By: Dan Fishback  

We have a major national security problem on our hands. There's a man - a deceitful man - who has consistently lied to the world, jeopardizing the safety of Americans. As long as he stays in power, we are at a greater risk of terrorist attack. As long as he continues to disregard the truth, spouting lies into the air, this international bully will threaten our safety. This man must be stopped: George Bush.

President Bush insists that we are in immediate danger from without. He insists that we must wage preemptive war to defend ourselves against imminent attack. In a recent speech, he said: "There is universal agreement that Saddam Hussein poses as serious threat." Perhaps by "universal agreement", he meant, "everyone except the CIA and other intelligence experts".

By: Chris Durant  

When you ask outsiders what comes to mind when they think of Humboldt County, a lot of them will say it's the great redwood forests. Or the rugged coast. Perhaps the Victorian homes of Ferndale and Eureka.

Chances are a lot more of them will say marijuana.

Pot - legal and illegal - is a fact of life on the North Coast.

Songs and stories have been written about it, there have been international news stories about it and to certain people Humboldt County means only one thing.

It's a problem for some and a cause for others. It's a crime, a community, a medication, a business, a commodity, a jail sentence, and a way of life.

By: Dana Milbank  

President Bush, speaking to the nation this month about the need to challenge Saddam Hussein, warned that Iraq has a growing fleet of unmanned aircraft that could be used "for missions targeting the United States".

Last month, asked if there were new and conclusive evidence of Hussein's nuclear weapons capabilities, Bush cited a report by the International Atomic Energy Agency saying the Iraqis were "six months away from developing a weapon". And last week, the President said objections by a labor union to having customs officials wear radiation detectors has the potential to delay the policy "for a long period of time".

All three assertions were powerful arguments for the actions Bush sought. And all three statements were dubious, if not wrong. Further information revealed that the aircraft lack the range to reach the United States; there was no such report by the IAEA; and the customs dispute over the detectors was resolved long ago.

By: Kevin Dawson  

The Republican right wing, who never stops characterizing Al Gore as an ungracious loser still pouting over the 2000 election (he's not the only one), cannot manage so much as "Congratulations" to disco-era President Jimmy Carter for the Nobel Prize he was awarded. In fact, many have demanded that Mr. Carter give the prize back, even to the point of making racist cracks about the Nobel Committee! Have a Billy Beer and calm down!

Reaganites have yet to figure out how to credit the 1978 Mideast peace accord to their hero, to whom they credit everything else (except where Iraq got its nuclear wherewithal in the first place) from the discovering of America to ending the Cold War (which, let's face it, merely fizzled away on its own and RR was in the right place at the right time, a la GWB on 9/11/01). Perhaps they could claim that Mssrs. Begin and Sadat had been forewarned: "You boys better work things out with the peanut farmer, or else in two years you'll be dealt with by Big Daddy!"

By: Paul Krugman  

So what's going on? Here's a parallel. Since 1995 Congress has systematically forced the Internal Revenue Service to shrink its operations; the number of auditors has fallen by 28%. Yet it's clear that giving the IRS more money would actually reduce the federal budget deficit; the agency estimates that it loses at least $30 billion a year in uncollected taxes, mainly because high-income taxpayers believe they can get away with tax evasion. So starving the IRS isn't about saving money, it's about protecting affluent tax cheats.

Similarly, top officials don't really believe that the SEC can do its job with less money; the whole point is to prevent the agency from doing its job.

In retrospect, it's hard to see why anyone believed that our current leadership was serious about corporate reform. To an extent unprecedented in recent history, this is a government of, by, and for corporate insiders. I'm not just talking about influence, I'm talking about personal career experience. The Bush administration contains more former CEO's than any previous administration, but as James Surowiecki put it in the New Yorker: "Almost none of the CEO's on the Bush team headed competitive, entrepreneurial businesses." Instead they come out of a world of "crony capitalism, in which whom you know is more important than what you do and how you do it". Why would they turn their backs on that world?

By: John F. Borowski  

The air waves are filled with the likes of Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Savage, Bill O'Reilly while their brethren, Cal Thomas, Mona Charen, Linda Chavez, and countless other pompous windbags litter our daily newspapers. The common threads are easy to distinguish: continual use of terms like leftist, socialists, "the liberal press", "heavy-handed government", and radical environmentalists. These daily diatribes of specious "facts" often enrage their audience, whose fluency in everyday issues runs a mile wide and often a micron deep. In the absence of a counter message or attempt to provide guests that would question the lack of objectivity on their shows, our "air wave prophets" fill the air with hate, misinformation, and a zealous desire to shape the world according to their morals: or lack thereof.

But this is not a new trend, just a more dangerous trend in American history because the voices of these "purveyors of truth" are controlled by fewer entities and owned by even fewer powerbrokers. In an 1807 letter to Thomas Seymour, Thomas Jefferson stated: "The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood." And sometimes it seems that all the Viagra in the world cannot help the captains of the yellow press to regain their integrity.

By: Judy Fitzgerald  

Could it perhaps be that a lot of people do not trust Bush because he has told one cynical lie after another? From his claims of having been the environmental and education governor of Texas (even though his record indicates the opposite) to not touching Social Security to being a "compassionate conservative".

In short, his walk simply does not match his talk.

Could it be that a lot of people do not trust Bush because of his going AWOL from the Texas National Guard? Could it be that people don't trust his administration because so many of the people in it (with the exception of Secretary of State Colin Powell) who are calling the loudest for war evaded serving their country during Vietnam? This includes the Vice President.

Could it be that people don't trust Bush or his Vice President because they both have been up to their necks in Enron and Enron-style scandals?

By: Tim Francis-Wright  

North Korea has informed the United States that it now views its 1994 agreements as null and void. But the Bush administration has backed itself into a corner. First, it has called for war over a nuclear program that may well be far less advanced than the North Korean program, yet it does not want to press for war on North Korea. Second, it cannot object too loudly to North Korea's renunciation of its previous agreement, because the United States has set recent precedent for that. The United States has already formally withdrawn from the ABM Treaty with Russia because the ABM Treaty no longer fit American interests. North Korea has essentially informed the United States that the 1994 accord no longer fits its interests. Third, if the Bush administration acts too harshly against North Korea, surely someone will notice that Pakistan deserves harsher treatment. Pakistan openly aided the Taliban government in Afghanistan, the home of al-Qaeda, during the 1990's. It is the most recent proliferator of nuclear weapons, and it gave important nuclear technology to North Korea. Yet Pakistan is now an important ally of the United States.

Stolen from:  

Once guns rights are on the table, the Constitution starts to mean something to Bush because a cross section of the public willfully ignorant of the more egregious violations start to take notice of common sense suggestions, like registering guns.

More specifically, once you start talking about gun rights, an army of under-achieving white men in the south and west, (the heart of "Bush country"), who likely don't understand all their rights are already gone start getting extremely agitated because they think their guns somehow matter. These are the absolute core of Bush's base, and no Republican has a chance of getting elected anywhere in flyover without them. Hammered by the economic reality of the place of rural America in a global economy, they may have lost their good paying jobs, but like hell are they giving up their guns. The driver behind this mentality is the belief they might need them to "keep the federal government in line". These are the actual "rural values" Karl Rove and George Bush have to worry about. What is even more scary than the mentality of these yahoos bent on insurrection is the fact that the Bush administration has no choice but to gratify their paranoia.

By: John Chuckman  

The Reverend Jerry Falwell has apologized again. It is his third-favorite occupation.

His first, as we all know, is using national television to promote the kind of intolerance and ignorance long associated with sweltering, fly-blown corners of America's south. It's a profitable business by the looks of Falwell's cascading jowls and tailored, tent-size suits. He generally doesn't apologize for these activities, whether it is his retailing of videotapes sensationalizing the pitiful suicide of a member of President Clinton's staff, or his spending countless hours blubbering from the pulpit against the lives of people who happen to be gay.

He once alerted the nation to dangerous hidden tendencies he discovered in a British television show for children, a harmless piece of fluff called Teletubbies. Falwell gravely warned America that one of the tubbies was promoting homosexuality.

Being a hate-entrepreneur or appealing to the worst instincts of nitwits is not an unusual occupation in America. There are many people who make handsome livings much the way Falwell does, and they are not isolated in the dark corners of American society. Some of them have considerable influence. Success in accumulating money and making a name for yourself, however achieved, counts far more than decency or intelligence in America. Just ask the man who now occupies the White House.

By: Howard Witt  

Defending their varying approaches to confronting the nuclear dangers posed by Iraq and North Korea, senior White House officials insisted Sunday that the threat of force is appropriate in the case of Baghdad but premature for Pyongyang.

"We're not going to have a cookie-cutter foreign policy, where we try to apply the same formula to every case. It would be foolhardy to do that", National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CNN.

"The President put it very well when he said there may be many modalities, but there's only one morality", Rice said. "And the morality is that we are not prepared to allow nuclear powers of this kind to grow up."

Hey 'Monkey Boy'!
When are you going to release Ronnie Raygun's papers?

By: Alan Morse  

Your adept predecessors persuaded with honey and intelligence, but your ignorance now shakes us. For that, and for that alone, I thank you. Now we will resist and topple your kind.

You have guns, bombs, but we have the power of non-violent resistance. Those who read know that firepower is laughable in the face of such force. Be afraid, Mr. Bush, and all who serve yourselves in backing this fragile regime, for you have germinated the seeds of your downfall.

We do not threaten your person or your pathetic toys, but we will cast you on the trash-heap of history. You can lead only by our consent... that, you have squandered.

Add me to your lists, Mr. Bush. I may be insignificant, but wait. I have time, history, and numbers on my side, and I am not the tiniest bit afraid of you.

Before Bush plays wargames, he should look at the most recent wargames results.

By: Geov Parrish  

Whatever the final outcome, it's clear that Bush's rhetorical climbdown last week delays, for the time being, any invasion - and perhaps even forestalls one altogether. At minimum, it's almost inconceivable now that the U.S. would launch an invasion without some osrt of attempt first by the United Nations to search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction - a search Iraq has already repeatedly said it would unconditionally accept. And as another gesture to international opinion, over the weekend Iraq released a number of political prisoners.

Suddenly, the momentum for an unprovoked invasion is gone. Surely high among the many factors is the increasing public reluctance to see the U.S. go it alone, in Iraq or anywhere else, in a naked imperial adventure. But another, much less remarked-upon factor is also at play, one that has many Pentagon generals and military analysts terrified.

The empire might lose.

By: Stacy Sullivan  

For the past three years, I have been doing research for a book on how a group of Kosovar Albanian émigrés in New York City helped build a guerrilla army by raising money and buying and shipping high-powered rifles from the United States to the Balkans. In March 2001, I accompanied one of the key fund-raisers for the Kosovo Liberation Army to a gun show in suburban Pennsylvania. Sports utility vehicles with "Sportsmen for Bush" bumper stickers lined the parking lot. Inside, a throng of people - mostly young men, but also a surprising number of families with children - strolled past tables laden with AK-47's, M-16 assault rifles, sniper rifles, handguns, flat and round bullets, brochures for the National Rifle Association, silencers, night scopes, knives, Japanese swords, muskets, daggers, even a couple of anti-aircraft guns, as well as paraphernalia from the Civil War, World War I, and World War II.

One gun dealer showed me a .32-caliber Thompson automatic weapon that shoots 32 rounds in less than 2.5 seconds. Another showed me a .22-caliber Bushmaster gun with a silencer that was described as "deadly quiet". The most impressive gun, however, was the .50-caliber high-powered Barrett sniper rifle. With the .50-caliber rifle, the dealer told me, a good marksman can kill a large animal from two miles away and an amateur could probably shoot a person from a mile away. He said he had armor-piercing, tracer, and incendiary .50-caliber bullets available that could bring down a helicopter. The rifle was going for about $5,000.

By: Mike Allen  

With the elections 16 days away and polls showing many crucial races too close to call, Republicans are drawing up plans that would aid a broad array of industries, after hammering business during the corporate responsibility debate touched off by this year's accounting scandals.

Business lobbyists said their wish lists include substantial nationwide limits on the amount of damages that can be awarded in medical malpractice cases, plus a major overhaul of the tax code to reduce the burden on corporations. Both measures have been part of President Bush's agenda and would have a better chance of becoming law if the GOP retook control of the Senate and kept a House majority in the Nov. 5 elections.

Michael G. Franc, the Heritage Foundation's vice president of government relations, said the mood among business lobbyists and economic conservatives is "guarded optimism, bordering on giddiness"...

From:  

As the election draws nearer, we're starting to see a whole host of campaign related idiocy cropping up all over the place. There's Jeb Bush (1) lying to old folks, Bill Owens (2) trying to pretend that his son is responsible, Mitt Romney's (3) hypocrisy on gay rights, Doug Forrester's (4) thoughts on Atlantic City, and Tom Tancredo's (5) gun nut flip-flop. But it's not just election idiocy this week. Further down the list we find Michael Kelly (7) who thinks that both George Bushes deserve the Nobel Peace Prize, Saudi Arabia (8) who continue to fund Al Qaeda under the very noses of the Bush administration, and Dubya himself (9) presiding over financially devastating corporate scandals.

By: Tony Judt  

The atrocity in Bali last Saturday is a grim reminder that we are in a long war. It is a war that pits a few thousand unidentified individuals against most of humankind, from the beaches of Bali to lower Manhattan. A year ago President Bush named this conflict the "war on terror" and committed the United States to fighting it. Today many people outside America believe that Washington has lost interest in this war, except as rhetorical cover for a retreat to more familiar territory: an old-fashioned battle against an old-fashioned kind of enemy - Iraq. We are seeking a fight we can win instead of concentrating on the war that we must win.

For former Sovietologists like Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, Iraq is a ready substitute for the conventional foes (Russia, China, Cuba) of the cold war years. There is no clear link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda (and certainly no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the Bali terrorism); so advocates of a war with Iraq have taken to claiming that such a link can't be excluded, and therefore it should be "pre-empted"...

When Bush Is in Town, Dissent Gets Confined to 'Protest Pens'

By: Robyn Blumner  

In town after town where Bush has come to raise money or make a speech, his venue and the route leading up to it have been purged of protesters. This is accomplished through the combined efforts of local policing agencies and the Secret Service, which scour the crowd for any hint of opposition.

Anyone with an anti-Bush sign is relegated into what is euphemistically called a Free Speech or Demonstration Zone - a swath of land usually off the main thoroughfare and chained off so as to make it virtually impossible for the targets of the protest to read the signs or hear the chants. Those with pro-Bush signs are often treated very differently. They are free to cheerlead the President as he rides toward his engagement, which typically is further sanitized by being invitation-only.

This kind of censorship is indicative of a leader who lacks confidence in his own powers of persuasion and the legitimacy of his course. Why else would Bush be so interested in hiding evidence of dissent within the American populace?

Editorial from:  

Americans have been told often enough that post-9/11, they have to learn to live with insecurity. But last week it seemed that everyone was conspiring to terrify them out of their wits. While the President was heading toward a war with one reclusive dictator with a thirst for nuclear weapons, another one popped up in North Korea bragging that he was secretly acquiring all that and much worse. While the area around the nation's capital was being terrorized by a murderous sniper, police were forced to admit that all their best clues - the description of the van, the shooter, the gun - were worthless. Then the Director of Central Intelligence told a Congressional committee that in effect, all the national effort to combat Al Qaeda over the last year had left the country in as much danger of internal attack as before the destruction of the World Trade Center.

By: Dennis Hans  

President George W. Bush is not a straight shooter. He merely plays one on TV.

The President presents himself as a stand-up guy who speaks the unvarnished truth in plain, simple language. His admirers contrast this straightforward approach with former President Bill Clinton, who on occasion - particularly on matters of sex and infidelity - used words not to inform but to mislead.

Yet Bush's pronouncements on Iraq, including his October 7 national address, have been replete with verbal trickery that would make Slick Willie blush. Bush repeatedly uses language to create impressions - about Saddam Hussein's link to al-Qaida, to 9/11, and to Islamic fundamentalism in general, about the extent and imminence of the threat he poses to Americans - he knows are false.

Hey 'Monkey Boy'!
Please explain your 'Voodoo' economics plan again... Thanx.

By: Mike McArdle  

Being a cynic gives one low expectations when looking at the machinations of our politicians. Unfortunately it doesn't make it any less infuriating when they behave in a cowardly, self-serving way. It just takes away the element of surprise.

You certainly didn't have to be clairvoyant to see it coming. In a classic display of pants-pooping fear our Democratic politicians have all but agreed to load the bombs onto the Baghdad bound planes. You got the feeling that some of them might incur a serious injury elbowing one another out of the way to vote for Bush's blank check resolution. Back in August they were asking for a debate. By September all they could say was: "Bombs away, Captain."

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