Just a quick heads-up

by Rich Miles

Tomorrow's Derby Day here in Red State Hell. So naturally, the CIA director abruptly quit today, because HIS boss would not let him have the day off to go to the races.

But seriously - he quit, as Wonkette kindly points out, for one of two reasons: either he's up against the deadline for filing for the Senate primary in Florida against Katherine Harris (they are SOOOO put out with her, and for good reason), or he's about to get arrested for his part in the Duke Cunningham sordidness. As Cat pointed out tonight, a bit of fun is to be had by googling "Porter Goss gambling prostitutes parties lobbyists" - and you can add "corrupt right-wing bastard" if you like...

Mayday! Mayday!

by Rich Miles

Oh. My. God.

While everyone in the blogosphere is hailing Stephen Colbert's ass-biting and face-getting-into of the Usurper at the "Press" Dinner the other night, His Self-Righteousness proclaims May 1, 2006 as Loyalty Day across the land.

Loyalty Day! And May 1! If we needed any further proof that a) Bush has no idea what went on in history, even some of the history HE created, and b) he is getting closer and closer to totally insane or at least totally unconscious, it is this prez'denchul proclamation, on this particular day.

For those too young to remember, or too old to likewise, May 1 is the day the Communists used to celebrate their....ummm...communism. They call it May Day, which also happens to be a word used by pilots and other military people to indicate that they're in a world of trouble and are going to bail out. And it also just conveniently happens to be the day when, three years ago, the Bushmaster stood in his khaki clown suit on the deck of the Abe Lincoln and proclaimed an end to "major combat operations" in Iraq.

And just as a point of idle curiosity, loyalty to what or whom? We're already loyal to America - so it's hard to envision him meaning anything else but loyalty to...him!

Do the red-state rubes REALLY still buy this crap - things like "Loyalty Day"? Or is he now totally talking to the hand?

Why Am I Telling You All This?

by Rich Miles

There's a point to all this. The point is that there is almost always a larger point underpinning the news you see every day - or sometimes a smaller point hidden in the weeds of our leaders' rhetoric. I try to establish and expand on these whenever possible. I'm not the only blogger doing this sort of thing, in fact my blog links will connect you to folks who may do it a lot better than I do. But I promise this - no one does it just like you'll see it done here.

And as time goes on, you will I hope see some of my friends and colleagues, and perhaps even you on this blog. Because while I am the lead voice here, I don't even want to be the only one. There are a lot of people who feel their voices aren't heard in the world today. If I can let a few of them speak here on my little corner of the Web, I will do so happily and proudly.

Because we live in a time when, to a greater degree than at any time in America's history, our alleged leaders bank on our not paying very close attention to what they do, and when on rare occasions we call them on their lies, they behave as if it's our fault for being foolish enough to let ourselves be lied to.

Or they tell us that what we see and hear is not reality, that we didn't really hear them tell us one thing and do another, or tell us one thing today and another two weeks later, or any number of other ways our leaders have of treating us like abused spouses who are so addled from the repeated blows that we don't know reality from fiction.

And we keep letting them do it to us - keep letting our leaders lie to us, in fact often seem to INSIST that they lie to us so we needn't face the painful truths, and only once in a while do we get brave enough to say, ya know, that doesn't quite seem true - right before they slap us down again, and tell us that black is white, and up is down.

A lot of people think I'm too old to be this earnest (I'm in my mid-fifties). A lot of them think I should have figured out by this point in life that no one person can really make any difference in what goes on in our country. And I suppose that's true. But I'm not just one person - as you know if you're a frequent web-crawler, there are an awful lot of us out here, and together, maybe we can make some kind of difference, change one mind, debunk one lie, something.

So I and the zillion other bloggers all over the U.S. who take an interest in matters political and social will try to bring some light to the dark experience that is being a liberal and/or progressive in America these days. We'll keep talking till someone listens, I guess.

Rich Miles
April 30, 2006

Render Unto Caesar

Fletcher Administration Has Its Priorities Set - For An Election Campaign, But Not For The People of Kentucky

by Rich Miles
April 26, 2006

OK, Let me see if I’ve got this right:

The reasons to deny University of the Cumberlands an $11 million state funding package for a new pharmacists’ school are basically these:

1) The giving of state funds (OUR money) to private, faith-based organizations of any kind is expressly forbidden in Section 189 of the Constitution of the State of Kentucky, and in various specific laws as well.

2) If it were a federal matter, it would be against specific federal anti-discrimination law, and in violation of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution of the United States as well. ("Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.")

3) 80% of people who contacted the Governor’s office with an opinion on this matter (a self-selected sample, it’s true, but it’s self-selected in both directions) opposed the funding

4) University of the Cumberlands cannot get any new pharmacy school they may build accredited nationally because of the very discrimination they practice that brought them to statewide notice in this matter.

5) While Gov. Fletcher refused to line-item veto this $11 million, he DID veto as much as $370 million in other budget appropriations, much of it taken away from our established, open-to-all-KY-residents state universities, as well as social programs for the poor, the elderly, youth programs, and environmental improvements..

The reasons to go ahead with the funding, and not exercise the line-item veto are these:

1) The governor is courting the radical fundamentalist religious right, in the mistaken belief that they will carry him to re-election next year.

2) Senate President David Williams says, in essence, that the will of the people doesn’t make a bit of difference in this matter - that it is not a “pick-a-star” contest. Also see #1 in reference to Williams as well.

3) The governor has decided that the courts must waste an immense amount of time and money answering a question that, in this separation-of-church-and-state republic, should never have been asked, and indeed that no one but him and Sen. Williams have asked now: we must know, once and for all, if it’s unconstitutional for Kentucky to fund faith-based institutions, and the money isn’t going to be released for use till that question is answered.

So is this a real dogfight, or are we, the people of the state of Kentucky, being taken for a ride again, with elected representatives alleging to represent the will of the people, while doing nothing of the sort, and pandering to a small slice of the electorate for what they perceive to be their political gain?

Before I proceed, let me clarify a couple of points here: First, I don’t deny the right of the University of the Cumberlands to refuse access to their educational gifts to anyone they want to - as long as they’re self-supporting through tuition and private, non-governmental donations. I think it’s particularly nasty and un-Christian of them to do so, but they have the right, as long as I and other state residents don’t have to pay for it. But when they take MY money, and yours, then WE get to say how it’s used, and WE get to object if it’s used to promote bigotry and intolerance.

Secondly, the young man, Jason Johnson, who was expelled from U Cumberlands because he’s gay should have known better - if he wasn’t willing to abide by the rules at UC, he should have gone elsewhere to school. He can be gay if he wants, but why deliberately start this kind of fight?

But having said that, I have to ask: how much longer do we have to put up with this?

How much longer will our government, our elected representatives, subvert the expressed - EXPRESSED - wishes of the majority of the people of our state, in order to kowtow to a small but highly vocal minority of radical religious nutjobs, which by the most optimistic estimates represent at most 20% of the electorate, of whom not all even agree with the governor and senator on this issue?

Dump the appropriation for University of Cumberlands, Gov. Fletcher - or I promise you, that 80% who oppose this nonsense are going to remember this ignoring of the will of the people, this perfidy and political posturing in November of ‘07. I for one will do my best to make certain they do.

Render unto Caesar, and all that. And yes, that's from the Bible.

A Tribute to Anne Braden

By Rich Miles

Anne Braden passed away last month, on March 6, 2006. She was 81 years old, what the country folks sometimes call a “goodish age”. She worked virtually till her dying day, and was said to be “annoyed” when the doctors told her she’d have to go into the hospital. She lived more life in those 81 years, made more friends (and enemies), served more causes and more just plain folks than most of us could hope to if we were given 5 times that many years.

I’m not going to sit here and give a rundown of the many accomplishments of the life and career of Anne Braden – a career that started in earnest when I was about a year old, and continued unabated until just last month. Pretty much all of it is part of the public record, and I encourage you to seek it out if you haven’t already done so. Her life, her truth, makes a good read.

Instead, I’d like to tell you about what Anne has left us: what she created for us in life, and what she has bequeathed us at her passing.

Anne McCarty Braden was, to all appearances, no one’s idea of a formidable opponent. She stood about 5 feet tall, even a bit shorter in her later years, and was a slim girl of 23 or so when she arrived back in Louisville in 1947, having been born here but raised in Anniston Alabama. But despite her diminutive physical stature, she had something about her that would not be beaten down, not for the entire 52 years during which she worked for civil rights and racial equality - and that something is the real gift she has left us here today, and for years to come.

For if a life such as Anne Braden’s can be summed up in one word, that word would be: courage.

Not the kind of courage that a soldier needs to face battle and possible death, though she received more than her share of death threats. Not the courage of a firefighter or a policeman or woman, to protect us from the accidents and ills of daily life. But courage all the same.

Courage to see wrong, and do all in our power to right it. Courage to see social institutions in need of change, and do what we can to effect those changes. Courage to see that there are people who will never believe what you believe, and yet keep putting out your message of peace and understanding and harmony among all races and nations, knowing that some will hear and scoff, but every once in a while, some will hear and change, some will join your fight, and some will, with luck and God’s help, even surpass you, and make the world a better place to live in for all of us – even the scoffers. Even the threateners. Even the haters.

The things Anne Braden did almost daily, and more importantly the reasons for them, have lost currency in our world today – it’s become almost unbearably “corny” to speak of changing the world, of creating a space where peace may thrive among individuals or among nations. Those who do this work are called hippies, dreamers, idealists, and worse. Anne was often called a Communist back when that term was the bugbear of the day. She was arrested twice on charges of sedition – a word we hardly hear today, whose antiquated roots embrace the very ancient and ongoing practice of governments attempting to silence their opposition. And still she kept at it. Still she saw that, no matter how much we might SAY that racial equality was growing and thriving in America, we did not always, perhaps did not often live up to our own standards. She saw this right up to the day she died, and she never stopped working and fighting for what she believed was simply – right.

And that – more than anything else she could have given us – is what she has left for us to do. We must have the courage to speak truth to power, as she did. We must have the courage to make it clear that war is never the answer, that racism is never acceptable, that hatred is its own reward – all we get from it is more hatred.

This is in large part why I feel the need to write these words. Our issue of the moment is not that of Anne Braden, but we need her courage and dedication to address our issue as well as to continue addressing hers. No one person, not even an Anne Braden, ever solves these problems all by herself, or all at once. It’s a long, hard job, and there’s not likely to be a break or an endpoint, or a place where we can say, the job is done - not in our lifetimes at any rate. But the more of us there are, and the more we can muster the courage of an Anne Braden, the greater the chance that some day, long after we’ve all gone to dust, our children or our children’s children may be able to say “I wonder why those people so long ago thought racism and war were so important? We don’t do that any more.”

It’s a fond dream, and perhaps mankind can never get there – that’s what a lot of so-called experts think, that we as a species can never get beyond hatred. But Anne Braden believed we could. Her whole life was dedicated to the proposition that we could. And the best we can do as her survivors is to do all in our power to prove her right.

If your beliefs include the idea of an afterlife, perhaps we can envision Anne now, finally getting to rest and finally seeing her beloved Carl again after 31 years without him. But Anne is still with us in spirit, in our hearts and minds and actions even now that death has taken her out of our sight. If there’s a better measure of immortality available to any of us, I can’t imagine what it would be.

Rest well, Anne – you’ve earned it.

And to those who read these words, keep the faith – what you do matters. If nothing else, the life of Anne Braden proves that.

Time To Set a Precedent

By Rich Miles

February 27, 2006

There’s no longer any way around it: George W. Bush must go to prison.

So must Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld and the whole sociopathic, vicious gang.

Impeachment, dragged screaming and kicking out of the White House, permanent humiliation is no longer enough. It’s no longer enough for us to disgrace them, then let them serve out their respective terms, and leave them the leisure to rehabilitate themselves into elder statesmen in years to come.

The American people must once and for all show our current and future leaders that there are consequences – personal and inescapable – for lack of conscience, lack of leadership, and lack of compassion for the people who elected them, the people they are pledged to serve.

Therefore, the president of the United States must go to prison.

He cannot be permitted to escape a term in the lockup by resigning, as Nixon did. Even if he resigns – unlikely, since those who think themselves kings must abdicate not resign – he must be charged, tried, and convicted of all his multiple felonies, then sentenced to life, plus the duration of the "War on Terrorism”.

Because if we, the American people, don’t finally show the people who work for us, who were hired by us, and are paid by us that they are accountable to us, Bush and his thugs and those who come after them will keep perpetrating crimes on us over and over and over again, and there will never be any accountability.

Never mind how unlikely it may seem that this can be done now, with all three branches of government under Republican control, and the Democrats in Congress searching high and low for a spine. First, the lock-step is not quite as locked as it seems and thus the "reality base" may have more support across the aisle than we think; and second, control of Congress is almost certainly going to change in November. That's not just optimistic talk - all the signs are there, in spite of all the "where the hell are the Democrats" articles in the MSM. Perhaps THAT will make the Democrats stand up for themselves and for us.

And in any case, consider the consequences if we don't:

Our so-called "leaders" ignore the will and well-being of the people and make us the enemy of the world.

They lie with impunity to keep us fearful, terrified, weak.

They steal our birthright, kill our children, destroy our country.

We must stop them. We must do all legally in our power, and we must start now. Before they stop America forever.

We Won't Get Fooled Again - Will We?

Originally published on http://www.theredstate.com/, in the Kentucky subsection

By Rich Miles

January 2, 2006

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

- Old country saying

Fool me three times…you must be one of George Bush’s people.

I mean, the scandals and the snowjobs just come too hot and heavy to keep up with.

We should be afraid. Very afraid

Why, you may ask? Should we fear that Osama bin Laden is plotting another 9/11-style attack? It’s crossed my mind, but no, that’s not it. I’m pretty sure Osama is so happy sitting in his designer-decorated cave somewhere, laughing his head off at how we’ve been running around like headless chickens for the past 4+ years EXPECTING him to mount such an attack that he doesn’t feel he has to bother - we’re defeating ourselves.

Should we fear that some of those WMD’s we couldn’t find in Iraq have made their way to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi or Ayman al-Zawahiri, and that they’re making plans to deliver them to central Kentucky or some other mainland location? No, that’s not really it either. That’s just so unlikely that it doesn’t bear worrying about. We all have too many other things to make us lose sleep at night, like no health care for the poor and middle class, and tax cuts for the wealthy in wartime, and our children who are dying in that war.

I don’t know about you, but here’s what I’m most afraid of these days: that the Bush administration’s insane rhetoric, recently losing ground in making us afraid enough to kiss their collective backsides and hand them the country and our civil liberties, will “take” again, and that our spineless Congress will sidestep the crimes they and the Bushies have committed on the people of Iraq and America, and that by November 2006, we will have forgotten what completely evil-minded screw-ups George W. Bush and his neocon pals are, and we’ll re-elect his sycophants to Congress and the Senate because they’re incumbents and it’s easier to vote for the devils we know than to actually THINK about who to vote for, and nothing – NOTHING – will have been learned or changed.

Remember the London (England) Guardian headline in November ’04: “How Can 59,000,000 People Be So Dumb?” You s’pose that question will seem current again soon?

There is ample evidence that many of our representatives in Congress who have spent the past 5 years with their noses up Bush’s arse are starting to distance themselves from The War President, to wit:

- That old reliable hawk John Murtha was equated with the evil Michael Moore for daring to say that things are pretty bad in Iraq, and we need to look for the exits.

- John McCain is getting his revenge on Bush for the 2000 campaign by forcing George to eat crow at least 2 meals a day, but hey, at least we don’t torture any more.

- Four Republicans joined in the filibuster to keep the Patriot Act from being made permanent.

- The ANWR drilling initiative was snatched from madman Ted Stevens’ feeble claw yet again (what is this, 20, 25 times now?) by a bipartisan effort.

- A Bush-appointed judge and Supreme Court short-lister, J. Michael Luttig, angrily denied the White House the right to transfer Jose Padilla to civilian custody because Luttig saw through the effort as an attempt to evade Supreme Court review of the case.

- And Even Sen. Rick Santorum, one of the most reliably non-reality-based supporters of anything Bush says or does, had to plead a “prior engagement” on Veterans’ Day when Bush was in his home state. Never mind that, if one supports the president, one changes one’s Vet’s Day plans when that prez shows up – Santorum clearly didn’t care to bask in the glow of a rapidly failing president.

These are but a few of the more visible recent defections from the Bush miasma, but there are many more, and the ones who aren’t bailing out are actually having to justify remaining on-board with Bush, when it was axiomatic not too long ago.

(Warning: I’m about to do something that even I consider scummy - I’m about to link our troops’ sacrifices in Iraq with politics - because that is surely what the conscienceless monsters in the Bush administration are already doing.)

As we could have predicted, Rumsfeld announced troop drawdowns on Dec. 23, just in time for Christmas, and less than a year before that red-letter day, Nov. 7, 2006. We’re going to see a lot more of this sort of thing, despite the fact that NOTHING has changed in the military situation in Iraq, except that it’s gotten worse. We’re not winning, we haven’t gotten things under control, or gotten the Iraqi forces trained enough to take care of their own country – we’re just going to “declare victory and leave”. Just in time for the mid-term elections.

And while I am thrilled at any development that might bring our troops home as soon and as safely as possible, this is not what it appears to be. Not even close. What’s really happening is that they’re gearing up the process of fooling us again. And we’re in dire danger of letting it happen. Again.

The reasons for this new chapter in the Republican campaign of deceit are as cynical as they are obvious: All of the House and 1/3 of the Senate are up for re-election next year, and Bush is not. And despite Bush’s insistence that he doesn’t care about polls, that he doesn’t govern based on what the American people think is right but what HE thinks is right (and consider the subtext of THAT concept for a minute), what is unmistakably clear is that all those folks who have to face the scrutiny, and perhaps the wrath, of their constituents next year are starting to feel the hot breath of challengers charging up behind them. In fact, Santorum is already looking up the distant backside of his principal rival and has been for months.

So in what I sincerely hope will be merely another misguided attempt to sway the opinions of the American people with lies rather than leadership, Bush and Cheney and the rest of the criminals in the administration are going on the offensive again, and manipulating us with troop drawdowns – politicking on the corpses of dead soldiers, and over the faces of living ones. They reckon that voters will no more vote against the people who are bringing our brave soldiers home than they would against the folks who repeatedly lowered their taxes in the first Bush term. They reckon we’re just that stupid, that we won't remember that THEY were the ones who got the soldiers over there in the first place.

And there is some little evidence that some portion of America is buying it – again.

Let’s look at what the ubiquitous polls are telling us, since their findings are actually starting to exhibit a bit of consistency: it would appear that there is a small percentage of Americans who simply cannot be swayed from their slavish support of anything Bush does. If Bush and his Secret Service entourage showed up at their back door, came inside and peed in their cornflakes, this small group would somehow twist their thinking around to believe that it was vital for national security, and perhaps even God’s will, that the cornflakes be urine-soaked. My admittedly unscientific estimate of the size of this cohort is around 23-25% of voters. NOT a mandate or majority – just a small but solid slice of the electorate that apparently cannot be swayed from their opinions by facts. The anti-reality segment of America.

It also seems clear that there is a roughly equal number of people on the exact opposite end of the spectrum, who have come to view Bush’s administration and all that it entails as incapable of doing anything that does any good for America - unless, of course, there are cronies and wealthy contributors to be enriched from such acts, and even then, any benefit to the American people at large is pretty much accidental. In some ways, this left end of the spectrum ignores reality almost as much as the right end, only for less magical reasons.

This leaves, if one takes the middle numbers in both cases above, something like 50-52% of the American populace who are willing and able to synthesize wide-ranging information and come up with a reasoned opinion about what Bush et al. are doing and whether those things are good for America.

The good news is that this middle half of America seems to be awakening from its 9/11-induced stupor and starting to recognize that not only is what Bush is doing to us not good, it is actively bad, and that all those in government who continue to support him and his policies ought to be gotten rid of at the earliest opportunity – which, in our system, is November 2006.

So in recognition of these challenges to their perks and their power bases, and in the long Bush tradition of perpetual campaigning (without often dirtying one’s hands with actual governing), Bush, Cheney, the radical right-wing media, the spineless mainstream media, and the decreasing number of members of Congress who can’t see the handwriting on the wall have once again gone on the offensive: portraying their opponents as unpatriotic, weak on national security, willing and eager to “cut and run”, unsupportive of our troops’ sacrifice, and just altogether not to be trusted to keep those stolen nukes and Islamic radicals out of our towns in middle America.

And there is some sad evidence that it’s working. Here’s why:

Back in 2000, and arguably long before, Bush and his handlers stumbled on a formula for political success that has proven all too useful to their purposes: appeal to Americans’ basest beliefs about ourselves.

In sum, this has meant sword-rattling patriotism, chest-thumping arrogance on the international scene, the bloodthirstiness that not so subtly underlies our national image of ourselves, and most of all – fear.

Fear! Keep the rubes afraid, remind them continually that YOU, personally, are the only one who can keep them safe from what they fear, tell them that we must fight pre-emptive wars against our enemies real and imagined (including gays and non-Christian-evangelicals, women who dare to demand control over their own bodies, and – ugh – liberals), and they’ll keep voting for you because they don’t want their hometowns overrun with crazed Muslim suicide bombers, homosexual couples, abortion clinics, or Michael Moore.

Recent evidence of this approach is everywhere, but if one recent example serves to make the point as to how much fear figures into the Bush strategy, go on the Internet and look at the tape of Bush’s press op in Panama after his recent trip to South America. In answer to a reporter’s question, he did everything but form his hands into fake claws and shout “Boogah boogah!!!” to tell us how afraid we still must be. And based on a small up-tick in his job approval ratings shortly after that trip (which was in all other regards a near-total failure) there are still people in this country who buy it. Likewise the people who are willing to overlook a little thing like unwarranted phone taps on American citizens on American soil, in essence because if it ain’t happenin’ to them, it isn’t important.

Now let me be clear: I don’t wish to suggest that there are no problems for America either at home or abroad. That would be just as unreality-based as the people against whom I’m railing here. What I’m saying is that the things we need to fear as Americans are not always the things our leaders are telling us to fear.

What we as Americans need to fear most is a government which has not, after all this time, really made us safer, and has almost unquestionably put us in greater peril; a president who seeks to subvert and subsume all the things that have historically made America great for his own political gain or that of his party; a Congress that, in the misguided belief that Americans are so stupid we will believe anything, has continued until very recently quietly to do Bush’s bidding while playing at serving the people who elected them; and the continued support by all these people of a war that simply will not ever be won, that irreparably harms our standing in the world, that weakens our military’s real ability to protect us here at home, and that may decimate a generation of Americans if left unchecked.

Do we need to fear Islamic radicalism and terrorism? Yes, with sane and sensible reasoning, and actions that will produce results, not just more fear.

Do we need to fear gay marriage, or a “war on Christmas”?

Please. Get a grip.

Do we need to fear that our own government, those folks we hired to make our lives safer and better, will use this very real threat against us to forward an agenda that is at base un-American?

We shouldn’t have to fear this. But we do. In fact, we fail to do so at our peril.

Rage Against the Money Machine

By Rich Miles

December 3, 2005

I’m about to fart in a whirlwind here.

(That’s a colorful country expression that means to do something that is absolutely useless and ineffectual. We have lots of colorful expressions down here. Don’t get me mad, or I’ll use another one.)

Anyway, here goes:

I’m going to issue a heartfelt and impassioned plea that the American electorate start paying attention to what’s going on around them in their government and politics, and stop being so damned dumb and gullible and clueless.

There now. I feel much better.

Here’s another little fact that won’t surprise you: it’s all about the money.

Now how do the two thoughts above fit together? Well, I’m glad you asked me that.

Ask yourself this: what does money represent in the political arena? And I’m not talking about “free speech”, as was so ludicrously asserted in the 2004 campaign season. Ready for the answer? Here it is:

It represents the ability of those who have it to spread their message, whatever it may be, better than those who don’t have it, or who have less of it.

And as we have seen far too often in the past several election cycles, it doesn’t matter if the message being spread is true or not. Those who craft campaigns learned a long time ago – and the American people have not yet learned – that one of the basic precepts of human communication is this:

If people hear something repeated often enough by an accepted authoritative source (the president for instance, or an announcer with an avuncular voice, or a nationally-syndicated radio host), they will in a fairly short time come to accept the repeated statement as fact, regardless of any factual information to confirm or deny the statement which is or may become available to the recipient.

So therefore, this is how money works in politics. The more money a particular political candidate, or group, or other entity has at its disposal, the more likely it is that the message of that candidate/group/entity will be believed by a significant segment of the voting public, and thus the more likely it is that he/she/it/they will be elected or otherwise accepted by the public.

So far, so obvious: money buys exposure for the ideas of the buyer, for good or ill. But woven deeply into this concept is another, less obvious and always unspoken idea that has been the basis of literally every Republican campaign for almost every office above dogcatcher for the past 25 years at least: The public is stupid enough to let this trick – proof by nothing more than massive repetition – be played on them over and over and over again.

The examples of this are uncountable. The most egregious, though by no means the only use of the technique was virtually the entire Bush campaign, led by Karl Rove, in 2004. High on the list was the Swift Boat Thugs episode, in which a decorated Vietnam War combat veteran was made to look like a self-serving coward and liar by the campaign of a man who had never served in combat, run by men who for the most part had never even worn the uniform of our armed services, using men as their surrogates some of whom later disclaimed their own statements in spreading lies.

A close second must be the “flip-flopper” canard attached to John Kerry, while all indications of Bush’s doing precisely the same or worse were either ignored, denied, or made to look like judicious decision-making and flexibility by a strong leader.

And not to be forgotten is the ‘outing’ of VP Dick Cheney’s daughter Mary as a lesbian by John Kerry – this one got virtually no explanation whatever in the mainstream media. Mary Cheney IS an admitted and open lesbian. Cheney and his wife had repeatedly admitted this in public. Mary herself had acknowledged this in public. She has been living with her female lover for years. It was no secret at the time Kerry said it in a televised debate with Bush. But somehow, for Kerry to say it out loud as he did was evil incarnate, and this take on the matter was repeated and repeated and repeated for weeks by various members of the Bush campaign, until it was simply common knowledge that Kerry was a disgusting man who was willing even to use Cheney’s children to try to score political points against Bush. Never mind that Mary Cheney is an adult, who was working for her father’s campaign, and not an innocent child who was not part of the political world of her parents. It just became – common knowledge.

Lest you think that the above is old news, let me point out that it’s happening again even as we speak: the strongest potential Democratic candidate for the presidency in 2008 is Hillary Rodham Clinton, and the repetition machine is already in gear against her, three years in advance of the election and indeed before she has even declared her candidacy. Never mind whether you believe she’d be a good president – what is unmistakable is that the Republican party believes she is a danger to their chances of retaining the presidency in ’08, and so she must be destroyed before, WELL before, she can gain a foothold. The same is true for Joseph Biden, Bill Richardson, Mark Warner, Howard Dean, John Edwards, and more. How many of these names made you laugh at the thought that any of them would make a good president? How honest can you be with yourself about how much you really know of these people, and how much your opinion has been formed by what someone else has told you, over and over again?

These are just a few of the ways in which the whole equation of money=power=repetition of specious untruths or half-truths is deeply embedded into the process by which we select our nation’s leaders. Truth, objective and provable and undeniable truth, is no longer one of the considerations for whether a piece of supposed information should be disseminated. The main, sometimes the only consideration is whether or not there is enough money available to repeat it enough times to make it part of the fabric of belief in the minds of the people. And truth be damned, if it works to the benefit of the liars.

Yes, I have cited only Republican uses of this technique, partly because Democrats don’t do it as often or get away with it as often, but mostly because – and this is not grudging admiration – they are so damned good at it. But is it a virtue to be far better than your opponents at convincing people to believe lies? I would like to think that most Americans would answer that question in the negative.

So to come full circle, and return to my heartfelt plea: I ask, I beg that you, the American voter, put a little more effort into making your decisions next time you are asked to do so, and really ask yourself if what you are hearing repeated so many times by your so-called leaders is true, is plausible, or even makes any sense. It’s my belief, and of course I can never be proven right or wrong on this, that if more Americans had really listened, and given serious thought to the ‘common knowledge’ they were being fed about Bush and his opponents, if they had read or watched more than one source of news (if that), if they had done more than vote their fear and supposed faith and personal comfort, there might be someone else occupying the White House today. Whether that would be better for the country is also unprovable – but in so many ways, it’s hard to imagine that it could be much worse than it is now.

Don’t let the money men buy your vote. Make them work for it. And whoever gets elected, make them work for US.

Patenting Their Reinvention

By Rich Miles

November 15, 2005

Former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.), the architect of the 1994 GOP victory, said Republicans must take the initiative or risk serious losses next year. "If we regroup and reclaim the mantle of reform and change, we are likely to win '06 and '08," he said. "If we do not regroup, we are likely to have a very difficult '06 and '08."

- From a Nov. 6, 2005 Washington Post article, “Voter Anger Might Mean an Electoral Shift in ‘06”

As Radar O’Reilly (no relation to Bill) used to say on “M.A.S.H.”, wait for it. The reinvention of the Republican Party is surely coming.

After either 5 years, or depending on your perspective 11 years of misgoverning, of saying one thing and doing another on almost every issue, of spending huge amounts of time and money on distractions like gay marriage while our soldiers die in a mismanaged and unnecessary war, people are starting to notice that the Republican party as represented by George W. Bush is just way out of the mainstream of what Americans want America to be.

But the real 9 days’ wonder of this observation is that the Republicans are actually, finally starting to notice that we’re noticing, and that they’re going to have to change tactics.

Not change what they do, mind you, or change the direction of the government or the nation – just change tactics. As Mr. Gingrich says above, “reclaim the mantle of reform and change”, LOOK like they’re doing something different. Like Brownie, roll up their sleeves.

So – wait for it. The Republicans are going to tell us that every good thing that happens in the next year is their doing, and everything bad is the Democrats’ fault. Let’s start with

Gas and petroleum prices:

Here in rural north-central Kentucky, where I live, regular unleaded was selling for $3.09 a gallon about a month ago. Today, the best price in my neighborhood was $2.04. This is a reduction of 33% in one month, after a rise of almost 50% in the 4 months prior to that. When the prices were going up daily, the Republican and White House (and oil company) explanation was that “market forces” were causing the rise, along with Katrina and Rita, and our own selfish failure to conserve fuel and energy. Now that the prices are going down, expect some Republican, probably from the White House one way or the other, to tell us somehow that it’s their splendid leadership that has caused it.***

Also, please don’t fail to note the two-steps-up-one-step-down nature of fuel prices – it’s been going on since at least 2000, when gas in my area was selling for 77 cents a gallon, and it arguably has been happening since about 1974 – but let’s not get into that just now.

Fiscal Responsibility:

Did you know that the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility? If so, do you know WHY you know that? It’s because the Republican Party has told you that it’s so for the past 40+ years.

However, did you also know that the largest federal deficits ever incurred, both in dollar amounts and in percentage of GDP, have been accrued during Republican presidencies, and most especially since both the White House and Congress have been controlled by the Republicans – since January of 2001? Reagan did his part to spend far more than we had, but Bush 43 and his pals in Congress have just left everyone in the dust. And they’ve been doing their best to set new deficit records every year.

But a funny thing happened on the way to gutting the federal coffers: someone noticed that there was a little storm in Louisiana, and that we are about to sell the entire country to the Chinese, and that we had better try some REAL fiscal responsibility instead of just talking about it. And here’s what is happening as a result:

So far, the Senate has passed a $35 billion budget cutting package that is almost entirely made up of cuts to programs for the poor and the elderly. Not to be outdone, the House has added 50% to that total, and is trying to cut even MORE from the programs which help Americans in need. One poor soul, Tom Coburn (R-Okla) who in other ways I consider a total nutcase (he’s the doctor-senator who says that abortion providers should be executed), actually suggested that some of the pork projects in recent appropriations be given back to help Katrina victims, and New Orleans’ reconstruction and by the way maybe reduce the deficit a little, and Ted Stevens of Alaska literally shouted the idea down on the Senate floor. No one’s going to gore HIS ox – not while there are poor people to rob in the lower 48! And repealing the tax cuts for the rich? Fuggeddaboudit!

Ethics:

Let me be # 432,168 in line to point out yet again that Bush campaigned in 2000 on, among other things, a promise to bring ethics and righteousness back to the White House (as if it had ever been there in abundance). Yet numerous polls since the 1^st of September have shown that a significant and growing majority of Americans think a) that the level of honesty and ethics in government has gone down since Bush became president, b) that they don’t believe Bush is an honest person, and c) there is a good possibility that Bush lied to make a case for attacking Iraq. Those opinions are almost certainly reflective of reports in the media, liberal or otherwise, but that doesn’t make the reports wrong. The one thing Bush has consistently done in the face of bad news is to assume that the American people are just overweeningly stupid, and will believe what he says just because he’s him, rather than what dozens or hundreds of others in the media, on both sides of the aisle in Congress, in the international community, in the military say to the contrary. Sadly, he has been right in this assumption far too many times.

But on the rare occasions when he or his henchmen get caught in a lie, they go on the attack. It never even occurs to them to either apologize for the lies or perhaps explain why what appears to be a lie might not be – the first instinct is to attack the person making the accusation on some other issue. Witness among others the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame debacle, which has led so far to one high-level White House official’s indictment.

So what does the White House do in the face of one of its own getting caught? They mandate “ethics refresher courses” for all WH staff, to be led by the office of “the most qualified candidate for the Supreme Court”, WH counsel Harriet Miers.

But it’s not a renewed interest in good governance – it’s part of the reinvention. Implied in the whole charade is that they’re basically nice ethical people, one of whom may or may not have strayed, and the rest of them just need a little reminder not to endanger national security or individual lives by revealing top-secret info or the identities of our spies.

I mean, aren’t they supposed to already know this stuff?

And finally, there is….

Torture:

This is the issue that, along with the Iraq War and all that it entails, will haunt us long after Bush is no longer in office, in fact likely long after he has gone to his eternal reward, which, if there is any justice in the afterlife, will involve copious amounts of fire and flame.

Put aside for a moment the argument over whether the actions at Abu Ghraib and Gitmo and the secret ‘black sites’ in the old Soviet republics really amount to torture. I happen to believe that they do, but let’s look at the underlying issue: our government in the persons of Dick Cheney and George W. Bush and 9 US senators and a so-far-uncounted number of US representatives are actually advocating that we put it into law that we CAN torture people if we want to.

And that is going to hurt America for generations to come, whether the law comes to be or not – that we not only did it, but that we stood up and said that we were proud we did it, and want to do it again. Serial abusers, that’s us!

And while to some this may seem only like more macho posturing by the draft-dodgers and other-priorities bunch, it’s actually part of the reinvention: we’ve been too soft on the bad guys, we have to get really tough and let them know that if they screw with us, they’ll get what’s good for them. The Bushites are reinventing themselves as even bigger badasses than before. Bush et al. tell us that this is good for America, and gives the president powers that he needs to protect us. But what is really frightening about this is that there are more than a few people who agree with this line of thinking, which means that the damage being done by it will be even farther-reaching.

I’m sitting here typing this, trying to figure out how to end it, and realizing that there really is no end to this column or this line of thought – perhaps what really needs to be done is to write a book. Yeah, that’s it! No one has thought of doing that, I’ll bet!

But seriously: the above are only a few examples of what we’re going to see between now and November 2006, so watch for it. And if we add up all the schizo directions in which the Republicans are trying to go now, and here’s what we get: kinder, gentler fascists.

Just what we need.

*** This prediction has already come true since I wrote that paragraph.

Where Were They When We Needed Them?

Originally published on TruthOut.org November 5, 2005

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/110505C.shtml

By Rich Miles

November 1, 2005

Hindsight is always 20/20. But this is ridiculous.

In the October 17 issue, Mortimer Zuckerman, editor in chief of U.S. News and World Report, published a scathing description of the shortcomings of the Bush Administration in a back-page editorial titled One swampy mess. Two days later, Lawrence Wilkerson, Colin Powell’s chief of staff when Powell was secretary of state, revealed much of what he knew about the Cheney-Rumsfeld ‘cabal’ that circumvented regular channels of decision-making in the State and Defense departments, allegedly to ram through policies including the Iraq War that otherwise might have withered under public scrutiny. And in an interview published in the Financial Times of London two days BEFORE Zuckerman, Bush 41’s friend Brent Scowcroft let loose with his grave misgivings about the basic honesty and competence of his pal’s son’s presidency. There have been several more high-profile defections from the lockstep Republican Bush 43-as-god ideology, notably in both houses of Congress, but also including such stalwart Bushian apologists as National Review, the Wall St. Journal, and even (gasp!) Fox News. It’s starting to look like jackals on a carcass, now that the head elephant is weakened enough to attack him and his coterie.

Those of us who opposed the near-election, then Supreme Court installation, then God forbid the RE-election of George W. Bush have known at least the basic outlines of much of what is being said against Bush these days for at least 5 years, so the only part of the recent revelations that come as a surprise is the sheer brazen balls of these people, and the clarity of the perfidy they’ve perpetrated on America. Many in the blogosphere, and even a few in the MSM, have been saying things like this, with different details, for the entire time W has been on the national political radar, and some have suffered grievously for their efforts – witness Joseph Wilson, Valerie Plame (who did not herself ever do anything to harm the Bush administration), Gen. Eric Shinseki, Richard Clarke, Paul O’Neill, and a host of others recently documented by Nick Turse of TomDispatch.com at http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/101405P.shtml

Norman Solomon, in a Perspective piece at that same website, http://www.truthout.org/docs_2005/103105M.shtml , points out that not only have the people who knew what was really going on kept their counsel until now, when it’s too late to bust Bush out of office, but that the nation’s newspaper of record, the New York Times, was complicit in leading the country to war, but now has taken on the self-righteous mantle of a late-arriving Cassandra, telling us now what many of us who have never supported Bush have known for years – that there are not and never were good and compelling reasons for the U.S. to send our children to war in Iraq. Quite the contrary, the whole war was fabricated at virtually every level, as several observers said it was.

So my question to these Bush-bashers-come-lately is: where the hell were you people when we needed you?

In the year 2004, those of us working our butts off to get Bush canned stood by and watched as pure lies, gross innuendo, delegated attack politics, guilt by alleged but never proven association, and religious-cum-patriotic posturing scuttled our man Kerry (with a little help from the man himself, it must be said), and caused the weak-minded, the magical thinkers and the venal to re-elect the most corrupt president in American history because the filth came too fast and furious for anyone to counter, and most of our national news voices didn’t really even try.

And now that Bush is weakened by events, individuals and news organizations who could, if they had had the courage, if they had told what they knew BEFORE November 2, 2004, have averted the disaster which is the second George W. Bush administration, are all jumping on the anti-Bush bandwagon, telling us that they knew all along how incompetent, how corrupt, how duplicitous and hypocritical Bush and his thugs are, and their consciences make them come clean now.

Well, those of us on the ground knew it too – many of us have known it since before 2000 - and we watched helplessly as voice after voice in opposition to the crime that is Bush were either ignored by the MSM, or actually buried even deeper by the journalistic cowards who would not stand up to what was obvious to the rest of us – that the American people, their safety, their happiness and success and values mean nothing to Bush et al. What matters is power, and redistributing wealth upward, and more power.

So to Mort Zuckerman, who prior to Oct. 17, 2005 was one of the most reliably jingoistic supporters of all things Bush and Republican, and all the others who didn’t have the simple humanity to do all in their power to defeat Bush one year ago, I say: SHAME on you. Our country, and our position in the world, and our children – our children, Mort! - will be decades recovering from the Bush administration.

We knew. We tried to tell you. Almost everything we feared would happen in a second Bush term has come to pass, just as many of us predicted it would. And you weren’t listening, and so your sudden epiphanies mean nothing to us.

Don’t blame us – we voted for America.