Follow the money; Follow the memo

So we finally know the identity of Deep Throat and it was former FBI agent Mark Felt. I'd rather know who shot JFK, but for mysteries revealed, it's not a bad one. I wondered why Mr. Felt came out after all these years. I read somewhere that his family urged him to do so because he had been ashamed of it and they convinced him it was actually rather heroic. At 91 years of age and in ill health, maybe Felt just wanted to know what people's reaction would be and did not want to die before he got to test it out. His family is calling him an American hero and maybe they are doing it for him and maybe they are doing it for us because we need another similar American hero.

There is now actual hard evidence of what we all knew anyway, that Kirk's president George W. Bush wanted the Iraq war and was not shy about making sure intelligence to support the war was created. It is called the Downing Street Memo and is really minutes of a meeting of top British government officials wherein they discussed Bush's aggressive position toward the creation of intelligence to support the Iraq War despite knowledge that their claims to the American people in support of the war were untrue. The smoking gun language from the memo is as follows:

Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.

What is a sad testament to our present-day media is that few American media outlets have been reporting on the memo. Had Woodward and Bernstein had something spelled out in black and white from a clearly reliable source on Watergate like this memo does for Iraq-gate, they would have been delighted and the fateful and famous decision of the Washington Post to print the story would have been far less dramatic; it would have been easy.

Too bad the WaPo of the '70s is long gone and that spirit of investigative reporting that sprung from it has been reduced to minor consumer scams.

Common Dreams has an interesting article on following the money in Iraq-gate.

The money trail exists; the memo exists; we just need someone to do the following.

Lieutenants

I finally saw Star Wars Episode III, so better late than never (or maybe not in this case), I decided on the Star Wars character who best represents Mark Kirk.

No, he's not Obi-Wan or Yoda (who disappointingly did not float in Episode III), a Sith Clone, Anikan or Padame. He's not even in the second trilogy at all. You have to go back to the '70s and '80s to find him.

Remember when Vader would get mad and use the force to choke to death a general who failed him by letting our friends Luke, Leia and Han escape. There would always be a lieutenant hanging around to become the next general. Well, to me those lieutenants best represent Kirk in the Star Wars world. He's self-admittedly "waiting and watching" on Social Security. He's waiting and watching for another so-called republican moderate to take a stand on Social Security so he can see if he is successful or takes a fall. That way Kirk can determine the position on the issue most likely to lead to his career advancement.

Problem Representative Kirk is that even if you succeed in your maneuvering and positioning and finally get your big chance, you're still working for Darth Vader.

Who's the boss?

In case you thought your congressman was sent to Washington to represent you, think again. Jill Zuckman of the Tribune's Washington bureau will set you straight in her Memorial Day article Bush finds Congress is no pushover. He wants a legacy; lawmakers want jobs.

Ms. Zuckman isn't really telling us anything new. Presidents typically get more support from their party members in Congress in their first term and when their approval ratings are high. It happened to Reagan, Bush I and Clinton during their seconds terms also. Bush II has a little extra problem in that he is so far to the extreme right of the norm of even his own party that it is a little hard for some republican congressment to sell the Bush agenda at home, particularly Mark Kirk.

Kirk came right out and said it to Ms. Zuckman, he needs to run again in 2006 and Bush does not.

Kirk's comment made me think about the fact that our Congressman is not representing us, never has, never intended to and has no qualms about discussing it. He represented Bush for 5 years, as a cheerleader in the first term and campaign worker for the 2004 election. Kirk is only worried now that he has to run again in 2006 without presidential coattails and a presidential agenda far to the right of the Illinois Tenth.

Mr. Kirk, try representing your district and speaking out against the extremist Bush agenda. Waiting and watching like you are doing with Social Security only makes it more obvious to us that we are the last of your concerns.

The Library Police of Naperville

You took this book out in 1971. Yeah, '71. That was my first year on the job. Bad year for libraries. Bad year for America. Hippies burning library cards, Abby Hoffman telling everybody to steal books. I don't judge a man by the length of his hair or the kind of music he listens to. Rock was never my bag. But you put on a pair of shoes when you walk into the New York Public Library, fella!--Bookman, the Librarian from Seinfeld, The Library, 1991

Remember when all you had to worry about was an overdue fine from the library and maybe a stern librarian like the one Jerry Seinfeld had trouble with in the famous 1991 episode quoted above.

Now, it's getting more difficult and really personal in Naperville, Illinois, where patrons will be required to give a fingerprint in order to use a library computer. The Naperville library claims it needs the fingerprint scanning system to make sure that library patrons using its computers are who they say they are and aren't sharing their cards with friends or family, but that could easily be solved by requiring a good old fashioned library card along with a driver's license or state picture ID.

One thing for sure, Naperville will create a nice little collection of fingerprints and if they monitor the time, date and computer used by each fingerprinted patron, they will create a nice little dossier of computer use on just about every high school student and computerless grandma in the neighborhood. When you add in the Patriot Act requirement of giving up library records to the federal government, Naperville can be a tremendous resource for FBI agents looking for budding terrorists or for that matter anyone who reads something that disagrees with the administration.

The tone of a local community dictates how free speech will be for its residents. In Naperville the tone is chilling with the intent to limit reading. I thought libraries were supposed to encourage reading.

Local Government/World Issues

Does the mayor of your city care about you? If you lived in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, you'd know he did. The mayors of those two cities have gotten together with other mayors around the world to fight nuclear proliferation. No one has to wonder why.

The mayor of Hiroshima, Tadatoshi Akiba, was on NPR Wednesday afternoon. He was asked to explain why he felt it was the job of the world's mayors to enter into the world arena to discuss this worldwide issue. Mayor Akiba answered that it is a mayor's duty to care about the general welfare of the citizens of their cities and general welfare included their health and their economic and everyday well-being. Nuclear weapons threaten the general welfare of urban citizens, so mayors must get together in the struggle against them.

Mayor Akiba did not engage in a blame the Americans for the A-bomb being dropped on his city in 1945, but he did remind listeners that he is in a position to know. He knows people whose lives were ruined by the A-bomb and his older citizens know what it is like to have to rebuild their city and their lives.

The mayors for peace movement has a very active agenda. They don't just say "nukes are bad". They have a plan for eliminating them.

After hearing this, I went home and watched my Mayor and Village Trustees on Government Access. They were talking about some pump thing. I have watched them a few times now and notice that they are always talking about planning issues. Should we allow this fence to be moved? Should we allow this addition on this building or this tree to be removed from over there and replaced with that tree? I don't know what they would do if confronted with the issue of nuclear proliferation. My guess is that they would say that it is not within their duties to made decisions on such an issue. However, if the worst happened and some nuclear weapon got lost en route to some more important place and ended up in our little town, it would be our local officials we would look to for help and guidance. They would be the only ones around (if any of us were left around).

Maybe we need to help our local officials educate themselves on the issues surrounding nuclear weapons.

Oh, and there is another lesson here. Mayor Akiba used his radio time to pitch Hiroshima as a great vacation spot and welcomed Americans to come and see it. They want Americans to come and enjoy the city, not just to come and see the A-bomb exhibit. See what can happen when you honestly help a city after a war. You can become friends even after a bitter struggle. Bush should take a lesson on that in Iraq. He needs to stop torture and prisoner abuse and to stop letting Halliburton and other US backed corporate mercenaries raid Iraq. We may need and want their friendship one day.

Have a great Memorial Day holiday. I'm going to take the weekend off. More on Tuesday.

More Ownership Society--Schools

Have you heard about what is going on in the New Orleans school district? The state has taken over the district budget and the district is in a sort of shambles with buildings decaying, teachers paychecks bouncing, and the valedictorian of one school had to take the graduation test 6 times before passing as reported by NPR. One of the reasons cited in the story was that all but the poorest of families have been pulling their children out of the public school system.

While the New Orleans school district has a myriad of problems, part of their problems can be seen as an example of what happens when all but the poorest of families pull their children out of the public school system, an example of what the Bush administration wants to happen to all of us with their support for school voucher programs.

School vouchers sound great when you are looking at high income families and when you look at affluent families individually. Looking at the system as a whole and the community as a whole, one sees that these programs simply pull all but the poorest students out of a public school system, leaving it to decay and creating an underclass of disadvantaged students. Parents who look forward to school voucher programs, are being short sighted for their children and their community. Their children may get a better than average primary and secondary education, but at the cost of bringing down the community as a whole hurting their children in the long run.

Once the US had a two-tiered school system. That was the system before Brown vs. Board of Education when white students were given the best education afforded by their community and black students got the leftovers. That system failed both white and black students because it kept a large portion of the community in poverty with no hope of improvment (not to mention how that system exacerbated racial fear and mistrust). No one wins when a community creates and maintains a large underclass of people. Businesses lose potential customers and skilled workers. Colleges lose new students and potential teachers. The arts lose artists and patrons. Good causes lose activists. Communities lose the good ideas and work of people who never learn to use their talents and develop skills.

Proponents of school vouchers say it is a matter of choice. They want to be able to choose where their children go to school. However, the NEA says that school vouchers do not provide a viable, improved choice for families. Current voucher systems like the one in Florida generally create a lottery for school availability. That is no choice, just luck. They also direct more students into private schools which generally pay their teachers less than the public schools and, therefore, do not attract the best teachers. Private schools are often religious, so if a family's religion does not have its own school system, they are out of luck. All but the richest families will have no greater choice with vouchers.

Vouchers are also a means of circumventing federal law prohibiting the use of federal money for religious institutions.

Also, some argue that a two-tiered system will be cheaper because schools will be subject to the marketplace, but that has not happened where voucher systems are currently in place because taxpayers have to pay for two school systems and the private systems, unlike public systems, have no symbiotic relationships among them creating a lot of waste.

As far as academic achievement, greater gains have been made in areas without voucher programs like in Chicago where there has been a concentrated effort to improve public schools. Once a mecca for well-run, private Catholic schools, we now hear frequent news reports of Catholic schools closing in Chicago over enormous community objection and protest reminding us that communities have no real control over private schools.

Bush tells people that school vouchers are good for American communities, but they are only good for the richest of Americans who are far removed from the rest of the community, but that is what Bush's Ownership Society has been all about, isn't it.

Stem Cells save lives, Bush trashes them and Kirk should rethink his Time Out

Saw representatives Shays and Castle on television last night and this morning discussing the stem cell bill, no Kirk. Guess he's still in the GOP doghouse.

Bush has been all over with a small group of children who were adopted as embryos, but he never tells surrounding (hand picked) group of supporters at these events that they represent only about 1% of all frozen embryos. Most unused embryos get trashed as medical waste.

If Bush and his anti-choicers really were "pro-life" they'd be worried, not about the embryos saving lives as stem cell creators, but the trashed embryos that neither give nor save a life.

The point is that the anti-choicers are just that and their cause has nothing to do with life.

It's nice that Kirk is using his time out to build a memorial for black veterans, but I think those veterans would prefer he help Obama and Durbin get real benefits for veterans as Illinois is last in the nation in providing for its veterans. Again, the GOP just doesn't get it.

Haunting Compromise

I have to admit, I am not sure how I feel about the Senate compromise. Kos raises some good arguments in its favor and the alternative would not have been so great.

However, I do have to wonder how we got here and why so many republican senators and supporters were willing to take such a drastic action to further a very extremist agenda. Not all republicans espouse Christian Fundamentalist beliefs, and not all Christian Fundamentalists are so in favor of the Bush War Agenda, so why are so many willing to go to the mat for them? Has religious extremism coupled with militarism and intolerance gone that far in this country? Is the extremist takeover of the republican party complete? Do all these people really want to see the end of Roe v. Wade and Brown v. Board of Education, do they really want the US to become a theocracy against all reasonable interpretation of the founders' intentions, or is it just what they are willing to do to keep power, position and campaign funds rolling in?

Has the republican party, and through them, the nation, completely given itself over to dangerous extremists who claim the backing of God for anything they may want to do and, if so, could it be that this compromise will come back to haunt us?

Eisenhower and Cheerios

Sometimes in the morning, I just cannot take the news, so I flip around the cable network over my Cheerios.

Ever watch A&E classroom? Bush should.

Today they showed a biography of Eisenhower. Eisenhower failed in the areas of attacking poverty and segregation, and was the guy who presided over the US installation of the Shah of Iran, but he was pretty good on many things including sensible ideas on military spending. Ironically (or maybe not so ironically), the WWII general was not all for increased military spending because his experience showed him that the opposite would lead to greater strength.

Eisenhower felt that Soviet militarism was actually weakening that country by impoverishing and enslaving its people--and he was proven correct in the 1980s as we saw the USSR crumble under its own weight. Eisenhower wanted to see American dollars going into private enterprise. He was ultimately pressured by others to add to the military budget after the USSR launched Sputnik. The popular phrase of the day was the "missile gap". There was a missile gap, but it in fact favored the US. However, Eisenhower could not admit that publicly because then he'd have to admit US spy plane missions over the USSR (which ultimately came to light when one of the planes was shot down over the USSR). So, an ignorant nation drove the would be peacemaker to increase military spending.

When Eisenhower left office, he made a famous speech (which I have quoted previously on this blog). The famous line "beware of the military/industrial complex" was taken from that speech (although he did not say exactly that line that exact way, but that is clearly what he meant). Eisenhower knew what was coming because of his contacts as a general and later as president and it worried him. He was proven correct again by Bush/Kirk and Co.

Eisenhower is probably rolling in his grave over Bush/Kirk and Co. Militarism and Iraq.

Mark Kirk's up close and personal with his own party

Last week, Mark Kirk tried to flex some moderate GOP muscle and got slapped down for it, almost literally, and by Rick Renzi to whom he gave $1000 in campaign funds in each of 2002 and 2003.

Basically, Kirk got himself into GOP trouble by push polling 13 red house districts to persuade people to ask their congressmen to vote in favor of the Castle-DeGette stem cell research bill. The polling was to be followed up by ads featuring Nancy Reagan in favor of federal funding for stem cell research due to her husband's bout with and ultimate death by alzheimers. (Little did Ron and Nancy know in 1980 when they set the right-wing-fake-religious-zealot-hate-machine in motion to push poll against Democrats and moderate republicans, that it would come home to roost on them most personally and harshly. Although credit must be given to Nancy for overcoming her background in her current mission for stem cell research.)

Attempting to make a deal with Hastert and DeLay to get a vote on the Castle-DeGette bill, Kirk was betrayed by them as they worked for an alternate, but less scientifically helpful, bill funding adult stem cell research to draw votes away from Castle-DeGette allowing GOP congressmen to vote in favor of a bill they could use to claim support for stem cell research, but less likely to draw right wing wrath.

So, where does this leave Kirk and his district which is widely in favor of embryonic stem cell research? Apparently, Kirk is not talking, but his district is and they want not only answers, but action from their congressman.

Representative Kirk, now's not the time to hide, but speak up. Stand by your decision to back embryonic stem cell research because you believe in it and because your district believes in it. Don't back off in hope that your party is still your party. They just plain aren't. This is not the party of Eisenhower or of John Porter. This is the do-as-I-preach-not-as-I-do theocracy, ultra-right wing that has taken over the formerly GOP. Shame on the moderate republicans who let them do it too. They don't represent any majority, but have scared the majority into compliance to form their minority mandate.

Representative Kirk, now is the time to stand up and speak for the real moderate majority. Leave the GOP if you have to and become an independent. I'm sure there are other old school republicans who don't have the guts to do it, but would love to join if someone else would make the first break.

Since you sold yourself to the district as a pro-choice, moderate republican, at the very least, you should rethink your financing of the campaigns of anti-choice hard liners like Renzi, Brady, Brown-Waite, Crane, Istook, Tauzin, Burr, Platts, Sessions and others likely to take a swipe at you and your district.

same old same old or a new hope?

I was going to write on this tonight:

In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own. Everybody there adopts great numbers of theories, on philosophy, morals, and politics, without inquiry... --Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1835

because I think corporate homogenity is a real problem in our country. Just go to the local mall and you see how diversity has been forced out for more secure profits. I needed a suit jacket in an emergency for a speaking engagement last week and found out that you cannot buy a suit jacket in May because if one store doesn't sell women's suit jackets after February, no stores sell them after February. I've been looking for a particular piece of furniture, but since one store doesn't carry it, no stores do. It is very difficult to find something a little different.

This sameness is not just in shopping. Ever flip channels during the news. All the networks carry the same news in the same order every single day. Weather is at the same time; sports is at the same time.

Thought, art, merchandise has been so canned for mass consumption, it is almost impossible to find diversity. People don't have to think and they seem happy to buy what everyone else is buying, look like everyone else and give up the burden of thinking for themselves to the clergy or talkshow pundits.

However, a couple of friends have left me with a new hope tonight. My friend David wrote this:

What separates this nation from practically all others? What magic have we captured in the United Sates that is the envy of the world? Minority Rights. As difficult as it often is, and as messy as it plays, we have fought for over 200 years to continue to respect the principle that what our freedoms really boil down is respect for the minority. Majoritarian preferences MUST be tempered by minority rights. 51-49 does not give any group the privilege to trample on the rights of those less represented. These are the freedoms that John Winthrop spoke of over 300 years ago; this is the vision that I grew up believing in. When we allow all people to believe that their viewpoint matters and will be considered in the final greater decision making process, we empower all of our citizenry to participate in the democratic process. This is America.

I had remembered De Tocqueville, but had forgotten Winthrop, the originator of American Multiculturalism. Even Winthrop, for all his paternalism, conformity and use of Plato's Noble Lie, wanted people to respect our differences and understand that we all need each other. Could there be a little Winthrop in at least some of these republicans who want to force their corporate sameness on the rest of us?

Another new hope? My friend Steve assures me that some conservatives are waking up to the problems in the Bush Administration and cites Cornell McCleary who apparently said on his radio show (Columbus, Ohio 610 WTVN) last week that the smoking gun British memo will bring some blame to roost on Bush, and seems to be saying that he would agree with it. Steve said callers to this very republican talk show agreed.

Could the republicans be less in lock step than they seem? Seems to me now would be the time for Mark Kirk to tell us how he feels about what is happening in Washington. If not, maybe we can come up with a new hope for the Tenth District in 2006.

Bush Administration Lie List

Plato said that the easiest way to govern people was to tell them one huge lie that would structure the society. Plato called it the Noble Lie and it was supposed to help create the classes of people from the rich rulers to the poor workers. The Noble Lie was that a person's class was not due to any circumstances within his or society's control, but completely due to how God made him. That was the first time rulers were taught to use false religion to supress the masses and maintain wealth in the few.

The Bush administration figured, hey, what the heck, if one lie is good, dozens of lies will be better.

I decided to start a list of the Bush administration (supported by Kirk) lies. This is just a start:

1. There are Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq.
2. Saddam Hussein was working with Al Quaeda.
3. We are not at war with Islam.
4. The Social Security System is in trouble and the only way to fix it is to pull money out of it and create private accounts.
5. You can make enough money in a private account invested in the stock market to more than make up for decreases in Social Security Benefits.
6. Most people who go through bankruptcy are just deadbeads living a high lifestyle on your tax dollar.
7. People who disagree with the far right wing of the republican party are godless and bad people.
8. Moderate judges are activists and right wing judges are not.
9. Roosevelt gave away Eastern Europe at Yalta. See this editorial by Andrew Greeley from the Sun Times.
10. Prisoner abuse is not coming from the higher levels at the pentagon and state department, but was solely created by a few 22 year old army privates.
11. If you are not with us, then you are against us.
12. The Real ID Act is not a national ID to be used to spy on Americans, but was written to solve serious immigration problems not otherwise handled by the current immigration laws.
13. Bush himself has nothing to do with the hate rhetoric coming out of republican party leaders.
14. Reporting on prisoner abuse and not the abuse itself is causing unrest in the Middle East and Persian Gulf.
15. Jeff Gannon is a real reporter.
16. The Bush Administration is promoting freedom and democracy throughout the world.
17. Bush tried not to go to war in Iraq, but had to. See this.
18. Bush is a man of God (sometimes translated into "Bush is God").

Feel free to add a Bush Administration lie to the comments. I'm sure I did not get them all. There are so many. Who could?

The Clinton lie list? Easy. 1. I did not have sexual relations with that woman.

Debt Bondage

In Asia-Pacific, 1.4 million of these 9.5 million people are in forced labour because they were trafficked. The remaining 8.1 million are trapped in other ways, most frequently by debt bondage.

The above is a quote from ILO Asia-Pacific regional director Shinichi Hasegawa explaining the forced labor problem in Asia.

According to Mr. Hasegawa, the debt slavors in Asia are making "estimated profits of US$ 9.7 billion per year". Bush/Kirk and Co. recently favored and passed changes to the Bankruptcy Act that make it almost impossible to come out of a bankruptcy with any assets and the promised clean slate of days past. They fought against amendments to soften the blow by excluding certain groups of debtors such as people who went into debt because of medical catastrophe and they won.

They could not stand all that forced labor profit being made in Asia without creating the same here in the US.

You can do something about this now. You can stop using your credit cards for credit. Pay off your balance every single month. Watch your spending. Take good physical care of yourself. Sick? Take that paid sick day even if your boss gets mad. Pay down your mortgage as soon as you can. This probably isn't so good for the economy which relies on consumer overspending and debt, but big businesses will have to learn to live within their means under the circumstances they created and you can keep them from getting you as their debt slave.

Then vote Democratic in 2006 and demand reversal of the 2005 bankruptcy changes.

You just have to read this

Senator Max Baucus of Montana amde these haunting comments this week on the Senate floor.

Recipe for totalitarian takeover

Ingredients:
extreme and literal religious beliefs
fear
loud emotional speakers
inflamatory speech
large groups
chants, slogans and songs
people in places of seeming authority in agreement
repetition
war

Instructions:
Get a bunches of people together in large meeting halls or in television and radio audiences. Loudly and emotionally preach extreme and literal religious beliefs to them. Repeat. Tell them that their beliefs are in danger and that they and their families are in actual physical danger. Tell them that the danger is caused by the political opposition. Set up the political opposition as an enemy. Start slogans, chants and singing. Repeat. Have senators, congressmen and media personalities voice their agreement; those using similar inflamatory speech to your base and others seeming quieter and more reasonable to the mass media. Apply pressure to the media to supress news and speech from the opposition. Repeat. Mix in a war, doesn't matter against who or for what reason. Stew it for 4 years, then fix the election.

Gone too far I would guess (hope) even for Rep. Kirk

The hate rhetoric has gone too far. Now, they are comparing Democrats to Nazis and talking about killing liberals, yes actually killing real people. This is what the GOP has brought to America.

Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania said this Thursday on the Senate floor:

I mean, imagine, the rule has been in place for 214 years that this is the way we confirm judges. Broken by the other side two years ago, and the audacity of some members to stand up and say, how dare you break this rule. It’s the equivalent of Adolph Hitler in 1942 saying, "I’m in Paris. How dare you invade me. How dare you bomb my city? It’s mine.

Glenn Beck said this on Tuesday on the air:

Hang on, let me just tell you what I'm thinking. I'm thinking about killing Michael Moore, and I'm wondering if I could kill him myself, or if I would need to hire somebody to do it. No, I think I could. I think he could be looking me in the eye, you know, and I could just be choking the life out -- is this wrong? I stopped wearing my What Would Jesus -- band -- Do, and I've lost all sense of right and wrong now. I used to be able to say, "Yeah, I'd kill Michael Moore," and then I'd see the little band: What Would Jesus Do? And then I'd realize, "Oh, you wouldn't kill Michael Moore. Or at least you wouldn't choke him to death." And you know, well, I'm not sure.

I would like to think that you do not want to be part of this, Representative Kirk, even for a chance at a future presidential run. I'd like to think that you would not want to preside over a hatemongering, violently divided nation with religious extremists at the helm. So, I urge you to distance yourself from the hate and divisiveness that threaten us at our core, leave the GOP and become an independent. I guaranty you'll win the respect of most of the district. I guaranty you are losing the respect of your moderate supporters in your current silence.

Heard around the 10th

Replying to a comment about the AOL poll asking people to identify the Star Wars characters that best represent Bush and Cheney, my friend Jim answered:

What a dumb question! Bush is obviously Jar Jar Binks...a being of considerably less than average intelligence who has accomplished little or nothing on his own but who somehow becomes an important politician! Cheney is obviously Senator Palpatine/Emperor...a man responsible for the countless deaths of innocents, and the real power in the universe who hides his evil intentions of global dominance by trying to appear as a caring politician with no personal ambition.

Jim, the force will be with you always.

Radical goals, radical tactics, unbelievable consequences

One of the problems with republicans in the Bush age is that they don't care about the consequences of their actions. The ends justify the means.

Their goal is the total destruction of all the checks and balances purposely built into our government by our founders so they can impose their will exponentially compared to their actual elected numbers. That's what they meant when they said Bush had a mandate as 51% of the vote itself is clearly no mandate.

Their radical goal requires radical tactics. Dividing our nation by inciting religious hatred and insinuating that violence may be justified is their tactic to scare people into giving them their mandate.

Embodying the consequences of their carefully (not carelessly) threatening words, Judge Joan Lefkow spoke before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday. You may remember that Judge Lefkow's mom and husband were murdered by a disgruntled plaintiff in a medical malpractice case she heard.

In this age of mass communication, harsh rhetoric is truly dangerous.... It seems to me that even though we cannot prove a cause-and-effect relationship between rhetorical attacks on judges in general and violent acts of vengeance by a particular litigant, the fostering of disrespect for judges can only encourage those who are on the edge or on the fringe to exact revenge on a judge who displeases them.

Sadly, the republican senators who were guilty of the over the top gratuitous attacks on the judiciary did not bother to show up. Maybe they were too embarrassed to face Judge Lefkow, but it is more likely that they just don't care.

Our fine Illinois Democratic Senators Senators Durbin and Obama did show up.

The Daily Herald didn't think the remarks insinuating that violence against judges might be justified and comparing them to terrorists were so bad. I guess the editor of the Herald has no friends or family in the judiciary.

May the force be with you--it's about all you will be left with under Bush

AOL did a poll about the Bush Administration and Star Wars Episode III. Ok, it's sort of silly, but it does raise a few good points.

First, it's important to note that in the late 1970s early 1980s, we were celebrating the struggle and eventual victory of the good rebels over an evil empire, and now in 2005 we are offered a view of the degeneration of a democracy into totalitarianism.

Art imitating life or life imitating art?

Second, it is interesting that many people see similarities between the movie and the Bush administration. Lucas says that he wrote the script for Revenge of the Sith years ago, but similarities were inevitable. Star Wars is based on those archetype myths about the basic struggle between good and evil. There is probably not too much difference between one totalitarian takeover and the next. It all involves disinformation, divisiveness, threats, fearmongering, scapegoating, torture, unjust imprisonment, mind control, mob mentality.

Then, there's the poll from AOL:

Bush: Skywalker or Vader?
Do you see the president as Luke Skywalker, a man with a powerful father who bravely fights evil? Or is he Darth Vader, lord of the dark side?
How would you cast President Bush?
As Darth Vader 62%
As Luke Skywalker 38%
Total Votes: 57,615


Cheney: Yoda or Emperor?
Is the vice president more of a wise counselor, like Yoda? Or do you see him more as a shadowy manipulator, like the Emperor?
How would you cast Vice President Cheney?
As the Emperor 65%
As Yoda 35%
Total Votes: 56,977

Whether or not the movie intentionally or unintentionally mirrors the Bush administration, the results of this poll indicating that most people identify the Bush administration with the evil empire rather than the good rebels should tell them something. Unlikely they will listen.

The good news? Anyone who ever watched any Star Wars or Star Trek knows that the evil bad guys always go down in their own arrogance.

Bush should be more concerned about the truth of it than the PR of it

Through the entire Newsweek/actions of American guards at Guantánamo Bay scandal, it is still unclear as to what really happened there. Newsweek probably wasn't too smart to print the story, but Bush should be concerned about the goings on even if it had not been reported. That is the kind of story that will get around whether Newsweek reports it or not and the kind of story to spark additional hate and violence. Then, there is the whole right and wrong of it all, but the holy rollers in Washington don't ever seem to care about real right and wrong.

Representative Kirk, so in favor of the Iraq war to begin with, needs to consider the actions of US soldiers at Guantánamo Bay and around the world. They are sending a strong message to the world about us and in the end the world does not care whether or not it's reported in Newsweek.

Cycle of Fear

We have nothing to fear, but fear itself.

Fear stirred up by Bush/Kirk and Co. leads Americans to willingly give up their civil liberties to appear virtually nude in front of TSA agents to get on a plane.

Then, there is the radiation risk that none of the major media is talking about. The company that sells this equipment says its safe because the risk to any one person is low and there is no justification for collectivizing the risk analysis. Guess that logic does make sense so long as you're not the one in who knows how many to actually get cancer. If you are the one, do you get to sue, or will your suit be subject to a litigation cap that makes your attorney reject the case?

What about children? There are laws against child pornography and I imagine the religious right wing is concerned about that--except perhaps for those members of the religious right wing whose sex scandals are being reported on Buzzflash and Salon. Isn't there a risk of renegade TSA agents using the film for such recreation, or selling it for the same? That's probably more likely then the chances they will find contraband being brought on a plane.

Fear can cause us to do crazy things. That is why Bush/Kirk and Co. are willing to create situations that increase terror risks and use the increased terror risk to increase fear which in turn causes basically good people to agree to the Bush/Kirk and Co. acts that increase terror risks.

It's a cycle.

We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

Look at what you can get people to agree to when you scare them

TSA is coming out with a device that looks under a person's clothing. AOL did a poll about how people feel about that. Here are the results:

Do you think X-ray screening is an invasion of privacy?
No
51%
Yes
49%

Do you think X-ray screening is necessary?
Yes, the safer the better
52%
Yes, but only on a case-by-case basis
30%
No
18%
Total Votes: 214,390

Americans are selling themselves down the drain with fear. We need to think about what we are doing to future generations.

FDR was right in his firm belief and 72 years later we are retreating, not advancing. In the face of worldwide depression and world war, our predecessors were far braver then we.

How to deal with difficult people

Ok, I went on Amazon.com this afternoon and purchased a copy of Dealing with Difficult People. I think I'm going to need it because it looks like Bolton will be confirmed and all nasty bosses will be vindicated.

I've had my share of nice bosses and nasty bosses. Some of the nice bosses were nasty behind my back, but all of the nasty bosses ended up causing their own problems. For the worker, a nasty boss may actually be a blessing. At least you know what is coming.

One thing I have observed, and I disagree with the linked article on this, is that super yelling and screaming, threatening, nasty bosses often don't get the work that they think they are getting from their employees. I don't think employees work harder for nasty bosses. I think they work more tentatively and hide whenever they can. People tend to want to avoid nasty bosses and do not confide in them. They tend to avoid work in general, especially decisionmaking situations. The less they have their name associated with, the less the boss can pin on them, the better. These situations also create internal in-fighting among employees where everyone jumps to pin a problem on another co-worker rather than helping to solve it. This internal in-fighting also wastes time because folks have to vent on each other.

Nasty bosses need also to remember that their treatment of workers ensures that everyone will turn on them when their chips are down. See Leona Helmsley and Martha Stewart. Both were considered nasty bosses and both did jail time, not for some big horrible crime, but mostly because when it was their turn to make a mistake, everyone was thrilled to see them get back some of what they dished out.

So, John Bolton will likely become UN Ambassador and the rest of the UN will be waiting for that one mistake that they can get him on and he'll eventually go down a la Leona and Martha, but this time, he'll be taking a nation along with him.

No one has the monopoly on goodness

When Bush I was president the economy was a shambles with a huge deficit, bad job market and bad stock market. Bush got caught in his famous "read my lips" comment and was pounded by the media for it including the famed cat food commercial "read my beak" which so many of us thought was hysterical.

They learned. Now that Bush II is president the economy is a shambles with a huge deficit, bad job market and bad stock market (hey, I was able to copy and paste here!), but a few things are different. What is different is that we now have a unjust war going bad on us, fear, hate, religious manipulation and a general push by the republicans to divide people based on their small differences a la 18th and 19th century slavery and racism. People will rid themselves of a president who treats them badly, but will agree to be treated badly if they are divided and scared enough.

When Clinton was President, the economy was great, job market was great, stock market was great (had to type that in). They damaged Clinton's Presidency with a minor sex scandal, he had an affair with an intern.

We have to learn. We have to fight the morality fight, but the good news is that they are making it easy for us.

My 9th grade teacher was right. Those who thump the bible the most are the ones who forgot to actually read it. Buzzflash and Salon have published a series of stories about bible thumping, pseudo-religious republicans with sex scandals that make Bill's look like something out of Daytime TV.

Every time you encounter someone who articulates that they hate what the republicans have done to the economy, but they are somehow godlier or more moral, we have to bring that up.

Suddenly, sex scandals and morality are off the republican agenda. They won't call any of these guys on any of it.

Well, if they cannot run on morals, and they cannot run on the economy, and they cannot run on the war, what can they run on?

They will run on the hate, fear, religious manipulation that is working so well for them and has worked on American soil since the first Europeans killed the first Natives.

Don't fall for the hate, fear, racism and religionism. No one has the monopoly on goodness, and the host of republican super-sized sex scandals proves it.

Who owns who in the Ownership Society

Bush touts his ownership society (which Mark Kirk supports) and regular people lose more and more and I've finally figured out what he means. He doesn't mean that people own their home, retirement, or health care. He means that large corporations own us.

Bush likes to say that home ownership is at an all time high under his administration, but under Bush, home ownership is dropping and the amount of his home any one person owns is also dropping. See this report from the Center for American Progress.

High housing costs coupled with wage stagnation is making it more difficult for people to purchase a home. It would be easy to say that smart people will wait to buy a home until they can really afford it or buy a home that they can afford, but you have to consider what is available out there, people have few choices. There are no more modestly priced homes. Modest homes are not being built and modest older homes are going for outrageous prices. Even a crummy little ranch in Skokie (circa late '50s early '60s) is running in the high $300,000s. I use Skokie as an example because I spent part of by childhood there and my parents spent about $31,000 on our house, which now goes in the high $300,000s/low $400,000s (compared to the example above, our Skokie house was much nicer--3 levels, 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms).

Interest rates are still relatively low, but payments are still going to be high on such an expensive home (and that's nothing compared to what housing costs in the 10th District). For our Skokie ranch example, even if you put down 10%, your monthly payment is going to be over $2000.00 every month at the 6.5% rate they are showing for a 30-year fixed. That house will own it's family, and if someone in that family loses his or her job, it will dump its family for another one. Houses have no loyalty.

Own your retirement? We saw this week how easily that can be taken away from you. United was able to terminate its pension plans. GM and Ford executives are probably jumping for joy at their demotion to junk status as they can convert their bad business decision to rely heavily on the SUV market into benefit cuts to it's employees too. Bad business decisions by upper management are easily translated into a "blame the American worker" campaign. I saw it a lot on television while I was home ill. Pundit after republican party mouthpiece went on a blame the worker rampage. The cost of pensions, the cost of health care (and whose fault is that anyway) are ruining companies...no matter that GM and Ford went heavily into gas guzzling SUVs at a time when our dependence on foreign oil has become a huge economic problem in addition to the huge national security problem it poses. Courts don't seem to care about the large bonuses to top executives when they are allowing breach of labor agreements. Take away social security, as they will have you do, and you have no retirement at all. The corporate job force owns you forever.

Own your health care? Impossible. It's so expensive. My antibiotic for my sinus infection was almost $100, the over the counter medications were another $40. If I did not have insurance, my doctor's appointments would have been $300+. One sinus infection, $500+. That's just a sinus infection. What about cancer? The cost of cancer drugs is soaring, and that does not take into account hospital stays often required for treatment. When I was precinct walking in October, Representative Karen May and I ran into a concerned doctor who asked to talk with Rep. May about new legal requirements to have chemo treatment in-patient and how that was going to make cancer treatement cost prohibitive for most people. Then, when you lose your job because you cannot work, you lose your insurance and you cannot even go bankrupt any more. I guess the message of the Bush/Kirk administration is that if you do not belong to their exclusive club of the super rich, "just die already". Your health status owns you and you had better stay healthy.

Under Bush and Kirk, regular people who thought they belonged to the middle class are poor and insecure and owned by corporate employers, lenders, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies.

A soft landing for Rumsfeld?

I have a theory about the base closing recommendations. Rumsfeld is out front and center on the recommended closings of several bases, some in red states. Rumsfeld is hiding behind the curtain of OZ (and a 22 year-old girl) on the Abu Ghraib torture scandal. Everyone knows that Rumsfeld has to go, but it would be a loss of face for the apologetically-challenged administration for him to go on Abu Ghraib. Easier for Rumsfeld to go when a bunch of Georgians and Mississippians are mad about job losses for their redder than red states.

That's my theory, but it is based on the premise that people have a problem with Abu Ghraib and the administration and the republicans in Congress and the people of the states so red may not have such a problem. So, it may be wrong. If it was correct, there may be hope yet.

Help Exxon Mobile or Help Mom, Sis and Grandpa get to work

To relieve problems with high gas prices and inadequately funded public transportation, Representative Mark Kirk of Illinois co-sponsored the Boutique Fuels Reduction Act of 2005, seeking to set a national standard for fuel refinement. Kirk claims that our transportation problems can be solved by having a national standard to prevent regional refiners from creating local monopolies.

Drive east to Ohio and there is a different take on the issue. On May 4, Representative Dennis Kucinich proposed the Gas Price Spike Act of 2005. Representative Kucinich seeks a windfall profit tax on gasoline and diesel to be imposed on all industry profits that are above a reasonable profit level. The revenues of this tax are to go into a tax credit for American-made ultra efficient cars and mass transit.

Kirk's proposal is geared to controlling large price increases by limiting regional monopolies. It does not address transportation issues in general. Exxon Mobile thinks it's a great idea. I have a feeling that eliminating regional refiners helps big international oil companies.

Kucinich's proposal is working toward finding a sane energy and transportation policy and stop gas prices from bringing down our economy. It is also working toward the simple notion of helping individuals who need to drive to work, school, day-care.

The boy who cried wolf ended up hurting others (and himself)

To see what is going on in Iraq today, best turn to the BBC. To find out that the captured No. 3 man in Al Qaeda, was not in fact the No. 3 man at all, you'll have to again turn to the Brits, the Sunday World-Times Online. I have not seen any of the US press make the correction.

What you will see on US TV today is footage of people evacuating the White House and Capitol because of an unidentified airplane. That is a serious matter, but the way things are with this "anything for politics" administration, how can we believe them that there was a real threat? Couldn't that just be a response to Bush's sinking approval ratings? A mask for today's problems in Iraq?

Quote in USA Today from Tom Ridge on the frequent terror alerts during his incumbency at the head of Homeland Security:

There were times when some people were really aggressive about raising it, and we said, 'For that?'

What is so serious about Ridge's statement, is that we will never know when we can believe this administration and someone could really get hurt because of that. I know Bush does not read, but can't Laura read The Boy who Cried Wolf to him?

State and Local Housing Flexibility Act with less flexibility

The link takes you to an article about the recently introduced State and Local Housing Flexibility Act. It is known in the Senate as S. 771 and in the House as H.R.1999.IH.

In the House, it was sponsored by Gary Miller of California and co-sponsored by the following cast of characters:

Rep Feeney, Tom [FL-24]
Rep Harris, Katherine [FL-13]
Rep King, Peter T. [NY-3]
Rep Northup, Anne M. [KY-3]
Rep Renzi, Rick [AZ-1]
Rep Weldon, Dave [FL-15]

all republicans.

The basic idea is to cut funding for affordable housing and increase rents. It also increases HUD's power over state and local agencies and give HUD legislative power and the ability to avoid Congress on important aspects such as income targeting. This means that HUD, without Congressional approval, could choose to save money by allocating its housing money to higher income families who need less.

Another aspect of the proposed legislation is to limit the choices low income families have for housing. The Housing Choice Voucher Program now in operation was created to give more choices to low income families giving vouchers for them to use to pay private market landlords across the country. The plan was to prevent places like Cabrini Green where low income families were concentrated in crime ridden areas. The hope was to allow these families the flexibility to live closer to jobs, good schools, relatives etc. and away from ghettos.

Under the proposed law, families could only relocate to different regions where the administering agency has a standing agreement with the administering agency of the family's current location. Allowable rent provisions also restrict housing choice under this proposal by not taking into account local rent levels into what is considered to be an allowable rent. Families will be restricted to particular poor neighborhoods without consideration to reasonable rents in better areas.

Again, another administration proposal called "Flexibility" that purposefully ends flexbility. A better name for the bill would be the "Let's Create New Crime Ridden Housing Projects and Keep the Poor Away from Bush's Rich Friends".

Representative Kirk, please do not to support this bill.

Just passing it on

I apologize to my readers. I usually blog with lots of original material, but still too feverish and miserable to write, so here is some good stuff from others:

1. Will Pitt always gets it right. This is something I'd like to hear from republicans on (although I notice none of them commented on my question of 5/6/2005). Here's a quote:

I have trouble imagining what it must be like to be a Republican these days. The party of Lincoln and TR, the party of fiscal responsibility and small government, has become so profoundly separated from its roots that it is barely recognizable anymore. Millions of people who proudly call themselves Republican must, I think, be dealing with a quiet yet insistent voice within. Something, whispers that voice, has gone wrong.

2. From the horse's mouth, the Illinois Leader:

Rep. Mark Kirk injects himself into the effort to take out Rep. Melissa Bean - GOP Congressional hopeful Dave McSweeney may be seeing hopes of a clear shot in the GOP primary to take on freshman Democrat Melissa Bean (D-8) go by the boards. From the conservative wing, former State Representative and U.S. Senate candidate Al Salvi is considering a run. Additionally, Tenth District Congressman Mark Kirk apparently thinks the GOP can do better than McSweeney and has reportedly recruited Lake County businesswoman Teresa Bartels, who serves on the Lake County Workforce Investment Board, to enter the race.

3. It's more about controlling us than terrorists, on Real ID from Tompaine.com:

Josh Bernstein of the National Immigration Law Center calls REAL ID “the most extreme anti-immigrant legislation that has a good chance of passing in decades.” And others point out that REAL ID is a step toward a chilling, privacy-violating national ID card system that could one day have Americans being asked, Nazi-style, to “show us your papers” wherever they go. It could vastly accelerate the creation of one giant, government-owned database storing nearly unlimited quantities of personal, financial, medical and other records on citizens and non-citizens alike.... The REAL ID is posing as a weapon in the war against terrorism, but the history of the idea long predates the current preoccupation with the terrorist threat, and the provisions of the REAL ID Act seem to have more to do with anti-immigrant measures, wall-building in southern California, and the like than they do with forestalling another 9/11. Even its backers, including Sensenbrenner, fail to cite examples of Al Qaeda types who used fake driver's licenses to carry out acts of violence.

4. From the Dallas News: Teaching kids hate based on religious differences in our public schools. Gee, that sounds like something for which we were mad at the Taliban.

While relations between Odessa's 150 Christian churches and its non-Christian minority are good, Mr. Newman said his 12-year-old daughter has been subjected to some anti-Jewish statements from classmates.

"They'll ask her why 'your people' killed Jesus. Or if she knows that Jesus is her savior," Mr. Newman said. "I don't think it's hate. It's just kids being kids. But I worry what will happen if a pronounced Christian viewpoint is taught in the class."

Kids being kids...we've seen where that often ends up...Afghanistan circa 9/11/2001. Hate is easy to teach, hard to unteach.

5. From Seeing the Forest, Is God Pro-Choice?

Martin Luthur broke from the Catholic Church over the issue of free will in his essay, Concerning Christian Liberty. The Catholic Church rejected the idea that God's grace removes freedom from the human will at The Council of Trent.

6. Couple of interesting things I heard on television: This afternoon, on MSNBC they interviewed Guy L. Womack, attorney for Charles Graner, famed of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal and Lynndie England's senior officer/lover. Apparently, they had Graner's ex-wife on earlier accusing Graner of all sorts of stuff including sexual deviance and were allowing Womack to respond. Sounded to me like the ex-wife Staci Morris is just mad. I don't blame her for that, but more important is that MSNBC takes this route rather than reporting on the far more important issue of the role of torture in the US military and the roles of Secretary Rumsfeld and Attorney General Gonzales. Finally, even I was amazed...they are still talking about and vilifying the runaway bride.

So easy air the dirty laundry of a troubled military couple or to go after an obviously ill woman, so bad for the ratings and high salaries of television executives to go after a powerful, but ever so wrong administration.

Too sick to blog

Sorry, readers. Turns out that my generic viral infection was really a bacterial sinus infection. With no antibiotics, I got pretty sick--high fever, lots of sinus, ear and gum pain. Had to track down a Dr. on a Saturday night. Starting to get a little better now, but not up to blogging.

How's this for a question to ponder: From my symptoms at the time, the Dr. thought I had a viral infection and prescribed rest and cough medicine. Drs. no longer give antibiotics to prevent secondary infection like they used to, but after giving a patient only a cursory examination, do they know enough about the condition not to give an anti-biotic?

Hope to write something substantive on current events this afternoon or evening. Please check back.

Purposefully splitting the country

This was posted to Media Matters on April 28, 2005:

From the April 27 edition of The Rush Limbaugh Show:

LIMBAUGH: I would submit to you that people on the left are religious, too. Their God is just different. The left has a different God. There's a religious left in this country.

And, the religious left in this country hates and despises the God of Christianity and Catholicism and whatever else. They despise it because they fear it, because it's a threat, because that God has moral absolutes. That God has right and wrong, that God doesn't deal in nuance, that God doesn't deal in gray area, that God says, "This is right and that is wrong."

Last Sunday on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Pat Robertson, one of the founders of the Christian Coalition and the Christian Broadcasting Network (CBN), said that no Muslims should be allowed to serve as judges in the US and said that the "out of control judiciary" is the greatest threat that America has faced in the last 400 years - a greater threat than the Civil War, Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, and Al Qaeda. Afterward, Stephanopoulos gave him an opportunity for a graceful out and he refused to take it. To their credit, the Christian Science Monitor wrote this article calling the statement "dumb". However, I have a concern that all this talk is going way beyond merely "dumb". They seem to really mean it and few in the rank and file GOP seems to be trying to distance themselves from it in any serious way.

So, as these traditional spokesmen for the GOP right have been engaging in religious hate rhetoric, the rank and file republicans seem to be willing to have this religious warfare waged on their behalf. I imagine the hope is that all opposition to every administration proposal would immediately back down against this type of rhetoric being too afraid of being labeled "against God" or being accused of creating the religious warfare themselves.

Since the earliest times in our country, groups seeking more power than their numbers should grant found slavery and race useful in this regard, but since racial language like the religious language quoted above is no longer considered acceptable behaviour, they have turned to this route. They get to claim holiness too, or should we say, holier-than-thou-ness.

The kicker is that since the earliest times in our country, this type of rhetoric (race or religious) has led to hate crimes, riots, murders. This played out a little bit in Chicago last night when the salt stain people were worshipping as the Virgin Mary was defaced with a swastika and the words "Big Lie". That is an early sign of religious warfare, and this is mild compared to what can happen. The world recently observed the liberation of Auschwitz. That is an example of how bad it can get, and think about it, they did not have the technology we have today.

Representative Kirk, I know we disagree on a lot, but I hope you are with me here. Please call an end to the GOPs acceptance of religious hate rhetoric to support republican sponsored policies and laws. Sure, these guys have a right to say it under the Constitution, but you don't have to condone it, benefit from it, and fail to state that you do not consider it acceptable political dialogue in this country. This is the real difference between right and wrong.

To my republican readers: Is this the country you want to live in? Really?

You can't get the flu in May and you can't get sick at all without insurance

Went to the doctor and found this out: No one gets the flu in May. If you have a fever, chills, muscle aches, sore throat, stuffy nose, cough in May, it's called a generic viral infection.

Lucky for me I have health insurance so I could find that out. Over 20 million Americans have no health insurance.

Watched way too much television yesterday and saw a commercial by some pharmaceutical company portraying a woman who has no health insurance and is very grateful for some halfbaked offer they have to get her their product at a discount. She tells the camera that she doesn't want health insurance, she doesn't want a "hand out". Too bad they were able to get some actor to say that in order to make the uninsured feel bad about demanding health insurance. The reality is that the uninsured would love to have health insurance and it is nothing short of a crime that money that could have been used for health care is being used in Iraq.

Rather than getting medical information about health care needs from pharmaceutical companies hawking products on TV, please look at this site. What we really have to do is to control costs by stopping the excessive amount of health care money from going to administrative costs. The costs of denying your medical claims are eating up a huge amount of our health care dollars. Another obscene cost charged back to us is the cost to wine and dine lobbyists to campaign against health care for you and for higher profits and less risk for the health care industry.

Mark Kirk took in a total of $173,189 from the health care industry for his anti-health care votes.

Rep. Kirk, the uninsured are not grateful for their lack of health care and using tax dollars for health care is not a handout. Using tax dollars for the wrong war in Iraq is a tragedy.

The flu in May and some interesting reading

Sorry for the short posts lately, but I've been ill with the flu. Who gets the flu in May? I never have before.

Anyway, here are some things to think about:

1. When Ted Kennedy said that the need for the Iraq war was a fraud concocted in Texas, he was not lying, but Bush was, see this Buzzflash Editorial.

2. Will the judge in the Lynndie England case be threated by Frist and DeLay and their followers for trying to get some small amount of justice for that poor confused girl? He is sure blowing the lid off the blame the underlings strategy favored by the Pentagon. Rumsfeld and Gonzalez sure have no problem with a young girl taking the hit for them.

3. The networks are sure shoving religion down our throats recently. Last night, NBC aired a show on how God saves people in big catastrophes (how do they know it was God?) and a new series called Revelation about the end of days. Now, someone (I didn't catch the network) is doing a special on religion in NASCAR. The networks seem more in lockstep with the GOP than ever. Am I the only one concerned about it? Amy Goodman writes about why media ownership matters.

4. Disagreeing with Bush became a crime during the 2004 election. Now some of the people arrested and strip searched are suing. Who will threaten the judges in those cases?

5. Bush compared himself to Lincoln in his speech at the opening of the Lincoln Library, but really provided the excuse for some additional revisionist history. I actually find the move fitting for this president.

Young soldiers and swine

Al Sharpton once said of the war in Iraq that nothing good could come of it because it was based on lies to begin with. He said something akin to the old saying that "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear." That was in response to Bush's reckless comment a while back to the Iraqis to "bring it on".

Well all this time later and Rev. Sharpton is being proved correct.

Abu Ghraib is one major example all by itself. We put our young soldiers in the position of torturing prisoners than punish them like it was all their idea. I was struggling with the fate of Lynndie England in a previous post admonishing her for not thinking for herself, and I still agree with that point, but things appear even worse for her superior officers than I previously thought. Now, it is coming out that she thought the photos were being used for legitimate training. A judge has refused her plea agreement because of the new evidence. Where in the world was her attorney through all this? Was he just going along with the blame the privates for the crime of the officers? the Attorney General? the Secretary of Defense?

Another example is the military recruitment of mentally ill kids. Since military recruiters are only judged by the number of recruits that they sign and not by the consequences of their recruits' performance, they have no qualms about who exactly they recruit. So, when it was discovered that a recruit was mentally ill, were the recruiters sorry? Apparently not, this is what one had to say:

"The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."

Why do you think the military is having trouble recruiting? In WWI and WWII, they had no trouble getting volunteers. Maybe because it is well known that this war is not only wrong from the inception, but is being maintained wrong. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and you cannot make a glorious victory out of lies, religious manipulation, supression of the news and profiteering.

Why are we putting our young people, the most vulnerable of them too, with swine?

I heard the news today, oh boy

Just turned on CNN...still fixated on the "Runaway Bride" despite the fact that 2 jets are missing in Iraq.

Last night they completely abdicated their role as a major news organization running 2 hours of the "Runaway Bride" outlining her step by step plot to avoid marrying that guy.

I turned it off after a while, but turned back every now and then just to see. They were going to have to go to other news eventually. At least, that is what I thought. They never did.

Then, I watched for a while just to see if Aaron Brown was the least bit embarrassed about the program. He did not appear so to me.

I did learn something last night, though. I went over to the Food Network and found out that Walnettos are real candy. I only remember Walnettos from the old Laugh-In skit where Artie Johnson played the dirty old man sitting next to Ruth Buzzi on a park bench asking her if she wanted a Walnetto whereupon she would whack her on the head with her handbag. I always thought Walnetto's were a joke, but they're not. They are caramels with walnuts and the manufacturer stopped making them when movie houses stopped selling unpackaged candy, but they recently made a comeback with a new manufacturer. Can't wait to try one.

Then, I turned on the real news, BBC World News. The real news was:

1. Evidence in the shooting of the Italian agent at a checkpoint in Iraq shows that the car he was in was not speeding as the American soldiers who shot him claimed.
2. American PFC England pled guilty to prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib. They showed a snipet of Ted Kennedy's speech, CNN showed none of that.
3. More bombings in Iraq and the death toll rises with no showing of increased stability since announcement of the government.
4. About 2 seconds on the "Runaway Bride".

The only headline BBC World News failed to get was: CNN Completely Abdicates Role in Serious Journalism...

and the Walnetto is a real candy.

You have to think for yourself

Lynndie England learned the hard way that you have to think for yourself.

Even if her superior officers told her to humiliate naked prisoners and even if she may have been reasonable in thinking that she could be subject to discipline for failing to follow orders, she still had to think for herself and make her own choice. I do not mean to defend the leaders who either ordered or condoned this behaviour, I am just observing that the lower ranked soldiers will do most of the time in punishment for this scandal no matter what, so they needed to do what they needed to do to protect themselves and they did not.

I, for one, would rather be in trouble for disobeying a bad order to abuse prisoners, than in trouble for and having to defend myself against the actual abusive behaviour. For me, it would be easier to look the judge in the eye for refusing than to have to look him in the eye after he has seen pictures like the ones Lynndie was in, She was 21 years old and not thinking as part of the rank and file military, but no one cares about that, even the folks who would argue that she had to obey orders.

Ironically, that is what Jane Fonda was trying to tell the soldiers in Vietnam in 1972. McNamara did their thinking for them and he was wrong, but he wasn't among the Vietnam dead either. He lived to apologize too little too late.

"But you cannot possibly be telling soldiers to disobey their superior officers? That's why we have a 30 year old hate of Jane?" No, I'm not. I'm just saying that the military will hold you responsible for what you do. They just proved it in England's case. So, maybe what I am really saying is that the superior officers need to be more careful about what they order, but until they do, the underlings have to understand that there will be consequences for obeying as well as disobeying.

And it's not just the military. Remember those people who came out of the World Trade Center on Sept 11 and were told everything was ok and they should go back in to work. I was amazed at how many people actually went back in under bosses orders. With one building already ablaze, you have to ask yourself if it's just not worth the reprimand at work to take off for home. Even the toxic smoke alone would have been enough of an argument to leave an office job for the day.

In the case of Enron, had any one of the employees not taken Skilling, Lay, Pi, Fastow or the other leaders so seriously, if someone key had just said no loudly and publicly, maybe the damage could have been minimized. If the cranky old accountants at Arthur Andersen (and you know that had to have existed) raised more of a stink, got supporters and held their ground over what they knew were illegal conflicts of interest and authoriza