February 2005 Archives

Some of us are old enough to remember the anti-war protest song by Country Joe & The Fish featuring that famous refrain, a song that helped to define America’s Woodstock moment for an entire generation.

All of us are old enough to remember the scandalous election frauds -– excuse me, "irregularities" -– that helped to define America’s 2000 and 2004 presidential elections for an entire generation, too.

[Editors Note: Part of our ongoing Sunday series examining the intersection of religion and politics and its relationship to our present state of democracy, written exclusively for the DCP, by Matthew Carnicelli]

In the second chapter of the Tao Te Ching, Lao Tse turns to the inevitable problems introduced through human beings’ tendency to unnecessarily compare and contrast things, to judge them - often as a means of bolstering one’s own self-esteem, or imagined standing in God’s eyes, or reputation within a community.

When people see some things as beautiful,
other things become ugly.
When people see some things as good,
other things become bad.

So, for instance, with regard to a form of human expression like homosexuality – which scientists increasingly tell us represents a genetic disposition, and not the impact of inappropriate parenting or a character defect – it is my view that Lao Tse here is suggesting that it is our need to rigidly define “beautiful” and “ugly” that unnecessarily sows disharmony in a nation, and within the larger human family.

The next chapter in the healing mission of Polly Sigh... my selfless quest to save the politically lame continues with this week’s interesting, yet deeply troubling letter.

Dear Polly:

I was confused this week by the strange tone in the media coverage of Condoleezza Rice’s recent visit to Europe. Maybe I’m old fashioned, but doesn’t it seem weird that all the media talked about were her clothes? Wasn’t she supposed to be doing important foreign policy business? If she did, nobody bothered to talk about it or write about it. Is it that she didn’t really do anything important, or is the media just so shallow that they’d rather talk about her ‘look?’ And all that stuff about ‘The Matrix?’ What does that have to do with the price of tea in China? I honestly don’t know the answer. Please advise.

Sincerely,

Peeved Over Ogling Press

Dear POOP:

My keen, intuitive ‘people sense’ tells me that you may be one of those individuals who learns best through the use of garden implements.

“Laws are like sausages. It is better not to see them being made.” -- Otto von Bismarck

Ain’t that the truth. And it’s never truer than it is at budget-bill time.

Appropriations bills, and for that matter any other kind of bills, are incredibly complicated documents by the time they ever come up for a vote. Even the simplest, most obvious proposal gets bogged down in subclauses and disquisitions and legal caveats and so on before it ever gets introduced, and then they all get even more weighted down with amendments and exceptions and corollary clauses and such before they ever reach the floor.

The bigger the bill, the more barnacles that it's encrusted with before it ever even leaves the dock. Every Senator and Congressman with an axe to grind or an agenda to pursue has to put his or her $.02 in, and back-door deals and quid-pro-quo's and lobbyist maneuverings make it such a mess that there's no way that any one bill can ever just be about any one thing by the time it finally comes up for a vote.

That's why it's equally specious to make oversimplified statements like "Congressman X voted against tax cuts for the poor" and "Representative Y voted to spend billions on selfish pork-barrel projects". The devil is in the details, and boy howdy are there ever a devilish bunch of details to deal with whenever we look at the legislative process. So let's see if we can't use a simpler example to address this topic instead:

“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. And to the Republic, for which it stands, one nation, (under God), indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

Schoolchildren and teachers stand up every day and repeat this mantra. But what does it mean when they do that? There are only 31 words, unless you take out the “under God” part, which was added in 1954 and is at the core of a firestorm in our nation. I won't go into that here; but I hope Matthew Carnicelli addresses it in one of his Sunday pieces.

Buckminster Fuller’s famous dictum told us to "Think globally – act locally."

Tip O’Neill was fond of telling us that "All politics is local."

Well, I’m going to go them both one better. Because the way I see it: "All politics is personal."

Let me give you an example of what I’m talking about here.

Part I outlined Bev Harris' recent talk to Seattle, with suggested websites and an invitation to the Voter Reform meeting Monday 2/14, spearheaded by Governor Christine Gregoire, Washington.

Part II described potential solutions to problems encountered throughout the country in the last two elections.

Part III covers Harris’s harrowing story,. The following is my own report, as no press were there, to my knowledge. I have included other links to information on Bev Harris, and she has a book called Black Box Voting.

http://www.seattleweekly.com/features/ 0410/040310_news_blackbox.php
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/12/int03323.html
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

By Harris's account, she found Diebold's secret files as a citizen using Google. One file was called "Rob Georgia" and included instructions for the Georgia election. She downloaded 6 CDs of files and began to study them. She states she was theatened by Diebold with jail if she looked at the files. She then released them on Democratic Underground for 3 hours in the middle of the night and scientists looked at them under assumed names. Seven CDs of data went to an expert in New Zealand and sixteen days later there was a story in the New York Times. A month later, 13,000 memos were leaked to her and her website was taken down for 30 days, but Dennis Kucinich put them up on his website. A week later, she states, there was an entrapment attempt by Secret Service but she was too smart to open an encrypted file. The government interviewed her five times about what she knew about Diebold. They asked for IP addresses of all who visited her website, which she refused to disclose. At this point, she sought counsel from a California attorney to assist her in getting the Secret Service to back down.

Bill Maher is right...this can't be about "Bush is bad"...if the issues have been stolen from you...you can't oppose them, just because it is 'politically expedient'.

I believe that good people, when informed of the facts, are generally able to make good decisions as to what is best for their families and for the society we live in. The problem, as I see it, is that people have been lied to...lied to about what is at stake, lied to about the facts of the past, present, and future, by a mass media bent on control of information.

[Editor's note: The story as told by the adventuress herself.]

This is dedicated to the lurkers and the workers.

--Suz Krueger

I'm starting to get a reputation around here at the DCP. I'm not quite sure why! At one time, I was a lurker and afraid of the internets, but now I'm being called brave and FEARLESS and even...FIERCE. Not little old mousy me...

But I just happen to believe that dedication leads to desperate measures. Ok...well, perhaps the original phrase was "Desperate times lead to desperate measures," but, I prefer to think of it as DEDICATION. So with that thought in mind, allow me to tell you my story.

I grew up playing board games, like most kids in America. I started out with Candyland, moving up to Chutes and Ladders, through Stratego, Monopoly, and finally Risk. If you looked on the Risk gamebox for a description, it told you it was "a game of world domination". During the course of play, you moved armies, acquired power, made treaties and formed alliances. The idea is to unite your friends and divide your enemies.

The Bush administration seems to have gotten this backwards.

[Editors Note: This thread header was written last night by crew member DiAnne Grieser. The DCP honors the contributions of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson to our world community. He was a source of inspiration for many of us and we are grateful for the body of work he leaves behind.]

This is an excerpt from the last writing I have by Hunter S. Thompson and it takes me to a time just four months ago when I had hope in a whole different way than I do tonight and I feel like I have aged several years in the interim.

"Armageddon came early for George Bush this year, and he was not ready for it. His long-awaited showdowns with my man John Kerry turned into a series of horrible embarrassments that cracked his nerve and demoralized his closest campaign advisers. They knew he would never recover, no matter how many votes they could steal for him in Florida, where the presidential debates were closely watched and widely celebrated by millions of Kerry supporters who suddenly had reason to feel like winners."

(Read the rest of this article here

I was reading Wal-Mart's earnings report for the fourth quarter of 2004. The company reported increased earnings of 16.2% on sales, that for the first time, topped $10 billion.

I was awestruck by the comment of its CEO, Lee Scott:

Wal-Mart president and chief executive Lee Scott called it a solid performance but added "we can do better."

[Editors Note: Part of our ongoing Sunday series examining the intersection of religion and politics and its relationship to our present state of democracy, written exclusively for the DCP, by Matthew Carnicelli]

I became a political activist on September 11, 2001. As I watched American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the World Trade Center's twin towers here in New York, I was overcome by a sense of dread. I feared that the planet was in danger of being been overrun by yet another wave of collective insanity. I groped for a few days for something that I could to do that might make a meaningful difference; and after the initial shock and numbness had worn off, I began to write. My subject then, as today, as I expect that it will be for the rest of my life, was the impact of consciousness, spirituality, and psychology on human affairs.

I hadn’t heard of the Council of the Parliament of World’s Religions back then. I didn’t know that eight years earlier, in 1993, in the aftermath of the first World Trade Center bombing, representatives of Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, Taoism, numerous indigenous spiritual traditions, and a host of other religions, had sounded a clarion call for global change and transformation – the Declaration Towards a Global Ethic – a declaration that might, had it been heeded, have actually prevented events like 9/11, or the later Madrid Train Station bombing, from ever taking place.

The next blessing in our series to heal the politically lame.

[ Note to readers: I found this letter somewhat colorfully expressed, but mine is not to judge. I am here merely to assist the lumpen heaps, as we shuffle hopelessly through our pathetic little lives. I suspect that this writer may be the same person who upset Bill Moyers so badly last week. Parents: Use discretion in allowing young children to view the following material.---Polly]

Dear Polly (or whatever the [BLEEP] your name is):

Okay, so we’re fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, which shows no [BLEEPING] signs of ending in my lifetime, and now Iran and Syria are talking about this “common front” thing against the U.S... I mean, what the [BLEEP]!! I’m 23 years old, and I’m starting to think I could get drafted to fight these [BLEEPING] wars.... It’s like that Armeggedon thing , or The Rupture , or whatever they call it. Are we gonna have to fight the entire [BLEEPING] middle east??? What if they all gang up on us? I think that Nostrilimus talked about this. Is it ever gonna be over? I don’t have a [BLEEPING] bible, and I need an answer.

Scared About this Armeggedon Nonsense.

Dear SATAN:

COMMENTARY
Privatizing Social Security: 'Me' Over 'We'

By Benjamin R. Barber,

Benjamin R. Barber, a professor of political science at the University of Maryland, is the author of "Jihad vs. McWorld" (Ballantine, 1996) and other books.

Social Security privatization has been vigorously challenged on both economic and technical grounds. It has been said again and again that privatization increases risk for prospective retirees without solving the long-term Social Security financing shortfall (if there actually is one). It has been argued that privatization is merely a scheme to divert money from the Social Security trust fund for speculative stock market investments. And it has been noted that it creates new costs (portfolio management, government oversight) without being able to guarantee workers future retirement benefits.

"A man is not honest just because he hasn't had a chance to steal."

--A Yiddish proverb

I would like to ask Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, Rice, and Gonzalez as well as every Public Official to remember that Yiddish proverb during the course of their business. Each day our public servants are asked to represent us, vote on our behalf, and protect us. It is their sworn duty and their oath upon taking office. It encompasses honesty and integrity, but furthermore requires our officials to resist the temptations to lie, cheat, or steal even if the opportunity arises. Thus far, Bush and his administration have miserably failed the test.

[Editor's note: Bev Harris has been a leader in the fight to require paper trails for all voting machines, and has been working hard since the election to investigate irregularities in states from Washington to Florida. For more on her work, see Black Box Voting. ]

When Harris spoke to a Seattle Dem Meetup recently, she outlined solutions to a litany of problems at many levels of the voting process nationwide.

In the February 21 edition of Newsweek, Robert Samuelson makes it pretty clear that the old shell game is being revived by the Bush Administration.

You've never heard of Flemming v. Nestor, but it's a 1960 Supreme Court decision that demolishes the Bush administration's case for borrowing vast amounts to pay for its proposed "personal" Social Security accounts. The White House has crafted a clever bit of intellectual camouflage to do what's politically convenient: create a new government benefit to the personal accounts—-at no obvious cost. True, borrowing is a cost, but it's largely hidden from the public. It's not as conspicuous as a tax. What we have here is an exercise in mass deception that, in a weird way, is encouraged by a public that prefers to be deceived rather than face the difficult choices posed by Social Security or the government's budget.

Amendment I

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

The Appellate Court ruled that reporters Judith Miller and Matthew Cooper must appear in court and testify in the government's investigation of who leaked the name of undercover CIA agent, according to an article in the Washington Post. Like many things, this is not a 'one side is right and the other is wrong' issue.

Last December 10, 2004, Scott McClellan seemed pretty sure that he knew what the definition of the term "payroll taxes" meant. And he was equally sure that the President is fully against it.

The new polls are out on the President job approval and it seems that the honeymoon is officially over.

Gallup and USA Today/CNN Polling for the data period February 7-10:

"Do you approve or disapprove of the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?"

Approve 49
Disapprove 48

-----------------
And then in today's news:

In his first public appearance as head of the CIA, Porter Goss warned that while the U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Iraq had left al-Qaida battered, they had also given birth to a younger generation of battle-hardened terrorist leaders plugged into a “potential pool of contacts” from which to build new international terrorist groups.
------------------
Low approval ratings followed by terror warnings.

Pick up your popcorn and go home. We've all seen this movie before.

A few days ago was Abraham Lincoln's birthday. When I was growing up, Lincoln's birthday was a big deal. For a few days before his birthday each year, we would talk about Abraham Lincoln, read about him, and make things that symbolized his contribution to our United States.

Now, we have merged Lincoln's and George Washington's birthday into a holiday called President's Day, and the only people who talk about either of them are in ads promoting the sales for that weekend. And isn't that a shame? Today, I am reminded of some of the words Lincoln spoke many years ago, and I am thinking about how they still fit into the landscape of American politics today.

I suffer from the "P" word--PROCRASTINATION. From the time that I first discovered blogging and through out the campaign, I discovered that inertia really is difficult to overcome but once I picked myself up and dragged myself away from the computer, I discovered new opportunities to get involved in grassroots campaigning.

Today, for instance, was one of those days when the bed called my name louder than the DCP. However, I had no choice. The kids needed to be taken to school and chores needed to be done. So, I dragged myself out of bed, out of the house, and into the cold, cold world. And as I drove them to school, a wonderful thing happened.

How many times does Condoleeza Rice need to lie with a perfectly straight face to the press and then be publicly exposed as a liar by the facts, until the press comes out and calls her a liar? Once again, we are provided with rock solid evidence, this time in the form of the 9-11 Commission Report, containing the memo which proves that Richard Clarke was telling the truth and Condleeza was lying. Yet, nothing from the press?

The President's thinks studying hard and getting good grades in college are a great big joke.

From the President's Bamboozlepalooza Tour stop to North Carolina :

Casey Morris has filed this report today:

This statement was issued today from House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer:

HOYER STATEMENT ON “JEFF GANNON” CONNECTION TO VALERIE PLAME LEAK WASHINGTON DC – House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer released the following statement regarding revelations that a man who went by the name of “Jeff Gannon,” and who was given White House media credentials despite his lack of qualifications, was given access to classified documents which disclosed the identity of Undercover CIA Operative Valerie Plame:

“Valid questions are being raised regarding the Bush White House’s relationship with James Guckert, also known as “Jeff Gannon,” and his access to documents that revealed the identity of Undercover CIA Operative Valerie Plame.”

[Editor's Note: This story was sent to us from a reader of the DCP who wishes to remain anonymous. We respect that wish.]

Zzzzzzzzzz, the buzz of the lights and the hum of the fan is the only sound heard in the factory. Our footsteps echo in the vast workshop that was once filled with the buzz of saws, the hum of voices, and the drone of the forklift and crane. Now, the silence is deafening.

The President visits Tampa, Florida to educate the public. From the question and answer period [emphasis mine]:

Q Hi, I'm a high school student. I'm just wondering is there anything I can to prepare for this new Social Security reform when I grow up?

More, from the President answering questions on his Social Security Plan [my emphasis added]:

Q Well, I think you'll like this. It's a simple suggestion. Regarding the flexible spending account, my suggestion is to encourage Congress to quickly get rid of the "use it or lose it" law, which will also supplement the help with Social Security. And then, my question is, for the three or four options that will be available, will those options be federally-run options? Or will they be from like commercial providers, say, like Fidelity Investments?

THE PRESIDENT: No, no, that's a great question. They'll be from providers. We don't want the federal government making stocks and bond decisions. (Applause.) They'll be private -- private sector, people who get paid to do this. And the fees, by the way, will be -- we'll make sure that you don't get gouged. I mean, obviously, what we want is people's money going into their personal account, not going into big fee structures. And so there will be a -- it will be regulated to that extent. In other words, there will a certain sense of regulation, you can only invest in certain kinds of stocks and bonds to be -- and the funds will be managed by people whose job it is to manage them, outside of the government.
-------------

A person in my cell arranged for Bev Harris, from Black Box Voting, to speak at the Democratic Meetup in Seattle last Tuesday night. There were no press present that I know of and probably 100 Democratic activists.

Bev Harris has a fighter’s spirit coupled with firm resolve and calm determination. Her talk was a whirlwind of disturbing information that has taken me several days to process, but I left with a strong feeling that Pandora’s Box has been opened and will not be closed again. She will not give up, nor should we.

This is from a story entitled, "Bush Pushes Social Security Plan", written by the Associated Press and headlined on the MSNBC News site. Given the front page status of this story on the MSNBC site, one assumes that several editors and producers read through this before they let it out of the box...

Bush’s plan has support from many Republicans in Congress, though some are opposed and others worry it will not sell politically. Trying to shore up support, Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration officials have held a series of meetings with Republican lawmakers.

[Editors Note: Part of our ongoing Sunday series examining the intersection of religion and politics and its relationship to our present state of democracy, written exclusively for the DCP, by Matthew Carnicelli]

Unlike our current President, I often wonder how it is that I could have lived this long and yet still know so little. Take as a case in point my complete ignorance until just recently of a remarkable volume entitled The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth – better known to posterity as The Jefferson Bible.

I wonder how is it that, despite years of Catholic education, knowledge of this uniquely American distillation of the four Gospels could have escaped me? This omission strikes me as both substantial and problematic.

[Editor's Note: This item, posted by DiAnne, was promoted from last night's comments to today's blog. Poetry can be a powerful medium for creating images that reflect a truth which would otherwise be lost to us. There are few images of any kind available to us regarding what went/goes on at Guantanamo.]

The following poem, The Dagger's Hilt, was written by UK citizen and Guantanamo detainee, Moazzam Begg. He snuck it out when he was released recently.

Find more about prisoners thought to be unlawfully detained during the "War on Terror" at http://www.cageprisoners.com:

This is the latest installment of my weekly series for the tired, poor, huddled masses who dot the charred American political landscape. I have read your letters and feel your pain. May god bless you all. You are my people.
-- Polly

Dear Polly Sigh –
I live in Omaha, Nebraska, and the President came here recently to discuss his plan to privatize social security. I attended the meeting, but didn’t really come away with very much information about the plan. The President kept saying that it would make Social Security stronger, but I’m not clear on how taking money out of the system will make it stronger. Shouldn’t they be trying to put money into the system? This seems kind of obvious. Am I missing something?

Confused Omaha Worker

Dear COW:

These are complex issues, and cannot be addressed using common sense. I think President Bush has made that clear.

More evidence mounts up that Bush and his administration were asleep on the job between January 2, 2000 and last year, when we witnessed the terror alerts raised or lowered every five days with the election polls. But don't tell the media this, after all, they've been in a deep slumber for years.

Both of these articles are from yesterday's Washington Post:

First this:

Ailing Democrats Put Their Faith in Dr. Dean

Two questions swirled around the Democrats as their national committee assembled yesterday to select a new party chairman: Can Howard Dean cure what ails the party, or is Howard Dean symptomatic of why those ailments may be so difficult to cure?

[...]His success has muted some of his former critics. Two years ago, centrist Democrats were at war with Dean. Asked this week whether he worried about Dean as party chairman, Bruce Reed, president of the Democratic Leadership Council, said: "The job of party chair is different from party nominee. The party chair needs to be an ardent partisan. You can't send a vegetarian to do a red-meat job."

[Note: marjorie (not to be confused with marjorie g) had her letter published in the Elmira Star-Gazette]

Word games at work in Social Security reform

I watch with amusement and sadness, the media's rush to change from the terms "privatization" and "private accounts" to "personal accounts" when discussing Social Security reform. Since privatization and private accounts did not poll well, the decree has gone out and all the little speakers are scurrying around to correct everyone.

This from an administration that presents itself as being unnuanced and straight forward. The words privatization and private accounts are the words that this administration has used for many months. And yet, now there is a campaign accusing anyone who uses these terms as being biased in some manner.

I watch with sadness as the media, in general, have rushed to accept this flimflam. It is sad when any government tells the press what words to use and what words not to use. What was it we objected to in the Soviet Union again? Oh yes. Torture of dissidents, government-controlled media and locking people up with no recourse and no charges. Thank God we are different here in America.

MARJORIE HAMILTON

Elmira

http://www.stargazettenews.com/opinion/Weopin2.html

Another good commentary from "The Manhattan Mercury"

********************************************************************

February 9, 2005

Cutting back on compassion
President Bush is right to contend that his budget proposal sets priorities; that's what spending plans do.

They should. The budget doesn't include $80 billion the president says is needed for the Iraq war, and it omits hundreds of billions to cover the proposed transition to private Social Security accounts. The budget also doesn't include hundreds of billions more over the next decade to deal with the Alternative Minimum Tax, which was supposed to make sure the wealthy didn't escape taxes but is taking a growing toll on middle class taxpayers.

JD Guckert, AKA Jeff Gannon, will grace the White House Press Corpse no more, reports Howard Kurtz of Washington Post:

The conservative reporter who asked President Bush a loaded question at a news conference last month resigned yesterday after liberal bloggers uncovered his real name and raised questions about his background.

Jeff Gannon, who had been writing for the Web sites Talon News and GOPUSA, is actually James Dale Guckert, 47, and has been linked to online domain addresses with sexually provocative names.

While the previous owners of Adelphia Communications Corp., the country's fifth-largest cable television were against showing pornography (though obviously not against committing felony securities, conspiracy, and bank fraud ) the new owners have take a different view of the "adult entertainment" industry.

Last week Adelphia became the first to offer hard-core adult films on pay-per-view to its subscribers.

If you want to continue fighting the torturer Alberto Gonzales after his confirmation by a supine Senate, check out this job with Amnesty International. AI is advertising for a project manager for a new national initiative, the "Denounce Torture at Home and Abroad."

Here's the full job description from the AI site:

POLITICAL HACK MAGICALLY ASCENDS TO POLICY POSITION

Rove Gets Bigger Role at White House

...Rove, who was Bush's top political strategist during his 2000 and 2004 presidential campaigns, will become a deputy White House chief of staff in charge of coordinating policy between the White House Domestic Policy Council, National Economic Council, National Security Council and Homeland Security Council.

From Big News Network:

Pentagon to broadcast to millions of U.S. homes

Moving on from its phase of embedding journalists, or as some would say, 'a policy of restricting and contolling the flow of information,' the Pentagon will now produce and disseminate the news itself. It will be beamed to the public at no charge. The service will emanate from what is known as the Pentagon Channel, an internal public relations television unit within the Department of Defense. It was set up nine months ago.

The budget from the White House has arrived on Capitol Hill.

First, the President's actions create thousands upon thousands of new veterans. Then the President wants to cut their benefits.

President Bush's budget would more than double the co-payment charged to many veterans for prescription drugs and would require some to pay a new fee of $250 a year for the privilege of using government health care, administration officials said Sunday.

Why does the President hate our veterans?

Have you ever been driving along in your car hopping from one station to the next, seeking a song or a voice to brighten your day? Well, I had that happen a few weeks ago, and I was very fortunate to have discovered a new progressive radio station in our area and a very cool talk show host. The station was 1310 AM and the rising star whom I discovered was the amazing--Stephanie Miller.

I found this article in my local home town newspaper. The story, while significant in itself, is noteworthy due to the source of the story...The Manhattan Mercury, of Manhattan, Kansas. The Mercury, for most of its existence, has been a right wing headline machine, but with new management, under Ned Seaton, the previous owner/editor's son, things may be just a bit different from now on...

2/4/2005 1:37:37 PM

Legislative supporters of an amendment to the Kansas Constitution to ban gay marriage argued among other things earlier this week that such an amendment would protect the traditional definition of marriage and noted that Kansas residents want to vote on the measure.

From the Office of There Ought To Be A Law

There ought to be a law that until and unless journalists can get the actual facts right on Social Security, they are cordially invited to sit down and shut up. The first invitation will be going out to Tim Russert.

The budget from the White House has arrived on Capitol Hill.

Where do I begin?

It's tempting to start with what's in there, but let's take a quick look at the methodology of the White House Office of Fantasies and Budgets so we can look at this in realistic terms.

In case you need reminding of what the Senate Majority leader is like, here's a quote from his interview with Robin Toner of The New York Times:

"I can play hardball as well as anybody. That's what I did, cut people's hearts out. On the other hand, I do it to cure them, to heal them, to make them better."

BILL FRIST, the Senate majority leader and a transplant surgeon.

More Compassionate Conservatism.

[Editors Note: This is the first article in an ongoing series examining the intersection of religion and politics and its relationship to our present state of democracy, written exclusively for the DCP, by Matthew Carnicelli]

With the very first lines of his Tao Te Ching, Lao Tse sets the stage for the journey to come by reminding his readers of a profound mystery that underpins all spiritual exploration.

The tao that can be told
is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named
is not the eternal Name.

On a planet where men and women of good will evoke God by different names, and honor His existence through different customs and rituals, the “self-evident” conclusion one necessarily arrives at is that the ultimate truth of God’s nature is truly beyond all human understanding. Lao Tse's observation in this regard mirrors the Apostle Paul's later reflection (in his First Letter to the Corinthians) that:

For now we see as through a glass, darkly.

This realization has profound political implications, and let me suggest that these implications did not escape the attention of the Founding Fathers.

Lao Tse continues in this first chapter with the following observations:

The unnamable is the eternally real.
Naming is the origin
of all particular things.

The problem of “naming” is acute with regard to the search for spiritual understanding. For instance, when we choose to refer to God, what should we call Her? And which set of doctrines and scriptural revelations, if any, should we consider definitive? The Founding Generation confronted this thorny issue in their own era, the period that historians describe as “the Enlightenment”. The response of quite a number of these Founders and Framers (Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and Thomas Paine, among others) was their adoption of the religious-philosophical perspective of Deism.

This is the 4th in a weekly series for the tired, poor, huddled masses who dot the charred American political landscape. I have read your letters and feel your pain. May god bless you all. You are my people.
-- Polly

Dear Polly Sigh…

I heard that some people in California lost their jobs because they smoke cigarettes. I live in Nevada, and I smoke. I’ve been working for the same company for 22 years, and I’ve got two kids in college. I know we can’t smoke around work anymore, but can they really tell me what to do after work? I mean, it’s still a free country right?

Signed,
Smoker in Nevada

From Media Matters:

From the February 3 edition of CNN's Inside Politics:

WOODRUFF: Here's a teaser of a question: Is Karl Rove looking for a new job? The president's senior adviser ran into our [CNN senior White House correspondent] John King today during Mr. Bush's Social Security event in Fargo, North Dakota. Look at what happened.

******ACTION ALERT*****

Take Action, Click HERE

The President's Bamboozlepalooza Tour that kicked off yesterday in North Dakota and continued with stops in Nebraska and Montana, travels along at taxpayer expense with stops today in Florida and Arkansas.

Karl Rove is implementing his plan to use Bush's popularity in the states where the majority voted to re-elect Bush, but continue to have Democratic senators, in order to pressure these senators to change their courageous stand against the Piratization of Social Security.

The state of reporting in what are reputed to be our "major media" is bad. We've all seen the statistic on the alarming number of Americans who think that we found WMD in Iraq. After watching Chris Matthews of MSNBC stumble through his coverage of the State of the Union address yesterday, I felt compelled to send a letter to Mark Effron, Vice-President of Live News, MSNBC, regarding Matthews inept performance. Here's a slightly shorter version of my letter:

Dear Mark,

Why didn't Chris Matthews recognize the members of the Bush cabinet during the introduction to the President's State of the Union address? He even admitted he didn't recognize them and couldn't name them. He turned to his panel for help, but they couldn't identify anyone either.

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President Bush has assembled the "Bamboozlepalooza Tour" and is getting ready to hit the road to twist both the truth and some Senator's arms. The Bamboozlepalooza Tour will be criss-crossing the nation to spread fears, distortions, "fuzzy math", and, well, let's just say it shall we? They are going out there to lie to America.

[Editor's Note: Crew member Mark Brisky created the shorthand version of the President's SOTU for us.]

So you didn’t have the stomach to watch the State of the Union address? Never fear! We have taken all 16 pages of last night’s Smirk and Applause session and boxed it into an equally nauseating, yet shorter version.

In the Republican's attempt to politicize everything on this earth, there were members of Congress who went to the President's State of The Union address, with a finger covered in purple ink, symbolizing God knows what having to do with the Iraq vote last Sunday.

I would like to write a piece in response to this idiocy, but someone already did, and did a wonderful job of it.

Tonight is the President's annual State of The Union Address. We can moan and groan about it, and through it, or we can do something both useful and interesting. Or we can try out a new game the whole family can play called, "Find The Hidden Frames."

Alberto Gonzales gave us the following pieces of information about our "freedoms" in his testimony last week:

"I don't recall today whether I was in agreement with all the analysis"

"'it is appropriate to revisit' the Geneva Conventions."

"I have no recollection"

Obviously, attempting to gain the high moral ground on issues of justice are not at the top of this administration's list. As I listened to Ted Kennedy (D-MA) this morning, I thought about the meme of "freedom" and how it related to "justice."

"They hate us for our freedoms", Bush said. Maybe though, they hate us for our lack of justice.

As we watch the Senators struggle with such juxtapositions of ideology today, and as we brace ourselves for the SOTU tonight, let's also think about what it might look like if we lived in a free and just civil society.

At least, a girl can dream....

On just her second day at her new job, what did Secretary of Education, Margaret Spellings, do? She made sure that the entire nation knew what her priorities are for her term of service to the President's radical cleric supporters.

Secretary Spellings expressed those priorities in the form of a letter to Pat Mitchell, the easily intimidated Pat Mitchell, CEO of PBS. Mitchell, as you will recall, stood her ground when PBS came under small arms fire for its political views, by giving Tucker Carlson, recently Crossfired conservative hack, his own show.