DON'T BE CRUEL -- LET GEORGE WEAR HIS FLIGHT-SUIT COSTUME

DIGGING DEEPER , By Ivan G. Goldman

There really is a formula to solve this Iraq business to everyone’s satisfaction. As any good negotiator knows, workable compromises require that all parties first state their desires. In the case of Prince George, he’s been hesitant to divulge what it is he actually wants. That’s why, four years after invading the place without a grown-up policy, he says he doesn’t want to be rushed into anything. But he does promise us a “new way forward,” which he will divulge in a nationwide address at some point after the New Year.

Quite a number of U.S. troops don’t mind letting him take his taking his time -- for example, the six G.I.s who were killed by roadside bombs in Iraq on Dec. 25 and 26. Other Americans are restless. Unfortunately, even this great Churchill-caliber speech we’re going to get in January won’t divulge what the Blunderer-in-Chief actually wants in Iraq. On that point he’s uncharacteristically shy.

Before he went in he railed against WMD and ties to Al-Qaeda. When these proved nonexistent, he said, no big deal, the goal was always to democratize Iraq, and the earlier goals were said not to matter anyway, just as catching Osama turned out, he told us, not to matter anyway.

Okay, I’m a good citizen. I read Orwell. I’m willing to forget what Bush-O-Ramus tells me never happened in the first place. But like a lot of us, I suspect the goals of our leader are not as stated, and that’s why we never seem to get over the solution hump. So in no particular order, let’s state them in his behalf:

DEMOCRATIZE IRAQ
CONTRACTS FOR BUSH’S PALS
OIL
ADULATION
WEAR A SPIFFY UNIFORM
AVENGE DADDY
SHOW UP DADDY
PROTECT PALS IN SAUDI ARABIA
EXPAND POWER OF BUSH REGIME
CLEAR THE WAY FOR THE NEXT BUSH RULER
CUT TAXES FOR RICH GUYS
ARMAGEDDON (FOLLOWED BY PARADISE FOR THE GOOD GUYS, COMMUPANCE FOR BAD GUYS)

Let’s take these goals in order:

Iraq had its election. The contracts for Production Sharing Agreements that are fantastically favorable to Exxon-Mobil, etc. are already in the works and should be completed within weeks. It would take at least two months to get all our service people out of there, so everything’s on track there. Some other contractors -- Bechtel, Halliburton, etc. -- will just continue paying bribes in exchange for contracts to do things that the companies will continue not doing. But instead of spreading some of the action to the Bush people, they'll have to shift all their bribes to Iraqis, who are unlikely to resist.

Let’s pass a resolution declaring Prince George the greatest commander in chief in U.S. history and simultaneously giving him the right to wear his flight-suit costume even to bed. We’ll let him and Laura deal with the zippers.

Daddy’s been avenged and shown up. Saddam’s supposed to be hanged within 30 days. And we’ve had troops in Saudi Arabia ever since the reign of Daddy. Clinton never pulled them out. They protect the oil and the royal family. So there nothing changes.

As for getting another Bush in office, voters are unlikely to come across on that one. They’re getting a tad impatient with the dynasty. But The Smirkster was originally elected by the Supreme Court, and with not much prodding, this new Gang of Justices, rejuvenated by two new appointees from our Prince, are far more right-wing than the court in 2000. So the family will just have to rely on them to do the job. When you compromise, you rarely get all you want.

If we pull out of Iraq we might as well cut more taxes though -- just a little -- for the rich. It’s something that’s so pleasing to Bush-Cheney that they’ll give up plenty in return, and it will show our good faith. Why not, for example, award tax deductions to anyone buying yachts or jewelry worth $1 million or more in one calendar year? It’s distasteful, but hey, after six years of this regime, we’ve all grown used to distasteful. It won’t cost us much, and remember, we won’t have to spend $8 billion a month on Iraq anymore.

The last goal, Armageddon, that’s a little tough, because we don’t actually want to let Junior play with the red button, do we? But probably a joint congressional resolution favoring the concept of the End of Times will satisfy him.

Some might ask, as “centrists” like Diane Feinstein do, what will happen to Iraq after we pull out? We understand their concern. Feinstein's hubby, for example, has a gazillion-dollar contract predicated on U.S. participation in a continuing Iraq war. But he'll just have to take his chances along with Halliburton and Bechtel [see above] And the answer to what will happen in Iraq, is, of course, the same whether we withdraw in five, ten, or twenty years or in two months -- chaos and death. Perhaps we could leave behind a statue of Junior in his flight-suit costume. It will mollify him and simultaneously provide the first step toward the unification of all Iraqi parties as they pull together lickety-split to handle that statue.

WHITE HOUSE 'QUESTIONERS' PLACE KEYS, CELL PHONES, MINDS ON CONVEYER BELT

DIGGING DEEPER , By Ivan G. Goldman

Secret White House functionaries slipped mysterious but potent Mickeys into the bloodstreams of journalists at Prince George’s press conference this morning.

The substance, whose precise chemical construction remains a mystery, rendered them incapable of asking questions beyond the first level of Hindu consciousness. Snails could have achieved equivalent success. Consequently, the Blunderer-in-Chief was once again allowed to ramble on about “victory” in Iraq and even his imaginary crusade for green energy. It's not terribly uplifting when the President of your country parades his psychoses around like this, but it's downright depressing when journalists on site either pretend they're listening to someone with all his marbles or are too dumb to know the difference.

There was not one question about the billions of dollars in contracts awarded to pals of him and Shotgun Cheney for Iraq buildings, dams, bridges, energy systems, and programs that don’t exist. The money, of course, does exist. It’s in the hands of the contractors, all of it borrowed by the government and to be paid off over time by future generations.

As the Bush-O-Ramus babbled simplicities about how yes, Iraq’s tougher than he anticipated, but “we” will achieve success in assisting Iraqis to build a flourishing democracy, he was never asked about the fact that the most powerful segment within this government coalition our troops are dying to defend is controlled by Mullah Muqtada al-Sadr, whose 60,000 militiamen have been ambushing our troops for nearly four years. Among those they’ve killed was Cindy Sheehan’s son Casey.

At some point, uable to bear more of this, I switched off NPR and listened to Puccini. Man, did that feel better! But I did read the news accounts, and it turns out I didn't miss a thing except actually hearing The Decider's uniquely mangled pronunciations. The phony bastard’s Justice Department as he spoke was fighting in court to avoid enforcing any provisions against global warming because, according to these lawyers we’re paying over at Justice, the EPA doesn’t have the power to force industry to do such things. Also precisely at that moment the Bush regime was listening in our phone calls, monitoring our emails, and torturing suspects who aren’t allowed to see attorneys or file writs of habeas corpus. From whence it finds these powers no one seems to know, but evidently it would be impolite and impolitic to ask the tyrannical goofus at the top.

The "questioners" this morning – people supposed to be looking out for the interests of the citizens -- were probably slipped the Mickeys sometime after they placed their shoes, cell phones, keys, and minds on the conveyer belt.

The current issue of Columbia Journalism Review is a brilliantly assembled oral history of the Iraq war in the words of journalists over there. These people, many of whom came very close to death in pursuit of their mission, explained the disconnect between what we're told by the government and what they were seeing. But they never explained the disconnect between what they saw and what many of them reported. Somehow the administration found the key to regulating their behavior. Slipping them a Mickey is as good an explanation as any.

WHAT DOES THE IRAQ PANEL REPORT AND A CHENEY HUNTING PARTNER HAVE IN COMMON? LOTS OF HOLES

DIGGING DEEPER , By Ivan G. Goldman

Let's look at just two suggestions from the Iraq Commission:

1. MORE EMPHASIS ON TRAINING IRAQI SECURITY FORCES: How much thinking did they do on that one? We’ve been training these people four years, and the trainers are good at it. But because many of their "students" are the very death squads and goonies firing on our troops and murdering Iraqi civilians, that doesn’t look like a terribly productive suggestion.

2. THE CLAUSE THAT SAYS FOLLOW THESE INSTRUCTIONS “IF CONDITIONS ALLOW.” Even Bush is smart enough to find the holes in that one. It’s clear this commission report was so aimed at consensus that nothing of value survived. The final product was a pile of trash waiting out on the curb.

But weak as it is, the report still disturbs Prince George because it deviates from his fantasy that we will push on to “victory.” The Bush-o-Ramus fails to understand the difference between a slogan and a policy, and he's repelled by anyone who can. A weakling and a bully, he’s surrounded himself with schlemiels who agree with everything he says, and the panel didn't quite play the game he's used to. Yet panel members wouldn't even use the term "civil war" for fear of riling You Know Who and his faithful companion Shotgun Cheney.

To the nation at large the prince is play-acting, as always, these days playing the part of cartoon character Lucy, who promises Charlie Brown that this time she’ll let him kick the football.

Meanwhile every day that goes by he whacks off another piece of the Iraq Panel’s already-watered-down suggestions, calling them unacceptable. At the same time, more G.I.s die in the prince's misguided effort to salvage his reputation. But oh sure, he’s willing to listen. Sure he is. Here’s some of what he’s already said prior to that big speech scheduled sometime in the never-never of January:

"I've heard some ideas that would lead to defeat, and I reject those ideas -- ideas such as leaving before the job is done. We're not going to give up. The stakes are too high and the consequences too grave to turn Iraq over to extremists."

By the time he gets around to responding to those recommendations that he hasn’t already rejected, there won’t be any left. Face it. There are no new ideas on Iraq. When you're presented with a corpse on the pavement, it's too late for remedies. Call a wagon. The longer we stay, the more damage we do to ourselves and the Iraqis. How can we possibly say we’re there fighting for democracy when most Iraqis want us out anyway?

Our troops over there are spread so thin they can’t patrol the roads on foot. That means troops and civilian mercenaries transporting people and supplies up and down those roads are nothing more than targets. (By the way, a majority of Iraqis say it's okay to fire on U.S. troops) After four years we’re still unable to control the road between Baghdad Airport and Fort Apache (known as the Green Zone)

The only way to stop our participation in this pointless war is to yank Bush and Cheney out of office, which means, yes, impeachment for a host of crimes, some of which Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman has already documented but been unable to do anything about because of the dead-ass Republicans that were running his investigative committee. More about the crimes another time. I don’t know about you, but I need rest intervals after thinking about Bush for too long. He makes my head hurt.

AS THE REPUBLIC SINKS, WE SEEK COMFORT FROM LIAR GATES, FIXER-IN-CHIEF BAKER

DIGGING DEEPER , By Ivan G. Goldman

Robert Gates will sail through the Senate as the next Defense Secretary, not on his merits, but because everyone is so pleased to have Anybody But Rumsfeld. And James Baker, named to head a commission on how to get the Blunderer-in-Chief out of Iraq, profits from a similar dynamic. Most of us are so happy to have at least a small shot at changing Prince George’s disastrous non-policy in the Middle East that we skip over the fact that Baker is the general who led the campaign that stole the presidency for Bush-O-Ramus in the first place.

Fix-Master Baker knew he didn’t have to present a winning case in 2000 – not with five Republicans on the Supreme Court. He just needed to construct one that was sufficiently plausible so they could get away with calling Florida for the guy who lost Florida as well as the national popular vote by a margin of 530,000.

Baker spat out just enough lawyer-speak to give the Gang of Five their excuse, landing the most egregious blow to our democracy since the Dred Scott decision. If roles were reversed, if Baker had an actual winning hand instead of the bluffing cards he used to get the victory, it wouldn’t have taken him an entire month. Swindles are more complicated and take more work than honest business.

Back to Gates. At least two CIA whistle-blowers told Congress under oath that he’d doctored intelligence under orders from the secret society within the Administration that got Reagan re-elected while he was already debilitated from Alzheimer’s. The group then ran the government for him. Baker, first White House Chief of Staff and later Treasury Secretary when he switched jobs with Donald Regan, was a key member of this collective presidency to whom Gates gave his allegiance.

Under oath, Gates, desperate to run the spy agency, denied conversations during which he defended presenting false intelligence for political purposes. With Nixon's old tape recorder in a museum somewhere, he got away with it -- just barely.

Gates took a giant step forward when he conceded today that the U.S. is not winning the Iraq War, and Anybody But Rumsfeld makes a kind of sense. But he also made it clear to anyone really listening that he doesn't have the imagination to exit, which is a death sentence to a lot of troops there now and the ones he'll feed into a pointless grinder during the next two years. It would be a mistake to buy a used car from either this devious apparatchik of the right or soul-less co-conspirator and Fixer-in-Chief Baker.

THE MEANING OF 'SECTARIAN VIOLENCE'

DIGGING DEEPER , By Ivan G. Goldman

Personnel inside the White House marketing division twist their words into knots to avoid calling the anarchic bloodshed in Iraq a civil war. “Sectarian violence,” they call it. They apparently believe if they tweak the terminology just right, no one will blame the boss for his hideous blunders. After six years of misrule and lies they’re confused, dangerous dolts, hypnotized by their own fictional devices and no longer able to distinguish slogans from reality.

Is their commander even aware of the meaning of the phrase “sectarian violence?” It means, of course, violence among sects – religious warfare. He and his handlers decided religious warfare doesn’t sound quite as bad as civil war, particularly if they call it by a name their base can’t define. In this regard the Bush-o-ramusses are actually partially correct, because as I pointed out in a previous column, trading murders back and forth – torturing and murdering random civilians -- hardly constitutes civil war. But sectarian violence doesn’t exactly define these events either, because some of the groups involved have motives divorced even from their own understanding of religion – the Ba’athists and the bandits, for instance.

Now we wait for a U.S. advisory panel to tell us what to do. An advisory panel made up of experts is actually not a bad idea. Too bad it comes four years too late. In the meantime, Bush tells us his policy is to remain there until we “win.” If he means it, panel members wasted their time. But then this is the guy who told us Rummy wasn't going anywhere a couple days after interviewing his successor. It’s going to be fun to see how the advisory panel, when it releases its report – or at least parts of it – defines the situation. It's walking on eggshells, because if you get too close to the truth it offends Prince George and his White House marketing stooges and they stop listening. Remember how he snapped at Senator-Elect James Webb, the father of a Marine in Iraq –for daring to mention that he wants him and the other U.S. troops home? Bush showed all the compassion of a Gila monster.

That little exchange with Webb also answers the question of whether Bush loses sleep over the hundreds of thousands dead, the million or so maimed, the refugees, and all the other horrors he thought might be a nice hobby for him.

Whatever this panel tells our tinpot commander, you can bet he won’t withdraw. The Smirkster drilled too many dry holes in Texas to just walk away from miles and miles of sweet pools of crude. Evidently no one told him that his chief contractor in the oilfields -- naturally that would be Cheney's dear old Haliburton -- is incapable of managing them properly and that there's less petroleum being pulled out now than there was before the invasion.

WE ALL PAY FOR IRAQ, AND DARFUR PAYS MORE THAN MOST

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof has been making an excellent case for some time now that something must be done to stop the genocide in Darfur. The Sudan government is systematically raping, torturing, and murdering citizens, and it has the backing of virtually the entire Muslim world.

But there's a barricade across the path to action. As the world's only superpower, we're the ones expected to lead the way, but if we were to try, no one would follow us because of the identity of our President. He’s been unmasked as a dangerous clown. His chances for assembling a military coalition to take action are near zero. Unilateral action? We don't have enough U.S. troops to fund his pointless war, and those deployed in Iraq won't be leaving any time soon. They should, but they won't. Those are the facts. And if we sent a small force into Darfur with insufficient air, armor, and artillery, our troops could be cut off and murdered, as they were in Somalia.

We pay in all sorts of ways for allowing a hideously incompetent fool to steal office and keep it, and Darfur is only one of those ways. We’re stuck with Bush 26 more months, and the problems of our nation and the world around it are all magnified by this reality.

Congress doesn’t have the power to withdraw troops from Iraq and it won’t ever cut off funding for those troops. Bush recently said the only way we can lose there is if we quit, which is the kind of logic one might expect from a tangerine. It tells us if we keep doing the same thing, maybe it will start to work somehow, sometime, some way, that maybe something will save his place in history. I wouldn't count on it.

Whatever pressing needs you bring up – national health care, anti-pollution measures, action on global warming, our dangerously shot educational system, immigraton -- require the application of brains and money. Meanwhile, the mindless theocrat steering the ship is spending $8 billion a month in borrowed money on a war that has no mission and helps only our enemies. And if you let him, he’d lower taxes (for the very, very rich of course) still more.

We're all screwed by Iraq to some extent, but some of us are screwed worse than others -- those who get blown to pieces, maimed physically or emotionally or who go to prison because of actions taken or not taken in relation to the war. To be least affected, one must scramble up the American hierarchy. It's no good to be a torturer, for instance, as enlisted people at Abu Ghraib found out, but it's quite safe to be pulling the torturers' strings. If you're sent into combat day after day without respite and you snap and kill the wrong Iraqi, you can get life. But if you can dispatch those same troops and own some Haliburton stock on the side while you grant it no-bid contracts, you'll do quite well.

The people in Darfur are, unfortunately for them, just another group that's particularly screwed by the mess our Bushoramous has made and continues to make in Iraq.

REPUBLICAN VOTERS MAKE GLASS NEARLY HALF-EMPTY

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Call me a cockeyed pessimist, but isn’t anyone else alarmed that approximately 47 percent of the electorate is still lame enough to vote Republican? Just who are these imbeciles and how did they get that way? Even Wiley Coyote knows there’s trouble when he looks down and sees he’s run off the cliff. How bad does it have to get before they agree it’s bad?

The way I look at it, the glass is 47 percent empty because how can anyone feel comfortable with all these cuckoo birds stumbling around and wandering into voting stations? NPR asked a congressional candidate in Georgia to identify the most important issue in the campaign and he answered gay marriage. He sounded sincere.

The Republicans have no energy policy, think it’s A-OK that we’re the only industrialized nation in the free world without national health insurance, and provide only slogans to fix their failed hobby war in Iraq. For the Supreme Court they’ve been approving lying inept-ocrats whose eyes twirl around inside their skulls. They even voided our signature on the Geneva Convention and treated the Bill of Rights like it was a fatwa from Bin Laden. They borrow like there’s no tomorrow, and if they were to continue getting their way on global warming and the poisoning of air and water, there won’t be a tomorrow.

And nearly half the voters voted to keep these corrupt-oramusses in office. Some of them have an excuse. They want to reach the End of Times and are savvy enough to see that Bush, Cheney, Hastert, etc. are the shortest, quickest route. But what about the rest?

These people Lincoln was talking about when he said you can fool some of the people all of the time seem so much more numerous in the de-brained culture of MTV, Bill O’Reilly, Rush Limbaugh, and Britney Spears. Recent high school graduates who can find Afghanistan on a map are as small a fraction of the whole as the percentage share of Americans who are even aware that Bush’s handlers were caught inserting a fake journalist-gay prostitute into White House press conferences to lob powder-puff questions at their answer-challenged leader.

Yes, this election gave us grounds for cautious celebration. But as the next Congress seeks to undo some of the criminally corrupt practices of the last one – particularly in regard to the job of making an aquarium out of the fish soup they call Iraq -- it ought to pay serious attention to providing a decent education to our citizens so perhaps someday down the road Americans will be able to field our 1-800 calls as capably as native Hindi speakers.

AMERICAN PRINCES, BARONS, AND SUCH

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
It seems more and more powerful politicians are sons and daughters of polticians or sometimes their spouses -- Bush, Bayh, Clinton, Gore, Chafee, Dodd, Dole, Kennedy, Murkowski, Rockefeller. The list goes on. I just named our President and nine percent of the Senate. There are also governors, House members, and others, such as Jerry Brown, who’s been California governor and who, as I speak, is sneaking up on the state Attorney General’s office. You’ll also notice this is a bipartisan list.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn’t this country fight a revolution to prevent people with inherited titles from running the government? But evidently people are more comfortable with the old system, and so they invite it back one politician at a time. Many individuals don’t really want to be free. That’s why they become Scientologists Moonies, fascists, Communists, Islamists, etc. Freedom can be a scary thing, especially to truly demented sonsofbitches and the uneducated, two types we have in abundance around here.

The Founding Fathers understood this inclination, but fought it. Washington, for instance, refused to be king. And to this day, as I understand the law, Americans aren't allowed to accept inherited titles, though no one does anything about it when they do. Remember Princess Radziwill?

The purposes and good intentions of the Republic’s founders have been mangled so thoroughly that I doubt they’d even recognize the sleazy structure we’ve stuck over their building blocks, with politicians openly soliciting money from their corporate paymasters and letting them actually sit down and write the midnight legislation.

We might at least stop being hypocrites and call things what they are – not only change the law but take it one step further and start awarding these titles right here in America. If Bush, Bayh, etc. were princes, barons, counts, dukes, stuff like that -- our voters would know they’ve inherited their offices and that no competing candidates should even be considered. And When Exxon-Mobil or Merck want something done, they can skip the charade and just purchase a royal decree. It would simplify things.

IRAQ: CIVIL WAR WOULD BE AN IMPROVEMENT

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
Critics of the White House’s Iraq policy contend a civil war is already in progress over there. Bush and his handlers say not so fast, cowardly pessimists. It’s just a “young” democracy ironing out a few wrinkles. That's the latest talking point put together by the Bushelbubs, following other detours around inconvenient truths such as “stay the course,” “central front in the war on terror,” and “cut and run Democrats." Once they decide on a specific phrase, they follow the rhetorical steps as precisely as members of a Vegas chorus line.

But for once the kleptocratic androids chosen to mouth these Cheney-vetted absurdities are correct. That’s not a civil war in Iraq, but a series of two-way slaughters – a kind of slow-motion Auschwitz that’s simultaneously manned by opposing sides.

A civil war involves things like battles, firefights, soldiers fighting soldiers -- something we rarely see among Iraqis. A typical scenario goes more like this:
Shiite murderers get the drop on a group of Sunni civilians waiting for a bus, abduct, torture, kill them, and dump the bodies someplace they’ll be easily found. They like to let others see their handiwork. Then the Sunnis retaliate by convincing a teen-ager to leave this world for the pleasure of 72 virgins by blowing up a mosque. And so on. An actual civil war would be ugly enough, but these guys make civil war look like a tulip festival.

We all know what we’re seeing. The question is what to do about it. How's this? Call a taxi and go home. The longer we stay, the worse it gets. The presence of our troops, as British General Richard Dannett recently pointed out, only exacerbates the slaughter. His reference was confined to British troops because he’s in charge of the British army. It’s up to America to recognize that Dannett’s astute interpretation of reality is a tailored suit that fits our situation exactly.

Yes, America set the fire, and it’s a damn, dirty shame. Maybe next time we’ll elect better leaders. In the meantime, we just have to let the Iraqis work it out for themselves, and no, that won’t be pretty. The Downing Street Memo informed us that the chicken hawks who run U.S. policy fixed the facts and intelligence around their bizarre blitzkrieg. Tony Blair couldn't refute the memo because there were too many witnesses in the room. Its revelations dwarf a long string of evidence that the Bushmen were already planning to invade Iraq when they took office. Among witnesses to step forward were the Administration's first Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill -- not exactly a Bolshevik. He ratted them out before the '04 election, but most of the electorate just didn't care.

When their Iraq policy collapsed on them, the Bushoramusses had no backup strategy so they just kept on doing the same thing. And they'll keep on doing it until we cut the cord on these vicious imbeciles.

We have troops in Iraq only because our criminally inept Administration refuses to admit making the worst foreign policy error in our history. It’s killing people for nothing, including our own sons and daughters. We can send for them now or wait ten years and many thousands of lives later. The result will be the same.

RATS IN THE HOUSE

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

Republicans in Congress have no energy policy, won't surrender to science on global warming, they undermine worker safety, poison our air and water, blow holes in the budget, and have no plan for Iraq or the rapidly deteriorating situation in Afghanistan beyond simplistic, meaningless slogans. They refuse to accept the Geneva Convention, and don't even make a peep about our disgraceful health care non-system.

But they do have a moral policy. Yes, and thousands of pastors agree that their Democratic opponents are immoral trash who, at the quickly approaching End of Times, will roast in everlasting patriotic fire that’s delicious to contemplate. Oddly enough, those same pastors will still agree that a vote for the GOP is a vote for virtue even after they’ve been informed that House Republicans covered up sexual crimes for years, staying a course that could have been designed by the North American Man Boy Love Association.

Rep. Foley’s explicit instant messaging is on its very face a felony. Even if he didn’t consummate the deal with the objects of his desire, attempted seduction of minors is a criminal offense. If a dirty old man cruises a schoolyard, tries to entice kids into his vehicle and then is scared off before he can reel one in, the law does not let him off. In fact, various police departments around the country have assigned detectives to pose as minors on the Internet, then arrested and convicted men for precisely the same pedophiliac practices that Foley left as evidence. And there’s no more Johnny Cochran to turn to.

Think what the mass media would do if, say, Democrat Nancy Pelosi had joined a sexual-crime conspiracy and then continued passing around campaign funds connected to its principal offender. The Republican leaders will suffer a more limited media assault by comparison, but it’s difficult to see how Hastert and Company can slither away. Individuals aware of an ongoing crime who refuse to report it can be brought to justice as part of a conspiracy. Their best hope is that they are being investigated by the already-compromised FBI, a vassal of torture-happy Attorney General Gonzalez.

Meanwhile, the White House is cracking apart – one revelation after another. It’s like turning on the light and seeing a billion cockroaches running off in different directions. Recently we discovered, for example, that the White House threw a billion dollars in tax money at golf buddies to put together a national reading program for children based on disproved crackpot ravings. It this was an Administration of grown-ups, the story would get play. But reporters faced with this corrupt gang of lying, maniacal bullies are stymied. Where to begin? Nobody asks the Hell's Angels how they handle their dues. Besides, when someone's burning up $6 billion a year in the pointlessness of Iraq, it feels small to look at details. People are dying, empires falling, and we just wriggled out of the Geneva Convention to provide cover for the war crimes of Prince George and his civilian baronets.

This time the Republicans may not be able to steal enough votes, and if they can’t, look out for investigations, subpoenas, indictments, and cornered criminals lining up to squeal on each other. Because after all, ratting each other out is the moral thing to do.

IRAQ POLICY HAS NO PLACE TO HIDE ANYMORE

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman
The war in Iraq has gone so wrong that patriotic generals and intelligence officials are leaking ugly facts about it faster than the Administration can lie about them. A high-level intelligence report sent to the White House in April flatly declared that the war damaged the U.S. and simultaneously knocked our campaign against Al Qaeda off the rails. Generals complain they're being asked to send underequipped, undertrained combat brigades off to the slaughterhouse and to strip the last few working gears off the Natonal Guard and Reserves.

But only last week Cheney said he and his mystic pals did the right thing invading Iraq and if he had to do it all over again, he’d do it all the same way. The new, just-composed official White House response to the leaked intelligence report is that the White House knows better than the intelligence agencies. That’s a repeat of the same failed pathology that got us into Iraq in the first place. Give them a few more days and they'll fish another Curveball or Chalabi out of the sludge to tell it their way.

There’s nothing to argue about any more. The war has killed more than 2,600 Americans in uniform plus hundreds of American mercenaries fulfilling military functions. Dead Iraqis now number, according to best estimates, 135,000. (Best statistics on this, by the way, come from Jon Stewart and Bill Maher’s comic writers). This same ratio applied to the U.S., would give us 1.7 million dead Americans. Kind of makes it tough to win Iraq hearts and minds, particularly since surviving family members tend to be jobless and hungry, without medication, electricity, clean water, sewer lines or relief from mega-miserey. Not to mention they might be picked up at any moment by death squads. For Cheney to say that everything he did was correct is a deeply psychopathic statement. It’s not just devoid of human feelings. It’s Satanic.

If Cheney and all the people who work for him – Bush, Rummy, etc., really believe what they are saying, they’re raving lunatics. If they don’t believe what they’re saying, they’re raving lunatics. But don't expect their followers to be affected by the new revelations. They'll sing their marching songs down to the last corpse -- as long as it's somebody else's corpse.

And what are we to think of those pro-war Democrats like Hillary Clinton who say we can’t afford to quit Iraq, so we have to keep stuffing all these lives plus $6 billion a month in borrowed money into the wood chipper? Where have you gone Gene McCarthy? The nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

EVANGELICAL TORTURE AND OTHER ODDITIES NO LONGER SEEN AS ODD

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

We live in a peculiar age. There are so many peculiar news items we barely notice them.

Somebody by the name of Louis P. Sheldon, a minister and chairman of a group that calls itself the Traditional Values Coalition, told the L.A. Times that he disapproved of John McCain for opposing Bush’s proposed “new rules” on interrogation.


“This very definitely is going to put a chilling effect on the tremendous strides he has made in the conservative evangelical community,” Sheldon said. Did you get that? The pro-torture Christians -- and apparently they're numerous -- are going to be pissed. Absurdities pile upon absurdities like black plague corpses.


Over in Japan, they’re fixing to make Shinzo Abe the next prime minister. He thinks Japan, which tortured and murdered innocents and P.O.W.s all across Asia in the 1930's and '40's, is a self-flagellating wimp of a country and needs to stand up and be proud. What war crimes? Sweet Abe’s shaping up as another great ally, like that royal family in Saudi Arabia that sticks women in shrouds in 120-degree heat as a sign of respect.


Another 38 bodies were found sprinkled around Baghdad, most of them tortured. Two more dead U.S. soldiers. How many got their limbs, faces, guts, or nuts torn out we didn’t learn. What the hell. There’s no draft, so who really cares? Millions of demonstrators turned out to oppose Vietnam. Iraq gets groups of maybe 50 or 60 in cities like New York and Chicago where thousands of people can be found in a one-block stretch out doing their errands.


The Pope had to say he’s sorry for quoting a deceased theologian who dared notice that spreading itself by the sword is an integral part of Islamic doctrine.


South Africa’s health minister favors beets, lemons, and garlic to treat AIDS.


Willy Nelson got busted for weed and mushrooms on his tour bus. At last. Sanity.

MANY HEROES, ONE COWARD

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

On the anniversary of the terrible events five years ago, it remains clear that we were in sore need of an FDR or a Lincoln that day. War veterans Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, or JFK would have been fine. Even the flawed Richard Nixon would have analyzed the situation and reacted reasonably well, possibly even brilliantly.

Instead we had the man elected by our Supreme Court, George W. Bush, who spent the entire day running away. He was cowering in Air Force One, flying around like a drugged parrot in a big circle, landing place to place in his confusion and finally getting back to Washington when everything was over. Even today, five years later, most of us turn away from this ugly truth.

Much of what we did that day we did late. The order to scramble jets came late, the questions and response from the President came late. But the rescuers didn’t come late. They came immediately, running into burning buildings to do what they could for survivors. I wonder how many of them, were they alive to know about them, would agree with our President's actions that day?

But now this incompetent President whose Attorney General had ordered the anti-terrorism chief to stop telling him about Bin Laden continues to pose as a tough leader with moral clarity who knows what to do and when to do it. A person with moral clarity can be as stupid as Bush, but not as cowardly as Bush.

The media fixated on that theatrical scene days later, of resolute-sounding Bush standing in the World Trade Center ruins and vowing revenge. But a worthy Commander-in-Chief commands. If a buck sergeant’s squad were under attack and he ran away, leaving his squad members to fend for themselves for hours, he’d of course be arrested and court-martialed upon his return. Bush’s tendentious role as hero is a cataclysmic triumph of propaganda over truth.

In the coming congressional election this dangerous fool will once again pose as a moral leader with the gumption to fight the enemy. But he never even figured out the identity of the enemy and used the terrible events five years ago as an excuse to go out and attack the wrong people. We're now mired in a war he entered as a hobbyist. History will not be kind to us for keeping this smirking fake in the White House.

EXCLUSIVE: NEW CONVERSATION PICKED UP ON OVAL OFFICE PHONE

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan G. Goldman

--Mama, I made a big mess.

--That’s ok, dear. Just get the servants to clean it up.

--No, mama, I tried that.

--What kind of mess are we talking about, anyway? Ketchup, a coke bust? What?

--Iraq, mama. The one with the ‘q’ at the end.

--Oh, that. Listen, Iraq’s not nearly as terrible as everybody says. Watch Fox, dear, like I told you.

--I do, mama.

--Iraq’s a lot like Katrina.

--That’s what everybody says.

--Those Iraqis are just like all those colored people they showed complaining about everything down there. Listen, those Arabs live much better than they did before we bombed the crap out of them. Money just pours into the place. Cheney wets his beak, everything’s coming up roses.

--But they say a lot of American troops got killed and burned and everything.

--Really. Do you know any of them?

--No.

--Me neither. They’d be out on the street if we hadn’t given them a paycheck.

--But mama, they’re missing arms and legs and stuff.

--Listen, dummy, grow some backbone. Those oil fields we grabbed over there will be worth a mint someday. So forget about it. Clear some brush or something. Cheney's watching the store.

--Okay, mama. But can’t you stop everybody from making fun of me?

--Stop whining. I told your father a thousand times we shoulda let Jeb inherit the presidency. That’s what the Godfather did. But your father? He knew better. Passed up Michael and gave the job to Fredo.

--Huh?

--Drive your SUV around the ranch. And be sure to practice saying ‘Bring it on’ in the mirror. It’ll make you feel masculine. Too bad it won’t make you smart.

--Huh?

GLARING QUESTIONS OUR INCOMPETENT PRESS CORPS DOESN'T ASK BUSH

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman

Dear Mr. President:

At what point will you recognize that your disastrous pre-emptive war in Iraq has strengthened Iran and al-Qaeda and considerably weakned us? At what point will you concede that the corrupt Baghdad government we defend with the blood of our troops is riddled with death squads, murderous militias, and high-up Iraqi officials allied with the Tehran regime who either direct these killers or are closely allied with them? You must be aware that these militias have tortured and killed both Iraqi civilians and U.S. troops. When you instruct us to pursue victory, do you mean victory in behalf of these enemies you like to pretend are allies?

Why are we still pouring out billions to companies like Haliburton for construction projects that never happen? Why don't you order your war-profiteering vice-president to divest himself of this company, which has more contracts in Iraq than any other corporation and which has been caught repeatedly cheating our government? Why do you take no punitive measures against the perpetrators of this documented ongoing swindle?

Now that you have wrecked the Army Reserve and National Guard by repeated deployments in this open-ended Iraq conflict, which is contrary to their organizatonal purpose, what is your plan to repair the damage? What makes you believe if we continue pouring lives and treasure down this rathole the situation will improve?

Why do you keep saying we had to invade Iraq because Saddam wouldn't let in U.N. inspectors when in fact the opposite is true and the U.N. inspectors had to leave because of your looney invasion?

At what point will you recognize your insistence that we remain in Iraq until the job is done is a slogan that has no relationship with the situation on the ground or any cohesive or rational policy? Explain whether you at least understand these facts or are you too simple-minded to see them? Or is it a little of both?

IS BUSH A SECRET ENEMY AGENT?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman
If the totalitarian Islamists who rule Iran, much of Afghanistan, and key government environs in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere had been able to place an agent in the White House back in 2002, he might have kicked the U.N. inspectors out of Iraq and then invaded it. This would have empowered Iran, giving it cover to complete its killer nukes agenda while our troops were busy fighting in behalf of Iran and Al Qaeda. It also would have enabled Osama Bin Laden to establish a dream base smack dab in the middle of the Arab world instead of on its Afghan fringes.

Eventually Iran and Syria might even have unleashed Hezbollah to attack Israeli citizens with its vast stores of rockets. When Israel fought back, this would have won terrorists support around the world as they lobbed those rockets into Israeli civilians. Everyone knows people are always dismayed when Jews refuse to be massacred. And Lebanon would have been in shambles again. Islamic totalitarians just love shambles. Everyone would have been even less aware of the Iranian nukes being assembled because the mass media can concentrate on only one story at a time.

But it's not likely an enemy agent in the White House would have been bold enough to implement the crazy strategy I postulated here because such overt moves would have exposed him. By this time he'd have been ridden out of office and possibly hanged.

Do I think Prince George is actually a conscious Islamic totalitarian agent? Of course not. He's just a nasty, spoiled fool who ran away in Air Force One when America was under attack and then got away with winning re-election because his handlers' marketing campaign convinced voters they needed his cowardly self, not his battle-hardened Democratic opponent, to keep them safe. They also stole Ohio and New Mexico just for insurance.

Anyway, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and Wolfowitz were right about one thing. The Iraqis did gather in the streets to greet our troops. But not with flowers.

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman
Thanks to passing brain cloud and my inability to get through Nerd 101, I neglected to allow comments on my blog. All this has changed. Soon a tidal wave of disgust and rueful admiration will carry this blog to the crest of blogdom. I may even post another comment seeing as how the world is burning and I can't find my appointment book.

TODAY'S STATE OF THE NATION

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman

Well, let's just see what's going on. The CIA director quit in the middle of the night and no one seems to be paying any attention. He will be replaced with no trouble by a military secret policeman who admits spying on Americans in America. Meanwhile, the Senate has agreed that English is the national unifying language, which is very important, because a lot of us were unsure which language to speak. Iran thinks it might compel Jews and Christians to wear badges. Our consumption of oil has reached monstrous levels and no, I won't give you the statistics because I'm too lazy to look them up, but eight years of a government that looks upon energy conservation like it was last week's dogfood does not help. The stock market is starting to stink, too. Note that Western democracies spend half as much on health care and enjoy better health because their governments actually care about the citizens' health as opposed to caring about the HMO, insurance, and drug lobbies. So their corporations aren't dragged into the insurance business. But their markets are skittish as well because their businesses can't function at optimal level with more and more U.S. consumers stuck in economic mud while Cheney & Company frolic.

Oh, and the Democrats are fixing to nominate war hawk Hillary for '08. She is obviously some kind of wacko. Her shifty eyes rarely match her voice or facial expressions and she got elected to the Senate by garnering the blowjobs-from-another-woman sympathy vote. I figure Diebold will fix it, though.

The White House is preparing its answer to the HBO premiere of Baghdad E.R., which will make dolts realize for the first time that war is not just another TV show.

FINE NEW AUDIO-VIDEO FROM PAUL HIPP 'I'M THE DECIDER'

Just grab the link below, paste it in your address bar, hit enter, sit back and enjoy (with audio on). Do it while it's still available. Huffingtonites could remove it at any time.

http://decider.cf.huffingtonpost.com/

RUMSFELD: STILL BLAMING 9-11 ON SADDAM AFTER ALL THESE YEARS

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman
Rumsfeld's adherence to The Big Lie Tactic is, if nothing else, relentless. Here it is April of '06, and while recently necking with Rush on the Limbaugh show he was still trying to tie Saddam to the Nine-Eleven attacks. How many times does that bullshit have to be discredited? It's like asking how many times do you have to give more Lebensraum to the Third Reich before it lets you alone? The numerical answer is the same -- infinity. I'd quote from the interview, but I can't bear to look at his words anymore. Trust me. I guarantee it's a safer bet than trusting Rumsfeld.

In that same interview we learned from raging Rummy that anyone who wants him out of there is doing Bin Laden's work. You know what? Even if he'd been a success, even if his cockamamie ideas proved true and we'd found all kinds of nukes and nerve gas in the palaces and a letter from Bin Laden thanking Saddam for all the help with the you know what, and even if we'd created a shining light of a democracy in Iraq with no muss or fuss and paid for it with Iraq's own oil, and then Rummy were to make that remark linking dissent to treason -- the man would have to go. But not only is this twisted geek not a success, the guy couldn't put together a cold salad without burning down the entire neighborhood -- and then denying anything went wrong.

WHAT ARE THE ODDS PRESIDENT SMIRKY WILL SEND U.S. MARSHALS TO ARREST HIMSELF?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman

This particular intelligence leak now connected to President Smirky by Libby, Cheney’s Number One pack mule, was not routine -- not comparable to typical intelligence leaks from previous administrations -- although that’s what the administration will tell us. And Mr. and Mrs. Livingroom, fed the usual shockingly deficient crap by the shockingly deficient big media, will probably give him a pass on this one.

This was a leak of tainted intelligence in order to contradict the truth told by whistle-blowing Wilson, who confirmed that Smirky personally peddled disproved information to the public to justify his war. It wasn’t a leak that could have helped the country in any way. It was a leak to screw a truth-teller and assist Smirky in screwing the country with his cockamamie war in Iraq.

The media will have a hard time getting these nuances across to the public, particularly because the biggest of the big media can be relied upon to not even try. Diligent journalists have gradually been replaced by these shmucks over the last couple generations as corporations bought out newspapers and administered drug tests to new employees.

Meanwhile, notice that Condoleeza doesn’t scowl as much at everybody now -- classic bully behavior when victims finally fight back. She’s also tried out a new White House fallback position to be opened in an emergency -- when calling questioners traitors stops working altogether. We can’t judge the wisdom of the Iraq invasion for generations, she tells us. Hmm. I don’t recall any Republicans applying that rule to Clinton's blowjobs.

HOW ABOUT HIRING UNDOCUMENTED ALIENS TO REPORT ON THE WHITE HOUSE?

DIGGING DEEPER
By Ivan Goldman
It was reported in print this morning that Bush, according to his indicted pal Libby, leaked classified material in an attempt to counter Wilson's revelation that he lied about Saddam's phantom nuke utensils purchase in Niger. Bush, of course, is the guy who promised to go after anyone who leaked classified material. Then in the White House briefing today, not one reporter asked one question about this bombshell of a story.

But is anyone surprised? Reporters have had years to ask the White House about the Haliburton-Cheney connection. Cheney hides, so they let it go. If he stopped hiding, they’d probably still let it go. Forget about his shooting a guy. He’s a war profiteer who owns tons of stock in his old company, which has been caught so many times cheating and fabricating items it never delivered to our forces in Iraq that it’s no longer even news. The fact that the Pentagon pays it anyway is also not news. The fact that it still gets more Pentagon contracts in terms of dollars than all the other U.S. companies in Iraq is also not news. Think somebody at Haliburton knows somebody? Maybe. Hard to say. American 'reporters' never ask about it. We'd probably be better off if corporations, instead of hiring illegal migrants to pick lettuce and slaughter hogs, hired some of them to report U.S. news.

HILLARY – NO POLCY, NO BELIEFS, NO NADA, BUT PEOPLE MAGAZINE LIKES HER
Hillary Clinton pokes her nose out of the tent to bark at something only when she’s found an issue that’s safer than Cheney’s bunker. And she’s found it – yes, the Taliban-tinged United Arab Emirates poised to take over six U.S. ports. Opposing this stupid, crazy deal is no more dangerous politically than coming out against avian flu.

But notice that Hillary, the leading ’08 candidate, has yet to oppose the Iraq war that’s sucking the juices out of this nation as we speak. Because, yes, folks, she’s moved center, and therefore has never, not once, said anything of substance about our quagmire over there, except maybe that it’s been mishandled. As though there’s some good way to handle a policy initiative that kills and cripples people, costs a trillion dollars and is the biggest boost to Iran and Al Qaeda since Rumsfeld took over the Defense Department.

Hillary has never tackled the question of whether this invasion maybe wasn’t such a hot idea after all. If she can't bring herself to oppose this criminal, pointless death pit, the worst foreign-policy mistake in U.S. history, what’s there to like about her? I mean, what’s the attraction?
The answer: people like the fact that she’s a celebrity, a People magazine kind of person -- a Clinton. Americans are more comfortable with dynasties than actually rolling the dice on a real election. That’s why we’ve got Bushes, Clintons, Kennedys, Byahs, etc., running all through our government like mice in the kitchen. It’s America’s dirty little secret – our longing for a monarchy. Come back, King George, all is forgiven. But of course that King George is long gone and it’s tough to root for Liz and Charlie Windsor, who are no more equipped to run a country than Dopey, Sneezy, or Smirky.

So we whip up putative royalty of our own, and Baroness Hillary stands ready to haul us aboard her bandwagon to nowhere. But bear in mind that if she has any core beliefs, she has yet to reveal them. She’s also an unaccomplished legislator and, at least in public, a crashing bore who's a lock loser to whichever Republican dynasty steps up to the plate next.

SENATE DEMOCRATS LINE UP TO ENDORSE SMIRKSTER'S 'PATRIOT' ACT
Lots of folks were disappointed when the Democrats in the Senate voted along with the Republicans last week to kill any attempt at filibustering the Patriot Act. That’s because they don’t really understand what the Democrats were up against.

They were just doing what other prison bitches do every day under similar circumstances. Senate Democrats deserve our compassion, not verbal assaults. After all, when they leave Congress many will try to resume heterosexual practices. Not John Edwards, of course, but many of them. They didn’t ask to be locked in a D.C. cellblock with all those tattooed Republican nasties, and they’re trying to survive as best they can.

The Democrats figured, well, it is true that the Bush administration cited the Patriot Act as a key enabler of their agents who as we speak are reading our mail, listening in on our phone calls, sending some of us off to live in Syrian dungeons between torture sessions, and all the rest of those Big Brother scenarios that are life imitating Orwellian art. But the Senate Democrats, optimists, all, figured, hey, their stud daddies really want this thing, and if you look a little closer, you find some great stuff in the Patriot Act. For instance, some of its passages have made billions for Haliburton.

Incidentally, praise is honestly due to Russ Feingold, Robert Byrd, and Jim Jeffords (Independent), the only senators who had the balls to fight off the Republican prison gangs. They voted to filibuster, kept their assholes shut, and, to paraphrase the angry mortician in The Godfather, they kept their honor.

CONTRARY TO POPULAR belief, the Cheney shooting was actually good for the bush administration. Anything that draws attention away from the way they run the country is good for them. The hotshot D.C. lawyer who took one in the face for the smirk king will no doubt be rewarded in one of those secret ceremonies at Bohemian Grove, when the world’s movers and shakers dance naked in the forest and renew their vows.

Listen, I'm no gay-baiter, but when you think about it, there do seem to be a number of gay themes all around the Republican scene, starting with that male prostitute Bush liked to call on in press conferences. Maybe if Clinton had been getting fellated by a male intern instead of Lewinsky, the Republicans in Congress would have been more supportive.

PHONE CONVERSATION PICKED UP BY NSA SURVEILLANCE TEAM

Dickie? I told you never to call me here. Anyway, I thought you were busy with that bird thing.

Georgie, is there anything you can help us out with? Anything at all.

The Iranians, they’ve got Chalabi. That’s all I can tell you. . . . I swear to God I didn’t know it was gonna be a real election, Dickie. They bumped into me at the U.N. and they said that you and -- and – them were in on a -- a -- big deal together. And that there was something in it for me if I'd help ’em out. They said that -- they said that -- you were bein’ tough on the negotiations. But if they could get a little help -- and close the deal fast – it’d be good for the family. They wanted to talk . . .

You believed that story? You believed that?

They said there was something in it for me -- on my own.

I’ve always taken care of you.

Taken care of me? You're my vice president and you take care of me? Did you ever think about that -- did you ever once think about that? Send Georgie off to do this -- send Georgie off to do that! Let Georgie take care of some Mickey Mouse fund-raiser somewhere. Send Georgie to pick somebody up in the helicopter. I'm supposed to be the President, and I was stepped over!

That’s the way your Pop wanted it.

It ain’t the way I wanted it! I can handle things. I’m smart – not like everyone says. Not dumb, smart. And I want respect.

Is there anything you can tell me about that Iraqi election?

Sistani, he belongs to them.

Georgie, you’re nothing to me now. You’re not my caddy anymore, you’re not a friend. I don’t want you near my office. When you see Condi, I want to know a day in advance so I won’t be there. Understand?

Wait, I have to know -- what's the deal with this Iraq thing anyway? Those reporters are asking about it again.

The Iranians, they left us a couple oil wells, but that’s it. They get the rest. They said we could have that crappy loot from the museums, but I told them the same thing I told Leahy.

They can go fuck themselves, right? Oh, you always know what to say. Dickie. I need you, Dickie.

You should have come to me Georgie. I’d have made you an offer you couldn’t refuse.

Can’t it be like the old days again? Remember when they let me bring you into that congressional hearing? You and me, Dickie. A team. Remember?

You know, Georgie? I just can’t stay mad at you.

So we’re still pals, Dickie?

Sure, let’s go hunting next weekend.

THINKING ABOUT HEALTH SERVICES IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH

(This post moved from previous blog spot http://diggingdeeper.wordpress.com/, where it was first posted January 25th, 2006)

Now that the Medicare prescription law has taken effect it’s become clear that no one understands it — not even the people in the administration and congress who supposedly wrote it. That’s because they never thought about seniors having to actually use it. Their goal was to shovel more money to their paymasters — the drug, insurance, and HMO Mafias.

I said “supposedly” wrote it because, like all legislation dealing with real money, it was created by the corporations themselves and passed on to their government schlemiels to prance around it at midnight in a voodoo blood ceremony I’m not supposed to say much about. I wish I could tell you no chickens were harmed.

Some of the people who voted for this swamp puss of a bill are considered friends of the people – Senator Diane Feinstein, for instance. I wrote and asked her how she could defend her vote and her little staff person got back to me in with an email that said she figured she’d rather get a start on some kind of prescription payments than have no bill at all. Which is like saying, hey, if I can’t get a health care bill that aids our health, why not vote for one that screws it up? Good plan, Feinstein. She also voted to kill the estate tax. Don’t get me started about that vampire. She looks damn good for 73. She’s juiced up her system of replacing her worn-out parts with organs from desperate Third Worlders. But that’s for another column.

We get people like Feinstein and her corruptomaniac friends in the House because it’s nearly impossible to dislodge incumbents anymore. Ninety-nine percent [no exaggeration] of all House incumbents who run for re-election are re-elected. And some Senate seats – Feinstein’s for instance – are even better protected.

Gerrymandering is now married to computerization and has produced a bastard zombie of a system that’s even more predictable than the old Soviet model.Remember when we used to laugh at Soviet elections because incumbents got 95 percent of the vote? The commissars were Jeffersonian Democrats compared to the jerks we have running Washington these days. If the Founding Fathers were around, the cockamamie rulings from this King George would be at risk. But our system has failed to react to the power of multinational corporations, and while we weren’t noticing, they bought the government. They’ve legalized so many bribery schemes that taking down Abramoff and his network will be like pissing into a hurricane. (For my zero salary, I figure I’m entitled to at least one crappy cliche per column)

This country has already been sold. Bush is just more blatant than the others, because he’s been brought up to hide nothing from servants because after all, they’re just servants. We are a nation of bozos, lulled to harmlessness by electro-media, Prozac, and other news-o-tainment from the same forces that bought Feinstein.

But these Enron-esque lunatics are programmed to keep acquiring new assets no matter how lopsided the ownership equation gets. Maybe when all of us are running around in rags enslaved to the last dauphin, some of us will ponder our go-along-get-along attitude.