $250, but the state will receive compensation of about 3 cents.

Good 'ol Bush; you just gotta love him--if you're a mega-capitalist criminal that is.

Now let's look in another corner of government policy: the national parks. In June, the Bushites announced to the world that Yellowstone National Park was "out of danger" and ought to be removed from the list of world's most endangered natural places. That would be good news if it were true, but--as anyone familiar with the Bush record on the environment might guess--it was not. In fact, the administration had to whitewash its own experts in order to make the claim. Here is a link to the story:

White House Lies About Yellowstone

In July, however, the Bushites managed to use the selective "evidence" that they trumped up into a brief to convince the World Heritage Committee to take the park off the endangered list. Here's the link:

Bushites Browbeat World Agency to Say Yellowstone is OK

Now why would the Bushista's go to all the trouble to produce a document with faked or selective evidence to try to get Yellowstone off the list? (Notice any similarities to the way they hornswoggled us into going to Iraq?)

Answer: Favors to their mega-capitalist energy and resource buddies, of course. Drilling on every inch of America's lands, stripping every inch of soil for coal, and exploiting the forests and the wildlife are major desiderata in Bush circles, so of course they Bushites will do anything they can get away with to make it happen.

Of course, there is no end to the evil machinations of the Bush cabal. So intelligent people are apt to become desperately depressed these days. We need to keep looking at the few victories that can be eked out from under the oppression of this corrupt regime.

Yesterday and today two came: a panel of federal judges stayed implementation of the FCC's new rules on media ownwership. Micheal Powell, son of Colin Powell and head of the FCC, had earlier this year changed the rules on how many media outlets could be owned in a single market. The changes effectively removed the previous limitations, so that consolidation of media outlets into fewer and fewer hands could continue apace, thus further limiting the expression of anti-conservative sentiments around the nation. He did this despite enormous bipartisan outcry. But that's a conservative for you: if he has the power, he'll do it no matter who complains.

The court stopped the new rules from being implemented so that a thorough review of them could be conducted--a process that Powell refused to do before he changed the rules. Here is the link:

Judges Stop Powell

And just today, Miguel Estrada, Bush's far, far, far-right nominee for the Federal bench, withdrew his name from nomination. Democrats in the Senate had mounted an effective filibuster against his confirmation. Again, here is the link:

Estrada Finally Takes Himself and His Neanderthal Ideas Out of the Running

If these seem like minor triumphs--well, they are. The decent people of America have to take their joy merely in stopping the evil being done by our "leaders." We can't use our energies to create, to solve problems, to make life better; we have to spend all our time trying to prevent them from making life worse.

It's thoroughly unsatisfying, but it's the part history has given us to play, at least until we can remove the junta from power. So let us play it well, and when we have thrown off the burden of evil that oppresses us, go on to undo all their actions, repair what they have destroyed, and conquer them utterly by demonstrating that the true creative and productive force in politics is liberal, progressive, compassionate, and forward-looking, not conservative, regressive, mean-spirited, and backward-looking.

BUSH: LET THE CROOKS KEEP THE LOOT!

The basest creature ever to sit in the chief executive's chair, George W. Bush, is now pushing Congress to enact a statute that will retroactively exempt the sort of CEO criminals that destroyed the employees and shareholders of Enron and WorldCom from being prosecuted for their crimes. Here is the link that explains the story:

Bush Tries to Shield His Criminal Buddies

Here is a telling passage:

Under current law, when a class is certified, any defendant has the right
to seek an immediate appeal of that decision, but the federal appeals court
has discretion to decide whether to permit the appeal to go forward. The
so-called Class Action Fairness Act takes away the federal court's discretion
to evaluate the merits of the appeal and, instead, automatically requires the
court to allow an appeal in every case. Moreover, proceedings in the case are
halted while the appeal is pending, which could take 1-2 years.
Consider the Enron case. At present, the federal judge in Houston hearing
that case has directed the parties into mediation to see if they can reach a
settlement agreement. At the same time, each side in the case is preparing
papers on the issue of class certification, which the judge is expected to
decide this year. If this retroactive House provision were to become law, one
individual defendant such as former Enron Chairman Ken Lay could stop all
proceedings in the case, merely by filing an automatic appeal of the class
certification decision. That would be so even if other defendants, such as
banks, law firms or accountants, want to settle the case in order to put the
controversy behind them and "clean the slate."

Now any "lawmaker" who would dream up such a support for white-collar criminals ought to be impeached on the spot. To try to force the judiciary to let rich defendants get a "get-out-of-jail-free card" is pure pandering, not to mention oligarchic in the extreme. But this is par for course with the Republican-controlled congress.

But that a "president" should be backing this blatant attempt to protect high-rolling corporate criminals is disgusting and nauseating. Support for this kind of thing is what demonstrates, day in and day out, the truly loathesome disdain that W has for the decent working people of this nation.

W is a disgrace to the human race, and American has the nefarious distinction of having allowed him and his handlers to crawl into the White House and foist themselves on the world.

It will be generations before American can live this ignominy down.

And, we are sorry to say, it deserves every moment of shame it has coming.

BUSH: ABUSING THE WORKER ON LABOR DAY

On this Labor Day, the Bushites have finally pulled off the destruction of worker's rights in America.

New rules by the Department of Labor, headed by conservative hachet-woman Elaine Chao, will allow employers, for the first time since the fair labor laws were enacted in the first half of the twentieth century, to get overtime work out of employees without having to pay them overtime pay. And just in case employers are too stupid to take a hint, the Department of Labor tells them specifically how to get away with it.

It seems that all they have to do is take a worker who is paid on a per-hour basis, give him or her a "promotion" to "manager," and then pay them the same salary while demanding that he or she work more than 40 hours a week. That, according to the Secretary of Labor, will now be considerer perfectly legal! Why think of all the increased productivity! And no one can complain, because they've been given a "promotion," don't you see?

Here is Greg Palast's article on the subject:

Palast: Bush Betrays Workers on Labor Day

Karl Marx, who was a brilliant economist even though his social theory was seriously flawed, called work that employers don't have to pay for "surplus labor." It is out of surplus labor that capitalists make all their profits: they get the worker to agree to take, say, $50 for a day's work, but they don't tell the worker that that amount really the vaule of only 7 hours work. So the capitalist pockets the value of the remaining hour himself. And what is the worker going to do? He has to take the $50, or lose the job to someone who will. That is why unions were created: to stop the capitalist from cheating the worker with impunity.

Well, of course, the Republicans don't want workers to get a fair deal, because that will cut into the capitalists' profits, from whom they skim their cream. So Bush and Chao have now made it COMPLETELY LEGAL to squeeze surplus labor out of workers.

Happy Labor Day, America!

P.S.

Regarding our earlier post noting the Diebold election machine scam, here is another link showing that Republicans have probably ALREADY stolen several elections using their fake "voting" machines:

Hartmann: The Theft of Your Vote Is Just a Chip Away

BUSH: KEEP POWER AT ALL COSTS

The Republican Party will never again allow its grip on power to slip, even if it has to destroy democracy to keep it.

As we said yesterday, the Republicans will do anything to prevent the people from getting rid of them and their corrupt, destructive, regressive policies. Having stolen the 2000 presidential election, they have been emboldened to try stealing, overturning, and undoing elections by any means possible.

Robert Reich has written an excellent article in this months's American Prospect that shows the depths to which Republicans will sink. In addition, he shows that the Republican refusal to abide by the will of the people when that will is against them signals the end of American democracy, which is based on the notion that the people as a whole will eventually see through any scams being perpetrated by those who have no concern for the public good. Here is the link:

Reich: Conservatives Will Make U.S. Banana Republic

Of course, the idea that the people will be able to protect their own welfare against the depredations of greedy, power-hungry tyrants depends on a number of factors. And of course, Republicans have been working hard to dismantle all those factors, so that there will be less and less opposition to their destruction of democracy.

The first factor is a relatively well-educated electorate, people who can evaluate what is being done in their name and see whether the actions of their leaders match their words. Well, ever since the New Deal, Republicans have been trying to keep the number of educated people down by refusing to fund public education properly. More recently, they have tried to destroy public education by shunting public monies into religious schools or private schools with so-called "vouchers," and they have also begun to emliminate public schools with their massive "testing" programs, which merely give them license to eliminate more and more public schools that "don't make the grade"--no matter that their "grade" is the stupidest possible benchmark for successful education.

The second factor is a well-informed electorate, people who actually know what is going on in the halls of power and in the world at large, so that they can judge whether their elected hired-hands are doing a good job. Well, in the past thirty years, Republicans have captured all the major media outlets by eliminating almost all the laws that tried to keep the media independent of corporate power. The result is that the major media have a pro-corporate bent, which is most often a pro-Republican bent, so that any media outlet that dares to take an independent stand is instantly criticized, mocked, traduced, and out-shouted by the other media outlets--a strategy designed to intimidate and maintain conformity. In addition, Republicans have created hundreds of "think-tanks," policy "institutes," legal cabals, and even "research institutes" for the sole purpose of producing "evidence" to counter any fact that refutes their bankrupt ideas. These sources of propaganda spew out an endless torrent of misinformation that confuses the not-too-well-educated public, causing it to be fooled about what is, and what is not, in its best interests.

And the third factor is an independent electorate, one who is not beholden to any faction for its livlihood, so that it can choose its leaders freely, and not out of fear that they might lose their jobs if they support candidates out of favor with their bosses. Well, Republicans have always tried to eliminate the independence of the electorate by keeping the worker barely able to make ends meet and utterly dependent on the employer for his meager pay, so that he is hesitant to cross his boss in any way. That is why Republicans hate unions so much: unions make the employee somewhat independent of the employer, which means that the employer cannot treat unionized employees as poorly as he might want in order to maximize his own profits. At higher levels, Republicans have mastered the art of coercing employees to contribute at high levels to candidates of the employer's choosing on pain of ostracization or even losing work. (This was the secret of Bush's "Pioneers" in the 2000 election: each one of them coerced enough of his employees to pay $100,000 into the Bush fundraising pot.)

So for the most part, Republicans have managed to undermine all the safeguards that the Founders hoped would protect their democratic republic from harm. And even with all of that going for them, they aren't taking any chances. As we have pointed out in previous posts, Republicans are also well on the way to rigging the new electronic voting machines to steal elections right out from under the noses of the poll officials and the people.

We are not talking about the recent Johns Hopkins study that shows that the new voting machines, made by a Republican-controlled company named Diebold, are subject to security flaws that make them open to tampering. (Here is the link: Voting Machines Unreliable.) No, what we are referring to the investigation showing that the Diebold software keeps TWO SETS OF BOOKS, one of which is hidden from everyone, including poll officials and state courts, and one of which is public, but CAN BE ALTERED BY OPERATORS AT A REMOTE LOCATION UNBEKNOWNST TO THOSE AT THE POLLING SITE! (Here is the link for this incredible investigative report: Diebold Setting Up Vote Rigging Machines Everywhere.)

Now making voting machines that work like fake bookkeeping records is obviously outrageous. How does Diebold get away with it? By using the powers granted to corporations since the Republican Revolution to declare that its software is "proprietary," which means that no one can look at it--NOT EVEN THE GOVERNMENT OR ITS INVESTIGATIVE ENTITIES. So no one is allowed to find out whether Diebold is stealing elections for Republicans or not. Pretty good trick those conservatives have pulled off, eh? You will never know whether your vote actually counted or not, because the only votes that matter are those sanctioned by Diebold.

And in case you are in any doubt about which votes Diebold sanctions, take a look at this link,

CEO of Diebold Willing to Do Anything for Bush

in which Wally O'Dell, the head of Diebold, says he is "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President next year."

How much more evidence do you need, America, that the inmates are in charge of the sanatorium?