©2001 Darrias

Is It Already Too Late?

All around I see people becoming aware, as if suddenly coming out of a trance or a comma. Just plain folks that "The Trick" oft called the ‘Silent Majority.’ People from all walks of life suddenly hip to the fact that we’ve never had a democracy. Just a Republic of sorts and even that has been taken away. 50% of the eligible voters didn’t even bother to vote. And even at this cost you can hardly blame them. The would-be one party "The Republicrats" has all but stolen all of our rights and guarantees. And I must state that of the choices we had President Gore was best but just barely. What this country needs is mandatory voting but with a choice of "None of the Above." If "None of the Above" won all the candidates would have to be replaced by others until we got some folks honest and qualified enough to vote for.

Then there is Darth Nader who had to be paid great sums of money to pull a third party split. I’m getting a Déjà vu and it’s suddenly 1980 and Anderson splits just enough liberal votes to let Ronnie Ray-guns in. Or George Wallace in 1968 giving "The Trick" a victory. Are we beginning to see a pattern evolve? To all the old folks out there who can remember those "Happy Days" of the 50’s and the ‘Black Balling,’ the ‘Witch Hunting’, and the all consuming ‘Military-Industrial Complex’ that we’ve all come to know and love! From what I hear that’s all coming back!

The Trick got caught rigging an election but escaped due to the treasons of Gerald Ford another pretender who was never elected by the people. Remember the other four times, which we know of, that the rich have gotten away with it? Which is why I say a Republic of sorts. It works for a few elections until the wealthy decide they need even more and steal the voter’s rights with their will.

I’m having another Déjà vu. This time I find myself in the last days of the Weirmar "Republic." A reactionary group has just seized the reins of power and you know the funny thing? This group of mad men was supported for the most part by Emperor Smirky’s grand dads. The Bushes’ & the Walkers took a young lunatic out of the beer halls of southern Germany and gave him the money and corporate friends and the help to steal a similar election and seize power…hmmm. That’s a Déjà vu all right! And the truly interesting thing is they continued to support him and run their oil companies, banks and such to his advantage long after war had been declared. When the war was over the Bushes’ and Walkers got their money back that the government had seized and gave it back to the traitors.

Some have said the early life of the cigarette smoking man in the X-Files is based on Poppa Smirk. You know the guy in the sewer shooting Kennedy in the head in Dallas and latter in the bushes in Memphis shooting King on the balcony. Maybe, maybe not but do remember Poppa Smirk ran the CIA under the ‘Trick’ while junior was doing lines and avoiding the draft. You remember the would be VP under Ray-guns in his trip to Paris to keep the hostages from being released before the election? This in exchange for some missiles and such even though to do so made one a traitor and guilty of sedition would it not? I could go on and on but what would be the point?

He’s got the army behind him so what are you going to do about it? Every one says, "Hey in 2002 we’ll throw the bums out and after some quick trails and some slow executions it will be all better." Yeah, right! What if the elections are canceled until the end of the coming public disturbances and the like? What if they just pull another Jeb Bush or the Extreme Court declares Marshall Law etc?

If you want to write your PHD in politics i.e. Political science I can save you all your research and study and do it in twelve words. These words were as true in say 6000 BCE as they are in 2001CE and have never gone out of style. Get a pencil and paper and write this down. Ahem … "Remember the ‘Golden Rule.’ He who has the Gold makes the rules!" So unless that quote describes you then perhaps you better find a good place to hide. Be afraid, be very afraid! Don’t sell your freeze drieds or the your timeshare on that underground condo just yet. As for me I think I’ll just stand over here on the left and yell, "I Am Spartacus!"
©2001 Ernest Stewart

Gimmie That Old Time Religion VII

Fundamentalist Theology vs. Scientific Method
GENE LYONS

"A gorilla, true enough, cannot write poetry and neither can it grasp such a concept as that of Americanization or that of relativity, but . . . in some ways, indeed, it is measurably more clever than many men. It cannot be fooled as easily; it does not waste so much time doing useless things. If it desires, for example, to get a banana hung out of reach, it proceeds to the business with a singleness of purpose and a fertility of resource that, in a traffic policeman, would seem almost pathological. There are no fundamentalists among the primates. They believe nothing that is not demonstrable. When they confront a fact they recognize it instantly, and turn it to their uses with admirable readiness. There are liars among them, but no idealists. --H.L. Mencken

God must have a terrific sense of humor. During the same week that the learned theologians of the Arkansas Legislature debated yet another creationism bill, the president of the International Flat Earth Research Society died in his sleep. According to his obituary in The New York Times, Charles K. Johnson called himself "the last iconoclast." He referred to Copernicus, the 16th century astronomer who first demonstrated that the earth orbits the sun, as "Co-pernicious."

Johnson, see, feared that human dignity would be much diminished by taking man off center stage. He spent his life promoting the idea that the earth was "actually a flat disk floating on primordial waters instead of a ball spinning and orbiting in space." Johnson sounds as if he'd have made a dandy candidate for public office in Northwest Arkansas. According to the Times, he "regarded scientists as witch doctors pulling off a gigantic hoax so as to replace religion with science. He based his own ideas on the Old Testament references to a flat earth and the New Testament saying that Jesus ascended into heaven."

Sunrises and sunsets he dismissed as optical illusions, the moon landing as sham scripted by science fiction novelist Arthur C. Clarke. He and his late wife, Marjory, reasoned that only a flat earth could explain why she hadn't spent her childhood in Australia hanging upside-down by her toes. We're confident that Rep. Jim Holt, the Springdale Republican responsible for House Bill 2548, formally entitled "An act to prohibit state agencies and other public entities from using tax dollars to purchase or distribute material that contains, or presents as factual, information which has been proven false or fraudulent," is not a member of the International Flat Earth Society.

Without earth-orbiting satellites, after all, Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcast Network would be out of business, and President Bush II's scheme to spend untold billions building a space-based missile defense that Chicago Sun-Times columnist William O'Rourke aptly describes as "an imaginary Maginot Line in the sky" would be not simply impossible, but literally inconceivable.

Even so, the reasoning behind this latest attempt to substitute fundamentalist theology for the scientific method in Arkansas schools is no less laughable. Exactly like the Flat Earthers, creationists begin with conclusions and reason backward to facts. They reject the procedures of science while claiming its cultural authority. They don't know what a scientific "theory" is: not a guess or hypothesis, but a systematically organized body of knowledge based on falsifiable and repeatable assumptions. Most revealing are the remarks of Rep. Denny Altes, R-Fort Smith, who fears that if children are taught that they are descended from animals, they'll act like them. It'd be interesting to know which animals Altes thinks behave worse than human beings. Or which gods.

Mark Twain liked to quote Numbers 31:1-18 in which the Lord instructs Moses to exterminate the Midianites. After putting all the men to the sword, the Israelites were given this divine injunction: "Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man, but save for yourselves every girl who has never slept with a man." In Deuteronomy 20:16-18, the Lord calls for even sterner measures: "In the cities of the nations the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, do not leave alive anything that breathes. Completely destroy them--the Hittites, Amorites, Canaanites, Perizzites, Hivites and Jebusites--as the Lord your God has commanded you. Otherwise they will teach you to follow all the detestable things they do in worshipping their gods." We call this kind of thing "ethnic cleansing" today. Even Mike Huckabee's against it.

But we digress. The problem here isn't really science vs. religion at all. Last time the Arkansas Legislature passed a "monkey law" back in 1981, 12 of the 23 plaintiffs in the successful ACLU lawsuit to overturn it were religious leaders, including the Methodist, Catholic, Episcopal and African Methodist Episcopal bishops of Arkansas. Presbyterians, Southern Baptists and Jews also were represented. Methodist Bishop Kenneth Hicks wrote an unusually articulate statement explaining the absurd presumption underlying fundamentalist bibliolatry: that puny man would limit divine power to the dimensions of his little mind. "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine," wrote British scientist J.B.S. Haldane, "it's queerer than we CAN imagine."

It's precisely this sense of awe at the fathomless complexity of space and time that scares the fool out of people like Holt and Altes. Creationism flourishes among the semi-educated who deem themselves members of contemporary Puritanism's visible elect and yearn to enforce the old-time Adam-and-Eve, Dick-and-Jane storybook theology that makes their little sect right and everybody else's wrong. The irony is that efforts like theirs have, if anything, quite the opposite effect. Science teachers aren't intimidated, and creationists end up looking like goobers. Thomas Jefferson, bless him, saw all this coming. His own scientific studies convinced him that nature showed evidence of intelligent design. "Is uniformity [of religion] attainable?" he wrote. "Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth." Hence, the First Amendment, which makes this silly proposal, if enacted, unconstitutional on its face.

Gene Lyons is a Little Rock author and recipient of the National Magazine Award.
©2001 Gene Lyons

NAFTA-Style Trade Deal Bad For Democracy
by Robert Kuttner

This weekend's Summit of the Americas aims to extend a NAFTA-style free trade area to the entire Western Hemisphere. As Secretary of State Colin Powell recently put it, ''We will be able to sell American goods, technology, and services without obstacles or restrictions from the Arctic to Cape Horn.''

And foreign businesses will likewise be able to sell goods and services in the United States ''without obstacles or restrictions.'' But one person's restrictions are another person's vital social safeguards.

Here is a short list of ''obstacles and restrictions'' that constrain American corporations - and represent a century of struggle to make America a more decent society:

We allow workers to organize unions.

We limit the pollutants that corporations can dump into the environment.

We have regulations protecting employees from unsafe working conditions.

We assure consumers safe food, and drugs, and drinking water, and other products.

We require business to partly underwrite social insurance, such as Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment compensation.

Each of these protections was initially opposed by organized business in the United States. And international business works hard to prevent such safeguards from being enacted in Third World countries.

NAFTA has indeed opened commercial trade flows between Mexico, Canada, and the United States. But it has also functioned as a convenient battering ram for business to resist social regulation.

The Ethyl Corp. used NAFTA to pressure Canada to end a ban on a toxic gasoline additive, MMT, which is not banned in the United States. Metalclad Corp., also based in the United States, filed suit in a Mexican state court demanding to be permitted to open a toxic waste dump. The suit held that even Mexico's still rudimentary environmental protections violated property rights under NAFTA.

NAFTA pays lip service to labor and environmental protections, but the weak laws on Mexican lawbooks are honored more in the breech. As a result, American companies that shift production to Mexico outrun hard-won labor and environmental protections in the United States.

Business, in other words, is keen to harmonize property rights, but not labor, environmental, or consumer rights. And if NAFTA becomes a hemisphere-wide arrangement, the social balance tilts even more dramatically to business, at the expense of both sovereignty and social regulation.

Brazil, for example, takes a very different view of pharmaceutical patent protections than the United States.

Brazil treats life-saving drugs as social goods. American pharmaceutical companies, not surprisingly, treat Brazilian policy as patent infringement. It is the defiance of the big global drug companies by Brazil (and by India) that has sharply brought down the cost of AIDS drugs in the Third World. But if NAFTA is extended, Brazil and its independent drug companies could be more easily sued by American rivals who have a very different set of public health priorities.

Beneath the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas and kindred arrangements lurks an intriguing new ideology. This ideology holds that corporations are really agents of the spread of democracy. I recently participated in a debate at Columbia University sponsored by the Reuters Foundation, on the health of democracy. One debater was Nancy Boswell, the managing director of a worldwide organization called Transparency International.

This well-intentioned group, funded by businesses, banks, and foundations, has branches in some 80 countries. It sees itself as fighting corruption in Third World countries and thereby alleviating poverty, by pressing for US-style corporate accounting, enforceable strictures against bribery, and the openness to investment characteristic of the United States.

In this view, nothing promotes democracy as much as the spread of free-market capitalism. It's an audacious claim, and it may even be half-true. In Mexico, NAFTA probably hastened the downfall of the single-party regime. But in South Korea, a reformist government had to abandon half of its social program to reassure foreign investors.

Historically, democracy has been spread mostly by social movements, not by corporations. The free-market ''transparency'' promoted by business actually promotes a narrow brand of democracy that is a sanitized version of American capitalism, circa 1890 - full rights for investors and for corporations, at the expense of laws that protect labor, the environment, and consumers.

Today, some business leaders are cautious reformers and business is beginning, grudgingly, to accept some minimal social standards as part of free trade agreements, but only because of strenuous citizen and labor organizing. However, this social rebalancing works much more effectively within one country, where voters and social movements can be direct counterweights to corporations by recourse to democratic politics.

There are no citizens of the republic of NAFTA. That's why these trade deals threaten democracy, even as they claim to spread it.
Robert Kuttner is co-editor of The American Prospect.
©2001 Robert Kuttner

©2001 CBIX

Presidency Of Dunces

One hundred days in office and what does George Bush have to show for it? It is a sorry record for America

Special report: George Bush's America
Jonathan Freedland

Is this real life or is it cruel satire? The scene is the Oval Office. The time is early April 2001. The United States and China are locked in a stand-off with 24 American aircrew held captive, their spy plane downed. Behind the desk is President George W Bush, grilling his aides on this complex diplomatic confrontation. Just as John F Kennedy interrogated his advisers during the Cuban missile crisis, so it falls to Bush to put the single question that might get to the heart of this superpower showdown.

So what does Bush ask? "Do the members of the crew have Bibles? Why don't they have Bibles? Can we get them Bibles? Would they like Bibles?" Then the president remembers a strategic factor even more crucial. "Are they getting any exercise?" Do the captive US personnel have access to exercise equipment? Is there a Stairmaster on Hainan Island?

OK, maybe the last bit is an embellishment but the rest is George W Bush in his own words, helpfully provided by the White House as proof of his deep engagement in the China crisis. You and I may think this transcript has the reverse effect - confirming the satirists' caricature of Bush as a know-nothing, fundamentalist fitness freak - but the Bushies released it to prove how presidential their man has become. "He's very curious, and so he asked a lot of questions," gushed an irony-proof Karen Hughes, Bush's press secretary.

There'll be more boasting this week as Bush the Younger heads towards his 100th day in office on Sunday. Ever since Franklin D Roosevelt used his first 100 days to rush through the New Deal, this Napoleonic marker has been the occasion for an interim report on the new president. So what should we make of the new man - and is there a lesson there for us?

Yes, he has proved as verbally challenged as we expected. The list of Bushisms grows daily, a classic added after the president refused to answer reporters' questions at the Quebec Summit of the Americas, "Neither in French nor in English nor in Mexican."

But the key expectation has proved spectacularly false. The savants told us there was little to choose between Gore, a Clintonite New Democrat, and Bush, a self-styled "compassionate conservative". Both were huddling in the soft centre: Tweedledum and Tweedledee. Whoever won, little would change. Well, no one's saying that now. For the promise that this would be a Republican Lite administration has proved naive, if not positively deceitful. Instead, in 100 short days, we have seen the Bush regime establish itself as the most brazenly rightwing of modern times. As the ecstatic head of the ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation enthuses, the new crowd are "more Reaganite than the Reagan administration".

At least you cannot fault their energy. In little over three months they have notched up a roll-call of policy atrocities that will keep US pressure groups busy for years. Pick your subject. Women's rights? Bush used the very first day of his presidency to block aid to any international group that promotes or offers abortion, even in developing countries where that help is vital. Children? He proposed saving money by slashing programmes designed to fight child abuse.

But let's not forget the area where Bush has made his strongest mark: the environment. Since January he has trashed the Kyoto protocol, broken his promise to reduce carbon emissions, proposed drilling in America's last wilderness, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, called for more nuclear power plants and "delayed" a demand that the utilities reduce the amount of arsenic in drinking water. The Bushies are backpedalling now, but their message could not have been clearer: the planet is not safe in their hands.

In international affairs, a retro brand of hawkery has become the defining philosophy of a president who promised a "humble foreign policy". Not content with reviving the cold war with Russia and triggering a new one with China (though yesterday's compromise on arms sales to Taiwan may be enough to prevent relations souring further), Bush scuppered the growing reconciliation between the two Koreas. That way he can still cite the "rogue state" of North Korea as the excuse for his ludicrous Son of Star Wars scheme.

Meanwhile, the closest thing we have to a policy crusade is Bush's drive for a $1.6 trillion tax cut - 43% of which will go to the richest 1% in America: billionaires who don't need, and don't even want, the cash.

It is an appalling record, assembled in less than 14 weeks. What it amounts to is the wish list of the wealth wing of the Republican party, granted in full. Big business does not just have influence over this administration - it is this administration. Look at the multimillionaires around the cabinet table. Scan the resumes: chief of staff Andrew Card is the former top lobbyist of General Motors; national security adviser Condoleezza Rice has a Chevron oil tanker named after her. It's no surprise this lot are making life easier for corporate power. Despite the window-dressing, which allowed compassionate W to present his cabinet as a "diverse" mix from across America, this is the boardroom presidency. Is there a lesson from this three-month, crash course in Bushism? You bet.

First, the right are serious about power. Many expected Bush to clip his wings, to govern from the centre, in deference to his lack of a national mandate. But that's not how the right works. It thinks power belongs to it, as a law of nature - and when its got power, it uses it. It's only the centre-left that is scared of its own shadow, too frightened to act even when it's won by a landslide.

Second, progressives must never again be deluded into thinking there is no difference between us and our enemy. The right may pretend it has changed, but it will be just that: a pretence. "Forgive me, Al Gore," pleaded one liberal US columnist, recanting her previous line that Democrats and Republicans were as bad as each other. She's now seen that Democrats may be bad - but Republicans are worse.

So what might be a practical response? How about the left resolve to pursue power as deliberately as our adversaries? In the United States, that would mean no repeat of the 2000 split which saw Ralph Nader win votes that might otherwise have gone to Gore. Third parties make sense in parliamentary systems - and Nader's Greens should compete for congressional seats - but not in presidential races, where there is but a single prize at stake. There can be only one president: next time the left have to unite behind one candidate.

In Britain, unity may well take the opposite form. Progressives lost four successive elections here because the anti-Tory vote was split between Labour and Lib Dems. Tactical voting in 1997 finally found a way around the problem, with supporters of the two parties effectively swapping their votes. Now there are moves, led by Billy Bragg and others, to formalise that process. Good luck to them. Should there be any doubt about motive, we need only cast a glance across the Atlantic. For that is what happens when the left forgets its enemy.
©2001 Jonathan Freedland

The Hightower Lowdown
BY JIM HIGHTOWER

Bush-Whacking Energy Sanity

"Crisis, crisis!" squawks Little George Bush, pointing to the rolling blackouts, skyrocketing electric bills, and general energy mess made by California's deregulated utility corporations.

How does he propose to respond to the mess? Gotta pull out all the stops, he cries, demanding that Congress let Big Oil punch holes and build pipelines in the pristine Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Plus, he says, we've gotta let the utilities churn out more pollution as a tradeoff for generating more electricity -- gotta unleash American enterprise, is his line.

So, why does George W.'s energy budget slash the most enterprising sector of the energy industry? He dumps more money into the failed approach of the oil, coal, gas, and nuclear giants, instead of shifting to two cost-efficient, non-polluting approaches: renewable fuels and energy conservation. Entrepreneurs and conservationists have teamed up to make dramatic gains using these two approaches, creating more than $200 billion a year in energy savings so far.

These programs provide the biggest, quickest, and cleanest bang for the taxpayer's buck -- yet renewables get Bush-Whacked with a 36% overall cut in W.'s budget. R&D funds for solar, wind, geothermal, and hydrogen technologies are cut by half, and funds for implementation of these most promising energy sources are whacked by 76%. At the same time, Bush is moving to kill new efficiency standards that would save a third of the energy now consumed by air conditioners.

Bush's budget throws more millions at nuclear power -- a failed and flawed energy source that already has sopped up $66 billion in tax-paid R&D spending. Nuke promoters, however, were very energetic contributors to George W.'s presidential race, so it's payoff time.

To fight for energy sanity, contact Safe Energy Communications Council at 202/483-8491.

'Don't Be Fooled Awards'

If it's spring, it must be time for Earth Day -- you can bet it's time for a heavy dose of corporate "greenwashing." Greenwashing occurs when a notorious corporate polluter rushes out a touchie-feelie ad campaign, associating its name with Bambi or butterflies, in a cynical effort to gloss over the corporation's gross record of environmental contamination with a green PR image of environmental sensitivity. A watchdog group called Earth Day Resources applied some gloss remover to the 10 worst greenwashers with its "2001 Don't Be Fooled Awards."

Heading the list of dishonorees is BP-Amoco, which launched a multimillion-dollar ad blitz last year to proclaim that the initials BP no longer stand for British Petroleum, but for "Beyond Petroleum." Brandishing a new abstract logo of a yellow and green sunflower, the world's largest oil company now asserts that its chief concern is Mother Earth, and its fuel of choice is Old Mr. Sun. It would be more honest if BP changed its initials to BS. This giant spends a pittance on solar energy development but billions on oilfield development. In this Earth Day season, BP can be found lobbying furiously in Washington to open Alaska's pristine Arctic Wildlife Refuge to BP-Amoco's oil wells, roads, and pipelines. It already has a long rap sheet of environmental crimes in Alaska -- including 104 oil spills in one year, and the illegal dumping of hazardous waste near Alaska's once-pristine Prudhoe Bay.

Boise-Cascade, Chevron, Coca-Cola, Weyerhauser, Dupont, and Royal Dutch Shell are among the other Greenwashers caught red-handed by Earth Day Resources' "Don't Be Fooled" report. To get a copy of the report, call 213/251-3690.

The WLF Goes Inside

The WLF might sound like another spin-off from the World Wrestling Federation, but it's really in a much bigger league.

Instead of wearing wrestling tights and strutting around a ring, the performers in the WLF wear pinstripe suits and strut around courthouses. They are lawyers for the Washington Legal Foundation, a corporate front group that specializes in clogging the courts and administrative agencies with tons of legal filings that are anti-consumer, anti-worker and anti-environment.

WLF lawyers have recently intervened in auto-safety lawsuits on behalf of Honda and Goodyear, it tried to prevent financial punishment of Exxon for its catastrophic Valdez oil spill, and it stood up for Brown & Williamson Tobacco Company in a case against the FDA. In addition, the foundation produces articles and "educational" programs spouting corporate propaganda on such issues as the public's right-to-know laws and patients-rights laws. It is also a major proponent of corporate "civil liberties" and corporate "free speech." It just might be that WLF's fervor for all-things-corporate stems from the fact that the bulk of its funding flows from corporate interests.

Now, this anti-government outsider has quietly moved inside, as George W. Bush -- who also embraces all-things-corporate -- has placed many WLFers into key positions. For example, cabinet members John Ashcroft, Gale Norton, Tommie Thompson, and Spencer Abraham serve on WLF advisory boards, and Energy Secretary Abraham and Interior Secretary Norton also are listed as "educational program speakers" for this cozy corporate club. Attorney General Ashcroft also is staffing the justice department with WLF alums, including his deputy AG, and his assistant AG for anti-trust.

WLF's infiltration of the Bush presidency represents the continuing corporatization of our government.
©2001 Jim Hightower

Quotable Quote

"This is America. Just because you get the most votes doesn't mean you win the election." ..... Fox Mulder

"It's this religion thing,'' she said, "that everybody is trying to shove down our throats.''
© The Tampa Tribune

Democracy Murdered, Film At ...?

By Daisy Vining

Why does the whole rest of the world know that Bush stole the election, but the Americans get to be kept in the dark about it?

I wonder why investors are pulling money out of the US. Mr. Bush has only seriously embarrassed our country about four times in the last week. As well as talking down the economy into a sell off. The man's Residency is cursed, no doubt about it. I don't care *how* lucky he is supposed to be.

There should be a "Gate" Topic devoted to Voter Scam Gate. Cheat Gate. Whatever it is people want to call it.

Interfering with an election by a government official is a crime punishable by a $10,000 fine or one year in jail. There are many that should be prosecuted.

Why isn't Katherine Harris being fined for hiring a private consulting firm for $4 million of taxpayers dollars (as reported by the BBC and all over Europe) in order that 60,000 voters should be taken off the roles for being identified as felons. The error rate was 95%? The people so disenfranchised Democrats and Blacks. Why isn't John Sweeney of NY being prosecuted for shouting, "shut it down" and intimidating the people counting the votes in Dade county? Why are the men and women who were aides to Tom Delay, who were flown to FL on a paid vacation to pose as grass roots citizens and behave a thugs not being prosecuted?

The SCOTUS and the Republicans overthrew our Democracy and to get it back they must be impeached:

This must not be covered up. Nor can it be in the long run. Bush must be thrown out of office. And this is a major argument for that end. The corruption of the electoral process; his indifference to it and his shamelessly benefiting from it. And allowing his friends to benefit from it.

I believe the Justices of the SC were acting cynically and consciously to do whatever it took to ensure Bush's election. To imagine anything else stretches my credulity. Scalia was "unconsciously" making sure he's to become Chief Justice? That's funny.

He based his career on "State's rights" and "Judicial restraint" What a joke! What fools people are now to take them seriously.

I believe that the Press is intimidated by the Far Right Repubs who jump up and down and scream "Law" and meanwhile subvert it. Where does the Law reside? Not in the pronouncements of a corrupt judiciary. Not in the actions of pompous Justices who impose their own will by technical and arbitrary rules.

Justice Scalia argued that the court was acting to protect the legitimacy of a Bush victory. But the Court's decision damaged Bush's legitimacy (not to mention to its own) much more than anything else they could possibly have done.

It's obvious that the action of Scalia was to make sure Bush had a Presidency. He mentioned "legitimacy of his election," - - as if such an election existed, which it did not under FL law at that time.

Scalia lies.

By backing up Bush's claim: that Bush had been "elected," he repeated a lie. He gave substance to a lie. He just made up Law. The "legitimacy" smokescreen was just a "claim." Scalia knew damn well there would never be any "legitimacy" to what Scalia did except as he writes the Law and therefore Bush's claim is bona fide if Scalia pronounces it so, by definition. He didn't care. He's taken his gloves off. That's why people are rightly frightened.

Supposedly Chief Justice Rehnquist and his colleagues had hoped that history would remember them well. They would have liked that. But not as much as they liked to make sure Bush got into power. Power is more important. That's the name of the game. If they honestly cared more about how they'd be remembered, they wouldn't have done this. Ruling the country is a more important to them than what anyone thinks.

The SCOTUS deliberately setup a no win situation for Gore. And they naturally tried in the hearing of the oral arguments to pretend to be fair. And they had the boldness to have demanded of Boies that he tell them what is a fair standard for the re-count. But neither he, nor us, nor they, could go back in time. And they knew that. And they had the boldness to claim it was an issue of "equal protection." Straight out of the book _Animal Farm_ it is:

"Your vote is not being thrown out like those of other unfortunates; We must remedy that.

We are not protecting you adequately. We must throw out your vote so all can be equally protected"

It's not "equal protection" but "pretend protection and equally arbitrary disenfranchisement." They can't give you your vote back because that is not fair to the people who's vote were suppressed or who's votes got lost? But they are naming it "Protection?" Who exactly are they protecting? Only Bush was named.

How can anyone believe their goodwill after what they did? They had the brazenness to demand Boies tell them how to repair it? After it was a fait accompli! They would've liked to have gotten themselves off the hook. But after all, it was too late for that. That's why Scalia was all smiles.

Our institutions are the sum of the people who inhabit them. If the standard goes down, I see now, the body politic gets weak. The weakness doesn't erupt into sickness necessarily right away. But December 12th we crossed that line into sickness.

If the sanctity of the governmental Institutions are not upheld - - And I don't mean because of something as minor as a blowjob; If the Institutions are not protected, the country is prone then to increasing violations. Then the ultimate value of those Institutions will become zero or less.

An article on the Supremes I read recently detailed that it was the respect of the SC Institution and the delicacy with which that respect was held that kept the two swing Justices from overturning Roe vs. Wade. Maybe that is part of Scalia's motive in destroying the reputation of the court at home and in the rest of the world. He is a Roman Catholic and his loyalties are obviously with overturning Roe v. Wade for his God and for his Church.

He is an operative for the Republican Religious Right, not a jurist. He has proved that. The Court is sullied now, so there is no reason for anyone to uphold it's any reputation anymore. The masks are off. The green curtain is pulled back from the racist wizard from AZ [Congressional testimony about Rehnquist's intimidation of minority voters is at http://www.thenation.com/special/20010101rehnquist.mhtml] and pulled back from the smug and faux fancy cohorts who voted with him. And now Scalia can get his way. No one will persuade O 'Connor and Kennedy to hold back from Roe because of fear to harm the Institution of the court. There is no more reputation.

The SCOTUS' respectability is now a pretentious charade. Every one of Nino Scalia's opinions is now rendered questionable. His judgment is proven by this to be worse than poor. It's proven to be completely arbitrary. In fact, the ruling is probably illegal because Thomas didn't recuse himself (it broke the law that his wife will benefit from the decision because of her job "headhunting" for the Enterprise Institute. Rehnquist's involvement was illegal because two of his sons work for a law firm that work for Bush. And Scalia broke the Law because *his son works for Olson*)

Why are no investigations being done of this? These three broke an actual law. It's not some trumped up insinuation. They do not care about the law. They are seriously dangerous. They only care about power.

What they have done is worse than breaking some rule in a bid for a Faustian freedom, since Faust at least made a barter. What they did is betrayal - - of our American values. They threw away our Democracy so they could, in what they pretend to be their superior wisdom but is in fact their job as operatives for the Radical Republican Party, decide on what would be our government. SCOTUS 5 betrayed those values upon which our Country was founded.

Our tradition here *was* that of the Enlightenment. The Tradition is that the settlers came here to escape and avoid the arbitrary rule of those in power. Our Government was constructed in particular to avoid the arbitrary rule of power. The remedy in order for us to return to our original form of government, determined by the rules of that form of government, is to Impeach and remove Rehnquist, Scalia and Thomas.

I call for this here and now.

If this is not done our Democracy is in peril.

The betrayal of the American people and the American tradition by this Supreme Court and by the ultra right factions of the Republican party I am afraid can never breed happiness or anything good. It is based upon hubris. George Bush's highhanded actions and disregard for the people of this Country is based upon the disenfranchisement of elderly Jews and Blacks and millions who voted for the better, the more qualified, and the smarter man. No good can ever come from that.

I shiver for our beautiful Lady Democracy; 224 years old. But way too young anyhow to face murder. She is supposed to be immortal. In our lifetimes, we will never know her immortality for she died for us December 12th. I never knew how much I truly and keenly loved her. In case you didn't guess I curse Nino Scalia. And will do so each day of my life.
-Daisy Vining vasudha@well.com

Clinton Pardoned An Accused Tax Cheat, But Poppy Bush Set A Serial Terrorist Free
By Eileen Smith

‚ÄîIn 1990, through the direct influence of President George Herbert Walker Bush, Orlando Bosch‚ a fugitive from justice, undocumented alien, serial terrorist and airline bomber‚Äîwas released from prison in Miami, at the urging of Bush's son Jeb on behalf of Miami Republicans

Jeb (the family Florida fixer) traded the unusual release from federal custody for the votes of Floridians and delivered Florida to his father's electoral tally in the 1992 presidential election.

Orlando Bosch was not released because he was rehabilitated and repentant. He was not released because he had served out a sentence. He was set free by the Bushes for Republican gain with seeming disregard for public safety here and abroad and for the "Rule of Law."

Thirty countries had refused Bosch asylum because of his criminality. An acting attorney general in Miami and the INS had refused to allow him to remain in the U.S. In January 1989 the acting attorney general wrote: "For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence. . . . He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death.'" Attorney General Dick Thornburgh described Bosch as an "unreformed terrorist."

And yet the Bushes set him free.

Even more troubling than the release of a dangerous man in exchange for votes is the manner of adjudication. President Bush did not pardon Bosch. He apparently simply stepped in and exerted the influence of his office to release Bosch against the recommendations of the district director of the INS and the Department of Justice.

This was no penny ante lawbreaker. Not just a tax cheat or draft dodger. Bosch planned, participated in, or managed the following crimes:

Bosch's reported crimes . . .

With Poder Cubano (Cuban Power) 1968–69: Bomb sent in a suitcase to Havana, Cuba. Bombs placed in various commercial establishments in the United States. Bomb against Mexican consul in Miami, United States. Bomb placed at the residence of the British consul in Miami. Bomb placed at a restaurant owned by Cuban emigrants in the United States. Bomb placed (but did not explode) at the Chilean consulate in the United States. Bomb placed at a pharmaceutical company in the United States. Bomb placed at the Mexican consulate in the United States. Bomb placed at the Spanish office of tourism in the United States. Bomb against the British vessel "Greenwood" in the United States. Bomb placed on board the Japanese ship "Aroka Maru" in the U.S. Bomb placed at the tourist offices of Spain in the United States. Bomb placed at the Mexican offices of tourism in the U.S. Bomb explodes in the garage of the Mexican consul in the U.S. Bomb placed at the Cuban consulate in Canada. Bomb placed at the tourism office of Canada in the U.S. Bomb explodes at the Japanese Office of Tourism in the United States. Bomb explodes near the Cuban mission in the United Nations damaging the Yugoslavian mission. Bomb placed on board the Japanese vessel "Michagesan Maru" in Mexico. Bomb at the Office of Tourism of Mexico in the United States. Bomb is discovered at an office of the French government in the United States. Unexploded bomb is discovered at the Mexican consulate in the U.S. Bomb is placed but left unused at the house of a Cuban dignitary in the United States. Bomb placed in the French Office of Tourism in the U.S. Bomb placed at the Shell Petroleum Company building in England. Bomb at a Japanese travel agency in the United States. Bomb placed at Mexican tourism offices in the United States. Bomb against British consulate in the United States. Bomb placed at a branch of a British bank in the U.S. Bomb placed at the headquarters of the Communist Party in North America. Bomb placed on board the Bahamian ship "Caribbean Venture" while at a U.S. port. Bomb against Mexican representatives in the U.S. Bomb at the residence of the Mexican consul in Miami. Bomb placed on British vessel docket at Mexican port. Bomb explodes on board Spanish ship "Satrustegui" in Puerto Rico. Bazooka attack against Polish ship in the United States. Bomb placed on board a Mexican airliner in the United States. Bomb placed at the home of the Mexican consul in the United States. Bomb at a Canadian travel agency. Gas bomb at a theater where a Cuban actress was rehearsing. Assassination attempts against the Cuban ambassador to the United Nations. Bomb at the Mexican Department of Tourism in the United States. Bomb placed the offices of Shell Oil of England in the U.S. Bomb at the offices of Air France in the United States.

With Chilean fascist leaders, after meeting with Pinochet, 1974–75:

Assasination of the former commander of the Chilean Armed Forces, General Carlos Pratts, and his wife in Argentina. The gunning down in Rome, Italy of Bernardo Leighton (Vice President of the Chilean Democratic Party in Excile) and his wife. Orlando Bosch is arrested by the Costa Rican police on charges of plotting the assassination of the exiled Chilean leader Andres Pascal Allende in Costa Rica. Assassination of a former Chilean minister during the administration of Salvador Allende, Orlando Letelier, and his collaborator Ronni Moffit in Washington, D.C. in the United States. With new terrorist group "Accion Cuba" 1974–75: Bomb placed at the Cuban diplomatic mission in Canada. Bomb at the Cuban diplomatic mission in Argentina. Bomb at the Cuban mission in Peru. Bomb placed at the Cuban embassy in Mexico. Bomb placed at the Cuban embassy in Madrid, Spain. Placed bomb against members of the Latin Press in Mexico, but never exploded. Bomb placed at the Panamanian embassy in Caracas, Venezuela. Bomb at the Venezuelan-Cuban Institute of Friendship in Venezuela. Bomb at the hotel where Cuban delegation was staying. Shots fired at the residence of a Cuban functionary. Assasination attempt against the Cuban Ambassador Emilio Aragones in Argentina. Bomb placed at Venezuelan tourism firm in Venezuela. Bomb at the Cuban Embassy in Venezuela. Bomb against Soviet commercial office in Mexico.

With new group under his leadership in Costa Rica "Comandos de Organizaciones Revolucionarias Unidas" 1976–77:

Bomb placed at Cuban mission in the United Nations. Bomb at the Costa Rican-Cuban cultural center in Costa Rica. Bomb at the Cuban mission in Spain. Bomb at the luggage/freight department of the flight of Cubana Airlines in Kingston, Jamaica. Bomb placed at the office of Cubana Airlines in Barbados. Bomb placed at the offices of Air Panama in Colombia. Kidnapping attempt of the Cuban consul in Merida, Mexico, killing D'Artagnan Diaz Diaz. Kidnapping of two Cuban dignitaries in Argentina. Bomb placed at the Embassy of Guyana in Trinidad and Tobago. Bomb placed at the offices of Cubana airlines in Panama. Sabotage in mid flight of a Cubana airlines flight, killing 73 passengers. (Arrested and imprisoned in Venezuela but continued directing terrorist activities toward Venezuela.) Bomb placed at the Venezuelan consulate in Puerto Rico. Bomb on board a Venezuelan airplane in Miami, United States. Bomb placed at the office of the Venezuelan airline "Viasa" in the United States. Bomb placed at the Venezuelan consulate in Puerto Rico. Also from prison, Bosch directed activities against the interests of Mexico, 1978: Bomb placed at the Mexican consulate in the United States. Bomb placed on board the merchant vessel "Azteca" of Mexico at a Mexican port, resulting in 2 deaths and 7 injuries.

Targeting Cuba again, directing the following terrorist activities in conjunction with a group called Omega-7:

Bomb placed at the Cuban mission in the United Nations. Bomb placed in front of Madison Square Gardens where Cuban boxers where scheduled to fight. Bomb placed at the offices of the tourist firm "Girasol" of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. Bomb placed at the offices of the tourist firm "Antillana" in Puerto Rico. Bomb placed at the offices of the firm "Record Public Service" owned by a Cuban emigrant in Puerto Rico. Bomb at the newspaper "La Prensa" in the United States. Bomb threat against TWA airlines against flying into Cuba. Bomb placed at the local offices of the travel agency "Varadero" in Puerto Rico, presided by Carlos Muniz Varela. Bomb at the Cuban mission in the United Nations. Bomb placed at Lincoln Center in the United States where Cuban artists were scheduled to perform. Bomb placed at the local offices of TWA airlines at J.F.K. Airport in the United States. Bomb placed at the firm Weehawken, New Jersey, presided by Eulalio J. Negrin, member of the Committee of 75 (Comite de los 75). Assassination of Carlos Muniz Varela, member of the Brigade "Antonio Maceo" and director of "Varadero Travel" in Puerto Rico. Assassination of Eulalio Negrin- a member of the Cuban community in the exterior and participant in talks and negotiations with the Cuban government- in New Jersey, United States. Assassination of the Cuban diplomat in the United Nations Felix Garcia Rodriguez

Source: cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0057.htm

Here's the story on Bosch:

A pediatrician by education, Bosch secretly left Cuba for Miami the year after Castro took power. He immediately began violent actions with the terrorist organization "MIRR" (Insurrectional Movement of Revolutionary Recuperation) and with the "Movimiento Nacionalista Cubano" (Cuban Nationalist Movement).

In 1968, Bosch was arrested by U.S. authorities, tried and sentenced to 10 years in prison. In 1972 he was released, and made his way without permission and against the provisions of his U.S. parole to Venezuela where he was arrested for the bombing of the Cubana airliner in which 73 people were killed, including the entire Cuban fencing team.

He languished in prison there, while still directing terrorist actions detailed above. He eventually was freed on humanitarian grounds after a long hunger strike, and in 1988 returned to the U.S. without papers, where he was arrested for parole violation and then eventually remanded to the custody of INS (U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service).

Cuba asked for the return of Bosch so that he could be tried for terrorist actions, but Bosch petitioned for asylum in the U.S., stating that he would not receive a fair trial in Cuba (a la Marc Rich's claim!). The petition for asylum is available at http://cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0055.htm

In January 1989, the request for asylum was denied. An acting deputy attorney general wrote: "For 30 years Bosch has been resolute and unwavering in his advocacy of terrorist violence . . . He has repeatedly expressed and demonstrated a willingness to cause indiscriminate injury and death."

More than 30 countries refused to allow Bosch entry. The INS District Director in Miami excluded Bosch from remaining in the U.S. on the following grounds:

There is reason to believe he would seek to enter the United States solely, principally, or incidentally to engage in activities prejudicial to the public interest. (8 U.S.C. 1182 (a) (27)).

That he is or has been an alien who advocates or teaches or has been a member of an organization that advocates or teaches the duty, necessity, or propriety of assaulting or killing officers of any organized government. (8 U.S.C. 1182 (a) (28) (F) (ii)).

That he is or has been an alien who advocates or teaches or has been a member of an organization that advocates or teaches the unlawful damage, injury or destruction of property. (8 U.S.C. 1182 (a) (28) (F) (iii)).

That he is or has been an alien who advocates or teaches or has been a member of an organization that advocates or teaches sabotage. (8 U.S.C. 1182 (a) (28) (F)(iv)).

That there are reasonable grounds to believe that he probably would, after entry, engage in activities which would be prohibited by the laws of the United States relating to espionage, sabotage, public disorder, or in other activity subversive to the national interest. (8 U.S.C. 1182 (a) (29)).

In addition, the notice alleged that Bosch also is excludable on the grounds that he has been convicted of a crime of moral turpitude (other than a purely political offense), 8 U.S.C. 1182 (a) (9), and that he did not possess valid entry documents. 8U.S.C. 1182 (a) (20). (See cuban-exile.com/doc_051-075/doc0054.htm.)

Then began the campaign to use political pressure to free Orlando Bosch and allow him to reside in America.

Jeb Bush, who had ingratiated himself with the highest orders of power in the anti-Castro communities of Florida, was the campaign manager for right-wing Republican Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen. Jeb arranged a meeting for her with his father, President G.H.W. Bush, to "negotiate" the release. (New York Times August 17, 1989)

In the same article the Times wrote "Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Republican who seeks the seat of the late Representative Claude Pepper and is the candidate for whom the president campaigned, wants the president to overrule the Justice Department's deportation order."

On July 18, 1990, Bosch was granted parole on the recommendation or order of George Herbert Walker Bush, and allowed to live under some temporary supervisory restrictions in Miami, although being allowed to walk the streets there and mingle with members of the community.

The circumstances of the parole don't exactly pass the smell test. According to The Washington Post of August 18, 1990: "In June, U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler asked government attorneys why nothing had yet happened on Bosch's case. He gave them another month to find a suitable home country for Bosch, and on the eve of that court date, Bosch received the three-page offer for release into house arrest. Justice Department spokesman Dan Eramian said the decision to release Bosch was made for 'humanitarian reasons,' but that the government will continue to try to deport him."

That, of course, never happened. He's still free. As is usually the case with the affairs of the Bushes, other Bosch trails lead to links with the CIA, the Mafia, and covert operations. There are claims that Bosch was a CIA operative. There's even a tight connection to Frank Sturgis, the man thought to have killed President John Kennedy. Orlando Bosch was one of the Cuban nationals known to be traveling from Miami to Dallas with weapons on Nov. 21–22. (http://www.aristotle.net/~mstandridge/knollmen.htm). Bosch's name shows up in the report of the Warren Commission as one of those investigated in the Kennedy assassination .

In The Nation magazine in 1990, author David Corn wrote: "In yet another parole violation Bosch is now, according to The Miami Herald, organizing a group to raise money to buy and ship arms to Castro's foes in Cuba. Is anyone in U.S. intelligence watching his outfit today?"

Obviously, George Herbert Walker Bush's need to be re-elected trumped any concerns for public safety and national security.

Bottom line: This case makes the hysterical G.O.P. attention to the Clinton pardon of a fugitive tax cheat look like a political diversion. And it makes Bill Clinton look like Solomon the Wise and Judicious, compared to the apparent abysmal judgment and integrity of the Bushes.

And whenever you see the Bush clan purse their lips and speak haughtily of their patrician familial honor and tradition and integrity, remember Orlando Bosch.

Talk about sleaze.
©2001 Eileen Smith

Which Bug Gets The Gas?
Will the next house DeLay fumigates be that big White one or his own?
By Tim Fleck

In case you missed it, BuzzFlash.com enjoyed a spirited stint on the Alan Colmes radio show last week. Progressive talk shows not only draw like minded callers, but they also bring the right wingers out of the woodwork. So it was no surprise that one caller last Wednesday started shrieking to Colmes about Clinton being a yellow-bellied draft evader who avoided Vietnam.

In a perverse way, we were glad to hear from the psychotic ranter because it got the Buzz thinking about one of our favorite topics: the GOP leaders are mostly cowardly men who evaded service in Vietnam.

In fact, Bush, Cheney and Ashcroft all avoided service in 'Nam. The President, whose Dad got him a position in the Texas National Guard, ran against Gore, who served in Vietnam. The closest Bush got to Vietnam was Abilene. Furthermore, Bush didn't even bother to show up for his last year of service in Texas. Cheney got a college deferment from military service. Ashcroft got a deferment claiming that his law school teaching gig filled a vital national need.

Hey, and let's not forget Tom DeLay, who is the guy who pulls the strings in the U.S. House of Representatives. Read an excerpt from a 1999 article that recounts the novel excuse that DeLay offered as to why he and Dan Quayle didn’t serve in Vietnam: In 1988, a little-known Texas congressman gathered a crowd of reporters in the lobby of a downtown New Orleans hotel housing several state delegates to the Republican National Convention. Clutching a pole topped by a drooping American flag, 22nd District two-termer Tom DeLay launched into a rather implausible defense of Dan Quayle, an Indiana senator freshly picked by George Bush as his presidential ticket partner.

Bill Clinton's draft-dodging efforts would become an issue in his successful campaign against Bush four years later, but now Quayle's own past manipulation of family ties to get into a national guard unit was touching off a classic feeding frenzy among the convention press corps.

DeLay seemed to feel the issue applied personally to him, and perhaps it did. He had graduated from the University of Houston at the height of the Vietnam conflict in 1970, but chose to enlist in the war on cockroaches, fleas and termites as the owner of an exterminator business, rather than going off to battle against the Vietcong.

He and Quayle, DeLay explained to the assembled media in New Orleans, were victims of an unusual phenomenon back in the days of the undeclared Southeast Asian war. So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks like himself. Satisfied with the pronouncement, which dumbfounded more than a few of his listeners who had lived the sixties, DeLay marched off to the convention.

"Who was that idiot?" asked a TV reporter who arrived at the end of the media show. When he was told the name, it drew a blank. DeLay at that time was a national nobody, and his claim that blacks and browns crowded him and other good conservatives out of Vietnam seemed so outlandish and self-serving that no one bothered to file a news report on the congressman's remarks.

(see http://www.houston-press.com/issues/1999-01-07/columns2.html)

And here are some other GOP luminaries who never served in Vietnam, but join the teeming mob of right wing zealots in labeling Democrats as draft dodgers. (The list includes our previously mentioned Vietnam cowards):

Elliott Abrams - Sought deferment for bad back.
Richard Armey - Sought college deferment, too smart to die.
Bill Bennett - Sought graduate school deferment, too smart to die.
Pat Buchanan - Sought deferment for bad knee.
George W. Bush Daddy got him in the National Guard
Dick Cheney - Sought graduate school deferment, too smart to die.
Tom DeLay - - Sought college deferment, too smart to die.
Newt Gingrich - Sought graduate school deferment, too smart to die.
Phil Gramm - Sought marriage deferment, too loved to die.
Jack Kemp - Sought medical deferment while in the NFL.
Rush Limbaugh - Sought deferment for ingrown hair follicle on his ass. Trent Lott - Sought deferment, didn't want to muss his hair.
P.J. O'Rourke - Sought deferment, too stoned.
Dan Quayle - Family got him into the Reserves.
Pat Robertson - Father pulled him out of Korea as soon as the shooting began.
Kenneth Starr Sought deferment for psoriasis.
John Wayne - Sought deferment to further acting career.
Vin Weber - Sought deferment for asthma.
George Will - Sought deferment, too much of a wussy.
John Engler got out of the draft for being overweight.

If there is anything that so preeminently displays the moral bankruptcy of the current administration and the rest of the GOP leadership, it is their failure to serve our country in Vietnam while fostering attacks on Democrats, many of them who actually served the U.S. in that ill-begotten war.

Worse for these major league hypocrites is that they scammed their way out of Vietnam not because of noble ideals that the war was a misguided tragedy. Rather, these guys were just plain cowards looking to save their skins.

It's an abiding fact that the right wing continues to foamingly deride Clinton for protesting Vietnam because it was a bad war, while refusing to criticize the GOP leaders who evaded Vietnam because they were just plain yellow-bellied. Moreover, it is a glaring indication of the advanced pathology of the rabid right wing hordes that they don’t give a hoot that their leadership has a yellow streak as wide as Texas running down their backs.

The Limbaugh loonies are, after all, beyond reason in matters of politics. They needn’t bother with the truth, even if their own leaders (including pork boy Rush) exemplify everything they claim to scorn in the way of no guts and fairweather patriotism. The hypocrisy is so rank, it smells like an Iowa Hog farm in a heat wave. ©2001 A BuzzFlash Editorial Commentary

Dead Letter Office

Heil Bush,

Dear Gruppenfuhrer Miller,

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 Miller! Sieg Heil!

Signed,
Deputy Fuhrer Cheney

Heil Bush

De-Bushing Texas
By Molly Ivins

AUSTIN, Texas -- Texas politics: still more entertaining than any other kindergarten.

Last week offered the following festive events: A.R. "Tony" Sanchez, Democratic nominee-presumptive for governor next year, receives a threatening letter that he hands over to his lawyer, Tony Canales, the former U.S. attorney in Houston.

Canales hires two former FBI agents, now private eyes, to investigate from whence cometh the letter, and they say it comes from Texas Secretary of State Henry Cuellar, who is supposed to be a Democrat but was appointed to his job by Republican Gov. Rick "Good-hair" Perry.

While we are digesting the possibility that our secretary of state spends his spare time penning nasty missives to others in public life, three of Cuellar's friends report that the PIs told them Cuellar is gay and asked them if he's been involved in group sex. All this winds up in the Houston Chronicle. Now Republicans are demanding to see the threatening letter and are saying it's all a smear job.

I believe I can straighten this all out for you. They call it "Laredo Rules"; it means that in Laredo, there are no rules in politics. This art form -- we might think of it as Extreme Politics -- is best appreciated as a Punch and Judy Show crossed with pit-bull fighting. We can look forward to more thrilling episodes in the same vein. Think how boring it must be to live in Nebraska.

Meanwhile, back at the state zoo, we still have an agenda dominated by George W. Bush, but it's Bush-in-reverse. Pretty much whatever George W. stood for, the Legislature is now undoing as fast as it can, and whatever he was against is now getting done. It's a striking symmetry.

The first problem, of course, is money. Bush successfully pushed for tax cuts in 1997 and 1999 that set up his run for the presidency nicely but left Texas without a nickel to spare. It turns out that one of his parting gifts was to bury the fact that we could only pay for 23 of the 24 months of Medicaid for nursing homes.

Sen. Eddie Lucio proposed cutting off the '99 property tax cut. More startling, Republican Sen. Chris Harris of Arlington (who is having quite a peppy session) proposed a constitutional amendment to roll back the 1997 property tax cut.

The state has a potential shortfall of $700 million just two years after Bush's last $1.8 billion cut. The Lege is not likely to be forced to raise taxes until next session, but the Senate budget passed last week includes $6 billion worth of unfunded items, including making it easier for children to enroll in Medicaid, helping school districts with building bonds, finally getting mandatory kindergarten statewide and almost $1 billion worth of highway construction that has to be postponed. We are also unable to cover teachers' health insurance or a raise for state employees.

Texas' performance, or lack of it, on Medicaid is already the subject of one federal court order and is likely to attract another as we continue to lag in providing health insurance for poor kids.

According to the Legislative Budget Board, the state share of public-school funding this year is 44 percent -- the lowest level since Texas began education reform in 1984, despite the pledge that Bush ran on to make it 60 percent.

On other old Bush battles, Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston is finally about to get a statewide indigent defense system. Bush vetoed the Ellis bill two years ago, but the publicity that Bush's own campaign brought to the weakness of the state's criminal justice system has helped make this a fairly easy sell.

There is still a possibility that the Lege will act on executing the retarded (another bill opposed by Bush) and providing life-without-parole as an alternative to the death penalty. The public supports both reforms already, according to state pollsters.

A more surprising vote was the House's decision to put a two-year moratorium on one of Bush's signature issues: charter schools. Bush was red-hot on charter schools and pushed them through the Lege willy-nilly. It was the willy-nilly part, the lack of state supervision, that proved to be the problem.

According to an interim study, 163 of the 192 schools chartered so far have severe problems. One-fourth of the charter schools are rated "unacceptable" by the state education agency, and only 59 percent of the charter students passed their Texas Assessment of Academic Skills tests in '99, compared with 78.4 percent statewide.

Bush, you recall, was fond of touting charter schools and "ending social promotion" as the keys to educational success. The House education committee voted to delay Bush's plan to "end social promotion." The new bill would allow factors other than test scores to be considered in promotion decisions -- a position advocated by many educators.
©2001 Molly Ivins

Books, Shmooks
by Christian Livemore

George W. Bush must be trying to win a limbo contest.

I've come to this conclusion because the latest brainstorm out of the White House -- cutting Federal funding to RIF (Reading is Fundamental, the program that distributes free books to needy children) -- leaves me with one overpowering question:

How low can he go?

Bush's 2002 budget proposes to cut ALL funding to the program. It amounted to $23 million this year. This would eliminate about 70 percent of RIF's budget.

Up until now, I had been under the impression that Bush did not care that he was stupid. I was mistaken. It now seems that he doesn’t care if everybody else is stupid, too.

I can just hear the debate in the White House now.

"Mr. President, what do you want to do about RIF?"

"Who's Rif? That my new dealer? Tell him I want a gram. No, make it two. That China business was haaaard."

"No sir, RIF is the program that gives free books to poor children."

"FREE BOOKS TO POOR CHILDREN?!"

"Yes sir. It helps them learn to read quicker."

"Read, schmead. What do you need to read for? They’re all gonna live off of welfare anyway… But wait – do they have Bibles?"

I believe we have just found the true meaning of the phrase ‘compassionate conservative’: "Fuck ‘em, they’re not my kids."

Bush is probably far less concerned with the plight of these underprivileged children than he is with Josh Harris, who, a recent Washington Post article about the downturn in the Nasdaq reports, recently saw his personal fortune sink to a measly $1.5 million because of the failure of his dot.com start-up, Pseudo.com.

Poor Josh.

His business has failed, he's down to his last 1.5 million, and to top it all off, his pet lizard Maurice Jr. just died.

How will he deal with the heartache? He's leaving for an ashram in India. "I really need to reconnect," he says.

Maybe Bush can redirect some of the RIF funding to buy Josh a new lizard.

Bush is probably also very concerned about all the ladies of New York, who, according to this same Post article, have had to cut down on their plastic surgery.

"It's the summer season coming up, so my patients must have tune-ups," says Pamela Lipkin, a high-end plastic surgeon on Fifth Avenue. "But instead of doing liposuction on seven areas, they're doing three or four. These decisions are so painful."

I'd like to say something here, and let me just say beforehand that I mean this in the nicest possible way:

Fuck Josh and his stupid lizard. And that goes double for the sagging ladies of Fifth Avenue.

It's not enough for Bush to cut funding for children's healthcare. It's not enough for him to cut funding to abused children. Now he wants to take away their freekin' books?

Maybe it's because he grew up so obscenely wealthy. Maybe it’s because he had everything a person could ever possibly want. Maybe it’s because he never had to work for a thing in his life – including the Presidency – and so he learned the value of nothing.

Or maybe he’s just an asshole.

Conservatives crack me up. They embrace the most head-spinning set of contradictions existing on planet Earth today.

They insist on their right to own guns. They scream that any common-sense gun laws are an infringement on personal freedom.

Then whenever there’s another school shooting, they whine about the permissive liberal lifestyle that doesn’t discipline their children, even though most of these kids got these guns from their right-wing Republican, NRA member grandfather’s shed.

They vehemently oppose abortion. They say that every child has a right to be born, and that it’s wrong to terminate a pregnancy, even if the mother is so poor she won’t be able to care for the child.

Then they cut funding for Head Start and children’s healthcare.

They complain about the state of the education system in this country. They claim they’ll leave no child behind.

Then they campaign for vouchers, which will take funding away from the schools that need it most, and those kids who couldn’t get into private school are left twisting in the wind at underfunded public schools with second-rate books and inexperienced teachers.

They complain about the welfare state. They say these folks should stop living off the government and go out and get themselves a job.

But then they take away kids’ books so they won’t learn to read and are doomed to a life of low-level jobs and poverty.

Since so many Republicans are wealthy, it surprises me that they seem not to understand a fundamental principle of investing: You gotta spend money to make money.

You want a prosperous society where everybody pulls their own weight and welfare isn’t necessary?

Invest now in children’s healthcare, so kids are well and strong enough to focus on their studies.

Invest now in inner-city schools, so that kids have adequate books, a decent student-teacher ratio, maybe a computer or two, and don’t have to stand in class because of a lack of desks.

Invest now in training programs for their parents, so they can get better-paying jobs, maybe move their kids into a house with a yard, and have energy to spend a little more time with them, help them with their homework.

You can either spend the money now and give these kids the tools they need to stand on their own two feet, or you can spend it later, when they’re undereducated because you cut the funding to RIF and Head Start and inner-city schools, and jobs have gone south because you just had to have your $1.7 trillion tax cut that crashed the economy, and now you’re forced to expand the welfare program or face record homelessness, child abuse and neglect rates, and staggering Medicaid costs because you didn’t reform the healthcare system and nobody can afford health insurance. < p> Let me tell you something: I grew up poor. Really poor. RIF gave me an exposure to books I never would have gotten otherwise. Oh sure, the school library had books -- history books, geography books, science books -- but they didn't have The Giving Tree.

They didn't have Green Eggs and Ham or Mulberry Street. They didn't have The Five Chinese Brothers.

These books taught me that reading was for fun, not just for work. They made me laugh, and they made me want to read more. They nurtured in me a curiosity I might not have developed otherwise, growing up in the projects, where drug dealers cruised in their Cadillacs and other girls my age were prostituting themselves for crack. It took a lot of energy just to keep from becoming like them.

These books showed me that there was a world out there besides the one I saw every day. I don't know what would have become of me without them.

But wait – that gives me an idea. If I was uneducated, lacked curiosity and was completely ignorant of the world around me? Nowadays maybe I do know what would become of me after all:

I could be the President of the United States.

Oh but wait, that’s right: it’s not enough to be stupid to be President. You have to be rich, too.
©2001 Christian Livemore

The Cartoon Corner

This edition we're proud to showcase the cartoons of C.D. Norman.

The Day The Vote Was Swiped

(Sung to the tune of "American Pie."
With apologies to Don McLean)

A long, long time ago,
I can still remember how
That voting used to make me smile.
And I knew if I had my chance,
That I could make a difference,
And maybe we'd be happy for a while.
But this November made me shiver,
With every rumor, Jeb delivered.
Bad news for the Gore camp,
He couldn't take one more step.
I can't remember if I cried,
When I read his motion was denied,
But something touched me deep inside,
The day the vote was swiped.

(Chorus:)
"We tried," these Americans cried,
"Punched our ballots for Al Gore,
But our vote was denied!"
Jeb's good ole boys have thrown away their franchise
Singin' : "This'll be the vote that we swipe,
This'll be the vote that we swipe."

Did Bush have the Gore voters robbed?
Does George have faith Jeb did his job,
If his father tells him so?
So, how low can the Bushes go?
Can Harris save her worthless soul?
Well, we know that she's a tool for him,
'Cause we saw her campaigning for him.
They both hide from the news.
They both just can't let their boy lose.
Gore is fighting a system he can't buck.
Trying to fight through Jeb's courtroom muck.
But we knew Gore was out of luck,
The day the vote was swiped

We started singin'...
"We tried," these Americans cried,
"Punched our ballots for Al Gore,
But our vote was denied!"
Jeb's good ole boys have thrown away their franchise
Singin' : "This'll be the vote that we swipe,
This'll be the vote that we swipe."

Now, for four years, we'll be on our own
Bush will heed the Right agenda's tome
But, that's not how should have been.
When this joker ran, though he's just a lad
With handlers he borrowed from his dad
Bush just tried to fool you and me.
And while Gore was defending the truth,
Bush was stealing votes from the booth.
The courtroom was adjourned,
No verdict was returned.
And while Gore tried to give a spark,
The people protested in the park.
And we sang dirges in the dark,
The day the vote was swiped.

We were singin'...
"We tried," these Americans cried,
"Punched our ballots for Al Gore,
But our vote was denied!"
Jeb's good ole boys have thrown away their franchise
Singin' : "This'll be the vote that we swipe,
This'll be the vote that we swipe."

Helter, skelter, the questions pelt her.
Harris blows them off and finds shelter.
Now exposed and falling fast.
Landed flat on her ass.
Then Harris tried for a courtroom pass.
With the joker on the sidelines, passing cash.
Now the courtroom said the counts resume,
While minions sang Bush's marching tune.
We all got up to dance,
Oh, but we never got the chance.
Though the manual count was a done deal,
Bush supporters refused to yield.
Do you recall what was revealed,
The day the vote was swiped?

We started singin'...
"We tried," these Americans cried,
"Punched our ballots for Al Gore,
But our vote was denied!"
Jeb's good ole boys have thrown away their franchise
Singin' : "This'll be the vote that we swipe,
This'll be the vote that we swipe."

Oh, and the votes were all in one place,
The manual counting in a race,
With no time left to start again.
So, come on, Jeb be nimble, Jeb be quick,
Jeb Bush deliver his party's pick,
'Cause fraud is this Devil's only friend.
And as I watched him on the stage,
My hands were clenched in fists of rage.
No angel born in Hell,
Could break that Jeb Bush spell.
And as the flames climbed high into the night,
To illuminate the looney Right,
I saw Jeb Bush laughing with delight,
The day the vote was swiped.

He was singin.…
"We tried," these Americans cried,
"Punched our ballots for Al Gore,
But our vote was denied!"
Jeb's good ole boys have thrown away their franchise
Singin' : "This'll be the vote that we swipe,
This'll be the vote that we swipe."

I met a girl who sang the blues,
And I asked her for some happy news.
But she just smiled and turned away,
I went down to the grocery store,
Where I'd heard they had food years before.
But the man there said that I couldn't stay,
And in the streets the children screamed.
The people cried, and Bush donors schemed.
But not a word was spoken
The promis