Take Your Finger Off the Button, George

"The president was not making any war plans. He was not making any declaration. He was making a point."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, trying to reassure people that President Bush's "World War III" reference did not mean he's hot to nuke Iran

Irrelevant

President Bush must know what he's become in the eyes of the American people - a whining and petulant man desperately begging us to support him just one more time. That's the impression I got from watching his press conference yesterday.

Why else would he lamely insist "I am relevant" when explaining why he wielded his veto pen to cut off the health coverage of millions of children? Or mutter darkly (while snickering, no less) that "if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing [Iran] from [having] the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon."

(Note that he changed the script slightly - he did not accuse Iran of actually trying to build a bomb, only of getting the required know-how. It seems that his handlers realize the old scare tactics aren't working and are changing to new ones.)

He doesn't get it. There's a reason why the latest poll shows him with a 24% approval rating, why his saber-rattling against Iran isn't selling, why the public is upset over his denying health care to working-class kids.

Perhaps it's because he continues to insist that the United States does not torture when everyone knows prisoners are routinely beaten and waterboarded. Maybe he really believes that he can get away with torture by redefining it, but he's sure not convincing anyone else.

Q: A simple question.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. It may require a simple answer.
Q: What's your definition of the word "torture"?
THE PRESIDENT: Of what?
Q: The word "torture." What's your definition?
THE PRESIDENT: That's defined in U.S. law, and we don't torture.
Q : Can you give me your version of it, sir?
THE PRESIDENT: Whatever the law says.

Perhaps it's because he's asked when he's going to admit the Iraq War cannot be won militarily and responds by raising the specter of al Qaeda and demanding that Congress hand over even more spying power to him.

Or perhaps he insists that "I feel good about many of the economic indicators here in the United States" when all but his super-rich pals are falling further and further behind.

But it's really all of the above. Bush comes across as someone denying the reality that is staring him in the face, pushing one more lie, hoping to deceive the American people just one more time. No one believes him anymore, and even he knows it.

And we have four hundred and sixty days left to go until someone else becomes president.

Some People Just Never Learn

Now that their attempted smear attack on 12-year-old Graeme Frost and his family has imploded in the face of public revulsion, you'd think Michelle Malkin and company wouldn't try it again, at least not this soon. Well, guess what - they're at it again.

Bethany Wilkerson was born with a serious heart defect and receives health coverage through the SCHIP program which has driven the right wing so bonkers.

She is two years old.

That has not stopped Malkin et al from frothing at the mouth, attacking not only Bethany but her parents as well. Malkin sneeringly called Bethany a "child-sized human shield." Mark Hemingway of National Review went further, taking Dara and Brian Wilkerson to task basically for procreating while poor.

What is it with these supposedly pro-life people that actual children drive them so crazy? Do they hate kids that much?

So Much for the Whole "9/11" Excuse

Remember back when the White House got caught secretly spying on our phone calls, E-mail messages, and so on? The number one excuse given by President Bush and his fellow fear-mongerers was that it was all because of 9/11, that we should get used to Uncle Sam watching everything we do rather than risk another attack. It was a blatant appeal to our fears, but it made a perverse sort of sense.

Well, guess what? Along with everything else from this Administration, that was a crock too.

The Daily Kos website is reporting that in February 2001, the White House started recruiting American telecommunication companies to facilitate government eavesdropping without all those pesky judicial warrants.

In case your math is a bit rusty, that was a full seven months prior to the 9/11 attacks. So Bush et al came to power and immediately started in on a massively illegal domestic spying program.

Out of the various companies pressed to cooperate, Qwest was the only one to refuse, and it seems just a tad suspicious that shortly thereafter, the company was abruptly denied government contracts and its CEO investigated for insider trading.

Will Congress look into this latest outrage? Hold their feet to the fire!

Two Minutes Hate, GOP-Style

Before the Hate had proceeded for thirty seconds, uncontrollable exclamations of rage were breaking out from half the people in the room. The self-satisfied sheep-like face on the screen, and the terrifying power of the Eurasian army behind it, were too much to be borne: besides, the sight or even the thought of Goldstein produced fear and anger automatically. He was an object of hatred more constant than either Eurasia or Eastasia, since when Oceania was at war with one of these Powers it was generally at peace with the other. But what was strange was that although Goldstein was hated and despised by everybody, although every day and a thousand times a day, on platforms, on the telescreen, in newspapers, in books, his theories were refuted, smashed, ridiculed, held up to the general gaze for the pitiful rubbish that they were - in spite of all this, his influence never seemed to grow less. Always there were fresh dupes waiting to be seduced by him. A day never passed when spies and saboteurs acting under his directions were not unmasked by the Thought Police.

George Orwell, 1984

Orwell would either be horrified or grimly satisfied at the way the Republican Party and the conservative movement in general - Rush Limbaugh, Fox News, Sean Hannity, and so on - have absorbed the concept of the Two Minutes Hate. In the novel, the Hate is used to channel the emotions of the Oceanian populace into hating this person or that, rather than have them start thinking about why life is as miserable as it is.

So it is with today's conservatives. Watching them switch their hatred from topic to topic and from person to person is like watching Orwell's dark vision come to life. One week, the object of their fear-and-loathing agenda is Mexican migrants looking for work. The next week, it's MoveOn.org. The week after that, it's a boy who asked why President Bush wants to take away his health care. Today, it's FreeThought Radio, a new atheism-centric show on Air America Radio, about which Fox News is screaming that it's a "war on God." And every year around this time, it's the "War on Christmas."

But the basic pattern of the Hate never changes, even if its target does so regularly. It's always a dire threat to civilization as we know it. We are always under attack from someone or other, and the latest target is always - always - the most evil and blackhearted enemy in the history of everything, topping only the one that came before it. And once the Hate has run its course, whether it is refuted by simple facts or met by public revulsion or simply runs out of steam, it switches effortlessly to its next target.

And it is always used to distract the American people from asking questions, from thinking for ourselves. Why run the risk of people wondering why our soldiers are needlessly dying in Iraq when they can be told to hate Sean Penn instead? What better way to prevent people from asking why the United States is the only industrialized nation in the world which does not provide some form of national health coverage than by focusing their worries and fears on a twelve-year-old boy with brain damage? It can certainly backfire temporarily, as with this week's aborted smear campaign against Graeme Frost and his family, but then it simply changes direction to target the next threat.

One wonders if the Republicans' Two Minutes Hate strategy will ever run its course, whether the people being so callously manipulated will ever wake up to that simple fact.

I hope it will, but I fear it won't.

UPDATE: With the Frost smear having gone down in flames, the Two Minutes Hate has switched to Al Gore, who in 2000 won the popular vote and this morning won the Nobel Peace Prize for his climate-change work. To nobody's surprise, Fox News and various right-wing blogs have started attacking Gore en masse.

We Love the Jews So Much, We Want Them to Stop Being Jews

"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say... We consider ourselves perfected Christians. For me to say that for you to become a Christian is to become a perfected Christian is not offensive at all."

Ann Coulter on CNBC's The Big Idea to (Jewish) host Donny Deutsch, explaining why she wants all Jews to convert to Christianity

Suffer the Little Children

We all know that the American right wing makes a big deal out of publicly claiming to be pro-family and pro-child while privately doing everything they can to screw America's not-wealthy families to the wall. The hypocrisy is expected if not exactly welcome. But even I thought they wouldn't stoop to going after sick kids.

Boy, was I wrong.

Two weeks ago, Graeme Frost, a twelve-year-old boy from Baltimore, gave the Democratic response to President Bush's weekly radio address, asking Bush to sign the bill expanding SCHIP health insurance to include more children who need it. As we all know by now, Bush vetoed the bill, claiming it would deprive the insurance industry - currently in desperate straits and forced to sell blood to pay its bills (that's a joke, by the way) - of profitable customers.

Graeme happens to know something about SCHIP. Three years ago, he and his sister were badly injured in a car crash and left comatose. Both children have brain injuries and need special care, especially the daughter. Their parents don't have thousands of dollars a year to buy health insurance, and even if they did, no company would cover them due to the kids' "pre-existing conditions." It's only SCHIP that allows them to get the health care they need.

For the crime of speaking out, of opposing Maximum Leader Bush and his plans to turn America into an "ownership society" where you're SOL if you don't have the scratch, Graeme and his family have been targeted by the right wing.

An anonymous post on the hard-right Free Republic bulletin board accused the Frost family of being pretty well-off and not needing the SCHIP insurance. They go to a private school which costs $40,000 a year for the two of them! They own their own home! Others in the right-wing media landscape, from Rush Limbaugh to Michelle Malkin and everyone in between, picked up on the theme and attacked Graeme and his family for being fake poor people. The right-wing blogs are full of vitriol, hatred and even death threats. The family also has to deal with various wingnuts harassing them at their home and place of business.

Of course, all these shrieking nutjobs don't bother to mention a few salient facts:

• Graeme is able to attend the school only because he gets a full scholarship
• Graeme's severely disabled sister can go to the same school only because Maryland is required by state law to pay for her education
• The family was able to buy the house for $55,000 in 1991 only because it was in a rough neighborhood

But that doesn't matter to these people. Like the sheep-like citizens of Oceania in 1984, they have been given a target. Who cares if the facts aren't with them? The Hate is on!

The whole thing makes me want to throw up. How can anyone attack children, let alone sick children? Is there really no depth to which they won't sink? These are truly loathsome people.

Gitmo Who?

"Reports about very innocent people being thrown into detention, where they could be held for years without any representation or charges, is distressing."

White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, finally admitting that arbitrarily imprisoning hundreds of people at Guantanamo Bay indefinitely without charges or trial might not be the best approach - no, wait, she was actually criticizing the military crackdown in Myanmar.

"Compassionate Conservatism" in Action

"On this day it is also appropriate to recognize the important role the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) has played in helping poor children stay healthy. To preserve that role and ensure that poor children can get the coverage they need, SCHIP should be reauthorized."

President Bush proclaiming "Child Health Day" on October 1

"[U]nder this bill, government coverage would displace private health insurance for many children. If this bill were enacted, one out of every three children moving onto government coverage would be moving from private coverage."

President Bush just two days later, putting insurance company profits over kids' health by vetoing SCHIP

In His Defense, He's Been Leader of the Free World for Only Six Years

"The United States salutes the nations that have recently taken strides toward liberty, including Ukraine, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan [KEYR-geez-stan], Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a], Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Morocco."

From a leaked draft of President Bush's speech to the United Nations, complete with phonetic guide

"I think that's a offensive question. I'm going to just decline to comment on it."

Press Secretary Dana Perino at a White House press gaggle, responding to a question on whether Bush has "a hard time pronouncing some of these countries' names"

Just Plain Ghoulish

It is no secret that Rudy Giuliani has based his presidential campaign solely on the fact that he was Mayor of New York on September 11, 2001. He's not even bothering to mention anything else, and the fear-and-loathing rhetoric of his speeches gives even Karl Rove's wettest dreams a run for their money. He stops just short of saying, "Vote for me, or Osama bin Laden will come to your house, kill your kids and shave your cats." He's pretty shameless, and his wholesale expropriation of the terrorist attacks as his personal property is, to say the least, unseemly.

But this one is just plain ghoulish.

Abraham Sofaer, a Giuliani supporter in Palo Alto, California, is hosting a fundraising party for the campaign tomorrow night in his house. No problem there. The kicker is that he wants his attendees to each chip in nine dollars and eleven cents for the campaign.

That's right: "$9.11 for Rudy."

Even by this campaign's standards, that's pretty darn awful. And it's telling that while the Giuliani campaign has made the occasional clucking noise of disapproval, they're notably silent on whether they're going to accept the money.

Then again, what do you expect from a guy who dumped his second wife via press conference?

Because One Pointless War Just Isn't Enough

It's no secret that the warmongers in the White House are itching to attack Iran before President Bush's term ends in January 2009. They've certainly tried hard enough to sell the American public on the necessity of bombing Tehran and taking out the Middle East's new Public Enemy #1, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He's building nukes! He's in bed with Al Qaeda! He was part of the mob that took over the American Embassy back in 1979!

Fortunately, the public ain't buying this time. We already got lied into supporting one war by this crowd, and we're not inclined to believe them again.

But that doesn't mean they're not trying.

Newsweek is reporting that Vice President Darth Cheney tried to manufacture an excuse to attack Iran:

A few months before he quit, according to two knowledgeable sources, [David] Wurmser [Cheney's Middle East adviser] told a small group of people that Cheney had been mulling the idea of pushing for limited Israeli missile strikes against the Iranian nuclear site at Natanz - and perhaps other sites - in order to provoke Tehran into lashing out. The Iranian reaction would then give Washington a pretext to launch strikes against military and nuclear targets in Iran.

This is truly scary. Cheney is already salivating over the prospect of using tactical nuclear weapons in Iran, a move which is quite simply madness. Has the Bush Administration really become so power-mad that they would really nuke a country which has not attacked us and is not developing nuclear weapons (according to the UN nuclear watchdog group that was enimently correct in saying the same thing about Iraq)?

I have the sinking feeling that they really are that nuts.

Hiding Behind the General

General David Petraeus has been good for President Bush. As the public face of Bush's Surge™ in Iraq, Petraeus did his master's bidding and provided a medaled front man behind whom Bush can hide when the going gets tough.

As is happening right now.

Prior to Petraeus' dog-and-pony show before Congress last week, the Washington Post revealed how he manipulated Iraqi casualty figures to make it look like the violence was decreasing when in fact the country remained as bloody as ever. This sometimes took truly ludicrous forms, such as how deaths were counted if victims were shot in the back of the head but not if they were shot in the front. Polls both before and after the PR stunt said a majority of the American people didn't believe a word he said.

Then MoveOn.org put in their two cents with their "Petraeus or Betray Us?" ad and the world exploded.

Well, not literally. The sun continued to rise and the sky remained blue. But from the GOP's temper tantrum, you'd think that's what happened. Republicans took to friendly media outlets (including, to no one's surprise, Fox News) demanding that MoveOn be kicked out of the country and that the New York Times be investigated for running the ad in the first place.

Amid all the brouhaha, one should not lose sight of the simple fact that the ad's assertion - that Petraeus deliberately fudged the numbers so his political bosses in the White House could look good - went entirely unchallenged. Indeed, all the evidence supports it.

Yesterday, the Senate demonstrated its support of freedom by passing a resolution condemning MoveOn for daring to criticize Bush's fig leaf. And in an effort to further milk the righteous outrage, Bush took to the airwaves in a rare press conference.

It cannot be a coincidence that the very last question was a softball from Bill Sammon, a faithful stenographer who writes for the hard-right Washington Examiner:

What is your reaction to the MoveOn.org ad that mocked General Petraeus as General "Betrayus," and said that he cooked the books on Iraq? And secondly, would you like to see Democrats, including presidential candidates, repudiate that ad?

With the planted question phrased in just that manner, Bush had his cue to get into his carefully scripted snit, with no follow-up questioning allowed:

I thought the ad was disgusting. I felt like the ad was an attack not only on General Petraeus, but on the U.S. military. And I was disappointed that not more leaders in the Democrat[ic] Party spoke out strongly against that kind of ad. And that leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org - or more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military. That was a sorry deal. It's one thing to attack me; it's another thing to attack somebody like General Petraeus.

The hypocrisy is staggering even by Bush's standards. After firing principled officers for refusing to put a happy face on Iraq, he finds one to be his personal PR flack in selling the Surge™ to a skeptical public. (Not to mention the professional Pentagon brass, which warns that the military is in real danger of breaking due to the war.) And when the Surge™ goes sour, Bush uses Petraeus to deflect disapproval and proclaims that any criticism is an attack on the entire military.

In other words, shut up and salute. No criticism of the armed forces is allowed, regardless of how richly it's deserved or whether the military is being used for political cover. How easily we forget that Republicans routinely attack military figures - and more harshly than MoveOn did - whenever it suits their purposes to do so.

Bush's handlers obviously realize that hiding behind Petraeus gives him the best chance of keeping his poll numbers from sinking any lower. If that means turning a decorated Army officer into just another political hack - well, that's life.

The Whole "Cratering the Economy" Thing Was Someone Else's Fault

"You know, you need to talk to economists. I think I got a B in Econ 101. I got an A, however, in keeping taxes low and being fiscally responsible with the people's money."

President Bush, forgetting that he took a $230 billion budget surplus in 2000 and recklessly blew it on endless war in Iraq and tax cuts for the rich, turning it into a $9 trillion national debt

Except Your Kids Are Dead

"Every day is Mother's Day as far as you're concerned, isn't it?"

President Bush to mothers of soldiers fighting and dying in Iraq and Afghanistan

Besides, Getting Killed in Iraq Is Your Job

"One, I'm too old to be out there, and two, they would notice me."

President Bush, making excuses as to why he talks tough on Iraq (e.g., "bring them on" and "we're kicking ass") but won't do any of the actual fighting and dying

Imagine How Democrats Would Make Out

"You're basically saying that we should take our marching orders from Al Qaeda?"

Fox News "journalist" Chris Wallace, on the attack during a Fox-moderated GOP Presidential debate after candidate Ron Paul advocated withdrawing all American forces from Iraq

Oh Yes, That Makes All the Difference

"If a bullet went through the back of the head, it's sectarian. If it went through the front, it's criminal."

A "senior intelligence official" quoted in the Washington Post, explaining how casualty figures were manipulated so the White House could claim that fewer Iraqis were being killed; other officially uncounted deaths include Iraqis killed by car bombs, Sunnis killed by Sunnis, Shiites killed by Shiites, etc.

Jews Aren't Part of His Base Anyway

"I send greetings to those around the world celebrating Rosh Hashanah."

President Bush, announcing the Jewish New Year one week early

So Why Not Ban Straight Divorce?

"In countries that have redefined marriage, where they've said, okay, it's not just a man and a woman, it can be two men, two women, the marriage rates in those countries have plummeted to where you have counties now in Northern Europe where 80 percent of the first-born children are born out of wedlock. We don't need more children born out of wedlock; we need more children born into wedlock between a mom and a dad bonded together for life."

Senator Sam Brownback (R-KS), explaining why he opposes marriage equality for gays and lesbians

"Slow News Weekend" My Fanny

Good Lord - go away for a holiday weekend and everything happens at once.

First off, President Bush's "surprise" visit to Iraq. Notice that he stayed far away from Baghdad, where some of the sectarian civil war's worst fighting has been happening and where the Iraqi "government" is in shambles. No, he went to Al-Asad Air Base, a gigantic and heavily guarded American military outpost with a thirteen mile fortified perimeter. Thus kept far away from any of the actual Iraqis whom he claims to have liberated, Bush shamelessly exploited the thousands of soldiers stationed there for a photo op.

"Those decisions [on finally leaving Iraq] will be based on a calm assessment by our military commanders on the conditions on the ground," he said manfully, "not a nervous reaction by Washington politicians to poll results in the media. In other words, when we begin to draw down troops from Iraq, it will be from a position of strength and success, not from a position of fear and failure. To do otherwise would embolden our enemies and make it more likely that they would attack us at home."

That pretty much sums up Bush's presidency right there. Set up other people to take the fall when your policy decisions go bad. Smear anyone who disagrees with you as spineless wimps. And use psychological terrorism of your own to scare people into supporting you even though everyone knows you have no idea what you're doing.

Once again, we see how Bush is so hopelessly delusional he can't recognize reality even when it walks right up and bites him.

Second development, also from the Bush Administration. We're seeing a level of rhetoric against Iran that's heightened even by this crowd's standards. Speaking to the friendly American Legion, Bush said that "Iran's active pursuit of technology that could lead to nuclear weapons threatens to put a region already known for instability and violence under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust. Iran's actions threaten the security of nations everywhere."

And where have we heard this one before? "We will confront this danger before it is too late."

Yes, Bush is trying to repeat the very same act that deceived us into invading Iraq when no threat was present.

Who cares that nuclear engineers and inspectors all insist that Iran is maybe a decade from developing such weapons? Who cares that Iran scholars both inside and outside the Beltway all say that an attack would be, to put it lightly, counterproductive? That Iran's production facilities are too widespread to be destroyed by anything other than a massive and sustained invasion? That it would cause the Iranian people to rally round the Tehran government? And that it would give Al Qaeda yet another recruiting poster?

And finally, the hypocritical moralists of the Grand Old Party forced Senator Larry Craig to resign for being gay. Let's not beat around the bush here (as it were, har!) - Craig was shoved out not because he covered up a disorderly-conduct arrest but for being homosexual. After all, the GOP was just peachy with Senator David Vitter's commerce with various ladies of the night. What's worse - patronizing prostitutes or cruising airport bathrooms?

OK, they're both pretty icky and not very defensible. But it's just wrong that the Republican Congressional Caucus gives Vitter a standing ovation and then gives Craig the heave-ho.

Eating Their Own

Back when Senator David Vitter (R-LA) admitted to fooling around with prostitutes, GOP reaction was notably muted. He was not condemned by his colleagues nor was he urged to resign.

Sheesh, what a difference the word "gay" makes.

As everyone knows by now, Senator Larry Craig (R-IH) pleaded guilty and paid a fine for cruising for quick nookie in an airport bathroom. Good Lord, from the way the right wing has gone off on him, you'd think he read from the Koran on the Senate floor:

Senator Norm Coleman (R-MN): "Senator Craig pled guilty to a crime involving conduct unbecoming a senator. He should resign."

Senator John McCain (R-AZ): "I believe that he - that he pled guilty and he had the opportunity to plead innocent. So I think he should resign."

Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI): "However, he also represents the Republican Party, and I believe that he should step down as his conduct throughout this matter has been inappropriate for a U.S. senator."

Rep. Mark Souder (R-IN): "While additional concerns are being raised, Senator Craig already demonstrated that he is unfit to serve in the U.S. Congress when he pled guilty. I believe that he needs to step down."

And so on. Ain't it fun to watch moralistic Republicans turning on their own?

Corruption and Callousness in Iraq

All I know is first you've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm a human being. Goddammit, my life has value." So, I want you to get up now. I want all of you to get up out of your chairs. I want you to get up right now and go to the window, open it, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" I want you to get up right now. Get up. Go to your windows, open your windows, and stick your head out, and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Things have got to change my friends. You've got to get mad. You've got to say, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!" Then we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. But first get up out of your chairs, open your window, stick your head out and yell, "I'm as mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore!"

Howard Beale (played by Peter Finch) in Network

Granted, the Bush Administration has set a pretty high standard for outrage over the last few years. From blowing off pre-9/11 warnings to lying us into invading Iraq to letting New Orleans drown to everything in between, it often seems like nothing these clowns do can royally piss us off anymore.

Trust me - that will change once you read the Rolling Stone article "The Great Iraq Swindle." In exquisite squalor, it details how the Bush Administration not just allowed Iraq to become a playground for corrupt war profiteers, but actively facilitated the process.

Contracts were handed out not on the basis of competence or ability, but on connections. Politically active Republicans were given the job of (re)building Iraq's financial and governmental infrastructures despite having no experience whatsoever. Contractors focused on squeezing the absolute maximum profit out of the US taxpayer - that's you and me - rather than actually doing the job, resulting in unusable projects and wrecked facilities.

It has gotten to the point where there are more American contractors (who in another age would have been more correctly called "mercenaries") in Iraq than American soldiers.

The Bush Administration, far from cracking down on rampant fraud, has done everything in its power to protect these crooks by derailing even criminal investigations.

The part of the story that truly got my blood boiling was not the hundreds of tons of cash handed out in payments and bribes with little or no accountability, nor of the billions of dollars stolen by crooked contractors. No, it's the story of one Russell Skoug, hired by a company called Wolfpack supposedly to maintain air conditioners for a Halliburton (there's that name again) subcontractor. But when he arrived in Iraq, he was told to fix Humvees. Never mind the fact that Skoag was not an automotive tech, nor that the limit of his car-repair knowledge was how to change the oil.

After being allowed to do what he was hired for in the first place - with his tools being limited to a screwdriver and a Leatherman - he was being driven in a convoy when a bomb went off under his vehicle, severely injuring him.

Before bringing Skoug to Iraq, Wolfpack promised they would cover all his expenses, including medical ones. But when he was injured, they refused to lift a finger to help him.

They refused to coordinate his evacuation and care. They refused to cover his medical costs, despite American law requiring that every contractor fully insure all of its employees in a war zone. And they even refused a direct appeal from Skoug's wife that they help the man they discarded.

"After I have put forth to help you all out," Wolfpack owner Mark Atwood whined via E-mail, "you are going to get on me for your husband not having insurance."

Think about that for a moment.

A company puts an employee in the middle of a war zone and then callously jettisons him when everything goes sour. Sorry about that, pal, but you're on your own.

A year after he was wounded, Skoug is now crushed by more than half a million dollars in debts, mostly from medical costs.

That's the Iraq War in a nutshell. The fat cats make out like bandits, raking in billions that in another age would rightfully be called obscene profiteering. And it's the Russell Skougs of the world who get screwed.

If that doesn't piss you off, nothing will.

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