Rumsfeld - Man On A Mission
Rumsfeld is apparently on a crusade to destroy every last shred of credibility and/or indication that he is human, all by his lonesome. He made "offhand" remarks regarding the 9/11 attacks, commenting on the one plane "that those people shot down." Now the White House is backpedalling faster than Fred Flintstone saying Rummy "misspoke." It has long been rumoured and suspected that the plane crash in Pennsylvania was not the result of passengers wresting control, but rather, of military aircraft shooting the plane down before it could blow up the White House, its presumed target. Is some truth finally coming out? Are these cracks in the Bush White House? Let's hope so.

Bad Times
Is this the Apocalypse? The tsunami that struck offshore Sri Lanka has killed nearly 33,000 people. Did you remember that last year on the same day (the 26th) an earthquake struck Bam, Iran, and killed 26,000 people? And did you know that today (the 28th) marks the anniversary of a 1908 quake in Messina, Sicilyl that killed 80,000 people. So no, this is not The End. The religious rightwingers who think this rain storm and that earthquake are "foretold" are just going to have to wait a bit longer. My advice is to go someplace really, really safe between Christmas and New Year's Eve.

Rumsfeld - Runner Up
Donnie Rumsfeld has made a "surprise" visit to our troops in Iraq. Read it here, LA Times. This "morale boosting" trip has nothing to do with the fact that the calloused cunt Rumsfeld told troops that even with armor that they needed on their Humvees and tanks, they can still be blown up. That's how you win the troops over, Donnie. There's nothing the Bush people like better than to pose for photos with people they are fucking. Rumsfeld brought us the Abu Ghraib war crimes, remember those lovely holiday snaps? Hello American troops in Iraq? That guy is smiling next to you because you're bending over and taking it up the ass from him, and you voted for him. Merry Christmas, your present came early.

Bush - Man Of The Year
A lot of people have their knickers in a twist over Time magazine naming Bush as the "person of the year" in its current issue. These people need to remember that Time also gave the same 'honor' to Hitler in 1939 and to the Ayatollah Khomeini in 1979. It's not an honor. However it would have made everyone feel better if Time came up with an unequivocal award and gave it to Bush. Call it the "Cunt Of The Year" award.

CHAMPIONS LEAGUE
Today the teams found out who they would be facing in the knock-out phase of the Champions League soccer tournament. The draw is as follows:

Full Champions League draw:

Real Madrid v Juventus
FC Porto v Inter Milan
Barcelona v Chelsea
Werder Bremen v Lyon
Liverpool v Bayer Leverkusen
PSV v Monaco
Manchester United v AC Milan
Bayern Munich v Arsenal

The Champions League, for those new to it, is a tournament of the best club soccer sides in Europe. A team has to finish in the top 3 spots in the country's hightest league (i.e., in England it is the Premiership, in Italy the Serie A, in France the Ligue Un, in Holland the Eredivisie and so on). These teams are then thrown into a hat and play a home and away game, with winners moving into this next phase. It is the best of the best. Imagine the competition we have during the Olympic Games, but instead of countries playing, you had The Lakers playing the best team from Yugoslavia.

UCSB Men's Soccer
UCSB made it to the final four of the NCAA tournament. They met Duke in the semifinal and destroyed them 5-0. Indiana knocked out Maryland in a hardfought 3-2 battle that ended seconds before the end of the 2nd overtime period. On Sunday, UCSB met Indiana and outplayed them. They beat them to the ball, won more challenges, held possession but at the end of regular time it was 1-1. After two overtime periods it was down to PKs. As is often the case, bad luck and good luck are fickle creatues, and UCSB lost on kicks. This is still a great win for UCSB, for the first time in their history they achieved 2nd place in the tournament. Next year, it's ours.

Mars Mystery
Mars is nothing but a great ball of mystery. BBC News has a story about Mars' largest moon, Phobos. Phobos will eventually crash into Mars. There are theories that it is either a captured asteroid, or maybe it and Deimos are the remnants of a large moon that was destroyed... by what? There are a series of grooves that run from the equator to the north pole... caused by what? Mystery!

Julian Cope
Today in the post I received two of Julian Cope's rare, mail-order only albums: DROOLIAN (1990) and SKELLINGTON (1989). Isn't Ebay wonderful? The cool part is, I won the auction for Droolian but lost the Skellington one, and the seller went ahead and burned me a copy of Skellington for free! The whole lot cost me $35 so maybe "free" isn't the best word, but he charged me no extra. This is contrasted with the scam artist last month who tried to ensnare me in a Western Union scam to "buy" a plasma TV. They wanted to use a dodgy outfit called "SquareTrade" which it turns out is totally bogus. The idea is that the mark, me, would wire $1500 to "a SquareTrade agent" and the agent would hold the funds until I was happy with my TV. For sheez. If it sounds too good to be true - IT IS. Meanwhile, I'm getting to hear St. Julian in all his home studio nuttiness, including that forgotten gem, "Out Of My Mind On Dope And Speed."

The Culture Bunker is named after a song from Cope's earlier band The Teardrop Explodes, btw.

MUFON OC

MUTUAL UFO NETWORK

MUFON ORANGE COUNTY
Presents
BUDD HOPKINS
GENETICALLY ALTERED "HYBRIDS" AMONG US: AN IMPORTANT AND NEWLY RECOGNIZED PIECE OF THE PUZZLE
Unseen," the title of the first section of my most recent book, "Sight Unseen," refers to a technology of UFO "invisibility," but the second half, "Seen," refers to accounts of apparent "hybrid" beings, part human, part alien, who have been observed operating in our quotidian world, holding jobs, driving cars, interacting with abductees and essentially aiding the gray aliens in their abduction program.

Several previously unpublished cases will be presented, including a particularly fascinating TB incident involving "Kathie Davis," the central figure in my book "Intruders." Also discussed will be the intriguing patterns that have emerged from these TB reports and their possible connection with the classic "Men in Black" reports that have for decades represented one of the strangest and most persistent aspects of the entire UFO phenomenon.
Transgenic Hybrid Beings? UFO Invisibility? MIBs? Don’t Miss This New Info!

Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2004 — 7:30 pm NNeighborhood Community Center
Information: 714-520-4UFO http://www.mufonoc.org 1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa
Book & Video Sales — Refreshments — €” Raffle Drawings
General Admission: $15.00 Members & Students: $10.00 First Time Visitors $5.00

Recount Fever
A group lead by the Green and Libertarian candidates for president is seeking recounts in Nevada and New Mexico, once the recount in Ohio is concluded. Read this in the Washington Post. What would happen if all of the reported frauds, intimidations, ballot tamperings, and so on actually turn out to show Kerry winning one of those states? Would the Bush team feel as compelled to get up on their hind legs in the name of Democracy for America as they are doing with the situation (rapidly deteriorating) in Ukraine? All I know, is that Bush is going to be the worst president in history, bar none, not even of just our country. I dare anyone to stack their shit president up against ours: Bush will always emerge the shittier.

Fuck Hunters
A hunter in Wisconsin went nuts and started shooting another hunting party. He killed 5 and wounded others. Read about it here, from the LA Times. Did any of these people "need" the meat? Probably not, since they all had 4X4 recreational vehicles. They were not pinning their hopes of surviving through the winter by bagging an animal. These people kill animals for sport. They enjoy stalking animals and using high tech weaponry to kill them. Hunting is barbaric and loathsome. If you love the outdoors, go hiking. Like animals? Take a picture. Hunting should be banned.

First Blair, Then Bush
Some MPs in the UK are tabling a motion to impeach Tony Blair. Read it here, from the Guardian. While the motion currently does not enjoy enough support to actually cause impeachment, this is significant because it marks the first time in 100 odd years it has been done. Once Blair is done there will be no real ally for Bush, Poland be damned. With no allies, will Bush change tactics? Or more likely, set himself up for impeachment as well.

Get Loaded, You Wanks!
Yes, Afghanistan is proud to report another bumper year for opium production, in fact, it's their best year ever! Read about it here, from The Economist. Explain how the US victory in Afghanistan and the new gov't equals the highest opium growing ever? "What the fuck" is right. All this Bush shit just makes me want to listen to my Crass albums and throw bricks.

FALLUJAH
The assault on Fallujah to "liberate" it from the Iraqis, has been reported in the NY Times as causing many civilian casualties. The following is from FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting), a media watchdog group concerning the Times and its coverage of the civilian deaths.
ACTION ALERT:
New York Times Rewrites Fallujah History

November 16, 2004

In three recent reports about the military invasion of the Iraqi city of
Fallujah, the New York Times has misreported the facts about the April
2004 invasion of the city and the toll it took on Iraqi civilians.

On November 8, the Times reported: "In April, American troops were closing
in on the city center when popular uprisings broke out in cities across
Iraq. The outrage, fed by mostly unconfirmed reports of large civilian
casualties, forced the Americans to withdraw. American commanders regarded
the reports as inflated, but it was impossible to determine independently
how many civilians had been killed."

The next day, the Times made the same point, reporting that the U.S. "had
to withdraw during a previous fight for the city in April after
unconfirmed reports of heavy civilian casualties sparked outrage among
both Sunni and Shiite Iraqis." And on November 15, the Times noted that
the current operation "redressed a disastrous assault on Fallujah last
April that was called off when unconfirmed reports of large civilian
casualties drove the political cost too high."

It's unclear why the Times considers those civilian deaths "unconfirmed."
While there is some debate over precise figures, this wording leaves the
impression that nothing can be reasonably known about deaths in Fallujah.

The head of Fallujah's hospital, Dr. Rafie al-Issawi, has consistently
maintained that more than 600 people were killed in the initial U.S. siege
of Fallujah in April 2004, a figure that rose to more than 800 as the
siege was lifted and people pinned down by the fighting were able to
register their families' deaths (Knight-Ridder, 5/9/04). More than 300 of
the dead, according to al-Issawi, were women and children. The Iraqi
Health Ministry in Baghdad, part of the U.S.-installed government, gave a
lower figure of about 271 killed, with 52 of the dead being women and
children. On October 26, the independent British-based group Iraq Body
Count reported that the civilian death toll in Fallujah in April was about
600, based on their extensive evaluation of the numbers reported by local
hospital officials and the Health Ministry, as well as mainstream media
accounts.

Other journalistic investigations depict the reality of widespread
civilian death in Fallujah: An Associated Press tally of the dead in Iraq
(4/30/04) discovered that in Fallujah "two football fields were turned
into cemeteries, with hundreds of freshly dug graves, marked with wooden
planks scrawled with names -- some with names of women, some marked
specifically as children. At one of the fields, an AP reporter was told by
volunteer gravediggers on April 11 that more than 300 people had been
buried there." A Reuters report (4/13/04) quoted researchers from Human
Rights Watch calling for an investigation based on reports they received
from residents fleeing the violence in Fallujah.

Even the lower estimates provided by the Health Ministry debunk the Times'
repeated assertion that reports of "large civilian casualties" are
"unconfirmed"-- unless the paper wants to maintain that 52 women and
children killed in an attempt to "liberate" their city are
inconsequential. But the Times should know from its own reporting that
the higher casualty figures are much more realistic.

On October 19, the Times reported: "There are no agreed figures for
civilian deaths in Iraq over all since the war began in early 2003, but
the best estimates, by private groups and independent news organizations,
place the figure in the 10,000 to 15,000 range." It would seem obvious,
then, that the bombing of a large civilian population in Iraq in what the
Times called "the most intense aerial bombardment in Iraq since major
combat ended" (4/30/04) would produce significant civilian casualties.

Since substantial numbers of civilians did in fact die in Fallujah in
April, even if the exact number cannot be pinned down, readers might
wonder if the Times' policy is that things that cannot be confirmed with
numerical precision are essentially "unconfirmed." But this would be a
double standard on the part of the Times; in its November 8 report, the
paper noted: "The number of insurgents in the city is estimated at 3,000,
although some guerrillas, terrorist fighters and their leaders escaped the
city before the attack. American military officials estimated that of a
usual population of 300,000, 70 percent to 90 percent of civilians had
fled."

Surely there is no way to determine exactly how many insurgents are in
Fallujah, or how many civilians have fled. To be consistent, shouldn't
the Times be reporting that accounts of civilians leaving the city are
"unconfirmed"?

In its November 8 report, the Times matter-of-factly noted that U.S forces
targeted a Fallujah hospital early in the campaign "because the American
military believed that it was the source of rumors about heavy
casualties." The Times added: "This time around, the American military
intends to fight its own information war, countering or squelching what
has been one of the insurgents' most potent weapons."

If part of that "information war" means convincing Americans that
civilians are not victims of the Fallujah invasion, the Times has signed
up on the side of the Pentagon.


ACTION: Please contact New York Times public editor Daniel Okrent and ask
him to investigate why the Times treats credible reports of hundreds of
civilian casualties in Fallujah as "unconfirmed."


CONTACT:
New York Times
Daniel Okrent, Public Editor
mailto:public@nytimes.com
Phone: (212) 556-7652

As always, please remember that your comments have more impact if you
maintain a polite tone. Please send a copy of your correspondence to
fair@fair.org .

UFOs

MUFON Orange County is sponsoring a seminar this week. Info below. Get all the juice on Forrestal, Bentwaters, Rendlesham, all the hot UFO gossip.

Peter Robbins
Bentwaters UFO Incident &
The Strange Death of James Forrestal
England's Bentwaters/Woodbridge Incident of 1980 (aka the Rendlesham Forest incident) is now regarded as the most significant and best documented UFO event in the history of the United Kingdom, in part through the efforts of Peter Robbins. Robbins, an American investigative researcher, spent nine years working the case. His efforts resulted in the publication of the British best seller Left At East Gate, co-authored by Bentwaters military eyewitness and whistleblower Larry Warren.

Early on the morning of May 22, 1949, a despondent James Vincent Forrestal, former Secretary of the Navy, threw himself to his death from the 13th floor of the Bethesda Naval Hospital where he was being held while being treated for depression. Peter Robbins will take us through a diverse body of evidence that counter the Navy's contention and makes the case for officially-sanctioned murder, with a most compelling motive.
UFO Landings? Murder of a Government Official? Join Us for this Expose!
Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2004 — 7:30 pm Neighborhood Community Center
Information: 714-520-4UFO http://www.mufonoc.org 1845 Park Ave., Costa Mesa
Book & Video Sales — Refreshments — Raffle Drawings
General Admission: $12.00 Members & Students: $7.00
First Time Visitors $5.00! Bring Your Friends!

ATLANTIS Found!
The BBC News service reported yesterday that some scientists have discovered an area off the coast of Cyprus that matches the descriptions of Atlantis given by Plato. Read it here, BBC.

Or maybe ATLANTIS is over here...
In June of this year, a different group of scientists using satellite imaging found Atlantis off the coast of Spain. Read about their find, here.

Which isn't to say ATLANTIS isn't here...
In October of last year, a team who found the Titanic announced they have pinned the location of Atlantis to Spartel Island, a submerged mud shoal near the Straits of Gibraltar. Read about this, here.

The legend of Atlantis is basically that an island nation with fabulous wealth, technology and beauty was destroyed by geological, technological, or supernatural forces. The nation of Atlantis had a longstanding war with enemies to the East, and it was this war that was in their day the war of civilizations. Were the Atlanteans the ancient Sea Kings that raided Carthage and Egypt 800 BC? Did they fly groovy flying saucers? Stay tuned.

NASA's Super Plane: LA to DC in 20 minutes
NASA has unveiled its "scramjet" engine, an engine so fast it could power a plane and get it from coast to coast in 20 minutes. The bad news is, you won't get to eat airplane food and see a sliced-n-diced movie on the way. Read about it here, in the Washington Post.

Post Electoral Blues
What does it mean when nearly half of a country votes against an incumbent president? The West Coast and the East Coast voted together, resoundingly voting to fire Bush and his corporate sponsors. With our hobbling two-party system, this is the sort of democracy we can expect. You think losing by two or three points is bad? Try thinking about having a permanent majority locked in. Remember the disgraceful gerrymandering in Texas last year and know that the GOP would like nothing better than turning the USA into a Soviet-styled state with one ruling party.

The remedies are threefold: one, proportional representation; two, coalition governments; and three, non-moneyed advertising on the national networks. The first prong, proportional representation, would mean that if your party gets 10 per cent of the vote, you get ten per cent of the seats in a parliament. The second, coalition governements, would mean that this Big Tent horseshit practiced by the two main parties would cease to be functional, that you could be the Green Party and receive a paltry 2 per cent of the vote, but you would then gain 2 per cent of the seats. In the House of Representatives there are about 435 seats, so this would mean about 9 seats would be Green Party. This would allow parties to actually stand for something and would enable voters to vote according to their beliefs, and not out of some lesser-of-two-evils scenario. Your party could be all about the environment, and you would join a coalition to support a leader as prime minister, being assured that he/she would take your views to heart in setting policy. The moment you felt betrayed, you could withdraw your support and cause the gov't to collapse. This is accountability. Third, the airwaves belong to the public and are granted without charge to the major networks. As owners of this airspace, it behooves these networks to allow political advertising without charge. The 2004 election dwarfed the 2000 election in terms of money spent on ads. Get the money out of politics.

So here we are in the tail end of 2004. The New Yorker two weeks ago published a four page dissection and denunciation of all things Bush. If you can, get ahold of a back issue and read this, it is incredibly forceful material, and something that could have won us the election had Kerry possessed the balls to call bullshit on Bush, as the New Yorker editors fearlessly did. Here is some food for thought, things that you should mention whenever a smug GOP stormtrooper crows about the Bush re-election:
1. record defecit. 3 billion surplus turned into a 2 billion defecit in 3 years. This is tantamount to taking a mortgage out on our future. We spent our grandchildren's money on bombs, not schools or science or medicine. Before Bush took office, each American's portion of the national debt was about $40. Now it is $23,000. The war in Iraq costs us $1 Billion per week. What is this getting us?
2. Abu Ghraib. The prison scandal's roots go all the way to the top, with a Bush Administration paper havering on what is and is not "torture." The USA does not torture suspects, full stop. Until Bush is commander in chief, and then we do.
3. Sudan. We stand idly by as millions starve to death. All our bluster about being a world leader are empty, shallow, nothings.
4. Patriot Act. Under Bush, Americans have experienced the greatest erosion of civil liberties in American history. Our reading habits, net surfing habits, and conversations are now fair game. Federal officers are barred by law from telling you that you are under investigation. This is a Nazi flashback.
5. Slavish devotion to oil. The Bushes have a long history with the Saudi royal family, as anyone who recognizes the name Carlisle Group can attest. This never came up. Our pimp/whore relationship to the Saudis has compromised our ability to maintain our integrity and security. We are addicts of oil, the supply is limited an dwindling, and the price is going up. Anyone who drives a Hummer or similarly conspicuously consumptive vehicles is not only a vain cunt, but also is directly responsibly for our involvement in the Iraq War. American consumerism (our "way of life") is why we are in Iraq. Those 1000 dead are the result of such crass consumerism. Hummer owners are cunts of the worst order, and getting a brick in the face is too good for them.6. Guantanamo. Never before has the USA held suspects without giving them the protections of the Geneva Accords or the hard-won international legal conventions we established after WWII. Now we are torturing suspects and holding them without trial, without charges, without access to lawyers or families, subject to military tribunals, and all in the name of Freedom. This is an outrage. Of the more than 5,000 people "detained" after 9/11, not one conviction has been made. Not one.
6. Democracy does not equal Christianity. The Bush people seem to think democracy and Christianity go hand in hand. We are mortgaging our future to establish a toehold of democracy in Iraq, but when the Iraqis are allowed to vote they will not vote for some secularists. The Middle East is full of people who want religious law. They want imams and ayatollahs telling them how to live. The Christian conservatives so bent on killing Muslims for Jesus are going to have their heads spin when our new allies in the middle east elect some rapacious cunt like Moqtada al-Sadr. That's the type of leader these people want. Iraqis should be free of religious control exactly like we in the USA should be free of religious zealots. For those of you not intimately familiar with the Bible, Jesus of Nazareth was part of communal sect known as the Essenes. They eschewed violence, advocated poverty and humility, and shockingly enough were vegetarians. The Essenes at Qumran wore white and removed themselves from society. The Christianity of today, which sprang from this modest soil, is as alien to the teachings of Jesus as a nuclear bomb. What they do, they do not do in the name of Jesus.
7. They divided our country. The USA has had a proud history of doing the right thing, although usually belatedly. Blacks were deemed 5/5 human in 1860, women got the vote in 1920, and so on. A little late, but the right call. Now, the GOP has succeeded in defining our country as two halves, one who is for a narrow, repressed, smug, violent, racist interpretation of Jesus, and the other that is for the common ground we all share as humans and Americans. The GOP successfully passed 11 anti-gay marriage statues. Listen up you fucks: you are born gay or heterosexual. It is not a choice.
8. Abortion. It's all about the little babies. The religious hypocrite army of the Republicans, those confused, ignorant dumbfucks who shoot family planning doctors for Jesus, are very vocal about telling women what to do with their bodies because Jesus is speaking to them. Well try this on for size you cunts: outlaw male promiscuity. That's right. Those same religious nutcases who equate abortion with murder should have no problem addressing the root cause of abortion, namely, sex. From now on, any male having sex out of wedlock should be guilty of murder. If you have sex, you will face 15 to 20 in prison for every offense. I promise you, abortion would disappear overnight. For the rest of those stupid motherfuckers in the GOP who get holy about abortion, hear this: the neo-natal intensive care units of every hospital in the country is desperately in need of money and volunteers. Those are real babies alive right now, and they need your help. Put your money where your mouth is, and help those babies and those mothers. I don't expect anyone to, because the GOP is all about smug self-righteousness and greed, and they don't give a fuck about compassion. Or how about a little bit of simply policy coherence? If you're against abortion, be against unwanted pregnancies, which simply means allow birth control to be handed out to those at risk. Allow the RU-486 pill to be sold over the counter. If women don't get pregnant when they don't want a baby, abortion will disappear overnight. What the GOP wants to ban is sex.
9. Weekends, 40 hour work weeks, overtime pay, health insurance, 8 hour days. All of these things are prizes won by the progressive movement in America. These are all battles fought and won by Democrats and unions to improve the lives of workers. They were vigourously opposed by unity and solidarity won out. If you are for the Republicans, start working 7 days a week and 12 hours a day for regular pay. And don't even get in the same room with me if you're going to mention sick leave or maternity leave: those would not exist without the labor movement.
10. Any health care at all. Because business in America is concerned with one thing only: profit. It means they don't care about making a city float bonds to build a factory and then when the economy pinches they close the factory and move operations overseas. It means they have an addictive junkie need to post profits, and the conditions of workers and communities fall by the wayside in the pursuit of executive bonuses and beating Wall Street expectations. Greed is not good. Don't forget, you GOP knobshiners, that Jesus preached poverty. Don't fuck with this, he meant exactly what he said: POVERTY. All of you rich fuckers are going to hell.

Now Democrats are wondering how far to the center they should shift to gain votes in 2008. Here's the answer: not at all. The Democrats lost the war on ideas. Our ideas are superior to theirs because they allow all manners of people to maximize their lives in the USA with all freedoms being equal. Those same GOP shitnecks who want prayer in schools would be mortified if we agreed with them --- and then made it a Scientologist prayer. This is known as bigotry. In America, Scientologists, Jews, Muslims, Ufo Cultists and Christians all need to be held equally at arms length to ensure that Americans can worship as they please. They need to explain to Joe and Jane Sixpack that their weekends, health care, and clean water come from regulations on industry. The Dems need to express the benefit of our shared humanity, or investment in our future, and the need to resist codifying religion and intolerance into law. The Dems need to be a liberal party again, a party that can see shades of gray in an argument, a party that values thought over faith, and values faith over atheism. For what is faith without good works? It is nothing. Americans made a horrible decision on November 2nd. For all those NASCAR dads and gun-toting hunter shitnecks out there, when your sons and daughters are blown to bits in Iraq (or Iran, Syria etc), that's what your vote for Bush got you. When interst rates skyrocket, that's what Bush gave you. When schools turn into shitholes and the students graduate without educations, job skills, or social connections and they come looking for your house to rob and then you pay $50K a year to imprison them when you could have paid a mere $10K a year to send them to college --- your crows have come home to roost. The Red States stand for intolerance, ignorance, fear, and greed. As much as Bush would like to say otherwise, those are not American values.

Bush Stalls CIA Report On 9-11, Nation Loses
In today's Robert Scheer column, Mr Scheer relates a recent convo with a high level intelligence officer, who asserts "It is infuriating that a report which shows that high-level people were not doing their jobs in a satisfactory manner before 9/11 is being suppressed," an intelligence official who has read the report told me, adding that "the report is potentially very embarrassing for the administration, because it makes it look like they weren't interested in terrorism before 9/11, or in holding people in the government responsible afterward."

Remember that Bush fought the forming of the 9-11 Commission, then withheld funding for it to prevent its investigation, then refused to testify, then agreed to "chat" with the commission but no one could record or take notes, and insisted Dick Cheney be present in case he misremembered his lines. This alone should disqualify Bush from a second term.

This doesn't even touch on the probable truth that the plane that went down in the field was headed for the White House and was shot down. That's right. Those people died to save a building.

Mad Cow USA !!!
Mad Cow isn't just for breakfast anymore. In the Washington Post today, an article by Cindy Skrzycki reports that "...the Food and Drug Administration is addressing how the disease, formally known as bovine spongiform encephalopathy, might be transmitted through cosmetics, soaps, dietary supplements and certain food items, such as sausage casings." Even if you don't eat beef, you should know that "... a bovine is behind many beauty products and foods that might not be thought of as beef-based, such as candy, yogurt, cake mixes, mayonnaise and soups. The small intestine, for instance, is the only way to make some natural sausage casings."

Jon Stewart on Crossfire ---
The Comedy Central host appears as a guest on the Paul Begalia / Tucker Carlson "debate" show, which you can download and view, here: http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/10/15/183457/32 . Jon Stewart decided not to be an entertaining monkey and took the 2 hosts to task. He cites them for being nothing but "partisan hacks" and admonishes them for their failure to act as responsible media for us, the public. In other words, Jon Stewart was gutsy and courageous. What he said really, truly needed saying.

"Terror Alert Level" Nothing But Partisan Ploy ---

A Cornell sociologist has found scientific evidence that every time the Terror Alert Level is upgraded, Bush's approval rating sees a jump as well. Read about it in the Washington Post. Repeat: scaring the nation that a terrorist attack is imminent has been proven to be nothing but a cheap, dispicable tactic to get Bush a few extra points in the polls. This is your government, change it.

Link for Several Online Polls Regarding Friday's Debate

Visit this weblink here which has about a dozen online polls where you can register your opinion as to who won the debate. If you think Bush won, you are now, officially, drinking the Kool-Aid.

Everyone, we recommend you all go out and see I (heart) HUCKABEES, the new movie by David O. Russell. It came out in limited release Friday and goes wide soon. It's a great, quirky, witty, exuberant film.

More Than 70 Car Bombs ---

In September there were more than 70 separate car bombing attacks in Iraq. Read about it here, from Washington Post.

GIG ANNOUNCEMENT:

People of Earth,

Our excellent good friends THE IDAHO FALLS are unleashing a music video
on the world (Look out Total Request Live!) and have asked Soda & His Million
Piece Band to assist in the celebration of their effort. This THURSDAY
Sept 30th at THE M BAR in Hollywood, SODA and company open the evening
at 10PM (sharpish, lads, sharpish) with a full set to be followed by a
screening of THE IDAHO FALLS video and then a full set from the Idaho
peeps to boot.

THURSDAY 9/30
www.thembar.com
(at the corner of Vine and Fountain)
SODA 10 PM
IDAHO FALLS 11 PM

Liars Academy equipment stolen

Early this Morning, http://www.liarsacademy.com" target="_blank">Liars Academy had all their equipment stolen out of their trailer in the Roland Park area of Baltimore, MD, the band's hometown.This comes right on the heels of the release of the band's new album,Demons, and in the middle of their east coast tour.Liars Academy will be posting a complete list of the stolen equipment,which is valued in the neighborhood of $15,000, on http://www.liarsacademy.com" target="_blank">www.liarsacademy.com very soon.The band will unfortunately have to cancel their performance in New York City tonight and New Jersey tomorrow, although they still definitely plan to play their hometown Baltimore show on Saturday. A decision will be made regarding the remainder of the tour shortly.In an effort to get Liars Academy back on their feet and out on theroad, the band is accepting https://www.paypal.com/xclick/business=liarsacademy%40equalvision.com&item_name=Liars+Academy+equipment+stolen&no_note=1&tax=0&currency_code=USD"target="_blank">donations via Paypal to the account:LiarsAcademy@equalvision.com. If anyone has information or leads that they think could be helpful in any way please email liarsacademy@equalvision.com">LiarsAcademy@equalvision.com.

Flower Speaker Power ---
The Japanese have created a very Japanese invention: turning flowers into speakers. Read about it on the BBC News.

US Helicopter Fires On Civilian Crowd, Kills 80 ---
This story in the Washington Post, describes a pair of Army helicopters raining bullets down on civilians, including a Palestinian TV journalist. The attack killed 80 civilians and was filmed. That film is being shown all over Al Jazeera. Think that's good for our image? Nice going, Army.

3 Years On ---
It's been three years since the WTC was destroyed by religious fanatics. 3,000 dead in the immediate attacks. Have we paid them proper respect? Have we done the right thing by their families? Do the victims' families sleep easier at night knowing we have done everything in our power to not only track down and capture the perpetrators but also to move the mountains of prejudice and hate that separate the United States from many poor, developing countries? I don't think so. The 9/11 families had to sue the Bush Administration. Bush fought against establishing the 9/11 Commission, then withheld the funding from it (which was illegal), and then refused to testify. Bush finally testified off the record, and with Dick Cheney in the room with him, like Dick is his legal guardian. A lot of talk about tracking down regimes that sponsor terrorism, but 2 of our dubious "allies" over there are the main sponsors of terrorism themselves: Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. 17 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Pakistan is a radical Islamic state with nuclear weapons ruled by a general who seized power in a military coup. The Al Quaeda network used Pakistan as a base and the Pakistani reluctance to capture them as a means to evade the American dragnet. Did we attack these places? No. Bush is buddies with the Saudi royal family. How can we go around the world promoting democracy while helping these corrupt dictatorships to thrive? If this is really about establishing democracies in the Middle East, why don't we do more to insure Israel's permanent survival, like brokering a peace settlement there? Why do we give military aid to Saudi Arabia? If it's not about democracy, then is it about oil? What is it, something like 21 of the Bush cabinet members and advisors are oil company executives or sit on boards of directorships for oil companies. Is that a coincidence? Whatever the reasons we're in Iraq, it's obvious that our cowboy approach didn't work. We need allies. We need other countries to help us. We need to dump Bush, and fast. The past three years have been a disaster unless you're a CEO or a redneck kook in a pickup truck crying about "your" tax dollars supporting black women who want more kids to get more welfare. I have actually heard this comment. It's laughable. What happened to the common good? To moral decency, to the idea that being Christian means helping as a servant, not being a smug, judgmental racist/homophobe/prude/ignorant clown? What if Jesus was not an American, you foolios?

Iran On Thin Ice
Iran has begun building centrifuges, a key component in refining uranium to make nuclear weapons. Through it all, Iran denies seeking to obtain nukes, saying their nuclear program is peaceful. Read it here, BBC News. Do you believe them? What do we, as the only country to have used nuclear weapons on civilians (even though it was wartime) think about having more "members" of the nuclear club? Nuclear weapons are bad for everyone. I would say that Bush and Co are two-faced liars for not simply calling in a few airstrikes on these Iranian centrifuges. I don't believe Iran's goals are peaceful. I don't want any nations, let alone ours, having nukes.

Man Utd vs. AC Milan
On Saturday, Manchester United played AC Milan in the Giants/Jets stadium in New York/New Jersey. A first half goal from Paul Scholes gave United the lead but they were unable to increase their lead and seal the deal. Milan's Shevchenko scored in the 90th minute off a dubious free kick, sending the game into a penalty shootout (on the American tour they are not playing extra time). United keeper Tim Howard had the best and the worst of luck. He saved a penalty to put United up, but then skipper Roy Keane bounced his shot off the post to let AC Milan level. A second round of 5 kicks saw AC Milan's keeper Dida score his kick, and when it came down to the last kick, Tim Howard was forced to the spot. His shot, like 4 others, bounced off the right post, giving AC Milan the win. They always say soccer is a game of 90 minutes because even when you get thoroughly outplayed, like Milan did today, all it takes is a good kick at the end of the game to win. This sends United home to start their season having lost all three of their USA tour matches. Hopefully manager Alex Ferguson will be able to put together a better side in their opening day match against Chelsea. For my money, Chelsea is the team to beat this year. I predict the Premier League finishing Chelsea, Man Utd, and then Arsenal, whose captain Patrick Vieira, has just signed for Real Madrid to play alongside superstars David Beckham, Luis Figo, Zinedine Zidane, and Ronaldo.

$445 Billion Deficit
Bush's three rounds of tax cuts for the wealthy have really worked. Last year's record budget deficit of $375 billion has been topped by this year's gigantic deficit. For 2004 we will have a whopping $445 billion deficit. Nice work, Bush. Read it in the Washington Post. How does the White House spin this? By projecting an unrealistically high number ($570 billion) so that when the real numbers come in, even though they are 20% higher than 2003's deficit, the White House can say "it's better than expected." Despite all evidence to the contrary, the White House says the economy is growing and they will be pushing for another round of tax cuts for the super-wealthy this year. A quote from Joshua B. Bolten, director of the Office of Management and Budget:
"The good news is that it is much lower than we projected, and we or any of the other forecasters projected just six months ago, and we believe that that is a product of the strong economic policies that the president has put in place, and that the trend will continue."
No, you stupid bastard, this is evidence that the president's policies are worthless, destructive, regressive, and foolish.

The Real Story Behind Teresa's "Shove It" Retort
Freelance writer Max Blumenthal gives some eye-opening background on the minor dustup between Teresa Heinz Kerry and attack "reporter" Colin McNickle. McNickle is a rightist writer who "infiltrated" the Democratic convention in order to try and provoke some of the dignitaries in attendance.  Read it here, from AlterNet. McNickle has been the tirebiter for Richard Mellon-Scaife, the rightwing billionaire eccentric who owns the Pittsburgh Tribune Review, the only newspaper that runs columns by white power writers. Thanks McNickles, Mellon-Scaife - you guys are the best. You're really helping elevate politics and civility.

Bush's Tax Cuts - Voodoo Economics Redux
In the American Prospect, Laurence Mishel and Lee Price take apart the Bush Admin's claims that the tax cuts have created jobs or growth. They argue that the cuts, in fact, are creating longterm problems for everyone, not simply the 2 million people who have lost their jobs under Bush.
What about the tax cuts? Those going to high-income taxpayers boosted GDP by just 0.1 percent in 2003, just one-fourth of the effect of war spending. The business tax breaks also had a minimal 0.1 percent impact on GDP in 2003. The tax cuts aimed at the middle class, such as the expansion of the child-care tax credit and the lowering of the threshold for the 10 percent income tax bracket, added 0.5 percent to GDP, an effect more than twice as great as the high-end tax cuts and business breaks combined. Yet nearly twice as much tax cutting went to high-income families and businesses.

It's The Oil, Stupid
Why are we in Iraq? Forget WMD, forget democracy, forget nation building - it's all about the oil. Read this frank and startling analysis from the Guardian Unlimited. John Herold Chapman analyze the motivations for going to war, and the meaning of the resulting "peace."
Oil and the dollar were the real reasons for the attack on Iraq, with WMD as the public reason now exposed as woefully inadequate. Should we now look at Bush and Blair as brilliant strategists whose actions will improve the security of our oil supplies, or as international conmen? Should we support them if they sweep into Iran and perhaps Saudi Arabia, or should there be a regime change in the UK and US instead?  

A New Hope ---
Can't help geeking it up and viewing John Kerry's electioneering as similar to fighting the Empire. The opening night of the Dems' convention saw Al Gore, Jimmy Carter, a preacher Kerry rescued on his swift boat in Vietnam, Hilary Clinton, and Bill Clinton make speeches that set out to unify our goals and to offer pointed, clinical criticism of the current president. These were not ad hominem but were focused and factual. Everywhere you look the Bushies are flailing about, trying to bail water out of their sinking lifeboat. Raise the terror alert, Tom! Those colors are so pretty and mean so much! Quick! Send Powell on a whirlwind tour! Now, send Cheney to speak at a college and assert more connections between Al Quaeda and Iraq - even though none exist! Deny the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission. Weasel, lie, lash out with haughty glee at even the slightest of gaffes from the other side. This is "gotcha" politics lowered to the level of mud crawling snakes. The Democrats spelled out their vision of a unified, united America as contrasted with the starkly divided house offered by Bush. Bush is going to be a one-termer, and the world will heave a collective sigh.

Incompetence And Sloth ---
Robert Scheer assesses the 9/11 Commission's report and hands in a verdict on the Bush Admin's unwillingness to interrupt their vacation to stop to the 9/11 attacks. Read his latest column, here. Scheer is angry that Bush's incompetence and sloth failed to mobilize our forces against the impending attack. You should be angry too. Remember how on Sept 11th we all felt like Americans, and even stranger, we all felt like New Yorkers? Remember how those images on the TV were perhaps the most horrific events we'd ever seen and how we wanted, needed, demanded that our leaders do the right thing? I'm angry. Bush blew it. We're worse off now. Kill one terrorist, make ten. Regime change begins at home.

S.O.F.C.
Reasearchers at the University of Houston, TX, have created a Solid Oxide Fuel Cell that is a fraction of the width of a human hair and has the potential to revolutionize our power needs. Read about this potentially paradigm-shifting discovery, here, from Space Daily.

Economic News That Tells The Real Story ---
An economist from Morgan Stanley explains the numbers being waved by the Bushies. In an article in The NY Times, here, Stephen Roach shows you the truth behind the claims. Yes, there were recently 1 million jobs added, but that is nothing to get excited about:

These gains certainly compare favorably with the net loss of 594,000 jobs in the first 27 months of this recovery. But there's little cause for celebration: the increases barely make a dent in the weakest hiring cycle in modern history. 

It's not all bad news. If you are interested in a career in waiting tables, the fast paced world of the pro courrier, the ever-changing moods of the temp agency junkie, or part time construction, you are going to be STOKED.

Finally, the occupational breakdown of the American labor market, as also sampled by the survey of households, provides yet another facet of the character of the recent hiring upturn. It turns out that fully 81 percent of total job growth over the past year was concentrated in low-end occupations in transportation and material moving, sales and repair and maintenance services.
 
So in Bush America, executives make more than ever, the middle class is being made redundant by outsourcing jobs overseas (which helps the share holders), and the working class is forced to accept ever lower wages in an ever-crowding labor market. Bush has been in a bicycle pedicab his whole life and has never noticed that someone else was sweating so he could get where he wanted. Class war now!

Garrison Keillor's Enlightening View On The Political Divide ---
Prairie Home Companion impressario Garrison Keillor has written a provocative article that lays bare the inherent differences between Democrats and Republicans. In his words, the "Democrat knows that the leaf turns." Keillor shows that there are basically two kinds of people, those who favor lower taxes at the expense of humanity, and those who believe the social contract takes greater significance. His words are better, so you can read them here, from Star Tribune. Here's a great excerpt:
 
There is a message here: if lower taxes are your priority over human life, then we know what sort of person you are. The response to a cry for help says a lot about us as human beings. You're at a party late one night and there's a scream from out on the street, and some people stick their heads out to see if there's trouble and other people don't bother. Maybe they'd rather not know.

Dow and Union Carbide Finally Pay -
 
Dow Chemicals and Union Carbide are finally made to pay for the 1984 gas tragedy in Bhopal, India. Thousands were killed and up to 20,000 have died since the pesticide plant released gas on the surrounding community. For 20 years these two chemical giants have fought paying out moneys to the victims' families. It's about time. Read the story, here, from BBC News.

Terrorist To Buy Crystal Palace FC ---
 
Former international pariah Muammar Gaddafi has put feelers out about buying London's premiership soccer club, Crystal Palace. Read about it here, in the BBC News. I know that Gaddafi has apologized for sponsoring international terrorism for 25 years, but I still remember the Lockerbie attack, when Libyan agents blew up a Pan Am airliner over the quaint Scottish town, kiling hundreds onboard and on the ground. Fuck Gaddafi.

Ron Reagan To Speak At Democratic Convention
The son of American Republican President Ronald Reagan will be a speaker at this year's Democratic Party National Convention. Ron Reagan will use this time to advocate stem cell research. Read about this, here. The amazing thing is that Ron is not now nor has he ever been a Republican. He will be speaking with his Nancy Reagan, and this will be sure to inspire wrath and gnashing of teeth among the Republicans hoping to sell parts of Reagan's corpse to heavy contributors. I'm surprised Bush didn't crawl inside Reagan's coffin for a photo op. Karl Rove missed that one.

Bush's Military Records Destroyed ---
Records that could have proved or disproved once and for all whether Bush went AWOL during his champagne unit duty during the Vietnam conflict, have been damaged and destroyed. Read this story from the BBC News, here. Pretty fucking convenient those records had their little "accident," don't you think?!

Is it 1984 Already? ---
The BBC News is reporting that Bush is planning on how to "postpone" the presidential election of the US is attacked. Sounds impossible but read about it here. This involves some more bogeyman tactics, saying "Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge last week warned al-Qaeda was planning to attack the US to disrupt the poll but conceded he had no precise information." My question is, if massive terrorist attacks are planned on Election Day, how does it matter what day we move it to? Are we assuming terrorists can't postpone attacks? Madness. The article cites Abraham Lincoln, truly a different breed of Republican:

Abraham Lincoln was urged by some aides to suspend the election of 1864 - during the US Civil War - but despite the expectation that he would lose, he refused.

"The election is a necessity," Lincoln said. "We cannot have a free government without elections; and if the rebellion could force us to forgo, or postpone, a national election, it might fairly claim to have already conquered us."

Republican Values ---
Tom DeLay's fundraising tactics are under intense scrutiny now. Among the things DeLay has done, he "...was pressing for a $100,000 contribution to his political action committee, in addition to the $250,000 the company had already pledged to the Republican Party that year." Read about this story, here, in The Washington Post. The article goes on to report:

"Many corporate donors were explicitly told in TRMPAC letters that their donations were not "disclosable" in public records. But documents from several unrelated investigations offer an exceptional glimpse of how corporate money was able to influence state politics -- and also of DeLay's bold use of his network of corporate supporters to advance his agenda."

Greece Wins Euro 2004!
It wasn't exciting football, but the Greeks grinded out a victory against the hapless Portugal team. This is Greece's first appearance in a soccer final, ever. Huzzah!

Michael Moore Got The Facts Right...
Craig Unger, author of 'House of Bush, House of Saud,' picks apart the recent Newsweek hatchet job, refuting the claims that Moore distorts the truth. Read it here.

Kerry & Edwards '04...
John Kerry chose John Edwards as his running mate. Read this piece from The Washington Post on why this ticket has the GOP running scared.

Justice Dept Vs. CIA ---
The Justice Department is pressing for the CIA to release information on how they have been interrogating top Al Quaeda suspects. Read it here, from Reuters. Is Justice washing their hands of the whole prisoner torture thing, since, after all, these prisons are run by the CIA? It always amazes me the level of rivalry between different factions of our intelligence outfits. CIA and Justice are like Red Sox and Yankees.

Euro 2004 Tomorrow ---
To celebrate the 4th of July, er, the Euro 2004 final match will kickoff in Portugal. Playing for the trophy are Greece and Portugal. No host nation has won the tourney since France won in the 80s.

Iraq Pipeline Down ---
A crucial oil pipeline feeding southern ports in Iraq has been damaged by saboteurs, halving Iraq's oil flow. Read it here, from Reuters. This is in line with driving oil prices up and then having the Saudis increase output in October to help Bush. Prince Bandar of the Saudi royal family has already agreed to this. How do ya like them apples?

Portugal in Final
Portugal beat Holland 2-1 in Wednesday's Euro 2004 match. Manchester United striker Cristiano Ronaldo headed in the first, and Luis Figo slammed in the second. Read about it here, Washington Post. Portugal will face either Greece or the Czech Republic in Sunday's final.

Your Email Is Not Safe ---
The US Court Of Appeals in Massachusetts has ruled that companies providing email services have the right to store, read and use email content without the recipient's consent or knowledge. Read about this here, from Washington Post. Email will not get the same protections as phone conversations or mail. Imagine having to watch what you say, even online. Is this the arrival, at last, of Big Brother?

Ron Arnold Is A Terrorist ---
The rightwing's attack dog Ron Arnold has nearly succeeded in branding environmentalists as "terrorists." Arnold's tactics include trying to label any action, even sit-ins, demonstrations, and non-violent protests, as "terrorism." Stifling debate, attempting to criminalize legitimate protest, and using fear to keep people quiet while the public lands are used without regulation, THAT is terrorism. Bill Berkowitz, in TomPaine.org's opinion pages, here, explains why people like Arnold are just thugs and bullies. From Arnold's own self-loving hole:

[as told to Outside magazine in 1991], "Facts don't matter; in politics, perception is reality." The same year Arnold also told The New York Times : “We [CDFE] created a sector of public opinion that didn't used to exist. No one was aware that environmentalism was a problem until we came along.”

It's something Orwell warned about. How could a person like Arnold do these things? Has he no soul? No conscience?

George "Milhouse" Bush ---
Bush had his Nixon moment last week when he announced, "I have never ordered torture," and Marianne Means makes the case that this is an awful lot like Nixon's "I am not a crook" statement. Of course history proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Nixon was, indeed, a crook, but also a liar, thief, paranoid delusional, and all-round shitweasel. Read Means' piece here, from TomPaine.org. The only way Bush is weaseling out of this one is if Rush can get enough people to believe Abu Ghraib was just a fraternity prank and that thinking you're being murdered doesn't actually equal torture.

Congressor Jane Harman, the ranking democrate on the House Intelligence Committee, "...echoes the accusations of former Secretary of Treasury Paul O'Neill and former CIA agents who claim the president and civilian Pentagon officials plotted recklessly to invade Iraq. On a party-line vote, however, Senate Republicans rejected Democratic calls for an independent investigation and the release of more documents... The Republicans are blocking an independent investigation, even though in the Clinton years they often complained that no administration can fairly investigate itself.

So if they've done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, why are the Republicans stonewalling efforts to get at the truth? Anyone smell a rat? Means concludes with an ominous paragraph:

So far there's no smoking gun. But there is a strong sense that Bush and his colleagues operated as though they were above the law. Inevitably, they will discover they are not. This is, after all, still America.

Constructive Dissent
The State Department's professional association last week gave awards to several envoys and diplomats for their attempts to register opinions seemingly ignored or unaired by the Bush White House. Read about it here, from The Washington Post. Challenging the Bush doctrine, the handling of Iraq, and the US stance in regards to Israel-Palestine are not signs of being a "traitor" as Rush/Hannity/O'Reilly/Coulter would have you believe.

Laingen said Schlicher and Mines represent the best tradition of the Foreign Service, in which "we signed on for a career that has a larger cause, whoever is the occupant of the White House. Frankness is a form of dissent."

Now it's time to give an award to Michael Moore...

We got fucking ripped off when Bush stole the presidency from Gore.
Think about it. Think about what a great statesman Gore would have made and how his actions would have made Americans proud. In the wake of 9/11, Gore could have lifted our country to heights it had never seen. Instead, look at the mess Bush has made. The cozy partnership between Cheney and Scalia, the Justice Department saying the President is above the law, authorizing torture, mobilizing zombies to attack anyone who demands accountability from the White House or the press, creating a climate where debate is quashed, dissent is crushed, and we are to march lock-step over the brink of the abyss with the born-again Bush Nazis. As a nation, look how we've suffered. It's like an alternate reality we've been living in, something Philip K. Dick could have written. The most qualified and capable candidate in 50 years is beaten by a jackass with no work history, who never left the US even once, who got grounded from flying because he missed his drugs test (when he was using cocaine), had his oil company bailed out by an infusion of cash from the Saudi royal family (read this as a bribe), and who appears like an angry little bunny on TV: confused, out of his depth, and clearly the plaything of the men behind him. Gore! We got fucking burned.

Al Gore KOs the Stupid Little Whiny Bitch
In fiery oratory, Al Gore lays it all out and delivers a series of bitch-slaps to Bush, Cheney and those who believe the Messianic view that Bush should be treated like a Caesar, immune from restraints and criticisms. Read Gore's powerful assault here, from Tom Paine. As Gore points out, Bush & Co have tried to keep the public in a state of perpetual fear and permanent war since the 9/11 attacks. Is this the America we want? Do we want an Executive branch that thinks it is above the law, that condones torture and imprisonment (even of American citizens) and then refuses to bring charges, allow them to see lawyers, or even acknowledge their status in captivity?

So why does anyone still support Bush? As my friend Sean said, people will believe what they want to believe regardless of facts. The Bush fans have the added delusion of believing this fratboy cokeheaded jackass is somehow ordained by Jesus to lead the homophobic, xenophobic "Christians" to victory over the Middle East. They believe that Bush & Co's rhetoric of Christianizing the Middle East is what Jesus wants, complete with apocalyptic Armageddon scenario. Here's my advice: go to church. Read the Bible and find out what Jesus actually said. Stay out of politics because you're too naive and simple. You will find He did not support murdering civilians, becoming obscenely wealthy, materialism, hate, and bigotry. In other words, Jesus would slap the shit out of that crap-ass poseur Bush, and Bush is going to have a lot of explaining to do when his day comes.

All-American Rejects
Tyson and Nick from the 'Rejects are in town scouting producers for their sophomore release. Tyson says it's going to have a thicker, more rock sound, with stronger emphasis on the midrange tones. Tyson and Nick were spotted hanging out at West Hollywood hangout Jones. Hopefully they'll give us some fantastic pop on their next record.

Gov. Arnie Kills Animals
It goes to show that steroids and hanging out with Nazis will do fucked up things to your mind. Schwarzenputz is attempting to repeal the Hayden Law of 1998 which mandates that shelters hold animals for 6 days before euthanizing them. Arnie wants to throw out that provision and allow shelters to kill animals immediately, which would instruct the shelters to no longer search for the pets' owners even when the pets have ID microchips in them. Read about it here, LA Times. Anyone who voted for Arnie is a fucking nitwit. You deserve to be run over by Arnie's goddamn Hummer.

Cop Joins ACLU
A former cop and Special Forces officer in Vietnam, a longtime opponent of ACLU, has a conversion. Read why he's changed his mind, here. Here's an excerpt:

There was a time when the world looked up to us, a time when America aspired to live up to its own high ideals. This coming election is about even more than policy or personality. It's about what it means to be American. Do we want to be proud of our leaders again? Do we want our country to be a real leader in the world again? Do we want to inspire people with our ideals?

Robert Scheer And Iraq

Truth About Iraq Finally Has Its Pants On

June 22, 2004 -- "We have no credible evidence that Iraq and Al Qaeda cooperated on attacks against the United States," reports the staff of the bipartisan 9/11 commission in demolishing one of the Bush administration's main arguments for invading Iraq. Now the administration and its spinmeisters are reduced to playing cheap semantic tricks to justify one of history's great bait-and-switch operations, arguing that they never said explicitly that Iraq was collaborating with Al Qaeda to harm the U.S.

The administration was perfectly happy when more than four out of five Americans polled, as we went to war, said that they believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with the destruction of the World Trade Center towers. We are now to believe that the dozens of prominent references by President Bush and his top officials to "linkages" between Al Qaeda and Iraq were all taken out of context by a confused public.

For example, the administration is now saying that when Bush announced on the deck of the aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln that the defeated Hussein was "an ally of Al Qaeda," he didn't mean they actually helped each other. When Secretary of State Colin Powell told the United Nations that Al Qaeda was operating inside Iraq, he apparently assumed people knew that he was referring to an affiliate called Ansar al Islam that was operating in the northern "no-fly" zone patrolled by the United States and outside Hussein's control.

And when Vice President Dick Cheney said on "Meet the Press" that by attacking Iraq "we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of the base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11," he was only helpfully pointing out that Iraq is in the Middle East too.

Yeah, right. The reality is that Bush and company have turned the language of lying into a fine art, always leaving themselves a shred of deniability in case the truth catches up. For example, Cheney has repeatedly cited as a smoking gun an always shaky report about 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta possibly meeting with an Iraqi official in Prague only months before the attacks, telling the nation that this sole claim to direct evidence linking Iraq with 9/11 had "been pretty well confirmed."

The 9/11 commission staff, however, begs to differ, saying Atta was in Florida: "We have examined the allegation that Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague on April 9. Based on the evidence available -- including investigations by Czech and U.S. authorities, plus detainee reporting -- we do not believe that such a meeting occurred."

The fact is that while the administration has been doing its utmost since 9/11 to convince us that Iraq is "the central front" in the war on terror, our security goals have been terribly compromised by expending our political, military and moral capital on the wrong enemy. As the 9/11 commission interim report makes clear, Osama bin Laden's allies before 9/11 were Afghanistan and the only two countries that recognized its Taliban regime: our "allies" Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In no meaningful sense were the religious fanatics in Afghanistan and the secular dictator of Iraq allies.

Indeed, what the staff report says is, "Bin Ladin had in fact at one time sponsored anti-Saddam Islamists in Iraqi Kurdistan." Later, in 1994, Bin Laden made overtures to an Iraqi intelligence officer requesting "space to establish training camps, as well as assistance in procuring weapons, but Iraq apparently never responded."

"Never responded" does not a relationship make. Yet Bush, not one to let the facts get in the way, said last week, "The reason I keep insisting that there was a relationship between Iraq and Saddam and Al Qaeda is because there was a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda."

It's the Big Lie technique -- never flinch in the face of truth. That's why Bush will never admit that he got it wrong when he told the nation on the eve of going to war: "Iraq has sent bomb-making and document forgery experts to work with Al Qaeda. Iraq has also provided Al Qaeda with chemical and biological weapons training."

There's a saying that "a lie can get halfway around the world before truth gets its pants on." Well, thanks to the many brave Americans who pushed so strenuously, against the wishes of this administration, for a legitimate investigation of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the truth has its pants on now and maybe can finally enlighten the 40% of Americans who still believe that Iraq played a role in the attacks.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Robert Scheer writes this weekly column for The Los Angeles Times and is coauthor of "The Five Biggest Lies Bush Told Us About Iraq" (http:/www.fivelies.com).

Molly Ivins On the Death Of The Constitution
The Texan firecracker, Molly Ivins (who wrote a book on Bush while he was still governor), mourns the death of the US Constitution. How? When the Attorney General said the President was above the law and not bound by the laws prohibiting torture. Read about it here, from the Contra Costa Times. To quote Ivins:

That was the day the attorney general of the United States -- aka "the nation's top law enforcement officer" -- refused to provide the Senate Judiciary Committee with his department's memos concerning torture. To justify torture, these memos declare that the president is bound by neither U.S. law nor international treaties. We have put ourselves on the same moral level as Saddam Hussein, the only difference being quantity.

Ivins doesn't mention that our Constitution was mostly dead after the 1947 National Security Act anyway. So let's recap: Clinton got his weenie knobbed by an intern and lied about it. Bush authorized the torturing of prisoners in a "war" for which he had to lie about WMDs, lie about Saddam Hussein's (non-existant) ties to Al Quaeda, and lie about an "imminent" threat to America. About 10,000 Iraqi civilians died in our invasion. For those who like Bush, those 10,000 innocent deaths are less of an offense than lying about a blowjob. What's a little torture, when it's done by your friends, the United States? Why don't they love us? Ivins notes:

In April 2002, Secretary of Defense Donaald Rumsfeld sent a memo to Gen. James T. Hill outlining 24 permitted interrogation techniques, four of which were considered so stressful as to require Rumsfeld's explicit approval before they were used. It has been apparent for some time that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were not isolated instances -- torture from Afghanistan to Gitmo to Iraq has so far resulted in 25 deaths now under investigation.

Head of Shell Oil Says Oil Bigger Threat Than Terrorism
Lord Oxburgh, also known as Ron, is the new head of Shell. He maintains, in an interview, here, from the Guardian UK, that global warming caused by the increasing amounts of carbon pollution (oil, cars, planes, etc) is a more serious threat to the world than terrorism. So if the head of one of the largest oil companies in the world is saying global warming is real and on the way, what do we do? Dump Bush.

CIA Analyst On Bush Lies
Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern gives the ramifications of Bush & Cheney's recent assertions that, despite the findings of the 9/11 Commission to the contrary, Iraq and Al Quaeda were not bedmates. Read this report, here, from TomPaine.org.

THROWRAG
* TROUBADOUR SHOW on Friday July 9th
Indie 103.1 FM Presents THROW RAG with special guests: Squad Five-O, Bloodjunkies,
The Orphans (all ages, $10.00 advance tix). http://www.throwrag.com

Tom DeLay is a Shitweasel
This story in the Washington Post tells of a 7 year truce in Congress by the two parties agreeing not to file ethics charges, has come crashing down. Thank God. What the hell is the point of an ethics committee if there's an "unwritten" agreement to just let things slide? How about protecting us, the people, and our interest? Tom DeLay's brand of vigilante politics needs to go.

Greg Palast On Reagan, Part 2
This week's riposte by Greg Palast has him skewering the senile old git even more. There's a reason Palast has been hailed as "America's best investigative reporter" and why he's won numerous journalism awards: he's fearless.

WHILE REAGAN NAPPED: RONNIE, OSAMA AND THE CHIN DEFENSE
by Greg Palast

New York, Tuesday, June 14 - Vinnie the Chin had a great alibi. The New York mob capo shuffled down the street in his bathrobe, unshaved, drooling out the side of his mouth. When he got busted, he pleaded he was too gone-in-the-head to know about the Cosa Nostra running rackets from his candy shop.

Ronald Reagan out-Chinned the Chin. When caught paying ransom to Khomeini and his Hizbollah terrorists, Reagan did his aw-shucks I'm just a ga-ga grandpa routine, "I told the American people I did not trade arms for hostages. My heart tells me that's true, but the facts tell me it is not." Oh, OK then.

If it were Jimmy Carter who'd been caught in such an act of treason -- arming our enemy -- Republicans would still be roasting his flesh today. You know it and I know it.

The Reagan Right has used the late President's funeral for a shameless political victory dance, carefully wiping the blood off the historical files. Before the truth is interred, let us have a moment of remembrance for the dubious doings in the White House while Reagan napped:

* South Africa's government went on a murder spree to insure that Black folk would never vote. Reagan blessed that police state with a smile, refusing, despite the pleas of Nobel laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu, to take even the small measure of limited trade sanctions against the evil white empire.

* Reagan's Secretary of Interior, James Watt, launched a biological pogrom against trees. Before he was indicted, the Environmental Protection agency became a country club for polluters' lobbyists. Reagan's heart told him it wasn't true, but the screeching chain saws said otherwise.

* AIDS was identified in 1981. Reagan's official policy was to hit the research snooze button. Our president did not mention nor act on the epidemic until 1987 -- 30,000 funerals too late. The gay death toll brought glee to Reagan's apocalyptic allies, the mewling mullahs of the Christian Right. (But As the Good Book warns, doing unto others has a price: the same fruitcake fanatics that slowed AIDS research also blocked the stem cell studies that might have saved the dying president from the horrors of Alzheimer's.)

* Reagan politically fathered those rascally Rosemary's Babies of the Bush junta: Dick Cheney, Ronnie's appropriately titled Whip in Congress; Paul Wolfowitz, the kind of Dr. Strangelove that scares even Henry Kissinger; John Poindexter, convicted of abetting Contra terrorists while in the Reagan White House, later Bush's first Total Information Awareness chieftain; and Reagan Treasury Secretary James Baker, who tried his damnedest to bankrupt America for Ron, and now, from his Bush White House office, is doing the same for Iraq as "special advisor" to the conquered nation.

But there can be no more dangerous creature to have burbled out of the Reagan Frankenstein factory than his Cold War comrade, Osama bin Laden.

In November 2001, with my BBC television and Guardian newspaper colleagues, I reported that, during the Reagan presidency, a US embassy official in Saudi Arabia was, in his own words, "repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants."

Sounds icky but not too notable until you learn the identities of these "applicants." They claimed to be engineering students who, when queried as to what school they attended, answered they "could not remember." They didn't have to. The unlikely "engineers" had little helpers in the Reagan Administration.

After investigation, the career diplomat, attorney Michael Springmann, learned they were, "recruits, rounded up by Osama bin Laden, to [bring to] the United States for terrorist training by the CIA. They would then be returned to Afghanistan to fight against the then-Soviets."

Uh, oh. They returned to Afghanistan all right. But terrorists are like homing pigeons -- they have a bad habit of coming home to roost. In spook-world, it's known as "blow back." The Reagan-bin Laden killer brigade, skilled in such crafts as skinning Russian prisoners alive, blew back with a sickening vengeance.

That story ran world wide at the top of the BBC nightly news -- except in the USA where it bounced off the electronic Berlin Wall. Our media was careful not to wake America from its nap, to hide the deeply disturbing truths behind Grandpa Gipper's grin.

Ronald Reagan's loss of memory was, undeniably, a great personal tragedy. But lost in this week's circus of fakery and fawning for a failed president, is the greater national tragedy: America's amnesia, an unforgivable forgetting, a great sleep of reason from which we have yet to awaken, even after September 11.

Rico, The Smartest Dog In The World!
A German collie named Rico has shown in tests that he can identify words with new objects, pick out favorite toys when they are named, and remember these things weeks later. Read about Rico, here, in The Washington Post.

Robert Scheer On Reagan
Here is Robert Scheer's piece on Ronald Reagan. More truth to offset the spin.


A NICE GUY'S NASTY POLICIES
For worse, Reagan was both more and less than he seemed

June 8, 2004 -- I liked Ronald Reagan, despite the huge divide between us politically. Reagan was a charming old pro who gave me hours of his time in a series of interviews beginning in 1966 when he was running for governor, simply because he enjoyed the give and take. In fact, I often found myself defending the Gipper whenever I was confronted with an East Coast pundit determined to denigrate anyone, particularly actors, from my adopted state. Yet, looking back at his record, I am appalled that I warmed to the man as much as I did.

The fact is that Reagan abandoned the Roosevelt New Deal ??” which he admitted had saved his family during the Great Depression -- in favor of a belief in the efficacy of massive corporate welfare inculcated in him by his paymasters at Warner Bros., General Electric and the conservative lecture circuit. Though Reagan the man was hardly mean-spirited, Reagan the politician betrayed the social programs and trade unionism he once believed in so fiercely.

Let's start with his leadership of California, where he launched attacks on the state's once-incomparable public universities and devastated its mental health system. Foreshadowing future trumped-up invasions of tiny Grenada and Nicaragua, he sent thousands of National Guardsmen to tear-gas Berkeley.

It also became increasingly clear that although the man wasn't unintelligent, his ability to mingle truth with fantasy was frightening. At different times, Reagan -- who infamously said that "facts are stupid things" -- falsely claimed to have ended poverty in Los Angeles; implied he was personally involved in the liberation of Europe's concentration camps; argued that trees cause most pollution; said that the Hollywood blacklist, to which he contributed names, never existed; described as "freedom fighters" the Contra thugs and the religious fundamentalists in Afghanistan who would later become Al Qaeda; and claimed that fighting a "limited" nuclear war was not an insane idea.

But to see him as only a bumpkin -- as some did -- was to very much underestimate him. Like Nixon, the Teflon president was a survivor who'd come up the hard way, and many journalists and politicians who didn't understand that invariably were surprised by his resiliency and savvy. Although he generally was compliant with his handlers, whenever the campaign pros or rigid ideologues got in the way of his or Nancy's instincts, they were summarily discarded.

Even when his ideas were silly, his intentions often seemed good. For example, one of his dumbest and costliest pet projects, the "Star Wars" missile defense program, which he first announced when I interviewed him for the Los Angeles Times in 1980, was touted by Reagan as a peace offering to the Soviets.

And his legendary ability to effectively project an upbeat, confident worldview managed to obscure many of the negative consequences of his policies. For example, he made the terrible mistake of willfully ignoring the burgeoning AIDS epidemic at a time when action could have saved millions. Unlike many conservatives, however, he was not driven by homophobia. Instead, Reagan allowed AIDS to spread for the same reason he pointedly savaged programs to help the poor: He was genuinely convinced that government programs exacerbated problems -- unless they catered to the needs of the businessmen he had come to revere.

In the White House, he ran up more debt than any earlier president -- primarily to serve the requests of what Republican President Eisenhower had, with alarm, termed the "military-industrial complex." (George W. Bush has broken that record.)

Apologists for this waste argue that throwing money at the defense industry broke the back of the Soviet Union and ended the Cold War. But the Soviet Union was already broken, as Mikhail S. Gorbachev acknowledged quite freely when he came to power in the 1980s. Rather, what Reagan does deserve considerable credit for is ignoring the dire warnings of the hawks and responding enthusiastically to Gorbachev in their historic Reykjav?­k summit, where the two leaders called for a nuclear-free world.

Let it be remembered, then, that in the closing scene of his presidency Reagan embraced the peacemakers, rejecting the cheerleaders of Armageddon and was then loudly castigated by the very neoconservatives -- most vociferously Richard Perle -- who have claimed the Reagan mantle for the post-Cold War militarism of the current administration.

Greg Palast Remembers Reagan

Here is the complete text of Greg Palast's Sunday column on Ronald Reagan:

KILLER, COWARD, CONMAN -
GOOD RIDDANCE, RONNIE REAGAN
MORE PROOF ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
Sunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast


You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.

And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog ... then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.

I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government loot. It used to be called bribery.

And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about "family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.

The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected, "faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.

And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away, his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.

Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatolla. Reagan, with that film-fantasy tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.

Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah -- no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.

Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.

I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disburse" ... and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.

In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway?

Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.

In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.

Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.

Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.

Blackwater and Private Armies
Read this article from Mother Jones, about the growing practice of training thousands of private contractors to take the place of soldiers.

Tenet Resigns
George Tenet announced his resignation in a surprise conference today. He cited "personal reasons" for quitting his job as head of the CIA. It's a good thing those reasons were "personal" and had nothing at all to do with the fact that Tenet presided over a total fucking debacle and his CIA were so fucked up they allowed Bush and his army of nutjobs to go in to the Middle East and knock the place over, like a strong arm robbery at a liquor store, to appease their messianic longings. Good thing Tenet did not feel any culpability in this gigantic fiasco in Iraq that has consumed all our surplus tax dollars and has begun the bankruptcy (both moral and budgetary) of this country. See ya later Tenet, good riddance to bad trash!

Dump Limbaugh
Rush Limbaugh is played on American Forces Radio daily to our military personnel. That's so Americans abroad won't get homesick for racist jingoism, fascist sloganeering, or relentless calumny against opposing viewpoints. You know, the stuff of debate. Calling the torture of Iraqi prisoners "nothing worse than fraternity pranks" is either a complete moron talking or its disingenuous to the point of being complicit in the crimes. Hell, lynching them boys in the south wasn't nothing more than some good ol' boys havin' a little fun too. But you know what? Limbaugh isn't news. He doesn't have a politically dexterous mind, able to discuss nuance. He's a blowhard. Dump him from this tax payer supported radio: here, in association with Act For Change. Basically he's a stupid fat fucking cunt who's addiction to hillbilly heroin should render him a laughingstock and total embarassment. Anyone who still pays attention to this gaseous lardass if completely fucked up.

94% Income Tax During WWII
Wonder why America is in debt up to our ears? Because we're spending all of our capital on fighting an unending war. This article, here, from Tom Paine.org, by Sam Pizzigati, shows the difference between "the greatest generation" and our own. The generation in charge of Washington these days has already been accurately dubbed, "a generation of swine," by Hunter S. Thompson. Check out these shocking facts:

All Americans were asked to pay more in taxes during World War II, and the wealthy were asked to pay the most of all, more in taxes than any Americans had ever before paid. In 1943, America’s most affluent households faced a 93 percent tax rate on all their income over $200,000. The next year, 1944, the nation’s top tax rate would rise even higher, to 94 percent on income over $200,000—the highest rate in American history.

This Week
What the fuck happened this week? I've been working 12 hour days and haven't had a chance to read the news, review a record, or even go to the post office! Did I miss anything?

Depleted Uranium Affects US Troops
This story from the In These Times website, shows that US soldiers returning from duty in Iraq are suffering the effects of uranium poisoning. In the past year, the Army and Air Force have fired over 127 tons of DU (depleted uranium) shells in Iraq. The DU shells lose 40 to 70 percent of their mass on impact, turning the radioactive uranium into fine dust that contaminates the soil and is carried by the wind. Question: when we're done liberating Iraq, who will help them clean up this toxic mess?

The Wedding Present
Which story do you believe? Either the US dropped bombs on a wedding party and levelled a village, killing around 40 people, or they bombed "a safe house used by foreign fighters and smugglers." Article here, from the BBC News. Maybe both stories are true, in which case the US used excessive force and needlessly endangered civilians to get at their targets. Those Iraqis in the wedding party, including the now dead bride and groom, have as much right to live as we do. By depriving them of their one and only life, not much argument can be made on how it will make conditions better in Iraq. Here's a snippet from the end of the piece:

The International Committee of the Red Cross has also expressed concern.

"The excessive use of force violates international human rights," ICRC spokeswoman Nada Dumani told AFP.

US forces have been accused before of killing innocent people in both Iraq and Afghanistan after mistaking celebratory gunfire for hostile fire.

In 2002, nearly 50 people at a wedding in Afghanistan were killed in a US air strike.

Why Iraq Was Not A Moral War
Paul Savoy, in an article for The Nation, here, clearly and powerfully illustrates why the various arguments for the invasion of Iraq ring hollow. This is an important read for anyone having trouble rebutting Bush's claims that Iraq "is better off without Saddam" and that he "had no choice" but to invade because of the imminent threat Hussein's WMDs presented. Savoy also illustrates how the Iraq war does not qualify as a humanitarian intervention, since the mass murders Hussein carried out happened 15 years ago. Yes, obviously, Hussein was a criminal. Was it worth killing 10,000 Iraqi civilians, wounding 4,000 American soldiers and killing 772 American soldiers to apprehend this one criminal?