BeggarsCanBeChoosers.com

By MARC MCDONALD

"At least he got a stroke in, which is more than the girl he drowned could manage. He should be rotting in jail, not making law. Disgusting."
----Geoff, a commenter at RightWingNews.com

For normal, sane Americans, the news that Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was hospitalized on Saturday after suffering a seizure was a cause for prayers and concern.

But if you browsed many of the right-wing blogs on Saturday, you'd find that they were full of jokes, insults and sarcastic remarks about Kennedy's hospitalization. (This, despite the fact that many of the big right-wing blogs had warnings against posting offensive comments about Kennedy).

Despite such warnings, the comments on right-wing blogs were full of vile posts that featured sick humor.

For example, an anonymous poster at the right-wing blog Gateway Pundit wrote, "One Liberal down! Looks like he (TED) may have to answer for his drunk driving accident in the 60's. Maybe the SUBJECTS of MA will get there (sic) SECOND Ammendment (sic) rights BACK."

The sentiments were similar, over at RightWingNews.com. There, "guest blogger" Kathy Shaidle (of the blog "Five Feet of Fury") expressed annoyance over the media's "eulogies" for Kennedy. In a post under the headline, "Oh pu-leeeeeeze," she wrote, "In the midst of this embarrassing, wrongheaded preemptive media eulogizing of Edward Kennedy, at least spare a thought for the woman he killed."

Meanwhile, Geoff, a commenter on RightWingNews.com wrote, "At least he got a stroke in, which is more than the girl he drowned could manage. He should be rotting in jail, not making law. Disgusting."

Another RightWingNews.com commenter named Lord Locksley chimed in with the remark, "They don't call him 'Nazi Joe's last big mistake' for nothing."

The hatefest continued over at the right-wing Sister Toldjah blog. There, commenter Severian wrote a hate-filled post that seemed to take issue with another poster's remark that he didn't "wish a fellow human being any ill."

Severian responded:
"Just a philosophical question here, at what point is it justifiable to wish a fellow human being ill? What you say is a nice platitude, but it also reeks of more than a touch of holier than though attitude. Would it have been OK to wish Hitler ill? Yes, no? How about Ted Bundy? Saddam Hussein? Osama Bin Laden? How many reprehensible traits and acts does one have to commit before it is OK to wish them ill? Ted Kennedy, while said to be a charmer and nice guy in person, has been personally responsible for creating some of the most toxic political environments on Capitol Hill, lynching Bork among others, and is responsible for much of the ill will and problems we see coming out of the liberal Dem side of the aisle. While perhaps not rising to the level of actively wishing him ill or trying to harm him, I’ll be honest enough to admit that when his day comes, as Mark Twain said, his will be an obituary I’ll read with approval."

Actually, none of the above hate-mongering should be surprising in the least, as anyone who has ever listened to the filth spewed out daily by the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, and the rest of the Right-Wing Noise Machine.

Nor should we be surprised by the glee the right-wing expresses when Democrats have misfortunes. We've seen this happen again and again.

Recall the hostage crisis episode in November, when a distraught man wearing what appeared to be a bomb walked into the campaign office of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire. Then, as now, the right-wing blogosphere was full of laughter and sick jokes about the incident.

I have to admit, I never really understood the right-wing sense of humor.

Like when Ronald Reagan joked in 1964 about the 17 million people who then went to bed hungry every night in America, saying that "they were all on a diet."

Or when Rush Limbaugh called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton a "dog."

Or when George W. Bush yucked it up over the issue of the non-existent WMDs in Iraq during a "comedy" skit in the Oval Office.

Labels: GOP, Ted Kennedy, wingnuts

By MARC MCDONALD

The United Technologies Corporation, which made a $3 billion bid for Diebold on Sunday, is a GOP-friendly company, if its campaign contributions are anything to go by.

Watchdog group CorpWatch notes that in the 2002 election, 62 percent of United Technologies' $699,242 in campaign contributions went to the GOP. In the 2004 election cycle, United Technologies made $788,011 in campaign contributions, with 64 percent of that going to the GOP.

The maker of the Black Hawk helicopter, United Technologies is a major military contractor. In 2005, it received over $5 billion in military contracts.

Diebold is one of the biggest makers of voting machines. The company has been the focus of controversy in recent years.

In 2003, Diebold's then-chief executive, Walden O'Dell, sent out a fund-raising letter in which he said he was "committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to (President Bush) next year."

Labels: Diebold, GOP, United Technologies

By MARC MCDONALD

Remember the "What would Jesus do?" campaign that was popular back in the 1990s? It was a slogan used by many Christians as a reminder to follow Jesus in their daily lives.

These days, Republicans have borrowed the phrase as part of their creepy, ongoing deification of their hero, Ronald Reagan.

Recently, right-wing hacks Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham have been touting the Heritage Foundation's "What would Reagan do?" campaign.

The "What would Reagan do?" slogan (often abbreviated as "WWRD") recently took off like wildfire across the right-wing Web. Wingnut bloggers pontificate on the subject and online merchants peddle WWRD T-shirts and other products.

The Republicans can't seem to get enough of Reagan these days. If you listen to a GOP presidential debate, the participants endlessly sing Reagan's praises and proclaim themselves to be the most worthy candidate to carry the Gipper's legacy.

Personally, I find all this Reagan worship rather creepy and disturbing. But what disturbs me the most is that none of it is based on reality. Indeed, the GOP's view of Reagan is based on myth and fantasy.

Take for example, a recent article by Heritage Foundation official Rebecca Hagelin.

Hagelin writes:
"Because Reagan did more than simply take strong, effective positions -- he took positions based on the U.S. Constitution -- principles which never change. Principles as relevant to today’s issues as they were when penned by our nation’s founders. He proved that timeless values are just that ... timeless."

Wow, that's quite heady praise for a flip-flopping, opportunistic politician who started out his career as a Democrat. Take a closer look, though, and you'll see that Hagelin's praise is the sort of cult-like, Kool-Aid-drinking devotion that is totally disconnected from reality.

First of all, there's this Heritage Foundation fantasy that Reagan "took positions based on the U.S. Constitution."

The reality is that Reagan (like George W. Bush) subverted the Constitution and used it like a piece of toilet paper.

Take the Iran-Contra affair, in which the White House ignored the Constitution and secretly sold weapons to terrorists in Iran and then illegally used the money to fund the Contras, the thugs who were trying to overthrow the democratically elected government of Nicaragua.

Although Reagan praised the Contras as "Freedom Fighters," they were in fact nothing more than terrorists who routinely slaughtered civilian men, women and children.

After the Lebanese magazine Ash-Shiraa exposed the Iran-Contra affair, Reagan lied through his teeth and denied the whole story. (So much for the GOP's portrayal of Reagan as a man of honesty and integrity).

Of course, we'll never know the full story of Iran-Contra. The White House team shredded thousands of papers that documented the affair. But what we do know is that Reagan had utter contempt for the Constitution and the rule of law.

In a 1987 special, journalist Bill Moyers documented the whole sordid affair, in "The Secret Government: The Constitution in Crisis," which you can view here. Watching it, I felt ashamed to be an American.

If the wingnuts insist on worshipping their hero Reagan, that's their business. But to try to portray Reagan as a paragon of honesty and integrity (and as a president who respected the Constitution) is a nauseating lie.

Labels: GOP, right-wing lies, Ronald Reagan

By MANIFESTO JOE

So you've enjoyed that turkey and dressing, and lingered by the fireplace with family members over a glass of Chardonnay. But if you're a Web addict, you eventually log on and check out what's happening on the blogs. If you drop by this one, I'll be your Jeremiah this Christmas Day, and with a little Dickens added for flavor.

As I write this, there are hundreds of thousands of disabled Americans who are waiting, sometimes for years, to get on Social Security disability. In the era of Bush, the system is no longer funded in a way in which claims can be processed in a reasonable time.

The New York Times recently reported:

Steadily lengthening delays in the resolution of Social Security disability claims have left hundreds of thousands of people in a kind of purgatory, waiting as long as three years for a decision. ...

Some have lost homes, declared bankruptcy or even died, say lawyers representing claimants and officials of the Social Security Administration. ...

"It's been hell," said Belinda Virgil, 44. She waited three years for her hearing in November and is awaiting the outcome. Virgil is tethered to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day and has no home of her own. "I've got no money for Christmas, I move from house to house, and I'm getting really depressed," she said. ...

State agencies initially turn down about two-thirds of the roughly 2.5 million disability applicants each year. But of the more than 575,000 who appeal ... two-thirds eventually win a reversal.

The problem is that there simply aren't enough appeals judges to handle the caseload. The backlog is now 755,000, compared to 311,000 in 2000. (Hey, wasn't that the year Bush was appointed president?)

Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses? Many of these people couldn't survive in either of those settings.

So, what's being done? Not much. The Times continued:

The agency wants to hire at least 150 appeals judges, but the plan has been delayed by the standoff between Congress and the White House over domestic appropriations. Without new hirings, federal officials predict even longer waits ...

... in November, the Democratic-controlled Congress voted a $275 million increase for the agency. But Bush vetoed the bill, calling it profligate. (So, like, he knows that word?)

I'm sure Bush is enjoying his turkey and dressing today. Too bad he's never had to go down to the local mission house to get it.

OK, I'm nearly done playing Jeremiah, and Dickens, too. Merry Christmas -- enjoy the rest of the day, in its true spirit. I, for one, go back to work tomorrow, thankful that I am able to do so. These are grim times for those who are not.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, U.S. economic crisis

By MARC MCDONALD

The most bizarre statement made by any GOP candidate in Wednesday's Republican debate in Iowa was made when Rudy Giuliani responded to a question about how America can reduce its crushing government deficit.

What was Giuliani's solution?

Was it ending corporate welfare (which costs America $300 billion a year)?

Was it rolling back George W. Bush's fiscally reckless tax cuts for the rich?

Was it stopping the disastrous Iraq War, which costs America $11 billion a month?

Nope, it was none of the above.

To reduce our nation's crushing deficit, Giuliani proposed cutting taxes. Specifically cutting corporate taxes.

Giuliani didn't propose cutting taxes for hard-pressed working class or middle class people in this country. No, his priority is with corporations (most of which already avoid paying any taxes at all, thanks to loopholes).

Never mind that the whole idea of cutting taxes to reduce deficits is an idiotic idea that has been repeatedly debunked ever since it was first proposed by Ronald Reagan in the 1980s.

I find it incredible that any candidate can still be calling for trickle-down economic policies, after the experience of three decades has shown that it simply doesn't work and it only leads to spiraling deficits.

And yet Giuliani and other GOP candidates can continue to propose such nonsense and get a free pass from the MSM.

I find it interesting how Giuliani seems to think that cutting corporate taxes should be a high priority for America. Between corporate welfare and tax loopholes, most corporations already get a free ride in this nation.

The tax burden in the U.S. over the years has been shifting from corporations to individual taxpayers (as has been documented by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele). In the 1950s, corporations paid around half of all taxes. Today, their burden has shrunk to less than 10 percent. In fact, today, 60 percent of all U.S. corporations pay zero income tax. Under a Giuliani administration, corporations can look forward to paying even less tax.

Labels: GOP, Rudy Giuliani, tax policy

By MARC MCDONALD

Did you know that there's a big conspiracy under way to undermine our nation and our Commander-In-Chief? The Liberals and other anti-American traitors are in on this conspiracy. So are America's own intelligence agencies.

Sounds pretty wacky, huh?

The sort of thing you'd read on one of the nutcase right-wing blogs.

However, this latest wacky theory didn't emerge from the fringe blogosphere. It came out of the mouth of none other than John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

When U.S. intelligence services recently released a report concluding that Iran halted its nuclear arms program in 2003, sane people across the globe breathed a sigh of relief. Many of us felt that maybe, just maybe, this would head off the Bush regime's crazy, reckless march toward yet another bloody fiasco of a war in the Middle East.

However, NeoCons like Bolton are up in arms. Bolton has had a hard-on for war with Iran for years now. He's the sort of Republican who loves a nice, bloody war, as long as he gets to avoid doing any of the actual fighting himself (just as he did during the Vietnam War when he avoided combat by joining the National Guard, just like his buddy George W. Bush).

While the rest of us breathed a sigh of relief over the recent intelligence report, people like Bolton see it all as part of a big Liberal conspiracy.

Bolton, in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine alleged that the aim of the National Intelligence Estimate, was not to provide the latest intelligence on Iran, but instead to offer "politics disguised as intelligence."

Bolton labeled the report as a "quasi-putsch" by the intelligence agencies.

I used to think that such crazy conspiracy theories were limited to nutcases who write fringe right-wing blogs on the Web. (You know, the sort of blogs that claim that President Clinton once ordered a Mafia style hit on Vince Foster).

But these days, even top GOP figures are embracing the most bizarre and far-out crazy conspiracy theories. These people believe that anyone who dares speak out against their beloved Bush must be part of a giant Liberal conspiracy.

Here's a memo to Bolton and the rest of the nutcase fringe Right. Yes, there was indeed a "putsch" in America---and it occurred in 2000 when Bush and the NeoCons came to power via a massive fraud of an election.

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, Iran, John Bolton

By MARC MCDONALD

For 10 years, the AK-47 semiautomatic assault weapon used in the deadly Omaha mall shootings was illegal in America, after President Clinton signed the Federal Assault Weapons Ban in 1994. On Sept. 13, 2004, that ban came to an end, thanks to the GOP-led Congress.

Thanks to this idiotic decision, lethal weapons such as AK-47s, Uzis and TEC-9s returned to store shelves in America.

The AK-47 is not used for hunting (as it isn't accurate for long-range shooting). However, it is a excellent weapon to have if you are a psychopath who wishes to go to his local shopping mall and slaughter a bunch of innocent people.

It was the weapon used by Robert Hawkins on Wednesday at a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska, where he shot and killed five women and three men and then turned the gun on himself.

If the GOP retains the White House, or regains the Congress, in 2008, we can be assured that Republicans will continue to weaken what few remaining gun restrictions there still are on the books in this country. For example, we can kiss the Brady Bill, signed into law by President Clinton in 1993, goodbye.

Indeed, the current crop of GOP presidential candidates all seem to be outdoing themselves on the campaign trail, depicting themselves as foes of any and all gun restrictions. And as long as our politicians are in the pocket of the powerful NRA, we can expect more gun tragedies in the years to come.

Labels: Congress, GOP, gun violence

By MARC MCDONALD

"Anyone care to bet the protagonist is a card-carrying member of the Democrat Party (aka nutroot) who is frustrated that Hillary hasn't personally defunded the War in Iraq yet? Might even be a member over at Daily Kos?"
---Rotarymunkey, commenter at MichelleMalkin.com

I have to admit, I never really understood the right-wing sense of humor.

Like when Ronald Reagan joked in 1964 about the 17 million people who then went to bed hungry every night in America, saying that "they were all on a diet."

Or when Rush Limbaugh called 13-year-old Chelsea Clinton a "dog."

Or when George W. Bush yucked it up over the issue of the non-existent WMDs in Iraq during a "comedy" skit in the Oval Office.

I don't know---maybe I just don't have much of a sense of humor, because I saw nothing funny about yesterday's hostage crisis, in which a distraught man wearing what appeared to be a bomb walked into the campaign office of Hillary Clinton in New Hampshire.

However, plenty of right-wing folks thought the whole episode was real funny. Take (please) the wingnuts who hang out at the blog of right-wing nutcase Michelle Malkin.

As of Friday night, Malkin's comments section was full of posters who were joking about the crisis and speculating about how the "liberal" media and the Democrats would conspire to spin the episode to Hillary's advantage.

A poster by the name of "Fodder Jack" seemed to find humor in the crisis, writing, "Maybe it is a last ditch effort by the press to get an interview with Hillary."

Another writer called "Reppac122" was (like many across the right-wing blogosphere) already using the occasion to attack the Clintons. "My cynical political thinking here is that the Clintons (yes, both of them) will use this horrible situation for their political benefit."

Another writer, using the handle, "RetFireman," raised the issue of conspiracy: "Now be honest...with all that has come out lately, and I am not saying it is staged, but how many people would be that surprised to find out at some later date that it was? Be honest with yourself, and consider who we are talking about."

Commenter "Eric CharlotteNC" sarcastically mocked Liberals in his post. "If our troops weren't in Iraq this never would have happened! Or maybe global warming got this guy very hot!"

"Blacktygrrrr" added his own two cents: "The bottom line is if the hostage taker is a liberal, he will be dismissed as deranged, since many liberals are deranged anyway."

"Rotarymunkey" had this to say: "Anyone care to bet the protagonist is a card-carrying member of the Democrat Party (aka nutroot) who is frustrated that Hillary hasn't personally defunded the War in Iraq yet? Might even be a member over at Daily Kos?"

And so it goes, on and on.

Of course, none of this comes as much of a surprise to those of us who are at all familiar with the vicious hatemongering in the right-wing blogosphere.

The scary thing is Malkin's blog supposedly has a policy of screening out "offensive" remarks. If the above comments weren't screened out, one can only wonder what truly deranged nutcase comments were deleted. The mind boggles.

I'm sure there are those who would argue that Malkin isn't responsible for the deranged posters who comment on her blog. But anyone familiar with Malkin's own writings knows that she herself is a truly psychotic nutcase whose babblings over the years have been far scarier than any of the comments above.

As prominent Malkin critic Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Malkin once wrote a book "defending the ethnicity-based imprisonment of innocent American citizens in internment camps."

As media watchdog site Media Matters pointed out, the mainstream media has given, on numerous occasions in the past, significant coverage to episodes in which controversial comments appeared on progressive blogs.

How much do you want to bet that the MSM ignores the right-wing hatemongering that appeared in the aftermath of the Clinton office hostage crisis?

Labels: GOP, Michelle Malkin, wingnuts

By MANIFESTO JOE

The signs are all there, beneath the jingoist bluster and superficial prosperity. George W. Babbitt still swaggers on the golf course and talks a great game, but it's getting tougher to make the mortgage payments on his family's $300,000 house. For his commute, the gas-guzzling Hummer has been traded in for a "sensible" Ford Taurus with leather seats.

And then, below, mostly out of sight, are the people who never had it that good, and never will. The ones who have no hope of "retiring." The ones who don't know how they can afford to make their old car pass the emissions test. The ones who would declare bankruptcy but don't know if they can qualify under the tougher new (Republican) laws. The ones who know the best bargains on navy beans and Vienna sausages.

Life in America has always been deodorized excrement for a certain minority among us.

But that minority is growing, and the middle class is feeling the pressure.

George W. Bush isn't solely responsible for U.S. descent into Third-World stagnation. But his policies have festively crowned all the economic royalism that went before him.

Food inflation is running far ahead of "core" inflation, at 4.4% (much higher for staples) compared to about 2%; yes, largely because of factors somewhat out of this administration's control, like fuel/transportation prices and rising demand from developing nations like China. But amid this, our "leaders" have been codifying policies that ever enrich the most fortunate among us, rather than make it easier for struggling people to eat and live halfway decent lives. The burden of living in America -- for health care, for a living wage, for transportation, for education, for anything that elevates people above mere brutish existence, is ever shifted upon those least able to pay.

How has this administration responded to the marginalization of America's working class? With the all the greed and conceit one would expect of economic royalists. Bush is the anti-FDR, even going beyond Reagan on that score. FDR was excoriated as a traitor to his class; no one could ever accuse Bush of that. He has devoted his entire political life to destroying all that FDR did for people who never had a "lock" on the better things in life, like little George always had. But then, what would one expect from a spoiled rich kid who got his childhood kicks killing frogs with strategically inserted firecrackers?

There have been far too many "outrages of the day" to account for all of them, but Citizens for Tax Justice has summed up the irresponsible fiscal policies of the Bush administration thusly, on Sept. 13:

"President George W. Bush has added $3 trillion to the national debt so far, despite inheriting a balanced budget when he took office in 2001. Since then, Congress has been forced to raise the statutory limit on the total amount the federal government is allowed to borrow four times -- in 2002, 2003, 2004, and 2006. Yesterday, the Senate Finance Committee approved legislation to raise the debt limit a fifth time, to an unprecedented $9.815 trillion, to prevent the federal government from defaulting on its debts and being unable to borrow any more. In contrast, when Bush took office, the debt limit was $5.950 trillion -- $3.9 trillion less than the new amount."

This was done in part by foisting a new Reaganomics policy on the country, with big tax cuts for everyone with the ability to pay, and little or nothing for anyone else. And then, obviously, by starting a totally elective foreign war.

What this amounts to is a tax on our futures. And the people who put George W. Bush in office clearly don't intend to be the ones who pay it. Even if things turn a little rough for them, 1930s-style, they can "afford" the rent-a-cops, the political consultants, the local government functionaries, the National Guard units, and if necessary, the brown-shirted goons, to help them keep their "rightful, destined" positions in life.

Does any of this sound familiar? Mexico and many other Third World societies come to mind. I wonder: Will George W. Bush ultimately go down in history as OUR Third-World strongman? Our Batista? Our Franco? Our Mubutu Sese-Seko? Our Suharto? Our Ferdinand Marcos?

At the same time as the economic screws are being tightened, the political ones are as well. The effective suspension of some Constitutional rights in the country, among other things, is an eerie tandem to the economic trend.

It's going to get worse. The news from countries like China, that have been buying U.S. Treasuries and have waning confidence in the dollar, gets grimmer all the time. There will come a day when there's no one left to borrow from.

The economic model for a Third-World country goes sort of like: 10% have about 90% of the effective wealth; about 30%, a precarious middle-class life; and the remaining 60% live in poverty.

I can foresee Canada soon having an illegal immigrant problem, what with the current trends in America. Hell, I'm ready to pack up and go now. Vamos, al norte! Any journalism jobs in Winnipeg? They aren't even building any fences on that border, not yet.

Jokes aside, many right-wingers would urge me to go, today. But this is my country, too, and I'm old enough to remember when it was a better place. I can remember when people who made $8 an hour (or the inflation-adjusted equivalent) were interested in organizing unions, not being duped by Bill O'Reilly or Rush Limbaugh. I can remember when many of them seemed to understand who it really was that was screwing them.

It's all looking way too Mexico, stolen elections and all. When they said it can happen here, they were thinking of far worse things. But the Third World looks bad enough.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, U.S. economic crisis

By MARC MCDONALD

They were both petulant, arrogant, and convinced that they were doing God's work. They were both out-of-control, power-mad leaders. As youngsters, they both enjoyed torturing small animals. Both spent their ruling years engaged in horrific wars against Islamic nations. And despite their cruel, bloodthirsty and savage ways, both have fanatical supporters who defend their actions to this day.

Who am I talking about?

George W. Bush and Vlad The Impaler.

Vlad, who is believed to have served as the inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula novel was, in real life, a 15th century prince of the East European state of Wallachia (now part of Romania).

Like Bush, Vlad was born into a background of wealth, power and privilege. Like Bush's dad, Vlad's father, Vlad II Dracul, was a head of state, as well. Both father and son spent their reigns engaged in bloody wars against Muslim nations (the Ottoman Empire, in the case of Vlad).

Even as youngsters, George W. Bush and Vlad The Impaler had creepy similarities in their lives. Both shared an enthusiasm for torturing small animals.

The 1990 book, Dracula, Prince of Many Faces: His Life and His Times points out that as a youngster, Vlad amused himself by torturing and mutilating small animals:

"...he could not cure himself of the evil habit of catching mice and having birds bought at the marketplace, so that he could punish them by impalement."

As The New York Times reported, in a May 21, 2000 article, George W. Bush also enjoyed torturing small animals as a youngster. "We were terrible to animals," Bush childhood friend Terry Throckmorton was quoted as saying. Throckmorton described how Bush and his friends treated frogs they found on the Bush family estate.

"Everybody would get BB guns and shoot them," Throckmorton said. "Or we'd put firecrackers in the frogs and throw them and blow them up."

The life stories of George W. Bush and Vlad The Impaler share other similarities. Taking a look at their time in power, one can't help but notice the eerie similarities in both rulers' bloody, savage wars against Muslim nations.

The atrocities that occurred in Vlad The Impaler's military campaigns against the Muslim nations are well documented. Reading about these atrocities, one can't help but be reminded of the various horrors of Bush's war in Iraq, including the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse case, as well as the use of flesh-melting white phosphorous chemical weapons against the population of Fallujah.

Both Bush and Vlad, of course, were advocates of torture during their time in power. Bush enthusiastically embraced waterboarding. And Vlad, of course, was a big fan of the torture technique that gave him his nickname ("The Impaler").

Another similarity is that Bush and Vlad were both famous as tough, law-and-order rulers (as long as those accused of breaking the law weren't wealthy cronies). In Vlad's time, the peasants were so frightened of breaking the law, that it is said that one could leave a bag of gold on the street and return to find it untouched the next day.

Of course, "law and order" has long been one of Bush's favorite campaign themes, dating back to his time as Texas governor. In Bush's five years as governor, Texas executed 152 prisoners, by far the highest total for any state and more than any other governor in modern American history.

One final notable similarity between George W. Bush and Vlad The Impaler is how both men have fanatical followers who continue to passionately defend their legacies to this day.

While Vlad is recognized in the West as a bloodthirsty monster and tyrant, many people in Romania regard Vlad as a national hero to this day. As Dracula, Prince of Many Faces points out, oral Romanian folklore made Vlad "a national hero, a kind of George Washington of Romanian history."

Compare that to today's worship of Bush by the nutcase right-wing fringe. From Fox News to hatewing radio to the right-wing blogosphere, Bush has a fanatical following that throws a temper tantrum any time someone dares to criticize their beloved hero.

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, right-wing

By MARC MCDONALD

George W. Bush raised a lot of eyebrows when he emphatically stated that the U.S. does not engage in torture. It was an ironic comment, especially in view of the White House's fierce lobbying in 2005 against a congressional drive to outlaw torture.


In fact, torture has been well documented at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and other U.S. facilities. Torture techniques range from the practice of "water boarding" (which simulates the effect of drowning) to vicious beatings. Other torture techniques include the pressing of lit cigarettes against detainees' flesh. Prisoners were also reportedly forced to walk on broken glass and barbed wire.

Although the Bush White House has embraced torture, it's important to note that torture is nothing new in American history.

For example, torture was widely employed by the Reagan-backed Central American death squads, which massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians in Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Nicaragua in the 1980s. One secret CIA manual, from 1983, offered advice in various torture techniques.

If Bush really believes the U.S. doesn't engage in torture, he really ought to bone up on his history. Bush wouldn't have to venture far from his Crawford ranch to find ample evidence---after all, nearby Waco knows a thing or two about torture.

For example, in 1916, a mentally retarded African-American youth, Jesse Washington, was arrested on the flimsiest of evidence in the murder of a Waco-area woman. After a short sham trial, the 17-year-old youth was dragged out of a courtroom by the trial spectators. He was slashed repeatedly with knives, castrated, and had his fingers and toes cut off. Then, before a crowd of 15,000 in downtown Waco, he was burned alive at the stake. City officials did nothing to stop the lynching, which was observed by the mayor and chief of police.

But I suppose it's unfair to single out Waco for this atrocity. In fact, Washington's torture-murder was only one of tens of thousands of lynchings that occurred during what historians have referred to as the era of "spectacle lynchings" from the 1880s to the 1920s. In many cases, the victims were tortured for hours, before they were soaked with kerosene and set on fire by cheering mobs. Like the Washington murder, many of the lynchings occurred in broad daylight, in crowded downtown areas, while city officials looked on, or even participated.

This ugly chapter of widespread torture has been largely forgotten by Americans today. Taking a cue from Stalinist Russia, the U.S. has carefully airbrushed away its atrocities when presenting the official, sanitized version of American history.

Some people might argue that, although thousands of lynchings did occur, they all happened a long time ago. They might wish to tell this to the family of James Byrd, Jr. In 1998, Byrd was chained to a pickup by three white supremacists and dragged to his death in Jasper, Texas.

In the aftermath of the Jasper lynching, a grass-roots effort in Texas urged the state to pass a hate crimes act to help prevent future atrocities. However, the bill failed to pass in the Texas Legislature after then-Governor George W. Bush refused to support the bill.

When Bush claims that the U.S. doesn't engage in torture, he's simply carrying on a rich tradition of denial and suppression of the truth that is as American as apple pie.

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, torture

By MARC McDONALD

I will give the conservatives credit for one thing: they are simply more aggressive than liberals in fighting for what they want.

We all saw this during the 2000 election. Mobs of GOP thugs ferociously fought for George W. Bush, while the Democrats passively sat around, waiting for the phone to ring.

We've also seen this with the Democratically controlled Congress since 2006. Despite facing a White House occupant with approval ratings in the toilet, the Democrats seem impotent and unable to truly challenge Bush and force an end to the disastrous Iraq War.

The GOP's tendency to fight tooth and claw for what they believe in extends to the popular online Wikipedia encyclopedia.

Although Wikipedia is open to edits from anyone and everyone, a casual glance at the site's political articles reveals a distinct right-wing bias.

How can this be?

It's because conservatives are simply more aggressive and are willing to spend the time and effort into putting a right-wing slant into Wikipedia's articles.

I first noticed this trend a year ago. I was casually browsing through Wikipedia and I came across the main article on Bill Clinton.

Out of curiosity, I did a search for how many times Osama bin Laden appeared in the article. Although Wikipedia is an organic entity and articles change, day by day, on that particular day, bin Laden's name was mentioned 26 times in Clinton's article.

I then did a similar search on the main article for George W. Bush. The number of times bin Laden's name was mentioned: a grand total of zero.

I brought this topic up in the "discussion" area of the two articles and the problem has since been rectified.

But I'm sure my experience is not unique for anyone who has spent any time, browsing through Wikipedia's articles.

There is a definitely right-wing slant to most politically oriented articles at Wikipedia. And personally, I think it's simply because the right-wingers are more aggressive in their efforts to edit the site.

Many of these right-wingers apparently spend countless hours on Wikipedia, carefully sanitizing the articles of their heroes. A current case in point: Wikipedia's main article on Rush Limbaugh.

Anyone who has paid any attention at all to the news lately is aware that Limbaugh is currently in hot water over idiotic remarks he made on his radio show on Wednesday in which he called service members who oppose the war in Iraq "phony soldiers."

It's probably one of the biggest controversies of Limbaugh's career (in a career that has been full of controversies from idiotic, bigoted, racist comments Limbaugh has made over the years).

But while Limbaugh's comment has created a firestorm of controversy, you can't read about it on his Wikipedia article. Although one contributor added the "phony soldier" episode to Limbaugh article on Friday, it was promptly deleted by another contributor, who explained his move by saying, "one out-of-context quote is definitely not encyclopedic," (an explanation, by the way, that reflects Limbaugh's own back pedaling attempts to distance himself from his idiotic remarks).

Although Wikipedia features fluid, dynamic content that can change at any time, the "phony soldier" comment has been absent from Limbaugh's article since Friday (even as it has become one of the most-discussed stories in America everywhere from workplace water coolers to the media to the halls of Congress).

But my point in writing this piece isn't necessarily to take Wikipedia to task for having a right-wing slant in its articles. Rather, I would hope that Liberals and Independents (as well as any fair-minded, intelligent, rational adults) get busy and not allow the Bush-loving NeoCons to turn Wikipedia into an online version of AM hate radio.

Labels: GOP, Republicans, Rush Limbaugh

By MANIFESTO JOE

It's so damned comforting that Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, took the initiative in guarding our republic from those slimy traitors at MoveOn.org. He could perhaps have been doing other things, like figuring out how to get U.S. troops out of this quagmire of a civil war in Iraq. But he has his priorities. Defending a man of impeccable truth such as Gen. David Petraeus just had to go on the senator's front burner.

For those who hadn't heard or read, the Senate this week passed a symbolic resolution, 72-25, condemning the "General Betray Us?" ad that MoveOn put in the Sept. 10 edition of The New York Times. Cornyn was the sponsor.

At a time when there are U.S.-sponsored mercenaries killing people in Iraq, a federal investigation into alleged gun-running by the same organization, and a general collapse of the situation there, it's reassuring that the senator is so determinedly standing up for America and supporting our troops -- well, at least those above the rank of full colonel who toe the party line.

I note again that the senator is preparing to stand for re-election next November. How could Texans imagine voting for anyone else, with things going so splendidly?

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: GOP, John Cornyn, Manifesto Joe

By MANIFESTO JOE

It's not surprising that a debate under the auspices of Fox News would be hostile turf for the Republicans' sole presidential candidate who opposes the Iraq war. But I think even U.S. Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas, was taken aback by the shivs that were being drawn Wednesday night in New Hampshire.

Being an old night-shift, burned-out journalist, I was stuck at a desk and didn't get to watch the debate live. But I read the accounts, and Paul apparently did an OK job of defending himself. But there's so much more he could have said in rebuttal.

The sharpest exchange of the night may have come not between Paul and one of his rivals, but between Paul and Fox News propagandist Chris Wallace, one of the "questioners." The Associated Press reported that Paul:

... made the case for withdrawing troops. That drew a sharp challenge from Chris Wallace ... who asked whether the United States should take its marching orders from al-Qaida.

"No! We should take our marching orders from our Constitution," Paul shouted back, pointing his pen at Wallace for emphasis. "We should not go to war without a declaration" by Congress.

That was a fair counterpoint, but it could have been much better. Paul may have been taken aback by the impudence of the questioner, who seems to have learned right-wing distortion tactics at Sean Hannity's knee. And in the heat of debate, sometimes one doesn't think of the right thing to have said until later.

It seems to me he should have said something more like this:

"No, Chris. We should take our marching orders from the American people, who in polls oppose continuation of this war by 65 to 70 percent. But you miss another crucial point.

"Al-Qaida wants the U.S. to stay in Iraq. There's nothing we could do for the next few years that would be more to their advantage. Sure, let's squander tens of billions more dollars, and thousands more American lives, on a civil war that we're inflaming rather than resolving. Let's deplete our military capability to act against terrorists elsewhere in the world, where it might actually count. Let's just flat-out 'break' our armed forces, when you come down to it. Osama bin Laden must be laughing gleefully in whatever hole he's hiding in.

"We're doing damage to our national defense, and to our reputation in the world community, that will take at least a generation to repair. If you want us to take marching orders from al-Qaida, by all means, let's 'stay the course.' "

Just as my own aside to this, it looks increasingly like the U.S. is being led into what amounts to rope-a-dope. Old-time boxing fans, what few of you are left: Remember Ali vs. Foreman, October 1974, the "Rumble in the Jungle?" There's no way a frightening puncher like the 25-year-old George Foreman should have lost that match to a 32-year-old, somewhat over-the-hill Muhammad Ali. But he was overconfident, showed classic hubris -- and lost entirely on tactics.

Not that the geopolitical/military situation is that simple. But I think there's a telling analogy there. If you're wearing yourself out beating on an opponent, and yet he's still there, inviting you in for more, you're probably doing something wrong. It's time to step back and rethink this.

Anyway, Ron Paul hasn't been acquitting himself badly in these debates, but I would take a different tack if I were him. Not that it's very important to me. I obviously want a Democrat to win next year, or I wouldn't be writing on this blog.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: GOP, Manifesto Joe, Ron Paul

By MARC McDONALD

At first glance, the Fox News Channel appears to be a big success these days. Since launching in 1996, Fox has come out of nowhere to lead the pack in cable news ratings.

To the delight of conservatives, Fox News pumps out a GOP-friendly message 24 hours a day across America. Between Fox News, Drudge and HateWing radio, Republicans have a variety of outlets these days to spread the word.

I hate to rain on Fox News' parade, but there is still one major nagging problem with this "news" channel's efforts to get out the GOP message.

That is: Fox News long ago blew its chance to be a credible news source.

Oh sure, Fox News is the gospel truth to the dwindling 29 percenters who still support Bush.

But to the rest of America, Fox News is increasingly seen as a joke these days.

The fact is, Fox News is simply preaching to the choir these days. And, as the GOP has increasingly lost its luster since 2000, it's clear that Fox is going to have a smaller and smaller choir to preach to in coming years.

Simply preaching to the choir is clearly not what Rupert Murdoch had in mind when he launched Fox News. But in order to go beyond that limited audience, Murdoch needed to build Fox as a news outlet that at least had the appearance of being credible.

Really, what Fox News should have done from the beginning is work hard to build its credibility image. Then, it could have effectively sneaked the partisan GOP content in occasionally through the back door. That, in turn, would have led to a winning of hearts and minds across America.

But Fox News blew it when it completely ignored the issue of credibility and instead just rammed through blatant GOP viewpoints to its audience 24 hours a day.

Liberals often fret that Fox News is nothing more than an outlet for GOP propaganda. But that dignifies what Fox is actually doing. Truly effective propaganda subtly changes people's minds without them even realizing that they're being propagandized.

That's clearly not the case with Fox News. Few people's minds are being changed by the heavy-handed GOP sludge pumped out by Fox News these days. And to Liberals and Independents (and indeed, the vast majority of clear-thinking rational adults) Fox News is nothing more than a joke these days.

What has to be most troubling to Fox News is the fact that credibility is by far the most valuable asset that a news outlet can have these days. And once you've blown your credibility, it's really pretty much impossible to ever get it back. The latter is especially true these days when watchdog sites like Media Matters are only a mouse click away.

The ironic thing is, if Fox News had strived for at least the appearance of credibility from the beginning, it would today be a much more effective tool for spreading the GOP's message. Instead, I would suspect most Americans will never take Fox News seriously again.

Labels: Fox News, GOP, mainstream media

By MARC McDONALD

The trapping of six miners in a Utah coal mine collapse is the latest coal industry disaster to occur since George W. Bush took office. Since 2000, Bush has cut funding for mine safety enforcement by $15 million and stacked the Mine Safety and Health Administration with representatives of corporate interests.

Coal mining deaths have increased sharply in the past few years. 2006 was the deadliest year in a decade for coal miners.

As the AFL-CIO notes, 47 coal miners were killed on the job last year, a 210 percent increase over 2005, when 22 coal miners died on the job. 2006 was marked by several major disasters, including a Jan. 2 explosion that killed 12 coal miners in Sago Mine in West Virginia.

Although times are perilous for coal miners, it's a different story for America's coal companies. For example, 2005 was a record year for revenue and profits for St. Louis–based Peabody Energy Corp., the world's largest private-sector coal producer. In 2005, Peabody recorded revenues of $4.64 billion, up about 28 percent from 2004.

As WSWS.org points out, the "Bush administration has stacked (the Mine Safety and Health Administration) with former coal managers who have unashamedly tailored the agency’s policies to meet the profit needs of the operators."

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, worker safety

By MARC McDONALD

Once upon a time, it was easy to be a GOP propagandist.

Up until the mid-1990s, Republicans could spew out lies all day long and rarely had to worry about any watchdogs holding them accountable. Oh sure, there were a few obscure leftist print publications here and there, but they had tiny circulations and were often difficult to come by.

Back then, the GOP propagandists certainly didn't have to worry about the corporate mainstream media keeping them honest. Indeed, the likes of CNN, The Wall Street Journal, and even The New York Times were quite happy to carry the GOP's water.

With the dawn of the Web, it began to dawn on the GOP propagandists that they were no longer able to spew out lies without being challenged.

Suddenly, anyone could set up a Web site for relatively little cost and effort and instantly have a potential worldwide audience.

GOP propagandists like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly soon discovered, to their horror, that they could no longer peddle their daily lies and bullshit and have no one to challenge them.

This, I believe, is the real reason that the likes of O'Reilly and Limbaugh have been attacking sites like Daily Kos and events like the latter's YearlyKos convention. And despite O'Reilly's boasts of success in countering Daily Kos, it's obvious that he is scared shitless these days (as evidenced by his hysterical, over-the-top denunciations of the site).

O'Reilly and Limbaugh and their ilk have found that everything they say these days is going to be picked apart, analyzed and fact-checked by the progressive Web. As a result, the GOP serial liars have been exposed for the frauds that they really are.

Watchdog sites like Media Matters terrify the GOP propagandists. The latter have discovered that once they tell a lie, it is promptly dissected and debunked and then lives forever on the Web---only a mouse click away for any truth seeker.

The old GOP propagandists' old tricks no longer work in cyberspace. No longer can GOP liars like Dick Cheney fall back on their usual tactics (like claiming they were misquoted). On today's Web, your words live forever in easy-to-access audio and video files that let people hear your actual quotes first-hand.

The dawn of the Web gave the ordinary people a voice that, for the first time in history, could potentially rival the traditional corporate media. Indeed, Daily Kos, with its millions of visitors, does rival the likes of Fox News in audience size. And YearlyKos sums up everything that the GOP/Fox News/Wingnut crowd hates about today's new era of media democracy.

However, the Web hasn't yet succeeded in ending ignorance in America. For every Daily Kos or BuzzFlash, there are wingnut sites that still spew out White House propaganda and talking points on a daily basis. Unfortunately, the Web can transmit lies and ignorance just as quickly as it sends out the truth.

But on the whole, the Web has been a boon for those of us who've long been disappointed in the failure of the corporate MSM to bring the truth to the people. As long as the progressive Web is around, the GOP propagandists will no longer have a stranglehold on the nation's political discourse, as they did as recently as the mid-1990s.

Which bring me to a final point: how long can this golden age last? I've never been one for conspiracy theories. But I just can't believe that the nation's ruling elite are going to allow this state of affairs to continue forever.

People like George W. Bush and his billionaire allies have utter contempt for democracy and a truly free exchange of ideas. No doubt, at some point, they will attempt to crack down on the progressive Web. I suspect they'll even give this crackdown a friendly-sounding, market-tested Orwellian name like "The Internet Freedom Act."

But until that day comes, let's enjoy the likes of Daily Kos, Progressive Daily Beacon, BuzzFlash, Crooks and Liars, OpEdNews.com and the rest of the progressive Web, which have ushered in a Golden Era of truth in America.

Labels: GOP, progressives, wingnuts

By MARC McDONALD

Possibly more than any other writer on the Web, right-wing blogger Michelle Malkin constantly refers to all the hate mail and threats she receives. In the eyes of her followers, this has enhanced her reputation and made her into a sort of right-wing hero for the truth, in her ongoing battle against liberals.

There's only one problem. Malkin isn't exactly the most reliable and trustworthy writer online. Frankly, I don't trust anything she writes.

The latest round of Malkin's claims of hate speech and threats began recently when Fox News' Bill O'Reilly compared the liberal Daily Kos to the Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.

O'Reilly based his tirade on a tiny, cherry-picked handful of anonymous comments left on Daily Kos (a site with millions of daily visitors, all of whom are free to post comments).

Blogger Glenn Greenwald, among others, responded to O'Reilly's lunacy, pointing out that if you go to the site of Malkin (a frequent guest host on O'Reilly's program) you'll encounter loads of vile hate speech in her comments section. In Malkin's case, however, this really shouldn't be surprising. After all, as Greenwald notes, Malkin once wrote a book "defending the ethnicity-based imprisonment of innocent American citizens in internment camps."

In response to Greenwald's charges, Malkin has fallen back on a tactic that she's used before: she trots out the claim that she herself has been the victim of all kinds of terrible, violent hate speech and threats.

As she wrote in a July 26 piece:

"If you're going to get into it, the qualitative difference between blog comments on liberal blogs and my blogs is Grand Canyon-wide."

I really don't believe anything that Malkin writes and frankly I have doubts about her claims of getting inundated with hate speech and threats.

Am I saying that Malkin and other right-wing bloggers basically make up anonymous comments to try to make liberals look bad?

Well, not necessarily. But I wouldn't put it past any right-wing site. And I simply don't believe that liberals are posting hate speech, or violent threats, on right-wing sites.

The fact is, we liberals don't do hate speech. We don't do racism. In fact, we're not big on threats or violence in general.

Hell, we're from the party of Jimmy Carter, who won the Nobel Peace Prize, for God's sake. It's hard to imagine George W. Bush ever winning a Nobel Peace Prize.

I know a lot of liberal Democrats. And I know a lot of conservative Republicans.

And frankly, in countless conversations I've had over the years, I've never heard a liberal make any kind of serious threat of violence against anyone, period. Violence is not our thing, after all.

I mean, we're not the ones who adore and cherish guns. We're not the ones who always throw a hissy fit when our paranoid little brains become convinced that the government is going to kick in our doors and take away our precious firearms. We're not the ones who demand the right to completely unrestricted access to guns (so that we can violently overthrow the U.S. government if we ever decide that we disagree with it).

Frankly, we're not big on guns, period. We'd rather solve our differences with reason and logic and rational debate.

I'm not sure where all these violent, hate-spewing bigots are coming from who supposedly post comments on Malkin's site. But if these are genuine comments, they're definitely not being posted by liberals.

By contrast, the right-wing hate-spewing comments that Greenwald references in his article sound EXACTLY like the sort of stuff I've been hearing FIRST-HAND from numerous self-described Republicans over the years. And in my conversations with fellow liberals over the years, I can tell I'm not alone.

I have heard, on numerous occasions, self-described Republicans advocating violence again Democratic politicians and liberals in general. I've heard them advocate violence against African-Americans. I've heard them say that America ought to "nuke the shit" out of the Middle East. And I heard them laugh during the Hurricane Katrina crisis, making comments like "Who cares? It was just a bunch of fucking niggers who drowned."

And on and on and on.

These are comments from self-described, George W. Bush-supporting Republicans that I've heard first-hand over the years. And I'm not alone. I've heard other progressives describe similar accounts of hate speech and violence-tinged rhetoric that they're heard first-hand from Republicans.

We're not talking about anonymous comments on a Web site here. We're talking about people we've listened to in person, first-hand---be it someone we encountered in the line at the supermarket, or our crazy right-wing uncle who spewed his venom during Thanksgiving dinner.

Over the years, I've had many discussions with liberals on every topic under the sun. And I have to say: I don't believe I've ever heard a liberal seriously advocate violence against anybody.

I've known a lot of bigots over the years. I've known a lot of people who threatened to use violence. And I've known a lot of racists.

True, not all of them were Republicans. But many were. And NOT ONE of them was a liberal Democrat.

Labels: Fox News, GOP, Michelle Malkin

By MARC McDONALD

Lately, the Republicans have been gloating over the fact that the Democratically led Congress has a low approval rating.

But if you stop and think about it, the GOP really has little reason to celebrate.

First of all, as Gallup has pointed out, Congress' approval ratings have been consistently low for decades---with only two exceptions: the Watergate era and in 1986 (when Congress' approval rating was at 40 percent). Indeed, the mainstream media has been irresponsible in its lack of context for failing to mention this fact in reporting on Congress' recent low approval numbers.

The fact is, pollsters have long noted that the American public has a dim view of Congress as a whole (but they often have a much higher opinion of their own local lawmakers).

It's important to remember the reason that Congress has a low approval rating these days.

Is it because the public disapproves of the lawmakers' efforts in the Congress to raise minimum wage and other Democratic legislative initiatives?

Nope, that's not the reason. In fact, polls have consistently shown that the public supports raising the minimum wage.

In fact, as Michael Moore pointed out in his book, Dude, Where's My Country? the majority of the American public agrees with the Democrats on most of the top domestic issues of our time. These range from keeping abortion legal to promoting civil rights to protecting the environment to stronger controls on firearms. Indeed, polls consistently show that a majority of the American public is further to the left than most Democratic politicians on many issues, such as health care. For example, 80 percent of Americans believe that health insurance should be provided equally to everyone in the nation.

The bottom line is that, if the Republicans take a good, hard look at the reason why Americans are fed up with this Congress, it's actually bad news for the GOP, not the Democrats.

The reality is, Americans are sick and tired of the war in Iraq--and they're fed up with the stumbling efforts in Congress to bring an end to this fiasco.

And try as they may to distance themselves from George W. Bush, the Republicans are going to have a difficult time distancing themselves from the Iraq War. After all, the overwhelming majority of the remaining Iraq War supporters in this country are Republicans.

The bottom line is that Congress' current low approval ratings has nothing to do with the public turning away from the sort of progressive policies that Democrats favor. And it has everything to do with the extreme unpopularity of a war that will always be associated with GOP politicians, whether they like it or not.

Labels: Congress, Democrats, GOP

.
Just how unpopular is George W. Bush these days? A new poll by American Research Group has Bush's approval rating at 25 percent. In the poll, 71 percent of Americans disapprove of Bush's job performance and 73 percent disapprove of the way he's handling the economy.

This latter information probably comes as a surprise to the Wall Street crowd and the inside-the-Beltway pundits who have been busy trumpeting the Dow's recent rise as evidence that America's economy is supposedly in stellar shape these days. Actually, I suppose it is in great shape for the mega-wealthy class of people who've seen their incomes explode into the stratosphere under Bush.
The new poll numbers represent the highest level of disapproval and lowest level of approval for the Bush presidency recorded in monthly surveys by the American Research Group.
See the full American Research Group results here.

Labels: approval rating, George W. Bush, GOP

By MARC McDONALD

"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths? It's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
---Barbara Bush, March 18, 2003, just before the start of the Iraq War.

Reflecting on the passing of Lady Bird Johnson takes me back to an era when our nation had first ladies we could be proud of. For that matter, we had a nation we could be proud of. Seems like a million years ago.

Lady Bird was a champion of environmentalism (a word that is utterly alien to the current White House). She was an advocate of many other noble causes as well. As former President Carter noted, "Many people's lives are better today because she championed with enthusiasm civil rights and programs for children and the poor."

By contrast, Laura Bush, the current first lady, simply seems to be out of touch with the American people, much like her husband.

We saw this repeatedly during the Hurricane Katrina crisis when Laura repeatedly showed herself to be incapable of even correctly pronouncing the word "Katrina." Indeed, during that disaster, she appeared to be as out of touch with ordinary people as Barbara Bush. Recall how the latter made one insensitive, idiotic comment after another when speaking about the victims of the disaster.

"Almost everyone I've talked to says, 'We're gonna move to Houston.' What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas," Barbara Bush said.

As Bill Maher noted at the time, the problem with the pampered, sheltered aristocratic class of people like the Bushes is that they're often racist without even realizing it.

Speaking of living a pampered, sheltered life, that sums up Laura Bush's life perfectly. Just like her husband, she has seen time and time again as her wealth and connections got her out of crises that'd be much more serious if they happened to ordinary folks like you or me.

Take her 1963 car crash, in which she ran a stop sign in broad daylight and smashed into another car, killing its occupant, a young man named Michael Dutton Douglas. She never faced the slightest legal repercussions for this event and no charges were ever filed.

The accident never received any attention from the mainstream media and has been pretty much covered up over the years (just like Laura Bush's habit of smoking).

One wonders, though, if this had happened to Hillary Clinton instead. I get the feeling that the mainstream media would have jumped all over the story. And everyone in America would be constantly reminded of it on a daily basis by hate-wing radio.

Instead, the image projected by the MSM of Laura Bush has been carefully sanitized. It's an image that is only occasionally punctured when Laura opens her mouth and reminds us that she's as out of touch as her bumbling husband. She doesn't seem to be very well informed about the real world---but that doesn't keep her from speaking about topics like the disastrous Iraq War.

As she told Larry King in a February interview: "Many parts of Iraq are stable now. But, of course, what we see on television is the one bombing a day that discourages everybody."

(In fact, as Think Progress noted at the time, the number of daily insurgent and militia attacks in Iraq has skyrocketed to nearly 200 a day).

Of course, if you take a look at Laura Bush's activities in the White House, you'll find that she, like a lot of first ladies, has championed various causes over the years. If you take a close look at them, you'll find that she's no Eleanor Roosevelt.

Take Laura Bush's support of the National Anthem Project, for example. This program aims "to revive America's patriotism." The program has been criticized as promoting a corporate agenda in public schools (complete with company logos that are blatant advertising).

My biggest problem with National Anthem Project is its idea of "patriotism" as some mindless, jingoistic, flag-waving behavior that wouldn't be out of place on Fox News. True patriotism doesn't need to be promoted by the government, or any organization, for that matter.

True patriotism is cultivated when our government does the right thing. That hasn't been the case under George W. Bush. Indeed, many Americans, far from feeling patriotic these days, are ashamed at what our nation has become.

Lady Bird was of an era when things were much different. Although it's difficult to fathom today, once upon a time, America was actually respected and admired by much of the world. When we spoke about human rights, our words carried serious weight. But in today's era of Iraq and Gitmo, any lectures we now offer the world on human rights are met with derision and ridicule.

Labels: Democrats, GOP, Laura Bush

By MARC McDONALD

For years, George W. Bush and the GOP have been boasting that America is winning the fight against Al-Qaeda.

Now that cocky claim has come back to haunt Bush and the Republicans. The Associated Press has reported that U.S. intelligence analysts have concluded al-Qaeda has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since 9/11.

You'd think that Bush would have learned a lesson in humility after his 2003 PR stunt fiasco when he strutted in his flightsuit across the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln beneath the "Mission Accomplished" banner. I mean, here we are four bloody years later, and no end in sight in Iraq's civil war.

And now Bush's boast that America is winning in the fight against al-Qaeda has been completely debunked by the new report by U.S. intelligence analysts.

This latest revelation makes a mockery of the cocky claims that we've been hearing from Bush and his supporters over the years. For example, on Sept. 7, 2006, Bush boasted in a speech to the Georgia Public Policy Foundation that "America is safer and America is winning the War on Terror."

Bush hasn't been the only right-winger to make such ridiculous, unsubstantiated claims since 2001. Take Fox News regular Richard Miniter, whose silly book, Losing Bin Laden: How Bill Clinton's Failures Unleashed Global Terror, was the toast of the conservative media in 2004.

Miniter created an even bigger splash in the right-wing world in 2005 with his book, Shadow War: The Untold Story of How Bush is Winning the War on Terror. The book breathlessly detailed such bombshells as "the Bush administration’s secret plan to hit Al-Qaeda before Sept. 11, 2001."

I guess the accepted story about Bush taking month-long leisurely vacations at his Crawford ranch and ignoring critical PDBs was nothing more than a Liberal Media Falsehood.

Anyway, for those taking notes, let's review a couple of facts:

1. George W. Bush and right-wing nutcases like Miniter have been arrogantly boasting for years that America is "winning" in its fight against Al-Qaeda.

2. U.S. intelligence analysts now believe Al-Qaeda has rebuilt its operating capability to a level not seen since 9/11.

Don't expect this latest development to change many minds in the diehard wingnut camp. After all, we're talking about Kool-Aid drinkers who still believe to this day that Saddam was behind 9/11. I'd imagine the right-wing blogs are already gearing up to attack the "liberal" Associated Press for reporting this story in the first place.

Labels: Al-Qaeda, George W. Bush, GOP

By MARC McDONALD

Over the past year, George W. Bush has gone from being perhaps the ultimate GOP wet-dream president to a politician whom even many Republicans hate.

At first glance, this ought to be welcome news. After all, we liberals have been shouting from the highest rooftops about why Bush is bad for America ever since 2000.

It's nice that a lot of Republicans have now come around to our way of thinking.

There's only one problem. If you take a look at the reason why many Republicans finally rejected Bush, it's not an encouraging sign.

After all, why did many Republicans finally turn against Bush?

Was it the illegal, immoral war in Iraq that Bush lied America into? No.

Was it Bush's blatant disregard for America's Constitution? No.

Was it Bush's illegal wiretaps? No.

Was it the disastrously bungled response to Hurricane Katrina? No.

Was it embracing torture as an official instrument of American policy? No.

Was it any one of a number of other serious violations of Bush's oath of office and impeachable offenses? No.

The scary thing is that the Republicans who abandoned Bush didn't have problems with any of the above.

They stood by Bush through thick and thin, and weren't deterred from supporting their hero, even when he dragged America's name through the mud and made us the most feared and hated nation on the planet.

No, the thing that finally ended the love affair between millions of Republicans and the Fratboy-In-Chief was their former hero's immigration policy, of all things.

I've talked to a number of Republicans over the past year and it's become apparent to me that Bush's immigration policy was the straw that broke the camel's back for them. As a couple of Republicans explained it to me last week, "We're sick and tired of all these fucking spics coming into our country."

So there you have it: torture is fine, shredding the Constitution is fine, lying the nation into war is fine. Just keep America as white as possible, and you won't get a peep of protest out of the droves of Republicans who abandoned Bush.

Like I said, Republican Bush-haters are even more frightening than the 28-percenters.

Labels: George W. Bush, GOP, politics

By MANIFESTO JOE

The modern American political phenomenon of "the angry white male" has baffled me for a long time. These are working-class and lower-middle-class guys, age ranging from around 25 to 55, who vote overwhelmingly Republican, against their true economic interests. These aren't men who own hedge funds, and it's been shown repeatedly that supply-side tax cuts at best do nothing for them, and at worst shift the burden to them in insidious ways. For them, voting GOP is like being chickens for Colonel Sanders.

But after reading a recent Associated Press report on income trends in America, comparing 1974 earnings to the most recent available census stats, I think I understand this a little better. It's mostly about wages and salaries -- but with an ironic demagogic spin.

From AP's report:

"New analysis of census data challenges the historical presumption that each American generation will be wealthier than the one before, according to a report from the Pew Charitable Trusts' Economic Mobility Project.

"A generation ago, American men in their 30s had median annual incomes of about $40,000. Men of the same age today ... make only about $35,000 a year, adjusted for inflation.

"That's a 12.5 percent drop between 1974 and 2004, according to the report."

It's not easy for me to relate to the men who have been most profoundly affected by this trend. I've been in the work force since the late '70s. It wasn't hard for me to do a little better than my parents did, because we were a relatively poor family. At the time I came of age, poor kids like me were getting help that isn't so available anymore, so I got to go to a good college and graduated in 4 years.

But the following decades weren't kind to working-class, and even middle-class, white guys. A lot of the bread-and-butter blue-collar jobs were exported -- from places like Flint, Michigan, to places like Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. As more women, often with college degrees, entered the work force, and more minorities finally began climbing the ladder, The Angry White Male suddenly had competition that Pops never faced. That big promotion, or even the gold watch at 65, were no longer givens.

At the risk of seeming "illiberal" for just a moment, I have seen, and have been personally affected by, all the things that the pissed-off white dudes complain about. I've seen people hired in haste for jobs they were unprepared for, and unable to perform -- but they were still tolerated. I've seen people get promotions they weren't ready for -- but, true to The Peter Principle, they stayed there. I've seen mistakes swept under the rug time after time.

But, Angry White Dudes, let's be honest. Was it really different in 1950? If you were able to talk to the vanguard of women and minorities who were trying to break through an almost impregnable glass ceiling back then, wouldn't they be expressing the same frustrations, only worse?

But, back to the report. Upon closer examination, what becomes clear is that the puppetmasters are getting you fellas, y'all Angry White Males, to blame people who are largely in the same predicament you're in. Someone I know told me that he walked into a 7-Eleven one day and heard Rush Lardbaugh on a radio, railing against "Feminazis" and such, and the guy who had the radio on was a fortyish man in a red smock who was probably making eight bucks an hour. And he was grooving to the bashing.

The report suggests that, instead of listening to Lardbaugh's rant, this guy should have been checking out what his company's CEO makes. In the same period, from the '70s to the most recent stats:

"Chief executives' pay surged to 262 times the average worker's pay in 2005, up from 35 times in 1978, according to the report's analysis of Congressional Budget Office statistics."

A coincidence? "Free market" fundamentalists would have us believe so. The market is supposed to be some kind of primal force that, like the Ned Beatty character in Network says, mustn't be meddled with. But it's funny; they meddle with it in other countries, and to general good effect. Back to the report:

"The Pew report also found that in many countries, including Denmark, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany and France, there is more economic mobility than in the U.S. when measuring by the income differences between generations."

OK, thirtysomething white males, go on being angry. But please, redirect the anger at those who really deserve it. You've got some pretty corpulent swine getting a free ride on your shoulders. It's time to start blaming them, and not your co-workers who happen to be of a different race or gender. Stop listening to the demagogues.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: class war, GOP, Manifesto Joe

By MARC McDONALD

One might expect that any rational, clear-thinking adult would wait to actually see a movie before they decide to attack it.

However, there are three things that are certain in life: death, taxes, and the fact that the wingnuts will do whatever they can to slime Michael Moore and his work.

After all, Moore is the anti-Christ to these people. He's been detested by the right wing ever since he dared to speak out against George W. Bush in Fahrenheit 9/11.

It was all enough to make right-wing writer and Fox News commentator Bernie Goldberg rank Moore as No. 1 in his 2005 tirade, 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America.

Never mind the fact that Moore has been vindicated, time and time again.

The current wave of Moore-bashing seems to date back to his "infamous" March 2003 Oscar-night speech. The press reports I read about that event focused solely on the fact that his comments drew boos from some audience members.

Few people, though, seem to remember exactly what Moore said that night, a mere three days after the U.S. launched its war on Iraq.

"We live in a time where we have a man who's sending us to war for fictitious reasons," Moore said, thus throwing a wrench into the carefully choreographed TV event beamed around the world.

In hindsight, of course, this comment has turned out to be amazingly prescient. The Bush team's stated rationale for the war has been shown to be, indeed, fiction.

Since then, Bush's once-sky-high approval ratings have sunk into the toilet. Indeed, a majority of Americans today believe that the Iraq War wasn't worth it. It took a few years, but Americans finally came around to Moore's views about Bush and the war.

Of course, Moore wasn't the first commentator to attack Bush. But he was the first to really draw blood, during a time when the MSM was fawning over Bush.

And the wingnuts have never forgiven Moore.

In attacking Sicko, the right-wingers have wasted no time in smearing Moore and his film. Never mind the fact that the movie won't even be released in the U.S. until June 29.

The popular movie reference site, IMDB.com shows how polarizing a film Sicko, is already, despite the fact that it is a month away from release. As of May 27, already 39 people had voted to give the film a rating of "1" on a scale of 1-to-10. It's unclear as to how these people have managed to see the film, considering that it has only played to a relative handful of people at the Cannes Film Festival in France (where, by all accounts, it was rapturously received by adoring crowds).

How much do you want to bet that those 39 thumbs-down votes were from Rush-listening wingnuts here in the States who haven't seen the film (and have no intention of doing so)?

Fox News propagandist Sean Hannity is helping to lead the charge against Sicko. Recently, he has repeatedly claimed that the U.S. has "the world's best health-care system." It's a mantra that we can expect to hear repeated, ad nauseam, over the next few months.

In the coming weeks, we can expect a predictable chorus attacking Sicko, from both HateWing radio, and the nutcase wingnut blogs.

I expect that the right-wing will roll out the really heavy artillery on the eve of Sicko's release (just as the wingnuts did when Fahrenheit 9/11 was released).

Recall how the right-wing British writer Christopher Hitchens slammed F9/11 in a high-profile Slate review on June 21, 2004 that was titled, "The lies of Michael Moore."

Time hasn't been kind to Hitchens' review, which served up a heavy dose of spurious "evidence," trying to defend Bush's case for war (most of which, of course, has now been completely debunked).

Hitchens also accused Moore of "cowardice," a bizarre charge, considering that Moore was inundated with death threats in the aftermath of F9/11.

Indeed, even many theater owners who showed F9/11 received death threats. Although there's no way to be sure exactly who was making these threats, one can be sure that they weren't liberal Democrats. And if anyone was guilty of "cowardice," it was the mainstream journalists (of which Hitchens is a member) who helped sell Bush's war to the American people.

I expect the right-wing will do whatever it can to tarnish Sicko and slime Moore in the weeks to come.

But it's clear that the wingnuts have their work cut out for them, if they're going to try to convince Americans that Sicko's indictment of the U.S. health-care system is false.

After all, polls have repeatedly indicated that a majority of Americans want the government to step in and do whatever it takes to provide health-care to everyone. Additionally, most Americans have horror stories of their own in dealing with HMOs and the health-care system.

Wingnuts like Hannity can babble on all day about how America supposedly has the best health-care system in the world. But I suspect that most Americans are no longer buying this crap. We as a people know that there's something seriously wrong with our system. And no amount of propaganda and Fox News disinformation will change that fact.

Labels: GOP, Michael Moore, wingnuts

By MARC McDONALD

George W. Bush has long presided over the most secrecy-obsessed White House in American history. He has spent a good chunk of his time in office classifying every document in sight (and even frustrating historians by re-classifying documents that were in the public domain for decades).

So it came as a surprise when Bush decided to release formerly classified documents that purport to show that Osama bin Laden ordered a top lieutenant in early 2005 to form a terrorist unit to hit targets outside Iraq.

Clearly, Bush is making another desperate bid to try to rally a weary nation that is sick and tired of his disastrous Iraq adventure.

The only problem is that these newly declassified documents weaken, not strengthen Bush's case for war.

The declassified documents show that Iraq has been transformed into a terrorist staging ground since the 2003 invasion by the U.S. That's the same argument that critics of Bush's war have been making since Day One.

Bush may be trying to rally the nation, but in this case, he's only going to rally the dwindling wingnuts who comprise the 28 percent of the nation that still supports him. After all, these are the folks who have been convinced all along that, before the 2003 invasion, Iraq was a terrorist state with ties to 9/11.

These Kool-Aid-drinking folks are the same ones who believe Saddam did have WMDs after all, and whisked them to Syria, just before the invasion. They live off in their own little hermitically sealed world, fed a steady diet of Rush, Drudge and Fox.

But if Bush is trying to convince the rest of us that his disastrous decision to invade Iraq is somehow bolstered by this newly released intelligence, he's even more deluded that we thought previously.

Before the invasion, Bush said that his goal was to transform Iraq into a shining beacon of democracy in the Middle East. Instead, all Bush's war has done is create another Afghanistan-like terrorist staging base from which extremists will plot further 9/11 attacks.

I don't know if the latest intelligence documents released by Bush are valid or not. Ever since its colossal blunder over Iraq's non-existent WMDs, Americans have increasingly doubted the efficiency of our nation's intelligence capabilities.

But if these intelligence documents are true, all they do is demonstrate that the Iraq War has been an even bigger disaster than we previously thought.

Labels: Bush, GOP, Iraq War

By MANIFESTO JOE

Yes, the late Molly Ivins dubbed him "Congressman Clueless." Yes, he's a radical libertarian who would have the U.S. go back to that unregulated capitalist utopia of 1906, when a third of Americans lived in unmitigated poverty and Upton Sinclair's The Jungle was published.

But he's actually making the most sense of all 10 hapless hopefuls for the Republican presidential nomination. Of course, he hasn't got a chance to win one delegate.

He's Texas' own Ron Paul, longtime congressman and one-time Libertarian Party candidate for president (1988).

Predictably, he's not being depicted well by the Mainstream Media. But, let's let the congressman's words stand on their own, with minimal spin. This is from one of the recent GOP debates, regarding 9/11 and the Mideast situation:


PAUL: Have you ever read the reasons they attacked us? They attack us because we've been over there; we've been bombing Iraq for 10 years. We've been in the Middle East -- I think Reagan was right.

We don't understand the irrationality of Middle Eastern politics. So right now we're building an embassy in Iraq that's bigger than the Vatican. We're building 14 permanent bases. What would we say here if China was doing this in our country or in the Gulf of Mexico? We would be objecting. We need to look at what we do from the perspective of what would happen if somebody else did it to us. (Applause.)

[...]

PAUL: I'm suggesting that we listen to the people who attacked us and the reason they did it, and they are delighted that we're over there because Osama bin Laden has said, "I am glad you're over on our sand because we can target you so much easier." They have already now since that time -- [bell rings] -- have killed 3,400 of our men, and I don't think it was necessary.

[...]

PAUL: I believe very sincerely that the CIA is correct when they teach and talk about blowback. When we went into Iran in 1953 and installed the shah, yes, there was blowback. A reaction to that was the taking of our hostages and that persists. And if we ignore that, we ignore that at our own risk. If we think that we can do what we want around the world and not incite hatred, then we have a problem.

They don't come here to attack us because we're rich and we're free. They come and they attack us because we're over there. I mean, what would we think if we were -- if other foreign countries were doing that to us?


Congressman Paul, despite himself, was pretty articulate, and raised points that have been unheard of in Republican Party discourse for decades -- for example, the long-range stupidity of the 1953 CIA coup in Iran.

Predictably, the MSM are dog-piling on him. Joe Klein of Time writes of a "singular moment of weirdness." But Media Matters for America points out that Paul's points were supported by the official 9/11 report.

Paul for president? Nope. But I'm happy he's in the race and telling at least some of it like it is.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: 2008 election, GOP, NeoCons

By MARC McDONALD

The stunning development in which 11 GOP lawmakers went to the White House to confront George W. Bush over the Iraq War ought to be welcome news---except for one detail. The fact is, the GOP lawmakers are worried about the Iraq fiasco for the wrong reason.

It's refreshing that some moderate Republicans are starting to act like they put the interests of the nation above partisan politics. It's also nice to see that, for once at least, some GOP lawmakers are willing to question Bush's fiasco of a war.

But you have to wonder: why are these GOP lawmakers getting cold feet now? Is it because the war is a disaster on every level? Is it because the war was based on lies? Or that over 600,000 Iraqis have senselessly died in this fiasco?

Uh, no.

Actually, the GOP lawmakers are questioning the war's direction purely for reasons of self-interest.

Namely, they're simply worried about the political impact that the war is having on their congressional districts.

In other words, they're simply trying to save their own hides from a drubbing by the voters in the 2008 elections. So much for the idea that the GOP lawmakers have finally developed a backbone---or a brain, for that matter.

In any case, despite all the posturing, there is no way that we're going to see any sort of real change in direction on the Iraq War on Bush's watch, short of impeachment.

The fact is, the Iraq War at this point is really only about one thing (well, besides the oil): George W. Bush's legacy.

In Bush's deluded brain, he keeps hoping that somehow Iraq will turn around and that he'll be vindicated in the end, and prove all the naysayers wrong.

Bush's Kool-Aid-drinking followers are hoping for the same thing---they've invested a great deal of their reputations in this fiasco of a war and they're hoping that somehow, it'll all turn out OK, and they'll be vindicated.

So while Bush is solely concerned about trying to salvage his legacy (and GOP lawmakers fret over their re-election prospects) our troops--and the people of Iraq--continue to die for no reason.

Labels: Bush, GOP, Iraq War

By MANIFESTO JOE

If there were still any doubt that the last two presidential elections were blatantly stolen, a story that was all but buried by the Mainstream Media this week should dispel that. I realize that it was a busy news week, with the horror of the Virginia Tech massacre. But this revelation should have rated lead-story treatment at least one day. As the The Sun of Baltimore reported on April 19:

WASHINGTON -- For six years, the Bush administration, aided by Justice Department political appointees, has pursued an aggressive legal effort to restrict voter turnout in key battleground states in ways that favor Republican political candidates, according to former department lawyers and a review of written records.

The administration intensified its efforts last year as President Bush's popularity and Republican support eroded heading into a midterm battle for control of Congress, which the Democrats won.

Facing nationwide voter registration drives by Democratic-leaning groups, the administration alleged widespread election fraud and endorsed proposals for tougher state and federal voter identification laws. Presidential political adviser Karl Rove alluded to the strategy in April 2006 when he railed about voter fraud in a speech to the Republican National Lawyers Association.

Questions about the administration's campaign against alleged voter fraud have helped fuel the political tempest over the firings last year of eight U.S. attorneys, several of whom were ousted in part because they failed to bring voter fraud cases important to Republican politicians. ...

Civil rights advocates contend that the administration's policies were intended to disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of poor and minority voters who tend to support Democrats, and by filing state and federal lawsuits, civil rights groups have won court rulings blocking some of its actions.

The administration ... has repeatedly invoked allegations of widespread voter fraud to justify tougher voter ID measures and other steps to restrict access to the ballot, even though research suggests that voter fraud is rare.

Since President Bush's first attorney general, John Ashcroft, a former Republican senator from Missouri, launched a "Ballot Access and Voter Integrity Initiative" in 2001, Justice Department political appointees have exhorted U.S. attorneys to prosecute voter fraud cases, and the department's Civil Rights Division has sought to roll back policies to protect minority voting rights.

On virtually every significant decision affecting election balloting since 2001, the division's Voting Rights Section has come down on the side of Republicans, notably in Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Ohio, Washington and other states where recent elections have been decided by narrow margins.

The chief of the Voting Rights Section from 1999 to 2005, Joseph D. Rich, saw the partisan pattern firsthand. Rich wrote in the March 29 edition of latimes.com:

THE SCANDAL unfolding around the firing of eight U.S. attorneys compels the conclusion that the Bush administration has rewarded loyalty over all else. A destructive pattern of partisan political actions at the Justice Department started long before this incident, however, as those of us who worked in its civil rights division can attest.

I spent more than 35 years in the department enforcing federal civil rights laws — particularly voting rights. Before leaving in 2005, I worked for attorneys general with dramatically different political philosophies — from John Mitchell to Ed Meese to Janet Reno. Regardless of the administration, the political appointees had respect for the experience and judgment of longtime civil servants.

Under the Bush administration, however, all that changed. Over the last six years, this Justice Department has ignored the advice of its staff and skewed aspects of law enforcement in ways that clearly were intended to influence the outcome of elections.

It has notably shirked its legal responsibility to protect voting rights. From 2001 to 2006, no voting discrimination cases were brought on behalf of African American or Native American voters. U.S. attorneys were told instead to give priority to voter fraud cases, which, when coupled with the strong support for voter ID laws, indicated an intent to depress voter turnout in minority and poor communities.

At least two of the recently fired U.S. attorneys, John McKay in Seattle and David C. Iglesias in New Mexico, were targeted largely because they refused to prosecute voting fraud cases that implicated Democrats or voters likely to vote for Democrats. ...

This administration is also politicizing the career staff of the Justice Department. Outright hostility to career employees who disagreed with the political appointees was evident early on. Seven career managers were removed in the civil rights division. I personally was ordered to change performance evaluations of several attorneys under my supervision. I was told to include critical comments about those whose recommendations ran counter to the political will of the administration and to improve evaluations of those who were politically favored.

Morale plummeted, resulting in an alarming exodus of career attorneys. In the last two years, 55% to 60% of attorneys in the voting section have transferred to other departments or left the Justice Department entirely.

At the same time, career staff were nearly cut out of the process of hiring lawyers. Control of hiring went to political appointees, so an applicant's fidelity to GOP interests replaced civil rights experience as the most important factor in hiring decisions. ...

The implications of the Bush hooligans' election thefts are enormous. And yet, the allegedly liberal Mainstream Media mostly gave this story passing, secondary coverage. At last count, U.S. military deaths in Iraq stood at 3,309. It is unlikely that we will ever know approximately how many Iraqis have died. British government scientists recently endorsed the validity of a study that estimated 655,000 Iraqis have been killed as the result of the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq.

And, it's even more unlikely that this needless and vastly damaging war would have occurred had just 1,000 or so legitimate voters not been disenfranchised in Florida in 2000.

Of course, this critically important story just wasn't enough to compete with, say, the real daddy of Anna Nicole's baby, as the day's lead.

And this is why our "free" press is in serious trouble -- almost as much as is our pseudo-republic.

Manifesto Joe is an underground writer living in Texas. Check out his blog at Manifesto Joe's Texas Blues.

Labels: Bush, election theft, GOP

By MARC McDONALD

Tax season is here again. Would you like to know a sure-fire way of reducing your tax bill?

Simple. Become rich. The richer, the better.

Example: let's say your wealth puts you in the top 1/100th of 1 percent of all Americans. That's about 28,000 people in the U.S. These people, on average, make around $2 million every five days, which is what the average American earns over the course of a lifetime.

The tax burden for these super-rich people has been steadily falling for years. For example, in 1993, they paid 30 cents of every dollar into federal income tax. In 2000, that had fallen to 22 cents. Now, with the Bush tax cuts, it has fallen to 18 cents.

In his book Perfectly Legal, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist David Cay Johnston details an outrageously unfair tax system that screws the poor and working class. It's a tax system that has been increasing shifting the burden away from the rich and onto lower-income taxpayers for years, a phenomenon that's gotten little coverage in the mainstream media.

Not only do the rich avoid paying taxes, but they also usually avoid tax audits. Johnston points out that working class people are eight times more likely to face an audit than the wealthy.

Johnston is only one of a number of high-profile investigative journalists who've detailed America's unfair tax system over the years.

In 1994, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists Donald Barlett and James Steele published an eye-opening account of America's unfair tax system in their book, America: Who Really Pays the Taxes?

Barlett and Steele painted a gloomy picture of a beleaguered middle- and working class that is soaking up more and more of the nation's tax burden. They also detail how the tax burden is quietly shifting in other ways.

For example, the tax burden in the U.S. over the years has been shifting from corporations to individual taxpayers. In the 1950s, corporations paid around half of all taxes. Today, their burden has shrunk to less than 10 percent. In fact, today, 60 percent of all U.S. corporations pay zero income tax.

Johnston, Bartlett and Steele point out numerous cases in which wealthy individuals don't even bother to file a tax return.

Johnston cites the example of two billionaires, Alec and Jocelyn Wildenstein, who admitted under oath that for 30 years, they never even filed a tax return---and faced no consequences as a result.

In their book, Barlett and Steele point out that in 1989, there were 1,081 people earning over $200,000 who paid zero income tax. I would suspect that since Barlett and Steele's 1994 book was released that the number of wealthy tax avoiders has increased further still.

In the interviews they conducted to research their books, Barlett, Steele and Johnston describe ordinary taxpayers' seething anger and frustration with the unfairness of the tax code.

Johnston, in particular, seems pessimistic that the U.S. tax system will ever be fixed. He considers open revolt and social disruption a possibility in the future.

For their part, Barlett and Steele, offer modest proposals for making the tax system more equitable, such as closing all loopholes. However, the odds of real change to make the tax system more fair in Bush's America seem remote indeed.

Labels: class warfare, GOP, tax policy