We spotlight the cartoons of Destonio with additional cartoons from Cunningham Strikes, Lisa Casey, Rex Babin, Chris Whitehouse, Kwawin, Kevin Siers, John Chuckman and Chadsux. In part VI of "Gimmie That Old Time Religion Robert Lederman explains, "Armies of Compassion: GW Bush’s Compassionate Fascism." Tally Briggs compares mass murderers in: "Crimes of the Poison Heart." Joe Conason warns of the "Loonies" running the government in: "Crack ‘Realists’ Show They’re in Charge." Polly Toynbee explains how the world sees America since the coup d’ etat in: "America the Horrible is now turning into a Pariah." John Cory has a guide to understanding Republicans in: "My Devilish Dictionary." Smirky’s choice in diplomats is giving George McEvoy a case of Déjà vu all over again in: "Once a Diplomat Always a Diplomat, eh George?" Geneva Overholster tries on the kid gloves that the Press uses on Smirky in: "The Press Treats Bush Tenderly." James Hatfield compares Smirky to Timothy McVeigh without Tim’s ‘Compassion’ in: "Dubya’s Budget Shows He Has About As Much Compassion As Timothy McVeigh." Senator Dorgan wins the "Vidkun Quisling Award" for 2001! Molly Ivins talks of electrical fraud in: "Energy Talk In Boulder." Jarret B. Wollstein explains one way the government steals from you in: "Asset Forfeiture: The Looting of America." And finally Bartcop sends, "An Open Letter to NBC." but first Uncle Ernie has some thoughts on "American Naivete!" Plus we have all your favorite departments! So welcome once again to "Issues & Alibis." We hope you enjoy your stay!

American Naivete

An early piece I wrote for this magazine was about the fact that this country has never been and probably never will be a Democracy. The founders based the American government on the ancient Greek and Roman Republics. They never really considered a Democracy when making the outline of America for a lot of reasons, chief among them Greed! Yet I meet people by the thousand that are all clamoring to get our Democracy back. They believe this myth with the faith of a born again Christian and no amount of reasoning will get them to change their mind. I gave up on teaching the unteachable years ago so I don’t bother trying. I just try and lay out the truth when I can find it and let the reader come to his own conclusion.

The America of the 21st century is beginning to resemble the Roman Empire of the third century CE in a lot of ways. The once rebellious people are for the most part fat and lazy and have found it far easier to believe the big lie than to risk ones comfort to stand up to that lie and face the truth. And Corporate America with the help of our governments has been molding the American people into a flock of sheep for the last 150 years. I have in my lifetime seen news reporting go from an almost sacred calling into a massed produced, brain numbing lie, following a carefully scripted plot. A plot as twisted and multi-layered as anything "The Bard of Avon" ever penned.

You hear a lot of bitching and moaning on the net about the ditto heads following this or that right wing wacko. Sincerely agreeing with what ever gibberish ushers forth from Pat or Rush's drooling jaws. I have seen people after watching JFK get shot from the front in the Zapruder film and seeing his brains explode out the back of his head in a Vee shaped spray swear there was no conspiracy and Oswald acted alone. I for one saw the lies of the ‘Warren Report’ at once and I was only 16. Of course I had no way of proving it so I held off judgement finding it easier to go along with the cover up. I had to wait until the Zapruder film came out in `68 to see in a few frames what I knew all along was true.

When that first lie crumbles before your eyes a whole new universe opens up to you. With this new awakening in me I started to examine everything in a new light. I had discovered what I call the Walt Disney Syndrome. It wasn’t that Walt believed in it, he didn’t. But that didn’t keep him from selling it to America. You know life may be tough sometimes but someday my prince will come, because when you wish upon a star your dreams come true etc. Walt had become god-like because Walt sold hope! And with the nuclear madness of the Cold War it was a big seller! That is just one tiny symptom of the lie.

People in this country for the most part believe Smirky is a legally elected President and there was never any conspiracy. Of course the corporate news groups have decided to back the traitors and pretend that it’s just another day America. When in fact it’s a day like no other, a day when the door stands wide open for the powers that be to rob the middle class blind, until there are just two classes. Just remember that no one’s gonna have to be a slave, all the time no more! We gonna take turns and guess whose turn it is now middle class America? Soon that $3 a week income tax break that Smirky so graciously gives you will almost buy you a gallon of gasoline, feeling empowered yet? Imagine the profit from a war against China. Why there would be trillions to steal and billions to kill. Think of the profit alone in one skinny Alaskan Rain Forrest. So just turn over America and go back to sleep, it’s alright, everything is wonderful, nothings happening, don’t worry be happy, lullaby and goodnight…
©2001 Ernest Stewart

Gimmie That Old Time Religion VI

Armies Of Compassion: GW Bushs' Compassionate Fascism
by Robert Lederman

"As President, I will lead the federal government to take bold steps to rally Americas armies of compassion." GW Bush January 30, 2001 from his introduction to the agenda for his faith-based initiative, "Rally the Armies of Compassion."

On the surface it sounds like a good idea. Let faith-based religious organizations compete with government programs for funds to service the homeless, the hungry, drug addicts, welfare recipients, children and prisoners.

The notion of a Federally-funded "army" making war on social evils is not new. We've had the war against drugs and the war against poverty, programs which have consumed trillions of dollars in a failed attempt to eradicate poverty and drug use. Their main success? The creation of a huge Federal beauracracy.

Making religious groups compete with government agencies for Federal funds also sounds good - until you really think about it. Since many of these groups use non-salaried volunteers or psychologically-coerced recruits as employees, they will have no trouble delivering services less expensively than a government program which provides relatively qualified employees with a salary and health benefits.

As President of an artists' rights group which rejects funding and government interference of any kind I've observed the creativity and freedom of millions of American artists compromised through a similar system of competition for government money.

Art and religion have much in common. You can make art without First Amendment freedom - Nazi Germany, the USSR and Communist China had vast art programs involving millions of exceptional artists. You can also have religion without religious freedom. All history will remember about such religious or artistic efforts is how spiritually dead they were.

Millions of contemporary American artists now divide their time between applying for government grants and making art. Their ideas are conditioned by the grant requirements.

Rather than helping America's artists, the NEA created a vast beauracracy of art lawyers, program administrators, curators and museum directors who serve as the gateway to government money. These administrators are the high priests of the art world. American museums, art galleries, television stations and theatrical companies must modify and self-censor their works every day thanks to this dependency on Federal funds.

It's ironic to see the conservatives who led the fight against the NEA leading the fight to enslave religious institutions in this same money trap. Art and religion are the conscience of humankind, the voice which stands up to tyranny at great risk when all others have been silenced and compromised.

America is a religious nation with thousands of sects and denominations that are substantially free of government control or regulation. Do we want our religious institutions to modify their messages as American artists have been forced to do? Do we want official religion the way we now have official art?

It's worth noting how official art came about in the US. Most Americans have a dismissive attitude towards so-called modern art imagining that its abstract imagery is due to artistic preferences. In fact, it has far more to do with the CIA and America's ruling elite - in particular the Rockefeller family. [1]

In the nineteen thirties and forties American artists were heavily involved in protests against poverty, racism and corporate control. They used figurative art, murals and realism not only to express their feeling about these social problems but to rally the public to do something about them.

Then the State Department, the CIA and the Rockefellers stepped in and began promoting abstract art, beginning with the Rockefellers' Museum of Modern Art in NYC. Ever wonder why America's wealthiest families spend billions on giant paintings and sculptures that represent nothing and why the government erects huge museums to display these non-wonders? In the fifties and sixties the government created public school programs to brainwash American children about art. Millions of these children then grew up to become artists specializing in abstraction and non-figurative art.

The CIA and these same ruling families are also behind President Bush's Army of Compassion which hopes to make religious organizations as dependent on government funding as arts institutions now are. Announced as a compassionate effort to promote charitable activity, the real intent is exactly the opposite - to control, compromise and co-opt it.

The men Bush has put in charge of his faith-based initiative, John J. Dilulio Jr. and Stephen Goldsmith, are senior fellows of the CIA's Manhattan Institute, a right wing think tank co-funded by the Rockefellers' Chase Manhattan Bank, pharmaceutical companies and right wing foundations with ties to the military-industrial complex. Goldsmith is President Bushs' chief domestic policy advisor. [2]

The Manhattan Institute was founded by Reagan's CIA director, William Casey. Like much that is connected to Bush whose family spent a decade financing Hitler, the Manhattan Institute has a Nazi connection. Casey spent the years following WWII bringing top Nazis to the US. Chase Bank helped Hitler liquidate the gold reserves of conquered European nations, voluntarily turned over Jewish bank accounts to the Nazis and continued to do business with Hitler after the US entered WWII. The Rockefeller family were half-owners of IG Farben, the chemical cartel that built and operated Auschwitz and forty other slave labor/death camps in Nazi Germany. President Bush claims that next to the bible the single most influential books contributing to his policy ideas were written at the Manhattan Institute.

America's religious institutions share a common belief in God but that's as far as their commonality goes. Of the hundreds of Christian denominations in America many consider each other impostors, charlatans or worse, agents of the anti-Christ.

Some Christian denominations -and the President himself - consider Jews to be people who cannot enter heaven. White supremacist churches which idolize Hitler teach that Blacks, Jews and gays must be expelled from the US or exterminated. The Nation of Islam, Scientology, Jews for Jesus, Alamo Ministries and a thousand other non-traditional groups will be competing for and entitled to these same Federal funds and will inevitably, and rightly, sue if they are denied them in favor of more traditional groups. Rather than being outsiders in this faith-based plan, some of these non-traditional groups (a number of which are known to have a direct CIA connection) are central to it.

After acquiring a taste for government funding will legitimate religious leaders who come to depend on it for their rapidly-expanding social programs dare to criticize the government and risk losing that money? On the other hand can we seriously expect religious groups to be impartially doling out food, education, housing, drug treatment, psychological help and job counseling to their clients without proselytizing?

It won't be just the Federal government that gets its' hands on religion through this initiative. Corporations will obtain huge new tax write-offs as a result of donating goods and services. In this way, Religious groups can also be made dependent on corporations which will demand and get the same kind of visibility they now have on public television.

Remember when public television was commercial free? You can see almost as many ads there now as on the commercial networks and a similarly compromised content.

Will a Monsanto logo hang next to the crucifix in the new federally-funded drug programs, and welfare centers? Will corporations obtain low-paid employees through these programs, thereby further diminishing the role of unions? Will drug companies recruit their experimental subjects from the inner city recipients of their faith-based charity or use food programs they sponsor inside a church in order to test genetically-modified foods?

Soon we will see hundreds of ads about how Dow, Monsanto or Exxon helped homeless folks in the inner city by financing a faith-based program. Now they will be able to deduct as much 15% of the corporation's entire taxable income by being involved in these programs. [3]

We are told any misuse of funds by these faith-based groups will be prevented by requiring accountability. Anyone who has ever applied for a government grant knows how coercive and controlling this accountability will be.

Do religious institutions want government peeking into every aspect of their activities? If civil rights laws are to be upheld how will churches and other religious groups who oppose homosexuality, abortion, contraceptives or like US Attorney General John Ashcrofts' church - dancing - manage to keep their beliefs intact while qualifying for funding?

Religious groups which go along with the program will grow dramatically as a result of being able to offer social services. Those which stubbornly hold onto their beliefs will diminish.

Bushs' faith-based initiative may be the single most sinister effort ever undertaken in the US concerning religion. History shows that when religion and government work together the result is always bad for religion and for the people of a nation.

In Nazi Germany religious leaders were intimately involved in creating public acceptance for Hitler's agenda. Like Reverend Martin Niemoeller, who became an outspoken opponent of Nazism after initially supporting it, Germany's religious leaders discovered too late that Hitler's religious initiatives were something very different from what was promised.

America was founded by people who sought religious freedom and economic opportunity. Now Bush wants to turn religion itself into an economic opportunity.

This entire program is unnecessary. American individuals and corporations are already free to donate as much as they like to religious groups which can use the money to feed the hungry and house the homeless while freely promoting whatever ideology they choose.

While non-religious groups have taken the lead in opposing Bushs' Army of Compassion, it is religious leaders and their congregations who have the most to lose. Today they can practice any religious belief that doesn't violate basic criminal law. For God's sake, let's hope they wake up in time to keep it that way.
©2001 Robert Lederman

Crimes of the Poison Heart
By Tally Briggs

Sometimes horrible things happen. A guy fills a truck with homemade explosives and blows away half of the Federal building in Oklahoma City, 168 people are left dead. Two teenagers bring semi-automatic assault weapons, shotguns and explosives to their high school in Colorado, carrying out an assault that left 15 people dead and over 100 injured. A disgruntled copy machine repairman comes to his Honolulu office one day with a 9mm handgun and kills 7 co-workers.

Most of us find these actions not only horrifying, but also shocking to the point of disbelief. How could someone do something like this? How could anyone be so insensitive, and selfish toward their fellow man?

Last week PBS aired TRADE SECRETS, an amazing two hour Bill Moyers documentary on the chemical industry (check out the website – it is pretty informative and horrifying itself). "Of the more than 75,000 chemicals registered with the Environmental Protection Agency, only a fraction have gone through complete testing to find out whether they might cause problems for human health. Many that are produced in enormous quantities have never been tested at all. Usually, it takes dramatic episodes of workplace injuries or wildlife poisonings, combined with rigorous scientific proof of harm and public outcry, before the government will act to restrict or ban any chemical. And that is no accident. The current regulatory system allows synthetic chemicals into our lives unless one is proven beyond doubt to be dangerous." Dangers range from testicular atrophy to brain cancer.

There was also this bit of information released:

Fifty Years of Deception: Archive of Chemical Industry Secrets Goes Online WASHINGTON, March 27 -- The Environmental Working Group today posted online 50 years and 25,000 pages of insider documents that reveal, in their own words, how chemical executives knowingly exposed workers and the public to cancer-causing chemicals, polluted whole communities and devoted vast resources to covering up the truth. The searchable archive of documents is available exclusively at http://www.ewg.org.

The horror of all of this, in a nutshell is this: THE EXECUTIVES KNEW THE DANGERS, AND SPENT VAST RESOURCES TO COVER UP THE TRUTH.

Why wasn’t the money spent on warnings, prevention, care, and research to make things safer?

Erin Brockovich is only the tip of the iceberg.

Now for me, these are horrors way beyond the senseless and violent crimes of a lone terrorist bombing, or school and workplace shootings. Yes, those are hideous beyond imagining, but one or two pissed off individuals are not the same as a conspiracy planned by a group of corporate executives and the fact their crimes affect millions of people. What is even more horrifying is that it isn’t just one group, but MANY. The CEOs at Phillip-Morris must have a huge chip on their shoulder since their crimes are farm league compared to the cumulative crimes of the CHEMICAL Companies.

How does a society get to the point of moral corruption where money and profit are far more important than human life? How does that happen, and how does it become the normal way a business operates? How does it also get backing and turn into a political party? Further still, how is it that these people are not punished for their crimes, but end up in control of the government?

From http://www.pbs.org/tradesecrets/evidence/money.html if you put your mouse on Smirk’s photo you find this: "The candidate receiving the largest chemical industry contribution in 2000, $549,436, was George W. Bush. Put your mouse on Al’s pic, and you get this: "Democratic opponent Gore received just over one-tenth this amount, or $55,800."

It is any wonder that the some of the first orders of the day from Smirk’s office is to lie and say that Carbon Dioxide is not a poison (try putting a plastic bag over your head and see how long you stay alive on Carbon Dioxide) and disavow the Kyoto Protocol; give the OK that arsenic levels in water are just fine, even though the world standard for water on this poison and known carcinogen is much stricter; and call a stop to testing for salmonella in beef products for the Federal School Lunch program? What's next, dismantle the EPA just so his contributors won't be put out by having to clean up their collective act? Thankfully Congress has finally woken up, come to its senses and is voting to block some of these insane moves.

Is Smirk really that out of touch he doesn’t see the overwhelming damage his decisions will make not only in the immediate future, but also in the long run? Someone might think he was the foreign spy set in place by a treasonous family to bring down the country by bankrupting the nation one state at a time, beginning with California.

I think he needs to get out more. He needs to go on a world tour ending with India or Africa, or force him to spend a month living in any slum in his own country.

Maybe someone should rent a Star Trek film for Bush The Younger – As Spock quotes from the honored past – The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.
©2001 Tally Briggs

Crackpot ‘Realists’ Show They’re in Charge
by Joe Conason

The most dangerous myth about the Bush administration is that its foreign policy is guided by competent (if not compassionate) conservatives, whose outlook reflects experience and whose belligerence equals realism. The unsettling truth is that the members of the dominant faction around George W. Bush are, like him, stumblers frozen in a bygone era. The experience of the past tumultuous decade has taught them little, and the only "realism" of which they seem capable is of the variety that C. Wright Mills memorably called "crackpot."

With their hostility to arms control and their contempt for international institutions and treaties, members of the Bush team (or, more precisely, the Cheney team) are fashioning a policy which deserves to be called "national insecurity." They are recreating the Cold War without Communism. And the only departure from the neo-isolationism which deforms their thinking is on questions of trade and commerce, where American interests will eventually and inevitably suffer from their penchant for irrational action.

The latest and most troubling evidence of incompetence in the White House arrived about two weeks ago. That was when the first reports leaked out about the administration’s plan to scale back the aid we provide to the Russian government for reducing and securing their stockpiles of nuclear armaments and weapons-grade plutonium. On March 18, The Washington Post reported that Bush budget-cutters intended to cut next year’s appropriations of nuclear-safety assistance for Russia by 12 percent from this year’s level, and by 30 percent below the amount proposed by the Clinton administration. The amounts in question are comparatively trivial—less than $500 million in a total annual outlay of $1.9 trillion—but the idiocy is gargantuan.

For reasons known only to the Post management, this scary scoop was buried on page A23 of the Sunday paper. It still generated sufficient uproar among sane members of Congress that, on March 29, the President announced he had scheduled Russian nuclear aid for a "full review" by officials of the State, Defense and Energy departments (as well as the geniuses at the Office of Management and Budget). "We want to make sure that the money is being spent in an effective way," he explained at a White House news conference.

That must sound reasonable enough to anyone who doesn’t know much, including Mr. Bush himself. In fact, however, the programs that his advisers will now take months to "review"—while tensions with Russia grow worse—have already been subjected to intensive review by people who know a lot. Among the knowledgeable is former Senator Howard Baker, a Republican who served as co-chairman of a bipartisan commission that has been studying those same programs. Mr. Baker, who happens to be Mr. Bush’s choice as this country’s next ambassador to Japan, told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on March 28 that he and his colleagues believe the United States should spend no less than $30 billion on various nuclear-safety programs in Russia over the next eight to 10 years. The math is simple enough, even for the Bush-Cheney crowd: It’s about four times the amount proposed in their current budget.

By what formula, then, did the administration’s super-competent foreign-policy honchos derive the planned cutback? Just how casually do these self-styled realists make decisions that impinge so profoundly on the nation’s future? And why did they suddenly announce that this question required further "review"?

Someday they may be asked to justify themselves in Congressional testimony on this subject. Meanwhile, we can only assume that they were overcome with zeal to slash expenditures so that Mr. Bush can pass his $1.6 trillion tax cut, and hoped that nobody would notice a measly $400 million cut from Russian aid.

Not since the early days of the Reagan era—when American officials talked so foolishly about a "winnable" nuclear war—has the stewardship of a dangerous world been left in such unsteady hands. Secretary of State Colin Powell is the only ranking official who displays any comprehension of these issues, and he has been effectively muzzled. His latest defeat was the nomination, reportedly despite the Secretary’s objection, of John R. Bolton as Assistant Secretary of State for arms control. An extremely hawkish Republican lawyer and former official in the Reagan and Bush administrations, Mr. Bolton has little background (and less interest) in promoting arms control.

But he does have the heartfelt support of Senator Jesse Helms, who opened Mr. Bolton’s confirmation hearing by recalling an earlier exchange of pleasantries with the nominee. "I said at the time, and I meant it, that John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand in Armageddon, for what the Bible describes as the final battle between good and evil in this world. And I meant it then, and I mean it this morning. I have no qualms about it."

Isn’t that a reassuring endorsement?

You may reach Joe Conason via email at: jconason@observer.com

America the Horrible is now turning into a pariah.
Let no one 'misunderestimate' Bush and his abandonment of Kyoto

By Polly Toynbee

In his own inimitable words, let no one "misunderestimate" George W Bush. He is the most rightwing president in living memory. If this is compassionate conservatism, what does the other sort look like? In less than 100 days he has turned America into a pariah, made enemies of the entire world, his only friends the dirty polluters of the oil industry who put him there. His foreign non-policy is a calamity, brilliantly uniting Russia and China with gratuitous offence and threat.

The Republican leader of the senate environment committee's last-minute cancellation of an urgent global warming meeting with the EU environment commissioner on Monday was like a cold war tactical snub from the Khrushchev era. Europe gets the message, so did an outraged Japan. The rest of the world draws instinctively together in its repudiation of the Bush Jnr White House. Through this strange global vandalism, the leader of the free world has become the rogue. Ungracious in victory, absolute power corrupting absolutely, the only super-power is morphing into an evil empire of its own.

Where to begin on America the Horrible? Start with it tearing up the 1972 anti-ballistic missile treaty to install a national missile defence system, recreating a new cold war with China as No 1 enemy. North Korean "sunshine" detente is over. NDM only gives the US an illusion of invulnerability in a world it makes more dangerous. World trade negotiations were wrecked by US self- interest. Not a cent has been paid of the US promised $600m for third world debt-relief. While US wealth soared in the last decade, only 20% of its citizens gained but his budget includes a $1.6 trillion tax cut, most for the richest. The toxic Texan (he left behind the filthiest state) denies global warming and urges oil drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Arctic Refuge. He even abolished regulations limiting arsenic in drinking water and cut black-lung benefits. This richest nation on earth will never lead a redistributive global politics while so unconcerned about third world poverty among its own. No, there is no lack of material for a thoroughly satisfying rant.

It was at a press conference an insulting half an hour before meeting German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder that Bush spoke his heart on the Kyoto climate change treaty. Those words will become a classic clip, pursuing him through eternity. It was the way he thumped the podium and smirked as he said it, (even this was inarticulate): "We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America." There we have it. Screw the world, Americans always come first.

In the past presidents always gave Americans a self-image that was noble, a global purpose in the vanguard of democracy, spiritually still a young revolutionary state, with quotes aplenty. That raw energy and self-belief has always thrilled and mesmerised outsiders. Whatever hot debates about America's true intentions (selfishness lurks beneath altruism in all international horse-trading), the country always had a fine story to tell itself about its mission. Late and reluctant into two world wars, the star-spangled cavalry did arrive at last. Delinquent or deluded in Vietnam, there was a fight to be had for freedom against Ho Chi Minh's communist invaders, a good story to be told.

In Kosovo the zero-body bag cowardice of fighting from too high to hit the targets was matched by the nobility of fighting at all in a place so far from Kalamazoo. American huddled masses yearning to breathe free always needed the Hollywood version of their politics and quite rightly so. Who can bear to be bad? So the brazen nudity of Bush's words must have shocked millions of Americans from coast to coast - and in that is the best hope of better to come.

The global response was instant and visceral. Blistering editorials poured out of the press from Brazil to Belgium, Tokyo to Turin. Politicians were barely more controlled. Some 45 editorials across American newspapers condemned their president. Our own John Prescott said: "The US cannot sit in glorious isolation ... It must know it cannot pollute the world while free-riding on action by everyone else." What next? Attack! Boycott Gallo wines, McDonald's, Texaco and Exxon-Mobil. Why not? It may satisfy revenge, it may even deliver a jolt or two, but as official policy this is as unlikely to change hearts and minds in the evil empire as futile gesturing was against the USSR in cold war days.

One way or another the US has to be persuaded to take global warming seriously. The fierce argument among Kyoto signatories is how to do it. The US agreed (but never ratified) cutting emissions by 7% from its 1990 levels, by 2010. Due to Clinton's self-destruction and his "third way" ducking of anything difficult when faced with republican obstruction, that commitment is now effectively impossible. The US boom means it would now take a 30% cut to hit the target. Cheap fuel is designed into America's unimaginably vast prairies of suburbia without buses or town centres. True, the fashion for four-wheel drive monsters has eaten up all technological gains in fuel efficiency. True, that $1.6 trillion tax cut should go on public transport and clean energy, but only a cultural revolution could deliver a one third reduction now.

Since a quarter of the world's carbon output is here, letting America progress at a slower pace makes sense. Blame is satis fying, but survival depends on results.

It was the detail of this debate that made Prescott storm out of the stalled Hague negotiations in November. He said realism required letting the US cheat a bit by buying spare emissions from Russia and planting forests. Greens said their calculations showed this meant the US need make no other effort at all to change its ways. But getting Americans to accept the idea of fundamental change is the crucial first step. The world needs a 60% cut within 50-100 years and the crunch will come. If Kyoto progresses to ratification by all the other countries, the hope is that the US will want to join a carbon emissions trading bloc. The threat of trade tariffs against US goods to balance their unfair lack of pollution control was posed by the EU environment commissioner: "Why should the US play by other rules than European companies?"

With all eyes fixed on US public opinion, some polls find 75% "very concerned", but Californian black-outs make energy shortages hotter news. Democrats and some Republicans think Bush has made a bad political mistake: his mangled words will have to be eaten soon. For the rest of the world, how much threat and fury, how much backroom dealing it will take to reel the rogue state back in, is a delicate calculation: there must be no further splits. Good, bad or ugly, saving the world without America may not be impossible, just exceedingly unlikely.
polly.toynbee@guardian.co.uk

Quotable Quote

"There ought to be limits to freedom"
George W. Bush -- at a Press conference at the Texas State House, May 21, 1999.

Vote, n. An act of expression by the populous largely ignored by the un-chosen. A slang term meaning, "an exercise in futility."

ONCE A DIPLOMAT ALWAYS A DIPLOMAT, EH, GEORGE?
By George McEvoy

If any doubt still exists that George W. Bush means to move this country back to the Cold War era, consider this: John Negroponte - his choice to be our ambassador to the United Nations - is the same man who directed the secret and illegal arming of Nicaragua's Contra rebels while ambassador to Honduras from 1981 to '85.

The Iran-Contra scandal, as it came to be known, began under President Reagan, who arranged for secret sales of arms to Iran in direct violation of U.S. laws. Profits from the $30 million in arms sales were channeled to the Nicaraguan right-wing "Contra" guerrillas to buy arms for their fight against the leftist Sandinista government. The chief negotiator in those deals was Marine Lt. Col. Oliver North.

Mr. Negroponte also has been accused by human rights groups of overlooking, if not actually overseeing, the activities of Honduran death squads, said to be torturing and executing political opponents. The death squads were supported by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The vice president at the time, father of the White House incumbent, was suspected of being deeply involved in the arms deal, especially since he was a former head of the CIA, but nothing was proved.

In December 1992, the elder Bush, then in his last month as president, issued pardons to a whole slew of government officials who had been charged or convicted in the arms scandal.

The Los Angeles Times, for one, predicts that there will be fierce opposition by Democrats and human rights groups to the Negroponte nomination when it comes before the Senate for confirmation.

But the same newspaper points out that Mr. Negroponte has strong support. He is a close riend of Secretary of State Colin Powell, who is believed to have handpicked him for the U.N. post.

And then there is this strange turn of events: Reportedly, several former members of the death squads, men who could have been forced to testify under oath at the confirmation hearings, suddenly were ordered deported from this country about the time Mr. Negroponte's name first was mentioned as a possible U.N. ambassadorial nominee.

The men in question had lived in the United States for years without incident, but they recently were ordered to return to Honduras.

One of them, Gen. Luis Alonso Discua Elvir, went public this month with details about U.S. support for the death squads.

Mr. Negroponte served twice in ambassadorships - to Mexico and to the Philippines - since his Honduran term, and nothing came to light during his confirmation hearings that could have disqualified him. On both occasions, he denied knowing about any human rights abuses.

Recent declassified documents and disclosures by former death-squad members now appear to cast doubt on the truthfulness of his denials.

A veteran of 37 years as a foreign-service officer, Mr. Negroponte has been described by colleagues in a way that could be either a compliment or an insult.

One former State Department official who worked closely with him in the 1980s may have thought he was praising Mr. Negroponte when he said: "John doesn't have an agenda. John is not ideological. He believes in nothing.''

Other colleagues described him as a dedicated diplomat who did the bidding of whoever was in office at the time.

His critics see that as being amoral.

Judging from his background, the man strikes me as the type who might say, "I was only following orders.''

Jose Miguel Vivanco, director of an organization called Human Rights Watch/Americas, has referred to Mr. Negroponte as "the ostrich ambassador. He never saw anything wrong. He never heard about any serious human rights violations. It was like he was living in a different country.''

It seems as if George W. Bush is taking a calculated risk in nominating Mr. Negroponte to be ambassador to the U.N.

Surely, he must know that the confirmation hearings would revive the Iran-Contra scandal.

And certainly, he must realize that his own father's role in that controversy will be examined again, and this time perhaps with more hard evidence.

But maybe the Bushes, father and son, felt they owe Mr. Negroponte for keeping his mouth shut all these years.

©2001 George McEvoy is a columnist for The Palm Beach Post.
His e-mail address is george_mcevoy@pbpost.com
©2001 Reuters

The Press Treats Bush Tenderly
By GENEVA OVERHOLSER

WASHINGTON -- Last week, I watched President Bush make a speech before a group of newspaper editors here. Then I saw the press coverage. I'd have to say that the picture you're getting is missing some pieces.

For one thing, you're not seeing how unsure of himself George W. Bush appeared to be -- how guarded, how tense, even programmed. Or how uncertain about important issues.

It's not that his appearance before the annual convention of the American Society of Newspaper Editors in the J. W. Marriott Hotel ballroom was a failure. It had many of the strengths seen recently as Bush and the press have mingled, for example, at the fancy-dress banquets where the media turn out to see and be seen. He has good speechwriters. His delivery isn't bad. He does self-deprecating humor deftly.

"I'm really not here to tell you your business," he told the editors. "It's your job to tell everyone how to run theirs."

The problems come when he goes off-script. It's clear what he's been briefed on: He gave one clipped, rehearsed answer on the day's biggest story -- the crisis with China -- and told a second questioner he had no more to say on that.

Then, asked to share his views on freedom of information issues, Bush froze. His smile grew stiff. He emitted several puffing sounds that showed up on transcripts as "laughter." He stumbled -- then grasped at the familiar. He used to e-mail his dad and daughters, he said, but no longer: "I don't e-mail any more out of a concern for the freedom of information laws, but also concern for my privacy."

News reports showed none of the president's apparent discomfort. "Bush said that since taking over the White House, he has struggled with the question of what's personal and has grown cautious in using e-mail," said The Associated Press in a typical report.

Nothing about his evident lack of familiarity with First Amendment issues. Nothing about the nervous dismissiveness.

Some of this gentleness may be press courtesy (which you probably considered an oxymoron). Some of it may be in not knowing just how to convey the atmospherics. But some of it is a reflection of a collective feeling. Despite assertions to the contrary, the press is made up of human beings. What individual journalists think about a politician shapes their reporting and writing. And, while the press is far from a monolith, it tends to herdishness and conventional thinking.

The picture you get of a president emerges from this collective press thinking.

At this point in Bill Clinton's presidency, the press hadn't settled on what to think of him. His new administration was boisterous, messy and full of emotional excesses. So was the coverage: In the first 50 days of the Clinton administration, the TV networks devoted 15 hours to it. They've given half that to the Bush administration's first 50 days, according to the Center for Media and Public Affairs, a non-profit watchdog organization here.

The spare coverage matches perceptions of the Bush administration that seem to have formed within the media: We've got grown-ups in the White House now. A president who likes creased pants and curtailed hours, short meetings and leak-free loyalty. Efficient, focused leadership. An MBA presidency.

Washington Post media writer Howard Kurtz recently wrote about the lean Bush coverage, presenting it as something intended by the administration. Their man uses the bully pulpit efficiently, Bush advisers told Kurtz. Not like Clinton, whose overuse diluted its effectiveness.

The most openly sympathetic elements of the press make their embrace of this positive characterization evident. Bush is not a hands-off president, but an admirably focused one, says Weekly Standard Editor William Kristol. The administration has "decided he does not have to be on the news every day."

Or, as the National Review's Noemie Emery wrote: "He inhabits the stage, but does not overwhelm it. He does not pretend to have mastered each topic. He cannot bring crowds to their feet."

Many editors talking to one another after Bush's inhabitance of the Marriott stage spoke of their surprise that he has yet to figure out how to look at all presidential. They wondered why he hadn't been briefed about a topic so likely to be brought up at an editors' gathering as freedom of information. They noted the short time he allotted for questions and answers, the long period afterward he spent shaking hands. The overall effect, said more than a few, was unsettling. Even scary.

It will be interesting to see if sentiments like these begin to shape what you read and see about this new president, who to date has been treated so tenderly.
© 1998-2001 Seattle Post-Intelligencer

©2001 John Chuckman

Dubya's budget shows he has about as much compassion as Timothy McVeigh
By James Hatfield

"This budget funds our needs without the fat . . . It puts the taxpayers first, and that is exactly where they belong." ‚ President Bush.

Dubya described the 2002 budget he proposed last week as a "new way of doing business in Washington, a new way of thinking" that reflected the "compassionate conservatism" he crammed down our throats over and over during the presidential campaign until we were ready to throw up.

Well, folks, the devil is in the details and a close look at his $1.96 trillion plan reveals what I tried in vain to tell everyone back in 1999 when my biography of Dubya, Fortunate Son, was first published: The man is a committed, diehard conservative with about as much compassion as soon-to-be-executed American terrorist, Timothy McVeigh.

To make way for his massive tax cut for the wealthiest Americans, Dubya's first federal budget proposal advocates funding cuts or completing scrapping the following:

Children's health insurance, energy assistance for the poor and elderly, drug-control efforts in housing projects and AIDS treatment The Clinton-era program that has paid for 70,000 additional local cops (and contributed to the significant decrease in overall crime rates nationwide) An $84 million violent-crime reduction program New funding for home-state public works Subsidies for small businesses Annual "emergency" aid for farmers A rural community advancement program, national flood mitigation fund and Appalachian regional development program An Alaska railroad rehabilitation grant Subsidies for urban mass transit Funding for alternative fuel research and more efficient vehicles (ironically, Interior Department programs for oil, gas and coal exploration would increase by nearly 20 percent under his plan)

Spending on environmental programs would fall by about $2.3 billion, which includes cutting funding to implement the Kyoto warming treaty. Dubya also proposes to cut $1.5 billion from the Agriculture Department and save $162 million by eliminating one of the Cabinet agency's most useful conservation initiatives, the Wetlands Reserve Program. $100 million he promised to spend on saving the world's tropical forests has now shrunk to $13 million. The Interior Department's budget would be slashed from $10.2 billion to $9 billion and the Environmental Protection Agency would lose $500 million. Transportation would receive the biggest single cut under Dubya's plan: $2.1 billion.

The tax-cut budget is also dependent on new revenues: higher "fees" on airline tickets, a "service charge" on cruise passengers, $200 million for TV licenses and $1.2 billion a year from money earned by the government from oil drilling leases in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. "What happened to compassionate conservatism?" asked North Dakota Sen. Kent Conrad, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, when Dubya's budget proposal was submitted to Congress. "This may be the first budget in history that wasn't just dead on arrival—it was dead before arrival," claimed Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle (D-S.D.). He also pointed out that Dubya suffered a serious setback two weeks ago when the evenly divided Senate trimmed roughly $450 billion from the new prez's proposed $1.6 trillion, 10-year tax package to use the funds for increased spending and a faster reduction of the national debt over the next decade.

Interestingly, not only did Dubya deliver his 2002 budget to Congress two months later than presidents customarily submit their spending requests, he also waited until the beginning of a two-week congressional recess when most lawmakers had returned to their home states. "There's a reason why President Bush waited until Congress had left town before he delivered the budget to Capitol Hill. He just knew that it wouldn't work," said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-ILL.), on this past Sunday's edition of NBC's Meet the Press.

Last year there was a very popular movie called Chicken Run. After his audition on Capitol Hill last week, Dubya has been signed to star in the sequel.
©2001 James Hatfield

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Gruppenfuhrer Dorgan,

Congratulations you have just been awarded the Vidkun Quisling Award for 2001. Your name will now live throughout history with such past award winners as Marcus Junius Brutus, Judas Iscariot, Benedict Arnold, Vidkun Quisling and last years winner Volksjudge Wilhelm Rehnquist. With your vote to allow Herr Ashcroft to take command of the Gestapo we will soon certainly put those Darkies and Jews back in their place und make Jesus das King. Along with this award there will be an Iron Cross 2nd class presented by our glorious Fuhrer Herr Bush at a gala party in das Fuhrer Bunker, formerly the White House on 7-4-2001. We salute you Herr Dorgan! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

Energy Talk In Boulder
By Molly Ivins

BOULDER, Colo. -- Here at the annual World Affairs Conference at the University of Colorado, the assorted experts from around the globe may sometimes be wrong, but they are rarely in doubt.

This lends a happy, "But the emperor isn't wearing any clothes," simplicity to much of the discussion. Shibboleths are ignored, obligatory bows to those who are only partially informed are skipped entirely, and folks get right down to the lick-log.

Thus, Harvey Wasserman, a longtime leader of the anti-nuclear movement, cutting to the chase: "Anyone who advocates nuclear power as a solution to our energy problems should be shut up in a padded cell."

Wasserman can, of course, discuss the details of nuclear plant design, risk, insurance, regulation, waste disposal, etc., ad nauseum. It's just that he'd rather not waste his time on the obvious. One session I attended here not expecting to learn much new (but it's always nice to have your prejudices confirmed) was titled "Our Fake Energy Crisis: What Really Happened in California."

The aforementioned Wasserman waded in with a will, describing the dastardly tale of ruthless utility companies determined to unload the "stranded costs" of their monumental folly in building nuclear plants -- $20 billion worth in California's case -- on the ratepayers. Given that utility lobbyists literally wrote the California deregulation bill, it's quite a reach to blame it on anyone else.

This is a familiar tale to those who have read beyond the basic coverage of the California situation. Wasserman tells the story well, with a fine contempt for the greed and stupidity behind it all and for the politicians now seeking cover. But he presents a media mystery that has me stumped -- one of those cases of the media overlooking the obvious so completely that one is bereft of a handy explanation.

Some parts of California are not suffering from power problems of any kind. In Los Angeles and Sacramento, the lights are still on and the rates have not doubled or tripled. As it happens, the people of Los Angeles and Sacramento own their own power plants. This glaringly obvious fact has for some reason escaped media attention, except in California.

The history of how utility ownership and regulation came about is crucial to this story. Wasserman quoted a 19th-century mayor of Cleveland, Tom Johnson, who said, "If we don't control the electric utilities, they will control us."

As is often the case with business and government regulation, it was the utilities themselves that asked for regulation, knowing full well that they could easily dominate state public utility commissions. "Regulation" evolved so that utilities were permitted to make 15 percent on invested capital -- a tidy sum.

This lasted until the early 1990s, when wholesale prices fell, tempting the utilities into deregulation. They dumped the stranded nuke costs on the ratepayers and made a promise in exchange -- no rate increases -- which they promptly broke when wholesale prices went up. Ask the people of San Diego.

The performance of the suppliers in this case -- Enron, Reliant, etc. -- is already the subject of public inquiry. But the California utility companies were meanwhile shipping the recovered nuke costs to their parent companies. ("We're still checking the DNA on those parents," said Wasserman.) And then, in a truly sublime move, the major California utility gave its executives huge bonuses just before it went into bankruptcy.

Wasserman's suggested solution is that Californians should simply get themselves out of the grid by setting up municipally owned power companies. In rural areas, this can be done by counties or electric co-ops. He believes that what held the old system together for so long was not government regulation, which was always blatantly subject to manipulation by the utilities (as anyone who has ever covered a PUC can tell you), but rather the tension between the for-profits and the municipals.

In the current issue of Business Week, the cover story is on Exxon Mobil's plan to take advantage of the "energy crisis." This would normally be funny, given that Exxon is in the oil business and (as most people outside the Oval Office are aware), the oil business has nothing to do with electricity. However, Exxon's acquisition of Mobil, which is rich in natural gas, unleashes a corporate behemoth of unprecedented size. Exxon also has a corporate culture that would give nightmares to "Chainsaw Al" Dunlap of business fame.

Here are some interesting facts from the Rocky Mountain Institute: The cheapest source of new electricity is efficiency; the next cheapest is burning soft coal, which is a gross polluter; and the next cheapest after that is wind power -- 2.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.
©2001 Molly Ivins

Asset Forfeiture: The Looting Of America
By Jarret B. Wollstein

Police stopped 49-year-old Ethel Hylton at Houston's Hobby Airport and told her she was under arrest because a drug dog had scratched at her luggage.

Agents searched her bags and strip-searched her, but they found no drugs. They did find $39,110 in cash, money she had received from an insurance settlement and her life savings; accumulated through over 20 years of work as a hotel housekeeper and hospital janitor.

Ethel Hylton completely documented where she got the money and was never charged with a crime. But the police kept her money anyway. Nearly four years later, she was still trying to get her money back. Hylton is just of a large and growing list of Americans - now numbering in the hundreds of thousands - who have been victimized by civil asset forfeiture. Under civil asset forfeiture, everything you own can be legally taken away even if you are never convicted of a crime.

Suspicion of offenses which, if proven in court, might result in a $200 fine or probation, are being used to justify seizure of tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property. Totally innocent Americans are losing their cars, homes and businesses, based on the claims of anonymous informants that illegal transactions took place on their property. Once property is seized, it is virtually impossible to get it back.

Property is now being seized in every state and from every social group. Seizures include pocket money confiscated from public-housing residents in Florida; cars taken away from men suspected of soliciting prostitutes in Oregon, and homes taken away from ordinary, middle class Americans whose teenage children are accused of selling a few joints of marijuana. No person and no property is immune from seizure. You could be the next victim.

Here are some examples: In Washington, DC, police stop black men on the streets in poor areas of the city, and "routinely confiscate small amounts of cash and jewelry." Most confiscated property is not even recorded by police departments. "Resident Ben Davis calls it 'robbery with a badge.'" [USA Today]

In Iowa, "a woman accused of shoplifting a $25 sweater had her $18,000 car - specially equipped for her handicapped daughter - seized as the 'get- away vehicle.'" [USA Today]

Detroit drug police raided a grocery store, but failed to find any drugs. After drug dogs reacted to three $1.00 bills in the cash register, the police seized $4,384 from cash registers and the store safe. According to the Pittsburgh Press, over 92% of all cash in circulation in the U.S. now shows some drug residue....
©2001 Jarret B. Wollstein

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of Destonio.

Country Under Dubya

Sung to the tune of "Hotel California"
with apologies to The Eagles

(long instrumental intro)

On a dark Sunday evening, cruel lies from his lair
Jeb's stench of collusion, rising up through the air
Bush reads his prepared speech, we saw his simpleton mind
Our heart grew heavy, and our plight grew grim
We heard enough for the night
There he stood on the TV
We heard his continuing lies
And we were thinking to ourselves,
'This can't be happening, he is all we despise'
Then he grab up the mantle and he showed us his way
There are voices down in Florida, I thought I heard them say...

Welcome to the country under Dubya
Such a crooked place (such a crooked place)
Such a crooked place
Plenty of gloom in the country under Dubya
Any time of year, you can find it here

His mind is Tiffany-twisted, he won using ruthless ends
He's got a lot of daddies, daddies' boys, that he calls friends
How they danced in the courtroom, stopped the ballots.
Our chance to remember, they want us to forget.
So he called upon Harris, "Please bring me a win"
She said, "I won't let that Al Gore win, you have no fear"
And still those voters are calling from Florida
Wake you up in the middle of this fight
Just to hear them say...

Welcome to the country under Dubya
Such a right wing place (such a homely face)
Such a right wing place
Right risin' up in the country under Dubya
What a big surprise, hear his alibis

Ballots that are uncounted, this year's campaign's on ice
And Bush said: "You are all just prisoners here, of my own device"
And in his daddy's chambers, they gathered for the feast
They stab Al with their steely knives,
But they just can't show him beat!
Last thing we'll remember, we all wanted a final score
We want to find the real count from the votes cast from before
"Too bad!" said the right wing, "We are programmed to deceive."
"We can spin out any lie we like, and we will never leave!"

(guitar solo to fade)
Parody by skisics surus, skisics@yahoo.com

VOTER RIGHTS MARCH (Saturday, May 19, 2001)

On Saturday, May 19, 2001, Voter March will sponsor the Voter Rights March at the Mall in Washington, DC from 10:00 am to 6:00 pm to voice our outrage over the fraud and disenfranchisement of voters in the latest Presidential election, to call for critically-needed voting and electoral reforms, and to protest the illegitimate President's right wing agenda to turn back gains in the environment, a woman's right to choose, and the separation of church and state.

BLUE JOINS ORANGE AND BLACK RIBBONS FOR NATIONAL STRIKE

BLUE RIBBON VISIBILITY is calling for a National Strike to coincide with The Voter Rights March.

The National Strike will begin on Thursday, May 17, and continue through Monday, May 21. The weekend will land in the middle of the strike, making it essentially a three "working day" strike.

This national strike will be called "Strike One", because it's just the start. If the first strike doesn't work, we do it again. Perhaps it will go to three strikes and Bush is out. The strike is to let our government know, and all the mega corporations who bought Bush the White House know that Al Gore got more votes in Florida and the USA. Since they had so much trouble counting our votes, and since so many Americans were wrongly prevented from voting, this strike will be another election where we cast our vote by not going to work; calling in sick. No matter how large and powerful a corporation is, it cannot exist without the people who work for it. Likewise, our government could not exist without the taxes that come out of our paychecks.

We The People are the fourth branch of government, which, by our consent, the other three branches may govern. It is our duty to help the other branches of government protect democracy. They cannot strongly act without our power visibly behind them.

TO OUR REPRESENTATIVES AND SENATORS IN THE UNITED STATES CONGRESS

We, the undersigned voters, know that our cherished democracy is endangered from within by the grave and potentially fatal flaws in our voting systems exposed by the Presidential Election of 2000.

As our elected representatives, you have the duty, the opportunity, and the privilege to correct these flaws and to restore fair and honest elections throughout our nation. To this end, we charge you to construct and pass a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS, which shall include:

Strict enforcement and extension of the Voting Rights Act to prevent the disenfranchisement of voters and require full investigation and criminal prosecution of any offenders;

Standardized, easily understandable federal election ballots

Funding to replace old and unreliable voting machines to ensure that every vote is counted fairly and accurately

Genuine campaign finance reform that bans campaign contributions from special interests

Replacement of the Electoral College with a majority-rule election, or substantial reform of the Electoral College to allow for proportional representation

Measures to increase voter participation by eliminating bureaucratic hurdles to voter registration and turnout, including language barriers, physical barriers, archaic equipment, and lack of resources

Enactment and enforcement of a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS will restore trust in our government and encourage participation in our democratic processes. The linchpin of a democracy is the process by which we select our representatives and leaders. The right to vote is our defining right as citizens of this nation. We call upon our elected representatives to protect our Constitution from abusive exercise of government power by enacting a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS.

We pledge our full and constant support for enactment of a VOTERS BILL OF RIGHTS.

A Note of Protest:

It is likely that 50% of the U.S. population is strongly dissatisfied with the ascendancy of George W. Bush to the office of President. There are three likely reasons:
1. Bush won the election under questionable circumstances;
2. Bush has espoused a reactionary platform that places him far to the right of mainstream America;
3. Bush has demonstrated none of the intellectual attributes expected of a president.

In the interest of democracy, one could discredit election gripes (point number one) as being unfair to our longstanding electoral college process.. Also, one might disregard Bush’s agenda (point number two) because the hallmark of the United States Constitution is tolerance for divergent political and moral beliefs.

However, point number three leads to a more egregious problem, namely that a rather anonymous man, with no distinguishing ambition or vision has, by virtue of family wealth and connection, been installed as President of the United States. Even the most cursory glance at George W. Bush’s history and character builds a strong case for charges of nepotism and cronyism. Such a glaring display of favoritism, to benefit an individual with no considerable talent, runs counter to the spirit of competition and fair play that has driven the engine of American capitalism for more than two hundred years.

There is a way to tangibly and immediately raise a voice in protest of George W. Bush as President. For the remainder of his term, conscientious Americans should simply write "George W. Bush is an Idiot" on all U.S. currency that passes through their hands.

This protest has already begun. The first bills were marked and spent in San Francisco as of January 26, 2001. What is important, though, is to not only begin marking all currency (and to continue the effort throughout the Bush presidency), but to forward this memo as much as possible so as to replicate the message throughout our money supply.

In an effort to mark money more industriously, many of us have ordered a BUSH IS A FRAUD rubber stamp; these self-inking rubber stamps are useful for marking the "Fraud" message in red ink.

Make your voice heard,
Steven Capozzola
San Francisco, California

"Lie" isn't an adequate word for what Republicans say. We need a new term; I propose anti-truth, as in, "There are lies, damned lies, and Republican anti-truths." Like matter and anti-matter, Republicans and the truth just can't occupy the same space. What they say goes all the way through and past "untrue" into the realm of turning reality inside out, tying a knot in it, and yanking hard.
M.E. Cowan