Hypocrisy, Thy Name Is Larry

I firmly believe that people's private lives are their own business, and as a rule I have less than no interest in the sex lives of politicians. They are, after all, only human, with the same drives as everyone else. That rule, however, goes by the wayside when a holier-than-thou person gets caught in matters of the zipper.

The latest example of this? Senator Larry Craig (R-IH), who we now know was arrested back in June for "cruising" an undercover cop in a Minneapolis airport bathroom. He tried to talk his way out of it with some "do you know who I am?" bluster, but pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct and paid a $500 fine. Now that this minor awkwardness has become public, he claims he wasn't cruising anyone, pleaded guilty only to avoid further embarrassment, and calls the whole flap a "he said/he said misunderstanding," to the derisive hoots of many.

Now, it just so happens that Craig has made a name for himself being one of the more vociferously anti-gay voices in the Senate, opposing such items as gay marriage, civil unions, gays serving in the military, and the expansion of federal hate-crime laws to cover gays and lesbians. And yet he has been rumored to be gay himself (or, at the very least, bisexual) for many years.

And so Craig joins a long, long list of Republicans and conservatives who loudly proclaim their moral uprightness in public while behaving very differently in private, including:

• Representative Mark Foley, who was forced to resign from Congress when it was revealed that he had hit on underage male pages for years and was protected by the House leadership
• Über-pastor Ted Haggard, who resigned from his church leadership position after being caught patronizing a male escort and buying drugs from said escort
• Representative Bob Allen, who was arrested after offering $20 to an undercover police officer to let him perform oral sex on said officer
• Senator David Vitter, who proclaimed that "remaining faithful after [marriage] is the best choice for health and happiness" but admitted consorting with prostitutes from the infamous "DC Madam" escort agency
• Jack Ryan, who dropped out of his Senate campaign against Barack Obama once it was revealed that he had tried to talk his then-wife into group sex
  
• Former NYC Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who told his second wife he was dumping her by holding a press conference at which he introduced the woman who would become his third wife
• Former Representative (and House Speaker) Newt Gingrich, who not only served his first wife with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery, but led the impeachment jihad against Bill Clinton while cheating on his second wife with the woman who would become his third wife
  

And so on and so forth. While progressives are generally leaning back to enjoy the spectacle, conservatives have gone berserk and are turning on Craig with a vengeance, demanding that he resign from his Senate seat.

Hypocrisy is a very bad thing. You'd think this would be pretty obvious, but all these politicians, preachers, pundits, and everyone else who makes a career out of being more righteous than the rest of us still haven't figured it out. If you talk the talk, you'd better make real sure you can walk the walk.

UPDATE: Craig just gave a statement in which he strenuously denied doing anything wrong, insisted he is not gay, blamed the Idaho Statesman for investigating his hypocrisy, and said he only pleaded guilty "in the hope of making it go away." Interestingly, he also admitted keeping his family in the dark about his arrest, implying he would never have told them at all had it not become public. This story isn't going anywhere.

Another One Thrown Under the Bus

After weeks and months of insisting that he would not resign, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has done just that. It seems that President Bush, who (in)famously stuck by Gonzo long after he became a political disaster, finally realized there is no up side to keeping him on the payroll and has thrown him under the bus.

So now what happens? Washington rumors say Bush will nominate Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff as the new AG, apparently because he has not disgraced himself like Gonzales did. But Chertoff has his own problems, particularly in the bungled response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago.

You may remember that when the storm hit New Orleans with full force, the levees broke and people started drowning in the streets. And it was Chertoff who waited more than a day to begin relief efforts with the "White House Task Force on Hurricane Katrina Response." This despite repeated pre-landfall warnings from the National Hurricane Center that Katrina would hit the Gulf Coast and hit it hard. DHS' response just went downhill from there.

It is tempting to declare that no one could ever bring the level of politicized quackery to the Justice Department that Gonzales did, but it's dangerous to underestimate a Bush appointee.

This gives Senate Democrats a golden opportunity to finally muck out the White House stables. If they're smart, they'll simply refuse to move on a nomination until Bush finally come clean on all the warrantless spying and other illegalities they've been up to. The GOP and Fox News (one and the same, really) will doubtless scream "obstructionism," but the Dems should stick to their guns. We may not get another chance like this again.

Spy or Die

For six and a half years, President Bush and his crowd have often said they don't care what people think. Whether it's massive anti-war demonstrations (before and after the invasion of Iraq), opposition to the Patriot Act or just plain stinky poll numbers, the Administration goes on as always, blissfully ignorant of the real world.

Earlier this summer, Bush rammed the "Protect America Act" through Congress, giving him the power to spy on anyone he likes, whenever he feels like it. He doesn't even have to pretend that it's related to terrorism, only that it is "directed at a person reasonably believed to be located outside of the United States." The American people were, to put it mildly, pissed off, and that reaction just might be making an impact on the White House.

That has to be the reason National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell made such a ludicrous comment to the El Paso Times. Basically, it boils down to this: let us spy on you whenever we want, however we want, without a peep of complaint - or die.

Or, in his words:

A: ...Now part of this is a classified world. The fact we're doing it this way [with public debate and media reporting] means that some Americans are going to die, because we do this mission unknown to the bad guys because they're using a process that we can exploit and the more we talk about it, the more they will go with an alternative means and when they go to an alternative means, remember what I said, a significant portion of what we do, this is not just threats against the United States, this is war in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Q: So you're saying that the reporting and the debate in Congress means that some Americans are going to die?

A: That's what I mean. Because we have made it so public.

Now, the American people have a depressingly high tolerance for super-patriotic and jingoistic bluster, but generally don't take well to naked threats. McConnell obviously knew he had gone too far, as he backtracked almost immediately: "It's a democratic process and sunshine's a good thing. We need to have the debate." But it's what he said first that reveals what he really thinks.

So not only are we supposed to let Bush et al spy on us without any restraints or accountability, we're also supposed to shut up about it?

Bush's favorite explanation for why Al Qaeda attacked us on 9/11 is that "they hate our freedoms." It appears that he is trying to prevent additional attacks by taking those freedoms away:

• Freedom from unwarranted government surveillance (see above, also the indiscriminate tracking of all domestic and international phone calls as well as claiming the power to read our E-mail and snail mail)
  
• Freedom of speech (the White House's procedures for barring demonstrators and other insufficiently worshipful Americans from Bush's public appearances)
• Freedom of travel (the "no-fly list," accused of being manipulated to keep dissidents off planes)
• Separation of powers (Bush's "signing statements" defying hundreds of laws)
• Habeas corpus (the Military Commissions Act, giving Bush the power to imprison anyone he likes indefinitely)

And so on and so forth. In a thriller novel, George W. Bush would be revealed as Osama bin Laden's sleeper agent in the White House. It sure seems that way; Bush is certainly doing everything he can to turn America into the kind of frightened and compliant nation any dictator would kill for.

Bush and Vietnam, Together At Last

Ever since it became clear that the Iraq War would not be a glorious crusade but rather an intractable quagmire, it has been compared to the Vietnam War. Both conflicts were rooted in blind ideology, launched based on lies, and kept going long after everyone knew they could not be won by military means.

President Bush never went to Vietnam and never fought alongside those who did - John Kerry, for one. Rather, he was safely posted to a "champagne unit" of the Texas Air National Guard, well known for keeping sons of the state's rich and powerful out of harm's way. (And he didn't even show up for all of his deployment to boot.) But that didn't stop him from drawing his own parallels between the wars, as he did today in a Kansas City speech to the VFW convention.

"There was another price to our withdrawal from Vietnam," he told the assembled veterans, "and we can hear it in the words of the enemy we face in today's struggle -- those who came to our soil and killed thousands of citizens on September the 11th, 2001. In an interview with a Pakistani newspaper after the 9/11 attacks, Osama bin Laden declared that 'the American people had risen against their government's war in Vietnam. And they must do the same today...' Here at home, some can argue our withdrawal from Vietnam carried no price to American credibility -- but the terrorists see it differently."

Astoundingly, Bush seems to be arguing that we were attacked on 9/11 because we withdrew from Vietnam twenty-six years earlier. Not only that, he falls back on the Rambo excuse, that we lost Vietnam because we didn't see it through and weren't "allowed to win." In his little world, we could have won the war if only we had the gumption to drop more bombs, kill more people, and devastate the entire region even more than we actually did.

Not surprisingly, his conclusions are strikingly different from those reached by people who actually know something about the war.

"What is Bush suggesting?" asked historian Robert Dallek. "That we didn't fight hard enough, stay long enough? That's nonsense. It's a distortion. We've been in Iraq longer than we fought in World War II. It's a disaster, and this is a political attempt to lay the blame for the disaster on his opponents. But the disaster is the consequence of going in, not getting out."

And just to show that the only President we've got really don't know much about history, he also said that "One unmistakable legacy of Vietnam is that the price of America's withdrawal was paid by millions of innocent citizens whose agonies would add to our vocabulary new terms like 'killing fields.'"

Um...George? The Khmer Rouge's killing fields were in Cambodia, not Vietnam. And they were overthrown by the very same Vietnamese you were out bashing today.

It's truly unbelievable that Bush would use one useless war to try and justify our continued involvement in another useless war. Once again, he gets an F in basic American history. Can't we flunk this guy out already?

Who Needs Democracy Anyway?

"By elevating popular fancy over truth, Democracy is clearly an enemy of not just truth, but duty and justice, which makes it the worst form of government. President Bush must overcome not just the situation in Iraq, but democratic government... President Bush can fail in his duty to himself, his country, and his God, by becoming 'ex-president' Bush or he can become 'President-for-Life' Bush: the conqueror of Iraq, who brings sense to the Congress and sanity to the Supreme Court. Then who would be able to stop Bush from emulating Augustus Caesar and becoming ruler of the world? For only an America united under one ruler has the power to save humanity from the threat of a new Dark Age wrought by terrorists armed with nuclear weapons."

- Philip Atkinson of the conservative group Family Security Foundation, explaining why a Bush dictatorship and a global Pax Americana would be a good thing

Bush to Kids: Drop Dead

With President Bush's approval ratings hovering around those of athlete's foot and a significant percentage of Americans calling for his impeachment, you'd think he'd choose his battles a little more carefully. But apparently not. You see, he (or the people who pull his strings, same difference really) has issued new regulations barring states from expanding public health coverage to children from middle-income families.

And his reasoning? The more kids who are covered by the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), the fewer who can give their business to private insurance companies.

Really.

To minimize the risk of such substitution, Mr. [Dennis] Smith [the director of the federal Center for Medicaid and State Operations] said in his letter, states should charge co-payments or premiums that approximate the cost of private coverage and should impose "waiting periods," to make sure higher-income children do not go directly from a private health plan to a public program. If a state wants to set its income limit above 250 percent of the poverty level ($51,625 for a family of four), Mr. Smith said, "the state must establish a minimum of a one-year period of uninsurance for individuals" before they can receive public coverage.

Who could possibly have anything against wanting to help kids get the health care they need? We have millions of uninsured children in this country, to say nothing of uninsured adults, and Bush's response is to add to their numbers?

That's not only wrong, it's actively evil. We're getting into James Bond-villain territory here. I can just see Bush standing in for Auric Goldfinger, aiming an industrial laser at kids' nether regions and chortling wickedly.

Let's hope the Democrats use this as an issue in next year's elections. If they have the stones to do so instead of just knuckling under as usual, they'll get a clean sweep.

You Can Say That Again

"Sean [Hannity] is not a journalist."

- Bill Shine, Fox's senior vice president of programming, on why it was not inappropriate for Fox News pundit Sean Hannity to host a fundraiser for Rudy Giuliani despite Fox's long history of attacking other networks for the same thing

Say What?

• "This seems to put us in the 'trust us' category. 'We don't do it. Trust us. And don't ask us about it,'"
• "Every ampersand, every comma is top-secret?"
• "Are you saying the courts are to rubber-stamp the determination of the executive of what's a state secret? What's our job?"
• "I feel like I'm in Alice and Wonderland."
• "The bottom line is the government declares something is a state secret, that's the end of it. No cases. The king can do no wrong."

- Reactions of judges on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to the Bush Administration's position that not only do they have the power to spy on anyone whenever they feel like it, but the courts have to bug out as the spying issue is a "state secret"

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise

Back in January, President Bush, who makes a big thing out of claiming to listen to his generals, ignored said generals' warnings and announced a Surge™ of American soldiers fighting in Iraq. Ever since then, the White House and their media flacks have consistently declared that the turning point will be in September, when General David Petraeus is set to issue a status report to Congress. (The latest turning point, that is - there have been so many of them it's easy to lose track.)

Wait for Petraeus' report in September and let the generals do their job, we are told over and over again. Those of us rude enough to point out that the Iraqi mayhem was actually getting worse and not better are attacked for being anti-American, anti-military, etc, etc. As the carnage mounts daily, the White House even tries backtracking on all its previous edicts of September as a magic date, insisting they never said any such thing.

And now, the Los Angeles Times is reporting that just to make sure the report says what the Administration wants it to say without the intrusion of any inconvenient reality, they're going to write it themselves:

Despite Bush's repeated statements that the report will reflect evaluations by Petraeus and Ryan Crocker, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, administration officials said it would actually be written by the White House, with inputs from officials throughout the government. And though Petraeus and Crocker will present their recommendations on Capitol Hill, legislation passed by Congress leaves it to the president to decide how to interpret the report's data.

To quote Gomer Pyle, "Surprise, surprise, surprise!" It's just another PR stunt by the same people who brought us the National Strategy for Victory in Iraq (remember that?) back in 2005.

Petraeus has already gone on record faithfully parroting GOP talking points. Given that fact - and Bush's well-known tendency to fire anyone who tells him what he doesn't want to hear - it's a safe bet that he will tell Bush the Surge™ is a big success. It's an even safer bet that the White House will then tell Congress and the nation that the Surge™ is in fact a tremendous success, the greatest ever in military history.

And as for the Iraqi people - you know, the ones who are dying by the dozens and hundreds every day in this savage civil war - well, who cares about them?

Target: Tehran

With the Iraq War in ruins, the Bush Administration is looking for someone to blame, and it appears that Vice President Cheney is urging President Bush to look eastward to Iran for the culprit. In recent months, the Administration has loudly proclaimed that Iran is behind everything that has gone wrong in Iraq, from the sectarian civil war to attacks on Iraqi's already-teetering infrastructure.

The fact that the evidence of Iranian involvement is thin at best and nonexistent at worst doesn't seem to bother the White House or the Pentagon at all. Earlier this year, the Pentagon offered several news briefings, featuring secret evidence (which could not be photographed or described other than in the sketchiest manner) supposedly implicating Iran in attacks on American soldiers. But no actual proof has ever been presented.

Meanwhile, our ineffective but increasingly independent puppet government in Baghdad has been making overtures to Iran and citing its "positive and constructive stance," much to Bush's displeasure. When asked about Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki's Tehran trip, Bush could only whimper that "I don't think he, in his heart of hearts, thinks they're constructive, either."

With Bush increasingly befuddled and hiding in his own little world, it's no secret that Cheney and his allies have been prodding him to approve an attack on Iran. Of course, non-ideologues outside the Administration who know anything about Iran all warn that such an attack would backfire disastrously, but they are studiously ignored.

Where have we seen this pattern before? Oh yes, in the run-up to the Iraq War. Back then, Bush et al were hot for an attack on Baghdad no matter what, and we're now seeing the exact same thing all over again. Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has replaced Saddam Hussein as the Madman of the Middle East, Public Enemy Number One and there is no evil too black to be laid at his doorstep.

Are Bush and Cheney like Napoleon, the tyrannical pig of George Orwell's allegorical novella Animal Farm? Everywhere they look, they claim to find evidence of Iranian "meddling" in Iraq, with no more proof than that fictional porker:

At every few steps Napoleon stopped and snuffed the ground for traces of Snowball's footsteps, which, he said, he could detect by the smell. He snuffed in every corner, in the barn, in the cow-shed, in the henhouses, in the vegetable garden, and found traces of Snowball almost everywhere. He would put his snout to the ground, give several deep sniffs, and exclaim in a terrible voice, "Snowball! He has been here! I can smell him distinctly!" and at the word "Snowball" all the dogs let out blood-curdling growls and showed their side teeth. The animals were thoroughly frightened. It seemed to them as though Snowball were some kind of invisible influence, pervading the air about them and menacing them with all kinds of dangers.

Of course, no mention is made of the hundreds of Saudi citizens caught fighting with the Sunni insurgents in Iraq, nor of the astounding revelation that a full third of the weapons provided by the Pentagon to the Iraqi military - that's almost two hundred thousand guns - have disappeared without a trace. That, you see, isn't in the script.

Sure You Love Them, You Just Don't Want to Catch Their Gay Cooties

"We did decline to host the service - not based on hatred, not based on discrimination, but based on principle. Had we known it on the day they first spoke about it - yes, we would have declined then. It's not that we didn't love the family."

- Rev. Gary Simons of High Point Church in Texas, trying to explain why the megachurch agreed to host - and then canceled the day before it was to happen - a memorial service for a Navy veteran whose obituary listed his gay partner as one of his survivors

Today New York, Tomorrow the World

"Freedom is not a concept in which people can do anything they want, be anything they can be. Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do."

- Rudy Giuliani (at the time Mayor of New York) in 1994, opining on the true meaning of freedom

Nothing Like Mass Killing to Get People Together

"America's fabric is pulling apart like a cheap sweater. What would sew us back together? Another 9/11 attack. The Golden Gate Bridge. Mount Rushmore. Chicago's Wrigley Field. The Philadelphia subway system. The U.S. is a target-rich environment for al Qaeda."

- Philadelphia Daily News columnist Stu Bykofsky, actually rooting for another devastating attack and even suggesting targets

Heaven Forbid!

"We have not only a Hindu prayer being offered in the Senate, we have a Muslim member of the House of Representatives now, Keith Ellison from Minnesota. Those are changes - and they are not what was envisioned by the Founding Fathers."

- Representative Bill Sali (R-ID), suggesting that Hindus, Muslims and other non-Christians be excluded from Congress, no matter what the Constitution says

Unconditional Surrender

Let's see now...President Bush is about as popular with the American people as tooth decay, he has no credibility, his Attorney General is under investigation for lying to Congress, and his Administration has been caught spying on the public without the search warrants as required by law. With the help of craven telecommunications companies and other enablers, the Administration vacuums up obscene amounts of phone records, E-mail messages, and library reading lists, and even claims the right to open our snail mail.

Sounds like a perfect time for another power grab.

Earlier this year, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court, which normally gives rubber-stamp approval to national-security search warrants, rejected much of the Administration's spying program, calling it illegal and unconstitutional. So Bush rammed a bill through Congress with the Orwellian name of the "Protect America Act."

Ostensibly "modernizing" FISA, the bill allowed such snooping retroactively, with no meaningful judicial or Congressional oversight and no way for anyone to find out who is being spied on or why. Not only that, the very same people put in charge of running the spy program - Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell - were also given the job of certifying that it was being done legally. And to top it all off, the White House timed the bill's introduction so that Congress had almost no opportunity to examine and vote on it before leaving for its August recess.

The Democrats, who were elected in November on a platform of reining in Bush's authoritarian excesses, folded like Superman on laundry day. It would be funny if it weren't so pathetic.

In hindsight, the White House's plan for getting the bill passed was painfully obvious. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff's much-derided "gut feeling" of terror attacks this summer set the mood. Fox News and other propaganda outlets faithfully chimed in with apocalyptic rumblings of possible attacks to come, presenting a program of all fear, all the time. McConnell, transformed into yet another mindless Bush-bot, asked Congress "to provide the legislative changes needed to protect the nation in this period of heightened threat."

Bush himself went out on the road, making speech after speech in which he said that, "America is in a heightened threat environment. Reforming FISA will help our intelligence professionals address those threats - and they should not have to wait any longer. Congress will soon be leaving for its August recess. I ask Republicans and Democrats to work together to pass FISA modernization now, before they leave town. Our national security depends on it."

The message to the Democrats was clear: give the President whatever he wants, do it now, and you get to live.

A majority of Congressional Democrats were sufficiently clear-headed to see through this cynical fear campaign and voted against the bill, but some - too many - could see only the specter of attack ads in the next election and caved in.

And so now the President can legally spy on anyone, anywhere, at any time, and for any reason. He doesn't even have to pretend that it's related to a terrorism investigation. The only bright spot is that the new law expires automatically in six months.

In an interesting juxtaposition, Bush issued an executive order on July 17 claiming the power to freeze the assets of anyone he deems to be "threatening the peace or stability of Iraq or the Government of Iraq; or undermining efforts to promote economic reconstruction and political reform in Iraq or to provide humanitarian assistance to the Iraqi people." Combine these two with last year's Military Commissions Act, which gives Bush the unilateral authority to declare anyone to be an "enemy combatant" and to order them locked up without charge, without trial and without end, and you've got a nearly picture-perfect recipe for dictatorship. All you need is a President more reckless and amoral than Bush.

What do you want to bet that at least some in the White House are itching to use these powers on political dissidents at home?

I've Got More Important Things to Worry About

"Good morning. I just finished a Cabinet meeting. One of the things we discussed was the terrible situation there in Minneapolis... I told them we would help with rescue efforts, but I also told them how much we are in prayer for those who suffered. And I thank my fellow citizens for holding up those who are suffering right now in prayer. We also talked about the status of important pieces of legislation before the Congress. We spent a fair amount of time talking about the fact that how disappointed we are that Congress hasn't sent any spending bills to my desk."

- President Bush briefly mentioning the Minneapolis bridge collapse before changing the subject to politically attack Congressional Democrats

Back to the Bad Old Days

Back in the days of Jim Crow laws, African-Americans were by law entitled to vote, but were barred from doing so in many southern states by "literacy tests" and other dodges. Those laws are thankfully a thing of the past, but at least one commentator is apparently looking back on them with fond nostalgia.

Jonah Goldberg, an editor at National Review, wrote a column this week in which he decries how so many people are ignorant of the workings of government:

A very high percentage of the U.S. electorate isn't very well qualified to vote, if by "qualified" you mean having a basic understanding of our government, its functions and its challenges. Almost half of the American public doesn't know that each state gets two senators. More than two thirds can’t explain the gist of what the Food and Drug Administration does.

This is certainly a valid concern - no democracy can survive if the people aren't basically aware of how it functions. But rather than make a point about improving education, or how government should be more accessible to its citizens, Goldberg instead argues for restricting who can vote: "Instead of making it easier to vote, maybe we should be making it harder. Why not test people on the basic functions of government? Immigrants have to pass a test to vote; why not all citizens?"

I had to read it more than once just to make sure I wasn't seeing things.

Does Goldberg really understand what he's saying? Such tests were used back in the bad old days to keep "undesirables" from exercising their democratic rights. Does he really want to go back to that?

His suggestion is fundamentally un-American. In a democracy, all citizens have the right to vote. It's as simple as that. Does Goldberg really believe that a certain class of people should be excluded from any say in how our society functions, instead leaving it up to the "philosopher-kings" of Plato's Republic?

Of course, he also hates the very notion of public education, as he wrote in a June column. So the two notions actually dovetail nicely - deny schooling to all but the wealthiest to guarantee a permanently ignorant underclass, then use that same lack of schooling to keep them from voting.

It's diabolical, really. Too bad such a bright person has to be so wrong.

Lights Out

Once upon a time, the Bush Administration tried to put a happy face on the Iraq War by pointing out all the good things we were doing to the Iraqi people - other than killing them, that is. New schools, hospitals, water treatment plants, etc, were loudly touted as George W. Bush bringing enlightenment to the Iraqi masses. The fact that it was based largely on mercenary "contractors" and truly obscene war-profiteering was politely unmentioned by most of the media.

But reality, as Stephen Colbert so memorably pointed out, has a well-known liberal bias. It soon became apparent that the benefits of civilization weren't quite as advertised. The reconstruction projects were handed out mostly on the basis of political patronage, and billions upon billions of our tax dollars were wasted or simply stolen. Many of the projects were never actually built, and many others were built so shoddily that they're unusable. (It's not surprising that with such a track record, White House propaganda has returned to the fear-and-smear tactics of old, attacking anyone who criticizes our occupation of Iraq as Osama bin Laden's cabana boy.)

For example, electricity supplies in Baghdad, in the middle of that country's baking summer weather, have dropped from six or so hours daily to just one or two hours a day. Which means that in 130-degree heat, there is no lighting, no air conditioning and no refrigeration for most of the day. Now, piddling details such as this are supposed to be included in the State Department's weekly status report to Congress on conditions in Iraq - but the Los Angeles Times reported that the Administration quietly changed it some months ago. Instead, the White House now reports the total amount of electricity generated in the country, regardless of whether that electricity actually reaches the people of Iraq.

Even given the dismal state of the Administration's war efforts, the latest revelation is a doozy. After all, generating electricity doesn't make a bit of difference if it doesn't get to you and you can't turn the lights on. It also fits perfectly into the Administration's habit of hiding or otherwise disguising bad news rather than dealing with it. Either way, while the total-electricity-generated figure might be strictly legitimate, it's also profoundly dishonest.

Assuming, of course, that the electricity was actually generated. Given the record of fraud and theft on the part of profiteering contractors, it's certainly possible that even the misleading figures given to Congress are a mirage. It's like something out of George Orwell's 1984:

But actually, he thought as he re-adjusted the Ministry of Plenty's figures, it was not even forgery. It was merely the substitution of one piece of nonsense for another. Most of the material that you were dealing with had no connection with anything in the real world, not even the kind of connection that is contained in a direct lie. Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version as in their rectified version. A great deal of the time you were expected to make them up out of your head. For example, the Ministry of Plenty's forecast had estimated the output of boots for the quarter at 145 million pairs. The actual output was given as sixty-two millions. Winston, however, in rewriting the forecast, marked the figure down to fifty-seven millions, so as to allow for the usual claim that the quota had been over-fulfilled. In any case, sixty-two millions was no nearer the truth than fifty-seven millions, or than 145 millions. Very likely no boots had been produced at all. Likelier still, nobody knew how many had been produced, much less cared. All one knew was that every quarter astronomical numbers of boots were produced on paper, while perhaps half the population of Oceania went barefoot. And so it was with every class of recorded fact, great or small.

As we are unable to even keep the lights on in the capital on any reasonable schedule, President Bush and his inner circle must be clinically delusional and actively hiding from reality. That's the only explanation as to how they are still surprised that the Iraqi people want us out.

Impeach Gonzales

"The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

- Constitution of the United States, Article II, Section 4

Enough is enough.

Attorney General Alberto Gonzales has shown over and over again that he will warp justice, perjure himself before Congress and drag the Justice Department into the mud to protect the political interests of President Bush and the Republican Party. His latest antics before the Senate Judiciary Committee did nothing to change that perception.

Back in 2004, half the Justice Department's top leadership threatened to resign over the Bush Administration's blatantly illegal secret-spying program, and stayed only because the White House agreed to rein in its more outrageous aspects. Testifying before the Senate last week, Gonzales claimed that the dispute was not over the innocuously-named "Terrorist Surveillance Program," but over another spying program.

The only problem was that former Assistant Attorney General James Comey, former FBI Director Robert Mueller, and internal DOJ documents all showed that Gonzales was lying through his teeth. It could have been lifted right out of the Marx Brothers movie Duck Soup - "Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?"

The farce achieved further Marxian proportions when Press Secretary Tony Snow insisted that "nobody has really laid a glove on" Gonzales, despite even loyal Republicans publicly saying that the Attorney General is more trouble than he's worth.

This is about more than just a matter of this spy program vs. that spy program. It is about the Bush Administration putting itself above the law, and an Attorney General who still sees himself as the President's personal attorney and not as chief law enforcement officer of the country.

What we already know is dismaying enough:

• Nine U.S. Attorneys were fired because they wouldn't go along with the White House's plan to indict prominent Democrats on trumped-up charges and leave provably crooked Republicans alone.
• Gonzales, very likely on direct orders from the President, attempted to pressure a very sick John Ashcroft to sign off on the TSP, an action that sparked the DOJ mutiny.
• Gonzales perjured himself before Congress when he claimed that there had been no documented abuse of "national security letters," when numerous reports of rampant FBI abuse of the practice had reached his desk only days earlier.
• The White House has ordered the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia to ignore any and all contempt citations issued to Administration staffers who defy Congressional subpoenas to testify.

Just imagine what we haven't yet learned.

Bush has already said that he has no intention of firing Gonzales or letting him resign which, while disastrous, actually makes a bizarre sort of sense from a political standpoint. A vacancy at the top of DOJ means Bush would have to nominate a replacement, which means confirmation hearings. And that means that the White House would be forced to reveal, slowly and painfully, all the corruption and machinations that have so tainted the Justice Department under Gonzales.

But there is another way of getting rid of him - impeachment. The Constitution clearly provides for impeachment and removal of government officials other than the President.

Congress must step up and demand the return of honesty and accountability to the Justice Department and, by extension, the entire Administration. Gonzales has to go.

Oceania Had Always Been at War with Eurasia

"We never argued that [Saddam Hussein] played a role in 9/11; political opponents manufactured the claim to question the president's integrity."

- White House press secretary Tony Snow telling a bald-faced lie in USA Today; the reality is that in the run-up to the Iraq War the Bush Administration deliberately conflated Hussein, al Qaeda and 9/11 to the point where a solid majority of Americans believed Hussein to have been behind the attacks

They're All the Same Anyway

"The same folks that are bombing innocent people in Iraq were the ones who attacked us in America on September the 11th, and that's why what happens in Iraq matters to the security here at home."

- President Bush, hoping to fool the public just one more time while not bothering to mention that the group calling itself "al Qaeda in Iraq:"

1. Didn't exist before the invasion
2. Is not controlled by Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda organization, and
3. Is not responsible for the vast majority of bombings in Iraq

If You Get Sick, It's Your Own Damn Fault

"In other words, the whole plan has got to be to bring more accountability into health care, to make the consumer more responsible for making proper and rational decisions. That's what accountability does."

- President Bush, suggesting that sick people be required to shop around and get prices - and that they're SOL if they don't make "proper and rational decisions"

Bad Medicine

We already know that the Bush Administration values politics above all else - war, peace, common decency, etc. But something about Dr. Richard Carmona's Congressional testimony on Tuesday struck a nerve.

Maybe it was that when he was Surgeon General he was directed not to say anything about the dangers of second-hand smoke. Or that he was gagged about health care in prisons. Or that he was told to stress abstinence-only sex education while ignoring the numerous studies which say it just doesn't work.

Maybe it's the simple crassness of being transformed into yet another mindless White House cheer-bot, ordered to mention President Bush no fewer than three times on every page of every speech he made. (At a press gaggle the next day, Tony Snow blithely said that "if you, in fact, serve at the pleasure of the President, you have some obligation to share his policies.")

No, I think the disgusting nadir was being "discouraged" from attending a Special Olympics event. Who could possibly have anything against helping disabled kids? The Bush Administration does, apparently - and for no other reason than the group was started and run by the Kennedy family. "I was specifically told by a senior person, 'Why would you want to help those people?'" Carmona said.

And yet he was "encouraged" to travel around the country speaking at various GOP events.

This is more than simple pettiness. This is actively politicizing every function of government, even something as supposedly above politics as health care.

And it's only getting worse. The White House's nominee for the new Surgeon General, Dr. James Holsinger, is not an advocate of better health care for everyone. Rather, he's an anti-gay partisan who in 1991 wrote a scary-sounding but badly-grounded report for the United Methodist Church. Titled "Pathophysiology of Male Homosexuality," he claimed that gay sex was inherently dangerous and should not be tolerated within the church.

Enough is enough. As Carmona testified on Tuesday, "the job of the Surgeon General is to be the doctor of the nation, not the doctor of a political party." It's high time to get politics out of health care.

Bring It On

After waffling on the sidelines for a week or so regarding the prosecutor purge scandal, President Bush has waded in with both fists. When Congressional Democrats said they would ask Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and other White House officials to testify, Bush responded with defiance, saying any testimony could take place only behind closed doors, not under oath and with no transcript. He practically dared Congress to subpoena them, saying he would fight any such move.

Fine by me. Bush has broken the law and committed outrages against democratic governance so many times that we need a good, bruising Constitutional showdown.

What is causing his sudden go-screw-yourself attitude? Is it simple antipathy towards anything that infringes on his vision of himself as Maximum Leader of the nation? Or is he trying to hide real crimes in his Administration, even more than what we already know?

I suspect the latter. Something must have come up in the morass of documents studied by White House counsel Fred Fielding that raised a very large red flag, something that has to be kept secret at all costs. What could it be? Written instructions to go after prominent Democrats? Explicit orders to drop cases against prominent Republicans?

We will find out.

Resign

Let's face it - Alberto Gonzales was not appointed Attorney General because of his devotion to enforcing federal laws. Rather, he got the job because of his long history of fealty to George W. Bush no matter what. Whenever following the law has come into conflict with following Bush's personal whims, the latter has won out every time. He was able to get away with it as long as Congress was in Republican hands, but now that adults are back in charge on Capitol Hill and oversight is no longer a dirty word, he's in real trouble.

The prosecutor purge, of course, is exhibit A. Conspiring with Karl Rove and other Justice Department and White House higher-ups, Gonzales axed eight U.S. Attorneys who were seen as insufficiently subservient to Maximum Leader Bush and the Republican Party. The reasons are varied, but all stink to high heaven.

One sent GOP Rep. Duke Cunningham to jail for taking bribes from defense contractors and was investigating CIA officials in the same scandal. Another refused to manufacture a phony "voter fraud" case to harass the Democratic winner of a closely contested election. Still another was pressured by a GOP Senator and Representative to indict a prominent local Democrat before the 2006 election. A fourth was fired simply to make room for a Rove crony. And so on and so forth.

The GOP has fallen back on its ABC defense - Always Blame Clinton. Since Bill Clinton replaced all 93 prosecutors at the beginning of his term, they say, Bush was just doing the same thing by ousting eight of them. The excuse is, of course, fake; incoming Presidents have always appointed their own stable of prosecutors. Bush's actions were very different in that he fired prosecutors to further politically-motivated probes or to punish those who took prosecutorial independence seriously.

And if all that wasn't bad enough, the National Journal reported late last week on Gonzales' role in shutting down the investigation into the Bush Administration's wholesale spying on the American people. You may recall that in late 2005, the New York Times revealed that the White House secretly ordered wiretaps and other snooping on American citizens without bothering to get the judicial approval required by the Constitution and statute law. DOJ's Office of Professional Responsibility, the department's internal watchdog, started to investigate the revelations only to be blocked when Bush refused to approve security clearances for the probers. It was Gonzales who recommended that the clearances be denied.

The problem was that at the time he made his recommendation, Gonzales was fully aware that he himself was to be a target of the investigation based on his actions as White House counsel. At the very least, shutting down a probe of himself is a pretty serious conflict of interest; at most, it goes all the way up to obstruction of justice, a felony.

Alberto Gonzales should never have become Attorney General. He is a partisan hack, slavishly loyal to his benefactor at the expense of all else. He should resign immediately, and take his fellow toadies with him.

Bring On the Burqas

Earlier this month, the citizens of Minnesota's 5th Congressional District elected Keith Ellison to be their Representative, and in doing so sent the first Muslim to Congress. This has caused some of the wiggier elements of America's right wing to go completely nuts. Good Lord, you'd think Ellison demanded that Nancy Pelosi be required to wear a burqa on the House floor. But he is actually quite moderate and not at all like the hate-crazed, suicide-bombing, honor-killing stereotype stamped into our national psyche.

But to the real fruitcakes, Islam itself is the enemy. And any American Muslims are traitors.

For example, take Glenn Beck, a O'Reilly-esque right-wing blowhard given a nightly talk show on CNN Headline News to counter the America-haters who otherwise dominate the network's talking-head lineup. (What's that? There aren't any? Oh well, maybe it'll draw some viewers from Fox.) When Beck had Ellison on his show, he showed off his inability to tell one Muslim from another, challenging the Representative-elect to "prove to me that you are not working with our enemies."

Now Dennis Prager, a columnist who moonlights as the religious right's token Jew, has gotten into the act as well. In his latest column for the TownHall website, he worked himself into a fine snit over Ellison's request to take his ceremonial oath of office on a copy of the Koran instead of the Bible. This request should be denied, he froths, "because the act undermines American civilization," and wonders what would happen if a racist asks to take the oath on Hitler's Mein Kampf. (Why not ask Trent Lott?) And if that weren't enough, he darkly warns that Ellison's request "will embolden Islamic extremists and make new ones."

Prager and Beck, and others like them, expose themselves as pure idiots whose bigoted rantings should embarrass thinking Americans everywhere. All Muslims are not the enemy, no matter what they think.

Way to Support the Troops, George

President Bush may talk the talk about "supporting the troops," but let's face it, it's just an act. He doesn't really seem to give a damn about the men and women he sent over to fight and die in the desert for his grand delusions.

Earlier this month, Bush hosted a White House reception for newly-elected members of Congress. It just so happens that James Webb, who defeated George "Macaca" Allen in Virginia's Senatorial election, has a son serving in Iraq as a lance corporal in the Marines. Bush asked Webb how his son was doing, and Webb responded by saying he wanted his son to come home.

"I didn't ask you that," Bush snapped back testily. "I asked how he's doing."

Webb naturally took exception to this display of pure callousness and later told a friend he wanted to "slug" the President, but refrained from doing so. I can think of quite a few parents who would not have been so restrained.

Especially those whose kids will never come home.

Way to go, George.

What Mission?

During the 2000 election campaign, then-Governor Bush made a talking point out of deriding President Clinton's (in)famous habit of constantly changing his positions as the situation warranted, calling it "waffling." He promised that as President, he would stick with it no matter what.

Well, he was right about that.

President Bush, the man who never ever ever changes his mind, has forcefully responded to the Iraqi civil war and the spectacle of American men and women caught in the crossfire as Sunnis and Shi'ites slaughter each other by the thousands. "There's one thing I'm not going to do," he talked tough in Latvia. "I'm not going to pull our troops off the battlefield before the mission is complete."

Which begs the question: what exactly is "the mission?" Frankly, that depends on which day it is.

Once upon a time, it was Saddam Hussein's gigantic WMD stockpiles. When it became painfully clear that such stockpiles did not in fact exist, the purpose of the invasion changed into Saddam's connections with al Qaeda. Nope, those didn't exist either. From there, the definition of "the mission" has wandered all over the place, from building democracy to defeating terrorism to controlling Iraq's oil - the last one being an extremely rare example of Bush actually being honest about something. Now, it has settled into this vague, amorphous mass of "finishing the job" and "completing the mission."

The simple truth appears to be that Bush et al have no idea what to do in Iraq other than staying the course. Except it's no longer called "staying the course." If our supposed leaders really have no clue what we're doing there anymore, it's a pretty good bet that it's time to get out. Now.

Gee, Ya Think?

Someone over at News Corporation - chairman Rupert Murdoch, for one - should have realized a long time ago that this would end badly. Very badly.

HarperCollins, a publishing company owned by Murdoch, announced that they would publish If I Did It, by former football star/actor/double murderer O.J. Simpson. And Fox, a television network also owned by Murdoch, announced that they would air a two-part interview billed as his "confession."

Yes, O.J. Simpson, You know, the guy whose "Trial of the Century" for killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman, his ex-wife and her friend, captivated America during the mid-nineties. The guy who to this day scours the golf courses of Florida looking for "the real killers." That O.J. Simpson.

Where most Americans see someone who literally got away with murder, HarperCollins publisher Judith Regan saw dollar signs. More dollar signs, in fact, because she was the person who would have interviewed Simpson for the Fox special. Indeed, the entire spectacle reeked of greed, ratings and publicity.

Not only that, there are reports that News Corporation attempted to buy the Brown family's silence with millions of dollars in hush money. And the company is reportedly attempting to sell the book to another publisher.

Granted, bad taste has never stopped Murdoch before. After all, his Fox network brought us such televised abominations as:

• Who Wants to Marry a Multimillionaire?, featuring a "millionaire" with restraining orders filed against him by numerous ex-girlfriends
• The Swan, in which the "winner" of a beauty pageant whose contestants underwent cosmetic surgery was served with divorce papers on live TV
• Who's Your Daddy?, where various men tried to con a woman adopted at birth into thinking he was her real birth father

But something about this one struck a public nerve. It was so crass, so tacky, so tasteless, that America responded with one gigantic retch.

For once, Murdoch listened. The TV special will not be aired. The book will not be published, although a couple of already-shipped copies are reportedly for sale on eBay.

Maybe it was because we're sick unto death of O.J. smugly insisting that he's innocent, all the while smirking at the thought there are some rubes out there who fall for it. Maybe it's the reported $3 million price tag, surely a low point in checkbook journalism. And maybe it was the sheer cheek of tabloid TV and tabloid publishing attempting to get away with ever more outrageous publicity stunts.

But whatever the reason, the American people have spoken, loudly and plainly. And good on us for it.

In His Defense, He Didn't Meet Any Vietnamese Citizens During the War, Either

"Well, if you'd been part of the President's motorcade as we've shuttled back and forth over the course of the day...the President has been doing a lot of waving and getting a lot of waving and smiles... So I think the President has a very good sense and will go back to the United States and tell the American people that these are a people that are very open to and solicitous of good relations with the United States."

-- National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley on President Bush, who was kept far away from average Vietnamese during his blink-and-you-miss-it trip to Vietnam

No Reality In Sight

The Bush Administration, led by the man in the Oval Office, is notorious for refusing to face reality. It is well known that President Bush and his inner circle are content to live in their own little fantasy world, where everything works properly and everyone loves us. (Of course, this gets an Orwellian makeover around election time, when the world is suddenly transformed into a mortal threat.) This goes a long way towards explaining Bush's poll numbers, which haven't seen the sunny side of 50% in months.

For anyone who reads the news and pays attention, it has been obvious for a very long time that our Iraq strategy of "stay the course" just isn't working. Our soldiers are getting slaughtered on a daily basis trying to keep the peace in a land where there is no peace. Indeed, American military commanders admit that we cannot even secure the capital city of Baghdad, much less the rest of the country.

Bush took to the cameras this morning for a rare press conference which was billed as a major announcement but which turned out to be - well, more of the same. No change in strategy, no realization that the (official) goal of a democratic Iraq is in ruins, no meaningful deviation from "stay the course." In fact, the only change of sorts is that Bush abandoned the macho "stay the course" slogan while continuing to embrace the disastrous "stay the course" mentality.

How typical for a White House which sees failing policies not as evidence that the policy needs to be changed, but rather that a new sales pitch is needed as the old one wasn't working.

He did claim that we "are constantly adjusting our tactics to stay ahead of our enemies." He did not, of course, mention that if the overall goal is unattainable and the strategy doesn't work, all the tactical adjustments in the world aren't going to make the slightest bit of difference.

In a very small concession to reality, he grudgingly admitted that "some of the Iraqi security forces have performed below expectations." In fact, the fledgling Iraqi army has been the source of many if not most of the sectarian death squads bringing so much killing and misery to the "wrong" Iraqis.

Overall, it was little more than the same stuff we've been hearing for years. "My administration will carefully consider any proposal that will help us achieve victory," Bush said. This appears on its face to be moderation, but here's the catch - he defines victory, so he defines anything that will help him "achieve victory." Anything that disagrees with his version of victory is by definition anti-victory and will therefore be ignored, just like all the other experts he brought in for photo ops and then tossed aside once their usefulness had been exhausted.

But let's face it - Bush's audience was not the soldiers he put in harm's way, nor their families, nor the Iraqi people. His audience was the American voting public, whom he is terrified will finally deprive him of his rubber stamp on Capitol Hill and replace it with a Congress which stands up to him for a change.

Never Mind What I Said

"Well, hey, listen, we've never been "stay the course," George. We have been - we will complete the mission, we will do our job, and help achieve the goal, but we’re constantly adjusting to tactics. Constantly."

-- President Bush, speaking to George Stephanopolous on ABC's This Week on October 22, 2006, claiming his Iraq War strategy has never been about "staying the course"

"We will stay the course."

-- President Bush, 8/30/06

"We will stay the course, we will complete the job in Iraq."

-- President Bush, 8/4/05

"We will stay the course until the job is done, Steve. And the temptation is to try to get the President or somebody to put a timetable on the definition of getting the job done. We're just going to stay the course."

-- President Bush, 12/15/03

"And my message today to those in Iraq is: We'll stay the course.

-- President Bush, 4/13/04

"And that's why we’re going to stay the course in Iraq. And that’s why when we say something in Iraq, we’re going to do it."

-- President Bush, 4/16/04

"And so we've got tough action in Iraq. But we will stay the course."

-- President Bush, 4/5/04

You Better Not Vote, Amigo

With Republican poll numbers rapidly heading south less than three weeks before Election Day, some GOP dirty tricksters are bringing out the mud buckets. Ohio gubernatorial candidate Ken Blackwell, for example, accused his Democratic opponent of supporting porn and pedophilia. You know, the usual nonsense. But a story out of California is pretty appalling.

The Los Angeles Times reported that Tan Nguyen, the long-shot GOP candidate for Rep. Loretta Sanchez's Congressional seat, mailed Spanish-language flyers to about 14,000 Democratic voters in Orange County with a not-so-subtle warning: "You are advised that if your residence in this country is illegal or you are an immigrant, voting in a federal election is a crime that could result in jail time." (Emphasis added.)

Legal immigrants are, of course, allowed to vote.

Orange County's population is about 30% Hispanic, which reliably votes for Sanchez. The flyer was an incredibly crude attempt at suppressing the Democratic vote by scaring Hispanic voters away from the polls.

Nguyen, himself an immigrant from Vietnam, disowned the flyer once the story became public and claimed to have fired one of his staffers, saying he had no idea the mailing had taken place. He was promptly contradicted by, of all people, the chairman of the Orange County Republican Party.

"I've learned that Mr. Nguyen was involved in expediting that mailer," Scott Baugh was quoted as saying. "I've had conversations with the attorney general and folks involved with the mail house. He called the mail house himself and told them to expedite the mailing."

Facing pressure from the GOP to drop out of the race, Nguyen has not said whether he will stay on the ballot. But it seems pretty academic at this point. Another Republican candidate has been caught red-handed trying to pull a fast one on the voters. He should quit now.

Swift Injustice

A few years ago, Salim Ahmed Hamdan was arrested in Afghanistan, accused of being Osama bin Laden's driver, declared to be an "enemy combatant" and blocked off from appealing his detention in the American court system. Hamdan was appointed a military lawyer, Lieutenant Commander Charles Swift, a Navy officer for twenty years and a Judge Advocate General lawyer for more than a decade.

When he got the job, Swift's superiors informed him that he was expected to throw the case. Never mind actually defending Hamdan, just get him to plead guilty at his show trial and make an example of him.

"I was deeply troubled by the fact that to ensure that Mr. Hamdan would plead guilty as planned," Swift testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2005, "the Chief Prosecutor's request [for Swift's assignment as Hamdan's attorney] came with a critical condition that the Defense Counsel was for the limited purpose of 'negotiating a guilty plea' to an unspecified offense and that Mr. Hamdan's access to counsel was conditioned on his willingness to negotiate such a plea."

Swift, however, had a different view, taking seriously his oath to provide his client with a "zealous defense." He proceeded to do just that, defending Hamdan all the way up to the Supreme Court. In June, the Court ruled that the Administration did not have the right to bar Hamdan from the American justice system nor to try suspects before what were widely regarded as military kangaroo courts.

One would think that a lawyer as good and effective as Swift would go far in his military career. Unfortunately, that did not happen.

Proving once again that in the topsy-turvy world of the Bush Administration no good deed goes unpunished, reaction from the Pentagon brass was quick. Less than two weeks after the Supreme Court ruled in his client's favor, Swift was informed that under the Navy's "up or out" rule, he was being denied promotion and was therefore being kicked out of the military.

That's right, he was punished for winning his case.

Whoever made the decision to ruin Swift's military career, whether it was Defense Secretary Rumsfeld or an approval-seeking underling, not only punished Swift. They also punished the military and the country. Any system which rewards toadying mediocrity while penalizing those who do the right thing despite orders from above is a dangerously unjust one.

What an Incredible Coincidence

The Republicans are now so far down in the polls that they rank just above the Black Death. Poll after poll says the American people think the party in power is living in a dream world and has no idea what real life on Planet Earth is all about. The question is not whether the Democrats will wipe the floor with the GOP in next month's elections, but how hard the wiping will be. GOP insiders outside the White House bubble of unreality have pretty much conceded that they will lose control of the House, but still retain some hope of holding on to the Senate.

In the long sad saga of the Iraq War, Bush has gotten minor poll bounces out of such "milestone" events as the capture of Saddam Hussein, the "handover of sovereignty," the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, and others. Of course, such bounces are quickly extinguished as reality sets in, but they still exist for a few days.

It therefore seems just a touch too coincidental that our puppet government in Iraq has announced that the verdict in Saddam's long-running trial will be revealed on Sunday, November 5 -- just two days before the midterm elections. Nobody seriously doubts that Saddam will be convicted and sentenced to death.

To this, I have three reactions:

1. A helpless here-we-go-again feeling that once again, the White House is attempting to distract our attention with yet another well-timed "milestone" which is utterly meaningless except in its short-term political impact.
2. An even more helpless feeling that even after all the lies, deceptions, political manipulation, etc, people will still be fooled into thinking the GOP is a can-do party that gets things right.
3. A distinctly disgusted feeling that Bush et al have such a low opinion of us, seeing the American people as so bovinely stupid that the same dishonest scams will work again and again.

Of course, there's always the possibility that the same people who were tricked in 2004 realize how the Republicans played them for suckers and are determined not to get conned again. But I always remember H.L. Mencken's immortal observation that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people."

It remains to be seen what impact such a transparently political event will have on the voting public. I hope that we, as a nation, are smarter than to be deceived once again.

Those White House Seances Are Channeling the Wrong President

"I said we gotta win. He [Democratic challenger Jon Tester] wants to pull out. He wants everybody to know our plan. That's not smart. If you had a plan in order to win are you gonna tell the enemy? He's not — the enemy’s not gonna tell us! That is absolutely unbelievable that anyone would take that approach! He says our president don't have a plan. I think he’s got one. But he's not gonna tell everybody in the whole world. And if you wanna go out and spar for a fight or you gonna tell your enemy what your plan is? I don't think so. And that's the way we'll win it, because we want to win it."

-- Senator Conrad Burns (R-MT) insisting that President Bush has a secret plan to win the Iraq War, echoing Richard Nixon's 1968 equally fraudulent claim that he had a secret plan to win the Vietnam War

Homey Don't Play That

Black Man #1: "If you make a little mistake with one of your ho's, you'll want to dispose of that problem tout suite, no questions asked."

Black Man #2: "That's too cold. I don't snuff my own seed."

Black Man #1: "Maybe you do have a reason to vote Republican."

-- A Republican radio ad trying to convince black voters to vote for anti-abortion GOP candidates

This From a Man Who Demonstrates Dishonesty, Cowardice, Lying and Jingoism

"By demonstrating values such as integrity, courage, honesty, and patriotism, all Americans can help our children develop strength and character."

-- President Bush, declaring October 15-21, 2006 to be "National Character Counts Week"

How About "Actually Making Progress and Not Having Our Soldiers Killed Endlessly?"

"I don't know. How do you define 'winning?'"

-- White House Press Secretary Tony Snow, responding to a reporter who asked "are we winning" in Iraq

It's Almost At the Point Where You Can Drive Down the Street in Only One Tank

"Well, I think there's some natural level of concern out there because in fact, you know, [the Iraq War] wasn't over instantaneously... If you look at the general overall situation, they're doing remarkably well."

-- Vice President Dick Cheney insisting on Rush Limbaugh's radio show that the Iraq War is going just fine, neglecting to mention that (a) the war has now lasted almost as long as World War II, and (b) it's a disaster over there

So a Vote Against Me Is a Vote for Satan

"God then called me to run for the United States Congress, and I thought 'What in the world will that be for?' and my husband said 'You need to do this,' and I wasn't so sure, and we took 3 days and we fasted and we prayed and we said, 'Lord. Is this what you want? Is this your will?' and after long about the afternoon of day two, he made that calling sure."

-- GOP Congressional candidate Michelle Bachmann on why she's running for election

"Inexplicably Upbeat"

There must be something in the water at the White House. The Administration's poll numbers are stuck in the cellar, GOP candidates are refusing to have party bigwigs appear at fundraisers, the Republicans are beset by scandal left and right - but according to the Washington Post President Bush and Karl Rove are "inexplicably upbeat." Indeed, the same White House that refused to plan for Iraq, Katrina, etc, has refused to plan for a Democratic-controlled Congress, insisting that everything will be just fine.

I can think of three possible explanations:

1. Bush et al are so insulated from reality, so happy in their fantasy world, that the possibility of an electoral defeat next month literally has not crossed their minds. Given this Administration's track record of delusion and wishful thinking, this one seems the most obvious.
   
2. A rally-round-the-flag military attack on Iran is in the works. This may not be so farfetched; the battle group commanded by the aircraft carrier USS Eisenhower was sent to the Persian Gulf ahead of schedule earlier this month, and Rove bragged to GOP insiders in September that an "October surprise" was on deck to happen before the elections.
3. With electronic voting systems now in place in most electoral districts, the possibility of hacking the vote (officially or otherwise) is scaring the tar out of a lot of computer-security experts. Especially in close races, some carefully aimed shenanigans could keep the GOP in control of the House.

Wait and see, I suppose...

The Liberation of Death

Three and a half years after the Great Liberation, the death toll in Iraq mounts daily. Fifteen killed in a car bombing here, twenty-five dragged off a bus and slaughtered there. Meanwhile, sixty corpses are found somewhere else, be it a construction site or a river. The streets of Baghdad have become almost unfit for human habitation due to lack of electricity, running water and now even waste collection. You see, garbage collectors are refusing to go to work, sensibly afraid of being killed for picking up the trash. Sunnis and Shiites massacre each other by the thousands all over the country, producing new religious enclaves by driving out or simply killing anyone from the "wrong" branch of Islam.

Meanwhile, the British medical journal The Lancet, which a couple of years ago claimed 100,000 civilians had been killed in the Iraq War, has now published a peer-reviewed study giving a rough estimate of 655,000 casualties. With a total Iraqi population of about 26 million, that works out to just over 2.5%, or one out of forty.

Just to give you an idea of scale, the United States' population is just now passing the 300 million mark. A 2.5% death toll for the US would mean about seven and a half million dead (give or take a few tens of thousands), or more than 2500 times the death toll on 9/11.

Think about that. Two thousand, five hundred 9/11s, one right on top of the other.

The number is simply too large for the mind to process.

Of course, the White House promptly attacked the study as "not credible," and indeed the death toll might not be that high - the study was based on representative sampling and not on a comprehensive death count. (It certainly doesn't help that the US government refuses to compile civilian casualty counts, and ordered the Iraqi government to refrain as well.) But no one can deny that this war and occupation, which was originally sold to us as a war of liberation, has gone horrifically wrong, producing for the people of Iraq a liberation of death.

President Bush, secure within his bubble, manfully proclaims that we shall "stay the course" in Iraq. Vice President Cheney, defying all logic and indeed common sense, stubbornly declares that even if he had known all that was to happen (no WMDs, stunning corruption, civil war, ethnic cleansing, etc) he wouldn't change a thing. This is not steely resolve, this is catastrophically inept arrogance.

In an attempt to buy some favorable coverage for a change, the White House some months ago allowed the creation of the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel headed by veteran diplomat and Bush family friend James Baker III. The report, now almost complete but to be released only after next month's elections, is expected to conclude that victory is no longer a viable option. Indeed, the only realistic options now are:

1. Concentrate on fortifying Baghdad while negotiating a peace with the insurgents
2. Withdraw American troops entirely and let the Iraqis fight it out

Neither option is likely to be welcomed in the Oval Office, where Bush claims that minor changes to tactics might be considered but changes in the overall strategy or goals are unacceptable. Then again, the ISG represents a voice of reason, something long ignored by the Bush Administration. Will they receive the brush-off as well?

Thirty Days Hath February

"This morning my administration released the budget numbers for fiscal 2006. These budget numbers are not just estimates; these are the actual results for the fiscal year that ended February the 30th."

-- President Bush, demonstrating that in his fantasy world in which Iraq is a huge success and everything is just peachy, the calendar is different as well

It's Really Not That Bad When You Consider the Alternative

"I know the speaker didn't go over a bridge and leave a young person in the water, and then have a press conference the next day...Dennis Hastert didn't kill anybody."

-- Representative Chris Shays (R-CT) attempting to deflect attention from the Congressional-page pedophilia scandal by attacking Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) over his fatal car accident at Chappaquiddick almost forty years ago

The Foley Fiasco

It seems just too good to be true - a Congressman caught exchanging some highly salacious and quite inappropriate E-mails with teenage pages. And he made a name for himself loudly denouncing the very sort of behavior in which he engaged. And the House leadership knew of his, er, activities long before it became public but kept it quiet, not only from the authorities but also from other Congressmen on the Page Board, which oversees the page program.

Once the story broke and it became clear that he had protected Mark Foley for months if not years, House Speaker Dennis Hastert floundered about, blaming everyone except himself. The Democrats did it! George Soros did it! ABC News did it! Matt Drudge floated the theory that the pages themselves had conspired to trap Foley, and Newt Gingrich actually claimed that Foley had been allowed to get away with it for as long as he did because the GOP leadership didn't want to be accused of gay-bashing.

It all adds up to the best free entertainment in town, with more acrobatics than Cirque de Soleil.

Not to be outdone, Fox News promptly dredged up the tale of one Gerry Studds, a Congressman who actually slept with a page. Of course, the story was from a quarter-century ago, and Studds was most definitely not protected by the leadership, but hey, who cares? Sex is sex.

The fiasco has demolished the GOP's standing in the polls. Voters are deserting the party in droves, from "security moms" dismayed at how the party has made a hash of the War on Terror to evangelical "values voters" disgusted that the leadership shielded a known stalker purely for political reasons. Current projections have the GOP losing as many as thirty House seats in next month's midterm elections, with significant hits in the Senate as well.

Life is sweet.

Simply Amazing

Let's face it - we all know that President Bush is not the sharpest crayon in the box. He is intellectually lazy, actively hostile to differing opinions, and prefers to be spoon-fed by his staff rather than think for himself. But the latest evidence of that brought me to a slack-jawed halt, gaping in horrified amazement as I realized just how embarrassing and dangerous it is that this man is the leader of our nation.

As the New York Times reported, four scholars who recently met with Bush at the White House to discuss the Iraq War said that the President's main concern was not the seemingly endless line of American soldiers coming home in body bags, nor the Shi'a slaughtering the Sunnis, nor the Sunnis slaughtering the Shi'a, nor anything like that.

No, he was most frustrated over the fact "that the new Iraqi government -- and the Iraqi people -- had not shown greater public support for the American mission."

Um...what?

Is Bush really that shallow? Does he really believe that it's all a matter of getting the Iraqi people to say "thank you?" Does he really not understand that thanks to more than three years of incompetence and plunder combined with an increasingly brutal occupation, we are now only slightly more popular than bubonic plague over there?

And if that weren't enough, Peter Galbraith, the former US Ambassador to Croatia, now says that Bush had no idea that Iraq was composed of two different sects of Islam. During a meeting at the White House, three Iraqi-Americans spent some time explaining the Sunni-Shi'a divisions to the President, whereupon Bush said, "I thought the Iraqis were Muslims!"

That was just two months before he ordered the invasion.

With Iraq disintegrating into sectarian civil war and proof all around that the current Iraq strategy (whatever it is) just isn't working, Bush proclaims the only way is to "stay the course" with absolutely no change in anything. And this is the man itching to attack Iran, seeing as how our grand experiment in spreading freedom and democracy proved so effective in Iraq.

The thought of that much power in the hands of someone so ignorant of even the most basic facts should give us all nightmares. God help us all.

Just Plain Evil

The Swift Boats are setting sail again!

You may recall that during the 2004 election, a GOP front group called Swift Boat Veterans for Truth made a lot of hay out of trashing Democratic Presidential candidate John Kerry's Vietnam War record, saying that he didn't really deserve his decorations. President Bush (who was schmoozed into the Texas National Guard and promptly went AWOL) and Vice President Cheney (who defended his five Vietnam-era deferments by saying "I had more important things to do") remained noticeably silent as their minions smeared Kerry eight ways to Sunday. Indeed, the attacks and Kerry's weak response to them were a significant factor in his election loss.

Now it's happening all over again.

In November, Rep. John Murtha, a decorated Marine Corps veteran who fought in Vietnam, came out against the Iraq War, saying we had accomplished all we could over there and it was time to bring the troops home. Nor surprisingly, he was promptly attacked by war supporters as someone who, in the uproar-causing words of Rep. Jean Schmidt, would "cut and run." Murtha's long history of supporting the military combined with his weekly visits to military hospitals to visit wounded troops made him a difficult target for the swift-boating treatment that Kerry received.

Now they're trying.

The Cybercast News Service posted an article last week claiming that Murtha did not deserve the two Purple Hearts he won back in 1967 while fighting in Vietnam. CNS is a hard-right website run by David Thibault, an acolyte of Brent Bozell, the self-proclaimed "media critic" who says the media is filled with liberals, unreformed Communists, gays, lesbians, al Qaeda sympathizers, and so on.

There is, of course, no serious reason to doubt that Murtha earned his decorations honestly and honorably. Demonstrating admirable restraint, Murtha said that "questions about my record are clearly an attempt to distract attention from the real issue" and that "my record is clear."

Thibault, to his (very small) credit, doesn't even try to pretend that his smear is unrelated to Murtha's antiwar statements. "The congressman has really put himself in the forefront of the antiwar movement," he told the Washington Post. "He has been placed by the Democratic Party and antiwar activists as a spokesman against the war above reproach." In other words, if Murtha had just kept his opinions to himself, echoed whatever is the latest mantra for staying in Iraq, and not raised a peep, nothing would have been said.

Once again, we see how the Republicans, who claim to venerate military service above all else, won't hesitate to slur any veteran who fails to toe the line. Max Cleland, who dared to dissent from the Bush Administration's war plans, lost his Senate seat in 2002 thanks to GOP ads smearing him as an ideological comrade of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. John McCain, the fiercely independent Republican senator who was a POW in Vietnam for five years, was attacked by his own party during the 2000 primaries. Not only was he called a possibly traitorous nutcase, but he was the target of a truly despicable whispering campaign saying there was something wrong with him because he and his wife adopted their daughter from Bangladesh.

It seems that some veterans are more worthy of praise than others. If you shut up and salute at the right times, you are held up as a paragon of military virtue. If you dare express any dissenting opinion, you are smeared as a fake hero, a fifth columnist, an enemy within. Insisting that veterans are required to hold certain political beliefs while attacking anyone who thinks differently is wrong, and smearing veterans who don't fall into line is just plain evil.

Picking and Choosing

When Senator John McCain, a dedicated Vietnam War veteran and survivor of Viet Cong torture, introduced an amendment to the Defense Department funding bill banning all forms of torture by the American government, he was speaking from hard experience. Americans, he said loud and clear, are better than to stoop to torture. Displaying a truly stunning political tone-deafness, the White House fought hard to derail the amendment, claiming that Americans should be able to torture prisoners. Fortunately, the American people loudly disagreed, and President Bush was forced to back off and sign the bill.

Well, not quite. For Bush also issued a "signing statement" claiming:

"The executive branch shall construe Title X in Division A of the Act, relating to detainees, in a manner consistent with the constitutional authority of the President to supervise the unitary executive branch and as Commander in Chief and consistent with the constitutional limitations on the judicial power, which will assist in achieving the shared objective of the Congress and the President, evidenced in Title X, of protecting the American people from further terrorist attacks. Further, in light of the principles enunciated by the Supreme Court of the United States in 2001 in Alexander v. Sandoval, and noting that the text and structure of Title X do not create a private right of action to enforce Title X, the executive branch shall construe Title X not to create a private right of action. Finally, given the decision of the Congress reflected in subsections 1005(e) and 1005(h) that the amendments made to section 2241 of title 28, United States Code, shall apply to past, present, and future actions, including applications for writs of habeas corpus, described in that section, and noting that section 1005 does not confer any constitutional right upon an alien detained abroad as an enemy combatant, the executive branch shall construe section 1005 to preclude the Federal courts from exercising subject matter jurisdiction over any existing or future action, including applications for writs of habeas corpus, described in section 1005."

Translated into plain English, this means three things:

1. The President has the unilateral power to ignore this law as he sees fit.
2. Anyone who claims to have been tortured in violation of this law cannot go to court for redress.
3. Federal courts are barred from taking the case of anyone declared by the President to be an "enemy combatant," even for habeas corpus (wrongful imprisonment) petitions.

Bush routinely issues such statements when signing bills into law, meaning he believes he can pick and choose which laws he can condescend to follow and which laws he can ignore.

This is not new from this Administration. From warrantless spying on American citizens to secret overseas prisons to redefining torture to a host of other outrages, President Bush has always said he has the unilateral power to do whatever he wants, the law be damned. When Congress and the courts dare tell him what he can and cannot do, he just flips them off them and goes on his merry way.

When the President says he can override any law at will, regardless of the justifications, that is not democracy. That is a dicatorship in the making.

This is why Democrats have to take back the Senate and the House this year. Once we have a Democratic Congress in place, we can impeach both President Bush and Vice President Cheney for flagrant abuse of power and have the Democratic Speaker of the House become President.

If At First You Don't Succeed...

Even having filled his Administration with cronies and yes-men, it appears President Bush had a hard time getting his own people to sign off on his plan to secretly wiretap Americans' communications without the legally required court orders. According to the New York Times, the White House in 2004 asked the Justice Department to approve the continuation of its secret spying program, but Deputy Attorney General James Comey balked, saying the program was most likely illegal.

In response, chief of staff Andrew Card and counsel (now Attorney General) Alberto Gonzales went to Attorney General John Ashcroft's hospital bedside - he was recovering from gall bladder surgery - to get him to overrule his deputy and approve the wiretapping. Ashcroft also said no.

While neither Ashcroft and Comey have commented on the story, neither one is a particular friend of terrorists and neither one would have given it a second thought. Indeed, Ashcroft has publicly called antiwar activists terrorists, and he would not have hesitated for a moment in giving his approval to spying on them.

The fact that both of them refused to approve the wholesale spying should raise the serious question of just who was being tapped. Rumors are flying that the program's target was not al Qaeda sympathizers or even antiwar activists, but prominent Democrats and the Kerry campaign.

Where will this lead?

Just a Piece of Paper?

"It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

According to three witnesses, that's what President Bush called the United States Constitution in November. Republican congressional leaders had gone to the White House to talk with Bush about the difficulties involved in renewing the USA Patriot Act. In the four years since the law's post-9/11 passage, some conservative leaders have joined with prominent liberals in expressing uneasiness about the Act's reach and its effect on civil liberties. In general, the Administration's relationship with the GOP right wing has been strained of late, most notably in Bush's doomed attempt to nominate the highly unqualified (and insufficiently conservative) crony Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.

In the meeting, GOP leaders reportedly told Bush that his high-pressure sales pitch to renew the Patriot Act was pushing more conservatives further away.

"I don't give a goddamn," Bush said. "I'm the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way."

"Mr. President," one lone brave aide piped up, "there is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution."

"Stop throwing the Constitution in my face," Bush shot back. "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!"

If Bill Clinton had called the Constitution "just a goddamned piece of paper" or called political dissenters "motherf---ing traitors," Congress and Fox News would be building a bonfire on the White House lawn. But since it's George W. Bush we're talking about, such revelations are barely mentioned, if at all, and quickly allowed to be forgotten.

In his actions as President, from classifying everything possible to his warrantless spying on the American people, Bush doesn't strike me as someone who has a lot of respect for the Constitution. It is, after all, only the bedrock of our civil society. And since he feels the need to spit all over everything this country was founded upon, you'd think he'd hold back on invoking the Constitution in his speeches all the time.

But then again, it's apparently just a goddamned piece of paper.