Yesterday upon the stair
I met a man who was not there
He wasn’t here again today
How I wish he’d go away.

That classic children’s rhyme seems to be the theme of the American intelligence community; the Department of Homeland Security; and the excuse Chicken George is advancing to explain how he and Dugout Dick were able to assure us that Iraq’s fearsome weapons were justification to launch the Second Iraqi War. We were warned that the man who wasn’t there yesterday would be back tomorrow and we had better be afraid of him. Things changed forever on September Eleventh and we did not want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.

January 30, 2004 - If you were unemployed, lived in Indiana and drew unemployment compensation benefits your check was processed in India, at least until Indiana’s contract with Tata Consultancy Services was terminated in November 2003. Indiana unemployment claims were being processed by Indians who paid no US income tax, no Indiana state taxes, and no property tax to support Indiana local governments or schools. The people who processed Indiana unemployment checks to laid off technology workers did not shop in Indiana stores, make payments to Indiana banks for mortgages on Indiana real estate or car loans on automobiles registered in Indiana. Tata won the contract, calling for faster processing and 24 hour web-based access to state records, with a bid $8 million lower than the two U.S. companies who competed. Bidding on the new contract has been restructured to permit Indiana companies to partner with universities and other firms so that they are more competitive with multinational outsourcing firms.

If you were covered by HMO with a provider contract with a major hospital or clinic and required x-rays or sophisticated lab work, the chances are that the results were interpreted by a radiologist or technician sitting at a computer in Bangalore. Last summer Gartner, Inc. authored a research report that predicted that 10% of American technology jobs will be outsourced overseas by the end of this year. These are jobs that Americans are trained for; jobs American’s want; and jobs Americans are doing now. The problem is that the jobs are wanted overseas where people are ready to do them for 20% of the paycheck their American counterpart commands. American companies pay no payroll tax on the foreign workers’ wages; no unemployment taxes on their salaries; no medical insurance premiums to cover them. By 2015 fully 3.3 million middle class Americans earning $136 billion a year will see their jobs outsourced.....click here for entire article

January 29, 2004 - David Kay’s candid public remarks admitting that Saddam Hussein’s Iraqi regime had no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction has Karl Rove’s spinsters operating in full Whirling Dervish mode. That President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Colin Powell, Don Rumsfeld and Condi Rice, all of whom described Saddam’s arsenal in excruciating detail a year ago, were victims of faulty intelligence is now the party line. And, of course, that faulty intelligence is all Bill Clinton’s fault. After all Clinton gutted the CIA and its Director, George Tenet, is a Clinton appointee held over into the third year of the Bush Administrations. Chicken George and Dugout Dick did not mislead us into war – they were victims.

The problem is that the facts don’t support that spin. Just days into the Bush Administration the Pentagon was ordered to plan the invasion of Iraq. Osama Bin Laden was pushed on to the back burner and the intelligence estimates and action plan that Sandy Berger handed to Condi Rice lay on her desk until September 10th. Don Rumsfeld’s first reaction to the September 11th attack was to call on the President to implement the invasion plans. But the FBI’s investigation moved too fast and too publicly. Within hours the world knew that it was Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda and not Saddam’s Iraq that had attacked America. Saddam would have to wait in his turn......click here for entire article

January 28, 2004- John F. Kerry’s back to back wins in Iowa and again in New Hampshire earned him the post position in the race for the Democratic nomination. His message seemed to resonate as well in the Northeast snow as it did on the Midwest prairie. The veteran Senator has to feel good after the first two rounds. He is again the front runner and the conventional wisdom has it that the nomination is his to lose.

Four years ago another Senator felt good after putting New Hampshire in the bag and the Straight Talk Express was steaming on track. But then Chicken George graduated from Bob Jones University and John McCain got the Karl Rove treatment. Neither John Edwards nor Wesley Clark has a Karl Rove on his staff and it is inconceivable that either would start an illegitimate black baby rumor like that launched against Senator McCain or suggest that John Kerry left his sanity in Saigon. But Senator Kerry should remember that his colleague was the 2000 Republican frontrunner after New Hampshire and that it was Senator Bradley and not Al Gore that won there in 2000.

Starting tomorrow the race turns south and west where the two Yankees, Kerry and Dean face two Sons of the South – one native born and the other adopted. Conventional wisdom has it that the General and the Trial Lawyer will have the advantage on February 3rd. They are, after all, sons of the salt of the earth pitted against the two scions of privilege. But they should reflect that it was Kerry’s fellow Bonesman, George Bush, whose silver spoon pedigree surpasses both that of Howard Dean and John Kerry that in 2000 untracked the Straight Talk Express in South Carolina.....click here for entire article

January 27, 2004 - Well, this morning we know that Saddam Hussein had the intention to engage in weapons of mass destruction program activities. We know because that is what Whitehouse spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters on the plane to little rock. “We could not afford to rely on the good intentions of Saddam Hussein.", he told them.

This time last year we knew that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. We knew what he had and we knew here he had them. We knew that because The President, the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, The National Security Advisor and every other administration figure who could crowd in front of a television camera told us so. We knew that because every whipstitch the Vice President would emerge from his undisclosed secure location on Sunday Morning to warn us of the looming mushroom clouds. We knew that the UN’s Hans Blix was a blind fool because he could not find the weapons that we knew were there. Donald Kay changed all that this week with his candid reports to the people. Now, only Dugout Dick knows those things but then it is hard to get up-to-date information in an undisclosed secure location.....click here for entire article

January 26, 2004 - Tomorrow we begin that quadrennial ritual that culminates with the choosing of a President. In the chill of a New Hampshire morning citizens will leave their homes, go to the appointed places, and cast their votes to commence the process of choosing those who will contend in November for the Presidency of the United States. This year there is an incumbent seeking re-election and renomination by the Republican Party is not in doubt. That focuses our attention on the men seeking the Democratic nomination in this unique and tortuous process by which we define American democracy. There are, of course, seven remaining of the eight men and one woman who began as announced candidates. Barring an unseen surge by one or another in the snows, there are now three viable contestants for the Democratic Party’s nomination, John F. Kerry, Wesley K. Clark, and John Edwards.

From 1952 until 1992 there was a common thread of experience that defined their lives. They were, as President Kennedy said, tempered by their common experience of World War II. Even if their military service was limited to a Culver City movie set or deferred by time to the discipline of the Cold War, each President from Eisenhower to George H. W. Bush shared that defining experience. Not until the election of William Clinton was the torch passed to yet another generation – a generation for whom, whether they served or not, has been tempered by yet another war – Vietnam.....click here for entire article

January 25, 2004 - Dr. Kay’s report was going to quiet all those voices that said the WMDs did not exist. It was supposed to vindicate the report that the Administration sent Colin Powell to read to the UN Security Council. Kay resigned this week; announced that he believed that there were no stockpiles of weapons to be found in Iraq and he had concluded that they had not existed. Those were the stockpiles that the Pentagon Godfather Donald Rumsfeld told us that he “knew where they are”. Unfortunately either Kay didn’t think to ask Rumsfeld where to look or the aging warrior is growing forgetful. Even Colin Powell, who up to know has toed the Party of Fear line closely, is admitting that the question of whether or not Saddam had those fearsome weapons is “open”. Chicken George has assured us that US weapons searchers will uncover evidence of clandestine weapons of mass destruction program activities – what one wag has called “papers of mass destruction”. Only Dugout Dick has emerged from his secure, undisclosed location, to assure the world that the fearsome arsenal will be found – but then he speaks to Halliburton, at least while their checks continue to clear the bank.

Trying to spin away Chicken George’s blatant manipulation of the facts to cajole the America people into invading Iraq his administration spokesmen are trying to convince us that the Moslem Middle East is engaged in a high stakes game of Hot Potato. WMD – WMD - who’s got the WMD? The claim that Saddam smuggled his arsenal into Syria is being bruited about again – it beats admitting the facts.....click here for entire article

January 23, 2004 - Chicken George had a lot to say yesterday in Roswell, New Mexico. Among those pithier of his remarks was his new look at the rule of law. He told his hand-picked audience, "See, it's a different kind of war. We're in a different era. We need to view law differently.” Well, he certainly does view law differently than did the 41 of the 42 men who took the same oath of office he did at his inauguration three years ago. Richard M. Nixon, who believed that if the President did “it”, whatever “it” might be, it was not illegal. Every day Chicken George shows us that he and his administration view law far differently than do the rest of us and their view doesn’t include due process or the right to be let alone.

He also views the economy far differently than do the rest of us. He told the Roswell audience, "We've got people doing jobs in America that Americans won't do, and that's helpful to our economy. It's helpful that there are some people that are willing to do the work that others won't do."....click here for entire article

AREA 51 WHERE ARE YOU?

January 22, 2004 - Chicken George takes the campaign to Area 51 today visiting Roswell, New Mexico for a speech to the New Mexico Military Institute and an audience made up of invited law enforcement officials and, of course, the cadets. He will stress the theme set by the Party of Fear for the 2004 re-election bid – fear and the war on terror. He is expected to reinforce his call to the people to support his program to make the government intrusions embodied in the Patriot Act permanent. He will tell the cadets that subversive ideas like due process; the right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures; the right to counsel; and the right to a fair and public trial have no place in a war on international terrorism.

Roswell is the place where true-believers swear the advance party of an alien invasion crash landed in 1947. Area 51 is that place where they earnestly believe that the government stores the wreckage of the spaceship and the bodies of its alien crew. (Perhaps they were not invaders at all but only Guest Workers who came to soon. There are some jobs that humans won’t take, you know.} It seems appropriate that Chicken George should visit there. The search for alien UFOs is a pretty analog for the search for those damn illusive weapons of mass destruction that Dugout Dick continues to assure us will be found. George is not that positive, he is content to claim concealed “weapons program activities”.....click here for entire article

January 21, 2004 - Yesterday, before the President spoke, I wrote predicting the content of his State of the Union message:

It is a message that will be well salted with appeals to fear. It will call for even more growth in the power of the Federal government; more spending to impose limits on American liberty in the name of security; more intrusions into the lives of the citizens.

When he stood before the Joint Session of Congress George W. Bush his essential message was exactly what I predicted it would be. He told the American people to fear and to react to that fear by embracing the transformation of our system of ordered personal liberty into a comprehensive intrusion of the federal government into our day to day lives. He said:

“Each day, law enforcement personnel and intelligence officers are tracking terrorist threats; analysts are examining airline passenger lists; the men and women of our new Homeland Security Department are patrolling our coasts and borders…”

“… [I]t is tempting to believe that the danger is behind us. That hope is understandable, comforting - and false. The killing has continued in Bali, Jakarta, Casablanca, Riyadh, Mombassa, Jerusalem, Istanbul and Baghdad. The terrorists continue to plot against America and the civilized world…”

“As part of the offensive against terror, we are also confronting the regimes that harbor and support terrorists, and could supply them with nuclear, chemical or biological weapons. The United States and our allies are determined: We refuse to live in the shadow of this ultimate danger…”

“Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire next year. The terrorist threat will not expire on that schedule. Our law enforcement needs this vital legislation to protect our citizens - you need to renew the Patriot Act.”

And there, Ladies and Gentlemen, is the theme of the President's re-election campaign. It is an appeal to our fears, the compliment of terrorist attacks on America . It is a campaign theme that depends upon our fear of terrorism to consolidate and extend the erosion of personal freedoms that had set American society apart from the rest of the world. It is a call upon the America people to cede to the federal government their essential liberty to secure an illusion of security. Thus the Republican Party, born 146 years ago in a confident hope for the extension of freedom, has become in this new century the Party of Fear.

January 20, 2004 - It is the third anniversary of George W. Bush’s inauguration as President of the United States. American deaths in the 10 months of the Second Iraqi War reached 502 today. The toll of America’s war in Afghanistan stood at 100. The military casualties America has suffered in the three years of the Bush Administration are almost twice the number suffered in Vietnam during the first three years of America’s involvement.

It is the third anniversary of George W. Bush’s inauguration as President of the United States. More than 2.4 million jobs have evaporated during the first three years of the Bush Administration. By any rationale forecast in November George W. Bush will be the first President since Herbert Hoover to face re-election while the number of Americans with jobs are fewer than those who were working when he took the oath of office.

It is the third anniversary of the Republican resurgence that gave them control of the three branches of Federal government. For three years the GOP has had absolute control of the reins of Federal power. With absolute power came absolute responsibility. After three years of unchecked power it is the Republican Party that has the unavoidable responsibility for the State of the Union......click here for entire article

January 17, 2004 - For the second time in three days the US base at Khost Airport was the target of a rocket attack as America’s forgotten war in Afghanistan winds on. The rocket attacks this week claimed no casualties but the death toll reached 100 in the guerilla war we have forgotten. The Bush Administration doesn’t talk about Afghanistan other than to call it a victory. After all we have handed an illusory sovereignty over to the Afghanis we installed. We have trained the new Afghani Army and induced allies to participate in the occupation.

But the Taliban that melted away while the troops arrived is still active with a secure haven in Pakistan – our presumed ally. Mohammad Omar is still out there, somewhere, directing the same kind of war he waged for ten years against the Red Army. Osama Bin Laden is still out there, somewhere on the margin directing the broader war he launched from his caves in the mountains. The writ of the regime we installed barely reaches into the neighborhoods of Kabul, much less the rest of the country. Despite the “victory” and the number of US troops being only a small fraction of the 125,000 engaged in Iraq the death count is 20% of that still mounting in the Iraqi theatre......click here for entire article

"The Republican Congress is spending at twice the rate as under Bill Clinton, and President Bush has yet to issue a single veto," Paul M. Weyrich, national chairman of Coalitions for America, said at a news briefing with the other five leaders. "I complained about profligate spending during the Clinton years but never thought I'd have to do so with a Republican in the White House and Republicans controlling the Congress."

In another article by-lined by Bill Sammon the Times says that BUSH 2004 is feeling the right’s revolution in the political pocket book. That article quotes Phil Kent, one of the hosts of yesterday’s Georgia fund-raiser describing the effect on his efforts of the President’s immigration reform proposals: "I was soliciting checks right after the announcement, and I lost two checks from people who had wanted to come, but wouldn't," Mr. Kent said. "They specifically said this is just rewarding lawbreakers. "That was the constant theme," he added. "And even among some people who wrote the checks, there's grumbling."......click here for entire article

January 15, 2004 - In the euphoria of NASA's first successful robotic exploration of the Martian surface since Pathfinder the President is calling for the United States to commit itself to erect a permanent base on the Moon by 2015. The cost is estimated at a little over a trillion dollars - just slightly less than the famous $1.2 Trillion tax cut that the Bush Administration handed out. Put another way it is just over twice the current annual deficit and about 10 times the amount spent on the occupying Iraq this year. It is a matter of national priorities.

We are unwilling to make it a matter of national priority that a child born in 2003 will be guaranteed access to quality health care by 2015 though every other industrialized nation has long ago made that guarantee to each of its citizens. We are unwilling to commit ourselves to a comprehensive program to rebuild and modernize our decaying infrastructure before 2015, though the neglect of our roads, bridges and public buildings take a toll on our economic engine that increases in cost each day. We are unwilling to make the investment to make energy independence and reduced dependence on fossil fuels an achievable goal by 2015. We are unwilling to make the investment to guarantee that each child has access to a quality education to enable that child to achieve excellence within his capabilities and instead create a system of leveling standards with a one-size-fits-all education policy. Yet the President wants us to sign the mortgage to build Moon Base Bush......click here for entire article

Pre-publication excerpts from the book have excited a frenzy of comment from Administration loyalists seeking to discredit the former Cabinet Secretary. Claims that as a member of the Cabinet he was ignorant of the intelligence flowing into the Administration have alternated with impugning the Secretary’s integrity and questioning his loyalty. I have not read the book nor have the talking heads making the rounds of the talk shows as the Bush Administration circles the wagons. I don’t know, nor do they, whether the book as a whole is reflected in the quotations lifted from it. But the controversy surrounding it raises a basic question as to the proper role of a cabinet secretary.....click here for entire article

The fellow looked up and said, “Hello Officer. I’m performing a public service. I’m snapping my fingers and scaring away the tigers!” The cop shook his head and replied, “Man, there isn’t a tiger within 10,000 miles of this place unless you count the zoo. The hippy nodded and said, “Effective, isn’t it.”

We are getting used to the Department of Homeland Security taking us to “Orange Alert” for each important national holiday. We crack down on airport security. We round up the usual suspects and tell the public to go about their business but to be very cautious and watchful. The Orange fades to Yellow again as the holiday glow fades and there have been no attacks, no attempted attacks, and no announcement of a terrorism plot thwarted – except perhaps for the man who did not show to board one Paris to DC flight. There were no tigers within 10,000 miles. It was effective wasn’t it? .....click here for entire article

In the years following WWII we again welcomed the wretched refuse into our community. In that wonderful bureaucratic mongrelization of the language we called them “displaced persons” or DPs for short. They came from Latvia, Lithuania, from Prague or from Poland; refugees from homelands torn by a devastating war and afflicted by the oppression of Soviet authoritarianism. Their children joined us in our classes and they learned from us not to be afraid while we learned from them how to curse in languages unfamiliar to our parents. They entered the Golden Door a half century after Emma wrote those words that appear on the plaque at the feet of the great lady .....click here for entire article

It started when the Reagan Administration revised the way that the Labor Department counted employed and unemployed workers. It was a matter of philosophy. That the Reagan revisions changing the way we looked at the work force increased the number of people we reported as employed and reduced the number of people we reported as jobless was a serendipitous psychological boost as the new administration applied what candidate George H. W. Bush had called “Voodoo Economics”. .....click here for entire article

President George H. W. Bush thought that the 20th anniversary of man's first visit to the moon was that “perfect time”. To mark the occasion in 1989 he said, “Back to the moon; back to the future; and this time, back to stay. And then a journey to tomorrow, a journey to another planet: a manned mission to Mars.” Congress thought the President’s 10 year plan was too expensive at $500 Billion and said no.....click here for entire article

Nobody, that is, except the International Monetary Fund. The IMF issued a report warning that the foreign debt being run up by the US with its twin budget and trade deficits is of such a magnitude as to threaten financial stability world wide. Add to that dollar’s erosion in value of 25% in the past year and a half and the picture becomes even starker. The IMF warned that underfunded Social Security and Medicare obligations point to shortages of $47 Trillion over the next 70 years. That figure is 5 times the current gross domestic product. Some see this as a replay of the 1980s when Reagan tax cuts and deficit spending dropped the United States from the world’s largest creditor nation to the world’s biggest debtor nation....click here for entire article

This incident was unusual. There were witnesses. One of the roommates was home at the time of the burglary. Neighbors saw the suspicious activity, several men hauling property away from the darkened apartment, packing it a waiting automobile and then returning for another load. The roommate feigned sleep as the invaders entered his bedroom. Both the victim and the witness recognized one of the burglars. The witness wrote down the license number of the vehicle into which the stolen goods were loaded. In most cases that would have been enough to result in an immediate arrest, a high bond on the Class X felony of Residential Burglary and a quick indictment. But this case was unusual and it was Champaign County, Illinois....click here for entire article

January 6, 2004 - I don’t know how I lived so long, using the English language daily both in my private discourse and professional communications and yet never learned the true meaning of the simple English word – hate. Yet I seem to have done just that.

Daily I learn that what used to be viewed as reasoned political discourse is now simply - hatred. What was once expression of principled political dissent from an administration’s policy has been transmogrified into expression of hatred toward that administration’s titular head.

Support for protection of America’s working men and women and their jobs has been distorted into class hatred in the new political rhetoric of the rabid right.

Asking pithy questions as to the wisdom of eliminating job retraining and re-employment programs when the warmth of an economic brew of tax breaks and incentives for the investor class has yet to drip down to families slowly slipping into poverty as those investors export American jobs is enough to get you labeled as a “Bush Hater.” Point out the flawed justification for the Second Iraqi War; question the existence of the WMD chimera; express the slightest doubt that the President and his surrogates told the truth to the Congress, the Security Council and the American people in selling that war and you are rapidly accused of hating America and supporting Saddam Hussein....click here for entire article

Over the holidays the FBI used the Patriot Act to add the more than 300,000 Las Vegas hotel registrants to its database of suspected terrorists. One must wonder how many Mr. & Mrs. Smith entries were added. We can rest a bit more easily knowing that the FBI was among the first to detect that Brittany and Jason spent the holidays together in a Las Vegas hotel. Who knows how many terrorist plots that nugget of national security information blew out of the water?....click here for entire article

God told Pat straight up that all this political malarkey in 2004, the elections and such, is just one colossal waste of time and energy. We might as well just skip straight to January 20th, 2005 and swear George in again. 2004 just doesn’t count for anything. It doesn’t make any difference how badly things go for the President, it will have no effect. “[H]e could make terrible mistakes and comes out of it. It doesn't make any difference what he does, good or bad, God picks him up because he's a man of prayer and God's blessing him.", God told Pat in a series of interviews with the Master that Robertson conducted at the end of 2003....click here for entire article

The other is a story rich in irony with a well rounded cast of characters involving the shadowy world of espionage, white color crime, and politics at the highest level. It is a mystery to which nearly everyone who breathes the rarified air of Washington’s press establishment knows the solution. The question: which one of the President’s high ranking political operatives fed Little Red Riding Hood to Chicago’s own conservative Wolf?....click here for entire article