PEOPLE WHO SAY THEY CAN'T SUPPORT KERRY SO THEY WON'T VOTE--WELL, READ ON

What? You're Not Going to Vote? Are You Insane?

Recently, a member of the discussion group Speak-Your-Peace ( (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Speak-Your-Peace/), call her Ishmael, wrote this:

"For all of you who think Nader is a "Bush plant" or a spoiler....check out the following article (not included, it was so dumb--ed.) and find out...WHO IS
REALLY TAKING THE MOST REPUBLICAN MONEY? Hint...It ain't Nader.

If you must vote....vote peace. Or else take responsibilty for the murder of the innocents to come. When you vote for war.....you are killing them.

I will probably will not vote this year....my message to the
DNC....I don't buy what you are selling and I will not participate in this FARCE. Smoke, mirrors and bull shit. Two sides of one coin...NO CHIOCE! With the votes being handled, controled and counted by the GOP and their companies. What a joke."


Yow! So I responded--surprise--with a rant:


"Ishmael, you won't vote this year? Have you taken leave of your senses?

And by "you" I mean all who agree with Annie or plan to vote for Nader in a swing state.

Whatever merit there is to Naderism, it's been, at least temporarily, been made moot. There just too much at stake to be bogged down in the trough of "same coin, two sides." In many ways, that dogma feeds right into the neocon's pit bull attack. The more of you--who would not vote Republican under any circumstances-- that don't vote, the better off they are. And as much as 3rd party that offers a real choice is desirable and necessary, I can wait another few years--it's been a few hundred, after all--to resume that fight.

I don't have a problem with Nader's general points of view. His conclusions about the evils of corporate dominance are indisputable. But--and there's a big one--but with extreme rightwing neocon zealots having hijacked the Republican party (not that it ever was admirable), being in charge of the government and still largely controlling the national agenda, and even with a centrist DNC-dominated Democratic party, to still maintain that there's no difference between the two parties is mind-boggling and hopelessly reactionary. "Corporate interests" are an incredibly destructive force, but note this--no mater how insufficient the Clinton administration was in fostering a sustainable environmental and energy policy, the democrats would not and will not undo 30 years of environmental progress, and invite the energy industry into the White House to write energy policy. That comparison obtains across the board. The dems don't distort or deny all science to a radical or religious agenda, that not coincidentally enriches the corporate coffers at the expense of yours and mine, as does the Medicare bill that the dems would never have passed. Under the dems, slow and plodding--often begrudging, sometimes bludgeoned into it-- advancement of consumer interests and reigning in of corporate power. Under the current incarnation of Republicans, total capitulation to the goals of the worst of corporate America, and total undoing of any progress in that direction since the New Deal, if not the first Roosevelt era--if they could get away with it. Another term, and they might.

At this stage, do we again have to list all the crimes of the Bush administration to convince anyone to vote against them,and that corporate hegemony is far from the only,or maybe even the most important problem? How about the 300,000 women around the world who have died because of Bush's re-imposition of the Reagan gag rule--no funding for international health clinics if abortion is even mentioned, let alone advocated or practiced, or don't adhere to the Bush's insistence that the only advocacy can be of abstinence. That's 300,000 dead. As that was one of the first acts of Bush as pres, repealing it will be one of the first acts of a Democratic pres. Once more --300,000 needless deaths, and immeasurable suffering. I shouldn't have to say anything else to get you to vote for Kerry--or rather, against Bush. Jesus Christ, 300,000!

But I will.

Remember that $15B AIDS money? How much do you think has been distributed so far? And to whom was it distributed? And who didn't speak up when some sick fuck of a Bishop in the Vatican told Africans it's no use to use condoms because they leak the AIDS virus--in an attempt to support his Church's vile policy against contraception? How many vulnerable uneducated African Catholics, with no access to the truth--due in no small part to that murderous gag rule--have suffered or died because of these hateful policies? You'd think the leader of the free world would condemn loudly and boldly such malicious ignorance--were it not for the fact that he instructed his CDC to say essentially the same thing on their website--or remove any reference to condoms at all in AIDS prevention. Condoms, after all, promote teenage promiscuity, in addition to not being very effective.

How much suffering and death have these actions and inactions caused? Your guesses will be far too low.

In the interest of full disclosure, the CDC seems to have restored some info on condoms recently, and Bush has recently mentioned, oh so briefly, condoms, in a positive way. Much too little, much too late. Close to 40% of teens in America think condoms don't work so there's no point in using them, mostly as a result of the same abstinence-only advocacy policies in public schools and other institutions that accept (or need) govt money, and the general; lack of any integrity in govt policy towards AIDS and STD education in America. All they seem to care about is stopping kids from fucking, instead of preventing pregnancy or disease. The former is idiotically futile, while the latter is eminently achievable.

That pig Reagan's silence during the early years of the AIDS epidemic resulted in the slogan SILENCE=DEATH. In more ways than he imagines, Bush is Reagan's legatee.

How about 10,000 dead Iraqis, 1000 (so far) dead American soldiers--and 5000 grievously wounded, and tens of thousands who will suffer the Iraqi version of Post-Traumatic Stress Syndrome? In Vietnam, 52,000 Americans died (and countless Vietnamese), but almost as many vets died after the war due to PTSS, via drug od's, suicide, and other manifestations of depression and despair. What will happen to the vets from this war, especially as they continue to realize how they too have been lied to, manipulated, and ill-treated when they return home--this time not by their civilian peers, but by their government? Whatever Kerry may or may not do as pres regarding Iraq (and his comments are not encouraging), there's no question the invasion wouldn't have happened under a Democratic regime. Two sides of the same coin? What offensive nonsense.

And those are just the appetizers for Bush's Grande Bouffe.

Now add this--during the next presidential term, up to four supreme court justices may retire. Two at least are guaranteed to do so. How long will Roe v Wade last with one more rightwinger on the court? Or for that matter, the Bill of Rights? Can you imagine the consequences of having an unassailable rightwing majority on the court? Are you even thinking about this? You think that won't further corporate interests in more far-reaching ways than even Nader is talking about?

And finally, does anyone really expect the Democrats, ever, to dismantle the corporate hegemony of America, no matter who the candidate? Do you really think even Kucinich or Nader as pres would have the power to do that? Come on! Not to be paranoid or anything, but this corporate star-chamber is not going to just pack it in--ever. If any true progressive ever made it to the Oval Office, he or she better have good life insurance.

But what the Dems would do, and what even today's wimpy incarnation will do, is wage a good fight against the social and civic oppression, the disgusting disregard for and attempts at dismantling of 80 years of social progress, and stop the vile and disgusting Daily Outrages that have threatened the wellbeing of billions of people on this planet.

So who gives a damn whether Nader is right or wrong, ultimately. And who gives a damn about who is or isn't accepting Republican money. And finally who gives a damn that Kerry isn't the progressive savior we want him (or the candidate) to be? All I want from him is to stop the hemorrhaging of our democracy, restore the Bill of Rights and the social progress of the last decades, and slow the heretofore depressing and inexorable usurpation of the government by the forces of evil. That's all. And that's not sarcasm. Any democrat will do that--because we've gone so far in the other direction, we don't need a hero to turn it around. A goddam moderate can do it, with our help and unrelenting pressure on him or her to do so.

The overwhelming priority for us, our country, and our children is to get rid of the Bush administration, prevent the total corruption of Supreme Court and finally win back control of the Congress from the real Evil Empire. We simply have to disempower the neocons and the religious right, and their surrogates in Congress. That won't get rid of the Ken Lays or Halliburtons of the world, overnight, or maybe at all, but it will stop the brutalizing of women abroad and at home (where they are being denied access to the morning-after contraceptive even after a rape), our children (who as teens are being denied access to condoms, safe sex education, sane advice about sexuality), our health (where stem cell research--well, really, any progressive science, including environmental--is another victim of these insane theocrats), our parents and seniors (who are further victimized by that scam Medicare bill) and our safety in the workplace, in the streets and as citizens of the world.

If one professes to care about any of these issues, and the hundreds more that you know are at risk by the traitors in the White House, then one has no choice but to vote for Kerry/against Bush. If one wants our leaders to care about the furthering of human dignity, and that our leaders at least make an attempt to protect us from our own worst instincts (like corporate greed), then one must vote for Kerry/against Bush. Not voting, or voting for a third party candidate, no matter who, when the electorate is still so closely divided, is not only unprincipled, it's disgraceful. It's treasonous. It's manslaughter!

If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem.

If you don't vote, you help elect Bush. If you vote for Nader in a swing state, you help elect Bush. If you support Nader's one-trick-pony litmus test, you help elect Bush. If you buy into Nader's lame responses that he didn't put Bush in office, against irrefutable evidence that those who voted for him, had even half of them voted Democratic, would have also irrefutably given the victory to Gore--then you help elect Bush. .

Take offense if you will, but if Bush wins because people like you didn't vote, or voted for Nader, and you allow these pricks to bring back that "constitution in exile" and continue to bankrupt the govt so it can't afford any social programs at all, you will have become part of the problem, and all your so-called principled attacks on corporate dominance will be revealed as self-serving bluster and incredible naivete. And you won't win the hearts and minds of the citizens you claim to care about but actually will have dishonored them by your incredible arrogance.

The Right has won because they have drilled down to a set of certitudes, turning them into achievable goals, spent billions in think tanks over the last 39 years in formulating strategy--including mastering the art of framing the debate and using language--and dismissing those conservative forces that represented moderation--essentially eliminating internal dissent and co-opting the religious right. And of course being totally unethical unscrupulous lying cheating hypocritical pusmongers.

So how can the Left regain hegemony? Well, that's what the entire leftie pundiscenti are talking about. One thing is clear, though. Ignoring the few tools we have on the grounds that those tools are as bent as the opposition's ain't going to cut it.

So get off your polemical platform and see the forest for the trees--work to defeat Bush, and vote, goddamit. Not voting is not a protest, this time around. It's aid and comfort to the real enemy. And it's stupid. Are you stupid? Of course not. So why are you behaving that way?

Work to defeat Bush. It IS the principled stance. It's the only one. All else is rendered crap by the crimes of this administration.

If Bush gets in again, I will hold you personally responsible."


Now today we read that Bush, Inc. is making "contingency" plans to cancel--they say postpone--the election in case of terrorist attacks.

Isn't that convenient?

THE REAL DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE RIGHT AND THE LEFT

In Case It Wasn't Obvious department

Referring to the "war on terror", National Review Online columnist Victor Davis Hansen says we shouldn't fret over its effects on the "Arab Street." He says that history teaches us that only resolute force wins wars and creates respect. Don't worry about the effect on ordinary Arabs. "Most people simply wish to associate with victory," he says. The best answer to terrorism is to rush the "insurrectionists" who threaten democracy in Iraq and elsewhere.

Jessica Stern--author of "Terror in the Name of God: Why Religious Militants Kill"--has since 1998 been interviewing terrorists from Islamic, anti-abortion, white supremacist and other violent organizations, trying to discover what inspires them to make holy war. In a LA Times piece, she said "there was one common thread: overwhelming feelings of humiliation." Cunning terrorist leaders tap this humiliation, giving legions of powerless young men the means and an ideological justification for turning their rage into revenge. The US doesn't yet understand this, and the statistics prove it. Nearly twice as many terrorist acts occurred in the two years following 9/11, the Rand Corp recently found, than in the two years preceding it. Clearly, "reactionary remedies like bombs and bullets won't win this conflict. (Here's a link to a Buzzflash interview with Ms. Stern: http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/04/05/int04024.html

Further, Marc Sageman, also in the Times, says our real enemy is the nihilistic "jihadist" vision. To win a lasting victory, the US must lay out "an alternative vision of a just and fair Islamic society living in harmony with the West. Day by day, year by year, we must provide proof of our sincerity, in Iraq, in Israel, and throughout the Mideast. "This war of ideas promises to be a long war of narratives, fought on a battlefield of interpretations. But it is the only thing that can work."

So there it is again. Brains vs. Brawn. Reason vs Force. The usual suspects.

I think, though, that Robert Reich is right in his new book, Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America. I predict that America is going to ultimately get so fed up with the lack of reason in the ideology and policies of the Radcons (as he calls them) that the citizens will finally throw the bums out of the national body politic. And I predict that day is coming sooner than we would have anticipated a year ago. But more on that another time. Meanwhile, here's a link to a terrific Buzzflash interview with him about his ideas and the book: http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=17132

MOURNING IN AMERICA

BEDTIME FOR BONZO

The funeral and services are over. The predictable rightwing paeans and suggestions to name everything in America after him from Washington DC to a mountain in New Hampshire, and to replace Andrew Jackson's pic on the 20 with his (bad to worse), seem thankfully to be over--or at least off the front page and the soundbite parade, which is all that matters anymore. Even America's worst president has stopped trying to compare himself to America's 2nd worst president (apologies to all the other contenders for the #2 slot).

Instead of mourning for this criminal's death, we ought to be mourning for the tens of thousands of people who died in Central America and elsewhere, or at home by AIDS, or who otherwise suffered or died miserably because of his direct actions and inactions.

America is like the anonymous woman in Bob Dylan's "Idiot Wind" (off Blood On The Tracks:

"Idiot wind blowing every time your move your mouth
Blowing down the backroads heading south
Idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe."


But Greg Palast said it best:


KILLER, COWARD, CONMAN - GOOD RIDDANCE, RONNIE REAGAN
MORE PROOF ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG
Sunday, June 6, 2004
by Greg Palast


You're not going to like this. You shouldn't speak ill of the dead. But in this case, someone's got to.

Ronald Reagan was a conman. Reagan was a coward. Reagan was a killer.

In 1987, I found myself stuck in a crappy little town in Nicaragua named Chaguitillo. The people were kind enough, though hungry, except for one surly young man. His wife had just died of tuberculosis.

People don't die of TB if they get some antibiotics. But Ronald Reagan, big hearted guy that he was, had put a lock-down embargo on medicine to Nicaragua because he didn't like the government that the people there had elected.

Ronnie grinned and cracked jokes while the young woman's lungs filled up and she stopped breathing. Reagan flashed that B-movie grin while they buried the mother of three.

And when Hezbollah terrorists struck and murdered hundreds of American marines in their sleep in Lebanon, the TV warrior ran away like a whipped dog ... then turned around and invaded Grenada. That little Club Med war was a murderous PR stunt so Ronnie could hold parades for gunning down Cubans building an airport.

I remember Nancy, a skull and crossbones prancing around in designer dresses, some of the "gifts" that flowed to the Reagans -- from hats to million-dollar homes -- from cronies well compensated with government loot. It used to be called bribery.

And all the while, Grandpa grinned, the grandfather who bleated on about "family values" but didn't bother to see his own grandchildren.

The New York Times today, in its canned obit, wrote that Reagan projected, "faith in small town America" and "old-time values." "Values" my ass. It was union busting and a declaration of war on the poor and anyone who couldn't buy designer dresses. It was the New Meanness, bringing starvation back to America so that every millionaire could get another million.

"Small town" values? From the movie star of the Pacific Palisades, the Malibu mogul? I want to throw up.

And all the while, in the White House basement, as his brain boiled away, his last conscious act was to condone a coup d'etat against our elected Congress. Reagan's Defense Secretary Casper the Ghost Weinberger with the crazed Colonel, Ollie North, plotted to give guns to the Monster of the Mideast, Ayatolla Khomeini.

Reagan's boys called Jimmy Carter a weanie and a wuss although Carter wouldn't give an inch to the Ayatolla. Reagan, with that film-fantasy tough-guy con in front of cameras, went begging like a coward cockroach to Khomeini pleading on bended knee for the release of our hostages.

Ollie North flew into Iran with a birthday cake for the maniac mullah -- no kidding --in the shape of a key. The key to Ronnie's heart.

Then the Reagan roaches mixed their cowardice with crime: taking cash from the hostage-takers to buy guns for the "contras" - the drug-runners of Nicaragua posing as freedom fighters.

I remember as a student in Berkeley the words screeching out of the bullhorn, "The Governor of the State of California, Ronald Reagan, hereby orders this demonstration to disburse" ... and then came the teargas and the truncheons. And all the while, that fang-hiding grin from the Gipper.

In Chaguitillo, all night long, the farmers stayed awake to guard their kids from attack from Reagan's Contra terrorists. The farmers weren't even Sandinistas, those 'Commies' that our cracked-brained President told us were 'only a 48-hour drive from Texas.' What the hell would they want with Texas, anyway?

Nevertheless, the farmers, and their families, were Ronnie's targets.

In the deserted darkness of Chaguitillo, a TV blared. Weirdly, it was that third-rate gangster movie, "Brother Rat." Starring Ronald Reagan.

Well, my friends, you can rest easier tonight: the Rat is dead.

Killer, coward, conman. Ronald Reagan, good-bye and good riddance.


Yep:
"Idiot wind blowing like a circle around my skull
From the Grand Coulee Dam to Capitol
Idiot wind blowing every time you move your teeth
You're an idiot babe.
It's a wonder that you still know how to breathe."

D-DAY

The last just war. Maybe one of the few. Seems true to me, but what a concept.

As a boomer who came of age during the Vietnam madness, it's sometimes been hard to acknowledge and thank those who indeed gave the ultimate sacrifice for us in WWII. My father was too old at the time to go into the service, and my family was not personally touched by the Holocaust, but to this day I get shivers and tears at the thought of it.

On both of these fronts--the war itself and the shoah--it's Steven Spielberg that has re-created some of the most lasting images, outside of the actual photos from the death camps.

Schindler's List. Saving Private Ryan.

An image from each haunts me. In Schindler's List, it's the Nazi idly shooting the little girl, an act of such insane evil, performed perhaps hundreds of thousands of times, incomprehensible, too much to countenance, yet of course it must be.

But, surprisingly, it's an image from Saving Private Ryan that I can't get out of my mind, and it's the one that reminds me to be grateful to all those who fought and died in that war. It's in the opening scenes of the landing on Omaha Beach. One of the Higgins boats reaches the shore, the landing panel opens, and before any soldier--any scared-to-death teenager--in the boat can even move an inch, every one of them is killed instantly from machine gun fire.

I heard a vet on NPR today describe what seemed to be that very event. Or another one just like it. How many were there?

Nevermind. There were many.

And we are here now because of those events. I'm taking a moment to reflect on that obvious point, and how lucky I was to be born when and where I was.

OL' MENCKEN

Reagan's death makes me wistful for a premature passing of our current Resident (and his VP, oh my god, if he were overtly in charge, ye cats, as Scrooge McDuck was so fond of saying).

The Man can't take away my hope.

Speaking of sayings and Bush,I am reminded of this H.L.Mencken quote:
"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false face for the urge to rule it."

Or this one, from George Eliot:
"Blessed is the man who, having nothing to say, abstains from giving us evidence of the fact."

Or this one by Steven Wright. It's not related--I just like it.
"Ninety-nine percent of lawyers give the rest a bad name."

REAGAN DIES, SENTIENT BEINGS SIGH WITH RELIEF

HORSESHIT

We heard the news today oboy.

All the horseshit paeans to him are making me nauseous. His crimes against the country, the constitution, and humanity are manifold, and there's no need to list them to anyone reading this, though I might later anyway, as a catharsis.

But this open letter addresses poignantly one of his most egregious crimes. One of? What am I saying? They ALL were most egregious.


Sunday, June 6, 2004


A Letter to My Best Friend, Steven Powsner On the Death of Former President Ronald Reagan

Matt Foreman, Executive Director National Gay and Lesbian Task Force

June 6, 2004

Dear Steven,

I so much wish you were here today to tell me what to do. You would know if it's right to comment on the death of former President Reagan, or if I should just let pass the endless paeans to his greatness. But you're not here. The policies of the Reagan administration saw to that.

Yes, Steven, I do feel for the family and friends of the former President. The death of a loved one is always a profoundly sad occasion, and Mr. Reagan was loved by many. I have tremendous empathy and respect for Mrs. Reagan, who lovingly cared for him through excruciating years of Alzheimer's.

Sorry, Steven, but even on this day I'm not able to set aside the shaking anger I feel over Reagan's non-response to the AIDS epidemic or for the continuing anti-gay legacy of his administration. Is it personal? Of course. AIDS was first reported in 1981, but President Reagan could not bring himself to address the plague until March 31, 1987, at which time there were 60,000 reported cases of full-blown AIDS and 30,000 deaths. I remember that day, Steven - you were staying round-the-clock in Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital caring for your dying partner of over 15 years, Bruce Cooper. It was another 41 days of utter agony for both of you before Bruce died. During those years of White House silence and inaction, how many other dear friends did we see sicken and die hideous deaths?

Is it personal? Yes, Steven. I know for a fact that you would be alive today if the Reagan administration had mounted even a tepid response to the epidemic. If protease inhibitors been available in July of 1995 instead of December, you'd still be here.

I wouldn't feel so angry if the Reagan administration's failing was due to ignorance or bureaucratic ineptitude. No, Steven, we knew then it was deliberate. The government's response was dictated by the grip of evangelical Christian conservatives who saw gay people as sinners and AIDS as God's well-deserved punishment. Remember? The White House Director of Communications, Patrick Buchanan, once argued in print that AIDS is nature's revenge on gay men. Reagan's Secretary of Education, William Bennett, and his domestic policy adviser, Gary Bauer, made sure that science (and basic tenets of Christianity, for that matter) never got in the way of politics or what they saw as "God's" work.

Even so, I think I could let go of this anger if this was just another overwhelmingly sad chapter in our nation's past. It is not. Steven, can you believe that the unholy pact President Reagan and the Republican Party entered with the forces of religious intolerance have not weakened, but grown exponentially stronger? Can you believe that the U.S. government is still bowing to right wing extremists and fighting condom distribution and explicit HIV education, even while AIDS is killing millions across the world? Or that "devout" Christians have forced the scrapping of AIDS prevention programs targeted at HIV-negative gay and bisexual men in favor of bullshit "abstinence only until marriage" initiatives? Or the shameless duplicity of these same forces seeking to forever outlaw even the hope of marriage for gay people? Or that Reagan stalwarts like Buchanan, Bennett and Bauer are still grinding their homophobic axes?

No, Steven, I do not presume to judge Ronald Reagan's soul or heart. He may very well have been a nice guy. In fact, I don't think that Reagan hated gay people -- I'm sure some of his and Nancy's best friends were gay. But I do know that the Reagan administration's policies on AIDS and anything gay-related resulted - and continue to result - in despair and death.

Oh, Steven, how much I wish so much you were here.

Matt

(On November 20, 1995, Steven Powsner, died of complications from AIDS at age 40. He had been President of the New York City Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center from 1992-1994.)

WHY CAN'T KERRY TALK THIS WAY, PART TWO

AL GORE'S INCREDIBLE SPEECH

"Gore to Call for Resignation of Bush Team Members Responsibe for Iraq Involvement (algoredemocrats.com) "Major address will cite imminent risk to U.S. soldiers and Homeland from Bush failure to hold top officials accountable --Former Vice President Al Gore will deliver a major foreign policy address in New York City on Wednesday,May 26, sponsored by MoveOn PAC, calling for the resignation of five members of the Bush Administration team and one member of the military command responsible for the failed policy and abuse of prisoners in Iraq. Gore will identify the various ways in which all Americans--soldiers in Iraq, residents and travelers abroad, and citizens at home—are endangered by the bitterness created throughout the Islamic world—and beyond—by US policy. He will also explore the linkages between the President[sic]’s Iraq policy and the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison."

I'll say! That summary is guilty of gross understatement. You must read this. Here's a quote:

"How dare the incompetent and willful members of this Bush/Cheney Administration humiliate our nation and our people in the eyes of the world and in the conscience of our own people."


Here's another link.

http://www.moveonpac.org/goreremarks052604.html/

Could any of us have said it better? Not John Kerry. At least not yet.

It now seems sad that so many of us lacked the passion for Al Gore back in 2000, I think partly because he appeared to lack any passion himself. But when I look at the passionate and courageous person he seems to have grown into, at least as evidenced by these amazing and moving MoveOn speeches, I wonder--had we that passion, would Florida even have happened? (And by the way, where's ol' Bubba in all of this? His silence is revealing, too. Maybe the VP should have been P.)

I wonder too if we are making the same mistake with John Kerry. Certainly most of us have not mustered any passion for him. Granted it's not just his style, but the content as well. But I didn't think that highly of Al Gore's content then either.

Will Kerry too grow and evolve into the mensch we wish he would be now? Who knows? Would Gore have grown as he has, or been as forthright on whatever the great issues would have been, had he been allowed to claim the office he won and thus the circumstances that instigated and aroused such feelings now not occured? Who knows?

But maybe it's another mistake to merely begrudgingly accept and vote for Kerry. Maybe we need to muster enough passion for him to guarantee his victory, by a margin so large that Jeb Bush, Diebold, or the repugnant tactics of Karl Rove can't stop it. I'm thinking maybe if he felt secure about his victory, then maybe he too would start to speak like Gore instead of some damn second-rate automaton pandering to the holy middle. Or like the speech I wrote for him in yesterday's post. (And the final irony is that we used to say that about Gore.)

That'll be hard, finding that passion. So many maybes, so many doubts. But maybe it's just too important not to.

I'm gonna try.

WHY CAN'T KERRY TALK THIS WAY?

BUT FIRST, ANDY ROONEY

I missed 60 Minutes this Sunday, but a transcript of Rooney's commentary is buzzing around the net.

It would have been interesting to see Andy Rooney read it. I don't much like his sociopolitical opinions when he goes there--usually too conservative (not rightwing), or at least centrist. But I do like his curmudgeonly style.

And I don't agree with all his points in this commentary either, but there's enough good stuff in his piece that it's worth reading. While he states that Abu Ghraib "belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country," I would have included slavery and its legacy, and the genocide of Native Americans, but in fairness he was talking about singular events like 9/11. And that part about booting the offenders out of the country is not my style. I'd publicly humiliate them, like getting them all nekkid and piling them up on some of the bullshit that comes out of the Whitehouse. Rumsfeld especially(The horror, the horror).

But it got me thinking. Specifically, that if these kinds of thoughts are coming from the center maybe there's hope that Bush will be defeated.

And I got to thinking about that phraseology. I didn't say that Kerry will win, but that Bush will lose.

Because if that doofus doesn't figure out this campaigning thing soon, we only have the continuing neocon implosion to hope for. We'll only win because they will lose. Or we won't win, because a critical mass of frustrated lefties will go for nadir--as many apparently are. I'm having deja vu all over again.

As for Kerry's strategy so far, it's almost inexplicable that he and his team don't get it. And it's not that hard, especially since every liberal or democratic pundit in the country is telling him the same thing, and it's pretty obvious anyway.

And can't his handlers get him to stop rambling off into incoherent one-size-fits-all politico-babble?

Can't they stop regularly supplying Mr. Bush with great fodder for his snarky and degrading attacks, like that stupid declaration that he might postpone the nomination until after the convention.

How hard can that be? The neocons have been street smart, but have no wisdom. Kerry and his team seem to understand what that wisdom is--sometimes--but are quite dumb about applying it.

For instance, he might say something like this:

"My fellow citizens, I want to tell you how this administration's extremist basis for reproductive health policy is responsible for death and suffering of women of all ages in our country and around the world. And I want you to know that an enlightened country, the world leader in science and medicine, cannot continue to let ignorance and radical ideology dictate a health policy that ignores, or worse, distorts that science for its own ends. In 2004, in fact, it's criminal.

Every time I hear Mr. Bush talk about the rights of women in Afghanistan and Iraq, I am reminded that on the first day he took office, he reimposed the gag rule. Since then, WHO estimates 75,000 women worldwide have died due to lack of reproductive health care and advice. The only right they had was the right to die.

Since Mr Bush essentially banned anything but abstinence to be taught in schools by withholding funds from those that do otherwise, teenage pregnancy rates have increased significantly. In the face of multiple studies in schools that support that fact, Mr. Bush's team claims they were flawed, and ignores them.

Since Mr. Bush has removed any mention of condoms from the CDC website pages on HIV/AIDS, how many STD's that could have been prevented are now plaguing our citizens? And do you know why he has banned references to condoms? Because they don't work, his minions claim. And they lead to teenage promiscuity. The former statement is patently absurd, and the latter is unsupported by any data--any at all. In fact, as with the abstinence-only policies, if anything leads to increased sexual activity in our teenagers it's the lack of responsible and truthful education about all aspects of reproductive health in our schools. I hold this administration completely responsible for increased rates of pregnancy and std's among our youth, and that is just unacceptable.

Bush has banned the OTC sales of Plan B (levonorgestrel), the emergency contraceptive that can be used after unprotected sex, even though the FDA approved it for OTC. Amazingly, though even the FDA knows it's a contraceptive, they even ignorantly call it an abortion pill. They claim it will lead to promiscuity, and can cause health problems for teenagers. Apparently it's "healthy" for a 14 year old victim of rape or incest to be pregnant, but not take an FDA-approved contraceptive.

If this administration really cared about the rights of women and the wellbeing of our teenagers, they would stop spreading this nonsense, and stop prohibiting our public health teams from telling the truth. But as in so many areas of public policy that affect our daily lives in countless ways, they are more concerned about supporting their radical agenda than the real health of our citizens.

They must think we are stupid. Why else would they continue to feed us such nonsense on a daily basis? They think that if they repeat these lies enough times, we'll eventually start believing them. Well, we're not stupid. And as citizens we demand respect from our leaders.

This madness must stop. Isn't it time we confronted every instance of Mr. Bush's telling us the opposite of what we know is true? Isn't it time we held this administration accountable for its lies and ignorance? Isn't it time we stopped letting science be manipulated or suppressed to support an extremist ideological program that results in death and misery? Is ignorance and willful misinformation in the service of this hateful agenda part of the legacy we want?"

Now, unlike any proclamation from this administration, everything I wrote here is true, and hardly radical. So why won't Kerry talk about these things? Who's telling him that it's in his interest to constantly redefine himself as a centrist, and that being a centrist means dancing around the real hot-button issues that affect our lives immediately and perhaps more than Bush's debacle in foreign policy, as awful as that is? Are they all that dumb?

And that's only on one of many issues that's not getting much press coverage these days. Imagine if he talked that way about Medicare. Deficits. Class warfare. Environmental policy--or destruction. Budgetbusting budgets. Unfunded mandates. Spending, secret and public, lawful and unlawful. Secrecy itself. Ashcroft's primitivism, priggery and oppression. Attacks on the Constitution. Delusions of Theocracy. Refusal to accept responsibility for anything. Judicial appointments. Pandering to idiots. Blaming the victims. And on, and on.

Kerry could address these issues and expose the deceit in every one of them by merely stating fact. It would just be the truth, after all. It's out there.

And wouldn't it be refreshing to hear Kerry talk this way? Wouldn't it be so satisfying to finally hear a contender speak truth to power, to address the unrelenting and insulting doublespeak of this administration?

Anyone holding breath?

How did we get to this point?

I think it's the mercury in the tuna.


Here's Rooney:

(Broadcast on Sunday, May 23, 2004 by 60 Minutes / CBS News)

Our Darkest Days Are Here by Andy Rooney

If you were going to make a list of the great times in American history, you'd start with the day in 1492, when Columbus got here.

The Revolution when we won our independence would be on the list.

Beating Hitler.

Putting Americans on the moon.

We've had a lot of great days.

Our darkest days up until now have been things like presidential assassinations, the stock market crash in 1929, Pearl Harbor, and 9-11, of course.

The day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country. It's a black mark that will be in the history books in a hundred languages for as long as there are history books. I hate to think of it.

The image of one bad young woman with a naked man on a leash did more to damage America's reputation than all the good things we've done over the years ever helped our reputation.

What were the secrets they were trying to get from captured Iraqis? What important information did that poor devil on the leash have that he wouldn't have given to anyone in exchange for a crust of bread or a sip of water?

Where were your officers? If someone told you to do it, tell us who told you. If your officers were told – we should know who told them.

One general said our guards were "untrained." Well, untrained at what? Being human beings? Did the man who chopped off Nicholas Berg's head do it because he was untrained?

The guards who tortured prisoners are faced with a year in prison. Well, great. A year for destroying our reputation as decent people.

I don't want them in prison, anyway. We shouldn't have to feed them. Take away their right to call themselves American - that's what I’d do. You aren't one of us. Get out. We don't want you. Find yourself another country or a desert island somewhere. If the order came from someone higher up, take him with you.


In the history of the world, several great civilizations that seemed immortal have deteriorated and died. I don't want to seem dramatic tonight, but I've lived a long while, and for the first time in my life, I have this faint, faraway fear that it could happen to us here in America as it happened to the Greek and Roman civilizations.

Too many Americans don't understand what we have here, or how to keep it. I worry for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren. I want them to have what I've had, and I sense it slipping away.

Have a nice day.

Citizen posters at the acclaimed political web log www.dkos.com contributed ten of their best ideas for progressive bumper stickers to this effort.

Here they are.


Asses of Evil
Thanks for Not Paying Attention
Four More Wars!
More Trees, Less Bush
It Takes a Village Idiot
One Person, One Vote (*May Not Apply in Certain States)
Putting the "Con" In Conservative
We're Gooder!
Leave No Billionaire Behind
Bring Back Monica Lewinsky

This one is from a friend:
Jail The Neoconmen

OSAMA VS CUBA, ROUND 1

The Miami Herald reports that the Treasury Department has more than 20 people assigned to catching people who violate the trade and tourism embargo on Cuba. It has four employees assigned to tracking the assets of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

I think I can forego my normally sardonic comments, which are clearly unecessary. Except for that last sentence, of course.

YOU'D THINK THE DEMOCRATS WOULD LEVERAGE THIS

Findings from a new national poll show support for impeachment, growing
opposition to war on terrorism.

May 11, 2004
For Immediate Release

Berkeley--Reporting from an ongoing survey of public knowledge and
opinion, Berkeley based NGO Retro Poll released startling results
suggesting that 39% of Americans favor impeachment of President Bush.
The poll, taken between April 19 and May 5 asked whether people believe
that misleading Congress and the Public on weapons of mass destruction
to take the country to war is grounds to impeach the President (39% said
yes, 40% said no). On whether the U.S. should have invaded Iraq the
poll results are consistent with findings of Gallup and other major
polls (48% said yes).

Other surprising findings were that almost half of respondents (46%)
favor an independent investigation of the U.S. role in the overthrow of
Haiti's democratically elected president, Juan Bertrand Aristide, and
57% favor a national moratorium on the death penalty because of the
procedural problems that have put many innocent people on death row (112
released so far). Four out of five Americans also repudiate the use of
torture.

As in earlier Retro Polls most support for the war in Iraq and the War
on Terrorism was found among people who still think that Saddam Hussein
worked with Al Qaeda (though no evidence has been published) and among
the 32% of people who believe the War on Terrorism is preventing
terrorism. However, 24% of Americans believe that the War on Terrorism
is actually creating terrorists. In addition, 56 % of people who gave
an opinion say the War on Terrorism is removing important democratic
rights in the US and large percentages (50-80%) oppose various intrusive
provisions of the USA PATRIOT Act.

The poll reached 513 random Americans and has a "margin of error" of +/-
3.5% Full results are available at www.retropoll.org.

THE DANGER ZONE IS EVERYWHERE

The Curtis Mayfield song The Danger Zone was recorded by Ray Charles and issued as the B-side of Hit the Road, Jack, Charles's 1961 hit.


The Danger Zone

Sad and lonely all the time
That's because I've got a worried mind
You know the world is in an uproar
The danger zone is everywhere, everywhere

Just read your paper
And you'll see
Just exactly what keeps worryin' me
Yeah, you'll see the world is in an uproar
The danger zone is everywhere

My love for the world is like always
For the world is a part of me
That's why I'm so afraid
Of the progress that's being made
Toward eternity

Every morning, noon, and night
Finds me hoping that everything's alright
Mm-hmm, the world is in an uproar
The danger zone is everywhere



Thengs were getting worse by 1971 when Stone the Crows recorded a version and put a little oomph in the lyrics:

Sad, sad and lonely
And sad and lonely all the time
That's because I've got
such a worried mind
The world is in an uproar
The danger zone everywhere
It is everywhere

Just read your paper
Read your paper and you'll see
Just what exactly has been
bothering me
The world is in an uproar
The danger zone everywhere
It is everywhere

My love for the world
It will always be the same
Because the world
has become a part of me
And I'm so afraid of the progress
that's being made toward eternity

Every morning, every morning
Every morning, noon and night
I keep on wishing and hoping
that everything's gonna be alright
The world is in an uproar
The danger zone everywhere
It is everywhere, everywhere

My love for the world
will always be the same
Because the world
has become a part of me
And I'm so afraid of the bloody progress
that has been made toward eternity

Every morning, every morning
Every morning, noon and night
I keep on wishing and hoping
that everything's gonna be alright
The world is in an uproar
Don't you know, don't you know
The danger zone everywhere
It is everywhere

32 years later, of course, the entire world is at peace and humanity has risen to its highest potential, abandoning armed conflict and violence as means to ends, and the reign of reason, tolerance and peace has begun. Just read your paper and you'll see.

NADER REDUX AGAIN

A FEW TACOS SHORT OF A FIESTA PLATTER

After a group of prominent liberal activists sent a letter last week to Ralph "A flower short of an arrangement" Nader begging him to abandon his "quixotic and destructive" bid for the presidency, Nader spokesman Kevin Zeese said Nader would not bow out simply to help someone else beat Bush. "You have to stand for something,"Zeese said.

And what is that, Kevin? That you can hold a grudge longer than anyone else except perhaps the Serbs? That it's OK to fuck over your friends and your country for the sake of your own ineffectual dogma?

See, all along I thought beating Bush WAS something to stand for.

What do I know?

AIRAMERICA IS HERE

After all the anticipation, AirAmerica radio is here. The first broadcasts yesterday got mixed reviews in the media. The Washington Post piece was somewhat irritating: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40719-2004Mar31.html?referrer=email

There were amusing quotes from O'Reilly The Conqueror and Boston conservative radio host Jay Severin, and clearly neither one was aware of the astounding irony in their comments.

Severin: "Yes, we know you believe with utmost sincerity that we are monstrous Neanderthals, but do you really believe your left-wing/pacifist/United Nations/French worldview will win a big middle-class audience? In America?"

O'Reilly: "this whole liberal network scheme is just plain stupid. . . . These pinheads backing the venture will lose millions of dollars because the propaganda network is simply tedious and tedious doesn't sell."

In now-commonplace extremist Republican fashion, they accuse their counterparts of the very offenses they thrive on, while portraying themselves as saviors and expressing the arrogant certitude that is the hallmark of zealots.

While the network is broadcast on few stations so far, we can listen live on the web via AirAmerica's website:http://www.airamericaradio.com/

Onward through the fog, Al Franken and Janeane Garofalo.

Interesting footnote: the Blogger spellcheck suggested a replacement for O'Reilly: Orwell

THIS ISN'T AMERICA by Paul Krugman

THIS ISN'T AMERICA

Paul Krugmans's NY Times columns:
www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/

By PAUL KRUGMAN

03/30/04 "New York Times" -- Last week an opinion piece in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz about the killing of Sheik Ahmed Yassin said, "This isn't America; the government did not invent intelligence material nor exaggerate the description of the threat to justify their attack."

So even in Israel, George Bush's America has become a byword for deception and abuse of power. And the administration's reaction to Richard Clarke's "Against All Enemies" provides more evidence of something rotten in the state of our government.

The truth is that among experts, what Mr. Clarke says about Mr. Bush's terrorism policy isn't controversial. The facts that terrorism was placed on the back burner before 9/11 and that Mr. Bush blamed Iraq despite the lack of evidence are confirmed by many sources — including "Bush at War," by Bob Woodward.

And new evidence keeps emerging for Mr. Clarke's main charge, that the Iraq obsession undermined the pursuit of Al Qaeda. From yesterday's USA Today: "In 2002, troops from the Fifth Special Forces Group who specialize in the Middle East were pulled out of the hunt for Osama bin Laden to prepare for their next assignment: Iraq. Their replacements were troops with expertise in Spanish cultures."

That's why the administration responded to Mr. Clarke the way it responds to anyone who reveals inconvenient facts: with a campaign of character assassination.

Some journalists seem, finally, to have caught on. Last week an Associated Press news analysis noted that such personal attacks were "standard operating procedure" for this administration and cited "a behind-the-scenes campaign to discredit Richard Foster," the Medicare actuary who revealed how the administration had deceived Congress about the cost of its prescription drug bill.

But other journalists apparently remain ready to be used. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer told his viewers that unnamed officials were saying that Mr. Clarke "wants to make a few bucks, and that [in] his own personal life, they're also suggesting that there are some weird aspects in his life as well."

This administration's reliance on smear tactics is unprecedented in modern U.S. politics — even compared with Nixon's. Even more disturbing is its readiness to abuse power — to use its control of the government to intimidate potential critics.

To be fair, Senator Bill Frist's suggestion that Mr. Clarke might be charged with perjury may have been his own idea. But his move reminded everyone of the White House's reaction to revelations by the former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill: an immediate investigation into whether he had revealed classified information. The alacrity with which this investigation was opened was, of course, in sharp contrast with the administration's evident lack of interest in finding out who leaked the identity of the C.I.A. operative Valerie Plame to Bob Novak.

And there are many other cases of apparent abuse of power by the administration and its Congressional allies. A few examples: according to The Hill, Republican lawmakers threatened to cut off funds for the General Accounting Office unless it dropped its lawsuit against Dick Cheney. The Washington Post says Representative Michael Oxley told lobbyists that "a Congressional probe might ease if it replaced its Democratic lobbyist with a Republican." Tom DeLay used the Homeland Security Department to track down Democrats trying to prevent redistricting in Texas. And Medicare is spending millions of dollars on misleading ads for the new drug benefit — ads that look like news reports and also serve as commercials for the Bush campaign.

On the terrorism front, here's one story that deserves special mention. One of the few successful post-9/11 terror prosecutions — a case in Detroit — seems to be unraveling. The government withheld information from the defense, and witnesses unfavorable to the prosecution were deported (by accident, the government says). After the former lead prosecutor complained about the Justice Department's handling of the case, he suddenly found himself facing an internal investigation — and someone leaked the fact that he was under investigation to the press.

Where will it end? In his new book, "Worse Than Watergate," John Dean, of Watergate fame, says, "I've been watching all the elements fall into place for two possible political catastrophes, one that will take the air out of the Bush-Cheney balloon and the other, far more disquieting, that will take the air out of democracy."

Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company

Paul Krugmans's NY Times columns:
http://www.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/paulkrugman/

LA TIMES ENLIGHTENED POLICY ON LANGUAGE

From The Week, March 19, 2004:

The article:
A Los Angeles Times music critic who'd described an opera as "pro-life"--meaning celebrating life--was shocked to find that a copy editor had changed the phrase to "anti-abortion." Richard Strauss' Die Frau Ohen Schatten has nothing to do with abortion, said critic Mark Swed. The copy editor was adhering to a strict policy banning the phrase "pro-life" as offensive to people who support abortion rights.

The Week printed this little article in a section called "Only in America." I guess this was meant to belittle the situation.

As silly as the incident was, I was delighted to find out about the LA Times language policy. Perhaps The Week saw just humor in this, but I saw something more. I saw, finally, the media beginning to resist the conservative usurpation of language to achieve an extreme political and cultural goal.

"Pro-life" has always been one of the most flagrant and obnoxious examples of the success the right has achieved in framing the debate. "Partial-birth abortion" is another, among many.

Congratulations to that copy editor for a mistake that brought an enlightened policy to our attention, and to the LA Times for its stance.

1,049 FEDERAL MARRIAGE RIGHTS

1,049 Federal Rights Available to Married Couples

In 1997, the General Accounting Office of the Federal Government compiled a list of 1,049 rights and benefits which were related to civil marriage. The list includes thirteen categories of rights and benefits, including:

Social Security and Related Programs, Housing, and Food Stamps
Veterans' Benefits
Taxation
Federal Civilian and Military Service Benefits
Employment Benefits and Related Laws
Immigration, Naturalization, and Aliens
Trade, Commerce, and Intellectual Property
Financial Disclosure and Conflict of Interest

You can view the entire GAO report here: http://www.marriageequality.org/facts.php?page=1049_federal

Then click on "GAO report here." It's a pdf file.

THE MYTH OF THE 'GOOD' NADER

MORON NADER--I MEAN MORE ON NADER

I don't read the New Republic, haven't in years, and don't know much about Chait, but I've said myself some of what he's saying in this artcle, decided to let someone else rant about him this time.

THE MYTH OF THE 'GOOD' NADER

Make You Ralph
by Jonathan Chait ,The New Republic

Post date: 02.29.04
Issue date: 03.08.04
As Ralph Nader prepares for another spoiler run at the presidency, liberals are again wringing their hands at the damage he may do not only to Democrats' chances of retaking the White House but to his own reputation as well. "The most regrettable thing about Mr. Nader's new candidacy is not how it is likely to affect the election, but how it will affect Mr. Nader's own legacy," editorialized The New York Times this week. "Ralph Nader has been one of the giants of the American reform movement. ... [I]t would be a tragedy if Mr. Nader allowed [his anger] to give the story of his career a sad and bitter ending." The same theme was sounded in November of 2000. "Bernie Sanders is right. Ralph Nader is 'one of the heroes of contemporary American society,'" argued Eric Alterman in The Nation. "How sad, therefore, that he is helping to undo so much of his life's work in a misguided fit of political pique and ideological purity." As Robert Scheer lamented in the Los Angeles Times, "What Nader did was to impulsively betray a lifetime of painstaking, frustrating, but most often effective, efforts on his part to make a better world. He is a good man who went very wrong."

The good-man-who-went-wrong assessment of Nader is virtually unchallenged among liberals. But, if you think about it for a moment, it's awfully strange. Heroes of history do not normally reverse themselves out of the blue. George Washington did not end his days pining for a return of the British monarchy to U.S. shores. George Orwell did not suddenly warm to the virtues of totalitarianism. Nor, for that matter, did Ralph Nader go wrong after decades of doing good. The qualities that liberals have observed in him of late--the monomania, the vindictiveness, the rage against pragmatic liberalism--have been present all along. Indeed, an un-blinkered look at Nader's public life shows that his presidential campaigns represent not a betrayal of his earlier career but its apotheosis.

Nader made his name with the 1965 publication of Unsafe at Any Speed, an exposé of the Chevy Corvair. Today, people generally remember the ways in which Nader was right--the appalling lack of concern for safety in the automobile industry and the need for federal regulations. Few realize that Nader's campaign against the Corvair was only the most visible edge of an uncompromising, conspiratorial worldview. Nader believed not only that the Corvair was dangerous but that General Motors (GM) knew it was. Justin Martin, in his fair-minded 2002 biography, Nader: Crusader, Spoiler, Icon, shows how Nader hounded liberal Connecticut Senator Abraham Ribicoff into investigating whether GM had lied about what it knew in testimony before Congress. In a letter to Ribicoff, Nader wrote, "Now comes decisive evidence which reveals a labyrinthic and systematic intra-company collusion, involving high General Motors officials, to sequester and suppress company data and films." Nader insisted he had an array of inside sources and documents that would reveal this conspiracy. Ribicoff dutifully assigned a pair of staffers to the case, and they spent two years chasing down Nader's leads. None of them panned out. The investigators found no evidence that GM knew of the Corvair's safety flaws. The failure to confirm Nader's suspicions enraged him. "He could not let go of the Corvair issue," one of the staffers told Martin. "He was fixated. And, if you didn't accept or believe the same things he did, you were either stupid or venal."

During the late '60s and early '70s, Nader developed a reputation as a wonk's wonk, a data-driven do-gooder with a stack of papers perpetually tucked under his arm. In fact, even then his work was driven by ideologically motivated fanaticism. In 1971, Nader pressured one of his associates, Lowell Dodge, to sex up his study "Small on Safety: The Designed-in Dangers of the Volkswagen." In his self-proclaimed 1976 hatchet job, Me & Ralph, former tnr managing editor David Sanford describes how Nader insisted that Dodge rewrite the conclusion of the study so that it began, "The Volkswagen is the most hazardous car in use in significant numbers in the U.S. today." Objecting that "the conclusion is not reflected in the data," Dodge left the project, allowing others to take credit as principal authors. "I have always carried around considerable guilt about what I regard as the extreme intellectual dishonesty of that conclusion," he told Sanford.

Nader's true fame came not from Unsafe at Any Speed but from the fact that its publication prompted GM to hire a private investigator to dig up damaging personal information that might discredit him. The irony is that Nader's grandiose paranoia predated this episode. Before publishing Unsafe at Any Speed, Nader worked as an obscure functionary at the Labor Department under then-Assistant Secretary Pat Moynihan. "Ralph was a very suspicious man," Moynihan told Charles McCarry in his 1972 biography Citizen Nader. "He used to warn me that the phones at the Labor Department might be tapped. I'd say, 'Fine! They'll learn that the unemployment rate for March is 5.3 percent, that's what they'll learn.'"

Nader's friends recalled that often he would act furtively, speaking in code, always convinced he was being monitored or phone-tapped. When he insisted in 1966 that he was being followed, one of his friends replied, according to Martin, "Ralph, your paranoia has grown to new extremes." Of course, it turned out that in that instance Nader was being followed. But this merely proved the old adage that sometimes even the paranoid have enemies plotting against them.

Nader sued GM and won $425,000, which he used to found activist organizations that helped push through a staggering series of consumer and environmental reforms, most of them in the late '60s and early '70s. Nader rightly wins credit for spurring progress during the era. And yet, even during his heyday, Nader habitually denounced liberals and their work, sabotaging the very causes he claimed to believe in. Martin's biography is filled with examples. In 1970, Nader championed a report by his staff savaging Ed Muskie, the liberal senator from Maine. Muskie, who helped engineer the Air Quality Act of 1967, had a reputation as an environmental ally, but Nader's report called the act "disastrous," adding, "That fact alone would warrant his being stripped of his title as 'Mr. Pollution Control.'"

That same year, the Senate overwhelmingly passed a bill to create a Consumer Protection Agency (CPA), what Nader called his highest legislative goal. But, just days after praising the bill, Nader turned against it, saying that "intolerable erosions" had rendered the bill "unacceptable." As Martin writes, "Without Nader's backing, the bill lost momentum" and died in committee. The pattern repeated itself, as the CPA passed either the House or the Senate five more times over the next six years, but Nader rejected every bill as too compromised. "Ralph could have had a consumer agency bill in any of three Congresses," liberal consumer activist and former Nader associate Mike Pertschuk told Martin. "But he held out for the perfect bill."

The final defeat came in 1978. Again, Nader's strategy was to impugn every Democrat who harbored any reservations at all about the bill. He maligned Washington Representative Tom Foley as "a broker for agribusiness"--despite the fact that Foley had bucked agribusiness to pass a bill regulating meatpackers. He attacked Colorado liberal Pat Schroeder, who had supported earlier versions of the CPA but had minor reservations this time, as a "mushy liberal" selling her vote to corporate contributors. He so alienated Democrats that, as the measure went down to defeat, one reportedly said as he voted no, "This one's for you, Ralph." House Speaker Tip O'Neill told The Washington Post, "I know of about eight guys who would have voted for us if it were not for Nader."

For Nader, it was almost axiomatic that anybody who disagreed with him was a corporate lackey. "Nader sees critics as enemies," wrote Sanford, a former ally. "Those who do not serve him serve the evil elements of corporations." This Manichaean worldview came through in everything Nader did. In the 1970s, he worked to establish automatic funding for Public Interest Research Groups (pirg) on campus--proto-Naderite outfits to train the next generation of like-minded activists. Nader's preferred funding mechanism was for every student to automatically contribute $1; those who objected could go to the college administration for a refund. But the administration at Penn State University in 1975 opted instead for a positive checkoff, whereby each student would check a box if he wanted to pitch in $2 for the pirg. Nader attacked Penn State as "a citadel of fascism" and threatened one Penn State board member: "I would advise Mister Baker to study very carefully the meaning of conflict of interest if he wants to understand the kind of disclosures that will be forthcoming in the coming year."

The Jimmy Carter presidency only saw a heightening of Nader's schismatic tendencies. "I want access. I want to be able to see [Carter] and talk to him. I expected to be consulted," he told The New York Times. That Carter filled his administration with former Naderites didn't help. Less than a year after Carter put former Nader deputy Joan Claybrook in charge of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Nader denounced her, demanding she resign for implementing an air-bag regulation with "an unheard of lead time provision." In 1980, Nader told Rolling Stone, "In the last year we've seen the 'corporatization' of Jimmy Carter. Whereas he was impotent and kind of pathetic the first year and a half, he's now surrendered. ... The two-party system, by all criteria, is bankrupt--they have nothing of any significance to offer the voters, so a lot of voters say why should they go and vote for Tweedledum and Tweedledee." (Liberals today who anguish over Nader's insistence that no important differences exist between the two parties should note that this belief dates back more than two decades.) In the summer of 1980, Jonathan Alter (now a Newsweek columnist) worked on Nader's voting guide for the presidential election. Alter came away amazed by Nader's fury at Carter. "He didn't seem overly distressed at the idea of Ronald Reagan becoming president," Alter later told Martin. As Nader addressed a gathering of supporters in 1981, according to The Washington Post, "Reagan is going to breed the biggest resurgence in nonpartisan citizen activism in history."

Of course, that did not happen. But twelve years of Republican rule failed to dim Nader's conviction that little difference existed between the two parties. Even Nader's critics seem to forget that he began running against Democrats in 1992, when he urged New Hampshire primary voters to write in "None of the above." "None of the above" meant Nader himself, as he would tell audiences: "Hello, I'm 'None of the above,' and I'm not running for president." Nader demanded that the major candidates address what he deemed the important issues of the day. In his 2002 memoir, Crashing the Party, Nader alleges that Bill Clinton leaked the Gennifer Flowers adultery revelations himself to avoid having to address Nader's agenda. "I'm almost certain that [Clinton] and his supporters knew [the Flowers scandal] was coming," he posits. "Clinton knew how to stay on message, and nothing was going to get him to take a stand on President Bush's nafta proposal before Congress, or on nuclear power, or on the failing banks in New Hampshire." This assertion neatly encapsulates Nader's style of thinking--the fevered conspiracy-mongering, the moral righteousness, and the laughably outsized role he assigns himself in world events.

s Nader embarks upon his fourth protest run against the Democrats in as many elections, there is something slightly ridiculous about the shock of his liberal critics. They still don't know who they're dealing with. Nader is not a heroic figure tragically overcome by his own flaws; he is a selfish, destructive maniac who, for a brief historical period, happened upon a useful role.

In the waning days of the 2000 election, some of Nader's campaign advisers urged him to concentrate on uncontested states, like New York and California, where he could attract local media without competition from the major-party candidates and win liberal voters who needn't fear tipping the race to George W. Bush. Instead, he chose a whirlwind tour of battleground states, campaigning in Pennsylvania and Florida, where votes would be harder to come by but more consequential to the outcome of the race. Liberals assume Nader tried to maximize his vote total without regard to how it affected Bush and Gore. The truth is that he actively sought to help Bush, even at the expense of his own vote total.

It's therefore both comic and sad when liberals take Nader at his word that he does not believe he affected the outcome of the 2000 race. The website RalphDontRun.net patiently explains how, if Al Gore had netted even 1 percent of Nader's 97,000 Florida votes, he would have overcome Bush's 537-vote margin. Like other liberals, the people behind the website seem to think, if they could only persuade Nader that his candidacy might help reelect Bush, it would dissuade him from running. More likely, it would have the opposite effect. The real mystery is not why Nader would do something so destructive to liberalism. It's why anybody ever thought he wouldn't.

HILLARY YOU PUTZ

Hillary moves to the right.

In today's news: "But while the Republican mayor of America's largest city says he supports same-sex marriage, both of New York's Democratic senators have come out against it. Spokespeople for U.S. senators Charles Schumer and Hillary Rodham Clinton told the New York Post they would not support marriage rights for gays and lesbians."

Oh Hillary, what the hell are you thinking? A Republican taking a more liberal and compassionate stance than you?

Add this to your wimpy record and almost inaudible voice against the Bush cabal, and I am ready to abandon you to the clutches of the DLC and the road to political impotence. Did you leave your brain and courage behind you when the press belittled you during the Affair of the Blue Dress? Are your ambitions such that you won't make waves at a time when a sunami is what's needed to dislodge the usurpers? Are you still listening to hubby, who also still thinks the party's success lies in staying in the capitulating and pandering center, rather than proudly building on its liberal past?

Shame on you, Hillary. This is a betrayal of your own political history and all who supported you then and now. You are on the verge of marginalizing yourself, and if that happens, you have only yourself to blame. For example, I'm writing you off, unless or until you show the spunk and fortitude we expected from you.

Sincerely,
Renfrew Zetz

I GOT A LETTER FROM BUSH

March 4, 2004

Mr. Arthur Cohen
xxx xxxxxxxxx Street
xxxxxxxxx, Massachusetts 02466-2105

Dear Mr. Cohen:
On behalf of President Bush, thank you for your e-mail. The President appreciates learning your views and welcomes your suggestions.

President Bush is dedicated to pursuing policies and programs that make America safer and more prosperous for all citizens.

Thank you for writing. Best wishes.

Sincerely,
Desiree Thompson
Special Assistant to the President
and Director of Presidential Correspondence



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