Belief

Further evidence to store under the heading: "these guys actually believe in nothing but dumping tax dollars on their friends." I mean, they get rid of tax money like it's the gay al Qaeda.

Consider, for a moment, that DHS has been draining the treasury through no-bid contracts for year. Consider that these contracts are many times larger than they are supposed to be.

And then remember that these are Repubs. They are supposed to be the ones who will teach us 'over-spending liberals' about restraint and market forces. 'Restraint' being the word for not spending it if you don't have the money - that idea left when the Gingrich greed-monsters took Congress in '94. They did away with 'pay-as-you-go' - the Democratic system where new spending had to be offset with cuts elsewhere.

No, the 'bridge to nowhere' Repubs can't restrain themselves. They've run up a historic deficit by paying off their supporters. Corporate welfare and hand-outs to millionaires are just the tip of the graft iceberg to them. The cost of government will go down now that grown-ups are back in charge, but the damage has been done.

But what about market forces?

Remember when the rightists used to lecture about the market where everything was efficient and competition drove prices and big government was so bad? Wasn't that supposed to be a core belief?

Well, as will all other beliefs - moral, ethical, or legal - they can't stand in the way of paying off friends who have their hands out. The private no-bid contracts in this case cost $124 million, rather than the $2 million contracted for. Without bids. Over years.

So there's your lesson in the holy power of Market Forces: it doesn't exist. There is no power - because the greed of rightists will always fix the deal.

Real loyal civil servants would have done a much better job at a much lower cost, but that's not tolerated in the Bush Debacle. In an effort to prove that they're right, they again prove themselves not only wrong, but disastrously wrong and unprecedented in their wrongness.

Privatization of government is a failure. Government works best when it's run by people who know what they're doing.

Which clearly does not include any of the Junta fellow travellers.

Legacy

I was one of the buyer/blogger/readers who pre-ordered Glenn Greenwald's new book A Tragic Legacy - and had ordered and read his first book: How Would a Patriot Act?

Greenwald is, simply and clearly, the most important political writer in America today. There is no other voice that speaks with his measured clarity and cuts all the way through the corruption, incompetence, and lies that have come to define political life in the United States.

And I'm going to review the new book, once I finish it. But what really struck me today was the "crushing defeat" of Georgie's immigration bill. That was to be his legacy bill. Immigration was to be the thing he did right and could point to in his dotage as something that he didn't bring to utter desperate ruin.

It was his own party that did him in. Reactionary racist rightists have had it their way for so long that they now believe that it was up to them all along. That the Bush Junta was using racial language and policy because Rove and the boys actually believed it - not just to keep racial minorities away from the voting machines.

Not that Rove's brownshirts are not racist - you can't run elections in the South the way they have and not be racist. It's just that power is their bag, and they will let their loathing of non-whites take a back seat to getting something done.

Which is why they compromised with Democrats over the bill. I still don't think the Dems should have played along - they should have pushed their own bill - but it's still not terrible. A terrible bill is what the extreme rightists want.

That bill would be the one where people would be allowed to come to the US as a permanent slaving underclass with no rights and frequent expulsions. That's just a few Cossacks short of a Pogrom. And meanwhile in this Mad Maxian future hell, the border would be built up and armed.

If they did that, they might want to arm both sides - lots of people would be trying to get out of the dystopic former "land of the free."

This bill goes a bit toward allowing illegal immigrants the ability to follow a path to citizenship. Why not? They've done the dirty work to earn it.

But the former Junta loyalists call this "amnesty" and forgiveness is not in their creed (other than for corporate tax cheats and other wealthy donors). So they stopped the bill.

Whatever you think of the legislation, it's startling to see how the rightists have left Georgie - and Greenwald points out so powerfully in his book. I was actually skeptical that the repudiation was as widespread as he claims, but this is proof.

What will be the legacy of this highway pile-up of an administration? And what is left for them to do? The rest of the term will be about resisting (further) the will of the American people by fighting the subpoenas of their elected representatives in Congress.

And ginning up a war with Iran.

Secrets

As usual, the Junta has proven itself clever only at deceit. All the other stuff it's supposed to do - like obey the law - is a complete wash-out.

See, the CIA just released the so-called "Family Jewels." It's an archive of all the bad stuff it did up to the 1970's. You know, like recruit A-list mobsters to 'hit' Castro. That sort of stuff.

Which is great, but it made me wonder - why? There's no Church Committee (more's the pity) breathing down their necks. Nobody but the Junta itself is blaming the CIA for anything in particular, and that's an obvious scapegoating ploy - no mystery there.

Then it occurred to me - secrets. While Darth Cheney and Scooter and the vile Davis Addington are making their handling of secrets into a personal Alamo, and the topic of official lies and a cult sinister secrecy is getting more play, the Junta has struck back - with other peoples' secrets.

Instead of releasing the notes from their thoroughly corrupt Energy Task Force, they're releasing Tricky Dick's dirty laundry. As demands for truth are starting (only starting) to be heard, the Junta is supplying truth - from 30 or more years ago.

So when their press puppies start yipping about secrecy, they'll say: "Hey! We published the damn Family Jewels. We don't see you publishing your Family Jewels. We're far more transparent than we need to be!"

And the puppies will roll over for their belly scratch, and the Progressive Internets will have a spasm of outrage, and the Wingnuts will have a spasm of just plain rage.

It's all a cover; a diversion. It's dirty politics. You know, the only thing they're good at.

Fantastic

The new Fantastic Four movie - Rise of the Silver surfer - finally touches on some of the reasons that the comic book quartet has been so popular for more than 40 years. Finally.

The success of recent Marvel comic book movies has a lot to do with the producers' decision to try use the best stories from the actual comics. The Spider-Man comics with the Green Goblin and Doc Ock were great triumphs of the medium, and the first two Spider-Man movies captured the heart of the characters and stores (sadly, not the third movie). Same with the first two (and yes, not the third) X-Men movies.

Spider-Man was able to tell his origin story in a very engrossing way, which led naturally into his conflict with the Green Goblin. Spider-Man 2 retained all the momentum and built on the first movie. The story from Spider-Man #50, from 1967: "Spider-Man No More," is Stan Lee at his best.

The Fantastic Four, a seminal series in the world of comics, didn't fare so well in their first movie. The film never got past their origin story. And, worst of all, they messed with the Stan Lee characters. Dr. Doom was remade into a technology company CEO who gained some sort of magnetic power by being exposed to the same cosmic rays as the FF.

The Thing - my personal favorite character overall - was badly done. He didn't look right and didn't have the wit that Lee and the great Jack Kirby had given him. There were obvious attempts at using some of the classic material, but they were feeble. Jack Kirby and, twenty years later, John Byrne both captured the Thing perfectly. Kirby's Thing was man-sized (as he is in the movie), but Byrne's was larger and more intimidating. Both had a well-formed brow - the character's most distinguishing facial feature, and one they chose to entirely ignore in the film image.

Also,m Kirby and Byrne both concentrated on the lighting effects through the use of heavy shadow, which made the Thing's rocky exterior that much more pronounced. The film version ignores this feature as well, giving the character a constant steady spotlight that makes his rocky exterior seem flat. Why? Were they too busy getting the Torch's flame effects right (which they did).?

Overall, the movie was a disappointment.

But the Silver Surfer was not. Without the burden of an origin story, the characters seemed to work as they should. The Torch (the only successful character from the first movie) has kept his fiery personae intact. The Reed & Sue story was well done, and the Thing, while still well off the mark, was closer.

Lawrence Fishburne did an outstanding job as the voice of the Surfer. It was that haunting tonality from the Matrix all over again. And the Surfer as a tragic figure worked well. The wrote out Galactus, but that's just as well. The fact that the guy threatening to eat the planet is a thirty-foot tall fashion disaster is not a relevant story point.

And Doom is back, and actually stopping over in Latveria (the country he rules in comics) before heading into the thickest areas of the plot. And for those of you who might not know, the Doom plot is straight out of the comics, again from 1967. The Surfer-Galactus story actually predates it by a year.

But that's okay - it works. The film is fun and even an old Silver Age guy like me could enjoy it. The effects were as eye-popping as you'd expect.

There are many, many more great Stan Lee stories to be told. In fact, I'm starting to get a little peeved that Stan doesn't get a writing credit with these movies. They are, invariably, his plots. Doesn't that deserve a mention?

Anyway, go see Rise of the Silver Surfer and hope that the third movie jinx that's killed the X-Men and Spider-Man movie franchises won't get the FF in the future. And that someday they figure out how to portray the Thing.

Drew

I was reading the new Street & Smith's Pro Football annual last night. I buy every NFL annual - it's a weakness. The S&S annual has a section in the beginning that lists all-time records for major statistical categories, and shows which active players are climbing the various lists. And there, with 251 TD passes, 44,611 yards, 3,839 completions, and 6,717 attempts, was Drew Bledsoe.

And it struck me that those are his final numbers. He's retired. Done.

I remember vividly when Drew was a big lunk-headed rookie. He had that confident lope of a star athlete. He was polished in any interview, born to the podium. He was the Guy. He knew it. You knew it.

Under new head coach Bill Parcelles and new local-boy owner Robert Kraft, the Patriots had changed. There was a distinct feeling of hope. These guys were real pro's - the kind you see on TV.

The years after the Pats 1985 Super Bowl run had not been kind. The quality of the team had steadily drained and the team was becoming as pale and lifeless as Mr. Orange at the end of Reservoir Dogs. Rod Rust and Dick MacPherson were coaching the likes of Mark Wilson and Michael Timpson. The team was sold and re-sold and moving and then staying.

Kraft and the Tuna changed that. And they brought in Drew (thanks to MacPherson's 1-15 season).

What makes me the most nostalgic about the time is the sense of promise in the whole affair. Drew (and we just called him "Drew") had it all. He could be a Marino, a Favre, a Fouts. He could have been anything. He stood tall in the pocket and fired the ball like an F-14 shooting off a carrier. A flick of the wrist and a perfect spiral darted to its target.

Were there any limits to what he could do? Where once the Patriots were a team with no floor - no limit to the depths they could fall to - they were now a team without a ceiling. With a Super Bowl coach like Parcelles and a Bradshaw-like kid QB, Pats fans were back in the game.

That feeling lasted until they actually got to the Super Bowl in 1996. Like 1985, the hangover from the loss was terrible. Where the 85 team had faced charges of drug use, the 96 team disintegrated - even before the game - by the greed of the coach.

Parcelles spent his Super Bowl in negotiations to take over the rival NY Jets. On the eve of the biggest game in team history, Parcelles was not preparing his team for victory, he was preparing his Broker for a windfall.

Disgraceful.

It was after that that Pats fans started noticing the flaws in their saviour. With the Tuna gone and boy coach Pete Carroll in town, Drew was the media star. To the jaded and paid-for Boston media, they either hated or loved Drew. The ones whop loved him never stopped their affair, and would support him to this day.

But the rest of us saw the guy who played poorly in playoff games and pressure situations. He had the swagger of a Brett Favre, but not nearly the numbers. For all his obvious physical skills, he was only at his best when everything else was going right.

Given an effective running game, a good offensive line, and decent receivers, he could be a monster. But given all those other factors, who wouldn't be? In the Pete years, the line faltered, and we saw painfully that Drew could not avoid a rush, especially up the middle. Lesser WR's could not get open enough and couldn't reel in the slightly off-target bullets that Drew flung at them. And without a decent back to scare defenses, they came at him - hard.

Drew stood up to it all. His numbers dropped further and he was no longer considered a franchise quarterback anywhere outside his own living room. In a 1999 7-6 playoff loss in Pittsburgh, it was clear: Drew wasn't getting it done.

Ironically, it was Parcell's understudy who teamed with Drew's understudy to create the Patriots Dynasty. Bill Belichick got out from under Parcells shadow, and ended up pulling Tom Brady from Drew's - and winning Super Bowl 36 with Bledsoe on the sideline.

Drew was traded to Buffalo for a first-round draft pick. That served to remind Drew that he was the Guy, and he had a career year in Buffalo. But he'd reverted to form by the end of 2002, and was his predictable self for the next two seasons, until the Bills cashiered him.

He had a decent season with the Cowboys under his first pro coach - Bill Parcelles. His breakout season with the Pats in 1996 had produced a 83.7 rating, rising to 87.7 in 1997, but dropping to 75.6 later. His first season in Buffalo produced an 86.0, but his second was a 73.0. In the same way, his first season in Dallas was back to 83.7 (how's that for consistency?), but he was benched halfway through the next season with a 69.2.

And then he quit. He did not do what his fellow first-overall QB did - Vinny Testaverde. Vinny was content to carry a clipboard and start occasionally as a backup after hist starting days were over. But Vinny'd faced his own limitation far earlier in his career than Drew.

Drew always though of himself as the lone figure on the podium, explaining to an eager press mob what had happened on the field that day. His statements always sounded like a Press Release.

He was by habit and by nature the Starter. And, even though he only lived up to about 80% of fans' expectations, he will not be reduced to playing mentor the way Kurt Warner has (for Eli Manning and Matt Leinart).

Perhaps that's because of Brady. Drew was crushed when Brady took the starting QB job following Drew's injury in 2001. And at the time he was credited with showing uncommon class even though he was terribly disappointed.

Later stories painted him as far less saintly, but whatever he did or didn't do to support Brady, it worked and the Pats won.

But it may be that experience, and his undoubted financial security, that has led him to walk away from the game entirely. There is simply no market for his services as a starting QB in the NFL. And that's all he's willing to do.

He was never the try-hard guy who would do anything to make the squad. His high school coach was his father, and he was a huge start in college. He surely paid dues along the way, but not to the union of guys who would do anything to stay in the league.

So goodbye, Drew. The league will be less interesting without you. Neither of us could have guessed where your career would go. You have a Super Bowl ring you won on the bench - which is more than Dan Marino has. You didn't become the legend we had hoped for, but you were a great warm-up act for the Hall of Famer who is the Main Event in New England.

Safety & Security

Safety

Let me get this straight: the "surge" in Iraq is the best strategy to secure, at least, Baghdad. And maybe Anabar province. The surge was supposed to go from around February to around May, but is now indefitite - at least until 2008. But we expect "results" to be seen by May, or June, or July, or - let's just say - September.

According to the government of the US - which is suppose to know about this stuff and, you know, tell the truth to people who are sacrificing their children to it - things have been steadily improving since 2003. And if mistakes have been made along the way, they have surely been the sole responsibility if the Iraqis.

So here's today's question: why the hell can't they stop the daily attacks on the Green Zone?

Mortar shells. Rockets. People are being killed.

Almost everyday this week, mortars and rockets have slammed into this 3.5 square-mile fortress in central Baghdad, home to Iraqi government offices and the U.S. and British embassies. About 1,000 U.S. State Department staffers work and live in the Green Zone.

A shell hit the parking lot where Prime Minister Alma Leeky parks. Now, I'm no military genius like George W. Bush, and I don't have a PhD in International Studies like Condo Rice, but it seems to me that if you can't keep mortar rounds from hitting the PM's parking lot, you're not really in control of anything.

How do you spin that one? Are they going to re-group the parking lots? Are they going to just build a dome over the thing?

And what are your chances to pacify and secure a nation when you can't stop bad guys from shelling the one postage-stamp sized patch of tarmac in the whole country that matters to you?

Security

I've been worrying more and more about security lately - and I'll tell you why. I believe America is in great danger for the next couple of year - greater than ever before in the entire GWOT (that's the Global War on Terror for you Chardonnay-sippers).

In 2001, the bad guys hit us - hard. You may recall the incident. At that time, they supposed (one must suppose) that the American president and his administration were at least average in their capability to defend the nation. So they expected the average American response - which is pretty damn ferocious compared to other sorts of average responses, like your average French response (sacre blu!).

But that's not what they got.

What they got was their holy-warrior's crazy extreme fantasy of their wildest dream of a response. America reacted like their ornery drunk over-fed double-digit-IQ stereotype. America acted rashly and stupidly and kept on behaving irrationally and violently for years and years.

Virtually without prompting, America sacrificed their standing in the world, their own sacred constitution and the rule of law they'd championed for centuries, and any hard-fought gains for rationality and civilization they'd ever achieved. Gone.

But here's the thing: you can't count of America choosing another slop-browed neolithic knuckle-dragger to their leadership. One must assume (if not hope) that the next American president will believe in thing that have generally been assumed to be American ideals: the rule of law, an international system of alliances, support for human rights, real freedoms and true democracy. All the stuff that's been missing.

So, for leading jihadists and their fellow travellers, the window is closing.

When Bush and his Junta go, so goes Osama bin Laden's hope of convincing the Arab world that he's right. The next American president - probably - won't be drunk on power and oblivious to the rights of every other living being on the planet.

So now's the time.

Media reports clearly show that the Chickenhawks in the Veep office are cracking for a go at Iran. Wouldn't that be the cherry on top for international qanti-Americanism? A war with Iran might even lead to a coup in Washington - Georgie as Preznut for Life! America reduced to the state of Apartheid-era South Africa - with only a few extremist dictatorships willing to do business with them.

Why, the "axis of evil" itself might stand on it's head; North Korea might end being our only friend. Maybe those 35,000 troops that Rummy left in South Korea will assume positions on the other side of the border. Who knows? The rogue America that the Neocons have struggled to create might end up in a state of war with everybody.

But that might not be possible with an American in the White House - so now's the time. Plus, a strike now might allow Bloody Rudy to abandon the rubber chicken circuit forever.

Act now, terrorists! Your friend George is running on fumes!

Real Treason

Harry Truman thought war profiteers were traitors to their country, and the Truman Commission in the Senate went after all of them, vigorously, regardless of connections or party affiliation.

Ah yes, the good old days.

Al Gore, in his brilliant new book, point out the fundamental problem with the Junta ruling the US now - I won't say they're "running" it. That is, they do not believe in the existence of a public interest. They are entirely creatures of private, individual interests of monied and powerful people, and the interests of the organizations that those people profit from.

So it should come as no surprise that these connected cronies have been looting the treasury of the United States as if, well, as if it's their own money and they're entitled to it.

Out of the billions of dollars that have left the treasury - sometimes in blocks of literally tons of cash - the DoD has recovered only $6.1 million from stealing or over-billing. Billions gone missing, no-bid contracts to cronies everywhere, and charges of fraud in abundance, and yet the Justice Department has gone after exactly nobody.

This is one of those break points. Okay, so the executive office is greedier than Scrooge McDuck and as un-American as Admiral Tojo - but we still have Justice, don't we? Just because every other part of the executive branch has a price sticker on it, surely the dedicated servants of justice at Justice don't go along?

Because, if that's the case, it means that the top law enforcement agencies in the country don't believe in the rule of law. That means there are law enforcement agents on the federal payroll who are against justice.

And there they are.

They've refused to prosecute war profiteers. They've refused any attempt to recover tax dollars from thieves - traitors, really.

"Basically, they have done nothing , and it is hard to explain what is going on there, other than direct orders from the very top of government," said Patrick Burns , director of communications for Taxpayers Against Fraud, a center that advises whistle-blowers on filing suits to recover government funds. "It can no longer be explained by incompetence alone." [emphasis added]

That about sums it up. Sure, there's incompetence - lots of it. But it can't just be incompetence. And it's not just people who don't believe in a 'public interest.' It's people who somehow got raised up in America without cherishing the ideal of justice itself.

So, just to list it, voter fraud to suppress minority voting rights, foot-dragging on any case against Repubs, US Attorneys fired for political reasons, torture okay, habeas corpus gone, Geneva convention "quaint," unlimited detention without trial or representation is fine, rendition to even worse torturers fine, all decisions on every subject made on political grounds.

That's your justice department.

What kind of monsters are these? They haven't just stolen money and taken lives; they've perverted the most cherished founding principles of America.

If criminals can steal vast sums and the nation's cops and prosecutors protect them for political reasons, you are no longer in America. You may be there physically, but America is no longer there for you.

Hoops

I finally understand why people don't seem to care in an overwhelming way about the Patriots. Not that they don't care, they don't love them. I've always thought: "how can you not love the Patriots?" They used to be complete no-hopers, 1-15 jokes. Now they're champs, and there's no sign of them taking a step any way but forward. What's not to like?

But as I watched the San Antonio Spurs win the fourth championship since 1999, I got it. Like the Patriots, the Spurs are just better than your team. They're better than my team. They're just a better team.

And it's annoying that they aren't mean about it. They don't trash talk and they don't swagger (well, they swagger a bit but only as much as they deserve). Their super-star, Tim Duncan, plays the game right but not in a jaw dropping change-your-underwear way. Hell, his nickname is "The Big Fundamental."

The Spurs just go out on the court and play basketball better than the other guys. They're even smart enough to employ "Big Shot Bob" Horry. PG Tony Parker won Finals MVP. Bruce Bowen (former Celtics #1 draft pick) shut down LeBron "King" James, the Cavs only star. Manu Ginobli hit from the perimeter.

The Pats are just like that. Tom Brady doesn't claim to be the best QB in the league - he just is. He doesn't need to be the leading passer to prove it. There are a few starts and many role-players on the Patriots roster, and they all work together toward a common goal.

Annoying.

It must be great to be a Spurs fan, but really it's painful to root against them. They are better coached than your team. They play as a unit with fantastic team defense, as opposed to your team. Your team couldn't stop the JV team from MIT.

Fortunately, it will soon be football season. That's when my team is just clearly better than your team. My team is better coached that your team. My team plays as a units and works together like they're in the same trench at Bastogne.

My team, the Patriots, are just better than your team. Annoying, isn't it?

Immigration Confusion

Okay, somebody hasn't been reading the paper lately. And as usual, it's all those people writing for the paper. In particular, George Will is just not keeping up.

Willy's got a bit in the WaPo today entitled "Harry Reid's Sham." Reid, by Willy's reasoning, is the reason that his great Churchillian leader didn't get to pass the immigration bill that he wanted. It's implicit (though unsaid) in the piece and in conventional wisdom that everything else that Georgie Bush has done has been an unmitigated historic failure, so the immigration bill might be something he can point to in his dotage as not being the very definition of humiliating failure.

The problem is that the Bush Junta has been feeding red meat to the most cro-magnon of right wing extremists for nigh six years now. So asking them to accept a compromise bill on immigration at this point is like asking Cujo to settle for a nice plastic chew-toy.

But not to Willy. According to Willy, this is all Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's fault. Reid, understanding that Democrats are not lining up to ban immigration, seal the borders, and expel everyone suspected of having an accent, is in no great hurry to pass the bill. And since it's the rightists who are threatening a filibuster over it (gosh - funny how the Junta has stopped talking about eliminating the filibuster now that they need it, huh?) why should Reid twist himself into a knot to get it passed?

To Willy, Reid is standing in the way of Georgie's only positive legacy. Not the rightist fellow travellers who are actually blocking the thing.

Of course, the headine in the NYT goes like this: "Bush Lobbies GOP Senators on Immigration." According to Willy, he shouldn't bother. Just send a nasty-gram to Harry Reid, right?

The right wing have been led further to the right than ever before. They want what they want and they're used to getting it.

This is also the result of the racial politics that the Rove strategy has used to get and keep power. All the voter suppression stuff and the appeals to outright racism has an effect. It's made the rightists that much more eager to enforce their racist beliefs.

The best way to view racism is through the prism of immigration policy and attitudes. Immigration reform is the legitimate facade on the structure of wanting to suppress people of colour. Politicians and media heads can't go on Lou Dobbs and say "let's act against brown people." But they can (and do) go on Dobb's hateful show and talk about sealing the border and expelling "illegals."

Hey: "illegals" aren't Irish. They aren't Swedes. They are brown people from South of the border, and the right wing has an irrational hatred for them.

George Will can say what he wants about Reid. He notes that Harry has only a 19% approval rating which he compares favourably to Georgie's 36% (which is a high number lately).

But the disapproval that Congress is receiving has more to do with a lack of fight than too much. People want Democrats to stop the madness in Iraq and confront a genuinely evil White House. Congress has not done that in their first six months, so people are on them.

People are not disapproving Harry Reid because he derails Bush's plans - quite the opposite. Which Willy knows - but Willy also knows that the days of journalists telling the truth are long gone now, too.

Bush - and Will - have a problem with their own extremists, not Harry Reid.

Iran

Oh, gosh! The right wing military Junta that controls Georgie Bush's brain has come up with more stories about how badly Iran needs to be bombed. I mean, some countries need to be bombed a little, and others need to be bombed 'back to the stone age.' Iran needs to be bombed back the whole 2,000 years since the world was created and populated with Adam.

I mean, these guys are just begging pleading for us to fire off a salvo. They want it. Should we continue to deny it to them?

See, a real live official of our real live government that you should Trust Very Much says that Iran is giving weapons to the Taliban. Really!

Okay, forget the fact - fact - that this government has been wrong on absolutely everything down to mis-tying their shoes. Okay? That's the US government, of course. The Iranian government has more credibility at this point.

Of course, Iran won't deny it. Why should they? If it's true, the US saying it makes people doubt it (can you believe that? But it's true). And if it's not true, Iran gets some Arab street cred from those who choose to believe it's true (yes, I know Iran is not an Arab country, that's just where they'll get the credit).

And Georgie continues to drum up his next conflict.

Look: the military wants absolutely nothing to do with a military action against Iran. The Army and Marine Corps are in shambles. The Junta has done what no outside enemy has ever been able to do to the US ground forces: they've shattered them.

But a strike with air and/or naval power wouldn't get the war mojo going for slavering death junkies like Joe Lieberman and Dick Cheney. Rove wouldn't mind it either, but he's more of a cold fish; he's in it for the power, not simply the gory killing.

America is becoming exactly what her enemies have always accused her - falsely - of being. Rather than exist as a 'City on a Hill' and an example to mankind, we've fit jackboots and started marching.

Instead of allowing international pressure to disarm a nuclear Iran - because after all, absolutely nobody wants them to have a Bomb - we're belly-bumping with them. Bullying, pushing, insulting them. Why? Because that's all the Junta knows about.

Cheney and the other NeoCons only know about bullying and ignore all other avenues. They are inherently lazy and know that using wisdom and patience is much more work than just lashing out. And to them, there is no good work.

Except for the work that others perform for their pleasure. And that goes double for the poor saps who pull on a uniform and go kill for them. Buy them body armour? Hah! We need that money for tax cuts. Pay for medical care for the wounded? Fund the VA? We have better things to do - chump. Go grab a few million from your Trust Fund and we'll talk.

Don't have a few million in your Trust Fund? Then you better get your butt to Iraq - or who knows? Maybe we can get that Iran thing going with a few more insults and incursions.

Did you know they were sending money to Afghanistan?

New Cold War?

Remember how great things used to be back when we won the Cold War? There was lots of praise to go around - old H.W. could yak about "Mr. Gorbachev - tear down that wall!" The other Repubs could claim that Reagan's disastrous and short-sighted military build-up had anything remotely to do with it.

The real people who won the Cold War - Democrats from Harry Truman to Tip O'Neil - could be gracious to their semi-literate political opponents take an undeserved bow. Really - Repubs wanted to turn the Cold War into a hot war of total annihilation on multiple occasions. It was only the calm and true toughness of Democrats who saw us through to safety.

But this might not be all nostalgia. Since Georgie is putting his $100 billion Edsel of a missile defense shield in Europe, Vlad The Impaler Putin is talking about pointing Russian missiles back that way. You, know, targeting European cities the way they haven't for almost two decades.

What Bush and his Junta clearly don't understand is that when you shove somebody, they're going to shove back. Like, if you brutally occupy a country, its citizens aren't going to bring you milk and cookies on the barricades. They're going to fight you any way they can.

And when you shove your policies around the UN, other nations are going to shove back. And when you put a missile defense system on the border of a nuclear nation - even a system as comically incapable as the one Georgie has had built - they're going to take exception to it.

But how could we have foreseen that the historically touchy Russians would react badly to this development? If only there had been someone who had ever studied Russian history or Cold War relationships who was close enough and loyal enough to get a hearing by Georgie?

Secretary of State Condo Rice has a PhD in International Studies. She's an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe. And now she's bringing back her Cold War.

I'm sure Vlad won't mind. An arms race with bad old America is just the ticket for an old KGB guy to grab that much more power. Putin has rolled back Russian democracy the way Georgie only dreams of in the US. And he does dream of it - make no mistake.

Yes, the Junta that is making Bizarro America - the country that is exactly the opposite of what was founded as a great Republic - is creating a Bizarro Cold War with a Bizarro USSR.

It's popssible that Georgie understands that people have tuned him out on, well, pretty much everything, including terrorism. With out Fear Itself, he and his handlers will go away forever. It's possible (in the sense that there's nothing stupid or destructive that these guys wouldn't do) that they're drumming up a new crisis to get their guys back in the White House in 08.

Because it's worth playing games with the other nuclear superpower in order to gain or maintain Repub power.

How else can you undo 231 years of American history on only 7 years? It's "hard work."

Gas

The Godfathers of big American car companies are in Congress today begging to keep their lower mileage standards. I'm so choked up for them, I can hardly type.

For year, the Junta has protected these fragile auto billionaires from doing anything that would remotely help consumers or, as breathing entities, their own miserable leather lungs. They had it pretty good.

It's one o those crystallizing cases where the public good - lower carbon emissions and higher vehicle mileage for all vehicles - clashes with Big Auto and Petro interests. And guess who wins that? Every time. 10 times out of 10.

Let's hope that winning percentage takes a hit. The nation - the world - cannot go on with the greediest human on the planet calling all the shots. It just can't. The Junta has sold off the environment and its citizens for a penny on a buck for so long now, it's hard to recognize that there ever were 'public servants' who actually worked to improve the lives of Americans.

Did you know, for example, that there used to be government lawyers who would try to make voting fair? It's true. There used to be government scientists who would - get this - test food and pharmaceutical products to make sure they were safe for consumption? And they would report it when the stuff was bad?

Even when the corporations lost money because of it?

Yes, these things used to be part of our expectations - we just thought that when something was harmful the government would tell us about it. We used to think that if pollution was killing us and our land and water, that would be more important than official cronies making a buck out of it.

No, really. I mean it.

And now, there is a possibility that efficiency and emissions standards will be increased - even though industry fat cats are against it.

Wow. Talk about retro.

Chimp Court

As if further evidence was required to show just how empty Georgie's suit really is, we have the first decision by his Chimp Courts at Gitmo: a rebuke.

Even the hand-picked Chimp Judges couldn't work their way through this one. And, being nominally American, would not blow past the law to get to the executions. It seems that in their rush to get Congress to rubber-stamp their Military Commissions, they created an unworkable Frankenstein of bizarre legal twisting and stretching.

Surprised?

Apparently, there are two types of courts, and neither (or both) are charged with determining if an inmate is an 'illegal combatant' or a legal combatant (i.e. a soldier). Without that determination, there can be no trial.

So the works were gummed up before they had a chance to even deliver the fear-based and justice-free verdicts they were slapped together to create. Too bad.

Why has anyone ever though for a millisecond that this gang of concrete-headed mental patients could cobble up a Justice System? Out of their own heads? Come on.

The reason they have to do it this way is simple: their own behaviour before and during the incarceration of these prisoners has been patently illegal. Illegal by American law and by international law. Why else are they in a military base in a country we have no diplomatic or commercial ties with?

They grabbed these guys up for no good reason. They kept them illegally with no recourse and no charges - for years now. They tortured them.

There is nothing they could do with them in a real court - military or civilian - but release them and wait for the civil action that will make them pay millions.

But they won't do that, and they won't reveal their own criminality in open court. So they'll keep them banged up forever. This decision actually helps the Junta - they have no intention of releasing anyone. This just prolongs the captivity until the next administration.

So Bush and Rove and the rest of their criminal gang can get safely out of town.

Gore

I've just finished reading the introduction to Al Gore's new book, The Assault on Reason - so I'm obviously in a position to provide a detailed critique of the work. Hey - that's how media works.

And that's pretty much his point - that the media is broken, and that the country's political discourse is broken. It's far more of a media analysis than I'd expected. He's telling us to put aside, for a moment, the disastrous Bush presidency, and look at what's happened to the whole political system.

It's actually a lot like his speech of 2005 where he talks about the one-way communication that now passes as our political discourse. In a television-led media, the conversation is one way - out to the viewer. The revolution era pamphleteering and print-oriented discourse from the first American century is gone, and what's replaced it is not so much discourse as it is propaganda.

Which I agree with whole-heatedly. But I'm not sure that I agree with the premise that the media - the type of media that is - has been so much the culprit. Was it really true that in the world of print, everyone had a voice?

I can't see that in the 18th and 19th centuries, there was a meritocracy of ideas. Was publication that accessible? Not really. Once the page is printed, it's still a one-way conversation. Aside from letters to the editor, the public was still seen and not heard by the papers. Did the print media indulge in 'info-tainment?' I think the answer is yes - there have always been yellow journalists and scandal rags out there. The National Enquirer has always sold well.

So what has changed? I think it's the people behind the media who have made the difference. In the days of Edward R. Murrow, the visual media (as Gore points out) tried to behave like the print media and enforce journalistic standards. And, in Murrow's day, there were scandal sheets and the like - but they weren't considered "news."

That's the difference - the "news" is no longer a thing unto itself. It's been merged with entertainment wholeheartedly. There are no lines left to cross journalistically. Anything that hits the airways, no matter how slanted or fact-free, is news. The people who might have been the voices of reason, who might have said "stop!" are no longer on the payroll of the big media conglomerates.

News is propaganda. News is titillation for its own sake. And not just the broadcasters know this - the politicians and political operatives know it too well.

That's how a guy like Karl Rove works - he knows the buttons to push to get his warped message to viewers. Truth and honest discourse don't enter into it - it's about power and nothing else.

There are no grown-ups left to play referee. And that's been the biggest error that the Democrats have made - they've cried foul instead of hitting back. They haven't used the media the way the Repubs have - by striking out, the facts be damned.

Not that I'm advocating a break with facts, just that facts are less important than an emotional appeal when using television. Rove knows this - and he knows how to hide it. The US Attorney scandal is hinged on Rove's efforts to create a false 'vote fraud' problem that will underpin his suppression of underprivileged voters.

To my knowledge, there has never been a purely partisan, purely political operative who has run a White House the way Rove has. Everything - everything - that the Bush team does is political.

The tragedy of hurricane Katrina was such a devastating blow to them because it exposed them to the world in a visual, television-friendly way. You could see their lack of care and competence. You could witness with your own eyes the extreme ideology that broke the country, the ignorance that's been put in charge, the arrogance of the idiocy.

It's the reason that Abu Ghraib was such a huge moment - it was in pictures. Words don't count anymore.

But I don't think it's solely the method of the media. It's the lack of control on the message, the lack of a referee to say "that's a lie" without being partisan. Repubs have been making up their 'facts' for years. It was Ron Reagan's favorite pastime.

And it's why Reagan did away with the equal time rules in the media. Before Reagan, there had to be equal time on the air for both major parties. There was an enforced balance. So when Nixon got on TV and lied, a Democrat was on to tell the truth.

And I think that might be a good first stet in restoring democracy - equal time. Let's put it back. That might necessitate the creation of an entire cable news network to offset the Fox propaganda channel, but so be it.

Let freedom ring.

The One

There is one country in the Middle East that does not torture prisoners of any stripe for any reason. This country does not hold prisoners secretly, render them, and offers universal habeas corpus - meaning that they must charge a prisoner or released them. This country offers universal suffrage to citizen of all races and creeds - all adults can vote, all adults can hold political office.

One country.

And yet, this is the only country that "enlightened" British academics want to boycott. They are floating yet another motion that will bar the academics of this country from participating in any scholarly venture with them - from writing papers to presenting at conferences.

Did I mention that this is the only country in the Middle East that practices academic freedom?

I don't have to tell you that the country in question is the New Iraq, with a stable, civil society and a mature...

No, that's not even funny. It's Israel, of course.

I will not, at this time, get into how entirely specious their arguments are about the "plight" of the Palestinians. I will note how lucky the Palestinians are to have enemies like Israeli Jews - no other 'oppressed' people have such an effective fund-raiser for an enemy.

Jews - yes. That's what it comes down to. Uh-oh - knee jerk reaction on its way: "you can't criticize Israel without being called anti-Semitic."

That old canard has been answered before, better than I can answer it, but I will say this: you can't exclusively criticize Israel without being anti-Semitic.

If a thousand kids are chewing gum in class, and you take little Hymie - and only little Hymie - by the ear and send him to the principals office for chewing gum, you are an anti-Semite. It's that clear. And all these Brits and their fellow travellers who want to ban Israeli academics - and Arab-Israeli ones (the only scholars in the Arab world with the freedom to study what they want and report what they want) - are not making similar motions about Yemenis or Saudis or Egyptians.

Even though those countries offer exactly zero of the human freedoms offered by those Jews. So what is it about Israelis that calls for them to be so clearly singled out? Is there anything other than their Jewishness that can explain it?

I've always found that Israelis don't wear ties very often. Could this be an elaborate dress code violation? Could slobbish Israelis have accumulated that many demerits in 60 years?

Not likely. The most grievous thing Israeli's have done since the founding of the country in 1948 is this: they survived.

How much happier would the countries of the world be if they could pay lip-service to mourning a Jewish state extinguished in its infancy, rather than have to deal with so many living Jews defending their rights and their borders so extravagantly. They didn't just lie down and die, so they must be boycotted.

Because surely, North Korea and Iran and the rest of the world's bad guys get enough special attention - no need to get into an academic snit over that bunch.

You would hope that the fact that Jews thwarted their own genocide in 1948 and afterward would be a good thing. The fact that Israel has agreed to every peace overture ever made to it and the Palestinians have refused an equal number would mean something.

But we're living in Al Gore's irrational world now. None of that matters. Israel is unforgivably Jewish, and so will always turn up on a boycott list in Europe.

But even though it all started like that in 1933 Germany, at least we have Israel now. So, British academics, boycott away - just don't fool yourselves into thinking this is motivated by anything but base bigotry.