Why the BushMen Have No A-List

First, let me define BushMen. They are the men who run the United States of America. Top BushMen: 1. Rupert Murdoch, media mogul (owns Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Fox Network, 35 TV stations (including 19 sports channels); newspaper magnate (publishes 175 newspapers operating in the United States, Australia, Continental Europe, the United Kingdom, Asia and the Pacific Basin including William Kristol’s Weekly Standard); neocon, imperialist, intimidator, warmonger; born in Australia, became US citizen in 1985. 2. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr., Chairman of the Carlyle Group which serves as a go-between for weapons sales between major defense contractors and governments all over the world. Serving Murdoch and Gerstner are: Karl Rove, White House Senior Advisor Richard Cheney, Vice-President Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense (soon to be head of the World Bank) Andrew H. Card, Jr., Presidential Chief of Staff Richard Perle, Chairman of the Defense Policy Board, (advisory panel to the Pentagon) Elliott Abrams, Deputy National Security Adviser who pleaded guilty in 1991 to withholding information from Congress in the Iran/Contra scandal Donald Rumsfeld, Department of Defense Secretary Peter W. Rodman, Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chairman John Snow, US Treasury Secretary William Kristol, editor of Washington, DC’s The Weekly Standard and founder of the Project for the New American Century Please note, George W. Bush is not on the list of BushMen. That’s because he doesn’t count, he makes no decisions, he makes no policies. He is a puppet. Subordinate BushMen Understaff: The sole purpose of the Subordinate Understaff is to enable George W. Bush’s delusions and to make him feel as though he is in the loop, which he isn’t. Subordinate Understaff: Condoleeza Rice, Secretary of State, GWB baby-sitter and confidante Karen Hughes, bogus current title whatever it may be, GWB baby-sitter Laura Bush, George W. Bush's wife and baby-sitter Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida, George W. Bush’s brother and Project for the New American Century tool Scott McClellan, Press Secretary, GWB baby-sitter, procurer and tool for the GOP. Assorted Jesus-people, evangelists, sycophants and flunkies The question of the day is: Why do the BushMen keep appointing inferior, unqualified people to important positions in the Bush administration? Many of the recent appointments, such as Gonzales for Attorney General, Rice for Secretary of State and Wolfowitz for head of the World Bank have simply been reassigning the usual suspects to new jobs for which they are ill-equipped. The reason is fear. The Top BushMen are scared to death that if new people, smart people, qualified and ethical people are appointed to top GOP jobs they would put a stop to the corruption and rot in the Bush administration. Of course another reason that the BushMen have not made appointments from an A-list is that qualified, smart, ethical Republicans whose names would automatically be on an A-list would not work for Murdoch and the Carlyle Group and wouldn’t be caught dead in a yes-man job in the White House. Before the war in Iraq, Rupert Murdoch said that George W. Bush "will either go down in history as a very great president or he'll crash and burn”. Murdoch added, “I'm optimistic it will be the former by a ratio of 2 to 1…one senses he is a man of great character and deep humility." Translation: I can make either thing happen, you White House morons, so exercise your great character and deep humility and do as I say. Sixty-percent of the people in the USA do not like the way our country is being run. Many of those people are Republicans. Even powerful dictators like Rupert Murdoch and the hydra-headed Carlyle Group can be stopped, particularly when it’s the will of 60% of Americans.

NYT and Salon Ask: “Why Paul Wolfowitz?”

But then, Why Condoleeza Rice for Secretary of State? Why Karen Hughes for undersecretary of state? Why John Bolton as ambassador to the UN? Why Alberto Gonzales as Attorney General? They all are inappropriate appointments to unqualified people. Why does the White House keep making these ill-advised appointments? Might as well ask, Why did the Supreme Court ratify a fixed election in 2000? The answer is: Because it can. The New York Times ends today’s editorial by saying that nominating Wolfowitz to head the World Bank is “too critical a post to be used by the president to make another triumphalist political point”. Salon’s Farhad Manjoo says Wolfowitz is “a defense specialist. This is not a qualification to be the head of the World Bank”. So. Everyone knows Wolfowitz is ill-equipped to be the head of the World Bank. And everyone knows Bush is bent on nominating him. Furthermore, everyone knows that not a single world leader is going to buck the US White House and dispute the appointment although not a single world leader wants Wolfowitz to run the World Bank. Who benefits then, in this latest White House “Fuck You” to the world? The White House benefits. They got rid of a big pain in the ass to Rumsfeld and Condi Rice. Plus they got to foist a warmongering fascist who knows nothing about global development and cares nothing about global development on the world. Another coup for the White House bullies. Could they have more fun than this? And while the BushMen are high-fiving each other for another ill-advised and arrogant appointment that demonstrates they can do whatever they want, what else is going on in the White House Third Reich? Well, let’s see, the new FCC Chairman, Kevin Martin is going to bring morality and decency back to radio and TV. He’s still in a church-lady snit over the SuperBowl half-time program when Janet Jackson showed off her surgically enhanced titty. Martin sniffed that the whole gyrating half-time program was “too crude”. You want too crude? I’ll give you too crude. Here’s how crude and ignorant and clueless our leaders have become. In a rare moment of lucidity, Tom Friedman’s NYT Op/Ed piece today lays out exactly how the White House has sold us down the river to China. He says, “the Bush team has not only been steadily eroding America's leverage and room for maneuver vis-à-vis its biggest long-term competitor - China - but it has actually been making us more dependent than ever on Beijing....the Bush team and its Republican-run Congress, have helped China become the second-largest holder of U.S. debt, with a little under $200 billion worth.” Friedman quotes energy economist Philip Verleger, Jr. who says, regarding the recent decision by the GOP-run Congress to allow oil drilling in Alaska, "I am sure China will be thrilled with the Bush decision to drill in Alaska...oil in Alaska cannot easily or efficiently be shipped to our Gulf Coast refineries. The logical markets are on the West Coast of the United States and in Asia. Consumers in China and Japan, not the U.S., will be the real beneficiaries of any big Alaska find.” Is that crude and sleazy and foul enough for you? Well, one thing we know: the BushMen are having a wonderful time. Like the small-minded, gloating, sarcastic, spiteful, gossipy, bitchy, ball-busting sewing-circle ladies that they are, they sure have shown us who wears the pants. Oh you betcha!!!! Just like Nero, Hitler, Joe McCarthy and J. Edgar Hoover.

Karen Hughes a Diplomat? Oh Please!

Let’s see...how long ago was it that Bush Advisor/Surrogate Mommy Karen Hughes told Little Georgie Bush that she was going back to Texas to be with her family? "My husband and I have made a difficult but we think right decision to move our family home back to Texas,” she said. Seems like yesterday, but it was April 22, 2002. Oh well...nevermind. Mommy Karen is back at the ranch and her boss will be Condoleeza Rice. If that superior-inferior arrangement isn’t a hoot-and-a-half, I don’t know what is. Assuming the appointment will be confirmed by the Senate, Hughes will have the title “undersecretary of state for public diplomacy”, and the rank of ambassador. As a friend of mine said yesterday, "WTF? Karen Hughes has a tin ear when it comes to anything resembling decorum or diplomacy." What it’s about, my friends, is that President George Bush is coming unglued and he needs his Moms. The war in Iraq hasn’t panned out too well. Social Security reform hasn’t panned out too well. The mandate that never was, isn’t. Michael Jackson and President Bush are about as popular as each other. Congress is debating Bush’s $2.57 trillion budget, the GOP is in a civil war with itself. There is open revolt over the recently-passed Bankruptcy bill. And God asked me to tell you that George Bush is free to believe anything he wants but that the Almighty laughed his ass off when he heard Bush say, “God wants me to be president”. When Prez Bush ventures out into the real world, his “conversations” with the folks are so stage-managed that Bush-watchers say he has no idea his approval ratings have slipped to the point that 60% of the people are against him. Not true. He knows he’s political poison. He may not understand it, but he knows and he needs all his security blankies all the time. That’s why Rove and Company summoned Karen Hughes back to the fold. She’s supposed to get Bush out of the fetal position and back to his deluded grandiose self. Will it work? Depends on how far he has spiraled down. Now that Karen Hughes is on the Bush team again, Salon’s Tim Grieves posed 5 questions yesterday he’d like to ask the newly-proposed undersecretary of state for public diplomacy. No. 5: “You know the president better than just about anyone. What was that bulge on his back?”

The Art of Seduction

This past weekend, I watched “The Lady From Shanghai” (1948) and “Double Indemnity” (1944). “Double Indemnity” was under the regulations of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA--better known as “the Hays office”--1922-1945) but “The Lady From Shanghai” was not under the regulations. Even so, both films followed the movies’ moral code prevalent at the time. Killers had to die, even if we liked them and they were charming. And particularly, women killers had to die, no matter how justified their crime, so they wouldn’t breed more of their kind. I grant you, that last sentence was not in the revised 1930 production code, but it’s not difficult to make the inference. It wasn't until 1960 (“Psycho”) that Hollywood finally broke with nearly 40 years of adhering to the MPPDA formula for morals in the movies. However, this weekend’s double-dose of movies which showed in exquisite detail how two women used their wiles to get men to do their dirty-work had an unsettlingly familiar after-taste. What was I reminded of? And then it hit me. Oh! My God! The Bush administration is the Lair of the Bitch Goddesses. No, not the women in the Bush administration. The men. The BushMen use the tactics that have given bitches a bad name. They govern by using the worst character flaws that society has damned women for. They lie, deceive, cheat, promise anything but deliver nothing. Or, as some wag said about an entertainment diva (turning Churchill’s famous line about the Royal Air Force insideout--“never was so much owed by so many to so few”)--“Never have so many paid so much for so little.” The BushMen tantalize and tease. They carp, nag and say catty things about opponents. They use dirty tricks. They get others to do their dirty work by spreading rumor and gossip. They start conflicts for the fun of starting conflicts. They don’t end conflicts nor do they have any desire to end conflicts. Conflicts are fun. Spreading dissension is fun. Creating mischief is fun. The US (and to a lesser extent, the world) is being governed by a bunch of desperate housewives. It’s also interesting that the Hollywood Production Code of 1930 turns out to be the rules of conduct the far-right neocons have decided the United States should live under. Check it out--http://www.und.edu/instruct/cjacobs/ProductionCode.htm Anyone voting for the Bush administration has been seduced. And seduced in the manner that tarantulas and Venus Flytraps seduce, not in the manner that men seduce. What are we to make of that? Beats me. It’s interesting though, when you think about it, isn’t it?

Behind the GOP Social Security Tap Dance

Forget the ridiculous pie-charts, falsified statistics and doomsday prophesies. There is only one idea motivating the White House fascists and their attempts to kill Social Security: The GOP is still fighting Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal. That’s it. They can’t get over it. They’ll never get over it. But the White House plan to replace the New Deal with the Raw Deal has two problems that weren’t factored into the scheme. It may be that their mania to erase all vestiges of FDR’s legacy from living memory has caused the WH to assume that the huge turds in the punchbowl don't matter. Or perhaps their hatred of the New Deal clouded their judgment. In any event, the sorry fact remains that the Raw Deal Privatization plan is 1) silly and unworkable and 2) the man who is supposed to close the Raw Deal by dazzling the populace with charm and articulate explanations, is an idiot. On March 4th, CNN posted a Fact-Check piece to correct some of the distortions (lies) that President Bush had presented as facts in his "Conversation on Strengthening Social Security" speech in Westfield, New Jersey. In brief: “Claim: ‘One way for a younger worker to come closer to what the government has promised is to be able to take a portion of the money and get a better rate of return on your own money than that which the Social Security system gets.’ CNN Fact Check: The president implies that a "personal" or private retirement account will ‘get a better rate of return’ than the current Social Security system, but he doesn't clarify the risk of getting a lower return or even losing money on the investments. Claim: ‘You can pass that money [from a private account] to whomever you want.’ CNN Fact Check: That is only partially true. The president does not mention that only part of the money in a private retirement account can be passed on to others as an inheritance. Claim: ‘If we don't act, we're looking at about an $11 trillion hole for the American taxpayer coming up. This is a big liability not for me or baby boomers ... but if you're a young worker, you've got a problem.’ CNN Fact Check: The president incorrectly suggests that the young workers of today will face an $11 trillion Social Security shortfall if the program continues on its current course.” But the worst of it is, President Bush doesn’t understand the privatization plan himself. When he strays from reading a printed explanation and says, “in other words”, trying to make the plan clear to the common man, he misspeaks and makes totally false statements about an already fatally flawed scheme. Our President is a delusional nutcase whose brain never functioned well on his best day. So what have we got? We’ve got a White House gang of fascists making plans and policies based on the fact they hate an ex-President’s plans and policies from 72 years ago. And we’ve got a medicated idiot explaining why screwing the elderly and poor and giving aid to the rich is a better plan than giving a helping hand to the elderly and poor. Into the bargain, we’ve got a WH Press Secretary dancing as fast as he can to explain the President’s pixilated explanations of a White House scheme to discredit a president who has been dead for 60 years. I used to think the entire Bush administration should be impeached. I’ve changed my mind. They all should be committed to an asylum for the criminally insane.

Censorship Always Fails

But thanks to Saint Augustine, the Christian right ceaselessly tries to censor everything from cuss words to lace panties. The Bible never mentions Original Sin. In Ezekiel 18, God says only that the sinner will die and his children are innocent. But when a convert rises to the top of a religious movement, the old ways of revering God are never good enough. Comes on the scene, a certain Aurelius Augustinus Augustine of Hippo--354 AD to 430 AD. Augustine was a poster boy for all kinds of raunchy behavior, including having a son by a whore. But when Augustine finally got religion (he was baptized in 387) he was more spiritual than Jesus and repented of his sinful ways more than St. Paul. Augustine eventually became the Bishop of Hippo. Along the path to his becoming a Saint, Augustine promoted the idea of Original Sin into a full-blown tenet of the Christian movement. The concept and term “original sin” were first used by the 2nd century theologian, Tertullian. And what it means is that because Adam fell under the spell of Eve and brought sin into the Garden of Eden, we all are sinners when we are born. But Augustine, in his missionary zeal to protect God's elite from going to hell, went further than Tertullian. Augustine said that since man was inherently evil when he came into the world because of the sinful, ugly, nasty, act of his parents having had sex in order to conceive him, the church must guide the state to repress, punish and restrain the vast majority of people who are evil. Because, unless stopped, the original sin in all of us will destroy the few good people God had decided should be saved from hell. Whew! Well, the early Christian church bought it. And every 30 or 40 years, a bunch of reformers, who historically are always proven to be worse sinners than those they want to reform, rise up and start screaming, Repent! And historically, it never works. Prohibition didn’t work, Nazism didn’t work, the Catholic Church’s banning books and movies didn’t work, McCarthyism didn’t work, the KuKluxKlan didn’t work. But those who fear their own smarmy inclinations keep trying. Frank Rich has another terrific column in the New York Times this morning, The Greatest Dirty Joke Ever Told. It’s about the current batch of reformers who are trying to censor our lives for our own good. And, of course, this latest attempt at censorship by a bunch of people looking at their own inadequacies and perversions and deciding the world needs to be protected from people like them, is doomed. The thing is, we don’t even have to fight this gaggle of fanatics who want to repress, punish and restrain. Their effort will fall of its own weight. Censorship always has and always will fail.

George Bush--Accidental Good Guy in Middle East

Or, as they say in my hometown: Even a stopped clock is right twice a day. Fareed Zakaria has an article in the March 14th issue of Newsweek giving George W. Bush credit for bringing democracy, freedom, reform and the promise of a peaceful future to the Middle East. That is such a load of horseshit. Although the article makes it clear that Bush has made huge mistakes in Iraq, Zakaria sounds as though he actually believes George Bush is the one who makes policies and decisions in the Bush administration, which he doesn’t, and that Bush is capable of having complex thoughts, which he isn't. Perhaps it’s that Zakaria wants to make sure he continues his career as a journalist, but his giving credence to the White House myth that George Bush decides matters of great importance is ridiculous. George Bush is the epitome of an empty suit. He’s a figurehead. He speaks when told what to say. When he’s not told what to say, he resorts to repeating memorized sentences that often are inappropriate to the topic. It’s equally ridiculous to advance the proposition that the present White House is responsible for signs of reform in the Middle East. Out of the ashes of the Bush administration’s failed war in Iraq, the Iraqi people have managed to pull something together that may or may not resemble democracy in a few decades. At the present time, after two years of destroying the country and murdering tens of thousands of Iraqis, the US has been unable to give the people even the basic amenities which they had under Saddam Hussein. Yasser Arafat finally kicked the bucket, which may or may not result in Israel and Palestine having a dialogue that may or may not lead to peace. The White House has done nothing for the Israel/Palestine conflict except allow George Bush to jabber about an area of the world he doesn’t understand in words someone gave him which he can’t comprehend. The whole world has been telling Syria to loose its stranglehold on Lebanon. And now finally Lebanon has said, Get out! In an excess of arrogance, the White House wants to take credit for Syria pulling out of Lebanon when it’s been inevitable since September 2004 when the UN Security Council passed resolution 1559. This resolution called for “foreign forces” to leave Lebanon and end their meddling in Lebanese affairs. George Bush only became aware of Lebanon as something the GOP could spin when former Lebanese premier Rafik al-Hariri was assassinated on February 14th. The BushMen blundered into the Middle East like ham-handed klutzes. Bush himself could barely pronounce the names Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden when they started their unnecessary war. As of this morning they have killed 1511 American soldiers. At no time did the White House fascist visions of global supremacy and George Bush’s grandiose delusions of power ever promote peace except by accident. The present White House gang has had designs on ruling the Middle East since Daddy WarBush bungled the Gulf War in 1991. Through lies and deceit, this obsession moved into the realm of reality when the White House invaded Iraq. The WH then decided it was a perfect opportunity to declare the US was spreading liberty and freedom even though the exact opposite is true. The only thing the GOP Is spreading in the Middle East is war and dissension Just because a stopped clock says it’s 3:00 when it’s 3:00 doesn’t mean the clock caused 3:00 to occur. And by 3:01, it will be wrong again...as usual.

George Bush Motto: “I Reject Your Reality and Substitute My Own”

Discovery Channel’s “Mythbuster” Adam Savage, unwittingly stated the Bush administration motto when he stubbornly and hilariously stuck to his guns on a doomed project and said to the crew, “I reject your reality and substitute my own”. But there is nothing funny about the Bush administration’s mulish and self-serving obstinacy. The zeal of the White House to impose its warped viewpoint on the world is the fervor of dictators and madmen. However, unless the Bush administration imposes martial law on Americans to force us to substitute their reality for what we know to be true, the BushWorld myth has already been busted. Permanently lowering taxes is doomed because the treasury needs the money that taxes bring in. Privatization of Social Security is doomed because it’s stupid and unworkable. Invading nations we either disagree with or whose resources we covet is doomed since the BushMen have left no money in the till for waging new wars. And yet the White House sends its martinets around the world to repeat the Bush mantra: We reject your reality and substitute our own. Last night on The Daily Show, Jon Stewart showed a clip of George Bush and the CIA’s new head Porter Goss when they toured CIA headquarters in Virginia last Thursday. Bush confidently claimed the CIA was going to continue its hunt for Osama bin Laden. And Porter Goss looked not only aghast and surprised but seemed genuinely bewildered at the rantings of the lunatic by his side. All the spin and propaganda that high-end White House public relations people can provide is quickly undone when a real-time, unposed, unmanipulated moment is caught on TV. The White House special-effects reality is no match for three seconds of tape that the BushMen weren’t able to manipulate out of existence.

Mr. Ratfucker and the Red Stars of Courage

Recently, Mr. Ratfucker was called a “Commie” by a dweeby little freeper asswipe on the Guardian Unlimited Newsblog. After Mr. Ratfucker picked himself off the floor where he had been laughing his ass off, and wiped his eyes, Mr. Ratfucker asked himself if dweeby freeper asswipes know what Communists are. He decided they don’t. However, a batch of ignorant, gormless, stupid, cowardly, bullying, nonthinking, easily-led college kids have determined that anyone who disagrees with the fascists in the White House are Commies. And they are putting red stars on the doors of professors who believe George Bush’s policies are wrong. Mr. Ratfucker would like to inform this new breed of goosestepping, neocon, warmongering, immature band of snitches, finks and yes-men that the only major impact they are having is to make anyone who merits one of their red star badges proud to have received it. So proud, in fact, that red stars are going to be turning up on so many doors, bumper stickers, t-shirts and lapel pins that not to have one will be equated with being on the wrong side of any and all political issues. Mr. Ratfucker says upward and onward, Red Star Society. Let’s hear it for the Red Star Badge of Courage!

DU Reports on Sy Hersh Louisville Speech

Another reason bloggers are gold. How else would we hear about a speech given by Sy Hersh in Louisville, KY, except that a poster wrote a full report. Democrat-4-Ever attended the speech and reported on it March 5 in the Democratic Underground. Needing specifics about where the speech was delivered, I Googled Seymour Hersh and Louisville’s main newspaper, Courier-Journal, trying to find a recap of the speech. I came up empty. Then I searched Courier-Journal’s site and again came up empty...no mention of the speech. Finally, I found a telephone interview a Courier-Journal reporter had done with Hersh back in February that mentioned, in passing, that Hersh would be the “Wyatt Lecture” speaker at Bellarmine University in Louisville on March 3, 2005. In any event, Kentucky’s Repub bias notwithstanding, Democrat-4-Ever said the lecture hall was packed. In reporting Hersh’s remarks, Dem-4 said, “Some of the things that I thought most interesting--Bush doesn't care what the American people or the world thinks about his plans. Just flat doesn't care. Hersh says that from his contacts within the administration that naysayers are routinely pushed out and only people who agree with his and the neocons grand schemes are allowed anywhere close to the table. King Chimpy honestly believes that he is changing the course of world history and that in 10, 20 or 50 years he will be remembered in the same way that Lincoln is revered. And he has no one around him to tell him any different.” Dem-4 also reported Hersh said, “Rumsfeld has completely trashed the CIA. Concerted steps were taken to remove, run off or push from the table any and all people within the agency that did not get on board with the grand schemes. The CIA was the original group that kept saying there were no WMDs, no terrorists, Saddam not involved. The BushyBots just didn't want to hear it. The CIA is now a toothless, powerless (my words) agency. Because of laws written in the 80s that required Congressional oversight this administration has circumvented the process by declaring presidential authority to prepare for possible wars by using the military by secret methods traditionally used by the CIA for information. Since they have "authority" and it is not the CIA, King Chimp, Cheney and Rumsfeld feel they do not have to report to Congress or any one else on what they are doing. Scary, scary $hit.” The Dem-4 post ended with, “You get a chance to hear this guy speak be sure and go. He was very hopeful in the American public being able to save this country but the plans he outlined for this administration should give us all pause and scare the beegeebers out of you if we let this continue.” The problem, of course, is how do we keep the fascism of the White House from continuing. We have a Republican House, Republican Senate and a Republican-corrupted mainstream media. The most powerful tool the Democrats have, other than those Dems who have the balls to stand up to the White House bullies, is the growing numbers of Republicans who are beginning to view the power-drunk BushMen as dangerous despots. Make no mistake, even the puppet-masters behind King George’s throne are well aware our president is insane. Right now, they are confident they can control him to their advantage. They can’t. As Dem-4 reported, the Prez “honestly believes that he is changing the course of world history”. It’s inevitable that the moment will come when the President’s detractors outnumber his sycophantic supporters. Then what? A.M. Benis (Sc.D., MD), an authority on Personality Disorders says in “Toward Self & Sanity: On the Genetic Origins of the Human Character”, the Narcissist “cannot tolerate any serious criticism of his qualities, or interference in his ambition to attain the limelight.  When frustrated he may, on the one hand, be incited into the narcissistic rage of defense and withdrawal, or on the other hand, he may undergo a depression to an abject state of hopelessness.” Our President may be medicated but he calls talk therapy “psychobabble”. So what happens to untreated pathologically narcissistic mental cases? I’m sure we’re going to find out. It’s not a good prognosis.

The White House Reflecting Pool

According to the legend of Narcissus, a Greek boy fell in love with his own reflection in a pond. He rejected the advances of the nymph Echo and was punished by Nemesis. Narcissus was doomed to pine away as he fell in love with his own reflection - exactly as Echo had pined away for him. Narcissistic Personality Disorder is a pathological condition in which an all-pervasive pattern of grandiosity, need for admiration and lack of empathy is exhibited. The American Psychiatric Association says five or more of the following symptoms need to be present for one to be diagnosed a Narcissist. 1. Feels grandiose and self-important, exaggerates achievements and talents to the point of lying, demands to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements. 2. Is obsessed with fantasies of unlimited success, fame, fearsome power or omnipotence, unequaled brilliance, bodily beauty or sexual performance. 3. Firmly convinced that he or she is unique, that he or she can only be understood by, treated by, or should only associate with other special, unique, or high-status people. 4. Requires excessive admiration, adulation, attention and affirmation or, failing that, wishes to be feared and to be notorious. 5. Feels entitled, expects unreasonable or special and favorable priority treatment, demands automatic and full compliance with his or her expectations. 6. Uses others to achieve his or her own ends. 7. Devoid of empathy. Is unable or unwilling to identify with or acknowledge the feelings and needs of others. 8. Constantly envious of others or believes that they feel the same about him or her. 9. Arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes coupled with rage when frustrated, contradicted, or confronted. However, the Narcissist is not in love with himself, he is in love with his reflection. A Narcissist’s image is the important thing. The image of himself that is reflected back to him is the only “self” that matters. There is no real self other than the reflection. Narcissists rarely seek psychiatric treatment. The Narcissist will never and can never admit he is wrong.

Dear Reverend Tom Friedman:

Your New York Times Op/Ed column today, “Brave, Young and Muslim”, is like a sermon from a right-wing preacher. You tout an unrealized rosy future that the Bush administration’s presence in Iraq may bring about but you conveniently forget why there is a Bush administration presence in Iraq. We illegally, unnecessarily and by telling the world huge lies, invaded Iraq on March 20, 2003. As of this morning, 1500 American soldiers have died in that criminal enterprise. You find no problem with buying into the White House rewrite of history. When the BushMen mounted their unnecessary war they lied and said Saddam Hussein had slammed two planes into the World Trade Center. Little Georgie Bush said Saddam had threatened his daddy and Saddam had to go. Now they are saying they invaded Iraq to bring freedom to the Middle East. And you, Reverend Friedman, have sat in the Amen corner through all the White House spinning morphs from the actual reason for invading Iraq--protecting our oil interests--to bringing freedom to the Muslims, and you have praised this unholy enterprise. On March 26, 2003 you set out the six criteria which will prove whether the war had been righteous: 1. Have we occupied Baghdad without leveling the whole city? 2. Have we killed, captured, or expelled Saddam? 3. Have we won this war and preserved the territorial integrity of Iraq? 4. Is the Iraqi state that emerges from this war accepted as legitimate by Iraq's Arab and Muslim neighbors? 5. Have we been able to explain why some Iraqi forces are putting up such a fierce fight? 6. Has an authentic Iraqi liberal nationalist emerged from the U.S. occupation to lead the country? It’s two years later and we’ve leveled huge portions of Iraq. We have not won this war or preserved the territorial integrity of Iraq. Iraq’s neighbors are now preparing for us to invade them. Who would the authentic nationalist be who is leading the country? And the only explanation for why Iraqi forces are putting up such a fierce fight is that they think we are in Iraq on false pretenses. And yes. Saddam was captured. You keep preaching that the end justifies the means. Pastor Friedman, it may come as a terrible shock to you, but the end NEVER justifies the means. That little fascist phrase translates as: We can lie, cheat, steal, deceive, maraud, oppress and make war as long as we claim our aims are just. Our aims in Iraq never have been just. They were not just on March 20, 2003 and they are not just now.

Cheney for Prez in 2008?

Tim Grieve has an interesting article in this morning’s Salon.com re GOP candidates for 2008. Although Cheney answered Fox News queries about whether he might run for Prez in 2008 with a, “Hell no,” Grieve quoted the Weekly Standard’s Exec Ed Fred Barnes as saying "there's every reason Cheney should change his mind". Oh my God! What a gift that would be. I can think of two reasons why the Dems should hail a Cheney run with sweets and flowers. No. 1-He’s a dead man walking No. 2-We know he’s a dead man walking We didn’t know about George Bush’s mental and physical health problems in 2000. And in 2004 when people were starting to suspect he was loony as King George III and physically unwell into the bargain, still, his health records were kept secret. But Dick Cheney’s health records are an open book. His prognosis is dim and getting dimmer. Whether he could even withstand the rigors of a campaign in three years is doubtful. It’s interesting and an indication of how far out of reality the Bush administration supporters are, that Barnes would welcome a Cheney run. Barnes even said Condi Rice would be a strong contender...stronger than John McCain. Holy crap! Barnes is loonier than George W. Bush who is loonier than King George III who was loonier than Richard III. Condi Rice is universally despised at home and abroad. Condi Rice has the personal warmth of a pit viper. Condi Rice possesses all the people skills of Bill O’Reilly without the physical beauty. And Barnes says, “John McCain is not in the same league” with Condi Rice or Dick Cheney. Well that’s true. John McCain would be a personable, electable candidate. Dick Cheney for Prez in 2008. And how about James Guckert for Vice Prez? Sounds like a dandy GOP ticket. Wheeze and sleaze.

Did the US Cause Lebanon’s “Cedar Revolution”?

The US is a bully intent on bringing the Middle East under its imperialist thumb by force. And yet, when overtures of peace or conciliation are made anywhere in the Middle East, the US crows, “We did that. That’s because we’re bringing democracy to the heathen.” Yasser Arafat’s death meant that Israel and Palestine could begin thinking about talking to each other. Neither Clinton nor Bush had anything to do with it. Nothing the US had done before worked. It was Arafat’s death that brought about the change. Is Syria loosening its death grip on Lebanon because the US invaded Iraq? Probably. But not because we’re white knights saving the downtrodden. If Syria is making nice with Israel and the US it’s partly because Syria is scared shitless they and Iran are on the White House Next To Be Conquered list. But it’s more complicated than that. First, France’s Jacques Chirac is pissed at Syria because he thinks Syria was behind the assassination of his friend, Lebanon’s Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri. Syria’s Bashar Assad was supposed to effect reforms in Lebanon, not commit murder. France is (was) Syria’s main friend in Europe. And France and the UN are calling for Syria to get its troops out of Lebanon. And yes, the US presence in Iraq cut off Syria’s border access for troops and intelligence. And yes, Syria has felt the threat of a US invasion ever since the US invaded Iraq. But is Syria relinquishing its power in Lebanon because of the US? Or, put another way, is the death toll in Iraq of American soldiers--which today or tomorrow will reach 1500--causing peace to break out in the Middle East? No. It is not. Because the US intends to wage more wars in the Middle East whether Lebanon’s Cedar Revolution is successful or not. Syria’s Assad is no Saddam Hussein. Assad sees which way the wind is blowing and would like to make peace with Israel and the US. But if the Islamic Jihad and Hezbollah--both groups that Assad supports but can’t control--are crazy and unpredictable, they can be matched nutcase for nutcase by Bush supporters in Congress. There are Neocons who still believe that Weapons of Mass Destruction were hidden in Syria and by god! if we can’t dig ‘em up, we can nuke ‘em out of existence. Assad is absolutely right to be scared of the US crazies. We’re like the drunk wife-beater who says “Look what you made me do” and then delivers another sucker punch.

Is Gannon/Guckert the GOP’s Monica Lewinski?

The Clinton/Lewinski scandal also broke on the Internet. The Drudge Report carried a story on January 17, 1998 that Newsweek had killed a scoop by Michael Isikoff about an affair between President Clinton and Monica Lewinski. With that revelation, the Clinton/Lewinski expose was off and running. Who would have dreamed the pious Bible thumping GOP could make l’affaire Lewinsky look so tame? Yes, Bill Clinton was a lech, but a garden-variety lech. Clinton was a charming, lusty, lech who found women irresistible and acted on it. But the Bush administration with its values rhetoric, decency harangues, speeches that turn into proselytizing born-again sermons and fire and brimstone rants against homosexuality has taken trouser-dropping erotic episodes to a new low. In the black community it’s called “being on the down-low”. The stories the Net is carrying about the BushMen allege that James Guckert, a gay male hooker who used the alias Jeff Gannon, infiltrated the White House press corps with no bonafide credentials but with White House blessings, that Guckert was a shill for GOPUSA and was scripted by the White House to ask pro-GOP/anti-Dem questions at press conferences, that Guckert provides male companions for the Bush administration for a hefty fee. And that the President has been carrying on a homosexual affair with one of his roommates at Yale, Victor Ashe (who GWB appointed Ambassador to Poland), for the past 35 years. All of these items are in addition to the “scandal sheet” posted by Salon.com on January 18, 2005, listing and elaborating on 34 scandals in the Bush administration which are, as Salon said, “every one of them worse than Whitewater” --the unsubstantiated claims of malfeasance against the Clintons. Could it be any juicier? And what does the Christian Right have to say about the Gannon/Guckert allegations? Bill Berkowitz who writes a column about the conservative movement for WorkingForChange said on February 24th that so far the American Right has been silent. Folks who either said there was no one around at the time to answer Berkowitz’s questions or they weren’t commenting on the Gannon issue were: Dr. James Dobson's Focus on the Family, The Family Research Council, The Traditional Values Coalition and The Free Congress Foundation. In addition, Berkowitz said, “The editors at Town Hall, the Heritage Foundation's one stop shopping center for conservative ideas, and the Rev. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association, currently involved in trashing HBO's Bill Maher over recent remarks he made about religion, didn't return my calls. Charisma News Service and the Christian Response Network didn't respond to my email questions about their lack of coverage of the Gannon Affair.” A lot of people are saying that focusing on all the alleged sexual misconduct of the Bush administration is unproductive and we should be using our energies to counteract the wrongheaded policies of the BushMen. I would feel that way too if it weren’t for the Repubs’ obsession with sex. I really want to knuckle down and understand the fine points of the Bush social services cuts, or the Bush plan to make wounded American soldiers from the Iraq war pay more for prescriptions, or the plan to screw money out of the elderly, or another plan to give monetary aid to very, very, very wealthy Americans, or the unworkable Bush plan for Social Security, or the Bush plan to bomb the bejesus out of Iran. But every time I start to study these important issues, the White House gang gets their panties in a twist over homosexuals, or sex education for teenagers, or sex on TV, or sex at the movies, or sex on the Internet. And then I have to start thinking about sex again. Which, apparently, is what the BushMen are doing...thinking about sex all the time, twenty-four-seven. Or at least plotting ways to fuck the world every which way til Kingdom Come.

No Trick Too Nasty or Perverse For the GOP

It is difficult for the majority of American citizens to think in Machiavellian terms. In the late 15th century Nicolo Machiavelli had been tortured and reviled by the Medici family which ruled Florence, Italy, because he was involved in a reform movement. In fact, he had become an important diplomat in that movement. But by 1525, Machiavelli had regained favor with the Medicis. He wrote “The Prince” in 1513, although it wasn’t published until after he died in 1527. The treatise was so controversial that Pope Clement VIII condemned it. Machiavelli admitted that his reason for writing “The Prince” was to endear himself to the Medicis. The basic tenet of “The Prince” is that royalty should maintain total control of their realms by any means necessary, including deceit. A few do’s and don’ts from the Machiavelli playbook are: Some "virtues" will destroy a prince but some "vices" will allow him to survive. The prince must be deceitful when it suits his purpose. But he must not appear to be deceitful. The prince must always seem to exhibit five virtues: mercy, honesty, humaneness, uprightness, and religiousness. A prince must be severe when punishing people rather than merciful. Death sentences affect only a few, but they deter crimes which affect many. It is better to be feared than to be loved. Machiavelli also wrote seven books on the art of war. One of his wartime pieces of advice was: Religion and the soldier's oath are to be used to inspire the men - put the fear of God in them. Apparently, the White House copies of Machiavelli’s works are well-thumbed. Today, the BlogBox on Democratic Underground quotes a caveat for all bloggers from the John Arivosis blog, AMERICAblog: “Defenders of Gannon are now phoning people who post comments on AMERICAblog, they pretend to be me, and ask the person to stop posting on the forum. This happened to a good friend of mine who posts here (guys, get a clue, don't call a friend of mine and pretend to be me), and now it's happened to someone else. “First off, when you use a phone, there's an electronic paper trail. Second of all, when you pretend to be someone else, you're very likely bordering on a crime. If this story is so hot that Gannon's, and/or the White House's defenders, are feeling the need to try to sabotage this blog, well all I can say is thanks, and I'm posting this publicly so perhaps we can get another media story out of this. “Folks, just a word of caution to everyone on visiting our site, but also to the good folks working like dogs at DailyKos, World o Crap, and everyone else on this story. I'm starting to sense some disinformation coming our way, especially in the comments section of the blog. We've all finally captured the attention of the mainstream media and made this story a story. We've also captured the attention of the Bush administration and other GOP bad guys, and I suspect they're trying to feed us bad info so we jump on it, print it and thus they can try to debunk all of our good work. “All I'm saying is that I recommend everyone be doubly careful about sussing out any information you find, see printed, or receive before running it on your blog, emailing it around as truth, etc.” So...there you have it from John Arivosis. Be careful about printing anything before you check it out--it may be disinformation leaked by the White House. Normal people do not live their lives based on Machiavelli’s philosophy. Most Americans find it hard to believe just how deceitful, nasty and perverse the White House can be. But the White House could teach Machiavelli a thing or two about deceit and dirty tricks. So believe it!

The Annual Roy Cohn Award

Last summer on July 23rd, BlogACTIVE.com gave the first Roy Cohn Award to Jay Timmons for Outstanding Achievement Against Gay and Lesbian Americans. Timmons was the head of the National Republican Senatorial Committee. The NRSC’s aim was to use the same-sex marriage issue to motivate far-right voters to oust Democrats. Trouble is, Jay Timmons was gay himself and in the closet. It was Washington DC activists Michael Rogers and John Arivosis who outed Timmons and gave him the Roy Cohn Award. They had been instrumental in outing other gay conservative politicians who thought they could safely hide in the closet while bashing gays and lesbians. On February 2nd when the Jeff Gannon scandal was heating up, ProudTinFoilHat posted a suggestion on Daily Kos that the Roy Cohn Award should be an annual event. I certainly hope there is a mounting clamor for this to happen. The list of qualified recipients in the District of Columbia is long and getting longer. You can bet the rent that the halls of Congress and the Pentagon have a bunch of married-with-children closet-case-Republicans who are shaking in their boots right now. Not to mention the White House.

Half the Voters in the USA Are in Denial

Denial is the drug of choice for Republicans. With the truth staring them in the face about the man they elected President, the GOP’s unthinking followers have willed themselves to go blind. George W. Bush has only one goal and that is to make his demons seem righteous. He is an infantile, sadistic, delusional, paranoid sociopath bent on recasting himself as a savior. Bush does not differentiate between lies and truth. He knows only that he must justify his increasing need to inflict pain on others and his increasing need to be seen as a hero. Although Bush’s demons have worked well to advance the aims of the White House masterfascist, Karl Rove, the tipping point may have been reached. What happens when the Bush pathologies can’t be kept in check with medications? What happens when Bush has an episode of rage or inane rambling in front of world leaders? It’s a fine line the Bush handlers are walking. The Prez needs to be medicated to keep him in control, but the medications dull his thinking so that he cannot understand the policies and programs he supposedly is proposing. He can’t explain his Social Security privatization plan without sounding like a moron. He knows that the pleasure he got from killing Iraqis is no longer satisfying his desire to see others suffer. But finding a rationale for waging war on Iran or some other vulnerable country has become problematic for the White House, particularly since there’s no money in the till for another major war. The White House has its agenda and that is world domination. But George W. Bush’s agenda is totally personal. He is incapable of thoughts other than the immediate gratification of his desires. Bush is an addict. He is addicted to appeasing his infantile needs of self-glorification and giving pain to others. And every day he has to anesthetize his anxieties and fears or give in to them by making others fearful about their own security. How is the White House going to contain George W. Bush’s unresolved psychological problems? Bush thought God would neutralize his unholy appetites or give him justification for indulging in them. But God is not living up to the bargain that Bush thought he’d made with Him. Is there a major George W. Bush breakdown in the offing? Oh hell yes.

Two 800-Pound Gorillas Sit in the White House

And we’re not supposed to look at or talk about either one. Gorilla No. 1 is the President’s health problems...mental and physical. Gorilla No. 2 is the increasing evidence that the Bush administration is up to its neck in Roy Cohns. A little history lesson for you kiddies out there: Back in the bad old Communist-witch-hunt days, Roy Cohn was Senator Joseph McCarthy’s right-hand-lawyer during the GOP’s House UnAmerican Activities Hearings in the 1950's. Those hearings, chaired by McCarthy, investigated organized labor, the Federal government and the movie industry in a search for Communists. High-profile people were falsely accused of Communist activity. Careers were ruined and lives were ruined because of the false accusations. Both McCarthy and Cohn targeted homosexuals for their vicious and untrue accusations. Roy Cohn, it turned out, was himself gay, as was Joseph McCarthy. Cohn eventually died of AIDS. Now, once again gays are being targeted by a witch-hunting GOP administration. This time it's fueled by a far-right religious born-again faction. And once again, we’re starting to hear that the gay-hating GOP accusers may be in the closet themselves. Jeff Gannon is a gay male hooker who was allowed by the Bush administration to infiltrate the White House press corps. His function was to ask questions of the President and/or the President’s Press Secretary that would make the GOP look good and the Democrats look bad. All of this we know as fact. But WHY did the White House reach into its copious files of people willing to do dirty tricks and come up with a gay hooker? There are hundreds of rabid young Republican wannabe reporters in the GOP’s files. There are hundreds of lily-white true-believers who could have been tapped for the job. There are hundreds of young and mean-spirited Republicans who would have loved to lob pre-written and scripted questions to the President. Jeff Gannon is a notorious gay hooker who advertised his wares (and his attributes--as in, 8”+cut) on the Internet with graphic photos and suggestive copy as to his talents. Why was he picked out to do the bogus-reporter job? Among some very interesting photos now making the rounds on the Internet are a series showing President Bush patting Jeff Gannon’s shaven head. Why is a gay hooker so cozy with the White House? And why does the White House have the name of a gay hooker in its rolodex? It’s come out recently that the White House has been paying for writers to say nice things about the Bush administration. But is the White House paying Jeff Gannon NOT to say things about the Bush administration? Maybe the White House has tried to turn a gay hooker legit so he won’t let the cat out of the bag about all the Roy Cohns in the administration. As Bill Maher said last Friday night...was Jeff Gannon going to “spill the beans while he...um...spilled the beans”? You can’t ignore two 800-pound gorillas forever. The stink is oozing out the castle walls.

A Skinhead Slug Becomes “Craggily Handsome”?

How does that happen? The UK’s “Guardian” began referring to Jeff Gannon as “shaven-headed, craggily handsome”. Who knows why. They had pictures. Maybe they were just being perverse. Then the Associated Press picked it up and every small-town newspaper from Ohio to Nevada running the story on the White House in-house gay-male-hooker used the line “craggily handsome”. Tom Selleck is craggily handsome. Clint Eastwood is craggy. Kevin Bacon is getting crags. But Jeff Gannon? Jeff Gannon has a pie-dough with raisins for eyes face. I mean no disrespect to the Pillsbury doughboy, but the Gannon face is what it is. If Gannon were an actor...I should say, if Gannon were a better actor, he would be type-cast as a sadist or a child-molester. Maybe that’s how he got on his downward spiral. He looks like a snitch. You can pump up your body and have great abs and lats but what are you going to do when your face looks shifty and depraved? So from now on, let the description line for Jeff Gannon/James Guckert be the truth: shaven-headed pasty-faced White House in-house gay-male-hooker. And leave the breathless prose for the guys who really are craggily handsome.

Secret Bush Tapes--What a Snooze!

There’s this guy who shills for the Moonies’ Washington Times and who has written a book called “All the President’s Children”. His name is Doug Wead. Doug Wead used to work for Bush-the-Elder. Doug Wead used to be an Assemblies of God preacher. So Wead decides in 1998 to tape phone conversations he was having with Bush-the-Younger, because George W. used to confide in Wead. And Wead could see the handwriting on the wall. Wead says he “viewed Mr. Bush as a historic figure.” Now Wead has leaked a dozen or so of those taped phone conversations to the New York Times. In an article in this morning’s NYT, “In Secretly Taped Conversations, Glimpses of the Future President”, David D. Kirkpatrick summarizes the content of those tapes. "I believe that, like him or not, he is going to be a huge historical figure," Mr. Wead said. "If I was on the telephone with Churchill or Gandhi, I would tape record them too." Fat chance Mr. Jesus-Lets-Me-Tap-Phones would have gotten within a telephone wire of Gandhi or Churchill. Wead said he made tapes of his phone conversations with GWB only in states that permit taping a phone conversation without telling the other party that you are doing so. Thirty-eight states and the District of Columbia have these “one-party consent” laws. The twelve states that require the consent of all parties are California, Connecticut, Florida, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Washington. So...you got the picture? A born-again Bush family employee confidant and friend, who, in 1998, believes George W. Bush is going to be a huge historical figure, secretly tapes phone conversations and decides in 2005 that the time has come to let the world know what the great man was thinking before destiny tapped him on the shoulder. What a load of crap! As reported by Kirkpatrick, the tapes sound like not only Wead and George W. were in on the taping. They sound like all the usual suspects from the Project for the New American Century, the Christian Coalition and Karl Rove were a party to this very stupid simple-minded scam. As Kirkpatrick says, “The private Mr. Bush sounds remarkably similar in many ways to the public President Bush.” Mercy me, what’re the odds?

Jeff Gannon on CNN

Yesterday, CNN’s Anderson Cooper interviewed Jeff Gannon. When Gannon’s minders (read, the White House) see that his current story isn’t going to fly and that the digging for truth is not about to stop, his story will no doubt change and be refined. Such as Gannon contending the White House didn’t know he was a gay male hooker. “My employer was never at any time aware of anything in my past beyond the writings I did, because, frankly, it isn't relevant to the job I was asked to do, which was to be a reporter,” he said. That answer makes the whole Bush administration and their vetting process and security system look so lame that Gannon/Guckert is going to have to think up something easier to swallow. Gannon’s sexforsale sites are still up and running on the Internet. Obviously, the WH knew and didn’t care, or people in the administration knew because they knew, if you catch my drift. So which is it? Anyone can get access to press briefings and be ten feet from the President of the United States? Or the White House rolodex has a list of available gay male hookers? His reason for using the pseudonym Jeff Gannon for James Guckert is equally silly. “I use a pseudonym, because my real name is very difficult to pronounce, to remember and to spell. And many people who have been talking about me on television have yet to pronounce it correctly,” he told Cooper. Someone is bound to bring up the names Walter Cronkeit and Eric Sevareid and to mention that they caused no tongue-twisting or memory problems. He couldn’t remember when he published his first article. Now right there, the man proves that although he may be many things to many people, he is not a writer. Not remember the first time he was published? Pulleeze! He dissembled about the fact that GOPUSA is not a news organization. “Well, we were -- we were -- we had established a news division, and it was later renamed Talon News,” he said. Which didn’t answer the question of how he could get daily press passes to White House news briefings before Talon News was created and while he worked for the right-wing propaganda outlet called GOPUSA. So...it really boils down to this. Why would the White House hire a gay-male-hooker as of February 18, 2003 to pretend he was a reporter? And although I have no idea if a certain blue-eyed male someone is bogus or not. But this blue-eyed male someone posted recently on DU that he had hired Gannon last summer for a weekend. So...Gannon’s past may not be so past. The thing I really can’t figure out is, why did the White House hire Gannon/Guckert? I mean the man looks like a skin-head. What were they thinking? They hired a gay-male-hooker who looks like a skin-head to pretend he was a reporter, and they gave him soft Republican anti-Democrat questions to lob to the President. And now anyone who questions the wisdom of this White House dirty-tricks ploy is being unfair and unAmerican? Remember ex-Secretary of Agriculture Tommy Thompson’s parting shot when he resigned his post? He said he was surprised our food supply hadn’t been attacked yet. Maybe it has...at least in the White House. They all seem to have mad-fascist-disease.

Back To the President’s Health Problems

On July 28, 2004, Capital Hill Blue, an online non-profit news source, reported that President George W. Bush was taking anti-depressant drugs to control his erratic behavior, depression and paranoia. CHB said the prescription drugs were administered to the Prez by Col. Richard J. Tubb, the White House physician. The article went on to say that, “Tubb prescribed the anti-depressants after a clearly-upset Bush stormed off stage on July 8, refusing to answer reporters' questions about his relationship with indicted Enron executive Kenneth J. Lay. ‘Keep those motherfuckers away from me,’ he screamed at an aide backstage. ‘If you can’t, I’ll find someone who can.’ “Bush’s mental stability has become the topic of Washington whispers in recent months,” the article said. “Capitol Hill Blue first reported on June 4 about increasing concern among White House aides over the President’s wide mood swings and obscene outbursts.” Then came the reports about the “Bush bulge”. But the device started to be noticed after the episode of Bush falling off a couch when he supposedly inhaled a pretzel on January 13, 2002. It was said he was wearing a LifeVest--a portable defibrillator--because President GW Bush suffered from atrial fibrillation just as his father, President GHW Bush had. And what causes atrial fibrillation? It can be caused by Graves disease, an auto-immune disease of the thyroid gland--a disease that not only Daddy Bush has, but Mommy Bush has also. And, oddly enough, the family dog, Millie died of it. And younger brother Marvin also has Graves disease. Is there something in the drinking water up there at the family compound in Kennebunkport, ME? Who knows? And it doesn’t really matter how George W. Bush came by all his afflictions. What matters is, he has them and he’s on powerful medications and all his medical and mental problems were hidden from us in order to get him elected. The Prez even refused to have a medical check-up before the election. We’ve got a President who is paranoid and abusive unless he takes anti depressants. It’s been documented that he needs to wear a defibrillator. His atrial fibrillations can cause mini-strokes, and from the evidence of the paralysis on the left side of his face, they have caused mini-strokes. He faints, he falls off of things, he can’t corral his thoughts enough to explain his policies, he slurs his words, he smirks to cover up his bewilderment and apparently he has Graves disease. So why did the GOP, The Carlyle Group and The White House fascists want George Walker Bush to be elected president? His medical and mental problems were clearly apparent when he was barely into his first term. Who else could so easily be manipulated by Karl Rove and Company? Would a really strong, Republican contender have put up with the machinations from the White House ventriloquists? Think of any healthy, intelligent, articulate person of the Republican persuasion, and ask if he or she would allow themselves to be pushed around and controlled by Dick Cheney and Karl Rove the way George-the-Unwell has, and the answer is, NO! The real question now is, Will the Mainstream Media recognize that the truth must come out about all the White House shenanigans? The future of the United States depends on it. Will a few brave journalists from a respected large news outlet finally stand up and say, “At long last sirs, have you no shame?”

Automatons Now Will Fight Our Wars

And why not? We’ve got one for President. A New York Times article this morning by Tim Wiener, “A New Model Army Soldier Rolls Closer to the Battlefield”, lays out the plans of the robotics division at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk, VA. They’re hot to trot re robots. In fact, we’re told, robots are already being used in Iraq to locate and dig up land mines. Not only that, Wiener reported that Bart Everett, the technical director for robotics at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center in San Diego said, "This is the first time they've (the soldiers in Iraq) said, 'I want a robot,' because they're going to get killed without it." See how the groundwork is being laid? Our soldiers want robots. Next we get a quote from Gordon Johnson at the Joint Forces Command research center in Suffolk. “The lawyers tell me there are no prohibitions against robots making life-or-death decisions. I have been asked what happens if the robot destroys a school bus rather than a tank parked nearby. We will not entrust a robot with that decision until we are confident they can make it." So those trustworthy Pentagon lawyers say there are no prohibitions against robots making life and death decisions. And never fear anyway, those Pentagon lawyers with their high moral values and ethical monitors implanted in their brains would never entrust a decision to a robot that the robot couldn’t handle. Well then, Mr. Highly Ethical Pentagon lawyer, sir, how do you account for the fact that we have a robot for President who can’t handle press conferences about privatizing Social Security, and yet he’s been entrusted with making life-and-death decisions? Answer me that. No answer? Okay. Moving along...Gordon Johnson amplified his pro-robot opinion, saying, “They don't get hungry, they're not afraid. They don't forget their orders. They don't care if the guy next to them has just been shot. Will they do a better job than humans? Yes." The robot soldier is coming, Wiener says. And he’s four feet high, has a Cyclops eye and a gun for a right arm. As we speak he’s honing his dead-eye skills on a Pepsi can in Suffolk, VA. Or as Wiener says, he’s “performing the basic tasks of hunting and killing”. "It's the first robot that I know of that can find targets and shoot them," technical director Bart Everett said. So what’s the bottom line? Designing, perfecting and building robots will drive the defense budget up from $419.3 billion for next year to $502.3 billion in 2010, not including the costs of war. You think the Carlyle Group with its investments in war, weapons of destruction and mayhem is not dancing around the campfire over these plans? The Pentagon has been dreaming of being able to invade countries and subdue the inhabitants with nary a loss of US life for over 30 years. How close are the fascists and warmongers in the White House to realizing that nightmare? Tim Wiener says, “By April, an armed version of the bomb-disposal robot will be in Baghdad, capable of firing 1,000 rounds a minute. Though controlled by a soldier with a laptop, the robot will be the first thinking machine of its kind to take up a front-line infantry position, ready to kill enemies.” So...we’ve got our robots, we’re stepping up our production of nuclear arms, armaments, warheads and bombs...we’re ready to take on the world by force and now we won’t shed any American blood. What’s to stop us? Absolutely nothing. Plus...our robot Prez loves the smell of plutonium in the morning.

L’Affaire Gannon: Gay Hooker on the WH Tab

Now let’s see, the GOP is concerned that your morals and my morals may taint the sensibilities of American children. So they lobbied against a TV ad showing a one-second view of Mickey Rooney’s 84-year-old ass. Not, mind you, on the grounds of bad taste, but on the grounds it was salacious. Ditto above re a nano-second view of Janet Jackson’s surgically enhanced titty. Ditto above re an ad with Nicolette Sheridan’s towel-drop in front of footballer Terrell Owens. Ditto above re showing “Private Ryan” with cuss words. And, as a further protection against immorality, the GOP wants to amend the Constitution so that the sacred bond of marriage can never be enjoyed by gays. Okie-dokie, fair enough. The GOP is concerned about the nation’s morals. The President of the United States is a born-again Christian who never misses a chance to sermonize that his values and morals should be a beacon into the dark abyss of our values and morals. The President’s speechwriter is a born-again Christian. Prayers are mandatory in this White House. Prayers start each day. Prayer breakfasts must be attended. It’s even been rumored the Prez has spoken in tongues at one of these prayer-fests and had to be forcibly restrained. Enter James Guckert who uses an alias, Jeff Gannon. Gannon daily attended (until last week) White House press briefings because he had acquired bogus press credentials from a bogus blog called Talon.com. The fake credentials were accepted by the President’s press secretary Scott McClellan, though they didn’t pass muster in the House of Representatives where Gannon was denied a Capital press pass. McClellan always called on Gannon because Gannon was a GOP plant. He shilled for GOPUSA. Gannon never failed to ask pointed questions that put the Democrats in a bad light and painted the Bush administration as righteous. This latest example of the GOP paying for good press, as it did in the case of Armstrong Williams who was bribed to speak well about “No Child Left Behind”, is another blot on the Bush administration. But wait...there ‘s more.... Now we find out Gannon/Guckert is a working male hooker who sells himself on gay porn sites...and one wonders....where else, Mr. McClellan? So the GOP doesn’t think it’s fair for Mr. Gannon/Guckert’s unsavory employment resume to be dragged out into the open and paraded about as an illustration of corruption in the Bush Administration’s White House? Get real, girls...and pull up your trousers.

Now Here’s My Idea

This will make Social Security solvent until the Republicans come to their senses. Humdinger ideas like this come with Whereases and Be It Resolveds. My idea has plenty of Whereases and Be It Resolveds: Whereas, the Social Security system is broke, Whereas, the Republicans say it was a stinko system in the first place because it was a Democrat idea, Whereas, the Republicans feel anyone who needs Social Security didn’t live his life frugally and profitably, and therefore is to blame for being poor, Whereas, all Republicans have lived frugally and profitably, have a safety-net of at least one corporate pension and do not want or intend to live on Social Security in their golden years, Whereas, all Republicans have taken care to teach their children and their children’s children to be frugal and profitable, to have a safety-net of at least one corporate pension and not to want or intend to live on Social Security in their golden years, Be it Resolved, that all Republicans who have a yearly income in an amount over $800,000 a year will never ever claim their Social Security benefits, because they are ideologically opposed to it and they will sign a statement to this effect, turning the money back to the government as a charitable donation. Be it Further Resolved, that all other Republicans, regardless of their financial situation, salary, and corporate pension plan(s), in order to honor their commitment to frugal and profitable living, will stop claiming their Social Security benefits as soon as they have collected the exact dollar amount they put into the Social Security system, which will be after claiming benefits for approximately five years. Now Finally Let It Be Resolved, should any Republican living in the United States in the year 2018 (when the GOP prophesies Social Security will be kaput) be a rare example of a Republican who did not live frugally and profitably and who did not put money aside for his retirement, or who is disabled and sick or to whom shit has happened, that rare Republican may receive Social Security benefits by filling out a questionnaire each month and swearing he is one of the Deserving Poor--which, god forbid! no Republican will ever have to say. Howzat? With all this Social Security money being ceded back to the Social Security system by Republicans who have lived frugally and profitably in the manner to which they ordered their God to say He intended, the broke system can wait to be overhauled. At such time as an administration has been elected that recognizes, 1) Shit happens, 2) People cannot help being poor, 3) People may need a leg up in their elder years, and 4) God is not mean and vindictive, nor does He scorn those who have been less fortunate in their ability to be frugal and profitable, then the Social Security system can be fixed.

Tom Friedman’s Sunday Morning Sermon

In Freidman’s NYT Op/Ed column this morning regarding oil in the middle east, he says, “I believe that combining environmentalism and geopolitics is the most moral and realistic strategy the U.S. could pursue today.” Friedman says he would like for the Bush administration to focus on “sharply lowering energy consumption and embracing a gasoline tax”. Mr. Friedman is a smart man, for the most part. He surely has figured out that the White House is not going to focus on any policy, moral or otherwise that does not put money or power, or money and power in the hands of rich men who already have money and power. Tom Friedman is blowing smoke. He’s talking about what another administration, one which is not beguiled by war, killing, destruction and global supremacy should do. War puts lots of money and power in the hands of The Carlyle Group, which is to say, the GOP. And as long as we are ruled by the GOP, we are going to wage war or at least rattle sabers and threaten to wage war. That always justifies a build-up of weapons and arms. Friedman loves to coin phrases he hopes will be picked up and become household slogans. For awhile now, he’s been using “geo-green”. He’s a geo-green. That is, now that the BushMen have wrecked Iraq, he wants them to start being environmentalists who practice geo-politics. It ain’t gonna happen, Tom. Why? Because it ain’t easy being geo-green, and it doesn’t put money in the pockets of men who are already rich and powerful...as I believe I’ve said before. Right now, when a disenfranchised person looks up out of his lowly state to a position that will bring him money and the clout to make somebody somewhere pay for something, he looks at the GOP and says, Let me in! I want to be rich and powerful and I’ll do anything! How do we counteract that kind of drain on the morals of our nation’s youth, Mr. Friedman? Because I don’t know. If looking at George W. Bush with his mental impairment, drooping face, ideology of war, lies and corruption doesn’t say, “All hope abandon, ye who enter here”, I don’t know what will. If the revelations about Armstrong Williams, Jeff Gannon/James Guckert, and Bernie Kerik don’t make people disgusted with the fascists who recruit them, I don’t know what will. If listening to an apparently decent-enough man like the Bushites’ press secretary Scott McClellan, tell lies and defend the corrupt imperialists in the White House doesn’t make young people vow to go geo-green and work their asses off to make the United States respectable again, what will? At least the last line in Tom Friedman’s column this morning was sharp and true and clear, “The president's priorities are totally nuts.”

The Eason Jordan Flap

Fact: Eason Jordan, CNN’s senior executive in charge of coordinating the network’s Iraq coverage, resigned suddenly last night. He said remarks he’d made at the World Economic Forum in Davos Switzerland this past January 27th seemed to suggest he thought US troops had deliberately tried to kill journalists. Those remarks had ignited a storm of protest. Fact: The MSM is saying bloggers caused Jordan’s downfall. Fact: The recent tempest re Jordan started with a post from Rony Abovitz’s blog, ForumBlog, on January 28 after the Davos Forum, asking, “Do US Troops Target Journalists in Iraq?” Fact: This isn’t the first time Eason Jordan has brought attention to himself. In an interview in the spring of 2002, Sara Sullivan, managing editor of TBS (Transnational Broadcast Studies) interviewed Jordan about the hardships of covering news around the world as a global broadcaster who is not from an American news service. In that interview Jordan said that in both Afghanistan and Iraq journalists were being killed and targeted. In an interview in April 2004 with PBS’s Terence Smith, Jordan disputed journalist John Burns, saying, ”But I do have to take issue with John's point in the beginning. He believes that journalists are not targeted. I do believe that journalists are targeted. There are very specific examples of that. And then beyond what's actually happened on the ground, you have Osama bin Laden in his most recent statement saying that he intends to target big media institutions because he views them as evil propagandists for the U.S. government. And so we take all these threats -- and there are real examples we can cite very specifically -- we take them very specifically and we do consider ourselves targeted.” Fact: David Gergen editor at large of U.S. News & World Report was at the January 27th forum in Davos and he said Jordan had initially said that “soldiers on both sides” targeted more than four dozen journalists killed in Iraq. But Gergen said that Jordan had “quickly walked that back to make it clear that there was no policy on the part of the U.S. government to target or injure journalists.” Fact: Massachusetts Representative Barney Frank was also in the Davos audience. Frank said Jordan had intended to say only that some journalists had been killed by Americans. Fact: Although the Davos Forum was video-taped, no copy has been made available as yet. Fact: The New York Times reported this morning, “Ann Cooper, executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, said that 54 journalists were killed in 2003 and 2004 . At least nine died as a result of American fire, she said.” Fact: The New York Times reported this morning, "Asked last night if CNN had had any contact with the Bush administration over the fallout from Mr. Jordan's remarks, a network spokeswoman, Christa Robinson, said, 'Not that I'm aware of.'" So...looks to me like CNN thinks Eason Jordan went beyond his scope. The Times said, “Among Mr. Jordan's responsibilities at CNN was to be an advocate - often a forceful one - in discussions with the Pentagon on issues concerning the security of journalists in Iraq.” Isn’t the whole point whether journalists are targeted by Americans in Afghanistan and Iraq, not whether a CNN flack spoke out of turn? Or is that just me?

Jon Stewart, Now You Can Get a WH Press Pass

The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart has always proudly claimed they do fake news, and he’s a fake news anchor. Even so, Stewart does some of the best political reporting on television. But alas, being a self-confessed fake newsperson, he would never have been able to get press credentials from the White House. Mirabile dictu! Thanks to Jeff Gannon’s groundbreaking foray into being a fake Washington bureau chief from a fake news outlet who used a fake name and who still got White House press credentials, the door has just opened for Jon Stewart. Although, truth to tell (and God knows, there’s very little of that going on) it might not be so easy for left-leanng Stewart to get a WH press pass as it was for Gannon who was a shill for the Republican GOPUSA web site. When Gannon, aka James Guckert was outed by World O' Crap, AmericaBlog, Mediacitizen, Daily Kos and Eschaton, he whined to his former-hometown newspaper (Wilmington Delaware News Journal) that “it could happen to you”. He said, “it happened to me, what reporter is safe?" Well gee, Jeff...um...James, maybe a real reporter from a real newspaper who used his real name wouldn’t be in the pickle you’re in. But here’s the real lesson in this morality play. Gannon/Guckert had every advantage. His mentor, Morton Blackwell, is also an associate of White House dirty-tricks maven Karl Rove. Gannon/Guckert always got called on to ask his left-bashing questions in White House press conferences. And yet...is the White House scrambling to shield and protect their favored fake correspondent? Of course not. They are scurrying around like rats in a maze to find a way out of yet another PR disaster. And Gannon Guckert can twist in the wind. But of this you may be sure...Gannon/Guckert will slither forth in a new incarnation. And he will be very little harmed by all the revelations coming out about him, his associates and his brand of journalism. Look to your laurels Bill O’Reilly and the gang at Fox News. A younger, more corrupt, sleazier understudy is standing in the wings.

Two to One They’re Selling You Out, Son

The “Maltese Falcon” has some great lines. My favorite is, “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter”. Too bad Sidney Greenstreet isn’t still around. He could play the Chief of Staff in a “Falcon” update--“Black Day at the White House”. VICE PRESIDENT We’ve got to have a fall guy. CHIEF OF STAFF By Gad sir, you’re a character, that you are. There’s never any telling what you’ll say or do. VICE PRESIDENT Let’s give them the Kid. CHIEF OF STAFF But that’s ridiculous. I feel toward him just exactly as if he were my own son. Really, I do. VICE PRESIDENT It’s our best bet. CHIEF OF STAFF (Turning to look at the President) What do you think of this? It’s mighty funny, eh? PRESIDENT (His eyes are cold) Mighty funny. CHIEF OF STAFF Well, sir, if you’re really serious about this, the least we can do in common politeness, is to hear you out. How would you be able to fix it....(he laughs)...so that he wouldn’t do us any harm? VICE PRESIDENT To be sure of convicting one man, they’ll let half a dozen equally guilty accomplices go free. I can show them that if they start fooling around trying to gather up everybody, they’re going to have a tangled case. But if they stick to the Kid.... CHIEF OF STAFF Your plan is, sir, not at all practical, sir. Let’s not say anything more about it. VICE PRESIDENT You people have your plan...I can deliver it for you. A fall guy is part of the price I’m asking. PRESIDENT I’ve taken all the riding from you I’m going to take...get up and shoot it out. VICE PRESIDENT (to the President) Young Wild West. (to the Chief of Staff) You ought to tell him that shooting me will be bad for business. CHIEF OF STAFF (to the President) Now, now...we can’t have any of that...don’t attach such importance to these things. (to the Vice President) Well, sir, there are other means of persuasion besides what you’re suggesting. VICE PRESIDENT (looking at the President) Two to one they’re selling you out, son. (to the Chief of Staff) Either you’ll say yes right now or I’ll turn the whole lot of you in. CHIEF OF STAFF You can have him. VICE PRESIDENT That’s swell. Yessiree. Good plots are good plots. And great tag lines live forever. In "The Maltese Falcon", Sam Spade is asked what the “black bird” is, and he says, “The stuff that dreams are made of.”

Big No-News Headline: “Rove’s Role Expanded”

Yesterday the wire services reported that the White House had announced that Prez Bush’s senior adviser, Karl Rove, would take on an expanded role. Rove would become WH chief of staff in charge of “coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council”, the announcement said. Translation: There is no change in the White House. Karl Rove is still President of the United States. Other changes were also announced. WH deputy chief of staff Joe Hagin will fill in when necessary for chief of staff Andrew Card “at meetings concerning intelligence, counter-terrorism, counter-proliferation and Defense Department and the Homeland Security Council”. And since deputy press secretary, Claire Buchan, is moving on to chief of staff to Commerce Secretary Carlos Guitierrez, she will be replaced by Dana Perino. Perino, you may remember is the toady who defends the WH indefensible policy on Environmental Quality. Those changes are of course a huge, Who cares? But there was a tidbit that is interesting. Bush’s born-again chief speech writer, Michael Gerson, will become “assistant to the president for policy and strategic planning”. Gerson will now have a lead role “in advancing Bush’s ‘compassionate agenda,’ such as his faith-based initiative”, the announcement said. In addition, Gerson will oversee the writing of Bush’s major speeches. It’s not the faith-based, compassionate agenda crappola that’s interesting. It’s that the role of Bush’s chief speech writer has been expanded. Which means, when Bush is allowed to say anything in public, more than likely it will be scripted. A good move, considering that the Prez laid an egg in Tampa FL last Friday when he couldn’t remember or articulate his Social Security privatizing plans. Okay. Karl Rove is President, Dick Cheney is Vice President and the Bushmaton will tell us whatever Rove/Cheney cook up by memorizing a speech written by born-again evangelist, Michael Gerson. Now...a thought comes to mind. Do you think it was with malice-aforethought that President Rove let the Bushmaton flounder and fumble in Tampa, FL? Are we witnessing the beginning of the WH subtly letting it be known that Bush's...um...battery pack isn’t holding a full charge? When looking at the current Bush administration...who could step down and never be missed? It sure isn't Dick Cheney.

The Prez’s Mental Problems: Does it Matter?

I have been harping on the fact that the Prez has slipped a cog and that his impairment has been going on for awhile now. On February 4th, the White House posted a transcript of remarks President Bush made in a “press event” at the Tampa FL Convention Center. Present were members of the Amen corner (AFL-CIO, ACORN, AFSCME, etc.). The Prez answered questions and explained his plans for Social Security. Why the White House published this transcript is beyond me. The President hadn’t the foggiest notion what he was talking about. He wasn’t making sense and he knew he wasn’t making sense. Following is one segment of his conversation with the folks in Tampa. A woman asked about the cost of the transition to private accounts. The Prez said, “It's estimated about $600 billion over a 10-year period of time to get the personal accounts started on the -- the way we've suggested they grow. It's a good question.” The woman persisted and said she couldn’t understand how the new plan was going to fix the problem. Bush answered, “Because the -- all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculate, for example, is on the table; whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those -- changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be -- or closer delivered to what has been promised. "Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the -- like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate -- the benefits will rise based upon inflation, as opposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those -- if that growth is affected, it will help on the red. Okay, better? I'll keep working on it.” And my question is: Does it matter that the President’s brain is not functioning? Since he isn’t the one making the policies or even the tiniest of decisions--all the heavy thinking and deciding is done by Rove/Cheney/Wolfowitz--does it matter that Bush’s brain is impaired? Does it even matter why his brain is impaired? Interestingly, one of the readers of Ratfuck Diary said that an article ran in Atlantic just before the debates that claimed the Prez had all the signs of early Alzheimer’s. Others, including me, think he’s had a stroke. We’re not talking about dyslexia, which the Bush apologists say he is afflicted with. People with dyslexia can think and reason just fine. They have difficulty with the written word not with lucidity and understanding. Does it matter that when George Bush meets with leaders of other countries he can’t put together a simple cogent sentence on his own? Does it matter that he can’t understand the policies he is advancing? Does it matter that he makes jokes and smirks to cover up his thinking difficulties? Yes. It matters because his mental problems are not improving. Being wired to brains that actually function didn’t help him during the debates. His meds aren’t giving him the boost in mental acuity he needs--they may even be the reason he’s begun to slur words on occasion. And the solution is what? In the end, it’s up to the Republicans to take care of their biggest problem--George W. Bush. And they will. The GOP is venal, corrupt, mendacious, grasping and arrogant. But merciful it isn’t.

Raspberry Quotes Krugman

This morning, the Washington Post’s William Raspberry pointed out the faulty logic in the White House plan to privatize Social Security. He then quoted the New York Times Paul Krugman who has come to the same conclusion. Both men have seen through the murky rhetoric regarding the witless privatizing plan and they have arrived at the gaping flaw at its core. If the stock market is healthy enough to make your Social Security portfolio grow, then the economy will have been healthy enough to put the old Social Security plan in the black (“through a windfall of payroll tax revenue”, Krugman said). If the stock market is failing, then your SS portfolio is going to fail and the privatizing plan will have suckered you and the old SS plan won’t be there to pick up the pieces either. As Raspberry says, “If the president is so thoroughly convinced that the market will outperform the Social Security trust fund (invested entirely in U.S. government bonds), why won't he propose that the Social Security Administration invest in the market rather than in government bonds? Wouldn't the bigger return guarantee the actuarial soundness of the system? Ah, but if it didn't, the government would be stuck with making up the difference.” That’s the bottom line no matter who is doing the math. If the President has such blind faith in the stock market, why doesn’t he propose that the SSA switch from investing in government bonds to investing in the stock market? As usual, the Bush administration wants to cover the government’s ass while advising you to uncover yours and bend over.

Before the Fall...

Just before a tyrant falls from grace, he seems invulnerable. He has his minions patrolling the palace, shooting down opponents, arresting loudmouths who dare imply the leader is corrupt. The suck-ups have been arranged in a row. Like bobblehead dolls, they nod in unison, goose-step in unison, say Yessir, you’re right sir in unison. The despot is riding high, unassailable And then, suddenly, the deceit, lies, brutality, bribes not fully paid and hastily forged alliances begin coming undone at the same time. It happened to Napoleon, Hitler, J. Edgar Hoover, Joseph McCarthy, and Richard Nixon. The downfall of over-confident zealous men with delusions of grandeur is always the same. Their ambition leads them to overextend their power. And they don’t count on being unmasked in public. Napoleon claimed he was building a federation of free peoples in a Europe united under a liberal government. But his allies--Spain, Portugal, Austria, Britain, Russia, Prussia, and Sweden--grew hostile when they realized the “liberal government” meant rule by Napoleon Bonaparte. God knows the BushMen have overextended their power. But the single thing they haven’t counted on is the Internet. The information that is available to anyone with a computer and the curiosity to seek out the truth will be the Bush administration’s Waterloo. After the fall, exiling the White House gang to Iraq would be a fitting end for a bunch of little Napoleons whose delusions killed 1,448 American soldiers and accomplished nothing else.

Attorney General Gonzales’s Vow is Cold Comfort

America’s first Hispanic Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, says that combatting terrorism will be his top priority. "But,” he added, “we will do so in a way that's consistent with our values, consistent with our legal obligations." Oh swell. And those values would be ...? Those legal obligations are according to whose definition? If Gonzales’s values are those outlined by the BushMen--which were beautifully summarized in the American Civil Liberties Union of PA Free For All pamphlet--then this is his credo: Send gays back to the closet and make them second-class citizens by law Force religion on public school children Give huge sums of tax dollars to faith-based organizations so they can proselytize Deny women the choice to control their bodies Gonzales was one of the lawyers who parsed the Geneva Convention rules for the GOP so that torture was not only allowed in interrogation techniques but was the preferred method to be used on detainees from Afghanistan and Iraq. Newsweek’s International edition last May 24th ran a story about the White House deciding the Geneva Convention rules on torture didn’t apply to the Bush administration. The article stated that, “The story begins in the months after September 11, when a small band of conservative lawyers within the Bush administration staked out a forward-leaning legal position. The attacks by Al Qaeda on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, these lawyers said, had plunged the country into a new kind of war. It was a conflict against a vast, outlaw, international enemy in which the rules of war, international treaties and even the Geneva Conventions did not apply. These positions were laid out in secret legal opinions drafted by lawyers from the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, and then endorsed by the Department of Defense and ultimately by White House counsel Alberto Gonzales, according to copies of the opinions and other internal legal memos obtained by Newsweek.” All of which means Gonzales is under no “legal obligations” except to torque criminal behavior into acceptable behavior according to White House rules. White House Rules: 1. Fuck you for a start 2. Fuck your mother 3. Fuck your mother's ancestors 4. Fuck the boat that brought your mother's ancestors to Philadelphia 5. Fuck the signers of the Constitution 6. Fuck the particular signer who fucked your grandmother’s great-great grandmother 7. Fuck George Washington who fucked the Indian who fucked the particular signer of the Constitution who fucked your grandmother’s great-great-grandmother. 7. Finally, if you think we’re going to give you the sweat off our balls, the time of day, a hello or smile, much less kiss your ass...let's go back to the beginning. FUCK YOU!

Last Night a Buzzing Sound Washed Over the USA

It was millions of bullshit detectors going off during the President’s SOTU speech. Anyone who forced himself to watch the entire speech was rewarded with one belly laugh, though. About three-quarters of the way through, the Prez said, ”One of the main differences between us and our enemies is that they seek to impose and expand an empire of oppression, in which a tiny group of brutal, self-appointed rulers control every aspect of every life.” So...what was that difference again? But other than that moment of supreme irony, POTUS mainly talked out his ass about Social Security reform. Oh, and he appointed his wife to be the leader of an initiative to keep young men out of gangs. He said young men need to be shown an ideal of manhood that respects women and rejects violence. God only knows where Laura Bush is going to find that role model. Fareed Zakaria has a terrific article in this week’s (February 7) Newsweek. He makes a number of good points. The title of the article, “Elections Are Not Democracy”, is one very good point. “Iraq is on track to become another corrupt, oil-rich quasi-democracy,” Zakaria says, “like Russia and Nigeria.” He also says that one complaint one hears over and over in Iraq is that, “America is spending billions of dollars in Iraq and getting very little for it in terms of improvements on the ground, let alone the good will of the people.” Zakaria quotes Isam al Khafaji who runs the Iraq Revenue Watch for the Open Society Institute who says, “Most of the money is being spent for reasons of political patronage, not creating the basis for a real economy.” Khafaji says the major portion of the money goes to Americans and the rest goes to favored Iraqis. “I can say with certainty,” Khafaji said, “that not a single Iraqi contractor has received his contract through a bidding process that was open and transparent.” The present government in the USA lies, cheats and deceives, whether it’s electing its own leaders or handing out government contracts in the Pentagon. How can we presume to advise other countries on democracy when our own is so warped and perverted? If the new Iraq turns out to be a corrupt, oil-rich quasi-democracy, where did the model come from?

Lockheed Gets Another Big Contract

Four days after out-sourcing a $6.1 billion Navy contract for 23 security helicopters to the Italian and British branches of Lockheed Martin, the Bush administration has blessed Lockheed Martin with another billion dollar contract. According to the Washington Post this morning, a 10-year, $1.9 billion Federal Aviation Administration contract for general aviation flight services (currently handled by 2,500 FAA employees) has gone to Lockheed Martin’s Bethesda, MD unit. Four new bidders (Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md.; Raytheon Co. of Waltham, Mass.; Computer Sciences Corp. of El Segundo, Calif.; Northrop Grumman Corp. of Los Angeles) competed for the contract against the FAA in-house team which had teamed with Harris Corp. of Melbourne, FL. When FAA Administrator, Marion Blakey was interviewed by The Federal Times on January 10th, she said the competition started in August 2002 and that the FAA was using “best-value criteria” to decide the competition. Translation: the White House saying they were out-sourcing to save money is hogwash. Best-value means spending as much money as possible. Guess what major corporation has invested in all of the competitors, including the Harris Corp. Here’s a hint. It’s the international war profiteer that owns the GOP. Altogether now: THE CARLYLE GROUP. Tonight the Prez will deliver his State of the Union address. We all know what he’s going to say. Things are going great in Iraq, the economy is going great, our deficit spending is going great but the new budget will be tough, the plan for Social Security to screw the old, poor and sick is going great, and the utopian vision to bring peace, freedom and Jesus to the whole world by 2008 is going great. While the Prez speaks, particularly if you wisely turn off the sound, it will be difficult not to concentrate on the tell-tale left-side droop of his face when he smirks. Repugnant as it is to be reminded that the GOP has picked a mentally impaired zealot to represent the United States in the world. It’s even more repugnant to know that the freedom and liberty global supremacy plans touted by the White House is being implemented by handing out defense contracts to all the Carlyle Group defense companies. And make no mistake, those defense contracts include adding newer and more deadly nuclear weapons to our once-dormant nuclear arsenal.

65 US Soldier Deaths in Iraq in the Last 10 Days

Our imperialist interest in Iraq is not worth it. The US has always dressed up its protection of economic interests in moralistic terms. We claimed we had to protect the world from being over-run by communists. That was the rationale with Vietnam. But in 1954, US News and World Report had an article about why the US was risking war in Indochina which said, “One of the world's richest areas is open to the winner in Indochina. That's behind the growing U.S. concern … tin, rubber, rice, key strategic raw materials are what the war is really all about. The U.S. sees it as a place to hold -- at any cost (April 4, 1954.)” We backed Vietnam dictator Diem and aided the French in their imperialism because of our economic interests. When the French pulled out, we remained, not from the goodness of our heart, not because we wanted to keep China from over-running all of Asia, not because we feared Russia’s military might. We kept fighting in Vietnam to protect our economic interests and because we couldn’t admit we were wrong. Finally, in 1973 Richard Nixon pulled us out of the unwinnable war in Vietnam. We didn’t win. Nobody won. We are doing the same thing in Iraq. Carlyle Group corporations making huge profits from the war in Iraq is not worth one US soldier death. Protecting the Bush family collusion with the Saud family and the bin Laden family is not worth one US soldier death in Iraq. Defending US oil interests in Iraq is not worth one US soldier death. All the lies and deceit coming out of the White House to cover up the real reason we’re in Iraq cannot right the wrong deaths of 1,436 US soldiers. It’s not freedom, liberty or democracy. It’s the rich wanting more riches. That’s why we are in Iraq. So I ask you, now that we’ve bragged about bringing democracy to Iraq, now that they’ve had their elections, and we’ve shown the Iraqis that we mean business and that we will bomb the bejesus out of any country that won’t let us invade and maraud and steal their resources, are they going to hand over their oil? Because that’s what this hideous unnecessary war in Iraq has been about.