Don't articulate any strong positions or opinions, lay low in the media, and make as little effort as possible to inspire, ignite or challenge the electorate. Run as the "Anti-Bush." Let Bush and the Iraqi insurgency define the terms of the election, and let the election be a referendum on Bush and Iraq.

I'm betting that this strategy will turn out to nothing less than a humongous, historic miscalculation. The Bush guys have shown themselves to be very good at seizing and wielding power. They're probably good at holding on to it as well. Allowing Bush to define the terms of the election is a lousy idea for many reasons. First and foremost, we now know the terms by which he governs are, quite often, based on falsehoods and fundamentalism. Why continue to debate this administration's false premises?

It's a little hard to believe that Kerry's inability to inspire is an issue of personal style or a result of having worked in the Senate for too long. It seems more like a strategy. The saddest thing about his visionless campaign is that there are so many big, global issues that we need to be talking about and working on right now -- energy, the environment, AIDS, the widening gap between rich and poor, nuclear proliferation and fundamentalist religous insanity, to broadly name a few. Yet, the national dialogue is like a broken record, stuck on Iraq, Britney Spears, and abstract, simplistic discussion about "the economy." We need an opposition candidate who is willing or able to push the national conversation in a more substantive and meaningful direction. So far, Kerry appears not to be that candidate.

I suppose it could be a systemic problem -- Kerry may just be doing exactly what one must do to run for president in today's corporate media environment and polarized political culture. Yet, I still have the overwhelming feeling that the Democratic Party is, for the moment, bankrupt of ideas and vision. Talking to people and looking around at the culture, I get the sense that American voters would appreciate John F. Kerry acting and talking a little bit more like his hero, John F. Kennedy -- exciting, inspiring and challenging the American people to move the country and the world and humanity to a better place.

If putting some serious challenges to the American people will lose Kerry the presidency, then maybe the American people have the president they deserve in George W. Bush.

10:49 AM | Link | (0) comments   

Lately, I've been in quite a few conversations with friends and peers that end up concluding that because we have not yet found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, the Bush administration are a bunch of liars and should be removed from power. I agree that these Bush guys are unfit as national leaders. I would like to see them gone. But increasingly, I find the ongoing, single-minded public conversation about Saddam's WMD to be a distraction from more important issues.

The problem is that this conversation over whether or not Saddam had WMD's keeps us locked into the Bush administration's terms which, as we now know, were false from the very beginning. We know that the war in Iraq was not really about Saddam's WMD. So, let's stop talking about Saddam's WMDs and start talking about the issues that WMD's were designed to distract us from in the first place.

Instead of staying locked in on these false premises about why we are in Iraq, I'd like to see an honest, straightforward public conversation about the most core, fundamental reason why we are in Iraq. The reason is simple, obvious, and in all of our faces all day long. The public conversation we need to have right now is simply this:

If we want to continue to live the American way of life, as it is currently conceived and organized, then we need to have a very big, very heavily armed military presence alongside the source of the world's largest remaining concentrated source of cheap, abundant energy, the oil reserves of the Arabian peninsula.

Remember, Osama's original beef was with the Saudi family. The Islamic fundamentalists have made clear who they are going after. To figure out why we're in Iraq, the U.S. media can wait 50 years for Dick Cheney's energy taskforce notes to come out. Or we can look at the clear evidence indicating that our military presence in the Middle East is necessary if we want to maintain the vast, steady flow of inexpensive oil that our American Way of Life so thoroughly depend upon.

Our national leaders need to make these choices more clear to the American people rather than continuing to pretend that we can motor, sprawl and "grow" endlessly, at no cost. If our national leaders aren't going to make these choices clear, then our national media needs press them and raise awareness in the American collective consciousness: If we want to keep living this way, then here are the costs. Blood for oil is the deal.

The Saddam-WMD discussion is taking up way too much media space. It doesn't really move anything forward except, perhaps, to de-legitimize the Bush presidency. I do find a certain pleasure in seeing this administration de-legitimized. But even if the second president in a row is successfully torn to shreds and a new guy comes to office, what are we left with? The American public still hasn't been leveled with or prepared for the necessary changes ahead. And the American presidency and system of governance is left ever more tattered in the eyes of the world than it already is.

Who does it serve, the U.S. media's endless, single-minded political story-line of Did He or Didn't He (get a blow job, do enough to stop 9/11, have the WMD's, take his Hollywood actress wife to the sex club...)?

Who does it serve?


11:03 AM | Link | (0) comments   

The 27 Most Wasteful Road Projects in America chronicles the nation's most wasteful and environmentally harmful highway projects and ranks the ten worst. Eliminating the 27 projects would save federal taxpayers more than $24 billion. The report was released by Taxpayers for Common Sense, a leading fiscal critic of highway and transportation boondoggles, and Friends of the Earth, one of the nation's leading environmental organizations.

Good stuff.


10:14 PM | Link | (0) comments   

Does this story seem plausible to anyone?

COUP D'ETAT:
The Real Reason Tenet and Pavitt Resigned from the
CIA on June 3rd and 4th

Bush, Cheney Indictments in Plame Case Looming

JUNE 8, 2004 1600 PDT (FTW) - Why did DCI George Tenet suddenly resign on June 3rd, only to be followed a day later by James Pavitt, the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations (DDO)?

The real reasons, contrary to the saturation spin being put out by major news outlets, have nothing to do with Tenet's role as taking the fall for alleged 9/11 and Iraqi intelligence "failures" before the upcoming presidential election.

Both resignations, perhaps soon to be followed by resignations from Colin Powell and his deputy Richard Armitage, are about the imminent and extremely messy demise of George W. Bush and his Neocon administration in a coup d'etat being executed by the Central Intelligence Agency. The coup, in the planning for at least two years, has apparently become an urgent priority as a number of deepening crises threaten a global meltdown.

Based upon recent developments, it appears that long-standing plans and preparations leading to indictments and impeachment of Bush, Cheney and even some senior cabinet members have been accelerated, possibly with the intent of removing or replacing the entire Bush regime prior to the Republican National Convention this August.

Read on...

11:16 PM | Link | (0) comments   

It's a little bit hard to believe that the following story is true. It almost reads like a piece of satire. I have no idea what this Capitol Hill Blue is all about, so take it as you will. This one's pretty good...

Bush's Erratic Behavior Worries White House Aides
By DOUG THOMPSON
Publisher, Capitol Hill Blue
Jun 4, 2004, 06:15

President George W. Bush's increasingly erratic behavior and wide mood swings has the halls of the West Wing buzzing lately as aides privately express growing concern over their leader's state of mind.

In meetings with top aides and administration officials, the President goes from quoting the Bible in one breath to obscene tantrums against the media, Democrats and others that he classifies as "enemies of the state."

Worried White House aides paint a portrait of a man on the edge, increasingly wary of those who disagree with him and paranoid of a public that no longer trusts his policies in Iraq or at home.

"It reminds me of the Nixon days," says a longtime GOP political consultant with contacts in the White House. "Everybody is an enemy; everybody is out to get him. That's the mood over there."

In interviews with a number of White House staffers who were willing to talk off the record, a picture of an administration under siege has emerged, led by a man who declares his decisions to be "God's will" and then tells aides to "fuck over" anyone they consider to be an opponent of the administration.

Read on...

1:14 AM | Link | (0) comments   

All evidence indicates that we are rapidly approaching the peak of global oil production. But rather than prepare Americans for a world of rising demand and dwindling supplies, Bush and Kerry are giving the comforting but false impression that they can deliver never-ending low gas prices. They're campaigning against geology, and $2 gallons are just the tip of the iceberg...

Check out my cover story in this week's New York Press.

5:24 PM | Link | (0) comments