"Those at peril are completely divorced from those in power.  It's 'Patriotism Lite' -- you put a sticker on your SUV."- Mark Shields on the regime's wars

For every $1 we spend on education in this country, we spend $6 on the defense industry.  Are we really six times more dedicated to killing than educating?  - A rhetorical question from John Cory

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness." -  John Kenneth Galbraith

We are living in a nation run by overprivileged alcoholic frat boys and power-mad thugs.  - Mark Morford column

At the rate things are going in American politics, next week will bring ads by the Noah's Ark Veterans for Truth claiming that the two Democrats on board were actually stowaways, whom God had intended for drowning but who snuck on cross-dressed as gayals. -  Lousiville Courier-Journal editorial

We're now in the age of Bush, Cheney and DeLay, small men committed to the concentration of big bucks in the hands of the fortunate few.  -  Bob Herberton on FDR and the current regime (more)

The unholy combination of theocracy and plutocracy that now rules this country is, in fact, enabled by dumb liberals. -  Molly Ivins column

A large segment of the Christian community and its leadership think nothing of rationalizing war in the name of a religion that prides itself on the teachings of the Prince of Peace, who instructed us that blessed are the peacemakers - not the warmongers.  - Congressman Ron Paul's excellent  speech

The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. - Benjamin Franklin

I have recently been examining all the known superstitions of the world, and do not find in our particular superstition one redeeming feature. They are all alike, founded upon fables and mythologies. - Thomas Jefferson's letter to Dr. Woods

Millions of  innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion?  To make one half the world fools and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. - Thomas Jefferson

What influence in fact have ecclesiastical establishments had on Civil Society? In some instances they have been seen to erect a spiritual tyranny on the ruins of the Civil authority; in many instances they have been seen upholding the thrones of political tyranny; in no instance have they been seen the guardians of the liberties of the people. Rulers who wished to subvert the public liberty may have found an established Clergy convenient auxiliaries. A just Government instituted to secure & perpetuate it needs them not.  - James Madison, 1785

With the additional "off the budget" $81 billion the regime is demanding, its wars have cost us over $300 billion.

The UN Human Rights Commission reports that increasing numbers of children in Iraq do not have enough food to eat and more than a quarter are chronically undernourished.   Malnutrition rates in children under five have almost doubled since the regime's attack.

The ripublicans even refuse to go after rich tax cheats.  The ripublican congress was told that 78% of known investment partnership tax cheats are not even asked to pay because there are not enough tax collectors to go after them. Congress and the Bush administration rejected the request by the IRS Oversight Board, a citizen panel Congress created, for extra money to pursue some of these tax cheats and stop about 1 percent of the $311 billion in estimated annual tax cheating.   They do go after some tax cheats- the working poor are eight times more likely to be audited than millionaire investors in partnerships even tho audits show 2/3 of the poor get either their full refund or more than they sought..    And there's more:

In the late '90s, a crooked banker gave the IRS records on 1,600 criminal tax cheats who used his Cayman Islands bank. The Justice Department prosecuted 49 of them, but the other 1,551 were not even asked to pay, lawyers for some of them say.

Two billionaires in New York, the art dealer Alec Wildenstein and his former wife, Jocelyn, testified under oath in their divorce that for 30 years they never filed a tax return. They have not been prosecuted.

Corporate income tax laws reward companies that move jobs offshore, allowing them to earn untaxed profits as long as the money stays offshore.

Widespread cuts in health insurance and pensions for the rank-and- file are driven by a special law that lets top executives defer paying taxes for years, in a way that adds 35 percent to the cost of their bloated pay.

The 2001 Bush tax cuts included a stealth tax increase on the middle class and upper-middle class that will cost them a half trillion dollars in the first 10 years and, for 35 million families, wiping out part or all of their Bush tax cuts.  The stealth tax boost on people making $30,000 to $500,000 was explicitly used to make sure that the super rich would get their entire Bush tax cuts.

A California couple who make $75,000 to $100,000 and have two children face a 97 percent chance of losing part of their Bush tax cuts to this stealth tax increase and overall will lose 42 percent of their Bush tax cuts by next year.  If your child becomes seriously ill, Congress, under this same law, will raise your income taxes if you spend more than 7.5 percent of your income trying to keep your child alive.

Since 1983, under a plan devised by Alan Greenspan, Americans have paid $1.8 trillion more in Social Security taxes than have been paid out in benefits, money that is used to finance tax cuts for the super rich while robbing the middle class of their capacity to save.  A family earning  $50,000 this year will have about $1,500 of its money funneled to the super rich because of the Greenspan plan.

Since 1993, the income tax burden on the 400 highest-income Americans has been cut 40 percent when measured the way that President Bush prefers, which is by counting how many pennies out of each dollar go to income taxes. In 1993 the top 400 paid 30 cents out of each dollar in federal income taxes. By the end of the Clinton administration in 2000 they were down to 22 cents. Under Bush, their burden is less than 18 cents. Everyone else felt their tax bite rise to 15 cents on the dollar from an average of 13 cents.

From an excellent  William Rivers Pitt piece on the utter hypocricy of ripbulicans:

Republicans, party of the 'Culture of Life,' have not one word to say about Sun Hudson.  Hudson was a five-month-old baby born in Texas with a genetic disorder that required him to be sustained on machines. Thanks to a law signed by then-Governor Bush in 1999, Texas hospitals are allowed to remove patients from machines if they deem there is no hope, and if the patient's family cannot afford to sustain care. Sun Hudson was removed from his machines two weeks ago, over the thunderous outrage of his mother, and he died. Congressional Republicans were nowhere to be found when the life left his little body.

Republicans, party of Tom DeLay, have not one word to say about DeLay's staggering double standard in this matter. In 1988, DeLay's father was injured in an accident and left in a condition quite similar to that of Mrs. Schiavo. DeLay sat in private counsel with his family, heard the verdict of the doctors that his father would never recover, considered the stated wishes of his father that he did not want to be left to live sustained by machines should such a thing come to pass, and decided to let the man pass.  Had a mob of self-righteous Congressional Democrats tried to batter their way into the decision-making process of the DeLay family in 1988, Tom would have likely attacked them with his bug-extermination equipment, and he would have  been fully justified in doing so.

Ball all of that up with the fact that these are the same cretins whose respect for life in all forms does not extend to the 200,000 or so human beings, a number that includes 1,528 American soldiers, whose lives have been snuffed out in this illegal Iraq war. Add to the pile the tens of thousands of arms, legs, faces and hopes that have been blasted away in this thing, and you are left contemplating the Humvee-sized hole that sits in the center of any 'Culture of Life' argument they would dare put forth.

Some of the fine professing christian's other misdeeds:

• Accepted trips from corporations and later helped kill legislation they opposed
• Accepted trips from the lobbyist for a foreign government in violation of House rules
• Helped sweatshops in the Mariana Islands at the behest of a lobbyist
• Promised a role in drafting legislation to a corporate donor
• Tried to coerce a Congressman for a vote on Medicare
• Allegedly used corporate money given to his PAC to finance Texas campaigns in violation of state law
• Used Homeland Security resources in a dispute with Democrats in Texas
• Diverted funds from a children's charity for lavish celebrations at the Republican convention
• Threatened retaliation against interest groups that don't support Republicans
• Stacked the House Ethics Committee with representatives who have contributed to his legal defense fund
• Crippled the effectiveness of the House Ethics Committee by purging members who had rebuked him
•  Pushed for a rules change for the House Ethics process that paralyzed the panel
• Sought a rule change that would have no longer "required leaders to step aside temporarily if indicted"

Meanwhile, Bush is spending $1.5 billion of our tax money (probably by giving it to hypocritical bible thumpers) to persuade more Americans to have happy married lives, but plans to keep gay Americans from having happy married lives.

The ripublicans alledge the Democrats' use of a filibuster to block jtheir idiot judicial nominees is an unconstitutional infringement of their idiot president's nominating power.  If that's the case, they are guilty also.     They used the filibuster against Abe Fortas and used other mean to prevent even a committee hearing on nominees-  they refused to allow a floor vote for Clinton's 24 appellate court nominees and refused to allow 22 of those 24 even the minimal courtesy of a committee hearing.  More infamous, then senator John ASScroft blackballed White.

The ripublicans are true hypocrites:  In March, Trent Lott, R-Miss.,  blocked a Senate vote on the nominee to head a base closing commission.  Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby are blocking Bush's choice for assistant secretary of the Army.  (source)

What's really disturbing is that they aren't happy that 10 of the 13 federal appeals courts and the the Supreme Court are already stacked with ripublican stoges- not to mention that 95% of Shrub's nominees were OKed by Democrats.

The nuclear option is so bad even the regime's corporate supporters are balking- they fear it will interfere with enacting of the rest of their agenda.  (more)

Then there's the religious idiots who say the Democratic are threatening to "filbuster people of faith."  What utter bullshit!  A Molly Ivins column best sums up the situation:  "It's a joke that the right wing claims it is against  "judicial activists." What they want are judicial activists who agree with them. These people don't want to govern, they want to rule."

On 5/5/05 the regime announced their decision to strip protections for National Forest roadless areas.  They will now allow their corporate sponsors to rape 58.5 million acres of National Forests.   This is in spite of over 1.75 million comments against the proposal during the public comment period.  See how much roadless area in your state will be raped at http://www.ourforests.org/local/.

The regime's Forest Service is plotting to remove National Monument status from Giant Sequoia groves in the Sierra Nevadas.  (more)

Weaking the Endangered Species Act with loopholes in the (as always) deceptively-named “Critical Habitat Enhancement Act,” (H.R. 1299).  (details)

Plans to drill for oil and gas in 100% of the Teshekpuk Lake area, one of the most sensitive and important wetlands of the Western Arctic. (details)

Revised  the Sierra Nevada Framework--a management plan for 11 national forests in California--  to allow the logging of large, fire-resistant old-growth trees in remote areas while removing fewer small trees and less brush near mountain communities. (details)

Plans to go ahead and offer for leasing wide areas of Otero Mesa in southern New Mexico suspected of holding reserves of oil and gas despite of opposition by New Mexico's governor and despite the fact that environmental groups have sued and sued again to gain access to the documents the BLM
relied on to reach its decision.  (details)

Plans to OK more oil and gas leases in the northwest corner of Alaska-  a 23.5-million-acre area of rare habitats and wildlife.  (details 1, 2)

In justifying it's mecury rule, the regime's ingored and tried to hide an EPA report which showed as $2 billion in yearly benefits from cutting mercury pollution just in the Southeast — 40 times the value projected publicly for the entire nation.   (details)

H.R. 235, a measure introduced by Rep. Walter Jones (R-N.C.), would allow clergy to endorse candidates from the pulpit and still retain a tax exemption of their house of worship.

Tucked away in the 2,000-page budget is a "Sunset Commission" provision the regime can and will use to eliminate every federal program it disagrees with.   (from the 4/21/05 Rolling Stone)

The EPA is promoting a policy that would allow sewage operators to dump filtered but not treated sewage into rivers.  The stuff will contain viruses, parasites, toxic chemicals and other pathogens found in sewage.

Idiot senator Bill Frist  joined a cabel of other religious right wingnuts at 4/24/05 nationally televised "The Filibuster Against People of Faith." event that attacked federal courts as hostile to christians.  Frist is pandering to these zealots in preparation for his run for the presidentancy in '08.

Meanwhile Florida Judge George remains under police protection from the right wingnuts the regime is encourging to attack judges who disagree with them.  On 5/1/05 Pat Robertson weighted in by saying these judges pose a more serious threat than "a few bearded terrorists who fly into buildings."

"C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action."
....
"The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran."

Per a Robert Reich piece,  just 110,000 jobs were added in March, not nearly enough even to keep up with population growth. Meanwhile, the wages and benefits of non-supervisory workers -- about 80 percent of the American workforce -- continue to drop, in real terms.  A 4/12/05 NY Times article reports that, after adjusting for inflation, wages for the average worker fell in '04 - the first such drop in nearly a decade.  The Bureau of Labor Statistics' measure of nonsupervisory private-sector workers (80 percent of the labor force) fell 0.5 percent last year, after inflation. A broader measure, the employment cost index, which includes supervisors, managers and most government workers, dropped 0.9 percent.  But the rich continue to profit- the Economic Policy Institute reports that the pay for the top 5 percent rose an average of 1 percent with some gaining much more.

As always, it's the employers that are profiting at the expense of the "little people".  Since 2001 productivity growth has averaged 4.1% a year while wages and benefits have risen only about one-third as fast- 1.5% a year.   And it's only going to get worse-  Harvard economist Richard B. Freeman predictes that new competition from millions of Chinese, Indian and other Asian workers entering the global labor market will increasingly pull down American wages.

The 4/11/05 LA Times reports that for the first time in 14 years, the American work force has in effect gotten an across-the-board pay cut.    At the same time corporate profits have hit record highs.

And inflation- even not considering gas prices- is rising.  Consumer prices jumped 0.6 percent in March, the biggest inflation surge in five months.  It's at 4.3% for the first 3 months of '05-  a full percentage point above the 3.3 percent rise in prices for all of 2004.   Both the inflation rate of the last quarter and the last year are running far above the rate of hourly wage growth, which has been approximately 2.5 percent over both periods. The amount of income lost to falling real wages over the last year is equal to the meager gains from job growth, which means that real wage income has been virtually flat for the last year.

Paul Krugman wrote that two-thirds of Americans polled by Gallup say that the economy is "only fair" or "poor" and 59 % think it's getting worse.  Over the last three years profits grew at an annual rate of 14.5% after inflation, the fastest growth since World War II.    Over the same period wage and salary income grew less than in any other postwar recovery - less than a tenth as fast as profits.

The Economic Policy Institute reports that pre-tax incomes for middle-class families of every type (children, young singles, seniors, single mothers) are down 3.4% during just the first 3 years of the regime's rein.    After-tax income is down for all middle-class groups except single mothers.  (source)

In related news, the Marines missed their monthly recruiting goals in January through March for the first time in a decade, and the Army, the Reserve and the Guard also fell short of their needs- the Army by 6%, the Reserve by 10% and the Guard by 25%.  Meanwhile the architects of the Iraq invasion- the PNAC is demanding  at least 25,000 more troops each year over the next several years.

Unable to fill their ranks, the Army and the Marines plan to increase the number of recruiters and target more high schoolers-  especially those least likely to go to college.   As a part of the regime's No Child Left Behind law, recruiters must be granted access to schools and personal info on students.    (1, 2)

A very good NY Times article details how far the regime's recruiters will go to get cannon fodder for their wars.  A 21-year-old man, fresh from a three-week commitment in a psychiatric ward was signed up even after his man's parents told them he had bipolar disorder.  Despite an Army investigation, the recruiters were not punished and were still working in the area.  Said another recruiter, "The problem is that no one wants to join," the recruiter said. "We have to play fast and loose with the rules just to get by."   I can't imagine why folks don't want to join!.    Several other recruiters told of concealing mental-health histories and police records. They described falsified documents, wallet-size cheat sheets slipped to applicants before the military's aptitude test and commanding officers who look the other way.   One recruiter said he has been ordered to conceal police records and medical conditions.   When he and others resisted such orders, superiors threatened to ruin their careers.

Then there's the CBS piece on a high-schooler who recorded two recruiters advising him on how to cheat to get in. One recruiter had told him how to create a diploma from a nonexistent school, while another recruiter helped him buy a product to hide use of marijuana and psychedelic mushrooms.

In a memo obtained by the ACLU, regime Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez authorised interrogation  techniques that violated the army's own field manual and and international law.  The ACLU has a lawsuit pending against Sanchez for his direct responsibility for the torture and abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib where he was in command.

The regime is getting some well deserved heat over its practice of sending prisioners to other countries to be tortured.  Just three examples:

• Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German, was pulled from a bus on the Serbia-Macedonia border in December 2003. He was sent to Afghanistan, where he was beaten and drugged. After five months, he was released without being charged. German authorities have stated that al-Masri's story checks out.
• Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian, was detained at an airport in New York two weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He was sent to Syria, where he was beaten. He was released a year later  without being charged.
• Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born Australian, was arrested in Pakistan several weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He was moved to Egypt, Afghanistan, and later to Camp Delta at Guantánamo. He says he was beaten and subjected to electric shocks during detention.  He was released after 40 months without being charged.

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The Independent of 3/27/05 reports prisoners were "systematically and intentionally mistreated" at a regime military base in Mosul, culminating in the death of one.  As usual, nobody was punished over the abuse.  An investigation by a US officer in 1/04 said "There is evidence that suggests the 311th MI personnel ... engaged in physical torture."  One soldier said troops "always harassed the hell out of detainees"; another said that at times "the detainees would get so scared they would piss themselves".   The report of the  investigation was obtained by the ACLU.      Also, a 65 year old an Iraqi scientist died while in detention in 1/04 of a  blow to the head.

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The Washington Post reports that regime intelligence officials in Iraq developed and circulated "wish lists" of harsh interrogation techniques they hoped to use on detainees in 8/03, including tactics such as low-voltage electrocution, blows with phone books and using dogs and snakes. Army investigative documents released on 4/19/05, as well as court records and files, suggest that the tactics were used on two detainees: One died during an interrogation while stuffed into a sleeping bag, and another was badly beaten.

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A former CIA contractor being tried for beating an Afghan prisoner to death plans to call former agency Director George Tenet and Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as witnesses to aid his defense that he was acting under government authority.    He also wants to but on the stand David S. Addington, counsel to Vice President Dick Cheney.  Judge Jay S. Bybee amd law professor John C. Yoo.   Bybee and Yoo are former Justice Department officials who drafted legal policy advocating aggressive interrogation techniques with detainees.  (more)

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The ACLU and Human Rights First filed a lawsuit on behalf of eight men tortured by US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The defendants are Donald Rumsfeld, Janis Karpinski, Ricardo Sanchez, and Col. Thomas Pappas, head of military intelligence at Abu Ghraib. (more)

A '04 article in the St. Petersburg Times reports:

Outback's 2,700 steakhouse managers and joint-venture partners are breaking bread with local government officials, tracking legislation and quietly donating $1.6-million of their own pay to build one of the country's biggest corporate PACs. Bigger than Boeing's, according to FECinfo.com.  Bigger than Halliburton's...

Through Oct. 13 of the current election cycle, Republicans took home 98 percent of the $452,250 that Outback's PAC donated to party committees, 97 percent of the $453,551 it spent on national, state and local candidates, and 100 percent of the $52,000 it gave to the so-called leadership PACs of top legislators.

The regime's own Defense Contract Audit Agency found that the leading U.S.contractor in Iraq, Halliburton subsidiary KBR, overcharged Iraq occupation authorities by $108 million for fuel.   Yet the regime permitted KBR to black out almost all negative references to the company in a DOD audit.  In a week, the estimated amount of the theft more than doubled to $212 milllion according to a Defense Contract Audit Agency audit (DCAA) that Henry Waxman somehow managed to obtain.  In one case, the overcharges exceeded 47 percent of the total value of one work order.   So far, the regime has prevented any meaningful congressional hearings on the theft.

A State Dept. report says Haliburton looted the $1.2 billion contract to repair Iraq's vital southern oil fields.  The new overcharges bring to $2 billion the grand total of questionable bills from Halliburton-  42% of the contract amounts.   A former Halliburton employee, Marie deYoung. said there was no effort to hold down costs because all costs were passed on directly to taxpayers. She repeatedly complained to superiors of waste and fraud.   Haliburton's response was: "We can be as dumb and stupid as we want in the first year of a war, nobody's going to care."   She has produced documents detailing alleged waste even on routine services: 50,000 dollars a month for soda, at 45 dollars a case; one million million a month to clean clothes - or 100 dollars for each 15-pound bag of laundry.  Another former employee, Mike West, says he was paid 82,000 dollars a year to be a labour foreman in Iraq, but never had any labourers to supervise. "They said just log 12 hours a day and walk around and look busy," he said. (more)

An alcoholic cousin of an aide to Ahmed Chalabi has emerged as the key source in the US rationale for going to war in Iraq.

According to a US presidential commission looking into pre-war intelligence failures, the basis for pivotal intelligence on Iraq's alleged biological weapons programmes and fleet of mobile labs was a spy described as 'crazy' by his intelligence handlers and a 'congenital liar'  by his friends.  The defector, given the code-name Curveball by the CIA, has emerged as the central figure in the corruption of US intelligence estimates on Iraq.  Despite considerable doubts over Curveball's credibility, his claims were included in the administration's case for war without caveat.

The catalogue of failures and the gullibility of US intelligence make for darkly comic reading, even by the standards of failure detailed in previous investigations. Of all the disproven pre-war weapons claims, from aluminium centrifuge tubes to yellow cake uranium from Niger, none points to greater levels of incompetence than those found within the misadventures of Curveball.

Between January 2000 and September 2001, Curveball offered 100 reports, among them the claims of mobile biological weapons labs that were central in the US evidence of an illicit weapons programme, but subsequently turned out to be trucks equipped with machinery to make helium for weather balloons.

His information was central to an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq 'has' biological weapons, and was widely used by President Bush and Dick Cheney to make their case for war.

But warnings were dismissed. Intelligence analysts who voiced concern were 'forced to leave' the unit mainly responsible for analysing his claims, the commission found. At every turn analysts were blocked by spy chiefs and their warning never passed on to policy-makers.

There's even more on this fiasco in a 4/2/05 LA Times article.

Here in America, the National Endowment for Democracy was created in the early eighties. Funded by Congress and governed by a board that includes active and retired politicians of both parties, it nevertheless calls itself a "nongovernmental" organization. Its declared mission was to support democracy per se, not any political party, but the distinction was soon lost in practice. Most of the $10.5 million handed out in Nicaragua during the elections of 1990 went to the opposition to the Sandinistas, who were duly voted out of power. In 2002, the Endowment funded groups in Venezuela that backed the briefly successful coup against President Hugo Chávez, in which
the Venezuelan Parliament, judiciary and constitution were suspended.

The day after the overthrow, which Omar Encarnación of Bard College has called a "civil society coup," the president of the International Republican Institute, which is loosely tied to the GOP and is a conduit for Endowment funds, stated, "Last night, led by every sector of civil society, the Venezuelan people rose up to defend democracy in their country." Speaking for the U.S. government, presidential press secretary Ari Fleischer stated that the coup "happened in a very quick fashion as a result of the message of the Venezuelan people." In fact, the Venezuelan people opposed the coup, and Chávez, notwithstanding his own repressive tendencies, almost immediately returned to power.

More recently Endowment contributions went to groups in Ukraine that supported presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko, who became president after fraudulent results engineered by the opposition government candidate were reversed by popular pressure. In Venezuela, the outcome was the destruction, however brief, of all democratic institutions, whereas in Ukraine the outcome was the rescue of democracy; yet in both cases the integrity of civil society, which depends on independence from governments, was partially corrupted.

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 http://www.nationalpriorities.org reports the regime wants $17.5 billion for new nuclear weapons we don't need in '06.  Here is what we can buy for that $17.5 billion:

2,170,585 people receiving health care, or
1,265,824 Head Start places for children, or
5,622,922 children receiving health care, or
86,052 affordable housing units, or
1,125 new elementary schools, or
1,853,209 scholarships for university students, or
164,705 music and arts teachers, or
215,339 public safety officers, or
16,907,852 homes with renewal electricity, or
149,705 port container inspectors.

As more and more rich people cheat on their taxes, the IRS is increasingly unable to go after them because it is so poorly funded.   "Since 1988, Congress has also cut in half the Internal Revenue Service's capacity to enforce tax laws, replacing it with extra effort to reduce audits of corporations and the rich....  On March 30, Congress was told that 78 percent of known tax cheats in investment partnerships are not even asked to pay because there are not enough tax collectors to go after them.    The IRS oversight board asked for money to go after these cheaters, but both Congress and President Bush refused. "

A recent report by the Tax Justice Network, an international group of tax experts and economists says the rich have stashed an impressive $11.5 trillion in tax havens.  A report in the 3/30/05 NY Times says the US lost more than a $250 BILLION dollars a year in tax revenue due to cheating in 20010 the vast majority of it from chiseling by businesses. (sources 1, 2 )

Data from a Molly Ivins column:

The Tax Justice Network recently reported the world's richest individuals have placed $11.5 trillion in assets in offshore tax havens to avoid paying taxes, a sum 10 times the GDP of Great Britain. The most authoritative study yet done shows that rich people clip $860 billion in coupons a year off this money.

The ratio of CEO pay to average worker pay reached 301-to-one in 2003. The average worker takes home $517 a week, while the average CEO earns $155,796, according to BusinessWeek. In 1982, the ratio was 42-to-one.

The number of long-term unemployed who are college graduates has nearly tripled since 2000. Nearly one in five of the long-term jobless are college graduates, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities reports that in previous recoveries, workers got an average of 49% of the national income gains, while corporations got 18% percent. This time, the workers are getting only 23% while the corporations are getting a whopping  44%.

A later NY Times  article reports that the NEA- the largest teachers' union- and eight school districts in Michigan, Texas and Vermont have sued the regime for its violation of a provision in their very own "No Child Left Behind"  law that says states cannot be forced to spend their own money to meet federal requirements.

What links the intelligence fiasco and the Schiavo case is the willingness of this administration and its Republican allies in Congress to argue for and undertake the most extreme and arrogant actions in the absence of credible information and arguments to support them - and in the process demonizing anyone who opposes their schemes. Waging an illegal war and trampling all over the bedrock constitutional principle of separation of powers are variations of a single syndrome, the Bush syndrome.

Whether the subject is global warming, weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, stem cell research, social security, or the Schiavo case, the Bush syndrome involves ignoring, twisting, and denying facts and reason in the interest of an extreme right ideology.

According to a USA TODAY/CNN/Gallup poll, 53% say they disapprove of Bush's handling of the Schiavo case, and, by a 2-to-1 margin, say the religious right has too much influence in the Bush administration.

Only 37 percent have a favorable opinion of the work being done by the Ripublican-controlled Congress according to an AP-Ipsos poll.  Support for the regime on the economy fell to 42% and 38% for issues like education and health care.  A whopping 58% oppose the regime's plans to get Social Security- even 54% of the young who are alledgely to benefit from the cuts disapprove.

Even DeLay's numbers are slipping in the notoriously regressive Texas area he represents- only 38% would now vote for him and a whopping 58% say they opposed his decision in the Schiavo matter according to a Zogby poll.

On  4/12/05 the BBC reported Poland is planning to withdraw all of it's troops in Iraq.   Italy wants to pull its contingent out as soon as possible.   The Netherlands and Ukraine have begun phased withdrawals of their contingents and Bulgaria wants to pull its troops out this year.  As Tom Engelhardt writes,  the "coalition of the willing" is turning into the "coalition of the wilting."

John Bolton as US ambassador to the United Nations reminds me of what a US commander in charge of the destruction of Ben Tre city said during the Vietnam War, “We had to destroy the village to save it.”

Sixty-two former American diplomats, most of whom served in Republican administrations, have signed a letter urging the Senate to reject Bolton's nomination."

In 1994, Bolton declared, "There is no such thing as the United Nations." He has also said, contemptuously, "The Secretariat building in New York has 38 stories. If it lost ten stories, it wouldn't make a bit of difference."

Pulling no punches, Bolton displays not even a pretense of diplomacy or multilateralism: "There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only power in the world and that is the United States when it suits our interest and when we can get others to go along."

As UN ambassador, Bolton would make the world a more dangerous place. Bolton spearheaded a successful campaign to prevent the Senate from ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, clearing the way for increased testing of nuclear weapons. He led both the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and the US renunciation of the International Criminal Court. Bolton hailed his announcement that Bush was taking the United States' signature off the ICC treaty as "the happiest moment" of his government service.

When asked why he opposed offering North Korea incentives to abandon its nuclear weapons program, Bolton
replied, "I don't do carrots."

In a bald-faced attack on the long-standing treaty law of the United States, Bolton wrote in a 1997 article in the Wall Street Journal, "Treaties are the 'law' only for U.S. domestic purposes. In their international operations, treaties are simply 'political' obligations."

Despite the State Department's conclusion that Iraq had not sought to purchase uranium from Niger, Bolton successfully pushed for Bush to lie about that in his pre-Operation "Iraqi Freedom" State of the Union address.

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And this from the extensive article "Bolton: The Armageddon Man"  by Tom Barry

During the 1990s, Bolton spoke out frequently in public and in Congress against the international policies of the Clinton administration. In a June 25, 1995 op-ed in the Washington Times, Bolton lambasted President Clinton for continuing the funding of "programs on international population control and environmental matters rather than fundamental economic reforms in developing countries."

A true noecon chickenhawk/warmounger, Bolton declared in 2/03 that after Iraq, "it will be necessary to deal with threats from Syria, Iran, and North Korea afterwards."

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David Corn also reports that Bolton was one of the Reagan/Bush officials who  strove to thwart and undermine investigations into Iran Contra- including the fact that the CIA had knowingly worked with contra supporters who were drugrunners.

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Although Colon Powell has be silent on Bolton's nomination, his chief of staff said this to the NY Times: "But do I think John Bolton would make a
good ambassador to the United Nations? Absolutely not. He is incapable of listening to people and taking into account their views. He would be an abysmal ambassador."

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Here's what John Kerry said in an email about this idiot:

Have you ever noticed that in the Bush Administration, the only way to get a job promotion is to bungle our national security? As under secretary of state for arms control and international security for the past four years, Mr. Bolton has achieved little. In fact, we secured more nuclear materials in the two years before September 11th than in the two years after. North Korea and Iran are now burgeoning nuclear states. This record earned John Bolton a nomination to the UN?

A former chief of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research castigated John Bolton on Tuesday as a "kiss-up, kick-down sort of guy" who abused analysts who disagreed with his views of Cuba's weapons capabilities.

With Bolton's nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Democratic attack, Carl Ford Jr. appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to support accusations of harassment.

"I have never seen anyone quite like Mr. Bolton," Ford testified under oath. "He abuses his authority with little people."

Before his Senate confirmation hearing, we knew that John Bolton, the State Department's top arms control official who doesn't much believe in arms control unless it is for other countries, is a neoconservative zealot. We had learned from his own words that Bolton, the Bush administration's choice to be the US ambassador to the United Nations, has nothing but contempt for the UN. We knew, from his speeches and deeds, that for Bolton multilateralism is when the US can get other countries to do its bidding; his idea of diplomacy making wild accusations and offensive statements.

Who can blame Iran for wanting nukes.  Bush called them part of the "axis of evil" and has attacked one of the other axis members.   The third member- N. Korea- hasn't been attacked.   Most likely because it the regime thinks they have nuclear weapons.

Seymour Hersh has reported that the regime is conducting covert reconnaissance raids into Iran, supposedly to identify hidden Iranian nuclear and missile facilities so they can be attacked.  Senior military pesonnel  told him repeatedly that the next strategic target was Iran.

How ironic that the neocon ripublicans want to attack Iran.  Per a Ray McGovern piece,  in 1976,  Gerald Ford supported selling Iran nuclear power plants and a reprocessing facility which is needed for extracting bomb grade nuclear material.   Dick Cheney was Ford's chief of staff, Donald Rumsfeld was secretary of defense, Paul Wolfowitz was responsible for nonproliferation at the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Henry Kissinger was national security adviser.  At that time, the neocons agreed that Iran needed nuclear power to eventually replace oil as a source of power.   Dr. Doom recently said Iran was, "sitting on an awful lot of oil and gas.  Nobody can figure why they need nuclear as well to generate energy."   Now they have changed their tune- most likely because Bush is sagging in the polls and needs yet another war to boost his ratings.  The Washington Post also reported on this.

• Three idiot Democrat  senators--Daniel Akaka and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii and Mary Landrieu of Louisiana- voted to drill for oil in ANWR.
• 18 idiot  Democrat  senators -including serial compromisers Lieberman, Bayh, Schumer and Rockefeller voted for "tort reform"
• 18 idiot  Democrat  senators--including Reid, Biden and Bingaman voted with the regime on "reforming" bankrupcy.
• Only 12 Democrat senators opposed the nomination of Condoleezza Rice for Secretary of State and none opposed the nomination of Michael Chertoff to head the Department of Homeland Security,
• Ignoring the will of the vast majority of Americans, only 53 Democrats reps. opposed the regime's meddling in the Terri Schiavo case.
• Only 39 voted against ther regime's demand for another $81.4 billion for their fiasco in Iraq.
• Only 36 Democrats reps. opposed the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act

 57% of Australians belive the Bush regime's foreign policy to be as much of a threat as Islamic fundamentalism.    (source)

The regime and it's FBI aided more Saudis in fleeing after 9/11 and before airspace was opened than previously revealed- including more of Osama's kin.  (source)

Court case reveals the trials of Gitmo detainees by the regime to be in violation of international law- a detainee barred from his very own trial.  A federal judge ruled this as illegal but the regime has appealed the ruling.  (more)

The DOE released a report in 3/05 that officially acknowledges for the first time that peak oil is for real and states plainly that "the world has never faced a problem like this. Without massive mitigation more than a decade before the fact, the problem will be pervasive and will not be temporary."

The former head of Wal-Mart's U.S operations, ousted from the board after the alleged misuse of corporate funds, says the money was spent on anti-union activities.  If that's true, he didn't misuse the money- union bashing is corporate Wal-Mart policy.   It's closing a Canadian store that had recently voted to organize and eliminated all  meat cutter jobs company-wide after butchers in one store voted in a union. (details)

"People making $60,000 paid a larger share of their 2001 income in federal income, Social Security and Medicare taxes than a family making $25 million, the latest Internal Revenue Service data show. And in income taxes alone, people making $400,000 paid a larger share of their incomes than the 7,000 households who made $10 million or more....  Fifty years ago, corporations paid 60 percent of all federal taxes. But by 2003, that was down to 16 percent. So individual taxpayers have to make up the difference, as corporate profits soar and wages fall."    (more)

Total reported spending by registered lobbyists from 1998 through mid-2004 was $13 billion.  Enforcement of lobbying regulations has been lax-  at least 14,000 disclosure documents required under a 10-year-old lobbying law were not filed, including documents that should have come from 49 of the nation's 50 largest lobbying firms.  Over a six-year period, nearly 300 individuals, companies and associations lobbied without first registering as is required by law.  More than 2,000 registrations were filed late. Of the 250 top lobbying firms, 210 failed to file one or more necessary documents. (more)

Bush's "town meetings" promoting this plans to gut social security are stacked with his supports and those which are even suspected of having opposing views are barred.  Three folks were booted from one in Denver when they arrived in a car with a a "No more blood for oil" bumper sticker.   A student was barred from a similar event in Arizona for wearing a Young Democrats T-shirt.  Rep. Waxman is seeking an accounting of how much these "events" have cost taxpayers and is questioning the use of  taxpayer funds for political purposes. (more)

Investigators looking into the regime's payment of $240,000 to Armstrong Williams to hype their bullshit were denied the opportunity to interview some White House personnel because the regime claims that such interviews could breach long-standing legal traditions.  (more)

The ripublicans  in congress who passed "tort reform" this bill are the same idiots bemoaning Terry Schiavo's fate.  How ironic.  It was a malpractice suit  which paid for maintaining her in a persistent vegetative state.  Also, they changed bankruptcy law so that it is now much harder for families hit by similar tragedies to get relief from staggering medical bills.  Even worse, as governor Bush signed a Texas law which gives hospitals the sole power to decide when to pull the plug- but only for those whose families cannot pay.  The idiots had nothing to say about a Texas hospital, against family wishes, pulling the plug on a baby while they were raising hell about judges making such decisions and then taking it upon themselves to make the decision.

The regime is still trying to hide the evidence of their botching the "war on terror".  They demanded that Sibel Edmonds' suit against them be closed to the public and reporters.  Of course the Appeals Court grant this outrageous demand- it consists of regime supporter - Douglas Ginsburg, David Sentelle and Karen LeCraft Henderson- all ripublican appointees. (more)

The regime is looking for a contractor to develop comic books to win the hearts and minds of Mid East kids.  (more)

The regime has repeatly blasted the UN over the money stolen from the Iraq oil-for-food program under Saddam but ignores the theif involved in their very own successor program called the Development Fund for Iraq.  It is so bad even the regime's own inspector general, Stuart Bowen, concluded that the regime accounted poorly for $8.8 billion."  The exact magnitude of the theft will very likely not be revealed.  On 5/3/03 Bush issued an executive order which amounts to a  'a blank check for corporate anarchy' and an 'outlandish cancellation of the rule of law,' according to Tom Devine with the Government Accountability Project."  Per the order  "I hereby order ... any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void, with respect to the following: a) the Development  Fund for Iraq and b) all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products." (more)

Anthing by Molly Ivins.  Alternet carries her columns.

The Medical Money Pit by Paul Krugman says we have substantially lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality figures than other advanced countries yet spend more on health care than other such nations-  $5,267 per person vs. $2,931 in Canada and $2,736 in France.  A 2003 study in The New               England Journal of Medicine estimated that  31 cents out of every dollar was spent on administrative costs compared with only 17 cents in Canada.

A Gut Punch to the Middle by Paul Krugman details the consequences of the regime's latest plan to gut Social Security-"progressive price indexing" of benefits. While, surprisingly, it doesn't appear cut benefit for the poor, it severely cuts benefits of the middle class by as much as 13%.  As for the regimes favorites- the rich- their "share" of the cuts would amount to minimal-   only 1% for those earning $1 million a year.  Krugman calls it "a gut punch to the middle class, but a fleabite for the truly wealthy".

The Long Emergency by James Howard Kunstler paints a dire, but likely true, picture of life after "peak oil".

The Savage Carnival by John Cory.  Snippets:  "America has become a savage carnival of freak show religiosity and circus clown politics.  Let's call them what they are: Ghoulish Obscene Panderers. How else to describe Tom Delay and Bill Frist, et al., as they crawl into bed with a brain-dead woman to pose for a political Polaroid?"...     "Wake up America! The Republic is dead. Welcome to the United States of Jesus, sponsored by the GOP Gospel Hour Medicine Show."...  "These folks hold the Constitution as irrelevant and Catechisms as the only key to America's greatness. They want the Ten Commandments in all public buildings and the 12 Apostles in Congress. They want the Virgin Mary to teach sex education, and they believe in the Holy Trinity of Bush the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Rove."

Casey's Story by Cindy Sheehan tells of her son's life- a life taken by the Bush regime in their Iraq fiasco.  A snippet on his recruitment:
His recruiter told him that he would be able to finish college, be a Chaplain's Assistant, receive a $20,000 signing bonus, and most insidiously and heartbreakingly, that he would never see combat. Casey scored so high on the ASVAB (military competency test) that he would only be in a support role and he would never be in a battle. Well, every promise that Casey's recruiter made to him, he broke. The only promise that I care about, though, is the one where Casey would never see battle.

Ripublican Probe of Cisneros Has Cost $21 Million  It's been going on for almost ten years and the cost rivals some of the largest independent counsel investigations in history.

I'm with Wolfowitz by George Monbiot in the 4/5/05 Guardian UK.
After highlighting the horrid history of the World Bank, the author argues that Wolfowitz's appointment as president would be good.
"It highlights the profoundly unfair and undemocratic nature of decision-making at the bank. His presidency will stand as a constant reminder that this institution, which calls on the nations it bullies to exercise "good governance and democratisation" is run like a medieval monarchy".   And "Best of all is the chance that the neocons might just be stupid enough to use the new wolf to blow the bank down. Clare Short laments that "it's as though they are trying to wreck our international systems". What a tragedy that would be. I'd sob all the way to the party. "

US Aggression towards Venezuela: The Rise of Black Propaganda and Dirty War Tactics  by Eva Golinger documents the Bush regime's attacks on Chávez-  support of a failed coup d'etat, an illegal oil industry strike and a constitutional recall referendum- and it's continuing meddling in Venezuelan affairs.  Their PR game plan is a rehash of Reagan's illegal campaign against the Sandinista government of Nicaragua.

Drugs, Bases and Jails by Tom Engelhardt.   Afghanistan is the sixth worst off country on Earth.  The power of the new government of Hamid Karzai extends only weakly beyond the outskirts of Kabul.  Large swathes of Afghanistan are still ruled by warlords and drug lords andarmed militias dominate much of the country as they did after the Soviet withdrawal and a low-level guerrilla war is still being run by elements of the former Taliban regime for which, in areas of the South, there is a growing nostalgia.  It's also becoming  like the good ole USA-  the poorest 30% of the population receive only 9% of the national income, while the upper 30% receive 55%.  There are currently 24 US jails in Afghanistan.   Since the gulag in has become the target of US courts, Engelhardt says those in Afghanistan will take its place.

The Culture of Life Top Ten by Michael Blanding.   A list of 10 "culture of life" issues the christinan right refuses to address and in many cases works against.

 Get Tom DeLay to the Church on Time by Frank Rich is an excellent piece on Delay, Ralph Reed and Jack Abramoff hypocritically taking  money from gambling from Native Americans.

Paul Krugman's 4/22/05 article "Passing the Buck".  The lead: "The United States spends far more on health care than other advanced countries. Yet we don't appear to receive more medical services. And we have lower life-expectancy and higher infant-mortality rates than countries that spend less than half as much per person. How do we do it?   An important part of the answer is that much of our health care spending is devoted to passing the buck: trying to get someone else to pay the bills.   According to the World Health Organization, in the United States administrative expenses eat up about 15% of the money paid in premiums to private health insurance companies, but only 4% of the budgets of public insurance programs."

Let Them Eat Bombs  by Phyton Terry Jones (and author of Terry Jones's War on the War on Terror).    A report to the UN human rights commission in Geneva has concluded that Iraqi children were actually better off under Saddam Hussein than they are now.   The number of children under five suffering from malnutrition has doubled since Bush's attack.  And this is after the huge decrease in child welfare which resulted from the sanctions imposed in 1990-   the number of children under five who died increased by a factor of six.  By 1995 something like half a million Iraqi children were dead as a result of the sanctions.

US May Allow Nuke Strikes over WMD - a Japan Times article says the regime is planning to pre-emptively attack with nuclear weapons countries or groups which have WMDs or are even just working on obtaining WMDs.

Power for Power's Sake, a 4/17/05 NY Times editorial.  A snippet:  "Mr. DeLay is not content with having a Republican president and majorities in both houses of Congress. He wants to control every aspect of government fully, and to deny the Democrats any role at all. The method is simple: when the game does not go his way, he changes the rules. If Republicans cannot win huge majorities in House races, he shifts the boundaries of their districts; if ethics rules start to catch up with his reckless behavior, he rewrites them. Most recently, when rulings by judges - the one branch of government still beyond his grasp - did not precisely suit him, Mr. DeLay resolved to impose his  ideology on the judiciary."

 A "Volunteer" Police State by Leslie Weise- one of the three booted from a Bush "Town Hall Meeting" in Denver promoting his plan to ruin Social Security due to his "No More Blood for Oil" bumper sticker.  He wasn't alone- In Tucson, on the same day, Steve Gerner was denied entry to a similar event because he was wearing a Democratic Party T-shirt.  In Fargo, N.D., 42 people, including a city commissioner were barred from a Bush speech because the were Democrats and wrote letters to the editor critical of the regime.

Entries for a Devil's Dictionary of the Bush Era by Tom Engelhardt.  Some entries:

• Checks and Balances. The system whereby the campaign checks of the few balance the interests of the many.
• Healthy Forests: Forests made safe from the ravages of nature, i.e. bugs and fires, by removal to pulp mills and lumber yards.
• Town-hall Meeting: A meeting in a hall in a town where all the participants have first been vetted for loyalty to the Bush administration.
• Public Opinion Polls: Progress reports for spin doctors.

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