Page A-26

Steaming Pile of the Day (or Food for Thought)

2009-09-24T13:59:00.000-07:00

Republican politicians don't give a flying fuck about what's best for the American people, but they don't have the balls to admit it.

Democratic politicians generally believe in the the common good, but don't have the balls to do anything about it.

The American people think they're God's gift to the world, but don't have the attention span to realize they're a nation in self-inflicted, irreparable decline.

It would be an amusing and entertaining reality show to watch if it wasn't happening to us.

The Public Education Analogy for Healthcare

2009-08-27T14:51:00.000-07:00

In the raging healthcare debate that currently dominates the American news cycle, it seems like everybody has an analogy that they claim proves or disproves the future viability of the as yet unformed healthcare reform legislation. Republican/conservative fearmongers compare it to socialism (Soviet, not Swedish). Over on the left, Democrats, scrambling to find some type of purchase in the painfully thin topsoil that is America's collective attention span, can't really compare it to anything substantive because they haven't yet decided how much they're going to give up in the face of Republican obstinance, although they have made weak efforts to point out that their various plans are similar in various ways to various existing programs like Medicare and the VA.

In all fairness to the American public, you can't really blame them for buying the Republican bullshit, because at least it's something to buy. The Democrats talked a big game about single-payer universal coverage (without explaining it to people) before the election, but quickly jettisoned that idea as soon as Max Baucus and Kent Conrad got their campaign checks from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries. Then they babbled about the public option (again, without clearly explaining it to Ma and Pa Kettle), half-heartedly flung co-ops against the wall to see if they would stick (what is a co-op you ask? Exactly!), and now are mumbling stuff about pasting a few legislative band-aids on the suppurating wound of American healthcare.

The frustrating thing is, the Republicans couldn't care less about the plight of the "mythical little people." The Democrats are the ones who push legislation and policy that benefits society rather than the individual or the corporation, and in a country of 300 million people, logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Or the one. In the words of George Costanza, "we're living in a society here!"

The Dems are responsible for some of the most important social legislation in history, from the Social Security Act to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to the Americans with Disabilities Act to Title IX, but these days, they seem unable to make the case for healthcare reform or anything else to the American people.

Republicans are great at coming up with neat little Goebbels-like slogans that reduce complex, subtle, critically important policy debates down to bumper-sticker slogans. From "the Moral Majority" to "Contract with America" to "entitlement programs" to "the death tax" to "socialized medicine" to "death panels" and now "the death book," Frank Luntz, Karl Rove, and the rest of the sinister Republican brain trust have got distracting abstraction down to a science.

It works for them because Americans don't want to "read the bill," they want the Cliff's Notes version. The shorter the better, and bonus points if it has a touch of snark to it, too. Democrats, weak-kneed and conviction-challenged as they are, hem and haw about the fine details of policy, nibbling off arcane portions of legislation and then trying to sell them to the American people as legitimate game-changers. Most of the time, most Americans don't know what the Democrats are trying to argue, what their positions are, how the proposed legislation would affect them, or why something needs to change. It's much simpler for the public to absorb a bold, confident, 30-second Republican sound bite than it is to try to figure out what the hell John Kerry just spent seven minutes and 15 appositive clauses trying to say.

This is one reason why the public doesn't buy the Democratic spiel, and frankly, Page A-26 can't blame them. To help the Democrats find their way out of the rhetorical paper bag in which they're currently lost in the healthcare debate, Page A-26 offers two helping hands.

First, a five-word bumper sticker slogan. "Universal healthcare -- for everybody's future"

Second, a simple analogy for single-payer universal health care or the public option. The public education system.

Republicans/conservatives and their town holler proxies are all bent out of shape about universal healthcare and/or the public option for a variety of disingenuous reasons. Oh sure, some of the more undereducated town hollers might actually believe that universal healthcare or the public option would result in rationed care or whacking grandma for the fun of it or socialized medicine (uh, you mean like the VA, hoss? Yes, my little mental midget, just like the VA), but the puppetmasters pulling the strings know that these reasons are just distracting flak thrown into the public discourse to confuse and mislead.

One of the favorite warhorses that Republican leaders trot out in opposition of universal healthcare or even a public option is that such a plan will drive private health insurance companies out of business because they won't be able to compete with the government's economy of scale. (Let's just suspend for the time being the counterargument these same Republican leaders spew out of the other side of their mouths: that a government-managed system would be horribly inefficient and ineffective.) Because the government would be able to offer better coverage at a lower price, reasonable Americans would abandon their overpriced, undercovering private health insurance for the public option. Alas, the poor private health insurance companies, how will they ever survive?

If only there was an example of an existing system in which a critical service was provided to the American public concurrently by the government and the private sector. If only.

Ah, but wait, there is. It's called the American educational system. First sketched out in the Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787, the public education system in the United States is one of the most beneficial and successful systems in the history of the world. Using tax revenue, the federal government, in conjunction with local governments and municipalities provides free education to anybody who wants to attend. And right alongside the universal single-payer government-run, socialized public education system hums a vast network of highly successful and profitable private education institutions.

Just like it would be for universal single-payer healthcare, Americans right now, today! have the right and the opportunity to send their kids to whatever school they want. Parents can choose to send their kids to tuition-free public school or they can choose to send them to private schools for a fee. It's entirely their choice. The government doesn't force them into either option, but it does make an option available for those who cannot afford the high cost of private schools or for those who simply choose to participate in the shared experience that is American society.

So there it is Democratic leaders, your ready-made, easy-to-understand analogy for universal single-payer healthcare, or at least the public option.

One last thing about the public education-universal healthcare analogy. Republicans have been trying for years to get rid of America's public education system. From attempts to dissolve the Department of Education to private school vouchers to unnecessary tax cuts that intentionally leave no money remaining for public services like education, the Republicans/conservatives are hell-bent on privatizing one of the shining lights of American history and American government.

This is an important point, because the Republicans would like to privatize everything, including Social Security, the armed forces, and even the Post Office. Why? Because corporations don't profit from government services, unless they're the ones providing them. So with regard to Republicans/conservatives, the healthcare debate is really about profit and greed, not what's best for individual Americans or America as a whole.

That's one more simple message the Democrats should be trying to make clear to the American public.

Fear Groupthink

2009-08-21T14:41:00.000-07:00

Today's topic is the moronic town hollers and the misinterpretation of them by America's beloved media types.

Yes, of course the Republicans/Conservatives/Neocons/Birthers/Deathers/Teabaggers/Minutemen/Swift Boaters/town hollers/et al are driving us crazy here at Page A-26, but as usual we're almost more distressed by the media coverage than we are with their actual antics. That's because, the flaccid "reporting" on the town hollers, instead of being a spotlight of truth that shames these dead-enders and their big-money enablers into something resembling reality and morality, only serves to mislead and distract by sending those still paying attention down the wrong path like sheep into a loading dock.

Like rattlesnakes, the disingenuous Republicans/conservatives can't really be expected not to do what they do. Just as one wouldn't expect a rattlesnake to suddenly turn into a snuggly pet, one doesn't expect Republicans/Conservatives/Neocons/Birthers/Deathers/Teabaggers/Minutemen/Swift Boaters/et al to suddenly turn into rational, thoughtful, caring beings capable of reasonable discussion on any topic. Like it or not, it's who they are and what they do. Apparently, in modern American society, there is always going to be 25-35% of the population who refuse to accept reality and will ceaselessly continue bleating on and on about Obama's birth certificate or God's views on homosexuality and abortion, guns, or the evil incarnate that is taxes and, gasp, government.

So screw 'em. Those people are unreachable. However, that still leaves 65-75% of this country who theoretically might listen to reason. Except. Except the media proves itself on a daily basis to be either a megaphone for intentional disinformation and propaganda (yes, Fox News, we're looking at you) or an echo chamber of babbling sycophants.

Exhibit one in today's media lambast is the industry-accepted reason for the town hall disruptions: fear.

Sometime in the past few weeks, it was decided by the media types that fear was going to the be the universal descriptor to describe the mind-bogglingly stupid antics of the town hall disruptees. Everybody from Brian Williams to Jon Stewart to Keith Olberman to Rachel Maddow to Bill Maher has been beating the fear horse to death ever since. So much so that the fear explanation has become firmly entrenched in the media's conventional wisdom on the topic and nobody even questions it any more, just simply repeats over and over again that these idiot town hollers are driven by fear, fear, fear! All town hall news stories and commentaries are now built on this thematic foundation.

For Page A-26, it has become useless groupthink, very similar to the "Saddam Hussein is a butcher with WMDs that gassed his own people, is a threat to the very existence of the world, and must be taken down immediately" groupthink that every public commentator and politician (with some exceptions: Bill Maher, Barbara Lee, Dennis Kucinich, Howard Dean) was mindlessly parroting in the months preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq in March 2003. This groupthink is why nobody in the media really questioned Bush's bullshit "evidence" and why Bush and his thugs were able to use the media to convince the American public that the Iraq war was necessary.

After reading and considering Joe Bageant's excellent book, "Deer Hunting with Jesus," a piercing explanation of why poor, rural Americans act against their own self-interests by supporting Republican candidates and policies, Page A-26 has developed a different theory about why these town hollers are acting the way they are.

It's not fear that is motivating them to act out, it's empowerment.

These morons are not scared, they are emboldened. The pundits are asserting that the town hollers are afraid of coming changes to their lives that will leave them on the outside looking in. That's totally bass-ackwards thinking. As Bageant points out, these people are already on the outside looking in. They are forgotten nobodies in the age of celebrity worship, their lives just dreary, empty shells of the American dream and they know it.

The Republican/conservative puppetmasters know it too, and they have tapped into the empty lives of these people and offered them a raison d'etre. They get them all riled up on talk radio and Fox News with a lot of lies and misinformation about Obama, Nancy Pelosi, the Democrats, and policy issues like healthcare reform, then offer them an opportunity to turn their anger into action through abortion clinic demonstrations, town hall disruptions, and the like.

For the poor dopes who buy into the Republican/conservative crap, they feel like this is their chance to be part of something, to make a difference, to be heard -- to feel powerful.

This is evident in the vehemence and total lack of introspection with which the town hollers proffer their ignorance in public. They feel they are part of something that wants and needs them. This is the same principle that drives people to join gangs -- and churches. The Republican party represents something that loves them, has a place for them, and has a mission for them -- or so they think.

Of course, they are being cynically manipulated by Republican/conservative idealogues who prey on these desperate lost souls and hire PR and marketing firms to shape and sell their messages to the very people who will be most hurt by them: Joe the Plumbers, hockey moms, and the town hollers themselves. In the cruelest of ironies, the town hollers are like ants who take poisoned bait from an ant trap back to the nest and end up killing off their entire colony, themselves included.

So it's not about fear, it's about empowerment. And these town hall fools have been empowered and enabled by the attention they are receiving for their public antics. You can see them growing in confidence, vehemence, and righteousness every second they're in front of a camera or a microphone. Their expressions similar to those of an eight-year-old who looks to his older brother for approval before doing something he knows to be wrong but wants to do anyway to impress the brother and his friends. Seeing that their buffoonery generates the right reaction -- attention -- they forge ahead, louder and dumber and wronger.

This is the kind of artificially invested self-importance wielded by security guards and vice principals, as if somehow their rumpled uniforms or polyester ties give them the right to exert social control well beyond their wisdom, intellect, and morality. Of course, it's the power of the superorganism standing behind them that gives them their arrogant righteousness.

So the town hollers are willing to suspend disbelief and logic to be a part of the Republican/conservative superorganism because it gives them a voice and a role in an American society in which they would otherwise be nameless, faceless drones. The Republican/conservative puppetmasters feed them lies and validate their misconceptions and ignorance, then give them a mission as God's warriors on the front line of patriotism and rugged individualism and point them towards the issue of the moment (abortion, Terry Schiavo, gay marriage, gun control, elective war, healthcare reform).

The town hollers are basically social/political/moral suicide bombers outfitted with explosive ideological vests by the Republican/conservative puppetmasters and loosed into the crowded open-air markets of American public discourse. And the town hollers carry out their missions with the same unthinking certainty and misguided prestige as the manipulated martyrs in Iraq.

But American media thrives on fear and so fear is the reason they have chosen to explain why these town hollers are acting out. Fear of change, fear of black people, fear of losing their place in society, which is something they don't even have to lose because it's already gone.

Too bad it misses the mark. Nope, these town hollers are fueled by the sense of purpose that comes from years of being told by the Republican/conservative puppetmasters that their ignorance is truth and that they can make a difference if only they will force the rest of society to see things as they do.

The vociferousness of voice and action of these town hollers and their ilk, at the behest of the Republican/conservative puppetmasters, has gotten steadily more aggressive in the last 25 years and will continue to do so until two things happen:

1) The Democratic/liberal/progressive leaders understand the disenfranchisement of the town hollers and find a way to reinspire their lives. Page A-26 doesn't have that answer yet, but we can sure as hell tell you it won't happen through condescension, derision, complicated philosophical Senate speak, or the inability to stake out a clear position and then stand behind it with the courage of conviction. Something more akin to rolling up their figurative sleeves and getting into these communities and showing how government programs like Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the VA, public education, and so on directly and positively benefit the lives of the town hollers. It will only work if it's as simple as A + B = C. The Democrats/liberals/progressives must find a way to make the town hollers feel just as important and empowered as the Republican/conservative puppetmasters make them feel.

2) Somehow the American media has to be reclaimed from the MBA and Chamber of Commerce crowds. There is no way that Americans can hope to understand what is going on behind the scenes in Congress and the corporate boardrooms when the media is controlled by the very corporate boardrooms that are carving up this country for their own gain. So long as editorial decisions are made based on spreadsheets, political ideology, and ego, there is no hope to pass meaningful healthcare reform or any other publicly beneficial legislation. The media is the only spotlight the American public has, and without it, the roaches will multiply in the dark and end up eating us out of house and home.

A Theory on Autism

2009-08-12T14:45:00.000-07:00

Page A-26 has long been on its soapbox about the total and absolute capitulation of America to China. Setting aside the political, military, and economic chokehold China already has on us -- yes, they could roll us right now three ways to Sunday if they wanted to; believe it -- public health and safety is the issue d'jour.

Page A-26 theorizes that there might be a correlation between the skyrocketing rate of autism in the United States during the last 15 years and the similarly staggering volume of Chinese imports brought into this country during the same time period. No, we are not claiming that the mere act of importing cheap goods from China is the cause of autism, but we are questioning whether there is a relationship between the high volume of these poorly manufactured goods and current public health issues.

Doctors and scientists aren't sure what causes the spectrum of neural disorders generally called autism, but theories are legion. From medical professionals to parents to ranting paranoids like Page A-26, autism theories are like, well, autistic kids -- seems like everybody's got one. Theories range from genetic predispositions to mercury in vaccinations to statistics and reporting.

Currently, the medical profession is fixated on the idea that autism is congenital. Their collective theory is that, as with many other diseases, there must be a certain gene or gene sequence that predisposes some people to autism.

Page A-26 has a whole new theory on the causes of autism, a theory that has major repercussions for not only public health in the United States, but also for the international economy.

Page A-26 theorizes that the sharp rise in autism in the United States over the last 15 years is a direct result of the massive increase in Chinese imports brought into the country during the same time period. We further posit that the search for genetic markers is a wild goose chase, because we believe that every human has the genetic markers for autism -- it's not about the markers, it's about the triggers. Specifically, Page A-26 believes that chemicals exhausted and leached from cheap Chinese imports made with substandard and outright dangerous materials are the triggers which activate the autism gene markers.

Now before you go off screaming Sinophobia at the top of your lungs, don't. This isn't an attack on the Chinese people or culture. China is the focus of our theory because it is now the world's supplier of cheap, plastic, and poorly manufactured goods. It could just as easily be Mexico, Bangladesh, Vietnam, or Romania (in fact, their products are also probably suspect), but as anybody who has done any shopping in the last 10 years will tell you, just about every damn thing for sale in this country was made in China.

In the last three years, there has been no shortage of news stories about recalled Chinese toys, food, and other products found to be too dangerous for human consumption. Each time we are bombarded with propaganda telling us that it was just a manufacturing anomaly and not the result of any kind of systemic deficiencies. And then it happens again. This is no accident. The corporations selling this stuff know damn well that the materials and processes being used to make these products in China aren't safe, but they don't care about safety, they care about profits.

Whether it's lead, arsenic, polyvinylchloride, and mercury in children's toys or radiator fluid in pet food or simply bisphenol A and phthalates in everything from baby bottles to car upholstery, dangerous chemicals are in everything we buy that says "Made in China" on it.

And not just a little contaminated. Lead levels in toys and other products have been found in some cases to be 116,000 PERCENT HIGHER THAN THE ACCEPTABLE LEVELS SET BY THE US GOVERNMENT. Nobody knows exactly what has been causing the elevation of autism rates in this country over the last 20 years, but it is very telling that NONE of the current theories makes any mention of contaminated Chinese imports as a possible line of investigation.

Again with the China, Page A-26? Yup. But China isn't really to blame. Like Colombia, they're just fulfilling a ravenous demand in the American market. Instead, blame the American corporations and politicians who intentionally put Americans at risk in order to increase their profits and power. You see, the European Union has already figured out that these cheap Chinese imports are dangerous and its politicians have set very stringent safety standards for consumer goods. So stringent that most Chinese manufacturers have separate facilities. One set of facilities produces high-quality goods for the European market's tough safety standards; the other set produces cheap, dangerous goods using harmful chemicals and substandard manufacturing practices for the American market. Don't believe us? Look it up and start paying attention, because its real.

But back to the autism discussion. Page A-26 did a cursory statistical survey to see how the increase in autism tracks against the increase in Chinese imports to the United States over the last 10 years. Now granted, Page A-26 is not a credentialed scientific organization, and also granted, the information we used to create our comparison was grabbed at random off the Internet, so don't get caught up in the methodology. In fact, Page A-26 feels that because we randomly pulled data off the Internet from different sources, the results are more objective and credible than some study commissioned by the US Chamber of Commerce or the American Chemistry Council or the goddamn White House.

When we graphed the two sets of data from two different sources for the years 1995 to 2003, we found that they were nearly identical. Both sets of data reveal strikingly similar year-on-year percentage growth as well as similar growth arcs for the entire eight-year period we looked at. Coincidence, or . . . ?

As we suspected, our theory has met with everything from goofy grins to outright annoyance as people wave off such out-of-the-box thinking as the ranting of a radical left-wing wackjob. Guess what? You better start thinking seriously about this theory, because it's not just autism, it's pancreatic cancer, overian cancer, MS, ALS -- these cheap products made with dangerous chemicals are everywhere and you are kidding yourself if you think that they're safe just because the corporations and manufacturers profiting from them and the corrupt American politicians who are beholden to the corporations say they're safe. In fact, the latest recall of toys were actually replacements for previously recalled toys.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/27/AR2007092702160.html?hpid=moreheadlines
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/09/27/AR2007092700231.html?tid=informbox

These products are not safe -- they are killing us. In fact, you can just assume that every single thing you purchase, from food to clothes to toys to medicine, contains ingredients that are harmful to the human body. It's all contaminated.

As mentioned, our theory has met with much resistance. Nobody wants to acknowledge that the cheap crap they buy at Wal-Mart might be why they have asthma or why their kid has autism. Americans long ago made the decision that they prefer cheapness over quality, convenience over health. And speaking of health, Page A-26 wonders if a comparison of pharmaceutical company profits and the rise in autism over the last 15 years would yield similar statistical results. We're thinking yes.

Page A-26 first started thinking about this link between dangerously manufactured Chinese imports and autism after seeing several news stories that reported the mysterious rise in autism rates and how it's one of the great mysteries of our times. Gosh darn, it seems like nobody can figure this out.

So, unlike the medical researchers who insist that the answers can only be found by deciphering the Human Genome, Page A-26 feels that the answer lies in the environmental factors that activate the genetic markers for autism. If we were running the research, we would start looking at historical, environmental, economic, and scientific factors that have occurred simultaneous to the huge spike in autism in the U.S. over the last 15 years. Could be the increased exposure to harmful chemicals from cheap Chinese imports, could be global warming. The point is, doesn't it seem a bit easier to investigate and address the human-created conditions that might contribute to conditions like autism rather than trying to figure out the inner workings of the human genetic code?

It could be that the powers that be don't want to figure it out -- just like the same powers that be don't want to acknowledge global warming. Those making money off cheap Chinese imports don't want that gravy train threatened and those in the medical and scientific community are too arrogant to consider something they hadn't previously considered. Oh yeah, and one more thing: if a legitimate study was to be done, and that study was to determine that there was a link between the dangerous chemicals in cheap Chinese imports and the explosion of autism in this country, it would shake the very foundation of the US and the world economies -- and the powers that be are never going to let that happen.

For example, yahoo.com has a bunch of links on its site for shopping for baby toys and consumer reports tips on buying baby products, but none of them mention anything about chemical contaminants or say anything about China. This content is certainly intended to drive commerce, not to inform the public about the things they really need to know about.

Go ahead, shout it out: it's a goddamn conspiracy. Actually, it's two conspiracies. First is the conspiracy among governments and corporations not to protect the consumers from harmful products in order to make greater profits. Second is the conspiracy to overlook the connection between these harmful products and the recent, sharp rise in medical conditions like autism.

Because the American economy is totally dependent on cheap Chinese goods, nothing will ever be voluntarily done that could possibly jeopardize that relationship or profit margin. In fact, China has the US economy so securely by the balls that last year, Mattel issued a groveling apology to China!

What will happen is that the US retailers and Chinese manufacturers will make incremental changes to move the toxicity of the products right to the edge of acceptable contamination levels, but will make no effort to complete clean up their products. As soon as the American public stops complaining and this latest wave of recall publicity dies down, it will go back to business as usual. (For example, one PR line that retailers are using is the design flaw versus chemical contamination angle -- http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-09/29/content_6810132.htm)

And hey, save some of that blame for yourselves. The next time you read a story in the news about some type of recalled Chinese import or see something on TV about how nobody can figure out what causes autism, maybe you will take a couple minutes to really think about whether there might be a link between the two. And then ask yourself why nobody is interested in investigating a link between the two. And then ask yourself if anybody besides you actually cares whether you and your family get sick and die from these products. And then ask yourself whether you really need that Thomas the Tank Engine toy for your son or that nonstick cooking pan or any of the other crap you were thinking about buying at Wal-Mart.

Only we have the power to protect our health -- by not buying these contaminated, dangerous, and unhealthy products. Don't buy them. We know that it's hard to find anything that isn't made in China, but that's part of the point here.

We are being poisoned by the omnipresence of these goods in our lives.

Until we put pressure on the retailers and branded companies that KNOWINGLY sell us these contaminated products, why would they ever change their practices? They are making huge profit margin at the expense of OUR HEALTH.

Don't buy this stuff, and tell the merchants that you buy from that you won't buy any products made in China. If we all took this kind of stand, however difficult and inconvenient it might be (please note that the title for the jumplink to the second page of this article is titled, "Boycotting Chinese toys 'impractical'" -- a subtle but clear message to the American public that they need to shut up, bend over, and take it), the cheap, dangerous products wouldn't sell and the corporations would be forced to replace them with something that will, like maybe the safer, healthier products they produce for the European Union.

It's our health America.

The Plot to Attack the United States, er Iran

2008-05-02T11:32:00.001-07:00

Bad news America -- bad news world. Dick Cheney's thirty-year priopism for attacking Iran is closer than ever to coming to a climax. He wants this so bad, he can almost smell it with his lizard tongue.

Generally, it's more of the same from the Bush Crime Family and the Cheney neocon-men: we know Iran has nuclear intentions, we know they are supplying weapons and training to insurgents in Iraq, and we know they have designs on your teenage daughters. We have no tangible proof we can show you, but we have plenty of talking heads that will get up and make the unsubstantiated claim. Basically, trust us, would we lie to you?

And just like the run-up to the Iraq war, Administration officials are getting increasingly frustrated with sanctions and other UN methods for dealing with international conflict. So they are looking for some way to justify military action. Make no mistake, justification will be found. More like, justification will be manufactured -- this war is going to happen.

The terrible twosome have been steadily ramping up their anti-Iranian rhetoric for a couple of years now -- from painting Ahmendinajad as a nutball (takes one to know one), to accusations of providing the materials for IEDs, to empty UN resolutions, to hypocritical accusations of state-sanctioned terrorism, to constant lying about Iranian nuclear intentions, and even a super-groovy retro Gulf of Tonkin hoax -- with frustratingly (to them) little to show for it.

Just last month, President Bushmill got up in front of the country and the world and unashamedly claimed that Iran wants "a nuclear weapon to destroy people." Well, maybe he was a little ashamed, but only because the elite liberal press made such a stink out of it. Jeesh, John McCain gets to totter on about "bomb-bomb-bomb, bomb-bomb Iran" and nobody bats an eye, but danged if those elitist liberal pinheads committed to defeat in this here war on terra don't get their drawers in a wad when the President says it.

Of course, it doesn't help when dumbshits in the intelligence community publish naive National Intelligence Estimates that contradict every hyperintuitive bone in Bushmill's one-dimensional world. Or when traitorous, disloyal bastards like General Erik Shinsheki and Admiral William Fallon refuse to be used as puppets in Boom-Boom Cheney's bloodthirsty theater of vain.

Earlier this month, Bushmill sent reliable Administration schills, General David "Betray us" Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan "What a crock" Crocker up to Congress to stall for more time on the Iraq issue. Never ones to pass up an opportunity to get a jump start on the next war, Bushmill and The Dick made sure to have Petraeus and Crocker lob Iranian fear bombs whenever possible. "They spoke of Tehran's 'nefarious activities,' its 'malign influence,' and how it posed 'the greatest long-term threat to the viability' of the Baghdad government."

Ever since pronouncing them as a founding member of the Axis of Evil, the Bushmill Administration has had Iran in their sights. The festering sores of Afghanistan and Iraq have kept their murderous passion to a slow burn, but with Dumbya's catastrophe nearing a hard stop in January 2009, it's go time.

Meet the new lies, same as the old lies. Now, just like they did with Iraq, Bushmill and Cheney are strategically positioning their game pieces in advance of the green light for War III: the Iranian Debacle. This week, Admiral Fallon dispatched the aircraft USS Abraham Lincoln -- you remember old honest Abe, right? -- to join the USS Harry Truman in menacing, er "reminding" Iran that as soon as the bloodthirsty cowards of the Bush Administration get their ducks in a row, it's their ass!

Also this week, Pentagon officials are trying to claim that Iran, a Shia state, is providing support for the Taliban, a devout Sunni organization. That'd be like what, Republican members of congress actually supporting legislation proposed by the Democrats? Yeah, right. Predictably, that bullshit has met with some skepticism from anybody with half a brain, but that ain't going to stop Bushmill and The Dick from their bloody ambition.

Public opinion has no relevance to the Bush/Cheney junta because they have no regard for the public. However, low public opinion does make it tougher to run roughshod over the country and the Constitution because it often leads to nagging questions about details (where are the WMD? where is Osama? Will we again be greeted as liberators? How much is this going to cost? Do you have any kind of plan for after the invasion? Do you have any actual evidence of anything?).

Despite the gaping holes in logic and common sense, Bushmill and The Dick still have their media enablers to help make the case for them.

And yet, still nothing. Daaaaamn. What does a corrupt, war-mongering, intentionally incompetent Administration have to do these days to gin up a fake war against a sovereign country that has done nothing to harm or threaten the United States? Oh for those heady post-9/11 days when all Bushmill had to do was hunch his shoulders and go "boo" and he'd have every legislator in the land falling all over themselves to get a piece of the wartime action.

Some like Mother Jones, Dan Froomkin, and Olivier Knox see the process but don't yet see the mechanism. What they need to realize is that the American public and even this weak-kneed Democratic congress won't back any attack on Iran based solely on Administration say-so. No amount of evidence or statements from military officials or hand-wringing or terra'-baiting can overcome this Administration's credibility gap. So how will they do it?

There is only one card left for Bushmill and The Dick to play, and it's the ace of spades: a massive domestic terrorist attack. Hell, it worked once before.

Think back a few years. Despite all the phonied-up evidence about WMD, would America have supported an invasion of Iraq based just on the warmongering of Bushmill and The Dick? Probably not. But supercharged with the emotion of an event like 9/11, and well, the American public will buy anything. So here we go again.

Stock up on your duct tape and plastic sheets Bay Area, because President Bushmill and The Dick have a shitstorm headed your way.

At the danger of being framed by the NSA as a patsy for Bushmill and The Dick's craven plan or winding up an unfortunate "suicide," based on close observation of the right-wing sound machine and a nasty gut feeling, Page A-26 fears the following:

There will be a large-scale terrorist attack in the United States this year. Like 9/11, it will be an inside job intended to frighten the American public and American politicians into such a frenzied state of panic that they will agree to anything Cheney's neocon-men want. Fox's pompous pompadour John "Kim Il-Jung stole my hair" Gibson has already acknowledged as much on live TV. (When we say "inside job," we don't necessarily mean that American agents actually carried out every detail of the attack. We mean that there was some direct assistance from US operatives, there was some intentional negligence, and there was some strategic inaction -- all designed to "allow" such an attack to occur.)
It will target a major US city. Bill O'Reilly already let slip that the lunatic fringe would be more than willing to sacrifice the other "blue" capital of the country, San Francisco. It will target an iconic yet low-population-density target in the Bay Area such as Coit Tower (O'Reilly's suggestion), Alcatraz, or the Golden Gate Bridge. For maximum effect on morale, we suspect it will be the Golden Gate Bridge -- think of the anti-Olympic flame protest there in April as a test run on the bridge's security.
It will involve a "dirty bomb" in order to substantiate both the Administration's scare tactic of a nuclear Iran and the necessity of the so-called War on Terror.
It will occur this summer, most likely after the Democratic National Convention in late August and before the Republican National Convention in early September. Such timing will give McCain the Main Stream Media's (MSM) undivided attention and effectively put him in the middle of the action, compared to the Democratic nominee who will have no access to the decision-making process or the associated spotlight.
As with 9/11, immediate and irrefutable "evidence" will surface linking the attack to Iran, most likely the elite Al-Quds brigade, which despite being a unit of the Iranian military, is still somehow considered a terrorist organization.
Suspects in the attack will be quickly identified, almost too quickly, but we will soon learn that they were either killed in the blast or have somehow already left the country. Dead (and make-believe) men tell no tales, right, so no use looking for anybody.
As with 9/11, the boisterous choir of jingoistic vitriol from the right-wing sound machine will make any quest for the truth not only impossible, but treacherously unpatriotic.
And like 9/11, there will be an immediate flood of emergency wartime legislation designed to give Bush and his Republican successor free rein to act unilaterally in response.

Such an incident will accomplish the following for the Bush/Cheney neocon-men and their corporate collaborators.

It will ensure the election of a Republican president in 2008.
It will fulfill Cheney's 30-year boner for revenge on Iran.
It will open up the Iranian oil fields for corporate plunder.
It will further enable the neocon-men's dream of a "democratic" Middle East by making it possible for the US to establish yet another puppet regime in the region.
It will further expand US military presence in the Middle East.
It will take all public and MSM attention away from all the other crimes and constitutional depravities of the Bush Administration.
It will continue indefinitely the plunder of the US Treasury by the Bush Crime Family's profiteering cronies in the military/industrial complex.

So there it is. Unless the Democrats in Congress grow a sac or the American people pull their heads out of their jingo-holes, we will have ourselves another unprovoked invasion of a sovereign Middle Eastern country and another interminable war for profit and pride.

As Bushmill and The Dick tried to tell us before they invaded Iraq, we cannot wait to attack because the final proof could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. So for War #3, they are going to combine the last two steps in the run-up to this new fake war: a mushroom cloud to prove their point.

Heads-up America, the writing is on the wall.

Angelina Gives Cheney a Surge in His Pants

2008-02-29T11:27:00.000-08:00

So yesterday, the most famous set of lips this side of Mick Jagger decided to use the celebrity bully pulpit to discuss her perspective on the situation in Iraq.

Page A-26 applauds Angelina Jolie's interest in global humanitarian issues; her sincerity is obvious. Not only has she visited many of the world's most depressing and distressed areas to observe the situations for herself, but she has also gotten involved with the United Nations in an effort to improve the lives of people around the world who are less fortunate than herself or most Americans. (Although, it appears that the UN has a proclivity for handing out such titles to attractive Hollywood types. Hmm. Who's next we wonder.)

All well and good, however, Jolie's editorial about Iraq is problematic. First, we find it hard to believe that she wrote one word of it. Oh sure, she probably conferred with a couple of writers about what she wanted to say and then reviewed a few drafts, but that's a lot different from actually writing the piece herself. (Although other humanitarian op-eds have been published under her name -- look at the date on this one. Does she "write" one a year?)

Secondly, while her focus is on humanitarian issues, the piece basically stands out as a propaganda tool for the Surgists who insist that we must stay in Iraq until ALL of the Neocons as yet unspecified criteria for success have been met. Even now as you read this piece, conservative chuckleheads around the country are waving Jolie's piece around and shouting, "See, see! even the Hollywood elites are now saying that we need to stay in Iraq indefinitely. See, see! The surge is working. See, see! We were right to illegally invade Iraq after all."

Third, though she is obviously sincere, we have serious doubts about the people providing her with information. She's only getting to see and hear what the U.S. government whats her to see and hear. When she was in Iraq determining whether or not the surge was working, did she visit the same thriving open-air market that John McCain found so reassuring?

The Neocons couldn't have scripted this one better if ole' Dicky C or Turd Blossom had written it themselves. Wrapped in a humanitarian cloak, the piece essentially claims that things are getting better in Iraq and that we should stay until the job is done. And, if any clear-minded folk disagree with the Administration's posit--, er Jolie's position, then they are ripe for attacks from the right about being invested in defeat and not caring about the fate of citizen Iraqis.

But today's rant is not about Jolie per se, but about the failure, once again, of the Main Stream Media to present content honestly.

Regardless of whether or not AJ misses the point about the stay-or-bring-them-home debate or whether her job as a make-believe artist qualifies her as an expert on geopolitical affairs, Page A-26 wants to know why Ms. AJ gets to have her op-ed run for two straight days? Can't recall seeing this before. Could it be that her celebrity status does mean something after all? Not for the debate on Iraq or the facts of course, but for the Washington Post's bottom line. Would a similar op-ed advocating peace and diplomacy by say Dennis Kucinich or Michael Moore get two straight days on the front page of the online Post? Sadly, this is just more evidence that news and journalism no longer exist in the country -- it's all about entertainment and profit.

Incompetent Design

2007-09-25T15:47:00.001-07:00

In yesterday's Washington Post, fellow traveler Dan Froomkin posed the worthwhile, if not after-the-fact question, "What has Bush done to the government?"

His point being that various failures of the last seven years -- Katrina, Iraq, political appointments, et al -- have been the result of government incompetence. It's a logical and totally correct assertion, but it fundamentally misses the point.

It's not about whether the government is incompetent, broken, fucked up-- and it's not even about how. We know the answers to both of those questions. It's about why.

With this Administration, it boils down to this: as bad as you think it is, you haven't even scratched the surface.

That's because their nefarity is almost beyond the scope of rational thinking. To understand what the modern-day Republicans are doing and why, one must contemplate conspiratorial scenarios. Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean it isn't true.

Why has the government become so incompetent so quickly and so thoroughly? Because that's exactly what the Bush corporatists and the Cheney neocon-men want. It isn't an accident or bad execution or the passive dumbing down of America over centuries. This is premeditated, partner.

Over the last seven years, government incompetence has been an intentional objective of this administration, to be used as leverage to drive people into the waiting arms of private industry (as well as to consolidate executive power, but that's a story for another day). That's where the profit's at, and that's what it's all it about. That's the only thing that matters. That's what is driving US policy -- all of it -- immigration policy, foreign policy, health care policy, environmental policy, energy policy . . .

Remember Bush's privatization kick for social security (it's baa-ack), health care, and even education? These are all federal government-level issues that Bush's handlers want to hand over to the profit-producting private sector, and they're using broader policy goals like tax deductions, the War in Iraq, and intentional government impotence to force the issue.

This whole incompetence strategy has been about redistributing the wealth and power of the federal government into the hands of C-level executives, board members, and the private corporations they control and which in turn control American policy. The whole ownership society and privatization of social security schemes are about tricking the American population into thinking that they can get inside the velvet ropes with the real fat-cats. It is about getting us to invest in individual securities, mutual funds, and sketchy mortgages so that we will be compelled to support the corrupt policy decisions of our profitocracy by voting for candidates who support corporate largesse at all costs. But the reality is trickle-down theory. The general public might get a few copecks that fall through the fingers of the rich and powerful, but the rich and powerful are the ones making all the money, as well as all the decisions.

The conservatives, who've been chewing on the welfare state since the New Deal, used to advocate small government based on libertarian principles of privacy and rugged individualism. Now their small government rhetoric is just talking points from the Chamber of Commerce. Modern conservatives, such as Grover "the bathtub" Norquist, see the federal government as a foolish annoyance blocking their access to the gold mines of the US Treasury.

The war in Iraq is about oil, revenge, power, and delusions of grandeur, but it's mostly about looting the US Treasury -- and so is the conservative incompetence campaign of the last seven years.

A dysfunctional government serves as confirmation of the corporatists argument that private industry is more efficient and innovative -- not to mention profitable. It's a beautiful self-fulfilling prophecy the conservatives have set in motion. Set horribly short-sighted, greed-driven policies that intentionally benefit the rich while at the same time destroying the very structure of the government, then turn around and point to the crumbling government as justification for passing more intentionally destructive legislation. Then just repeat, re-elect, and repeat

Money is like matter: it is neither created nor destroyed, it simply changes hands. The conservatives want it to change hands from the public coffers (where it benefits everybody) to the private sector (where it benefits primarily the elite). Figure it out America.

The war in Iraq is costing about $12 billion a month. Where do you think all that money is going? Why are there more mercenaries making $1,000 a day in Iraq than there are US government soldiers making $1,000 a month? Why can't the federal government or the US military account for millions of dollars in cash and weapons that purportedly went to Iraq? Why was there zero oversight of war spending from 2003 to 2007? Why haven't the Bush warmongers ever given any clear idea of how much they envision spending on Iraq and the War on Terra'?

The conservatives have been working on their redistribution of wealth strategy since the Reagan years. Trickle-down economics, supply-side economics, tax cuts upon tax cuts that benefit primarily the wealthy while starving the federal government of the very funds that would make it vibrant and consequential, massive deficits (who holds those notes and who profits from that debt? Who has a concerted interest in seeing crushing deficits and who are their enablers?), systematic incompetence.

It's all come to a head in the Dumbya administration, which is the perfect conservative storm. Wielding all three branches of government and the battle ax of 9/11 above the heads of a cowed and disinterested American public, the conservatives have spent the last seven years in an intentional, targeted, selfish, and greed-driven effort to destroy the federal government. It has been orchestrated by the conservatives who have ingeniously used a defenseless federal government as the patsy in its own assasination. (Playing the role of the Warren Commission: the Democrats.)

Bush bears some responsibility, but mostly for being lazy. The confident, resolute, sure-as-shooting, happy idiot has been the perfect front man for the conservatives' incompetence ruse. It makes perfect sense. Bush is an idiot. He barely speaks English, surrounds himself with unqualified yes men, and can't find his way out of a paper bag. While the corporatists that really pull the strings of the Republican party are anonymously counting their money, the poor hayseed American public, who just realized that the Music Man made off with their monorail money, is bumbling along behind Bush with pitchforks and torches babbling about incompetence.

In his piece, Froomkin references author Jonathon Chait, who writes in his book, The Big Con, "lying has become a systematic necssity . . . integral to the Republican economic agenda." Exactly. Yet still, legitimate seekers of truth and accountability like Froomkin are unable to think outside of the box and realize that the incomptence is just an act, a shiny object, a red herring, misdirection intended to disguise the real enterprise.

Until journalists expand their minds and start questioning current events in the three-dimensional universe of ulterior motives, greed, and conspiracy, until they realize that Hilary and Dan Rather are right -- that there is a vast right-wing conspiracy -- the "news" will continue to be nothing more than a propaganda vehicle for those who have the power and conviction to use it for their own dark agendas.

Why is Tony Snowjob So Broke

2007-09-01T13:49:00.001-07:00

It's now been two weeks and two separate rounds of media "reporting" on Tony Snowjob's decision to leave the Bushmill White House for financial reasons and nobody in the Main Stream Media (MSM) has asked the question that Page A-26 asked back on August 18: why is Tony Snowjob so broke?

Following is the sum total of the MSM's aggressive pursuit of the facts regarding Tony Snowjob's dire financial straits:

Q Why are you leaving?

MR. SNOW: Why am I -- because I ran out of money. A lot of people at home are saying, well, what do you mean, you make all this money. Well, you know what, I made more money when I was in my previous career. And I made the decision not to say to my wife and kids, you know, we've finally saved up all this money and done these things, and you're just going to have to give them away so Daddy can work at the White House. We took out a loan when I came to the White House, and that loan is now gone. So I'm going to have to pay the bills . . . . No, cancer has nothing to do with this decision.

Predictably, the MSM is covering Snowjob's tracks for him by not questioning why he needs money so badly and even praising his desire to eschew the dirty cheapness of public service for the "admirable" gold fields of private sector demagoguery.

"And who could blame him?" writes the annoyingly flippant Dana Milbank. "The former Fox News host suffered a cancer recurrence earlier this year, and he has the admirable desire to earn more money for his family than a government salary provides." Apparently there's nothing more admirable in this country than grabbing everything you can grab -- especially if you're an anonymous cog in the government machine making $34,599 a year-- Oh that's right, Tony Snowjob is one of the Administration's highest paid and highest profile celebrities, making $168,000 a year and rubbing shoulders with some of the richest, most powerful people in the country. Golly Milbank, no wonder Snowjob has to leave his government post. Just like Latrell Sprewell, he's got a fambly to feed.

The normally inquisitive and cynical Dan Froomkin's "best guess"is that Snowjob may not have much time left and wants to bank as much money as possible for his family -- a theory Snowjob himself publicly refutes.

Snowjob floated the idea that he needs the money to put his three kids through college but provided no details on where his kids might be going, how many are currently enrolled, and why Snowjob doesn't have enough resources to cover these costs. And would you believe it? The MSM failed to follow up on any of these points.

Such curiously incurious reporting once again leaves the public with no real idea why a highly visible, highly paid member of the White House executive team is so broke he has to leave his government job. Is it gambling? An ill-advised subprime home loan? Or did he just donate too much money to the Republican party?

Where did it all go? Is Tony Snowjob the only government employee facing the daunting prospect of making a go of it in this country? Is he the only one with college-age kids? He certainly is one of the few government employees making $168K a year, and he is one of the few that has had his own radio and TV shows.

Apparently, he took out a loan when he came into the White House last year and now even that borrowed money is gone.

But how can that be? How could he come into the White House from his high-paying private sector Fox News gigs empty-handed enough to have to take out a loan? $168K isn't enough to last him and his family two years, even with an additional loan? Where's all the money going? If he needs the extra cash to continue living a lavish and privileged lifestyle, then the American public needs to know where his priorities are. If he's out of money because of the outrageous cost of health care, then the American public needs to know that our health care system is so broken that even a member of the upper class like Tony Snowjob can't afford to pay for a serious illness. Either way, Snowjob and the White House are being intentionally opaque about his reason for leaving and the his financial status, and the MSM is doing its best to help out by not asking obvious follow-up questions.

We get that Snowjob is ill -- anybody who sees him on TV knows he is a sick man. But this is a bigger issue than Tony Snowjob. Forget for the time being that he made his bones attacking progressive ideas like a single-payer health care system -- an idea that would probably be directly benefiting him right now -- in favor of pure Republican politics. Now those Republican policies may be biting him right in the ass, which of course is something Snowjob and his Republican controllers don't want to become public knowledge. And so, once again, the MSM has found some reason -- in this case deep, deep respect for Tony pure-as-the-driven Snowjob -- not to ask the pertinent questions that would reveal the entire story to the American public.

Apparently, Snowjob and the White House don't have a problem looking into everybody else's financial situations, but don't like it when the spotlight is turned on them.

The public needs to know Snowjob's situation because it could help inform them about future elections and policy decisions. If the American public knows that even Tony Snowjob cannot afford to pay for his health care, they might be a lot more interested in a Democratic candidate with ideas about socialized health care in the 2008 election. And that is exactly what Snowjob and the Republicans are worried about and why they are being so cryptic about Snowjob's reasons for leaving.

We know what the Republicans' motives are, but what's up with the MSM? Why aren't they following up on obvious gaps in this story. What is their motive? These are legitimate questions that need to be asked and answered.

Again, the question needs to be asked, because just like Larry Craig aggressively worked to limit gay rights while himself leading a gay lifestyle, Tony Snowjob has been and continues to actively work against affordable health care for everybody in this country while at the same time claiming that his $168,000 a year salary isn't enough to cover his expenses. Could that be because the cost of his cancer treatment is so ridiculously high? Would not that be Craigian-like hypocrisy if Snowjob was actually leaving his job to earn more money on the lecture circuit because he can't afford his medical care even with an executive health care package, $168,000 a year, and 20 years of TV and radio earnings?

We'll never know. The MSM seems incapable of putting two and two together on this issue. In Thursday's press gaggle, there was just one timid question about the Bush Administration's war on S-CHIP, the government health insurance program for children -- a question that Snowjob predictably ducked. After his announcement on Friday, there was not a single question about why the cancer-stricken Snowjob is so financially strapped he has to step down immediately. Helpful hint for the MSM: two plus two equals four.

Why is Tony Snowjob so broke?

The Band-Aid Analogy

2007-08-23T10:41:00.000-07:00

In a speech yesterday to the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, President Bushmill had the gaul to compare Iraq to Vietnam in an effort to attack critics of his war. It would be laughable if so many people weren't dying because of this idiot.

Basically the entire Bush Crime Family and Cheney neocon-men argument for staying in Iraq boils down to this: if we leave, things are going to get worse.

And you know what? For once, they are right about something. Of course things are going to get worse -- at first. If and when the United States leaves, there will be a vacumn of military power and control, and chaotic violence will follow as various competing groups grapple to fill the vacumn.

Relatively quickly, however, a pecking order of power will be established, and once that happens, the violence will start to subside. Al Queda will be rooted out by sectarian forces and then those sectarian forces will claim and clean out their own cities and territories, and probably within two years, Iraq will have reached a point of functioning equilibrium. Just like Vietnam did.

Here's the simplest analogy Page A-26 can provide:

Getting out of Iraq is going to be like pulling a band-aid off of an open wound: you can pull it off slow, or you can rip it off fast. Either way it's going to hurt, but if you rip it off fast, the pain is over in an instant and the process of feeling better can begin immediately. If you pull it off slow, it draws out the pain and often makes a huge, bloody mess. If you leave it on indefinitely, the wound festers and gets worse.

The bottom line is that Bushmill and his lying enablers are simply trying to confuse and bully the American public into believing that the surge and Bush's larger Iraq strategy are working. In 2004, when Ted Kennedy likened the Iraq conflict to Vietnam -- and not in a good way like Bushmill sees it -- the Bush Crime Family and Cheney neocon-men were appauled that Kennedy would dare invoke the haunting specter of Vietnam.

It really is hard to keep up with these immoral, lying bastards, but we have to keep trying. Otherwise, they will completely rewrite history with their disgusting, distorted views.

A Pox on All Their Houses

2007-08-18T12:01:00.000-07:00

Well, well-well, well, well. Seems that Tony Snowjob, the official public mouthpiece for lies and deception coming out of the White House and long-time member of the Bush Crime Family, has announced that he must leave his $168,000 a year job because of financial difficulties. "I will not be able to make it to the end of this administration, just financially," Snow said on Friday.

Less sympathetic Page A-26 could not be. First of all, most of America would be living the high-high life if they made $168K a year. For a Republican celebrity to be whining about money issues is extremely insulting to the rest of America that has to scrape and scrimp by on considerably less. (In 2004, the median household income in the United States was $43,389.)

So much for sacrificing one's own fortunes for a couple of years to serve country and the common good as a public official.

Do not shed a single tear for Tony Snow. He's been in the job for little more than a year. Before that he was a TV personality and Republican stooge (well, he's still a Republican stooge and TV personality, just not officially for Fox News any more) making millions of dollars.

So where did all that money go in just two years? Main Stream Media (MSM) reporting of Snow's announcement didn't even have the balls to proffer a guess.

Page A-26 knows exactly where the money went, and Americans should be furious. The money went to pay for medical bills related to Snow's recent recurrence of colon cancer.

Americans should be furious at the price of health care in this country, but that's only an underlying outrage in this particular case. The outrage here is that Snow, a card-carrying member of the vast conservative Republican right-wing conspiracy, a man who made his reputation and fortune villainizing progressive ideas like socialized health care, can just quit his government job and go make millions on the lecture circuit to pay for his continuing cancer treatment.

No wonder he and his fellow Republican millionaires don't give a crap about the ridiculous price and state of health care in this country -- it doesn't affect them! If you're rich, it's a non-issue.

Americans should be further outraged that Snow and the MSM are clearly avoiding any discussion of why Snow needs money. The news reports mention that he needs money, but not why. Why? Why wouldn't they mention why he is so broke?

Because it would reveal that not even somebody making $168 grand a year can afford health care, and that in turn would strike a serious blow against the conservative/Republican position on the topic. It may even cause people to start questioning whether the cozy relationship between the Bush Crime Family corporatists and the insurance companies may actually have something to do with the sad state of health care in this country. The next thing you know, Americans are electing Hillary Clinton for president and clamoring for health care reform. And that will eat into the corporate and personal profits of the Bush Crime Family and their corporatist allies, and that cannot be allowed to happen.

This is even more infuriating given President Bushmill's recent, disgustingly flip and either uncaring or uninformed comment about Americans' access to health care. In his typically ham handed way, Bush recently had this explanation for why he is going to veto a measure passed by both houses of congress to increase funding for the federal Children's Health Insurance Program:

"People have access to health care in America," he told an audience in Cleveland. "After all, you just go to an emergency room."

Pretty much says it all. If you ever had a doubt that the Bush Crime Family and its cohorts don't get it, don't want to get it, and don't' want you to have it, it's an idiotic comment like this (reminds Page A-26 of Poppy Bush's illuminating moment with the barcode scanner at the grocery store in 1992).

So good riddance to Tony Snow. He doesn't care about us, so why should we care about him. Next fall, just remember how quickly he abandoned the noble role of public servant when the devil came knocking on his door. Will he and his good friend Bushmill have compassion for uninsured kids with cancer when it comes time to vote on that children's heath care legislation? Or when Democrats try to get socialized medicine in the country so that everybody and not just the millionaires can have access to reasonable, affordable health care? Yeah, right.

One last word on Snow's announcement Friday: thanks for nothing MSM. Once again, they just let the real reasons behind the public actions go unquestioned and unreported, showing less curiosity than Bushmill in a bookstore. A pox on their houses, too.

George W. Bush: Huge Douchebag or the Hugest Douchebag?

2007-08-14T01:31:00.000-07:00

Beware the historical legacy of George W. Bush, which right now, even as you read this, is being "prepared" by operatives of the Bush Crime Family.

Mark these words today and be chilled to your very marrow: in twenty years or less, there will be serious discussion in the right-wing media about putting Bush on the dime (the Bush Crime Family has always hated FDR) or Mount Rushmore. Sadly, in twenty years Stephen Colbert's tongue-in-cheekiness will be lost in the sands of time, and people could very well be asking with a straight face, "George W. Bush: great president or the greatest president?"

Conservative philosophe Glenn Beck on August 1, 2007:

He feels the pain of every wounded hero, every lonely, grieving parent this war has caused. He is a man who understands the heavy cost that we are paying. But who believes with every ounce of his being that we are in the fight for our very survival, a fight that's importance can only be judged fairly decades from now, and I believe a fight he is willing to be judged harshly for until that time comes, even if he's long dead.

Republican mouthpiece Scott Hennen after meeting with his Holiness himself on August 2, 2007:

I wish I could quote him exactly or play a recording of the conversation. Because the George W. Bush I met with in the Oval Office today is a very different person than the man you see in our media. He is a great President. We are very blessed that he is our Commander in Chief. History will judge him well.

And of course, one of the ringmasters of the inner sanctum of the vast right-wing conspiracy, ladies and gentleman, Bill "I haven't been right about anything yet, but it's bound to happen some time" Kristol gives a coup d'grace on July 15, 2007: "Bush will be viewed as a successful president." Sounds pretty confident for a guy who hasn't been right yet. Hmm, maybe he knows something that we don't.

But that's just the frontal assault by the usual suspects. It goes deeper than that. Think Armstrong Williams. Think Judith Miller. Think Michael O'Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack. Take for example, a new book by Purdue University professor Bert A. Rockman (go ahead, give that "Rrrrrock-man" a little Burgess Meredith in Rocky III there when you say it, it's OK). In The George W. Bush Legacy, Rrrrock-man et al note some of Bush's "bold steps," including:

. . . influencing the direction of the judiciary, expanding executive power, institutionalizing the 2001 tax cuts and going beyond them, delivering policies and appointments for favored base constituencies, and increasing the size and reach of the national security state . . . .

Oh it can happen, and the same stubborn, determined, deluded gang of wacky misfits that rammed Iraq into our yawning pieholes is already hard at work making sure it does happen. Under rocks and in the shadows, the "preferred" legacy of George W. Bush grows. While time heals all wounds and the nation forgives and forgets, the Bush malignancy gathers strength and consolidates message. Soon, it will be indistinguishable from the truth. Ultimately, it will become the truth. What are you doing to stop them?

The best single thing you can do to understand why Bush perpetually thinks he has a mandate from God to do whatever he decides needs doin' and why crafting a legacy of mythological proportions is so paramount to the Bush Crime Family, read Kitty Kelley's biography, The Family. Stop right there with the snickering about Kitty Kelley. The vast right-wing conspiracy Swift-boated poor Kitty real good, but disregard the titter of a compromised media, Page A-26 is here to tell you that The Family is a piercing, definitive examination of the Bush pathology. Kelley astutely describes how Dumbya came into the presidency with his legacy foremost on his mind. That is the hallmark of the Bush Crime Family -- they are myth makers.

Now that it's been brought to your attention, start noticing every time Bush or one of his sicophants mentions the words history or legacy. It's a lot. Long after this generation has forgotten what its lyin' eyes saw, the lies that the Bush crime family are planting today will have sprung up and completely choked off all connection to the truth.

And in a completely unrelated story, Karl Rove announced his resignation today (calm down, not effective until August 30). While this seems good, it's actually not. With a slimeball like Rove, it's better to keep him out in the open so you can keep an eye on him. He'll now be free to play his dirty tricks unfettered by any rules of engagement (but completely covered by executive privilege).

Some pundits, like Howard Fineman of Newsweek, think that Rove is going to head up some underground strike force to target Hillary Clinton and keep the Terra' meter pegged to eleven. No doubt. You can be sure that Mr. Dirty Tricks, who learned at the knee of the master, Lee Atwater, will continue to divide this country against itself in order to serve the Republican agenda. Ol' Karl still has a few McCain-South Carolina tricks up his sleeves, but for now, he'll just be doing stuff like that for fun. That is, when he's not "spending time with his family" of course.

Others like Dan Froomkin of the Washington Post think that Rove may take a leading role in establishing the Bush Presidential Library (will they have a copy of My Pet Goat?) as a base of operations for prosletizing the Bush mythology.

Bingo Froomkin. Here's Rove at a joint appearance with Bush yesterday morning to make the weepy announcement: "I look forward to . . . being your fierce and committed advocate on the outside . . . ." You can bet your sweet ass on that one. Karl Rove will spend the rest of his life aggrandizing Bush into Jesus II.

"Karl Rove is movin' on down the road" Bush said at the press conference. Yeah, well, let's hope he gets hit by a bus. Maybe then our grandchildren might have at least one chance in hell of knowing what actually happened at the dawn of the 21st century.

Dem Guns, Dem Guns

2007-08-07T23:27:00.000-07:00

It's almost as if Page A-26 had been a fly on the wall when Dick "the Dick" Cheney, Karl "Turd Blossom" Rove, Tony Snowjob, Ken "Ferret Face" Mehlman, and the right honorable and in no way subjective General David Petraeus were deciding which cover story to use and how to spin the press about the missing guns in Iraq. Page A-26 guessed it would be pinned on a hapless supply sergeant in Kuwait -- and Petraeus' fall guy for today: clerical errors. Thank you very much, we'll be here all week.

Let's look a bit more closely at the details of this missing weapons story. It's not just weapons that are missing, it's body armor and helmets. Body armor? Wasn't there some big hullaballoo about how the troops didn't have body armor and how we went to war with the Army we had and not the Army we wanted? After first trying to deny it, didn't Bush and Rummy promise that the troops would get their body armor? Maybe it wouldn't have taken years and the lives of hundreds of US troops if not for those pesky clerical errors. Damn you logistics!

You know who hasn't had any shortages of weapons and proper protective gear? Private military contractors, otherwise known as mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, hired killers. We're talking the usual suspects like Blackwater, Aegis, and even some boys that we helped train for General Pinochet in Chile.

If the press or the GAO or the Pentagon or any other interested party really gave a damn about this story, they would listen to Page A-26 and look at two possibilities: the guns never existed (which would be nicely covered by Petraeus' little clerical snafu story) or they went directly and free of charge to our shadowy, unregulated, murderous, private contractor proxies (which would give the shadowy, unregulated, murderous profiteers a nice little bump to their profit margin by giving them free weapons). It's almost as good as the free cash that up and vanished while the private military contractors were supposedly guarding it. Anybody seeing a pattern here?

And because no serial numbers were ever recorded, the guns can never, ever, ever, never be located, accounted for, or traced to anybody. How convenient. Maybe the missing guns are with Saddam's missing weapons of mass destruction?

As pressure and embarrassment mount about this story, look for the Cheney neocon-men and the Bush Crime Family to pin the blame on the Iraqis. Also look for lots of stories about how those guns that the Iraqis lost are now being used by "insurgents" against US troops. (Wait, we thought it was Syria and Iran who were supplying the insurgents with weapons and materials? Now we're supposed to believe it's actually the Iraqis who are supplying themselves?)

Anything to steer you away from the thought that a) those guns never existed, or b) they are safely in the hands of whoever it is the Supreme Dick wanted to them to go to, whether that be private contractors, Sunni insurgent groups, or whoever else it is that the US is too embarrassed to admit in public that they're supplying with deadly weapons.

Chances are we'll never know the real truth about this missing guns incident, but there are some things we definitely do know.For example, we know the weapons are unaccounted for, we know money was appropriated for these weapons by the Pentagon and paid to suppliers, but we also know they never made it to the troops. And we know that the lying, corrupt Bush Administration has been in charge of prosecuting every iota of this war from day one.

This incident should mark the tipping point toward impeachment for this Administration. Either they're horribly incompetent and don't deserve to be in charge, or they're horribly corrupt and deserve to be in prison. Come on America, it's one or the other (possibly both).

As Page A-26 said when this story originally broke: missing guns? There's no missing guns.

The Guns of Avarice

2007-08-06T22:33:00.000-07:00

Well look-ee there, a whole bunch of guns went missing in Iraq.

Where did those guns get to? To our new friends, the Sunni insurgent groups? Or our old friends, the Shia-dominated central government? Or our forgotten friends, the Kurds? Or their mortal enemies the Turks? Oceania or Eurasia? All of the above?

Stand by for lots of finger pointing and "cannot recall" moments as Cheney's neocon-men play musical chairs with the truth before finally pinning the entire blame on some supply sergeant in Kuwait who got a case of Budweiser for rubber stamping some phony forms.

Who is in charge of the show over there? Who's been running the show the entire time? Who has lied about every facet of the war from its premise to its ultimate objective, from Abu Ghraib to Jessica Lynch? What shred of credibility or qualifications do they have? When will the real culprits -- the ones setting the policies and doin' the decidin' -- ever be held accountable for their crimes?

Did the guns ever exist at all?

Or was it all just on paper? A financial transfer made "official" with some bogus documentation and sealed away from public knowledge with executive privilege? After all, what's more lucrative to a profiteering multinational than a no-bid contract for goods and services that don't exist. It's just pure cash flow. In the world of Bush, oversight doesn't exist, so who would ever know or care?

It's just part of the ongoing draining of the US Treasury by the corporatist military/industrial complexians that run this country and the world. Why did the damn bridge collapse in Minneapolis? Ask Haliburton, Raytheon, Blackwater, Bechtel, Honeywell, Boeing, Northrup-Gruman. Better yet, ask their executives, their shareholders, and the financial services companies that raked in billions -- they're the ones that got your damn money, take it up with them!

As for the guns, this much is certain: there was no bungling by an inefficient government bureaucracy with layers of fatty pork that doesn't know how to do anything right and buys $800 toilet seats. Those guns, if they ever existed, went right to who Cheney and his boys wanted them to go to (ahem, private contractors [Blackwater]).

Missing guns? There's no missing guns.

The Cowardly Donkeys

2007-08-05T23:19:00.000-07:00

Why are the Democrats so afraid of being labeled soft on terrorism? Don't they know that it doesn't matter what they do to appease Cheney, Bush, Bill Kristol, and the rest of the neocon fascists, any future terrorist attack -- even the inside jobs -- will be blamed on the Democrats.

Under "pressure" from the White House, the valiant, upstart Democratic congress went ahead and did the Republicans bidding for them again by passing an update to FISA. This after just finding out on Wednesday that they still don't know the parameters of the original illegal NSA domestic spying program. They just don't get it. When the Democrats in Congress vote for legislation like the gas they passed on Friday, then Ann Coulter and her ilk are, in fact, accurate when they call the Democrats cowards.

By Tom Sawyer-ing the Jackasses into passing the FISA free-for-all, the Republicans have effectively taken warrantless domestic spying in particular and civil rights in general off the table for Democrats in 2008. The Dems are now totally complicit on domestic spying, the war on terror, and the ever-accelerating demise of this country.

They're going to get blamed anyway, so the Democrats might as well start doing the right thing instead of the right-wing thing.

Terror Alert Level: Exposed!

2007-08-03T01:30:00.001-07:00

Does it not strike anybody else as peculiar that this bridge collapses out of nowhere in Minneapolis and the word "terrorism" merits barely a whisper from either the lips of politicians or Main Stream Media (MSM)?

Somehow the entire nation is nearly thrown into martial law over a block of cheese and some dry ice in some lady's luggage at the airport, yet a completely unexplained bridge collapse is immediately diagnosed as ABT -- anything but terrorism. It's almost as if the word has been immediately put out to all MSM that this story is going to play as infrastructure decay and bureaucratic inefficiency through and through. Right? That's all Page A-26 has heard this described as, yet as far as we know, not a single investigation has been completed or preliminary report released. The FBI was dispatched -- to "look for possible evidence of problems such as shoddy construction or faulty materials." But it definitely was not terrorism. Or conservative/Republican economic policy designed specifically to weaken and ineffectualize the government.

Pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the terror alert system and this Administration's manipulation of terror and the MSM for its own ends. Apparently, the MSM is not capable or willing to independently raise the issue of terrorism; instead, it must wait for its marching orders from the likes of Karl Rove and Tony Snow.

And in this case, no effort has been made on behalf of the Administration to raise the bloody terror flag. Why not?

As happened after 9/11, all stories in the immediate aftermath are the same -- in this case focusing on local blame-fixing and acts of heroism. Cue the shiny objects.

So how can an event like the Minneapolis bridge collapse occur without tripping sending the Terror Alert Level to 11? Why would the Bush Administration, which is usually so quick to cry "Terra'," not be using these events as excuses to further eviscerate the Constitution? Are they incompetent? Or is it for a reason?

The obvious answer is that the whole terrorism thing is one big dog and pony show, with the neocons and the Bush Crime Family using the fear it generates to ride herd on the American public. Alternatively, it may be a deliberate act of misdirection that the Minneapolis bridge collapse is being presented to the public as ABT. This event may very well have been a dry run for future acts of terrorism by somebody -- a theory oddly unexplored.

The Common Thread

2007-08-02T00:46:00.001-07:00

The "people" that killed Pat Tillman are the same ones that killed Kennedy.

Not literally the same people, but the same ideological cabal, which seems to pass down its constitutional disdain, from HUAC and the Red Scare to Watergate to Iran/Contra to 9/11 to the War in Iraq. Through the decades, a mind set has been passed down from generation to generation, their Machiavellian malice growing with each successive political mitosis.

Like Kennedy, Tillman was a grave and gathering threat to the War Machine and its handlers. As with Kennedy, a hit was arranged with outside contractors -- no fuss, no muss, no connection to us.

The Power of Name-Brand Recognition

2006-05-15T13:00:00.000-07:00

While perusing reader comments about the latest NSA spying, er domestic surveillance revelations, on the ABC news Web site's The Blotter today, I came across this anachronistic gem of red-state idiocy (comment posted on May 15, 2006 11:12:28 AM).

"I hope the information they gain allows them to catch the scum that leak information, and helps them arrest the communist scum who publish it."

Comments like this reveal the intellectual capacity of those people who are supporting the NSA/CIA/White House surveillance activities.

Communists? So the whole War on Terror thing isn't enough to scare people into giving up what few remaining civil liberties they still have, now they've got to resurrect the specter of communism? When all else fails, go with the power of name-brand recognition (just ask the producers of Herbie: Fully Loaded, Poseidon, Rocky VI, and so on).

On second thought, why not fire up the old Commie scare machine. Bush-heads love to disingenuously compare the War in Iraq to WW II (instead of the more appropriate Vietnam War), so why not present the War on Terror as just an extension of the Cold War. It's Rumsfeld and Cheney's wet dream of perpetual global conflict (and wartime profiteering).

In fact, this statement is so pea-brained and uninformed, it sounds like something the Idiot-in-Chief himself might have said in one of his bumbling, tortured, rambling, nonsensical, babbling, blathering, stammering, embarassing, stupefyingly simple-minded public statements aimed at pacifying the Republican sheep and scaring anybody out there who dares apply critical thinking to this Administration's willful incompetence.

To anybody that thinks the NSA activites are acceptable, under any conditions, you need to read (not listen to a book on tape, or read the Cliff's Notes, or skim quickly so that you can be done in time to catch the next episode of "Life According to Jim") Orwell's 1984 and Animal Farm.

Animal Farm provides the blueprint for where this society is headed, and 1984 describes the end result. Read and enjoy America, especially you unadulturated Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/NeoCon/Christian Fundamentalist supporters, this is our future if we allow this NSA crap to continue.

McCain is Just Another Politician

2006-04-18T03:02:00.000-07:00

Two weeks after his apparently totally disingenuous offer of $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Yuma, it is clear that John McCain is not a man of his word. In fact, McCain is not the political voice in the wilderness he wants you to think he is, rather he is just another politician.

After seeing McCain's $50 an hour offer, I immediately sent his office multiple e-mail messages indicating my interest and willingness to take the work. I also sent an e-mail to Andrea Jones, Senator McCain's press secretary, detailing my opinion of McCain's insensitive and arrogant statements and asking for a response from the Senator. To date, I have not received a response to any of my e-mail messages.

In addition to the e-mail messages, I also placed two calls (April 6, April 10) to the Senator's Washington, D.C. office. Both times I spoke with low-level McCain staffers who declined to identify themselves. When I indicated that I was calling about the $50 an hour jobs, both staffers said exactly the same thing, "Sir, the Senator was being facetious."

You can believe I called that bluff right then and there. "Are you kidding me," I asked. "No, really, are you really going to try to feed me that answer?"

Silence.

"I watched the speech, and I saw him not once, but twice challenge the audience that they could not pick lettuce in Yuma for the season for $50 an hour. He was damn serious, and I so am I. I'm ready to go to Yuma tomorrow, and I want that $50 an hour job" I continued.

More silence. Finally, "Sir, the Senator was being facetious, he made that quite clear."

Wha-?, huh-?, wh-?. He what?" I sputtered. "I saw the speech. I heard the words. He was not being facetious. Did you see the speech?" I questioned.

Guess what their answers were? That would be a no, on both counts; neither staffer had seen the speech they were defending.
Though I pressed for more explanation, the McCain staffers would not utter a word beyond their practiced company line.

After two days, the Main Stream Media (MSM) hadn't even batted an eye on the McCain comment. Lying is an accepted and even appreciated element of both politics and entertainment, so both McCain and the MSM thought nothing of it and were moving right along to their next misleading and fallacious statements, stories, and quotes. But a tiny band of upstart Internet rabble spanning the political spectrum, including the TruthMaker, Project USA, and Free Republic dared speak out.

Determined that McCain not get away with his total bald-faced, flat-out, fuck-you lie without any repercussions of any kind, I resolved to become a misshapen, rusty wheel, wobbling around with the persistent annoying squeak of the righteous, irritating the fuck out of anybody within earshot (I'm thinking some kind of Souza march as the background music for the book-on-tape version of this part of blog post). Because politicians are so completely insulated from their electoral constituents and only listen to their paying constituents, the MSM is really the only way to hold them accountable, which goes a long way toward explaining why we're in the mess we're in. But that's for another day.

I sent multiple e-mail messages to the likes of Lou Dobbs, Dan Froomkin, Howard Kurtz, and Sal Ruibal, imploring them to call McCain on the carpet for his duplicity. As I told Lou Dobbs, this is my protest, this is my voice. I want McCain and all politicians held accountable for their words and actions and I'm willing to go pick lettuce in Yuma for a few months to do it.

For a while, it seemed like this story was just going to disappear into the ether. For example, in the week following McCain's Lettuce Challenge, the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz wrote two articles on McCain and his public image, but neither made any mention of the Lettuce Challenge. Meanwhile the Page 6 payola fluff is still getting daily treatment.

The Lettuce Challenge story finally started to get some traction on April 13 when Lou Dobbs ran a short piece on his show about Project USA's online lettuce-picker application. On Friday, more than three dozen demonstrators showed up at McCain's Washington office carrying job applications and heads of lettuce. By yesterday, even the conservatives were piling on. Viva la revolucion!

Still, no one has actually held McCain accountable. He has not been interviewed or questioned by any journalist of any kind about the Lettuce Challenge. So long as the MSM allows politicians to walk away from the public statements with total impunity, politicians will never feel the need to keep their word. Just ask McCain about that.

As a conspiratorial side note related to McCain's renewed allegiance to the Republican power brokers, just try to find a transcript somewhere of McCain's speech to the AFL-CIO on April 4 in Washington, D.C. "You can't do it, my friends."

McCain's capitulation to the dark side has been building to a head in recent months, including throwing himself into the sweaty embrace of Jerry Falwell (much as he dry humped Bush in the '04 campaign) and speaking at Falwell's Liberty U. next month. South Carolina in 2000 seems a distant memory, like it never happened. And oh! look-ee here, on Sunday Falwell comes out and says he won't endorse Rudy Giuliani. Hmm, I wonder who he will endorse. I won-der . . .

To top it all off, Mr. Straight Talk Express is seriously going off the rails by signing on to the Nixonian Republican "win at any cost" philosophy. He truly is a maverick no more, if in fact he ever was -- let's not forget that McCain's maverick image is more image than maverick. Anybody remember a little something called the Keating Five Scandal?

Let Me First Say . . .

2006-04-06T18:31:00.000-07:00

You want to know what bullshit sounds like? I'll give you a hint: you can hear it from just about every single political, legal, or economic guest, "expert", or commentator on any televised news show.

It goes something like this: the show's host asks a question that the guest doesn't want to answer. The guest, rather than answer the question, instead says, "Thank you for having me on today. (Optional) Before I get your question (which the guest has no intention of doing), let me first say--"

That's it, "Let me first say . . ." This is television code for "You know and I know that there is no way I'm going to go anywhere near that question, so I'm going to give a wink and a nod and talk about something completely different in the hopes of either steering the discussion back to my talking points or eating up enough of your air time that you won't have time to ask the question again. As the host, you will meekly try to get back to the original question, or not, depending on your network, before giving up and going on the next issue."

This tactic, which apparently is part of the mutually understood covenant of the media business, has had the infuriating result of making every TV interview completely worthless because no question ever gets answered. Of course, both the guests and the interviewers are fine with that because TV interviews are not about answering questions anyway, they are about marketing and entertainment.

So the next time you watch a TV interview, get out your notepad and tally up how many times you hear, "Let me first say. . ." Or better yet, demand to know the truth. As long as we continue to accept shameless dissembling in place of integrity and credibility, we will never actually know about or understand the issues that affect our daily lives.

TruthMaker to McCain: "I accept your offer, sir!"

2006-04-05T20:29:00.000-07:00

That's right. Maverick has made his bluff and the TruthMaker is calling him on it.

Tuesday in a speech to the AFL-CIO's annual convention in Washington, D.C., Senator John McCain, who is currently in the process of selling his once "maverick" soul to the Bid'ness and Jesus wings of the Republican Party in hopes of getting the nomination for POTUS in '08, was actually booed when he tried to go through the GOP (biz and Jes', not the actual conservative Republican) talking points on immigration. Though McCain threatened to leave and even feigned walking away from the lectern, he did continue his speech to further booing.

The talking point that drew my attention was #17, illegal immigrants are simply taking jobs that regular Americans don't want or won't take.

Irritated by the response he was getting, the senior senator from Arizona made an offer to the crowd that was at best an offer made in bad judgment, and at worst completely cynical and disingenuous political grandstanding in the typically Republican style.

In response to one cry from the crowd to "Pay a decent wage," McCain shot back that he would pay anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Yuma. McCain then went on to disparage the American worker by noting twice that anybody interested had to work the entire lettuce season, not just one day. "You can't do it, my friends" McCain added.

After watching McCain's challenge, I immediately fired off an email to the Senator's office. I indicated that as a college-educated person doing white collar work in the Bay Area for much less than $50 an hour, I am willing to leave my home and family, and travel hundreds of miles to the south to earn that kind of money.

I further challenged him to put his money where his mouth was, since I have accepted his challenge, and am willing to put my lower back where my mouth is. I did stipulate that McCain's offer had to be legitimate and verified in writing. I don't want him pulling any crap like giving me a contact number and I've got to take it from there.

So the ball is in McCain's court now. I need the money, and as I told the Senator, I'm willing to do pretty much any job for $50 an hour in this economy. Let's see if he has the cajones to keep his word.

A word on his word. For one, it's typical of Republicans to try to skew the debate. Like Republicans that constantly try to compare the War in Iraq to World War II, McCain tried to bolster his argument that Americans won't do field labor with the completely egregious example of $50 an hour wages. What a joke. If it is true that Americans won't do field labor, it's because the massive corporate agribusinesses offer demeaning and degrading wages that the average American can't live on. Do you know how long the line would be to scrub toilets or bus tables if employers were paying $50? Even $15 an hour would make a huge difference. But no, McCain hyperbolically throws out the number $50 an hour. It's insulting and totally misleading, and he knows it.

And will he stick to his word? I have a feeling that many other Americans like me are going to flood his office with requests for one of these $50 an hour jobs. Will he honor his offer or will he cop out with some chicken-shit backpedaling about how the offer was only for the people in the audience or that he was just making an example?

He better not, because he stood up there at the lectern and made his offer not once, but twice. He was adamant, mostly about the fact that nobody in the audience could actually work an entire lettuce season, but also about his offer. Well, like I said, I've already contacted him to say I accept the offer. Sign me up right now.

On the other hand, if McCain welches on his offer, then he should be soundly denounced as just another bag of political gas, a lying member of the ruling class that will say and do anything to get elected, or in this case, nominated. Put up or shut up Senator.

Finally, who exactly is going to pay this $50 an hour wage, if it ever materializes? Certainly no agribusiness employer is going to cough up that kind of money. They can pay 10 illegal immigrants for them kind of wages. So is the money going to come out of the taxpayers' pockets? Is McCain making idle boasts on the taxpayers' dime? Will it come out of his personal funds?

Questions like where the money will come from, a question for which there is no clear or logical answer, seem to indicate that McCain is in fact full of hot air. He never had any intention of paying anybody $50 an hour to pick lettuce. He was just trying to make his political point by manipulating the issue and distracting people from the real facts. SOP for the Republican party.

I'll be sitting by the phone waiting for my $50 an hour job and waiting to see if John McCain is a man of his word or just another politician that can't be trusted to live up to his promises.

It's the Bomb, Stupid

2006-03-22T12:38:00.000-08:00

President Bushmill finally deigned to answer a question from the redoubtable Helen Thomas yesterday in his faux unscripted news conference, although some pundits thought she was maybe a little too hard on da poor widdle POTUS.

But with all these "unscripted" Bush events going on in the last week or so--

OK, we've got to stop the train right there. For all the Republican cheerleaders out there clapping Bushmill on the back for bravely facing the reporting menace head on and without scripting, hold up a second. Page A-26 has serious doubts about the POTUS' ability to do anything without cheating. Take for example, his much ballyhooed press conference earlier this week.

If you read the transcript from Tuesday's "unscripted" press conference, you can find at least two instances where Bushmill shows his lyin' eyes.

First, after rambling through an answer about the economy, Bushmill ends his fuzzy babbling with a telling slip, "Let's see here. They told me what to say."

Not enough for you? Maybe the jokester in chief was just showcasing some of that downhome folksiness? OK, we've got more. Later, after a painful parsing of the word timetable -- Bushmill doesn't and won't set a timetable for Iraq, he sets objectives -- he gets confused about which prescreened question from which preselected questioner he's going to take next. Confidently calling out "Cannon" (did he actually mean Gannon?) Bushmill is flummoxed when somebody other than who he thinks he's calling on starts to speak. Because this chickenshit administration is only comfortable playing rigged games, Bushmill has to stop the proceedings to make sure that he gets the right question from the right person in the right order.

"No, you're not Cannon. That's Cannon. You're Ken. Sorry, Ken. You thought I said Cannon. . . "

Not exactly a smoking gun like, say, no WMDs or videotape footage of presidential apathy in the face of a CAT-5 hurricane, but it's not like the POTUS doesn't have a long track record of staged spontaneity (and don't forget the bulge).

All the theatrics and playacting aside, will somebody please ask the most relevant question we can think of:

Why are we in Iraq now, on discredited intelligence about non-existent WMDs after deposing its sovereign leader with a military invasion, fighting a war that is virtually unwinnable almost by definition (you are never truly going to defeat an in-situ insurgency) while North Korea, who we know to have multiple nuclear warheads and missiles capable of reaching Alaska and Hawaii, is openly and publicly threatening us to our faces with nuclear attack and we won't even talk about the issue, let alone take military action?

The answer is simple. North Korea is far too great of a military foe for us to take on with our depleted and demoralized military, which is strung out after three years of senseless warfare in Iraq. Bushmill and his chickenhawk neo-con junta have no stomach for anything but a rigged game.

Axis of Evil anyone? That would be Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Two of these three countries have openly discussed their nuclear capabilities and ambitions, brazenly challenging and threatening the United States. So which one did we attack? Not the one with the nuclear weapons program.

Until Bushmill and his stooges actually show some kind of interest in the North Korean problem, they have absolutely no credibility on homeland security issues. North Korea can hit American soil right now with nuclear weapons and have threatened to do so, but the Bushmill Administration is doing everything it can to keep our attention focused on the Middle East because that is what the neo-cons have been focused on since 1992 with their sinister Project for the New American Century."

Why? There are three main reasons. One, Bush and his cronies are cowards who only want to engage in rigged games that they know they can win. And they will cheat, lie, and steal without conscience to the rig game. So of course, they have no stomach for facing a militaristic country that actually has the capability to fight. It's all about the low-hanging fruit.

Then there's the fact that in the global-political game of Risk, North Korea is irrelevant. It's already in China's pocket and has no military, diplomatic, or economic value. So there's no reason to engage this pesky nuclear gnat, unless of course you actually consider the security of the United States, the Korean Peninsula, and the world of critical importance.

Next reason? Three words: military-industrial complex. The amount of war profiteering that has gone in the last three years makes the Vietnam era look like a lemonade stand. The profit margin for companies like Halliburton, Dynacorp, Raytheon, Blackwater USA, Boeing, Northrup Gruman, and other usual suspects such as Bush family members is massive in a cushy conflict like the war in Iraq. In fact, it is in the best interest of these companies and their political sponsors to keep this low-grade conflict going in perpetuity.

You disagree? Compare the profits and stock prices of the companies listed above in 2002 to their current levels. No wonder Bushmill and Treasury Secretary John Snow are out there touting the health of the economy.

The final reason: what does the Middle East has that North Korea doesn't? Three letters, starts with O and ends with $. Yeah, you know what we're talking about.

In fact, the best our vaunted State Department can do is meekly "urge Pyongyang to stop making inflammatory statements"? What in the wild, wild west is freakin' going on here?

"Come on Kim, knock it off, stop it. UN, Kim's teasing us, make him stop."

Now, now, little Bushmill, just remember, nu-que-lawr warheads and real WMDs may make break your bones, but words can never hurt you. You damn ignorant, incompetent, corrupt ass!

And it's not just Bushmill that deserves chastisement. Yesterday, Lil' Kim (credit to Bill Maher on that one) made new threats about a pre-emptive nuclear strike for national security reasons (hey, what's good for the jackass is good for the asshole) on the United States and it was virtually ignored by everybody in the press and the government alike. Yeah, that's right, do a Google search, and other than an article by the LA Times, you'll find that it was first-tier US media orgs of record like the Wheeling Intelligencer and the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette running this story (along with media outlets in South Korea and Indonesia). Whither the Washington Post or the New York Times or the USA Today?

So again we come back to one simple little question: why Iraq and not North Korea?

Until we get a straightforward answer on this -- which won't happen until somebody asks the straightforward question -- this Administration has absolutely zero credibility on any topic.

Can you believe it?

2005-10-19T00:50:00.000-07:00

"Um, Chicken Little, . . . the boy who cried wolf, . . . corporate executives, . . . the boy who cried wolf, . . . Rafael Palmeiro, um . . . " Come on, you can get this. Joanne Worley is feeding you great hints, Dick Clark is perched on that horseshoe-shaped railing like the grim reaper, and you're one triangle away from the pyramid. " . . . Um, . . . oh-oh!, . . . . the Bush Administration, . . . Ashlee Simp--." Rush the stage girlfriend, we have a winner. "Things that have lost all credibility" you shout triumphantly. And so it is.

It used to be that their cynical and manipulative handling of the people's business was lauded as a sign of strength and purpose and resolve, but lately the Administration's lies have finally flooded the White House basement and are bubbling out into public view. Enveloped in an ever-thickening cloud of backpedaling damage control, the Administration finds that now even soccer moms, NASCAR dads, and the Main Stream Media (MSM) are starting to pick up on the fact that it is completely full of shit.

On that note, unidentified low-level sources have revealed to Page A-26 that Harriet Miers did not provide a complete work history in her Senate Judiciary Committee questionnaire.

Sources indicate that Ms. Miers failed to mention her tenure as a member of the Martindale-Hubbell/Lexis-Nexis Legal Advisory Board.

In and of itself this may or may not be significant,
however, it absolutely is significant in that this
Administration has already proven that it's word
cannot be taken at face value, so Ms. Miers' exclusion
of her work with Martindale-Hubbell/Lexis-Nexis (a key source of information for many researchers and
journalists -- if knowledge is power then having
oversight and control over the distribution of
information is a pretty significant thing) begs the
question: what else isn't she telling us?

Of course, being the lawyer that she is, her answer to the Employment Record question (#7) is capped off by a nice little disclaimer: "I have made my best efforts to include all organizations of which I was a member. However, I may have been a member of other organizations for which I no longer have records." Sing it sister, consider your ass covered.

It is reasonable that she may not be able to recall every detail about every thing she's ever done -- on the other hand, lawyers usually keep pretty detailed records of things, especially things they're getting paid for, soooo . . .

This is of particular interest given that Ms. Miers was able to give the exact dates for obscure and dated gigs such as her many different positions with the Pioneer Bible Translators dating back to 1983 and a three-month law clerkship in 1969, but drew a complete blank on her time with Martindale-Hubbell just five years ago?

Elsewhere in the bowels of her answer to question #7, she remembers the exact address for the computer lab she worked at from 1963 to 1972, but can't quite seem to remember when she served as a board member for Comerica Bank. She provides details for her association with Dallas Legal Services in 1974, but can recall no dates for her membership on the Tyler Cabot Mortgage Securities board.

Is this total recall or selective memory?

Here's where the Bush Administration now has to reapeth what it hath soweth, baby. If not for the five steady years of lies and deception (examples are numerous, but can be summed up in one word: Iraq), it might be OK to let stuff like this slide, but this is the Administration (and the Congress [yeah, including Democrats]) that nominated and confirmed Michael Brown.

A harmless omission or the tip of the iceberg? What other information has she forgotten, or failed to disclose? And why? Somebody, somewhere should be looking into the discrepancies in Ms. Miers' answers before she is rotely confirmed to a lifetime position on the Supreme freakin' Court. This ain't no FEMA directorship that you can toss around like Mardi Gras beads, this is for life.

For example, did Ms. Miers' time with financial institutions Comerica and Tyler Cabot correspond with any scandals at those institutions? Say maybe during the late 1990s at a time when, say, they might have had dealings with now unsavory corporate characters such as Enron or Service Corporation International (SCI).

Maybe she just forgot. Evidence of her time with Martindale-Hubbell is all over the Internet, as is mention of her insignificant Comerica stock ownership, so it's not like this information is impossible to find. It's not necessarily about these specific blips on her questionnaire -- it's about the fact that there are blips, blips that should be aggressively investigated by the press.

Case in point. Ms. Miers stated in her questionnaire that she served on the Board of Directors for the Tyler Cabot Mortgage Securities Fund, but she could not provide any dates. A seemingly innocent omission, until you start poking around.

In a tiny sampling of the possiblities, the 1995 Capstead Annual Report provides a timeline for the company's first ten years. Turns out that the Tyler Cabot Mortgage Securities Fund was created under the Capstead umbrella in 1991. The report also notes that Kay Bailey Hutchison, currently U.S. Senator from Texas, was elected Texas State Treasurer while serving on Capstead's Board of Directors in 1991. Conflict of interest? Was Ms. Miers with Tyler Cabot at this time? Did she cross paths with an up-and-coming Hutchison accidentally or was Tyler Cabot/Capstead a front for Republican political interests in the early 90s? What influence did Tyler Cabot/Capstead have on the Texas political process and what, if any, part did Miers have in their political activities.

The point is, leaving out the dates for her tenure with Tyler Cabot, a seemingly innocent omission of some seemingly irrelevant information, could be part of a strategy to obfuscate and deceive. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but this Administration has lost it's benefit of the doubt and everything about it should be filtered through extreme skepticism.

So with Harriet Miers, are we getting the whole truth, or is it Bushiness as usual? Guess that's the $10,000 question, or maybe the $20,000 question, or is it the $25,000 question?

ADDENDUM (October 20, 2005)

"The real costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill, . . . Armstrong Williams' conflict of interest . . . um, the real costs of the Medicare prescription drug bill, . . . um . . . Jeff Gannon's real identi--"

"Administration lies that the American public found out about after the fact!" Ding ding ding.

Turns out that Page A-26 is not the only one dissatisfied with the level of information provided. Senate Judiciary Committee co-chairs Arlen "The Joker" Spector and Patrick "Cheney told me to go fuck myself" Leahy are also a bit tweaked.

Under pressure from Spector, Leahy, and others to be a little more forthcoming, Miers revealed today "that as a result of an administrative oversight, her Texas law license was suspended for 26 days in 1989 because of unpaid dues." On Monday, Miers also "disclosed that her D.C. law license was briefly suspended last year because of unpaid annual dues."

Again, this is not Rationale for War level deception here, but is does indicate that Congress and the American public are not getting the whole story from Ms. Miers and her Republican handlers. The woman that is Bush's work wife, the one that spoon feeds information to him and is responsible for managing Oval Office paper flow can't even keep her law licenses current?

Why didn't she supply this information in her original questionnaire responses? And why was she immediately able to provide it when questioned about the lack of detail in her answers?

What else isn't she telling us? There's no way to know unless somebody starts poring over her questionnaire with a fine-toothed comb and the Senate Judiciary Committee (including all 10 righteous Republicans) does its job and fully investigates the nominee before confirming a lifetime appointment on her.

Is that too much to ask?

A bridge too obvious

2005-10-17T03:31:00.000-07:00

"Conspiracy theory" is a term that is used to discourage thinking in unconventional ways, ways that allow for the possibility that prominent politicians and elected officials sometimes involve themselves in illegal and/or amoral activities.

--David Cogswell

Ahhh, the stench of truth. After giving the pols and the MSM a couple of weeks to back up their bullshit posturing vis-a-vis cutting waste, fraud, and abuse in government spending such as the recently passed Energy and Transportation bills, it's left to Page A-26 to point out the pair of soiled underpants in the middle of the room.

Last month, Katrina revealed how bare the cupboards actually are, and there was much huffing and puffing and blowing of hot air all around. The politicians were outraged at their own overspending and the MSM ran the bloody "pork barrel" shirt up the flagpole, punctuating their noble work with particularly aggregious examples of government overspending such as the infamous "Bridge to Nowhere." In fact, considerably more attention and real estate was given to sexy earmarks in the large appropriations bills than was given to the fact that one party controlled the legislative process, that one party dictated the legislative agenda, that one party controlled every committee and sub-committee, that one party had the power to veto anything not in the best interest of the American people, that one party was more responsible.

So Page A-26 sat back and waited for a thorough congressional investigation of fraud, excess, and abuse, and for an in-depth, Katrina-aftermath, looking-for-bodies, breaking-news type of outrage and activity from the press. But instead, nobody has really done anything, and just a couple of days ago, the Republicans were back at it with another extended roll call, arm-twisting vote for a bloated energy bill rife with corporate giveaways. Yet again, the Main Stream Media (MSM) has failed in its duty to inform and thereby protect the American people from it's duly elected government.

Of course, this is just one of many, many such episodes in the last five years. In general, and specifically with this Administration (and by that I mean the Republican party, because let's be clear here, Bush is just a handpuppet that stumbled into enough political serendipity to convince his handlers that maybe he could be trusted to drive by himself. Lately, even his handlers have been forced to admit [privately and off the record, of course] that he's an incompetent boob.), there is a grassy knoll, there is a conspiracy behind every event, there is an uber cabal of powerful in this country who set the national agenda and for whose personal agendas we are all just means to an end.

Tom Delay did intentionally subvert campaign finance laws in order to gain political advantage for himself and his party; Bill Frist did take advantage of insider information to unload his HCA stock before it tanked, and he has known of his HCA assets despite blind trust laws prohibiting such knowledge; Karl Rove and Scooter Libby absolutely did illegally out Valerie Plame in political retribution for her husband's public comments about the rationale for war and they did perjure themselves about it when testifying before the grand jury; the Administration's fiscal and political priorities are responsible for the Katrina aftermath debacle. These are not just a series of coincidental incidentals. There is a guiding hand behind it all, and each of these little indiscretions are just the barely visible tips of a much larger underground network of skullduggery, kind of like aspens, which "turn in clusters, because their roots connect them."

If the politicians wanted to clean things up, they could. If the MSM wanted to investigate or report the facts, they could. Instead, politicans want to perpetuate their corrupt relationships with big-money political supporters and the MSM, which is just one more corporate appendage, is impotent in the face of political nefarity.

Take for example, "The Bridge to Nowhere." This simple, $300 million dollar swindle cries out for further review. The MSM has had a grand old time citing the Gravina Bridge as an example of scampish porkbarrel politics, but with many a rueful shake of the head or ironic, insider smirk, MSM anchors, reporters, and commentators consistently missed the point.

The press got caught up in the little stuff -- that this bridge would connect Ketchikan, Alaska (population 14,000) to Gravina Island (population 50). To them it was just a bridge to nowhere. The story was that Congress was so inefficient and mismanaged that they would spend upwards of $300 million to build a bridge that serves no purpose. Time and again the question was asked, "how could they allow this kind of pork to go through in these dire deficit times?" But that is not the question they should have been asking; the right question is "why are they building this bridge?"

To the people behind this bridge con, which is fronted by Representative Don Young (AK), the money appropriated for it in the 2005 Transportation bill is not earmark spending, it's an investment in future profits.

Real information about the Gravina Bridge is hard to come by. Of course, we know the critical stuff, like this bridge will be as long as the Golden Gate bridge and as high as the Brooklyn Bridge. Who cares? How is that relevant? It's not, it's just another example of ninth-grade journalism class reporting. Gee, I wonder how many football fields long the bridge will be? In fact, you can't even find an MSM article that specifically focuses on the bridge, let alone one that provides the entire history of its proposal or identifies the silent partners in this deal.

That's right, silent partners. For every in-your-face Don Young or skulkingly guilty Frank Murkowski, you can be damn sure that there are a host of special interests lurking in the shadows of this bridge rubbing their hands together in anticipation of future riches. This is not an example of porkbarrel spending, this is grand theft infrastructure.

There is almost no road system at all on Gravina Island and Ketchikan's tiny network of paved roads is not even linked to the mainland. There are no hotels or resorts or industries or available services on Gravina. But there will be as soon as that bridge is built. And that's the point. As soon as that bridge is built, some people are going to make a shitload of money on this deal and those are the people that are making sure that this particular earmark is more important that Medicare funding or fully funding Social Security.

This is greed, not incompetence. The politicians try to mislead the public with blustering about excess, fraud, and abuse, then they turn around and exceed, defraud, and abuse. Think about it, why would they build a bridge to nowhere. Well, the greedy are always looking for their next score. If you are a powerful politician with close ties to the levers of power and industry, and vice-versa, you use your connections to create the future.

Page A-26 has no doubt that while there may be nothing in the Alaskan town at the far end of the proposed bridge right now, you can bet your vastly undervalued dollar that there's going to be something there as soon as that bridge is built. Something like resort hotels (and possibly casinos), seriously upscale summer lodges for the wealthy, new businesses like Fred Meyer, McDonalds, Jiffy Lube, and Exxon gas stations, and lots of lots of suddenly very expensive real estate.

Now if the press had any interest in actually investigating stories instead of just parroting "news," somebody would start researching property records, government road-building contracts, and other development-related materials to see who is going to make off like a CEO on this bridge to nowhere deal. Mark these words: by 2015, most of the primary growth forest will be gone and there will be a thriving, up-scale resort town where a sleepy little village of 50 now stands. And those 50 residents will probably be living in dumpy apartments in the Fourth street neighborhood of Anchorage after they get Eminent Domained right out their homes (right, conservative Supreme Court?)

A quick Google search on the bridge project reveals the silhouettes of some sketchy motivations behind this bridge, sketchy motivations that do not seem to hold up in the light of day.

For example, Youngites like the mayor of Ketchikan cite the need to replace the inefficient ferry system with a much more user-friendly multi-lane superhighway bridge, you know, to handle all that back-and-forth traffic between the bustling bedroom community of Gravina Island and the industrial metropolis of Ketchikan. Turns out that most people without a financial stake in the bridge think that the bridge will actually add time and inconvenience to the commute. Imagine that. A bridge miles out of town that turns a five-minute ferry ride into a 15-mile drive probably isn't going to do much for the 50 or so people who might have a need to move back and forth between Gravina and Ketchikan (most of whom don't have cars anyways because there's no freaking roads on the island), but it sure as hell is going to make it a lot easier for fleets of logging trucks to get all that prime Gravina timber to market.

Even better, supporters say the bridge will revitalize Ketchikan, but local folk think that the ferry is actually a significant draw for the tourist trade. Others complain that the bridge will pose serious navigational hazards and the bridge will detract from the local economy and quality of life (page 9). Never mind the fact that it will go right through a native burial ground.

So remind me again, who is actually going to benefit from this bridge? Who are these special interests? My first stop would be the major donors lists of Represenative Young and the RNC. In addition to real estate, infrastructure, and tourism interests, this new bridge will also open up Gravina Island to cost-effective resource extraction that will negatively impact the environment (page 12). Tiiimmmbeerrrr!

So all the earmarks of Teapot Dome, Tammany Hall-level graft are there, but the one entity capable of bringing the truth to light, the MSM, has already moved on. They are happy to shout "pork" and "pork barrel" and "earmarks" from the highest rooftops when it gets them ratings, but as soon as some smokin' chick lawyer with a face like a thespian mask and legs like hot-buttered Jesus gets nominated for the Supreme Court, the MSM is off whoring around for better ratings and the excess, fraud, and abuse is set aside until it once again becomes ratingsly convenient.

I'm sure the real Gravina Bridge story is a good one, and if the MSM had any interest in serving their public mission, they'd go after this one with Woodward and Bernstein-like zeal and follow the money right back to the levers of power.

Aw fuck it. Have you heard what happened to Taylor Behl?

Cue the shiny objects

2005-09-23T12:25:00.000-07:00

As Bush and his Republican cronies, some of whom purport to be "true" (which once, long, long ago used to mean fiscal) conservatives, try to explain how they're going to pay for Katrina, Medicare reform, Rita, tax cuts, Social Security reform, Iraq and Afghanistan (and Iran? or is it Syria now?), AIDS relief in Africa, increased funding for No Child Left Behind, and something about going to Mars all at the same time, they have seized upon that well-worn Reagan chestnut -- eliminating waste, fraud, and abuse -- as their panacea.

Once again, I say-I say ONCE AGAIN, this is nothing but classic Republican misdirection, a strategy they use relentlessly, but apparently with Main Stream Media (MSM) impunity, to divert attention away from real issues by throwing up more red herrings than a hungover penguin with an ulcer.

So they want to trim the fat do they? Well answer me this: after controlling both houses of congress since 2003 and the presidency since 2001, why hasn't that waste, fraud, and abuse been rooted out already? In fact, not only why hasn't it been rooted out, why has federal spending ballooned exponentially since Bush took office, AND just in the last three months, why has Congress passed two massive spending bills -- the Transportation bill and the Energy bill -- that are universally acknowledged to be rife with pet projects, earmarks, and fat, cracklin' pork?

In fact, according to a study by the Citizens Against Government Waste (a warm, sheltering, supportive, non-profit front behind which small-government conservatives and big business executives can band together against the oppressive forces of the public good and do some bathtub drowning of this here runaway federal government), "in the years since the 2003 budget was introduced, pork-barrel spending has climbed from $20.1 billion to $27.3 billion, with the number of earmarked projects rising from 8,341 to 13,999."

Remember folks, this is on the conservatives' watch. This taxpayer-funded, special-interest-focused, free-for-all spending spree is happening not in spite of Republicans' best efforts, but because of their best efforts. They are flat-out bullshit hypocrites that yap about fiscal responsibility and tax-and-spend democrats and eliminating waste, and bitch about how the government is wasting money trying to protect the environment from unconscienable corporate polluting (which they assure everyone could be more effectively done through the efficiency of industry self-regulation) and poor people are just getting too much of "your" money, all the while greasing the skids for their corporate and special interest buddies to make billions -- their real constituencies, by the way -- and making a little political hay for themselves by bringing some trickle-down into their home districts.

And as they're harumph-humphing around the floors of the House and the Senate (Hey! I didn't get a harumph out of that guy!), pompously yammering on about freedom and opportunity and freedom and liberty and strengthening and building and the future and, and, the children, and [Senator, pause gravely here, wait, wait, wait for it, now: tremble the lips a little bit, clear the throat, grab the lectern with both hands and look directly into the cameras and . . .] the grandchildren (and the crowd goes wild), the hope is that everybody will forget that these same political blowhards that are trying so hard to seem genuine in their outrage are the ones that knowlingly and willingly caused the problems that they are now so upset about.

Now misdirection doesn't work unless you have a patsy, or a demagogue , or, with the public's current attention span and level of interest, any shiny object that refocuses public attention away from the dudes in the three-piece jumpsuits that are "gathering" stacks of cash right off the back loading dock of the US Treasury.

Only because Katrina and Rita have brought "unforseen" pressures on the federal bankroll, is congress being forced to publicly scramble for cash. Everybody, and I mean EVERY-FREAKIN'-BODY, and that means the politicians (of both parties), the special interests, the media, and the public, knew that with all the tax cuts and the foreign wars and the heady spending of the feelgood Republican Earmark Era, there wasn't enough money to go around, not even close. We went from record surplus to record debt in record time. But nobody cared, at least not until the hurricanes came along and tore off the bullshit dome under which Americans have been living since 2001 to reveal that America is so financially strung out, we're only about two more tax cuts (or one tax cut and one natural disaster) away from having to blow China behind the dumpsters out back of the UN building just to keep them from repo'ing the State Department.

Cue the shiny objects.

So where do our trusty politicians urge us to focus our wrath? Low-hanging fruit like the billion a week we're spending in Iraq, or the mushrooming Defense and Homeland Security budgets, or corrupt legislation? No, no, no. To be successful in the ole misdirection play, you also need to skillfully execute another time-tested Republican strategy: vehemently argue that something is the opposite of what is actually is. In this case, it's not rampant, whole-scale giveaway of billions to the corporations and the special interests, it's the waste, fraud, and abuse of $25,000 earmarks and pork-barrel spending projects.

As I said, a telltale sign of Republican disingenue is when they overprotesteth. Now that everybody suddenly cares about how much money we don't have, the Republicans are covering their backs by pointing out random, disjointed bits and pieces of "excess spending" in the Energy and Transportation bills (that they rammed through). Haven't really heard any other thoughts on how they're going to solve the bugdet shortfalls, but I have heard about lots of things (the usual suspects: Iraq, Defense, tax cuts) that are absolutely off the table.

That's funny, cuz "when asked by a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll how they'd prefer to finance the (at least) $200 billion Katrina relief effort, only 6 percent [of Americans polled] proposed cutting domestic spending and just 15 percent supported increasing the deficit. A majority -- 54 percent -- chose 'cut spending for the war in Iraq.'" Hmm.

But just when you think you have them on the ropes, along comes clueless Gomer Press, about an election cycle late and a pair of testacles (or breasts) short, bumbling onto the scene with all the sensitivity and attention to detail of an LAPD homicide unit. Flopping around like Odie and sounding like Scooby-Dumb, the press inevitably steps right into a steaming pile of political bullshit and tracks it all over the real issue. In fact, the press is so predicatable, Karl Rove's entire political strategy is based upon using the press to manipulate and/or neutralize public opinion.

"Huh, uh what, what's going on here fellers?" Gomer P. babbles. The policitians, presented with an exit strategy, start hollering bloody murder about bloated spending projects like opulent $1500 wheelchair ramps or Caligulan $100,000 bikepaths. A bikepath damn their souls. How dare anyone in this country even think of building a bike path with taxpayer money before every possible tax break for chemical, drug, and energy companies has been completely exhausted. It's beyond irresponsible, it's treasonous. If the tragedy of 9/11 has taught us nothing else, it has taught us that if Exxon-Mobil doesn't increase net profits at least 20 percent quarter on quarter, the terrorists win.

Because, yeah, there are several bikepaths, and sidewalks, and museums that are funded in the Transportation bill, but there aren't that many of them and it takes a lot of $250,000 projects to add up to $286 billion. No, what I see a lot of in this bill (and check the list yourself) are roads. That's right, roads roads-roads roads ROADS. Shitloads and shitloads of roads for gasoline burning cars. Not much in there for light rail or mass transportation. Nope. Just shitloads of roads.

And whooaaaa Nellie, lookie here on page 20 of the report, line item number 406: $100,000,000 for "Planning, design, and construction of a bridge joining the island of Gravina to the community of Ketchikan." Yup, this is the infamous bridge to nowhere.

I don't care what other bullshit projects are in this bill, ditch the bridge to nowhere and you've just freed up $100 million for education or Medicare or Louisiana or even, perish the thought, public transportation. One might expect that the Press would have the same idea and start pushing for more information about this funny smelling bridge to nowhere. Nope. Seems the Press is willing to be deliciously puzzled by this endearing little example of political business as usual. No investigation, no Katrina-level outrage, just some impish grins, a few devil-may-care shoulder shrugs, and they'll leave it at that. Sometimes the world is just a kooky, goofy place.

The bridge to nowhere says everything that needs to be said about the corruption of the Republican party, the prostitution of the American political system, the degradation of the Press, and the complete abdication of all responsibility by the public. Sure there's some "pork" in these bills, and yes, this "pork" should be put to better use. But don't start busting balls over bikepaths and museums and guardrails. All the guardrails in the world don't add up to the waste, fraud, and abuse of one unnecessary bridge, not to mention the waste, fraud, and abuse of the no-bid contracts for Iraqi and Katrina reconstruction. As the old bumper sticker used to say, "It will be a perfect day when schools have all the money they need and the Air Force is forced to have a bake sale to buy a bomber."

Oh well, what's a few hundred billion dollars among friends of the Republican party.

Is Bush hitting the bottle again?

2005-09-22T14:22:00.000-07:00

Oh my. Air America and the liberal blogosphere are all a-twitter today with the National Enquirer's scoop that President Bushmill is once again hitting the bottle. Of course, other than a minor reference to this story in Froomkin's White House Briefing, the Main Stream Media (MSM) is taking a pass on this one.

This should not come as much of a surprise -- neither the drinking nor the refusal of the press to look into the allegations.

Let's quickly review some of the evidence for Bush's drinking. Not psychological studies of recidivism in addicts; or research that points out how difficult it is for addicts to stay clean without participating in a formal support program; or the fact that part of overcoming addiction, one of the 12 classic steps, is to take responsibility for your actions and apologize to those you have hurt as a result of your addiction (and we all know how willing Bush is to take responsibility for anything or admit his mistakes) -- this type of discussion is well represented in the blogosphere right now. Instead, let's look at some Page A-26 circumstantial-type evidence.

First, clearly, clearly, Bush has an addictive personality. He has acknowledged being a hardcore lush up until the morning after his 40th birthday. There are also numerous allegations of habitual cocaine use during this drinking period. After he quit drinking, Bush became addicted to Jesus, plunging mindlessly into religion. Then, after being elected Governor of Texas, Bush became addicted to power, eventually scoring the presidency and using the position to try to extend his power to every corner of the globe. In the last couple of years, Bush has become addicted to mountain biking to the extent that the Department of Homeland Security and the Secret Service have standing orders not to interrupt his bike rides for any reason, including national emergencies.

Behavioralists and geneticists may disagree over whether Bush's behavioral patterns represent a genetic predisposition to addiction or are simply a result of his pea-brain trying to seize onto anything that will give structure and purpose to his life, but the evidence is there for all to see (and the Bush people have even trumpeted this as one of his best attributes): when Bush gets something in his head, he becomes obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else. Whether it's social security reform, the war in Iraq, or mountain biking, total, mindless obsession equates to addiction.

Then we have suspicious incidents such as the infamous pretzel choke in 2002. In this article, CNN generously describes it as a fainting episode. Note the spin and misdirection. There is detailed discussion of how the White House physician thinks that the pretzel somehow stimulated the Vagus nerve, lowering his pulse and precipitating the blackout. But just for good measure, as any good defense attorney with an obviously guilty client will do, the Administration makes sure that there are several other possible scenarios laid out, just in case some busy-body physician reading the article should take umbrage with the Vagus nerve cover story. Other possible causes floated in the article include "a mild illness" and an unusually low pulse rate attributed to his regular exercise regimen.

Seems pretty flimsy from here, especially considering that he was apparently alone for the entire blackout incident (is the President ever alone?), and minutes later, all physical tests were allegedly normal (including pulse rate).

So what happened with the pretzel? Try to the fill in the blank here: Football game, TV, pretzels, and ___________. What's missing? Uh, beer.

Not convinced. Sure, no problem. Let's go to exhibit number three: Bush drinking beer in public. As noted by those press elite lucky enough to be invited to the special press party at Bush's ranch on August 26, Bush served beer to guests at the party and drank a non-alcoholic Buckler beer.

Isn't it really bad practice for recovering alcoholics to hang out in environments that include alcohol? And wouldn't most therapists, physicians, and psychologists strongly recommend against any kind of alcohol-related libations? But there was Bush, doling out the suds for his buds and sucking down a few "fake" beers. Did anybody check the President's beer or did they just take his word for it that it was near beer? Non-alcoholic beer sure makes a great cover for the real thing -- looks the same, smells the same, tastes the same -- how would anybody know the difference? How indeed.

And one of the reasons why it's not a good idea for recovering alcoholics to sublimate their addictive impulses with near beer is that even non-alcoholic beer has alcohol in it!

OK, so he's drinking alcohol at a party, but because it's near beer, you're going to give him a pass. Fine. On to exhibit number four. The champagne toasts. It seems that there are endless opportunities for Bush to lead champagne toasts (finally, an applicable venue for his unique leadership skills). The latest was his champagne toast at the UN summit on September 14. Check out the end of the video, was that apple juice that Bush was celebrating with?

Now couple this circumstantial evidence with some of Bush's unfathomable statements and actions, and the case strengthens.

But where is the press on this one? It took them about four years to finally pretend to look into the National Guard story. And the Downing Street memo languished for a month after the British press disclosed it before the American press gave it a lukewarm "so what?" Oh yeah, and where's Jeff Gannon now? And how is that investigation of the Valerie Plame leak coming along? And what was the deal with the Cheney Energy Council?

But let's not blame this one entirely on the press, at least not in the present. Sure, they've had five years to ask some questions, do some digging, and refuse to take Administration talking points and PR at face value, but that's all cerveza under the bridge. Now that there are some cracks in the once impenetrable Bush facade, well, the MSM is slightly more emboldened, so somebody might actually stumble into this story, right?

Which brings us to yesterday's National Enquirer story. How does Page A-26 know that there's something to the Bush drinking whispers -- because of the National Enquirer story.

It's not what's in the story that's important, it's the fact that it was reported by the Enquirer. Think about it -- if you were the Administration and you knew that your boy was drinking again and that sooner or later this information might find its way to a legitimate journalist, how would you go about putting the clamps on this story before it got loose in the MSM? Well, you'd "leak" to a publication so maligned, so disreputable, so debunked that its very association with the story instantly delegitimizes it.

It's brilliant, really. Leak the story to the Enquirer as a way of making the story untouchable. Because the Enquirer was the first publication to run a significant story about Bush's drinking, all the Administration drones and right-wing parrots out there can immediately equate the story to alien autopsies and Liz Taylor's 17-year old transsexual Afghan love child. Anyone who touches this story now is immediately tainted by association. Who can take this story seriously now that its been broken by the Enquirer? This has Turd Blossom's fat, sweaty paw prints all over it.

If I was an editor at an MSM organization, I would immediately assign some reporters to follow up on this story. My very first question would be: who leaked the info to the Enquirer? Come on MSM, reverse engineer for truth god damnit! Who were the unnamed sources for the story and what were their motivations? Start with these questions and follow the lies.

Is Bush drinking again? Or should the question be, did he ever really stop? It's impossible for those on the outside to know, so we have to rely on the MSM to ask these questions for us. Unfortunately, while there is more than enough circumstantial evidence to at least generate some curiosity among the press, it appears that nobody in the MSM has the cajones to actually take a bite. I give this story about another day and a half before it drops off the table until about the year 2009 when some tell-all New York Times bestseller by a former Bush Administration official (and probably ghost-written by Judith Miller) will reveal that Bush was a falling-down drunk for his entire presidency and that everybody in the White House and the press corps knew all about it.

Oh well, wink-wink, chuckle-chuckle, and look the other way. Hey, at least he's not getting a blow job and lying about it. Or is he? How would we ever know?

That's entertainment!

2005-09-07T17:24:00.000-07:00

I make my living off the Evening News
Just give me something-something I can use
People love it when you lose,
They love dirty laundry

So everybody is pointing fingers now about the mess in New Orleans and guess who's leading the charge for accountability -- the television media. How ironic. We all know that television has a very powerful influence on American public opinion, but for the last seven years or so, ever since Monica Lewinsky became the biggest threat to the American way of life since the birth control pill, we have been content to let the television media go AWOL. Rather than focusing on its responsibility to provide NEWS, the television media has been allowed to focus almost exclusively on ratings and profits.

As much as anybody -- as much as FEMA, as much as Michael Chertoff, as much as state and local officials, as much as Bush, -- the press is complicit in the recent disaster in New Orleans for two reasons: they could have helped stop it from happening, and they are directly profiting from it.

Since Bush took over in 2001 and started systematically dismantling the federal government with tax cuts, faith-based initiatives, spending reappropriations, and blind faith in state sovereignty (uh, except when states rights interfere with the larger agenda -- see Terry Schiavo, see gay marriage, see medical marijuana, see stem cell research), the television media has had ample opportunity to question the Bush Administration about not only its policies but also its procedures. How many bald-faced lies have been perpetrated on the American public by the Administration in the last five years -- Medicare reform, Cheney's Energy Council, the Valerie Plame outing, THE FRICKING WAR IN FRICKING IRAQ, the real story of Pat Tillman, the California energy crisis, Bush's mountain biking greatness, Jeff Gannon, Mission Accomplished!, tax cuts for the lower and middle classes . . . and on and on. The television media not only had front row seats for all of these stories, they facilitated them. They had a chance to investigate and ask the tough questions, and accurately present the facts. They had a chance to honestly inform the public about the political machinations that were going to affect people's lives.

But they were derelict in their duty. Instead of growing a set and cutting through the Administration misinformation to the real issues at hand -- how these policies affect the nation as a whole -- the press too often got tripped up by its desire for continued access, its allegiance to the bottom line, and its hopelessly confused concept of balanced coverage.

Until now. NOW! Now that Bush and his people have finally gone too far with their lies and image manipulation, now that the public's willingness to believe in it's leaders has been stretched to the breaking point, now that the American public is finally rising up in anger, now that the forces of change have been put into motion, now the television media comes out from behind its corporate boards and its advertising revenue and its insider access to the powerful and famous to finally speak up.

Pathetic. The television media had a chance to stop the New Orleans flood, if they had only sunk their teeth into coverage of the Administration's appropriations cuts and revisions that took millions of dollars slated for infrastructure projects -- including specific monies for the levees in New Orleans -- and moved them to the more amorphous and Bush/Cheney-friendly Defense and Homeland Security budgets. By questioning the PR-driven, valueless, supply-side, trickle-down tax cuts that have helped widen the gap between rich and poor in the nation and have left the country's infrastructure weakened and vulnerable. By questioning the organization of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), or by shining a light on the systematic dismantling of FEMA, or by directing more attention to the qualifications of Michael Brown and Michael Chertoff. And they could have made some effort to examine the rationale for going to war in Iraq, a war that has a large percentage of the National Guard deployed half a globe away. They could have come in handy this past week.

We can do "The Innuendo"
We can dance and sing
When it's said and done we haven't told you a thing
We all know that Crap is King
Give us dirty laundry!

But the television media didn't fight for straight answers, instead they played the game. They posed straw-man questions; they gave the arguments from both sides equal weight in a misguided nod to objectivity, even when the facts clearly supported one side or the other; they lobbed softball questions, accepted Administration answers at face value, and rarely followed up on obvious gaps in logic or reason.

The television media was first puzzled, then outraged when Bush declared on September 1, 2005, two days after the city of New Orleans filled with water from Lake Pontchartrain, "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." But why should this come as a surprise to anybody that has been paying attention the last five years -- this President is full of shit, and the fact that the television media is just now waking up to this fact is itself pretty revealing.

Because even though the President, the Congress, FEMA, the DHS, and the television media were not interested enough to look into the New Orleans levee situation, the New Orleans Times-Picayune, NPR, and the New York Times were concerned enough to run lengthy stories about it as far back as 2002. But levees are just not sexy enough for TV. Now dykes, especially dykes getting married, well stop the presses, they'll give Joe Scarborough and Neil Cavuto and Bill O'Reilly carte blanche to beat that topic into the ground for days on end.

The press has a unique position in American society, and they must use this position to probe, to pressure, to push those in power for answers. But at the highest levels of the television media, in the boardrooms, the decision has long since been made to favor ratings and profits over information. At the individual level, media personalities have sold out to the forces of fame and fortune. It's just easier to accept things at face value and stay in the game, which includes appearance fees, radio deals, book contracts -- membership in the cult of celebrity has its advantages. Nobody is going to risk all that to rock the boat. The result is a corrupt, bloated press that foreshadows the very decline of American civilization that it refuses to acknowledge.

Plenty of outrage should be showered on the President and his team. Whether by incompetence or design, they sure did a good job of fucking this one up. But where is the outrage at the television media? Instead of anger at their poor performance, the television media is instead being hailed for finally growing a spine and sinking their teeth into the Katrina story.

Maybe because the television media is so powerful, it can control the discourse about itself. Whether it's politics or business or sports, or entertainment, it's all PR anyway, so the television media makes sure to clap itself on the back loudly and often, effectively creating its own positive image.

I just don't understand how even reliably cynical types such as the Washington Post's Dan Froomkin and contrarian blog HoorayForAnything can be sizing the television media up for their Medals of Freedom right now, because the television media still aren't getting it. Despite all their indignation and anger at the disaster in New Orleans and the bungled relief efforts, they are still not able to put two and two together and come up with four.

For example, in the last week of August, the Census Bureau released some rather grim statistics that showed that the number of Americans living in poverty rose by 1.1 million to 37 million last year. The Census Bureau went on to add that it is the fourth straight year that poverty has risen. So as the television media decries the terrible plight of the residents of New Orleans, even timidly pointing out that most of them are poor and black, they still cannot or will not address the elephant in the room: this Administration's total disregard for all but the economic elite in this country. Where is the outrage about the Census Bureau numbers? I guess it's just easier to strap on a field vest and poke around dead bodies and destroyed houses while hyping ratings with unsubstantiated descriptions of armed thugs running rampant on the city streets shooting babies and raping puppies than to draw a line between elitist public policy and it's effect on the masses.

And I have yet to hear one single TV talking head acknowledge that the looting (the actual looting, not the the survival collecting) is being done for many of the same reasons that precipitated the riots following the Rodney King verdict: when people are disenfranchised and abused by the system they get angry, and when circumstances present an opportunity, frustrations will boil over into rioting, looting, and other forms of protest. I guess such discussion would fall more along the lines of provocative social discourse though, and the news is not about discourse, it's about intercourse, it's about entertainment, it's about celebrity galas, it's about staged photo-ops, it's about corporate and Administration talking points, it's about agenda-setting.

And we haven't even talked yet about how the television media is waving its collective hanky for the Gulf Coast with one hand and counting its profits with the other. Executives and "talent" for network news channels and syndicated news services lie awake nights dreaming about events like Katrina. Such fortune may come along just once in a career. With 24 hours to fill every day, the network news channels usually have to devote hours and hours of air time to supercilious coverage of every cute white teenager that goes missing, every soldier pumped up about returning to Iraq for a second tour of duty, and every wisp of cloud that darkens the Gulf Coast shores -- coverage complete with elaborate graphics, expensive on-location reporting, and panel upon panel of distinguished experts to discuss ad infinitum the totally obvious.

But along came Katrina, and the media could hardly control it's glee. It was going to be big, and that meant at least two days of heavy weather, followed by at least a week of cleanup stories; Katrina was bringing with it a solid week's worth of salacious news content and tragedy. Television media executives and producers know that Americans love tragedy, whether Americans will admit it or not, and with tragedy comes ratings.

Because let's cut to the chase here, network news stopped being about the news decades ago. It had of course been sliding toward the precipice for years, but the news part of network news was given the final shove off the cliff during the Gulf War when Arthur "The Scud Stud" Kent and Wolf Blitzer stood on their rooftops in Riyadh and Tel Aviv and showed media people everywhere that the "news" was as much about the reporter
and the theatrics of reporting as it was about the events being reported. Folks, that's called entertainment, not news.

The television media was up to all of its old tricks (definitely read this brilliant indictment of everything that is wrong with network news), and the grandstanding for Katrina and the subsequent levee breeches was obvious and totally unconscionable. This went far beyond the obligatory shots of some poor field reporter in rain gear standing out on a jetty somewhere being pounded by wind and rain while trying to file a report on the fact that there's a storm outside, this was blatant exploitation. For reporters and studio anchors, it was a chance to lay out their best cheesy sentiments and maddeningly cutesy prose ("for local residents, relief supplies coming to them like it was the end of the world had some wondering if the end of the world was coming to them" -- uh, this line should be read in the sing-song voice of drippy television news magazine journeyman Keith Morrison); for producers it was a chance to capitalize on the emotional appeal of human tragedy and grief.

In addition to the endless loops of personal stories of "tragedy and heroism" and the same 45 seconds of footage shown over and over again, news anchors got their time in the sun, and field reporters breathlessly recounted their heroic efforts to get the stories. Words like tragedy, devastation, heartbreaking, and crisis were used relentlessly to sensationalize the facts, to make them more enticing to the viewers. Images like the ones CNN showed last Wednesday of distraught and displaced people congealed into staged irony by contrasting them with a shot of the nearly submerged street sign for Humanity Drive in New Orleans are used to pluck the heartstrings and pull in viewers. Reports of thousands of dead without any corroboration (remember back on 9/11, initial television news reports were baselessly speculating at up to 50,000 dead when the actual number turned out to be less than 3,000?), bodies floating in the streets, and up to 100 armed men holding the convention center. Was this the news or the latest episode of CSI: New Orleans?

Lest there be any doubt that TV news coverage of Katrina was about ratings and profits rather than news, each of the network news channels continued to play their standard rotation of commercials throughout the special reports and breaking news coverage that dominated programming on Wednesday and Thursday of last week. CNN teasers announced "overwhelming emotional destruction" and "firsthand accounts of survival and loss" in the same smarmy voice that last week hyped Larry King's interview with Pamela Anderson. Promos for the Anderson Cooper show on Wednesday promised "Chaos in New Orleans," "Bands of gunmen roaming the streets," "The body count continues to grow," and "Anderson Cooper goes on a search and rescue mission." The latter turned out to be a camera crew following Cooper around as he shamelessly poked his face into people's flooded houses looking for dead bodies like he was filming a demented episode of Room Raiders and made comments like "the smell is overwhelming."

Cooper in particular was in fine form on Wednesday, making his bid for an Emmy, or at least an Edward R. Murrow Award, with gems like, "heartbreak and chaos have risen as high as the floodwaters" and "we went out with search and rescue workers today, we'll show you their grim discoveries when we come back (from commercial)," at which point the critical news coverage was interrupted for a British Petroleum commercial. Over on MSNBC, the promo for Rita Cosby Live & Direct boasted of "the stories and heartbreak only we can bring you."

And each network continued to cycle through its regular daily coterie of news anchors, giving each of its featured studio hosts a chance to have their 9/11 moment of journalistic heroism. You could almost see it in their eyes: every anchor was giving it their theatrical all, so that when the inevitable documentaries of this disaster are made, when the history of this disaster is written, they will be as much a part of the story as the people of New Orleans. It's disgusting.

The studio anchors looking so grave and concerned then kick it out to a reporter in the field, invariably positioned theatrically against the backdrop of either tragedy or devastation. In one story about the possibility of E. Coli bacteria in the fetid floodwaters of New Orleans (No shit? who would have guessed), CNN even had poor Elizabeth Cohen squatting down in the foul water with nothing but a thin pair of hip waders between her and amoebic dysentery. Oh the stagecraft. And there was Anderson Cooper again, looking so clean and freshly shaved on his search for the dead that studio anchor Aaron Brown felt compelled to comment on it. An embarrassed Cooper quickly brought the discussion back to the misfortunes of others.

We got the bubble-headed-bleach-blonde
who
comes on at five
She can tell you 'bout the plane crash with a gleam
in her eye
It's interesting when people die-
Give us dirty laundry

Most offensive of all is the way the anchors' somber and emotional reading of the syrupy teleprompter script suddenly turns upbeat, with a smile, or a least a rueful smirk curling on their pampered lips as they cut away from floating bodies and starving babies to send it over to Flip Diddler for at look at this weekend's rosy weather forecast for the nation's beaches.

What is the point of showing crying babies, and screaming mothers, and total human devastation over banner headlines like "New Orleans chaos," "Finding bodies," and "New Orleans nightmare"? The point is sensationalistic imagery and language that generates ratings. Ratings attract advertisers and raise the prices for commercial time, and that translates to higher profits. And there you have it, the modern television media in a nutshell.

The news networks were certainly not disappointed in the reviews of their New Orleans theater. According to David Bauder of the Associated Press, "Ratings for the cable news networks also spiked, typical for big events. Fox News Channel averaged 2.8 million viewers last week, up 184 percent from its average this year; CNN's 2.1 million was up 325 percent and MSNBC's 766,000 was up 250 percent." Damn, that's oil company numbers there.

It is clear that the television media is content to go for ratings and let the news fall where it may. Sure, some decent reporting has been done, and the television media does deserve credit for bringing the terrible suffering and inept relief response along the Gulf Coast to the attention of the world. But let's not pull a muscle patting the television media on the back (they're doing a pretty good job of that themselves), because it is clear from the television coverage and the subsequent ratings that television media has looted its fair share from the people of the Gulf Coast and should be looked upon as greedy profiteers for their disingenuous posturing and callous opportunism the past 10 days. Go ahead and spew your venom for Bush, Chertoff, FEMA, Ray Nagin, Kathleen Blanco, Congressional leaders, or Grover Norquist, but save some for the messengers too.

You don't really need to find out what's going on
You don't really want to know just how far it's gone
Just leave well enough alone
Eat your dirty laundry

--Don Henly, "Dirty
Laundry"