The Staton Jones Report

Today's the last day to donate to the Kerry Campaign for this quarter. FEC reporting will be based on the donations up to and including today. Send John Kerry $25 or more and send Shrub a Message ("Go Fuck Yourself!™" - Dick Cheney).

This has been a public service announcement of the Naked Partisans.

The Onion has a story about the nearing completion of the Reagan Pyramid.

According to project overseer and Reagan Attorney General Edwin Meese, the 118,000-ton pyramid, which is visible from a distance of more than 40 miles and has already cost the lives of some 50,000 slaves, will serve not only as Reagan's conduit to the Empire of the Gods, but also as an earthly repository of the deified Republican's vast wealth.

"Buried with Reagan will be his finest treasures," Meese said, "including 2,500 MX intercontinental ballistic missiles, 15 stealth bombers, a golden chalice of jelly beans, and his most prized servant, former president George Bush Sr."

Bush told reporters, "It is my honor and duty to have my sinus passages ceremonially packed with sand before my still-living, pain-racked body is forever locked with my leader's within the Great Reagan's final resting place. Let us all praise Osiris."

Sometimes those Onion guys strike pure gold.

The weekend totals for Fahrenheit 9-11 have been raised to $23.9M from $21.8M, making this film even more of a blockbuster.

Studio executives and box office analysts are asking themselves that question after Michael Moore's documentary stunned Hollywood with a $23.9 million take last weekend.

That number is more than $2 million higher than distributor Lions Gate Films predicted Sunday, prompting speculation that the movie could be the first to earn the title "blockbuster documentary."

"I'm going to say this guardedly, but this has the potential to be the first $100 million documentary," says Paul Dergarabedian of box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

CNN is reporting that retired soldiers will be compelled to return to service in Iraq.

The Army is preparing to notify about 5,600 retired and discharged soldiers who are not members of the National Guard or Reserve that they will be involuntarily recalled to active duty for possible service in Iraq or Afghanistan, Army officials said Tuesday.

It marks the first time the Army has called on the Individual Ready Reserve, as this category of reservists is known, in substantial numbers since the 1991 Gulf War.

The move reflects the continued shortage of troops available to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to fight the ongoing war on terrorism as well as Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Folks, if this isn't a kind of draft then tell me what is?

When I read George Takei's biography, written during the "kiss and tell" era of the Star Trek actor's middle aged lives, I expected a story about a young actor making it in Hollywood. Instead, I was introduced, at a shamefully late age, to the experiences of the Japanese-Americans who were imprisoned during WWII simply because they looked Japanese. Today Salon has an essay about one man who fought the process, and his life's story trying to get his name cleared as a result. I urge everyone to read it, because the same crap is going on today with the Bush Administration's efforts to legalize locking up any U.S. citizen they don't like. And don't think it can't be you ...

Finally, some good election news . The Liberal party of Canada (think Democrats who actually enact legislation for the working class) has survived a very close call against the Conservative party (one really sensible thing about Canada is that the good guys and the bad guys actually give themselves obvious names like "Dr. Evil") in a national election that was rocked by the Sponsorship Scandal and the new health care premium in Ontario. The Conservative leader, Stephen Harper, made some spectacular mistakes by not keeping his minions at bay (they accused the Liberal leader Paul Martin of "supporting child porn" at one point), and his Bush-esque platform is repellent to many Canadians (he wants to take Canada into Iraq, for instance).

So, I'm walking down fucking Main Street in fucking Houston when some fucking guy driving by in a fucking SUV yells, "Get a fucking job," to someone or other on the street. After fucking glancing around, I fucking notice a shabbiliy drassed man on the fucking street corner holding a fucking cardboard sign. It's a fucking image that's so fucking common these fucking days, that I fucking hardly notice it any more.

Now, how did I fucking know that the fucking guy in the fucking SUV was a fucking Republican? Is it that the fucking yeller displayed the kind of fucking compassion that makes the fucking term "Compassionate Fucking Conservative" such a fucking knee-slapper? No. Was it the fucking irony of yelling "get a fucking job" to someone on the fucking street of a fucking city where tens of fucking thousands of fucking people have lost their fucking jobs thanks to the fucking malfeasance of George W. Fucking Bush's fucking close personal friends? No.

Maybe there was something about the fucking specific thing the driver yelled. He obviously had some fucking economic elitism that enabled him to affect a fucking attitude of fucking moral superiority while yelling, "Get a fucking job," at a perfect stranger who was doing nothing fucking more than standing on a fucking street corner with a fucking sign. That sure reeks of fucking Republicanism, but it's not actually what fucking tipped me off.

The man was standing on a busy street corner, but not really in a good place to panhandle people stopped at lights. In fact, he wasn't panhandling at all. His sign said nothing about working for food, or needing help — in fact, his disheveled appearance was the only indication of joblessness.

The sign said, "End the reign of Bush II! Get Bush out of the Whitehouse!"

That's how I knew the driver was a fucking Republican.

Fucker.

It's official. Fahrenheit 9-11 is the top grossing film of the weekend, and the top earning documentary ever. Read the linked article for all the other "firsts" it achieved this weekend.

If you know an independent voter who is confused about Bush & Co., take them to see this film. Pay for it yourself. The future is at stake here.

Al Gore delivered a long yet very inciteful speech this last week. I urge you to read it. He deconstructs the ideology and methodology of the Bush Administration, and does so with a vigor we don't normally associate with Gore. I'll edit this post to include key excerpt later.

For a guy most conservatives have crowned the king of boring policy-wonk liberalism, former Vice President Al Gore sure has Bush boosters whipped into a frenzy of late. Last Wednesday he delivered a speech sharply critical of President Bush's Iraq war policy and called for the resignation of its key architects inside the administration. Gore's language was fiery and dramatic, and at 6,000-plus words there was plenty of it. But his essential argument was clear: Bush's foreign policy has imperiled American freedom and security, and fixing the problems wrought by it in Iraq and elsewhere now requires changing the primary players in Washington.

Moore's film is powerful, moving, and relentless in savaging the reputation of George W. Bush. And after seeing the film, unless you worship "Shrub" in a private shrine, you'll see the incompetence shining through all the haze that Faux News puts up. Former President G. H. W. Bush called Michael Moore a "slimeball" for attacking his son, but both 41 and 43 get a good solid beating in the film (Moore even catches Bush shouting out to him to "get a real job"). If you didn't know the answer to the question "whose your daddy?" for the Bushes, Moore spells it out clearly: The Saudis. You know, the same folks who destroyed the World Trade Center.

Fahrenheit 9-11 will
earn more than $20M
by then end of this
weekend. Click the
button below to see
updated estimates:

The film attacks Bush's ties to the Saudis, his "selection" by the Supreme Court, the PATRIOT Act, his economic policies, and of course, the War in Iraq. Many condescending reviewers attack the film for being heavy-handed and "partisan" (imagine!), but I think Moore restrained himself quite a bit in the film. It has to be outrageous if the message is going to break through the layers of bullshit clouding most American's heads. And this film is both horrifically depressing and hilarious (unless you think Bush's facial ticks are not funny). Like he says, if you come into the theater "on the fence" you won't be when you leave. And if you are a compassionate human being (and not a GOP droid) you'll fall on the Democractic side of that fence.

Hope to see you in the theaters! Joe Bob sez "check it out!"

Update: Box office receipts should break $20M by Sunday (thanks to Mike Jones of The 18 1/2 Minute Gap for the link to box office estimates).

Big surprise! The glowing economic numbers reported for Q1 were ... lies. Oh, big surprise.

The economy grew at a 3.9 percent seasonally adjusted annual rate in the first quarter of this year, a slowdown from the 4.1 percent pace of the previous quarter, the Commerce Department said.

That contrasted with the department's earlier estimates that the nation's output of goods and services, or gross domestic product, had jumped in the first quarter. Commerce initially said in April that first quarter GDP had increased at a 4.2 percent annual rate, and then in May raised the estimate to 4.4 percent.

Why does anyone believe what this government says about the economy, Iraq, or anything else?

God I love blogging. I don't have to worry about editorial or journalistic issues. Not like the "liberal media" which wrung its hands over whether or not to publish Dick "Go Fuck Yourself" Cheney's reply to Sen. Patrick Leahy's passing "hello". Amazingly, some media outlets (print only, of course, since Colin Powell's son has made it expensive to say "fuck" on TV) had the balls to print Cheney's comment, verbatim. I think if that's what he said, under those circumstances, then it's both news and quotable.

The Washington Post actually printed the word today for the first time since publishing the Starr report in 1998. And that set the town buzzing.

Click here to
read the Washington
Post's use of the
dreaded "F-word"!

"When the vice president of the United States says it to a senator in the way in which he said it on the Senate floor," says Executive Editor Leonard Downie Jr., "readers need to judge for themselves what the word is because we don't play games at The Washington Post and use dashes."

Oddly, the same article recalled that in 2000 President Bush made an off-mike comment about Adam Clymer, then a New York Times reporter, calling him a "major-league [expletive]." Cheney responded, "big time." Downie said the paper used the derogatory term for backside at the time and that he saw no reason to repeat it in today's newspaper.

In fact, I think we should all refer to June 24th as "Go Fuck Yourself" day in honor of the GOP, and they should offer free tubes of K-Y jelly for self-use.

The Washington Post has a story about the impact of Michael Moore's film on independent ("fence sitting") voters.

The film seems unlikely to change minds that are set in stone. But judging by the reaction of the crowd in Washington, it does have the potential to move people off the fence.

If this year's presidential election is as close as the one in 2000, it won't have to move many to make a difference in the outcome.

The GOP and their "behind the scenes" zombies are trying to stop the film in its tracks.

The White House, furious about the Bush-bashing, anti-war movie, has wisely decided to take a low-key approach, allowing surrogates to do most of the work – and they've done it with zeal. One California-based organization, Move America Forward, has orchestrated a letter-writing campaign to theaters around the country, demanding that they refuse to show Moore's movie. Conservative talk radio and television hosts have filled their segments with rants against it. And the president's father called Moore a "slimeball."

The conservative group Citizens United announced Thursday that its president, David N. Bossie, had filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, asserting that television ads for the movie are restricted under some of the new campaign finance rules created by the McCain-Feingold legislation.

The attacks from the right have only seemed to embolden Moore. Clearly he relishes the fight, which not only allows him to play the role of David to the GOP's Goliath, but helps drum up publicity for his film. Typically efforts to suppress free speech have the opposite effect. Just ask former Broward County, Fla., sheriff Nick Navarro, who famously propelled the talentless "rappers" 2 Live Crew to fame in the early 1990s by trying to put them out of business.

Fortunately, their efforts only fan interest in the film.

Chris Lehane, the former spokesman for Al Gore's presidential campaign and new media strategist for Moore, seemed almost disappointed.

"We wanted to thank them for sending people to the movie," he said, flashing a broad smile at Moore.

Go see this film.

Today, Salon.com has an article titled The United States of Texas reviewing two books that detail the political power that the “Texas Power Elite” weild in Washington.

I'm sure they are fine books, but I think I summed up this issue quite nicely in a sidebar I published last year in part of my eternally-unfinished History of Iraq. This is what I wrote:

The Texan agenda has been follow so closely by the puppet government in Washington, that there has been only one visible sign of any conflict.

As part of his bold new "Moon Landing" initiative, President Kennedy foolishly chose Cambridge, Massachussetts — home of M.I.T. and Harvard — as the site for the new Space Agency headquarters. After Kennedy was shot in Texas, by a Texan and a Texan became President, the location was moved to Houston, home of Rice University — which is a pretty good school, even though it can't beat M.I.T. in science or Harvard in football.

That's all that really needs to be said on the subject.

President Clinton's biography My Life has broken first day sales records across the country. Even in Texas, near President Bush's hacienda, it's selling well.

At Hastings Books, Music & Video in Waco, Texas, near President Bush's adopted hometown of Crawford, manager Steven Kling said he expected to sell out of his store's 100-plus copies by day's end.

Hastings, sadly, went out of business in my hometown north of Dallas. But I can well imagine the ugly looks carting the Clinton bio around would elicit in Crawford these days.

This comes as no big surprise to most Americans who've lost their job and found a new one since Bush ascended to the Sun Throne: your new job paid less and sucked more. The Kerry camp contents that new jobs are lower paying than the ones previously held by a majority of Americans forced out of work during the Recession.

CIBC World Markets, a Toronto-based investment banking firm, reached a similar conclusion in a report issued Monday. That study found that U.S. job creation since late 2001 has been concentrated in low-paying industries such as hospitality, education and personal services, while job losses have hit higher-wage sectors such as transportation, manufacturing, utilities and natural resources.

"The message is clear: The vast majority of the jobs that evaporated during the job-loss recovery were high-quality jobs," the CIBC study concluded.

Ironically, I had to emmigrate to Canada to find a job that paid as well as the job I lost in the U.S. last year. Canada's economy, while not booming, is still fostering high tech employment whereas Dallas (my hometown) is still downgrading high-tech jobs and pay. Until coming here, my income decreased each year since Bush took the throne (remember, the President's own laywers wrote that he was the Law now that we're at War with ... Everyone).

Trent Lott wants Reagan's face on a gold dollar coin.

I am an advocate of having a gold dollar with Reagan's picture on it, and calling it the Ronnie. The Canadians have the Loonie, and we can have the Ronnie.

Let's see, a gold dollar coin would have to weigh less 1/400th of an oz. (that's 71 microgrammes) to even begin to be affordable for the U.S. Mint (gold is trading at $400US/oz.). That's far, far less than a gram. This coin would require a loupe just to be seen!

Nevermind that! The idea that the words "Ronnie" and "Loonie" would be forever associated is ... how does the phrase go?

Priceless.

Could someone explain why this article is in the nearly worthless Useless Today and yet no mention is made of this story in The New York Times? Man, the "paper of record" is soft pedaling the Bush Administration's war crimes.

So, back to the smoking gun. Rummy (deftly and with lots of paper and oodles of words that he hoped would cover the obvious facts) authorized torture.

That's the whole enchilada. Oh, and that makes him a war criminal. That's the simple, uncomplicated consequence of his actions.

Just such a necessity arose months later when the first anniversary of Sept. 11 brought new fears of terror attack. Intelligence officers at the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, told their superiors that Mohamed al-Kahtani, believed to be the would-be 20th hijacker in the Sept. 11 plot, was withholding information about new attacks, Daniel Dell'Orto, the Pentagon's deputy general counsel told reporters at a White House briefing Tuesday.

Gen. Miller of Gitmo claimed
in a letter to Rummy that he would
get better "actionable intelligence"
out of Abu Ghraib in 30 days if his
"techniques" were employed there.

from the USA Today
article posted today.

The alert set in motion a review that culminated with a Nov. 27, 2002, "action memo" in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved interrogation techniques that included "removal of clothing" and "inducing stress by use of detainee's fears (e.g. dogs)."

Rumsfeld also approved placing detainees in "stress positions," such as standing for up to 4 hours, though he apparently found this approach unimpressive. Rumsfeld, who works at a stand-up desk, scrawled on the memo, "I stand for 8-10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours? D.R."

Bush's lawyers also used clever language to strip people that the U.S. government holds in detention (in other words, kidnapped or virtually 'disappeared') of their rights under the Geneva Convention with a simple legalistic argument: they label them as "non-combatants" and claim the language of the Convetion doesn't apply.

That's the same legal argument as redefining the word "murder" to get O.J. off. Bush is responsible for Rummy's actions here and he set the tone of condoning torture. Rummy must resign and ought to be hauled before the World Court, followed by Bush.

According to Chicago's CBS 2, Republican Jack Ryan coerced his actress wife Jeri Lynn Ryan into going to S&M and swingers clubs.

Offered the chance to deny that he visited sex clubs or wanted his wife to have sex in public, Ryan demurred and suggested Jeri Lynn Ryan's allegations would have little political traction.

“Well, we were married for almost eight years,” he said. “The worst of that was over ... eight years that we went to places that she felt uncomfortable. That's the worst of it.

The breakdown of the
family over the past 35
years is one of the root
causes of some of our
society’s most intractable
social problems-criminal
activity, illegitimacy, and
the cyclical nature
of poverty.

from Jack Ryan on the Defense of Marriage
as posted on his campaign site.

“If that's the worst, then I think people will say, gosh, that guy's lived a pretty clean life.”

...

Jeri Lynn Ryan charged during a custody hearing that Ryan took her on surprise trips to New Orleans, New York and Paris in 1998, and that he insisted she go to sex clubs with him on each trip.

She said that after going out to dinner with Ryan in New York, he demanded that she go to a club with him.

“It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling,” she said. She said Ryan asked her to perform a sexual act while others watched, and she refused.

She said they left and Ryan apologized to her and said it was out of his system. But then, she said, he took her to Paris and again took her to a sex club.

She said she cried and became physically ill at the club, and her husband got angry with her. She said she could never get over that incident.

She also accuses him in the papers of being controlling and lying repeatedly throughout the proceedings.

He sounds like a typical GOP candidate for the Congress to me. Packwood, Livingston, and Gingrich all had similar backgrounds. It'll be digusting watching them attack Clinton for screwing around on his wife all the while they conveniently forget about their own bad behavior.

[Additional material added by Winston Smith]

From Salon's War Room '04 page:

The New York Times reports that the "Bush administration's policy of barring news photographs of the flag-covered coffins of service members killed in Iraq won the backing of the Republican-controlled Senate on Monday, when lawmakers defeated a Democratic measure to instruct the Pentagon to allow pictures."

"The 54-to-39 vote came after little formal debate, with 7 Democrats joining 47 Republicans to defeat the provision. Two Republicans, Senators Olympia J. Snowe of Maine and John McCain of Arizona, voted in favor of permitting news photographers to have access to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where coffins containing the war dead from Iraq arrive."

"'These caskets that arrive at Dover are not named; we just see them,' said Mr. McCain, a former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war for five years in Vietnam. He added, 'I think we ought to know the casualties of war.'"

According to Brad de Long's blog, Seymour Hersh (the reporter who broke the Abu Ghraib story) had this to add at a talk given at the University of Chicago last week:

He said that after he broke Abu Ghraib people are coming out of the woodwork to tell him this stuff. He said he had seen all the Abu Ghraib pictures. He said, "You haven't begun to see evil..." then trailed off. He said, "horrible things done to children of women prisoners, as the cameras run."

Remember, these are very probably random Iraqis who are being tortured this way. To use their kids is to amplify the cruel insanity and virtually guarantee a generation of anti-American hatred in Iraq. Also remember that U.S. Senators have probably seen these photos and none have come forward to denounce them..

Just fucking brilliant. Why are these people still in power in Washington?

If this film debuts in the top five or, heavens forbid, the top grossing film this weekend, Karl Rove will pop a blood vessel. So get out there and go see this film this weekend! Go see it twice for Shrub's sake! I'll bet Moore will take the weekend's proceeds and pour them into anti-Bush campaigns across America, so think of this as a 527 fund raiser with a good film.

Go.
See.
This.
Film.

Opens this Friday. Click here to find a theater near you (and thanks to PABAAH for the link -- too bad they're protesting the film).

I did some modest Googling of the anti-Fahrenheit 9/11 web sites (try this for example) to see what the rhetoric was. Not too surprisingly, there has been a concerted effort to terrorize theaters into not showing the film, and plans to protest (violently in some cases) the opening. It occurred to me that the same kind of violent, hate-filled protesting that goes on at abortion clinics would be the order of the day, and sadly, those opposed to Moore's film are planning just that.

It's sickening to see "Americans" calling for the banning of a film they haven't seen simply because it challenges them to see beyond the simple, stupid rhetoric of their adored Great Leader. If they could only grasp the notion that, even if you don't agree with the film's premise, the fact that it will be seen is proof that the Constitution is still working utter eludes them.

According to Salon, Rev. Moon was coronated by U.S. Senators in the Dirksen Senate Office Building.

You probably imagine your congressman hard at work in the Capitol debating legislation, making laws -- you know, governing. But your newspaper probably didn't tell you that one night in March, members of Congress hosted a crowning ritual for an ex-convict and multibillionaire who dressed up in maroon robes and declared himself the Second Coming.

On March 23, the Dirksen Senate Office Building was the scene of a coronation ceremony for Rev. Sun Myung Moon, owner of the conservative Washington Times newspaper and UPI wire service, who was given a bejeweled crown by Rep. Danny K. Davis, D-Ill. Afterward, Moon told his bipartisan audience of Washington power players he would save everyone on Earth as he had saved the souls of Hitler and Stalin -- the murderous dictators had been born again through him, he said. In a vision, Moon said the reformed Hitler and Stalin vouched for him, calling him "none other than humanity's Savior, Messiah, Returning Lord and True Parent."

To many observers, this bizarre scene would have looked like the apocalypse as depicted in "Left Behind" novels. Moon, 84, the benefactor of conservative foundations like the American Family Coalition -- who served time in the 1980s for tax fraud and conspiracy to obstruct justice -- has views somewhere to the right of the Taliban's Mullah Omar. Moon preaches that gays are "dung-eating dogs," Jews brought on the Holocaust by betraying Jesus, and the U.S. Constitution should be scrapped in favor of a system he calls "Godism" -- with him in charge. The man crowned "King of Peace" by congressmen once said, according to sermons reprinted in his church's Unification News: "Suppose I were to hit you with the baseball bat to stop you, bloodying your ear and breaking a bone or two, yet still you insisted on doing more work for Father."

You just can't make this stuff up.

Congratulations to Burt Rutan's group for successfully putting an aircraft above 100 km (essentially, the edge of space) and safely landing like an airplane (as opposed to NASA's lawn dart) a few minutes later. The culmination of five years of design, experiment and $20M of Paul G. Allen's money, it is a great achievement of a group of immensely talented people.

Time magazine has a piece on Texas Representative Chris Bell's ethics charge against Tom "The Hammer" DeLay in the House.

Relations between Republicans and Democrats in Congress have rarely been worse. But leaders in both parties hope an even bigger fight won't erupt after a Democratic Congressman last week lodged a complaint with the House Ethics Committee against majority leader Tom DeLay. Texas Representative Chris Bell — who lost his seat in a primary last March in a district that had been redrawn by a Republican redistricting plan DeLay helped engineer — charges that one of DeLay's political-action committees illegally funneled corporate money into the 2002 Texas state house races, an allegation that an Austin grand jury is investigating. Bell also accuses DeLay of putting a special provision into a House energy bill for a Kansas utility company in exchange for a $25,000 contribution to that PAC. DeLay insisted "there is no substance" to the charges and dismissed Bell as "a disgruntled member of the House" out for revenge.

Bell's complaint breaks an informal seven-year truce between parties on members of Congress filing such actions against one another, an agreement dating back to the nasty battle that led to the unseating of House Speaker Newt Gingrich. Now the gloves may come off. One DeLay ally has threatened to file retaliatory complaints against Democrats, though DeLay told reporters, "I do not encourage anyone to file complaints." Democratic leaders, who claim they had no role in Bell's action, also were eager to keep the conflict contained. Meanwhile, G.O.P. Representative Ray LaHood of Illinois says he will try to attach an amendment to a funding bill that would retroactively prohibit Bell or any other departing House member from filing an ethics complaint. Says LaHood: "I don't think we should be allowing members to throw a Molotov cocktail as they walk out the door."

This from the party of Newt Gingrich. Is there nothing they did that they're willing to own up to? Anything?

From a Chris Matthews interview with Ron Reagan ( President Reagan's youngest son -- whom I actually like quite a bit from what I've seen of him ) beginning with a short excerpt from a eulogy given by Ron at his father's funeral:

"Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man, but he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians, wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. "

Matthews: "That was in many ways the most remarked upon moment in a very dramatic week."

Reagan: "Well, what I find interesting about it is that everybody assumes that I must be talking about George W. Bush, which I find fascinating and somewhat telling. If the shoe fits—"

Matthews: "Were you?"

Reagan: "Well, I said many politicians. If he's lumped in that group then fine, fine. That's all right. There's a lot of-- I think there's a lot of false piety floating around Washington."

Matthews: "Ron, do you feel deeply that the President has used religion to make his case for the war with Iraq?"

Reagan: "I think he's used religion to make his case for a lot of things, you know."

Matthews: "Including Iraq?"

Reagan: "Including Iraq."

...

Matthews: "Many of the people in this administration who are most hawkish claim a Reagan mantle here in fighting this war. Should they?"

Reagan: "No. With all due respect, I don't think they knew my father as well as I did. And another thing I would observe is that my father never felt the need to wrap himself in anybody else's mantle. He never felt the need to pretend to be anybody else. This is their administration. This is their war. If they can't stand on their own two feet, well they're no Ronald Reagan’s, that's for sure."

Salon has a column by Arianna Huffington which points out that college costs have risen 35 percent under Bush. If the "education" President would just lighten up on education, there might be some left for the remaining 99% of the country he so poorly represents.

The cost of a college education at a four-year public university has risen a devastating 35 percent since George W. Bush took office. He promised to be "the education president," but in what we now know to be the classic Bush bait and switch, he then did just the opposite, delivering a tax-slashing economic agenda that forced public colleges and universities in all but one state to raise tuition in 2003.

I'd go farther and say that Bush is following Reagan's lead in education. In 1982, I went to Washington, D.C. to protest Reagan's cuts of student aid for college students. Bush has gone farther.

As an added little gift for the new grads, the Bush administration's latest budget-cutting guidelines will lead to a $550 million reduction in federal assistance to those college students in need of financial aid.

Reagan took Pell Grant money and turned it into ROTC money, forcing many of my friends to enter the military to finish at RPI. Bush is probably going to reinstate the draft next year, so you won't even have the illusion of choice.

From an op-ed by Robert Samuelson in the Washington Post:

When oil prices hovered around $40 a barrel, pundits screamed for an energy tax (a policy I've long advocated). Although that's desirable, it won't bring much immediate benefit, because there are more than 230 million vehicles on the road. Any shift toward fuel efficiency will take time. A smart energy policy operates over years and decades, not weeks and months. The question that we ought to be asking -- and aren't -- is whether we're similarly blundering with natural gas. Given our history, that seems a good bet.

Natural gas is the heating fuel of about half of U.S. homes (51 percent in 2001). Since 1993 it has been the fuel used for almost 90 percent of new electricity generation; in effect, natural gas powers the Internet and most PCs. It is also a major fuel for manufacturers and for heating office buildings. In 2002 about half of gas sales went to industrial and commercial users. The trouble is that we're no longer self-sufficient in natural gas -- and our import dependence will grow.

In 2003 Americans used about 22 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas, up from 19 tcf in 1990. By 2025 consumption will be 29 tcf to 34 tcf, projects the Energy Information Administration. If we don't import more or expand domestic production -- or both -- those projections won't come true. Prices will rise, choking demand; or, shortages will occur. Some factories that need gas will move to countries with cheaper and more reliable supplies.

Everyone remember Al Haig's famous line when Reagan was shot?

Now, this last week we've see Bush wrap Reagan's dead carcass around him like a primitive caveman holding the body of a lion on his shoulders hoping to impart some of it's "magical" powers. And lo and behold, it worked! Pew reports Bush's ratings rose as he turned Reagan into an entry in the Mounted President Nature Trail.

So if Bush is Reagan, that makes Cheney ... Al Haig? Apparently Dick "Crashcart" thinks he is. Afterall, he ordered the Air Force to shoot down commercial airliners on 9-11. Isn't that the job of the Commander in Chief, just maybe?

Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly authorized U.S. fighters to shoot down hijacked airliners as the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks unfolded but his orders did not reach military pilots until the last of the four planes had already crashed, the commission investigating the terrorist attacks said Thursday.

Cheney was in an underground bunker when Bush was still doing his level best to not appear dyslexic, scared or clueless (too bad he utterly failed) before an audience of future disenfranchised voters. So while "Crashcart" was ordering the deaths of hundreds of civilians, the al-Qaeda plan unfurled pretty much on target (with the notable example of the plane intended for the Capitol Building).

Bush was "rushed" to Air Force One fifty minutes after the attacks began, again showing staggering "cat like reflexes" on the part of the Secret Service. If I was a public school principal, I'd politely turn down any future offers of Bush visiting to read his favorite Victorian gothic literary masterpiece: My Hungry Caterpillar..

When it became clear that the nation was under attack, Bush decided to continue his remarks to a classroom of second graders. "The president told us his instinct was to project calm, not to have the country see an excited reaction at a moment of crisis." Fifty minutes later, he was on Air Force One as it climbed into the sky with no certain destination. The objective was to get into the air as fast as possible and decide where to go, the commission said.

Poor "Crashcart". At one point, he thought that two commercial jets had been taken out by the Air Force on his orders. Alas, despite his (probably illegal) orders, the greatest military power in the world could not intercept commercial planes still on the Eastern seaboard with supersonic fighter jets and more radar than a Florida speed trap. No wonder Saddam thought we were bluffing about attacking him.

You know what I'm talking about.

Bush. Cheney. Saddam and al-Qaeda.

They keep inisisting that there was a connection, even a strong one. But the 9-11 Commission has found no such thing.

Repeat: There is and was no link between Saddam Hussein (Iraq) and al-Qaeda (Saudi Arabia).

Don't believe it? Read this story in any of these respected news outlets:

The New York Times

The Washington Post

The BBC

Bottom f**king line: Bush and Cheney lied and continue to lie about this to justify their illegal, disastrous and ruinous war.

Remember the Contract For America? I sure do. According to (of all the useless newspapers in the world, why did a great article like this wander in?) USA Today, the GOP is doing all the same things to the Democrats in Congress that they accused the Dems. of doing to them (only worse). Read about it here.

As chairman of the House Rules Committee, Dreier is emblematic of the role reversal in the partisan, polarized Congress of the 21st century. He routinely uses his gavel to crush Democrats' efforts to air their proposals, much less enact them. His party writes legislation without Democrats' input, limits Democrats' ability to amend that legislation and prolongs votes in the House for as long as it takes to win. Republicans redraw congressional lines to elect more Republican members and pressure interest groups to hire more Republican lobbyists.

"We have had to do some of the things we criticized once," Dreier admits. "But now that I'm in the majority, I have this responsibility to govern. It's something I didn't completely understand when I was in the minority."

If they had simply won control of the Congress by running on their core platform, I'd say "fair enough" or even "turn about is fair play", but these bastards ran on the platform: we're not going to do what the Dems. did to us.

Goddamned hypocrites.

And by the way, the Dems. never cut the GOP entirely out of the legislative process. In doing so, the GOP has eliminated representation of the constituents who voted for their Democratic Congress-critters. That's not DEMOCRACY. Is that what we're exporting to Iraq? Is Democracy now a finite substance, like oil? When we send it abroad, are we depleting ourselves of it? It sure as hell seems like it with the GOP.

Bush's right-wing anti-Castro nutcase Otto J. Reich resigned as Shrub's special envoy to Latin America. His ties to the wingnuts go back to 1959 when he fled Cuba at the age of 15. He served under Reagan, where he actually trying to garner public support for the Contras (until, of course, they were discovered to be the beneficiaries of Oliver North's White House Basement Mullah Mutual Fund).

In 1987, the comptroller general of the United States reported that Mr. Reich's office had "engaged in prohibited, covert activities" of domestic propaganda "designed to influence the media and the public to support the administration's Latin American policies.'' Those acts violated restrictions on the use of public funds for propaganda without Congress's consent, the report said.

Mr. Reich was not charged, though many Reagan administration officials were, with breaking Congress's ban on aid to the contras. But the memory rankled, as did the fight over his appointment. In March 2002, days after his swearing-in as assistant secretary of state, he opened a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington with, "Friends, colleagues, un-indicted co-conspirators...."

Apparently he is quite the crackup. Thank Bog he's not working for Bush anymore ... of course, with Tenet's resignation, the Season of the Rats Leaving the Ship has officially begun.

In a continuation of refutations of the DoL report claiming that offshoring was eroding less than 8% of jobs, The New York Times offers a different perspective; namely, that high-end jobs are also going offshore right along with the lesser roles of coding and testing.

"The policy prescription you hear from people again and again as the response to the global competition of outsourcing is for Americans to move to high-end work," said Ronil Hira, an assistant professor for public policy at the Rochester Institute of Technology. "It's important to dispel the myth that high-end work is immune to offshore outsourcing."

"What is not clear," Mr. Hira added, "is how much of that high-end work will go abroad."

Salon has a review by Laura Miller of several books that examine Shrub's psyche and morals in depth. The main review is of a book that psychoanalyzes the President, finding him suffering from a huge Oedipal complex and deep seated fears from his mother. It's an interesting review because of the myths of Bush it disputes, and the (in my opinion) better model of Bush's Brain.

Of course, there's something slightly absurd about applying the reasoning of a philosopher to what's essentially an instinct-based moral code. "I'm not a textbook player," Bush told Bob Woodward, "I'm a gut player." Still, at every point where Bush's stated values come into conflict with his actions or other stated values, a little flash of light goes off, and what's illuminated is a vision of life rooted in fury and terror and a need to dominate the self and others as a way of containing both. Maybe that's one reason why George W. Bush is always talking about freedom. He'd probably like to know what it feels like.

Holy Neocons, Batman!

From the AP:

Angered by Bush administration policies they contend endanger national security, 26 retired U.S. diplomats and military officers are urging Americans to vote President Bush out of office in November...

Among the group are 20 ambassadors, appointed by both Democratic and Republican presidents, other former State Department officials and military leaders whose careers span three decades.

Prominent members include retired Marine Gen. Joseph P. Hoar, commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East during the administration of Bush’s father; retired Adm. William J. Crowe Jr., ambassador to Britain under President Clinton and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under President Reagan; and Jack F. Matlock Jr., a member of the National Security Council under Reagan and ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987 to 1991.

“We agreed that we had just lost confidence in the ability of the Bush administration to advocate for American interests or to provide the kind of leadership that we think is essential,” said William C. Harrop, the first President Bush’s ambassador to Israel, and earlier to four African countries.

Once again, e-voting hardware is buggy enough to endanger a recount. The state this time? Why, none other than Florida, recount capital of the U.S.

Touchscreen voting machines in 11 counties have a software flaw that could make manual recounts impossible in November's presidential election, state officials said.

A spokeswoman for the secretary of state called the problems "minor technical hiccups" that can be resolved, but critics allege voting officials wrongly certified a voting system they knew had a bug.

The electronic voting machines are a response to Florida's 2000 presidential election fiasco, where thousands of punchcard ballots were improperly marked. But the new machines have brought concerns that errors could go unchecked without paper records of the electronic voting.

The machines, made by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb., fail to provide a consistent electronic "event log" of voting activity when asked to reproduce what happened during the election, state officials said.

Officials with the company and the state Division of Elections said they believe they can fix the problem by linking the voting equipment with laptop computers. Florida's two largest counties — Miami-Dade and Broward — are among those affected by the flaws.

For crying out loud, why can't Florida get this right?

The Washington Post has an article on Bush's polling with respect to the economy today.

The nation's economy is growing smartly, wages have begun to rise, and employers have added more than 1.4 million jobs to their payrolls in the past nine months. Yet voters continue to give President Bush poor ratings on his handling of the economy.

It may sound baffling, but interviews with voters, pollsters and economists suggest Bush's stubborn difficulties on domestic policy boil down to an obvious problem abroad.

"It all goes back to Iraq," said Steven Valerga, 50, a Republican in Martinez, Calif., who voted for Bush in 2000 but plans to vote for Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.) in November. "It's a drain on the economy, when there's so much needed elsewhere. My gosh, we didn't need to be there."

However, later in the article you get to hear from the truly idiotic voters (these are the working poor who support Bush). Instead of trashing these folks, I'll let their own words damn them:

For Bush, that sensitivity to foreign affairs is not all bad. Maria Sandoval, an elderly Democrat in Colorado Springs, has had a rough time of it in the past few years, living solely on Social Security and relying on the county clinic for her health care. On the economy, Bush "hasn't done very good," she allowed. He could have offered more help, she said, and his prescription drug law does not promise her much, either.

But Bush has her vote, she said firmly. "I guess he hasn't put too much into [the economy], but he's busy with a lot of other things. He's on top of everything. That's what I like about him."

During the Clinton years, Jeremy Tuck said he had been selling mobile homes in Tuscaloosa, Ala., and, at $45,000 a year, making good money. Last year, he was assembling mobile homes, earning $15,000 and living hand-to-mouth. But Bush has his vote this November. Had Gore been elected in 2000, Tuck said, "we would've been taken over by Saddam Hussein or [Osama] bin Laden."

That's right. Bush is on top of EVERYTHING. Uh huh. And Osama bin Laden and Saddam were poised to take over America! Glad they got Faux News' message "in one gulp". If I went from making $45K to $15K over the last three years, I'd crucify the President who was in office.

Worst. Voters. Ever.

Apparently, Dick "Crashcart" Cheney has been tossed from the ticket and replaced with the undead Ronald Reagan. Follow the link for what has to be the most tasteless (and funny) reaction to the GOP wrapping GWB in Reagan's burial cloth. Remember, they did it first!

Luckily for me, I'm stuck in Canada, a nation that currently isn't sucking up to the United States, so I've had to endure little of the Reagan worship that must be washing across the U.S. right now. Here are a few articles that put Reagan in perspective:

Where's the Rest of Him? by Eric Alterman of The Nation

Reagan Stories at The Nation

The Great Taxer by Paul Krugman of The New York Times

Tom Tomorrow's comments from This Modern World

Mother Jones offers some parting shots at Reagan by those who knew him best (Noriega, Contras, etc.)

Gorbachev ended the Cold War, not the "Gipper"

Check out the George W. Bush Re-election Site.

Funny thing ... it's not about George anymore. It's all Reagan, all the time now. Rove, never one to pass up an "opportunity", has dragged Reagan's dead carcass onto the podium with Shrub in a pathetic, disgusting and completely predictable attempt to anoint Bush with Reagan's mojo. I have no doubt it will work like a charm, too.

People, get a clue! Vote for the PARTY, not the CLASS PRESIDENT. Bush is NOT the "Second Coming of Reagan" either. And even if he was, Reagan was an awful President.

Several months ago, it was made public that the title of the August 6^th, 2001 PDB was Bin Laden Determined to Attack in U.S.. This was a significant disclosure, because our President's primary activity between August 6^th and September 11^th was to be on vacation. In short, it was already abundantly clear that the actions of Bush and his staff during that time didn't show and evidence that they had what you might call — for lack of a better term — "a clue."

I came across an article in Slate published last April, in which columnist Dan Radosh suggests that the problem lies in the confusing manner in which the information in the PDB was presented:

Is the notorious Aug. 6, 2001, "President's Daily Brief" a smoking gun or merely historical information? Who can tell with all those complicated paragraphs and complete sentences?

The obvious solution? Give Dubya the PDB's as a Powerpoint Presentation. (I'm sure that Edward Tufte would be appalled — he hasn't been particularly impressed by previous uses of Powerpoint by the Bush team.)

Salon reports that Fahrenheit 9/11 now has a distributor, and will be in the theaters on June 25^th. I predict the GOP will stage highly coordinated protests, possibly violent (like anti-abortion protests), at the theaters.

On the TV news crawl in Toronto today is this little gem:

George Bush says he has "total disdain for Michael Moore"

High praise indeed.

Salon reports that the GOP lost their South Dakota House seat. The office was vacated by Bill Janklow after he was convicted of manslaugther for running over a motorcycle rider.

Despite the fact that Janklow spent four years as the South Dakota Attorney General, followed by sixteen years as Governor, he seemed unaware that he would be unable to participate in the House proceedings were he to be convicted. At a press conference shortly after his sentencing, he explained that he "couldn't be sorrier" about the death and planned to get back to work in Washington as soon as possible. Clearly, as a Republican, he had forgotten that being a criminal is supposed to be incompatible with serving in government.

His apologies similarly fell flat, due to his history of bragging about his "lead foot" — an admission that was supported by an impressive collection of traffic citations.

This is the first time in a while that GOP arrogance and hubris, has delivered an election to the Democrats. Kudos to challenger Stephanie Herseth for running a relatively positive campaign.

See, we finally figured out how to lower alien abductions. Another win for the Bush Administration!

Check out this article from WiRED News. Apparently, that ole $2+/gal. gas price is starting to make a few Americans think again about the VW TDI engine. I switched in March of 2003, expecting Shrub's war to hammer the price of gas ... it took a year, but it finally happened.

Go here for more info on TDI cars.

The terror attack in Saudi Arabia against oil industry workers (not surprisingly) shot oil prices up $2/bbl. today, closing at $42.31. That's an extra $100B out of the pockets of US consumers if this price sticks (it won't, maybe, right?).

Remember to vote your pocketbook this fall, assuming you can still drive there.

Krugman turns the rock over on the GOP disinformation machine:

The end result of current [economic] policies will be a large-scale transfer of income from the middle class to the very affluent, in which about 80 percent of the population will lose and the bulk of the gains will go to people with incomes of more than $200,000 per year...

Does Mr. Bush understand that the end result of his policies will be to make most Americans worse off, while enriching the already affluent? Who knows? But the ideologues and political operatives behind his agenda know exactly what they're doing.

Of course, voters would never support this agenda if they understood it. That's why dishonesty — as illustrated by the administration's consistent reliance on phony accounting, and now by the business with the budget cut memo — is such a central feature of the White House political strategy.

Right now, it seems that the 2004 election will be a referendum on Mr. Bush's calamitous foreign policy. But something else is at stake: whether he and his party can lock in the unassailable political position they need to proceed with their pro-rich, anti-middle-class economic strategy. And no, I'm not engaging in class warfare. They are.