SUNDAY: 10/12/03

The unmitigated right-wing king of bombast and self-righteous showmanship has a drug problem.

Though there's never any cause to cheer another person's addictions, the record of Rush Limbaugh's unharnessed left-bashing mouth makes it hard to feel sorry for the guy.

Along with diatribes against "feminazis" and other of his concocted liberal threats to the republic, Limbaugh intoned in 1995, “Too many whites are getting away with drug use. The answer is to ... find the ones who are getting away with it, convict them, and send them up the river.”

Hoisted with his own petard. Enough said.

Newsweek story here.

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Condoleeza Rice announced the other day that she'd be running things ...well, coordinating, things in Iraq for the forseeable future. When asked about this Don Rumsfeld said nobody told him about it. I'm glad Rummy's being oozed out for the time being, but the other one who really should disappear is Dick Cheney.

Maureen Dowd, in today's NY Times, says the VP is Georgie's bad daddy. That's as apt way to characterize the side-talker as I've heard.

"When Bush the Elder put Bush the Younger in the care of Dick Cheney, he assumed that Mr. Cheney ...would play the wise, selfless counselor ...tutoring a young president green on foreign policy and safeguarding the first Bush administration's legacy of internationalism, coalition-building and realpolitik.

"Instead ...Bad Daddy usurped his son's presidency, heightened its conservatism and rushed America into war on the mistaken assumption that if we just acted like king of the world, everyone would bow down or run away."

Well that all seems feasible.

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"There is nothing more likely to betray a man into absurdity than condescension." --Samuel Johnson

The Constitution creates no executive prerogative to dispose of the liberty of the individual. Proceedings against him must be authorized by law. —United States Supreme Court, Valentine v. U.S. (1936)

Implicit in the term "national defense" is the notion of defending those values and ideals which set this Nation apart. —United States Supreme Court, U.S. v. Robel (1967)

Running scared we're in danger of decimating the document that makes it possible to enjoy the liberties terrorists aim to destroy. In the end it won't matter to Osama bin Laden whether he destroys us directly or through the misguided zeal of John Ashcroft, George Bush, or some other over-the-top fear monger.

If we think selectively dismantling the constitution is our ticket to safety and security, those suicide-murderers may some day look down upon us from their mythical perch locked in the arms of their paradisiacal virgins and boast, "See, it worked. All they needed was a little push."

As Nat Hentoff says in an article in The Village Voice, "On June 9, 2002, commander in chief George W. Bush, acting under the Authorization for Use of Military Force Joint Resolution, sent an order to the Defense Department designating Jose Padilla, an American citizen, an 'enemy combatant.' The president did this all by himself, even though, as I noted in a friend of the court brief to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals by a historic array of former federal judges and establishment lawyers:

"There is no constitutionally approved definition of who is an 'enemy combatant.' " Nor is there any basis in our laws for holding Jose Padilla indefinitely without charges, or access to his lawyer, Donna Newman."

What the president has done unilaterally (his favorite way of acting) is to "abrogate the fundamental law of the constitution", just the thing Justice Hugo Black says he may not do in the quote, right.

When we charged a former King George with breaking fundamental laws we separated ourselves from him in a bloody revolution. Fortunately we have other means at our disposal to separate ourselves from this George. We can do this next November ...barring any hanging chads, Florida subterfuge, or another Supreme Court coup.

The word "security" is a broad, vague generality [that] should not be invoked to abrogate the fundamental law [of the Constitution]. —Justice Hugo Black, U.S. Supreme Court, New York Times Co. v. U.S. (1971)

And though the rules of the road have been lodged,
it's only people's games you got to DODGE
--Dylan again

WEDNESDAY: 10/8/03

The Reign of Error
by Jim Culleny

What is this the Lie Olympics or something? This Team Pinocchio is definitely going for the gold if it is. Dick Cheney, for instance, one of the all-time oligarchs of obfuscation, is more positively strapped to the back of Halliburton, Inc. (big oil-slick-related corporation currently making lots of money in Iraq) than Ahab was to the dorsal of the white whale, but continues to deny his good “luck” out of the side of his mouth.

But Ahab was just a deadly lunatic on a mythic quest. Dick Cheney, on the other hand, is a real-politik capitalist duke; a wolf in sheep's clothing of biblical proportions --some might even say a common (if highly placed) grifter who's building his nest-egg according to the law of the land upon the backs of the poor and middle class.

In fact, if anyone ever had a physiological condition that exposed their inner moral state, the vice president's mendacious sidewise oral delivery is a dead give-away. It's no accident the man literally talks out of the side of his mouth. Is this God's way of red-flagging something we might have missed? ..."Yoo-hoo," says the Lord, "take a closer look, this guy's not a straight talker."

What Cheney says: "Since I left Halliburton (he was CEO) to become George Bush's vice president, I've severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven't had, now, for over three years."

What the record shows: According to Cheney's own financial disclosure statements, he continues to collect a yearly Halliburton check in 'deferred compensation' . And Cheney also holds hundreds of thousands of stock options, which gain in value as Halliburton grows fat, and fatter, on those shameless no-bid cost-plus contracts (to rebuild Iraq).

This stinks so bad it’s as if Halliburton also got a billion dollar no-bid contract to build a multi-multiplex of hog farms inside the beltway downwind of a wind farm. We can smell it all the way up here in New England! But we've got to respect the VP. He wears expensive pig-skin suits. And Cheney knows the best way to keep wearing expensive pig-skin suits is to lubricate the gears of government for his oil industry cronies with on-spot applications from his powerful vice-presidential grease gun. Giving jiffy-lubes in the name of President Oil, so to speak.

By all accounts, at the very beginning of the Bush administration’s Reign of Error, the vice president got together a bunch of other oil-soaked guys in pig-skin suits for a gab-fest on what governmental services the new administration could provide to make their lives more profitable. We can fairly surmise that this is what went on at those “energy policy” meetings because Cheney refuses to make their content public. Those tête-à-têtes of corporate consigliores remain secret two years later even though the General Accounting Office has demanded to know who was there and what was said. The GAO thinks it’s the public’s right to know --national energy policy affecting the lives of citizens as it does. But Dick Cheney is “standing on principle” he says. What he’s really doing is standing principle on its head.

As commentator Arianna Huffington puts it in an article on Alternet.com, to hear the administration speak, “...(this) isn't really about lifting the veil on the energy industry's influence over the administration's regressive energy policy. It's about protecting freedom, liberty, the Constitution, motherhood, puppies and everything good.” Richard Nixon used similar arguments once upon a time to defend his own crooked assault on democracy. We later found out tricky Dick was blowing smoke. Best guess: Cheney is a smoke generator too.

My own opinion is that Cheney has no idea what “principle” is. He must not when he says the things he says while doing the things he does. For instance, Texas commentator Jim Hightower suggests Cheney’s loathing of Saddam Hussein may ring a little hollow. Hightower says, “...is it possible that Dick is a Hussein hypocrite? Yes, “ he answers. “In fact...Cheney, the former oil equipment executive, helped rebuild Saddam's economic machine that now stands accused of sponsoring terrorism."

But "No, no," retorts Cheney during the 2000 election when ABC's Sam Donaldson asked him directly if his Halliburton firm, through subsidiaries, was actually doing business with Hussein's government. "I had a firm policy that I wouldn't do anything in Iraq – even arrangements that were supposedly legal.”

The truth, Hightower says, is that just before election day 2000, the ...Financial Times of London discovered that two Halliburton-owned subsidiaries sold more oil field technologies and equipment to Ol' Mr. Evil ...than any other U.S. corporation, pocketing some $24 million in sales. These deals helped Hussein restore his oil-production capabilities, which are used to finance the militaristic adventures that Cheney now labels "evil." They also helped fulfill the vice-president‘s need for personal financial security. That was then and this is... well, to this day the Lie Olympics continue.

I’ve said this before, but it’s an important point vis-à-vis the president‘s predecessor: whereas the chain of lies that can be traced through almost every utterance of the Bush administration suggest these guys are slime balls to the American people, Bill Clinton was a slime ball mainly in his relationship with his wife. Despite the phenomenal loathing heaped upon him by the right, Clinton’s resort to untruths was embarrassing, petty, and stupid. Clinton’s lies were not assaults on the principles of Democracy, they were limited and personal and exhibited a common human weakness. But they simply were not as colossally destructive to the democratic process and the well-being of this nation as the chronic tortured-truth policy the Bush administration has pursued in the name of "The War on Terror".

You can’t fight a reign of terror with a reign of error.

Watch Fox News? Your I.Q. just suffered a K.O.

According to a survey by the Program on International Policy Issues (PIPA), listening to Fox news contrubutes to ignorance.

"..money doesn't talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony." --Bob Dylan

TUESDAY: 10/7/03

Michael Moore has a few questions for George Bush. These are excerpted from his book "Dude, Where's My Country" in The Guardian and re-published at Common Dreams News Center.

1. Is it true that the Bin Ladens have had business relations with you and your family off and on for the past 25 years?

2. What is the 'special relationship' between the Bushes and the Saudi royal family?

3. Who attacked the US on September 11 - a guy on dialysis from a cave in Afghanistan, or your friend, Saudi Arabia?

4. Why did you allow a private Saudi jet to fly around the US in the days after September 11 and pick up members of the Bin Laden family and fly them out of the country without a proper investigation by the FBI?

5. Why are you protecting the Second Amendment rights of potential terrorists?

6. Were you aware that, while you were governor of Texas, the Taliban traveled to Texas to meet with your oil and gas company friends?

7. What exactly was that look on your face in the Florida classroom on the morning of September 11 when your chief of staff told you, 'America is under attack'?

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SUNDAY: 10/5/03

Sexcapades are ok for Republicans with thick germanic accents, but not for Democrats with bubba-like southern ones.

Or is it: Sexcapades are ok for Democrats with bubba-like southern accents, but not for Republicans with thick germanic ones.

Pick your politics, pick your poison:

One woman's take
Another woman's take.

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First the Reign of Error kneaded and stretched the truth, then it stretched its military very thin in order to cover all that stretched truth. The consequences?:

"Since the United States cannot expect much additional help from other countries or from the fledgling Iraqi security forces, the burdens of occupation will start to strain severely the Army's capacity to deploy trained and rested combat forces worldwide in a matter of months..." --editorial in today's NY Times.

There's a case to be made that The Bush Administration's rush to unilateral (forget that misleading, stupid, and futile "coalition") preemptive war, has not only damaged the image of the USA, but it's capability to militarily address other crisis in the immediate future.

Keeping up on the Reign of Error is an endless task. In today's NY Times we find another installment of the sorry saga.

"The Bush administration's optimistic statements earlier this year that Iraq's oil wealth, not American taxpayers, would cover most of the cost of rebuilding Iraq were at odds with a bleaker assessment of a government task force secretly established last fall to study Iraq's oil industry, according to public records and government officials," it says in today's NY Times.


--photo:rusted & busted Iraqi oil equipment

Despite the info in a huge report by a task force base at the Pentagon that said, "Iraqi oil industry as so badly damaged by a decade of trade embargoes that its production capacity had fallen by more than 25 percent," the administration said Iraq could pay for its own rebuilding and quickly. Now the president want 20.3 billion from us to do it.

Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz told Congress during the war that "we are dealing with a country that can really finance its own reconstruction, and relatively soon."

Vice President Dick Cheney said in April, on the day Baghdad fell, that Iraq's oil production could hit 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year.

Go here for more details on this aspect of the Reign of Error.


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