Joe Bell's Blog

Prosecute the Traitor

Joe Bell — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 10:45:45 EST

I read George Bush's final speech. One thing certainly hasn't changed. It is still September 11, 2001 where he is. It apparently always will be. He knows a lot more about September 11, 2001 than he is willing to share, but he still holds on to it as the today we are all supposed to stay in. He still says that acts of terrorism against America are the most threatening thing before us. I guess that means that he doesn't think climate change and peak oil are threatening. Or, he is still denying that they exist. That is another thing that hasn't changed, George Bush is more than happy to lie to the public. I really like the lie of his contrasting the terrorist as willing to condemn women to inferiority and kill innocents while his America is for freedom and justice. I guess the million women and children he has engineered the death of in Iraq are somehow not supposed to count anywhere. What about all the women in America who make less than 3/4ths of what an American man makes for the same job, and less than half if you include single mothers? That is not oppression? Or how about the lie that Iraq was an enemy of America? Weird considering that we were buying oil from them hand over fist until the first day of the Gulf war, that we installed Sadam as dictator to insure that oil supply. Bush says that we are the land of freedom and dignity, but he must be including warrantless wiretapping of citizens not even suspected of crimes and torture of people held without charges by government employees.

I could go on, but the main thing that the speech should provide is some backbone to those who are actively working to prosecute the traitor, our first turncoat president and vice president as well as their co-conspirators. If we want to look like America to the rest of the world again, we have to make it clear that law breakers are not allowed to walk this country free.

Detail Plan for Closing Guantanamo?

Joe Bell — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:58:58 EST

So we get a feint in the direction of closing the American Gulag. Obama is raising the flag saying he is planning to close it "the first day". Like most basketball players, this is a good looking move. Until you notice that he is really saying that he is going to turn it over to the torturers to decide exactly when and how they will close it. That means that it will never be closed. The fake trials will go on, the torture will go on, the illegal detentions will go on. We need to make some effort to communicate with Obama that what we were talking about is closing it. Now. There is no need for a study. We know it is illegal already. There is no need for another kangaroo trial. These guys need to either go directly to US jails in Kansas, where they can be charged like criminals, or they need to go directly back to places where we know they won't be tortured or murdered. After all, our military and the CIA know for sure where all the places are that you can outsource torture already. We don't send them back to any of those places.

Here is a link to a site that will let you send a letter asking for a simple closure plan, not from the torturers, but from people as horrified by our lawlessness as we all are.

http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=OngZ6jq38wT6K0kpaXe4TQ..

Geithner's tax and domestic help troubles

Joe Bell — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 13:37:27 EST

The Replutocrats in Congress are all aflutter about Secretary nominee Geithner's tax problems. These are the same guys who take money by the bucketfulls from special interest lobbiest, and can only come up with a big payola to reward their economic team that has bankrupted the US treasury and plunged the world into a depression. The problems that Geithner has are nothing compared to the outright theft that we take a normal from Replutocrats. Financial guys are all crooks at heart, probably. They make money by stealing money from greater fools who got their money by working. So where is the news when the top financial guy for our government turns out to be a financial guy after all? I mean, it is not like the Comodity Trading group that was recently investigated, found to be violating everything people believe good government avoids, and then politely asked to please not do that anymore. But really. Cut the guy some slack. He is headed to be the chief crook in charge of the money. What can you expect?

Look at what our train system has fallen to

Joe Bell — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 17:50:02 EST

It is wonderful that Amtrak is trying to help move people into and out of Washington for the inaguration. I have heard that lots of people have given up going because the other means of transportation are already sold out. So this effort on the part of our passenger rail is to be appreciated. But look at all the implied inadequate investments that we have been making over the years to make our passengers have to follow all the regulations below. It is a shame on America. And since this is a citizen owned railroad, it is a shame on everyone. We should try to improve the passenger rail enough that next time, in 2012, when we are coming to hear Obama's second inagural speach, these rules are laughably out of date.

January 20 Inauguration Day Travel and Security

Because of the large crowds expected, use of Washington Union Station will be limited to Amtrak, MARC and VRE passengers. Due to extraordinary security measures associated with inaugural events, as of early afternoon the food court and most retail shops in Washington Union Station will be closed. Please be mindful of the following:

Arrive at the station no earlier than one hour prior to your train's departure time.
Due to expected crowding and limited access to ticketing facilities at Union Station in the afternoon, pick up your roundtrip tickets (your inbound and return tickets) before you board your train for Washington. Don't chance missing your train home by getting caught in the crowds trying to get your return ticket.
Access to the station in the afternoon will be limited to select points of entry and much of the station will be closed to the general public. Follow special signage to reach boarding gates for MARC, VRE and Amtrak trains.
Special traffic patterns in Washington, D.C., and specifically in and around Washington Union Station will be in effect.
Your safety and security are paramount. Please be patient and follow the instructions of station personnel and law enforcement while boarding and detraining, and exiting and entering Union Station.
Due to the high volume of traffic expected, passengers on some trains may be asked to remain on board for a brief period prior to detraining to ensure the safe and orderly movement of passengers through Union Station.
Restroom facilities in the station are limited and will be extremely crowded, so consider using the restroom before detraining and before returning to the station for your return trip. Portable restrooms will be available outside the station.
The station's food court and most retail shops will be closed early afternoon; however, food service will be available aboard inbound and outbound Amtrak trains.
Amtrak cannot provide alternate transportation or accommodations in the event of a service disruption.
Pack lightly, as no lockers or storage facilities will be available in the station. A list of prohibited items from the inaugural event sites and locations is available on the District of Columbia inaugural Web site.

Heightened front-line and behind-the-scenes security measures will be taken in stations and aboard trains, and may include:

Amtrak Police officers and Mobile Security Teams
Federal, state and local law enforcement and anti-terrorism forces
K-9 units (please do not approach or pet police dogs)
Identification checks
Passenger, and carry-on and checked baggage screening

Passengers with disabilities and/or special needs should specifically request assistance when making reservations. In addition, please notify your conductor of any special needs.

Volunteers wearing high-visibility vests will also be on hand at Washington Union Station to assist you.

Confirm Eric Holder as Attorney General

Joe Bell — Fri, 09 Jan 2009 12:12:04 EST

The justice department is supposed to be the law enforcement part of the executive branch. For the past eight years, the justice department has functioned as the law breaking sanctioning part of the executive branch. In every way, the department has been degraded to a place where simple minded political flunkies have okayed every illegal act of the Bush administration. Now the Replutocrats are preparing to fight in the senate against Eric Holder to become the new attorney general. Aparently their brain trustee, Karl Rove, is planning to orchestrate this. Karl is especially interested because he hopes that this circus will put some legs under the racist agenda of the Replutocrats again. The beginning of a democratic society is based directly on the rule of laws instead of the rule of men. It is a little strange that we have to insist on this idea, but don't forget that we have been torturing people at government expense for the last eight years as well. That is also a Karl Rove program. Below there is a link where you can generate mail in support of confirming Eric Holder. Please go and do it today.

https://secure.pfaw.org/site/SPageServer?pagename=Confirm_Holder

Something to do right now.

Joe Bell — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:33:16 EST

At least part of the damage that the Bush administration has done has come from executive directed omissions to enforce legislative acts. Things like the signing statements, weird supreme court decisions handed down by politicalized right wing justices and politicalization of the justice department have resulted in many laws on the books being watered down or ignored. Tomorrow, the house of representatives will take up legislation to strengthen and enforce the fair pay legislations, which will belatedly attempt to insure the right to sue for equal pay for equal work. It is about time that we started trying to enter the latter half of the 20th century on this. It is essentially spelled out in the constitution. Now is a good time to start enforcing the basic fairness laws of the land. Here is a link to a place where you can mail your congressperson's email box.

http://action.aclu.org/site/R?i=fRYREUsmP1m91MKSbMTUZA..

More work to reverse the damage

Joe Bell — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 10:58:33 EST

The balloting on the ideas and solutions for the Obama Biden administration goes on. It is nice to see some democracy working. However, there are some issues that are probably never going to win a majority vote in this country, but are still worth our discussing. One of these issues concerns the protection of our yourn people's access to accurate information. I know that the constitutional defenders and the get FISA right folks don't care about people below voting age. Their agendas are bigger and more adult. But the congress should take some time while trying to untangle the mess that Bush has made with information about reproduction. Gagging teachers and programs that offer clear information about how to prevent pregnancy in favor of forcing only ineffective abstinance only programs had lead us to the place where one fourth of the young people suffer from sexually transmitted infections. There should be an official statement that we believe everyone should know and have access to effective methods to plan and choose when they decide to reproduce. Here is a site that is supporting this through some email campaign and videos. I know, the constitutional defenders are really obsessed with religious, so they may not like this. And this doens't have anything to do with Jon's agenda either. But it is worth paying attention to.

http://prochoiceamerica.org/

Support this guy

Joe Bell — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 18:55:06 EST

I know that most of this goes unread, and that the Constitution Defenders are much more interested in arguing about religion than doing anything direct, but if you see this, go to the web site. This guy has taken some direct action against the oil companies who are trying to rob the public lands. I guess there isn't any constitutional block on robbery. Bush certainly was never able to find one. He needs our support. There is no religious content on his site either, so even the one of two constitutional defenders who are always waiting to pounce will be able to go.

http://www.bidder70.org/

The Constitution Needs to be Revived or Revised

Joe Bell — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 12:07:16 EST

It began to occur to me that we are a little late to the party in this forum, at least in name. The poor constitution is so beaten up and breached in many of its clauses and amendments, and so much abused that we really need a constitution revision forum. I was chatting with a bunch of people over the holiday and found that many of them didn't realize that the President doesn't have any power to declare a war. They were all working under the impression that Presidents by being "Commander in Chief" was always the one to start and execute wars. They used that belief to rationalize the continued killing of women and children in Iraq, and seem to even think it was inevitable that Presidents would continue wars indefinitely to protect their legacy, even after the war was unpopular. So the constitution has already lost its war powers clause. By the same token, the house of representatives has lost its ability to do anything but go along with the Executive and give the money for the war to the war department. We really need to fix that not by some concept of defense but by an offensive. People need to know that the nice man that comes down from Washington every other year is the guy who decided to start the war, raised the money from them for the war, and is continuing to kill the women and the children. If we aren't willing for that to be the way, we owe it to people everywhere to change the constitution so that everyone overseas and at home knows that we have a government headed by one person who has the power of life and death completely unchecked in his or her hands. This is our time, and it is ours to do.

Reason Enough

Joe Bell — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 09:09:19 EST

Weird reading experience this. The article is an excellent presentation about how useless torture has turned out to be in the bespoke state terrorism that has been the Bush administration. Well worth the read, but it is embedded in so many distracting pictures of women and their clothes or lack thereof that Vanity Fair makes its business on. Torture doesn't produce any good information. And it degrades its practicioners and government officials who sanction it, praise it. Like George Bush and Dick Cheney.

I don't know if this is a sort of self parody going back to pilgrim's progress. It does have a nice complete recursive sense to it of the pilgrim suffering at seeing the vanity fair and vanity eventually demonstrating that the suffering was empty.

http://www.vanityfair.com/magazine/2008/12/torture200812

Rebuild the Legislature

Joe Bell — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:32:23 EST

There is a lot of talk right now about George Bush pardoning his co-conspiritors. Send an email, sign a petition to stop him. If you look at his record, you don't need to worry or speculate about it. Those pardons have already been written, vetted through the political branch of the Justice Department and will be issues. We still do not have any idea the lengths that Bush will go to. He is intent on subverting the constitution apparently at every turn. The difficulty we have is that we are on the side of traditional US values, but did not pull the one lever we were supposed to. Bush and Cheney should have both been impeached. There is no more important thing for us to do than to remember that the legislative branch has been destroyed and the people have no advocates in the Federal government. I don't know what the real formula to restart the legislative branch will be, but I think it is something we will have to puzzle out over the next two years.

Supreme Court Starts To Worry About Its Legacy Too

Joe Bell — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 10:39:02 EST

The Supreme Court yesterday ordered an appeals court to reconsider a lawsuit against Donald Rumsfeld and other Bush administration officials, brought by three former Guantanamo detainees (all British citizens) who were tortured there. The Supremes directed the appeals court to reconsider its dismissal of the case in light of last summer's Boumediene v. Bush decision, allowing Guantanamo prisoners to challenge their detentions, the order said. This Boumedine case is interesting in looking at the bottom of the presentation at the link. You can see the really bad judges on the court's pictures. The ones who are grey, who voted against your constitutional protections and therefore in favor of allowing your government to detain you in jail without a charge indefinately. Hopefully, that is enogh of a constitutional miscarrage to get Obama's attention. And yours too.

Bush Says He Will Bail Out the Auto Industry

Joe Bell — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 19:05:04 EST

Bush, who is an oil servant, and in the direct thrall of the Saudi princes, stepped up and said that he and his were going to rescue the car companies. Being a failure himself, the most disliked president in history, he will not be able to recognize the failings of the executives of the automakers. He will blame all the problems not on the stupid decisions that these clowns have mede for the past 25 years, but he will say that the problems all come from the workers. He will probably come up with some way to lower the CAFE standards and revoke all the union contracts and remove all healthcare for workers at the auto plants. You can also look for him to make some executive orders that people who do not buy cars by some date certain will be fined. And he will authorize "enhanced sales interrogation techniques" for all GM and Chrysler car sales men. Maybe he will declare war on somebody and start dropping Hummers on their women and children. He will buy these Hummers for 10 times the normal price. And, you can be sure, each Hummer will be dropped with a full tank of premium grade gasoline.

Iraqi speaks symbolic disrespect for George Bush

Joe Bell — Sun, 14 Dec 2008 18:50:13 EST

George Bush is over in Iraq again today. This is the country that he lied to us about and started an executive branch war against, even though none of them had ever done us any harm. In this video a person who will soon be executed outside the building, threw his shoes at George Bush and called him a dog. These are pretty bold actions, but not so out of line when you consider that George Bush, using our money, has reduced Iraq to a chaotic death zone and set up a puppet state. Hopefully more people, perhaps even people here in the US, will begin to show their contempt for George Bush more openly. Of course the people already have in the past election, but we have been let down by our congress in not impeaching him and having him confined to a federal lock up for the rest of his miserable life.

http://www.dlisted.com/node/29748

Turn Away from Bush's Pro-Torture Policy

Joe Bell — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 22:47:58 EST

I am alive to the concept that this community is supposed to be about the constitution, and will try to keep that in the posts. And I don't know that we can make a direct constitutional argument about torture. Maybe it is an unreasonable search. Maybe it is sort of covered by the 9th amendment that talks to the general idea that people reserve rights that can't be listed, can't be counted, but are still reserved to them. I know that we have violated that during the last eight years, and have had the president himself say that torture is fine with him. He has had little torture scripting meetings right there in the White house where high members of his administration choreographed torture sessions. He has put people on the Federal payroll through training courses in torture, and then paid their wages while they were torturing people. All that said, I think we have to insist on Obama banning torture from everything and everywhere. It is something that George Bush decided on his own, by executive order. And I think Obama should reverse that order, and then issue some explicite thing that says we don't torture people, and we imprison people who do. I know that the religious among you will object. "What about the Inquisition?" "What about the witches?" and so on. But I don't thing a secular state like the US is supposed to be looking for anything that torture helps shed light on. Here is a place where you can sign a petition asking the same thing.

http://action.humanrightsfirst.org/campaign/etn_obama/85k6uxs9ze5536k?

Nancy Peolsi is signing you up for this Today

Joe Bell — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 12:50:28 EST

You may as well know that this charity appeal really touched Nancy Pelosi's heart, and she decided to sign you and your children up to sponsor thousands of these needy. It is apparently going to be made final today. You could sign up for one or two yourself, if you felt so moved. Don't forget, these are George Bush and Hank Paulson's favorite charity (with your money) as well.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qDC0qcf0kzE

What do they mean today?

Joe Bell — Sun, 07 Dec 2008 22:26:18 EST

I read my paper pertty throughly today. In it I found seven direct references to our being in a recession, and that we had been in a recession since the beginning of this year, so roughly four quarters. I recall that George Bush and Hank Paulson rushed the congress only a couple of months ago with the call that we must do something now! now! NOW! to keep from going into a recession. I don't expect the truth from George Bush about whether the sun is shining outside, but I began to wonder today. Do they really know that we are in a depression alrady, and so now they feel comfortable letting the recession cat out of the bag?

Is this the time to start a new party?

Joe Bell — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:47:28 EST

I heard some political consultants and some people in the fund raising business talking on the radio today. They were doing analysis for the last campaign. The historic one that elected Obama. First they discussed what a long shot it was, that this happened. Most of the things they mentioned, like the powerful Clinton Machine, Obama's relatively nonpartisan approach, the fact that though the Democrats have been working on a 50 state strategy they didn't really have any presence in lots of the states, several that Obama managed to win. Then one of them said a striking thing. He said that Obama's intranet fund raising was dominated by smaller contirbutors than is usual, and that many of them kept on giving and giving all during the campaign. And, that many of not all of them were people who had not contributed to a campaign or party before. That is where the three quarters of a billion dollars came from. And, this fundraising method and audience had managed to raise more money than the Replutocrats and the Democrats combined had raised in this election. So I began to wonder if this isn't the time to start a new political party? One that didn't have a stake in the civil war, or a hand in bringing on the depression, or make compromises with the corrupt Bush administration. Wouldn't it be nice to take off all these old ill fitting Democrat suits, suits that I have worn gladly for 45 years I will add, and slip into something a little more comfortable, less tainted with the imperial wars, less in bed with the lobby, less militaristic, less doctrinairaly capitalist?

Just a thought.

How Does This Obama Site Work Now

Joe Bell — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:06:40 EST

Apparently, the posts you make to your blog don't work the way they used to. Once, when you posted something to this blog and also posted it to other group blogs, your posting and any comments and so on would come to you by email from the summary mailed from this site and the people who were reading and commenting in the other group. That doesn't work anymore. There are no comments recorded, and nothing comes out of the digests that logically should cover this. However, people are still reading this site. And several groups that I used to read are going on and publishing digests somehow, but using email exclusively. And in those digests we see other people commenting on the listserve.

For example, yesterday I posted a link to a lot of Bush's co-conspiritors with a petition to try and stop Bush from pardoning them preemptivly. One person commented that he had looked up all but three of them and had found that all of them listed themselves as "Christian". And another guy commented that if these Bush guys look creepy to you, you should look at Obama's picks so far. Now on the first point, I think that it is not supposed to matter what religion a public official claims to follow. This is supposed to be a secular state here in America. Who cares what religion a government offical practices? I think one of the main problems we have from Bush is that he violates the establishment clause of the constitution all the time. And on the second point I pretty much like the people that Obama has selected. I wish Bill Richardson was going to be Secretary of State because he has actually shown himself to be capable of that roll. But I am sure he will be fine as commerce. And I think Hillary Clinton is really smart and accomplished and can grow into the role she has been selected for. So I suspect that the guy who was complaining about Obama's picks has some other agenda.

Part of my reason for writing this is so that people who are confused about what it happening during this transition to this great organizing site now that we don't have to be raising money all the time. It still functions, and it still gets visits. But the down stream functions are all turned off. Just so you know.

Rogue's Gallery of Constitutional Criminals

Joe Bell — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 16:12:31 EST

If you want to see something both scary and sickening, follow the link below. There are pictures of the rogue's gallery of the Bush administration. A thick brew of scoundrals and people who place no value on civilization or human life. These are the people that George Bush has conspired with to subvert the constitution. We all need to visit these pictures so we burn the felon's faces into our memory and sign the petition to let George Bush know that we do not want him to grant preemptive pardons to his co-conspiritors.

http://action.aclu.org/site/PageServer?pagename=Pardon_gallery

Rick Perry at it Again

Joe Bell — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 11:24:28 EST

Again, yesterday, our useless governor was out. He and our state comptroller were talking about how much better things were in Texas than they are in the rest of the country. The things he had to talk about were that 25% of the children in Texas don't have any sort of health insurance and that they live in households that are below the poverty line which is the highest percentage in the United States. He also could boast that we had lost some 60,000 jobs during the last year, and that we ranked 47th out of 50 in job loss. While the rest of the country has not noticed a particular change in terms of overall health, we Texans managed to drop from 37th to 46th in terms of the overall health of the general public. And of course he could crow about how our state has managed to get all the way down to 49th out of 50 in educational attainment. Now in some places the governors are struggling to meet their budget, but here we have a surplus. Of course the way our useless governor is getting that surplus is by not funding any programs to improve our health, our education and our welfare. He calls this "business friendly". See, Rick Perry and his business friends apparently don't want people to be able to afford to send their kids to doctors or school, and they are sort of glad when they don't even have jobs.

http://www.americashealthrankings.org/2008/pdfs/tx.pdf

Take the fence off of marriage

Joe Bell — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 13:13:01 EST

I don't remember if Obama said he was in favor of letting people who want to get married get married or not. I do know that the Replutocrats are against that simple idea. They managed to run this stupid and misleadingly name law called the defense of marriage act through the national legislature. It is really not a defense of marriage bill, it is to fence off marriage. Now in the first place, as far as I can see, this is one of those things that the states are supposed to decide, not the federal government. And in the second place, we have no call to keep anyone who wants to from getting married and enjoying all the special priviledges that our government affords people who are married. So, to kick off the new legislative session, it seems like a good idea to have the congress repeal that mistaken legislation. Here is a petition you can sign to try and get Peolsi and Reed moving on it.

http://site.pfaw.org/site/R?i=wjSJ0NSGUN6P0HIxlHEXGw..

Our Worthless Governor Rick Perry

Joe Bell — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 10:50:53 EST

Yesterday afternoon a report from the highly politicized US Justice Department to our worthless governor showed that in Texas, for the whole time that Perry has been governor, we have failed to adequately protect the safety of people in our disabled services centers. Over 100 have died because of poor or no care, and there have been thousands of instances of abuse. Now you know that the Justice Department is fully politicized in the Bush administration, so to find them critical of any Replutocrat administration, the abuses have to have been much worse in the first place. But, in response to this report, our worthless governor decided to comment on the outcome of some football poll, and how it was unfair that the University of Texas didn't get ranked higher than some other state's barber college. Do we have impeachment as an option here in Texas? If not, we could at least write the useless governor. Oh, wait, that would mean that he would have to read. So never mind.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/img/12-08/1201stateschoolsreport.pdf

Progressive Economic Proposal

Joe Bell — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:39:24 EST

This is a good article about both the economic Ponzi scheme we are in now
and the directions that we may want to explore to get out of it. The third section proposes a speech for Obama with a wonderful take on the opportunities afforded by the current crash. It is unlikely that Obama will take the advice, but the reasoning is good and well intended.

http://www.spiritualprogressives.org/article.php/korten

Transportation Secretary

Joe Bell — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 09:33:57 EST

I like that Obama has decided to put the United Nations representative back in the White House. Bush was really wrong to degrade that position. I think we will need to move the transportation sector into a White House position as well, because transportation is already a neglected area. And all the problems that we have going forward are going to be worse if we don't deal directly with transportation. Especially railroads, mass transit, and bicycling. These opportunities are fleeting, and we need to be out front on them when organizing to work on the crumbling infrastructure. This video captures some of the pressing problems of the bicyclist.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/580992/tips_for_cyclists/

End the War Sooner Than the SOFA

Joe Bell — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 12:17:12 EST

Today, I read an editorial in the Fort Worth Star Telegram (my home newspaper) by a person named Trudy Rubin. It says that she writes for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I don't really know her and her political leanings, but she made several mistakes in this piece that need to discussed more widely. This piece said that the Status of Forces Agreement currently be rammed through the Iraqi congress was a good thing for President Elect Obama. She said that it was good because it gave him longer than he had promised to get the troops out, and that it provided some sort of cover for him to not become the President who lost the war in Iraq. To the first point, we don't need any extension of the war in Iraq. Sixteen months is about $160 billion more than we can afford. This economic situation is serious folks. We cannot afford to keep lavishing money on the military to kill women and children in a country that never did the US any harm without sinking further and further into a history making depression. Defense spending is a euphemism for waste, and we can little afford more of that no matter how many electoral votes we got. Secondly, there is in a constitutional sense no President who can loose a war. Presidents in the United States cannot start wars, only the legislature can. I know that we have fudged and fretted with that since Korea, but that is plainly what the constitution says. And, even if it were not true, it is pretty obvious to me that George Bush is the hands down favorite for the title “President Who Lost the Illegal War in Iraq”. No amount of effort on anyone's part will separate Bush and his rubber stamp congress from that badge. I think it would be fine of folks wrote to Trudy Rubin and told her so.

trubin@phillynews.com

The First 150 Days

Joe Bell — Tue, 11 Nov 2008 13:59:39 EST

For the past eight years we had the most antidemocratic administration in our history. Nine of the first 10 amendments to the constitution have been violated and maybe even killed. Rich people, corporations and banks now openly steal from the national treasury. Authoritarian religious bigots impose their backward racialist sexist dogma on the law books, using the cover of security or their hate filled religions. We sent off men and women to kill men, women and children for oil. Our politicians plan and discuss the torture of other human beings in meetings in the Whitehouse. This blatant contempt and the desperation it provoked is the reason for the recent electoral outcome. It shows that many of us in this land hope things can change. But the agents of the last eight years are now everywhere saying that the past election doesn't show that this country has turned against their programs. Even some of our gutless leaders like Nancy Pelosi are arguing that we need to move over toward this failed ideology ourselves. They are the ones who plan to construct barriers to the hopes that the last election actually embodied. We need to stay on the progressive course, at least for the next 150 days. I don't know exactly how that happens, but I do recall that FDR managed a good bit of legislation through the congress and set aside a lot of Hoover's executive orders during his first 100 days. He was able to show his determination to resolve the crises he faced. And he didn't try to move over toward the center, like Speaker Pelosi suggests, he did what he needed to get the center over closer to him. I think the center is already closer to the progressive side anyway. I am trusting Obama's constitutional knowledge to forge the way forward to a Bill of Rights that we can be proud of again. And most of that can be done by executive order since Bush never tried to get the legislature involved. But from looking at the chief of staff, I am still not clear on what the legislative agenda is going to look like.

Things we can expect

Joe Bell — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 10:27:21 EST

I read an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. The writer said that he felt the treatment of George Bush was shameful. Now I normally wouldn't even read a biased rag like the WSJ, and would seldom find anything in it to agree with, but I think the writer is absolutely right, and I hold Nancy Pelosi directly responsible. George Bush should have been impeached for his flagrant disregard for the Constitution and existing laws and treaties. He spies on Americans who are not even under suspicion much less actually associated with terrorist, he allows torture of people held in secret prisons without charge, he completely sets aside the First Amendment by allowing surveillance of political activist, gives money to religious organizations and supports their practices of discriminations that are illegal in all other places in the country, and he started a war under false pretenses which has killed uncounted women and children in a country that has never harmed the US in any way and which has resulted in the pointless deaths of thousands of American citizens. So he should have been impeached and be serving several sentences in a federal prison as well.

Our next president will have a historic opportunity to take very important steps to restore the rule of law in the interrogation and detention of detainees held at Guantanamo Bay, Iraq, Afghanistan, and in secret prisons around the globe. Every action taken pursuant to an executive order of President Bush can be reversed by executive order of President Obama, on the first day. After he gets done picking the secretary of the treasury (that was why I was reading the WSJ in the first place) he should get some guys busy writing some executive orders directing all agencies to modify their policies and practices.

One order to cease and prohibit the use of torture and abuse, without exception
One to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay and transfer the detainees to countries where they will not be tortured or detained without charge
One to cease and prohibit the practice of extraordinary rendition.

These things have always been illegal in the US. It seems fitting to me that a second Illinois president should follow the lead of Abraham Lincoln and say " With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations" and then sign these orders which will be a good beginning for peace with all nations.

http://72.3.233.244/images/asset_upload_file45_37256.pdf

Now what?

Joe Bell — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:24:14 EST

As we all expected, and as the polls predicted, we have won a great election. This election was the most positive and issue focused process that I have participated in. I think that enough people voted and the margins are adequate for us to talk about being able to follow the discussions and the election with actual policy changes and legislative action. I only have a couple of things that I think we should focus on. One is ending the war in Iraq. Sooner than discussed in the election time frame, if at all possible. We have never had any reason to be in Iraq, and we have even less now. We have no vision for the future of the people of Iraq, and even if we did, don't we believe that they should get to follow their own lights instead of ours? The founders put us on a strange path when the decided that life and liberty somehow had something to do with the pursuit of happiness, but it is our path. At least we have to be able to see that happiness will be different for each of us, and we should be able to extend that idea to the people of Iraq as well. A secondary reason for getting out as soon as possible is that we can't afford it. We can't afford to keep killing women and children in Iraq, we can't afford to keep risking and killing our own citizens in the occupation, and we can't afford the money thrown down a hole after the other trillion or so.

The second thing I would like to see is some system of balance in the programs that we do undertake. I think the legislative branch has called this "pay as you go". It is a good idea that I would add a little wrinkle to. The wrinkle is that programs that have to be paid for by some increase in taxation or cut in spending to offset them should get favored treatment if their offset represents a decrease in defense spending. We currently spend at least 30% more on defense than we did at the beginning of the Bush debacle. This is not the part of the budget that is devoted to killing women and children in a country that never did us any harm, this is basic DoD budget. Just a day before the Bush administration declared that we had a financial crises, the legislature passed, on a simple voice vote, the largest defense budget in history, bigger in fact than when we were arming the allies in the Second World War. I have heard that the arms industry is the main business of the United States, that it is what we pursue happiness by. But actually the defense business in this country is completely out of control. And, it turns out, the jobs it creates are not nearly as numerous or valuable to the economy as the same amount of money spent on education. I would encourage you to look at the report at the link below. So, I would really like to see the pay as you go idea tweaked to include that you get some preferred treatment if the offset decreases the money spent on defense.

http://www.peri.umass.edu/fileadmin/pdf/other_publication_types/PERI_IPS_WAND_study.pdf

Thinking about Governor Palin

Joe Bell — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 09:00:41 EDT

Working hard, time for a little break. This link helps you focus on some of the ramifications of Governor Palin being just one 72 year old heart beat away from being the president. Be careful of the red phone…

http://www.palinaspresident.us/

Now get back out there and get the people to the polls. It is just a little ways, and then the bright new morning.

Vote Early

Joe Bell — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 08:54:19 EDT

Halloween for "Big Bad John" Senator John Cornyn, who dressed up in a fancy western jacket and played cowboy for his Texas Republican Convention video. We have a saying here in Texas; All hat, no cows. And yesterday Senator Cornyn said in Waco that people concerned about the current economic crisis are "Chicken Littles". He is just trying to back up the song and dance that Senator McCain's economic advisor put out where he said we were just whiners, and that we were having a psychological recession. But the scary truth is that this politician is out-of-touch on the issues most important to Texas families. Senator Cornyn recently has gone so far as to guarantee that 1.4 million Texas children who are just wishing they had health insurance will never get it. He has voted six times against health insurance for children. Representative Rick Noriega has the vision and leadership skills Texans need, and we must elect him to the U.S. Senate. So when you are out there at the polls, if you happen to be in Texas, vote for Noriega too.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tt05KC3Add8

All Eyes on Governor Palin...Leave out the "l"

Joe Bell — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 13:03:47 EDT

I don't know how desperate Senator McCain's campaign is feeling. Certainly there are bad sounding polling numbers from all sorts of places, even some predictions that Arizona has a chance of sending Democrats to the House, and maybe even giving it electoral votes to Obama. It is a bad time for all the Replutocrats, and justifiably so. They have run the worst government this country has ever had for the last seven years, and people are justifiably disgusted with them. It is a piece conventional wisdom that one should be cautious when dealing with an animal which has been systematically cornered because the animal my do things that are crazy because of the fear. I don't have much experience with that because I wouldn't normally try to corner any animal because of the intrinsic cruelty of it. However, once I was trying to catch our cat, who had run away from our new house. I put out one of those live traps with some pieces of her snacks in it on the deck. In the morning, I discovered that I had a raccoon instead of the cat. That raccoon was completely trapped, no idea of any possible escape. He really thrashed about in the trap when I came out of the door, actually managing to move it clear across the deck in his frenzy. I am not sure which one of us was more afraid of the other one. I got the big leather gloves that I used the tend the fire and long pants with those high rubber boots and managed to pick the trap up and get it in the back of my pickup. By this time I am sure that I was more afraid of the raccoon than he was of me, even though he was the one in cage. I drove over to a place that is on a greenbelt with a stream that leads down to the river. I thought that would be a good place to relocate him. I stood the trap up on its end so the raccoon was sitting in the bottom and then turned away. It was weirdly calming to the raccoon, who seemed to relax as long as I wasn't looking at him. He let me open the trap and clip it open. I pushed the trap over so it was flat in the bed, and the raccoon sort of ambled out, walked around the bed of the truck and looked over the edge in a couple of places. He got down to the end, climbed up on the tailgate, jumped over into the grass and ambled away.

I know it is a pathetic fallacy, but maybe we should turn our gaze away from Senator McCain here at the end. We could certainly pay more attention to Governor Palin, talk about her clothes habits, her weird behavior when her water broke with her special needs child and she decided to take a 12 hour plane ride so she could deliver in a walk-in clinic in a suburb of Anchorage without an attending doctor, her really unusual idea that she is seeing, from her back yard, a country that is nearly 700 miles from her house, and her weird religious practices like speaking in tongues which even the Apostle Paul cautions against. And of course if we run out of that talk, we could switch to Governor Palin's close connections to convicted felons like Ted Stevens, and her personal adventures in using her influence for personal gain since she has been Governor. Maybe then Senator McCain could just jump up on the tailgate, and amble off into the sunset. No hard feelings. It would probably make the night time talk shows funnier too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQ4eeQzDlgM

Governor Palin's Sentences

Joe Bell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:45:23 EDT

It is really strange how things happen in pairs. Governor Palin has been talking and talking about how she is a reformer. She doesn't usually talk about her close affiliation with Senator Ted Stevens, the long time senator from Alaska. He got her plum jobs and sponsored her in her run for the Governorship. He supported her even when she quit the only "real work" job and used the opportunity to backstab (that favorite of the Christian Right) the man who had helped her in that job. Even when she used influence for personal gain in the State House, he stayed with her. Senator Stevens likes, as the saying goes, the cut of her jib. They are very close, you see. Now Senator Stevens has been on trial for lying on his financial disclosures in failing to report at least a quarter million of "gifts" that they oil lobby gave him. The good senator protested in his defense that "I didn't want the this or the that, they just gave them to me." He said it with great spirit. It didn't work, the jury convicted him on all seven counts. And yesterday afternoon while I was riding my bike home from work I heard on the radio that Governor Palin had been questioned about her extravagant spending on clothes. $150,000 in about one month. Her answer? "Oh, those clothes, I didn't want them. The Republican Committee just gave them to me." Is there an echo in here? They are so close that they complete each other's sentences, though hopefully Senator Stevens will serve his whole sentence himself. If they throw the book at him, which is what he has always advocated for other felons in his state, he will be in for 35 years.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI

keep on going

Joe Bell — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 09:20:45 EDT

You may not have seen this video. It is really good and positive, uplifting. Which is what we all need today. Because we all need to keep working to get the people out to the polls in spite of the Replutocrat threats and intimidation, we all have to go vote. Today if you can. Certainly by November 4.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3iojPaw8yX0

Good Luck if We Keep On Working

Joe Bell — Mon, 27 Oct 2008 11:55:23 EDT

In lots of ways, we are turning out to be really lucky. Remember that the crash and depression started in 1929, just a few months after the Hoover administration started. That crash and economic downturn started because of a another long experiment in relaxed government regulation and lowered taxes on rich people. But instead of having a president who was willing to intervene, the country had to weather a long period of isolationism and exhortations to get a job when unemployment was already at 25% and the government hadn't even honored its promises to the returning veterans of WWI. Just think how dismal Senator McCain, old school and economically clueless, would be trying to complete the third term of George Bush. Instead we have the great good luck to elect a president who is brimming with good ideas and intelligence, just in time. Who knows all the things that can come out of the next four years? Reforming the IMF? Expanding public spending on the crumbling American infrastructure? Establishing coordination between the US Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank? Making real progress on energy independence and lowering the levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere? Paying down our huge debt and filling the "capital hole"? Creating mechanisms for banking supervision? Safeguarding our companies against aggressive sovereign wealth funds? Reversing the Replutocrat design for economic concentration and wealth disparity fostered by the Bush tax cuts? The potential is tremendous, and the need to keep working to get the voters out is more important today because there is less time. And don't forget that our volunteers are competing against Senator McCain's paid walkers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d98t2c2XZE&eurl

Senator McCain's Half Track Mind

Joe Bell — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 16:45:11 EDT

Senator McCain is going around in the few safe Replutocrat areas left to him and saying that Senator Biden is not confident of Obama's readiness for being president. He is intentionally misunderstanding something that Senator Biden said about the likelihood that there will be some international crisis which will test Obama when he is in office. It is a sign of the weird warmongering that is what Senator McCain thinks is the only way America can be challenged, the only valid response. But the challenge of the foreseeable future is unlikely to be a military challenge, but an economic one. The past eight years have put the United States in an extremely weak leadership position. After all, we have been continually killing women and children in a country that never did us any harm, running up a huge debt (what the Asians are referring to as A Capital Hole) by spending, squandering, $10 billion a month. So the likelihood is that the international crisis will be just a continuation of the current financial meltdown as it ramifies around the world. Now I know that Senator McCain thinks that you can solve any problem with bombs, but the rest of the world will be trying to find out the depth of America's response in terms of wisdom and compassion for whatever collapse overtakes whichever country.

Here we have a sample of the depth of Senator McCain's knowledge and experience.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2kyXN4ZVQg

McCain Reprise of Sleaze

Joe Bell — Fri, 24 Oct 2008 14:49:05 EDT

I live down here in Texas, have most of my life. We all remember the campaign for governor back in 1993 when George Bush came out on the political stage. Actually he had been on the political stage most of his life since his dad was the VP and then the President and he had run unsuccessfully for the house once, but he just burst into the governor's office that year. He was well known around the state for having been the coke delivery boy Texas Rangers up in Dallas, but nobody thought of him as any account. Rich men's sons frequently turn out that way. And he was running against a really good governor who had done a lot of good for the state. It seemed like it was a cake walk for Governor Richards there are the end. But the Karl Rove principle was still only hinted at. During the last three weeks of that campaign, Karl Rove fired up $300,000 of push polling calls all across the state saying that the Governor and all of her staff, maybe the whole state government, was gay. He also launched a huge leafleting and whispering campaign in the valley, where the sitting governor was very popular, saying that people who had any traffic tickets, parking tickets, expired inspection stickers, child support complaints, warrants of any kind, were going to be rounded up when they came to the polls. Sadly, George Bush came out of nowhere to win. The trademark negative campaigning and voter suppression that George Bush taught his lackey Senator McCain worked first here in Texas. And that is what Senator McCain is launching now on a national scale. Sleaze, slime, racism, and this weird McCarthyism/Law and Order thread.

It is so much better to be on this side. I don't hear anything but positive, optimistic policy and plans from the Obama campaign. So I am thinking that this is working. I called some people yesterday in Ohio, and all of them thought that Obama was the only one who was addressing their worries about the economy. It was only a list of 20, but that was a first for me. So I think everyone should keep on going, and get the people who are out there worried with no one talking about their problems to get out to the polls and vote.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-T2iGkLJY

McCain Reprise of Eagle Eyes

Joe Bell — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 14:18:42 EDT

Senator McCain is rolling out one of their oldest and most misleading scare tactics screaming that Democrats and their supporters are planning to flood the polls with illegal voters. He comes by this deception honestly, if that old saw makes any sense. The Replutocrats first raised the alarm over Democratic voter fraud more than 40 years ago. In the first presidential campaign that I remember Arizona Replutocrat Barry Goldwater, launched “Operation Eagle Eye”. His campaign was going to put 100,000 “eagle eyes” at polling places across America to catch illegal voters. We lived in Louisiana at the time, and my mom was one (or two I guess) of those Eagle Eyes. I don't think they turned up any evidence to support their fear mongering. But my mom lodged a protest with the voting official about every black voter who showed up to contribute to Johnson’s landslide victory.

For the next forty years similar Replutocrat "ballot security" operations failed to uncover voter fraud. This practice of “voter suppression” became a small industry for sleaze bag operators like Karl Rove. And as you would expect George Bush has voter fraud as a top priority of his whole administration. And as you would expect, when the most incompetent president in the history of the United States sets a priority, things begin to happen. Since 2002 the federal government has charged a whopping 120 persons nationwide with voter fraud. So you can easily see why George Bush's lackey Senator McCain, in his current campaign like thing, has charged that ACORN “is now on the verge of maybe perpetrating one of the greatest frauds in voter history in this country, maybe destroying the fabric of democracy.” The last thing that we need in the final days of the presidential election is a bunch of worn out old phony charges of voter fraud.

That is why we need to keep working to get as many of the people as we can to vote, even to vote early if they can, but to vote by Election Day. There are plenty of folks interested now all over the country. Our newspaper here in Fort Worth reported that something like 67,000 new voters registered just in Tarrant County since the primary.

Palin Family Budget

Joe Bell — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:25:24 EDT

Governor Palin has spent $150,000 on clothes in the last 5 weeks. She spent another $30,000 on people to do her hair and put on her makeup. At that rate, she would be burning through $2,000,000 in a year. That is just on clothing and personal care. Governor Palin appears in her speeches to be talking about what an ordinary person she is, an average small town American, and a hockey mom. Based on the ordinary family budget, that expense would be something like five percent of the total budget for a year. So her trajectory demonstrated by her clothes and personal care budget would come to about $40,000,000 for a year. So here is the family budget.

Palin Family Expenses

Category $ Spent % of Total

Food 4,792,000 11.98

food at home 2,840,000 7.41

food take out 1,828,000 4.57

Alcoholic Beverages 336,000 0.84

Housing 10,632,000 26.58

shelter 6,068,000 15.17

utilities 2,224,000 5.56

furniture 356,000 .89

Clothing 1,920,000 4.80

Transportation 5,864,000 14.66

Health Care 1,832,000 4.58

Entertainment 1,684,000 4.21

Personal Care 436,000 1.09

Miscellaneous (ammunition, education, childcare, entertainment, etc.)

1,824,000 4.56

Cash Contributions 1,076,000 2.69

Personal Insurance & Pensions

3,084,000 7.71

Life & other Personal Insurance

176,000 0.99

Pensions & Social Security

2,688,000 6.72

Personal Taxes 3,440,000 8.60

Total $40,000,000

So actually it is not really suprising that Governor Palin is not too interested in the middle class and its current problems. Another interesting point is that Governor Palin actually got all this money from people, probably lobbyist employed by big defense contractors, alcohol producers and money launderers, who contributed it to the Republican Party. They are rich beyond most people's ability to imagine, so it seems natural to them. The mess we are in economically comes from letting people like them along with Governor Palin, Senator McCain, Senator Stevens, and George Bush run the country for the last eight years.

We have to keep working to get the people who don't even make 25% as much in a year as Governor Palin spends on beer in a year. Right? Hockey moms drink beer?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek3jAkx9m10

Bush McCain Try to Kill the Endangered Specie Act

Joe Bell — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:02:31 EDT

A couple of months ago, I responded to a request for comment from the Interior Department Fish and Wildlife folks on a rule change. The comment was to tell the department what regular citizens felt about using CO2 emissions as a regular function of the Fish and Wildlife department when considering endangered species. This request was the result of a judiciary finding that said that CO2 was exactly the kind of gas that could be monitored and controlled by the Clean Air Act which is in the purview of the Environmental Protection Agency. Apparently the Interior Department wanted to see if we felt that the climate change could also affect the animals that live around us. My comment was logged as number 2008817118574 which I took to mean that it was the 118,574th comment. At the time I figured that would take them way past the end of the Bush administration to review and was relieved. We all know that George Bush and his lackey Senator McCain just like dirty water and he doesn't care how high the CO2 levels get since he has air conditioning in all of his mansions. However, I read today that the Interior Department has decided that they will finish the review of all of the comments in 36 hours, and issue a finding and a new rule right then. The newspaper says that there are over 200,000 comments and they are intending to use 15 people, contractors interestingly enough, to read seven of the comments a minute for the rest of the week. That is just one more example of the Fast Talk Express at work. I am surprised that they were able to round up 15 speed readers that quickly. Or wait, oh, I get it, these 15 guys can't read. That is why they needed to us contractors since the civil service exam and all insures that regular federal workers are able to read.

Vote for Obama Early

Joe Bell — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 10:00:36 EDT

I voted this morning. I got my ballot last night in the mail, and this morning, before breakfast, marked it for Obama, put it in the pink envelope, sealed it, put the pink envelope in the white envelope, sealed it, signed it across the flap, stamped it and put it out for the postman. What a long road this has been. I am glad to have gotten to vote for such a fine man with such great plans for my country. Our country.

Riding my bike to work today I listened to the radio. They had Senator McCain and his friend Joe the Plumber's Helper talking to people in Pennsylvania. It is such a burden to listen to Senator McCain talk. In this talk he said that he was in the airplane sitting on the deck of an aircraft carrier with a Cuban target assigned during the Cuban missile standoff. He said that was the test for being President. So if I understand him, what he is thinking is that being a government employee who showed up for work one day, sat down at his workstation and drew his paycheck for sitting there doing nothing while the clearer heads around him figured out that there was nothing anywhere that was worth what was at risk and stood down is some kind of qualification. We can go further and make it clear that the workstation was a very expensive one, built by contractors at government expense. It was sitting on a huge ship which was very expensive, built by contractors at government expense. The bombs that he had attached to his workstation were very expensive, built by contractors at government expense. So a reasonable person would expect that Senator McCain would have a realistic understanding of the redistributive effects of all government programs, having been on the receiving end of so many and so much. But he turns directly from this example of his great good fortune at government expense to criticize the Obama tax cuts for the middle class as socialist. He says that Joe the Plumber's Helper, who would get a tax cut in Obama's plan along with 95% of the people in the country, would be hurt by that plan. And that the pain would be from Obama's socialism. I admit that Senator McCain copped to not knowing anything about the economy early in the campaign. And certainly he has held up his end of that bargain. But he keeps making all these wild statements about his plans and beliefs about the economy, all of them inept and out of touch. It is just painful to listen to him. I turned off the radio and rode on with just the roar of the traffic.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C4egXbhSOhk

McCain's heroes - George Bush and Karl Rove

Joe Bell — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:15:58 EDT

Charles Keating, Morris Udall, Scoop Jackson, Barry Goldwater, Billy Mitchell, Emiliano Zapata and Teddy Roosevelt. Maybe, probably, there are more. These are the ones that I remember from his speeches and his second book. It is a pretty contrived public relations list. He says he admires people that he thinks are like what he would like for us to believe he is like. Morris Udall and Teddy Roosevelt were both men who loved the out doors and made real efforts to preserve them for the future. What had Senator McCain done on that score? Nothing. Udall also worked hard to improve the standard of living, health and education of the American Indians. What has Senator McCain done on that score? Nothing, but he has arranged for the American Indians to become the new center for the gambling business in the United States. Scoop Jackson, Barry Goldwater and Billy Mitchell are champions of the air force and extremely committed to war, no matter where, no matter when. And Barry Goldwater wanted to nuke everyone preemptively. So Senator McCain could have been telling the truth here. He liked Charles Keating well enough to take a lot of money from him, but that is not really heroic, especially when the money was stolen from the people who deposited it in his bank. Emiliano Zapata is a really weird choice on this list because he was a champion of the native people's right to own land. Senator McCain is a champion of the native people's right to own casinos, but that is not really the same thing. However, the main point of this for me is to show that Senator McCain doesn't say that his hero list includes George Bush and Karl Rove. And Senator McCain has been demonstrating that he likes these guys best.

Senator McCain is running an extremely negative, fear mongering campaign, just like George Bush and Karl Rove. This sort of talk tends to distort the polling information because people are ashamed to say that they believe what is obviously a smear. So we have to keep working to both counter the negative stuff, and get people out to vote. McCain supporters are already illegally purging voters from the rolls in some states and whipping up hysteria over ACORN. These are standards of the Bush Rove campaign to keep people from voting. Here in Texas they are circulating misleading flyers about the voting process. Their aim is to suppress voter turnout, so we have to keep working to help people go vote. McCain smears are targeted to dominate the real news for a week or two. The press keeps repeating the smear and then adds some small disclaimer at the end to say that it is not true. So we have to keep working to talk directly to the people to counteract the false information and get the people to go vote. We know from the history of this McCain-Bush campaigning style that the popular vote shifts radically in the final days of the race. People get disgusted with the negativity and decide they don't want anything to do with politics. Some people get angry. Some people get scared. So we have to keep working to spread the positive messages we have been delivering the whole time, and get the people to go vote. If we do all this, keep working and get the people to go vote, we can get the kind of landslide that will give us a huge mandate. But, we have to keep on working. It is not long, compared to how long we have been out here already, and it is easier now that we can see that the Obama positive idea actually does counter the McCain-Bush negativity. Yes We Can.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdNgMKPV9xQ

Senator McCain's Constant Lies

Joe Bell — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 15:58:59 EDT

I understand that there is sometimes a problem when people make a mistake getting them to own up to it. They frequently want to blame someone else, or point to some circumstance that justifies their behavior. The cartoon called Family Circus had this recurring theme when something got broken or spilled, the kids all scattered saying "Not Me" (some little ghost) did it. The McCain campaign seems to be caught in the same stuff now. In the last debate Senator McCain introduced a guy he said was Joe the Plumber and said that Obama's plans were keeping this guy from realizing his plan to buy the plumbing business he currently worked for. It sounded homey, and Senator McCain milked it for all it was worth. It was sort of a surprise move, and he seemed to revel in it. But later it turns out that Joe the Plumber is not a plumber, he is at best a plumber's helper. He has no papers and he has failed to complete his apprenticeship that would admit him to the lowest level of skilled workmen we depend on to actually be plumbers. Further, it turns out that Joe the Plumbers helper isn't planning to buy the business from his plumber employer. He is hoping to take it over when the plumber decides to stop working. Maybe that means he is planning to buy the truck that has Plumber painted on the side? Maybe buy the tools too? And maybe he will be able to do that after he clears up the lien the IRS has on him for not paying taxes on his wages the last couple of years. But the best part is that Senator McCain picked him as a guy that Obama's tax plans would aversely effect when the facts about the existing business is that in Obama's plan, this business would be getting a tax break. Not so in Senator McCain's plan.

So I am confused that Senator McCain is still talking about Joe the Plumber's Helper. But I read the paper this morning and it says that he used Joe the Plumber's Helper in three speeches yesterday. And in two on Saturday. So even though he could have run from the room saying "Not Me did it" and ducked out of this mistake, he is making it over and over again. I wonder if he just doesn't know that most people try to tell the truth most of the time, and they expect their leadership to do the same. Not some heavy burden, because we don't expect you to explain all your mistakes. But it seems reasonable that you would at least clear out and stop making the same mistake over and over again. Makes you wonder if people should pay more attention to this story as well.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20081007_investigating_john_mccains_tragedy_at_sea/

George Bush's Lackey Senator McCain

Joe Bell — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:06:06 EDT

I am not a very trusting soul, I guess. This whole bailout idea sounds really suspicious to me. It is hard to believe George Bush under any circumstances since his lies got us into a never ending war with Iraq for none of the reasons he said. I notice the even Senator McCain is still repeating those lies. That is what one would expect a lackey to do, so I suppose it isn't really a blot on him. He is just a spear carrier. George Bush also lied about the telephone surveillance of Americans which we now have direct testimony from people in the business showing that it is not targeted or even controlled. I notice that Senator McCain is still repeating the controlled, targeted and necessary lies. That is what one would expect a lackey to do, since he is just a spear carrier. Now we have George Bush saying the sky is falling the sky is falling and the only thing we can do is take a couple of trillion dollars out of the treasury and give it to the Wall Street guys, and later give it to the bankers. No strings. And again, Senator McCain goes along. He even offers other ideas like cutting capital gains tax rates to seven percent. Weird when you think that most people will not have any capital gains this year, but much in line with George Bush's plans to give money to people who already have lots of it. A lackey, a spear carrier.

But I just feel that there is some agenda about this bailout that we don't know about yet. I can't imagine any problem with less than 10% of the sub-prime mortgages being big enough that we couldn't deal with it in the normal course of business with our existing agencies and practices. And if mortgages were it, why are all the bailout measures aimed at people who have nothing to do with mortgages? Just like there wasn't anything about Iraq that would have merited a single person being killed over it. Just like the crazy idea that you can spy on Americans because of things you don't know they are doing. Or that we were somehow relieved of observing the Geneva Conventions because we are exceptionally nice people.

Could this gambit be intended to take away the ability of the United States to borrow money for some time in the future? That will make the dollar a worthless currency everywhere but at the 7 Eleven on the corner. That could provide cover for all the Saudi princes to switch to the Euro for trading oil and stick the Russians with lots of worthless dollars and a struggling economy. We can already see that the future price for oil is dropping like a stone now. Nothing has changed about the oil, the supply or the demand. So maybe this sudden crisis is another misguided plan, half cocked by George Bush and his lackey Senator McCain, to deceive, defraud and leave destitute the American public, paralyze the government for some time to come (like during the Obama administration), and give aid and comfort to Saudi Arabia.

Re-work the Re-worked Failed Bailout

Joe Bell — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 16:05:44 EDT

George Bush and Henry Paulson dithered last week as it became more and more obvious that the vaunted bailout of the rich Wall Street felons was not reassuring anybody. It is the nature of a raid on the treasury that makes it seem like the criminals grabbing all the goodies in the pantry before stealing out of town that was at fault. Now George Bush and Henry Paulson have decided that they would rework the bailout. Again, it still sounds like the criminals making a raid on the treasury grabbing all the goodies in the pantry before stealing out of town. Saying that they were going to take equity positions in banks sounds fine, but then they start talking about them being "non-voting" stock and "shares in the debt positions". This is just more money for the rich guys by saddling the regular people with worthless holding in banks that can choose to liquidate without asking the public stockholder so much as a by your leave. Like Senator McCain and Governor Palin, these people want to give the money that we have to the people that gambled it away in the first place. I am still disturbed that nobody is talking about making an accounting of the size of the actual problem. We know how to do that, and we already have an agency that can do that. If we had started out with a plan in mind to account for the size of the bad mortgage problem and calculated the amount of write down we needed to do to allow people to go ahead and buy the home they were in, the IRS could have had most of the software already written, and be printing the questionnaires this week. I know that Bush and Senator McCain don't want the government to work, so they don't propose that we should make it work.

The debt bubble is the bad thing. We should be working to fix that. And the congress should be working to capture the money the Wall Street folks have set aside for their own use and putting it into Social Security. Those are the kinds of things that make it apparent that the government is unwilling to let the malfactors of great wealth steal away in the night.

Surveillance Investigation

Joe Bell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 14:48:05 EDT

Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Faulk. You should remember these people's names. In the employment of our government over the past few years, they have been listening to your private telephone conversations, writing them down, and sharing them with the NSA and their coworkers. They told the people in charge that some of the calls were from non-threatening groups, including the Red Cross, including men and women serving in Iraq talking to their families. But they were told to continue listening. So much for George Bush's and Senator McCain's claim that this was a focused and carefully targeted operation. I guess that the McCain campaign being lead and staffed by AT&T lobbyist is the best indicator. And Ms Kinne and Mr Faulk, not famous or powerful people, a National Guard guy and a government linguist, with nothing to gain from it, tell us directly all we need to know. I will point out that you can end your personal surveillance program today by calling AT&T and canceling all your services from them. I did a few months ago, and have saved about $87 a month since then. I have been giving the savings to the Obama/Biden campaign. I count this as my first Obama moment.

Another Obama Moment

Joe Bell — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:24:46 EDT

I was on jury duty this week down in Austin. Besides the regular sense of the goodness that you get when you spend a couple of days in a room with a bunch of Americans trying to do the right thing by some strangers, several hopeful things happened. First, there were no empty seats at either of the campus area watering places I was in on Tuesday. Everyone seemed to be listening to the debates intently, and kept shouting "Answer the Question John" after nearly everything Senator McCain said. There was lots of laughter when he said "not going to telegraph my moves" in the context of dealing with Iran. People seemed to feel that the telegraph was a pretty outmoded means of communications. It was refreshing to be surrounded by a lot of young men and women who apparently got it. There were half a dozen people walking around in the crowd with voter registration forms and absentee ballot request paperwork, and I saw folks in the crowd signing up. Hopefully it will make the jury pool bigger too.

In the bumper sticker count for the three days, I saw 43 Obama Biden and 3 McCain. Lots of the Obama Biden cars and trucks also had Noriega for Senator too. I also saw several fairly rude bumper stickers about Governor Palin which I won't repeat here. I experienced a dramatic difference in my bicycling. First, I never rode anywhere that I didn't see other people on bikes within a block or so. Twice, cars yielded to me when I had the right of way even though I was on a bike. Cars and EVEN PICKUP TRUCKS passed me with plenty of room, and would slow down if there was approaching traffic that did not allow enough room for them to pull out. No one honked at me the whole time. Everyplace where I needed to stop to shop, eat or have a drink there were bike racks to park my bicycle. Even at shopping malls. This is a radical difference from Fort Worth.

The best thing that happened to me was that as I rode along early, getting to court, I was in groups of adults and children walking to school. The street was full of their voices, little kids, a few dogs and moms and dads talking and laughing, and singing and walking to school. You could see people coming out of houses down intersecting streets, walking to school. Who knew that Americans can walk, I mean several blocks, walk to school? I count this as another Obama moment, Yes We Can.

Palin Attacks 10th Amendment and Article 1 of the Constitution

Joe Bell — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 10:58:45 EDT

We got to hear what a Vice President should sound like last night. Senator Biden was polite, knowledgable, and to the point. Governor Palin continued to hold our intelligence in contempt and treat us to Beverly Hillbilly's verbal styling. I don't suppose there was any chance of much better than that. The fact checking shows that Governor Palin's rehearsed scripts diverge from ground truth in significant ways, but nobody is surprised when Replutocrats distort their own record and the make gratuitous smears when campaigning. It is the legacy of the party that Karl Rove made, that Steve Schmidt is trying to breath life back into its rotting corpse. Three things that I heard were disturbing to me though none of them were subjected to fact checking.

One is that Governor Palin thinks there is something called victory and something called surrender in a counter insurgency. I know that she hasn't had the time to read the counter insurgency manual authored by the general she says she likes, but it is clear in that manual the purpose of counter insurgency is nation building, not victory or defeat. The second thing she said was that we needed to get rid of the imaginary lines that separate the States. I am not at all clear why the sudden dislike of the 10th amendment has sprung up in the Replutocrat talk, but this is the second time this week there has been a direct assault on it. The third shocker is that Governor Palin believes the crazy view that the Vice President is in charge of some yet un-named fourth branch of government as articulated by Dick Cheney. This sudden amendment for Article 1 came to be a plank in the Replutocrat platform just last night. I thought that talk came from Dick Cheney attempting to dodge the rules for the executive branch having to preserve their records like the legislative branch, but apparently it has Senator McCain and Governor Palin on board too. Talk about needing to fasten your seat belts.

Who knew that when military commanders, who have read the book, say that the situation they are in in Afganistan couldn't be handled by nation building, that folks back in Alaska could dismiss what the commander said? Who knew that I was only imagining that I have been a citizen of Texas these many years, imagining that I have worked for the government of Texas, that I have a State citizenship in Texas that comes before my citizenship in the United States, and that most of the government services and protections I enjoy come from the State of Texas? Who knew that the Vice Presidential candidate, nominated by a private process, is headed toward running a whole separate branch of government which has no constitutional standards or limitations? Who works for the separate branch? Who pays the separate branch?

Avoid the Failed Bail Out

Joe Bell — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 12:25:31 EDT

The Senate voted to give the Wall Street felons the $700 billion on the installment plan, $250 billion at a whack, and no jail time at all. I suppose the rich men can sympathize with the problems of the other rich men easily, because it was done in practically no time with no real discussion. But the Senate didn't say how they planned to pay for it, or for any of the bacon they crumbled up and sprinkled on the pie. So that paying for it piece is something that will be worked out over some time. One way we shouldn't pay for it is to try and borrow more money. That is like the people who get a new credit card to take care of their unpaid balance on their old credit card by transferring the balance to the new card. We all know that eventually, you have to finally pay the money. This should be our time.

First we ought to admit that the wars we are fighting now are immoral and pointless and stop them right where they are. Bush and Senator McCain lied about the war, lied about the WMD, lied about the terrorist, lied and lied and lied. No money we spend, whether it is our money or money we borrow, is going to make those lies come true. We need to bring Senator Palin's son home along with all the other sons and daughters we have at risk over there as soon as possible. Next, we have to raise the money we need to pay back the people we duped into loaning us lots of money. That will be hard, but we know we are good for it. Thursday of the week before the "Bush McCain Wall Street Needs a Bag of Money Crisis" started we passed a funding bill for the military that was for $625 Billion. We need to reconsider what part of that we actually spend. That is more money than the whole rest of the world combined will spend on the world military. That is just bone headed stupid. What is the point of becoming an old drunk under the bridge cadging smokes by buying the largest military on the planet? Seems like you should buy some houses, places for people to go to school, that sort of stuff. Military spending is the spending we have to get under control. I wouldn't hold my breath waiting for Senator McCain to point that out. Finally we have to stop driving cars. Not next month or when some miracle makes it easy, we have to stop now. That is easy enough to do, and that alone will fix the trade deficit, so you can keep buying the plastic crap at Walmart, but not gasoline anymore.

Luckily enough, this last thing doesn't require politics to do. You can do it regardless of what the rich men say, or the rich men think. Arrange to work from your house. Ride in other people's cars. If you feel like you have to drive, pick up everyone you see walking until your car is full. Walk. If the walking is too far, ride a bike. If that is still not enough, ride the bike to where you can take the bus or catch the train or get a ride in someone else's car. To get out of this mess, you are going to have to get out of your car. When we have paid down the debt to the place where we were when Bush McCain started, we can start up things like cars again. Until then, we can't afford them.

Senate Trying to Pick Your Pocket

Joe Bell — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 12:20:00 EDT

When the Senate of the United States says they are "hearing from constituents", you had better reach back and give your wallet a pat. The only constituents most senators would recognize would be lobbyist for extremely rich men or industries. Take Senator McCain for instance. He has formed his campaign staff out of lobbyist for the gambling industry (which is also the money laundering industry, the illicit drug industry, the beverage alcohol industry and the sex for hire industry) and these lobbyist are the only constituents that Senator McCain speaks to or represents actively. Other examples include Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, who is completely serviced by the oil industry lobbyist and Senator John Cornyn who is in the oil industry pocket but also listens to the lobbyist for the H1B industry which is the Indian Programmer Full Employment business. So this new bailout from the senate makes me pretty uncomfortable.

As far as I can see, the senators tried to crumble up a little bacon on the humble pie the house couldn't pass to see if we taxpayers could pay off the yachts and castles in France that the Wall Street folks are worried about. That is still a bad deal for the rest of us. I understand that the problems the economy has come from a credit squeeze. It is harder and harder for people to borrow money. But I can't see how creating a lot more debt is going to help. Right now we already owe all the money we borrowed to pay for Bush-McCain's endless war in Iraq, the oil we buy from the countries that still have oil, and the plastic crap they sell at Walmart. So now the Bush-McCain crowd wants to borrow another $700 Billion? Who are they going to get to give us the money? It isn't Secretary Paulson, or any of the people on Wall Street. The main difference is that the people like us have to pay our taxes because it is our civic duty and it is against the law not to. While the rich companies and rich men represented by lobbyist not only don't have to pay their taxes, they want to get our tax money too by getting the senate to make it legal for them to have it.

I still think this is mostly an accounting problem that is well within the scope of the government agencies we already have. If there are only 1 million mortgages that are scaring the ninnies on Wall Street, we have at least one agency that processes the paper work on that many complicated applications every couple of weeks. We call them the IRS. It isn't a surprise that the rich folks haven't been able to think of that because they have been on George Bush and Senator McCain's tax holiday for at least the last 7 years, so they don't realize that the rest of us have been paying taxes all that time. Let's insure the savings like they say, because that covers inflation and reassures people about their banks. It is also free unless a bank fails, so we don't have to pay anything until the thing happens. I don't mind the tax credits for businesses that are trying to make substitutes for oil, but I would rather have direct investment in some things we already know work like mass transit, work from home software and trains. But throwing good money after bad came to be an expression we all recognize because it happens so often. And that is what the bailout mostly is.

Lloyd Doggett for Speaker of the House or Secretary of the Treasury

Joe Bell — Tue, 30 Sep 2008 15:57:48 EDT

I am having a hard time putting much energy in the campaign right now. I am so disgusted with how the Democrats sold the people of the United States down the river over the past few days. Here we have the worst administration since at least the Grant administration with the most unpopular president in history. And then this gang of crooks comes up with a really stupid plan to stage a run on the treasury. That is where they store the taxpayer's money. This is a run by the most venal and incompetent administration we have ever had, and the leadership of the party I have always belonged to just falls in line. Where was Nancy Pelosi, where was Harry Reid? Who spoke up for the regular people? It certainly wasn't the leadership of my party. This run is by the people who have been buddies with Senator McCain and his lobbyist co-conspirators. And you would have thought that it was a Democratic proposal by the way Senator Reid and Representative Pelosi fell to, carrying George Bush and Senator McCain's water. I didn't even wear my campaign shirt around the house last night. But today I read some things that Lloyd Doggett said, and saw that he voted against the bailout because he thought it was irresponsible to give the keys to all the cash registers to the very folks who had presided over the step by step bankruptcy we are now experiencing. So I feel a little better, and I want to put my support behind Lloyd Doggett to be either Speaker of the House or Secretary of the Treasury. I don't know if he wants either job, but I think we should pressure the Democrats to at least say that he is seriously being considered.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/30/business/30bailout.html?scp=2&sq=lloyd%20doggett&st=cse

Governor Palin Goes to New York

Joe Bell — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 14:57:06 EDT

Governor Palin gets to add a couple of stickers to her Winnebago this week. She actually visited New York City. One of her aides explained to her that New York City is also in a state named New York, so she would be able to get two new decals. The McCain campaign brought the governor up so they could get some photographs of her with recognizable world leaders. They had missed the chance before when she was briefly in Mexico because she was six or seven months pregnant and the President of Mexico is seldom in a dollar store in Laredo. And what a line up the McCain folks put together.

One of the world leaders they managed to get pictures with is Henry Kissinger. You remember him, right? He was the Secretary of State for Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Back when Senator McCain was a POW. Of course he stopped being anything but an old guy about 25 years ago when he started being a really old guy. After his massive genocidal bombing of Cambodia and the orchestration of the murder of the democratically elected President Salvador Allende of Chile, I am sure he had lots of pointers for Governor Palin. They also managed to get her pictures with President Alvario Uribe, the jefe of the narco traficante state of Columbia. (I have a hard time keeping up with what drug lords like to call their leaders, so "jefe" may be wrong in this place). These two had lots to talk over since President Uribe hates community organizers even worse than Governor Palin. He actually arranges for his paramilitaries to round up community organizers and kill them. Governor Palin was "all ears". Then there was another meeting with another drug lord, Hamed Karzai, the jefe of the heroine producers in Afghanistan. Though they could have talked about building pipelines at taxpayer expense to profit oil companies, something they have in common, but chose the much more pressing topic of the names of their respective children. And finally she had a photo taken with Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili. Again, they could have discussed the use of taxpayer money to build a pipeline for oil companies, but the story is that the Governor had some messages to give him from one of the lobbyist in the McCain campaign who also works for President Saakashvili. She also gave him one of Cindi's recipes for peach cobbler.

So, what a day for Governor Palin. Two decals, two narco traficante, two kleptocrates, and one tired old war criminal. How you gonna keep 'em down on the ice flow? There is still ice in Alaska, right?

McCain Campaign Goes to Sleep Again

Joe Bell — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 10:25:28 EDT

Senator McCain says he has suspended his campaign, yet again. It is important that we notice that the man himself had to do it. I know he is hoping that it makes him look all concerned and like he is going to bring some focus on this. But we all know what the reason is. Senator McCain's campaign is mostly staffed and entirely run by lobbyist. He has been in Washington for 26 years and he has lots of lobbyist help right now. But unfortunately, the Bush administration is up there ringing the dinner bell for lobbyist, and Senator McCain is just high and dry for any help. When you start waving around $700 billion of freeeeee moneeeeey, those lobbyist all head for the feed trough. So there isn't anyone back at the McCain Campaign office and the Double Talk Express is empty.

In an interesting twist Senator McCain is also hoping to use this to cover his absence at the long scheduled and long planned debate. I think it is really unlikely that Senator McCain was really going to have much to say at the debate anyway. I have already heard that he was a POW. Several times. So I think they should just push ahead. We have all planned parties to listen already, and I have already made the beer. They can easily manage whether Senator McCain shows up or not. If he is there, let him speak for himself, and if he is not, they can put one of those life sized cardboard pictures of him behind the podium. I hope they use a picture that doesn't have that weird scary little smile he shows all the time.

McCain is wasting all of our time

Joe Bell — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 16:24:38 EDT

Are we really spending time and millions of dollars and not having any discussion about why we lost a whole American city to bad weather? Why we just lost another big chunk of one of our biggest cities to more bad weather. I like politics a lot, but I have to admit that sometimes it is really a downer to realize how much we have trivialized it. I thirst for when we will begin to talk about something we have to take care of.

McCain Advocates Repeal of 10th Amendent

Joe Bell — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 11:19:42 EDT

Man, if you listen to Senator McCain's and Governor Palin's campaign attack dog and Karl Rove tribute band Steve Schmidt's press interview, you can see how bad his job has to be. Here he is, slandering, in public, for money, on the record, one of the most reliable newspapers published in this country. He mentions "journalistic integrity" a couple of times but he didn't mention Fox News for some reason. And all because Senator McCain can't cover up the direct connection he has to Rick Davis, who is a paid lobbyist for the bailed out Fanny Mae and the other voice on this tape. Handsomely paid at that, more than a million dollars this year, and that is just the part that Mr. Davis' company was forced to disclose because of regulations. No wonder Senator McCain and Governor Palin are anxious to get buckets of money to quench the thirst of the Barons of the Wall Street Melt Down passed and on the books so fast. I just wonder how much Mr. Davis stands to make out of that bail out.

As it turns out that the discussion of Senator McCain's long time association with lobbyist and his hundreds of speeches and publications advocating less regulation and less scrutiny of the Wall Street bankers and the fundamentally sound statements that Senator McCain parrots George Bush on seems to be something they are talking pretty fast about. I think that is what they mean by the double talk express. I especially like Senator McCain's calling for deregulating the health care business like he did banking in a publication called Contingencies published last Saturday. Even the article sounds like a debate between Senator McCain and Senator McCain. In the first part of the article he says we have the best health care anywhere but by the end he says that we need to have more regulation and accountability to control the outcomes of medical practice. He says he wants to deregulate but then seems to be saying that we need to move from state level regulation to federal level regulation. Who knew? Senator McCain is opposed to state's rights. Do you think he is headed toward repeal of the 10th amendment?

http://www.contingencies.org/septoct08/mccain.pdf

Wolf, Wolf! He shouted.

Joe Bell — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:12:28 EDT

You know, there is this story about a foolish boy who thought he would play a prank on his village. One evening, while he was out watching the sheep, he started to cry, Wolf, Wolf! That is what the watchout was supposed to do, and the farmers from all around came running to protect the sheep. But of course, there was no wolf. After they chided the boy they went back home. The boy wasn't chasened though, and he thought it was funny to see the people hauling themselves up the hill huffing and puffing. So he again shouted Wolf, Wolf! and dutifully the farmers came again. And again there was no wolf. The boy kept shouting and they kept coming until finally the farmers were just worn out. The next time, there really was a wolf, but no one came. The foolish boy was eaten, as you all recall.

President Bush and Senator McCain have called Wolf. First it was WMD! But no wolf. Then it was connections to Al Queda terrorist! But no wolf. Then it was yellow cake uranium! But no wolf. Then it was the axis of evil! But no wolf. Then it was Telephone Survailence for all Americans! But no wolf. And now it is Wall Street is Melting, Melting! But the truth is that there are only about 1 million mortgages that are in trouble, many of them we don't really know how much trouble actually. The IRS can process that much information in 30 days from first question to finished report. But President Bush and Senator McCain, who have already taken us for a $6 trillion debt ride seem to think another trillion or so would be fun too. I personally have had enough. This thing isn't nearly so bad as they would have us believe. It is certainly not a good time to turn over all the power of the purse to the most venal and incompetent adminstration since US Grant and Tea Pot Dome. I say vote no to anything that Bush asks for now, and vote yes for Obama Biden getting in and making a trustworthy government. Lets concentrate on the real wolves for a while.

Is this the End of Your Mind on Republican Misrule?

Joe Bell — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 11:43:58 EDT

It seems to me that we are either at or very near the end of the misrule of the government by the degenerate ideology that has run the United States since the Reagan administration. Somewhere back there the principles of the conservative strain in American thought got frayed and broke. There was a time when conservatives believed in limited government interference in private matters, no entangling alliances off shore, a strictly controlled military, no spending that couldn't be paid for immediately, and democracy guided by experts in change. But people like Harold Simmons, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist and Karl Rove were gnawing at the constraints that this sort of government would be small, inexpensive and expert. They injected some horrible decline into the process and mutated what was a stodgy but safe government into an Alzheimer's nightmare.

Now they believe in government interference into all private matters, attempting to put a federal presence in each bedroom in the country to monitor completely private acts. They block any improvements in the transportation infrastructure of the US so that Americans are doomed to more and more inefficient cars, days long traffic jams and collapsing bridges. They have permanent entanglement in the politics and lives of any place in the Middle East that has even a tiny amount of oil. They continually spend money that we don't have on arms and subsidies to already wealthy people while building debts so large that generations of Americans will live in poverty to pay them off. And they insist that only boneheads be in charge of the government to the extent that they want to have tax brakes for the rich during a horrible depression for the middle class and poor, back up truckloads of money to give the already rich guys ruining the economy by taking on lots of bad debt and force women to bear children conceived by rape, incest, and child abuse.

I am counting on reasonableness being enough, but I am beginning to feel pretty angry. The contempt which Senator McCain and Governor Palin hold my intelligence in is hard to bear. I would like to think that our political process was conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all people were created equal, equal even to the task of thinking about complicated ideas dispassionately and being able to arrive at a vote which works to make sure that this government shall not perish from the earth. So I am going to give the Obama Biden campaign the $87 that I saved by canceling all my AT&T services. It is remarkable how this campaign has already started saving me money, just by paying attention to his voting for the amnesty for AT&T. I had been paying at least that amount every month for years. His vote convinced me that I had to act on my own, and here is the money to prove that it works.

McCain continues to debate McCain

Joe Bell — Wed, 17 Sep 2008 14:21:04 EDT

It would be different if he actually made up the things that he says, but Senator McCain has been slavishly reading a Republican script so closely for so long that he doesn’t really have any ideas of his own. If he was speaking for himself, I am sure he wouldn't disagree with his own 26 year record in favor of deregulation of the financial industry. He has voted repeatedly for anything that removed regulations from bankers and stock brokers. He was a leading champion of Texas Senator Phil Graham's Enron loophole as well as his banking deregulation legislation. But today he says that there should be some sort of investigation into what has been going on in the banking business. Maybe he just doesn't understand that when you vote to deregulate some business, you are voting to make sure there are not records and checks and balances.

If he was speaking for himself I am pretty sure he would not say that in Iraq, victory is in sight, unless he means Camp Victory. He has said over and over that he thinks we are going to be there for 100 years. He certainly wouldn't talk about bombing Iran since he understands that the only success we have in Iraq has come from helping the Shia win the civil war against the Sunni in Iraq. That was done as a favor to Iran. Certainly he would say that he is Shia, that we are all Shia now. Or maybe he doesn't understand that intervening in a religious squabble hoping to sneak in and steal the oil is a fool's errand.

Or maybe he just thinks Americans are stupid, like Steve Schmidt apparently believes.

More like Dick every day

Joe Bell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:58:03 EDT

As the Replutocrats continue to spread lies and distortions at the behest of Steve Schmidt, the new Karl Rove, the focus on developing the Vice President also continues. Since Senator McCain wants to run an exact copy of the Bush administration, they need a person as nefarious and scary as Dick Cheney. Today, we find that Governor Palin is already emulating Dick Cheney in two or three new areas. One, the Governor is stonewalling the investigation into her vendetta against the public safety commissioner for his failure to come to heel in the firing of the Governor's former brother in law. In the stonewall protocol, Dick Cheney would always blame excessive partisanship as the reason even though he knew that the investigator was bending over backwards to accommodate him and his co-conspirators. He depended on the reporting of Faux News to trumpet his stand, and accuse the investigators of terrorism, or at least suggest that they were Islamofascists. And dutifully, the Governor follows the protocol. Also the Governor, picking up on a technique Dick Cheney has a headlock on, forced the offended person (in Cheney's case the old man he shot in the face and in the Governor's the aforementioned public safety commissioner) to apologize to them for having been in the way. I admit that the commissioner's "apology" wasn't really abject and sniveling. It reads more like an admission that he was tardy in kissing her ring, with perhaps a warning to those who stay behind. This could indicate that the Governor is just not seasoned in the advanced interrogation techniques that George Bush and Dick Cheney advocate. Not to worry, though. At least down here in Texas, we all know it is not hard to train a dog to mean.

Governor Palin takes Senator McCain and Heads for Ohio

Joe Bell — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 13:05:12 EDT

Seeing an opportunity to make more preposterous claims this week, Governor Palin has decided to drag the old guy out to Garfield Heights, a bed room community in the Cleveland Ohio area similar to Wasilla and Anchorage in Alaska, for a campaign rally. The area Walmart has closed because it is producing natural gas from a poorly engineered landfill, but the Governor and her "First Nominator", as they call the former POW and senator from Arizona, think they can lead a couple of hundred people in chanting "Drill Baby Drill" in the parking lot. They are hoping that this change, drilling for natural gas, will be something that will distract from the bizarre announcement from the McCain campaign yesterday that the economy is fine. Fiddling while Wall Street melts.

http://www.cleveland.com

Governor Perry, Hair Net in Hand

Joe Bell — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:43:36 EDT

After Hurricane Ike tore through Galveston and wrecked large portions of Houston, the stress caused Governor Goodhair to start channeling everyone's impression of the war in Iraq. "Well, the surge turned out to be a lot less than we expected", he said. Now the Bush administration does not take kindly to that sort of talk, no matter where, no matter who. So they decided to strand a bunch of National Guard first responders in Houston without any food or water for a couple of days. The Bush-McCain folks hate those National Guard guys anyway because they interfered with George Bush's drinking and drug use, and he is still AWOL from them. They also decided that maybe it would be OK for the Federal Government to withhold food and water for a day or so for any of the relief efforts for the two million people (is that three or four times as many people as live in all of Alaska?) for a couple of days. Then, they got six locations set up for relief there in Houston. That sounds like about enough for Wasilla, AK, but there are 2,000,000 stranded people in Houston. So Governor Goodhair, still rattled by the slow response the crisis but the really fast punishment for speaking the name of The Surge in vain, came out, hair net in hand, and groveled before his political masters, tore his cloths, threw dust in the air. And then Perry called down a blood curdling curse on the people of Texas saying, "I just hope the people of Texas get the same treatment that Louisiana got. Please treat Texas like you did Louisiana". You can see the power of the Bush McCain Vendetta Machine in the sniveling behavior of the Governor. If he wasn't wearing a dark suit, he would have been even more embarrassed.

McCain Finds his Cheney

Joe Bell — Mon, 15 Sep 2008 14:10:45 EDT

Gradually the press begins to find more and more about Governor Palin. It is not unusual that there is little depth of information extant about the former mayor of a city so small that Karl Rove, who was a direct mailer before he became the chief executive of the Bush Administration, mentions cities that small with contempt, at least when he is talking about the Governor of Virginia. And it turns out that Governor Palin begins to resemble the sitting Vice President more and more. It turns out that Governor Palin is famous for nepotism, vendetta, self vending, misuse of government facilities, increased deficit financing, emphasis on blind loyalty, and extreme secrecy. The Governor hasn't ever shot a 78 year old man in the face while drunk yet, but these similarities are enough to justify McCain's choice. He is, after all, really planning to have an administration that majors in wars, never ending pointless wars for oil, and plenty of graft, corruption, and misrule. Just like the McCain Bush campaign needed its Karl Rove, the prospective continued regime needed its Dick Cheney. And like the party line Replutocrat McCain has really always been, he has found both Steve Schmidt and Governor Palin.

Government Oil Regulators Alert

Joe Bell — Sat, 13 Sep 2008 08:39:51 EDT

All goverment officials, I urge you to immediately remove tax breaks for Big Oil, and instead strongly support clean and renewable energy. I am concerned that Congress is planning to once again cave in to the interests of the oil industry (certainly Senator McCain and both Senators from Texas are), and I demand a change. America, and the world, urgently need a change, not another energy policy and a Congress that are Paid for by Big Oil.

I also want to urge all government officials and Senators and Congressmen in the most forceful way possible to please, be sure that in all of your contacts with big oil that you make sure they are wearing a condom. I know that just being the catcher (with maybe a little reach around for you Johns), that you feel powerless to protect yourself. But there is a grossly under reported epidemic of AIDS in this country. Anyone like big oil who has a huge number of partners including known drug abusers like the President of the United States, is a well know risk for the spread of this terrible infection. So I really want you to insist, and maybe even with hold your participation without the use of a condom.

For that small number of you who happen to live in Alaska, where the Governor opposes any form of sex education, a condom is a device that is widely available, and is frequently available free from clinics and treatment centers for IV drug abusers and people with other sexually transmitted diseases, even in Alaska. It is perfectly safe and harmless to use. Although your partner may object that it somehow lowers their sense of connection during the act, it is a simple matter of hygene, and your life is at stake. Please, always use a condom when having contact with big all.

Patrick Henry weighs in on John McCain

Joe Bell — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 11:27:34 EDT

I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided, and that is the lamp of experience.

I know no way of judging the future but by the past. -- Patrick Henry.

I know that Governor Palin and Senator McCain have talked sometime in the last week. And I have read that Governor Palin is speaking to crowds about how she has been a reformer in her home state (which is more or less like being a reformer in a medium sized city in the lower 48), and a campaigner against corruption in government. Given that past, I expect that she has talked at length with Senator McCain about his bona fides in the reform area, which appear to be limited to his investigation of Jack Abramoff. I am certain that Senator McCain will have shared with Governor Palin that his interest in the Jack Abramoff lobbying activity centered on the possibilities that Mr. Abramoff and his associates may have stolen money from the Indian Casino Owners. Senator McCain is in the casino business through his wife's business interests. Good Christian occupations, gambling, selling alcohol, prostitution, and money laundering. Now I know that if Governor Palin's reading of her past is legitimate, I am sure she asked about the rest of the scandal, the parts that the pilfered Indian Casino money was used to pay for, and what all dirt they had found on the other perps. Since Senator McCain knows that she is going to be just one shaky, anemic heartbeat away from the Oval office starting January 20, 2009 if he has his way, he told her nothing. Just like he lied and covered up the rest of the scandal for the American public. Like old Patrick Henry says, he has lied and covered up in the past so we should expect him to in the future. Maybe she has too.

McCain Releases His Service Record...NOT!

Joe Bell — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 10:57:32 EDT

I was curious about the place where I saw all those trashed McCain campaign signs and wanted to see if it was the official McCain campaign place for Tarrant County. The building was all closed up so I started looking on the internet. This led me to the McCain campaign web site. I was surprised at the site a little because the whole thing turns around John McCain's experience as a POW and a member of the military. There were stories, there were speeches, there were even movies of his military service. One thing I couldn't find was a link to where his service record is available. My dad was in World War II, and he signed some form to release his service record so it could be used in some book about Iwo Jima. I remember when I was working on Wes Clarke's campaign he sort of made an issue of getting his service record released to the press and even published in newspapers. Same for John Kerry. So I would assume that anyone who is running so much based on his military record would want everyone to have at least the opportunity read his record. Some of us still like to read even though the movies and the speeches are nice. I come from Texas, and we have a contrary case down here. Karl Rove made a bet that he could get an old coke head elected governor of Texas. The one he picked had a military record that reportedly listed him as AWOL from his cushy assignment to the National Guard during the War That John McCain Won While in Prison. Karl organized a couple of lawyers to go get the record and destroy it, and they did. So we still don't know exactly what George was doing besides avoiding the draft. But he never released his service record. So just for the sake of clearing the air and proving that he is not just another George Bush, I think we should have some sort of call on John McCain to release his whole service record. I am sure it would make an interesting read.

McCain is Still Opposed to Education

Joe Bell — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:40:02 EDT

This morning in our newspaper down here in Fort Worth they had a story about John McCain and education. He said a couple of things that really caught my eye. First he said that he was a POW in the war in Viet Nam. Then he said something to the effect that he was opposed to the public school monopoly of education. I know that he is the head of the Double Talk Express or the Loose Talk Express or the Let Palin Talk Express, but certainly he knows that there is no public school monopoly of education. There have always been many competing educational institutions in this country as there are today. We have all kinds of special schools for the rich and privileged, like the schools that John McCain himself attended and sends his children to. We have all sorts of parochial schools and have had since the first missionaries came from Spain to Texas, at least. In the south at least we also have lots of non-public schools for people who won't go to school with people of different races. They usually bill themselves as "Christian" schools, but of course they are only for Caucasian Christians. We even allow parents to decide that they prefer ignorance to education, and let them make any number of odd arrangements for their children. So pitching the idea that there is some monopoly is just wrong. Senator McCain has never made a peep about education of any kind in the 26 years he has been slopping at the trough up in Washington. No bill, no legislation, no speech. Except for one time, recently, when he refused to extend educational benefits to veterans of the folly in Iraq. But this is consistent at least. He has been passively against education until he discovered that he is actively against it again.

Call on McCain to Release the Abramoff Documents

Joe Bell — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 13:17:55 EDT

Yesterday I was riding home by a different route and chanced to go by what I take to be a McCain campaign office here. It is in one of the many deserted strip centers here that used to have small stores and service businesses in them seven or eight years ago. Their dumpster was full of John McCain yard signs. I wish I'd had a camera. They were those pieces of corrugated plastic on two wire legs, printed red white and blue and John McCain's name and a slanted 2008. I rode around front and saw that the window of the office had now been covered with a bunch of new yard signs that said McCain Palin on them. Sounds like the Republicans down here in Texas are more than willing, they're anxious, to ditch the old guy. I understand that the only reason that McCain got the nomination has to do with his control of 750,000 documents from the Jack Abramoff scandal that he has hidden away under his control. They say that those documents would bring the whole Republican Party down, especially the sitting government and its toadies, who are abundant here in Texas. It was the threat that Senator McCain would release those documents that killed his many critics in the primaries. I think it is time he released them now, don't ya'll.

Anne Kilkenny Letter about McCain's Choice for VPilf

Joe Bell — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:29:42 EDT

I list this here so, if you haven't had a chance to read it, you can. It is a letter about Governor Palin written by a personal acquaintance, Anne Kilkenny, of long standing from a suburb of Anchorage. Since it seems like the Steve Schmidt has decided that it is best for Governor Palin to remain visible and scripted, you may want to have a look at what someone who has been in her community for a long time thinks.

http://community.adn.com/adn/node/130537

McCain doesn't want good government

Joe Bell — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 10:27:57 EDT

That grumpy old guy who travels around with Governor Palin has tottered up to the microphone to mumble a couple of times in the last few days. He keeps saying that all we want is "a government that stands by your side." I was thinking about that this morning on my commute. I have a reasonable amount of time to myself commuting since I ride a bicycle 10 miles to work. I decided this morning that this is actually a good indicator for what the old shop keeper is thinking. He has been up there in Washington for 26 years trying with all his might to dismantle the government. He doesn't think the government should function well, should understand and meet the needs of the people adequately, should preserve the future of our institutions by practicing clear thought and great service now. That is a real difference we have, because I really want the government we have to be the best one possible for all the people, maybe for all the world. I think it was reading Lincoln's second inaugural last Monday is what touched off this line of thinking. I always read that speech out loud on any national holiday, so I have heard it many times. I wish it was possible for Governor Palin to read to the old guy. A vain hope I know. I always choke up reading the last paragraph.

Warning:::Plot spoiler::: With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

McCain Finds His Rove

Joe Bell — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:42:10 EDT

The grumpy old man who is afraid to appear in public without Governor Palin because of his long record of ruining the prospects of the American middle class has finally found his mendacity coach and negative campaign mentor in a guy called Steve Schmidt. Apparently both Senator McCain, like Governor Bush before him, are totally dependent on someone like this. Karl Rove for Bush and now Schmidt for McCain. Mr. Schmidt has no interest in government, no ideology, no connection to middle class values, no concern about equal pay for women, no interest in women's right to chose, no longing for peace. He just wants to tear down and mutilate the proposals for those things made by Barack Obama and Joe Biden. He is a political vandal. No use for what people might want to build, just a capacity to destroy it. And this sort of campaigning is popular with people like Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'reilly who are likewise disaffected, and have no positive programs to improve the future. So expect to hear a lot of it. I understand that the Obama Biden campaign is working to build a platform to govern from, and doesn't want to spend all its time spreading gossipy sludge and outright lies. I just worry because of the success of this lowest common denominator agitation in the past. But get ready, from now on you will not hear Senator McCain speaking anymore, he will just channel Steve Schmidt's slanders and vandalisms.

Cheney's Freudian slips

Joe Bell — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 09:12:17 EDT

Vice President Cheney was not invited to the Republican convention. Neither was President Bush, so it isn't that shameful. These men, and John McCain, have been in charge of the government that the Republicans are attempting to run away from. But the stress on Cheney seems to have caused him to make some Freudian slips last week. He was heard to ask a couple of questions that obviously arise from some of his anger management sessions, or maybe from his mendacity control sessions. A little embarrassing, but I think we can all appreciate that when he is in time out like this, the government is providing therapy which has some hope of helping him rejoin the human race, maybe after a nice period of rest in Leavenworth, Kansas. Here are the questions that he let slip. “Does America really want to separate itself from the community of values that has fueled so much of its own economic progress?” Mr. Cheney grumbled. And “Does the American government really wish to operate in the modern world as an outsider, alienating free countries and trying to rally the world’s dictatorships?” I suppose these are good questions for that sleepy old guy running with Governor Palin.

Somnambulism or Just Wandering in St. Paul

Joe Bell — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 12:23:09 EDT

Now we have heard from Senator McCain. For me it was sort of a let down. He seemed way to tired to be doing anything that was harder than watching TV. He did manage to say the whole thing without dropping off to sleep. I was only barely able to stay awake. That weird smile, and somehow his face, which is usually sort of blotchy with tight patches on his jaw and forehead instead looked strangely pasty, like he was a little sick to his stomach or something. Actually, I had to look away, and just listened most of the time. Like radio. It was like going back in time, slipping out of history.

He actually didn't say anything new that I heard. He mentioned President Bush once with praise for getting us to and through 9-11, and made the same assertion that it was the worst attack that had ever happened on American soil. Of course some people might think that the revolutionary war was worse, or reach out in their memory to Hawaii, but apparently Senator McCain can't recall those times. It is a little disingenuous though since he invokes that time later in his speech. Of course that just means that the speech writer knew better.

I thought the best section he delivered was when he said: "We need to change the way government does almost everything: from the way we protect our security to the way we compete in the world economy; from the way we respond to disasters to the way we fuel our transportation network; from the way we train our workers to the way we educate our children. All these functions of government were designed before the rise of the global economy, the information technology revolution and the end of the Cold War. We have to catch up to history, and we have to change the way we do business in Washington." Again it is disingenuous for him to act like he hasn't had 26 years already to have started on this project, and that for all of his talk about being a maverick, he was always back there in the herd by feeding time. And because of that, he really doesn't offer anything in the way of a program to get to those changes. I mean, we were all there, struggling to stay awake. He could have said something that he wanted to do that was different from what he has done for 26 years.

Then there were a lot of sentences where the speechwriter left out the "except" clause. He said things like "I’ve fought corruption, and it didn’t matter if the culprits were Democrats or Republicans, except if they were George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove or Alberto Gonzales, who were subverting the constitution, setting the US government to torturing people, spying on Americans without a warrant, divulging the name of undercover CIA agents, and politicizing the Justice Department." Or "I’ve fought big spenders in both parties, who waste your money on things you neither need nor want, while you struggle to buy groceries, fill your gas tank and make your mortgage payment, except when it was any form of Republican earmark or the $5 trillion debt to fight a war, with emergency expenditures that were spent directly on companies that I happen to be a heavy investor in". Or, "I’ve fought to get million dollar checks out of our elections, except when they are from Harold Simmons to run a swift boat style smear campaign". Or, "I’ve fought lobbyists who stole from Indian tribes, except when the scandal got really out of hand and started to effect George Bush and Dick Cheney, and then I buried all the 750,000 Jack Abramoff documents I had and took $100,000 from Greenberg Traurig (Jack's old employer)". Or "I fought crooked deals in the Pentagon except for the ones with defense contractors I had money invested in".

He mentioned gas prices a couple of times, but didn't offer any ideas except more of the same. What he did mention all included time horizons somewhere out in the 10 year time line, and they are only worth the effort if oil prices stay at least as high as they are today. He did mention a family, the Nebes, who he said he was working for. His work for them so far has managed to wipe out their "real estate investments" and they have had the shame of having to take jobs. The husband has one, and Sue has three jobs to make ends meet. Logically, if he was going to make a change, he could have used this story as a pivot to announce that he was ending his long standing opposition to equal pay for women or raising the minimum wage. But no, it is still ok with Senator McCain for women to make less. And he reprised his licks on Bomb Bomb Bomb, Bomb Bomb Iran and did a little improvisation on Back in the US…Back in the US… Back in the USSR, but only a few people even noticed. And he said he wanted vouchers for education and offered to supplement the income of guys who were working at a lower paying job because of loosing their well paying jobs he had exported in the last 8 years. He didn't say if that offer would be open to women and I am confident that it doesn't include young people. And he didn't mention that this would reverse his own votes on welfare "reform" over the years.

Then he moved in to the last fourth of his speech which was about his being a POW. You remember, back during the war in Viet Nam, and the Nixon Watergate administration. He mentioned Bob and all the people got up and cheered again. Again, I would have thought that if he was looking for a pivot he could use this long sad story to say how in his administration he was going to stop torture, release the prisoners from inhuman detention in Guantanamo and see to it that the Geneva Convention violators were punished either through our courts or in The Hague. But no pivot, he just offered trudging along in George Bush's footprints. Somnambulism or just wandering, to me, it didn't sound very interesting where he is headed.

The Air Wank in St. Paul

Joe Bell — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 13:46:09 EDT

Well, I heard the speech of Governor Palin, and came away knowing a few things. One is that John McCain was a POW. That was back during the war in Viet Nam. Similar, at least in outcome, to the War of 1812. Another was that it is going to be pretty hard sledding for community organizers under a Palin administration. She really made an ugly little face, like she smelled rotten fish, when she talked about community organizers. Next I learned that she likes small towns and she thinks that they are sort of like the whole United States. That is a strange faith statement because the reality is that only about 20% of the people in the United States live in towns anywhere near that small. She is from Alaska and even there she lives in a town of 230,000 with about a third of the citizens of Alaska.

Moving on, she mentioned that John McCain was a POW and some other guy named Bob at the convention was a POW too. It was strange because the way she told it, there was just a pin hole in Bob's cell door and yet every day when John McCain walked by on his way back from interrogation he would stop and grin and give Bob a thumbs up signal. To a pin hole? Every day? Then she talked at some length about how she had reformed the government of Alaska completely, in just a few months, by getting the legislature to pass a law, against bad ethics I guess. She told a couple of fibs about what she had actually done. She said that the "bridge to no where" had been refused. But she actually just took the money. The dirty federal money. I mean why not? She and Ted were buds when they earmarked the money. And she said how she had lowered taxes and balanced the Alaskan budget, actually producing a surplus. Really she lowered the tax on property (which goes to fund education) while raising the taxes on oil. And the balance or surplus actually came from the run away speculation on oil futures, not any controlling of spending. Then she assured everyone that there is plenty of oil in Alaska. There is so much that she has decided to build a gas pipeline to the lower 48 to help us achieve energy independence. I guess she hoped that you won't notice that she is not planning on pipelining oil to us. All Alaska's oil is going to Japan, like it does today. She is going to send us gas, apparently through a state owned pipeline.

Down here in the lower 48 our general expectation is that production infrastructure for gas companies will be paid for by the gas company. I supposed she mentioned the Russian control of gas pipelines at this point so we would think that it is normal for the state to pay for corporate investment. Normally we would wrinkle up our nose like we smelled rotten fish.

Finally she attempted to make a transition from the Plenty of Oil to the War in Iraq which turned out to be the missing "bridge to nowhere". She said that John McCain had sponsored the surge, after opposing it, which has brought victory in sight. Of course we all know that what we actually have in sight is a timetable for withdrawal. Oh, and some no bid contracts to let Exxon, BP, Shell and Total operate the Iraq oil fields. And about $5 trillion of debt from wasted money to kill a lot of women and children in a country that never did us any harm. Then, she finished up with a really moving story about how John McCain was a POW in the Viet Nam war.

Not much substance here, but a lot of air. That brings me to the curious gesture that the Republicans made during the convention. To make the gesture you form your hand into a circle, hold it above your head, and move your arm from the shoulder forward and back. It is a gesture that my mother would have washed my hand out with soap if she had seen me doing it. But they did it repeatedly, sometimes even interrupting the speaker. In the tradition of air guitar, I have decided that this gesture should be called The Air Wank. We used to do it when we were trying to indicate that a speaker was exaggerating or prevaricating in some grand way. Which seems directly to the point of Governor Palin's talk, except for the parts about John McCain being a POW.

Peggy Noonan dishes John McCain

Joe Bell — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 21:06:00 EDT

We still haven't seen the Governor of Alaska speak, but there are Republicans talking. Here are a couple of them discussing Governor Palin and what John McCain was thinking when the quick like a bunny picked her out of a hat. Didn't find out much about her, and what he knew would have scared a more thoughtful man. But like Senator McCain brags. He makes snap decisions without enough information or reflection, but he is "willing to live with the consequences". Some of his Republican operatives are apparently not quite so sanguine.

Replutocrat Twins Meetup

Joe Bell — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:20:45 EDT

Fortunately the Replutocrat public distraction and misrepresentation fest in the Twin Cities will be shorter at least. That probably will not cut down the number of lies and distortions, since we have no idea what depths they are willing to go to. But we do have one thing that is a positive thing to look for. I am guessing/hoping that with the selection of Governor Palin as the Vice President, we can at least look for the announcement of the "Alaska Plan" for the whole United States.

See, the way the folks up in Alaska do it, they tax the pants off of the oil companies and make a big heap of money doing that. The oil companies that operate up there have a ready market for all of the oil produced in Alaska. They sell every drop to the world's second largest economy, Japan. And that of course provides the oil companies an extremely reliable international currency to minimize the effects of the poor old US dollar on their profits. So they are more or less happy to give Alaska lots of money.

The other half of the Alaska plan is that the Alaskan government takes the money and distributes it to all the people in Alaska. Not that that is very many people. Fewer people live in Alaska than live here in Fort Worth. But the subsidy amounts to 10's of thousands each, so it is the totally cool socialist state. Everyone in Alaska is on welfare, rich and poor alike. Everyone is free to go to any of the state owned hospitals for any treatment they offer, and they don't have to pay for any of it. And they get a free moose apiece each year too. So like the Palins would have seven moose each year, or about 14000 pounds of free meat each year. I am not sure how all of this is going to work out for those of us here in the "lower 48" as they call us, but I am sure willing to get on board for the first part of the Alaska plan, taxing the pants off of the oil companies, and then see what comes of the rain of money and free meat.

McCain doesn't know, or he just doesn't care

Joe Bell — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 10:15:52 EDT

Last night we got a detailed plan for the future which certainly had plenty of specifics. There was also a subtle line that I didn't hear all the time, but woke up this morning thinking about. On several things having to do with the poor and the struggling middle class, Obama said that John McCain doesn't know. And on several things having to do with the environment and energy policy, he said John McCain doesn't care. I haven't been using that formulation in my mind, but I have resolved to going forward. I feel that McCain's energy plan is one of those Doesn't Care things. So in memory of his joking around with Bush during Katrina, and Gustav barreling up the gulf in persuit of her,

McCain's Energy Plan Drill Here Drill Now Govenor Palin - Upload a Document to ScribdRead this document on Scribd: McCain's Energy Plan Drill Here Drill Now Govenor Palin

Consider the Source

Joe Bell — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 10:37:46 EDT

My mom was not very well educated, they didn't offer education to women back then, so she navigated through her life with a bunch of little sayings. One of her favorites was something she said whenever something unpleasant came up, something that made one of us boys mad. She would say "Consider the source" as a way to get us to think about the person who said whatever it was. She would talk us through all the things that could have made the person say the thing that was bothering us. Usually, it would turn out that they were more to be pitied than punched out. I think we should do something like that about the guy who is using borrowed or stolen money to finance the attack ads that are now running about Obama. He is a really rich man, and he has made all his money slopping at the government trough. His first job was a bank examiner for the FDIC, finding dirt on Dallas banks. He traded up from that to a job at one of the banks. Some places they call that blackmail, but Harold just calls it smart. He is not at all shy about describing himself as smart. After running with that job for a while pushing for raises and promotions until he was costing more than the bank would have had to pay in fines, he took what money he had cadged together and bought a drug store. Something he knew nothing about except that people are required by federal law to buy stuff there and frequently didn't really know how much the stuff cost. Insurance scams abound. Next he took that operation and went back to the bank and got a huge loan to by a bunch of drug stores in Waco. Insurance scams abound. But again, this guy is more than happy to tell you how smart he is.

After selling his drug store operations to Eckerd's (you remember Eckerd's, they died of swallowing his drugstore pill) he started using that money to buy companies that are federally subsidized and sell off their assets to cover the loan he had used to buy the company in the first place. First it was sugar (subsidized both by the parity program, some crazy stuff to keep us from buying sugar from Cuba, and the commodity credit corporation's subsidized rates). Then it was timber up in Oregon (subsidized by low rent on federal land and free trees), and eventually, oil field service companies and equipment manufacturers (subsidized by big tax write offs). He follows the same pattern, buy the company with borrowed money (it is from bigger banks now, he managed to kill the little bank he started on), sell off their assets, take as much federal money as he can find, and get rid of the people working there. Again, he is more than happy to tell you how smart he is. He has now cooked up a scheme (and sold it to the State of Texas and Governor Goodhair) to store nuclear waste material up in Andrews county in West Texas, even though the dump he bought up there is way too close to drinking water supplies.

He will again grab lots of federal money, sell the assets and run, sticking you and me with the cost to clean up the mess.

I am pretty sure Mom would say that self centered and elitist stain on his character, plus the living with knowledge that he had broken many laws and ruined many lives should be punishment enough. And truly having had a few failed marriages and his own children taking him to court to get their money out of him early because they believed he was crooked as a snake is the harvest he has already reaped. His community out there in Santa Barbara fined him a huge amount because, during a drought when everyone else was suffering, he used enough water to keep a family of 4 supplied for 28 years to keep his grass green. I doubt that he can easily find a place to buy gas or get a meal. So I guess I will just share this information with anyone who talks about the smear so they can consider the source.

Looking forward to the change

Joe Bell — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 17:07:34 EDT

Archiving of all government communications is required by federal law. That is based on an ancient idea coming down through the ages to our founders. It is supposed to insure that history can eventually find our glories and failures equally to improve the citizens and our democracy over time. That idea was extended by a court case called Armstrong v. Executive Office in 1993 to include electronic documents, like e-mail. The Bush junta has struggled since 2002 to deal with the requirement in their unique way. The residents inherited a working archival system when they seized the White House back in 2000. But the Bush IT shop decided to switch from a Lotus Notes-based e-mail system to one based on Microsoft Exchange. Somehow, imagine my surprise, it broke the archiving software. Interestingly enough, it broke right during the time they were conspiring with John McCain to start the war in Iraq under false pretenses.

Since then, the White House has repeatedly fumbled in developing a new system. I can manage this in a few weeks in a multi-location business with thousands of users and I'm not even very smart. But the President of the United States can't get it done in six years, even with the best consulting firms in the once great USA. As if that weren't bad enough, there is also evidence that most senior Bush administration officials have taken to using non-government e-mail accounts. Karl Rove (Mr. McCain's chief strategist) for example used this dodge to skirt the requirements of federal law while working in the White House. His account was provided by the Republican Party for 95 percent of his correspondence. Some 88 senior White House officials had e-mail accounts with the Republican party or the Bush-McCain re-election campaign, and used them extensively if not exclusively. The Republican National Committee had a policy of deleting e-mails after 30 days, but apparently went to nightly dumps over time.

It turns out that the IT people from the Bush junta are now trying to engage another consulting company to fix the archiving, not rebuild it from backups. The backups are probably lost anyway. so we will never know for sure the depths the Bush-McCain group has sunk to. All the more reason to work work work for the Obama Biden ticket. This is the kind of illegal activity that I am expecting to see change under the coming Obama Biden administration. I can just barely wait.

Republican Stewardship of the Education of Texas

Joe Bell — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 14:03:36 EDT

I read in the newspaper this moring that US News and World reports just released the listing of the best colleges and universities in the US. And the University of Texas at Austin, just down the street from the capitol of Texas, managed to get to 47th place. About 15 years ago, before the current period of Republican domination of the state, UT was up there in the single figures. That is before the big raid on the Permanant University Fund which Tom Loffler lead. That was before the current extremely reactionary administration put in place by Mr. Bush and kept in place by Governor Goodhair. I guess the general Republican plan to slide America into the third world has certainly gained a lot of momentum here in Texas. That ought to concern all of us over here on the side of education. Degrading the public schools into places where we just test and test, taking the funding for our major educational institutions and feeding it to banks and investors and letting UT slide into a second rank university is the kind of governance we can expect unless we work really hard, even down here in Texas, to make education a priority again.

Learning Lessons

Joe Bell — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 10:34:50 EDT

What a weekend for getting lessons.

First we learn that human life starts at conception but that women, who I had come to believe were human, couldn't decide for themselves anything about that little human. John McCain didn't go into whether he felt that restriction came from the Bible (which it certainly doesn't) or from one of his drinking bouts, nor did he go into whether he thought that those single celled XX humans were in for lesser protection than those single celled XY humans. There is more, a lot more, but we will have to wait for him to mumble and stumble his way along to find out.

Then Mr. McCain says we should form a new group of democracies to teach the Russians how the cow ate the cabbage. Of course this group will have to exclude our favorite authoritarian state, China. For me this is a complicated lesson because if we make China mad, we also make WalMart unhappy. And the little happy face guy will start going around in the store raising prices, which I think will hurt the folks who shop there. But of course we will have to wait for him to mumble and stumble his way along to find out if he cares about the folks that shop at WalMart.

Then yesterday and this morning, Pakistan hauls off and shows us how democracy works. It turns out that when the executive, in this case Mr. Musharraf, does things that are illegal, in his case steals an election, and tampers with the employment of people from the judicial branch, the legislative branch can run through a process called impeachment. The resulting hearings and legislative activity gets reported in the press, and eventually the President, Mr. Musharraf, makes a long speech and then resigns. We used have that same idea over here. But in our case the President, Mr. Bush, admits that he lied about Iraq being involved in the 911 attack (on Sept. 18, 2003 on national TV), and admits that he got the National Security Agency (NSA) to engaged in the domestic wiretapping of American citizens in the United States without first obtaining warrants (and still is doing this), and he gets to go on a 10 day vacation. I am pretty sure that Mr. McCain thinks this is just fine because he is really hoping to get away with doing the same stuff that Mr. Bush and Mr. Musharraf have done.

Finally we got the best lesson from the Senator from Texas, also named John. Maybe all men are eventually called "John" or at least all of them that work in the congress. The Texas John says that his state has the best health care in the country and that it should be the model for all healthcare reform. This is in a state that has the highest rate of uninsured people in the country, most of them women (see above) and children. Here is a picture of Big John with his healthcare plan. See, a taco today and a taco tomorrow.

What Corsi is angling for

Joe Bell — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 16:16:03 EDT

I was shocked that the NY Times listed the new book by the sick puppy J. Corsi as "non-fiction" since it is pure fiction, not very good fiction, but totally imaginary at least. I sent a letter to the editor of the NY Times as well as to books@nytimes.com which is the sunday section the reviews books. Everybody should. I also contacted Amazon. I contacted them and objected to their giving a discount for an obviously misclassified "best seller" since it should be in the listing against other fiction books. It would not even be on the list if it was competing against mass market fiction.I did get a response from Amazon. They suggested that I should tell them what books it should be categorized with, since they do ratings for their recommendations engine based on similar books, not relative to some arbitrary category. Worrying over this last night, I figured out that this pulp screed should go in the same list as Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another collection of weird religious bigotry and racism dressed up as if it was non-fiction.

I was thinking about that and wondered what other books people may know that are like both the Corsi pulp, and the Protocols. Any others you can think of?

The insane ramblings of J. Corsi

Joe Bell — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:25:24 EDT

I don't know how many people should have to subject themselves to the ramblings of Dr. Corsi (PhD in Cosmetology, you know, knows a lot about making stuff up) in order for well intentioned people to speak out about it. He has cobbled together a really horrible book filled with overt racialism and base religious bigotry. I think that people from this site should all write to the New York Times editor and complain about this book being listed in the "Non-fiction" category. This sort of conspiracy mongering is at best some kind of weird fiction, not based on events or any facts. I also think we should complain to people like Amazon and B&N for listing it as a non-fiction best seller since it is competing with real works of history and journalism. The way that pulp distortions, freak shows and hallicinations like this elbow their way into the market on the scaly backs of the dinosaurs that like them is embarassing for all Americans. We can do better, and we should.

Remember, Iraq is a big part of McCain's Energy Policy

Joe Bell — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 15:20:31 EDT

It is easy to forget that the main reason we are in Iraq is to get control of the Iraqi oil fields for Big Oil, western Big Oil. I know folks would rather not think it, but the truth is starkly evident. From Dick Cheney's early plotting with the Big Oil companies, through Paul Wolfawitz testimony that the war would fund itself based on the income realized by Iraqi oil right down to the recent no bid contracts to operate the oil fields of Iraq by Exxon/Mobile, BP, Shell and Total. So John McCain's statements about wanting to drill offshore reach out to the onshore of Iraq. That is why he is so willing to have a 100 years war in Iraq. It is a shame we had to kill so many people and waste so much money to get a supply of oil for our three ton cars, but it would be even worse to let the program go on and on. We should always talk about this during the election. After all, it is the single major policy inititive of the last administration, the one we expect to change.

Offshore drilling

Joe Bell — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 10:06:29 EDT

We all know and have come to accept that the federal government is and has been deeply influenced by the deep pockets of the oil companies. We all certainly know that oil companies have been able to get the government to make huge investments of public funds in support of their particular industry.

Look at the highways.

Look at the millions of acres of public land leased to them at barely token rates.

Look at the consistant lowering of CAFE standards at the federal level (functionally a usage subsidy for oil producters).

So given all of this, why would anyone think that if there was any oil worth talking about offshore, the oil companies would have let the government restrict its access to it?

The offshore drilling ban was actually put in place by George HW Bush. Former President Bush has always been a direct supporter of the oil companies. He certainly did this in consultation with them. They stayed friends after he did it.

So it seems reasonable that the oil companies know that what oil may be offshore is both too little and too difficult to get to for it to be worth anything to them.

Conservatives, huh, what are they good for?

Joe Bell — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 04:16:55 EDT

I rode my bike out into the country around here to visit with an uncle of mine. He has lived here in Fort Worth for a long time and is pretty conservative in his opinions. As is the want generally around here. So I mostly spent the day avoiding politics as a topic. But listening to him and his friends I began to wonder what use conservate thought is now.

As I recall, conservatives historicly opposed social engineering by the government but now they are backing one of the most expensive and ambitious social engineering ventures in US history: the reconstruction of Iraq. They also think No Child Left Behind and Abstanace only sex education is a fine idea too, as long as it doesn't teach evolution. And restrictive health information access from family planning programs suits them too.This agenda is extreme, but it is counter to the way things are now, so what use are conservatives? We could have radical leftist who would be less likely to tamper with people's lives.

I also remember conservatives being states' rights guys but this group of men all support constitutional amendments on abortion and gay marriage and they are really opposed to higher vehicle emission standards set by California and other states. And they actually don't think we have enough intrusive compulsory educational mandates. They remind me of the re-education thinkers of the Cambodian stripe.

The conservatives are supposed to be champions of individual freedom but all afternoon they voiced support for warrantless wiretapping of U. S. citizens, the Patriot Act, the Military Commissions Act, the million man Watch List at Airports, the warrentless search and ceasure at airports, and the elimination of habeas corpus. They even justified this saying that we had to do these things to protect our freedoms.

Finally I always thought conservatives prided themselves on a historic support for limited government, fiscal responsibility, and balanced budgets. Making government small enough to drown in the bathtub. But these guys seem positively pleased with a president who has built the biggest, most expensive, and most intrusive government in U.S. history, all based on borrowing and deficite financing. They are really hoping that the bailouts of the Wall Street businesses expands, again to protect our freedoms.

Cancel your AT&T surveillance

Joe Bell — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 10:55:50 EDT

It took a little while for me to actually do this because I had to change several things to finally get disentangled from AT&T. But yesterday afternoon late I had a long conversation with a customer service representative about how I was canceling my telephone service with her company because they had been making recordings of me and my family's private conversations and sending them to people I did not know. I told her that her company actually knew better, and they went ahead and did it anyway. She seemed genuinely concerned about loosing a customer who had been such a long term user (over 20 years at one of the numbers), and I told her that it was sort of painful to me because my family's name has always been associated with her company's name. The family legend is that my older brother got his first name from the great man by way of my dad's nickname when he was in the second world war. The legend has it that everyone in the Navy named "Bell" was called "Alex" at that time. I suppose everyone in the Navy named "Bell" now is called "Spy".

If you get a similar experience, and I certainly hope all of you who have any chance to will avail yourself of the pleasure of knowing that your telephone conversations are not being recorded and shared with strangers, expect the representative to assure you that AT&T always protects your private information. My representative said this several times. I finally managed to convince her that it was not true by asking, if that was true, why had they spent so much money to get both houses of congress and the president of the once great United States to grant them immunity? Certainly if they had protected my privacy, which they knew was their obligation, they would not need any extra-legal immunity because they could just present the truth. That line of reasoning seemed to make sense to her as well.

I believe that I will realize some material savings by not being attached to AT&T besides the peace of mind attained by doing the right thing when it was mine to do. My plan is to evenly divide these savings between the ACLU and the Obama campaign. The ACLU because I have belonged to them since they protected war protesters against the first Bush Oil War, and they are going to work on setting aside this new law. And Obama because I don't think his administration would ever use this new power anyway, and I want to be counted with the people who recognized that.

Avoid the wait and give the money to Obama

Joe Bell — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 15:51:43 EDT

I don't understand why people would be willing to spend this much money and wait around for this long to have their conversations recorded by AT&T and shared with people they don't know. The reason the registration/activation process crashed today was becasue the NSA was having trouble with all the new "suspect profiles" they were having to create.

A great way to save $299

Joe Bell — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 09:58:53 EDT

I read this article this morning and thought of a great way to support Obama. If you go to the link in the article you will see that AT&T doesn't mention the extra service they give you if you buy a 16G G3 iPhone, which is that they record your conversations and share them with people you don't know. And, since that is both illegal and morally repulsive, they spend millions of the dollars they collect from you supposedly for their advanced service actually buying off legislators to give them immunity from law suits. So it seems both silly and unpatriotic to buy one of these phones. And it takes them at least 15 minutes to do the transaction and register your name with the NSA. So you can just not buy the iPhone, save the time waiting in line, and you will have a little more money to pay for gasoline and to contribute to Obama for President.

Empty Suit and All

Joe Bell — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:29:04 EDT

I notice that lots of people in the Get FISA Right group seem to think that Obama is the only one who can do anything about FISA, and that he is the only one who voted for it. That is the kind of thinking that Bush/McCain't want you to have. However, there are 68 other senators and 293 other representatives who are actually to blame. That is the way the government here is supposed to work. The legislature as a group of individuals vote on things. And we are supposed to watch the actions of the legislature and praise them when they do well, and treat them badly when they do poorly.

In response to this legislation passing, since my congresswoman and both of my senators voted for this authorization to go fishing in my private communications, I am going to send each one of them a nice fish, caught right here in our local waters, to commemorate their vote. I am going to mail them all this afternoon. If I am lucky, I will have enough to send one to each of their offices in Washington and to their home offices down here too. I bet they will remember the gesture.

I have also called the people at AT&T this morning and canceled all my telephone services. I spoke directly and plainly to the person who took the information down and told them that I felt that they personally were participating in something that appeared to be spying on my personal conversations, and sharing the information with people that I had not chosen to communicate with. I also wrote a letter to AT&T pointing out that they had spent a considerable portion of the money that they had collected from me to secure this immunity, and that I wanted my part back. I figured out what 10% of my billings by AT&T since the beginning of their beginning the service of saving my telephone conversations for the perusal of unautorized people. It came to a tidy sum, and I sent them a letter explaining why I was entitled to a refund and that I intended to persue the matter through a collection agency if they did not respond in a reasonable time. I plan to call them each day and ask them about the progress of this matter. To my knowledge, the legislation in questions did not immunize AT&T from consumer action.

I will keep track of the cost of these direct actions, and I will deduct them from the amount of money that I have budgeted to give the Obama campaign. I will make sure that they get a careful accounting. And, I am going to vote for Obama for President.