Vote

With two days left to go until the election, there is nothing left to be said.

Well, maybe a little.

We have seen how the Bush Administration's inner circle keeps President Bush isolated from the real world, to keep him blissfully ignorant in a bubble of sycophancy.

We have seen how the Bush Administration constructs an alternate reality of Orwellian proportions to avoid facing the real world, to deny or explain away any inconsistency, any failure, any setback.

We have seen how the Bush Administration ignored its own counter-terrorism czar's pre-9/11 pleads for action to be taken against al Qaeda, and even ignored an intelligence briefing barely a month before the attacks, warning of al Qaeda's plans. Afterwards, the Administration politically milked the attack for all it was worth, fought an independent investigation of the attacks every step of the away, and even stonewalled the victims' families in an attempt to cover up their own incompetence.

We have seen how the Bush Administration came into power itching for the opportunity to invade Iraq and "get" Saddam Hussein, then used the 9/11 attacks to play to our fears. We were shamelessly and callously manipulated with lies and distortions about Saddam's phantom weapons arsenal, about his nonexistent role in 9/11 and his barely-there connection with al Qaeda, which those in power still parrot (albeit slightly modified) even today.

We have seen how the Bush Administration pushed aside anything which countered the official ideology. Military officers who said we needed more troops, intelligence analysts who said there was no real evidence of Iraqi WMDs, professional diplomats who warned of the harsh realities of occupying Iraq -- all were ignored and sometimes retaliated against by a neoconservative cadre who listened only to people who agreed with them.

We have seen how the Bush Administration exploited our post-9/11 fears to ram the Patriot Act through Congress, to draft a truly draconian Patriot Act II and to make a good college try at stamping all dissent into the ground.

We have seen how the Bush Administration deliberately lied to Congress and the public about the cost of the Medicare bill, putting forward knowingly false numbers and keeping the true price secret until after it was safely enacted into law.

We have seen how the Bush Administration took the first federal budget surplus in decades and exploded it in an orgy of tax cuts, the overwhelming majority of which went to the wealthiest Americans while giving chump change to most everyone else. We now have half-trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, flushing anything even resembling fiscal responsibility down the toilet.

We have seen how the Bush Administration went out of its way to offend, bully and push around everyone else in the world in the drive to attack Iraq, vaporizing all our post-9/11 goodwill and setting back the cause of good international relations by years if not decades.

We have seen how the Bush Administration hides everything behind an obsessive wall of secrecy, fighting to keep anything and everything hidden from the public even after everyone knows what is being concealed. For exhibit A, one need look no further than Vice President Cheney's Energy Task Force, which everyone knows allowed energy industry lobbyists literally to write energy policy.

We have seen how the Bush Administration directs no-bid secret sweetheart deals to politically connected companies such as Halliburton and Bechtel.

We have seen how the Bush Administration pushed its "No Child Left Behind" law through Congress, then simply and repeatedly refused to spend the money to make the law a going concern.

We have seen how the Bush Administration relentlessly demonizes gay and lesbian Americans, weaving ghost stories of homosexual hordes somehow "destroying" marriage for the rest of us and backing a Constitutional amendment relegating them to second-class citizenship.

We have seen how the Bush Administration insists loudly and without fail that black is white, that up is down, that the ongoing disaster in Iraq is a great triumph, and that we have al Qaeda on the run when the terrorist network is gaining new recruits every day, and that it's all the media's fault for pointing out their lies.

We have seen how the Bush Administration uses terrorism alerts for political means, to keep the American public good and scared, and thus susceptible to official propaganda.

We have seen how the Bush Administration cuts domestic spending to the bone and beyond to pay for the continuing adventure in Iraq. Homeland security, education, health care, even military pay and veterans' medical benefits are sacrificed.

I could go on and on and on with reasons why we should vote the Bush Administration out of office on Tuesday. (For a fuller list, see One Thousand Reasons and 525 Reasons to Dump Bush. But now it's all up to you.

On Tuesday, get out and vote.

If you believe that George W. Bush is the savior of Christian civilization and will beat back any threat to America, whether or not it's actually real, vote.

If you believe that John Kerry will do a better job at protecting America and at repairing the frayed fabric of our nation, vote.

If you believe that both Bush and Kerry are tools of the same power interests and a real outsider is needed, vote.

Whether you vote Democratic, Republican, Independent, Green, Communist, Socialist, American Tradition, United Fascist Union, United Christian, Prohibition -- heck, even if you vote for the National Barking Spider Resurgence Party, get out and vote.

Remember, if you don't vote, someone else will vote for you. And their interests may not be the same as yours.

Vote!

Um...What?

"A political candidate who jumps to conclusions without knowing the facts is not a person you want as your Commander-in-Chief."

-- President Bush at a Pennsylvania rally, referring to Democratic criticism over American troops failing to secure hundreds of tons of high explosives in Iraq -- evidently hoping no one will notice that jumping to conclusions is standard operating procedure in his Administration

Curse of the Bambino, R.I.P.

Eighty-six years.

Eighty-six years.

EIGHTY-SIX YEARS!

Eighty-six years ago in 1918, American soldiers were marching across Europe in World War I. A Ford Model T pickup truck cost $600. And the Boston Red Sox won the World Series.

Four times since that season, in 1946, 1967, 1975 and 1986, the Sox made it to the Series only to lose it all. True fans blamed not the team, but the long-dead Babe Ruth, whom legend says put a curse on the team after he was sold to the New York Yankees in 1919. The Curse of the Bambino was rolled out every time the Sox lost another heartbreaker.

Well, tonight that curse is history. Eighty-six years after they last won the World Series, the Boston Red Sox are back on top of baseball. They won the American League pennant in a wild come-from-behind playoff series against their hated rivals, the Yankees, then dealt with the St. Louis Cardinals in four straight games.

As the party to end all parties fills the streets of New England, victory on the diamond has rarely been sweeter.

Here's to you, Boston. May we not have to wait eighty-six years for the next one.

Shocked, Shocked

During Wednesday night's debate, when asked if "homosexuality is a choice," President Bush replied by once again supporting a constitutional amendment preventing gays from marrying and somehow threatening the marriages of everyone else.

When it was his turn, John Kerry mentioned that Dick Cheney's daughter is gay: "We're all God's children...and I think if you were to talk to Dick Cheney's daughter, who is a lesbian, she would tell you that she's being who she was, she's being who she was born as. I think if you talk to anybody, it's not choice."

Now, everyone knows Mary Cheney is gay. Not only is this not a secret, but it's been quite openly discussed this year, by her father among others. But you'd never guess it from Republican reaction. The White House and the Bush campaign (which are, let's face it, one and the same), acted like Kerry had "outed" her. Either that, or he had said he wanted to see her doing the Midnight Lesbo Show at a local strip joint.

"Now, I did have a chance to assess John Kerry once more," Lynne Cheney said after the debate, "and the only thing I could conclude is this is not a good man. This is not a good man. And of course, I am speaking as a mom and a pretty indignant mom. This is not a good man -- what a cheap and tawdry political trick." The sense of outrage was finely tuned, and was flogged by the GOP's media allies from Rush Limbaugh to Fox News as a "smear."

Unfortunately for the Republicans, their outrage was as false as it was palpable. I don't recall hearing any such flatulence from the right when GOP pundit and Illinois senatorial candidate Alan Keyes said a few weeks back that the VP's daughter was a sinner who practiced "selfish hedonism." Nor were the Cheneys up in arms when Congressional Republicans took to the House and Senate floor earlier this year to flog the anti-gay-marriage amendment, trying to deny gay and lesbian Americans first-class citizenship by denying them the same marriage rights the rest of us take for granted. Or when Republican candidates even now use the issue as a political wedge to bash their Democratic opponents. They even remained silent when the Bush Administration announced it would ignore the Clinton Administration's addition of sexual orientation to the federal government's anti-discrimination rules.

John Kerry said Dick Cheney's daughter is gay. Horrors! Doesn't he realize that Mary Cheney is solely the Republicans' to exploit, and he is not allowed to horn in on their act? Another interpretation is that the Bush campaign was playing to its evangelical Christian base by pretending that being gay is terrible and shameful, and referring to an openly gay person as being gay is a horrible insult, one which must be repudiated loudly and repeatedly.

The GOP's outrage over this fake "smear" is so blatantly phony as to make P.T. Barnum cringe. Then again, since they have no real accomplishments to tout, they've got to run on something. After all, a manufactured incident is better than nothing at all.

Death of a Superman

Christopher Reeve, who died yesterday at 52, refused to accept what fate dealt him. After becoming synonymous in the public mind with the Man of Steel, having played the last son of Krypton in the four Superman films of the late 1970s and 1980s, Reeve appeared in a number of Hollywood and TV films. But he generally never outflew his caped character.

Until, that is, he fell from a horse in May 1995, snapping his spinal cord. Paralyzed from the neck down, he seemed condemned to spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair.

But Reeve did not see it as a condemnation, rather as a challenge. While he never walked again, he put himself through years of physical therapy and saw it as a major triumph when he was able to move a finger five years after the accident.

Nor did he let his condition stunt his creative life. He returned to acting, appearing in a number of TV films and series, including "The Practice," the super-teen "Smallville" and a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window. He even took the director's (wheel)chair to helm several TV productions, including 1997's "In the Gloaming."

He and his wife opened the Christopher and Dana Reeve Paralysis Resource Center in New Jersey, dedicated to helping other paralytics realize their potential and go on living rather than seeing their condition as a sort of living death. When the issue of stem cell research took the spotlight, with its potential for therapy and possibly even cure for paralysis and other conditions, Reeve publicly criticized President Bush for blocking all but a trickle of federally-funded research.

He served as a source of inspiration and hope for people around the world living with paralysis and other medical conditions, teaching them that being unable to move does not mean they are unable to live. Christopher Reeve might not have actually soared through the clouds as he did on the silver screen, but he was a Man of Steel nonetheless. He will be sorely missed.

We Told You So

Just in time for "The Progressive Perspective" to come back on the air from our new world headquarters on the East Coast, comes the final crumbling of President Bush's excuses for invading and occupying Iraq without provocation.

Way back in 2002 and early 2003, Hans Blix, the United Nations’ head weapons inspector, said Saddam Hussein’s Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

After the fall of Baghdad, David Kay, the White House’s handpicked weapons-hunter, reported that “we were all wrong” and said there were no weapons.

And now Charles Duelfer, Kay’s replacement, has made his report to Congress. In it, he reports that -- guess what? -- Iraq did not possess weapons of mass destruction.

Specifically, that were no such weapons when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, having all been destroyed after the first Gulf War in 1991. That while Saddam did retain the capacity to rebuild a WMD arsenal, it was never maintained. That any remaining programs were at best dormant. And that no attempts to restart weapons programs were conducted after the UN inspectors left in 1998.

When President Bush and his White House cadre of neoconservatives launched their propaganda campaign back in 2002 to scare the American people into backing an invasion, Reason #1 was Saddam's supposed WMD arsenal. We were terrified with tales of unmanned aerial drones spraying anthrax over our cities. We were horrified by scenarios of Saddam gift-wrapping a nuclear weapon and presenting it to Osama bin Laden. And we were cowed into silence by the constant drumbeat of statements telling us we were either with the President or we were with "the evildoers."

We were so frightened by the what-ifs, the coulds, the possiblies, that we stampeded to wave the flag and to tell the Administration, "Yes! Get him before he can get us!"

Of course, he couldn't "get us." It became apparent within days of Baghdad's fall, when people started to realize that no WMD had been found or even used. And as the weeks and months rolled on, when nothing at all was found, the true believers began to panic. "You obviously want Saddam back in power!" they said when the straightforward was pointed out to them, evidently forgetting that the ends do not justify the means.

With this final debunking of the prime invasion rationale, one might expect President Bush to acknowledge it, if only by a little bit.

Of course not.

"There was a risk -- a real risk -- that Saddam Hussein would pass weapons or materials or information to terrorist networks," Bush said at a Pennsylvania rally. "In the world after September 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take."

We now know what was said all along -- that these weapons did not exist.

Indeed, there is a far greater risk that such weapons would be given to terrorist groups by Iran or North Korea, or built with nuclear material smuggled out of Russia. But we see no moves whatsoever to confront Tehran or Pyongyang with the same ferocity that was used against Baghdad. And in a truly idiotic move, the Bush Administration has actually cut spending on helping Russia secure nuclear material and keeping it out of the wrong hands.

In his debate with John Kerry last week, Bush came off as confused and defensive when asked why he did not subject Iran or North Korea to the same "shock and awe" treatment he lavished on Iraq. "The IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] is involved," he said. "There's a special protocol recently been passed that allows for instant inspections."

This after publicly sneering at the IAEA and whole concept of inspections when it pointed out before the Iraq invasion that Saddam did not possess nuclear weapons.

But it was never really about 9/11 at all. Months ago, it was revealed by various Administration insiders that Bush had demanded the invasion of Iraq long before 9/11, that he had used the terrorist attacks to scare us into supporting his plans no matter what.

George W. Bush and his inner circle wanted to invade Iraq. They had a variety of reasons, from getting the oil to "finishing the job" to revenge against the man who "tried to kill [Bush's] daddy." They didn't care whether their reasons were good or even rational.

We now see the price we have paid. Our national credibility is shattered. We have rapidly gone from being the most respected nation in the world to being one of the most hated and feared. We have poured well over $100 billion into the Iraq quagmire, and more than 1,000 Americans have given their lives to -- what?

Did they die defending America from a raving madman? No, because according to Duelfer, Saddam had no intention of taking on the United States and had nothing to do it with anyway.

Did they die to spread democracy in the Middle East? Not likely, with handpicked Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi saying that elections, if held at all, will be held in only part of the country, and with Washington backing him up.

Did they die to liberate the Iraqi people from a dictator? Yes, but our welcome was rapidly worn out and this was never realized back at the White House.

Bush has finally been reduced to saying that Saddam was an "evildoer," a bad man. Sorry, but that just isn't a good reason for throwing away lives, money and our national reputation.

At this point, with less than a month before the election and the Bush campaign still unable to come up with a compelling reason, I guess we'll never hear one.