Lambert at Corrente connects the dots between the wife of "Bush Pioneer" Tom Noe, of Ohio missing millions invested in rare coins and other crapola fame, and 2004 Ohio election chicanery -- and makes a pretty compelling case that the Ohio missing millions scandals is a story of bribery, money laundering, AND election fixing.

I don't care which party you're in, if you don't want to see fair elections in which every vote is tabulated as it was cast, and every legitimate vote is counted, you're anti-American.

...so that the entire world can yuk over the Phallic Logo Awards.

There is a fellow on my block who loves to blare the local oldies radio station, WCBS-FM, loud enough for the entire neighborhood to hear it, all day, every day. I've been known to respond by taking a boombox outside with me when I garden and playing some particularly nasty, edgy and cynical Elvis Costello -- something like Live at the El Mocambo. Mr. Brilliant has threatened to use Miles Davis' Agharta or King Crimson's Thrak as an even more aggressive counterassault. This guy, who regards himself, along with the guy who lives next door to me, as King of the Neighborhood, has always refused to turn it down, and we've all kind of had to live with it, since you can make as much noise as you like between 7 AM and 9 PM.

Until now.

Oldies radio is dead in New York City.
After more than three decades as the top oldies station in the country, WCBS-FM (101.1 FM) abruptly scrapped its format yesterday for a concept called Jack.

As Frank Sinatra's "Summer Wind" trailed off at 5 p.m., a voice intoned: "Why don't we play what we want? There's a whole world of songs out there."

The first song under the new format was the Beastie Boys' "Fight for Your Right." Soon after, CBS played Bruce Springsteen's "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" and James Brown's "I Got You (I Feel Good)."

The station had been home to some of the most famous names of New York radio, including Cousin Bruce Morrow, Harry Harrison, Dan Ingram and Ron Lundy, many of whom shifted from WABC-AM when it went from music to talk.

"I've expected something like this," Morrow said yesterday. "They have every right to try what they want to try. My audience won't be without me for long."

The move stunned longtime listeners.

I'll just bet it did. But Oscar Wilde's quote, "There are two tragedies in life. One is not getting what you want. The other is getting it" -- is echoing in my head....

This is the last weekend of my lovely at-home vacation, and once again, I didn't get nearly as much done as I'd hoped. You see, when a decision has to be made as to whether to do something fun or do housework, fun always wins out. This creates a situation in which it takes 12 hours just to clean the basement family room, including tossing about a hundred videocassettes of things I haven't yet watched after eight years and things I'll never watch again -- and organizing the remaining 100+ into categories....and getting rid of eight years of Family Handyman and Today's Homeowner magazines that I was keeping from our early days as homeowners, when I felt capable of doing myself just about anything not involving tall ladders.

So what this means is that while the outside of my house looks great, with all manner of new annuals planted, and everything mulched (there's something kind of empowering about dragging bags of mulch around, don'tcha think? Or is that just a girl thing?) -- but the inside still looks like a college dorm after a particularly wild party. Six months after we had new windows installed, the interior painting is still in a state of paralysis, with each room having to wait till something in another room is done. Today, I have a wallpaper border looking at me dolefully, determined to not come down easily. You see, many bullets were sweated putting this sucker up, but when you change colors, the old border just doesn't work anymore. Now I remember why I never wanted to use wallpaper.

But while I was at home attempting vainly to be a self-contained DIY network show, important things were going on in the world, which my fellow denizens of Blogonia have dutifully covered while I was slacking off looking at 157 shades of green and a wallpaper border for the kitchen.

First, you'll notice that we have a Big Brass Blogroll of the Big Brass Alliance member blogs. This sucker is really taking off, folks, and we have visions of Bush, Cheney, and Rove being led out of the White House in handcuffs dancing in our heads.

Second of all, here are some interesting stories you won't want to miss regarding the wankers of the right:

• Is there a perfect storm brewing involving the Downing Street Memo, Jack Abramoff, and Ohio Republican crook Tom Noe? John Aravosis reports on money the Bush campaign received from "Bush Pioneer" Tom Noe. Noe's fundraising is being investigated by a Federal grand jury.


• Politicsnj.com has a nice page about NJ Gubernatorial candidate and long-time wanker Bret Schundler stealing a photo from a Dean rally for his own campaign because he can't gather enough people for a canasta game, let alone a rally.


• Kos covers the no-holds-barred steel cage deathmatch between mainstream so-called journalists and bloggers, as the FEC prepares to squash political blogging by parsing the definition of "journalist", so as to ensure that only Administration-approved commentary is allowed on the internet.


• Shakespeare's Sister comments on the weekly Friday Night Bush Administration Trash Dump. This week it's the U.S. Southern Command, which runs the prison at Guantanamo Bay, admitting that "American jailers at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects splashed a Koran with urine, kicked and stepped on the Islamic holy book and soaked it with water." They call this "mishandling." Meanwhile, the lunatic Michelle Malkin is sticking with the "Newsweek lied, people died" meme, focusing on one detainee who ripped up his own copy of the Qu'ran. Obviously, Ms. Maglalang has never heard of the "It's OK to knock your own team" rule.


• Joe Gandelman passes on a BBC story that indicates I may have enough lifespan ahead of me to finish that novel after all:
  

  Curvy women are more likely to live longer than their slimmer counterparts, researchers have found.
  Institute of Preventative Medicine in Copenhagen researchers found those with wider hips also appeared to be protected against heart conditions.
  
  Women with a hip measurement smaller than 40 inches, or a size 14 would not have this protection, they said.
  
  The researchers say hip fat contains a beneficial natural anti-inflammatory.



• And of course, the Nixon Revisionism in the aftermath of the Deep Throat revelation continues. My favorite entry in this catalog of idiocy is from Ben Stein in The American Spectator, who proves why no one is interested in going mano-a-mano with Ben Stein's intellect anymore, not even for cash:
  

  Now, we read that Mark Felt's family and Mark Felt put out their story solely to make money off it. So, this makes the family's karma even more unnerving. The father, patriarch, Mark, took out his anger and frustration for being passed over at the FBI, by ruining the career of the peacemaker, Richard Nixon. So, he condemned a whole subcontinent to genocide and slavery and poverty to please his own wounded vanity. (Maybe his nickname should be "sour grapes" and not "deep throat" because he has as much in common with that fox as with a porn star.) And, blood will tell, as the old saying goes: his posterity is now dragging out his old body and putting it on display to make money. (Have you noticed how Mark Felt looks like one of those old Nazi war criminals they find in Bolivia or Paraguay? That same, haunted, hunted look combined with a glee at what he has managed to get away with so far?)
  

  
  You've got to love a revisionist history which claims that the reason we lost Vietnam was because of the Democrats' hounding of that ol' peace-lover himself, Richard Nixon. By that logic, I expect next week an essay from Pat Buchanan acknowledging that 9/11 was able to occur was because of the Republicans' hounding of Bill Clinton. Sauce for the goose, baby.

Went to the live broadcast of Morning Sedition today.

UPDATE: Either this is one of the 10 coolest things I've ever gone to, or I am completely pathetic. Or both.

But where else can you go to get 3 hours of commercial-free comedy and free coffee to boot?

After a year on the air, Morning Sedition is the smartest, funniest three hours on radio, bar none.

Here are my photos from today's live broadcast:


Disgraced Cardinal Milf Milfington with today's "Rapture Watch." (By the way, if any of the Morning Sedition folks are here, did you know that the Cardinal shows up in the Top Resources for Christian Radio Streaming Talk?)


Marc Maron & Mark Riley


More Marc 'n' Mark


And yet more Marc 'n' Mark


Mike Doughty, former lead singer from Soul Coughing (a.k.a. Dave Matthews' onetime favorite band) sings "Busting up a Starbucks" and "White Lexus" from his new CD


Planet Bush correspondent "Lawton Smalls" gives his unique perspective on the den of iniquity that is New York City


Lawton Smalls: "God loves you....deal with it!"


Dan Pashman, son of Lewis and Linda Pashman of New Jersey (who were also in attendance), exhorts the crowd to make some noise.



Vanity Fair correspondent James Wolcott expounds on scooping the Washington Post on the revelation of who Deep Throat was.


Marc Maron turns into "Marc the Shark" Maron, conservative talk radio host.

Tbogg notes the upcoming and unfortunately named Ball for Life.

This is a benefit for Good Counsel Homes, which runs those homes for unwed mothers into which pregnant high schools girls used to disappear back when I was in high school during the Late Cretaceous period.

Good Counsel's mission:

Good Counsel is a family for those in need, serving God who is the Father of the orphan, defender of the widow, and who gives the lonely a home to live in (Psalm 68). Our Lord’s call to serve the disadvantaged compels us to advocate on behalf of single mothers and their children and to offer love, shelter, and the opportunity to grow in self-respect and independence. We invoke the patronage of Mary, the Lady of Good Counsel, to help us protect mothers in need and to love their children from the moment of conception.

...until the moment of birth. Then you're on your own, you slut. (Yes, they do give "chastity instruction" to these shameless hussies.)

Here's a Presbyterian pastor on Ohio Secretary of State, Bush Toady, and Gubernatorial candidate Kenneth Blackwell's plans for a new, theocratic Ohio:

Amember of my church gave to me a copy of the Ohio Restoration Project. This project is led by so-called Christians who have a plan for Ohio. The project will target 2,000 pastors throughout the state to become "patriot pastors." These patriot pastors will be briefed on a specific political agenda and asked to submit names of their parishioners in order to increase a database to 300,000 names. These pastors will be asked to place voter guides in their church pews.

Ken Blackwell, Ohio's secretary of state and a governor hopeful, is named throughout the document. Blackwell will be featured on 30-second radio ads promoting this group's agenda and supporting the "Ohio for Jesus" rally set for the spring of 2006. At the end of the document are the words, "America has a mission to share a living savior with a dying world."

This is not America's mission. This is frightening, diabolical stuff for non-Christians and Christians alike. It is blasphemous to claim that any earthly kingdom is God's kingdom. The theological foundations of this movement are vacuous. They are set on the sands of opportunism, self-righteousness and greed.

Today Ohio, tomorrow the nation.

He can send his wife to the Middle East to talk about freedom for women all he wants, but as long as Bush insists on sucking face with the Saudis, this is what he's supporting:

He just wanted his colleagues in the government's legislative arm to discuss the possibility of conducting a study into the feasibility of reversing the ban on women drivers — the only prohibition of its kind in the world.

But Consultative Council member Mohammad al-Zulfa's proposal has unleashed a storm in this conservative country where the subject of women drivers remains taboo.

Al-Zulfa's cell phone now constantly rings with furious Saudis accusing him of encouraging women to commit the double sins of discarding their veils and mixing with men. He gets phone text messages calling on Allah to freeze his blood. Chat rooms bristle with insulting accusations that al-Zulfa is "driven by carnal instincts with 454 horsepower."

There even have been calls to kick al-Zulfa from the council and strip him of his Saudi nationality.

The uproar may be astounding to outsiders. But in Saudi Arabia, where the religious establishment has the upper hand in defining women's freedoms, the issue touches on the kingdom's strict Islamic lifestyle.

Conservatives, who believe women should be shielded from strange men, say driving will allow a woman to leave home whenever she pleases and go wherever she wishes. Some say it will present her with opportunities to violate Islamic law, such as exposing her eyes while driving or interacting with strange men, like police officers or mechanics.

"Driving by women leads to evil," Munir al-Shahrani wrote in a letter to the editor of the Al-Watan daily. "Can you imagine what it will be like if her car broke down? She would have to seek help from men."

Bush Anxious to Learn More of Deep Throat

I'll just bet he is. Jeff Gannon, call your office.

If something isn't done about electronic voting machines before the 2006 elections, any thought of taking back the House is going to be moot.

A couple of diaries at Kos today reveal some eyebrow-raising voting issues in some 2004 races.

One of them analyzes the squeaker of a gambling referendum in Florida that ended up passing handily once 78,000 absentee ballots were tabluated. It seems that 95% of the absentee ballots were pro-gambling:

As of November 3, the statewide vote margin on Amendment 4 never exceeded 10,000 – ranging from a 6,500-vote edge against allowing slots in South Florida to a margin of 10,000 or so more citizens voting against slot machines.

The amendment looked headed to a razor-thin defeat. Not only that, the 0.1% total state margin would have required a recount of the vote tallies for the constitutional Amendment. (Anything less than 0.5%.) So the vote was 50-50 with 99% of the votes counted, a squeaker.

But a week later, the Amendment was ahead by 93,000 votes. How so?

Well, Broward County found 78,000 absentee votes that had not been counted (absentee votes in Broward are opti-scanned; only the in-precinct Election Day votes are touchscreen). The vendor for Broward is ES&S. Part of the problem was that the ES&S tabulator model used for absentees in Broward could not breach its limit of 32,000 votes without generating a massive numerical error, a newly discovered "counting-backward glitch" (that affected also some North Carolina counties and God knows where else, and that ES&S now has to fix and reprogram for future elections).

Amazingly, in this 50-50 election a miraculous 74,000 of 78,000 new Broward absentee voters voted "Yes" on slot machines. So most voters in the state were split right down the middle, but 95% of the newfound absentee voters were strongly in favor of betting.

Truly, a miracle for betting afficionados and the state Dept. of Education which wanted a dedicated share of the gambling revenues.

Now who was suspicious of these new counts? Well, Paul Seago, executive director of Orlando-based No Casinos, Inc. Also, state rep Randy Johnson (R-Celebration) who was chairman of No Casinos. They maintained doubts about the final approval margin, 119,000 votes, for the pro-slots measure.

[snip]

Johnson checked with statistical experts and he came away believing the disparate vote pattern could not have strayed so far from 50-50 merely by chance, that it would be a 1-in-a-million possibility.

The second aberration was Pinellas County, where a 17,000 vote reversal was recorded and sent off to Tallahassee for final inclusion and certification. The flipped vote-margin remains in the state certified count to this day, even though all parties acknowledge the error. [Translation – Glenda Hood leaned on "regulations" and "deadlines" to forbid the correction of the state number.] The error was not by machine so much as by a paper and pencil reversal by a worker. Staff of Elections supervisor Deborah Clark, a Jeb Bush appointee, learned of the flip on November 4, but 8 days later Clark still sent Tallahassee the wrong results (supposedly approved by 17,000 Pinellas voters instead of rejected by a 17,000 vote margin in Pinellas). "Pinellas elections office knew [Nov. 4] soon after Election Day of a discrepancy in vote totals on a statewide slot machine initiative, but they didn't fully investigate for two weeks." So the false vote totals were maintained knowingly for weeks, until state certification was past.

Uh-huh. And I am Marie of Rumania.

The other one links to this message at Black Box Voting detailing easy hacks to Diebold's optical scan systems that were used in several disputed precincts in 2004.

It's pretty clear that the voting system in this country is broken. The very systems that were supposed to override the kind of partisan manipulation that people had claimed for years are even more susceptible to cheating. And when you have a Republican party that will do anything it takes to win, from destroying the reputation of an opponent to voter suppression, why should we believe that their supporters who make and sell voting machine hardware and software won't manipulate the machines to produce a desired outcome?

When the odds against the 2004 exit polls being so far off are over 10 million to 1, something is terribly, terribly wrong. We can have elections till the cows come home, but if the results are pre-determined, what's the point?

C-Plus Caligula never ceases to amaze me.

Remember last week when he appeared with a bunch of children derived from the so-called "Snowflake Embryo Adoption Program", a.k.a. "White Babies -- Guaranteed!!"? This was designed to illustrate that all those frozen embryos resulting from IVF treatments could be adopted by nice white couples instead of being used to save people's lives, and beef up his stance on stem-cell research.

Turns out that this program, which receives money from HHS, allows both the donor family and the recipient family to specify criteria from each other. This means that a donor can specify that only fundamentalist Christian couples may receive their embryos, or that gay or lesbian couples cannot, or that mothers who adopt such embryos must be stay-at-home moms, and presumably also be appropriately submissive to their husbands. It also means that a recipient can specify that the embryo be conceived of only those with a "pure" White Anglo-Saxon Protestant gene pool, or that it be of tall parents, or have blue eyes, or whatever.

Conservatives love to decry the use of birth control on the grounds that it fosters "Eugenics", yet they think this is perfectly OK.

This is a program that behaves like an adoption agency, yet is permitted to use adoption criteria that no other regulated adoption agency would be able to get away with.

John Aravosis points out:

...these people were at the White House. AT THE WHITE HOUSE, at the invitation of the president. The president wanted this to be THE MODEL for the country - religious-based (and who knows, race-based?) discrimination as the model for the entire country.

I HATE when that happens.

So what generated today's tête explosée?

Here ya go:

President Bush Says He Fears for Americans in Iraq and for His Twin Daughters

President Bush said Wednesday that he doesn't spend much of his time worrying but that he does fear for Americans and others in insurgency-wracked Iraq and for the safety of his 23-year-old twin daughters.

"I spend most of my time worrying about people losing their lives in Iraq, both Americans and Iraqis," Bush told The Associated Press and other broadcasters in an interview.

He suggested he has some concerns about the implications of his high-profile position for his daughters, Jenna and Barbara.

"I worry about letting these little girls get into a situation where something unpleasant could happen to them," Bush said. "We're pretty much over the anger not anger, the frustrations of living in a fishbowl."

I'm sorry, folks, but this man is a vile, nasty, narcissistic, ugly piece of shit trying to pass as a human being. Here's a man who has sent over 150,000 young Americans -- OTHER PEOPLE'S CHILDREN -- to die in a war that has no end, no strategy, and certainly no exit plan. He has attended NO funerals. He refuses to even allow Americans to "bother their beautiful minds", to paraphrase his mother, with images of the dead returning home. And what does he worry about? "...letting these little girls get into a situation where something unpleasant could happen to them."

WHAT THE FUCK DOES HE THINK FIGHTING IN IRAQ IS???

Does he honestly believe that his kids are some kind of royalty, that they are entitled by birth to be insulated from any kind of risk?

Why on earth should ANY American family sacrifice their children for this man? Why on earth is anyone still supporting this man?

(hat tip: Steve Gilliard)

...to come to the aid of their Fearless Leader.

While the 101st Fighting Keyboarders continue to extol the virtues of C-Plus Caligula's Mighty Adventure in Iraq, the Pentagon is trying mightily to figure out a way to spin its dismal recruiting levels (or to cook the books so the numbers look better than they are):

The Pentagon on Wednesday postponed by more than a week the release of military recruiting figures for May, as the Army and Marine Corps struggle to attract new troops amid the Iraq war.

The military services had routinely provided most recruiting statistics for a given month on the first business day of the next month.

Air Force Lt. Col. Ellen Krenke, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said the May numbers for the active-duty and reserve components of the all-volunteer military will be released on June 10.

"Military recruiting is instrumental to our readiness and merits the earliest release of data. But at the same time, this information must be reasonably scrutinized and explained to the public, which deserves the fullest insight into military performance in this important area," Krenke said.

Asked whether the move would simply delay the release of bad news, Krenke said, "That's not necessarily true," noting that "we expect the numbers to improve during the summer months."

Military recruiters have said potential recruits and their parents were expressing wariness about enlisting during the Iraq war. They said improving civilian job opportunities also were affecting recruiting.

The regular Army missed its recruiting goals for three straight months entering May, falling short by a whopping 42 percent in April. The Army was 16 percent behind its year-to-date target entering May, with a goal of signing up 80,000 recruits in fiscal 2005, which ends Sept. 30.

With recruitment not making goals, and the Administration rattling its sabers at North Korea (and to a lesser degree, Iran), the salivating neocons who run American foreign policy are going to be faced with only three options for satisfying their boners for wider war: inadequate manpower (i.e. the Iraq model), a draft (unlikely at this point, given the upcoming Congressional elections and a growing push for impeachment), or the use of mercenaries (now called "private military contractors).

Shakespeare's Sister notes this Faux News story on the MSM's failure to pick up on the Downing Street memo:

A British government memo that critics say proves the Bush administration manipulated evidence about weapons of mass destruction in order to carry out a plan to overthrow Saddam Hussein (search) has received little attention in the mainstream media, frustrating opponents of the Iraq war.

The "Downing Street Memo" — first published by The Sunday Times of London on May 1 — summarizes a high-level meeting between Prime Minister Tony Blair (search) and his senior national security team on July 23, 2002, months before the March 2003 coalition invasion of Iraq.

The memo suggests that British intelligence analysts were concerned that the Bush administration was marching to war on wobbly evidence that Saddam posed a serious threat to the world.

The memo, which received sporadic reporting in major newspapers in the United States throughout May, has sparked an outcry from more than 88 Democratic members of Congress who have signed two letters to President Bush demanding a response.

Led by Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the signatories are mostly representatives who opposed the war in Iraq and make up the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Conyers says the mainstream media have ignored the story and let President Bush off the hook. He noted that liberal blogs and alternative media have been keeping the story alive. "But these voices are too few and too diffuse to overcome the blatant biases of our cable channels and the negligence and neglect of our major newspapers," Conyers said in a recent statement.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said there is "no need" to respond to the memos, the authenticity of which has not been denied.

Dante Zappala does not agree. For Zappala, the Downing Street Memo strikes a critical and personal chord. His brother, Sgt. Sherwood Baker, 30, a soldier in the Pennsylvania National Guard, was killed in Baghdad 13 months ago on what Zappala said was a mission to find weapons there.

"My family knows the consequences of the decision they made to go to war," said Zappala, 29, of Philadelphia. He is a member of Military Families Speak Out, a group that opposes the war and, according to Zappala, now has more than 2,000 members.

"I can't speak for what the TV news decides to focus their attention on," Zappala said. "They seem to have a willful deference to all relevant information. I think they've really just dropped the ball on this."

But not everyone believes the Downing Street Memo represents a "smoking gun" and deserves more attention.

"As a smoking gun it leaves a lot to be desired," said Kevin Aylward, a northern Virginia-based technology consultant who runs the conservative-leaning blog, Wizbangblog.com. "It's interesting, but it's probably fourth- or fifth-hand information."

Aylward added: "I suspect the more interesting story at this point, seeing it three weeks later, is who is behind the letter-writing campaign to push it in the media."

Kevin Aylward obviously fancies himself to be a latter-day G. Gordon Liddy,

In the article, Ellis Henican is quoted as throwing up his hands: "It's a little late," he said of the memo story, adding that people are resigned to the fact that the United States is in Iraq for the long term, regardless of what events led to the war. "We're kind of stuck."

That may be true, but that's the kind of mindset that has allowed this Administration to pile up one heinous act after another, under the (probably correct) assumption that Americans would be paralyzed by exhaustion and horror if they had to face litany of Administration atrocities. This paralysis on the part of the citizenry, combined with its own insularity, arrogance and delusion, is what allows Dick Cheney to get away with stating that the Iraqi insurgency is in its death throes at the same time that the May death toll is the highest of the year so far, and allows Bush to dismiss "absurd" Amnesty International's description of Guantanamo Bay as a gulag. The Administration truly does believe that reality can be created out of whole cloth, and since the journalistic profession has decided to accept this ridiculous notion, it's up to those of us who aren't delusional to keep the pressure on.

Is the Downing Street memo a definitive smoking gun? Hardly. But given that neither British nor American officials have denied its accuracy, it's certainly strong evidence that further investigation is in order -- and that's what we want to see.

Running Scared points us to this little peek into the neocon psyche: A list, compiled by Human Events Online, of the "10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th centuries."

The first three are obvious, though I find it kind of interesting that Mein Kampf is #2 to The Communist Manifesto -- which sort of gives you an idea of how the neocons think: better fascist than communist. And yet Quotations from Chairman Mao comes in at #3, which I guess means that there's business to be had from the Chinese, so we don't want to piss them off too much.

But in case you had any doubt that the conservatives' biggest obsession is sex, #4 is The Kinsey Report. Let's stop there for a moment. Everyone pretty much agrees that Hitler was a pretty bad fellow. The neocons certainly regard Communism as the great evil of the 20th century, to the point that they've advocated support of some pretty nasty operators, like Osama Bin Laden, simply because they were anti-Communist. But isn't it interesting that right after the Big Political Theory Books comes an opening door on America's sexual activities?

Here's the rest of the list:

5. Democracy and Education, John Dewey

6. Das Kapital, Karl Marx (please note again that Kinsey is a bigger enemy in the neocon eyes than Marx)

7. The Feminine Mystique, Betty Friedan

8. The Course of Positive Philosophy, August Comte

9. Beyond Good and Evil, Friedrich Nietzsche

10. General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, John Maynard Keynes

The "Honorable Mention" list is even more eye-opening, and includes such works as -- yup, you guessed it -- The Origin of the Species and The Descent of Man, by Charles Darwin (gotta keep the fundi-nuts happy); The Population Bomb, by Paul Ehrlich (see also: The Feminine Mystique -- gotta keep the women at home popping out babies); Silent Spring, by Rachel Carson (too opposed to allowing major corporations to poison the air, soil, and water with impunity); and for some strange reason, Coming of Age in Samoa, by Margaret Mead.

Frankly, this list tells us a lot more about the conservative mindset than it does about anything else.

In the early 1980's, I worked as an editorial assistant to the late Erwin Glikes at Simon & Schuster. Glikes was an icon of conservative publishing at the time, perpetrating on the American public such authors as Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Allan Bloom, and Dinesh D'Souza. He was a very nice man, and I never understood how he could buy into some of this crap. Later on, long after I'd moved on to a job that might pay something approaching a living wage, he published at The Free Press (his imprint at Macmillan) David Brock's book about Anita Hill. I suspect that Erwin would have been among this group of ideologues coming up with this list, if he were still alive. And I would be just as baffled today as I was then about how an otherwise intelligent person could buy into this stuff.

On this day after the identity of "Deep Throat" was revealed, it's instructive to take a look at the Bush Administration lies about Iraq, conveniently gathered together in one place, in a devastating piece of Flash animation.

30 years ago, articles of impeachment were drawn up against Richard Nixon because of his cover-up of a burglary of Democratic National Committee headquarters in a campaign that Nixon was likely to win anyway. Four years ago, Bill Clinton was impeached for lying about a consensual sexual liaison with a legal adult. Today, George W. Bush, and the men around him, have been shown in the minutes of a British Prime Minister's meeting (which the British have not disavowed) to have ordered intelligence about Iraq "tailored to fit the policy" -- said policy being war.

With over 1700 young Americans dead, at least tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians dead and America's reputation in tatters around the world, when are we going to demand the same kind of accountability from this Administration that was demanded of these predecessors? Is there a point where the lies and the crimes become so heinous, and their impact becomes so severe, that it's just too painful for most Americans to face them? And if that's what's happening here, don't we have a responsibility to DEMAND accountability?

Because of the compelling evidence presented by the Downing Street Memo that the current occupant of the White House took us into a war on a lie, then ordered the intelligence to fit the war plan, we've joined up with the Big Brass Alliance, a blogging network in support of afterdowningstreet.org.

After Downing Street is a coalition of veterans groups and political activist groups seeking a full investigation of the Administration's activities leading up to the Iraq War. The Big Brass Alliance is a coalition of bloggers in support of these activities, including encouraging Rep. John Conyers to introduce a Resolution of Inquiry asking the Justice Department to conduct such an investigation.

Right now, the chances of such an investigation are slim to none, which is another reason to elect non-Republicans to the House in 2006.

[This was actually written yesterday (Memorial Day), but Blogger, in its usual inimitable fashion, choked on the publish.]


Today in Iraq:

Two suicide bombers blew themselves up Monday in a crowd of police officers south of Baghdad, killing up to 30 people and wounding dozens, and an Iraqi aircraft with four Americans and an Iraqi on board crashed in eastern Iraq.

Also Monday, U.S. forces mistakenly detained a Sunni political leader on the second day of an Iraqi-led security sweep in the capital.

The Iraqi aircraft carrying four U.S. personnel and one Iraqi crashed sometime before noon during an operational mission, the military said in a statement, but it did not say what type of aircraft was involved or whether those on board had died.

U.S.-led coalition forces had secured the area where the aircraft when down in the eastern province of Diyala and the crash was "under investigation," the military said. It also said the crash was reported to a joint communication center in the town of Khanaqin, near the border with Iran.

Mohsen Abdul-Hamid, head of Iraq's largest Sunni Arab political party and short-time president of the now-dissolved U.S.-backed Iraqi Governing Council, was taken from his home in western Baghdad at about 6 a.m. by military forces, party officials said.

The U.S. military later confirmed it had mistakenly arrested Abdul-Hamid, questioned him and released him shortly after.

President George W. Delusional, today at Arlington National Cemetery:

As we look across these acres, we begin to tally the cost of our freedom, and we count it a privilege to be citizens of the country served by so many brave men and women. (Applause.) And we must honor them by completing the mission for which they gave their lives, by defeating the terrorists, advancing the cause of liberty, and building a safer world.

No, we must honor them by bringing to justice via impeachment and removal from office the man, and those around them, who put those young people whose names I posted earlier in harm's way; the men who allowed the United States to be attacked so that George W. Bush could have his war; the men who went into Afghanistan only because it was the only way to get Tony Blair to sign on for the war in Iraq; the men who continue to allow Osama Bin Laden to run free.

That's how we can honor them.

12/30/03 Pollard, Justin W. 21 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge (accid.) CA
12/28/03 Cuervo, Rey D. 24 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack TX
12/28/03 Jordan Jr., Curt E. 25 Army Non-hostile - illness WA
12/28/03 Blanco, Ernesto M. 28 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack TX
12/26/03 Mihalakis, Michael G. 18 Army National Guard Non-hostile - vehicle accident CA
12/26/03 Haight, Charles G. 23 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack AL
12/26/03 Sutter, Michael J. 28 Army National Guard Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack IL
12/25/03 Christensen, Thomas W. 42 Army Reserve Hostile - hostile fire - mortar attack MI
12/25/03 Hattamer, Stephen C. 43 Army Reserve Hostile - hostile fire - mortar attack MI
12/24/03 Yashinski, Michael E. 24 Army Non-hostile - electrocution CO
12/24/03 Soelzer, Christopher F. 26 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack SD
12/24/03 Biskie, Benjamin W. 27 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack OH
12/24/03 Cooke, Eric F. 43 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack AZ
12/24/03 Splinter, Christopher J. 43 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack WI
12/22/03 Moore, Stuart W. 21 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack TX
12/22/03 Saltz, Edward M. 27 Army Reserve Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack MT
12/19/03 Bush Jr., Charles E. 43 Army Reserve Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NY
12/18/03 Allison, Glenn R. 24 Army Non-hostile - illness - heart failure MA
12/17/03 Holland, Christopher J. 26 Army Hostile - hostile fire - ambush GA
12/15/03 Nakis, Nathan W. 19 Army National Guard Non-hostile - vehicle accident WA
12/15/03 Souslin, Kenneth C. 21 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge OH
12/14/03 Ferguson, Rian C. 22 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident SC
12/14/03 Voelz, Kimberly A. 27 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack PA
12/12/03 Braun, Jeffrey F. 19 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge CT
12/12/03 Black, Jarrod W. 26 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack IN
12/11/03 Edgerton, Marshall L. 27 Army Hostile - hostile fire - car bomb GA
12/10/03 Bates, Todd M. 20 Army National Guard Non-hostile - drowning OH
12/10/03 Burdick, Richard A. 24 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack CA
12/10/03 Petty, Jerrick M. 25 Army Hostile - hostile fire ID
12/10/03 Reese, Aaron T. 31 Army National Guard Non-hostile - drowning OH
12/08/03 Wright, Jason G. 19 Army Hostile - hostile fire MI
12/08/03 Blickenstaff, Joseph M. 23 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident OR
12/08/03 Wesley, Christopher Jude Rivera 26 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident OR
12/08/03 Bridges, Steven H. 33 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident CA
12/07/03 Hutchinson, Ray J. 20 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack TX
12/05/03 Clark, Arron R. 20 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack CA
12/02/03 Young, Ryan C. 21 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack CA
12/02/03 Davis, Raphael S. 24 Army National Guard Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack MS
12/02/03 Boone, Clarence E. 50 Army Non-hostile - accident (?) TX
12/01/03 Singh, Uday 21 Army Hostile - hostile fire - ambush IL
11/29/03 Sissel, Aaron J. 22 Army National Guard Hostile - hostile fire - ambush IA
11/29/03 Bertolino, Stephen A. 40 Army Hostile - hostile fire - ambush CA
11/28/03 Rico, Ariel 25 Army Hostile - hostile fire - mortar attack TX
11/27/03 Sweet II, Thomas J. 23 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge ND
11/26/03 Goldberg, David J. 20 Army Reserve Non-hostile - weapon discharge (accid.) UT
11/23/03 Ravago IV, Rel A. 21 Army Hostile - hostile fire CA
11/23/03 Smith, Darrell L. 28 Army National Guard Non-hostile - vehicle accident (drowning) IN
11/23/03 Menyweather, Eddie E. 35 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack CA
11/23/03 Nason, Christopher G. 39 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident CA
11/23/03 Wilson, Jerry L. 45 Army Hostile - hostile fire GA
11/22/03 Roberts, Robert D. 21 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident FL
11/22/03 Bushart, Damian S. 22 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident MI
11/21/03 Coleman, Gary B. 24 Army Non-hostile - vehicle accident (drowning) KY
11/20/03 Tyrrell, Scott Matthew 21 Army Non-hostile - munitions accident IL
11/20/03 Lister, Joseph L. 22 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack KS
11/20/03 Wood, George A. 33 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NY
11/17/03 Panchot, Dale A. 26 Army Hostile - hostile fire MN
11/17/03 Dalley, Nathan S. 27 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge UT
11/17/03 Shull, James A. 32 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge (accid.) WA
11/17/03 Coulter, Alexander S. 35 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack TN
11/15/03 Whitener, Joey D. 19 Army Hostile - helicopter crash NC
11/15/03 DiGiovanni, Jeremiah J. 21 Army Hostile - helicopter crash MS
11/15/03 Heidelberg, Damian L. 21 Army Hostile - helicopter crash MS
11/15/03 Hawk Eagle, Sheldon R. 21 Army Hostile - helicopter crash ND
11/15/03 Hafer, Richard W. 21 Army Hostile - helicopter crash WV
11/15/03 Uhl III, Eugene A. 21 Army Hostile - helicopter crash WI
11/15/03 Baker, Ryan T. 24 Army Hostile - helicopter crash NJ
11/15/03 Acklin II, Michael D. 25 Army Hostile - helicopter crash KY
11/15/03 Sullivan, John R. 26 Army Hostile - helicopter crash IL
11/15/03 Hayslett, Timothy L. 26 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack PA
11/15/03 Russell, John W. 26 Army Hostile - helicopter crash TX
11/15/03 Wolfe, Jeremy L. 27 Army Hostile - helicopter crash WI
11/15/03 Kesterson, Erik C. 29 Army Hostile - helicopter crash OR
11/15/03 Piche, Pierre E. 29 Army Hostile - helicopter crash VT
11/15/03 Dusenbery, William D. 30 Army Hostile - helicopter crash IL
11/15/03 Saboe, Scott A. 33 Army Hostile - helicopter crash SD
11/15/03 Hansen, Warren S. 36 Army Hostile - helicopter crash WI
11/15/03 Bolor, Kelly 37 Army Reserve Hostile - helicopter crash CA
11/14/03 Medina, Irving 22 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NY
11/13/03 Minucci II, Joseph 23 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack PA
11/13/03 Fletcher, Jacob S. 28 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NY
11/12/03 Wise, Robert A. 21 Army National Guard Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack FL
11/12/03 Bailey, Nathan J. 46 Army National Guard Non-hostile - weapon discharge TN
11/11/03 Jackson, Marlon P. 25 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NJ
11/11/03 Acosta, Genaro 26 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack CA
11/09/03 Tomko, Nicholas A. 24 Army Reserve Hostile - hostile fire - RPG attack PA
11/08/03 Frosheiser, Kurt R. 22 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack IA
11/08/03 Collins, Gary L. 32 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack TX
11/08/03 Vasquez, Mark D. 35 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack MI
11/08/03 Jimenez, Linda C. 39 Army Non-hostile - accidental fall NY
11/07/03 Kennon, Morgan DeShawn 23 Army Hostile - hostile fire - ambush TN
11/07/03 Smith, Benedict J. 29 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) MO
11/07/03 Rose, Scott C. 30 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) KY
11/07/03 Neff II, Paul M. 30 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) SC
11/07/03 Kennedy, Kyran E. 43 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) MA
11/07/03 Swartworth, Sharon T. 43 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) VA
11/07/03 Gilmore I, Cornell W. 45 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) MD
11/06/03 Wolf, James R. 21 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NE
11/06/03 Chance III, James A. 25 Army National Guard Hostile - hostile fire - land mine MS
11/06/03 Fisher, Paul F. 39 Army National Guard Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) IA
11/05/03 Rivera, Jose A. 34 Army Hostile - hostile fire - ambush PR
11/04/03 Benson, Robert T. 20 Army Non-hostile - weapon discharge WA
11/04/03 Martinez, Francisco 28 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack PR
11/03/03 Johnson, Rayshawn S. 20 Army Hostile - hostile fire - IED attack NY
11/02/03 Lau, Karina S. 20 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) CA
11/02/03 Dagostino, Anthony D. 20 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) CT
11/02/03 Vega, Frances M. 20 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) PR
11/02/03 Conover, Steven Daniel 21 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) OH
11/02/03 Jennings, Darius T. 22 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) SC
11/02/03 Moss, Keelan L. 23 Army Hostile - helicopter crash (missile attack) TX
11/02/03 Perez, Joel 25 Army Host