RichardHelms

AT LONG LAST, SENATOR MCCAIN, HAVE YOU LEFT NO SENSE OF DECENCY?

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Tue, 23 May 06 12:53:00 UT

In 1954, an attorney named Joseph Welch drew in a breath, and in four sentences brought down one of the most dangerous men of the 20th century, Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy.

In defending a member of his law firm whom McCarthy had decided to publicly â and wrongly â condemn as a communist, Welch uttered the now famous words, âUntil this moment, Senator, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessnessâ¦Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator; you've done enoughâ¦Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?â

Senator McCarthyâs career, for all intents and purposes, ended at that moment. Within months he had been censured by the Senate. He left office, began drinking heavily, and was dead three years later.

Skip ahead to the present day. Former Senator Bob Kerrey, now the president of The New School in New York City, this year invited Senator John McCain â widely touted as a frontrunner for the Republican Partyâs presidential race in 2008 â to be the schoolâs 2006 graduation speaker.

A student at The New School, Jean Rohe, was also scheduled to speak. She discovered that Senator McCain planned to deliver the same speech to the New School graduates that he had given at Jerry Falwellâs Liberty University several days earlier. Ms. Rohe researched the oratory online, and discovered that it was nothing more than a thinly disguised stump speech, supporting a number of governmental initiatives that Ms. Rohe found personally repugnant.

Since she was scheduled to speak before Senator McCain, Rohe decided that her presentation would be very powerful if it preempted many of McCainâs points, rebutting them even before they were made!

Facing a crowd that greeted McCain with a huge banner and flyers that read âOur Commencement Is Not Your Platformâ, Rohe made three main points specifically crafted to take the bite out of McCainâs comments.

First, she agreed with him that ââ¦dissent and disagreement are our âcivic and and moral obligationâ in a time of crisisâ.

Second, she stated unequivocally (and - I might add both editorially and parenthetically â correctly) that âpreemptive war is dangerous and wrong, that George Bushâs agenda in Iraq is not worth the many lives lostâ¦â.

Finally, she addressed McCainâs contention that âAmericans have nothing to fear from each otherâ, by maintaining that we have nothing to fear at all. Fear, she contended, drives us to invade and destroy the lives of others. Her point, by way of interpretation, appears to have been that the Administration has used fear as a tool to control public opinion, to justify its military adventures in the Middle East, and to drown out voices of - as McCain referred to them â âdisagreement and dissentâ.

To say that Mr. McCain was irritated would be an understatement. He amended his comments to congratulate Rohe â somewhat deprecatingly â for her âCliff Notes version of my speechâ. Despite this, Rohe made a point of meeting with him after the ceremony to tell him, âIâm sorry, man. I just had to do it.â

According to Rohe, McCain half-heartedly reassured her that it was all right. However, he later commented in the New York Times on the event, stating âI feel sorry for people living in a dull world where they can't listen to the views of othersâ¦"

Senator McCainâs meaning is obvious. He feels sorry for people who wonât sheepishly knuckle under to his updated NeoCon blather.

It seems that McCain has done something of an about-face over the last several years, sliding ever-steadily and inexorably to the Right, attempting to curry favor with NeoCon fat cats and Carlyle Group kingmakers. His recent public rimjob of the very Axis of Fascist Evil, Jerry Falwell, is only the latest indicator of McCainâs true stripes.

In 2000, McCain â then on the campaign trail for the presidential nomination â referred to Falwell as an âagent of intoleranceâ. Sounded good to me, though my terms for Falwell lean somewhat more to the scatologically anatomical (look it up). However, in a Meet The Press interview with Tim Russert last month, you could barely hear what he was saying over the âbeepâ¦beepâ¦beepâ backup sound coming from somewhere behind him.

Russert confronted McCain with this statement he made in 2000: âGov. Bush swung far to the right and sought out the base support of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell. Those arenât the ideas that I think are good for the Republican Party.â

McCain then backed away from that statement, claiming that âthe Christian Right has a major role to play in the Republican Party. One reason is because theyâre so active and their followers are.â

In other words, they vote with their wallets and checkbooks, and the Campaign Beast Must Be Fed. McCain is completely comfortable with selling out to the very worst quarters of the NeoFascistCon movement, by praising Falwell on national television and speaking at Liberty Universityâs commencement, in return for his thirty pieces of silver and a little reach-around in the voting booths. How Republican of him. How very Republican.

Of course, Falwell hasnât changed a bit in six years. Any thinking observer can see that he is still the fun-loving right-wing whacko that he always has been. This is the same guy who sold videotapes on his television show claiming that the Clintons had murdered Vince Foster. Heâs blamed the ACLU, gays, abortionists, feminists, liberal judges, and secularists for 9/11. He has claimed that people who arenât born-again Christians are failures as human beings. He has called for the abolition of public schools, claiming that all schools in the country should be run by Christians. As recently as 1997, he made the incredible assertion that âGrown men should not have sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them.â

Huh? McCain is aligning with this guy? Even Falwell says that he doesnât like what McCain stands for, based on his own statements in an editorial he wrote on his WorldNetDaily (http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=50190 ) on May 13th.

Yet, McCain goes on national television and refutes his own statements made in 2000, claiming that Falwell is no longer an âagent of intoleranceâ? Poppycock! Balderdash!

Then, in a move worthy of no less than NeoCon trickmeister and soon-to-be-indicted conspirator Karl Rove, McCain turned loose his pet shark and hatchetman Mark Salter to do a number on Jean Rohe, in a post on Ariana Huffingtonâs blog. On the one hand, Salter spends a large part of his lengthy post praising McCain and placing him on a pedestal. The rest he spends deriding the New School students in general, and Rohe specifically, referring to them as disrespectful and claiming âthat they could learn a thing or two about tolerance and respect from the students of Liberty Universityâ.

Canât imagine how, since students at Liberty University arenât taught anything that diverges from Falwellâs own limited world view, and tolerance isn't even in the college catalog there.

Apparently, McCain regards "dissent and disagreement" as a positive quality, at least so long as you are not dissenting or disagreeing WITH HIM!

Finally, Salter closes with an admonition that it is unlikely that Rohe and the New School students âwill ever posses (sic) the one small fraction of the character of John McCain.â

Well, if âcharacterâ is defined by abandoning your principles when it proves monetarily and politically advantageous; sending hatchetmen to do your own dirty work in print; and aligning yourself with fascisti and NeoCon goose-steppers like the Carlyle Group and Jerry Falwell, I can only hope that Mr. Salter is correct.

I would hate to see a young mind like Jean Roheâs so hopelessly corrupted by the acquisition of such 'character'.

Until this moment, Senator McCain, I think I never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness. Let us not assassinate this lady further, Senator; you've done enough.

Have you no sense of decency, sir?

At long last, have you left no sense of decency?

McCAIN, DELAYED (or) INVASION OF THE PAC PEOPLE

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Tue, 21 Mar 06 11:35:00 UT

John McCain: Vietnam vet, prisoner of war, crusading campaign finance reformer, Bush butt buddy.

Wait. Back up. What was that last bit?

Until recently, McCain, widely touted as the GOPâs darling for the 2008 Presidential Sweepstakes, has forged a lot of political capital by distancing himself whenever possible from the Bush/Carlyle Group/Dubai Ports World/Republican National Committee/K Street Group cabal. After all, wasnât it McCain who joined forces with Russ âCensure Nowâ Feingold to produce landmark legislation to reform all campaign finance?

Well, sure it was.

We all remember that, right?

Maybe McCain doesnât.

News released this past week reveals that John McCain, maverick campaign finance reformer, has signed Terry Nelson to serve as his campaign advisor. Specifically, he wants Nelson to organize and manage his political action committee, which is a fancy title that actually means fund-raiser.

Who is Terry Nelson? Why, heâs none other than The Shrubâs PAC organizer from the 2004 election.

At first, this may seem like a shrewd, canny career move for McCain. After all, itâs well-established in sports that you build a winning team by drafting the best players, right?

In this case, maybe not. You see, campers, Terry Nelson is also sunk right up to his balls in the Tom Delay money laundering case in Texas. According to recent reports, Nelson has lawyered up, and is planning to present damning testimony against disgraced former Republican House Majority Leader Delay.

Hereâs the way the scheme worked, basically. In 2002, Terry Nelson was the Deputy Director of the Republican National Committee. Delay founded TRMPAC, or the Texans For A Republican Majority Political Action Committee. TRMPAC raised some $190,000 in corporate donations.

Under law, since these were hard money contributions, TRMPAC could not distribute these donations to Texas Republican candidates to be used for political purposes. Hard money contributions over a certain amount can only be used for administrative costs.

Delay and his TRMPAC found a convenient solution, according to allegations currently being tried in Texas courts. He sent the money to the RNC â specifically, to Terry Nelson, through the RNCâs Republican National State Elections Committee and Jim Ellis, a TRMPAC operative. This, as it turns out, made the contributions soft money.

Nothing really illegal so far. Just a little shady. However, the indictments against Delay (and his administrator for TRMPAC, John Colyandro) also indicate that Ellis included with the transfer a list of Texas Republican legislative candidates supported by TRMPAC, ostensibly included as a guide for how the money was to be, um, âre-distributedâ.

Seven of those candidates subsequently received checks â representing soft money, which could be used for any purpose whatsoever â from the RNC, totaling (What, class? Thatâs right, you guessed it!) $190,000. Coincidentally, or probably not, this amount exactly matched the amount of hard money sent to the RNC by TRMPAC.

This, my beloved loyal readers, is called money laundering. It is a crime, most often engaged in by Mafia types, but itâs also a favorite of GOP cash-jugglers.

Terry Nelson is reported to have been named by the Texas grand jury investigating TRMPACâs operations as an unindicted co-conspirator in a scheme by Delay, Colyandro, Ellis, TRMPAC, and the RNC to engage in money laundering.

As the trial has proceeded, it has emerged that the exact list allegedly delivered to the RNC by Ellis has not been uncovered. It appears to reside in a single place â Terry Nelsonâs head. So, Nelson is planning to testify against his indicted co-conspirators. If convicted, Delay, Colyandro, and Ellis likely face some significant prison time, where they will undoubtedly discover an entirely new meaning to the term âback door contributionsâ.

In the mean time, Nelson became one of Bush Administration Chief Trickster Karl Roveâs protÃ©gÃ©s, and played a significant role in the 2004 Presidential Election, as political director. In fact, there are rumblings throughout Capitol Hill that Rove â as the master strategist of all Bush/RNC political activities in Washington â may have played a role in advising Nelson. Even if he didnât, Terry Nelsonâs role in this scheme places the Republican National Committee squarely in the sights of any ambitious Attorney General who might be interested in pursuing prosecution under the RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) Act.

Yes, campers, the very legislation used to bust organized crime could eventually be employed to disassemble, prosecute, and imprison many prime players in the Republican National Committee.

And, at the center of the entire nefarious scheme, turning stateâs evidence down in Texas, is Terry Nelson.

Thatâs right, campaign finance reform crusader John McCainâs new political action committee director.

Terry Nelson, Karl Rove protÃ©gÃ© and alleged money launderer in Tom Delayâs 2002 TRMPAC/RNC scheme, will be in charge of McCainâs fund raising for his anticipated 2008 presidential campaign.

Gentles, we are living in dangerous times. The scandals revolving around Tammany Hall were nothing compared to the Tony Soprano â like undertakings of our current administration. The Bush Administration and its evil minions have mastered the art of deception and diversion. Can it be any coincidence at all that one of Karl Roveâs prime disciples has latched on to the GOPâs 2008 golden boy? Would you like to guess what McCainâs cabinet would look like if he were elected?

You wouldnât have to think hard, or look very far. Most of them are already getting fat and happy in their West Wing offices on Pennsylvania Avenue. Roveâs master plan is ticking along right on schedule. Having orchestrated the diving jetliner of death that is the Bush Administration, heâs already planning how to pull the strings that will make the next Republican president dance to his macabre tune.

The only hope for breaking up the Rove/Bush crime syndicate is to elect a Democratic president in 2008. No Republican Attorney General is going to consider prosecuting the RNC for gangland activities. By replacing Alberto âWhenâs it MY turn for the Supreme Court?â Gonzales with a Democratic AG, there is a slim chance that justice will finally be served.

Until then, itâs going to be business as usual inside the Corruption Beltway.

O! CROMWELL

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Thu, 16 Mar 06 17:16:00 UT

As time goes on, it becomes more and more apparent to me that the Roundheads are back with a vengeance, bent on imposing their misguided moralistic values on anyone they can reach.

The most recent example is the decision by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to slap CBS (yes, campers, The Tiffany Network) with a 3.6 million dollar fine for a scene broadcast on its show âWithout A Traceâ.

The episode in question aired in 2004, and featured at some point a scene involving group sex between (and, I would imagine, among) teenagers. Prompted by what they claim amounted to massive complaints from sensitivities-bruised viewers, Martin and his Puritan Raiders determined the sequence to meet their definition of âindecencyâ. Now, according to court decisions and Congressâs own guidelines, the indecency sanctions only apply to programs broadcast across the airwaves between the hours of 6:00 am and 10:00 pm. However, it appears that in the Central and Mountain time zones, programs otherwise broadcast at 10:00pm are aired at 9:00pm. Hence, the fines apply only to those stations that aired the program in those time zones.

This is only the latest example of Martinâs overzealous â one might even accurately invoke the word âcrusadingâ â efforts to control the moral tone of broadcast radio and television. In a recent comments, he has even complained that the current fine limit of $32,500 per incident is inadequate, and has endorsed some Congressional proposals calling for fines of half a million per incident of âindecencyâ.

So, how is âindecencyâ defined by the FCC? Simply put, the definition goes something like this: any "language or material that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards for the broadcast medium, sexual or excretory organs or activities."

Okay. Iâll bite. How do you determine that it is offensive? Offensive to whom? Which community standards? Who establishes these standards? What are sexual organs? Are breasts sexual organs? The last time I looked, they were lactation organs designed to provide nourishment for children. Menâs breasts certainly arenât sexual organs, right? Does this indicate discrimination?

Obviously, this definition was written with such intentional vagueness that it allows any overenthusiastic prig â at least any overenthusiastic prig whoâs been endowed with power and authority far exceeding his ability to responsibly wield it â the opportunity to presume that his values are the only values that matter, and to beat broadcast malefactors over the noggin with unreasonable fines in order to shut them up, or shut them down.

Earlier today, I sent Chairman Martin an email, which I will share here:

âI am a psychologist, and a founding member and past president of the North Carolina Association for Management and Treatment of Sex Offenders. I have been recognized for years as an expert in the North Carolina courts on sex crimes committed by children and adolescents, and on the etiology of those criminal behaviors.

I am appalled at your stance regarding "indecency" on broadcast television, and especially your endorsement as FCC Chairman of the recent decision against CBS and "Without A Trace", which resulted in a fine of 3.6 million dollars.

Besides the chilling effect on First Amendment Rights, your stance, which you have repeated time and again, is completely without scientific support.

The United States President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, established during the Nixon Administration, issued a 1970 report which found absolutely no evidence that exposure to explicit sexual materials plays a significant role in the causation of delinquent or criminal behavior among youths or adults. This Commission could not conclude that exposure to erotic materials was a factor in the causation of sex crime or sex delinquency.

Further, while only a single study (Zillmann and Bryant, 1982) determined a deleterious effect on children by viewing sexually explicit material, these findings have never been replicated, indicating either methodological error or investigator bias on the part of Zillman and Bryant. In fact, as stated in a Ph.D dissertation by Christopher D. Hunter (Hunter, 2000), ". many other studies -- including the Donnerstein and Linz (1985) study described earlier -- exposing participants to several experimental conditions (violent porn, nonviolent porn, control) have found that exposure to nonviolent porn produces few or no adverse attitudes towards women. From a review of this literature, Linz (1989) notes "We would have to conclude that the data, overall, do not support the contention that exposure to nonviolent pornography has significant adverse effects on attitudes toward rape as a crime or more general evaluations of rape victims (p. 74)."

Therefore, the FCC's crusade against "indecency", which by no means can even be thought to reach the level of pornography, cannot be supported by any credible research findings. As such, it can only be interpreted as an expression of backward Puritanical attitudes and an unhealthy view of sexuality in general. Congressional action authorizing the censoring of undefined 'indecency' represents nothing more than a pandering to the religious prejudices of a vocal minority of the American people. That attitude, based on your own statements as the FCC Chairman, is one that you share. In other words, you are imposing your own stunted views of sexuality on the American people, without regard to documented scientific evidence that this material poses absolutely no harm to the people whatsoever.

What we DO know, however, is that the attitudes of children are strongly affected by exposure to violent depictions. Study after study, including those by Bandura, and by Feshbach and Feshbach, and which have been replicated time and again, have concluded that exposing children to violence does lead them to imitate this violent behavior. The FCC, however, with its head firmly stuck in the American viewing public's pants, has chosen to ignore this overwhelming evidence. On any evening, on any channel, children are offered scene after scene of graphic violence, shootings, stabbings, beatings, strangulations, mangling, and aggression. No actions have been taken against any broadcast television station or network based on the depiction of violence, no matter how gory, bloody, or prevalent.

This depiction of violence inflicted on one person by another has been conclusively demonstrated to result in aggressive and delinquent behavior, and is the TRUE indecency on broadcast television. Yet, the FCC allows it go on virtually unchecked.

It is my contention, Mr. Martin, that your values are misplaced, your policies are seriously flawed, and that you are yourself a menace to the American viewing public. It is clear, beyond any chance of a reasonable doubt, that your stance, which dictates the policies of the Federal Communications Commission, is predicated on nothing more than your own religious and social prejudices. As such, they are a reflection of the overall misdirected priorities of the Bush Administration, and I can only hope that you will not inflict too much irreparable damage to this country before the next presidential election. At that time I will be very happy to see you removed from your position of badly wielded authority, and replaced with an enlightened FCC Chairman who will base decisions on facts rather than unsupportable religious and moral chauvinism.â

My spleen properly vented, I was able to get on with my day. However, as I considered Chairman Maoâsâ¦. er, Martinâs Cultural Revolution, I have noted some troubling inconsistencies.

The courts have maintained almost from the birth of the Republic that obscenity is not protected speech. In the case of indecency, however, the rulings have not been quite so clear cut.

The courts required, as part of the test for obscenity, three specific factors. They included: 1) the nature of the speech; 2) whether the speech violated prevailing community standards; and 3) whether the speech had any redeeming social value. Great works of art, for instance, since they are presumed to be part of a body of work that enriches the soul and have withstood the test of time, would be exempt, since they did have redeeming social value. It would appear, from the courtsâ definitions of obscenity, that only local prosecution would be possible, since the communityâs standards would have to be violated in order for the work to be judged obscene.

Such is not the case with indecency. The entirety of the work â its purpose, artistic intent, newsworthiness, etc â is of no consequence whatsoever. Show a peek of tit or a naked bum, and the work is automatically indecent. Context is unimportant. Social relevance is unimportant. If it rides the airwaves between 6:00 am and 10:00 pm, and it contains material that Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman, believes to be indecent, you are â by Gawd â going to be in for a little wallet lightening!

And what exactly would constitute indecency during these hours? Well, campers, you donât actually have to show sexual organs. All you have to do is mention them. You donât have to depict real or simulated sexual activity on-screen. All you have to do is describe it.

You know, my faithful readers, back in the 1930âs there was this obnoxious little prude named Will Hayes, who was appointed by President Harding to be postmaster general. If he had stayed in that position, he probably would never have been a bother to anyone. Instead, though, he accepted a position as the first president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA).

The MPPDA later became known as the Hayes Office, which was imbued with the power to pass judgment on every film made in Hollywood. Hayes, a rock-ribbed Presbyterian, based his determination on the fitness of films on his religious convictions. Assisted by Joseph Breen, a puppet of the Catholic Legion of Decency, the Hayes Office whitewashed American films just as they were coming of age. The effects of their well-intentioned but ultimately disastrous meddling was that the development of film as an art form â at least in the United States - was stunted for almost three decades.

The Hayes Code, as the edicts from the MPPDA office were referred to, were based on a single overarching directive: No picture shall be produced which will lower the moral standards of those who see it.

The assumption was clear. The motion picture, as a communications medium, was considered so intensely powerful that the mere exhibition of a moment of indecency â as defined by Hayes and Breen â threatened to undermine and erode the very core of an individualâs lifetime of social and moral development!

Kevin Martinâs attitudes at the Federal Communications Commission appear to be very similar. His single-minded crusade to eradicate the broadcast airwaves of any hint of human sexuality smacks of the very same Puritanical mischief that almost destroyed American filmmaking over seventy years ago. He appears absolutely convinced that if some kid from Nebraska sees a two-second image of Janet Jacksonâs jug, itâs only a matter of time before heâs cruising the blue highways in a pickup truck, trolling for hitchhikers he can rape and murder.

The very best research available, of course, assures us that this is poppycock (Oops, I said cock â titter, titter. Oops, I said titâ¦). Research doesnât mean a damned thing to Martin. Like his Royal Appointer, King George of Crawford Texas, Martin doesnât want to be confused by the facts. He has his opinions, and thatâs enough for him. As a result, itâs only a matter of time before the programming on NBC, CBS, ABC, and FOX is watered down to an almost intolerable, mind-numbing solution of âThe Waltonsâ, âGentle Benâ, and âTouched By An Angelâ, which will drive viewers inexorably to the welcoming arms of cable television, where free thought and artistic expression continue to live happily unmolested.

Until, of course, Kevin Martin and his band of merry party-poopers decide to clean up that Artful Dodge City.

And donât think for a second they havenât considered it.

Gotta boogie...
R

ANY PORT IN A STORM; or HOW MUCH DID YOU MAKE IN THE WAR, DADDY?

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Mon, 27 Feb 06 17:46:00 UT

Hereâs what we know:

The Bush Administration has entered into a unilateral secret deal with United Arab Emirates-based Dubai Ports World, in which DPW would be in charge of all day-to-day operations of up to twenty-one ports in the United States.

This deal, apparently, is so super-top-hush-hush-Cone-Of-Silence-secret, that the Administrationâs own top man, George W. Bush, claims he didnât know about it.

This, of course, is a lie.

Oops. Guess the NSA is now tuned in to this edition of the blog, so Iâm committed now.

Hi, guys. Nice to have you on board.

As I said, this is what we know â that the deal has been cast. Congressional Republicans and other Neocons at first pitched a nutty, decrying the deal and backpedaling from the White House as fast as their little white feet could pump. North Carolina Congressperson Sue Myrick even went so far as to say âHell, no!â to the deal.

Now, though, after a weekend to think it over, and a chance to consider how their palms may be greased by such an arrangement, the White Houseâs GOP Henchmen on the Hill have begun to warm to the deal. Why, I ask, should we be surprised? After all, for Neocons itâs all about the bottom line.

There is more to this tale, however. Behind the ports deal is a tale of such monstrously incestuous nature that it canât be read during the Family Hour, and it goes something like this:

On September 11, 2001, four airplanes were hijacked by nineteen terrorists. You may recall this event. It was in all the papers. Two planes took out the World Trade Center in New York, one put a huge hole in a wing of the Pentagon, and one â during a struggle for control initiated by the passengers â augured into a hillside in Pennsylvania.

While George W. grilled his inner circle as to the connection between this attack and Saddam Hussein, the world slowly became aware of the true origin of the terrorists.

According to Wikipediaâs condensation of the 9/11 Commissionâs findings, thirteen of the nineteen hijackers entered the USA by way of the â you guessed it â United Arab Emirates. Fifteen were Saudis. Two were from the UAE, and the remaining two were from Lebanon and Egypt.

In a Los Angeles Times article in 2003, Josh Meyer revealed much about the funding sources for the 9/11 terrorists. According to Meyer, U.S. officials who had access to the twenty-seven classified pages of the Congressional Report on 9/11 stated that it was clear that there were âvery specific, very directâ links between the hijackers and the Saudi government â meaning, of course, the Saudi Royal Family.

I have previously pointed out in this blog the links between the Bush family and the Bin Ladens. The Bin Ladens, like the Bushes, have a long-standing close relationship with the Saudi Royal Family. In fact, the Clinton Administration tracked Osama Bin Laden down in Afghanistan in February 1999, but had to halt its planned attack because â as it happens â Bin Laden was hosting the Saudi Royal Family at a banquet, and the Administration decided that it would be bad PR to take out an entire sitting government of a âfriendly powerâ in the process of icing a single bad dude.

Okay, so we know that the Saudis supported the 9/11 terrorists, 79% of which were Saudi nationals. We also know that the 9/11 terrorists entered this country with the assistance of the United Arab Emirates. Two of the hijackers were, themselves, Emirati.

In February 2003, Charlotte (N.C.) â based CSX Corporation was bought by The Carlyle Group, referred to as âa global private equity firmâ. CSX owned CSX Lines, a rail and shipping concern. The Carlyle Group reportedly paid about $300 million for the company, which they promptly renamed Horizon Lines, LLC.

Just a month earlier, George W. Bush had named John Snow as Secretary of the Treasury. Snow was confirmed by Bushâs rubberstamp Senate in only fourteen days, and was sworn in just three weeks after his nomination. From whence, you may ask, had W plucked this Cabinet talent? Why, as it happens, John Snow had been the Chairman and CEO of CSX Corporation!

Whatâs the connection? Iâm glad you asked. The answer is in the makeup of the Carlyle Group, who bought CSX mere days after its Chairman and CEO was elevated to almost the right-hand seat of the Doofus-In-Chief.

Here is a rundown of the prime players in The Carlyle Group at the time of the CSX deal:

James Baker, former United States Secretary of State.
Frank Carlucci, Former Secretary of Defense and Deputy Director of the CIA
John Major, Former Prime Minister of Great Britain
George H.W. Bush, Former President of the United States.

Whoa.

Let me get this right. George W. Bush hires John Snow as his Secretary of Treasury mere days before The Carlyle Group, which includes his own father, buys Snowâs company?

Snow, of course, claimed loud and long that he had no knowledge of the deal, which was â after all â completed after he left his post at CSX. For a moment, we are tempted to believe him. That is, until we note that it was only the ANNOUNCEMENT of the sale that took place in February 2003. In fact, it has been documented that the deal itself was completed in December 2002 â almost a month BEFORE Snow was nominated to the Treasury post.

It gets better, campers.

In December, 2004, Dubai Ports World (remember them?) announced that it had purchased the rights from CSX Corporation to acquire the international terminal business conducted by CSX World Terminals.

If you will recall, The Carlyle Group had purchased the CSX Corporation a little over a year and a half earlier for about three hundred mil. They then turned around and sold their World Terminal operations to Dubai Ports World for â get this: 1.15 billion dollars.

Who is Dubai Ports World? DPW is a corporation owned lock, stock, and two smoking barrels by the government of the United Arab Emirates. According to Lou Dobbs of CNN, the money sent to the 9/11 hijackers was sent through the United Arab Emiratesâ own banking system.

In an interesting twist, The Carlyle Groupâs James Baker watched the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11 at the Washington D.C. Ritz-Carlton Hotel, with â wait for it â the Bin Laden family, with whom he had been meeting on behalf of The Carlyle Group. Former President Bush is also reported to have been at this meeting, but left shortly after the attacks.

Later, he defended the Saudi Royal Family against a TRILLION dollar lawsuit brought by the families of the 9/11 victims. So, it shouldnât come as much of a surprise that, last year, Dubai International Capital, a UAE government-backed buyout firm, invested heavily in an eight billion dollar Carlyle Group fund.

The ties between The Carlyle Group, which continues to pay former President George H.W. Bush by way of dividends on investments he made while a member of the Carlyle Board, and United Arab Emirates is unmistakable. In other words, whatâs good for Carlyle is good for the former president. The United States ports deal is good for The Carlyle Group. Very good.

Lest you think the Bush connection with Dubai, the UAE and the Saudi Royal Family ends with The Carlyle Group, you should take note of the fact that The Forgotten Bush Brother, Neil, received significant funding for his educational software firm from â where, class? - thatâs right. The United Arab Emirates. This is the same software firm that produces electronic study guides for the very tests required of school students by George W. Bushâs No Child Left Behind legislature!

Finally, President Bush chose David Sanborn, the former Director of Dubai Ports Worldâs European and Latin American Operations, to be his head of the U.S. Maritime Administration.

But he didnât know the deal with DPW to run the U.S. ports was in the works.

Well, of course not. To think otherwise would serve to question the very trustworthiness of the Commander and Thief, who lied to get us into a war that enriched his father and other Carlyle Group cronies (did we mention that the Carlyle Group is now one of Americaâs largest defense contractors?).

Hereâs one more point. George W. Bush himself is a former Carlyle Group Board Member. In 1990, he was brought onto the Board of The Carlyle Group as the CEO of Caterair, a company specializing in airline food.

Caterair was a cute piece of work. It was created by the Carlyle Group, who bought out Marriottâs interests in airline catering through a leveraged buyout funded by junk bonds. The Carlyle Group paid about $570 million for Marriottâs In-Flight Services Division. The originator of that deal, Frederick Malek (thatâs right, Nixonâs famous âJew-Hunterâ, who compiled lists of Jewish employees at the Bureau of Labor Statistics at Nixonâs direction, and later presided over the 1988 Republican National Convention that named George H.W. Bush as the Presidential Candidate), tapped George W. Bush for a seat on the board at Caterair.

Of course, it would be completely ridiculous to presume that this choice had anything at all to do with the fact that Wâs daddy was POTUS at the time. Who would even question that?

In any case, this also placed George W. Bush on the Board of Directors at The Carlyle Group. As has been documented in many business ventures involving George W., Caterair soon faced soaring debt loads, eventually totaling $263 million. George W. jumped ship, leaving the other directors to go down with the sinking Caterair ship.

David Rubinstein, a co-founder and Managing Director of the Carlyle Group, was recorded in a speech to the Los Angeles County Employeesâ Retirement Association, which has invested $95 million with Carlyle. He didnât know the speech was being recorded, and probably would have tempered his words had he been told so.

Here is what he said about W:

âWe put him on the board and [he] spent three years. Came to all the meetings. Told a lot of jokes. Not that many clean ones. And after a while I kind of said to him, after about three years - you know, I'm not sure this is really for you. Maybe you should do something else. Because I don't think you're adding that much value to the board. You don't know that much about the company.

âHe said, well I think I'm getting out of this business anyway. And I don't really like it that much. So I'm probably going to resign from the board.

âAnd I said, thanks - didn't think I'd ever see him again. His name is George W. Bush. He became President of the United States. So you know if you said to me, name 25 million people who would maybe be President of the United States, he wouldn't have been in that category. So you never know. Anyway, I haven't been invited to the White House for any things.â

Whatâs good for The Carlyle Group is good for George H.W. Bush, whose investments grow like Topsy any time Carlyle Group makes a buck.

George H.W. Bush is mortal. Someday, like all mortals, he will come to his last breaths. When he does, his immense fortune will fall to his children.

Do you think for one second that George W. Bush doesnât know this?

Do you believe, for one-tenth of a thousandth of a second, that the President is clueless as to the relationship between The Carlyle Group and Dubai Ports World, whom his administration has tapped to control every shred of ports operations in the United States?

Does he care that Dubai Ports World is wholly owned by the United Arab Emirates who, with their Middle East butt buddies the Saudi Royal Family, financed the attacks on America on 9/11?

Nope.

Thereâs a buck to be made. Everything else is collateral damage.

The Case of the $757.00 Burrito

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Thu, 19 Jan 06 12:46:00 UT

I checked my bank account this morning, only to find that I was overdrawn by $276.

Not possible, I said to myself. There should be plenty of money in that account.

I checked to make sure that the deposit Iâd made last Friday had gone through. It had. No problem.

There was another deposit listed, however, dated 1/18/06, for $757.00. I know I didnât make that deposit, so I checked it out. Turned out to be a refund from Salsarita.

Further investigation revealed that â after I had lunch there on Friday, which cost (you guessed it) $7.57 â they charged my account $757.00 on the 17th. This, of course, placed me into dire straits, and resulted in about $300.00 in overdraft fees when my mid-month bills were sent out, also on the 17th.

Salsarita apparently realized the error of their ways, and refunded my account the $757.00 yesterday (without explanation). Of course, the $300.00 in overdrafts left me still in the hole, and when three other charges came in last night I was charged another $90, for a grand total of $390.00 in overdraft fees.

To rub margarita salt in the wound, Salsarita apparently charged my account TWICE for the $7.57 my meal had actually cost.

I drove over to the Wachovia at Cotswold (anticipating an additional showdown with the manager at Salsarita), and asked my friendly personal banker Jack if he could refund the $390, since I was clearly not at fault.

âNo,â he said. âNot an amount that large. I could refund ninety or a hundred dollars, but to refund $390 in overdraft charges is beyond my privileges.â

In other words, it was a matter for someone above his pay grade.

He called the manager at Salsarita â expecting, I presume, that they would refund the $390.00 in addition to the $757.00 theyâd already refunded to my account. Of course, they refused. Jack was very apologetic. He said, though, that it wasnât a bank error. I pointed out to him that the bank wouldnât have to refund $390.00 if they hadnât made a policy decision to pay out the largest checks first, and that if theyâd gone from lowest to highest debit on the day I incurred $300 in overdraft fees, the actual total overdraft fee would have been only $90. I asked him â despite the issue of whether the bank had made an error â whether this practice was fair to the customer.

âWell, of course,â he said. âIt is our presumption that the customer will have enough funds in his account to cover all checks.â

âEven if theyâve been dicked by Salsarita?â I asked.

He did agree, considering that argument, to call his district supervisor to request authorization to refund the $390.00. He asked me if I could leave a number where I could be reached.â

âIâll be right here,â I said. âIâm not leaving until this is resolved.â

We stared at each other for a few minutes, waiting for the phone to ring.

It never did.

Finally, he said, âIâll tell you what. Iâm going to go ahead and put the money back in your account. We â that is, the bank â will work with Salsarita to recover whatever we can.â

I thanked him for â apparently â exceeding the bounds of his pay grade authority. He made the necessary adjustments, and we parted amicably.

I crossed the parking lot to Salsarita. There was still, after all, the issue of them charging me twice for one meal.

I showed the manager the bank records.

âOh, youâre the guy who got charged $757.00 for a shrimp burrito,â he said. âThe bank just called about you.â

He explained that the restaurantâs computers went down sometime after lunch on Friday, and when they came back up they apparently were missing their decimals. As a result, some eighty-five customers were charged one hundred times their actual lunch bills.

He agreed that Salsarita owed me $7.57 for the double charge, and â in a moment of what appears to be uncustomary largesse â offered to refund both charges, essentially making my lunch last Friday free.

Actually, he offered to refund $15.58 to my card, when the actual amount should have been $15.14 (or $7.57 x 2).

Under the circumstances, and because I had to get back to work, I accepted the offer. I didnât bother to correct his faulty math.

âIâll need your credit card,â he said. âWe have to do the credit in the back.â

I handed him my card, and he did something with the front cash register, which â after several steps â appears to have debited my bank account $15.58.

Thatâs right. Debited. Now my $757.00 burrito lunch cost only $31.00. I was, however, getting closer to even.

In the end, he made everything right, while still denying that Salsarita held any responsibility for the overdraft fees. He even offered to give me lunch for free.

I declined, as I had used my lunch time to deal with this mess, and had to get back to the office where I would work through my REAL lunch time to make up for the time I was at the bank and at Salsarita.

I also informed him that I had lost trust in Salsarita, and that any time I eat there again, I will have to be certain that I have enough CASH to pay for my meal. Theyâll never see a debit card of mine again.

I think he cared. It was hard to tell, though.

Itâs days like this that make me wish I hadnât given up strong drink. A margarita would be nice right now.

But not from Salsarita.

God only knows what that would costâ¦

Lies, Damned Lies, and Faulty Intelligence

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Mon, 19 Dec 05 14:16:00 UT

âWar is Peaceâ

âFreedom is Slaveryâ

âIgnorance is Strengthâ

âThe intelligence supporting our invasion was wrong, but the invasion was right.â

Come again?

In one of the greatest televised displays of Orwellian anti-logic in history, George W. Bush, Liar-In-Chief, took to the airwaves last night and proclaimed that â by golly â there were errors in the intelligence that led to the invasion of Iraq after all. In fact, it appears that none of the justifications the Shrub made for invading a sovereign state prior to April 2003 were true.

Yet, this imbecile has the temerity to stand before the American people and proclaim that â in spite of the lies he perpetrated to justify his invasion â that it was RIGHT to invade.

Not only that, but he proclaimed that if we get pissed off enough, we might just do it again.

What gall.

Readers familiar with my blogging rants are well aware of the documentation weâve provided that clearly shows the White House knew BEFORE the State of the Union Address in 2003 that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

They were told by German and French intelligence officers that their primary snitch on Iraq â a shady character appropriately nicknamed âCurveballâ â was untrustworthy and unreliable.

The British, as documented in the Downing Street Memos, also informed the White House that they could not find any corroborating evidence to support Curveballâs allegations. They also documented that it appeared that the White House was ignoring any intelligence that failed to support its own, already made, decision to invade IraqNam.

Richard Clarke, a former security advisor to The Shrub, has repeatedly described his meeting on September 12, 2001, in which Bush asked him what role Iraq had played in the attacks on the World Trade Center. These reports were supported by two other White House staffers who attended the meeting. It is denied by Secretary of State Condoleezâ¦Condilezzieâ¦Condoleezzerâ¦ oh, hell, Condi Rice. Of course, as we all now know, Rice couldnât confirm the conversation because, at the time it occurred, SHE WASNâT EVEN IN THE ROOM.

The record clearly indicates that, by early September 12, it was already well-established that the attack had been carried out by Al Qaeda, at the direction of Osama Bin Laden. It was also very well known â even in a White House gone completely mad â that Bin Ladenâs support came not from Iraq but from Afghanistan and the Bush Family Butt Buddies in the Saudi Royal Family.

In fact, the Bushes are very familiar with the Bin Ladens, as these two families have carried on strong business relations ever since Prescott Bush was a Senator. As it happens, The Shrubâs company Arbusto Energy was funded by James Bath, who was the only US representative of Osama Bin Ladenâs brother Salim. Bath invested $50,000 in startup money in Arbusto, but after September 11, 2001, The Shrub denied ever having engaged in business with Bath.

Confronted later with his lies, Bush recanted and suddenly ârecalledâ his business relationship with Bath and Bin Laden.

Later, when Arbusto merged with Harken Energy, almost 18% of its stock was bought by a Saudi sheik who was closely affiliated with the Bin Laden family. The Bushes, and especially its weakest link The Shrub, knew exactly from whence Osama Bin Ladenâs funding was derived.

When the World Trade Center was attacked in 2001, Bush conveniently forgot his long-term relationships with the Saudis and the Bin Ladens, and instead turned his focus to the running family vendetta with Saddam Hussein.

The reasoning seems to have gone something like this: The 9/11 attacks were bad. Saddam Hussein is bad. Osama Bin Laden is bad. The Saudi Royal Family is bad. On the other hand, we like the Saudi Royal Family, because they have helped make us rich. If we focus on Bin Laden, weâll make our Saudi buddies angry, and they might stop making us rich. Weâd better focus on Saddam Hussein, despite the complete absence of any evidence of any kind anywhere or at any time that he had anything to do with the attacks on the World Trade Center.

The obvious conclusion? INVADE IRAQNAM.

As is always the case with inveterate liars, such as our sort-of elected president, eventually all the little mendacious birds must come home to roost. Since the Downing Street Memos were leaked in 2005, we have seen the cracks in the administrationâs tangled web of lies grow into vast chasms, large enough for people of reason to peer into and see them for what they are.

Finally, on nationally television last night, Bush came out and admitted it. The intelligence was wrong. There were no weapons of mass destruction. There was no connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. Saddam Hussein posed no threat whatsoever to the United States. We invaded based on bad intel.

Our bad.

Sorry we blew the shit out of your cities based on a mistake. We really feel bad about killing and imprisoning your citizens and making them do pose for all those naked pictures at Abu Ghraib Prison. Boy, are our faces red.

No, it isnât our faces that are red. Itâs our hands.

Then, after admitting that the entire invasion was a colossal mistake, the Shrub actually turned the argument around and claimed that it was the RIGHT THING TO DO.

According to the Schizoid-In-Chiefâs psychotic logic, it doesnât matter WHY you choose to violate the sovereignty of another countryâs borders, as long as you can justify it by the outcome.

Wow. The mind boggles.

Bush is trying to change the subject by citing all the âprogressâ being made in IraqNam. According to him, ten million people voted in elections there this past week. Of course, they voted in elections propped up by the US government, overseen by the US military, and chose between candidates pre-screened and approved by the White House. Weâll just choose to ignore those little facts.

Bush claims that leaving now would lead to civil war in Iraq. Okay. Here are the facts.

That region of the country has had nothing but civil wars all the way back to the time of Alexander and beyond.

There is going to be a civil war whether we leave now or in twenty years, because civil war is what that culture knows how to do best.

What is anathema to the culture of the Middle East is a democratic form of government.

Letâs face it, this part of the country was dominated by Bedouins and other nomadic types until the First World War. People in most of the Middle East went to war over the rights to use a well until T.E. Lawrence came along and inspired the Arab League â which, by the way, along with the explosion in demand for Middle Eastern crude, resulted in the establishment of the Saudi Royal Family. Kings, sheiks, and viziers have been part of their heritage since the time of Scheherazade and Ali Baba.

Any artificially propped-up democracy in Iraq is doomed ten minutes after the last chopper leaves Baghdad, no matter how many trained Iraqi soldiers we leave behind. Sooner or later the Sunnis will get pissed at the Shiites, someone will steal a goat, and the entire country will erupt into a full-fledged bloodbath which will only end when some military despot vanquishes some other military despot and establishes himself as the supreme leader of the country.

And Iâll betcha ten bucks that the one who wins will be the one who was trained by the US Army, backed by the CIA, and had the best oil connections.

So, no matter what anybody tells you, wrong is wrong, and right is right. You canât do right by doing wrong. Specifically, you canât overrun the borders of a sovereign country on the basis of lies, bomb it back to the Stone Age, and impose an unwanted political system on it, and then say it was the right thing to do.

This invasion was wrong.

It was undertaken by people who knew the reasons for it were lies.

So far, those lies have cost the lives of 2300 of our finest boys and girls, and have maimed and invalided many thousands more. Some counts say we have killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis â mostly people who posed absolutely no threat to us before the invasion. It was all done without a declaration of war by Congress. At its core, this fruitless and unnecessary invasion was conducted by the will of one man â George W. Bush, Doofus-In-Chief, who ignored all evidence against it, in order to satisfy his obsession with a fifteen-year-old family vendetta between his daddy and Saddam Hussein.

Anybody who tells you any different is a damned liar.

Momma, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Scooter

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Fri, 28 Oct 05 14:07:00 UT

On the way back from lunch, as I fought the uptown Charlotte traffic, I heard on CNN that Lewis âScooterâ Libby had been indicated for making false statements, perjury, and obstructing justice in a federal investigation.

According to this same report, Bushâs Goehring, Karl Rove, may evade indictment â at least briefly â but would remain under investigation by Special Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald.

This could be very welcome bad news for the Bush White House. Bad for them. Welcome for people who oppose this illegitimate administration and its ill-begotten war in Iraq. The only downside is that â for whatever reason â Fitzgerald has apparently decided not to indict Libby on charges of divulging the name of a CIA undercover agent, in this case Valerie Plame Wilson.

Like a rock tossed into the middle of a still pond, though, this indictment opens the door for ripples that will mean all kinds of trouble for The Shrub.

In January 2003, in an attempt to justify his already sealed intent to Bomb The Bejeezus Out Of Baghdad (actually, I do believe that this was the original code name for Operation Iraqi Freedom), Bush appeared before a joint session of Congress, and a smattering of Supreme Court Justices, and declared with a certainty rarely seen inside the Beltway that Iraq was attempting to purchase enriched uranium from Niger, in order to fashion nuclear weapons.

Bush credited the British for this piece of information, leaving the British government looking a little surprised and saying something like, âWhatâs all this, then?â

In fact, even as Bush reported on Iraqâs intent, he knew that it wasnât true. He also knew that he had always intended to invade Iraq. The tragic events of 9/11/01 simply provided him with a convenient excuse.

We know, from one of the Downing Street memos, that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw informed the White House over a year prior to the invasion that there was no credible evidence linking Iraq with Al Qaida or any other significant terrorist organization. Also, Straw cautioned the White House during a visit to Bushâs Crawford Texas bunkerâ¦ er, ranch that Iraq presented no more international risk than either Libya or North Korea.

We also know from these memos that Bush planned to invade Iraq come hell or high water as early as March 2002, and that the invasion was originally planned for January 2003. It was only delayed on request of the UN Security Council, through pleas to allow Hans Blix and his weapons inspectors to complete their work â work which, by the way, yielded absolutely no evidence of the continuing existence of WMDâs in Iraq.

As late as July 2002, according to the Downing Street Memos, Britain had provided the White House with absolutely no information suggesting that Iraq was attempting to either procure enriched uranium from Niger, or build nuclear weapons.

This is where Joseph Wilson comes in. Wilson asserts that he told the Bush Administration in March 2002 that there was no credibility to the assertions that Iraq was attempting to obtain yellowcake uranium from Niger, based on his contacts with the Nigerian Prime Minister Ibrahim Mayaki. This was at the same time that Jack Straw informed Bush in Crawford that Iraq posed no unusual threat compared with neighboring countries.

The basis for Bushâs accusations in the State of the Union Address appear to stem from information contained in apparently falsified documents. As it happens, these documents had already been found to be baseless by the CIA and the State Department as early as February 2002. In fact, there is reason to believe that these falsified documents originated from within the White House itself.

So, when The Shrub stood before Congress in 2003 and declared that Iraq was attempting to acquire nuclear weapons â citing this as sufficient reason to Bomb The Bejeezus Out Of Baghdad â he KNEW that he was not telling the truth. Joseph Wilson had told him it wasnât true. The CIA and the State Department had told him it wasnât true. Even the British Government, to whom he attributed the information, had told him it wasnât true.

What IS true, according to the Downing Street Memos, is that Bush was determined as early as March 2002 to invade Iraq, and was willing â and this is a quote from the Downing Street Memos, campers â âto remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD (neither of which existed â my interjection). But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.â

In other words, The Shrub and his dark minions were willing to accept only that information that supported attacking Iraq, and reject all dissenting information, EVEN IF IT HAPPENED TO BE THE TRUTH!

In even plainer language, the President was willing to lie to get his war.

The fly in the ointment, though, seemed to be Joseph Wilson, who wrote the New York Times in July 2003 to refute the allegations of yellowcake uranium shopping by Saddam. He claimed in this letter that he was asked by the CIA to travel to Niger in February 2002, at the behest of Dick âDarthâ Cheney. It seems that, as early as February 2002, Cheneyâs office had questions about the report of Iraqâs attempt to obtain nuclear materials, and wanted someone to go over to Niger and take a look-see. Wilson did so, and found nothing of any real interest to report. He returned to Washington, filed his report disclaiming the rumors, and thought that the whole matter was resolved.

Imagine his surprise when he tuned into the State of the Union Address almost a year later and saw the Doofus in Chief accuse Saddam of exactly the kind of activities Wilson had found to be unjustified â AND HAD REPORTED TO THE WHITE HOUSE.

How surprised must Wilson have been two months later, when Dick Cheney himself appeared on Meet The Press and claimed that Saddam was once again trying to obtain nuclear weapons â this only a month before the attack on Baghdad began.

Robert Novak reported at Townhall.com on July 14th, 2003, that his information indicated that Wilson had been sent to Niger by lower-ranking officials in the CIA, and that it was very possible that CIA Director George Tenet never knew of the mission. This is somewhat surprising, since it appears from Joseph Wilsonâs comments in his letter to the Times that the mission was a direct response to a request from the Vice President.

Novak reported in this piece that he had questioned TWO senior White House officials about the Niger mission, both of whom told him that it was Wilsonâs wife who suggested sending him to do the investigation. Apparently, when Novak followed up on this assertion, asking what kind of influence Wilsonâs wife might have over the Affairs of State, he was informed that she was an undercover CIA operative.

Now, campers, revealing the name of a clandestine operative is a federal offense â a felony offense at that â in the United States. The fact that Novakâs report at Townhall.com inferred that a felony had been committed spurred the current investigation that resulted in Scooter Libbyâs indictment.

Most interesting, though, is NOT that Libby was indicted, but that he was indicted for just about every federal offense OTHER than revealing Valerie Plameâs name to Novak. I guess my Dad was right all along â itâs one thing to do something wrong, but the punishment will be twice as bad if you lie about it.

Remember, though, that Novak referred to TWO senior White House officials who outed Valerie Plame. At this time, only Libby has been indicted. We know, though, that Karl Rove, Dick Cheney, and The Shrub were also questioned by the grand jury. Bush testified, but refused to be sworn in â you can guess why.

So we know of at least four guys in the West Wing who may have spilled the beans to Robert Novak. Iâm guessing that Bush wasnât one of them, since in order to spill any beans heâd have to waste a half hour looking for them. Cheney is too much an evil genius to do it. That leaves Rove, whom â interestingly â is still under investigation by Fitzgerald.

Somehow, I canât get this image from Dashiell Hammettâs The Maltese Falcon out of my head. Thereâs a meeting in the Oval Office, with Bush, Cheney, Rove, and Libby. Theyâre trying to figure out how to get out of this mess. Bush, played by Humphrey Bogart, turns to Cheney, in the guise of Sidney Greenstreet.

BUSH: We need a fall guyâ¦. I know, letâs give them the kid.

(Scooter starts to pull a gat from his trench coat)

SCOOTER: Keep it upâ¦

CHENEY: Scooter? Iâd never think of it. Scooter is like a son to me.

(Scooter looks temporarily relieved)

CHENEY: On the other hand, you can always find another son. Thereâs only one chance to Bomb The Bejeezus Out Of Baghdad, and not go to Leavenworth for it. Scooter, Iâm sorry. I couldnât be more fond of you if you were my very ownâ¦ butâ¦

And at that point they have to sedate Scooter before sending him down to testify to the grand jury.

Okay, it sounds a little far-fetched. I mean, weâre talking about nefarious hijinks in the highest office in the land, here. Who could imagine that elected officials charged with a sacred public trust might lie, conspire, and otherwise evade responsibility for their actions?

Well, I could, for one. I vividly recall another administration about thirty years ago which did exactly that.

All I can think is that it really must stink to be Scooter Libby right now. The poor guy looks to have been set up, by the guys he trusted most in the world, to take the sweat for a crime he didnât commit â namely, the wholesale lying to an entire country in order to justify a personal family vendetta that, so far, has cost the lives of over two thousand good American boys and girls.

If Bush, Cheney, and Rove think that sacrificing Libby will save their sorry butts, they are sorely deluded. Just as the downfall of the Nixon Administration was precipitated by a simple break-in, you can bet that Fitzgerald is already working the angles. You always arrest a little fish to get the big fish. You can bet that, before the weekend is out, someone is going to start talking deal. Libbyâs going to take the first fall, but he can make it a lot softer if he gets to land on Rove at the bottom.

And, in November of 2006, we have the opportunity to run the rascals in Congress out of town and replace them with Democrats, who will be completely willing to investigate The Shrub for his war crimes, and impeach his fanny just in time for the 2008 Presidential race.

Thatâs when the real party starts.

Bush Oil Cronies Boast Money to Burn as Seniors Shiver in Northeast

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Wed, 26 Oct 05 12:22:00 UT

On the morning Hurricane Katrina ravaged the Gulf Coast, I pulled into my local Stop and Rob and filled up the gas tank of my Grand Am at about $2.49 a gallon.

By the time I drove back by on the way home that evening, the price had risen to $3.39 a gallon. A line of cars rolled out the parking lot, down the street, around the corner, and for another half mile up Antioch Church Road.

My son had to leave the house at midnight, hoping to find a gas station still open, and with a reasonable wait, to fill his tank. He returned at four a.m.

Hereâs the deal, though. The gasoline that was in that stationâs tanks at eight in the morning was the same gasoline that was in it that evening. The station never received a shipment that day. No tankers pulled into the lot to fill the underground storage. For some unknown reason, though, the same gasoline that was worth $2.49 in the morning zoomed in value during the day, even though the Stop and Rob had paid the same wholesale price for it.

Now we know why.

Yesterday, British Petroleum reported a third quarter profit of 6.5 billion dollars, compared to 4.9 billion in the same quarter a year ago. Today, we expect to see Exxon Mobil admit to a nine billion dollar third quarter windfall â more money than they have ever made in any quarter, ever.

Well, sure. When you jack up the wholesale price of gasoline by â in some cases â over fifty percent, even though that same gasoline has been in storage for months, youâre bound to find a little extra cash in the till at the end of the day.

You see, the gasoline that you paid forty dollars a tank for in September had been pumped, refined, and stored at the low, low 2004 prices. It didnât cost BP or Exxon a penny more to provide it to the dealers, but they hiked the prices at the very first sign of Gulf damage, just because they could.

And what are they doing with their windfall? Are they plowing it back to the consumer in the form of price drops? Why, no, Virginia. Theyâre spending it onâ¦ advertising.

Thatâs right. Bushâs oil baron buddies are spending millions on print and television advertising designed to convince you that they really arenât gouging Grinches. We are Big Oil, little girl, and WE ARE YOUR FRIEND.

Baloney.

According to one advertising claim, âWeâre all in this togetherâ. Okay, Iâm in. Pass me a couple million of OUR money.

What? You donât want to share? I thought we were all in this together. My mistake.

The interesting thing is the sheer volume of advertising going on. Exxon Mobil has taken out nineteen full-page advertisements in major papers attempting to make themselves not look like thieves, compared with only twelve in 2004. Chevronâs done eleven more appearances in 2005 compared with 2004. The big winner is BP â British Petroleum. Good olâ Green has has plastered the Washington Post with SEVEN full page ads since January. In 2004? Zip, zero, nada, none â nanka, as David Spade says.

Red Cavaney, President and Shill-In-Chief at the American Petroleum Institute, has even tried to divert attention away from gargantuan profits by pointing out how ecologically sensitive Big Oil has been throughout this crisis. After all, even though their primary backers made obscene windfall profits on the backs of the American consumers, they are careful to remind us that in the course of Mother Natureâs fury, there were no oil spills on the Gulf Coast.

Groovy. Reading between the lines, Iâm interpreting that as meaning we didnât lose any oil, SO THERE SHOULDNâT BE ANY SHORTAGE. Right, Red? Hmmm. No response. Guess not.

Other screeds urge consumers to back off on usage, while the Directors of Exxon Mobil, BP, Royal Dutch Shell, and others ride gas hog limos and jet around the world all alone in their private planes. Even Big Oil Apologist George W. Bush took time from jetting back and forth to his bunkerâ¦ er, ranch in Crawford to tell Americans that itâs time to bite the leather and take it up the chute, and that itâs likely to be a long cold winter for folks in the Northeast who depend on fuel oil to stay alive.

In all, the major oil companies expect to reap a windfall profit of between seven and ten billion dollars more than in the same period one year ago â at the same time claiming that they had to raise wholesale prices following Katrina because they were going to take it in the pants over infrastructure damages.

Red Cavaney, of course, says âOh,Poo."

Okay, what he actually said was, âYes, our numbers are large, but when you figure the size of the companies, we are at an all-industry average. We are half the size of the returns of the financials and pharmaceuticals."

Well. That helps. The oil barons are only making half as much as the biggest corporate criminals in the world, the pharmaceutical companies. I guess that only makes them half as evil, right? After all, how can you compare the simple mass rape of millions of American drivers dependent on gasoline to get to the work that drives the machine of American industry to the mass rape of millions of Americans dependent on life-saving medication to keep them alive so they can do the work that drives the machine of American industry?

Oops.

Okay, bad example.

Cavaneyâs strategy is obvious, though. âPay no attention to that man behind the curtain,â he seems to say. âItâs the Big Bad Wicked Witch of the West that you really need to fear.â

How do they get away with it? Thatâs easy. Their butt buddies Bush and Cheney run the country right now, much the way that Captain Hazelwood ran the Exxon Valdez. Both Bush and Cheney are up to their armpits in oil money. Big Oil spent eighty percent of its campaign contributions in the 2004 election on Republicans. Then, just to put on an appearance of impartiality, they threw a paltry twenty percent the way of specially selected Democrats from oil-dependent districts, and claimed they werenât choosing sides.

So, when youâre shivering in the Cold Blue Northeast states this winter, you can rest assured that the Administration that Oil Bought is roasty-toasty in the West Wing of the White House, and that all is well in the Halls of the Exxon Mobil British Petroleum Royal Dutch Shell Hegemony.

Or is it an oligarchy? Hard to say.

Thanx and a tip of the olâ chapeau to Frank Ahrens of the Washington Post for some of the key facts used in this blog entry.

Phony Baloney Cronies, or A Little to the Left, Please

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Wed, 19 Oct 05 20:50:00 UT

Okay, so the rumor machine is all atwitter today over speculation that Veep Dick "Fuck You" Cheney is about to pull himself out of the game by resigning prior to the end of the Shrub's second ill-gotten administration.

Apparently, the basis for the back-alley banter is a new book by turncoat Dick Morris that imagines a presidential contest in 2008 between Hillary Clinton and Condolezz...er, Condolleeeezz... er, Condolleez... aw, hell, Condi Rice. According to the Beltway buzz, Cheney will take one for the team by resigning as VP, citing 'health problems', so that Bush can hand the right hand seat to Rice in anticipation of a White House run, while he still has a Republican Congress to confirm the choice.

Morris, according to reports, claims the Republicans believe that there isn't another GOP pol with the stones to take on Hillary and win, given the Shrub's dismally low approval numbers. And, there may be some basis to this. After all, if the Presidential race were held today, Bush would probably have a difficult time whipping the foam on a double half-caf mocha latte.

What I can't figure, though, is how anyone thinks that Rice would do any better. If there was ever a blatant case in point demonstrating the validity of the Peter Principle, it is our current Secretary of State. Here is a woman whom, as National Security Advisor, somehow booted a memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in United States", and then tried to defend her stupidity in a nationally televised Congressional hearing. When the only man in the Bush White House with a shred of honor, Colin Powell, fell on his sword because he could no longer stomach the lies coming out of the West Wing, we're supposed to believe that the absolute best person Bush could find to replace him was Rice. In other words, having failed miserably in anticipating the telegraphed ramp-up to 9/11, Condi Rice was - in the Shrub's myopic view - the one person in the country best suited to represent the United States in the geopolitical arena.

Here's what I really think happened. The entire Bush Administration has been one marked by Good-Ol'-Boyism, nepotistic glad-handing, and self-serving score settling. Bush One's bowling buddy Dick Cheney is called upon in 1999 to comb the land looking for an honest man to pair off with Bush Two, and the best person he can come up with is... well, himself. After the election, Bush One's poker pal Rumsfeld was brought on board to orchestrate the invasion of Iraq, almost a year before 9/11. Karl Rove and Scooter Libby (currently in the center of the Valerie Plame scandal) were also old Bush One cronies, and were recruited to keep the kid from looking dumb.

To this day, I can't figure out why Colin Powell threw in with these embarrassments, except perhaps he felt like he owed a debt of loyalty to Bush One, whom he served during Desert Storm. Maybe Powell, like the Shrub's Dad, felt he had left the job a little underdone in Gulf War Round One, and wanted a chance at a second swat at Saddam Hussein. Who knows?

In other words, almost the entire Bush White House is populated by Bush One insiders, except for Condi Rice. If, as it is thought might happen, Dick Cheney takes a dive to once more divert attention from the fact that the Emperor has no clothes, it is probable that the only place Bush has to choose from for Replacement Veep is within his own circle. Can you imagine any sane person on the outside who would want to sign on with this eight-year train wreck at this point?

To make matters worse, pickings are getting slim. Rove and Libby are likely to be indicted any day, and have already indicated that they would resign immediately if that happens. Rumsfeld has sort of vanished lately - probably locked in a closet in the Executive Office Building. Powell already took a train to the coast. Tom Delay is dodging the cops in Texas, and is probably already practicing how to take a shower without bobbling the soap.

In other words, with all the phony baloney cronies flying the coop at 1600 Penn Ave, Condi Rice may be the only person left in America who is: A)Not currently under investigation or indictment, B)Self-deluded enough to believe she can handle the job, and C)Willing to allow her name to be paired with Bush's as the administration augers in like a bunker buster.

Here's my suggestion. Keep Cheney. Dump Bush. We all know that Cheney's corrupt, devious, and megalomaniacal. At least he doesn't try to pretend he's something he isn't. He's also smart, something the Shrub can't brag about. I don't agree with a single thing he believes, but at least I always know where he's coming from.

Of course, this will never happen. Instead, the President's inner circle will fall away one by one, draw token prison time, or take plum positions with Halliburton, or just fade away, until Bush is left wandering the countryside like King Lear, babbling to himself about the grandeur that was his reign, with his faithful companion Condi Rice by his side.

And you know who King Lear's companion on his travels was, don't you?

That's right. The Fool.

Of Crime and the River and Arlo and the Shrub

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Tue, 4 Oct 05 10:55:00 UT

People often ask me why I write crime fiction. Why, they ask, don't you write romance novels, or maybe one of those nice Oprah books?

Okay, let's get something straight. Ricky don't do chick lit. Close quotes.

I think most people who write crime fiction tend to have similar views of the world. We tend to believe that there is a lot of evil out there that needs a good squashing, and perhaps we feel just a little powerless to do anything about it.

Our protagonists, though, because they are immortal, fearless, impervious to bullets, and generally smarter than the average bear, can wade right into the midst of evil and give it the shellacking it deserves.

Would that it were so easy in the real world.

Last night, I attended an Arlo Guthrie concert in Charlotte. Yeah, that Arlo Guthrie. The "Alice's Restaurant" guy. Yes, before you ask, he is about a gazillion years old. He's got this long gray hair, and a grizzled moustache and beard, and his voice has more than a touch of gravel in it at times, but you can tell that the fire still burns bright inside of him.

This was an unusual crowd for normally ramrod straight, evangelical, right-wing, my-country-right-or-wrong Charlotte. Somehow, in the city that made banking sexy - if only for bankers - Arlo managed to draw a full house of idealistic anti-war peacenik dreamers. For three hours, we were transported back to the Time of Tricky Dick. The house was energized against an unjust, stupid, opportunistic war. Arlo told a lengthy, somewhat rambling story involving Joseph from the Bible, and Moses, and David slaying Goliath, and then tied it into a central theme, which was that one person can have the most dramatic impact, if he or she comes along and does the right thing at the right time.

Elaine, my lovely bride, and I left the theater to walk to our car. I mused that, regrettably, we weren't doing enough to stop our own senseless, unjust, stupid, opportunistic undeclared war. Cindy Sheehan and the most recent march on Washington, it seems, was a good start. I worry, though, that without some kind of organized movement, the whole shebang is going to lose momentum and sputter to a halt.

This has been a tough several months. I haven't blogged as frequently as I probably should have, because of the vagaries of book deadlines, work commitments, family tragedy, etc. I think that needs to change. I have a feeling I'll be venting somewhat more frequently in these pages, if only to add my voice to the crescendo of criticism of our miserable failure of an administration and its incredibly dangerous policies. As Arlo said in "Alice's Restaurant", if a hundred, or five hundred, or five hundred thousand people do it, then it's a movement,and maybe we've forgotten just how powerful a movement can be.

I think it's time to rediscover the Power of the People. There's some beaucoup evil loose in this country right now, and I think it could use a little squashing. Anybody with me?

Let's roll.

Catcha later.
R

The Madness of King George

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Tue, 23 Aug 05 16:49:00 UT

Back when I was a callow impressionable youth, my greatest fear was of single- and double-digit numbers. I was eighteen, still a senior in high school, and somewhere off in a jungle halfway around the world kids my age were getting their nuts blown off in an unwinable war waged for corporate and political interests that had abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with the protection of people in the United States.

Why did I fear low ordinate numbers? Because we had something called the Draft. Each year, some old white guy in a shiny suit, standing at a table in Washington DC, would start spinning a wire basket filled with numbered tiles. There were 365 tiles in the basket, and the first one out belonged to January first. If you were nineteen that year, and your birthday drew a low number, it was just a matter of time before you found yourself hanging out of a chopper taking AK fire over a rice paddy in Nam.

This was not your daddy's war. In 1941 a bunch of guys flew all the way across the Pacific to bomb the living bejeezus out of Pearl Harbor, removing the last bastion of defense between them and California. That was an enemy worth fighting. We have to recall that we weren't at war with Germany and the other Axis Powers until we declared war - mostly as an afterthought - on the Japanese. The next day, Hitler declared war on us, and the conflict Americans had desperately sought to avoid for years was on, baby. That was a noble fight. Everyone knew that if we didn't stop the bad guys, it was just a matter of time before the state food of Kansas was wiener schnitzel and sushi, because they'd already demonstrated beyond any reasonable doubt that they intended to kick our collective ass.

Nam was a different story. We took a losing war off the hands of the French (again), and set about losing it ourselves, against an enemy who posed absolutely no threat to the United States in any way, shape, or form. It was a geopolitical conflict designed to inflict one form of government over another, because BY GAWD we knew that the only good gummint is a democratic gummint, and we were going to force Democracy down the throats of the Vietnamese if it choked them to death.

That didn't make sense to me in 1972, and it still doesn't make sense. Fortunately, I was one of the lucky ones. I drew a high number in the draft lottery. I was relatively safe, unless Nixon decided to divert attention from the mounting suspicions regarding his felonious activities by invading China or something. Still, and despite my position of safety, I knew guys who were going over there to become rice fertilizer for no good reason, and I had to try to stop it. I joined in with other youthful anti-war protestors, and took to the streets to demonstrate and try to end the madness.

And you know what? It worked. Not only did we pull out of Viet Nam (sadly, not before we got shellacked by the Cong), but we also managed to can Tricky Dick's lying ass in the process. We felt pretty good for a bunch of skinny, long-haired malcontents. Surely we'd shown THEM. It would certainly be a hundred years before we ran across another administration as soulless and depraved as Nixon's. Right?

Right?

Well, I guess not. It's been thirty years, now, and here we are again, campers. Those of us who long ago learned to observe the lessons of history decried this ill-begotten Iraq invasion long before cruise missiles lit up the sky over Baghdad in 2003. We could see the handwriting on the wall, no matter how vehemently Rummy denied that Iraq would be another Viet Nam.

Nobody listened.

Okay, guys, before the right-wing history revisionists burn all the books and name an airport after The Shrub, I want to set the record straight.

First, and absolutely foremost: IRAQ HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH 9/11!!!!!

There were no Iraqis on any of the airplanes that day. No Iraqis were involved in the planning of the attacks. No Iraqis assisted in transporting any of the 9/11 terrorists. No Iraqis profited from the attacks. In fact, Iraq had not posed a single threat to anyone in the Middle East since Desert Storm in the early 1990s. Why? Because they were embargoed. They were hemmed in on all sides by a UN coalition. Hell, they couldn't even get FOOD in, let alone weapons of mass destruction.

Second, and fundamental to the rest of my points: The so-called "war" in Iraq, which was never actually declared, was planned by the cabal surrounding The Shrub long before 9/11. There are records making it clear that discussions surrounding an Iraqi invasion took place among the Bush faithful even before the 2000 election. Why? Because Saddam Hussein had been an embarrassment to The Shrub's daddy ever since Operation Desert Storm. Daddy didn't finish the job by rooting Saddam out of his palaces and disemboweling him in the Baghdad public square in 1991, and as a result lost the election to Bill Clinton in 1992. Daddy Bush never got over the sting of that defeat. So, when The Shrub got a shot at the White House in 2000, Daddy Bush surrounded him with all the old Bush 1 cronies, put Skull and Boners Cheney and Rummy in charge, and told The Shrub to shut up, sit in the corner, and let Cheney pull the strings on the Bush Family Vendetta.

9/11 provided the trigger. We all know now, from Condoleezza Rice's own words, that The Shrub approached her on the day of the WTC attacks and asked her how they could connect the tragedy to Saddam Hussein. Huh? Well, they couldn't, but they did it anyway. They wouldn't let something as simple as the truth get in their way - family scores had to be settled. We know now, from the Downing Street Memos, that The Shrub and Daddy's Cronies intended to attack Iraq from the very start.

The justification? Well, since the United States had now joined the worldwide club of terrorist victims, we now somehow understood the problem, and it was our responsibility to wipe ALL terrorism off the face of the Earth, by Gawd.

The only problem? There weren't any terrorists in Iraq. Uh-oh. Hmmm. What to do about that?

"Wait!" Rummy said, "What about the Weapons of Mass Destruction?"

You know - the weapons that Hans Blix and his entire crew of UN investigators had never been able to prove existed. Those weapons.

"We gotta go in and get those weapons!" The Shrub cried. "Rush Limbaugh told me that the UN couldn't find it's ass with both hands and a GPS, so we have to go do their jobs for them!"

(By the way: he would use this same basic excuse two years later to make the Recess Appointment of John "Door Banger" Bolton to be the UN Ambassador - why waste a good excuse on just a single incident?)

So, we bombed the holy shit out of Baghdad, made a glorious - if completely unopposed - dash across the desert, and eventually dragged Saddam Hussein out of a spider hole so we could take pictures of him in his BVDs and distribute them on the wire services. Then we found the Weapons of Mass Destruction and proved to the world that our mission had been just and right.

What?

Oh, yeah. I forgot. No Weapons of Mass Destruction. Oops. Our bad.

"But wait!" Rummy said. "We just change the mission! Now we say that our real intent was to bring Democracy to Iraq, exactly the way we did in Viet Nam thirty years ago."

"Um. Excuse me," said all of us who actually remembered what happened in Viet Nam. "We got our butts kicked in Nam. We left with our tails between our legs because the enemy engaged in a guerilla war we couldn't win."

Nobody listened, of course, because there was this election going on, you see, and they were too busy listening to the Swift Boat Veterans for Bush trying to paint John Kerry as a cowardly Commie sympathizer. This was no time for The Shrub to admit a possible weakness in Iraq! We had to press on with The Mission. We'd make Iraq a democratic society if we had to kill every last one of them to do it!

Which, of course, sounds exactly like the rationale that was used in Viet Nam.

"But this is different," Rummy argues. "This isn't Viet Nam. It's Iraq."

Yeah, it's Iraq. It's a place where - instead of hiding in jungle thickets and sniping at enemy soldiers - we have Islamic radical fundamentalists who reject every tenet of democratic rule and aren't terribly shy about blowing themselves to kingdom come to make their point. Only problem is, they tend to like blowing themselves to kingdom come when they're hanging with a large number our soldiers.

This is why Cindy Sheehan is encamped outside The Shrub's Crawford, Texas bunker... uh, compound. She knows, as we all SHOULD know, that the entire Iraq debacle is a shell game of lies built on lies. Having invaded the country to save Daddy's face, The Shrub now - like the dog who finally catches a car - has to figure out what to do with it. It's "You Broke It, You Bought It" on a global geopolitical scale.

I think Cindy Sheehan should be Time Magazine's Person of the Year. Maybe she should receive the Nobel Peace Prize. In a perfect world, her single act of courage in facing down the biggest presidential liar since Nixon would be the catalyst that would energize a new anti-war movement in this country. In a perfect world, seeing her selfless vigil, people of genuinely good will would take to the streets, march toward Crawford, clog the interstates, fill the hills and valleys, and converge on the Bush enclave with one, unfaltering voice, proclaiming that THIS WAR IS WRONG!

And, when The Shrub finally does make his escape and head back to his thankfully temporary digs on Penn Ave, we should follow him there, and fill the Mall with thousands of angry, chanting, vocal demonstrators. By Gawd, it would be 1972 all over again.

I don't think it will happen, though. I don't see the people who could make it happen - the young people - getting energized enough to mobilize and collectively voice their anger and rage. Maybe it's because, despite the lowest military recruiting numbers in decades, the youth of America aren't truly threatened by the "war" in Iraq. After all, it isn't as if there's a draft anymore. Nobody has to sweat out the rolling rat cage and the tiles with the single-digit numbers, wondering whether the luck of the draw means they'll have their asses shipped over to some stinking desert to get blown off by some suicide bomber or an errant landmine.

The kids of today won't fight against the war, because the lack of a draft means they won't have to go fight it.

"But wait!" says Rummy....

Open letter to Richard D. Parsons, AOL Chairman

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Wed, 29 Jun 05 14:49:00 UT

So, when I tried to log on to my AOL account from work yesterday, I received a message stating that my account was âtemporarily unavailableâ.

I knew what this meant. One of my children had been naughty again.

This has happened before. Either my son or my daughter lands in a chat room, the conversation becomes inflammatory, âwordsâ are exchanged, someone gets their BVDs in a bunch and complains to the AOL Guardians of Good Taste, and the next thing I know Iâm being called on the carpet and required to change my passwords.

AOL does send me an email outlining the offense, and I usually respond by limiting the offending childâs access to chats or IMs or whatever until they come to me on their knees begging to be reinstated, and promising me that â on pain of being unplugged â they will never never never ever do it again. No biggie.

Yesterday, however, when I got home, took my slap on the wrist from TOSBrownshirt of the Teen Chat SS, and updated my passwords, I received an email outlining what â in this case â my lovely daughter had said that raised AOLâs hackles.

To quote: she said, âI have suspicions that President Bush is technically retarded.â

Thatâs it. She didnât scribble profanities, defame other chat room visitors, utter vulgarities, or flame anyone. She simply had the audacity to write an opinion regarding the mental capacity of the Doofus In Chief. Apparently, some right wing kid in the room couldnât handle a little W-bashing, and filed a complaint with the Secret Chat Police.

Now, I would like to take a moment here to reiterate my own opinions. While olâ George may not qualify in terms of actual IQ scores as an imbecile, it doesnât take long to recognize that he is, in no particular order, Socially Retarded, Militarily Retarded, Ecologically Retarded, and â perhaps his worst offense â Politically Retarded. Without his daddyâs puppet-masters Cheney and Rummy and Rove hanging around to point him in whatever direction they mistakenly believe to be correct, he would probably wander around the Oval Office bumping into the furniture.

That, as I stated, is an opinion. It is Protected Speech, under the First Amendment to the United Stated Constitution, and therefore should not be quashed or punished. Likewise, my beautiful child stated an opinion. More correctly, she said that she had âsuspicionsâ. She didnât say outright that Bush is retarded. She said â paraphrasing here â that she was very concerned that, based on her observations, Bush might not be actually qualified by testing to fall in the Mentally Deficient Range of intelligence, but that he does appear to technically meet some of the criteria for retardation.

I have a question. If I decide to hang out in Teen Chat Room or â as is more likely â sit and look over my daughterâs shoulder as she does so, can I file complaints with the Chat KGB when some right-wing sixteen-year-old dunderhead opines that Hillary Clinton is a closet lesbian? In that case, will that kidâs father be subjected to temporary banishment from AOL, and forced to change HIS passwords?

Taking this one step farther: if I am looking over my daughterâs shoulder, and some kid defends Bushâs tragic and obscene incursion into Iraq, which I oppose on just about every principle that exists, am I within my bounds to turn that kid in to the Authorities because he offended my delicate sensibilities? And, in that case, since the kid in question defended what I believe to be an obscenity (even though, in reality, he was only stating an opinion) isnât he even more culpable than my daughter was when she questioned the presidentâs intelligence?

The whole slippery-slope nature of this discussion boggles the mind. More importantly, though, I was deprived of access to my AOL account, which I pay for without fail every month, because of Constitutionally-protected speech! Whatâs next? Will I find my phones tapped and my every email dissected by the NSA because I donât agree with the current administration? Is it now a crime to challenge the government â and its Supreme Commander â when it does something incredibly cretinous?

These are dangerous and frightening times, Mr. Parsons. With the Patriot Act awaiting reenactment (with, I might mention, some very interesting additions involving domestic surveillance), Bushâs vendetta in Iraq stretching off potentially into the next decade, and religious wackos pressing their agendas on every corner, free speech appears to be first in line to go up against the wall. We should all be concerned about this, whether the president is a dunce or not. At the very least, I would expect that you â as the director of one of the largest online companies in the world, would implement better controls over your arbiters in the chat rooms, and assure that there are clearly-set standards for conduct that donât trample all over visitorsâ rights. Free speech is one of our most cherished values, and I am appalled that your organization would even consider punishing someone for stating a political opinion.

For shame, Mr. Parsons. For shameâ¦

Roll Me Over, In The Clover, Do It Again

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Thu, 20 Jan 05 10:08:00 UT

Okay, so let's see if I have this right.

Condoleezza Rice, whose parents should be flogged just for spelling her name that way, was so incompetent as National Security Advisor that she was the natural choice for Secretary of State. And the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved her WITH ONLY TWO DISSENTING VOTES?

At least Barbara Boxer had the stones to come out and - almost - confront Rice with the fact that she out and out lied to both Bush and the American public about Weapons of Mass Distraction. The amazing thing is that Rice actually sat there and acted insulted that someone might question her integrity. Hard to question something that barely exists.

Come on, people, this is the same woman who ignored a memo entitled "Osama Bin Laden Plotting Attacks Against United States", that was practically a blueprint for the 9/11 attacks.

Secretary of Freakin' State. Only two dissenting votes.

A colleague of mine thinks she knows what the actual tactic is, here. The Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee, she postulates, are trying to give Bush just enough rope to hang himself.

You'd think the Democrats' butts would still be sore over the way they were treated in the election, and wouldn't make this same mistake twice.

They reasoned in April 2003 that they could vote for the invasion of Iraq - based on Bush's, Rice's, and Powell's blatant lies about the existence of WMD's - and therefore give Bush just enough rope to hang himself. When Democrats decided to yank back on that rope later (after it became obvious that there were no WMD's and the word 'quagmire' started circulating the Capitol Dome), they were accused of 'flip-flopping', and 'failing to support' our valiant boys in desert camo fighting Bush's War.

Bush rode that elegant piece of spin all the way back into the White House.

Now, with twenty-twenty hindsight, and a clear understanding of Bush's underhanded, sinister way of doing business, the Democrats have formed a unified, enlightened bloc to stride forth and... well... do it all again, it seems.

What a bunch of spineless weenies.

If there was ever a time for Congressional rancor and party-line votes, this is it. The Foreign Relations Committee should have been split right down the line - Republicans for and Democrats against - on this nomination, as they should for every nomination this asshole in the White House makes over the next several months, including (most of all) Gonzales. The vote in the Senate should also be broken right down the aisle - ayes on the right and nays on the left.

That's the only way Democrats have a chance to take back the House and Senate in 2006 - by clearly delineating the differences between themselves and the Republicans.

Instead, though, they appear to have decided that it's no use fighting the Bush juggernaut and - like the Parisians in WWII - are standing by crying in their wine coolers as the right wing parade goose-steps through the Arc de Triomphe and down the Champs d'Elysses of American politics.

Thank you, John Kerry and Barbara Boxer, for standing firm and refusing to endorse this total failure Condoleezza Rice as America's Top (shudder) Diplomat. As for the rest of the Democrats on the Foreign Relations Committee - either get with the program or get lost. We don't need an opposition party without a backbone.

My best Christmas present

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Wed, 15 Dec 04 07:28:00 UT

The nurse on the telephone sounded urgent.

"We've sent your daughter's blood work over to a specialist. He wants to see her today. As soon as possible."

My daughter had been diagnosed the day before as anemic, after several medical tests. Anemia runs in the family, for reasons unknown. We figured that, like my lovely spouse, she would just have to take iron pills to boost her hemoglobin.

"What did you find?" my wife asked.

The nurse explained that her hemoglobin and hematocrit were both low, but hinted that there were 'other factors' of concern.

The specialist didn't want to see her until 1:00. It was only nine in the morning. My daughter was already at school, completely unaware of what was happening. I wished I could say the same.

Like any distraught and concerned parent, I immediately turned to that know-it-all resource for all things medical, the internet, for information. What I read didn't comfort me. Among the potential causes for her condition were disorders with dreaded names like leukemia, and multiple myeloma. What I read stoked my deepest fears.

I picked up my daughter around noon, and drove into the big city to our north, to the huge medical center there. We made our way to the seventh floor. I had only told her that there were some things in her blood tests that a doctor wanted to check out, and that it was probably nothing more than anemia. She's a smart kid, though, and when she saw the words Children's Specialty Clinic and Oncology Center, and then saw all the bald kids playing in the waiting room, she figured out what was up right away. Then she saw her mother waiting for us, and she became really worried. That made three of us.

The doctor asked dozens of family history questions - who had heart disease, who had cancer (that word I dreaded), who had diabetes. The interview and examination went on for only a few seconds less than the cretacious period.

Then the doctor took blood, did a clotting test, and finally announced his concerns.

He was worried about Von Willbrands Disease. I had never heard of Von Willbrands Disease. Apparently it's a form of atypical hemophilia, that ebbs and flows. You can bop along perfectly content, clotting like a son of a gun, for years maybe, and then incur a minor injury during an ebb in clotting factors and bleed to death just like that. The doctor talked about a case he had worked with a Vietnam vet who had been shot several times, gone through evac, a MASH unit, and then had undergone heart surgery years later, all without incident. Then he had minor hernia surgery and almost bled out on the table.

The treatment? Get this - iron tablets for the anemia, and a nasal spray. And that's only if she actually has it. We won't know for another week. We can wait.

That's it. No leukemia. No multiple myeloma. No dreaded chemotherapy and bone marrow transplants and prolonged illness and praying for a remission. My daughter is going to be perfectly fine.

At the checkout desk, we wrote out a check for the examination, and I was stowing the checkbook as a woman pushed her son up to the window. He was hairless and bloated and flushed from chemo, and he retched into an emesis tray he carried in his lap. I tried to smile at them with something that resembled hope, but deep down I only felt relief.

That night, I slipped into bed with my wife, and I held her close, and I told her we had been given a mitzvah. She said she knew. A single telephone call and four hours of waiting had taken a year or two off our lives, but we were able to sleep peacefully, grateful for the best Christmas present we could have ever received.

The deer in the drainage ditch

MurdVooCarre@aol.com — Tue, 23 Nov 04 07:48:00 UT

Every once in a while, I run across something that reminds me that work isn't everything.

As I've mentioned, I live back in the trees in southern North Carolina, about six or seven miles from the South Carolina border. It's peaceful, especially now that we've had the first frost and the leaves in our hardwood forest behind the house have burst into a multi-hued palette of reds and yellows and oranges. As the afternoon sun shines through them, the entire back of the house takes on a glow of reflected rays that shine through the skylights and the window-wall that lines our den opening onto the deck. It is, after all, my favorite time of year.

The other day, as I started out the front door to get the morning paper to read with breakfast, I stopped short as I glanced something through the glass beside the door. A large animal was walking across our front lawn. I crossed into the dining room and deftly pulled open the shutters on the window.

There, on the grass, were five white-tail deer, grazing quietly between furtive glances to check for predators. We've seen deer regularly here in the woods, but never so close to the house, and never in such numbers. I don't know if they could see me through the glass - I have no idea what the visual acuity of deer might be - but if they could it didn't seem to bother them.

They remained there for several minutes, until a school bus from the local elementary school chugged up the hill, and they scattered across the road into the pine barrens on the other side.

My daughter tells me that she's seen them several times, and that they live in the sheltering evergreens in the field across the street. I've seen them running there from time to time, but when I go walking over there I never seem to run across them.

On Saturday morning, I saw ten or so turkey buzzards circling over the field, swooping and drifting with the updrafts and thermals. I know what they eat, and what it means when they congregate in such numbers. I quickly took a census of our cats, to make certain that none of them had come to a bad end, and then took a quick walk out in the field. Didn't see anything, but the next morning I only counted four deer in the front yard.

This is the season of the deer in the drainage ditch. White-tails have exploded in numbers in our community, and during the fall they have little on their walnut-sized minds except eating and making little deer. That makes them easy prey for automobiles. It seems that, every day, I see a new carcass lying by the side of the road. Somehow they disappear by the evening, but I can't help wondering if one of our deer wandered in front of an SUV and got scattered, and whether that isn't why we now have flocks of turkey buzzards circling over the barrens.