KARMA POLICE OR A PRESIDENCY RUNNING LOW ON POLITICAL CAPITAL?

By: Xaivier Martin

Whether you believe in God, Allah, Buddha, U2's Bono, or you don't believe in any supreme being, there is one universally-undeniable truth: what goes around, comes around. Call it whatever you want; karma, chi, fate or just desserts. Find yourself on the wrong side of it and life just sucks.

November 2004: we all remember hearing or reading about President Bush's first press conference after being declared the winner by everyone, but the eternally optimistic (and bitter) Democrats who held out hope. In that press conference, Bush spoke of the election results serving as a mandate by the people. He also spoke about feeling that he thought he'd earned some "political capital," and he planned to "take it out for a spin" . After all, he'd just had a victory in which he'd received a higher percentage of the vote than Bill Clinton.

March 26, 2005: several independent polls show Bush with an approval rating of 45%, as opposed to the 52% he received in polls taken the last two months. Oh what a difference a few weeks make! Now, as easy as it may be to suggest that Bush and his large, trunk-carrying friends are experiencing the karma backlash that they deserve, we should look a little deeper.

One of the issues that the real "Dr. Evil" - Karl Rove - hit people over their heads with during the election was the thought that if Democrats were in the White House all hell would break loose in Iraq and conditions would just get worse. The only thing is, since November, all anyone hears are about how many more U.S. troops have died on a given day. Undaunted, Republicans nearly broke their arms patting themselves on the back over the democratic elections that took place nearly two months ago in Iraq. Logic says the elections should have given the Republican Party a pretty big boost in public opinion, but as was stated earlier, Bush's approval rating was not affected. How could that be?

Take into consideration that at the same time as the elections, Bush rolled (or more accurately, dragged) out his plan to save Social Security. His legacy would not be weighed down by jobless rates or the worst single attack on U.S. soil. Bush had conquered Saddam Hussein and now set his sights on taming the 400-pound gorilla in the room that everyone else had intentionally ignored. The thing King George failed to realize - that Clinton, Bush's father and others before knew - is that, if provoked, the 400-pound gorilla will retaliate with a political punch the likes of which he'd never seen.

Still, Bush is the same man who entered May 2004 with a 46% approval rating and managed to get elected to office with a one-and-a-half percent majority. Say what you will about Clinton being bulletproof, but with everything Clinton dealt with, his approval rating rarely if ever dropped below 50%. Bush has had more go wrong in his tenure as President on top of terminal approval ratings and so far has managed to come out the other end relatively unscathed. He may not be the smartest man or even a good speaker, but he has been up to this point, the closest thing to untouchable this side of Elliot Ness.

With all of that said, Bush finds himself under siege. He is under siege by his own party, Democrats, the AARP and atheists. With unanimous court rulings coming down on the Schiavo appeals, he can't even get a break from the same Supreme Court that gave him his start in the 2000 election. Alas, this last attempt to take his political capital for a spin may just have taken the Bush train dangerously off track.

Not that he has the time, but if Bush ever watched his fictional counterpart on NBC's "The West Wing," he would have known that the Schiavo case was only worth a meeting and maybe some polling to see what public reaction would be to his involvement. The fictional President Josiah Bartlett (played brilliantly by Martin Sheen) would have handed the Schiavo case over to a senior counsel member and let that be it. Even if Bush and the Republicans had been successful in their attempt to keep Terri Schiavo alive, it would have publicly been seen as the administration and Congress spending valuable time - and tax payers' money - on a situation and person that didn't warrant it.

In the meantime, gas prices continue to skyrocket out of control - the national average is $2.11 a gallon - and people are slowly but surely distancing themselves from Bush's Social Security plan, while the economy seems to be going nowhere but south. During a campaign, the public will become concerned with whatever their candidate says they should be concerned about. After the smoke clears and the pomp and circumstance is through, the people care about themselves - and if they have any reason to believe their needs aren't being taken care of, things get real ugly, real quick.

In the end, the American people don't really care if Iraq has democratic elections and they don't care about saving the life of someone who supposedly doesn't want to live and is in a vegetative state anyway. The public cares about getting their money should they be fortunate to be able to retire and they care about sons/daughters, mothers/fathers and friends/family dying on foreign soil at the hands of those they are supposed to be helping. Lastly, the people care that it takes three or four more dollars to pay for a week's worth of gas.

If Bush wants to stop the bleeding, he'd better start caring about those things as well. The alternative is suffering second term shell shock and a being trapped on a runaway train quickly running short on political capital. Oil prices being as high as they are, it would be a harsh turn of karma if Bush's administration ran out of gas just months out of the gate wouldn't it?

ELMER GANTRY RIDES TO THE RESCUE

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

I was momentarily surprised last weekend to discover what had crawled out from under its rock down in Florida, but after a New York minute's worth of thought it made perfect sense. The Schiavo case had become a sad sick circus, so why shouldn't Randall Terry be the ringmaster? As the biggest camera whore in the Troglodyte Right, it was almost predestined that he would show up.

Listening to National Public Radio "get it wrong" last Saturday on "Weekend Edition" when they identified him merely as the "family spokesman" reminded me that it really is true - those who forget history are doomed to repeat it.

I first saw Randall Terry during the "Holy Week of Rescue" back in 1989 when he and the morons of his "Operation Rescue" blockaded the Feminist Women’s Health Center here in Los Angeles, forcing it to close operations despite the efforts of a lot of good people - myself and SWMBO (though we hadn’t met yet then) included - who put their bodies between the clinic’s patients and the deluded fools of what I have since come to see as The American Taliban, aka The Christian Right.

If there is a "leader" of that movement worthy of the mantle of being the new Elmer Gantry, Randall Terry is the guy. Over the four years his Operation Rescue terrorized women across America, over 40,000 people were arrested in his demonstrations outside abortion clinics, most notably in Wichita Kansas over a long summer later in 1989.

As a writer of fiction, I wouldn't dare make up a biography like Randall Terry's. His grandmother was a civil rights activist and his aunts were strong feminists, one of whom would later serve as spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of Rochester, N.Y. She would later note with intentional irony that he was raised at the knees of feminists.

As a teenager Terry played a mean guitar and piano, and was a major local consumer of marijuana. Planning to become a rock star, he dropped out of high school and headed west. Several months later, he had his religious epiphany in a diner outside Galveston, Texas. Returning to Rochester, he began talking of God and hellfire, and selling used cars. Enrolling in a Bible school in the early 1980s, he met his wife, Cindy. They talked of serving as missionaries in Central America.

After a vision of using civil rights tactics to save the unborn, Terry began his operation in Binghamton, New York, in 1986. Among his most avid followers there was James Kopp, who would be a trusted lieutenant in the movement when they landed on the American political map with a series of demonstrations in Atlanta in the summer of 1988 where both were imprisoned for 40 days. Ten years later, Kopp was charged in the murder of a doctor who performed abortions in Buffalo, N.Y., who he killed from ambush, shooting the doctor in his home. When he was finally caught several years later after being hidden in the United States, Canada and France by movement supporters, Kopp pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.

There is additional evidence suggesting that Randall Terry and Operation Rescue may have provoked violence at abortion clinics, including the murder of an doctor and an assistant at a clinic in Pensacola, Florida in 1990.

At an anti-abortion rally in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on August 16, 1993, Terry declared that, "Our goal is a Christian nation... We have a biblical duty, we are called by God to conquer this country. We don't want equal time. We don't want pluralism.... Theocracy means God rules. I've got a hot flash. God rules." Two years later he declared, speaking of doctors who perform abortions, "When I, or people like me, are running the country, you’d better flee, because we will find you, we will try you and we will execute you."

Not only was Terry opposed to abortion, but to family planning in general. He once described Planned Parenthood's founder, Margaret Sanger, as a "whore" and an "adulteress." He also opposed and divorce, writing in his 1995 book The Judgment of God, that "Families are destroyed as a father vents his mid life crisis by abandoning his wife for a 'younger, prettier model.'" Seemingly unaware of the irony, Terry's fall from grace began later in 1995, when he divorced his wife of 20 years, Cindy, and married a much younger woman who had been his housekeeper. The pastor of his church - the Landmark Church of Binghamton, N.Y. - unceremoniously tossed him out when he divorced his wife.

On March 4, 1998, Terry was named in a lawsuit that sought to force anti-abortion leaders to pay for damages caused in clinic attacks, filed by the National Organization for Women (NOW) under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act. Terry settled with NOW out of court, agreeing to a permanent injunction against any future actions against clinics, which many took as the end of Randall Terry.

On November 8, 1998, Terry filed for bankruptcy in an effort to avoid paying massive debts owed to women's groups and abortion clinics that had sued him. Terry's use of the bankruptcy laws to avoid paying the judgments against him was what prompted Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) to propose amendments to each of the bankruptcy "reform" bills to specifically prevent abortion opponents from using the bankruptcy code to escape paying court fines. This year, with a 55-45 majority in the Senate, the Republicans defeated the Schumer Amendment that had stalled action on bankruptcy "reform" in 2002 and 2003 when anti-choice House Republicans refused to vote for a bill containing this provision.

Following his bankruptcy, Terry solicited donations from the True Believers, declaring on his website that "The purveyors of abortion on demand have stripped Randall Terry of everything he owned." Unsurprisingly, he failed to mention that the donations would be used to pay for his new $432,000 house in Florida - where he had moved to take advantage of the same "homestead protection law" O.J. Simpson has used to avoid paying civil judgement against him. Terry's explanation was that he wanted a home where his family would be safe and where "we could entertain people of stature, people of importance. I have a lot of important people that come through my home. And I will have more important people come through my home." The same month he paid the deposit on his new home, a court ruled that Mr. Family Values "was not paying a fair share of child support" to his ex-wife for their four children.

Like the proverbial bad penny, Randall Terry resurfaced last summer in Ponte Vedra Beach in northern Florida, where he had formed a new organization, The Society for Truth and Justice, to campaign against homosexuality after his adopted son had outed himself that Spring as being gay. His first campaign was against the U.S. Supreme Court's 6-3 decision striking down anti-sodomy laws, launching an "Impeach the Twisted Six" campaign with a rally in Jacksonville on August 9, 2004.

Thus, it really isn’t a surprise that this camera and microphone hound is where he is. Terri Schiavo's father Bob Schindler, announced in February that "Our family asked Randall Terry to come, and we gave him carte blanche to put Terri's fight in front of the American people. He did exactly what we asked, and more. Randall organized vigils and protests, he coordinated the media, he helped us meet with Governor Bush." In fact, "Terri's Law" signed by Gov. Jeb Bush last October 21 might better be known as "Terry’s Law", memorializing Randall Terry's key role in mobilizing fundamentalists to pressure the Governor and the legislature to intervene in the Schiavo case.

Over this past week, many commentators have said that the lesson of the Schiavo case is that one should be certain to have a living will on file. If Randall Terry and his like-minded troglodytes of the Christian Right have their way, even this won't be any good.

In the 1970s, when living will legislation first gained support, the anti-abortion movement was adamantly opposed to these demands for "death with dignity." The National Right to Life Coalition states on its website that "living wills are used to condition public acceptance of assisted suicide, mercy killing, and euthanasia." Though the religious extremists lost this fight in the 1980s, Schiavo's case has re-energized the movement's opposition to living wills, in the guise of opposition to euthanasia and assisted suicide.

Fr. Frank Pavone, the director of Priests for Life, which is an extremist anti-abortion group involved in the Schiavo case, has called living wills "unnecessary and dangerous for patients, doctors and society." In an article in the Baptist Press News on October 20, R. Albert Mohler, Jr. declared that the Schiavo case is proof "that the culture of death is gaining new ground and that what has been styled as 'voluntary' euthanasia is now turning into involuntary euthanasia."

Republicans in state legislatures have been working hard to overturn the authority for living wills. Legislation currently before the Wisconsin Senate allows doctors, nurses, pharmacists and other medical personnel who morally disagree with the guidelines regarding feeding and hydration tubes to ignore living wills and advance directives. This legislation has already passed the Republican-controlled Assembly and is likely to pass the Republican-controlled Senate. Of course, in Republican fundamentalist cloud-cuckoo land, it will then be perfectly all right for them to pass versions of the Texas legislation Governor George W. Bush signed, allowing hospitals to pull the plug when your bank account and insurance are exhausted.

In Elmer Gantry's America, you only ever get the salvation you pay for.

THE NEW CRUSADES

By: Xaivier Martin

When President Bush first began his seriously lobbying for "faith-based" initiatives in 2002, I thought to myself, "He's obviously catering to his base of evangelicals and conservative Christians." I figured a few small provisions would get through, but nothing major, because with all the religious ranting and raving, the U.S. is still steeped in a strong belief in individual rights and religious freedom.

Next, Bush moved his domestic policy of protecting the homeland to a foreign policy of liberating nations under tyrannical and volatile rule in the interest of "spreading democracy." The need to hunt down Al Qaeda and Osama Bin Laden became the need to oust Saddam Hussein and has now become the need to establish an Iraqi Democracy. Being the person I am, I'd like to believe in Bush's desire to do the right thing and help those in need. Still, there are two glaring omissions from this "goodwill tour" that make me skeptical: 1. There are people in the U.S. (the country Bush was elected to lead) that don't know what democracy is and yet we're using armed forces to make sure another nation understands and participates in it. 2. There are people in other nations like the Sudan (genocide) and the nations of southern Africa (AIDS) who have actually asked for and could probably use the U.S.'s help a little more than the Iraqi people.

And it was with the U.S. House passage of the act allowing "faith-based" organizations to hire and fire based on a person’s religious belief that really made me stop and think. I began thinking about everything that has been going on in the last few years and how it might be connected. My conclusion: We may be looking at a modern version of "The Crusades."

The original Crusades sought to cleanse the world of heretics and spread the word of God throughout those allegedly barbaric and underdeveloped areas. Whether be it through the spreading of Democracy or empowering of faith-based groups, the New Crusade promises to be just a tumultuous and divisive for this county as its predecessor's was on the world.

The Republican agenda in the last six months has consisted of creating a democratic Iraq, spreading democracy to every unstable nation in the world, giving faith-based groups immunity in following equal rights legislation and placing the Ten Commandments and other scriptures in front of courthouses.

Meanwhile, President Bush's first bold move of domestic policy, No Child Left Behind, has proven to be as effective as a pacifist in a bar brawl. Social Security is claimed to be broke in 2041, but quite a few members of his own party want no part of Bush’s proposed extreme makeover.

In 1620, some of this country's forefathers came to the shores of Massachusetts in search of the reality of religious freedom. In 1776, the social architects of our country created an outline of a society built on reason, checks and balances, and civic responsibility; all without the mention of religion. Yet, here in the 21st Century we find ourselves being divided into those who believe in God and want the right to subject all others to their beliefs and those who don't believe and wish the U.S. to remain a secular society.

How is it that the same party that wants the government to step in and essentially endorse a religion by putting its scripture in front of public courthouses also wants the same government to stay out its gun racks, bank accounts and Social Security? And these same people will explain away any accusations of authorized religious discrimination by saying the display of these scriptures is an affirmation of their faith, not a devaluing of other faiths.

Others might suggest that this is merely the affirmation of the faith that is interwoven throughout the rituals of this country such as the Pledge of Allegiance. After all, it is clearly stated when said,"One nation, under God……" right? Well, those of you who were around during the "Red Scare" that led to the Cold War might remember that the Pledge of Allegiance did not always have the previous line of religious conviction. The "One nation, under God……" was added at the insistence of The Knights of Columbus who suggested the language would help distinguish the U.S. as a righteous and just nation as opposed to the Godless and immoral Communist state of the Soviet Union.

Public officials are elected to write and protect legislation that is created to insure the citizens of this country have every opportunity at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. They are not elected to act as a moral compass or to recommend what kind of relationship I have with my God, should I choose to have a relationship with God.

The character Sen. Vinnick (played Alan Alda) in NBC's
"The West Wing" perfectly articulated the stance of an elected official when addressing the fact that he did not regularly attend church and had not for several years: "I’ll answer any questions you have about my policies or my politics, but if you have questions about faith I suggest you go to a church."

Despite the many efforts of Republicans to suggest that our country is becoming more Godless by the minute, Faith-Based groups got $160,000,000 more from the federal government (Housing and Urban Development, Education, Labor, Justice and Health and Human Services) in 2004 than they did in 2003. Additionally, Faith-Based groups were given an additional $669 million in 2004 by the Department of Agriculture and the Agency for International Development in grants.

Still, a speech given to group of 250 religious leaders gathered at a conference organized by the White House suggests that, maybe it's not an increase in money for Faith-Based groups that President Bush ultimately wants, "Unfortunately, there are some roadblocks -- such as the culture inside government at the federal, state and local level that is unfriendly to faith-based
organizations," Bush later said. "It is said that faith can move mountains. Here in Washington, D.C., those helping the poor and needy often run up against a big mountain called bureaucracy."

Although dealing with completely different things, these words spoken over nine centuries ago sound strangely similar:

"The West must march to the defense of the East. All
should go, rich and poor alike. The Franks must stop
their internal wars and squabbles. Let them go instead against the infidel and fight a righteous war……God himself would lead them, for they would be doing His work. There will be absolution and remission of sins for all who die in the service of Christ. Here they are poor and miserable sinners; there they will be rich and happy. Let none hesitate; they must march next summer. God wills it!"

These words were spoken by Pope Urban II as a rallying cry to the Council of Clermont for what would later be known as The First Crusade. Now, Bush is far from the Pope, but summer is right around the corner.

TERRI SCHIAVO AND THE NUCLEAR OPTION

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

As we look forward to Spring in Washington D.C. and the coming battle over judicial nominations, certain things come into sharp focus through the prism of events these past two weeks.

While 82 percent of Americans believe it was inappropriate for Congress and the president to insert themselves into the Schiavo case, with 78 percent believing it was a cynical use of a desperate family for political purposes, it's not impossible to see this awful situation as having become a major opportunity now being taken advantage of by the Don of the Mayberry Mafiosi, Karl Rove.

The President set an amazing precedent last week, when he broke off a vacation for the first time since his inauguration in 2001, to fly across country and appear at the White House to sign "Terri's Law," which the Republicans were crowing was a great political opportunity to excite the party base in the Christian Right.

After a week of legal appeal after appeal being turned down by judges appointed by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, Bush #1, and Bill Clinton at all levels of the federal judicial system, "the base" is fired up and excited. From Chief Moron Rick "Man on Dog" Santorum ranting that the judges failed to follow the instructions of Congress, through every right wing shill on talk radio comparing Michael Schiavo to Scott Peterson, to "religious leaders" like Pat Robertson demonstrating they only believe literally in those parts of the Bible that serve their interests of the moment - they all seem unable to remember Christ's injunction "Judge not, lest ye be also judged" - to the pathetic fools "witnessing" outside the hospice in Pinellas, Florida, the troglodytes of the Far Right have managed to build a constituency that now believes the country has been taken over by a "runaway judiciary." As one of the protestors said, "This is a hostile takeover of our country by the judiciary."

The members of the Know-Nothing wing of crude religious demagoguery of the Republican Party have managed to publicly demonstrate they are even more politically-illiterate than most of their fellow citizens when it comes to understanding the theory of the separation of powers between the Executive, Legislative and Judicial Branches of our American government. The entire event has been a perfect example of why we need this separation of powers, a system designed specifically to deal with moments of public insanity such as we are witnessing now.

This constituency couldn't be better-timed to build public support for the next major Republican congressional initiative: packing the courts with President Bush's conservative judicial nominees by instituting the "Nuclear Option" of ending the right of judicial filibuster in the Senate. Bush practically signalled it with fireworks this past Tuesday when he commented on the refusal by 11th Circuit Court of Appeals - considered one of the most conservative Federal Appeals circuits in the country - to re-insert Terri Schiavo's feeding tube:

"I believe that in a case such as this, the legislative branch, the executive branch, ought to err on the side of life, which we have. Now we'll watch the courts make their decisions."

Let’s be clear: the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals has a majority of judges appointed by Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H.W. Bush. Even David Pryor, the controversial judge whose nomination was filibustered in the last Congress - who was given a recess appointment to this court by George W. Bush - did not dissent from the ruling.

The Republican hypocrisy on this issue, with Senator Bill "Kitten-Killer" Frist demonstrating he slept through his college history classes while in pre-med with his pontificating that he will"“restore tradition" by killing the opportunity of judicial filibusters, is clearly shown when one considers that five years ago this month - while filibustering against a judicial nominee of Bill Clinton's - Senator Bob Smith (R-NH), one of the most rock-ribbed Republican conservatives to ever sit in the Senate, said:

"If you disagree with us on the basis of why we are objecting, fine. But don't pontificate on the floor of the Senate and tell me that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States of America by blocking a judge or filibustering a judge that I don't think deserves to be on the circuit court because I am going to continue to do it at every opportunity I believe a judge should not be on that court. That is my responsibility. That is my advise and consent role, and I intend to exercise it. I don’t appreciate being told that somehow I am violating the Constitution of the United States. I swore to uphold that Constitution, and I am doing it now by standing up and saying what I am saying...

As Ed Kilgore put it this week, "In the end, the Schindlers and their crusade is ultimately becoming just another battle in the right-to-life movement's long war to force a redefinition of life and the legal protections afforded it from the moment of conception to biological death."

We need to see the events of the past week as proof that the Republicans and the Christian Right have no principles, no bedrock ideology. Their only desire is for power, and they will not let anything stand in their way, not even 82 percent disapproval of their actions by the citizens of the country. They have no "mandate" other than their own illegitimate desire.

We all need to understand that this is what the Schiavo case is really about. The legal and factual arguments being thrown out as tactical maneuvers by the anti-abortion activists and Republican politicians pursuing this issue are meaningless, because Tom DeLay, Pat Robertson, Bill Frist and George Bush don't mean them for a moment. For most of the protestors "witnessing" in support of the Schindlers - whose cause has been taken over by publicity hounds like Randall Terry and Bo Gritz - the photos they wave of Terri Schiavo (may she rest in peace soon in the arms of a God these morons have no understanding of) are just the current version of the fetus posters they brandish every other day of the year. As Republican Christopher Shays of Connecticut put it, "This Republican Party of Lincoln has become a party of theocracy."

How a private disagreement between formerly-loving family members has managed to metastasize into what could be a full-blown constitutional crisis with the potential to ultimately destroy the basic form of government that has allowed us to be the nation we are is truly mind-boggling.

The newspapers say that our representatives in the House and Senate are paying attention to the public opinion polls that show overwhelming public disapproval of this circus, and strong support for the private right of Terri Schiavo not to be put though this meatgrinder of political publicity. During this recess, when your Representatives and Senators are back home to meet the people they represent, be certain they return to Washington a week from this next Monday with a clear understanding that this Far Right coup d' etat is not what the American people want.

Enough is enough.

ONE SIZE DOES NOT FIT ALL

by: Ryan Oddey

The article you are about to read is the final piece on an interesting intellectual journey that I had over the last twenty-four hours. When I wrote the first draft of this article I had every intent of calling out certain Democrats within the party who I felt would rather bash the donkey than attack the GOP on the issues. Tim Kaine, Democratic candidate for Governor of Virginia, was to be one of my biggest targets in this article. I planned on attacking him for the things he has said about his beliefs, other Democrats, and certain issues.

However, the comments I received after I sent the first draft in for editing opened my eyes to something, and I feel that it is important to share my revelation with you.

One of the main reasons I wanted to go after Kaine was because I had been following the comments he’d made; a recent interview he’d given initially pushed me to respond. In that interview, Kaine said he felt John Kerry seemed more comfortable talking about hockey and such than he did talking about religion. Kaine went on to say that the Democrats have failed to reach out to religious voters in out country and that the Democrats needed to do so to succeed. Initially I was upset at Kaine’s approach, feeling that this was a case of if you can’t beat them, join them.

At the time what I failed to realize, and what I believe other Democrats may fail to realize, is that reaching out to the religious groups of American society is not the same thing
as becoming Republican-lite.

Many Democrats, including myself at one point, believe in a "one size fits all" approach to campaigns. As we have learned with the last two presidential elections, this does not work. The "one size fits all" approach fails to an even greater extent when you try and run a campaign like that in a statewide election like governor.

We have seen that "Blue State" candidates do not appeal to voters in certain parts of the country, and that is why we have terms such as "Southern Democrats." These Southern Democrats have developed a platform consistent with the Democratic Party while at the same time embracing the cultural values of the south, including families, religion, and other concerns that fall under moral values. This is nothing short of political Darwinism, as Southern Democrats expressed the values of their fellow citizens. This is something we non-southern Democrats need to learn - Jimmy Carter is any Democrat's vision of a true progressive, and he has never had any difficulty acting from his Baptist religion in the best sense of that.

Tim Kaine is a product of this. He is the classic Southern Democrat in the same way Jimmy Carter was and is. Yes, he may have been frustrated with the way John Kerry ran his campaign, but most Democrats were. Furthermore, Kaine observed the shortcomings of the Kerry campaign and has set himself up to not trip over the same mistakes.

Paul Waldman of the Gadflyer criticized Kaine for saying that he is a Christian who takes his marriage vows seriously. Waldman's point was that, given the public forum, any politician would make those same claims. While I agree with Waldman that any politician would say that, the problem is that Democrats have not been saying that. Kaine took the opportunity to voice what more Democratic politicians need to say - that they do share these moral values.

Democrats do not need to beat the Republicans when it comes to the political arena of morals and values, rather they need to let the public know that Democrats are as concerned with morals and values as the GOP. Simply put, we need to even the playing field. The best way to draw even when it comes to morals and values will be for candidates to say the things that Kaine has been saying, and following through with those claims.

I believe the Democratic Party has come a long way in the short time since John Kerry lost last November, but we are not finished evolving. We do not need to adopt Republican values in order to reach out to the religious base - rather we need to express that, as Democrats, we too have cultural values and we need to list what they are. Kaine is doing that, and others need to follow in his footsteps if we are to take back Congress and the White House.

Make no mistake, this is not the same thing as Joe Lieberman's ideas of Republican-Lite. Lieberman has gone out of his way to agree and promote everything proposed by President Bush, climaxing with a kiss at the State of the Union Address. That is Republican-Lite, and we do not need that.

What we do need is Tim Kaine and more people like him. The DNC realizes how important the Kaine approach is, because they have pledged 5 million dollars to his campaign. Terry McAuliffe made this pledge before his term ended, and Howard Dean followed through with the promise. Actions like that show that Dean is the right man for the DNC as he helps lead the Democratic Party into a new era, one that will see more candidates like Tim Kaine.

And the victories to match.

THE AMERICAN DELUSION - TAKE 2

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

A friend from the other side of the political spectrum and I were discussing the question of American international debt and its influence on policymaking. He commented that when Donald Trump was deeply in debt a few years ago, that he considered it a problem for his creditors, not for him. In many ways, the Bush Administration seems to think the same way as "The Donald" - but they fail to consider that there's a huge difference between an individual businessman, no matter how wealthy he is, going bankrupt and the world's most powerful state going through such an event.

In his masterful "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers", historian Paul Kennedy argued that great powers typically fail when military reach outstrips that nation's economic strength.

Recent events point in that direction for the United States. Consider:

On Thursday, March 10, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, when asked about the risks of having reserves too concentrated in one currency, told a parliamentary committee, "I believe diversification is necessary." His comment rekindled speculation in the currency market that the Japanese government - which with a total $840.6 billion in U.S. Treasury bonds holds the world's largest dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves - could shift out of dollars. The comment led to a drop in the dollar exchange rate with the yen, though the dollar recovered after the Ministry of Finance stated Japan had no plans to shift funds out of the dollar.

This latest gyration came after a downward spike in the dollar in February after the Korean central bank, which has the world's fourth-largest foreign-exchange reserves, referred in an annual report to possible diversification.

In January, speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Fan Gang - Director of the National Economic Research Institute at the China Reform Foundation - said the issue for China isn't whether to devalue the Yuan but "to limit it from the U.S. Dollar." He went on to say (in English, to be sure he was not misunderstood): "The U.S. dollar, in our opinion, is no longer seen as a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that's putting troubles all the time. So the real issue is how to change the regime from a U.S. dollar pegging to a more manageable reference...say Euros, Yen, Dollars, those kind of more diversified systems."

China now holds the second-largest dollar-denominated foreign-exchange reserves after Japan. In the past two years, China has replaced Japan as the largest trading partner of the United States.

Understanding all this depends on understanding the present situation of the current account deficit, which is an outgrowth of our biggest domestic economic problem - the shortfall of national saving. Since the First Quarter of 2002, our net national saving rate, which is the combined saving of individuals, businesses and government - adjusted for depreciation - is now at a record low of 1.5% of GDP. Because of this, the United States must import foreign savings in order to keep growing at acceptable rates. Thus, we run massive and ever-widening current account deficits to attract that foreign capital, making up for out lack of domestic savings.

As of the 4th Quarter of 2004, the current account deficit of the United States hit an all-time record of 6.3% of GDP, and the trade deficit on goods accounted for 98% of this because more and more the United States doesn't make things, at least not things the rest of the world wants to buy.

This current account deficit is a 1.8 percentage point deterioration from the 4.5% deficit announced a year earlier. This is not only a record current-account deficit for the United States, it is also a record financing burden for the rest of the world. We now require the rest of the world to buy an average of $2.9 billion of American debt - sold as Treasury Bonds - each and every business day just to keep the magic going. As a country, the United States is a family living paycheck to paycheck who has to go to the Payday Advance loan sharks every week, just to put food on the table and keep the bills paid.

This past Wednesday, March 16, the 4th Quarter 04 current account deficit was announced. On the same day General Motors announced a record earnings loss, and oil prices climbed to a record $56 per barrel.

This all comes together as results stemming from a single cause: The budget deficits run up by the Bush Administration in the past three years - now at record levels - have been crucial in pushing the national savings rate to a record lows. It is the capital inflows, and the trade deficits behind them, that are required to compensate for these budget deficits and so that a saving-short America can get the foreign aid it needs to keep on growing. This is "Big Government Conservatism" - otherwise known as "Bushonomics" - in action. We are running our own Ponzi scheme on ourselves.

The record increase in the price of oil is connected to all this. In real terms, $56 a barrel oil is a 400% increase in price from the lows of late 1998, which puts this on a par with the devastating blows we experienced in the 1970s. The sharp run-up of oil prices is the equivalent of a tax on household purchasing power that only digs the hole deeper for the already over-extended American consumer. Personally, I don't feel that bad watching SUV owners debate the question of whether to fill the tank or buy food for the family that week, but that's merely a personal feeling. In fact, as American families have to decide whether to fill the tank or buy food, this will lead to deferrals on other purchases that have kept the economy going over the past four years of the first Bush Administration. Falling demand for SUVs was reported on the business pages of the LA Times this past week. No wonder GM made the report it did - my bet is Ford and the others won't be far behind.

Of course, the Bush Administration's spin is that the rest of the world can't get enough of dollar-denominated assets because of the returns they offer in an otherwise return-starved economic environment. This is about as accurate a view of what is really what as "Saddam had WMDs" and "We're winning in Iraq."

The truth is the foreign capital pouring in at $2.9 billion a day is not the result of private investors plunging back into American assets. It is the result of policy decisions by foreign central banks. Total reserves increased by about $700 billion from year-end 2003 to year-end 2004, which implies an increase of nearly $500 billion in dollar-denominated holdings by the world's central banks. In other words, foreign central banks financed approximately 75% of America's current account deficit last year.

It is here that the Donald Trump analogy comes into play. This purchase of American debt is a bold attempt by foreign central banks to keep their dollar exchange rates from rising - thus maintaining their current account surpluses - and thus defer what could be a painfully-classic U.S. current account adjustment complete with a further decline in the dollar and sharply higher US interest rates. In other words, the central banks are providing a subsidy to American interest rates, which have allowed for such events as the drastic increase in housing value to the point where people like me are starting to remember the Real Estate Bust of 1989-90 here in California. This subsidy has been what has cushioned the blows of stagnant real wages and surging oil prices that would otherwise clobber the American consumer, and allows Bush to maintain his policy of coddling the comfortable.

When I was a teenager, I worked as a lifeguard at the local swimming pool. One thing we learned in water safety class was that our job did not include "going down with the ship." In other words, there comes a point where a would-be rescuer might have to let go of the drowning man. That is the point at which the rescuer realizes the drowning man can pull the rescuer down with him. The message that has been delivered at Davos, in Tokyo and Seoul in the past sixty days is that the central bankers are close to realizing they may have to let go of the drowning man.

The message is that the Republican's game is just about over. One by one, the Asian central banks who hold our Payday Advance checks have dropped increasingly less-subtle hints that they are saturated with dollar-denominated holdings. Korea, Japan, China, India, Malaysia, Hong Kong, and Singapore - all are coming to see these massive dollar overweights as a threat to their continued well-being.

Like Donald Trump, the standard Bush response borders on arrogance: "What choice do they have?" This comes from the presumption that we export-driven Asian economies over a barrel, that they are unwilling to accept the deterioration in export competitiveness currency appreciation might bring. This misses the key cost-benefit tradeoff - the moment when the rescuer has to decide whether or not to be dragged down by the drowning man - as the governments of these countries weigh the damage to exports against the fiscal cost of a loss on holdings of dollar-denominated assets. These are not private investors who have to worry only about themselves - these are governments who are ultimately responsible to their citizens and must inevitably think in terms of national interest. The bigger the dollar reserves, the more this cost-benefit analysis is likely to come to the policy decision of dollar diversification. And this spells the end of America's cut-rate foreign financing.

In addition to the economic news of the past two weeks, there is political news of more than passing interest. The People's Congress, meeting in Beijing, passed a law making any attempt by Taiwan to declare independence a cause for war. Bush recently declared that it is American official policy to support Taiwan in the event of a war between them and the mainland. We even got the Japanese to formally declare a national interest in maintaining the current status of Taiwan.

Consider the day that the Taiwanese declare independence. It won't be a struggle between the Chinese Navy and two American carrier battle groups in the Taiwan Straits. The Chinese in Beijing will only need to put in a call to Washington and inform the Secretary of the Treasury that they are planning to diversify their foreign exchange reserves into Euros.

The result of that move - with the Japanese, Koreans, and all the others following suit in order to protect their own national economies - will be an American economy that makes 1929 look like Good Times. Is there an American President of either party - or an American political party - that could take that sort of hit?

Taiwan independence is only one of several possible scenarios that hold this sort of outcome for the United States. The rest of the world doesn't need to draft a single soldier to bring the greatest superpower in history to its knees. As Paul Kennedy has pointed out, every Great Power going back to the Roman Empire has fallen when military reach outstrips that nation's economic strength.

YOUR ASSIGNMENT, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT...

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

The House of Representatives and the Senate went on two weeks of Spring Break this past Friday, March 18.

I was going to suggest this weekend that you be sure to find out where your Congressman is meeting with his or her constituents, and be sure to drop by and ask some real questions about the real issues we face today.

That might not be so easy to do. It turns out that your assignment, should you accept it, may well be finding a way to sneak into the meeting your representative - if they're a Republican - has decided to hold as they take a page from the President's playbook.

At his press conference this last Wednesday, Bubble Boy said he thought the Congress Critters should go back to their districts and "talk to their constituents not only about the problem, but about solutions. I urge members to start talking about how we're going to permanently fix Social Security."

As is usual, the President acts as if he never heard the word "hypocrisy." So far, Bush hasn't talked to his constituents about Social Security outside of crowds of pre-screened Republican supporters of privatization who are willing to take direction on what to say from White House advance men in a performance so obvious even the mainstream media have taken to commenting on it unfavorably in their reporting of the Bamboozlepalooza Tour. So his advice to lawmakers is that they should have discussions with voters but he shouldn't?

As usual, actions speak louder than words, and the Best CongressCritters Money Can Buy have decided to follow his example, rather than his advice. Having had some disastrous public meetings where the dialogue wasn't scripted in advance when they went home in February, House Republican Conference Chairwoman Deborah Pryce (R-Oh) and other Republican leaders are urging Congressional Republicans to hold low-profile events to avoid "March Madness." The plan is for them to stop by newspaper editorial boards, speak at Rotary Club lunches and Chamber of Commerce meetings, and other local business groups - preach to the Kool-Aid drinkers, in other words. With an invitation-only/members-only format, "there isn't an opportunity for it to disintegrate into something that's less desirable," as Sen. Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania, chairman of the Senate Republican Conference put it.

Since it would be an unlikely happenstance that anyone reading this would be a member of any of those organizations where they can get "face time" with their Critter, perhaps those of you who find out about these meetings might want to gather outside and let the rest of the world know they're happening. You might want to talk to the local media who will be dropping by (and if they don't know about the meeting, be sure to be polite and invite them over), and raise the questions that Mr./Ms. Critter sure as hell won't be bringing up inside.

Might I suggest you talk about the "nuclear option" and the coming confirmation fights over the Terrible Ten? That's the ten judicial nominations turned down in the last Congress that the President has renominated as part of his "mandate" to take the country back to 1896.

The first one up is going to be William G. Myers III, and he's an easy target, even for the reasonable Republicans. HE LIED TO THEM in his confirmation hearings last year, and again when he testified on March 1. Just in case you aren't familiar with the Rollins Case and Myers' involvement, go here (PUT IN LINK TO MY "NUCLEAR OPTION" ARTICLE HERE). Amazingly, on a 10-8 party-line vote, the Senate Judiciary Committee sent the nomination on to the full Senate for confirmation. This despite comments such as that of Senator Charles Shumer (D-NY) that "the President keeps recycling nominees like William Myers, whose words and deeds make him the most anti-environmental nominee we have ever seen." Every major environmental organization, along with civil rights, labor and Native American groups oppose Myers' nomination.

Senators of both parties traditionally dislike being lied to by nominees, especially when the lie is committed under oath, when it becomes perjury. Your Republican Senator may just surprise me and hold real "constituent meetings" during the break. If so, go and politely ask them if they intend to confirm a man to a lifetime position as a Federal Appeals Court Judge who is a known perjurer - and remind them that the perjury was committed against that august body they're a member of, the United States Senate. The Kool-Aid drinkers are going to do whatever they're ordered to, but there are responsible Republicans - not to mention most Democrats - who may not be aware of this information (feel free to copy/paste the relevant information from my article into a polite e-mail to your Senator, to be sure they "get the message"). Give them a "non-partisan" reason to protect their own house, and they just might see the light.

Bring up the "nuclear option," and remind the Republicans that the day will come again when they are the minority party (sooner rather than later, I fervently pray) and that they may well live to rue the day they let short-term advantage short circuit long-term reality.

Even such a moron as Mitch McConnell appears to have gotten the message. It's reported that McConnell is reluctant to take this step because he's aware of the long-term risk. As Majority Whip, McConnell's opinion counts and many of his fellow members would be hesitant to proceed on something this important without his approval.

It's now rumored in far-right circles that McConnell has argued in closed-door meetings that there's not a sufficient public clamor for the change. The Righties plan to raise grass-roots anger at Democratic filibusters, but you have a chance these next two weeks to let your Senator know that whoever's chanting outside their door is not "the voice of the people."

At present, there are indications that Senators McCain, Hagel, Chafee, Snowe, Collins, and Specter (we should call them the Sane Republican Caucus) are not ready to support the "nuclear option," even though as Judiciary Committee Chairman Spector has led the charge to get committee approval of the Myers nomination. This potentially leaves the thugs short of a majority.

It is CRUCIALLY IMPORTANT that you make your views known to your Senator during this recess, because Republicans close to the Senate leadership plan to force the issue when the Senate returns next month by voting to end filibusters, most likely in connection with the Myers nomination. If Senators have heard about his testimony in last year's hearings, they just might get hinky over a vote for such a scummy nominee. Remember: HE'S A PERJURER!! HE LIED TO THE SENATE!!!

This is of crucial importance, folks! The other side wants to get this over now, so the rules-change fight won't smear a Supreme Court candidate. There hasn't been a Supreme Court vacancy in 10 years, but with the current situation on the court we are going to see a Chief Justice nomination and at least two other Associate Justice nominations before 2008. The Right is looking to change the court as decisively for the next 40 years as happened with Roosevelt's nominations in 1937-40, when the Court was dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th Century.

The Right knows the importance of this fight. Richard Lessner, Executive Director of the American Conservative Union, put it clearly: "As we get closer to an anticipated opening on the Supreme Court, that creates a sense of urgency to invoke [the rules change] sooner rather than later, so we put that obstacle behind us as we move into a potential Supreme Court battle. If we're going to have a battle over a Supreme Court nominee, let's not also have a simultaneous fight over Senate rules." This past week Ed Meese, Reagan's Attorney General (and a far-far-right Republican asshole I have been at war with since 1967 when he was Alameda County District Attorney) and C. Boyden Gray - George H. W. Bush's White House counsel - said they want the Senate to move ahead with the scheme, and that incompetent moron George Will has announced that he's changed his mind on the subject after advising against the "nuclear option" two weeks ago.

NO!!

Let's make them do it out in the open, where everyone can see it and see what a difference it makes. If the "nuclear option" can be defeated next month by making Senators queasy over supporting a perjuring scumbag like Myers, it's going to be more difficult for them to do it later, because (hopefully) by then the public will be educated to the fact that this isn't some "arcane rule change" that has no effect on their lives.

Folks, we are talking about the country I will be living in for the rest of my life, and the world that my young comrade here at That's Another Fine Mess will - at a minimum - live in till he qualifies for Social Security (assuming we win that fight and it's still there for him). We are talking about The Immediately-Identifiable Future. Your life.

These two weeks are crucial. Make your voice heard. Call your Senator's local office in your state. Send an e-mail. Write a letter. Find out about any meetings and attend them - ask questions. Make absolutely certain that they can't say "I didn't know." Be like Jack Webb - "just the facts." We can win on "just the facts."

Act as if your life depends on it.

Because it does.

I Don't Like Where This is Going

By: Ryan Oddey

"Those who give up essential liberty, to preserve a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." These words were spoken by Benjamin Franklin prior to the Revolutionary War Although this statement was first uttered centuries ago, the message still stands true. The sentiment voiced by Franklin is something we should all remember when we take a look at the actions and nominations of President George W. Bush.

Mr. Bush has taken actions that may appear to preserve America?s safety through his appointments of hardliners to diplomatic positions, but this sense of security will not last as our nation goes down a long and lonely road towards isolationism. Although President Bush has claimed to be a uniter, and not a
divider, the truth is that he is the latter.

George W. Bush has divided this nation, and his recent nominations will divide the United States of America from the rest of the world. Bush is not a diplomat, Bush is not a great
leader; he is a radical right revolutionary who would rather lay the groundwork for a Republican dynasty within America instead of
rebuilding strong international ties in the hopes of a better tomorrow. The President says he is making America safer, but in the end the long term outlook of Bush international policy will raise hostility towards the United States.

The key evidence that points towards Bush?s position as a radical right revolutionary. as well as his international intentions, was most recently seen over the last few months in the form of nominations of persons for positions that they should not have. Furthermore, these nominations prove one of the most
despicable facts about President Bush, that he is a hypocrite.

On Tuesday, February 22, 2005, President Bush attended a NATO summit in Belgium where he declared a "new era of trans-Atlantic unity between the U.S. and Europe. " This sentiment was echoed by new Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in a trip she had made to Europe earlier that month. In spite of calling for stronger relations with Europe, President Bush has made policy moves that will continue to push away our neighbors around the globe.

The nomination of John Bolton to the United Nations is one glaring example of Bush?s ideology of undermining international organizations and alienating the United States from the rest of the world. John Bolton is on record saying the following: (courtesy of StopBolton.org
"[M]any Republicans in Congress--and perhaps a majority--not only do not care about losing the General Assembly vote but actually see it as a 'make my day' outcome. Indeed, once the vote is lost?? this will simply provide further evidence to why nothing more should be paid to the UN system."
The Washington Times 1998

"There is no such thing as the United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and we can get others
to go along."
1994 Global Structures Convocation, New York, NY.


"General Assembly Resolutions and international conference declarations, (such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Agenda 21, and the Millennium Declaration) are 'mind-numbing.'"
Policy Review. "Bring Back the Laxalt Doctrine," 2000.

"If I were redoing the Security Council today, I'd have one permanent member because that's the real reflection of the distribution of power in the world."
National Public Radio with Juan Williams, 2000.

"The Senate vote [on the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty] is also an unmistakable signal that America rejects the illusionary protections of unenforceable treaties."
The Jerusalem Post, 1999.

"Renouncing the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court was 'the happiest moment of my government service.'"
The Wall Street Journal, 2002.

"Support for the International Criminal Court concept is based largely on emotional appeals to an abstract ideal of an international judicial system."
Statement before the House International Relations Committee, 2000.

"We do not support the promotion of international advocacy activity by international or non-governmental organizations, particularly when those political or policy views advocated are not consistent with the views of all member states.?
Statement to the UN Conference on the Illicit Trade in Small Arms and Light Weapons in All its Aspects, 9 July 2001. This stands in stark contrast to the official policy of the United States, which is to support and strengthen the involvement of non-governmental organizations in international processes.

The only explanation for promoting a man who has made these statements to a position of international diplomacy is to let every other nation in the world know that we are not interested in working with them. If they want to work FOR US, fine, otherwise, according to Bush, we don?t need you. Even worse,
President Bush believes that taking this approach towards the United Nations will make America safer. He could not be more wrong.

Former United States Ambassador to the U.N. Richard Holbrooke was recently quoted as saying: "If we continue to under-fund, under-support, and undermine the U.N. system it will become progressively weaker and at the same time it will become
increasingly a center for hostility to the United States, a combination, a trifecta if you will, that will hurt American national security interests in many ways."

This statement is important when you consider that the deeper the wedge between the United States and the rest of the world, the less likely the rest of the world will be likely to help assist in different programs, such as the ones designed to take out terrorists and share crucial information. Thus hurting
our national security. Or perhaps we alienate enough nations to the point where they no longer want to participate in purchasing our bonds, thus harming our financial security.

America isn?t the only one that would suffer from alienating the United Nations. Holbrooke added: "A weaker U.N. is one where the human rights commission is dominated by such terrible violators as Cuba and Libya," he said. "In other words, what is wrong with the U.N. or the human rights commission, is not the core ideas that it stands for but the instances where due to lack of American engagement and leadership the institution was hijacked by states whose practices are anathema to all the U.N. stands for."

The opportunity is there for us to lead the world by means of working with every nation around the globe. Instead, President Bush has developed an agenda where the United States is trying to force the rest of the world to go yield to our will. It will not work and yet in spite of the fallacy of this plan, Bush continues to carry on with it.

The recent nomination of Under-Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz shows just how disinterested President Bush is in establishing ties with Europe. Wolfowitz gave testimony to congress prior to the war in Iraq and stated that Iraq was a nation that would be ready, willing, and able to rebuild in a short time following the war. Wolfowitz also added that Iraq would have its own funds to use for the rebuilding process. Obviously this was not true and Wolfowitz either lied to congress or was so far off in his assessment that he has no place heading the World Bank.

The war in Iraq is not the only red flag in the political history of Paul Wolfowitz. During the term of George H.W. Bush, Wolfowitz was the Under Secretary of Defense and in this position he outlined a policy that encouraged the United States to use pre-emptive force. Furthermore, he argued that the United States should act alone when necessary. How can a man with such an isolationist approach the world be tapped to lead an international organization? The bigger question, how can Bush keep thinking this approach is in the best interest of the United States?

Bush continues to follow these policies because he has surrounded himself with ex-Trotskyists, now known as the ?neocons.? These people, including Vice President Dick Cheney and World Bank Presidential Nominee Paul Wolfowitz, subscribe to the theory of permanent revolution. Although the permanent revolution theory was first developed for the Soviet Union, we can see how the Bush administration has adopted its ideals. Most notably, the concept that the United States needs to be involved in the revolution and rebuilding of other countries so that the newly rebuilt nations will match up ideologically.

Thus we see a domino theory. If we can force enough nations to adopt our ideals it will force other nations to either join in the permanent revolution or risk being left behind. It is a way to try and force the will of the rest of the world and by nature, it is a militaristic disposition. Thus we see how Cheney and Wolfowitz can be considered Trotskyists if we consider their political history, most recently, the war in Iraq.

The problem with the Trotsky approach to international relations is that it is such a huge gamble. The Soviet Union tried to force its will on other nations in the hopes that they would adopt Russian policy and it did not work. The end result was the implosion of the Soviet Union. I believe the United States could realistically face a similar outcome. For those of you who would suggest that the Soviet Union had the super power of the United States to contend with and thus conclude that since we are the lone super power left nothing should stand in our way I offer you this: China is fast becoming another super power, but I believe the continued development of the Europan Union could result in super power status. Add in the fact that the United
States continues to see its respect drop within the international community and suddenly you have a lot of countries who want nothing to do with American Policy.

This is not the fault of America, or American society, it is the sole responsibility of President Bush and his administration. They are trying to roll the dice with the rest of the world, and force them to conform to our ideals and our interests. The longer Bush tries to force his will on the rest of the world, the worse the fall out will be.

Considering what happened to the Soviet Union, it is not impossible to believe that if this policy continues for a long enough time, it could lead to revolution within the United States. Perhaps the blue states of the northeast will grow tired of being a part of a constant war machine and call for secession. It happened in the Soviet Union.

I will concede that the likelihood of secession is minute, but because it is not an impossible idea it helps illustrate just how damaging Bush policy is overseas and at home. Unfortunately, too many people see Bush as someone who went into Iraq with the sole agenda of regime change. The reality, is that Iraq was not the end of a regime, but the beginning phases of an idea destined to try and change the world and force every other nation on the planet to essentially bend to our will.

Bush does not care about the people of Iraq, he is more concerned with trying to recreate the world so that it fits his and other neoconservatives? ideals. Now that Iraq is taken care of, we are flirting back and forth with going to war with Syria or Iran. If Bush cared about the safety of the world, North Korea
would have been on the top of the list. Instead, Bush went into the Middle East, in the name of his own revolution, not freedom.

Wolfowitz, Bolton, and other American "diplomats" are just pieces in the puzzle that is beginning to take shape. The sooner we all wake up and realize exactly what is going on here, the sooner we will be to ending this madness. And believe me, we need to take care of this sooner rather than later, before the United States of America becomes the next evil empire.

Bush the Visionary?

By Scott Isebrand

A revisionist history of Bush the Visionary-a narrative in which he authored Middle East democracy over liberals' objections-is being written right across the slackened faces of Democratic Party leaders.

Max Boot in the L.A. Times wrote this past week, "In 2003I wrote that the forthcoming fall of Baghdad 'may turn out to be one of those hinge moments
in history.after which everything is different..' At the time, this kind of talk was dismissed.as neocon nuttiness. Well, who's the simpleton now? Those
who dreamed of spreading democracy to the Arabs or those who denied that it could ever happen?"

Jeff Jacoby in The Boston Globe notes, "The Axis of Weasel is crying uncle.." He quotes Richard Gwyn of the Toronto Star: "It is time to set down in type the most difficult sentence in the English language.. It is this: Bush was right." Jacoby continues: "Claus Christian Malzahn in the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel: 'Could George W. be right?' And Guy Sorman in France's Le Figaro: 'And if Bush was right?' And NPR's Daniel Schorr in The Christian Science Monitor: 'The Iraq effect? Bush may have had it right.'
And London's Independent, in a Page 1 headline on Monday: 'Was Bush right after all?'"

The Visionary Bush is just a golden calf. Don't be misled by the rhetorical jabs-"Well, who's the simpleton now?" "Was Bush right after all?" They beg
more honest questions: Simplistic about what? Bush was right about what? Boot, Jacoby and other Bush hagiographers would have us believe that opposition to the invasion of Iraq was based on pessimism about democracy in the Middle East. That's unfair and false. Bush (and Tony Blair in Britain) peddled liberaion as a sorry second-choice excuse for invasion only after first insisting on a dubious al-Qaeda-Iraq link (quickly proved false and
doubted all along by the intelligence community) and the imminent use of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (months ago deemed non-existent by the
Administration's own inspectors).

David Brooks in The New York Times takes a different tact. Instead of Bush, he gives us Wolfowitz, "the man who's been vilified by Michael Moore and the
rest of the infantile left .." Brooks is right that Wolfowitz has been misunderstood by some commentators, mostly on the left. He's right that
Michael Moore vilified him. (So what? The Swift Boat Vets vilified John Kerry, too. The Swift Boat Liars for Bush weren't journalists striving for
objectivity; they're gross propagandists, and no one ever said Fahrenheit 9/11 was investigative journalism-it's polemic. Relax, Brooks. This is just
how the game's been played since the rightwing started pushing Clinton-killed-Vince-Foster "documentaries." They started it; now they need
to take it as well as they dish it out.)

But in the run-up to the invasion, Wolfowitz was seldom if ever cited for any grand ideals he had about democracy in the Middle East. He was cited by
invasion-backers largely for his preemptive strike doctrine. Again, it was the rationale of imminent attack and bran, crass, deceitful attempts to
link Iraq with 9/11 that were offered, not a great vision for spreading democracy at gunpoint.

THE MYTH AND REALITY OF ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER - TAKE 3: ARNOLD'S SCRIPT IS NOW MULTI-COLOR

By: Thomas McKelvey Cleaver

In the movie business, once a script is put into production, additional rewrites are identified by having the changed pages printed on different color paper. The more "multi-hue" the script, the more rewrites there have been; lots of different colors generally denote a project that's in trouble, though no one will ever admit it until the movie tanks on opening weekend.

Right now, Arnold Schwarzenegger's script for turning California Republican has at least four different colors in it - a sign of trouble, whether Der Governator admits it or not.

The California Nurses Association, which took the lead in opposing Arnold over his refusal to enforce the law about nurse staffing levels, and has been Big Boy's most tenacious opponents, has now been joined by the rest of the "special interests" who are bringing a blend of demonstrations and legislative strategy, with the result that Big Boy now has to defend his agenda on multiple fronts.

The Nurses won a big victory in court this past Monday when a judge declared Arnold didn't have the power to set aside the staffing regulations adopted in the legislation. As Richard Holober, Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of California put it, "The nurses have shown other unions and other opponents of the governor's policies that when he is wrong, you have to confront him and stick to the issue. And you can beat him."

Arnold's coast-to-coast tour through the checkbooks of the far right ended this past Wednesday night at the Century Plaza Hotel here in Los Angeles, where for $89,200 a couple, "the people of Kaleeforneeya" could obtain a private briefing on the issues from Der Governator himself. More than 1,000 demonstrators from The California Nurses Association, the teacher's unions and firefighters unions were outside on Century Boulevard, with protestors arriving in top hats and tiaras to point out who it was Arnold was meeting with on the inside.

In recent days, Schwarzenegger has been forced to mention the protestors in his speeches, while his audience has had to push past them to get in to see him.

Recent public opinion polls show a significant drop in public support for Schwarzenegger's proposed propositions when mention is made of the $70 million cost of the special election he is forcing through.

At the same time, Lance Olson, general counsel of the California Democratic Party, is representing the watchdog group TheRestofUs.org in a lawsuit to terminate the unlimited campaign contributions Arnold's been raising in contravention of state campaign financing law that decrees any campaign committee controlled by the governor is limited to a $22,300limit per donor. The committee - Citizens to Save California - claims independence, yet works closely with the governor and his staff. The chairman is long-time rightwing anti-tax activist Joel Fox.

In the meanwhile, legislative committees are holding hearings about the governor's "press releases" masquerading as TV news clips, a tactic he borrowed from the White House.

The same day, California Treasurer Phil Angelides launched his campaign for Governor, saying, "Governor Schwarzenegger and I have a different view of the world, two very different visions of what makes society strong." Angelides has already raised about $12.5 million for the effort. Unlike Arnold, who can read his lines with conviction whatever they say, Angelides actually knows what he's talking about when it comes to facing up to the fiscal problems confronting the state.

Schwarzenegger is no longer the only celebrity politician in the fight. In a speech last weekend to the Foundation for Taxpayer and Consumer Rights (a meeting that only cost $350 per person), Warren Beatty put it perfectly when he said of Der Governator: "Arnold: be the action hero I know you can be. If you're looking for something to terminate, terminate your dinners with the brokers of Wall Street. Terminate your dinners with the lobbyists of K Street. Terminate collecting out-of-state right-wing money. Terminate the $70 million special election you want to hold to divert the public's attention away from the budget crisis."

The sad thing is, if Arnold Schwarzenegger had half the courage his action-hero characters have displayed on-screen, he had the political capital to come in and actually change things for the better. Instead, he has displayed the lack of courage one associates with a demagogue who knows his only power is the power to fool the public. He's raised more money in a year than "money machine" Grey Davis raised in three years, and changes his policies weekly depending on which group has contributed how much to his campaign, all the time proclaiming himself an "outsider" who will never be "a politician.

Arnold's about to learn that the Three Rules of Hollywood work in politics, too: Nobody. Knows. Anything. His popularity hasn't dropped yet into free-fall, but his opponents have slowed him down considerably while he scrambles to find the script rewrite that will solve his problems. That's something you're supposed to have accomplished before you greenlight the movie. As in the movie business, we'll all know the answer on Opening Weekend.