A breath of fresh air...

Amid a week nauseating Reagan-worship:

...Calling Reagan an "all-American" insults the millions of Americans whom he deprived of his sunlight. Reagan far too often invited the nation to live down to its lowest common denominators. Reagan tried to make America younger, all right. He tried to return us to the days where we sat before black-and-white televisions, in separate black and white neighborhoods, where white people saw only white people and black people were represented by Buckwheat and the only time you saw lots of people of color were dead Indians in Westerns.

Complete op-ed here.

And more realism here if you have access to Salon.

Reagan spectacle....

...They were the first of thousands of Americans who descended on Washington to say their own goodbyes.

Is that "thousands" as in "I took home $20,000 after taxes last year," or "thousands" as in the estimated half-million protestors who greeted President Bush in Rome last week?

On Tuesday evening in Manhattan, John Hockenberry of NBC (speaking to an audience of some 700-800 people) said the media was expecting a "hundred thousand" mourners to file through the rotunda in honor of Ronald Reagan.

If that was a peace demonstration, such a poor turnout would make it a failure. And it certainly wouldn't attract the media attention the Reagan funeral rites are garnering!

This circus over Reagan's death is like a huge circle-jerk, with each media outlet striving to outdo the other and in the process exciting themselves to an even greater pitch.

Sadly, they don’t seem to realize that everyone outside their circle doesn’t share their enthusiasm.

Excerpt from here.

Who killed Nick Berg...?

This column in the Sydney Morning Herald sums up pretty well the inconsistencies in the Nick Berg video that suggest he may have been killed in a "black ops" action by the C.I.A.

...Possum believes "the available evidence surrounding the case suggests that it was a 'black operation' by US psychological warfare specialists ... to provide the media with a moral relativity argument to counter the adverse publicity over torture at Abu Ghraib". The use of FBI footage in the opening sequence, if confirmed, suggests the involvement of high-level US Government operatives....

Read it here.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it....

...the average worker takes home $517 a week and will receive about $400 in tax breaks from President Bush. At the same time, the average CEO takes home $155,769 a week and this year alone received well over $50,000 in new tax breaks from Bush... [Emphasis mine.]

From MoveOn.org here.

Scary....

This from 27-year veteran CIA analyst, Ray McGovern:

...because I am more frightened now than at any time over the last three and a half years, that this administration will resort to extra-legal methods to do something to ensure that there are four more years for George Bush. And Ashcroft’s statement last week, gratuitous statement, uncoordinated with the department of, CIA, with the Department of Homeland Security, his warning that there is bound to be a terrorist strike before the US elections. That can be viewed and this can be reasonably viewed as the opening salvo in the justification for doing, taking measures to ensure that whatever happens in November comes out so that four more years can be devoted to maybe changing that war crimes act or protecting at least these vulnerable people for four more years....

McGovern's concern stems from legal advice given to President Bush that he and members of his administration might be vulnerable to prosecution for war crimes on the basis of a U.S. law that reinforces the Articles of the Geneva Convention.

Complete story here.

Privatization of war....

Mercenaries in Iraq are making, by some accounts, $1,000 a day, while U.S. soldiers there make around $1,100 a month.

Not only is this morally outrageous, but yet another example of Neocons funneling money from taxpayers' pockets into corporate hands.

Don't they tell us that "marketplace streamlining" will result in things costing less? While in reality, the only thing that ends up "less" is money left in the pocket of the little guy.

No doubt, this immoral war would be costing U.S. taxpayers fewer dollars if it were being fought with conscripts.

There again, would we have invaded Iraq in the first place if we'd had a non-volunteer army?

Thought-provoking animated cartoon here.

War crimes....

Amnesty International's newly-released annual report criticize [sic] Wednesday the deaths of around 200 Israelis, at least 130 of them civilians and including 21 children, who were killed in suicide bombings and other "deliberate attacks" by Palestinian militants.

This "deliberate targeting of civilians by Palestinian armed groups," the report says, "constituted crimes against humanity."

The report also charged that the Israel Defense Forces killed some 600 Palestinians, including more than 100 children, between January and December 2003.

According to the report, most of those who died were killed unlawfully, in "reckless shooting, shelling and bombing in civilian residential areas, in extra-judicial executions and through excessive use of force."

The IDF also comes under criticism for "certain abuses" that constitute war crimes, and gives the examples of unlawful killings, obstruction of medical assistance and targeting of medical personnel, the extensive and wanton destruction of property, torture and the use of "human shields."

I recently asked an Israeli-born friend, whose opinion I respect, how militant supporters of Israel can decry the deaths of Jewish children at Palestinian hands, while ignoring the deaths of Palestinian children killed by the IDF. He answered that he thought they'd charge that Palestinian terrorists deliberately target Jewish children, while the IDF strives to avoid civilian casualties--those that happen are by accident.

I think that is their rationale, but such an opinion rests on denial. First, much evidence--such as that cited above--indicates that members of the Israeli military do, in fact, deliberately target civilians. And while their actions may or may not be officially condoned, there is no doubt that bringing to bear the IDF's heavy firepower in densely-populated areas leads to dreadful civilian casualties. You might use the excuse, "We didn't mean to kill civilians," the first few times. But at this stage, the carnage is predictable, and the excuse deceitful.

Complete story here.

Questions remain....

Will the truth behind Nick Berg's murder ever be known?

American businessman Nicholas Berg's body was found on May 8 near a Baghdad overpass; a video of his supposed decapitation death by knife appeared on an alleged al-Qaeda-linked website (www.al-ansar.biz) on May 11. But according to what both a leading surgical authority and a noted forensic death expert separately told Asia Times Online, the video depicting the decapitation appears to have been staged.

[...]

While the circumstances surrounding both the video and Nick Berg's last days have been the source of substantive speculation, both Simpson and Nordby perceived it as highly probable that Berg had died some time prior to his decapitation. A factor in this was an apparent lack of the "massive" arterial bleeding such an act initiates.

[...]

And Berg is seen on the beheading videotape in what appears to be US military prison-issue clothing, sitting in what appears to be a US military-type white chair, virtually identical to those photographed as used at Abu Ghraib prison....

The article raises other questions and inconsistincies, too, not the least of which is that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the individual blamed by the Bush administration for beheading Berg, was reportedly killed long before Berg's death.

Complete article here.

It's official: we've been had...

An urgent investigation has been launched in Washington into whether Iran played a role in manipulating the US into the Iraq war by passing on bogus intelligence through Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, it emerged yesterday.

Some intelligence officials now believe that Iran used the hawks in the Pentagon and the White House to get rid of a hostile neighbour, and pave the way for a Shia-ruled Iraq.

According to a US intelligence official, the CIA has hard evidence that Mr Chalabi and his intelligence chief, Aras Karim Habib, passed US secrets to Tehran, and that Mr Habib has been a paid Iranian agent for several years, involved in passing intelligence in both directions.

[...]

"It's pretty clear that Iranians had us for breakfast, lunch and dinner," said an intelligence source in Washington yesterday.

Complete story here.

FBI nabs the wrong Muslim (again!)....

Brandon Mayfield just appeared live on CNN. He has been exonerated of any involvement in the Madrid train bombings. The FBI is now admitting that they mistakenly identified a fingerprint as belonging to the Porland, Oregon-resident, attorney, and convert to Islam, who spent two weeks in prison as a result of their error.

Complete story here.

Kerry-Pelosi '04...?

Criticalviewer makes a strong case for nominating Nancy Pelosi to the Kerry ticket.

I'd enthusiastically vote for her! Pelosi has long stood out from among lackluster, apologist Republican-lite Democrats.

Spread the word: Pelosi for V.P.

Remember freedom of speech...?

E.L. Doctorow, one of the most celebrated writers in America, was nearly booed off the stage at Hofstra University Sunday when he gave a commencement address lambasting President George W. Bush and effectively calling him a liar.

Booing that came mainly from the crowd in the stands became so intense that Doctorow stopped speaking at one point, showing no emotion as he stood silently and listened to the jeers. Hofstra President Stuart Rabinowitz intervened, and called on the audience to allow him to finish. He did, although some booing persisted.

Apparently, it was mostly parents and relatives who objected to criticism of Bush. Said one enlightened man, "If this would have happened in Florida, we would have taken him out."

Ah, such respect for the First Amendment! And who says fascism is dead?

Complete story here.

First casualty of war...

The Pentagon seems to be hoping that if they keep denying that the U.S. military massacred an Iraqi wedding party, Americans will come to believe them. Sadly, they may be right.

"There was no evidence of a wedding: no decorations, no musical instruments found, no large quantities of food or leftover servings one would expect from a wedding celebration," Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt said Saturday. "There may have been some kind of celebration. Bad people have celebrations, too."

"Bad people"? In addition to the callousness of his remarks, such simplistic vilification does nothing to win over the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people.

The general's denials are contradicted by every other piece of independent evidence: reporters on the scene, information from hospitals, accounts of survivors and a wedding video that just turned up. On the video, for example, a stocky man with close-cropped hair can be seen playing an electric organ at a wedding. Then in another tape filmed a day later in Ramadi, the same musician is lying dead--his face clearly visible in a burial shroud, dressed in the same tan shirt as he wore when he performed.

A CNN anchor this morning threw in a line that militants may have been hiding out among the wedding party. Even if this were true, would "neutralizing" several suspected militants justify killing 11 women and 14 children (at last count)?

Initially, the military denied that any women or children were killed. With bodies piling up, however, Kimmitt was forced to admit that a "handful of women" - perhaps four to six - were "caught up in the engagement...They may have died from some of the fire that came from the aircraft."

May have died?

One survivor, Haleema Shihab, 32, hid out the night, wounded and bleeding, in a bomb crater with her stepdaughter. She said that American soldiers showed up and one, laughing, kicked her to see if she were alive. "I pretended I was dead so he wouldn't kill me," she said.

According to the Guardian, American commanders remain unrepentant.

Major General James Mattis, commander of the 1st Marine Division, was scathing of those who suggested a wedding party had been hit. "How many people go to the middle of the desert ... to hold a wedding 80 miles (130km) from the nearest civilization? These were more than two dozen military-age males. Let's not be naive."

When reporters asked him about footage on Arabic television of a child's body being lowered into a grave, he replied: "I have not seen the pictures but bad things happen in wars. I don't have to apologize for the conduct of my men."

Bad things do indeed happen in war. Mattis would do well to remember, howver, that U.S. soldiers are subject to the Geneva Convention and not immune from legal prosecution for war crimes.

Complete stories here and here.

Nick Berg's father calls for Peace...!

...George Bush never looked into my son's eyes. George Bush doesn't know my son, and he is the worse for it. George Bush, though a father himself, cannot feel my pain, or that of my family, or of the world that grieves for Nick, because he is a policymaker, and he doesn't have to bear the consequences of his acts. George Bush can see neither the heart of Nick nor that of the American people, let alone that of the Iraqi people his policies are killing daily.

[...]

So what were we to do when we in America were attacked on September 11, that infamous day? I say we should have done then what we never did before: stop speaking to the people we labelled our enemies and start listening to them. Stop giving preconditions to our peaceful coexistence on this small planet, and start honouring and respecting every human's need to live free and autonomously, to truly respect the sovereignty of every state. To stop making up rules by which others must live and then separate rules for ourselves.

[...]

George Bush's ineffective leadership is a weapon of mass destruction, and it has allowed a chain reaction of events that led to the unlawful detention of my son which immersed him in a world of escalated violence. Were it not for Nick's detention, I would have had him in my arms again. That detention held him in Iraq not only until the atrocities that led to the siege of Fallujah, but also the revelation of the atrocities committed in the jails in Iraq, in retaliation for which my son's wonderful life was put to an end.

My son's work still goes on. Where there was one peacemaker before, I now see and have heard from thousands of peacemakers. Nick was a man who acted on his beliefs. We, the people of this world, now need to act on our beliefs. We need to let the evildoers on both sides of the Atlantic know that we are fed up with war. We are fed up with the killing and bombing and maiming of innocent people. We are fed up with the lies. Yes, we are fed up with the suicide bombers, and with the failure of the Israelis and Palestinians to find a way to stop killing each other. We are fed up with negotiations and peace conferences that are entered into on both sides with preset conditions that preclude the outcome of peace. We want world peace now.

Complete statement here.

Bush budget stalls....

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Republicans retreated Thursday and decided to postpone a Senate vote on their $2.4 trillion budget until at least next month, GOP aides said, averting a certain defeat by party moderates demanding curbs on future tax cuts.

The decision, described by aides on condition of anonymity, was an election-year embarrassment for both the Republicans who control Congress and President Bush. [Emphasis mine.]

When asked what might make moderate Republicans change their minds and support the budget, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said, "Some of us could get killed in tragic accidents.''

Whoa. I'd be careful what I said around the bunch in the White House.

Complete story here.

Sad, sad news....

David Reimer, a Canadian man who was raised as a girl in a controversial case that drew international attention to issues of gender and biology, took his own life last Tuesday.

According to press reports, Reimer, 38, had been depressed following a series of personal and professional setbacks, including the loss of his job, separation from his wife and the death of his identical twin brother two years ago.

David's story was the subject of the book, "As Nature Made Him," The Boy Who Was Raised a Girl," by journalist John Colapinto.

As I can vouch, being gender-variant in this narrow-minded world can take a toll on a person. I'm very sad that David reached a point where he felt he couldn't soldier on.

Complete story here.

Horrific....

RAFAH REFUGEE CAMP, May 20 — As a throng of Palestinians marched in protest here today, an Israeli tank and helicopter gunship opened fire, leaving at least nine people dead, including children, and dozens wounded, witnesses said.

The incident began when more than a thousand Palestinians responded to a public committee's call to demonstrate this afternoon by walking down a central avenue toward the Tel al-Sultan neighborhood on Rafah's outskirts, where Israeli forces seized control Tuesday in what the Army called a hunt for militants.

As the leading edge of the crowd of men and boys approached an Israeli tank position, two thunderous explosions rang out, interspersed with jackhammer blasts of machine gun fire. Clouds of dust rose in the air as debris and blood sprayed across the road. The Palestinians turned to flee, some carrying bleeding children in their arms.

[Complete story here.]

The Palestinian death toll in the military sweep the Israeli army is nauseatingly dubbing "Operation Rainbow," stands at 33 in two days, and will probably go higher.

I am sickened and feel complicit in that the carnage could not be taking place without U.S. arms sales and tax dollars.

Most Americans feel otherwise, if they care at all. One woman I used to work for who describes herself as a "tax and spend liberal," says she might vote for Bush in November due to his support for Israel and strong "war on terrorism."

Tragically, she is not alone. (See here.)

In a somewhat heated argument, she justified to me her utter lack of sympathy for Palestinians by saying, "But they are killing my children!" speaking in the larger sense of Jewish family.

What confounds me is how this intelligent, caring mother of four can feel no compassion for murdered Palestinian children.

Not only that, but how can she fail to see that our support for "Israel no matter what" puts us at risk of terrorist attack? Incidents like "Operation Rainbow," in which American-made helicopters and missiles mow down Palestinians are precisely why Arab extremists consider the U.S. a legitimate military target.

I support Israel's right to exist, as I do a viable Palestinian state. If Bush truly wanted to protect Americans from terrorism, he would make all aid to Israel contingent on an immediate and just resolution of the Palestinian question.

And more....

Not only did the policy to torture detainees originate at the highest levels of the U.S. government, but Bush and his officials knew damned well that what they were doing was wrong!

May 17 - The White House's top lawyer warned more than two years ago that U.S. officials could be prosecuted for "war crimes" as a result of new and unorthodox measures used by the Bush administration in the war on terrorism, according to an internal White House memo and interviews with participants in the debate over the issue.

And they should be tried for war crimes, for actions in both Afghanistan and Iraq.

Complete story here.

Abu Ghraib....

If you still believe the torture at Abu Ghraib was a case of privates and sergeants gone amok, rather than policy ordered from above, check this out:

...Top military officials have claimed the abuse seen in the photos at Abu Ghraib was limited to a few MPs, but Provance says the sexual humiliation of prisoners began as a technique ordered by the interrogators from military intelligence.

"One interrogator told me about how commonly the detainees were stripped naked, and in some occasions, wearing women's underwear," Provance said. "If it's your job to strip people naked, yell at them, scream at them, humiliate them, it's not going to be too hard to move from that to another level."

Complete story here.

Stranger and stranger....

...According to Berg, his son was taking a course a few years ago at a remote campus of the University of Oklahoma near an airport. He described how on one particular day, his son met "some terrorist people -- who no one knew were terrorists at the time."

At one point during the bus ride, Berg said, the man sitting next to his son asked if he could use Nick's laptop computer.

"It turned out this guy was a terrorist and that he, you know, used my son's e-mail, amongst many other people's e-mail who he did the same thing to," Berg said.

Government sources said Berg gave the man his password, which was later used by Moussaoui, the sources said.

The sources said the man who used Berg's e-mail knew Moussaoui, now awaiting trial on federal charges that could bring a death sentence. But the sources would not disclose details of how the men were connected.

So, are we to assume that Nick Berg was accessing his email on a moving bus using what, his cell-phone? I know you can do it, but was it really that easy and reliable a "few years ago"?

Complete story here.

Prosthetic leg...?

The mystery of who really killed Nick Berg deepens:

"From Iran Zarqawi traveled to Iraq in May 2002, where his wounded leg was amputated and the limb fitted with a prosthetic device. He spent two months recovering in Baghdad, at which time "nearly two dozen extremists converged on Baghdad and established a base of operations there." (From here.)

The quote is originally from the National Review Online.

According to people who have seen the video, the person beheading Berg did not seem to have a prosthetic leg.

Michael Berg, Nick's father, blames the Bush administration in no uncertain terms, not for directly wielding the knife, but for delaying his son so long that he could not safely exit Iraq.

"My son died for the sins of George Bush and Donald Rumsfeld. This administration did this," Berg said in an interview with radio station KYW-AM.

Full story here.

Were U.S. forces responsible for Berg’s gruesome death?


I’m blogging again after a long hiatus.

The reason? Despite a schedule that leaves me no time, I just can’t stay silent any longer.

The precipitating factor is the Nicholas Berg tragedy. As usual, mainstream media coverage is infuriatingly inadequate.

Contrary to the official storyline, family and friends insist that Berg was held in detention in Iraq not by the Iraqis but by U.S. forces.

…The Berg family last month filed a habeas corpus petition against Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, saying Berg was being illegally detained by the U.S. military without probable cause. Berg was released a day later, April 6.

According to the petition, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, the family said it understood, based on information provided by the FBI and the State Department, that while Berg had originally been detained by Iraqi police in Mosul, he was later transferred to U.S. military custody.

The petition said the FBI had been involved in "investigating and confirming Nicholas Berg's identity and to ensure that the individual detained was Nicholas Berg based on a concern of possible identity theft."

The Bergs added that the FBI had recommended that their son be released from custody, and that the State Department had told them it no longer had power to intervene or to bring him home because the son "had been turned over by the Iraqi police to the United States military."

[Full story here.]

One day after the family filed the lawsuit on 4/5, Berg was released from custody in Mosul. He told friends when he got back to Baghdad that, due to his Jewish name and an Israeli stamp in his passport, he'd been suspected of being an Israeli agent. He checked out of his Baghdad hotel on 4/10 and vanished, until U.S. forces found his decapitated body on 5/15.

Allegations are flying that Berg was picked up at the behest of U.S. forces due to the mistaken supposition that he was an antiwar activist. Why would someone think that the Bush supporter was actually against the U.S. invasion of Iraq and do such a thing? Because his father, Michael Berg, signed an anti-war petition that ended up on a Rightwing website that called for reprisals against the petition’s signatories.

Furthermore, speculation that Berg’s actual murderers were not al Qaeda operatives was given substance by Wolf Blitzer’s interview on CNN yesterday of Rend Rahim Francke (or Rend al-Rahim), the Iraqi Governing Council’s representative to Washington. Rahim stated categorically that the U.S. translation of the horrific video showing Berg’s murder was inaccurate. The expression translated as “al Qaeda,” she said, actually referred to a similar sounding Arabic expression meaning roughly “those who sit by and do nothing” (think, “apathetic,”), a mistake native Arabic speakers would never make. Moreover, she said the speaker did not have a Jordanian accent, as would be expected if he were actually Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian who U.S. authorities and the C.I.A. are blaming for actually cutting off Berg’s head.

I can’t find a live link to the CNN story (I saw the segment as it aired yesterday) and it hasn't been picked up by any other news outlet I've seen.

Other websites and threads are commenting on the light-skins of the hooded men in the video, the military stances they held, their buff physiques and possession of weapons not usually found in the hands of al Qaeda operatives. Ignorant as I am of military habits and paraphernalia and not having viewed the video, I can’t comment on any of this.

What is blatantly obvious is that Berg’s tragic and grisly murder has shifted the attention of American voters away from the torture of Iraqi detainees at Abu Ghraib, the mounting American death toll and escalating financial costs of the war. Once again, “Us against them” war hysteria is running at fever pitch among the suseptible and renewed determination to “stay the course,” is strong in America.

Am I actually suggesting that the Bush administration would cold-bloodedly sacrifice a 26-year-old American citizen’s life purely for political gain?

What do you think?

Just call me pessimistic....

Boy, even if you didn't know it was an election year, the number of empty promises flying out of the White House would tell you something was up.

The latest is about space.

President Bush will make a speech next week outlining a major space initiative, the White House said last night.

Administration officials said they expected that Mr. Bush would propose a research and development program with the aim of establishing a base on the moon, as a prelude to a longer-term goal of sending humans to Mars.

Excuse me if I postpone celebrating until I see the actual funding for such an expensive initiative.

Bush loves to go about pronouncing, then promptly underfunding or ignoring. He promised to fight the global AIDS epidemic, make the U.S. safer from terrorist attacks, support the troops, improve American air and water quality, leave no child behind, capture Osama bin-Laden and make Halliburton pay back what it overcharged U.S. troops in Iraq.

He hasn't followed through on those--and countless other promises--he's made to date. I see no reason to expect follow through on this latest enticement, timed to capitalize on the success of America's Spirit Mars landing.

Complete story here.

Unbelievable....

Oh, yeah, we have the highest level of unemployment since the Great Depression, a staggering federal budget deficit that the IMF worries will bring down the global economy if something isn't done, 495 dead American soldiers in Iraq and counting with no "weapons of mass destruction" to be found, global warming threatening the extinction of one-quarter of all plants and animals by 2050, and this is a crucial issue.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) -- Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean, trying to limit the fallout from negative comments he made four years ago, said Friday he ``didn't really understand the Iowa caucuses'' when he said they were dominated by extremist special interests.

Dean is scrambling to "stem fallout from comments" made on a Canadian talk-show four years ago, criticizing the Iowa caucuses. Comments which, from what little I know, are true.

Meanwhile, Bush is given an almost free-ride in the media on his boondoggle of a war in Iraq, presidential culpability for 9/11, the ballooning deficit, soaring unemployment, a host of broken campaign promises ranging from tax relief for working people to cleaner water to “no child left behind.” The outing of an undercover CIA operative Valeria Plame alone would have been enough to prompt Right-Wing pundits to scream for Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

The New York Times should be ashamed they gave this story prominent position on their website.

Carnivorous cows and vegetarian salmon....

Salmon raised in ocean feedlots, the main source of supply for American consumers, contain such high levels of PCBs, dioxins and other probable cancer-causing chemicals that people should not eat it more than once a month, according to a large-scale study to be reported Friday in the journal Science.

Read all the way to the end of this article and you'll see that the industries who brought you "mad-cow disease" by feeding rendered beef to cattle are now searching for ways to turn carnivorous salmon into vegetarians.

While I think it's a worthy goal to lower dangerously high levels of contaminants in food (the result of feeding processed small fish to farmed salmon), I can't help but worry that turning carnivores into vegetarians could create unforeseen problems in the same way that turning cows into cannibals did.

Among other things this article fails to mention is that farmed salmon are also fed pellets made from rendered beef, chicken, lamb, etc.

Complete story here.

Whatever happened to campaign finance reform...?

Will Bush purchase the office he stole last time?

WASHINGTON — President Bush's reelection campaign raised a record $130 million last year, officials said today, a show of financial muscle aimed at unnerving Bush's Democratic rivals.

The figure eclipsed the $100 million that Bush raised for the 2000 election and was more than triple what former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, the top fund-raiser among the contenders for the Democratic presidential nomination, amassed in 2003.

While the Democrats must spend their money now in pursuit of their party's nomination, Bush, who faces no Republican opposition, entered the year with $99 million in the bank. He can save that money for a big spending blitz once his Democratic opponent is determined.

But the president isn't resting. This week, he raised an estimated $2.8 million at a $2,000-a-ticket St.. Louis fundraiser - the largest amount raised at a single event in Missouri history - and is due to attend fund-raisers in Knoxville, Tenn. and Palm Beach, Fla. on Thursday.

And the money keeps rolling in. Bush is expected to raise a whopping $200 million in the end.

Meanwhile, Gephardt, Kerry and Lieberman continue to sling mud at Dean, and to a lesser extent Clark, making Bush's re-election that much surer. Are the Democrats stark raving mad? Or simply selfish, egotistical, immature and short-sighted?

If democracy is to survive in this country in any form, Bush must be defeated in 2004.

Story here.

More on Republican hypocrisy....


This time on Ed Gillespie and the RNC.

Here.

So who's pandering now...?

When former California Governor Gray Davis signed into law a bill granting undocumented immigrants the right to California drivers' licenses, his opponents in the recall race (including current Governor Arnold Schwarznegger) howled that he was pandering to Latino voters.

I supported Davis' bill and I generally support improving the status and conditions of immigrant workers.

What irks me is the hypocrisy of a Republican Party that lambasts a sitting Democratic governor then turns right around and introduces their 2004 version of the Bracero Program.

WASHINGTON, Jan. 7 — President Bush offered a plan today that he said would help millions of illegal immigrants working in the United States while also making the country more secure and prosperous and living up to its finest ideals.

"By tradition and conviction, our country is a welcoming society," Mr. Bush said at a special ceremony in the White House. "We welcome the talent, the character and the patriotism of immigrant families."

While Mr. Bush said again that he opposed amnesty, which he said would only encourage lawbreaking and perpetuate illegal immigration, his proposals would nonetheless effectively grant a measure of amnesty to illegal immigrants with jobs.

Bush has amply demonstrated in his 3 years in office that he could care less about the plight or rights of immigrant workers. The real reason for this too little too late PR ploy is to (1) garner Latino votes in November, and (2) hopefully score Brownie points in his upcoming meeting with Mexican President Vicente Fox.

Complete story here.

A problem to dwarf all others...

While President Bush and his coterie drag their feet, maintaining that global warming is a hoax, time is running out for hundreds of plants and animals.

Hundreds of species of land plants and animals around the globe could vanish or be on the road to extinction over the next 50 years if global warming continues, scientists warn.

The researchers concede that there are many uncertainties in both climate forecasts and the computer models they used. But they said their prediction could come to pass if industrial nations do not curtail emissions of greenhouse gases that trap heat in the atmosphere.

[...]

They found that more than one-third of the 1,103 native species they studied could disappear or approach extinction by 2050 as climate change turns plains into deserts or alters forests.

Complete story here.

Why aren't the Democrats jumping on this...?

I know this is old news to those of us who haunt alternative news-sites. But why aren't the Dems going after Bush?!

...George W. Bush is going to run in 2004 on the idea that his administration is the only one capable of protecting us from another attack like the ones which took place on September 11. Yet the record to date is clear. Not only did they fail in spectacular fashion to deal with those first threats, not only has their reaction caused us to be less safe, not only have they failed to sufficiently bolster our defenses, but they used the aftermath of the attacks to ram through policies they couldn't have dreamed of achieving on September 10. It is one of the most remarkable turnabouts in American political history: Never before has an administration used so grisly a personal failure to such excellent effect.

Never mind the final insult: They received all these warnings and went on vacation for a month down in Texas. The August 6 briefing might as well have happened in a vacuum. September 11 could have and should have been prevented. Why? Because Bush knew.

Complete piece here.

Happy 2004....

May it be the year we kick George W. Bush out of the office he so undeservedly occupies!

Sorry about my absence these past days. I've been packing up and getting ready to move to New York.

That's right! I'm leaving the "Left Coast," as one of my New York contacts is wont to call it, to try my hand again in the Big Apple. And, what is more, to rejoin my sweetie. Long-distance relationships suck!

With luck, depending on the gig I pick up, I'll start posting more regularly on K9 once I settle in.

Lord knows, there's plenty to complain about! What with Dean trailing Bush by only 5 points in the latest Harris poll, the Republican party is running scared that the more than $112 million--raised for the primary alone, in which Bush runs unopposed--won't be enough to beat the Democrats. And we all know that a scared Karl Rove is a man who will stop at nothing.

The latest? They've targeted MoveOn.org regarding two ads entered in a recent contest (here, among other places) . Talk about a non-issue! The ads in question were submitted to an open forum, to be voted on by interested MoveOn members. And guess what: the weren't among the 15 final ads chosen.

Even had they been picked and actually aired on TV, they would have fallen under the category of free speech, still protected by the Constitution. Give the Bush camp another 4 years and that may no longer be true.

So stay tuned in '04 and keep on fighting!