On this date, I usually talk about labor issues, but this is ridiculous.

When I first heard the net rumors 36 hours ago about the odd circumstances surrounding the birth of Trig Palin, I was not planning to pay them much heed, let alone write about them. Even if the story was true, I reasoned, it was a case of a mother trying to protect her daughter from the consequences of a mistake, a family matter, and not something appropriate to political commentary.

But even disregarding the rumors that it was not Sarah Palin who was the mother of Trig Palin, but rather 16 year old Bristol Palin, daughter of Sarah, there were enough oddities and changes in the narrative, and enough political and legal implications, that I started paying closer attention.

The original narrative was that Sarah Palin, a staunch anti-abortionist, had four children, and had recently given birth to a fifth, knowing the child would have Down Syndrome, but sticking to her principles and having the baby nonetheless. Certainly, there is nothing in there to condemn, and her actions, whether ones you might have taken yourself, were praiseworthy.

Why I Wasn't At the Demonstration

If the name doesn’t ring a bell, Larry is the fellow who decided to hook a pipe lengthwise behind his pickup truck so it would drag along behind him like a little steamroller, and went blasting though all the crosses and other grave markers that Cindy Sheehan and the other anti-war vigilists had erected at the protest site. Of the 1,800 markers, 500 were knocked down, and 100 destroyed. Poor old Larry tried to make his escape after this bold action, but one of those pesky crosses flattened one of his tires, with the result that the local police caught him, red-bumpered, so to speak. (Fortunately, he didn’t actually injure anyone while doing this).

It consisted of this blond-headed limey wandering around downtown London and prattling on about the Illuminati and the New World Order and bank conspiracies and the like. But he had an engaging style, and sounded a bit more intelligent than your typical conspiracy nutter.

But then he started talking about how the Bushes and the Queen of England and others were all secretly extraterrestrial lizards, and how that was why there were so many statues of dragons scattered about London. At that point, I turned the TV off, and went and wrote an essay, successfully managing, once again, to not allege that the Queen of England had a problem with her tail dropping off when molested by a house cat. Well, after all, I have to have some sort of standards.

All Clinton was doing was asking for clarification of a question put to him during a court deposition, something any lawyer would tell his client he must do in a deposition if he isn’t crystal clear on what is being asked of him. All completely straightforward and legitimate.

Any notion that Clinton was being sneaky or devious by asking for that clarification belongs in the tall pile of utter bullshit that the right-wing likes to try to convert into truth through constant repetition, along with all the discredited Clinton "scandals" such as travelgate, Whitewater, and Paula Jones, or the infamous $200 haircut story.

One of the more moderate voices came from right winger John Leo, of the U.S. News and World Report. Unlike many of the right-to-life crowd, he actually admits that the autopsy proved there was "extraordinary damage" to Terri’s brain, and that it also showed that her husband, Michael, had not abused her. Mind you, this is one of the more moderate voices from the right.

The new Public Editor is Armando AcuZa, and he’s off to a good start in his job, which consists, in the main, of providing an independent analysis of how the Bee does its job as a newspaper for the benefit of the readers, while addressing questions, concerns and complaints that readers have about the Bee. He came at a difficult time for the newspaper, when its star columnist, Diana Griego Erwin, resigned after allegations arose over her methods used in providing quotes and background in her (usually) human-interest columns. The Bee stated that they had run spot checks on a dozen or so of her recent columns, attempting to track down sources she used, and in a dismayingly high percentage of such cases, were unable to find evidence that the people named actually existed.

You see, here’s the thing about suits, and it’s why having them own journalistic endeavors is such a grotesque travesty. They are timid. They are easily cowed by an uproar, by a bunch of complaints, by anything that can hurt profits. The media needs to be fair and fearless, and corporate suits are neither. Corporate suits can make a nation strong, but they can never make a nation great.

Timid.

That the free press in America has taken a catastrophic plunge over the past 15 years is pretty much beyond dispute. One can spend a few days reading the Washington Post and realize that the glory days of Woodward and Bernstein are long passed. One can read its crosstown rival, the Washington Times, and realize that some segments of the American press are no better than the once-ridiculed Pravda of the Soviet era.

It’s just that since I wrote about her last week, her case has mushroomed into a minor constitutional crisis. Just to give you some idea, the Miami Herald reported, somewhat incredulously, that Governor Jeb Bush thought that the Florida Supreme Court taking the Schiavo case under advisement on Thursday somehow created a window of opportunity in which he could legally send troops to forcibly wrest Schiavo from the Hospice and take her to a nearby hospital where doctors could be forced to reinsert her feeding tube. The police who are guarding Terri and the Hospice from all the chanting lunatics out front were lined up, prepared to face off against the governor’s cops. This confrontation, one unheard of in American history, was averted when the hospital made it clear that it would not treat Terri without an explicit court order, and Bush backed down.

The nuts out front of the hospice have been sending their own children in to be arrested. A seven year old girl, carrying a plastic glass of water to give to Terri, seemed to be under the impression that her husband should be in jail for "being bossy." I wonder if that poor kid’s parents, who cravenly hung back among their fellow crackpots, knew that if that kid had somehow gotten to Terri Schiavo and tried pouring the water in her mouth, Schiavo would have almost certainly drowned? If they did know, then horsewhipping them is too good for what they did to their poor daughter.

In the days of Clinton, it was a bit harder to write on, because the most arresting elements of the speech were visual. Clinton would stand there and orate, showing an amazing command of facts, figures, policies and repercussions. The Republicans would sit there with expressions on their faces like that of non-Norwegians being force-fed lutefisk. Rectally. Newt would visibly deflate. It was lots of fun.

I guess they’ve been trying to foist George Dub off as an intellectual who does a lot of reading and decision-making and other what you call your leadership stuff lately. This strikes me as one of Karl Rove’s more misbegotten ideas, and will implode the first time the kid strikes out on his own and ad libs within earshot of a reporter that he had that Edger Allan Poe fellow over for dinner last week and thought he was a real swell guy. At which point Rove will croak, "Nevermore."

He didn’t.

The Democratic Party has sold out. It has become the Washington Generals to the GOP's Harlem Globetrotters.

The Democrats know the GOP stole the 2000 election, and they seem to have concluded that if they just agreed to GOP demands to eliminate the paper trail, the GOP wouldn't steal the 2004 election. Idiots.

After a long and determined effort to get one senator, just one, to object to the certification of the electoral college vote based on the wide spread failures and irregularities in the Ohio vote, a total of one – count ‘em, one – Democrat did so. Credit where credit is due: Barbara Boxer has more courage than the rest of the Democrats in the Senate combined, and more character than the whole sorry lot in the Senate, even if you don’t bring down the curve by counting Dick Cheney.

Ed Lynch, a right wing columnist for Roanoke.com has the latest variation on such lists, and is honest enough to give credit for the format to Jeff Foxworthy.

His is better than most such lists (most are on the level of "You might be a liberal if you hate America, God, and apple pie"), and worth examining. Following my usual format, we’ll have his one liners, and my responses [I clipped his introduction and some, but not all, of his goofier claims about liberals]. The astute reader may be able to discern the difference between his claims and my responses.

You might be a liberal if …

On "The Daily Show" Jon Stewart showed Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf stating flatly that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake, followed a few minutes later by a rattled-looking Wolf Blitzer coming on to explain to his docile cable audience that he had been told that when Musharraf had called attacking Iraq a "mistake" he hadn’t meant it quite as "unconditionally" as it sounded. Protect that "access," Wolf; it’s your bread and butter, and I don’t guess those red leather pumps and matching red satin hotpants come cheap, do they? Especially with all the wear and tear of being a member of America’s fourth estate.

In Calhoun County, where 82.4% of voters are Democrat, Putsch won the vote by a 3,780 to 2,116 margin. There are less than a thousand Republicans in that county.

Bradford County: 61.4% Democrat, Putsch won 7,553 to 3,244.

In Dixie county, roughly 1,500 Republicans were able to deliver 4,433 votes for Putsch. The 7,700 Democrats only had 1,959.

I remember back about eight years ago, the Queen of the Weasels, noting the flood of GOP agitprop on the airwaves being dutifully repeated as news by a manipulated and compliant media, sighed, "I hate that they can do this and we don’t fire back at them."

Of course, that was 1996, and Clinton won anyway, since Bob Dole was busily running against Bob Dole. And the Democrats were fairly adept at their own agitprop, even without VRWC radio and easily suckered reporters. They managed to create the impression that Bob Dole’s running mate, or his father, was Newt Gingrich.

It was just that on Usenet, a right winger posted one of those "us vs. them" things that are so popular with both sides. This one (and I have no idea who "Immortalist" is, or if he was the author or not) was written just well enough to draw a response from me.

In the interests of openness, the responses to the "Republicans believe" segments are, with grammatical editing, as I wrote when I responded to the post. The responses to "Democrats believe" were added after the fact.

Just the last claim, based on the right wing fabrication that Gore said he invented the internet, shows that Miller was an uninformed hack whose "analysis" was no more legitimate than those of fellow revilers Charles Krauthammer ("Al Gore is off his lithium") and Rush Limbaugh.

I was pretty disgusted with the VRWC for the "Al Gore is crazy" campaign, and revolted that a licensed physician would lend his name to such a shoddy undertaking.

This was while Kerry was getting shot at, saving lives, and generally being a hero.

Now, Cheney – the same Cheney who spent much of the past three years cowering in bunkers in undisclosed locations – has declared that Kerry is ill-suited to lead America at these times of challenge. Folks, for Cheney to say Kerry is ill-suited to lead America in a time of war is like Homer Simpson saying that Steven Hawking is weak on math, or Peewee Herman saying that Randy Johnson throws like a girl.

"First Amendment Zones," the Orwellian name for the place where free protest is incarcerated, have been a trademark of this administration, and this brittle, cowardly, sanctimonious president. I first mentioned them in an essay in 2001, identifying them as actually being Second amendment zones, set up because they were so worried Putsch might get shot by his adoring fans.

But we didn’t have Second Amendment Zones in 1964, or in any of the years subsequent to that and before 2001, despite the fact that we had plenty of violent loons with guns who felt that shooting a president could solve their personal problems. Didn’t need them until 2001, nine months before 9/11.

Now that he’s officially dead, I imagine there will be schemes where the GOP will offer cash prizes to people who name their children "Ronald Wilson" ("But Mom, I’ve been Fred for 42 years. I don’t WANT to change my name!") and putting Reagan’s face on the flag and gawd knows what else.

It seems like another jarring revelation, another major setback, more bad news seems to be coming out on an hourly basis. It’s nearly impossible to keep track.

Today, the junta wasn’t even trying to deal with the ramifications of Woodward’s new book. The central figure in the book is Colin Powell, who was brutally frank in discussing his doubts and reservations about the whole Iraq adventure going back to November of 2001. They sent Condi out to protest some of the milder charges contained in Woodward’s book, but let’s face it: nobody is listening to her any more. The fiasco at the 9/11 commission pretty much finished off her credibility. Woodward’s book comes on the heels of the statement by the British ambassador to America that Putsch was plotting to attack Iraq days after 9/11. That in turn comes days after Clarke’s testimony before the 9/11 panel, which in turn came on the heels of his book, which contained damaging information, which in turn came right after Kevin Phillips’ book which cast severe doubt, not only on Putsch’s priorities, but his very loyalty to America.

I looked him right in the eye and asked, "Are things in Washington as bad as they appear?"

My personal favorite was a quote from Richard Clarke’s letter of resignation, dated January 20, 2003: "It has been an enormous privilege to serve you these last 24 months. I will always remember the courage, determination, calm, and leadership you demonstrated on September 11^th."

Except, to my surprise, it didn’t. The sense of revulsion and disgust and outrage was pretty close to universal, and Republicans as well as Democrats were attacking Coulter for her vile words. I looked at various editorials, all saying pretty much the same things I wanted to say, and realized that I wasn’t going to say anything that wasn’t obvious and redundant. She’s a vicious, nasty bitch who brought shame and disgrace down upon her head and the heads of those who support her. How could anyone say a man was "lucky" for losing three limbs while in the service of his country? Even more appalling were the bare-faced lies that accompanied that paragraph; that he was picking up a grenade while on a beer run, not anywhere near a combat zone, and if it had happened at Fort Dix instead, he would be no hero.

Thus it was that the administration released George W. Putsch’s military records at 5:25 on a Friday afternoon, just 24 hours after refusing to commit to a release of the medical records any time soon.

At first, everyone thought it was just another incredibly blatant and bare-faced lie from an administration that has made an art form, not to mention a national policy, of blatant and bare-faced lies.

Hours after retired chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay came out and said that he no longer believed that Iraq had stockpiles of hidden weapons of mass destruction, a curious thing happened.

On Usenet, we have a group of refugees from Newsmax and the GOP who live for nothing but to spin everything they can Putsch’s way. One of my readers, Mad Cat, ingeniously named this group "The Chimp Pimps," and I do wish he would stop coming up with lines like that when I’m sipping my morning coffee. This keyboard is shot.

Just when you thought the right wing and their fearless leader, that Yellow Pose of Texas, George W. Fustercluck of the White Feather, couldn’t get any dumber, they find a way.

In the aftermath of the sensational charges in Ron Suskind’s book, "The Price of Loyalty" that Paul O’Neill saw Putsch as little more than a potted plant, Putsch, apparently uncued, told the complaisant media that the allegation that they were planning an attack on Iraq from Day One following the SC coup was no big deal, since Clinton was doing the same thing. Clinton, too, was for "regime change," Putsch announced grandly, or at least coherently.

Leaving aside the obvious tacit admission inherent in that particular statement, there was the question that none of the cringing dogs in the White House Press was willing to ask: "Did Clinton’s plans for regime change involve attacking, invading, and then occupying Iraq, killing over ten thousand people in the process and leaving our troops to be slowly bled dry by a home-grown resistance movement?"

The reason is that the numbers surrounding the employed labor force show, once and for all, what a load of pure hooey the "unemployment rate" really is.

Back at the end of September, CBS also asked its respondents, "Do you have confidence in George W. Bush's ability to deal wisely with an international crisis, or are you uneasy about his approach?" Putsch was trailing in that one by a 45-50 margin, and given the large number of US casualties and the damning CIA report that declared that the Resistance in Iraq had grown to an estimated 50,000, and the US stood to completely lose control (the actual phrase the CIA used) of the situation, it’s a wonder it wasn’t lower. Indeed, the White House realized that his domestic support threatened to crumble over that as casualties soared to well over 400 dead and at least 7,000 injured or otherwise disabled in the war. (That "otherwise disabled," consisting of thousands of troops with symptoms that sound suspiciously like they inhaled depleted uranium, may yet be the biggest lingering afterstory of the war.)

Private Jessica Lynch could have quite easily have smiled and waved to the cameras and let the money roll in, knowing that in a few months, public attention would have moved on and her life would revert to normal, or at least as normal as a retired media-created hero can expect to have.

It wouldn’t be a bad life. She would start out with a nice big grubstake that she could use to buy a house and a new car and plough the rest into a retirement fund and have a fairly comfortable life. And when she’s recognized, she can look forward to deferential cops not giving her a ticket for speeding, free meals at restaurants, and the occasional request to come to a junior high and give a lecture on patriotism. Not bad for a girl who joined the army only because she couldn’t get a job at the local supermarket and had to do SOMETHING.

But the fun is only beginning. Antonin Scalia, the Negative Stereotype of the Supreme Court, has recused himself. It was a given that Scaly was going to vote against Newdow no matter what, and the fact that he was foolish enough to give speeches on the Newdow case last winter meant that he pretty much had to recuse himself. The Court is trying to regain the legitimacy it lost in the Bush vs. Gore decision, and having Scaly sit in judgment on a case he had already tried in the press would have just made a bad situation even worse.

BC, of course, wasn’t alone. Liberals everywhere have hoped that someone would plant a creme pie in Radio Gasbag’s smug face, just as karmic response to all the demagoguery and attacks on the most powerless and downtrodden members of society by that sleek neo-fascist clown.

Limbaugh, in a cynical ploy by Disney/ABC/ESPN, had been hired as a "color commentator" for a football show on the sports network. Limbaugh knows little about football, but a lot of the droolers who listen religiously to his three hour daily rants on the radio are also football fanatics (funny how that works) and ESPN reasoned that a little of the Limbaugh sneers would boost the ratings. And in fact, it did, by 10%. Of course, that meant the market share went from minuscule all the way up to teeny-weeny, but that meant profits for Disney, and that was all that really mattered.

No President, not even Ronald Reagan, willingly clung to a economic model that so clearly showed economic catastrophe for the country. We’ve seen an eight-trillion turnaround in the national budgetary picture for the next eight years or so, from a $5 trillion surplus to a $3 trillion deficit, and that’s not even counting the immense costs of our little adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Oh, the circus atmosphere is still there; along with the porn star and the sleazy magazine publisher and the showbiz midget and all of that, there are a hundred or so dogged, earnest people striving to be heard on a variety of issues ranging from medical care to legalization of ferrets. But it’s shifted very much to the back burner.

As the debate last night made clear, there are six major candidates, plus Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnie is limping along on name recognition, but it’s become clear that his campaign is an utter fiasco, and his role in this election is that of being the biggest clown.

Well, it’s pretty crappy. Not just the unemployment rates. Those exemplify pretty crappy, of course. Officially, it’s around 6.3%, and unofficially (counting the people who have given up looking for work and whose benefits have expired) it’s somewhere around 10.5%. It isn’t just the pay, which is lagging further and further behind the increases the top 1% of wage earners see. Although with discretionary income falling each year, many west European nations have caught or surpassed us. (Yes, Americans have higher wages and lower taxes than their European counterparts, but said counterparts don’t have to deal with such privatized taxes as health care, pensions, higher education, and so on.)

There are different theories about who was responsible for the car bombing, of course. The FBI (and would someone explain just what the HELL the FBI is doing in Baghdad) has confidently pronounced that the bomb was a Soviet model, and stated it belonged to Saddam. Paul Bremer, viceroy of Baghdad, claimed it was al Qaida. American puppet Ahmad Chalabi thinks the deed was done by Iraqi Ansar al-Islam, which is a loose coalition of Moslems who aren’t either Ba’athists (Saddam’s people) or al Qaida, but who disapprove of American presence in Iraq on general principles.

It was a real popular game. Families would get extra blanks so the kids could play, and would be riveted to the television and cheering or groaning as the numbers changed.

What were they betting on?

The number of highway auto accident deaths during the three day holiday period.

Gosh, that’s so terribly unfair of the Democrats. I mean, aside from the fact that the weapons didn’t, er, quite exist, actually, and aside from the fact we’re pretty much stuck in Iraq, with no clearly defined goals and no exit strategy, and the poor bastards who went over there because Putsch told them it was the right thing to do can only hope they don’t get taken out by a road bomb.

The Republicans claim the ad is misleading because it forgets to mention that the intelligence on the so-called "Niger memo" which claimed Saddam was attempting to buy yellowcake uranium radioactives to make into nuclear weapons came from British intelligence. It’s not Putsch’s fault that he’s an incompetent fuck up; his buddy Tony gave him bad info, is all.

At which point Arnie slapped his fingers on his forehead, grinned sheepishly, and said. "Dis iz zo embarrassing; I cannot think of the name of the governor of California."

On one level, I could relate. Gray Davis isn’t the most memorable person ever to hold the governor’s chair. I can’t remember bad movies I’ve seen, like the one where Arnie acts like a robot. What was that called?

But kids are kids, and the behavioral patterns and social/ecological niches were pretty much the same everywhere I lived. You had your brains, and your jocks, and your bullies, and your wimps. There was more to it then that, but those four genres of childhood were usually the easiest to spot, often within minutes. Even in the English preparatory school system where everyone wore uniforms and came from roughly the same social class, those types were easy to spot.

And a constant among all those places was the most irritating one of all, the wimp who wanted to be a bully. Other kids would tease him, and he would immediately burst into tears, and in a full rage, declare that he was going to tell, and his dad or big brother or some other protector, real or imagined, would come and make them all sorry they had made fun of him. Only rarely did such an authority figure turn up, and usually if that happened, everyone faded into the woodwork until the threat went away, whereupon everyone would emerge and pummel the wimp.

And they struck down the sodomy laws on 14^th amendment grounds and to preserve the right to privacy. On this one, they didn’t just ignore stare decisis; they reversed themselves. (They did the same partially in another case, backing away from the lunatic assumption that campaign contributions were free speech.)

OK, I ‘ve got a higher opinion of the American people than Mencken does. They aren’t all serfs and goose-steppers.

In addition to the liberations we had two weeks ago, we liberated a bunch more people in a town called Fallujah over the past two days. On the first day, we liberated either 13 (the US military count) or 17 (what the local hospital claimed). The US media, always willing to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of sounding authoritative, split the difference and declared the toll to be 15.

In addition to those liberated, an additional 75 were reminded that you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs.

Then the next day, two more got liberated, apparently for complaining about the liberation exercises of the day before, and 15 more were given omelet recipes.

It’s not unusual to encounter quotes such as "The Islamic community has a cancer growing inside it, which hates Jews, hates freedom, and hates Western Society. The disease of Islam must be rectified. It’s kill or be killed."

Charming, is it not? The fruitloop who said that also came up with these howlers: "Because of the peace movement, we had the Holocaust," and "The Democratic Party is keeping the Ku Klux Klan alive, and if we’d listened to Southern Democrats who wanted peace in the Civil War, we’d still have slavery."

Of course, I’m factoring in a few extra things. For example, I’m assuming that the economy will grow by 4% next year, so my business will grow accordingly. I’m also assuming that income for all my clients will ALSO increase by 4% and they will spend a proportionate amount on me. I’m also assuming that the house will appreciate by at least 4%, and adding that to my income. But housing went up an extra 10% in our area last year, so maybe I better make that 14%.

Finally, I’m assuming that I’ll spend $10,000 this year on the lottery. While it would be reckless to assume that I will actually win any particular amount, I happen to know that the lottery pays off at the rate of 38%, and since the money that is going into the lottery is investment toward future growth, I don’t have to list it among my expenses, but can assume that the $3,800 the odds say I’ll get back can be counted in my expected income.

Maybe I should invest $50,000 in the lottery. Then I could retire two or three years earlier.

I get considerable feedback on the essays I write, and a surprisingly large majority of it is positive. I might joke that I wish I was a little old lady so the right wing would hate me as much as they seem to hate Helen Thomas and Granny D, but the fact is that like anyone, I like being praised more than I like being damned.

So you should probably take it with a grain of salt when I say that people who like my essays tend to be articulate, thoughtful, pleasant people with lively curiosity and good table manners, while people who don’t like my essays tend to be knuckle-dragging, mouth-breathing hirsute oafs who fantasize that some day, Rush Limbaugh and Britney Spears will be married and produce a race of superior beings who will all look like Ollie North.

But I might be biased on the matter.

The English tabloid, the Mirror, is reporting that Putsch was planning to address the Parliament of the European Union in order to try to shore up some support for his proposed attack on Iraq, but that the idea was scuttled when the European Union refused to guarantee that Putsch would get a standing ovation from Parliament members when he strode in to begin his speech.

This weekend was different. No howling mobs, no cities in flames, no shots being fired. And we can all take solace in the fact that this time around, Nixon is still dead. The man most responsible for turning American politics into the vicious reactionary circus we see today is dead. There’s that, at least.

There were a few tattered remnants of old-style conservatism left in the GOP in the late 90s. They still claimed to stand for state’s rights, small unobtrusive government, and a balanced budget, and often fought for constitutional amendments and laws that would uphold such notions.

Well, maybe not friends. Allies. That’s a lot more accurate. Allies. Figure that after this is over, we’ll go back to tearing each others’ throats out. But for now, we have a common cause. George has managed to keep one campaign slogan: he is a uniter, not a divider. EVERYBODY’S getting pissed at him.

So we have new allies.

I got my first inkling of this during the MLK day rally last week when I spotted a cop giving the demonstrators a genial wave. I was in peace protests in the 60s, and back then, if a cop was moving a hand in your direction, it was usually to toss a tear gas grenade at you. The best you could hope for was that they would settle for just glaring at you from behind their riot shields. Smiles and friendly nods were definitely not the order of the day. It was about then that cops took up wearing flag patches on their shoulders, as a way of saying THEY were the "real Americans." They didn’t like long haired hippie freaks, and we didn’t like pigs. It made for a difficult relationship. Maybe I’m getting old, but I think I like the new relationship better. For one thing, it greatly reduces my chances of getting a concussion.

"It Hasn't Even Happened Yet"

Tony Snow, Rush Limbaugh clone and self-professed "journalist" for Faux News, was in quite a snit.

Deriding in advance the peace demonstrations planned to coincide with Martin Luther King day, he snorted, "All this for a war that hasn’t even happened yet."

The thought, as usual, wasn’t original to him. Right wing announcers at Faux were all using the same phrase. One of my readers reported that the previous night, Faux had admitted that there were to be peace rallies the next day, and illustrated the piece with shots of a demonstration, presumably somewhere in the middle east, which showed various burnoosed types waving "Death to America" signs.

Certainly, the lie was an egregious one. But politicians often tell whoppers that you would think would cause Cletus the Slack-Jawed Yokel to say, "Hay, now jus’ wait here one minit..." But between our docile corporate media and a snoozing public, guys like Lott get away with those and skate on down the road. It’s a wonder to behold.

She either didn’t know, or didn’t care, that the phrase originally was spoken by George W., who isn’t exactly what most people would consider a liberal.

But she is at her best – if that’s the word for it – when the subject of race comes up. Especially when it’s race and crime. And most especially when it’s race, and crime against white women.

A Rush to Judgment

Senator Tom Daschle criticized the tone taken by talk show hosts, Rush Limbaugh in particular, as having "a very shrill edge" that had led to a dramatic increase on threats among people in public life. Daschle said, "What happens when Rush Limbaugh attacks those of us in public life is that people aren't satisfied just to listen. They want to act because they get emotionally invested. And so, you know, the threats to those of us in public life go up dramatically, on our families and on us, in a way that's very disconcerting."

Now, if you take a large flock of chicken, and lob a lit cherry bomb into the middle of the flock, the response isn’t going to consist of the lead rooster looking up and politely asking if one of the hens has gas.

Nobody along the fringes of the American political right asked if anyone was suffering from gas.

"We must draw clear distinctions between our vision of the future and the extreme policies put forward by the Republicans. We cannot allow Republicans to pretend they share our values and then legislate against those values without consequence.

"As Minority leader, I will highlight those differences and challenge Republicans to match their words against their deeds. With our Members, we will carry this new resolve to Democrats across the country for the benefit of the American people."

With those words, 61 year old Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Congresswoman representing much of San Francisco, announced that she would run to succeed Dick Gephardt as House Minority Leader.

The other day, the actor Woody Harrelson wrote a piece for the Guardian entitled "I’m an American tired of American lies." The piece, a protest of American and British schemes to attaq Iraq, is well-written and thoughtful. It’s not particularly partisan, either: Harrelson takes time to condemn Clinton for his embargo of humanitarian aid in Sarejevo. He’s disgusted by war, and in particular the tawdry, vicious, and mean reasons that lie behind our proposed mugging of Iraq.

Of course, the American right, cowardly, vicious, and sanctimonious beyond mere human fault, will punish him forever for speaking his piece. They disparage and smear any celebrity who speaks out against any of their pet projects, whether it’s the mugging of Iraq or staging a coup against the country. Barbra Streisand is hissed at, and people spit at the mention of her name for having the temerity to suggest that the Democrats fight for what is rightfully theirs. Alec Baldwin is accosted by a drunken bozo at a Laker game and has beer poured on him because his girlfriend speculated that he might leave the country if Putsch was elected. (If Baldwin ever did actually say such a thing, he isn’t going back on his vow; Putsch wasn’t elected).

Greedy, Stupid Bastards

A little over a year ago, just prior to 9/11, the right wing had a cause celebre that, they claimed, pitted virtuous, hard-working all-American farm families against that inhuman and uncaring behemoth, the government.

Oh, many the crocodile tear was shed on the poor victims of the Klamath, betrayed by Washington bureaucrats who put fish ahead of people. Flags were waved, hymns were sung, and Radio Gasbag orated about how this was the fault of Clinton, and all the Little Gasbags bellowed their assent.

Behind all the prayers and patriotism were a bunch of greedy, stupid bastards who were doing nothing more than demanding something they hadn’t done anything to earn, and were prepared to take it by coercion or force. The water they claimed as theirs was, by a long-standing treaty, the property of the tribes that fished downstream from the arid lands on which the farmers squatted. It didn’t stop them from loudly demanding they had it by non-existent "right," going so far as to bust open stopcocks to let water flow to their lands while cowardly and ineffectual local officials cowered in the background.

 The dead will still be just as dead, and you won’t benefit from it.  The families of the dead won’t benefit from it. The country won’t benefit from it.  Nobody will, except the networks, which will enjoy a low cost day of high ratings. Come join Cookie and Bret and Geraldo and Sam and sob convulsively as they deliver themselves of sonorous vapidities about how We’ve All Changed or how the nation Has Changed or how Putsch Needs Changing or whatever.

 If you’re like me, though, you’ll think about it.  There won’t be anything unusual there; since if you’re like me, you’ve thought about it at least once every day since it happened.

Back around 1980, when BBSes -the local ASCII equivalents of Usenet - first showed up, extremists in the White Power and Nazi movements were delighted. At last, they had a cheap and - they thought - effective method of getting their message out to the masses. They were convinced that only the ignorance of the sheep prevented Hitler's vision from becoming America's future.

This caused considerable consternation. It was pretty horrific to contemplate that the computer - the cutting edge of humanity's technology and ingenuity, and the new incredible frontier in communication - was being perverted to such ends. More than one person was struck by the juxtaposition of brilliance and vileness.

Many of us quickly realized the best thing to do about the hate mongers was to let them put up their own boards and propagate to their heart's content.

It was yet another glimpse into the awful vacuity of the mind of George W.

Voice husky with conviction, eyes brimming with compassion and moral outrage, George paused in mid golf game and told the cameras, "I call upon all nations to do everything they can to stop these terrorist killers," Mr. Bush said on the first green of Cape Arundel, at 6:15
a.m. "Thank you. Now watch this drive."

When Putsch said, during the campaign, that he was “a uniter, not a divider”, most of us figured that, like most of the irritating mindless little slogans he used during his campaign and ever since, this one was a bare-faced lie.

But now we have a situation where the country is united, and we didn’t even have to lose 3,000 innocent lives to get there. Of course, we’re ALSO in a situation where a vice president, facing investigation by the SEC for insider trading, threatens to throw CEOs in jail and the market goes up 450 points, so maybe these aren’t real normal times.

But what has us united besides laughter at Cheney’s efforts to crack down on corporate crime?

The RNC fax machines spit out an imaginative one last week. No longer were the Palestinian suicide bombers to be referred to as "Palestinian suicide bombers." They were to be referred to as "homicide bombers" and all the minnows on the right dutifully veered as one and started using this ridiculous new phrase.

Some genius thought that since the intent of the bombers was to kill Israelis, they should be called homicide bombers. That way, they could be simply dismissed as being cowardly criminals, and nobody, particularly Israel, would have to deal with the embarrassment of explaining why they are so fiercely hated that young women and children are willing to give their lives in the hopes of killing some Israelis.

With stories breaking left and right on such items as the Phoenix memo and further disclosures of improper connections between the administration and Enron, and news reporters becoming openly skeptical of the administration, it would be nice to believe that the media has finally woken up and seen the light and is doing its job.

Yes, that would be nice.

Don't count on it.

Media owners around the country have to be biting their lips and wondering what they can do about all these stories, too big to ignore, but that are oh, so damaging to this sugar daddy administration that lives only to make corporate dreams come true.

In a CNN interview that was played down by CNN itself but reported in the Guardian and other free overseas press, Sen. Bob Graham, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee gave a pessimistic assessment regarding America's ability to keep terrorists out.

He referred to intelligence reports that said that 25 "extremists" had entered the United States between late April and May 15th. "(They) jumped on ships outside the United States, hid in the container cargoes until they got to the United States and then disembarked and they've been lost in the American population,'' he said.

Senator Graham mentioned that the problem was a "gap" – that was the word used – in our security in our seaports. It seems that each year, six million containers are unloaded from 7,500 ships, and customs actually inspects 2% of those six million containers.

David Brock’s book, "Blinded by the Right" would be right at home on the shelves of a cult awareness network support group. Such outfits, which strive to rescue people from the emotional and mental slavery of cults such as the Moonies, the Scientologists, and the thousands of other, smaller ones, like to talk about people who have found their way clear.

Unlike cults, these groups don’t try to claim responsibility, although if there are cases where they clearly helped, they don’t mind getting credit.

No, their favorite type of story is that of the cult member who figures it out and leaves. Were it not that way, that of independent thought and self-reliance prevailing over emotional dependence, were it just one set of values luring someone from another set of values, then it would be just two competing cults.

Normally, watching House deliberations on Cspan has all the drama and excitement of watching a cat sleep. A few twitches, the faint creaks of metabolism, and all you end up with after a few hours is that you and the cat are both older, with nothing to show for it. The House doesn’t even have fur and a purr. You might as well go mountain climbing in Iowa.

Of course, when the House isn’t boring, it tends to be very very not-boring. Whenever you get 435 people together who tend toward the sleazy and crafty, and tell them they have to set a moral example for the television audience, you are going to get some entertaining results.

I have a friend who is something of a conspiracy buff. Whenever we got together, he tells me about the latest he had gotten from the semi-underground system of conspiracy buffs who are forever passing along badly-made xeroxes of the latest, and I hear amusing, if far-fetched stories.

The biblical conspiracy ones were usually the best. The real reason the Pharoah let the Israelites go was because he was secretly Jewish. Jesus spent 12 years preaching and spreading "true Christianity" in Britain between 17 AD and 29 AD before returning to the middle east -or- Jesus resurrected, and after a month, went to France and then England. Sir Francis Bacon and Thomas Jefferson (or his brother Andrew) were reincarnations of Jesus. And so on.

You know, I do believe the Republicans are finally starting to realize that they can’t just bluster and bluff their way out of avoiding political fallout from Enron.

There were a couple of reports today that lead me to that conclusion, one report being a major shift in political stance in the House, and the other, a slip of the tongue by a White House spokesman.

In the House, the Dems brought up the issue of campaign finance reform, and twenty Republicans jumped ship and voted to hold debate on the McCain-Feingold bill, known in the House as Shays-Meehan. Hastert and DeLay had successfully managed to block consideration of that bill last July, effectively killing Campaign Finance Reform, it was thought, for this election cycle.

I already felt a little sorry for Buddy before the accident even happened. While I’m sure the Clintons loved him and treated him well, he was a presidential pet, and that’s a tough existence for any animal.

Libertarians are a lot like liberals when it comes to social issues. Although libertarians like to pretend that liberals aren’t for freedom of speech, the right to own property, freedom of religion and freedom from oppressive government, the fact is we share all those traits in common.

Where the trouble begins is that libertarians believe that government, and government only, is the crux of power in a society, and that it can be abused. That government is a crux of power and can be abused is beyond question, of course, but where the libertarian philosophy falls apart is in the faith that should government be severely curtailed or even removed altogether, no other faction will move in to replace it, and society will consist of virtuous anarchists, each content to leave the others all alone.

Anyone familiar with my essays knows that for some time, I have considered the mainstream American media -CNN, Faux, the television networks, and so on -to be corporate disgraces to journalism, interested only in ratings and not in dispensing information, and hopelessly corrupted by their corporate overlords.

Indeed, in the companion news service, the large majority of the news items I run are from foreign sources–England’s Guardian, for instance, or the Toronto Globe and Mail, or even Pravda. There’s few Americans over the age of forty who would have ever guessed that Pravda might tell us more about what is happening in America than the New York Times, but here we are.

I don’t watch Bill Maher’s "Politically Incorrect". In fact, before this week’s flap, my ignorance of the show was so profound that I was spelling the host’s name as "Meyer".

It’s not that I’ve anything against the show, mind you. I just don’t watch the gasbag shows, with the occasional exception of the Lehrer Newshour. I can learn more about what’s going on in the world from an hour of reading the newspaper, or browsing independent media websites, than I’m likely to get from watching overpaid correspondents shout at each other. Gasbag shows just don’t do anything for me. And if I’m knowledgeable in politics (my level of knowledge varies proportionately with the degree to which the reader agrees with me) it’s because I don’t watch those shows, not because I do. But I know the right wingers watch them religiously, which is often a part of their problem.

There’s a fellow who runs a website that is described as "liberal humor", and it’s probably one of the most entertaining sites on the web. It’s brash, informed, and usually truly hilarious. It’s value can be ascertained by the amount of time and effort (considerable) right wingers put into vilifying it.

But I was always a little bit puzzled because the guy, while championing Clinton and blasting Republicans up one side and down the other, would fly into rages over two things: Democratic Leaders who don’t stand up to the right, and leftists who were discouraged by the Democratic Party’s timidity and who supported the Greens or other leftist groups.

One of the more enduring myths among the far right in America is that Hitler’s National Socialist Party was, because it had the name "Socialist" in it, leftist. This is a bit like arguing that the Republican Party and Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard are the same thing because they are both Republicans.

The notion was invented by some hack GOP writer in the 1980s, and is often pushed, not just by the John Birchers, but by Rush Limbaugh, Pat Buchanan, and everyone else who has a vested interest in trying to blame "the other side" for Hitler, and the intellectual dishonesty to make the attempt.

To a lot of right wing types, the media is this vast liberal conspiracy that is out to burn their bibles, eat their children, and impregnate their dogs. They demonstrate the truth of this by noting that the media will, in the event that anyone disagrees with the Republican Party or the Christian Coalition, actually say in public what the disagreement is all about, rather than merely calling for the death penalty for the offending party.

Anything reported in the media that isn’t straight off a Republican National Committee fax machine is considered liberal. Just the mere fact that they can call Fox "fair and balanced" because nearly 10% of its political guests are Democrats should pretty much show where these people are coming from.

Putsch was giving a speech. CNN, always willing to help sell the surrogate-in-chief to the American public, was covering the speech.

So far, so normal. Putsch babbles, and CNN positions the cameras at angles where the strings won’t show. Just another day in Corporate America.

But then the word came in: the Big Dog was opening his office in Harlem.

Propping up the Faux-President is on thing, but ratings are ratings. William Jefferson Clinton, the most popular politician in America and America’s last elected President, the Big Dog, translates to ratings.

CNN broke away from Putsch’s speech, literally in mid syllable, and went to Harlem.

Conservatives are fearful, mistrusting, angry, bitter and afraid because they, too, believe most people are pretty much like themselves.

Cheer up, right wingers! Remember, when it’s raining crap, make crapola! Always look on the Brock side of life!

The embarrassments and setbacks you suffer now for all your little lies and malice have just been supplanted by attention focused on your major lies and malice. Perhaps the public won’t notice that behind your cynical and corrupt exterior lies a heart that is also cynical and corrupt.

Brendan Nyhan  at Spinsanity wrote on the 4^th of June, "Bush's seemingly innocuous campaign promise to "change the tone" in Washington has proven to be a powerful rhetorical weapon, helping suppress criticism while portraying the President as above the fray."

Of course, it was true. Armed with a well-funded and vicious propaganda machine, Putsch’s White House could take the seeming high road, making it possible for Ari Fleischer to smile at reporters and in response to frantic questioning about vandalism committed against the White House, look coy and say they were looking into it, but that they really wanted to just put it behind us and change the tone in Washington.

The story was handled the way Republicans handle most such smears, with lower-level staffers leaking lurid gossip to the more rabid mouthpieces of the right wing propaganda machine, the Matt Drudges and Rush Limbaughs and Faux News ("We distort, you deride"). When the frenzy had reached sufficiently epic proportions, Ari finally deigned to comment on it with his little constipated smile, and the overly coy and disingenuous remark that the White House wasn’t going to comment on the trashing, but wanted to "put it behind us" – as if Republicans ever passed up an opportunity to stick it to the Dems.

For those conservatives and libertarians who opposed federal empowerments either because of an honest belief in states’ rights, individual rights, or just general mistrust of government, these must be head-scratching times.

Take this week, for instance. The Supreme Court ruled on state referendums legalizing marijuana for medical use, striking that argument down by an 8-0 vote. The Court was so sure of its standing that it let the Court Jester, Clarence Thomas, write for the body in the unanimous decision. Clarabelle wrote, "In the case of the Controlled Substances Act, the statute reflects a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception(outside the confines of a government_approved research project)." In other words, only the federal government may determine the medical efficacy of marijuana. Not the states, not the medical community, not the scientific community. Only a bunch of half-wits who ran for office on campaign slogans of promising to "get tough on drugs" can decide that.

One of the big advantages the right has in casual discussion is that they aren’t generally limited to factual or rational statements. This means they can say any damfool thing that pops into their empty little heads, and they do.

Take Christine Whitman, the pathetic woman in charge of Putsch’s EPA. She has the ludicrous task of appearing "green" in an administration that is rabidly pro-oil, pro-nuke, pro-development. So she’s taken up wearing big wooly aprés-ski sweaters and yapping about how she just luuuvves all those trees and stuff they got there in those undeveloped areas.

Every so often, I get a spate of mail from right wing sorts, and it’s the usual collection of memes (fractional social opinions) grown and nurtured by the propagandists of the right wing and fed to their mindless followers. "Liberal media". "Clinton scandals". "Gore tried to steal the election". "Liberals just want to tax and spend". And of course, "Welfare is racist because it degrades and controls the recipients, who are black"

That last one showed up a couple of dozen times in one message I got this past week from a particularly nutty right winger, and of course, it’s a meaningless construct, just one of those things that Limbaugh tells his followers to always accuse liberals of because it drives them nuts.

On Monday, April 9^th, the Sacramento Bee, in an editorial, wagged its collective Op-Ed finger at Dan Rather and chided him for attending a fund-raiser for the Democratic Party. Surely, the Bee remonstrated, Rather had to see that by attending such a function, even unknowingly, would severely impact his credibility as a journalist. Tch, tch.

Left unmentioned in the same edition was a story that broke two days before. Leon County Circuit Court Judge N. Sanders Sauls, who delivered an opinion that crippled Al Gore’s election hopes in the contested Florida tally, had accepted an invitation to appear as a co-star with Florida Secretary of State Kathleen Harris at a June rally to be put on by the ultra-right-wing internet website, http://www.FreeRepublic.com.

For right wingers, it’s a time for biting lips and looking shifty, just they way they imagined that man they so admired, Bill Clinton, to be.

Gone, for the far right, are the halcyon days when they could bitterly rant about how Bill Clinton promised a middle class tax break, but then he lied! Or he wagged his finger at us and denied schtupping Monica Lewinsky! Remember the outrage when we would tiredly say that we didn’t care if he was boffing an intern, as long as he wasn’t lying to us about anything important? Right wingers were apoplectic that we didn’t share their apoplexy!

Now we have George W. Bush, who is not only breaking campaign promises, but breaking them at a rate never before seen in the undemanding arena of American politics. In just a few short weeks, he’s broken the following promises:

The Republicans have another assault on working Americans going in the form of a highly regressive tax cut that continues the GOP drive to make Americans employees instead of citizens.

Putsch’s tax scheme is hardly the first of its kind; Republicans have been trying to feed the rich ever since Reagan floated to the top in 1980. That one resulted in massive deficits, and stripped middle and lower classes of much of their influence in the government.

It’s the funniest damn thing about right wingers.

They love to talk about how everyone should be self-reliant and take pride in themselves, and resist temptation. There’s a lot of talk about honor and duty, and not making excuses. Right and wrong are black and white, easily discernable, and anyone who chooses wrong should be met with swift and summary punishment. There’s even one radio gasbag of the right, a self-styled counselor calling herself "Dr. Laura" who routinely castigates people who call her for advice for needing to ask advice in the first place. She shrieks that they should think for themselves, and they all chorus, "Yes, we must think for ourselves." It’s like that Monty Python movie, Life of Brian. (Many years ago, in the earliest days of BBSes, when modems were 300 baud, one fellow and I had a fake advice area called "Ask your Aunties". We played the role of two demented and vicious old biddies, Auntie Zepp and Auntie Derek, who would sadistically rip into our correspondents for such moral failings as writing us, asking for advice. Derek and I had a falling out and went separate ways, which is a great pity. Knowing what I know now, if we had stuck with that enterprise, and found a few minority groups to vilify, we would be millionaires today).

From there, Nordlinger's litany follows a familiar course. First he discusses the number of charges made against Clinton. Then he talks about those who warned that unless Clinton were utterly destroyed, "...anything short of an abject helicopter lift-off from the South Lawn" would allow Clinton to come back to gloat. Nordlinger felt that the national moral bankruptcy would mean people would support Clinton for this. Then he talked about how Clinton only talks to friendly reporters (if Nordlinger were President, would he want to talk to an ideological psycho with an axe?), and whined about what a dirty rotten liar Clinton is. Then he talks about how all the other people around Clinton are now leading normal lives, as if Nordlinger's approbation meant nothing. He was particularly incensed that the body politic would consider a "venomous snake" like James Carville to be an interesting and colorful character. Nobody ever says things like "colorful character" about Nordlinger, presumably.

Yesterday, President Clinton announced that he was forming a panel to attempt to find ways of reducing deaths in hospital caused by errors by medical personnel.

In most countries, this would be welcomed with general approval, and not seen as a particularly bold move, politically speaking. But this is America. And more to the point, Congress is Congress.

Remember them? They're the guys who decided that if Clinton was against nuclear proliferation, then they better be for it. Clinton wanted to save medicare and social security, so naturally, they wanted to get rid of it. When Clinton was caught fooling around, they dropped their girlfriends long enough to announce that they were against sex of all kinds, and then showed they meant business and were really angry that Clinton's girl friend was cuter then were their bimbos by accusing him of mopery and dopery.