Not Fit To Print: Blah, Blah, Blog

Don't Ask; Don't Tell; Don't Learn

2010-12-06T22:05:00.000-08:00

The problem with Don't Ask; Don't Tell is that is promotes a culture of denial. Anybody who tells you the military needs to be educated on how to deal with gays is missing the point. What the military needs is an addition to the Code of Conduct that specificies the following: Sexual activity does not belong on the battlefield, in training camps, on bivouac or on the front porch of a military dorm. It belongs in private rooms with closed doors. What goes on in there, as long as consenting adults are the only ones present, is nobody's business.

When I joined the Army in 1977, gays were not allowed in the military but sexual harrassment was rampant. Women in Basic Training completed the same requirements as the men in their Company. We lived in separate dorms, but the rigorous physical and firearms training was exactly the same for the women as it was for the men.

However, there was one significant difference: being female meant that we were constant targets of unwanted sexual attention. The form it took varied from snide remarks or taunting to physical forms of abuse. I experienced the former, not the latter, fortunately. Still, just knowing that every day I had to deal with the kind of juvenile sexual attention typically reserved for movies like American Pie was a little disappointing. Particularly, since I was supposedly working with the "creme de la creme" of the military (Signal Corps--top secret facility in West Germany--during the infamous "Cold War.")

Here's a sobering fact: According to NPR, “In 2003, a survey of female veterans found that 30 percent said they were raped in the military. A 2004 study of veterans who were seeking help for post-traumatic stress disorder found that 71 percent of the women said they were sexually assaulted or raped while serving. And a 1995 study of female veterans of the Gulf and earlier wars, found that 90 percent had been sexually harassed.” Here's the kicker: the assaults were not perpetrated by the enemy--most of these women were raped by fellow U.S. soldiers.

I left the military in 1981. Recently, I read that about 25% of our female soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq get urinary tract infections because they are afraid to go to the bathroom at night for fear of being raped by fellow soldiers. That is why I'm writing today.

We need a law, not a philosophical debate. We need to make it a violation of the Military Code of Conduct to be involved with ANYBODY'S sexuality unless invited. We need to codify the wrongness of men raping female soldiers as well as force homophobes in the military to keep their judgments against homosexuals to themselves. As long as sex is left where it belongs, both with regard to gays and women, we can work toward a functional military. That would be my holiday wish.

HOMOSEXUALITY IS NOT A MORAL ISSUE

2010-10-04T18:52:00.000-07:00

Our nation seems confused by the issue of homosexuality. Even Lady Gaga, an outspoken proponent of gay rights, implies that there is a moral component to homosexuality when she asks that we “overlook the moral implications” of it. Unfortunately, she’s asking for the wrong thing: self-proclaimed saviors can’t overlook their beliefs any more than a gay man can think his way straight.

If we want to fight bigotry toward homosexuals, we have to stop letting heterosexuals define homosexuality as immoral. We have to demand that our legislators act based on information instead of superstition. Research tell us that homosexuality is the result of a combination of nature and nurture, just like everything else that is human. We should try to remember this.

NOTE: For the record, and for the benefit of the more imaginative and least educated reader, please understand that when we say “homosexuality” we are not talking about the sometimes bizarre sexual escapades of self-professed heterosexual men in isolation, nor do we refer to any kind of criminal or abusive behavior. These are not the hallmarks of homosexuality; they are the hallmarks of sexual perversion; they are not the same.

What we are talking about when we discuss homosexuality is the organic sexual attraction a person feels as a result of a combination of inborn characteristics and early childhood experiences. Accordingly, unless a crime or some kind of abuse is involved, homosexuals and heterosexuals alike should be allowed whatever sexual experience they, as consenting adults, prefer.

What we need to teach our children (and apparently a whole lot of adults as well) is that homosexuality is no more immoral than being left-handed instead of right-handed and bisexuals are no more evil than those born ambidextrous.

Perhaps our Puritan roots are responsible, but Americans seem simultaneously frightened and controlled by their sexuality. Instead of studying the subject with the understanding that it is natural, normal and healthy to be sexually active; we either treat it like a dirty little secret or go to the opposite extreme, publicly displaying our sexual prowess in a way that belies its inherently intimate nature: internet porn becomes an addiction and giving blow jobs, a competitive sport.

Meanwhile, our continued failure to fully educate our children regarding human sexuality has left too many with the mistaken belief that one must be exclusively masculine or totally feminine; any variation of these absolutes is cause for ridicule if not downright condemnation, or worse. This, despite the fact that sexuality appears to be a spectrum, not a set of two narrowly defined absolutes.

If we want to stop this madness, we need to change the nature of the discussion. At a recent fund raising luncheon in San Francisco, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, who is actively fighting to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” was asked how we can make real progress toward Gay Rights. Her answer: “Stop talking about Gay Rights and start talking about Civil Rights.”

Nobody is asking anybody to change their beliefs; only that no one person or group’s extremely personal and subjective beliefs are allowed to strip another of their basic human rights: to choose to serve in the military and/or to marry and raise a family--however unorthodox that family may appear to some.

Lastly, for the “family values” crowd, let’s keep in mind that over-population has been blamed for just about every modern societal problem you can name. Mother Nature/God created homosexuals. Perhaps they have a message for us: The key to family values isn’t making babies, it’s taking care of them.

Homophobes are not taking a moral high ground when they tell you gays don’t deserve the same rights the rest of us do; they are merely advertising their ignorance, fear and lack of compassion. Instead of asking them to “overlook the moral implications” of homosexuality, we need to remind them that Homosexuality is not a moral issue.

Family Values

2008-06-09T16:58:00.000-07:00

I heard today that Texas law enforcement agencies decided to cite "the law " as the reason for returning all those polygamist kids to their mommies. I am not surprised. It seemed absurd to me at the time that without a search warrant or evidence of a crime, the authorities were even allowed on the compound—let alone given permission to remove hundreds of children from their homes.

Not that I'm a fan of polygamy. On the contrary, I've read Under the Banner of Heaven, John Krakauer's chilling account of two fundamentalist LDS brothers whose so-called vision from God led them to murder their younger brother's wife and daughter. I was as horrified as the next person at both the murders and the multiple stories of sexual abuse perpetrated by fundamentalist "elders" documented therein. But here's what I'm having a bit of trouble with: no one is citing the extreme emotional and psychological abuse the women and children of these fundamental LDS churches are being subjected to.

Why focus solely on sexual abuse, which is difficult, if not impossible, to prosecute without the testimony of the victims? Why is no one concerned about the emotional/psychological abuse inherent in any organized cult that allows parents to literally imprison their offspring, prevent them from having contact with the outside world and require them to lie to authorities to protect their abusers? Any time a child is born into captivity and kept there, he/she is a victim of abuse. Why aren't we prosecuting them for that?

This behavior is well-documented and could easily provide the evidence needed to arrest fundamentalist perpetrators and rescue these children from their current family prisons. Yet the authorities focus solely on reported sexual abuses, for which they have no direct evidence. Hence, the debacle that recently ensued when dozens of children were uprooted, moved around and then returned to their unholy church--creating a major news event but bringing the abused children no closer to safety.

The only rationale I can find for failing to protect the children of the fundamentalist LDS Church from its elders, and it scares me to say it, is that our society still holds to the archaic and dangerous belief that children are the property of their parents. It is ironic to me that the same people who fight for the rights of an unborn child, seem oblivious to the rights of living children who are imprisoned by their own parents.

We have plenty of proof that over 400 children live in isolation and fear within the confines of fundamentalist camps. Yet Texas law enforcement officials saw no reason to rescue these children until they got a prank call reporting underage sex. Perhaps we should all stop looking for proof of sexual abuse and start working with what we can prove: polygamist fundamentalist sects that bring children into the world and force them to live in a confined environment, without any opportunity for self-development, self-expression or choice of living conditions, are abusive by nature. They should be outlawed. What's more, programs for debriefing their members should be created to assist the victims in learning to live in the real world, where each of us is free to decide how and where we live.

Over Engineering the Democratic Nomination

2008-05-08T14:59:00.000-07:00

Hey, can we stop trying to manipulate this process and let people vote for crying out loud? So what if we don't know who the candidate is until the convention. Big deal. We will find out then. This will not be the first time that's happened and I hope it won't be the last.

As for Florida, since when does a Republican majority in the state government get to dictate to the Dems when to have their Primary? As my ex-husband used to say "Who's f*$ing this monkey?"

I have only twice, since this whole stink began, heard anybody on the news mention why Florida's votes are being discounted. Oh they always say it's because Florida broke the rules and held their primary too early, but NOBODY ever says who was responsible for it.

WAKE UP people! The early date for the Florida Democratic Primary was not a decision made by Democrats, it was the result an overwhelming majority of Republicans in the Florida state legislature that forced the Democratic Primary to take place prior to February. And that is what caused Florida to be disqualified. Yes, Democrats also voted for the bill that moved the Primary up, but that's because it was part of a bill that included a much needed requirement to FINALLY require a voting paper trail in future elections. Any Democrat who refused to vote for that would have been tarred and feathered, metaphorically speaking. Bottom line: inappropriately bundled legislation and Republican bullying are at the root of the current problem in Florida.

Knowing this, why doesn't the DNC revoke the ruling that disqualified Florida and allow their votes to count? Because as always, it's not about letting people vote, it's about politicos manipulating others in order to influence the end result.

For the first time in history, we have the technical capability to live by the rule of Democracy. We can create a system in which there is a single vote per person and have it be accurate, not a representative (by delegates or the electoral college) vote, or a hypothetical, based on sampling. But do we attempt that lofty goal? NO. We piss away our time and energy trying to outsmart, outspend and outmaneuver each other. I thought this was a Democracy of the people, for the people, by the people. Obviously, I was wrong.

Fear and loathing in Washington

2008-05-07T11:35:00.000-07:00

I watched Barrack Obama in horror the other night as he denounced the Reverend Wright, yet again. How many times is he going to do this? And why does this continue to come up? Are the American people so incapable of handling a difference of opinion that we are now resorting to McCarthy era standards of guilt by association?

I watched the controversial Reverand Wright's speeches several times and heard nothing that either surprised or upset me. Of course black people are angry. They were brought to this country by force and under horrific conditions; sold into slavery; abused and neglected and then "freed" into a society that discriminated against them and used them as a scapegoat for all the societal troubles that ail us. I'd be angry too. In fact, not to be angry under such conditions would indicate a lack of humanity.

If we refuse to allow people to articulate feelings of anger and frustration we perpetuate the kind of societal dysfunction that only leads to more anger and frustration. What's more, if we punish those who associate with people whose ideas are not completely in line with our own, we are practicing intolerance to a frightening degree. Is this what American is all about? What happened to freedom of speech? Where is our tolerance? What about honesty?

And why is our time being spent focused on name calling instead of problem solving? Frankly, I think it's laziness. It's the easy story. It does not require spending time and energy to find out what's really going on. Nobody has to research the actual state of our economy, our disastrous health care system or our failing educational institutions to come up with a story. All the media has to do is continually revisit the tape of the Reverand Wright saying "God damn America" and they've got their topic for the day. I don't think anybody but Obama's enemies and the media care one iota about the Reverand Wright. It's his opponent, Hillary Clinton, his potential opponent, John McCain and the lazy media that continue to make this the focus of the Obama campaign.

But perhaps the worst of it all is that Obama played right into it. Instead of saying "shame on you" for making this the issue of the day, he continues to take the bait. Now he's on the road again, once more denouncing the Reverand Wright. His latest ruse is to say that the man he knew is not the man Wright now appears to be. Well, that's a sell out if I ever heard one. How about taking the high road and saying that despite their differences of opinion, he respect the Reverend's right to speak his mind, just as he expects to be respected for doing the same? How about telling us that he will not be a President who lets the media run his affairs? How about reminding us how important it is to tell the truth, even when it's painful? How about acting, dare I say it, Presidential?

I am afraid Obama is going the way of Clinton. Instead of raising the rest of us up, which was my original hope for him, he now appears to be wallowing in the muck with everybody else. His fear of reprisal is controlling his behavior. And when fear controls, fear wins.

I remember the saying "There is nothing to fear, but fear itself." Apparently, it's true. I thought Obama knew that. I guess I was wrong.

Criminal Sex

2008-03-12T18:59:00.000-07:00

I've had enough of people who insist that men who pay for sex are bad. On the contrary, if a man wants meaningless sex he should pay for it. I would much rather find a couple of bills on the bed the next day than settle for the promise of a phone call that never comes. At least if I'm left with cash I can buy a new pair of shoes. If all I get is the brush off after giving it up, frankly, I feel cheated.

Men love sex. Some women do too, but here's the difference: Women learn to love it. Men are born loving it.

So if a guy feels he needs something different, whether it’s because he’s a pervert or because his partner isn’t giving him what he thinks he needs that's between him and his partner—not him and the rest of the world. John Kennedy, Bill Clinton, Eliot Spitzer and the like didn't fail the American public; they broke a promise to their loved ones to be faithful to their wives. It's nobody else's business.

You might say that as representatives of our country and enforcers of laws, our elected officials should know that breaking laws is wrong regardless of the law in question and regardless of the reason. But why are there laws criminalizing sex between two consenting adults anyway? How can we be so backward that we believe sex is healthy and beautiful if we're making a baby—even one we don't want--but bad and nasty if we're just enjoying it for its own sake? God made the clitoris, didn't he? He must have wanted us to enjoy it.

The twisted logic that causes people to say prostitution should be criminal but it's okay to have sex to make babies, may still be part of most organized religions, but isn't the state supposed to be separate from all that?

If it's not a crime to have sex, why is it a crime to pay for it? If your girlfriend blows you weekly and you present her with a diamond necklace, is that criminal? Maybe Spitzer really liked his $1k/hour call girl—maybe they developed a relationship of sorts. Maybe his wife knew about it and didn't care. We just don't know—nor is it any of our business.

But what is our business is the business of Congress. What we should be trying to do is convince Congress to pass legislation that decriminalizes sex between two consenting adults—regardless of whether or not money changes hands.

In addition to saving us all from being subjected to yet another sex scandal instead of real news, it would improve conditions for clients and service providers alike if prostitution were legal. We could do like the Dutch, in Amsterdam, for example. We could regulate the medical check-ups of sex workers to make sure they are healthy. We could pay reliable business people to manage them to ensure they have fair working conditions and are paid a living wage. It's working quite nicely over in Holland. Why not emulate their system?

Never mind, I already know the answer. If prostitution were legal, Eliot Spitzer's enemies would have to find something substantial to pin on him—and they don't have anything else. The one thing all powerful men have in common is that they want and expect great sex. What's the point of all that power otherwise? Men are not any different now than they were hundreds or even thousands of years ago. Sex sells for a reason—it's what men want.

As long as prostitution is a crime, the rich and powerful will always have a way to bring down whomever they choose to target. As the Spitzer scenario proves yet again, even the best and the brightest are, at the most fundamental level, just looking to get laid. Let's admit it and move on instead of continuing to punish otherwise law-abiding citizens for simply being what they were born to be: horn dogs.

Joining Forces

2008-03-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

Apparently, somebody in the Clinton campaign decided to suggest a Clinton/Obama ticket--a suggestion I advocated recently--and one which backfired on a massive scale.

I have, until this moment, believed the right combination would be Clinton/Obama. Now I'm beginning to wonder.

The Clinton machine may have screwed the pooch, as it were, by being the ones to suggest it. It gave Obama a perfect opportunity to discount the idea while simultaneously make Clinton appear ignorant of the facts, and arrogant to boot--the two qualities her supporters have been attempting to pin on Obama. Suddenly, the most experienced candidate seems quite clumsy and the one who appeared to be all fluff and no substance is sounding a lot more substantial.

Maybe we should be looking at an Obama/Clinton ticket? Maybe Hillary should be the one to say it's time to make the ultimate sacrifice, it's time to bring all of my education and experience to supporting an Obama White House? Perhaps her experience and his charisma could combine to form a more perfect union? It's an interesting thought.

Ready or Not: Clinton or Obama

2008-03-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

Hillary Clinton spent eight years in the White House. Obama supporters keep trying to tell me that her experience isn’t relevant. Here’s my response: Even if she were nothing more than a fly on the wall, Hillary Clinton’s eight years in the White House have given her an education in politics, diplomacy and the business of running a country, that is so far superior to whatever formal education Senator Obama possesses, it makes me wonder what kind of kool-aid Obamamaniacs are drinking.

One simply can’t compare the combination of experience and education Clinton has with that of Obama. They shouldn't even be in the same race. Obama is a rookie. Albeit, he’s a handsome, charming, intelligent, noble rookie--but he’s still a rookie. And what makes me burn is that his supporters are so influenced by the superficial and the new and the bright and the shiny, that they can’t see past it.

They believe that just because he has all the personal qualities we hope for in a President, that he should be the next President. Except: He’s not ready. It’s not that he won’t be a good, or even a great President. I hope some day he will. And I hope that day is in eight years.

Right now we need to stop diminishing Hillary and start supporting her. If the only way Barrack can win is to get his people to downplay his opponent's education and experience, then he’s proving his lack of substance by the very argument he’s raising.

Every time Obama’s supporters chime in to say that Clinton’s experience isn’t valid for whatever reason, I want to ask: When was the last time you started a new job? Are you telling me it wouldn’t have been invaluable to have an insider’s view of all the inner workings of the place before you started? Do you expect me to believe that kind of inside knowledge is not going give you an edge over somebody who’s never been there before? Do you really think Obama's character and decision-making ability are so much stronger than Clinton's that despite her extraordinary advantage as a result of her education and experience, Obama is actually better qualified?

The President of this country is going to have to run it, not just represent it. Clinton can do both. I see no evidence to suggest that Obama can. Yet over and over Obama's supporters will say that he's the man for the job.

Obama’s people are a little crazy, is what I’m saying. I sympathize. It's kind of thrilling to contemplate the prospect of turning our whole political system on its head. I understand how visualizing a black man taking the White House could make them so giddy they can’t see straight. I am sure it feels good. But they need to regain consciousness and focus. We cannot afford another Republican administration. The current one is killing us.

Let's not allow our sentimentalism to obscure the cold hard facts: Barrack Obama is VP material—he’s not ready for the Presidency.

Let him be a fly on the wall of Hillary’s White House for the next eight years. Then he’ll be ready, and then I’ll support him. Until then, let’s put our energy toward someone who knows how to do the job, not just how to win votes.

Dysfunction in Action

2006-10-14T18:47:00.000-07:00

I recently traded my self-proclaimed status as a writer, activist and dilettante for the mundane title of Operations and Financial Controller.

My first day on the job, while sorting through loose papers to find critical information, it occurred to me that the situation I had just walked into is a microcosm of the current state of our country. Most of the people still employed at my new company are stellar. They work hard and they jump through hoops to make things happen. However, certain key people (who were previously given the opportunity to control important functions, like operations and finance) apparently had a long history of denying, ignoring and/or withholding pertinent information from their co-workers.

The disastrous results of their behavior are such that one might be tempted to accuse said people of outright sabotage. Had the fiasco involved a team effort, rather than a series of individual failures, one might even suspect a conspiracy.

The truth, however, is much less dramatic. The real source of the clusterfuck I'm currently trying to manage is due to nothing more sinister than my predecessors' (there were several) inability to perform the work required, and their failure to take ownership of their respective positions within the organization.

I think this Foley business is an example of the same kind of failure. The group of insiders who chose not to address the "overly-friendly" emails Foley sent to underage pages were not intentionally trying to sacrifice kids so Foley could get his jollies. Their goal was not to destroy the program nor conspire to cover up Foley's indescretions. They are simply ignorant people. They are uneducated regarding the nature of sexual addition, sexual abuse and, well, sex. And as sex is a fundamental aspect of being human, I believe ignorance in this area makes for a fundamentally ignorant person.

It is my personal opinion that the Republican party is largely comprised of people who are sexually repressed and undereducated. They are committed to maintaining a superficially wholesome image, but the need to appear wholesome is so great that it gets in the way of their ability to solve problems. They can't acknowledge (let alone deal with) something as complicated and emotionally charged as pedophilia. They are so busy following up their knee-jerk reactions to inconsequential sexual titillations (Clinton's blow jobs and Janet Jackson's right tit) that they have no time left to address more substantial issues.

I was amused at Cokie Roberts' comment last Sunday on This Week with George Stephanopoulos, when she said the Democrats would have handled the Foley scandal the same way the Republicans did. I disagree. While this is a gross over-generalization, I believe that Democrats are champions of information and education; whereas, Republicans seem to handle crises by resorting to repression and denial.

Democrats are more focused on Democratic principles than they are on following their leader. They tend to place their loyalty where those principles can best be served. If that means changing leaders, so be it. Howard Dean's amazing disappearing act after the so-called "Dean Scream" is evidence of that.

Republicans, on the other hand, place their loyalty on people vs. principle and will discard their principles immediately if they are forced to choose between backing their own and standing up to injustice. They do not solve problems as much as they use their power, as a group, to coerce their members to behave in ways that maintain their power in unity, and promote their group's special interests.

This explains (to me anyway) why it is such an important part of the Republican mindset that people be loyal to each other. Their only power rests in their ability to keep their numbers up. If they lose numbers, they lose power, and then they lose everything. They are woefully short on original ideas, information, education, creative thinking and problem solving skills. What they do have is a lot of people willing to do what is asked of them. (I am not a Democrat, by the way, I am an Independent.)

It has recently come out that the White House asked Foley to stay in Congress until 2008, despite the fact that Foley, himself, wished to retire and take up a career as a lobbyist. Specifically, I read that Foley was told that his lobbying career would be greatly enhanced if he agreed to do as asked. (Which is the gracious way of saying that it won't be, if he doesn't.) So Foley stayed. And look what happened.

If we really want a Democracy in America, we're going to have to elect officials who will refrain from using coercion and will instead rely on critical thinking skills to effectively manage this country. We are also going to have to insist that, Democrat or Republican, when elected officials take on the responsibility of representing the citizenry, they are made accountable for their actions and the actions of the people they put in place. This means that before anybody gets a job, they need to be vetted, thoroughly--not to test their loyalty--but to test their competence.

As long as we allow political strategists to influence our vote, rather than using our own critical thinking skills to elect competent, experienced people with a loyalty to the principles this country was founded on (as opposed to those motivated by a rabid a desire to align themselves with power at any cost) we will continue to get exactly what we have now: an administration that punishes truth-tellers and awards unquestioned obedience, while the real issues of concern to the citizens of this country are largely ignored.

Where Have I Been?

2006-10-02T18:17:00.000-07:00

I got a nice email from a friend today. He wrote asking where I've been lately. The truth is, I've been taking a little break. Okay, a big break. You see, for about a minute, it actually looked like the cat was out of the bag, so to speak, regarding the general state of the Union and everything I would normally have wanted to say was already being said.

What with all the noise about Iraq making terrorism worse, the business of Bush crusading for torture and the number of people now willing to say that they just don't think Congress is doing what they are supposed to do, I thought I'd said enough and could take a break. If it was all common knowledge now, why keep beating a dead horse?

Everything so many of us (bloggers, alternative media, etc.) have been spouting, since the war in Iraq began, is being accepted as fact now (Saddam was not a threat to Americans. There are/were no WMDs in Iraq. Invading Iraq will make terrorism worse. Even with the best intentions, Iraq will become a mess because our government is incompetent and greedy.) Frankly, I didn't think there was much more to say.

I was wrong.

Despite the fact that we can now all agree on what the facts were before the war, it hasn't seemed to make any difference. The reaction to the information, though it took several years to be accepted by the majority in this country, is so mind-numbingly inadequate to the effects of the situation on the ground, that it was almost better before we all knew how misled we had been.

At least before we could comfort ourselves with the knowledge (albeit, somewhat naïvely) that once people understood how inadequate to the task our leadership has been, at every level, they'd be fuming mad and ready for a change. But no, it appears not. All we can do now is lambaste Bill Clinton for "losing it," when recently questioned about why he didn't "do more" to capture/kill Osama bin Laden.

Frankly, I was proud of Bill. Just like I was proud of Howard Dean for screaming his fool head off at the now infamous Democratic event that was his last shining moment in the sun. I'm sick to death of denial. I'm ready to puke at the number of "gracious" comments I've heard from self-serving politicians who would happy to see you and me tarred and feathered for no good reason before they'd say anything that might be construed as "disloyal."

Both Bill Clinton and Howard Dean have something real and important to offer: They have a sense of self-respect and dignity that forces them to speak up--even when what they have to say might not please others. They have something else too: an innate ability to call things like they see them and an unwillingness to pretend otherwise.

Bill Clinton's problem wasn't that he screwed Monica Lewinsky; it was that Republicans preferred to focus on his sex life, rather than assisting him in finding and stopping Osama bin Laden. I just wish he'd had the guts to simply do what Joan Allen's character in The Contender did under similar circumstances: announce that his sex life is none of their damned business. That would have been the smart thing to do--highlight the idiocy of the request, rather than defend accusations that simply allowed the bullies who made the request to win by smearing their victim.

Our latest debacle is a charade in which key members of Congress pretend to protect the rights of innocent civilians, yet continue to support a barbaric policy which allows untried "enemies of state" to be fingered, by the administration, with no chance to address their accusers. What's more, the specifics of the torture that will be allowed under this so-called "clarification" process aren't going to be discussed. How does that clarify anything?

Bottom line: the semantics of the discussion have changed. That's all. Bush, et al, will continue to do what they've been doing. The only difference is that Congress has essentially ratified the Bush version of terrorism. This way we can pretend we are still the "good guys."

Meanwhile, our pundits are happily pointing the finger at the likes of Hugo Chavez and that guy from Iran (whose name I can say, but never spell) calling them "hotheads" and "buffoons." Why? Because they say things like "Bush is Satan." Well, Bush says things like Iraq, Iran and N. Korea are part of an "axis of evil." Where were the pundits then?

Things have not improved. They have simply degraded to the point where people are no longer arguing over how bad it is. Now they are simply arguing over how to make it sound better.

--Laurie

Iran, Lebanon and North Korea: Why Condi can't get it right

2006-07-22T16:16:00.000-07:00

Negotiate: To confer with another or others in order to come to terms or reach an agreement.

A few weeks back, just when I'd begun to hope for a real breakthrough in our diplomatic efforts with Iran--one promised by the trailers for the most recent round of talk shows, all of which proclaimed that Rice had offered to negotiate with Iran--I tuned in anxiously in hopes of something, well, hopeful.

What did I find? Rice offered to negotiate with Iran, but only after they comply, unconditionally, with each of the terms she's set out, in advance. This is a novel approach, given that the whole point of a negotiation is to discuss and agree on terms. Yet, that's the offer Rice is making: if I get exactly what I want up front, I'll talk to you. Seems to me that's a little like saying you're open to discussing your marital problems, but only after you finalize the divorce.

Her response to the current violence in Lebanon and Israel is similarly nonsensical. She won't call for an immediate cease-fire because she thinks it's time to deal with the "root" cause of the violence. Apparently, she's so afraid the violence will recur she can't bring herself to call a halt to it. Instead, she prefers it to go on, unchecked, while she bones up on theoretical constructs around violence and its "root" causes. She would save a great deal of time and energy (not to mention wasted human lives) if she understood that violence is the natural human response to the failure to negotiate successfully.

The root cause of the violence in the Middle East is not Hezbollah, it is the fact that even when agreements are made, they are not upheld. Israel has violated international law since it encroached on the territory given to the Palestinians, by the United Nations, in 1967. Israel's historic subjugation and abuse of the Palestinian people, coupled with their willingness to imprison large numbers of Arabs (who may or may not be guilty of any crime) is the root cause of the violence in the Middle East.

If we want to resolve the issues in the Middle East peacefully, we must use our power to enforce the previously agreed upon negotiations and call for an immediate cease-fire. This would build credibility with the Palestinians, and would make it possible for further negotiations to take place. Unless/until we take responsibility for Israel's failure to live by the 1967 borders, we will simply be supporting Israel's decision to abuse the Palestinian people.

Surprisingly, Dr. Rice does not appear to understand the importance of keeping our commitments in regard to prior negotiations. Nor does she seem to understand that violence begets more violence. But most surprising to me is that she fails to recognize that people simply can not be expected to respond positively to having their land taken, walls built to segregate them, or to being forced to endure constant military actions meant to subdue, harass or kill them.

She is also woefully ignorant of another pretty basic premise: if you want to be an example to the world, you have to live by your word. When leaders of so-called democratic nations (like Israel and the United States) say they support the spread of Democracy, most people expect that to mean that democratically elected governments will be recognized by those leaders. But, clearly, that is not the case. When the United States and Israel refused to recognize the Palestinian people's clear choice for self-rule (a government led by Hamas) they lost all credibility as proponents of Democracy, and are now simply known as the world's biggest jerks with the world's biggest guns.

The United States has been similarly dismissive in its approach to North Korea. When Jimmy Carter negotiated with them in 1994, we promised to deliver two light-water nuclear reactors, in exhange for their promise not to build power plants that might later be used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. We did not deliver. Additionally, we have blown off every attempt on their part to address that failure. Yet, every news story I've heard in the past several weeks has focused solely on North Korea's refusal to stop building nuclear weapons.

What's more, when North Korea attempted to initiate one-on-one negotiations with us, we refused. We're holding diplomacy as a carrot! We're blackmailing other countries by refusing to talk with them unless we get what we want first!

As long as the U.S. and Israel continue to refuse to negotiate with their adversaries, whether they be Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran or North Korea, they are forcing the cycle of violence to cointinue. By refusing to engage in diplomacy, both the U.S. and Israel are not only actively preventing the peace process from unfolding, they are the single biggest contributors to the violence they say they're trying to end.

All Women are NOT Created Equal

2006-05-31T13:33:00.000-07:00

In the race for Santa Clara County, D.A., the right woman is on the left.

For the first time in the history of this country, there is growing interest in putting a woman in the White House. And here in California, more and more women are running for local office. But before we heed the feminist call to make our President the First Lady as well, we should probably consider the possibility that being woman, alone, is not enough.

With the 2006 mid-term elections looming and the 2008 presidential race not far behind, Karyn Sinunu and her female rival, Dolores Carr, represent the national dilemma in microcosm and are changing the way we think about law enforcement, politics and the qualities we look for in a leader.

Though Sinunu and Carr are both women, they could not be more different. Sinunu is a Liberal; Carr is a Conservative. Sinunu is a nuancing genius; Carr stays the course.

Perhaps it is unfair to compare them. After all, Sinunu is, as her closest friend and colleague, Deputy D.A. Ed Fernandez says proudly "a star." She began her career at the Santa Clara County D.A.'s office in 1986, after raising two children. She whizzed through her trial assignments in five years, winning the coveted Trial Attorney of the Year award. By '91 she was managing teams and by '94 she was an assistant D. A. Two years ago, Sinunu was promoted to Chief Assistant D. A. for Homicide. Her boss, District Attorney George Kennedy, endorses her candidacy. With experience managing over 180 attorneys and a budget exceeding $60 million, Karyn Sinunu's qualifications are stellar.

Sinunu has authored a victim's rights manual which is now being distributed to all California prosecutors and has developed a procedure for use in child abuse investigations. She is strongly committed to victim's rights, has proposed legislation that would make it a felony to frame someone for a crime and is not afraid to throw out a case if evidence suggests that police (or over-zealous prosecutors) have fingered the wrong man. Now let's take a look at Dolores Carr.

Carr has worked in the D.A.'s office since 1985. A look at her web site turns up a number of endorsements. She is hailed for her "comprehensive knowledge of the law" and for "supervising the grading of the California General Bar Examination." But nothing on her site or in her campaign materials seems to get to the heart of how Dolores Carr thinks. For that, we need to review the case that put Dolores Carr and Karyn Sinunu on opposing sides for the first time.

Back in 1991, Carr was prosecuting a rape case. The alleged perpetrator was a black man who had frequented the 42nd Street Bar & Grill in Palo Alto. Three women accused him of following and harassing them. One said she was raped. While two of the victims were unable to identify their assailant, one picked out a man named Lucas from a photo line-up.

Dr. Lucas, who was in residency at Stanford University, was picked up and charged with stalking, sexual harassment, and rape. Yet, though all three victims claimed the perpetrator had been driving a red car and wore a leather jacket, no red car and no leather jacket ever turned up. What's more, DNA samples taken from the rape victim did not match DNA taken from Lucas. One would think it would have ended there, but it did not.

Dolores Carr, now a Supreme Court judge, was insistent that Lucas was guilty, and chose to hold him on the lesser charges of stalking and harassment. Not until Karyn Sinunu got involved, months later, was the actual perpetrator found and Dr. Lucas released. Interestingly, the case is in the news again, because the convicted rapist has been released, and has re-offended.

Sinunu and Carr are also facing off again, this time in the race for the D. A.'s office. Carr, who became a judge in 2000, is portraying herself as an "outsider" who will "reform" the D. A.'s office. Here's a quote from her campaign materials: " . . . it is the ethical obligation of the district attorney to seek truth, not simply convictions. Anything less inflicts unnecessary pain and expense upon litigants." Yet when Carr was recently asked about the Lucas case, she said she wouldn't do anything differently.

Despite Carr's campaign rhetoric, the Lucas case demonstrates that Carr lacks Sinunu's wisdom. Had Sinunu not stepped in, one can only guess at the number of months Dr. Lucas would have remained behind bars. What's more, with Lucas in jail, the person ultimately found to be the rapist might never have been charged.

I set up a meeting with Karyn Sinunu to understand what she saw in the Lucas case that Carr missed by "staying the course" despite evidence of innocence.

Sinunu lives in a modest brick house in an upper-middle-class San Jose neighborhood. The yard is impeccably manicured, with short lush grass and well-maintained hedges. She opens the door and leads me into a living room with large, overstuffed furniture in subdued tones. The hardwood floors spread a honey-colored glow throughout the house. The décor is Metropolitan Home. Not fancy, but very nice, and homey. The artwork and the bookcases throughout reflect an appreciation of culture and a lifelong pursuit of education.

Sinunu herself is a mixture of femininity and strength. Dressed in a dark blazer, matching knee-length skirt and leather high-heeled pumps, she is the visual representation of the balance between business and pleasure, style and substance. When she speaks, she conveys a mixture of passion, intelligence, compassion, and a laser-like ability to perceive the essence of things.

Despite the fifteen years that have passed since the Lucas case, she was surprisingly clear on the specifics. Yet what impressed me most was her description of the Lucas interrogation and how she sensed, immediately, that Lucas was an innocent man.

Sinunu: [The police] picked him up. They questioned him at length. And one of the questions was, "Have you ever followed women?" And he said, "yes." I don't know why, but he talked about one time, when he was in his car. He saw a beautiful woman crossing the crosswalk and he circled around the block and looked at her. Now Dr. Lucas, it was clear from watching the video, was a man who was socially naïve and very much a book worm and it was an odd thing for a man to say in that kind of an interview, but he was that forthright. He was very thoughtful in his answers and he was clearly just beaten down by this, I mean shocked, that he had been arrested. So the case came to the District Attorney's office, and based on the statement that he had followed a woman one time, and quite frankly I don't know any man who hasn't probably done the same, but just looking from afar—he wasn't stalking her or anything—he just watched a pretty woman. Based on that statement, he was charged.

Dr. Lucas couldn't make bail. A recent medical school graduate, he had no money, just student loans. He sat in jail for six weeks. Finally, the DNA evidence taken from the rape victim came back. It did not match the DNA taken from Dr. Lucas.

Sinunu: An attorney called me in Palo Alto and said "I'm representing Dr. Lucas, what's going on with your office?" Well, I had just taken over the Sexual Assault unit, so I took the case. I looked at everything. I didn't know how we could possibly prove this. And I had the case dismissed. We were changing our whole theory, I mean, we believed that one person did this . . . that had a certain piece of clothing and a certain car, and we couldn't find anyone who said that Lucas had a leather jacket. We couldn't find any one who said he had a red car, or borrowed a red car. I learned after that, that there was a janitor there at the hospital, at Stanford Hospital, who was little bit obsessed by the case. He kept asking everyone about it. And he was an African American man who drove a red car.

Sinunu discovered that this janitor had a record. He'd been arrested for driving under the influence. When the police arrested him they took his blood to determine his blood alcohol level. Sinunu asked them to run his DNA. She then asked them to compare it to the DNA evidence found on the rape victim. It was a match.

What was it that allowed Karyn Sinunu to grasp what others missed? Many watched the videotape of Dr. Lucas’ interrogation, including Dolores Carr. Others were privy to the same evidence Sinunu had at her disposal. What led Sinunu to question the curious janitor whom nobody else seemed to notice? I contend her finely honed "women's" intuition tipped the balance.

Intuition, to be clear, is not instinct. Instinct tells us to run from danger and to hold our breath when underwater. Intuition is different; it is instinct tempered with wisdom. It requires assessment of the facts surrounding a situation and an awareness of the interests of the players. It necessitates constant assimilation of new information. Intuition requires the ability to "nuance."

A person with highly developed intuition will “smell” something amiss, just as Karyn Sinunu did when she watched the tape of the Lucas interrogation.

It's time to focus our energies on finding and electing leaders who possess the kind of thoughtfulness and intuitive leadership that a woman like Karyn Sinunu can bring. Not content to simply uphold the law, Sinunu is proactively crafting both legislation and guidance to assist her fellow attorneys in finding, prosecuting, and removing from society those criminal elements most dangerous to our communities.

Simultaneously, she is passionately committed to victim's rights, defendant's rights, and the all-important task of protecting our children from exposure to violence.
With a strong background in philosophy and psychology, Sinunu is literally writing the book on how to both prosecute and prevent, the violence that predisposes children to lives as adult offenders. Karyn Sinunu is a visionary.

In the end, whether we are selecting a District Attorney or the next President of the United States, what matters most isn't getting any woman into office, but getting the right woman. And in the race for Santa Clara County D.A., the right woman is on the left.

Immigration Insanity

2006-05-17T12:36:00.000-07:00

Why are Republicans so worried that illegal aliens might benefit from amnesty? Why is no one asking how corporate interests responsible for the hiring of illegal aliens are going to be held accountable? "We can't reward illegal behavior." That's what I keep hearing. But aren't the corporations that encouraged/enabled illegal immigrants to come to this country just as responsible for the immigration problem as the immigrants themselves? After all, it's a two-way street: immigrants show up, somebody hires them. Without the second half of that equation, none of this would be happening.

What's more, it is just as illegal to hire illegals as it is illegal for illegals to be here. So why is nobody interested in pursuing legal action against the companies who broke the law for the past 20 years? If we can track down the people who crossed our borders illegally, surely we can find out where they worked.

Yet, I've heard no talk of fining the people and/or businesses that profited from frightened workers, who have historically been over-worked and under-paid. Instead, high-level Republicans (whose own business interests likely benefited from the 12 or so million illegal aliens now working in the United States) are so fearful that the very people they profited from might actually benefit themselves, they are inundating the talk show circuits. And, as usual, they're playing a broken record: "they broke the law" is the favorite tune of the hour--never once do any of them acknowledge the fact that the law was also broken by everybody who profited from hiring illegal aliens. That never seems to come up.

If we wanted to be fair (though clearly fairness is not the goal) we would charge every individual or company who hired an illegal alien--knowingly or not--a fee. We could base that fee on what it costs to educate a foreigner to be conversant in our complicated language and to understand our complex system of government. First, we make sure they speak English, then we educate them in uniquely Northern American cultural basics, like Hypocrisy 101: How to say one thing and do another; How to Manipulate Information; or, How to Use Legal Technicalities to Violate the Intent of the Law (and get away with it!)

Of course, to be really fair we would have to make the companies that hired illegal immigrants pay back wages as well. They should be forced to cough up the difference between what they paid their workers and what they would have paid if forced to pay minimum wage. That would be an interesting exercise, wouldn't it? At the same time, of course, we would need to crack down, viciously, on any future violations of immigration laws--punishing those hiring even as we seek to punish those sneaking across our borders.

As for those already here, when they have completed and/or tested out of their training, they should be allowed to apply for citizenship through the usual process while working here and paying taxes. As long as we eliminate any future practice of hiring illegal workers, there will be no incentives for additional illegal immigrants to show up here. The key, however, is enforcement.

As long as we force businesses to pay for their criminal behavior, and the fines are in excess of what they save paying slave wages, there will be no incentive for them to continue to lure illegal immigrants across our borders. When you remove the cause of a problem you don't need to deal with symptoms. Besides, as one comic put it, try building a 700-mile fence without Mexicans. The fence isn't the answer. Enforcing the law is.

We need to admit that we allowed this problem to fester and take responsibility for that fact. What's more, we need to stop acting like it's a new crises--this is not new. The only reason it's coming up now is that Bush can't find a single other area to talk about that gives him even a semblance of credibility with anybody. This is it--his last hurrah. If he can win the hearts of Hispanics everywhere, he won't go out in utter disgrace. He needs something to work on that will make him look better than he does right now. He picked immigration. It's one of the few areas he hasn't already picked up, screwed up and had to run from. Now he figures he can boost the ratings with his peeps by getting Hispanics across the country to side with him. He's a desperate man. This is a desperate move.

It's also a repeat. Remember Reagan? He did the same thing. Only he called it "amnesty." And what happened? We let folks stay but nobody kept up the other end of the deal, the end that said we should start enforcing laws against hiring illegal immigrants and stop encouraging them to come here covertly. That never happened. So here we are again.

What is the definition of insanity? Oh yeah, doing the same thing and expecting different results.

It's Not About Terrorism, It Never Was

2006-05-14T11:32:00.000-07:00

"We are information rich and question poor." --Baroness Susan Greenfield

Everybody's pitching fits about the NSA's phone monitoring project, the one that AT&T/SBC and Verizon signed up for, no questions asked. The one that will provide the government with literally billions of records of phone calls (from cell and land lines), email transactions, videos downloaded and web sites visited. Only Qwest media had the sense to question the legality of the request. Only Quest said, hey, don't you need to give us some paperwork before we hand over records of every call or email, everybody we service, ever made?

The NSA declined to provide the requested/required documentation, so Quest kept their records private, as well they should have. Somebody give them a medal, please.

USA Today's big story, which broke Friday, focuses on the fact that the other two communication giants (AT&T and SBC recently merged) just stepped on up and handed over their stuff. Naturally, people are upset. But nobody's upset for the same reason I am, at least nobody I know of, except Greg Palast. He's the author of The Best Democracy Money Can Buy and one of the few journalists in this country who isn't afraid to put two and two together.

Palast has done a lot of research into this and he believes, as do I, that our government is merely using the terrorist threat to intimidate people into complying with requests that would otherwise be seen as both illegal and reprehensible--and, of course, it's working. I can imagine no other circumstance under which the heads of either AT&T or Verizon would so unthinkingly hand over their customers' records. But if you say it's to fight terrorism, what choice do they have, really?

Yet, if this program were a remotely effective tool for fighting terrorism, the NSA could easily have received approval from FISA. In fact, when asked why they didn't go through FISA, at least one official actually said it was because they didn't think FISA would give them approval. Why? Because access to billions of private citizens' records is not a terrorism-fighting tool; it's an information gathering tool that helps the Bush administration understand/control the public mindset.

They aren't using the information to track down Al Qaeda; they're trying to figure out where their biggest political threats are and to eliminate them through some seemingly innocuous legislation that we won't see for what it is and therefore won't know enough to be afraid of. It's not about them spying on us, it's about them preventing us from spying on them. We're not the ones doing stuff we shouldn't--they are. It's another brilliant plan executed by the men who stole two elections, manipulated intelligence and sent us to war so they would have a constant reason to infringe on our personal freedoms and take our money.

The only area of competence, literally, the ONLY area of competence this administration has demonstrated is in the area of public manipulation of information. They have failed, miserably, at every other task put to them. They have focused all their energy and expertise on controlling what we believe and none of their efforts have gone into addressing actual problems and/or providing effective programs to help the American people be safe and prosperous.

The NSA is not cataloguing and monitoring call patterns in order to protect us from terrorism; they're doing it to see which 527s are having the strongest impact via email campaigns. Remember when Republicans tried to make 527s illegal? Well, that didn't work so now they're doing what they think will work, they're going to find a way to compare the political situation in the country with the patterns they see in internet traffic. This will tell them exactly which organizations to target/discredit so they can eliminate or at least minimize political damage done when information they don't like (like how they actually operate and who wins/loses) finds its way into the public domain.

They need to monitor our communications so they can know how the internet hurts/helps them politically. They are looking for patterns. In fact, as one official put it, the data are used for "social network analysis." This is not about fighting Al-Qaeda, this is data mining.

This is at the heart of what should be the national debate and it's time we started facing facts: if they get away with the NSA program and we let them slide on the failure to enforce net neutrality, we will lose our democracy. The only thing that keeps us from being a dictatorship now is our immediate, uncensored, access to critical information. It's that simple.

As for their idiotic claim that, by removing names from phone numbers in the database, people's identities are protected, that's just another technicality. The fact that they aren't getting the phone numbers from the same search they get the phone tracking from is irrelevant in practical terms. However, it's an important distinction because it allows them to claim that they are not performing an illegal search, since they aren't accessing names. Of course, "the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information." In other words, they'll put the names right back into those records the second they choose to, but it won't be illegal because it wasn't done up front. That's how these people work. Remember Bush promising to fire anybody involved in the leak of Valerie Plame's name?

They tried the same twisted argument then. They claimed that by saying "Joe Wilson's wife" instead of "Valerie Plame" administration officials didn't 'out' her. Of course, Joe Wilson only has one wife. It doesn't matter if they said the name, she was 'outed' just the same. But to them, a group of extremely limited thinkers who don't appear to understand that despite their own twisted thought processes, content is more important than packaging, this is a perfectly legitimate argument.

But that's not the main point either. The real issue here, under all the hoopla over terrorism and invasion of privacy is something infinitely more sinister: the current administration is trying to stop you and me from having the true power of a Democracy at our disposal--they are working furiously to find a way to curtail your ability to access uncensored information.

Do you think the Chinese government is the only client Google can create custom web browser tools for? Think again. I don’t know exactly how the Chinese internet works, but don't think our government can't implement something like that here. They took us to war against our will. They put a puppet president in place and rigged two consecutive elections. Let's not forget that.

When the 2006 mid-term elections create the usual political in-fighting, let's hope somebody is smart enough to disable the argument about our privacy rights being a rational sacrifice to the fight on terror and start calling it like it is. This is a clear violation of our Constitutional rights for the purpose of understanding and manipulating OUR information gathering processes, such that we lose our access to free and unfettered information about our own government. That's what's at stake here.

And while we're at it, it's time to make a distinction between conspiracy theorists (who make stuff up) and people who merely have the ability to recognize a conspiracy when they see one.

The Second Coming

2006-05-08T20:15:00.000-07:00

Things fall apart . . the centre cannot hold . . .The best lack all convictions, while the worst are full of passionate intensity. -- W. B. Yeats, The Second Coming

I am not an evangelical, but our president is. People seem loathe to talk about. In his own small circles he's a proud believer; yet in the public eye he's "slouching toward Bethlehem." Fearful of being exposed for the religious fanatic he is, he avoids the discussion. But those who know him, know exactly what's going on.

Perhaps you believe his believing isn't relevant. But it is. It's at the core of his decision-making. And as he is the "decider," it's critical. Just the other night when a friend of his was asked if Bush thinks we should curtail our energy consumption, his friend said, no, absolutely not. George W. Bush believes we are a "blessed" nation. Our lifestyle is fed by the fruits of the land God gave us. We are meant to use it--not save it.

There is, of course, no discussion of how our nation's consumption of much more than what comes from our own large continent fits into God's plan. There is simply an unspoken assumption that if we can get our fat hands on it, it is, apparently, "God's will."

It will be very interesting to see how George W. submits to God's will when Bolivia kicks us out of their country. On May 1, the Washington Post reported that Bolivian President Evo Morales made good on his threat to nationalize the oil and gas fields that "private companies have plundered for years." (Those private interests to which Morales refers, are largely U.S. corporate interests.) While the announcement was not unexpected, it apparently did surprise a few when it was accompanied by a deployment of soldiers to the fields.

Bolivia is not alone in the desire to curtail huge profits, by U.S. interests, while the citizens on whose land they operate benefit little. In Venezuela, over 30 oil contracts were recently voided because the government is now demanding a larger stake in the profits. A similar situation appears to be brewing in Ecuador, where limits on foreign crude profits are becoming law.

But Bolivia is going a step further: in March of this year they opened criminal cases against three former presidents and eight lesser officials for alleged mishandling of foreign oil contracts. It's exactly what the public wants: accountability. Funny how it's happening in Bolivia, but has yet to happen here, in this hotbed of Democracy, this "blessed" nation of ours.

It will be interesting to see if the Bolivian investigations into oil and gas industry corruption will lead to a revisiting of the 1999 water contract Bolivia signed with one of Bechtel's subsidiaries. That deal, a 40-year contract allowing Aguas del Tunari to take over the water supply to Bolivia's third largest city and charge exorbitant rates of the poorest while raking in huge profits, was actually terminated --but only after massive protests. And Bechtel still made out. They sued Bolivia for $25 million based on the loss of profits they could have made if the original contract had played itself out.

Meanwhile, the Bechtel bunch is cleaning up in Iraq. For those who worry that the war was all about oil, that's not entirely true. Sure, we want the oil, but equally important is Iraq's potential for supplying the likes of Bechtel and Halliburton with a seemingly unlimited number of opportunities to overcharge and under deliver on a myriad of contractual services. Iraq is the land of opportunity for large Western corporate interests and the inexhaustible needs our invasion has created were arguably one of the biggest motivations for our invasion of that country in the first place. From the perspective of our evangelical leader, it's all worked out quite nicely.

But there is an enemy lurking--one Bush hasn't the sense to be concerned with--not yet at least. It isn't Al Qaeda and it isn't the Democrats either. It's a black woman named Bunnatine (Bunny) Greenhouse. A former top-ranking official in the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Greenhouse took exception to the exclusive, no-bid contracts, the government kept giving to KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root--a Halliburton subsidiary). This was back in 2004. After two years of questioning the questionable practices of paying over $10M to KBR without offering competitive bidding, Greenhouse was hauled into a general's office and demoted for poor performance. She was also given the option to retire. Greenhouse decided to fight back.

Since then she has managed to continue to work while building her case. It's like holding two jobs, really, but her determination is evident. Her contention is that she was chosen by God to "be a fisher among men." According to a detailed article in April's Vanity Fair, Greenhouse talks about her message from God and says that at the time she didn't know exactly what it meant, but now she does.

It all started in 1997, when General Joe Ballard, the Army Corps's first black chief engineer, gave Greenhouse her personal mission: he wanted her to "shatter the cronyism that had led to bad contracts." She started by enforcing a law already on the books that required small and minority-owned companies to have a fair chance when bidding on government contracts. Since she had to sign off on anything over a certain amount, she would see any really large, lucrative deals, so she had some control. But after a while, she says the cronies tried to beat the system by dividing the work up into smaller projects; hence, the ability to get them signed off by Greenhouse's subordinates, whom were presumably tied to the companies getting the contracts. But even that pales in comparison to what happened when the war began.

Greenhouse describes a high-level government meeting that included members of KBR, the very company responsible for preparing the plan for restoring Iraqi oil. She also says that "it's strict protocol in the procurement business that the contractor who drew up the contingency plan for a job should not be allowed to bid on the job itself: he'd know the exact budget and other details that would give him an unfair advantage." Yet, KBR got the contract.

Since then other troubles with KBR have hit the press. When KBR chose Altanmia Commercial Marketing Company to supply gas to Iraq at $2.65/gallon, twice what others would have charged, people were up in arms. But instead of getting to the bottom of the scandal, the Army Corps of Engineers signed a waiver behind Greenhouse's back that essentially said they didn't want to see KBR's records and nobody else was going to see them either. As the contractor who hired KBR, the Corps had the legal right to do that--the question is, who within the Corps would give that order? No one seems to know.

But the story isn't over. Whatever is going on with Iraqi oil and KBR will come out in the end because of people like Bunny Greenhouse. Just as President Bush feels a sense of righteousness to his cause, Greenhouse too senses a greater destiny, pulling her toward a cause that is in exact opposition to that of our President.

While Bush manipulates the truth so he can continue to take from others by force, shoving his misguided ideology onto a frightened and ignorant group of followers who fail to see beyond the surface, Bunnatine Greenhouse is fighting to reveal the truth and free the oppressed.

Can you believe it? Our president turned out to be the anti-Christ and Jesus is a black chick. What will they think of next?

George Gets A New Hat

2006-04-22T11:34:00.000-07:00

The cover of Rolling Stone shows Bush in a dunce cap. Alternet.org has a string of postings responding to the "Bush is a Moron" piece they recently posted. My response: tell me something I don't know.

Yes, George W. Bush is a moron. Unfortunately, the group who trained and positioned him as president is comprised of very clever (albeit amoral) men who have propped him up and created a plausible deniability scenario aimed at fooling the American public into thinking Bush means well but just doesn't always understand the finer points.

In reality, he's been deliberately kept ignorant so his "honest" protestations of well-meaning actions that have somehow inadvertently resulted in horrific failures can be made palatable to religious right, who are so busy trying to be gracious that they have forgotten how to be conscious. I've said it before and I'll say it again: it is not statistically possible to fail 100% of the time, by accident.

This mess we're in now isn't due to Bush's moronic nature, it's the result of calculated decisions aimed at failing in ways that ultimately serve the neocons running the show. The more Iraq becomes a cesspool, the greater our need to employ the war profiteers in bed with Bush/Cheney, et. al. The more we live in fear for our own safety, the less we will concern ourselves with the unconscionable acts our government supports in other countries.

Our government, largely due to complacency and failure to apply critical thinking skills on the part of the American people, is no longer taking care of us; they are simply using fear tactics to justify taking over the world--one step at a time. The only question now is what are we going to do about it?

Scott Stops Spinning

2006-04-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

Scott McClellan announced his resignation today. I'm not surprised. He likely got so tired of spinning that it just wore him out. With Powell coming forward to debunk the administration's claims around Iraqi WMDs, a slew of retired generals calling for Rumsfeld to resign, and so much of the Republican party in disgrace, McClellan is smart enough to know he can't spin his way to favor with the American public any more, and that has to hurt.

Looking back, he has a lot to be proud of. He stepped into Air Fleischer's shoes and never looked back. He fulfilled his commitment to maintain the President's plausible deniability stance on every level. Every time someone accused Bush of lying or misleading the American public, McClellan was right there to spin us into an alternate truth, where everything Bush does is right and every seeming wrong is really due to accidental misinformation.

If we're to believe Scott McClellan, the CIA told Bush about the two trailers found in Iraq, they just didn't bother to fill him in on the fact that they were for providing hydrogen for weather balloons, not for making biological weapons. I seem to recall that the CIA told Bush about the aluminum tubes Rice cited in her call to war as well, but for some reason they failed to tell him they weren't suitable for nuclear weapons. The CIA even told Bush there was a deal between Niger and Iraq for yellow-cake uranium, they just left out the part about it not actually being true. According to McClellan, none of these intelligence failures are the President's fault; the man just didn't get the memos.

Yet if discovering the truth were Bush's goal, how do you account for the fact that when Joe Wilson had the guts to come right out and say, for example, that the uranium yellow-cake deal with Niger was not true--having been to Niger to investigate that claim--the Bush administration outed Wilson's wife and did their best to vilify him? The only thing this business clarified for me is why everybody's afraid to tell Bush the truth. Apparently, he doesn't want it.

As the now infamous PNAC report and Downing Street Memo make painfully clear, George W. Bush intended to invade Iraq, regardless of whether or not the intelligence supported that decision. McClellan did some pretty heavy spinning around that too--but he wasn't the only one.

Then CIA Director, George Tenet, did a bit of tap dancing as well. Whereas, in the past, the CIA Director might be tasked with providing detailed, accurate and complete information to the Commander in Chief, George Tenet's assignment was special. His goal was to withhold information the White House didn't want. It was, quite simply, the only way to create the plausible deniability Bush needed to wage an unnecessary war and get away with it. And there is no doubt that Mr. Tenet performed magnificently. In fact, he performed so well that he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Sounds absurd, I know. But when you think about it, it makes perfect sense: George Tenet's failures were George Bush's success.

As were the failures of Condoleezza Rice. Had her goal been to prevent an attack like 9/11, Condoleezza Rice would not have refused to meet with Richard Clarke, the foremost expert on the subject of Al Qaeda and the threat they posed to the United States. Had her goal been foiling an attack, her first act as National Security Advisor should have been to gather as much information as possible from the experts at her disposal. Instead, she sidelined Clarke and refused to invite him to meetings. What's more, she ignored the list of action items he carefully passed on to her and had the gall to tell the 9/11 Commission that she did nothing with them because she considered it a "list" not a "plan" and "nobody told me what to do."

Yet, as with Tenet's failures, Condi's snafus gave the White House exactly what they needed. Bush knew he couldn't attack Iraq without the support of the American public, and he knew without a "Pearl Harbor" he wouldn't get that support. So, Condoleezza Rice looked the other way while Al Qaeda worked unchecked. She too was rewarded. As were Robert Bolton and Alberto Gonzales.

The pattern is clear: those who agreed to assist the president in achieving his goal of invading Iraq, at the expense of the truth and the welfare of the American people, have been well compensated. The few who were willing to speak the truth to protect the American people, have been smeared, discredited and/or ignored. Yet every day we hear another report about how the White House did their best, they just got it wrong. And each time the pattern repeats, Scott McClellan has been there to remind us that our president has always made the best possible decision based on the information he had. That is, until now.

Scott McClellan is stepping down. I am sure he's tired. But I suspect there's more to it than that. In fact, I have a hunch that he's more than tired. I'd be willing to bet he's just a little bit angry. Despite his continued insistence that the many mistakes made by the White House were not due to any conspiracy or decision to "cherry pick" information, he must have finally realized it just isn't possible for the colossal failures of the Bush administration to have all been due to nothing more sinister or complicated than a series of completely accidental mistakes.

Why? Because it's not statistically possible to achieve a 100% failure rate by accident. In order to perform that badly, you have to work at it.

The Free Market: How we're paying for it

2006-04-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

Conservatives love to talk about the "free market" and letting the market work unfettered. At the core of their philosophy is the idea that a free market is the only fair way to go. Re-distribution of wealth, of any kind, for any reason, is anathema to them. At least, that's what they say.

The truth is that conservatives manipulate the market to their advantage all the time--and if that's not redistribution of wealth, I don't know what is. At least when liberals say let's tax to pay for highways or healthcare, they're up front about what they're taking and what they plan to do with the money.

Conservatives, on the other hand, pay lobbyists to pressure Congress to do them favors, which the rest of us can't afford to do, and essentially buy themselves more democracy than we can get. When was the last time you paid several million dollars to somebody to tell Congress exactly what you wanted them to hear? And when was the last time your personal desires became legislation?

In fact, until the internet and organizations like MoveOn.org came about, the rest of us had virtually no influence on Congress. Finally, we have something at least resembling real democracy--at least now we can make our voices heard--even if they're still largely ignored. But Republicans have tried to discredit organizations like MoveOn.org. Pretty ironic, isn't it? It's okay to manipulate a take-over of K Street so lobbying concerns are almost entirely Republican, and it's okay to call for redistricting outside the normal process solely to force a Republican majority in Congress, but somehow it's bad to let people like you and me send in $20 a year to have a venue for making our own opinions heard? I can't help but laugh every time the likes of George W. Bush or Tom DeLay speak of "compassionate conservatism" "graciousness" or "morality." I honestly don't think they know what any of those words mean.

While the rest of us scramble to find a way to get reasonable healthcare, finance a home and pay for our education, large government-backed corporate interests are forcing our wages down by hiring illegal immigrants who are too frightened of exposure to demand reasonable pay and humane conditions.

Of course, that cat's out of the bag now, but all it means is that the politicians tied to corporate interests are frantically attempting to enact legislation that will make it okay for companies like Wal-Mart to hire illegals--that's pretty much what all this immigration law stuff is about. It's not about protecting Americans from terrorists or saving our jobs: it's about changing laws so big corporations and wealthy folks who've profited from illegal (see: slave) labor won't have to be accountable for their own lawlessness. It's much like what Bush and DeLay have done all their political lives: push the law to the edge, go over when necessary, then get lawyers to say it's okay. In other words, to hell with the intent of the law, if the laws don't give us permission to do what we want, we'll just rewrite them.

I used to think that we could prevent this kind of abuse of our legal system by sending important cases to the Supreme Court, where (presumably) greater minds and higher morals were at work. Now, I'm not so sure. Recently, I heard Jose Padilla was finally turned over to the court system, after years of detention without a trial. He sued. But instead of letting the case go to the Supreme Court, as it should, the administration finally gave in and decided to give him a trial after all. End of story. Now the Supreme Court won't hear the case because it's "moot."

But what about the next guy? This is clearly not the only time this situation will come up. Surely, the Court understands the importance of a ruling on this issue, so there is no ambiguity in the future? Apparently not.

The same thing happened with the issue of reporters and their confidentiality clauses. When Judith Miller went to jail, it brought a larger issue to the fore: should reporters be required, by law, to testify in spite of their oath to keep sources confidential, when a criminal case is involved? The Supreme Court refused to hear that case as well.

If there is ambiguity in the law, particularly in important cases like these, isn't it the Supreme Court's responsibility to deal with those ambiguities, so we can use their rulings to guide our actions in the future? Frankly, I'm beginning to think they want the law to remain ambiguous. As long as there is debate on these issues, those taking advantage of that ambiguity can pretend they didn't know what they were doing was wrong. (Another fine example of plausible deniability.)

And this brings us back to this so-called "free market." We're told we're free, but the circumstances under which we make our choices--where we work, where we live, what we buy--are manipulated by forces so much wealthier and, therefore, more powerful than ourselves, that while we may have the choice to say "yes" or "no," what we're saying "yes" or "no" to is completely out of our hands. In other words, unless you're part of the middle- or upper-class, you're free alright, free to eat shit or starve. That, is the essence of this "free market."

But that's all about to change. With the advent of the internet, people are now able, for the first time in history, to see what's really going on. This is why conservatives are so concerned about regulating the internet. If we are all able to communicate and share knowledge, the current power base in this country will shortly be on its way out. Thus far they have depended on legal ambiguities and an ignorant, uneducated populace to keep their power.

The freedom to share information among all classes, the ability to educate the poor and disenfranchised as well as the middle-classes and the elite as to what's really happening in government and around the world, is actually the only thing that will allow us to have a truly free market: one where both the circumstances that create our choices and the choices themselves are a natural by-product of ethical and moral behavior, monitored by a variety of groups providing a constant source of organic checks and balances. This is what a true democracy looks like. And it's scaring the pants off the likes of George W. Bush and Tom DeLay.

America the Punitive

2006-04-03T23:39:00.000-07:00

It's bad enough that the current administration is so hell bent on the punitive solution to everything, but why must we always punish the wrong people?

The big debate on the Sunday talk shows yesterday was Immigration law. Some are proposing new laws to make illegal immigration a felony. That would make all undocumented residents of this country felons--even the ones who were brought here, by their parents, when they were children. I'm not sure of all the specifics of this proposed new legislation, but one thing I'm clear on: the real source of the immigration problem is being ignored.

There is a saying in ancient wisdom: the solution is in the problem. That is to say, if you want to solve a problem you have to look at it. Clearly, the present path of new legislation, aimed at doing what our old legislation could have done had we enforced it, is not based on that ancient principle. Instead of looking at the problem in order to fully understand it, we are (as we are so fond of) simply acting out our frustration on the victims of our own failed policy.

For example, we have failed, miserably, to enforce immigration law for years. As a result, the laws have been broken regularly. Foreigners heard, through the grapevine, that if they could get into the United States, they could find employment. How did that happen? Companies like Wal-Mart hired contractors whose ability to stay in business depended on ultra-cheap labor. And where does one find such labor? From the pool of illegal immigrants who are too frightened of being exposed to complain. Corporate farming concerns have been using illegal immigrants the same way. And who doesn't know somebody who brags at upscale dinner parties about the great "find" they discovered in the form of a gardener or a nanny who is top notch but charges virtually nothing?

While we looked the other way so big business and the wealthy could take advantage of frightened immigrants who believed they were coming to the land of plenty, more and more foreigners heard more and more about the opportunities here. And as with most stories, each time they are told they are more and more dramatic. In other words, the folks in Cuba and Mexico (and wherever else illegal immigrants tend to come from) are playing "telephone" with the truth. By the time they save up what they need to pay the smugglers, they've become totally convinced that getting to the States is the answer to their prayers. Hence, the doctor who is flipping burgers; the engineer who cuts your grass; the scientist who clerks at Walgreen's. This is what the American dream has morphed into.

You'd think at some point these folks would get the picture and stop selling everything they own to come here and work for peanuts, wouldn't you? But no, they won't. Because they have something we don’t: they have the ability to think beyond themselves. They are capable of delayed gratification, a concept totally foreign to most of us. And they aren't selfish, oddly enough. Despite how little they have, they actually come here more concerned about how they might position their children for a better future, rather than worrying every moment about how they can take, take, take, for themselves and foist the payment off on future generations. It's really no wonder Americans are so fed up--they are dealing with people they simply can't comprehend.

And now, we are going to blame another failure, the failure to protect ourselves from terrorists, on the wrong people. Instead of securing our ports, improving airport security, fixing obvious communication problems and logistical snafus, we are blaming our sense of insecurity on the people who are cleaning our toilets. Instead of taking responsibility for our own failures, we are going to use new immigration legislation to point the finger of blame on people whose only crime was wanting a better life, and who observed the lax enforcement of immigration law long enough to believe that it might allow them to provide more for their children. Had the United States been diligent in its own enforcement of these laws, as written, in prior years, these people would not be here in the first place. And had we not quietly, covertly, taken advantage of their presence to greedily profit ourselves, they'd have had no reason to stay.

Come to think of it, this is not unlike what we've done in Iraq. We waltzed into their country, uninvited; we removed their government and destroyed their infrastructure and then left them without water, power or a functioning government, essentially we created a political vacuum. And now, when they're having trouble getting squared away, we pompously pronounce that all the problems they are having are due to their own inability to "get their act together."

We may not be able to see into the future; we may even be failures at taking care of our own; but there is one thing we do quite well: we play the blame game with the best of them. We play it so well, in fact, that it has long ceased to even matter what's true--only that we know how to win.

Feingold Takes on Bush: Another Battle in the Ongoing War between the Map and the Territory

2006-03-14T17:06:00.000-08:00

I've been harping on this subject for a long time. I am pretty sure it started with the book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. A theme presented there, which has resurfaced throughout my adult life, is that of confusing the map with the territory. I am reminded of it, once again, after reading today's Washington Post.

The Post article Feingold Pushes to Censure President presents a perfect example of the confusion I am referring to. It also shows quite clearly how the failure on the part of our elected representatives, to properly distinguish between the map and the territory, is turning our nation into a worldwide joke and our country into a third-world nation. I refer, specifically, to the habit of focusing on appearance versus reality.

The crux of the Post article, referenced above, is that the Senator from Wisconsin, Russ Feingold, wants the president to be held accountable for using his presidential powers to bypass the law and legislate from the White House. Feingold, who is clearly concerned about the use of the wiretapping program Bush has authorized and its effect on our (yours and my) civil liberties, is introducing a resolution to censure the president. This would, presumably, lead to a debate in Congress over the situation and would call to account the specific actions taken by Bush, as well as provide an opportunity to look more closely at the ways in which we might provide the security measures needed to protect the public without breaking the law. In other words, rather than jump to impeachment, as many others have suggested, Feingold wants to solve the problem.

As anyone who has ever solved a problem knows, it can't be done if the problem isn't recognized first. Step one, then, is acknowledging that the wiretapping program Bush implemented is outside the law. This we know. This particular issue isn't even up for debate. The law says, clearly, all domestic wiretapping comes through FISA. Period. Bush didn't use FISA; he ignored FISA. So first, we must deal with that issue. Here's an excerpt from the Post article:

In a floor speech introducing his resolution, Sen. Russell Feingold (Wis.) said: "When the president of the United States breaks the law, he must be held accountable." Bush, he said, "authorized an illegal program to spy on American citizens on American soil, and then misled Congress and the public about the existence and legality of that program."

So, this is how it begins. Once the problem is acknowledged, Feingold wants to look at how we can use this lesson to improve the way the executive and legislative branches of the government can work together in the future to both provide the security the nation is so concerned about and ensure that our (yours and my) civil liberties are protected.

This sounds pretty reasonable to me. In fact, the only extreme element of it is that our president chose to ignore the law put in place specifically to address this situation in the first place, that being the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act which already established a secret court for the purposes of dealing with wiretap warrants. In other words, what Bush says he needed to do, he could have done, without breaking the law.

For people with critical thinking skills, this can't help but bring up other questions, such as: Why didn't he go through FISA? Was he concerned that FISA would not have approved some of his requests? Did he plan to spy on people he didn't have reason to think were tied to Al Qaeda? Why wouldn't FISA have approved his requests--if they were reasonable?

These are not extreme questions; they are the logical result of applied critical thinking to real, practical issues. In other words, we're working with territory, not maps now. We're talking about what's real, not merely what's perceived. But now, let's take a look at how the Republicans supporting Bush are reacting to this.

Sensing a Democratic misstep, Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) labeled the resolution a "political ploy" and called for an immediate vote, hoping to put Feingold's colleagues in a tough spot. But Democrats invoked Senate rules to postpone action, and it was unclear last night whether Feingold's measure would face a roll call.

Even Democrats are scrambling to assess the effect this move might have on their map, how damaging it may be to their image, how it may adversely influence their political prospects for the future--completely forgetting that the real issue isn't how good they look or how popular they are but whether or not they are actually protecting the rights of the citizens of the United States, rights they have sworn to uphold:

Several Democratic strategists said surveillance issues are not Bush's most vulnerable spot, and they fear the party may appear extremist. "It is more likely that a big censure fight would have the effect of rallying folks to his side," said one Democratic strategist and former Clinton aide.

And here's another:

Democratic leaders reacted cautiously to Feingold's move. Senate Minority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) commended him "for bringing this to the attention of the American people."

Yes, they are being cautious; they are also wrong. For one thing, Feingold didn't bring this to the attention of the American people. The official who leaked it (and will, if Republicans have their way, be found out and prosecuted for it) brought it to the attention of the American people. Then the American people brought it to the attention of Russ Feingold. Let's at least get the facts straight: Feingold has confirmed that his office has received, literally, thousands of letters calling for Bush to be held accountable for his actions in violating the FISA Act, and many are even calling for impeachment.

When, do you think, was the last time thousands of citizens wrote to their elected representatives and asked that action be taken to address illegal activity in the White House? The Iraq War maybe? And see how well Democrats handled that? Fear, fear of a messy map, that's what drove them then. Let's hope it isn't what drives them now.

The political debate Republicans insist on having is simply a cover for the real issues. Their response to everything is to put a better spin on it. In other words, they make a new, nicer map. If Democrats are foolish enough to accept the Republican map instead of focusing on the territory (yet again) they will meet, in the 2006 mid-term elections, the same fate they met in 2000 and in 2004. They simply can't win by playing a game invented by their adversaries.

I keep hearing that the Democrats need a message, so here it is: It's not about how you look, it's about what you do. It's not about strategy, it's about morality. It's time to change the game. It's time, in fact, to stop playing games and start going to work. It's time to throw away the map, roll up your sleeves and get dirty.

If you need a leader, you've got one: his name is Russ Feingold.

Hacking Away at Voters' Rights

2006-03-09T16:54:00.000-08:00

"It's not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes." -- Joseph Stalin

The Brad Blog covered a great story yesterday: Florida's Ion Sancho, Election Supervisor of Leon County, is suing Diebold. It seems that after Sancho had Diebold optical scanning voting machines (the ones that were the source of so much speculation when traditionally Democratic/Independent voters turned out in droves for Bush in the 2004 election) tested for their 'hackability,' the results were impressive. It was found "that election results could be completely flipped on Diebold's optical-scan system without a trace of the hack being left behind." Wow.

Since that discovery, Sancho has diligently done his best to ensure the Diebold machines are either fixed or replaced. But he's not having much luck. After giving Diebold the required 30-day notice to report back regarding their progress in repairing the machine (the deadline is March 21) Sancho attempted to find a replacement vendor. He worked out deals with the only two other companies that provide voting equipment: ES&S and Sequoia Voting Systems. Both companies promised to deliver voting machines to Sancho and both, at the last minute, backed out of their agreements. What's more, with Diebold failing to fix their problems, Sancho is in a very awkward position: if he fails to provide his county with a voting machine contract, he can be fired. Apparently, this is exactly what Diebold (one of Bush's largest corporate supporters) wants.

In fact, the Brad Blog is reporting that on February 28 there was a secret meeting during which Diebold's General Counsel actually stated that Diebold would not sell its machines to Leon County unless Ion Sancho is removed from office first. Unfortunately, that's just what might happen. With all three voting machine vendors refusing to do business with Sancho, Sancho's May 1 deadline for signing a voting machine deal that will provide a disabled-accessible system may come and go without a deal--in which case Florida law will allow Sancho to be suspended by the Governor (Jeb Bush) or even fired, if the state Senate so wishes.

So Sancho is fighting back. He is suing Diebold. It will be interesting to see what happens. Here in California, our own Secretary of State, Bruce McPherson, confirmed the findings of Sancho's Diebold hack test--yet he still recertified Diebold in the state. That might be worth looking into.

As for Sancho, he does have at least one vocal supporter, a member of the team that took part in the hack test analysis. According to the Tallahassee Democrat, this particular supporter (who has apparently chosen to remain anonymous) sent a letter in support of Sancho. It reads, in part:

I think very highly of your contributions, and I am puzzled why others fail to recognize just how much you have done for the voters of Florida. I find it unconscionable what some of the vendors seem to be doing to make life difficult for a supervisor of elections who would put the public interest first and foremost.

Indeed.

From Bad to Worse

2006-03-02T19:34:00.000-08:00

I fell asleep with the TV on last night. I awoke to breaking news: Bush, on tape, being briefed about the expected devastation from Hurricane Katrina--the day before the storm hit New Orleans. Bush is seen listening to various warnings from experts who had studied the data and knew what to expect. Bush asked no questions. At the end of the briefing, which he took from his vacation home in Crawford, Texas, our president looked the camera squarely in the eye and said that the federal government was prepared and would move quickly to do whatever was necessary for the victims of the storm.

Yet, I seem to recall hearing that three days after Katrina made landfall, our president had to be force-fed a video-taped version of TV highlights in order to impress upon him the extent of the devastation. Then, when FEMA failed to provide the assistance the desperate and neglected residents of New Orleans needed, we were told it was the local and state officials who were to blame--for failing to file the proper paperwork to get the Feds rolling.

Now we know, unequivocally, that Bush had all the information he needed to act before the storm hit--but he didn't act, did he? And that's not the worst of it--not by half.

Even as civil rights activists are fighting to get Congress to investigate the domestic wiretapping program Bush says is within the law (but most of us believe isn't) it has come out that the wiretapping program Bush authorized may not be the only secret program to which the American public is being subjected. It appears that when Congress told the Bush administration to cut their Total Information Awareness program, because it violated the privacy rights of American citizens, the administration simply moved the program to another area within the government and gave it a new name. So, perhaps they weren't lying, after all, when they said the domestic spying program is only used for terrorist suspects--because the spying they do on the rest of us is through an entirely different program--one that was supposed to be stopped two years ago--one that, until a few days ago, nobody even knew enough to ask about.

Here is an excerpt from the February 27 episode of Democracy Now:

More than two years ago Congress halted plans for a controversial plan called Total Information Awareness to create the world's largest surveillance database to track your phone calls, purchases, Internet usage, reading material, banking transactions. The National Journal has now revealed the program has quietly continued inside the NSA.

But wait, there's more: While protesters are fighting to shut down the detainee camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, it has come out that an even more medieval prison, also run by U.S. interests, has been growing its inmate population, in Afghanistan.

The U.S. is holding 500 at the base in wire cages at the Bagram Air Base, north of Kabul in Afghanistan. Some have been detained for up to three years. They have never been charged with crimes. They have no access to lawyers. They are barred from hearing the allegations against them. Officials describe the jail's conditions as primitive.

Meanwhile, Congress just passed another Patriot Act renewal. They decided not to worry about the pesky little provisions that violate our civil rights and instead chose to focus on the supposed improvement in communication between law enforcement and the various Homeland Security agencies. The rationale given is that this particular improvement is at the heart of the Patriot Act, so Congress figured it would be better not to worry so much about all the other stuff they were previously so riled about.

Meanwhile, John Conyers, the only politician who has consistently had the guts to fight the administration at every turn, starting with the stolen elections (I refer to 2000 AND 2004), is now the latest smear target of the Bush administration. Just yesterday I heard on the news that Conyers has been over-utilizing his paid assistants by asking them to baby sit. How sad. No steamy extramarital affair, homosexual encounter or drug problem. Is that really all they can come up with? Goodness, I think they're losing their touch.

The only thing I can figure out that explains how the rest of Congress laid down and died here is that they're all just as sleazy and corrupt as their high-profile Republican counterparts and have either committed some serious illegal actions themselves, which they know all too well will become the breaking news of the day, should they fight Bush and his band of bullies, or they've figured out that even if they have no major closet skeletons, the Bush machine will be happy to conjure some on their behalf. Either way, the bullies in the White House are still running the show and the rest of us are just taking up space in the cheap seats. That's some sorry excuse for Democracy, that's all I can say.

In Defense of Activism

2006-02-27T17:07:00.000-08:00

The other day a friend told me I was "allowing" the political situation in the world to upset me. I had to meditate on that a bit because he seemed to be saying that being upset about thousands of unnecessary deaths, wasted tax-payer money and manipulation of information by the very people who are supposed to protect us, is something I should let go of--so as not to get "upset." While I understand the concept of taking responsibility for one's feelings, the implied judgment--that I would be more evolved or enlightened as a human being, if I were capable of denying/ignoring (or simply not caring about) the reality of the current situation--did not sit well with me.

It is true that if I didn't read the paper or watch Democracy Now or listen to alternative radio, I could be pretty care-free. In fact, it would be relatively easy. There is just one problem with that approach: it denies a fundamental belief I hold--we are all connected.

This is not to say that I believe all people should feel as I do. But after two years working as a news reporter/co-anchor in listener-sponsored radio (which I began just before the invasion of Iraq) my own life started to look pretty small. In fact, when I contemplated the reality of life for the average Iraqi, I began to see that having to choose between an expensive bottle of champagne or a dinner out were not exactly "big issues." So I shifted my focus to what really mattered. And for me, that meant spreading information that mainstream media wasn't reporting. It also meant devoting a fair amount of time and energy, every day, to keeping informed.

That isn't easy, by the way. If I count the time spent reading the paper, watching/listening to alternative media publications, interviewing people, etc., it's almost a full-time job--and that's just to keep on top of what's actually happening, forget about doing anything with it. So I do not mean to criticize or demean anybody who hasn't the time or energy for it. On the other hand, I have to admit to feeling a little hurt and insulted by the idea that I was being seen as somehow weak and/or unevolved because I "allow" myself to be passionate about what's happening in the world around me. And I can't help but wonder where that mentality comes from. What could motivate the idea that it is acceptable, even admirable, to turn off one's natural response to injustice, criminal activity, violence, abuse, lies?

I have given this a lot of thought, and I believe it has to do with the Eastern philosophical influence our Western culture has attempted to assimilate. We learn from yogis and gurus that the highest evolutionary state is that of total rejection of our physical bodies--sitting endlessly in the lotus position--unaware of everything but our breathing. We hear that the truly enlightened are always in a state of peace and harmony. But I have to ask, is this really progress?

I studied Western practical occultism for many years. Here's what I learned: we are in bodies for a reason. What our bodies do matters. As physical beings, we are stewards of this planet and how we address that responsibility is key to both our physical and our spiritual well-being. I also learned that the way we think is the ultimate determining factor in how our physical universe unfolds. So, while I do understand the concept of "let go, let God," I also know in my heart that God/the Universe/Mother Nature gave me a mind and a heart and, therefore, I am committed to using them. A mind will see injustice and a heart, if not corrupt and/or atrophied from lack of use, will naturally wish to correct injustice. My concern, I guess, is that our willingness to embrace Eastern philosophical traditions is having a negative effect on our ability to address actual problems. Training ourselves to feel good when serious problems are left unaddressed is not, I think, an "evolved" response. Telling ourselves to stop feeling bad about a situation when we haven't even taken the time to properly assess and address it, is not what I would call progress.

On the other hand, we can't all be activists--or can we? If activism means taking action when action appears necessary, then it has, at its foundation, the willingness to look at our world without rose-colored glasses, despite how painful that may be. In addition, it means being willing to experience whatever pain that causes, so that we can understand the full effect of the choices we make, and others (i.e., our elected representatives), make on our behalf. Yet how do we motivate ourselves to do that if we have already bought into the idea that we are not supposed to get "upset" -- even when we are manipulated and abused by others?

Our biggest enemy, I think, is not Al Qaeda. It lurks within us. It is our apathy and our willingness to pretend that we live in a world where what we, as individuals, think and do does not matter; where we can justify isolating ourselves from the rest of the planet just as long as our own, personal, needs are met--even if in doing so we promote the abuse and even death of others. It's our failure to understand that no matter how small we are, we are part of something bigger, and it's our reluctance to be responsible for our part in that bigger thing.

--Laurie Fosner

A Letter to Our Politicians

2006-02-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

This letter was written by Linda Peterson of Hillsborough, CA and was sent to the following elected representatives:

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Rep. Tom Lantos, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein. I think it's worth reading--Laurie

How deep the government's pockets and how crowded with corrupt politicians, money and lobbyists! When did it start, this Dubai Deal? Was it back during the Carter administration, the early years of CIA Director George H.W. Bush, the younger days of Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz? How convenient for them now: six ports on the east coast of the United States, a washed-out gulf coast and New Orleans wide open for . . . whatever!

Have the off shore corporate and special interest groups finally found their way back home! Who has been selected to be the beneficiary of a deal that will allow them, with control of our ports, our ships, and our cargo containers, to hold this country hostage? Wasn’t it the current White House Administration and our president who declared "national security first" and invaded Iraq to prove this point! How safe we must feel, with this Dubai Deal!

We have only to look at the care given to hurricane Katrina victims to see the level of concern this government now has for this country and it’s people. Is this the reason for the detention centers contracted to be built? We are to be saved from ourselves for seeing our country for what it has become?This must be how the Native Americans felt when, bit by bit, they were lied to, cheated, and herded onto reservations. I wonder, are the Reservations taking reservations?

With Respect,
Linda Peterson

Hypocrisy in Action

2006-02-21T20:51:00.000-08:00

I've been wondering just what the Bush administration would do in the wake of the recent Palestinian elections. How to promote democracy as an ideal, yet reject it in its practical application, is the latest nuancing challenge facing our president.

Apparently, Israel wants to withhold $50M due the Palestinians from customs and tax revenue. They plan to starve the Palestinian economy until Hamas steps down, I guess. Jimmy Carter thinks that would amount to punishing the Palestinian people for their choice in governments, and he thinks that's wrong. He believes democracy requires that the Palestinian people choose their government officials, by election, even if the end result of said election is that the leadership of the United States and/or Israel are forced to work with people they don't like. As we might expect, President Bush does not see it the way Jimmy Carter does. He is siding with Israel and has given his Secretary of State the job of assisting them in applying sanctions that could lead to widespread poverty and devastation in the occupied territory.

Condi Rice has been hitting the trail in Europe for the purpose of touting the importance of refusing financial aid to the Palestinians. Her rationale: they are now being led by people who promote violence to solve problems; we can't work with terrorists. Meanwhile, the country we invaded to solve our own strange set of problems, including our "addiction to oil" is still steeped in so much violence that it is essentially experiencing a civil war.

And even as Iraq is struggling for the security and freedom we failed to provide to them, despite our self-proclaimed status as "liberators," our president is using his yearly State of the Union address to scold us for our "addiction to oil." It's the ultimate marriage of irony and hypocrisy that a Texas oil man is scolding Americans for being dependent on oil. In what alternative universe does the pusher have a right to lecture the addict?

But the biggest hypocrisy/irony (I'll have to invent a word for that: hypirony, perhaps?) is that the information we got from Bush's decision to by-pass the Geneva Conventions and allow torture-- information that purportedly "proved" Saddam Hussein had WMDs--as well as the torture scandals at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo and elsewhere, now show us quite clearly that the only way the Bush administration could have been so mislead about their intelligence, was if they tortured people until those people told their torturers what they wanted to hear. In other words, if our interrogators followed known CIA interrogation methods that were tested over decades and proven to be effective, the Bush administration could not have gotten the information they wanted.

That's why they changed the rules. They had a plan. They needed evidence to support it. They tortured people until they got the evidence they needed. That's the way that game played out. For all the evidence to back up this assertion, just check out the http://www.democracynow.org/ website. They have several programs on this. In addition, LinkTV aired a special on Abu Ghraib that will provide as much information as any sane person can tolerate regarding all of the above.

The very program the administration says is protecting us from future terror attacks, generated the misinformation that got us into an unnecessary war and has since caused violence against Muslims and non-Muslims alike to increase, rather than subside.

I don't see how there can be any doubt that this was planned and executed to fill the needs of an elite group of people, mostly men, who deliberately manipulated information and evidence in order to support their desired outcome. This is nothing short of conspiracy. There is only one question left: At what point will the American people care enough to stop it?

Understanding George W. Bush

2006-02-15T17:33:00.000-08:00

George W. Bush says he supports democracy. We are in Iraq now to "spread democracy." Yet Bush has made a habit of refusing to recognize other democratically elected governments. How can we explain this apparent contradiction?

What Bush appears to mean, when he says he supports democracy, is that he wishes to see his choice of leaders gain power through a process that bears a superficial resemblance to a democratic election. The fact that Bush's choice of leaders is not the people's choice doesn't seem to matter to Bush. He is behaving, increasingly, like a man who can't see the forest for the trees. He is so actively involved in all things superficial that he is, seemingly, incapable of recognizing substance. The concept of democracy is strong in his heart and mind, but the ability to comprehend its practical meaning is apparently beyond him. If it were not, he would have understood from the start that forced democracy is an oxymoron. I suppose this is a hazard of being raised in a bubble.

Now, the Bush administration is telling us that the wiretapping program Bush didn't want to explain to FISA is only being used to spy on "known suspects." I simply must ask: What's a "known suspect?" Has anybody asked Bush or Gonzales or Cheney to define that term? I'll tell you what I think it is: a known suspect is somebody they know they are suspicious of.

If you think I'm being sarcastic, think again. We already have all the evidence we need to prove that Bush's definition of democracy is not in the dictionary; and he has repeatedly demonstrated a failure to deal with reality, in favor of propagandizing his ideological fantasies (I refer to Iraq, Hurricane Katrina, No Child Left Behind, the Medicare Drug Program, the budget). Somebody should start asking him to define his terms.

In fact, I have a long list of words Bush uses a little too loosely. Let's start with "enemy." Since we've already been told that whoever is not with him is against him, it appears that Bush believes that anybody who isn't 100% supportive of every one of his efforts is his "enemy." That would put anti-war activists in the enemy camp; along with environmentalists, abortion rights activists, animal rights activists, etc. Perhaps this explains why we're hearing reports about wiretapping of anti-war activists, environmentalists, abortion rights activists and animal rights groups.

We also know Bush is a big fan of guilt by association. If we put these two ideas together, "if you're not with us you're against us" and "if you're against us, you're with the enemy--Al Qaeda" the next logical conclusion is: Anybody who voices any dissent regarding any program Bush wants to promote is an enemy of the administration and an ally of Al Qaeda.

We'll then. Perhaps that's how members of the administration can justify telling the world that they are merely working to protect the United States from the enemy. It would also explain why they feel compelled to monitor peace activists and other socially conscious groups that aim to protect the planet from corporate abuse and environmental disaster. It's all very logical. It's also completely delusional.

The delusion is a little harder to comprehend than the logic, so here's a breakdown:

Bush's corporate base and the elite group of men running his administration view any checks on corporate power as unconstitutional. Their true God is the marketplace; therefore, any challenge to their ability to manipulate and profit from market conditions is, from their frighteningly narrow perspective, a sacrilege. They believe it is their right to take as much as they can and give as little as possible. What they can take depends on the law, not any sense of social conscience or morality. Hence, the laws must be written to give the maximum freedom to corporate interests. (Wow, this is easier than I thought--once you agree to a delusional set of basic premises, there is no limit to what you can justify!) What's more, this right to corporate power is the sort of right they will fight to defend to the death--even if that means sending somebody else's kids to war.

Bottom line: if they can get their fat hands on it, they own it. It's the imperialist mentality our founding fathers fought to escape. (It's a strange twist of fate, don't you think, that King George III was their nemesis and President George, the third, is ours?)

French Lessons

2006-02-13T17:59:00.000-08:00

In the novel The Little Prince by the French writer St. Exupéry, a young boy meets a pilot in the Sahara Desert. The boy asks the pilot to draw him a sheep. The pilot provides several drawings to the prince, none of which are acceptable, for various reasons. One sheep is too old to suit the prince; another looks somewhat sickly. Finally, the pilot hands the prince a drawing of a box. Your sheep, he says to the prince, is inside this box.

The Danes should have taken a lesson from the French.

You want a picture of the prophet Mohammed? Here's your prophet.

Coretta Scott King's Last Words

2006-02-09T15:36:00.000-08:00

At the funeral of Coretta Scott King, this week, four presidents were among the mourners. A touching and eloquent tribute was delivered by George W. Bush. His father didn't do too badly either. In fact, the only one more relaxed was, as expected, Bill Clinton. These three presidents did what people should do at a funeral: relying on a combination of eloquence, humor, respect and graciousness, they touted the admirable qualities of the deceased.

But when Jimmy Carter took the mic, we heard a different kind of tribute. Jimmy Carter used this moment to say what I believe Mrs. King would have wanted him to say. He reminded us that the very issues the Kings fought for (and against) are as relevant today as they were decades ago--he reminded us that our own government is even now doing to us what was done to the King family by the Johnson administration.

The Kings spoke out against the war in Vietnam and they suffered for it. At the direction of Edgar J. Hoover, the FBI taped the King's private conversations and fed the transcripts to President Johnson. In an attempt to break the will of the King family, the government even tried to break up the King's marriage, by sending tapes to Mrs. King that they hoped would make her distrustful of her husband. So it was neither inappropriate nor "political" of Jimmy Carter to have reminded us that we face, today, a wiretapping program put in place by the Bush administration that is so steeped in secrecy our own Congress can't tell us if it's legal or not. Jimmy Carter went straight to the heart of the entire King legacy: speak the truth--even when it's ugly.

While some are saying the death of Coretta Scott King is the end of an era in the civil rights movement, they cannot say the need to fight for civil rights has ended. Perhaps the only real difference is that we are all targets now--not just notable activists--all of us. If we have a computer and we practice our right to free speech, we are among the vulnerable. Should the surveillance programs the government refuses to discuss extend to the internet, which they apparently do, nobody is safe; and while we may not be curtailed from speaking, we can hardly call it "free" speech when the consequences of that speech may be the loss of privacy and the possible targeting for political smears or worse.

What's more, we are, once again, in a senseless war--one we cannot win. So for those Republicans who complain that Jimmy Carter was "in bad taste" to use a funeral for the purpose of reminding Americans that we are still fighting for the very rights and policies that the King family devoted their lives to, I say: what better place to do it? And what better tribute to Mrs. King than to have her passing be a forum for continuing the legacy of speaking the truth--even when it's ugly.

Mum's the Word

2006-02-07T17:17:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I watched the farce that was supposed to be a special hearing on the Bush administration's domestic spying program. A number of senators put on a good show, using fairly strong language to suggest that the current wiretapping program puts the president above the law and must be explained and/or curtailed. Despite their tough talk, however, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales got away with categorizing every single question about the program as an "operational issue" which he then refused to answer for "national security" reasons. The end result: we don't know a single thing about the program that we didn't know before.

When Senator Arlen Specter ended the hearings by saying he "hoped" that "at some point" his questions would be answered, it was as if to say: You know my concerns, now let's hope this all blows over. It was just one more anticlimactic episode in our nation's further decline into apathy and denial. The only thing more disappointing was hearing the same senator say it "wasn't necessary" for Alberto Gonzales to be sworn in before testifying. He might just as well have said that the entire process was an exercise in futility.

Despite the failure of the hearings to turn up anything to appease anyone who has thus far shown any concern, there was no call for a special prosecutor to look into the program. Nor did anybody insist that the program be terminated or sent to FISA for review, even though FISA was created to oversee just such a situation.

Lip service. That's what we got. That's all we got. And there is a good reason for that: the Democrats are helpless; they can't do anything. Republicans have all the cards: they have more representation in Congress, for one thing. They also have dirt on EVERYBODY--and they're not afraid to use it.

We are witnessing a conspiracy to manipulate at the highest governmental level. The combination of numerous well-orchestrated, illegal events (well documented too, for anybody who cares to look into it) that allowed George W. Bush to be proclaimed president in 2000 and 2004, combined with the re-districting scandal DeLay is at the center of (and which contributed to the current Republican power imbalance) mixed with the frighteningly effective propaganda machine Karl Rove has built; and then molded by an increasingly greedy, hypocritical, elitist mentality that is proud of their willingness to smear, lie and cheat to win, and you have a formidable enemy. This is why the Democrats can't do anything: they are overwhelmed on every front.

Osama bin Laden is not the man Americans should fear now--George W. Bush is the epicenter of the current evil spreading throughout the so-called civilized world. What's more, he has a carefully crafted 'out' for every possible contingency, one he will use each time he comes close to being held accountable: I didn't know.

It's a brilliant plan: Bush takes the word of his advisors, period. It's that whole loyalty thing he is so proud of. But it is not about loyalty; it's about culpability and how to avoid it. As long as Bush completely isolates himself and refuses to take in any information he doesn't want to be held accountable for, he can always say, "I trusted the people around me to tell me the truth. I was misled." It's a perfect set up.

That's why he's so cocky--he thinks he's untouchable. It's also why he's ignorant of so many things everybody else knows--like what was going on in New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Bush doesn't read the paper or watch anything but sanctioned TV because he HAS to remain ignorant for the master plan to work. It's a "plausible deniability" failsafe and it must be maintained at all costs. He can't act quickly in the face of disaster because he needs three to four days to have the face of disaster brought to him--via videotape or a White House briefing. But first, somebody has to figure out what to brief him on and how to do it. Then the plan has to be implemented and some staged event acted out. By the time Bush is ready to say or do anything, it's several days later and several days too late to be effective.

The problem, as I see it, is that President Bush has a responsibility for being aware of reality by virtue of having been sworn in as the president. It doesn't matter who put him there; he took an oath and now being aware is part of his job. He's supposed to seek information and think about it and understand what's going on around him and then act on behalf of the people: that's us. So this master plan that requires that he NOT be fully aware, is actually a flawed plan--in spite of how well it appears to have worked for a small, select group of conservatives.

While Bush has delegated his responsibility for information gathering and assessing to others, (the center of this group being the Rumsfeld/Cheney cabal), he has also given them all the real decision-making power--power that should belong, at least partly, to the president. Yet, as it stands, should the cabal want Bush to ignore certain information, they just keep that information from him. Bush may be protected from culpability by the plausible deniability scenario, but he is also unable to harness the full power of the presidency. That is resting squarely in the hands of Rumsfeld and Cheney and whomever they are working with.

Based on everything we know about the problems we've had in Iraq (lack of proper equipment for the troops, failure to plan for the post-war occupation or even consider the potential civilian casualties that might result from a war, inability/unwillingness to protect Iraqi museums and ammo dumps from looters, etc.) it does appear as if these men do exactly what they want to do, regardless of the advice they receive from experts who know infinitely more than either of them. Here's the kicker though, and it is the key to how they are still getting away with it: they do what they want, even when they know it's not what the American people want; but at the same time, they say what we want to hear.

There is only one way to fight this kind of blatant deception: we must hold Bush accountable for the actions of his administration, not their rhetoric.

We have to stop basing what we do on what we hear and start fighting with the facts. We have to sidestep their trap of pulling us into semantic discussions and endless interpretive dialogues that end with the "agree to disagree" scenario. This is not about finding the best way to split up a pie--this is about civil rights violations, dead Americans/Iraqis, failure to provide the financial resources necessary to ensure a competitive educational system to our children and an unwillingness to finance nationwide healthcare, despite the obvious failure of private industry to meet the needs of the citizenry. It's about destroying our planet by short-sighted corporate deals that deplete topsoil and destroy the ozone. It's about ignoring information so a small select group of conservatives can control resources and hoard wealth while the rest of us pay for it--with our lives and our livelihoods.

Our soldiers are dying in Iraq so the administration can claim credit for democratizing the Middle East and make money off the rebuilding of a country we destroyed--meanwhile, all they've really done is remove one brutal dictator and replace him with a group of corrupt, incompetent men who have no support from large numbers of Iraqis and are distrusted for their relationship with the United States government. Iraq is in the middle of a civil war now and they still don't have the clean water, employment opportunities and security they need. The entire country has become a dangerous place and the very prison we used to call Saddam's Torture Chamber has become the site of our own Abu Ghraib torture scandal . . . and more Americans and Iraqis die, daily.

As for paying with our livelihoods, economists have attributed the massive lay-offs by companies like Ford and General Motors to the nationwide failure to control healthcare costs. Companies can't afford to pay pensions and insurance benefits anymore. Other civilized nations take their healthcare programs seriously and don't ask corporations to bear the expense. Not here. Here we don't want "big government" so we cut the only really necessary programs--programs low-income families can't pay for in the private market--like education and healthcare, and we give money to rich folks who are already able to pay privately for the best schools, doctors, etc. I guess the theory is that in a matter of time all the poor folks will just die off and the only ones who will be left will be elitists, like them. There's just one problem: we're all part of the same big thing.

Everything is connected. Everything affects something or someone else. People who don't understand this have no business running a government.

MoveOn.org is sponsoring a new TV ad. It equates Bush with Nixon, who was quoted as saying "If the president does it, it's not illegal." That appears to be the Bush administration's rationale for failing to follow the law regarding their wiretapping program. It also appears to be their excuse for holding detainees without cause and for allowing prisoners to be whisked away to Uzbekistan where they will, under torture, confess to anything we want them to confess to. (That's how we get our "evidence." In fact, that's how we all knew Saddam Hussein had WMDs.) Bush can't see how ANYTHING he does is wrong, illegal or immoral because he's the president.

(By the way, why does nobody ask where the wiretapping enthusiasts are getting the information that says the people they're spying on have Al Qaeda connections? They weren't exactly shooting for accuracy when they created the WMDs scare--why should we think they are any more capable of interpreting data now?)

In fact, according to numerous reports, the administration is spying on peace activists and environmental groups and the like. Perhaps that is why they didn't go to FISA--as was pointed out during the hearings--perhaps they knew that if they did, FISA would NOT have approved their requests. That possibility, alone, should make each one of us skeptical of the administration's continuous insistence that we simply take their word for the legality of the program.

Besides, how does that work when mum's the word? What, exactly, are we supposed to do with that?

Assessing Alito

2006-01-13T16:20:00.000-08:00

I am not a Democrat. I'm an Independent. I feel compelled to make that statement because there are times when Democrats embarrass me. Now is one of those times.

I've been following the Alito confirmation hearings pretty closely. And while I do disagree with Alito's prior claim that there is nothing in the Constitution that guarantees a woman the right to an abortion--What about my right to determine the course of my own life? My liberty? My happiness?--I can't help but side with Republicans when it comes to just about every other issue Dems are whining about.

First, let's talk semantics. I've heard countless Democrats express outrage over their claim that Alito "bragged" about his membership in CAP (Concerned Alumni of Princeton), an organization that has reportedly attempted to keep women and minorities out of Princeton and wants to deny both groups "equal rights." The reality is that CAP was fighting to stop quota systems that gave preferential treatment to minorities and women. That's a far cry from attempting to keep them out altogether. You may argue that minorities and women deserve preferential treatment and I would say you may have a valid argument, but let's not confuse the issue with inflammatory statements that misrepresent the facts.

While the language in some of the CAP literature may be elitist, when Alito was asked, specifically, to comment on an article from one such newsletter (one that referred to minorities and women as "not knowing their place") Alito condemned it, outright. He also made it very clear that his reason for joining CAP was to express his concern over the school's decision to ban ROTC programs--another issue CAP spoke openly about--it was not their stance on treatment of women and minorities. Alito has been asked about this, and he has answered appropriately. Putting his CAP membership on his resume (over 20 years ago, while seeking employment within an extremely conservative administration) is no more sinister than my decision to include every writers' association, to which I pay dues, on my resume. (Frankly, I don't even know what half of them do, but I thought they might be useful at one time, so I signed up.)

As for Alito's opinions on other matters, we are being told that he almost always rules in favor of big corporations. That would be relevant except for one contextual element that is consistently left out of the discussion: Alito is an appeals court judge. That means he regularly decides cases that have already been tossed out by a prior court. I.e., he's not working from a pool of cases that are necessarily legitimate to begin with. Therefore, citing statistics on the number of cases where he wrote an opinion that favored the defendant versus the plaintiff (i.e. the corporation versus the individual bringing suit against them) is a disingenuous approach to assessing his credentials.

What does concern me is Alito's stance on abortion. He has, apparently, been quoted in prior years as saying he believes Roe V. Wade should be overturned. I had a long talk with my conservative friend the other day. (He is actually pro-choice, by the way). He said that the problem with Roe V. Wade isn't that it makes abortion legal, it's that the legal gyrations that went into reaching that final conclusion are seriously flawed. In other words, the law itself is not well thought out. He also said, however, that he does not believe Alito would vote to overturn it.

I'm not so confident about that. When people believe life starts at conception, they can be pretty stubborn about abortion. In light of that, I'd like to address some of the reasons I believe abortion should be both legal and available "on demand."

First, does life begin at conception? Perhaps so. But can't we then also say sperm is life and so is the ovum? Both are made of living organisms. Christians like to say that conception is where life begins because that's when sperm and ovum meet, but God doesn't determine when we have sex--and sperm and ovum don't meet (forget, for now, about the Petri dish) without sex. So we already have a system, presumably created by God, in which the actions of people are a major factor. Yet when it comes to choosing to terminate a pregnancy, we are told by these same Christians that the actions (and or desires) of the pregnant woman, are no longer meant a determining factor. God has spoken, they say, and like it or not, all pregnancies should be carried to term.

Yet if creating a child is a partnership between God and man, which it clearly is, then why shouldn't choosing not to bring the fetus to term be one also? Why should a woman, regardless of age, intelligence, income, social standing, education, etc., be required to bring to term a pregnancy she does not want? And why should it matter to anybody else why she does not want it?

No woman is free if she cannot take advantage of modern medicine to control her own body. No woman is free if she is compelled by the legalized morality of another, to carry to term a pregnancy she does not welcome. I cannot count the number of times I have heard self-righteous Christians say that if a pregnant woman doesn't want to raise a child, she should simply have the child then give it up for adoption. This argument merely serves to demonstrate their denial of the extreme emotional, psychological (not to mention financial) consequences of carrying a fetus to term.

I understand that men may be tempted to make erroneous assumptions without the intent to cause harm. But I must say that as a woman whose life has been strongly affected by my own decisions regarding childbirth, it is both offensive and absurd to me that any woman would believe she had the right to dictate another woman's decision in this regard.

As for parental notification: if a child is pregnant, her parents have already failed. What possible advantage could there be in forcing that child to involve others in her decision, unless she felt that their support would be helpful? This applies, as well, to legal requirements for spousal notification, waiting periods to force pregnant women to "contemplate" their actions and any/all other restrictions on abortion. There is one person, and only one, who should make this difficult and life-altering decision and that is the one person who is pregnant.

The following letter from Steven Lewis of New Paltz, New York, states the case more eloquently than I am able to. I hope that those men who read it will take it to heart--not just because a man wrote it--but because he speaks the truth.

It's Not Always About Dad
(published as a letter to the editor, New York Times, December 7, 2005)

As a dad of seven (and granddad of nine), I know well the rights and privileges and obligations of fatherhood. But this I know as well: conception is not pregnancy any more than a first sentence is a novel.

No matter how many ways one looks at gestation, men carry none of the abundant discomforts, anxieties, transformations or perils associated with carrying a baby to term. (It is not so cavalierly dismissed as "attendant morning sickness, leg cramps, biological risks and so on.")

Nor do we suffer the profound physical, spiritual or emotional trauma of miscarriage or abortion.

By its very nature, pregnancy is the exclusive and private domain of women. Men who think otherwise reveal a stunning lack of humility.

Over the past 37 years of a life informed by children, I have slowly and sometimes painfully come to understand that it is not always about me. Someone who equates a father's relevance with the ability to obtain an injunction against abortion needs to look beyond himself for his place in the family.

--Steven Lewis, New Paltz, New York

I could not have said it better myself. -- Laurie Fosner

Bringing Down the House

2006-01-07T17:20:00.000-08:00

"Sharon's stroke is God's punishment for dividing His lands."
-- Pat Robertson

"Pat Robertson is God's punishment for creating televangelists"
-- Laurie Fosner

I love the end of the year when everybody talks about what happened that year. I thought about doing a little year-in-review myself, but then I decided that predicting the future would be much more interesting--and challenging. So here's my 2006-2008 list of things I hope (and in some cases think actually might) happen.

First, Bush is going down. The whole Bush administration is on its way out in utter disgrace. We've already seen the beginning. My conservative friends seems to think none of this will end in anything more than a little wrist slapping (kind of like what happened in 2005 when inspectors found 208 violations at the Sago Mine.) Nothing major will come of it, they say. Nothing, that is, except the natural consequences of a myriad of failures--just like what happened at the Sago Mine. Yes, my conservative pals think Bush is too well insulated to be affected directly. But I think they're wrong. Bush, as uninformed and over-coached as he is, would have been untouchable in the old days, before the internet. But with the advent of email and alternative media web sites, he's toast.

It used to be that people with Bush's connections and influence were always saved by lesser beings who took the fall. That worked when secrecy was maintainable. But those days are gone, despite the Bush administration's efforts to keep them alive and well. My conservative friends think the Bush machine can survive by simply removing (literally) anybody that threatens to spill the beans. They figure people with that kind of power don't let others rat on them--they use rat poison. I am sure they're right. But when there are a lot of rats and they're running in every direction, you need a lot of rat poison.

If the arrogance and poor planning that the Bush administration has demonstrated thus far in regard to Iraq, FEMA, Homeland Security improvements (well, just about everything) is any indication of what we can expect, I'd say their rat poison supply is likely way too low and their ability to figure out how to use it is just as inadequate. Then again, they may surprise us--it may turn out to be the only thing they're actually good at. One thing is for sure, we're about to find out.

Abramoff and his buddy Scanlon have already pled guilty. Abramoff says he has information that could implicate as many as 60 members of Congress. Some say that's an exaggeration aimed at making a his plea bargain more personally advantageous. That may be--but whatever the actual number--a lot of heads are gonna roll. And the best part is that they're mostly self-righteous Republicans. (Ah, the sweet smell of justice).

Then there's the whole Tom DeLay redistricting scandal. (I love that DeLay and Abramoff are best friends. While DeLay posed as a representative of democracy his best buddy was swindling the people we stole this land from and calling them "troglodytes and morons" behind their backs. Reminds me of the Enron guys laughing about all the little old ladies they were stealing from--the ones they knew wouldn't be able to afford to pay for heat that winter.)

And let's not forget the Plame Game. "Scooter" may be the only one indicted now, but I predict the grand jury investigation into his involvement will open up the whole can of worms around false WMDs claims in a way that can't be denied or ignored. Patrick Fitzgerald is too smart to say much now, but when he drops his bomb, it will be during a publicized trial that will go on record and spread so fast that nobody will be able to stop it.

As for the next president--I'm just praying that both John Kerry and Ms. Clinton have the good sense, and frankly good manners, to step away from that opportunity. Kerry hasn't the charisma or the ability to stand his ground amid controversy--we already have proof of that--and Ms. Clinton is just too unattractive. It isn't her looks, it's her personality. I read her book (well, I listened to it on audio tape). It was a conglomeration of stories seemingly meant to make her appear softer and more lovable. It didn't work. Self-serving was my assessment--and it still is. Besides, men hate her. I don't like saying it but it's true. She can't win. Nor can Kerry.

My vote of confidence goes to a man with little experience in the highest levels of government but one whose innate sense of justice and integrity are (so far) unquestioned: Barack Obama. As far as I'm concerned the only thing better than a dedicated, inspired and educated (not graduated--educated) woman in the White House would be a similarly situated black man.

As for lesser matters, here are a few more 2006 predictions, just for fun:

Jon Stewart will become the world's favorite Oscar host, ousting Billy Crystal for good. His opening number will be a musical tribute to Good Night and Good Luck, starring Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins.

Martha Stewart will write a book about women in prison which will be turned into a Hollywood extravaganza starring Sandra Bullock and Meg Ryan look-a-likes. The requisite lesbian sex scenes will force Pat Robertson to make the statement "Prison is God's punishment for being a lesbian."

Bono will replace John Bolton as the U.N. Ambassador to the United Nations after it is discovered that Bolton has been conspiring to blow up ten of the 38 stories in the Secretariat building.

And last, but not least, Hugo Chavez will be recognized as the world's foremost democratic world leader--leaving the president of the United States in the not-so-honorable mention category.

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Proposition 80

2005-11-07T16:32:00.000-08:00

Utility regulation, specifically electricity. Who doesn't think we need that? Does the name Enron ring a bell?

Currently Californians receive about 70% of their electricity from investor owned utilities (IOUs), like Pacific Gas and Electric, which are regulated by the California Public Utilities Commission (PUC). But the other 30% of our electricity comes from other sources: namely, local publicly owned utility companies (like the Los Angeles Dept. of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District). They provide about 14% of the electricity used by Californians. The rest is provided by commercial electric service providers (ESPs) with a very small amount (4%) coming from the Dept. of Water Resources, and that is mainly to supply the State Water Project.

IOUs are currently regulated by the PUC. Publicly owned utilities are not. ESPs are only required to register with the PUC; they are not regulated with regard to rates and services. Proposition 80 would change that. Proposition 80 would also change some environmental legislation.

Currently, there is a requirement, known as the Renewables Portfolio Standard, which states that by the year 2017 one-fifth of the total electricity supply must come from renewable sources, such as wind or solar power. This is regardless of whether the electricity comes through an IOU, an ESP or a community choice aggregator (the group that is authorized to negotiate for electricity from providers other than the electric utility currently serving a particular location).

The current law also allows most consumers to pay a standard rate, regardless of the time of day or the season, despite the fact that IOUs pay varying rates that are time and date dependent.

Proposition 80 will change the current law in the following ways:

- The deadline for reaching the requirements of the Renewables Portfolio Standard will be moved up, from 2017 to 2010;
- ESPs will be under the control of the PUC with regards to energy procurement, contracting, resource management, efficiency standards and enforcement of requirements;
- Current IOU customers will be prevented from switching to ESPs (but Prop. 80 will allow current ESP customers to "grandfather" their direct access service).
- Will allow current direct access customers to switch to IOU service, but only under specified conditions. (However, this measure does NOT restrict either current or future service changes initiated by community choice aggregation).
- Puts into law a long-term procurement plan that would include a number of factors the PUC has already incorporated into its planning, but that have not yet become legal requirements;
- Puts into law current PUC practices regarding resource adequacy requirements;
- Deletes an existing provision that allows electricity providers to cease efforts towards increasing their renewable electricity sources once they reach the 20% mark.

Proponents of Prop. 80 say that we can't wait any longer to return to regulation. They point to the Enron debacle and warn that unless we regulate electricity providers, there is no way to prevent a similar situation from developing again. Opponents say that nobody wants another Enron, but we need to stop living in the past and start thinking about the future. Yet they have presented no ideas for avoiding a future Enron-like situation. What's more, their arguments for voting against Prop. 80 are downright nonsensical.

For example, opponents of this proposition say it will "make it extremely difficult to improve the State's standards for generating electricity for renewable sources, which could seriously undermine adoption of wind, solar, and geothermal technologies. Growth of California's green businesses could be placed at risk." Huh?

This proposition actually increases the speed with which renewable sources must reach the standards previously set, and removes the prior cap on potential increases to renewable energy requirements. How can either of those changes to current law be interpreted in any way that supports the belief that they will harm green business growth or make it harder to improve the State's standards with regard to renewable energy? There is no evidence to back up this assertion and the logic is flawed as well.

In an effort to promote the ideology of free enterprise, opponents of Prop. 80 seem to forget that electricity is not a luxury some of us can simply do without. People die when it's too hot and they can't turn on an air conditioner. Food rots when refrigerators are turned off for prolonged periods of time. Free market economics is all well and good for small ticket items and non-essentials, but we saw what it does to utilities. Say it with me one more time: ENRON.

Prop. 80 isn't perfect. It does remove some customer freedoms with regard to changing utility providers. But how can the PUC ensure that utility companies have the resources to meet all their customer's needs if they do not build some stability into the customer base? This is not about taking away freedom, it's about logistics and the realistic need to control customer flow.

Personally, I am very happy to comply with stricter direct access laws if it means having the freedom to turn on the lights when I need to without being price-gouged or having to fear that at a most inopportune moment, I might be subjected to a rolling black-out.

--Laurie

Props. 78 and 79

2005-11-07T16:04:00.000-08:00

Propositions 78 (Discounts on Prescription Drugs) and 79 (Prescription Drug Discounts. State-Negotiated Rebates).

Yes, these two sound a lot alike. But there are specific differences worth noting. Prop. 78, for example, relies on voluntary discounts from drug companies. Prop. 79 makes those discounts a requirement. Those in favor of Prop. 78 say the voluntary discounts work elsewhere so they ought to work here. Opponents say they don’t always work elsewhere and we can't be sure they'll work here. What's more, opponents point out that the drug companies themselves are favoring Prop. 78.

The backing of Prop. 78 by prescription drug companies may be due to the fact that Prop. 79, in addition to requiring drug discounts, will also make it a civil violation to engage in profiteering from the sale of prescription drugs. Prop. 78 does not.

There are also differences between the two propositions with regard to who will qualify. In general, Prop. 78 requires a smaller family income to qualify participants and a 50% higher annual fee (though, to be fair, the actual amount is only about $5 more per family). Prop. 78 also excludes from coverage a larger population based on whether or not they have other coverage and/or are state supported.

However, the most troubling (and least discussed) differences between the two have nothing to do with drug companies or prescription drug benefits. If Prop. 78 is approved by the voters, it will circumvent an important protection provided by the State Constitution. Currently, if a proposition contains a provision that conflicts with another proposition, and both measures are approved by the voters, the conflict is resolved in favor of the proposition with the most number of votes. In other words, even if passed, a proposition will not be adopted in its entirety if another measure, with a conflicting provision, receives more votes. When that happens, the provision from the proposition with the most votes takes precedence. All other parts of both passed measures are then implemented, with the conflicting portion of the measure with the least votes having been replaced by the competing provision from the measure with the most votes.

If Prop. 78 passes, however, it has built into it that all its provisions will go into effect and none of the provisions of a competing measure would take effect, provided Prop. 78 receives the higher number of "yes" votes. In other words, it will bypass a portion of our State's Constitution and will require the proposition to be adopted in its entirety--and Proposition 79 to be ignored in its entirety--even if there are no directly conflicting provisions, and even if Proposition 79 passes.

If you read even further in the text of the measure, you'll also find this: "If this measure is approved by voters but superceded by law by any other conflicting ballot measure approved by the voters at the same election, and the conflicting ballot measure is later held invalid, this measure shall be self-executing and given full force of law." What this appears to mean, is that if Prop. 79 were to pass with more votes than Prop. 78 and be implemented, but at some later date (no limits specified) Prop. 79 were to be found "invalid" then Prop. 78 would come out of the shadows and take effect as law, automatically, with no opportunity for discussion or re-assessment of the situation.

Prop. 78 is not just about a prescription drug plan backed by prescription drug companies; it's a law that means to sneak itself into implementation through the back door, should it be turned away at the front.

As for Prop. 79, my biggest concerns are the unknown fiscal costs. While health care and prescription drug benefits are at the top of my list of important causes, I'm not convinced that it's a working plan that California will really benefit from.

What I can tell you is that unlike Proposition 78, Prop. 79 does not attempt to bypass the State Constitution to protect itself, nor does it self-implement, automatically, if a competing measure receives more votes but is later found to be invalid. In other words, Prop. 79 is either coming through the front door, or it's staying home.

Prop. 78, on the other hand, won't go away even if it receives fewer votes than Prop. 79; rather, it will hang out in the alley until its proponents find a way to categorize Prop. 79 as invalid--then it will slide on in, unnoticed. And frankly, that makes me a little nervous.

--Laurie

Proposition 77

2005-11-07T16:03:00.000-08:00

Redistricting. Another Constitutional Amendment. This one is being referred to as The Bipartisan Voter Empowerment Solution. It would amend the Constitution so that redistricting plans would be decided by a panel of retired judges. Currently, redistricting plans are included in the legislation and become law after passing the Legislature and receiving the Governor's signature. If the Governor and the Legislature are unable to come to an agreement with regard to redistricting plans, the California Supreme Court oversees the process.

Proponents say Proposition 77 will put the matter back into the hands of the voters. They base this on the fact that Prop. 77, if passed, will require that all redistricting plans be voted on. If the voters reject a redistricting plan, according to Prop. 77, another panel would be appointed to create a new plan. Proponents of Prop. 77 also say that the legislators who are currently responsible for redistricting have too much control over the process. To prove their point, they cite the fact that in November 2004, not a single district switched parties.

Opponents of Proposition 77 say that the process is already in the hands of our elected representatives in the California Legislature. They worry that the panel of judges who will ultimately design future redistricting plans might be prone to the influence of special interests. They are also concerned about the money that will be spent designing and implementing plans that might not pass--not to mention the cost of the elections themselves. And, like me, they are reluctant to amend the state Constitution for something that appears to be motivated by self-interest.

One of the biggest flaws in this proposed initiative is that it allows redistricting plans that have not yet been voted upon, to be implemented. That seems a little backward, doesn't it? If the idea is to put the planning process back into the hands of the voters, but the initiative promising to do that allows plans to be implemented prior to approval, how are voters' gaining control? And what if the plan is implemented and then voted down? There will be costs associated with the failed plan on both ends--neither of which would be the case if plans were not carried out until after they had been approved by voters.

Opponents of Prop. 77 also point out that politicians will be appointing the judges who will design the redistricting plans. Therefore, the suggestion that Prop. 77 takes special interests out of the redistricting process is one many, myself included, find a little hard to believe.

--Laurie

Proposition 76

2005-11-07T16:00:00.000-08:00

This State Spending and School Funding Limits Initiative, if passed, would make major changes to the California Constitution. In addition to placing a second limit on state expenditures, this measure grants substantial new powers to the Governor, to make unilateral decisions on state spending, under certain circumstances. Prop. 76 also changes the minimum funding requirements for K-12 schools and community colleges.

Proponents see this as a fiscally responsible law designed to pull California out of debt. Opponents believe this measure gives too much power to the Governor and will lead to cuts in much needed social programs in order to balance the state budget. Some are also concerned because the measure contains no guarantees that budget cuts will not be accompanied by tax increases.

It's a bit of a catch-22. If Prop. 76 passes (with Schwarzenegger as Governor) liberals worry that he will cut social services to meet the new, stiffer, budget requirements. However, if Prop. 76 is in place and a liberal Governor replaces Schwarzenegger, conservatives are concerned that tax increases will be implemented to cover state revenue shortfalls.

The history of this initiative should also be considered. The framers point to California's historic inability to pass balanced budgets, saying "The Legislature is chronically late in passing budgets and seems institutionally incapable of passing balanced budgets." Yet, according to legislative analysts, California has been making progress, despite the shortfalls that occurred in 2001, as a result of the stock market plunge and the subsequent economic downturn. Unfortunately, the same analysts predict another shortfall in 2006-07, hence the desire to create legislation to address the budget deficit.

While few would debate the need to balance the state budget, this initiative is really about how it's done. The two main issues appear to be : 1) Using reductions in minimum funding requirements for schools to achieve a balanced budget, and 2) Allowing unilateral budget decisions to be made by the Governor, without consent of the Legislature, in order to balance the budget.

Personally, I'm disinclined to vote to change the State Constitution, unless it is done to protect individual rights. Granting greater powers to a particular individual does not seem to me to be an appropriate reason for altering the Constitution. What's more, if the framers of this initiative are correct, and the Legislature is "institutionally incapable of passing a balanced budget" then making it a legal requirement to do so will only ensure that the ultimate decision-making power rests with a single person: the Governor. I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that.

--Laurie

Proposition 75

2005-11-04T15:41:00.000-08:00

The Public Employees' Right to Approve Use of Union Dues for Political Campaign Purposes Act will require public employees to sign an annual consent form if they wish to allow any portion of union dues or fees collected from their paychecks to be used for political purposes. This sounds very reasonable. The issue, however, is whether or not this reasonable sounding measure is necessary.

I recently listened to a long discussion on this proposition on public radio. It was fascinating because the proponents of the proposition were mostly representatives of large corporate interests, not union members upset about having their contributions used in ways they did not approve of. It was also interesting to hear callers, many of whom were union members, talking about their own unions and how they handle this issue. Apparently, some unions already have a simple form for their members to use to indicate their preferences regarding use of member contributions for campaign purposes. Others seem to be following a completely different set of rules and are not allowed to opt out of making campaign contributions unless they withdraw from the union. Still others say they have no problem with the political contributions made by their leaders because they vote, democratically, for their union representatives. Therefore, in the same way our elected representatives in Congress speak for us, union leaders make fiscal decisions for their members. While they may not always agree with them, they understand that this is how the system works.

The point of all this is that unions are not all alike and are not all operating under the same rules. Therefore, a single law that requires a set system to address this issue doesn't really make logistical sense, from my perspective. In addition, it is interesting to note that corporations, not individuals, seem to be behind this proposition. And, as is the case with both Prop. 73 and Prop. 74, the title of this measure makes it sound both reasonable and necessary, but the text of the measure and the context in which it is to be applied, do not.

What's more, Prop. 75 is being supported based partly on the fact that the employees involved are public employees, paid by the state. But the union is not a public organization. The dues the members pay to fund their respective unions are meant to empower the unions to work for the members as a whole. With big business and government interests often at odds with employee interests, using union dues for political purposes is unavoidable if unions wish to be effective in bargaining on behalf of their membership. Whether the money is sent directly to a particular campaign or used to lobby for the interests of the union, the point of both is to allow employees a collective voice. What corporate interests want, it seems to me, is to curtail the ability of unions to utilize the power of their collective voice. They couch it in terms of individual rights, but what they are attempting to do is actually take a powerful collective voice and convert it into an ineffective group of individuals with no venue for working as a group with shared interests.

Finally, if there are problems with specific unions failing to respect their members wishes, then why didn't those very union members create the measure and put their effort into getting it passed? Proposition 75 was conceived, created and paid for by large corporate interests. That ought to tell you something. --Laurie

Proposition 74

2005-11-03T11:47:00.000-08:00

This proposition is known as the Put the Kids First Act. Proposition 74 will change the time a teacher must work prior to receiving tenure. Currently, in California, there is a two-year probationary period. Proposition 74 would change that two years to five, for any teacher whose probationary period began in the 2003-2004 fiscal year, or after. In addition, it would eliminate a teacher's right to an administrative hearing before being terminated, regardless of tenure.

Under Proposition 74, if a permanent employee (tenured teacher, in this case) is found to have two consecutive unsatisfactory evaluations, that teacher may be removed based upon those evaluations. The terminated teacher may then request an administrative hearing. However, current law requires that a teacher be granted an administrative hearing prior to dismissal. Prop. 74 would change that.

Proponents, mostly conservatives, say this will allow them to lose problem teachers. Opponents say it's payback. They say teachers are being "punished" because they refused to let Governor Schwarzenneger get away with reneging on his campaign promise to put education first. They also say the real problems are lack of needed classroom materials, too few teachers per student, and generally inadequate government support of public education.

So who is right? This one's not easy. Before discussing the right and wrong of it, let's look at the concerns behind the proposed changes. We are told, by the Governor, that we can improve our education system by making it easier to fire teachers and by requiring that they work longer to earn tenure. Currently, there are only two states that require the same five-year probationary period that the Governor is suggesting: Indiana and Missouri. There are also three states that have a one-year probation period: Connecticut, North Dakota and South Carolina. Proponents of Prop. 74 say a longer probation period is necessary to improve the quality of teachers, which will improve the quality of education. If that's true, we should see some correlation between schools with longer probation periods and better overall student performance.

But according to the 2003 statistics on state-by-state performance levels for elementary school students, the three states with a one-year probation period ranked higher than the two states with the five-year probation period. Middle school rankings for 2003 show slightly different results. One of the one-year probation period states (South Carolina) scored below Indiana and Missouri, but the other two states with a one-year probation period (Connecticut and North Dakota) still bested the states requiring a full five-years on the job before offering tenure. Granted, this is not a scientific study. But it does suggest that the length of a teacher's probation period is not linked to student performance.

The second issue being cited by proponents of Prop. 74 is that it will allow for easier removal of problem teachers. Again, let's start with what we have now. Currently, a teacher may be removed from the classroom for exactly the same infractions the new measure, if passed, would include. In other words, the causes for dismissal of a teacher will not be changed by Prop. 74. What will be changed, should Prop. 74 pass, is the number of evaluations a teacher will be subjected to (Prop. 74 would require five evaluations during the same time period that teachers currently undergo two evaluations). This means that in addition to using school funds to conduct additional teacher evaluations, the time between evaluations is shorter. While that may sound like a good idea, it presupposes that more evaluations, closer together, will weed out problem teachers. But is that true?

If a teacher is guilty of immoral conduct, dishonesty, illegal activity or any of the other problem behaviors that could lead to dismissal, would a formal evaluation actually be required to bring the problem to the attention of the appropriate authorities? I think not. Rather, reports from unhappy students and/or parents would likely be the way in which school authorities would discover any infraction sufficient to warrant dismissal. That being the case, it's hard to imagine needing to more than double evaluation exercises in order to find out which teachers are really causing problems.

What's most troubling to me, however, is that Prop. 74 will strip teachers of the one protection mechanism they have for preventing unfair dismissal based upon ideological differences. The current law reads that "immoral or unprofessional conduct" is at the top of the list of items that warrant dismissal. This is not new to Prop. 74. However, the current law has a check and balance feature that prevents one person's morality from infringing on somebody else's: a tenured teacher is entitled to an administrative hearing prior to dismissal. This allows the teacher time to present his/her case and requires that presumably objective third parties are privy to whatever breach of morality the teacher might be accused of. This is extremely important because morality and professionalism are subjective terms. One person's definition may differ quite greatly from another's.

If Prop. 74 passes, however, a teacher may be dismissed simply because he receives two consecutive evaluations claiming that said teacher is not up to the evaluator's personal "moral" standards. The potential for abuse here should be obvious.

Proposition 74 is presented as a measure aimed at taking care of kids, but it's really nothing more than an administrative action that will cost money to implement (how much, no one seems to know) and does nothing tangible to improve the quality of education our children will receive. --Laurie

Proposition 73

2005-11-02T11:05:00.000-08:00

We're getting down to the wire--just one week to go before the November 8 special election. There are eight propositions to vote on. They cover a variety of subjects: unions, prescription drug benefits, school administration, abortion law and utility regulation.

If you're on the conservative side, you may see this election as a chance to curtail certain individual freedoms--freedoms that allow others to make choices that go against your own conservative values. Proposition 73, for example, will require pregnant minors to wait longer for abortions and will require that they inform their parents (with certain exceptions) prior to terminating a pregnancy.

Proposition 74 also includes a waiting period--this one is for teachers seeking tenure. Conservatives are backing Prop. 74 because it allows teachers to be fired more easily for poor performance, while also increasing the time they must work prior to achieving tenure. Conservatives see this as an issue of teacher accountability. But liberals tend to view it as a way of scapegoating teachers, while failing to address the real problems with California's educational system, such as budget cuts and poor system administration.

Each of the propositions on this November ballot can be pretty easily categorized as either conservative or liberal. Chances are, if you are a conservative, you'll be voting "yes" on the first six propositions, in keeping with the Governor's recommendations. If you're left of center, however, you'll mark "no" on props. 73-78 and say "yes" to 79 and 80, in keeping with the recommendations of MoveOn.org.

If, however, you're a moderate, and you're not inclined to vote by association, here are some of the specifics to chew on. Let's start with Prop. 73.

Proposition 73:

This measure, cited as the Parents' Right to Know and Child Protection Initiative, is supported by the idea that people have "an interest in and a responsibility for protecting the health and well-being of children, ensuring that parents are properly informed of potential health-related risks to their children, and promoting parent-child communication and parental responsibility."

One can hardly argue with a law meant to promote the health and well-being of children by promoting parent-child communication and parental responsibility. Unfortunately, if we look at the underlying premise for this measure closely, we see some major flaws in it. First, if a 13-year-old girl is pregnant and chooses not to inform her parents, there is already a serious problem in the family unit: birth control and AIDs awareness have not been taught effectively, for starters. Given the importance of educating our children on both topics, the parents of said 13-year-old girl have already failed to be ultimately responsible for their daughter's health and well-being.

Yet Proposition 73 will require that a physician report, in writing, to the parent or guardian of an unemancipated minor before performing an abortion on said minor. It further requires the notice be written in both English and Spanish. In addition, a 48-hour period of "reflection" must be imposed after the written notice is delivered, prior to the actual performance of the abortion.

While the intent of the legislation is clear, one can't expect to promote communication between a parent and child by passing a note from a third party. Granted, under Proposition 73, if the unemancipated minor does not wish to comply with the written notification requirement, she does have the option of filing a petition with the juvenile court. And, to their credit, the drafters of this measure have factored both timeliness and economic concerns into processing such a request. After specifying her reasons for the request to withhold parental notification, the court will waive the petition filing fee. What's more, the court will conduct the hearing by 5 p.m. the day following the filing, and the judgment will be entered within one court day of the submission of the matter. So far so good--but then what?

"If the judge finds, by clear and convincing evidence, that the unemancipated minor is sufficiently mature and well-informed to decide whether to have an abortion, the judge shall authorize a waiver of notice of a parent or guardian." But what if she's not deemed capable of making a "sufficiently mature and well-informed" decision? What do you suppose will happen when the court rules not to allow the abortion without parental notification?

Here's another rarely asked question: if she's not mature enough to have an abortion, how can she possibly be mature enough to have a child? Unfortunately, the answer to that question is that she's not--and she's knows it. That's why she wants the abortion in the first place. If she can't get one from a physician who is a law-abiding citizen, she will find another way to end her pregnancy--one that won't require her to tell her parents about it. I wonder, what kind of back-alley enterprise will she end up resorting to? Let's not confuse our beliefs and our morality with reality. This is a practical issue--not a moral one.

Let's take a look at another scenario. Let's say the judge finds that notice of the parent or guardian is not in the child's best interest. According to Prop. 73, the judge may then also issue a waiver of the notice. But should he find that the reason the notice is not in the girl's best interests is due to "physical, sexual or emotional abuse" then "the court shall ensure that such evidence is brought to the attention of the appropriate county child protective agency."

Again, that sounds okay. But let's take a closer look at what this means. If a child is fearful of her parents and knows that in order to get a waiver for notification the government will refer her to another government agency--one that will investigate her situation--then, in effect, parental notice has not been waived at all. It's simply been diverted so that it will come, later, from another source.

Practically speaking then, the end result of this of legislation will not be to protect young girls--it will be to frighten them into seeking the services of possibly unethical, probably unqualified and most certainly less competent practitioners who are only too eager to take fast cash from a desperate and frightened young woman with nowhere else to turn.

If we want to promote family values and a pro-life agenda, let's set up educational programs for parents and children so that questions about sex, AIDs, pregnancy, etc., can be asked and answered in a supportive environment. If we wait until a child is pregnant and try to legislate such values, we will likely succeed only in adding to her emotional, psychological and possibly physical trauma--and that's not what anybody wants.

Tomorrow: Proposition 74--stay tuned. -- Laurie

RePackaging Miers

2005-10-17T14:51:00.000-07:00

The White House is beginning to look more and more like the set of Saturday Night Live. Now that Conservatives and Liberals alike are criticizing Harriet Miers for failing to live up to Supreme Court standards, the White House spinmeisters are changing their approach. They've decided to back away from touting her religious affiliations and now wish to highlight her stellar career as a lawyer.

Unfortunately, that seems to be backfiring as well. In an effort to find evidence of legal prowess, all that's been turned up, it seems, is a stash of obsequious and poorly written invitations and thank you notes to high level officials--many of them written to George W. Bush. Here's a taste from a recent Washington Post article:

One example, from a May 1996 letter asking George and Laura Bush to appear at a ceremony honoring her, displayed both an obsequious tone and a tortuous prose style. "I am respectful of both of your great many time commitments and I realize you receive many, many requests," she wrote. "Of course, I would be very pleased if either of you is able to participate. However, I will be pleased with your judgment about whether participating in this event fits your schedule whatever your decision. . . . I feel honored even to be able to extend this invitation to such extraordinary people."

Republican Senator Rick Santorum remained unmoved by Ms. Miers conciliatory tone. His comment appeared in another Post article, also published Saturday:

"I don't know yet," Santorum said, according to an account yesterday in the Public Opinion newspaper of Chambersburg, Pa. "But I am concerned President Bush nominated someone who is a blank slate. I'm disappointed he wanted to nominate someone like that instead of someone with a record."

Here's another sizzling example of her "tortuous prose," from a 1997 handwritten card, also courtesy of the Washington Post: "Hopefully Jenna and Barbara recognize that their parents are 'cool' -- as do the rest of us. . . . All I hear is how great you and Laura are doing. . . . Keep up all the great work. Texas is blessed!"

Even pro-conservative political pundits are having a hard time standing by Ms. Miers. Here's what Times' columnist David Brooks had to say about columns Miers wrote in the early 1990s, when she was president of the State Bar of Texas. "The quality of thought and writing doesn't even rise to the level of pedestrian."

Meanwhile, White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card responded to the intense criticism of Miers by political pundits, lawyers and activists by saying that he was "a little surprised that they came out of the box so cynically." Card also denied having had to "shout down opposition" to the Miers appointment in staff meetings. "That is fiction," he said, "and I live in a nonfiction world." (Odd that the distinction between reality and fantasy was not so apparent in the lead up to the Iraq war.)

So to all those Conservatives who keep saying that Bush picked Miers to avoid a fight, all I can say is: it didn't work very well, did it?

Manual Miranda, head of a coalition of conservative and libertarian groups that oppose the Miers nomination put it plainly: "Right now the base is completely fractured and people are very concerned about the impact on the 2006 elections. The troubling thing is that the Supreme Court was the gold ring and the president's thinking appears indiscernible, unless you're willing to take it as a matter of faith." Funny how the faith thing keeps coming up, isn't it? -- Laurie

The Marriage of Church and State

2005-10-14T11:38:00.000-07:00

I have a conservative friend (or two) and they've been quick to point out that the nomination of Harriet Miers is a huge disappointment because, in their opinion, Miers is not a substantial enough candidate to warrant a Supreme Court nomination. Their feelings have been backed by plenty of other notable conservatives, among them, George Will.

Will, who appeared on This Week with George Stephanopoulis last Sunday, stood behind his earlier comment, that if Bush had asked for the names of 10,000 qualified potential nominees for the Supreme Court, Harriet Miers would not have appeared on anybody's list.

When asked why he thought Bush chose Miers for the high court, Will (and my conservative friends) all seemed to agree that it is because George Bush wants to avoid a fight. This is an interesting assumption, because if true (which I think is debatable) it presupposes that liberals will blindly accept the Miers nomination, despite the fact that there is virtually no information on which to rely to assess her qualifications for such a prominent appointment.

She's never been a judge, and though she has been White House Counsel since Alberto Gonzales was appointed Attorney General, her work has gone largely unnoticed. Sure, she battled the sexism that made all women of her generation work that much harder to succeed, and yes, she is a close personal friend to the president. But do those two things qualify her to sit on the highest court in the land? I think not. And I'm not alone.

But why, then, did President Bush nominate Harriet Miers? Here's my theory: he wants Harriet Miers to act as an extension of himself. He's not looking for a stellar thinker--he's looking for a loyal follower--who is as fanatical about evangelical Christianity, and the need to spread the word of God, as he is. Bush is seeking the very thing John Roberts is not: a Supreme Court nominee who will use the Bible, not the Constitution, as her guidebook.

Harriet Miers is not just a close friend of George W. Bush; she's a woman who, bound by religious zealotry, is determined to push her religious agenda. She is also the kind of woman who will staunchly stand by her man (meaning George W. Bush). In other words: she's just the kind of woman Bush likes best.

While pundits debate her merits, another loyal supporter and practitioner of the Tammy Wynette philosophy, First Lady Laura Bush, is tackling the resistance to the Miers' appointment by slapping the label of "sexist" on those who question Miers' qualifications. Mrs. Bush is quoted in Wednesday's Washington Post as saying that it's "possible" that questions about Miers's intellectual qualifications are "sexist" in nature. Mrs. Bush, a graduate of the Karl Rove School of Understated Slander, knows that a suggestion and a smile are more powerful than outright condemnation, and she's 'working it' like a pro.

Meanwhile, nobody, conservative or liberal, is talking about what I believe is really going on here. That is, that our president is pushing a nominee, to the Supreme Court, who will work actively to promote a "culture of life" that includes reversing Roe V. Wade and will help to shove George W. Bush's personal vision of democracy down our throats.

In short, George Bush is attempting to put in place an unqualified lackey, whose sole loyalty will be to him and his twisted version of Christianity. I offer up, as evidence, some interesting moments in our President's history:

- When the tragedy of 9.11 occurred, President Bush used the word "crusade" and was strongly criticized for inciting the anger of Muslims the world over. He immediately stopped using the word, but he hasn't stopped preaching the message.

- In a New York Times article from April of 2004, David Sanger wrote that Bush "described an America chosen by God to spread freedom. He never used the word 'crusade' . . . But he described one."

- In October of 2004, Ron Suskind, in his New York Times Magazine piece Without a Doubt, quoted Bruce Bartlett, a domestic policy adviser to Ronald Reagan and a treasury official for the first President Bush. Bartlett said, ''Just in the past few months, I think a light has gone off for people who've spent time up close to Bush: that this instinct he's always talking about is this sort of weird, Messianic idea of what he thinks God has told him to do.''

- On January 24, 2005, the Washington Post printed an article titled "Bush Hails Progress Toward 'Culture of Life'" in which Bush is quoted as saying the following, during a speech given at an anti-abortion rally: "'The America of our dreams, where every child is welcomed . . . in life and protected in law, may still be some ways away, but even from the far side of the river . . . we can see its glimmerings.'"

- On October 7, 2005, Bush was the subject of an extremely disturbing article in the UK's Guardian. Here's an excerpt:

George Bush has claimed he was on a mission from God when he launched the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, according to a senior Palestinian politician in an interview to be broadcast by the BBC later this month.

Mr. Bush revealed the extent of his religious fervour when he met a Palestinian delegation during the Israeli-Palestinian summit at the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh, four months after the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

One of the delegates, Nabil Shaath, who was Palestinian foreign minister at the time, said: "President Bush said to all of us: 'I am driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, 'George go and fight these terrorists in Afghanistan'. And I did. And then God would tell me 'George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq'. And I did.'"

Mr Bush went on: "And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, 'Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East'. And, by God, I'm gonna do it."

George W. Bush believes he is a modern-day prophet, and as such, he is obsessed with his own self-importance. Having given up drugs and alcohol, he has focused his innate compulsivity into a self-delusional obsession with being a chosen spokesperson for the man upstairs.

Like Church of Latter Day Saints founder, Joseph Smith, a former fraud and charlatan who was booted out of one city after another for pretending to have skills he did not have, our President has taken a string of pathetic failures and turned them into a campaign to convince the world that he is somehow a conduit for the word of God.

The very fact that he is where he is, is all the proof Bush needs to continue to feed his own perverted concept of reality. He is the leader of the so-called "free world." By failing to see through his psychological disorder, the American people have validated his sick and twisted concept of himself and his place in the world. He has arrived; and there is no longer any possibility of a rational, sensible, response to his delusions of grandeur.

So, if you want to understand why George W. Bush has nominated an evangelical Christian with no judicial experience to be the next member of the Supreme Court, just listen to what Bush said on October 12, 2005, after an Oval Office meeting with visiting Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski:

"People are interested to know why I picked Harriet Miers. They want to know Harriet Miers' background. They want to know as much as they possibly can before they form opinions. And part of Harriet Miers' life is her religion."

Make no mistake, our President is planning a marriage between church and state--and Harriet Miers is the blushing bride-to-be. -- Laurie

What a Week

2005-10-09T11:15:00.000-07:00

The last week of September pretty much slipped by me. After getting behind on the news during the Labor Day weekend, then being inundated with pretty much nothing but the news of Katrina and the mind-boggling incompetence and callousness of the democratically-elected government that is supposed to be looking out for us, a lot of other stuff just got overlooked. So here's a recap of some of the things that you may also have missed, or perhaps merely glossed over.

PFC Lynndie England was convicted on six counts for her role in the infamous Abu Ghraib scandal: one count of conspiracy, four counts of maltreating detainees and one count of committing an indecent act. England, who is best known for smiling while holding one detainee on a leash, and posing with others while they were in forced into humiliating positions (naked, piled atop one another, etc.) is only 22 years old.She has been described as having an "unusually pliant" personality. She is uneducated, appears to have below average intelligence. She was also having an affair, at the time the photos were taken, with then-Cpl. Charles Graner Jr., who is currently serving time for his part as the "ringleader" in the Abu Ghraib abuse scandal. Graner is also the father of England's son, and was her supervisor while at Abu Ghraib.

While she faces prison, the men responsible for a system that recruits the poor and ignorant and then places them in positions of power over those they've been taught to hate, while simultaneously failing to instill even the most basic checks on the abusive behavior those same ignorant lackeys are instructed to perform by their even more ignorant (but infinitely more experienced) "superiors" continue to operate with impunity.

Meanwhile, here in the States, a company named AdvoCare began marketing their newest product, a breakfast drink for kids. According to the New York Times, "The drink, called Spark, contains several stimulants and is sold in two formulations: one for children 4 to 11 years old that includes roughly the amount of caffeine found in a cup and a half of coffee, and one containing twice that amount for teenagers and adults."

AdvoCare is promoting the product as a "nutritional supplement" and says Spark is designed to help youngsters to "develop fully as a high-performance athlete" by filling "nutritional gaps." While AdvoCare claims that the drink contains a variety of helpful nutrients, critics are quick to point out that drugs containing caffeine are required, by law, to have a label on them, warning them not to be given to children under 12 years of age because "too much caffeine may cause nervousness, irritability, sleeplessness and, occasionally, rapid heartbeat."

Spark, considered a food, not a drug, requires no such label. The company, a direct marketing enterprise, is based in Texas. (Why does that not surprise me?)

Meanwhile, in San Francisco, that homosexual den of iniquity that makes most Texans blush, the Board of Supervisors has passed "the strongest anti-sweatshop legislation in the country." The legislation requires that tax dollars spent on uniforms, sheets and towels go to companies that pay their workers a fair minimum wage and provide safe working environments. It also forces companies to provide a guarantee that they will not employ children, foreign convicts or slave labor.

And in Washington, our nation's capital (fast becoming the religious center of the universe), FEMA, the organization that couldn't, is drafting plans to reimburse the faith-based organizations that could, and did, come to the rescue of thousands of displaced Hurricane Katrina victims. President Bush appears to have completely forgotten that charity means, well, charity. He is fixing to use federal tax dollars to reimburse organizations that voluntarily provided shelter, food, water and clothing to the homeless.

But he's only talking about reimbursing faith-based charities. Non-faith-based charitable contributions from folks like doctors (and various other groups and individuals) who showed up in New Orleans to help, when FEMA was conspicuously absent, will not be reimbursed. Of course, non-faith-based groups didn't really do all that much. In fact, one doctor up and left in the middle of administering to a patient. Of course, that's because FEMA forced him to stop--right before they sent him away. I guess he screwed up when he showed up, unannounced, and began to administer chest compressions to a dying woman. Apparently, he was supposed to have foreseen the need to register with FEMA before assisting in the disastermath; his valid medical license was not good enough for FEMA. They needed to be able to find him in their system--the same system that broke down entirely and did nothing for several days.

Yet faith-based groups (that hand out a bible with every meal) appear to have managed to avoid the scrutiny of FEMA. The Bush administration's position is clear: The doctor who practices only medicine and not evangelical Christianity is unnecessary during times of crises; however, the rank and file bible thumper is not only welcomed, but will be paid for his service--by you--the people of the democratically-elected government that has written into its Constitution that there must be a separation of church and state. Ah, but lest we forget: Bush is also from Texas.(As is Tom DeLay, who has now, finally, been indicted for something--it was really only a matter of time).

And last, but not least, on September 24, there was a large and well-organized march, in Washington, against the war. While TruthOut.org covered it in great detail (by the way, if you haven't already, please consider contributing to TruthOut.org--they need the money almost as much as we need them), the New York Times conveniently left out the numbers, saying only "vast numbers" of protesters converged on Washington.

I was surprised at the lack of detail, because the coverage from TruthOut made it look like a pretty big deal. So, I broke down a paid for a copy of the full archived Times article and came across this: "Organizers of the rally and march had a permit for100,000 people, but the National Park Service no longer provides official estimates for large gatherings in Washington."

Wow, no estimates for large gatherings in Washington. When did that happen? I guess it must have been about the time Bush and his buddies realized that numbers actually mean something.

There is more, of course, this is just the start. I figure I'm going to need to catch up a week at a time. I can't wait to find out what happened during the first week in October. -- Laurie

Judy Gets Out of Jail

2005-09-30T16:29:00.000-07:00

Judith Miller agreed to testify before a grand jury today. She held a brief press conference after being released from jail, where she spent the past 85 days for her prior refusal to cooperate in the investigation into the CIA leak that made Valerie Plame a household name.

During a very short speech, prior to taking very few questions, Miller continued to play-up her role as a conscience-driven martyr, reminding the media that she "would have stayed in jail longer" had her source not finally provided the "personal, explicit, voluntary waiver" Miller required before agreeing to testify.

But her fellow reporters were not easily led. One asked why she didn't ask for the waiver sooner and said that her source, Scooter Libby, had told reporters that he would have provided whatever she needed, if she had merely asked for it.

Miller got a little huffy at that. I guess she didn't like the implication: that there was absolutely no need for her to have spent even one night in jail. That would make her seem a little stupid, wouldn't it?--or worse--like she may have deliberately landed herself in jail so she could:
a) delay the investigation into the leak while the White House scrambled to position itself;
b) build sympathy for her plight, which would translate into anger at the prosecutor; or
c) allow her to work out a deal (remarkably like the one she got) that allows her to limit her testimony to her conversation with Scooter Libby and stay mum about everything else that she did, knows and/or has heard.

(Personally, I vote for d--"all of the above").

But Judy held her own and said that she could not speak to that issue because that was all handled by her lawyer. I guess we are expected to believe that Miller spent 85 days in jail because it did not occur to her (or her lawyer) to call Libby and ask for a waiver. A second waiver, that is. She already had a waiver, but that waiver wasn't the waiver she wanted.

And it makes no difference to Miller, apparently, that her source is possibly guilty of a federal crime. She sees nothing mitigating in the fact that she is not protecting a whistle-blower or victim or even an average citizen from people who might be tempted to take revenge on her source as a result of her testimony; she is preventing a high-level figure in the White House, who may have committed a felony, from being brought to justice.

With characteristic self-righteousness, Miller has managed to convince herself (if no one else) that she is doing something noble. But what she's actually doing is obstructing justice and actively enabling the Bush White House to do the same.

As she was clear to point out today, it was the combination of the "personal, explicit, voluntary waiver" provided by Libby, and the agreement to testify regarding her conversation with Libby BUT NOTHING ELSE, that finally opened the door to reason.

I strongly suspect it's not the Libby waiver that is key here. Rather, it's the narrow subject matter to which she has managed to limit her testimony, thus allowing her to feign cooperation and moral integrity while continuing to withhold the most crucial evidence in this investigation: her own actions in the lead-up to the possibly felonious disclosure of Joe Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, as a covert CIA operative.

As Arianna Huffington pointed out some weeks ago, Miller is a White House favorite. She is also the woman for whom her employer, the New York Times, had to apologize after they repeatedly printed her stories confirming the WMDs claims made by the White House in the lead-up to the Iraq invasion. Turns out those stories were un-substantiated White House propaganda.

Ms. Miller, as a result, had a little egg on her face, and one of the people who helped to put it there was none other than former ambassador, Joe Wilson. It was Wilson's refusal to let the Bush administration get away with inserting unfounded claims about an Iraq/Niger uranium deal in the President's State of the Union address that got the White House and Miller hot under the collar. So together they plotted to discredit Joe Wilson. As Karl Rove, Machiavellian White House manipulator extraordinaire, told MSNBC's Chris Matthews "Joe Wilson's wife is fair game."

Things were starting to look pretty bad for the White House when that got out, but the administration has, so far, managed to convince all but the most savvy media members that by not using Ms. Plame's name, they didn't break the law.

They are coasting along on the assumption that we are all so ridiculously literal as to believe that saying "Joe Wilson's wife works for the CIA" isn't blowing her cover because her name wasn't used. Unable to take the most obvious next step in critical thinking, they apparently expect the public to be similarly dimwitted; and, therefore, unable to reach the most obvious of conclusions: that Joe Wilson only has one wife. And at least one of her names is Mrs. Joe Wilson.

--Laurie Fosner

Evidence of a Cover-up in the Lead-up to 9.11

2005-09-21T12:02:00.000-07:00

Whenever left-wing activists talk about the Bush administration's complicity in the terrorist attacks of 9.11, most people simply roll their eyes. It's not that it hasn't occurred to us--it's just that we can't go that far unless we have some kind of evidence; it' just too horrific to think about. It's bad enough if we acknowledge the incompetence and inefficiency of an administration we see demonstrating incompetence and inefficiency, daily. But there is still a glimmer of hope in most of us, I think, that makes us resist the temptation to believe that our leaders would actively enable a terrorist plot, in order to justify their predetermined course.

That said, the recent announcement that a secret intelligence group called Able Danger, was prevented from informing the FBI of 9.11 hijacker Mohammed Atta's arrival in the United States, and his ties to Al Qaeda, before 9.11, is pretty disturbing. More disturbing than that, however, is the news that the 9.11 Commission was advised of the attempt to inform the FBI about Atta, and they chose not to include it in their final report. But fortunately, a few brave men are refusing to participate in the cover-up.

Today, a Senate Judiciary Committee, headed by Republican Senator Arlen Specter, will be meeting to discuss this subject. But the military analysts and officers scheduled to testify will not be doing so. Tuesday, Bryan Whitman, a Defense Department spokesman, said the open environment of the committee was not an "appropriate" forum for a discussion of the operation known as Able Danger. (It is worth noting that Defense Department lawyers are the ones allegedly responsible for blocking Able Danger from providing information about Atta to the FBI in the first place--back in 2000--almost a full year before the tragedy of 9.11).

Here's an excerpt from today's New York Times:

F.B.I. officials, who answer to the jurisdiction of Mr. Specter's committee, have confirmed that the Defense Department abruptly canceled meetings in 2000 between the bureau's Washington field office and representatives of the Able Danger team.

The Pentagon had said that it interviewed three other people who were involved with Able Danger and who said that they, too, recalled the identification of Mr. Atta as a terrorist suspect. Mr. Specter said his staff had talked to all five of the potential witnesses and found that "credibility has been established" for all of them.

Specter plans to go ahead with the meeting today, on the off chance that it "may produce a change of heart by the Department of Defense in answering some very basic questions."

Yes, we can always hope, can't we?

--Laurie Fosner

ABOUT FACE: The momentary "liberalization" of George W. Bush and the new-found (though short-lived) efficiency of our bureaucratic federal government

2005-09-19T14:18:00.000-07:00

It's taken me a while to process recent events. I got behind over the Labor Day weekend. I was only gone three days but when I returned to several hundred emails and a dozen "must see" news and information programs, I knew it would take a couple of weeks to catch up completely.

In light of that, it's very difficult for me to believe that when President Bush takes 52 days off he doesn't get behind. Then I remembered that our president has people to do his work for him. All he has to do is show up where he's supposed to, and say what he's supposed to say.

That's part of the reason I was sure Bush would use the recent massive FEMA failure as an excuse to put more of the burden for protection of the people on state and local governments. His supporters have long called for a more limited role for federal government. What a great opportunity for them to point to the bureaucratic nightmare that FEMA has become, as an excuse to scale back all large federal programs.

But Bush didn't do that. In fact, he gave what some are calling a "liberal" speech. I watched a replay of it the other night. I was pretty surprised--particularly in light of his behavior in the lead-up to that speech. Here's a recap of what preceded Bush's sudden about face:

President Bush didn't know about the devastation in Louisiana until somebody showed him a DVD of the mess--this was days after the hurricane hit--thus proving that his awareness of current events does not extend beyond what his staff chooses to share with him. (Bush's ignorance of real world events also explains why he sometimes needs to wear a wire: whenever his work requires his extremely limited awareness to expand instantaneously, somebody has to be able to feed him information, on the spot. That's why Dick Cheney had to sit with Bush when he went before the 9.11 Commission. They couldn't use a wire for that because, thanks to internet media, the public was already onto him).

Practically speaking, we have to start with the premise that President Bush is unaware of pretty much everything that's going on in the world, outside his own small sphere; that is, unless one of his peeps gives him some sort of briefing. Or, unless he happens to catch something on TV, which is also becoming more and more tightly controlled by friends of the Bush administration. (Giddy with their obvious success in keeping the president in the dark, they've decided to try their manipulative schemes on the rest of us).

Yet, regardless of the degree to which the men controlling Bush also control the media, there is no question that Bush himself is carefully guarded. It became painfully clear on that fateful day, when we watched in horror--a nation united behind a single common theme--as President Bush patted Michael Brown (then head of FEMA) on the back and said "Brownie, yer doin' a hell of a job."

In that perfect moment, Americans of all types came together--irrespective of political affiliation, social class or religious beliefs--we were one that day, as we cringed with universal embarrassment, while our president shared with the entire world how totally clueless he is.

While his minions scurried to blame the disastermath on looters, the victims of the hurricane, and anybody insisting that there are questions that need to be answered, now, not later; President Bush was frantically searching for a crash course on "How to clean up a clusterfuck the size of which you have, heretofore, only imagined."

But what about Iraq? Surely, he sees what that's become? I think not. As close as I can figure, the bad news in Iraq doesn't show up on Bush's radar at all. Bush gets his news from the people who put us there. And they are, coincidentally, the same people who have the most to gain by keeping us there. They don't talk about the things that aren't working out the way they'd planned, because for them it's all good. The more destruction, the longer we stay; and the longer we stay, the more money they make. They tell Bush exactly what he needs to hear in order to get him to stand at a podium and announce, with absolute conviction and authority: "We must stay the course." And to Bush that makes perfect sense. Based on the information he's getting, we're doing alright in Iraq.

Our president is arguably the biggest single victim of political censorship in the history of the United States. If we received nothing more than the same small portion of reality that Bush is dosed with each day, we would probably see things much the way he does.

But now it's beginning to look as if the administration's strategy has backfired. When Bush failed to rush to New Orleans and comfort the people who were victimized by the flood, when he decided to use a fly-by over the disaster area as a way of getting a "real look" at the carnage below, he demonstrated a harsh indifference to reality on the ground--one that left the majority of Americans outraged.

To the millions who watched and waited as Bush blithely ignored the call for help, it mattered not one bit that his delayed response was the inevitable result of a system that relies on a team of advisors to keep him informed. Their failure to apprise Bush of the extent of the damage, until several days after the fact, does not make the American people feel any better about Bush's ability to protect them. Nor did it help his cause when his horrid mother stood in the Houston Astrodome and claimed that the folks taking shelter there had actually "done very well for themselves" because they "were underprivileged anyway" and now they might get to stay in Texas.

When the Bush indifference surfaced, amid the back-drop of New Orleans, both the public and mainstream media were already mad as hell. They weren't willing to sugarcoat the facts to make the administration look good; nor were they willing to join the party that makes excuses or points to victims in order to deflect blame from themselves. Everybody was talking about the failure of FEMA--even FOX News. As a result, Bush saw a whole bunch of stuff he wasn't supposed to see. He saw angry, hungry, tired, poor people--mostly of color--and they were all asking the same question: is anybody coming to help us? It was the first time in the history of George W's presidency that he saw, in living color, the full effect of his own ignorance and ineptitude.

And right on the heels of Cindy Sheehan, can you beat that? After all that extra driving they had to do to bypass her every day, just when Bush was about to head back to Washington to get away from her, Hurricane Katrina hit and forced him to see the reality of a failure of government that has left the entire world asking "how could something like this have happened in the United States?"

Then something truly surprising occurred: In the midst of all of this, President Bush, who usually refuses to admit even the possibility of making a mistake, did something truly radical. Bush accepted responsibility. In his own words: "To the extent that the federal government failed, I take full responsibility." He went on to talk about the racism that has led to poverty in America and vowed to "do what it takes" to rebuild New Orleans, to fight racism and end poverty, and make a better world for our children's future.

I was stunned. I didn't believe him, but I was still stunned. How could I not be? How could anyone have possibly known that President Bush was planning to appear, live, in Jackson Square, New Orleans and channel Franklin Delano Roosevelt?

It was a dramatic change of course for Bush--one meant to convince the public that his understanding of the situation and his desire to personally correct the errors that led to such a catastrophic failure would actually lead to government programs that would lift the poor and disenfranchised out of poverty, once and for all.

Of course, Republicans are mad as hell because they're worried that he's going to make good on his promise and spend all their hard-earned money bailing out lazy poor people. And Democrats are mad because they know it's all just talk. Nothing has really changed. The "liberal" speech Bush gave at Jackson Square was just one more example of hypocrisy in action.

But you have to hand it to the Bush administration--they know how to put on a good show. When something is really important to them, they can turn the federal government into a machine so efficient it makes Martha Stewart look like a sloppy housekeeper. While hundreds continue to beg for food and water, electricity and a clean place to live, Bush and his crew demonstrated a turn-about in government efficiency that was nothing short of miraculous. As Tom Engelhardt points out in his latest Dispatch:

Without a single mishap, the rescue team delivered to central New Orleans its own generators, lights (not just the warm-glow ones for the President but the HMI movie lights to set the cathedral in the background ablaze), the camouflage netting that was needed to hide from viewers any sign of the surrounding devastation, and even its own communications equipment. And then there was the matter of crowd control - okay, maybe not exactly crowds in depopulated New Orleans, but soldiers from the 82nd Airborne were effectively deployed, just in case, "to keep regular citizens several blocks back."

Naturally, when his speech ended, President Bush drove out of sight, taking the lights, the cameras and the action with him. Again, from Tom Engelhardt:

. . . an hour after he was done and gone - rescues of this sort being limited affairs - the area was "plunged into total darkness again, to audible groans. … It may be true that, for a week or more, this administration couldn't get a bottle of water to a diabetic grandmother, but when something was actually at stake - what reporters far and wide referred to as the "rebuilding" not of New Orleans but of a presidency, or simply of the presidential "image" - efficiency, coordination, and togetherness were the by-words of the day.

Yeah, nothing's changed. But Bush did surprise me. I've got to give him points for that.
-- Laurie Fosner

Family Values

2005-09-17T15:27:00.000-07:00

One of the unavoidable side effects of a natural disaster is that it tends to take up all our attention. As a result, many other, equally important, issues get sidelined. One such issue is gay rights, and more specifically, same sex marriage.

A couple of weeks ago, lawmakers passed a bill that would legalize same sex marriage in California. But Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger says he will veto it "in honor of the will of the people." Schwarzenegger says he's all for gay rights, but believes a vote (five years ago) in which Californians chose not to honor out-of-state same-sex marriage, indicates disapproval of same-sex marriage, in general.

Meanwhile, a pair of proposed constitutional amendments that would ban same-sex marriage in California and revoke the spousal rights already granted to domestic partners, is slated for the 2006 ballot. Yet even as California appears to be moving backward in the struggle for human rights, the Spanish Parliament has taken a giant step forward.

Last month, the Spanish Parliament voted to legalize both gay marriage and adoption of children by gay couples. Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero spoke prior to the vote. Here are excerpts from Zapatero's speech, sent to us from Paul Toulmin (thanks Paul):

We are not legislating, honorable members, for people far away and not known by us. We are enlarging the opportunity for happiness to our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends and, our families: at the same time we are making a more decent society, because a decent society is one that does not humiliate its members.

Today, the Spanish society answers to a group of people who, during many years have, been humiliated, whose rights have been ignored, whose dignity has been offended, their identity denied, and their liberty oppressed. Today the Spanish society grants them the respect they deserve, recognizes their rights, restores their dignity, affirms their identity, and restores their liberty.

It is true that they are only a minority, but their triumph is everyone's triumph. It is also the triumph of those who oppose this law, even though they do not know this yet: because it is the triumph of Liberty. Their victory makes all of us (even those who oppose the law) better people, it makes our society better.

Honorable members, there is no damage to marriage or to the concept of family in allowing two people of the same sex to get married. To the contrary, what happens is this class of Spanish citizens get the potential to organize their lives with the rights and privileges of marriage and family. There is no danger to the institution of marriage, but precisely the opposite: this law enhances and respects marriage.

Today, conscious that some people and institutions are in a profound disagreement with this change in our civil law, I wish to express that, like other reforms to the marriage code that preceded this one, this law will generate no evil, that its only consequence will be the avoiding of senseless suffering of decent human beings. A society that avoids senseless suffering of decent human beings is a better society.

With the approval of this Bill, our country takes another step in the path of liberty and tolerance that was begun by the democratic change of government.

Today we can offer them a beautiful lesson: every right gained, each access to liberty has been the result of the struggle and sacrifice of many people that deserve our recognition and praise.

When the decision to legalize same-sex marriage was announced, the large group of gay and lesbians in the gallery crowd could not refrain from shouting for joy at the news. As expected, authorities ushered them out of the gallery. But as they were moving toward the door, the Spanish Parliament stood up and applauded them. Here's an account of that historical moment, posted on the AmazingDreamsPublishing web site:

Naturally, when the bill passed, the queers in the gallery couldn't restrain their joy at this extraordinary event, and the chamber's president, as he'd warned he'd do, ordered them out of the gallery. Then, a remarkable thing happened -- Zapatero and the Socialist deputies rose and gave a sustained standing ovation to the gays and lesbians as they left. It was a stunning tribute to the homosexuals' sacrifice, courage, and refusal to accept less than full equality before the law -- a recognition that this was their victory. I've seen many parliaments in operation in many parts of the world at times of crucial debate -- but I've never, ever seen the parliamentarians applaud the gallery.

The deadline for the veto of the bill legalizing same-sex marriage in California is October 9. If Governor Schwarzenegger is committed to honoring the will of the people, perhaps there is time to convince our governor that our will would be to follow in the footsteps of the Spanish Parliament, by granting gays and lesbians in our state the respect they deserve--by recognizing their rights; restoring their dignity; and affirming their identity.

To write, phone or fax Gov. Schwarzennegger:

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building
Sacramento, CA 95814
Phone: 916-445-2841
Fax: 916-445-4633

To send an electronic message: http://www.govmail.ca.gov/

DO AS I SAY, NOT AS I DO

2005-09-14T10:52:00.000-07:00

George W. Bush is sneaking around again. Even as he announced his decision to "take full responsibility" for the failure of government to protect and assist the victims of Hurricane Katrina, he is quietly making plans to authorize the use of nuclear power in pre-emptive strikes.

Apparently, the trouble on the ground in Iraq has him rethinking his "shock and awe" strategy. Perhaps, all the angst he's experiencing at the hand of Sunnis and insurgents has him wondering how much more smoothly it all could have gone if he'd just had the authority to pre-emptively drop a nuclear bomb.

It would certainly have prevented a lot of bickering about water and electricity and such. In fact, it's probably the only sure-fire way to prevent trouble on the ground. Never mind that after setting off a nuclear weapon the only thing left in Iraq would be rubble on the ground. (Oh, and radioactivity. But I guess Bush and his buddies aren't concerned about that.)

Just think, if we'd totally obliterated all signs of life in Iraq we could have sent Cheney's buddies in to rebuild without worrying about angry Iraqis getting all worked up about unemployment, looted museums, and the like. Ah, well, you know what they say: Hindsight is 20/20.

For a frightening look at the Pentagon's draft plan, here are excerpts from an Agence France Presse article, compliments of Carl Van Dyke (thanks, Carl).

(I am awaiting a response from AFP re: their permission to post the full article. )

Published on Sunday, September 11, 2005 by Agence France Presse

Draft US Defense Paper Outlines Preventive Nuclear Strikes

"A new draft US defense paper calls for preventive nuclear strikes against state and non-state adversaries in order to deter them from using weapons of mass destruction and urges US troops to 'prepare to use nuclear weapons effectively.' "

"A copy of the draft obtained by AFP . . . outlines scenarios, under which it would be justified to seek presidential approval for a nuclear strike. They include an adversary using or planning to use weapons of mass destruction against US or allied forces as well as civilian populations."

" . . . a number of scenarios allow nuclear strikes without enemy weapons of mass destruction in the equation. They could be used, for instance, to counter potentially overwhelming conventional adversaries, to secure a rapid end of a war on US terms, or simply 'to ensure success of US and multinational operations,' the document indicates."

"The doctrine also gives the Pentagon the green light to deploy nuclear weapons to parts of the world where their future use is considered the most likely . . . "

"The doctrine reminds that while first use of nuclear weapons may draw condemnation, 'no customary or conventional international law prohibits nations from employing nuclear weapons in armed conflict.'"

Check back for a link to the full document, or a full doc posting (If I get permission). -- Laurie Fosner

Wasting Time on Roberts

2005-09-13T09:27:00.000-07:00

Mario Cuomo got it right when he said the key to whether or not Judge Roberts will make a good Supreme Court judge is easily ascertained by asking and answering one simple question: will Roberts use the Constitution, or the Bible as his guide?

Based on Robert's own comments, five years ago, when he was not aware of the fact that today he'd be the very judge President Bush would choose to take a seat on the high court, I'd say he's very aware of his responsibility to put the Constitution before the Bible. That being the case, Judge Roberts is likely the very best conservative we are going to find for this job--given the sad fact that any nominee to be considered for this position will be hand-picked by George W. Bush.

While the democrats nitpick at Roberts this week, they are once again forgetting the most important thing: if they ask Roberts to affirm his commitment to the Constitution, over the Bible, they risk losing the Republican support of this candidate. In the end, they may satisfy their desire to feel better about Roberts as either a justice or even Chief Justice, but at the same time they will alienate all the hardcore right-wing folks who currently support him but will not if they fear Roberts will fail to push their Christian agenda.

If the Democrats were smart (alas, how can such book smart folks be so practically challenged?) they would stop trying to make Roberts prove his unwillingness to overturn precedent and his commitment to the Constitution; rather, they would listen to Robert's own words from five years ago and draw their conclusions from that. And if they still don't feel comfortable with John Roberts as a member of the Supreme Court, they should ask themselves whom Bush will pick next. If that doesn't scare the bejesus out of them, they're not awake.

To listen to both Roberts, and Cuomo on Roberts, check out http://www.notfittoprint.com/InTheirOwnWords.html.

Janice Karpinski, Meet Michael Brown

2005-09-12T15:12:00.000-07:00

It's the fourth anniversary of the tragedy of 9.11. I had planned to do a little write-up on our progress in the so-called war on terror, but I'm finding that task more difficult than expected, given the fact that we've actually made no progress in the so-called war on terror.

In Iraq, our mishandling of detainees has only increased the anger Muslim fanatics, and the Iraqi people, have felt since we invaded their country. As for fighting terrorists there so we don't have to fight them here: we've not only failed to win the war in Iraq, we've allowed the Bush administration to dismantle (or disfigure) the very agencies that are supposed to protect us, should a terror attack occur here at home.

There's a very simple reason for this: in both Louisiana and Iraq, people who were woefully unqualified and inexperienced for highly visible and important tasks were selected to oversee operations that, if handled badly, would inevitably result in disastrous consequences. At Abu Ghraib prison, and in New Orleans, the failure of appointed individuals to foresee, manage and curtail major disasters were not only expected, by the Bush administration, they were welcomed.

Torture at Abu Ghraib prison, while under the command of Janice Karpinski, couldn't have failed to produce the nasty, twisted, sexually perverse abuses we saw in those gruesome photos. It was a foregone conclusion. The first step in the process occurred when Alberto Gonzales, then legal advisor to the White House, spearheaded a little campaign to interpret the law in such a way as to essentially rewrite it. The rewrite gave the president the authority to detain people without evidence. In other words, if the president says a person is an enemy combatant, then we just have to take it on faith that he is.

Next, the new laws gave the president the authority to bypass the Geneva Conventions regarding torture by excluding so-called "enemy combatants" from that protection. At the same time, the Pentagon suggested that humiliation based on Muslim taboos against sexual gratification and interaction with women would serve to "break the will” of detainees. And finally, a woman with no prior detention facility experience, or war-time service, was appointed to oversee the very prison where Saddam Hussein had committed the heinous acts of torture for which the Bush administration pretends to have invaded Iraq. The writing was on the wall.

And now, we have an even more massive failure in New Orleans: enter, Michael Brown. Brown's most notable career prior to being named head of FEMA was manager of the International Arabian Horse association. He spent 11 years there before he was forced out, for reasons unknown. According to Time magazine, Brown's resume also says he was the Assistant City Manager of Emergency Services Oversight of Edmond, Oklahoma. In fact, he was merely an administrative assistant to the City Manager--as one person put it--"essentially an intern."

Brown also claimed to be the Director of Christian Nursing Facility in Oklahoma, but an administrator of that facility has been quoted as saying "he wasn't a person anybody remembered."

Brown's academic credentials are equally suspect. Brown claims to have won a prize as Outstanding Political Science Professor at some institution or another, but a spokesperson for that institution has apparently gone on record as saying Brown was only a student there.

Meanwhile, in the disastermath of New Orleans, we hear that the head of Homeland Security, Michael Chertoff (and our president) got the news about the levees breaking from the TV. Even after the flood, the president remained oblivious to the vast array of problems created by FEMA (yes, they actively reversed progress made by creative, hard-working, people who stepped in to help when FEMA was nowhere in sight).

Several days after the city flooded, Bush was so totally out of touch with reality that he went on camera and announced to the press, "Brownie, you're doing a great job!" I've said it before, and I'm sure I'll have reason to say it again: "The emperor has no clothes" is inadequate to describe what's happening here. This emperor isn't just naked--he's masturbating publicly.

Since the massive failure of FEMA, the citizens of this country, the non-profits without official ties to FEMA and the Red Cross, have had to work as hard at preventing FEMA from impeding their progress as they have at rescuing the living and removing the dead.

So in hindsight, it's kind of hard to imagine this same president has ever understood anything that's actually been happening, on the ground, in Iraq. He can't even keep tabs on Louisiana, when he's in Louisiana.

Now maybe that's Michael Brown's fault. You know, just like Abu Ghraib was Janice Karpinski's fault. Brown is the head of FEMA. Maybe he was supposed to notify the president and the head of Homeland Security when the levees we all thought would break finally did. Maybe Brownie is the one who dropped the ball. Makes sense. But Bush had to know that was going to happen.

Bush knew Michael Brown's career past, even if Brown's resume was a pack of lies. Bush appointed Brown to lead FEMA, based on the recommendation of someone who'd known him, personally, for years. Perhaps some inexperienced and inept White House admin could get away with failing to check Brown's references, but Bush was in close personal contact with him.

I can't help but wonder how the White House will attempt to deny responsibility when confronted with the obvious fabrications on Brown's resume. (We'll likely be treated to yet another press conference during which Scott McClellan will waste no time accusing the questioners of playing the "blame game." )

Apparently, among all the other definitions that the White House has rewritten, we can now add another: accountability is no longer the process of understanding cause and effect while calling attention to the people responsible. Accountability is now synonymous with blame; blame is a bad word; the White House doesn't use bad words. (Except when Vice President Dick Cheney uses them to insult a Democrat). Most of the time, however, bad words are strictly avoided. Hence, no accountability, for anything, ever.

As of this posting, Chertoff has moved Brown out of Louisiana, where he is, no doubt, preparing to fuck up his next task. He hasn't got the guts to admit that he pulled Brown out because of the public outcry; rather he continues to insist that Brownie is "needed elsewhere." And I'm sure he is. Wherever incompetence is needed to implement a plan to fail the American public for the convenience of the administration, I guess that's where he'll go.

But take heart, contrary to popular belief, the Bush administration is capable of learning from its mistakes. In fact, Janice Karpinski taught them a really important lesson after she publicly announced that she was the administration's scapegoat: if you set somebody up to fail, you need to make sure it's somebody who's loyal enough to take the fall without complaining.

And while you're at it, better make it a man. We all know women talk too much.