PREVIOUS RANTS

 

 

That’s right you tree-hugging, lettuce munching environmentalists, the 15,000 barrels of oil sputzing into the Gulf of Mexico every day is your fault!

Former Alaska Gov. Sarah (“Drill, Baby, Drill!”) Palin apparently knows what it takes to solve our nation’s energy problems, and on her Facebook page she’s making it clear that “radical environmentalists” are the ones who are really causing this catastrophe a mile under the sea.

“Extreme deep water drilling is not the preferred choice to meet our country’s energy needs, but your protests and lawsuits and lies about onshore and shallow water drilling have locked up safer areas. It’s catching up with you. The tragic, unprecedented deep water Gulf oil spill proves it.”

Palin insists that those those darned hippy environmentalists are the ones influencing public policy enough to keep oil drilling away from “safe” places like the Alaska Natural Wildlife Reserve that would finally break America from its dependence on foreign oil.

Yes, the blame lies solely with the activists who are clearly causing the plumes of oil to gush into the waters of the Gulf, and certainly not the failure of a blowout preventer mechanism that was allegedly shrugged off weeks before the catastrophe by an official from the drilling company, Transocean. It could not have been the decision not to employ or require an acoustic switch as a backup to the blowout preventer’s breakdown. And of course, any alleged negligence on the part of Transocean, BP and the Minerals Management Service, which is responsible for regulating offshore drilling of this type, doesn’t even come into play.

Really just blame it on those eco-warriors.

“Radical environmentalists: you are damaging the planet with your efforts to lock up safer drilling areas. There’s nothing clean and green about your misguided, nonsensical radicalism, and Americans are on to you as we question your true motives.”

Governor, your wisdom is timeless.

 

"Am I the only guy in this country who's fed up with what's happening? Where the hell is our outrage? We should be screaming bloody murder. We've got a gang of clueless bozos steering our ship of state right over a cliff, we've got corporate gangsters stealing us blind, and we can't even clean up after a hurricane much less build a hybrid car. But instead of getting mad, everyone sits around and nods their heads when the politicians say, "Stay the course!"
 
Stay the course? You've got to be kidding. This is America, not the damned "Titanic." I'll give you a sound bite: "Throw ALL the bums out!"
 
You might think I'm getting senile, that I've gone off my rocker, and maybe I have. But someone has to speak up. I hardly recognize this country anymore.
 
The most famous business leaders are not the innovators but the guys in handcuffs. While we're fiddling in Iraq, the Middle East is burning and nobody seems to know what to do. And the press is waving "pom-poms" instead of asking hard questions. That's not the promise of the "America" my parents and yours traveled across the ocean for. I've had enough. How about you?

I'll go a step further. You can't call yourself a patriot if you're not outraged. This is a fight I'm ready and willing to have. The Biggest "C" is Crisis!
 
Leaders are made, not born. Leadership is forged in times of crisis. It's easy to sit there with your feet up on the desk and talk theory. Or send someone else's kids off to war when you've never seen a battlefield yourself. It's another thing to lead when your world comes tumbling down.
 
On September 11, 2001, we needed a strong leader more than any other time in our history. We needed a steady hand to guide us out of the ashes. A Hell of a Mess! So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia , while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.
 
But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, omnipotence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.
 
Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.
 
Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm.
 


Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.
 
Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "The Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen, and more important, what are we going to do about it?
 
Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.
 
I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bonehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?
 
Had Enough? Hey, I'm not trying to be the voice of gloom and doom here. I'm trying to light a fire. I'm speaking out because I have hope, I believe in America. In my lifetime I've had the privilege of living through some of America's greatest moments. I've also experienced some of our worst crises: the "Great Depression," "World War II", the "Korean War," the "Kennedy Assassination," the "Vietnam War," the 1970s oil crisis, and the struggles of recent years culminating with 9/11. If I've learned one thing, it's this:

 "You don't get anywhere by standing on the sidelines waiting for somebody else to take action. Whether it's building a better car or building a better future for our children, we all have a role to play. That's the challenge I'm raising in this book. It's a call to "Action" for people who, like me, believe in America. It's not too late, but it's getting pretty close. So let's shake off the crap and go to work. Let's tell 'em all we've had "enough."
 

(excerpts from a book by Lee Iacocca, who rescued Chrysler Corporation from its death throes)
 

 

Follow The Green

by: Casey

So, have you ever smoked pot?

I know, I’ve already made you nervous, haven’t I? But bear with me, there’s a point to be made here. Hopefully, the fact that you’re frightened by a simple question would make you curious as to why that might be, and give you the courage to continue.

Oh, and, it’s okay, your kids/parents/superiors and/or the cops aren’t listening — in fact, you don’t have to say a word out loud, just admit it to yourself: Did you “take a little puff” once? Did you “inhale” back when you were in school? Did a certain guy/girl get you to have a toke or two to enhance the mood? Did you maybe even do it more than once or twice? Did you like it? Would it scare you to admit it if you did?.

It’s clearly unpopular to admit to ever smoking dope. Oh, you can take sleeping pills, and anti-depressants, and anti-anxiety meds, and any number of truly dangerous drugs to which someone owns a patent. And of course, you can drink a pot of coffee every day, and a bottle of wine every night without much public scorn. You can abuse your body with deep-fried Styrofoam dipped in artificial everything without society batting an eye, but never, never can you smoke cannabis.

Isn’t that strange? I mean, whether you smoke weed or not, you must find it odd that the government tells you that you can’t. Think about it: if you plant a seed, you could go to prison. Is that what the founders of our country (many of whom grew cannabis) had in mind? Though many rational people see that this is just not right, it’s the way it is, and few are willing to risk the social stigma of doing anything about it. Very curious…

Even the individual states of the republic can’t override the federal government on this issue. Several states have voted to legalize marijuana, and each time, the feds have come out to say that they will aggressively prosecute anyone they catch growing or possessing the devil weed. Even sovereign countries are afraid to legalize pot. Torture your populace? Allow slavery? Promote corruption and fascism? Those things are just fine, but don’t legalize marijuana, or the US will cut off trade…Very strange indeed.

Well, when reason fails and common sense hits a roadblock, we turn to the almighty dollar as the lowest common denominator in all motivations for public corruption. So, let’s follow the money:

• Marijuana (hemp) was not only legal before the invention of nylon fiber, but its cultivation encouraged and in times of war required. There is much evidence that DuPont (with its interest in completely replacing hemp rope with its patented product) had a big hand in the legislature that led to the Marijuana Tax Act stamps (which were required and then never issued), which resulted in the criminalization of marijuana.

• One of the biggest current and historic lobbyists against hemp has been the forest industry, as hemp is a more sustainable and cost-effective alternative to wood-pulp paper. It’s said it can be recycled far more than can wood pulp, and can be used to produce linen-like paper of very high quality, as well as textiles. William Randolph Hearst was heavily involved in both the paper industry and the Marijuana Tax Act.

• The prescription pharmaceuticals, for which marijuana is a superior alternative in many cases, are among the most common and profitable for drug manufacturers: sleep aids, muscle relaxants, pain killers, anti-anxiety treatments, etc. It’s no coincidence that these legal pharmaceuticals are also the most habit-forming of drugs. Despite their public denials, the producers of these drugs make enormous profits on addiction, and an un-patentable and non-addictive alternative ain’t allowed in their ‘hood.

• Federal and state taxes of alcohol (neither a food nor a drug, according to the feds) amount to hundreds of millions of dollars annually. Alcohol is big business, far bigger than tobacco, and though it contributes to the death of hundreds of thousands of people each year, very little is done to stifle our consumption. Oh, the local governments say we shouldn’t drink and drive, but rarely that we shouldn’t drink at all.

• NORML and other pro-hemp groups have very little money, and therefore very little lobbying power. Thus, they have an extremely hard time competing with the giant petroleum, chemical, timber, drug and liquor industries which oppose them on the federal level. Plus, there’s the whole stinky-hippie thing.

So, let’s say, for the sake of argument, that keeping marijuana illegal is now, and has historically been, about money. Not money for the common taxpayer, but money for a few big corporations. That in itself is pretty anti-democratic. However, there’s even more subterfuge here. It’s called the “War on Drugs.”

Through our military and police, we’ve been “at war” with our own citizenry for nearly 25 years, far longer than the Civil War lasted. The War on Drugs is costing tens of billions of dollars a year. Wait, that staggering number deserves its own line:

TENS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS A YEAR!

It has helped create criminals where before there were contributing members of society, and it has caused more bloodshed, and cost more American lives, than Viet Nam, Korea, and both Gulf Wars combined. To what end? What has been accomplished? According to the government’s own accounting, very little.

Well, perhaps it’s about control. Many say that the first local marijuana laws were used to keep Mexican immigrants quiet. If the “Spics” complained about unfair treatment, they could always be arrested for pot. In the 30’s, 40’s and early 50’s, pot was associated with “Coloreds” and their jazz music. Then came the Beatniks, and in the late sixties and early seventies, where it was the young and progressive who toked weed (while the old and conservative had three-martini lunches), pot was an easy bust which could be made on the so-called subversive elements of society. Recently, there have been many who look at the gang wars, and the prisons full of brown skin, and say the war on drugs is simply a tool used by the establishment to suppress all those – from street kids to college students, and blue collar workers to doctors, lawyers and professors – who would oppose the status quo. In the case of marijuana laws especially, there’s nothing to contradict this. There is absolutely no reliable medical or social evidence of a public health threat caused by cannabis.

As to the importance of having smoked weed in the past: Well, if everyone who has smoked pot came out and admitted it, we might see a quick shift in the political winds. Imagine Grandmas, Judges, Senators and Generals admitting they’d had a toke back in the day. What if Presidents could say they’d had a little hash once or twice, and Doctors could point out that they’d prefer their patients smoke pot than drink hard liquor. What if Cops could admit that they’d have a lot easier job if people were high instead of drunk. Imagine how quickly we’d see the futility of continuing this expensive, destructive and deadly crusade.

So, let me ask you again: Have you ever smoked pot?

No, me either…

 

 

Thoughts From The Depths

by The Old Curmudgeon

Do you have that rundown feeling, acid stomach, are you upset, is your liver....well, let's not get into all the gory details. It's obvious you need "Jeremiah Peabody's polyunsaturated, quick dissolving, fast-acting, pleasant-tasting green and purple pills."

Never before have Americans been so inundated with drugs. I don't mean the illegal kind--the plant products, I'm referring to the thousands of capsules, creams, lotions, nostrums, patches, pills, potions, powders, prescriptions, solutions, sprays, and tonics that their producers would have you believe are absolutely necessary to have even a chance at a modestly happy life.

Since the U.S. Congress, that bastion of corporate corruption, paid off their drug-money financiers in the 90's with laws that allowed them to advertise on TV, and arranged for the FDA to get direct payments from them, the evil genie has been out of the bottle.

Consumer interests have been forgotten. There's not even a pretense any more. The senators and representatives you elected openly cavort with the drug companies and do whatever is asked of them, as good whores should.

That's how they approved the idea of marketing drugs on television. That's why TV viewers are now inundated with commercials extolling the virtues of one unpronounceable formula or another. Got a headache? Can't get a hard on? Have problems sleeping? Too fat? Too thin? Too tired? Kids too active? They've got the solution if you've got the money--a lot of it.

Don't worry about those "side effects" they have to mention; headache, nausea, dry mouth, blurred vision, palpitations, etc., but not to worry, most people won't have those problems, they say. (By the way, how long do you think it will take the next congress to revoke the law that says they have to mention 'side effects' in their commercials?)

remember all the thousands of commercials promoting Vioxx and Celebrex as the tickets to a pain-free life for arthritics? Turns out they killed so many people, they had to take them off the market. You don't suppose the FDA slipped up, do you?

Do you find any contradiction in your government spending over a hundred billion dollars in a futile and useless campaign to prevent the growth, distribution and use of Marijuana, a beneficent herb that has never caused the death of anyone, but actively encourages its citizens to take expensive synthetic drugs and give them to their kids for every little pain and sniffle that comes along?

The solution to all this medicine madness is simply to stop taking pills. Stop buying the crap the money-grubbers sell. Go back to the old remedies made from plants. Find a local herbalist who can teach you about the plants that grow where you live and how they can keep you healthy. Stop thinking that a pill will solve your problem. Go to acupuncturists and chiropractors for severe case treatment. Skip the pill-pushers, who are also on the drug company payrolls.

And if you watch TV, never let your thumb get far from the mute button. 
another rant on drugs                     

We See That Now
A heartfelt -- no -- abject -- no -- craven apology to the right from the left for our campaign of hate, anger and malice against God's own president.

Move Over Joe Camel

by John F. Borowski

Coca-Cola doesn't have Joe Camel. They have a cool cow figure with shades, adorning their "Swerve" drink and it will only be sold in schools: purveyors of liquid candy will use any gimmick to invade our public schools. "Swerve", in its 11- ounce can, contains 52% milk and is artificially flavored with sucralose a manmade chlorinated compound. 600 times sweeter than table sugar, this compound only had 19 studies on it by the year 2000 worrying health advocates, considering compounds like pesticides were often made with chlorinated compounds. Big tobacco used a camel figure to con kids; Coca Cola will now use a cow to do the same. 

Coca-Cola has now become an official sponsor of the national PTA and Coke's vice president John Downs now has a seat on the PTA's board: giving Coca Cola interests full voting rights! The PTA, well regarded children's health advocate now has enlisted itself as a lobbying springboard for a corporation with dreams of flooding schools with their products: health concerns be damned. 

This is the same Coca-Cola Corporation that is looking to display its logo on baby bottles. The same Coca-Cola culprits have contracts with at least 6,000 of the nation's 14,000 public school districts and pays the Boy & Girls Clubs of America $60 million a year to ensure that only coke is sold in their 2,000 facilities nationwide. Coca-Cola has been instrumental in lobbying against the World Health Organization's guidelines stating that it is not healthy for humans to ingest sugar as 10% of their diets. 

Parents must be overjoyed. Their kids get a cool "milk dude" with chlorinated sweeteners with twice the sodium of Coca Cola classic. Kids can alternate between "Swerve" and regular Coca-Cola and corporate charlatans can laugh all the way to the bank. What is not humorous is that we are inundating children with caffeine, Phosphoric acid and massive amounts of sugar: the legacy will be the sickest generation of children in modern United States History. Little is known about the health effects of chlorinated Sucralose and it will only be marketed in schools! 

Some educational purists and visionaries will echo Tracey Cooper, a Colorado Springs school district advertising manager. When asked about having "Burger King buses" in their school district (adorned with Burger King's logo), Ms. Cooper replied, "In a perfect world we wouldn't have to do this." Considering school is one of the most monumental and crucial habit forming times in our children's lives, we should not go begging for the crumbs off corporate board office tables. 

Coca-Cola's "Swerve" cow is now trying to overtake the infamous "Joe Camel" cartoon character, with all the same deceit and malfeasance that the tobacco industry produced for 50 years! Coke knows that the ticket to reaching kids is repetition of message. Should that trusted teacher figure stay mute as kids drink sugary caffeine water and artificially chlorinated pseudo milk drinks? In the just world, adults safeguard children, and now is time to act. 

Call the National PTA on their toll-free line at 800-307-4782, ask them to advocate for kids, not soda pop corporations. Ask them to drop Coca-Cola bigwig John Downs off their board. Write Coca-Cola at their corporate office in Atlanta, Georgia (PO Box 1734), 30301. Tell them to get out of our schools. Ask them why they would provide a "milk drink" sweetened with a chlorine product. Ask your local pediatrician to submit a letter to your school district advising against the sale of pop and sweetened milk substitutes. Ask that doctor to join ranks with the American Academy of Pediatrics that recently issued a statement in favor of a ban on the sale of soda pop to school children. 

Give your kids real milk. Give them water and try soy- milk products. Make sweets a rare treat. Give Coca-cola and Swerve the boot from our schools.

Having just returned from a week in England where, among other things, walking more than ten yards a day is quite normal, I was once again startled by the crypto-human land whales waddling down the aisles of my local supermarket in search of Nabisco Snack-Wells, Wow chips, and other fraudulent inducements to "diet" by overindulgence in "low-fat" carbohydrate-laden treats. And they did not look happy.

To say that Americans are shockingly obese is hardly a novel observation, yet it is discouraging to see so many of your fellow citizens in such a desperate and unhealthy condition, and I'm sure it is even more discouraging to be in such a state. Related to this is the recent disclosure that one-third of all Americans are taking prescribed antidepressant medications, specifically the SSRIs of the Prozac family (Selective Seratonin Re-uptake Inhibitors, including Zoloft, Paxil, and Celexa). That's one out of every three men, women, and children! The American media routinely regard the scandalous levels of both obesity and emotional distress here with befuddlement and even indignation, as though it were inexplicable and even unfair that such a friendly, generous, valiant, humorous, and enterprising folk as we should be so mysteriously afflicted with The Blues.

Have any reporters noticed how we actually live here in America? With very few exceptions, our cities are hollowed out ruins. Our towns have committed ritualized suicide in thrall to the WalMart God. Most Americans live in suburban habitats that are isolating, disaggregated, and neurologically punishing, and from which every last human quality unrelated to shopping convenience and personal hygiene has been expunged. We live in places where virtually no activity or service can be accessed without driving a car, and the (usually solo) journey past horrifying vistas of on-ramps and off-ramps offers no chance of a social encounter along the way. Our suburban environments have by definition destroyed the transition between the urban habitat and the rural hinterlands. In other words, we can't walk out of town into the countryside anywhere. Our "homes," as we have taken to calling mere mass-produced vinyl boxes at the prompting of the realtors, exist in settings leached of meaningful public space or connection to civic amenity, with all activity focused inward to the canned entertainments piped into giant receivers -- where the children especially sprawl in masturbatory trances, fondling joysticks and keyboards, engorged on cheez doodles and taco chips.

It was interesting to note over in England how many people were out enjoying themselves in the public realm, with other people. By public realm I mean in the streets, the cafes, the pubs, the parks, the riverside promenades and other places explicitly designed for humans to enact their hard-wired social proclivities. Everywhere I went in Oxford, Cambridge, and London I was amazed at the hordes of young people so obviously enjoying the company of groups of their friends, and what a contrast this was to the current culture back home where you hardly ever see anything but a couple, or perhaps two couples, out in a bar or restaurant, and where the Starbucks cafes are filled with solitary individuals, and the streets are for cars only, usually with lone occupants. It was also startling in England to see groups of old people walking together in the streets or sitting on a blanket in the park, because in America old people have been conditioned to go about outside of home only in cars. Today's older Americans have spent their entire lives in a car-obsessed culture in which walking is seen as uncomfortable at least and at worst socially stigmatizing, something only winos do.

In Europe, people make 33% of their trips by foot or bicycle, compared with 9.4% for Americans. American suburbanites weigh on average 6 pounds more than their counterparts in walkable cities. They have higher blood pressure, are more susceptible to diabetes, and live two years fewer on average than Europeans. Pedestrians in the US are three times more likely to be killed in traffic than in Germany, six times more likely than in Holland. Bicyclists here are twice as likely to be killed in traffic than Germans, three times as likely as Dutch.

Statistics hardly tell the whole story, though. The emotional toll of the American Dream is steep. What we see all over our nation is a situational loneliness of the most extreme kind; and it is sometimes only recognizable in contrast to the ways that people behave in other countries. Any culture, after all, is an immersive environment, and I suspect that most Americans are unaware of how socially isolated they are among the strip malls and the gated apartment complexes. Or, to put it another way, of what an effort it takes to put themselves in the company of other people.

We will be driving a lot less than we do now and cars will generally be a diminished presence in our lives. The automakers and the oil companies can lobby all they like, but history has a velocity of its own, and it is taking us into uncharted territory where the GM Yukons and Ford Excursions will be useless. When the suburbs tank, they will go down hard and fast. The loss of hallucinated wealth is going to shock us to our socks, and the fight over the table scraps of the 20th century is liable to entail a lot of political mischief here in the USA.

The physical arrangements for daily living will have to be revised and re-ordered accordingly. We're going to have to return to traditional human habitats: towns, villages, cities, and agricultural landscapes. We will have to walk out of necessity, or at least ride some places with other people. We may be too busy to indulge in the blandishments of television and the other entertainment narcotics we've become addicted to, and even the Internet may be made irrelevant in a world of regular brownouts. We may have to grow more of our food closer to home and do some of the physical work ourselves. As far as I know, there is no such thing as a Cheez Doodle bush. We are going to be living a lot more locally and thrown on our own resources.

We're going to have to do this whether we like it or not, because circumstances will compel us to. There may be a lot of hardship and difficulty, but in the process we are going to get some things back that we threw away in our foolish attempt to become a drive-in civilization. And most of these things we get back will have to do with living on more intimate terms with other people, getting more regular exercise, eating better food, leading more purposeful lives, and rediscovering the public realm that is the dwelling place of our collective spirit. Paradoxically, when that happens fewer of us will need Prozac or the Atkins diet.

Photos by Jason Houston

		James Howard Kunstler harangues OrionOnline readers regularly. He is the author of The Geography of Nowhere and Home From Nowhere. His newest book is The City in Mind: Notes on the Urban Condition.
The City in Mind by James Howard Kunstler		kunstler@aol.com
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QUOTES ABOUT OUR PRESIDENT

1   The air currents of the world never ventilated his mind.

2   He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that sort of grandeur creeps into it.

3   He looked as if he had been weaned on a pickle.

4   If he became convinced tomorrow that coming out for cannibalism would get him the votes he so sorely needs, he would begin fattening a missionary on the White House backyard come Wednesday.

5   (He) is a no-good lying bastard. He can lie out of both sides of his mouth at the same time, and even if he caught himself telling the truth, he'd lie--just to keep his hand in.

6   (He) looks like the guy in the science fiction movie who's the first to see "The Creature".

key to quotes: 1  Walter Hines on Woodrow Wilson; 2  H.L. Mencken on Warren G. Harding; 3  Alice Roosevelt Longworth on Calvin Coolidge; 4  H.L. Mencken on Franklin D. Roosevelt; 5  Harry S. Truman on Richard Nixon; 6  David Frye on Gerald Ford

So let me get this straight... 

In the last 24 hours, Arnold Schwarzeggnegeggenegger has called in to several right-wing talk shows and said...

- He is pro-choice.
- He recognizes domestic partnerships.
- He supports gun control measures.
- He supports the continuance of many state-funded programs.
- He supports many liberal social issues.

Neocon candidate Sen. Tom McClintock said Arnold's comments..."have managed to blur distinctions" between those two?!?

"Schwarzenegger's appearances have gotten mostly positive, if not particularly enthusiastic, reviews from conservatives"?!?

And the right is still cheering over this? I'm laughin' my ass off! I'm envisioning the campaign slogans.

"Arnold, I Guess"
"Um, Well, Okay. Schwarzenegger!"
"Republican? Maybe! Arnold For Governor"
"What's On TV October 7th?"

Let's not kid ourselves over the original reasons for this recall. It had nothing to do with "the good of our people." Uber-conservative Darrell Issa started this whole thing because he wanted to overthrow Gray Davis while his popularity cratered so he can make a play for becoming California's neocon governor. The recall is happening, but his candidacy was a disaster. He's gone into hiding - no one has heard a blink from Issa since he withdrew. And now, the best the Republicans can hope for is the aging bodybuilder whose only political experience is by marriage and who has more liberal ideals than 80% of the politicians who call themselves Democrats.

Believe this: Many Repubs are mourning the failure of Issa, Simon, and eventually McClintock. They are desperately trying to rally behind Arnold, but their heart just isn't there. You can hear it. Hell, you can smell it.

As an attempt to overthrow an elected official without a high crime or misdemeanor, it can be called a success. But from a conservative standpoint, this is an unmitigated and total failure. And it's too late to close that box, Pandora.

Let me get this the fuck straight...

I can't get a fucking job at a fucking department store without taking a

fucking drug test because I might come into work too high to fix their

fucking computers and someone might get the wrong fucking software or

something... and it's crucial that we have a fucking drug-free workplace

ideally a fucking drug-free Amerikkka)....

But the same fucking government that will put kids in fucking jail for

fucking life over a few fucking tabs of LSD or Ecstacy will stuff a pilot

full of fucking METH (the same fucking crap that they're busting people for

cooking in practically every trailer park in the U.S. of Fucking A. and put

him in a $30 million airplane with tons of bombs and guns and turn him loose

over Afghanistan... and then court-martial the poor cranked up bastard when

he's too fucking buzzed to figure out who to bomb?

What the fuck's wrong with this fucking country, anyway?

Joaquin Switch

Got Oil?

The Bush team's ridiculous and wildly inflammatory anti-drug ads are still running in heavy rotation. You know the ads I'm talking about -- the ones where innocent-looking, middle-class teens admit their culpability for the consequences of the drug trade.

"I helped blow up buildings," says one doe-eyed youth. So if that is legitimate logic, and our president says that it is, I wonder if we might turn the tables on him by starting a little ad campaign of our own to sabotage another misguided Bush campaign: the War on Conservation.

The thought occurred to me after the startling announcement that the administration was taking precious time off from an actual, necessary war -- the one on terrorism -- to sue the state of California for daring to require that carmakers put more energy-efficient models on the road.

Turning the letter of the Federal Clean Air act against its clear intent, Department of Justice lawyers lined up on behalf of the administration's friends in the hydrocarbon-loving, auto-manufacturing industry and argued that as long as California's cars are in compliance with the lax Federal standard, the state cannot impose a tougher one. 

For those keeping score, the Bush administration is in favor of states' rights when the states want to weaken federal safety standards of any kind, and against states' rights when the states want stronger measures.

So how about using the same shock-value tactics the administration uses in the drug war to confront the public with the ultimate -- and much more linearly linked -- consequences of their energy wastefulness? Imagine a soccer mom in a Ford Excursion (11 mpg city, 15 mpg highway) saying, "I'm building a nuclear bomb for Saddam Hussein." Or a mob of solo driverstoodling down the freeway at 75 mph shouting in unison, "We're buying weapons that will kill American soldiers, marines, and sailors! Yahoo!"

It's not just a fantasy. Last week, talking to my friend Scott Burns, co-creator of the "Got Milk?" campaign, I was delighted to hear that he already had two ad scripts ready to go. The first one feels like an old Slim Fast commercial. Instead of "I lost 50 pounds in two weeks" the ad cuts to different people in their SUVs: "I gassed 40,000 Kurds," "I helped hijack an airplane," "I helped blow up a nightclub," and then in unison: "We did it all by driving to work in our SUVs."

The second, which opens on a man at a gas station, features a cute kid's voice-over throughout: "This is George." Then we see a close up of a gas pump. "This is the gas George buys for his car." Next we see a guy in a suit. "This is the oil company executive who makes money on the gas George buys." Close up on Al-Qaeda training film footage: "This is the terrorist organization supported by money from the country where the oil company does business. " It's followed by footage of 9/11: "We all know what this is." And it closes on a wide shot of bumper to bumper traffic: "The biggest weapon of mass destruction is parked in your driveway." Pretty effective.

Can the administration seriously deny that oil dollars do, actually, finance a spreading slick of evil in the world today? In Iraq, oil money has kept Saddam's repressive regime afloat even in the midst of tough UN sanctions. According to a report just released by the CIA, Saddam has been spending his oil money on conventional arms and weapons of mass destruction, while starving and torturing his own people.

In Saudi Arabia, our second largest foreign supplier of oil, the money you spend at the pump over here pays for a feudal monarchy that gorges itself on excess while bankrolling terrorist mischief abroad with its support of suicide bombers.

Even our close ally Kuwait, our eleventh largest oil supplier, manifests an ambivalence toward America that, if you accept the Bush administration's drug-war arguments about the validity of remote effects, resulted in this month's assassination of an American Marine on military exercises. Thank you, Exxon.

Would it be so painful for us to slow down the intravenous drip of oil that keeps these hideously anti-American regimes alive? There are car companies with electric and hybrid cars already on the market. And a little pressure on our wasteful ways could unleash a new wave of good old American inventiveness.

But instead of applying the marketing skills it uses for its wrong-headed drug war to the eminently worthwhile cause of saving energy, Bush, Inc. has sided with the Enrons of the world to stifle energy-saving technology and keep America in an artificially prolonged state of dependence.

Of course, waiting for the Bush administration to get religion on energy conservation would be about as fruitful as waiting for Saddam to welcome U.S. inspectors to his palaces. It ain't gonna happen. Unless, that is, the public makes it happen. Anyone willing to pay for a people's ad campaign to jolt our leaders into reality?

By Arianna Huffington

If you have questions or comments, contact  arianna@ariannaonline.com.

I don't know how many toes I'm stepping on here (sorry, Joyce) but . . .

It's time to tell the truth about golf. 

GOLF SUCKS

by Norman Davis

Golf is an elitist game for people with too much time and money. 

Golf wastes more space and does more damage to the environment than any other game in the world.

For years, Golf was played by a small circle of white-collared, white country clubbers whose goal was to keep the game in the country club family. (You know, the "right" kind of people.)

Golf became popular when greens fees were reasonable, waiting on the tee was the exception rather than the rule and most players actually walked the course. 

Times have changed in a big way but golf is still very popular, due now more to the popularity of a celebrity like Tiger Woods, who came from a non-country club background to conquer the game before he was old enough to buy a drink.

One may question whether Tiger's success, achieved through 15 years of constant focus on the game and loss of certain parts of a "normal" childhood, is something all parents should strive for, but there's no doubt that Tiger made it. He got $15 million from Buick just to carry their logo on his golf bag. Wonder what he gets for his cap?

The cost to equip oneself for a single round of golf can be astronomical compared to other sports and these costs create obstacles for those who want to enjoy the game, but simply can't afford to shell out $30 or more every time they want to play a round. Who can afford $300 green fees and multi-million-dollar memberships. Who buys $2,000 drivers, $500 shoes and equivalent amounts of golf caps, golf shirts, golf pants, golf underwear? Not the guy working two jobs to pay his mortgage.

Golf contributes to the pollution of our environment in a big way. Golf courses pour millions of gallons of pesticides and herbicides on their precious grass. (See list of pesticides used.) Way more than necessary. For instance, the golf courses in Arlington, Texas, used more than 20 times the amount of pesticides per acre and used pesticides that were more than twice as toxic than in other types of parks in Arlington. Arlington used a total of 6,227 lbs of pesticides on four golf courses in one year.

The manufacturers of golf equipment also contribute to the deterioration of the environment by their manufacturing processes. Seven major golf club makers paid $216,000 in penalties recently for failing to notify the public that ozone-depleting chemicals are used in the manufacturing processes.

In the face of growing criticism of the adverse environmental impacts of golf courses, the industry is promoting the notion of "pesticide-free," "environmentally-friendly" or "sensitive" golf courses. No such course exists to date, and the creation and maintenance of the "perfect green" comprising exotic grass inevitably requires intensive use of chemicals.

Who can be exposed to pesticides used on golf courses? Anyone on the golf course or nearby is at risk. Pesticide applicators, either professional contractors or golf course workers, can be exposed to these poisons during storage, mixing and application. Golfers playing shortly after pesticides have been applied, can be exposed directly to the pesticides on the turf, as well as to pesticide vapors and mists. People living near a golf course may be affected by sprays and dusts blown from the golf course onto their property and into their homes. Pesticides applied to the turf may run off into surface waters or leach down to groundwater, which can then expose people to contaminated drinking water. These people may live far from the place where pesticides were used.

 

Active Ingredient	Potential Health Effects*
Benfluralin	Decreases red blood cell count and hemoglobin concentration
Benomyl	Causes low birth weight
Chlorpyrifos	Impairs nervous system function
Dicamba	Toxic to fetus
Diquat	Causes cataracts
Disulfoton	Impairs nervous system function;causes optic nerve degeneration
Pendimethalin	Toxic to liver
Propoxur	Impairs nervous system function
Thiophanate-methyl	Decreases sperm formation, causes hyperthyroidism
Thiram	Toxic to nervous system
Triadimefon	Decreases red blood cell count

* These are some health effects identified by the EPA that can result from sufficient oral exposure to the pesticides listed, including exposure from drinking water. Exposure to these pesticides by inhalation or direct contact and/or at higher concentrations could cause more severe health problems. (Source: Oral Reference Doses, Integrated Risk Information System, U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, 1991)

In 1982, Navy Lieutenant George Prior died two weeks after he spent three consecutive days playing golf at the Army Navy Country Club in Arlington, Virginia. His doctor, an expert forensic pathologist, reported that Prior suffered a severe reaction to chlorothalonil, a pesticide used weekly on the golf course.

DURSBAN, produced by Dow Chemical, is one of the most dangerous pesticides on the market.

On June 8, 2000 the EPA announced a ban on virtually all uses of Dursban in residential and commercial buildings. Virtually all retail home and garden products containing Dursban are banned; all uses of Dursban in schools, day care centers, nursing homes, and shopping centers, among other places, are banned.

Guess who is excepted from the ban. That's right, golf courses.

Why did GCSAA insist golf courses must use the toxic pesticide Dursban when virtually all other uses are banned? And why is EPA allowing this? See BanDursban.org

Oh yeah, one of the things they find when they test the soil of greens is mercury.

Then there's all those nice gasoline-powered carts. Carts have no pollution controls, yet nearly everybody uses them, putting millions of tons of carbon monoxide and other toxic chemicals in the air. 

Do many golfers realize they are exposed to toxic chemicals every time they enter a golf course?

Around the world, it's the same frightening story.

In the Phillipines, farmers were murdered when they protested a large real estate company's plans to build a golf course over farmland.

In Japan, the popularity of golf has created 1,700 golf courses in a country the size of California.  Forests have been leveled, hilltops flattened, valleys filled in. Over 100 million people live in this land space. Before World War II, there only 23 golf courses in all of Japan and there were only 72 in 1956. Now, besides the 1,700 golf courses in operation, another 330 are under construction and roughly 1,000 in various stages of planning.
(complete story here.)

The Malaysian government is paying more than $7.5 million for a pipeline to feed water to a golf course resort on Redang Island from the mainland area of Terengganu, where a cholera epidemic recently broke out because of an inadequate supply of clean water

In Sri Lanka, they are shrinking elephant habitat in order to expand a golf course that attracts American tourists willing to spend $200 a day to play. (story)

In Jackson Hole, Wyoming a luxury golf course under development in the Snake River Canyon, will  interfere with the most productive bald eagle breeding territory in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem. 

Golf courses use up billions of gallons of potable water, desperately needed in many parts of the world for drinking and the irrigation of food.

In Santa Fe, New Mexico, a severe drought has caused many wells to go dry. Trees and plants are dying. Severe water restrictions allow very limited watering of gardens and trees on public and private property. The main reservoir for the city recently reported it's water levels were seven percent of normal. Snowpack last winter was 30 percent of normal. Santa Feans have resorted to saving their dish and bath water to try to keep their plants alive.

And in the midst of all this is Las Campanas golf course, a lush, private course with stiff membership and playing fees. Because of a previous arrangment with the city, Las Campanas until recently was pumping 1.2 million gallons of potable water per day to keep it's lovely fairways green. Due to public pressure they agreed to surrender 400,000 gallons of their daily allotment in return for the city providing them with an equal amount of "gray water" every day. Of course, the city had to pay for the pipes that send the effluent to the course. And Las Campanas continues to use 800,000 gallons a day of drinking water, in order to make sure that no member or guest never has to hit a shot from weeds or (God forbid) sand ( except in their carefully sculpted sand traps).

I'm not naive enough to think that reading this is going to make all the golfers in the group toss their clubs in the garbage. But if you must participate in this elitist sport, then these tips from Earth Share may give you something to shoot for.

Just before he was elected in 1992, our economy was pure-D shit. Reagan and Bush got their huge tax cuts for the super rich, they got us in wars and they dumped us into recessions not seen since the 1930's

 You kids may not believe this - ask your parents -  just 8-10 years ago, the economy was such shit, you couldn't get a job no matter what. If you didn't have a specific skill, they'd just laugh at you. 

If you had a degree or advanced training, they'd say, "We can't hire you, because if the economy ever comes back, you'll leave us in a heartbeat."

 It was hell, unless you were from old money or your daddy ran the CIA.

 I forget who, maybe someone will remember, but some reporter stuck a camera in Clinton's face and said,

"If we trust you with our vote, what can you do to save our economy?"

 Great Clinton Quotes:

 "I am going to focus on this economy like a laser beam. I will work non-stop to turn this mess around and create new jobs and lower the deficit and fix the things that are wrong." mess around and create new jobs and lower the deficit and fix the things that are wrong." mess around and create new jobs and lower the deficit and fix the things that are wrong."

 The Republicans, in unison, hooted like drunken hyenas and ridiculed Bill Clinton.

 "The banks will fail. Clinton's plans will only worsen the recession."
   -- Armey the foul-mouthed Dick, Degree in Economics

 "Clinton's pie-in-the-sky fantasies will crash our economy."
   -- Phil Gramm, pornographer, Degree in Economics

 "A guaranteed disaster, without a doubt."
  -- Newt Gingrich, scumbag, thief, History professor

 But, as always, their predictioons were dead wrong
 This is what happened...

And when it did, every lying son of a bitch Republican changed their tune.
 
"This is Reagan's recovery!"
  -- Armey, the foul-mouthed Dick

"Reagan laid the groundwork, but Bill Clinton is trying to claim all the credit."
 -- Phil Gramm, financial backer of "The Hitcher."

"Bill Clinton did not contribute anything to this recovery."
 -- Newt the scumbag

 "Name one thing that Clinton did to help the economy."
 -- The vulgar Pigboy

 That's right.
 After guaranteeing Clinton would ruin the country, they switched 180 degrees and said,
 "We knew all along Reagan's genius would save us."

 And the reason you younger kids are reading this story for the first damn time is the American whore press will only talk about Clinton's mistakes.

 Look at the chart, one more time:

 Look at that massive plunge we took in 1981, when Reagan was elected.
 Look at the plunge!

 Then look what happened in 1993, when Bill's "laser beam" got focused on fixing the Reagan Error.  Bill Clinton saved this damn country.

 And how did America repay this multi-trillion-dollar gift Clinton gave us?
 We tried to fuck him.  Oh, yes we did!  What other man, besides Bill Clinton, could have survived that impeachment fraud?  That was a horseshit set-up from the start.

 You say Clinton has his flaws?
 Yeah, he does.
 We know all about Clinton's weaknesses, because we all got a good look.
 We've never looked at another man so close in all of history.
 Elvis, JFK, the Beatles and Jesus Christ combined never had so many scurrilous, untrue, shit-for-brains lies told about them with as little proof or provocation as Bill Clinton:

 - Nine years of the never-ending GOP hate machine and their outrageous lies.

 - Drudge and the Internet, sending the wildest, unverified rumors around the globe in seconds, and the American whore press gleefully printing every slur that Drudge's "secret sources" send him.   Some, like the New York Whore Times, right on the front page.

 - The non-stop, 24/7 cable TV talk shows. And when they didn't have a story, they just made shit up.

 - Dateline, 20/20, Dateline again, Nightline, 20/20 Downtown, Dateline again, 60 Minutes, the Today Show, Dateline again, Good Morning America, Fox News and on and on.

 - The Sunday shows, starring Tim Russert and his Clinton's cock obsession.

 - And we can't forget talk radio. The Pigboys, the Liddy's, the North's, the Bob Grants, hammering home the craziest lies in history, hour after hour, weak after week, year after year.. For some reason, sane people can't make it on radio.

   That's only the beginning. We haven't gotten to the abuse of government yet.

 - The FBI, the Arkansas State police, the snooping-on-their-boss Secret Service were reduced to watching the president to see if he might be breaking any telephone laws, or talking to a man with slanted eyes, or Koresh forbid,  looking at or talking to a young, attractive woman.
   All these bastards tattling on the president  instead of doing their goddamn jobs.

 - The Justice Department, sending more agents to comb Arkansas for trailer trash whores than they used for the World Trade Center bombing and TWA 800 combined. They wanted Clinton's cock more than they wanted to catch terrorists or save lives.

 - Larry Klayman, Dan Burton, Bob Barr, Tennessee Tuxedo and Henry Hyde and his merry band of cock-starved House manager elves. And the top asshole in all of government, Hardon Kenny Starr.  Remember, he had his agents rifle thru Hillary's underwear drawers in their bedroom just to prove what a complete asshole he could be. After all, she might've been hiding "important evidence" in her freshly-washed panties, right?

 -  One abusive distraction after another, drawing up subpoenas for literally millions of pages of documents, then squealing "We still haven't received all the documents we've asked for," as though Clinton had nothing on his mind but pleasing Larry Klayman.
    The cock-hunters were desperately searching for something,- anything to hang on Bill Clinton, all the while screaming to the eager-beaver press that "This raises more troubling questions."

 - There are so many dozens more - Susan McDougal had to do hard time - for no reason other than her former husband once did business with the man the GOP wants to destroy.  Julie Hyatt Steele lost her paid-for home because she refused to read the scripted lies written by Hardon Kenny.
    The CIA dirty tricks, the Whore Court rulings against Clinton no matter what the law said, Jerry Falwell's "Proof of 40 Murders" video and Pat Robertson and Bob Jones raising money to prevent demon Clinton from "forcing homosexuality on your children."

 -  They kept going and kept going until they finally impeached him for doing what Newt, Livingston and some House managers were doing on the very goddamn day they voted to impeach.  That scumbag David Shippers
    brought his hooker to the impeachment trial to impress her with how big and important he was.

 - The Juanita Brodderick fraud.
    She was beaten and raped so badly her husband didn't notice? Then, when the story started to lose its punch, she claimed he raped her twice?
    Once again, the House managers, with one hand in their oversized pockets, were spellbound by every sensational word that Juanita could "remember."

 - The original Paula Jones fraud.
    Financed by Richard Mellon Scaife and Pat Robertson, Paula became the most important weapon in the "law and order" party's arsenal. And her story kept changing just like Juanita's.
    First she claimed Clinton exposed himself to the virgin Paula and, being the smoothie that he is, asked her to "kiss it."  In the second version, Clinton blocked the door and exposed himself.  By the time Susan Carpenter McWhore was added to the team the story became he blocked the door,
    exposed himself, then fondled himself!  Yeah, that'll sell some papers, all right. And it also gave Sean Hannity and the vulgar Pigboy Rush Limbaugh years of tittilation and ratings.  Paula told Joe Conason she tried to settle to get out of this, but the cock-hunters wouldn't let her.

    ...and the whore press couldn't get enough.

 - The country begged them to stop, the GOP even lost seats in the House during the 1998 mid-terms, but like a drunken date-rapist, they had to reach their Clinton's-cock-orgasm before they could regain a semblence of control, and they haven't yet.

  THIS is how we treated the best president we've ever had.
  THIS is how we repaid his hundred-hour work weeks for all those years.
  THIS is how we thanked the man for tripling the retirement portfolios for tens of millions of families.

  Currently, the biggest fight in Washington is how to spend the Clinton surplus, but, of course, nobody calls it that - no matter what the economic charts show.

 Clinton worked harder than any president we've ever known, and he got the job done. He did it better than any president before him.

 Well, we as a country are about to get our payback.  For the last eight years, we've been riding in the Mercedes 500 SEL.  Now, we're either going to get the shiny Grand Am or the Escort that knocks real loud.

 We're going to miss Bill Clinton.  Someday, I'd like to shake his hand and say, "Thank you, Mr President."  I remember the night of his first Inaugural, Clinton said:

 "Thank you for putting your faith in me. I hope you're as proud of me
   at the end of my term as you are tonight, just as we're about to get started."
   
 We are proud of you, Mr President.

 ...and George Bush and the lying GOP and the cock-hungry press can just kiss my ass!

(from a very pissed-off citizen whose web site is bartcop.com)

**Everyday Mundane Warmongering**

Just another day in the life of a commonplace war no one fully understands

And isn't it all just so much annoying background noise now?

The war, that is. How we're still bombing and still spending millions per day and draining the economy, still blithely massaging the feet of Rumsfeld's gnarled war-happy ideology with the oily balms of our collective fear and dread and meek lack of willingness to question just what the hell is really going on. We're just so used to it.
Still pumping the GOP-friendly military-industrial complex full of perky aggro attitude and jingoistic testosterone and years if not decades of billion-dollar missile contracts, all to keep us fully engaged and engorged in this unwinnable war until you've long forgotten how to spell "Al-Qaeda" and Dick Cheney has had his defibrillator plated in platinum. This much we know.

Still sending even more US troops all over the world and still terrified of losing our slippery grip on our ever-fragile Saudi Arabian oil fields; still killing thousands of Afghan civilians (more dead innocents there than victims of the WTC attacks, at last count) and we're all just a little apathetic and jaded because isn't it all just so tedious and commonplace now?

The anthrax stories have all miraculously vanished, the cases of government-approved Cipro are gathering dust, it's apparently safe to eat  donuts covered in mysterious white powdery substances again, sales of both bioterror suits and home bunker kits are way down, and the whole gas mask thing is *so* November 2001.

Curious, though, how this war-that's-not-really-a-war has already receded back into the weave and weft of the culture, media joints like the venerable NY Times yanking its stand-alone war page and Time magazine putting something other (hello, new iMac) than a grainy photo of a hag-like bin Laden on its cover for the first time since war was sort of declared.

All due to general lack of interest and lack of new developments and lack of cool missile photos and visible explosions and rage-filled anti-US zealots burning US flags in the streets of Pakistan -- not to
mention all those depressing pictures of poor people dressed in rags. Only so much of that a patriotic nation can digest, really. Isn't someone helping those poor people? Where is the UN? Get in there and clean up after us, would you? Sheesh.

After all, we've got a new and much more interesting Enron mega-scandal to explore now. Isn't that a frenzied shredding sound coming from Bush's office? To heck with this confusing dust-choked religious war -- let's talk billion-dollar slimeball corporate turpitude with direct ties to the White House. Now that's got some juice.

So now we simply forget about the war, accept its nagging everpresence, like getting used to a bad smell. Time to simply accept all the miserably unpredictable airport security procedures and the new era of warrantless police searches and email scanning and the idea that your civil liberties are to the Justice Department pretty much a running joke.

Time to be very glad you aren't one of the thousands of inexplicably detained "aliens" or rights-annihilated prisoners or blacklisted academics on Lynne Cheney's big List O' Evil Intellectuals Who Aren't In Complete Sycophantic Agreement with Everything My Husband Decrees.

You know your place. Dissent or nuanced anti-military thinking about our true motives and who's really benefitting from this war will not be tolerated. Hush now. Everything will be fine. Enjoy your new Lincoln Navigator.

The war is just something we do now, something we're stuck with like some sort of slow-moving colon disease, no real choice in the matter and everyone pretty much understanding that we aren't about to reach any sort of dramatic victorious parade-in-the-streets endpoint anytime soon
even if we do ultimately kill bin Laden sometime in the near future, which we probably won't.

The war is now just our painful mantle, a bitter horse-pill we swallow every day without question and without hesitation, despite how underneath the veneer of relative health we're suffering huge karmic rashes, sociocultural impotence, political cancer.

And likely making the terrorists very happy indeed, given how quickly and efficiently we're sabotaging our own freedoms and further corrupting our own system of justice without their having to lift a finger. 

Ah well. War is hell, as they say. Good thing we've gotten so used to it.

from Mark's Notes & Errata, S.F. Chronicle

What Are We In?

BY RONNIE DUGGER      (from the Texas Observer--submitted by Dave McQueen)

A lawyer friend of mine in Indiana, David Stutsman, phoned me last spring at 3:30 in the morning. He hadn’t been able to sleep thinking about the theft of the presidential election, the theft of the country. During our talk in that dead of night he asked a question that I only heard echoing around in my mind later on: "What are we in?" What are we in? Since last December, and now since September 11th, we are in history. But what is this? What are we in?

After the secret four-month constitutional convention in Philadelphia in 1787, a matron of the city asked Benjamin Franklin what they had produced.

"A Republic, if you can keep it," Franklin said.

Well, we haven’t kept it–we’ve lost it.

George W. Bush, his lawyers led by the crafty James Baker III, Bush’s operatives in Florida led by his brother Jeb the Governor and Secretary of State Kathryn Harris, and five members of the Supreme Court usurped from the people the right to choose the President of the United States. When Bush was sworn in as President by Chief Justice Rehnquist the government itself was seized in a judicial and presidential coup d’etat.

Our elections are bought, and we know that. Our government is bought, and we know that. Congress and the Presidency had already been delegitimized across the past 20 years, for most of us, by the triumph over the common good of uncontrolled campaign finance corruption and bribery.

Since January 20th the beneficiaries of the court’s scandalous seizure of the Presidency have organized this illegal government, unilaterally abandoned international arms control, gutted the government’s revenues, prepared to gut Social Security, and launched a deceitful crusade for military control of the world with weapons circling in space under the cover of "missile defense."

The truth is so astounding we go on as if it were not true. But as an historian of the French Revolution, George Lefebvre, has written, "We cannot run history over like an experiment in a laboratory." The truth is the truth.

On the morning of September 11th, mass murderers turned our loaded airliners into weapons of mass destruction and slaughtered more than 6,000 people from over 50 countries. On the ensuing Friday, Bush, in his role as President, declared that "we’re at war," although Congress, the only constitutional source for such a declaration, has not declared war. The government admits that we have no proof (as of the date of this writing) that there was any nation behind the attacks to declare war against, yet again, on September 25th, Bush said, "We’re at war."

Please consult whatever dictionary you may have nearby. War is armed conflict between states or nations or their leaders or between parties within a nation. When individuals in a private terrorist organization attack buildings with airliners and thereby murder thousands of civilians en masse, that is not war, that is a crime against humanity.

Although the media have not stressed the fact, the use-of-force law that Congress passed was not a declaration of war and specifically limits the authorization granted the President to the terms of the War Powers Act, which keeps the President accountable to Congress for emergency use of military force.

Osama bin Laden and his Al Qaeda should be branded as pariahs the world over and brought to justice. The legal basis for doing this, with or without the permission of the Taliban, is the right to self-defense enshrined in the U.N. charter. Assuming that our appeals to the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and his terrorists continue to be rejected and if militarily and logistically it makes good sense, a multilateral force including our special forces should penetrate or parachute into Afghan territory and assault to capture bin Laden and the Al Qaeda network wherever they can be found.

But the mass murder of 6,000 innocents in the United States does not give us a warrant to mass murder 6,000 or any other number of innocents in Afghanistan. At least a million of those 25 million people are at risk of starvation, their average annual income is $800 a person, and they live on the average only to the age of 41. Neither can we just declare and wage war against Iraq, or Sudan, as pundits like William Safire and writers in The Wall Street Journal are openly advocating. The darkest thing ethically, and the worst for American standing in the world, would be tit-for-tat bombing of cities in Afghanistan, killing innocent civilians as ours have been killed, or declaring war on some other Islamic dictatorship under the ruthless and apocalyptic theory of preventive war.

The answer to mass murder is not mass murder, it is going forward to form an international democratic government that can ensure international justice that can be enforced by multilateral armed force if necessary.

We should demand that the United States Senate, acting on its own initiative, quickly ratify the International Court of Justice, which will have jurisdiction over crimes against humanity.

All sorts of concessions about the composition and jurisdiction of this court were made in order to pacify the Helmses and Gramms of the U.S. Senate. About 60 nations have already ratified the treaty to establish it, but the Bush administration is opposed to ratification. This is the very court before whom the international community should indict and try bin Laden and everybody guilty in Al’ Qaeda who can be found. It would be perfectly in order, if we had such a court, to contemplate the capture of Saddam Hussein of Iraq and a trial for crimes against humanity committed when he used poison gas to slaughter his fellow citizens.

If an American President, or an American military unit, commits crimes against humanity, they should also go before the court. Isolationism and unilateralist nationalism have held sway too long in the most powerful country in the world; it is way past time for us to accept our standing in the family of nations as an equal.

Not only should the International Criminal Court be ratified, it should be given jurisdiction over all truly international crime, including that committed by transnational corporations.

What are we in? We have an illegal President, presiding over an illegal administration, declaring an unconstitutional war, and orchestrating, under the cover of missile defenses, American development of weapons circling in space which would give the United States control of every nation on earth.

What has been true since the corporate takeover of the Democratic Party in the first half of the seventies is no truer now, but now it’s out here in the open for all of us to see. The issue before us is who governs, who decides, who controls–the people or the gigantic corporations and their political puppets.

Felix Rohatyn, the famous investment banker in New York City, said to Charlie Rose, on PBS, last Dec. 21 (I wrote it down at the time): "The government should be the minority stockholder, and the private sector ought to be the dominating factor." There is the truth of the intention, coming from Wall Street. There is the issue: the people, or the corporations. There is the issue: democracy.

One answer for democracy has been struck upon by the Maverick Alliance for Democracy in San Antonio. For the past three years they have been sponsoring multi-organizational gatherings of many progressive, populist, and community organizations under the name Independent Allies. They meet every two weeks at Estela’s on the West Side. During a part of the program called "Noticias," a representative from each participating organization tells what it’s up to. "Independent Allies" is not an organization, but a communications protocol and center, and some of us are interested in extending the idea across the state and into the country. [Meetings will be held in San Antonio November 17-18. You could learn more about that by phoning Bob Brischetto at 830-612-3643; his email is brischetto@wireweb.net.] It is time for us to form now, among all our organizations, the Equal Independent Allies, one national people’s movement, independent of any political party, to demand and fight, for example, for:

• Public funding of our elections.

• Single-payer national health insurance.

• The restoration of the corporate tax system, the progressivity of the income tax, and the replacement of the Social Security payroll tax with the income tax.

• Limits on the size of corporations, the cancellation of their alleged "personhood" and their alleged constitutional rights.

• Limits on personal wealth and a guaranteed annual income.

• Free education as high as any student can make the grades.

• First-home building subsidies and the opening of some public lands as trust lands for homesteading.

• Equal rights and equal pay for women.

• A living wage for every working person.

• The legalization of undocumented immigrants who have been here a few years and work and/or have families here.

• Repeal of the Taft-Hartley law and criminal prosecution of corporations that bedevil union organizers.

• Clean energy–wind, and solar–and the phasing down and as soon as possible of oil, coal, and nuclear power.

• International trade for people and the environment everywhere.

• A sharing of the wealth of the rich nations, including ours, with the two billion people who have no schools and no toilets.

• And world citizenship, an international democracy, and a constitution worthy of the human race.

I don’t think we have much time here in our beloved country. Although for some years I have been skeptical about electoral politics as a way of fixing a country where bribery has been legalized, I have become convinced, in the history we are in, that if, in what time we have, we are to form a new government for our country to replace the one that we have lost, we must use electoral politics as nonviolent revolt. My idea is to try to find people somewhat like Huey Long, without his corruption or crypto-fascism, willing to defy the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Parties in Washington, to be candidates for governor or U.S. Senator as Greens, as independents, as rebellious Democrats, or even as rebellious Republicans, in as many states as we can get going for 2002, so that by the time we get to 2005, we will not be staring again at either George W. Bush or Albert Gore.

Ronnie Dugger was founding editor of the Observer in 1954 and later its owner and publisher until 1994.

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Some Things Never Change: The Unbearable Ludicrousness Of Polling

The world has changed forever. That's what everyone has been saying, and saying again, since Sept. 11. In many ways, it's obviously true: Who would have thought that opening your mail without a hazmat crew standing by would qualify as risky behavior?

But some things, apparently, remain impervious to hijackings, bioterrorism or even patriotism. Like the media's indestructible infatuation with meaningless opinion polls -- and, far more ominously, our political leaders'
continued reliance on polls as their primary means of making policy decisions.

Take the latest numbers that show President Bush enjoying a 92 percent approval rating. Or, as Cokie Roberts gushed on "This Week": "He's at the highest approval rating of any president in history ... Franklin Roosevelt
didn't hit this level."

But FDR shouldn't feel too bad. Even the pollsters admit that, as the fine print in this week's Washington Post/ABC News poll put it, "Results of overnight polls that attempt to measure opinions about fast-changing news events should be interpreted with extra caution." In other words, the results are meaningless.

Or worse. Take this week's startling -- and widely reported -- finding that 83 percent of Pakistanis side with the Taliban in the current conflict. It was, we were told by Newsweek, CNN and assorted pundits, the result of a
Gallup poll. Trouble is, it was "Gallup Pakistan" -- a dubious organization with absolutely no ties to the U.S. polling company.

But even if media outlets had not been warned by the real Gallup about the poll's reliability, shouldn't they have been skeptical of such an outrageous number and, at least, asked how the pollsters had got to it? Had they
stopped by an anti-U.S. demonstration? Or had they randomly called any Pakistani who had recently purchased an American flag and some lighter fluid?

This willingness to treat the numbers with a reverence ancient Romans reserved for chicken entrails is standard operating procedure for both pundits and politicians -- and it often has disastrous consequences. Back in May 2000, for example, a Zogby International poll asked Americans to name the most important issue facing the next president of the United States. Terrorism didn't even crack the top 10; it placed 16th, listed as the top concern by 0.4 percent of the people. And so our always-eager-to-please politicians led by following -- and allowed the safety and protection of the American people to slide.

Real leadership -- one driven by vision, not polls -- would have seen the iceberg lurking beneath the placid surface of our prosperity and found a way to turn that 0.4 percent into a new consensus. After all, the job of a
leader is not simply to reflect current opinion but to challenge it, move it forward and shape it. Otherwise, we could just get rid of the president and move Mr. Zogby into the Oval Office. Why pay $400,000, plus security costs, for a middleman?

But tell that to our "leaders" in Congress, where Bush's chart-topping approval rating has given him almost complete protection against any criticism of his domestic agenda. The Democratic leadership has been cowed into silence -- even as the president is attempting to Trojan-horse his highly partisan political agenda -- including drilling in the Arctic, building a missile shield, and even more corporate tax cuts -- through the gate of this tragedy. Nothing about Sept. 11 made any of these policies less misguided. But in an effort to stand up to countries without free and democratic debate, the first thing we did was get rid of free and democratic debate.

So the off-the-cuff reactions of a small sampling of randomly selected adults who didn't have the good sense to hang up when pollsters called have silenced a less-than-brave opposition. This despite the fact that history
shows that even soaring approval ratings are, at best, highly ephemeral. All the president has to do is ask his father, whose then-record post-Gulf War 89 percent approval rating had an even shorter shelf life than the new Daniel Stern sitcom.

And what of the 92 percent? Even putting aside the fleeting nature of poll results, what does the near-unanimous support for the president really mean? Are people signaling their approval of the man or the office or the country? For the leader we have or the leader we need him to be? Is it a vote for Bush or a vote for optimism?

Tellingly, in polls taken just after Sept. 11, two-thirds of those polled said the government was ill-prepared for the terrorist attacks. But the latest surveys show that over two-thirds think that the government is now "doing everything to prevent terrorism." Has the government really done a total about-face in the last month? Or are we just crossing our fingers?

A poll in Wednesday's USA Today seems to indicate that we are. It showed that "67 percent of Americans were satisfied with the way things are going in the country." Can you imagine a more meaningless finding? Anthrax spores are shutting down the Senate, the CIA is 100 percent sure there will be future terrorist attacks, and seven out of 10 of us are "satisfied"? Will a nuclear assault leave these folks "ecstatic"?

As the Army begins shipping body bags to Afghanistan in anticipation of the coming American casualties, one can only wonder how many of those bags will have to come back full before Bush's 92 percent rating makes like the NASDAQ and nose-dives back to earth.

The terrorist attacks have laid bare, once again, the danger of having leaders who can't even get dressed in the morning without consulting the latest poll numbers. And while the tragic events have clearly provided our 92 percent president with an aura of heroic leadership, they have also cast in high relief the deficiencies inherent in the system from which he sprang

Arianna Huffington.

(to subscribe to Arianna's columns or to contact her go to  arianna@ariannaonline.com )

It Can Only Get Worse

(from Brain Droppings by George Carlin)

OK, Jivers.  This silence is deafening.  We're all sitting around with our hookas, picking lint, pounding pud, looking out the window, petting the dog, and whistling while OUR POCKETS ARE BEING PICKED  AND OUR GOVERNMENT HAS BEEN STOLEN by a bunch of slimy pig fucking oil rich corprocrats from goddamn TEXAS.  Repeat after me:  I'M MAD AS HELL AND I'M NOT GOING TO TAKE IT ANYMORE!
 
This is the first in an irregular series of gnus rants, and I don't want to be the only one.  I especially want to hear from Marshall, Peter, Danice, Jo, Capen and Cnewsguy, since this is our  beat.  And Telebob is damn good at this too.   Dallas thieves and Australian smut peddlers may have stolen the entire broadcast spectrum, but we still have this medium, at least until they figure out how to hijack it completely too.  So open the window and yell:  KLAATU BARADA NIKTO!
 
First, there is no budget surplus.  It's a shell game.  When Reagan ran up astounding deficits Congress obligingly arranged an increase in Social Security Taxes, FICA.  That is the whole source of the so-called "surplus." Only the poor and middle class pay it--income over $72,000 is exempt.  So now Dubya's controllers want to compound the thievery by giving the "surplus" away to--surprise--themselves!  For the details see William Greider's Nation piece in the April 2 edition:  http://www.thenation.com  and click on "Stockman Returneth" in the archive section. 

And while you're there see Vincent Bugilosi's (yes, THAT Vincent Bugliosi's) marvelous rant
on the Supreme's COUP, also in the archive section, titled "None Dare Call It Treason."  Bob, speaking of the Dubya coup, how about posting here the Conason piece from the Austin list?
You've all been alerted to, and I assume have read, Salon's great piece on Broadcast and Record chicanery.  Yesterday, Glenn posted a link to an update of the story. We more or less won the Commercials strike, but now the main event looms, and the performers are going into what may be our biggest strike ever woefully divided.   AFTRA leaders and many members are still pissed at SAG's bumbling new "militant" leadership for torpedoing the merger, and there is a significant fraction of SAG's membership which is actively working to undermine the new guys.   See Marc Cooper's overview from the April 2 Nation at:    http://www.thenation.com   and type in <residual anger> in the search box at the top.  Is this any way to go into a strike?  This doesn't look promising.

Finally, pocket pickin'.  There is no energy crisis, at least not yet. There will be, since oil and natural gas production is already declining, but that's twenty or so years away. Sunday March 4 the SF Chronicle ran a good piece on the front page on how the "shortage" of electricity has not been caused by "skyrocketing demand," as the pundits are so fond of saying, but is in fact market manipulation.   The Chron's computer analysis showed that demand has increased a scant 4 percent since 1998.  The paper's own subhead capsulized the game:  "Energy Crisis A Cover For Raising Price." But the very next day the Chron ran another front page story parroting the "shortage" canard, and hasn't referred to their own scoop a single time since.  Editorial amnesia or were their wrists slapped by their Hearst masters?  ("parroting" the "canard" yeeesss.)
 
Alright, if your e-server and your hard drive survived all that, now you're informed.  Let's hear it from you.  Post 'em here.  OUTRAGE!  SMUTTY JOKES (especially about Dubya!)  INSULTS TO DALLAS CORPROHOGS!  TRUTH, JUSTICE, THE AMERICAN WAY! COME ON JIVERS!    - - - Dave McQueen

TOTALLY CORRUPT BASTARDS

The FCC as the handmaiden to the NAB has allowed the airwaves that were supposed to be there "in the public interest, need, and convenience" as the birthright of all Americans has allowed the complete control of the media (in any significant sense) to be corralled and cornered by a very small group of people who now not only control the asset, but they also control the 'controllers' of the asset.  Wm. Kennard reminds me of Adam Sors in "Sunshine". A man smart enough to recognize the immorality of what he does, but not the courage to really fight it...until it swallows him whole.

The quote from Lowrey Mays of ScumChannel is totally typical of the attitude that permeates the ownership of the "means of production".  I am no screaming commie, I am just another 'small businessman' squeezed out by the broadcasting Waltons who doesn't like it.

What once Congress called Payola is now just good business...and who could be against that?  What was done by urban Jews and drug sniffing black people was surely suspect and a crime...hang Alan Freed from a light pole...but wait until a broacasting Congressman like Heftel wants to do it...well that's a different story. Junkets by congressmen who were going to vote on Defense contracts...perish the thought.

The limited ownership rule was a good thing.  The 3 year rule was a good thing. The rot started under Reagan and Dennis Patrick and has gone downhill ever since. This is why I detest Lee Lapdog Abrams and his ilk...he showed them how to round up the captive listener with his market analysis techniques that any 3rd year Statistics Student could have done. Why even some of our erstwhile brethren enthusiastically sipped from the same cup.

Take a look at the 1979 foto.  There is the ambitious Jackie McCauley, and I see Ed E and Rick (who are above suspicion motivewise) as for the rest....WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE? And where's the dirtwad (RIH) L. David Moorsquat.

Oh god...now you got me started...where are my pills?

Tekelbob

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