MAX BLUMENTHAL

In case you haven't read about a weird new federal voting commission created by Bush and Condi to devise plans to cancel or postpone elections in case of an October terror attack, it's time to do that. Beyond the implications of any knee-jerk decisions the commission may make, the mere fact that it exists is in effect a statement by the Bush administration that while democracy is a fine luxury, it's ultimately expendable when our perceived security is at risk.
Ironically, that's the exact opposite of the reasoning behind the CPA's early handover of power to a "sovereign" Iraqi government.

Hitchens admits he was used by Chalabi and the INC to plant pro-war stories in the media during the run up to invasion.
Some journalist must have caught him before his morning jello-shot.

I've been wondering why -- unlike his opponents -- Ralph Nader refuses to release his medical records. Is he hiding something?
Today's Salon cover details Nader's history of paranoia and penchant for secrecy. It's a long read, but worth it.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
JUNE 30, 2004
Contact:Laura Gross, 802-651-3200 ext. 134



Governor Dean vs. Ralph Nader





NPR's Justice Talking Hosts Debate




Friday, July 9, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. - National Press Building in Washington, DC


BURLINGTON, VT-Gov. Howard Dean will debate Ralph Nader on Friday, July 9, 2:00 - 3:30 p.m. at the National Press Building in Washington, DC. Taped in front of a studio audience of 150 people, the debate is sponsored by NPR's Justice Talking. It will focus on issues surrounding this election, including whether this is the right time for Nader to run for President and the role of third parties in this country. The debate will be open to the press.

Margot Adler, NPR correspondent and host of Justice Talking will moderate.

"I am anxious to debate Ralph Nader in order to speak about why he wants to run for President," said Dean. "This is the most important election in my lifetime and a third party candidate could make a difference - this November and for years to come."

Dean is currently the honorary chair of Democracy for America (www.democracyforamerica.com), a political action committee dedicated to supporting fiscally conservative, socially progressive candidates at all levels of government - from school board to the presidency. Every two weeks, Dean and Democracy for America endorse twelve candidates - The Dean Dozen - to help recruit volunteers and raise money for races all over the country.

***For more information about NPR's Justice Talking and logistics for the Dean/Nader debate, please contact the Public Interest Media Group at 212-260-1520 or info@publicinterestmedia.com.***

"I would not have voted for [President Bush's] tax cut, based on what I know. . . . There is no doubt that the people at the top who need a tax break the least will get the most benefit. . . . Too often presidents do things that don't end up helping the people they should be helping, and their staffs won't tell them their actions stink on ice." -- --Former senator Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), in a recent interview with Business North Carolina magazine.

Disney is collaborating with the most reactionary right-wing elements of California's political culture to publicly counter-attack Michael Moore by showing a "pro-American" propaganda flick -- a sort of sequel to "Birth of a Nation" -- in Sacramento.
Speeches by xenophobe icons like radio host Melanie Morgan, failed senatorial candidate Howard Kaloogian and "representatives of Walt Disney" will also be featured. The event was planned by Sal Russo, the right-wing consultant who was instrumental in getting the recall of Gray Davis off the ground and is now heading the anti-Michael Moore front group, Move America Forward.
I wonder if it was funded by the Saudis, who own a major share of Euro-Disney.

Check out Mike Tomasky's devastating piece on how Ralph Nader has toadied up to right-wingers to win anti-immigrant voters and get on the ballot in key swing states. The article is one of the first I've seen that's pointed out how ridiculous Nader's interview with Pat Buchanan was, and it includes a good ref to my piece on Nader's ballot antics in Arizona.

Former White House counsel David Kendall asks the Washington Post:

"The former president has acknowledged his personal mistakes that led to his impeachment. Isn't it time for The Post to confess its own journalistic mistakes over its Whitewater coverage?"

Why is Newsweek's Michael Isikoff spreading disinformation about Craig Unger's account of Saudi 9/11 flights in Fahrenheit 9/11?

What was an Oklahoma trial judge doing on the bench with a male enhancement pump? Bizarre.

This is the label from one of those nylon laptop travel bags (see attachment) that is made by a small company here in the USA, to be sold in France.
The translation:
"Hand wash with warm water. Use mild soap. Stretch to dry. Do not bleach. Do not dry in the dryer. Do not iron.
We are sorry that our President is an idiot.
We did not vote for him."
 

According to Tom Flacco, Fahrenheit 9/11 has been essentially blacked out in GOP strongholds in the Philadelphia suburbs.
The culprit is Regal Entertainment Group, which controls a major share of Philly-area cinemas:

The Regal Entertainment Group maintains a strong movie theater presence in the suburban marketplace surrounding Philadelphia; but it also keeps close financial ties to President Bush. This, as Regal is showing Moore’s Fahrenheit on just 4 of its 108 movie screens in Philadelphia and its suburbs.

I did some digging and found that, in fact, Regal has been communicating with Move America Forward, the Republican-run group spearheading the attack on Michael Moore. Check out this comment from a Regal spokesman after being asked by an AP reporter if Regal had been working with Move America Forward:

"There has been some communication, but not an overwhelming amount. And we do intend to play the film," said Dick Westerling, spokesman for the theater chain Regal Entertainment Group, which has 6,020 screens in the United States.

It wouldn't be the first time Regal's reneged on a deal. Look what they did to Mel Gibson after signing a deal to be the first theatre chain to show "Passion." And Regal's CEO, Phil Anschutz, is a major donor to a Denver homeless shelter that requires its residents to observe the gospel and attend church; naturally, the shelter is a favorite of Bush's Office of Faith-Based Initiatives.

Will Nader repudiate efforts by two religious right-wing groups in Oregon to help him win a place on the state's ballot?
Given Nader's long history of making tactical alliances with the far-right, I doubt he will relent now.

I just did a google search for Jack Ryan and couldn't help noticing an ad appearing on the right of the screen for "Miami's Sexiest Party Nightclub, High Energy Club Singles & Couples"
By the way, I'm in DC now and a rumor is rapidly working its way through political circles here: Jack Ryan has resigned in order to prepare to replace Dick Cheney as the Vice Presidential candidate. Apparently Cheney does not have the same appeal to Swingers, Trekkies and Trekkie Swingers that Ryan now commands.

Today the American Prospect published my piece confirming rumors that Nader's bid for the Arizona ballot was financed by right-wing money and revealing that his campaign cynically piggybacked on an anti-immigrant initiative's petition.
But Arizona is only the tip of iceberg. Not only has the Nader campaign contacted a Republican consulting firm to handle its bid for the Texas and New Mexico ballots, Nader is relying almost entirely on right-wing groups to rally support for his efforts in the key battleground state of Oregon. From Oregon Live:

Officials from two groups that have been calling members -- the Oregon Family Council and Citizens for a Sound Economy -- said they had no qualms about trying to help Nader despite opposing most of what he stands for.

"We'd like to take a few votes away from John Kerry if it would be possible," said Tim Nashif of the Oregon Family Council, which has been making hundreds of phone calls to members urging them to help get Nader on the ballot.

Apologies to readers -- I've been working on a story that I hope will shake up the presidential campaign a bit. So my postings will not as frequent as usual until Saturday. Look for the story in this weekend's American Prospect web edition.

ABC's The Note runs excerpts from an interview with Ron P. Reagan, son of former
President Reagan, that will be featured in the upcoming New York Times
Magazine:

Q: "How do you account for all the glowing obituaries of him?"

RR: "I think it was a relief for Americans to look at pictures of
something besides men on leashes. If you are going to call yourself
a Christian -- and I don't -- then you have to ask yourself a
fundamental question, and that is: Whom would Jesus torture? Whom
would Jesus drag around on a dog's leash? How can Christians
tolerate it? It is unconscionable. It has put our young men and
women who are over there, fighting a war that they should not have
been asked to fight -- it has put them in greater danger."

Q: "How did your mother feel about being ushered to her seat by
President Bush?"

RR: "Well, he did a better job than Dick Cheney did when he came to
the rotunda. I felt so bad. Cheney brought my mother up to the
casket, so she could pay her respects. She is in her 80's, and she
has glaucoma and has trouble seeing. There were steps, and he left
her there. He just stood there, letting her flounder. I don't think
he's a mindful human being. That's probably the nicest way I can
put it."

From Haaretz:

The Israel Defense Force's Military Police on Tuesday raided the "Breaking the Silence" exhibit of photographs taken by Nahal Brigade soldiers during their military service in Hebron, confiscating a folder containing the clips of articles about the exhibit and a videotape with statements made by some 70 soldiers about their experiences in the West Bank city. The four reservist soldiers who initiated and organized the exhibit were also summoned to interrogations Wednesday by Military Police.

The army said the raid was meant to uncover evidence of violence and vandalism done to Palestinians and their property. The reservists who organized the show said the army was trying to intimidate and silence those soldiers who gave evidence about brutality in Hebron and to silence any other soldiers who planned to give evidence about what they have seen take place in that city.

I'm in Chicago now, where a sex scandal has rendered Republican investment banker Jack Ryan's senate campaign dead in the water. The scandal is a massive front page story in every newspaper in the state; the tabloids that cater to the South Side are milking it for all it's worth and the Tribune choice of cover photo (above) couldn't be more pointed. I personally don't think it matters if he tried to coerce his wife into having sex with him in front of strangers at Euro-perv clubs, and neither do most young voters in Illinois. But the state GOP, which is heavily influenced by the Christian right, is furious, and that's the real story I think. From the Tribune:

U.S. Rep. John Shimkus (R-Ill.), who spoke to Ryan on Tuesday, reflected the growing unease of Republican leaders about having Ryan near the top of the ballot in November. That, warned Shimkus, could undermine the Republican vote and hinder chances for less established GOP candidates in lower-level races.

Ryan's downfall is all too appropriate considering Ryan assigned a staffer to play Peeping Tom on his opponent, Barack Obama, videotaping him in even private moments with family members. The Tribune has published a scathing editorial today mocking Ryan's ironic political voyeurism and bluntly accusing him of lying to voters.  

9-11 commissioner John Lehman's specious assertion that "there is at least one officer of Saddam's Fedayeen, a lieutenant colonel, who was a very prominent member of Al Qaeda," only seems more ridiculous after considering his past and present associations.
Lehman is a key member of the neo-con cabal, a signator of the Project For A New American Century and former owner of the defense consulting Abington Corporation, where Richard Perle worked and solicited lobbying money from Israeli arms dealers. And Lehman's brother, Chris, was a member of the Office of Special Plans, Doug Feith's rogue Pentagon operation which stovepiped cooked intelligence info on Iraqi WMD's to Dick Cheney before the war.
Now we know where he gets it from.

Remember John Ashcroft's demagogic attack on Jamie Gorelick during the 9/11 hearing for creating "The Wall" -- a bureaucratic barrier that prevented inter-agency intelligence sharing? Well Justin Rood of Congressional Quarterly has revealed that in fact it was Bush's own Homeland Security advisor who devised "The Wall."

Sorry to my small but loyal legion of readers for the lack of postings today; I've been traveling.
My brother has pointed me to an outrageous website devoted to encouraging evangelical fundamentalists to move to South Carolina and work to turn the state into a neo-Confederate theocracy (at least, more than it already is):

"ChristianExodus.org offers the opportunity to try a strategy not yet employed by Bible-believing Christians. Rather than spend resources in continued efforts to redirect the entire nation, we will redeem States one at a time. Millions of Christian conservatives are geographically spread out and diluted at the national level. Therefore, we must concentrate our numbers in a geographical region with a sovereign government we can control through the electoral process."

Today I have been doggedly pursuing rumors that paid signature gatherers in Arizona for a draconian anti-immigrant ballot measure, Protect Arizona Now, have also been gathering signatures to get Ralph Nader on the state's ballot. Dailykos has publicized the rumor, also claiming Democrats had found enough invalid signatures to knock Nader off the ballot. However, I called Tina May, editor of the Arizona Republic, and she told me Nader has in fact qualified.
Meanwhile, the director of Protect Arizona Now won't pick up her phone to tell me if her group has been collecting signatures for Nader. There have been many rumors of Republican support for Nader in Arizona but none have been confirmed.
If Nader did piggyback on Protect Arizona Now, then his campaign has been indirectly financed by FAIR, a hard-right anti-immigrant lobbying front and think tank in Washington which pumped at least $35,000 into Arizona signature gathering efforts. Ralph couldn't go any lower.
Or could he?

According to Seymour Hersh, Israel established a covert base of operations in Kurdistan after it determind the US occupation of Iraq was a losing enterprise likely to spark region-wide conflict and imperil Israeli security:

Ehud Barak, the former Israeli Prime Minister, who supported the Bush Administration’s invasion of Iraq, took it upon himself at this point to privately warn Vice-President Dick Cheney that America had lost in Iraq; according to an American close to Barak, he said that Israel “had learned that there’s no way to win an occupation.” The only issue, Barak told Cheney, “was choosing the size of your humiliation.” Cheney did not respond to Barak’s assessment. (Cheney’s office declined to comment.)

In a series of interviews in Europe, the Middle East, and the United States, officials told me that by the end of last year Israel had concluded that the Bush Administration would not be able to bring stability or democracy to Iraq, and that Israel needed other options. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon’s government decided, I was told, to minimize the damage that the war was causing to Israel’s strategic position by expanding its long-standing relationship with Iraq’s Kurds and establishing a significant presence on the ground in the semi-autonomous region of Kurdistan. Several officials depicted Sharon’s decision, which involves a heavy financial commitment, as a potentially reckless move that could create even more chaos and violence as the insurgency in Iraq continues to grow.

Hersh also details Iraqi PM Iyad Allawi's past as a Baathist thug and CIA-backed putchist. Read my Allawi bio for an extensive account of his sordid history.

Time for more Brooks bashing.

Whether you agree with Ralph Nader's policy ideas or not (I agree with many of them), his play for right-wing votes highlights just how incoherent, desperate and potentially destructive his campaign is. Recently, Nader sat down with Pat Buchanan to explain why conservatives should vote for him.
Throughout the interview, Nader attempts to couch his leftish policy-talk in the brand of red meat rhetoric that has earned Buchanan a small but devoted following on the fringes of the right.
For instance, consider how Nader explains why the Islamic world hates us: "...they see corporate culture as abandoning the restraints on personal behavior dictated by their religion and culture. Our corporate pornography and anything-goes values are profoundly offensive to them."
Or why conservatives should vote for him: "Conservatives are also very upset with a self-styled conservative president who is encouraging the shipment of whole industries and jobs to a despotic Communist regime in China."
Buchanan's pointed questions to Nader about immigration and social issues and Nader's pained attempts to muster palatable responses make it clear neither man takes Nader's candicacy seriously as a right-wing alternative to Bush. Moreover, the points where Nader and Buchanan's views converge -- limiting or ending aid to Israel, pulling out of Iraq, restricting corporate power -- obviously do not resonate with most Republican voters. So what is Nader really trying to accomplish? 

A disturbing congressional report has revealed that despite a US and EU embargo on arms sales to China and over the fierce objections of the Pentagon, a certain US surrogate is helping China arm to the teeth in preparation for a possible conflict over Taiwan.

Nick Confessore has David Brooks' number, laying bare Brooks' penchant for "peddl[ing] unreliable generalizations that describe the world as he and his friends wish it to be."
Brooks' column today, "Kerry's Cruel Realism" is a prime example of this tendency. The column is a tendentious attack on Kerry's foreign policy outlook hinging precariously on Kerry's criticism of a Cuban dissident group, the Varela Project, during an interview with the Miami Herald's Andres Oppenheimer. Brooks writes:

"Imagine if you are a Cuban political prisoner rotting in a jail, and you learn that the leader of the oldest democratic party in the world thinks you're being counterproductive. Kerry's comment is a harpoon directed at the morale of Cuba's dissidents."

Brooks' imagined scenario is typical of his arguments, which rely almost invariably on abstractions entirely divorced from complex -- or as Brooks would say, "cruel" -- realities.
Consider the facts for a moment. Kerry did indeed criticize the Varela Project and while Oppenheimer disagreed with Kerry on that point, in a follow-up column he praised Kerry, writing:

"The most convincing part of likely Democratic candidate John Kerry's newly announced Cuba policy, unveiled in a telephone interview with The Herald on Friday, is that he would have a better chance than President Bush to mount an international campaign to push for a political opening on the island."

Ultimately, Oppenheimer concludes that in comparison to Bush's bellicose approach to the Western Hemisphere, "Kerry is right."
Moreover, members of the Varela Project have soundly rejected Bush's over-aggressive Cuba Plan. The leader of the Varela Project, Oswaldo Paya, whom Brooks cynically attempts to link to Bush, stated:

"It is not appropriate or acceptable for any forces outside Cuba to try to design the Cuban transition process."

Fellow dissident Eloy Gutierrez Menoyo was more direct, calling Bush's plan, "total interference that does not benefit the building of democracy in Cuba."
Like Bush's myopic plan for Latin America, Brooks' column is grounded in ignorance of the region, reliant upon distortions of half-truths and created to please a narrow but stentorian domestic constituency.
Sadly, Brooks' column is one of the few pieces in the New York Times in past months to touch upon Bush and Kerry's debate on US Latin America policy. Readers of the Newspaper of Record deserve better.

It's interesting that hours after Al-Qaeda's chief of operations, Abdulaziz Al-Muqrin claimed responsibility for the repugnant beheading of American Paul Johnson, he was swiftly killed. Apparently Al-Muqrin had been holed up in the al-Malazz area of Riyadh, a hotbed of pro-Al-Qaeda sentiment. The convenient timing of his death suggests that Saudi security forces knew he, or at least his followers, had been there for some time.
The callousness of Al-Muqrin's actions reflects his experience in the Reagan-backed Afghan jihad of the 1980's and his upbringing in a society ruled by a hypocritical and repressive theocracy. Like most of Al-Qaeda's commanders, Al-Muqrin was indoctrinated into ideology-fueled mass murder through the covert sponsorship of the US, Saudi Arabian and/or Pakistani governments.
The best window into the ideology and tactics of Al-Muqrin and Al-Qaeda's Saudi wing is a magazine/training manual they publish on a semi-regular basis called Camp Al-Battar. I've selected two editions, one which includes a hysterical retort to Muslim intellectuals and clerics who have accused Al-Qaeda of fueling the U.S. and Israel's war on terror. The other consists mostly of a description of kidnapping tactics that were later employed on Paul Johnson. 

After voting to withdraw from the Baptist World Alliance, finally confirming the Southern Baptist Convention's status as a neo-confederate religious cult, members heard from The Dear Leader. BP News reports:

President Bush addressed messengers via satellite from the White House, reaffirming his pro-life stance and his support for a Federal Marriage Amendment. Touching on the embryonic stem cell debate without mentioning it by name, Bush said that life "is a creation of God, not a commodity to be exploited by man." Bush received one of the loudest ovations for his statement of support for a Federal Marriage Amendment.

A consortium of young right-wingers is planning a provocative and raucous counter-demonstration outside the Republican convention in New York on August 29th.
The counter-protest is to be spearheaded by "Protest Warrior", a self-avowed pro-war protest group which claims to have "infiltrated" various meetings of International A.N.S.W.E.R. Some of the posts I've read on Free Republic express reservations about Protest Warrior's notoriously aggressive tactics, which include wading in with anti-GOP protesters to provoke confrontations.
"Protest Warrior" may be joined in New York by groups like professional smear-monger David Bossie's "Citizens United," which is currently working with top GOP consulting firms to discredit Michael Moore. 

As a lifetime Laker-hater, I couldn't agree more that the Pistons have rescued the ethos of the NBA.

Professional gay basher Lou Sheldon of the Traditional Values Coalition advises parents to consider the following before seeing Shrek 2:

"The movie features a male-to-female transgender (in transition) as an evil bartender. The character has five o'clock shadow, wears a dress and has female breasts. It is clear that he is a she-male. His voice is that of talk show host Larry King."

George W. Bush the war hero: on sale now from KB Toys. 

In case you missed it (I did), last week the New York Post published the location of Cheney's bunker. I bet the place is full of all kinds of executive toys from the Sharper Image.

A certain former senior aide to President Clinton returns to the White House for the Clinton portraits' unveiling ceremony and makes the following observation:

"As we made our way in the receiving line from the East Room, I noticed that the Georgia O'Keeffe painting that Hillary had hung, the first and only 20th century work of modern art in the White House, was gone. In its place was a nostalgic scene of the Old West."

Did Aretha Franklin lip synch the national anthem before game 5 of the Lakers/Pistons series?
Is Larry Brown the first Jewish coach to win an NBA title? I remember running into Red Auerbach in Posin's deli (Washington DC's oldest Jewish deli until it closed a few years ago) when I was a kid but I don't know if he is Jewish.
How many capes does Hamid Karzai have? Does he have super powers? If so, why hasn't he used any yet?

"Liar, hypocrite, coward, drunk. Did I forget something? asks Justin Raimondo before laying into FOC (Friend Of Chalabi) Christopher Hitchens.
Raimondo pours it on Andrew Sullivan as well, who exhorted the troops to "Take Fallujah!" from "the comfort of his P-town digs."

The National Review Online has discovered "the only conservative hip-hop writer in America" and published a piece of self-satire by him on why the Republican party may eventually earn allegiance from "the hip-hop generation."
Word, Reagan is dope, dawg. He called my moms a welfare queen. F'sheezy, the war on terror is protecting the homeland, ya heard? True dat! Big ups to Halliburton. And big shouts to the prison-industrial complex.

SHOW: THE O'REILLY FACTOR (20:49)

September 23, 2003 Tuesday

Transcript # 092306cb.256

SECTION: News; Domestic

LENGTH: 957 words

HEADLINE: Back of the Book

GUESTS: Melinda Anderson

BYLINE: Bill O'Reilly

O'REILLY: Do you -- do you still believe girls like you still feel guilty today because of their Catholic school upbringing?

ANDERSON: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: Do you really?

ANDERSON: Absolutely.

O'REILLY: Yes? I mean I've got to tell you how it helped me, all right, and this is serious. I -- nobody would have sex with me, number one, because I was sweating all the time. This is true. I played in sports. I was sweating. I was really pathetic. So, even if I wanted to have sex, which I did, I couldn't have it, all right, unless I paid for it and I didn't have any money.

Racist Border Patrol raids are continuing hundreds of miles from the border -- in the eastern suburbs of Los Angeles. Last weekend 160 allegedly undocumented immigrants were arrested by Border Patrol agents outside schools, churches and laundromats in Riverside and San Bernadino County.
My first question is, who ordered these raids, the likes of which have not been seen since President Eisenhower's draconian "Operation Wetback" in the 1950's? Did the initiative come from the White House? And why hasn't anyone from the Kerry campaign denounced the raids?
The most salient question of all is, has the Patriot Act been invoked by the Border Patrol? A friend who is an immigration lawyer representing some of those arrested in the raids tells me it indeed has. I am trying to learn more...

"Marta has consented to my request for a divorce, and we have mutually agreed to seek an amicable separation," Rush Limbaugh told ditto heads yesterday. "As I said, it's a personal matter and I want to keep it that way. I don't intend to say any more about this on the air."

Fahrenheit 9/11 may be more disturbing than the public expects. From the San Francisco Chronicle:

The footage, eerily similar to film of the atrocities at Abu Ghraib prison, shows GIs laughing as they snap photos of each other putting hoods over Iraqi detainees.
In the same scene from "Fahrenheit 9/11,'' which opens Friday at Bay Area theaters, an American soldier fondles a prisoner's genitals through a blanket.

I imagine many theatres will take on a demonstration-type atmosphere. And Freepers will undoubtedly stage provocative protests outside.

Ariel Sharon is going ahead with plans to build a separation wall around West Bank mega-settlement Ariel in direct contravention of terms of the deal he worked out with Bush. Sharon is doing this to mollify rightist finance minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who demanded the settlement wall as a concession for his support of the Gaza pullout plan.
This underscores two things: one, that the Gaza pullout plan is a Trojan Horse designed to trick the world into believing Israel is pulling out settlements when in fact they are solidifying their death grip on the West Bank; and two, that Israel has been hoisted above the law by a Bush administration dependent upon evangelical Christian Zionist votes and riding the endorsement of the perennial occupation enforcer: AIPAC.

BILL KRISTOL, FOX NEWS SUNDAY, 6/13/04

KRISTOL: I think [Ronald Reagan] could have an impact if the Bush
campaign has the nerve to make it have an impact.

John Kerry said at the 1988 Democratic convention, speaking on behalf
of his fellow Massachusetts liberal Democrat Michael Dukakis,…that the
Reagan presidency was a period of "moral darkness".

Now…no one wants to politicize the death of a recent president.

But you know what? The Bush campaign should.

And they should, in my view, they should go up with an ad next week…a
very respectful ad about President Reagan and say:

"We have a disagreement. George W. Bush was a Reaganite. John Kerry
thought that the Reagan presidency was a period of 'moral darkness'."

BILL KRISTOL, FOX NEWS, ON THE RECORD WITH GRETA VAN SUSTEREN, 10/30/02
(WITH THE NATION'S DAVID CORN)

KRISTOL: Look, Paul Wellstone was a very political guy, and I suspect
he would have liked his own memorial service, if I can put it that way.

And the fact it was a little over the top, and some of us maybe found
it a little distasteful and a little too partisan.

Paul Wellstone was a tough, partisan politician, a man of the left, a
proud man of the left.

There's a big tradition on the left of turning funeral services into
political rallies.

If you go back and look at the early days of the, you know, Socialist
Party here, and of course, abroad, as well…

…It was a somewhat -- I mean, I say this in a nice way, I think, but it
was a -- it was a Wellstone-like memorial service.

CORN: But you know…if anything had happened to Jesse Helms in the last
week, there'd be a service in North Carolina.

And people would be calling for Elizabeth Dole, who's running for his
seat, to carry forward the Jesse Helms legacy.

There was nothing surprising about that service.

KRISTOL: No, no, no! Wait, wait!…When Rick Kahn said, "We can redeem
the sacrifice of Paul Wellstone's life if you help win this election with
Walter Mondale," that's a little crazy.

I mean, you can't redeem the sacrifice of Paul Wellstone's life by
electing Walter Mondale.

So there's a kind of…politicization of things like death, which is a
little weird.

For the left, the personal is political. And I think you did see that
in this memorial service.

A mysterious group has suddenly emerged to mobilize wing-nut opposition to Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11. The group, "Move America Forward," bills itself as "a national organization working to build support for our troops, the military, our Commander in Chief and the War on Terrorism."
On its site it publishes a list of contact info for "anti-American" studio executives and asks followers to bombard them with angry emails and letters.
Alternative Press Review reports that the site is registered to Russo, Marsh and Brown, a California consulting firm.
From my work covering the campaign to recall Gov. Gray Davis last year, I know the "Russo" in that firm is Sal Russo, a top GOP consultant who was instrumental in getting the recall off the ground before anyone had heard of it.
Russo also worked on Bill Simon's hapless 2002 gubernatorial campaign until he was fired for overbilling Simon. A Sacramento Bee reporter told me in August, 2003, "Russo is in this to line his pockets. Everybody knows that."
If you have linked to this piece from another site, click here to visit the main page.

Earlier today I watched "Who Are We? Challenges To America's Identity" author and senile, pseudo-intellectual crank Samuel Huntington explain on C-SPAN how "national identity has been eroded by the problems of assimilating massive numbers of primarily Hispanic immigrants, bilingualism, multiculturalism, the devaluation of citizenship, and the 'denationalization' of American elites" (read: why can't "Hispanics" stop all their Spanish-talking and salsa dancing and just act like middle-American peckerwoods -- and why must liberal "elites" and their flag-burning, Taliban-joining children accept them?).
Here's one of Huntington's most absurd statements (as I remember it):

"Immigrants used to face incredible adversity and suffering on the journey to America. Now immigrants don't face the same suffering and so immigration doesn't come with the same commitment."

Huntington is so damn old he might be speaking about his own experience as a passenger on the Mayflower. To bring him up to date on immigration, I'd first recommend he check out Derechos Humanos' Arizona migrant death counter. Last time I checked, 80 undocumented migrants are known to have died this year crossing through the Sonoran desert from Mexico to Arizona. In southern Arizona, migrants call summertime "the season of death."
Huntington might also try reading Ginger Thompson and Sandra Ochoa's account of a grueling migrant journey on a rickety boat from Ecuador to Guatemala on the way to the US.

I have a counterproposal to Grover Norquist's HR 452. It's called the Ray Charles Memorial Act and it would save the ten dollar bill from Reagan's mug. 

I usually find the Times' Week In Review section useful when I run out of toilet paper -- Tom Friedman's columns are remarkably absorbent!
This week's edition is better than Charmin. Most devoid of cerebral activity is a think-piece attempting to explain America's "optimism." The piece's conclusion is based almost entirely on golly gee whiz platitudes about our "anglo-protestant heritage" and how "deep down, we're all cubs fans."
The piece also cites a poll which asked respondents from different countries whether they consider success to be something within or outside their control. Predictably, people from richer countries -- like the US -- consider success within their control, and people from poorer countries -- like Bangladesh -- consider success out of their control. While this is an interesting poll, I fail to see how it reflects "American optimism," or anything to do with culture.
But by ignoring political and economic factors while explaining perceived cultural traits, this piece concludes that a belief in success is tantamount to optimism. By that logic, the third world, where success is often measured by the ability to survive under harsh conditions, is populated by a bunch of gosh-darn pessimists. Why can't you swarthy brown people just get over colonialism, corrupt governments and globalization, put your heads down and just churn out campaign apparel for the Bush/Cheney campaign for 50 cents a day, the piece effectively asks.
The truth is, if Reagan reflects Americans' optimism, as the Times says, then he must also be responsible for the third world's pessimism.
I'm all out of energy now, but I have one more question about another monstrous piece in the Week In Review: How are posters displayed through Manhattan protesting the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib and the war in Iraq "anti-American?!"

Human Rights Watch has issued the most thorough -- and damning -- report I've seen on how the Bush administration deliberately created the context for the torture at Abu Ghraib.

I'll always have fond childhood memories of watching Nancy Reagan stare up at Ronnie while he rattled off anti-communist boilerplate from dual teleprompters. And there was the time she applied makeup in a trailer in South Central L.A. then traipsed across the street for a photo-op with jackbooted LAPD anti-gang cops pressing black teenagers against a wall during the first designer drug raid.
But that was over 15 years ago. So what is behind Nancy's recent resurgence in popularity? And why is Cherie Booth-Blair so unpopular? And why does even the liberal press like "political doormat" Laura Bush? I found some sound, but mostly obvious, answers in the Guardian.

"One other political point: The Republicans achieved control of the United States Congress for the first time in 70 years, of both houses, under Ronald Reagan."
--Tim Russert on Larry King Live, 6/10/04

Ha'aretz is running a fascinating article detailing the rise of Eugenics in 1930's Israel:

"Castrating the mentally ill, encouraging reproduction among families "numbered among the intelligentsia" and limiting the size of "families of Eastern origin" and "preventing ... lives that are lacking in purpose" - these proposals are not from some program of the Third Reich but rather were brought up by key figures in the Zionist establishment of the Land of Israel during the period of the British Mandate."

The article also points out that Eugenics was popular in the US; 20,000 immigrants, people with low IQ scores, members of racial minority groups and handicapped people were sterilized in California from the 1930's on.
From my own research I know that Eugenics is alive and well in prominent anti-immigrant groups. The premier anti-immigrant group, Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), which has a lobbying office on Capitol Hill, is deeply influenced by Eugenicist thought. One of FAIR's founding members, microbiologist Garrett Hardin, actually advocated infanticide as an effective means of population control. Here's an excerpt of an interview in OMNI:

Omni: Infanticide as a form of population control is hard to accept, yet you support it in its historical context.

Hardin: Yes. Looking at history with an open mind you’ll see that infanticide has been used as an effective population control. In writings about the South Seas, Robert Louis Stevenson expresses astonishment that island peoples practiced infanticide and yet were unusually loving towards children. Stevenson came from Calvinistic Scotland where, by God, children were treated severely. The Scots would never think of killing a child, but they’d never pamper it either. In the South Seas, the reverse occurred. In all societies practicing infanticide, the child is killed within minutes after birth, before bonding can occur. The mother never nurses the child. The South Pacific peoples must have easily seen the problems associated with overpopulation. When you live on an island, you know you live in a limited world.

Hardin has also claimed sending food to Africa encourages over-population and called the Statue of Liberty a "symbol of pornography" for encouraging "huddled masses" to come to American shores. Hardin ultimately lived up to his rhetoric: in 2003, when he and his wife feared that in old age they would become a drain on society, they killed each other in a double suicide.
Hardin lives on through the anti-immigrant "green" movement which sought to take over the Sierra Club earlier this year. Californians for Population Stablization, a group that blames immigrants for over-population which he helped found, was involved in the takeover campaign.
Another key figure in the neo-Eugenics movement is Michigan opthamologist John Tanton, who founded and funds FAIR and almost a dozen other anti-immigrant groups. In 1986, Tanton wrote:

"Can homo contraceptivus compete with homo progenitiva if borders aren’t controlled? Or is advice to limit ones family simply advice to move over and let someone else with greater reproductive powers occupy the space?"

The neo-Eugenicists' voice in Congress is Republican congressman Tom Tancredo, who represents the district Columbine High School is in. Tancredo is a former public school teacher himself who quit to run for congress after increasing numbers of Mexicans were enrolling at his school and bilingual education was proposed. Tancredo favors putting the US Army on the border to stop "the invasion that is taking place" and warns of America's "cultural balkanization." Both Hardin and Tanton were donors to his 2000 campaign -- despite Tancredo's un-Eugenical opposition to abortion.
And though the anti-immigrant Eugenicists have many advocacy journals, the most popular is right-wing British author Peter Brimelow's VDare, named for Virginia Dare, the first white child born in the New World.

Ron Reagan Jr. said this about his dad's faith at a private Simi Valley funeral service 6/11:

"Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference."

With Bush in Georgia twisting European arms to forgive Iraq's debt and James Baker working behind the scenes, it's worth remembering who made the loans to Iraq. Above is an (enlargable) image of a secret cable dated October, 1989 (after the Kurds were gassed) from James Baker to Saddam Hussein's number two, Tariq Aziz, pledging to "work to strengthen the relationship between the United States and Iraq wherever possible."  

I follow the news as closely as anyone, and even though this one's a month old, I don't remember it getting any play:

"One drawing showed President George W. Bush's head on a stick. Another depicted Bush as a devil launching a missile.

The drawings by a 15-year-old boy in Prosser were enough to prompt some questions from the Secret Service."

If this poll is any indication, Bush may not be gaining ground among Latinos. Univision, America's largest Spanish-language broadcast outlet, asked visitors to its website whom they thought the best president in the last 50 years was. Here are the results:

George Bush padre (father) 1%
George Bush hijo (son) 1%
Jimmy Carter 3%
Bill Clinton 55%
Dwight Eisenhower 0%
Gerald Ford 0%
Lyndon Johnson 1%
John F. Kennedy 13%
Ronald Reagan 23%
No sé (don't know) 3%

Obviously the poll wasn't conducted scientifically, but it's definitely an interesting indicator. And respondents were only allowed to vote once.

While Bush rolls out Spanish language ads in swing states across the Southwest, completely beneath the radar of the English-language media he has ordered draconian anti-immigrant raids in major US cities. (Sorry, all the articles on the raids are en espanol)
Currently Border Patrol and Immigration and Naturalization Service officers are fanning out around San Diego and Los Angeles metro areas, arbitrarily grabbing people who look like Mexican immigrants, questioning them and deporting those who can not produce papers.
Friends living in heavily Latino areas of Pasadena tell me that undercover INS officers conducted raids today in a popular supermarket and in laundromats, arresting women while they washed their clothes. They say the streets are now noticeably clear of Mexicans, as most are wisely choosing to stay home.
INS reports that 400 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in the past month.

The Iraqi police have issued an arrest warrant for Francis Brooke, a former employee of CIA-backed PR firm, the Rendon Group, and Ahmed Chalabi's lobbyist.
Brooke is accused of obstructing justice during the raid on Chalabi's Baghdad office. I wonder if his Iranian ties are being scrutinized as well.

Now that Rush Limbaugh and his wife Marta, whom he met on the internet, are getting divorced, they share a combined 4 divorces and 6 broken marriages (correct me if I'm wrong). This latest divorce, Rush's third, raises a few questions:
--What advice did Clarence Thomas dispense to Rush and Marta when he married them at his home?
--Given Rush's proclivity for pills, why hasn't he discovered Levitra yet?
While these remain unanswered, one thing is clear: the divorce was brilliantly calculated to strengthen Rush's argument for a gay marriage ban: "Marriage is about raising children. That's the purpose of the institution."

I usually can't stand Marc Cooper's LA Weekly columns, which too often consist of picking mock battles with fellow "progressives" for not being as level-headed as he thinks he is.
But this one is an eloquent reflection on his admirable journalistic work in Central America during the 1980's, where he was a witness to Reagan-backed death squads sending peasant families into mass graves by the thousands.

To understand the absurdity of Bush's proposed rule changes on worker overtime, read the Economic Policy Institute's incisive briefing paper.
EIP estimates 5.5 million hourly wage-earners will lose their overtime pay because of the new rules.
To understand how radical Bush's plan is, all you have to do is look at his secretary of labor, Elaine Chao. Not only is she a Federalist Society member; she's married to Mitch McConnell, the senator famous for taking more money from lobbyists than any other sitting congressman.

When he sang "America, The Beautiful," I felt like, yeah, this is my country too.  

Reagan press secretary Larry Speakes laughs off AIDS in a 10/15/82 press conference:

Q: Larry, does the President have any reaction to the announcement from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, that AIDS is now an epidemic and have over 600 cases?
MR. SPEAKES: What's AIDS?
Q: Over a third of them have died. It's known as "gay plague." (Laughter.) No, it is. I mean it's a pretty serious thing that one in every three people that get this have died. And I wondered if the President is aware of it?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't have it. Do you? (Laughter.)
Q: No, I don't.
MR. SPEAKES: You didn't answer my question.
Q: Well, I just wondered, does the President ...
MR. SPEAKES: How do you know? (Laughter.)
Q: In other words, the White House looks on this as a great joke?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I don't know anything about it, Lester.
Q: Does the President, does anyone in the White House know about this epidemic, Larry?
MR. SPEAKES: I don't think so. I don't think there's been any ...
Q: Nobody knows?
MR. SPEAKES: There has been no personal experience here, Lester.
Q: No, I mean, I thought you were keeping ...
MR. SPEAKES: I checked thoroughly with Dr. Ruge this morning and he's had no - (laughter) - no patients suffering from AIDS or whatever it is.
Q: The President doesn't have gay plague, is that what you're saying or what?
MR. SPEAKES: No, I didn't say that.
Q: Didn't say that?
MR. SPEAKES: I thought I heard you on the State Department over there. Why didn't you stay there? (Laughter.)
Q: Because I love you Larry, that's why (Laughter.)
MR. SPEAKES: Oh I see. Just don't put it in those terms, Lester. (Laughter.)
Q: Oh, I retract that.
MR. SPEAKES: I hope so.
Q: It's too late.

(Andrew Sullivan deserves credit for scooping this defining moment in the Reagan legacy. I wonder if there's film footage out there.)

I took a while last night to watch some of the Reagan coverage on Univision, American's largest Spanish language broadcast network, and I was somewhat impressed by the network's presentation.
Especially impressive was a ten-minute segment on Reagan on "Aqui y Ahora," Univision's version of 20/20, which attempted to explain Reagan to an audience of mostly recent immigrants to the States.
The show presented Reagan as a friend of Latinos who passed the 1985 amnesty for illegal immigrants because his experience as California governor made him "comfortable with Latinos."
However, the rest of the segment detailed Reagan's attack on trade unions and his illegal financing of the contras in Central America. I was glad to finally see some stock footage of Honduran death squads training -- an important image glaringly absent from English-language coverage.
Ultimately, "Aqui y Ahora" concluded that America's post-mortem love affair with Reagan reflects the country's longing for an optimistic leader amid a particularly grim moment -- the implication (at least as I interpreted it) being that Bush is no Reagan.
"Aqui y Ahora" was followed by the 11 o'clock news, which featured interviews with Latinos reflecting in glowing terms on Reagan while waiting in line to see his coffin. Most of the interview subjects were self-identified Cuban exiles.

Students at UC-Berkeley are demanding that Prof. John Yoo, Federalist Society member and author of the now-notorious "torture memo," resign or be fired.
Yoo's response? "I'm a conservative professor, so I'm used to people objecting to my views."
I hope a similar push is underway at Harvard for the resignation of Alan Dershowitz.

Of Reagan, God, Simi Valley and "dead Central Americans waiting to tip the scales of the Reagan legacy."

In Sunday's NY Times magazine, Paul Krugman destroys the non-partisan veneer of Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, outlining his inexplicable support for the Bush tax cuts, a disastrous and fiscally irrational policy he soundly rejected while serving under Clinton. Krugman then asks:

"Why did he do it? There are two possible interpretations. The more generous one is that he never gave up the ideals of his younger days. Into his 40's, Greenspan was an acolyte of Ayn Rand, the libertarian novelist and philosopher, and Greenspan has never repudiated his Randian association...

The less generous interpretation is that Greenspan simply abused his position to help his friends. Kenneth Thomas, a finance professor at the Wharton School, has calculated that Greenspan visits the White House about once a week, as The Christian Science Monitor reported last month, and that is almost four times as often as he did when Clinton was president."

A look at Greenspan's record of political giving before his career as Reserve Chairman suggests the latter theory is true. In 1983, Greenspan, then director of a New York consulting firm, donated to a youngish right-wing congressional candidate: Dick Cheney. In 1985, Greenspan again lined Cheney's pockets with a cool thousand.
The donations are difficult to explain except as gifts to a friend and ideological soulmate. Why donate to some guy running for a seat in a far-away prairie state unless he's your pal?
Upon taking office, Kerry's first order of business should be firing Greenspan.

Today's Salon.com ask a good question (in about 3500 words):If Nader claims he is taking away Republican votes from Bush, where are they? And why did Nader kick off his campaign two blocks from John Kerry's Boston townhome?
The article also points out that while Nader might not get Republican votes, he's get quite a few donations from Republicans. According to the Dallas Morning-News, 10% of Nader's donors also donate to primarily Republican candidates. And the Arizona Republic reports claims that a GOP consultant is financing Nader's bid to get on Arizona's ballot.
I wouldn't be surprised if those GOP donations turned into a full-scale ad campaign by the fall.

A new LA Times poll suggests the Bush campaign's worst fear might be a reality: Kerry is pulling away nationally.
According to the poll, Kerry leads Bush by 51% to 44% nationally in a two-way matchup, and by 48% to 42% in a three-way race, with Nader drawing 4%.
The internals are more devastating for Bush: Three-fifths of respondents think the nation is headed in the wrong direction; 55% disapprove of Bush's handling of Iraq; Kerry leads in the suburbs and has eviscerated Bush's popularity among men.
But Bush still holds a considerable lead in Missouri, a fact that could help Gephardt's chances of grabbing the VP nomination.
I personally don't think Kerry's VP choice will make or break his campaign but it wouldn't hurt to have someone with national security credentials.
How about Gen. Anthony Zinni? Seriously.

Last week, a group of Republican senators took part in a long Republican tradition: hanging out with cult-leader and self-professed messiah Rev. Sun Myung Moon.

Today, as Reagan is laid to rest with enough phony hoopla to rival a North Korean state funeral, it's worth harkening back to the genesis of his political career.
The San Francisco Chronicle has done an excellent investigative series on how Reagan worked with J. Edgar Hoover to destroy University of California president Clark Kerr and launch Reagan's political career. Reagan subsequently collaborated with the FBI to crush the Berkeley free speech movement. The Chronicle also details Reagan's links to the racist, McCarthyite John Birch Society. It's a must read. Here's a little snippet:

To Hoover and other FBI officials who had been frustrated with Brown's and Kerr's failure to end the protests at UC, Reagan was a breath of fresh air.

Over the years, the bureau had taken note as the charismatic actor who wanted to star in "The FBI Story" transformed himself into a leading conservative spokesman.

Reagan had campaigned for Nixon against John F. Kennedy in 1960. The following year, Reagan told a conference of food executives in Chicago that the Communist Party "has ordered once again the infiltration" of the movie industry. "They are crawling out from under the rocks," he declared.

When Hoover saw a news story about Reagan's speech, he dispatched agents to question him. But the bureau's former informer backpedaled, admitting that he had no "first-hand information" about current subversives in Hollywood.

In 1962, Reagan raised money for a Southern California Republican congressman and John Birch Society member, John Rousselot.

That year, Reagan, as host of "General Electric Theater," produced a two-part television special about Marion Miller, who had infiltrated the Communist Party for the FBI and told all in a book, "I Was a Spy: The Story of a Brave Housewife."

Later in 1962, General Electric dropped Reagan from his $150,000 per year job as company representative, concluding his speeches had become too politically extreme. That year Reagan switched his voter registration to Republican.

So much for Peggy Noonan's hagiographical horseshit account of Reagan refusing to work with the government against the commies.

The LA Times has revisited the John Walker Lindh case, positing it as a harbinger of the abuse committed at Abu Ghraib. According to the Times (and common knowledge) Lindh was stripped, humiliated, threatened with death and torture by CIA and FBI interrogators.

In fact -- and this has hardly been discussed -- by the time Lindh's haggard image was broadcast around the world on 12/1/01, damning him in the eyes of the public, CIA agents had already tortured and threatened to kill him six days earlier.

The Times also details the failure of Lindh's arrestors to read him his Miranda rights and Ashcroft's DoJ's refusal to grant him access to a lawyer until a month after his arrest and subsequent torture. Apparently, this breach of law was ordered from the top with advice from Federalist Society lawyer and DoJ legal consultant John Yoo.

There was, however, one lawyer within the Justice Department who protested Lindh's treatment (who the Times should have interviewed): ethical consultant Jesselyn Radack.

After Radack placed a phone call expressing dismay over Lindh's treatment to a DoJ criminal investigator and later sent him an email calling the FBI's interrogations illegal, Ashcroft retaliated. Soon Radack was under investigation by the DoJ's general accounting office, which issued her a "blistering" and "vitriolic" performance review.

When she showed her emails protesting Lindh's treatment to Newsweek (which published them -- a must read), the DoJ filed criminal charges against her. Though those charges were dropped, the DoJ demanded that the DC and Maryland bars suspend her for "criminal misconduct."

Today, her career is essentially destroyed.

“I’ve basically been blacklisted,” she told Brown Alumni Magazine. “I’m in this Kafkaesque nightmare. I can’t wake up. It’s something you read about and say, ‘That would never happen to me. That would never happen to anyone I know.’”

That's just another story about how the Bush administration smears the messenger.

Which journalist has been using Doug Feith as a primary source on Saddam's non-existent link with Al Qaeda?
Stephen Hayes, the toast of the neocons and author of the new sci-fi book, "The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein Has Endangered America."

Was Reagan always the "sunny optimist" he's portrayed as? In this 1975 interview with libertarian magazine Reason, he sounds downright Bushian:

REASON: Are you thinking in terms of a Fortress America approach or a world policeman approach?

REAGAN: No. Fortress America is just what Lenin wanted us to have–whether it is world policeman or not. You know, Lenin said the Communists will take Eastern Europe, they will organize