Diebold chief pledges to deliver Ohio to Bush in '04

As Thom Hartmann noted on July 30, the paperless, unauditable voting machines being rolled out across our land (ironically, in the name of reliability and fairness) are made by companies with close ties to the Republican Party and the Bush administration, and those machines have been involved in enough suspicious election results to make a lot of people wonder just how fair and reliable they are.

Now comes word in the Cleveland Plain Dealer that the CEO of one of these companies sent a letter to Ohio Republicans pledging to help deilver Ohio votes to the GOP in 2004.

The Aug. 14 letter from Walden O'Dell, chief executive of Diebold Inc. - who has become active in the re-election effort of President Bush - prompted Democrats this week to question the propriety of allowing O'Dell's company to calculate votes in the 2004 presidential election.

O'Dell attended a strategy pow-wow with wealthy Bush benefactors - known as Rangers and Pioneers - at the president's Crawford, Texas, ranch earlier this month. The next week, he penned invitations to a $1,000-a-plate fund-raiser to benefit the Ohio Republican Party's federal campaign fund - partially benefiting Bush - at his mansion in the Columbus suburb of Upper Arlington.

The letter went out the day before Ohio Secretary of State Ken Blackwell, also a Republican, was set to qualify Diebold as one of three firms eligible to sell upgraded electronic voting machines to Ohio counties in time for the 2004 election.

As previously noted, the current generation of electronic voting machines leave no audit trail and no way to verify that their counts are accurate, and their programming is not available for scrutiny--although a version of the code found on the Internet by author Bev Harris (Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering in the 21st Century) was analyzed by computer scientists and found to be full of security flaws that would allow any number of people to falsify election results. The only safeguard against such tampering is voter-verifiable paper audit trails.

Wisconsin woman gets the last word; obit backs 'removal of Bush'

Lee Sensenbrenner writes in the Madison, WI, Capital Times:

When Sally Baron's family wrote her obituary, they described a northern Wisconsin woman who raised six children and took care of her husband after he was crushed in a mining accident.

She had moved to Stoughton seven years ago to be closer to her children and was 71 when she died Monday after struggling to recuperate from heart surgery. Her family had come to the question of what might be a fitting tribute to her.

"My uncle asked if there was a cause," her youngest son, Pete Baron, said.

Almost in unison, what her children decided to include in the obituary was this: "Memorials in her honor can be made to any organization working for the removal of President Bush."

"She thought he was a liar," Baron's daughter, Maureen Bettilyon, said. "I think his personality, just standing there with that smirk on his face, and acting like he's this holy Christian, that's what really got her.

"She'd always watch CNN, C-SPAN, and you know, she'd just swear at the TV and say 'Oh, Bush, he's such a whistle ass!' She'd just get so mad."

If you're going to donate to BuzzFlash or the Smirking Chimp or the opposition candidate of your choice, think about making your donation in memory of Sally Baron.

EPA Inspector General: White House misled public

We've heard it before, but now it's being said by the Office of the Inspector General of the Environmental Protection Agency: the EPA was directed by the White House to mislead the public regarding the safety of the air in Lower Manhattan in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attack.

A report released by the Inspector General on August 21, "EPA's Response to the World Trade Center Collapse: Challenges, Successes and Areas for Improvement," says:

EPA issued five press releases within 10 days after September 11, 2001, four more through the end of December, and another four through the end of May 2002. EPA's WTC press releases from September through December 2001 reassured the public about air quality. Although EPA's press releases generally recommended that rescue and cleanup workers take precautions to reduce their exposure to pollutants, EPA's basic overriding message was that the public did not need to be concerned about airborne contaminants caused by the WTC collapse. This reassurance appeared to apply to both indoor and outdoor air.

For example, EPA Region 2 officials told us that the September 18 statement made by the EPA Administrator (see Appendix C) that the air was "safe" to breathe only applied to:

• long-term health effects - not short-term or acute health effects;
• the general public - not Ground Zero workers;
• outdoor air - not indoor air;
• healthy adults - not sensitive sub-populations such as children and the
  elderly; and
• asbestos - not other air pollutants.

However, except for the second point, the statements issued by EPA in press releases throughout 2001 generally did not contain the above qualifications. For the general public, EPA's overriding message was that there was no significant threat to human health.

If the all-clear applied only to long-term asbestos danger to healthy adults among the general public, what else was there to be concerned about? According to the Inspector General's report,

One person described the aftermath in Lower Manhattan as "looking like a blizzard" had hit. However, this blizzard did not deposit snow, but instead a complex mixture of building debris and combustion by-products. This mixture included, among other substances, asbestos, lead, glass fibers, and concrete dust.

In addition to the initial dispersion of dust and debris, fires at the site created various emissions of potentially harmful pollutants. These fires were not officially declared extinguished until December 19, 2001, and debris continued to smolder and fires flared up for weeks after that. Emissions resulting from these fires included particulate matter, various metals, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), volatile organic compounds (VOCs), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), and dioxin.

Protecting the public from air pollution is the EPA's proper concern. Why would they issue press releases minimizing known dangers and overstating the positives?

According to the report, "The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ)...convinced EPA to add reassuring statements and delete cautionary ones."

Few written records were available on the process used to prepare WTC press releases. We found draft versions for two of the press releases. However, the White House's role in EPA's public communications about WTC environmental conditions was described in a September 12, 2001, e-mail from the EPA Deputy Administrator's Chief of Staff to senior EPA officials:

All statements to the media should be cleared through the NSC [National Security Council] before they are released.

According to the EPA Chief of Staff, one particular CEQ official was designated to work with EPA to ensure that clearance was obtained through NSC. The Associate Administrator for the EPA Office of Communications, Education, and Media Relations (OCEMR)3 said that no press release could be issued for a 3- to 4-week period after September 11 without approval from the CEQ contact.

Although EPA's position has been that WTC area residents should obtain "professional cleaning," EPA's press releases did not instruct residents to do so. Instead they instructed residents to follow recommended and proper cleaning procedures and referred the public to the New York City Department of Health (NYCDOH) for recommended cleaning procedures.

We asked the OCEMR Associate Administrator whether her office had considered advising the public through a press release that they needed to obtain professional cleaning for their indoor spaces. The Associate Administrator stated: "It was in a press release: it was removed by. . . [the CEQ contact]."

But what reason could the White House have for pressuring the EPA to put a positive spin on its reports? The report says the EPA Chief of Staff cited "the desire to reopen Wall Street and"--what else?--"national security concerns."

The desire to reopen Wall Street is understandable, but was it worth lying to those who work there and those who live nearby about what kinds of pollution were in the air? As written, the EPA press releases would not likely have prevented the reopening of the stock market. However, they might have led people to be more careful, to have inside spaces professionally cleaned--and maybe to live longer, healthier lives.

As for the other stated reason, we've heard that song before. National security is the reason Bush won't release records of the Reagan administration that might embarrass his father. National security is the reason we can't be shown the evidence that the 9/11 hijackers were funded by Saudis who happen to be Bush business partners. But what national security purpose was served by misrepresenting the facts and encouraging thousands of New Yorkers to expose themselves to potentially hazardous conditions?

Moreover, White House interference did not stop with manipulating the EPA press releases. The CEQ also was less than cooperative with the Office of the Inspector General in its investigation.

Our review of the process and the support for information in EPA press releases on air quality was limited since CEQ officials declined to meet with us to discuss their role in the preparation of press releases. Our written request for an interview was declined by a White House legal counselor, who noted there were "institutional concerns about interviewing White House employees."

No surprise there; the obvious "national security" purpose served by their silence is the same one served by those other decisions: sparing the administration and its friends some embarrassment.

The whole sordid affair is just one more example of the Bush League's leadership by deception, really, and hopefully less deadly than some of their other whoppers; but somehow seeing them spin public safety information, particularly if it kept some of the victims of 9/11 from making informed decisions about their own health, is even more disgusting.

An open letter to Chris Rock

Dear Chris,

In your recent interview in Rolling Stone, I got the impression that you had a little to say about the President. You said a little less.

Asked what you thought about George W. Bush, your response was, "Uh, you know, I don't want to get Dixie Chicked."

Having been born in 1966, you aren't old enough to remember much of the Vietnam era, but I am. And what I remember is that the young entertainers of the time (including George Carlin, whom you list among your favorite comedians, and a whole lot of rock stars) were at the forefront of the anti-war movement--which was just as unpopular and derided in its day as opposition to the Bush League is today. But they persevered, and they kept asking the hard questions, and they kept the public thinking about the issues, until opposition to the war spread from its initial young base to more and more of their elders, finally forcing the national media to stop dismissing war opponents as hippies and radicals, and start taking the movement seriously.

I myself am not old enough to remember the McCarthy era, but I have read some about it. It was a bizarre time when defying the House Un-American Activities Committee could get an actor, screenwriter or director blacklisted by the major movie studios--basically put out of work, potentially for life. Some Hollywood figures caved to McCarthy's demands, denouncing their (sometimes non-existent) Communist pasts, turning in their associates, and helping to keep the witch hunt alive. Others refused, and sometimes paid dearly. Careers, marriages, and lives were destroyed. But those who stood up to McCarthy's bullying were eventually vindicated, and it was McCarthy who ultimately went down in disgrace.

Today America stands on the brink of a new McCarthyism. Disagreeing with the Bush administration can get you branded as unpatriotic or downright treasonous. But that's all the more reason for those who disagree with what's going on in Washington to speak up. And as a popular entertainer, you are in a unique position to do so.

Look at what's happening in California right now. Who's getting the most attention in the media and leading in the polls over 150 or so opponents including several with career credentials in government? An Austrian bodybuilder-turned-actor. Your talents have earned you celebrity; your celebrity has brought you wealth and power. You have a responsibility to use that power wisely.

If it hadn't been for the few lonely souls who spoke out against Joe McCarthy, might American freedom have been lost forever? If it hadn't been for Bob Dylan and George Carlin and Muhammad Ali and the other stars of their day who kept speaking out through their art and through their daily lives, who knows how much longer the US would have continued to fight unwinnable wars in Southeast Asia? If you and others allow yourselves to be cowed by the right wing, what will be the cost to future generations of Americans?

Chris, America needs you. Please don't hold back. Speak up and speak often about the madness that has infected American political thought. History will thank you--and your fans will stand by you. Did you notice that in the wake of the Clear Channel-sponsored boycott, the Chicks played to sold-out houses all across America?

[Edited at 10:22 PM. Memo to self: never post before the morning's first cup of coffee.]

White House Alters Webpages About Iraq Combat

How's this for revisionist history?

When the White House published the text of and photos from Bush's speech announcing the supposed end of the Iraq attack, the headline read: "President Bush Announces Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." But on Tuesday, 19 Aug 2003, the Cursor website noticed that the headline had been changed to read: "President Bush Announces Major Combat Operations in Iraq Have Ended." The word "major" had been added.

Apparently, with the quagmire resulting in at least one dead US soldier a day--not to mention even more injuries, dead Iraqis, and sabotage--that headline had proved incorrect. Therefore, straight out of 1984, the headline was stealthily altered to make it seem as if that's what it had always said.

The latest addition to the Bush League Blogroll, the Memory Hole (website - blog) does a great job of living up to its slogan--"rescuing knowledge, freeing information." It's a remarkable compendium of such attempts to rewrite, recast, or simply erase history. It also offers plenty of reference material, including the Congressional report on 9/11 and a compilation of little-publicized quotes of various high-ranking government officials saying that 9/11 could have been prevented--for example: "I don't believe any longer that it's a matter of connecting the dots. I think they had a veritable blueprint, and we want to know why they didn't act on it" (Sen. Arlen Specter, R-PA).

A different "talking head" sounds off

In the August 17 Observer, Brian Eno muses on the Bush League's brand of propaganda after reading Weapons of Mass Deception by Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber:

It's not so much the control of what we think, but the control of what we think about. When our governments want to sell us a course of action, they do it by making sure it's the only thing on the agenda, the only thing everyone's talking about. And they pre-load the ensuing discussion with highly selected images, devious and prejudicial language, dubious linkages, weak or false 'intelligence' and selected 'leaks'....

With the ground thus prepared, governments are happy if you then 'use the democratic process' to agree or disagree - for, after all, their intention is to mobilise enough headlines and conversation to make the whole thing seem real and urgent. The more emotional the debate, the better. Emotion creates reality, reality demands action.

...As we are seeing now, the most recent Gulf war entailed...false linkages made between Saddam, al-Qaeda and 9/11, stories of ready-to-launch weapons that didn't exist, of nuclear programmes never embarked upon. As Rampton and Stauber show, many of these allegations were discredited as they were being made, not least by this newspaper, but nevertheless were retold.

Throughout all this, the hired-gun PR companies were busy, preconditioning the emotional landscape. Their marketing talents were particularly useful in the large-scale manipulation of language that the campaign entailed. The Bushites realised, as all ideologues do, that words create realities, and that the right words can over whelm any chance of balanced discussion. Guided by the overtly imperial vision of the Project for a New American Century (whose members now form the core of the American administration), the PR companies helped finesse the language to create an atmosphere of simmering panic where American imperialism would come to seem not only acceptable but right, obvious, inevitable and even somehow kind.

Aside from the incessant 'weapons of mass destruction', there were 'regime change' (military invasion), 'pre-emptive defence' (attacking a country that is not attacking you), 'critical regions' (countries we want to control), the 'axis of evil' (countries we want to attack), 'shock and awe' (massive obliteration) and 'the war on terror' (a hold-all excuse for projecting American military force anywhere).

You can get Rampton & Stauber's book for under $10 at Amazon, but you ought to buy it through one of your favorite dissident websites (we recommend The Smirking Chimp), and help them to keep going.

A clever Brit has found a way to foil Ahnold's plot to become Master of the Universe....

Bush, Cheney, and Shwarzenegger dance to Ken Lay's tune

In an article published today by CommonDreams.org, Jason Leopold--who spent two years covering California's energy crisis as bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires--writes that Arnold Schwarzenegger, Michael Milken, and others attended a secret meeting convened by Ken Lay on May 24, 2001 to hear Enron's plan for solving the crisis.

Meanwhile, Gray Davis was asking the Bush administration to enact price controls to rein in the obscene price gouging that was then going on in the state, where electricity reached a price of more than $200 per megawatt hour. Bush met with Davis on May 29 and washed his hands of the matter. It was the California legislature's fault for not fully deregulating the market, Bush said, and it was Davis's problem to fix. Davis had contended that Texas energy companies were manipulating the market.

Dick Cheney, who chairs Bush's energy task force, had also met with the now-disgraced boss of Enron about a month before. Lay had given him a memo that included eight recommendations for the national energy policy. Seven of the eight made it to the final draft--released in May, after the Schwarzenegger-Milken-Lay meeting, the Bush-Davis meeting, and a Frontline interview in which Cheney blamed the whole mess on the California state government.

But, says Leopold, Davis was right.

What’s unknown to many of the voters who will decide Davis’s fate on Oct. 7, the day of the recall election, is that while Cheney dismissed Davis’s accusations that power companies were withholding electricity supplies from the state, one company engaged in exactly the type of behavior that Davis described. But Davis would never be told about the manipulative tactics the energy company engaged.

In a confidential settlement with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, whose chairman was appointed by Bush a year earlier, Tulsa, Okla., based-Williams Companies agreed to refund California $8 million in profits it reaped by deliberately shutting down one of its power plants in the state in the spring of 2000 to drive up the wholesale price of electricity in California.

The evidence, a transcript of a tape-recorded telephone conversation between an employee at Williams and an employee at a Southern California power plant operated by Williams, shows how the two conspired to jack up power prices and create an artificial electricity shortage by keeping the power plant out of service for two weeks.

Details of the settlement had been under seal by FERC for more than a year and were released in November after the Wall Street Journal sued the commission to obtain the full copy of its report. Similarly, FERC also found that Reliant Energy engaged in identical behavior around the same time as Williams and in February the commission ordered Reliant to pay California a $13.8 million settlement.

Since that time, of course, have come the Enron collapse, revelations of memos detailing the rip-off scheme, and a wire-fraud conspiracy guilty plea byEnron's Timothy Belden, who Leopold says masterminded the scheme. But first impressions are lasting impressions, and the conspiracy to pin it on Davis had already succeeded before the truth got out.

It's worth noting that the energy industry's manipulation of the California energy market cost California an estimated $70 billion--almost twice the $38 billlion budget deficit that is the chief impetus behind the recall.

"Davis, who refused to cave in to the demands of companies like Enron even while Democrats, Republicans and the public criticized him, was right all along," says Leopold. "Maybe Californians ought to cut Davis some slack."

Counting the lies

Bob Kemper of the Chicago Tribune's Washington Bureau writes:

On the defensive over the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, Bush administration officials increasingly argue that the U.S.-led war was justified because it toppled the despotic regime of Saddam Hussein and paved the way for a new era of peace and stability in the Middle East.

But the violence and strife roiling U.S.-occupied Iraq, including a vehicle bombing Thursday that killed at least 11 people in Baghdad, is emboldening critics who maintain the White House overstated its primary case for war: that Iraq posed a direct and immediate threat to the United States.

Four months after U.S. forces seized Baghdad, an in-depth look at that case shows that virtually all the administration's allegations regarding Iraq's destructive capabilities remain unproven or in dispute, according to outside experts, former intelligence analysts and a variety of foreign-policy think tanks.

Kemper goes on to enumerate the still-unproven claims, from the biological and chemical weapons to the aluminum tubes, to the mobile labs, to the 30,000 warheads, and on and on. No surprises here, not to anyone with an ounce of skepticism...but the Bush League's political strategy consists of repeating the lies more often than anyone repeats the truth; that's why we have to keep repeating the truth.

P.S. In case you don't want to register (for free) at the Trib website, there are copies of this article (minus the first couple of paragraphs) at
http://www.statesman.com/asection/content/auto/epaper/
editions/sunday/news_f353ee540662109e1071.html

and
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/print.php?sid=12599.

"Today we face another 'Watergate'"

This is why George W. Bush must be held accountable for his crimes.

Samuel Dash, chief counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, sounds the alarm:

The Founders of our nation foresaw that a president could abuse power. They created a constitutional system of equal and separate powers in Congress, the courts and the executive - each with the power to check the others. It worked in Watergate and Congress and the courts checked a president who was asserting absolute power.

But, as in all human institutions, there is no guarantee that it will always work this way. Each of the branches must have the leadership and the courage to do its job. For, if the Congress and the courts are passive in the face of a president's assertion of excessive power, and the people are uninformed of the danger, the country can once again face the loss of precious constitutional freedoms.

This lesson of Watergate is particularly pertinent now. In responses to terrorists' attacks on our country that threaten our national security, President George W. Bush and Attorney General John Ashcroft have sought and obtained from an acquiescent Congress unprecedented powers that are inconsistent with the Bill of Rights' protections. It is not that these powers are necessary to fight terrorism. Prior to 9/11, Congress and the Supreme Court had already given competent federal law enforcement agencies all the power and authority they need to successfully keep our country secure.

The government overreaches when it employs its war against terror to attack the liberties of American citizens. We now face sweeping federal wiretapping, secret searches and seizures, arrest and detention without trial or right to counsel, infiltration by FBI agents in our places of worship and in our social and political clubs and associations. Not even what we read, either from libraries or bookstores, is respected.

It is the time of the anonymous informer and the chilling threat, reminiscent of Watergate, that dissent is unpatriotic and giving aid to the enemy. The logic of the government appears to be that the only way we can preserve our freedom and liberty from the efforts of terrorists to destroy them is to temporarily destroy them ourselves. But true security comes from our being a free society blessed with constitutional democracy and a Bill of Rights - rights that if lost cannot be easily recovered.

Impeachable offenses don't make impeachment likely

Belva Ann Prycel's editorial in the Lincoln County Weekly lays out a case for impeachment based on the deliberate deception of Congress and the American public in the run up to the invasion of Iraq....

       Richard Nixon faced impeachment for misusing the CIA and the FBI, a serious abuse of presidential power. George Bush and his administration apparently manipulated and misrepresented intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and the public to support, a preemptive war to take control of Iraq.

       For those who would give George Bush some largely undeserved latitude, let's be clear that this was not a benign act with no victims and no ongoing consequences. This was not a personal impropriety, a sexual tryst or a stain on a blue dress. This was a stain upon American democracy.

      Thousands of innocent Iraqis died and many continue to suffer in a lawless war-ravaged country. Millions of civilians, including American servicemen and women are exposed to the health hazards of depleted uranium from U.S. missiles. Every day, more young soldiers die as Iraqis make sitting ducks out of American troops. The cost of war and a long occupation rises into the hundreds of billions of dollars, while our country faces a depleted treasury and deficits as far as the eye can see.

       This is demonstrably a misdeed of monstrous proportions. A huge, costly, and deadly lie was foisted on the American public and the Congress. The credibility of the United States was severely damaged and the constitutional powers of the presidency abused.

      George Walker Bush deserves impeachment. He deserves impeachment and removal from the office he was never elected to hold. Those who have paid the ultimate price with their lives demand no less. Our democracy demands no less. As citizens, we must clamor for the justice and accountability which our leaders would like to avoid. We must not forget.

The Bush League deserves to be thrown out for a number of reasons, beginning with the fact that they were never legitimately elected, but let's face it--it ain't gonna happen, not with a highly partisan Republican majority in both houses of Congress. The only way we're going to throw the bums out is at the polls--and the only way to throw them out at the polls is by making sure the votes are cast and counted. More on that in a future post....

Delivering The News With Honor, Morals, Integrity, And Shit Like That

If you like whitehouse.org, toostupidtobepresident.com, and gwbush.com...you'll love RepublicanPress.com.

Meet Kathleen Kuntly, GOP Media Diva, whose book, Democrats Are Traitors, "tells about all of the traitorous acts committed by Democrats. Acts such as standing for civil rights instead of standing for America. Acts such as standing for a minimum wage for working stiffs, and standing against tax cuts for the wealthy...."

...and Claymore D. Liddy, ex-CIA spy, who will stoop to any level to reveal Bill Clinton's secret plan to discredit George W. Bush: "Ken Starr is a family man,  so he suggested we meet at the stripclub 'Vixen's Values.' I saw Ken sitting at a table with a man in a boy scout uniform.  I walked over to the table. I  shook Ken's hand and I noticed that the boy scout was really Dick Cheney in disguise. Yes, Vice President Cheney was dressed as a boy scout. Ken informed me that the Vice President has to be in disguises these days due to the terror alert across America...."

...and Editor-in-chief Raymond P. Clodstill, a truly passionate patriot: "Each night, I like to watch my favorite video while I have a scotch on the rocks. The video I watch is the landing of President George Bush onto the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln . I have watched this video at least three hundred times now, but I still get cold chills on my arms when President Bush exits the plane in his tight military flight suit.  I feel so proud to be an American as he walks over to meet the sailors in that tight military flight suit.  He walks with pride, and his crotch is pulled tight and upward by the military flight suit...Damn, I am proud to be an American, and I am proud of this President who wears a military uniform!..."

...plus Col. Morton T. Morton, Brother Merv Kilgore (Pastor of the Church Of The Giving,Ragweed, Texas), former Reagan White House Staffer I. Fester Auspice, psychiatrist Herman Von Shtupp, science editor Conrad Burns, and others.

In George W's America, we can all use a laugh. You'll find lots of them here.

You CAN beat them; don't join them

Walter Williams, in a Newsday op-ed piece, says that the American Majority Institute should beat the Bush League at their own game--but only to an extent.

He says the progressive think tank needs a big budget, to compete with the well-heeled GOP think tanks that have "clobbered" the Democrats in getting the word out; it should aggressively push its message, as groups like the PNAC have done; and it should hire talent--good writers who are well-connected, skilled analysts and researchers. But, he warns, they must stop short of stooping to the opposition's level in spinning, twisting, and just plain making things up. He gives two good reasons. First, the Bush League's duplicity will be a major object of attack, and such charges can hardly be effective if the Democrats are guilty of the same sin; moreover, it's the right thing to do for our democracy. Besides, it's hardly necessary.

The Democrats have a mother lode of reliable information that shows the pattern of calculated deception of the Bush administration. It is a rare opportunity that can be used effectively by a tough think tank that is scrupulous in analyzing and packaging data and commentary that can help Democrats in attacking the Bush administration.

When sound numbers support a strong case, the American Majority Institute should go for the jugular. The attack on Republican politicians and think tanks must be unrelenting in exposing deceptive information and dishonest analysis. Be partisan and be honest - it is not an oxymoron.

Such an effort can serve the interests of the Democratic Party and the public. Fighting deception with deception to win the presidency and Congress makes a mockery of the critical concept of having an informed electorate.

The rare opportunity that Williams refers to is that the Bush League spin doctors are so far out of control, no opposite spin is needed to refute and expose them. The simple, unadorned, and above all, verifiable facts are enough--as long as they are relentlessly used at every opportunity.

When Bush says we attacked Iraq because Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in, all the Democrats have to do is remind us that it was Bush who ran the inspectors out of Iraq, and who still won't let them back in.

When Paul Wolfowitz opines that "all foreigners should stop interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq," they should point out that many Iraqis are saying the same thing--only they are referring to the U. S.

When Ann Coulter insinuates that disagreeing with the President is traitorous, we need reminders of Ollie North's infamous "He's not my President" remark, and of the "wag the dog" allegations that Clinton faced over Somalia. When the administration says we're bringing democracy to Iraq, they need only point out that the US has forbidden elections in situations where it was feared that the outcome would not be what the White House wants. Every time they say the Democrats are undermining the judicial nomination process by filibustering 4 confirmations, it should be pointed out that Bush's nominees in general have been approved at record rates, and that the Republicans blocked far more nominations during Clinton's days in office. Whenever they complain that Bush's lie in the State Of the Union address was "only sixteen words," somebody ought to point out that nine words were enough to get Bill Clinton impeached--even though his lie did not cost a single American soldier's life.

The hypocrisy of the right is so self-evident, all the Democrats need do is make sure the facts are repeated as often as the lies. And while this effort should be undertaken by Democratic politicians at every turn, they should not be alone. Relentless pointing out of objective fact is something that we should all be demanding of the press. A grass-roots campaign to get the news media to stop parroting spin and start reporting the facts could go a long way towards unmasking the Bush League.

Another Bush League assault on the First Amendment

Are you an outspoken critic of the Bush administration? If so, says Britain's Independent, you could be at increased risk of being harassed by airport security personnel. In fact, the Transportation Safety Administration has been forced to admit the existence of a list, "possibly hundreds or even thousands of names long," of people targeted for special treatment at airports--special treatment that could include anything from "intense scrutiny" and temporary detention to strip searches and denial of boarding--simply for being a political activist and exercising your legal right to challenge the government. And once you're on the list, there's no way you can try to get taken off, or even find out why you were put on it in the first place.

The Independent says police recordfs show that over 300 people have gotten "special questioning" at San Francisco airport, and another 24 at Oakland, apparently without apprehending a single wanted criminal.

This is not only an assault on the dignity and freedom of American citizens, but a waste of limited government resources that could be put to better use fighting real crimes and real terrorists.

Apparently, to the Bush League, freedom and security mean they're free to do what they damned well want, secure in the knowledge that insignificant abstractions like truth and the rule of law won't get in the way.

When does the honeymoon end?

Robert Reich writes on the contrast between Tony Blair and George W. Bush:

Since his election in 1997, Tony Blair has based much of his appeal on claims of integrity and sincerity, coupled with promises to improve domestic services. Now two-thirds of the British public doesn't trust him, and he's compelled to show how well he's done on domestic issues apart from the attention he's given to foreign affairs. But in an America that is still reeling from the terrorist attack of 11 September, Bush's appeal has been based largely on his determination to fight back. Americans haven't cared very much about the details of Bush's strategy, as long as it's sufficiently bold. In fact, a large portion of the American public continues to believe that Saddam Hussein was somehow involved in the 9/11 attack. As long as the administration seems to be making 'progress' by tracking down or killing his key assistants, including his sons, and fighting the remnants of his forces, most Americans are satisfied.

The challenge facing those of us who see through the Bush League's charade is to wake up the rest of the country. We need to get the press to stop fawning and start asking the tough questions, and we need to pressure our legislators to demand accountability; but we also need to work on the public, starting with our friends. Mike Hudson of the Niagara Falls Reporter set a good example with his Open Letter To a Republican Friend:

Bill Clinton was no angel. But the visceral hatred you and others held for him resulted in a morbid national curiosity about whether Paula Jones could identify his member, whether the stains on Monica Lewinsky's dress were something other than the remains of a glazed doughnut and why the President of the United States would have to resort to such lowlife trash in the first place.

The Republican Congress forced the people of the United States to pony up $80 million to finance Ken Starr's six-year investigation into these and other allegedly important matters.

You're an honest man, Joe. What if Bill Clinton had been defeated by a majority of American voters in 1992 or 1996? What if he had won only due to the machinations of the Arkansas political machine? What if he had been the first president taking the White House since Rutherford B. Hayes in 1876 to lose in the popular election? What if he was the first president in American history to have to redact something said in a State of the Union address?

And what if he then involved us in a war that cost the lives of hundreds of Americans, based on proven lies, misrepresentations and exaggerations about everything from a nuclear threat to biological and chemical weapons to ties with al-Qaeda?

What if he had long-standing business ties with the Saudis, who planned, financed and carried out the attacks against this country on Sept. 11, 2001?

Look in your heart, Joe. I think you know the answers to these questions.

One of the most important aspects of Hudson's letter is the way he closes it. "Looking forward to your return to the Falls," he says, "so we can argue this over a drink. That opportunity is one of the great things I hold dear about being an American."

We can't stoop to the level of the right-wing hatemongers and say that everyone who disagrees with us is a traitor. We must recognize in them, as they fail to recognize in us, patriotism and a desire to do what is best for America. The movers and shakers in the Bush administration may be cynical, manipulative, evil people...but that doesn't mean their followers are. A lot of good folks simply don't understand, or don't want to believe, the extent to which the Bush League has deceived and manipulated them. We have to approach them as friends, and present our argument as the patriotic message it is.

The ecology is terribly important. So is Medicare. So is education. So are Social Security and health care and all the other things the Bush League has set about destroying. But none of those is as important as restoring honesty, decency, and reason to American politics and respect for the Bill of Rights to American government. For the next 16 months, we must unite in one cause--exposing the hypocrisy of the criminals who have taken over Washington, and convincing our friends and neighbors that it matters. All the other goals put together don't matter as much as removing the Bush League from power.

Arrogance, or something darker?

John David Rose, in this Carolina Morning News editorial piece, detects the scent of the PNAC at Ground Zero. No accusations, but it sure would explain a lot--from the Bush League's neglect of dire warnings leading up to 911, to the infamous "trifecta" joke, to the continuing coverup of the "intelligence breakdown" that looks more and more like a failure of the Bush administration to act on the adequate intelligence that had been gathered and presented.

PNAC, Project for the New American Century, was organized in 1997 by Zionist neo-cons Robert Kagen and William Kristol. It is funded by three foundations closely tied to Persian Gulf oil and the weapons and defense industries.

Members of PNAC included Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Jeb Bush and Paul Wolfowitz, a director of the organization.

All signed a statement of principles, one of which was to promote "American global leadership" with special emphasis on Arab countries. Another was to "transform" the U.S. military with huge increases in defense spending.

Here's the chilling kicker: To convince the American people to spend extra billions for defense instead of on Social Security, Medicare, etc., PNAC suggested it would take a "catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." (PNAC's exact words.)

Of course even the most cynical of the chickenhawks wouldn't have deliberately sacrificed the World Trade Center for the sake of their war mandate (would they?), but given the number of lives they've already squandered in Afghanistan and Iraq, it's conceivable that they might have turned a blind eye to an indefinite terrorist attack involving a few airplanes. I hope Rose's fears (and my own) are misplaced. I hope the Bush League can do something to reassure us all that they aren't that sick. But I won't hold my breath.

The Bush Administration's Top 40 Lies about War and Terrorism

Here is a handy compilation of the Bush League's biggest whoppers about the War on Terrorism. Plenty of ammo here to piss off your neocon friends!

GOP chums give new meaning to the term 'secret ballot'

Let's have an election. I'll provide the voting machine. You push the red button to vote for my friend, or the green button to vote for his opponent. When the polls close, my machine will announce the totals. You will have no way to tell as you exit the voting booth whether your vote was accurately recorded; and since there are no paper ballots, there can be no recount. You'll just have to trust my machines. And don't bother asking to see their inner workings; that's a trade secret. I make these things for a living, you know. I can assure you, they work very well. But just in case, every machine has a modem built in. That way, if anything goes wrong on election day, I can dial in and fix it on the spot.

Think this is satire? Think again. All over the country, a common reaction to the Florida 2000 debacle is installation of electronic voting machines that leave no paper trail and are controlled by computers whose programming is not available for inspection.

And the threat of fraud is far from hypothetical. Writing for the Smirking Chimp, Thom Hartmann summarizes a number of surprise Republican wins, all tallied in whole or in part by these inscrutable computers--including a few crucial races that gave the GOP the Senate in 2000.

The machines just happen to be made by companies with close ties to the GOP and the religious right; in fact, one candidate--Chuck Hagel of Nebraska--"left his job as head of an electronic voting machine company to run as a long-shot candidate for the U.S. Senate." Guess whose electronic voting machines gave him "stunning" upset victories in both the Republican primary and the general election?

Let's review. The programming of the voting machines is secret. There is no way for the voter to know his vote was correctly registered, and no way to verify the count when it's done. The head of the company that made the machines runs for office, and defies the pollsters not once but twice when his own machines declare him the winner.

There's a quote popularly attributed to Josef Stalin: "The people who vote decide nothing; the people who count the votes decide everything." Evidence that Stalin actually said this is slim to nonexistent. But whoever said it, it's true enough. It is essential to democracy that we vote in private--and no less essential that we count the votes in public.