You KNOW the Rightwingers are on the ropes when they are reduced to dragging out aging Church ladies who claimed to have had steamy affairs with JFK (who of course, like the "escaped" Yemeni "terrorists" is conveniently not here to defend himself). Seems that the Clinton sex scandals, like "Peyton Place" after a few seasons, have run their course.The titillation is gone. The stains on the blue dress fail to inspire anything other than the occasional spot removal tip. Clinton's sex life past or present now rates drearily low on the lurid scale. I mean, what's left after you have Paula Jones mudwrestling Tanya Harding?

So, now, in an effort to inspire new fear and loathing in the self-righteous, - a 60-something Presbyterian church administrator who looks suspiciously like Dana Carvey in his Church lady drag, claims she was getting it on with JFK right before he died. Oh, yeah - and she just happened to be a 19-year-old White House Intern at the time. Of course we are all supposed to gasp: "Just like Clinton! Oh my God, it's a liberal sexual conspiracy against 19-year-old White House Interns! Well, that settles it! I'm going to cast my vote in 2004 for a murderous war criminal!!"

Speaking of murderous war criminals.....

Here is an excerpt from the 1973 book "Hitler" by Joachim Fest, who served in the German army under Hitler. The book (considered one of the best about the Reich) was published in Germany and later translated into English by Richard and Clara Winston.

This excerpt describes Hitler's actions immediately following the Reichstag (the German capitol building) fire in Berlin in February of 1933 - a disaster blamed on Communists but which many historians believe was actually arranged by Hitler. Read the following and substitute "Bush" for Hitler, "9/11" for "Reichstag Fire," Al Queda for "Communists," "Congress" for Hindenberg, and "Patriot Act" for "emergency degree."

"The next morning, Hitler...placed an emergency decree before Hindenburg for signature. It utilized the pretext of the fire in truly comprehensive fasion, annulling all important fundamental rights of citizens, considerably extending the list of crimes subject to the death penalth and providing the Reich government with numerous levers against the states. "People behaved as if stunned," a contemporary noted. The Communist threat was taken very seriously by the ordinary man. Apartment houses organized guards against the feared pillaging. Peasants set up watches of springs and wells for fear of their being poisoned. These fears, further fanned by the whole propaganda apparatus of government and party, made it possible for the moment for Hitler to do almost anything. And with great presence of mind, he made the most of the opportunity. ...The decisive factor was that the conservatives made no effort to preserve the rights of habeas corpus. This "fearful gap" meant that henceforth there was no limit to outrages by the state. The police could arbitrarily "arrest and extend the period of detention indefinitely. They could leave relatives without any news concerning the reasons for the arrest and the fate of the person arrested. They could prevent a lawyer or other persons from visitn him or examining the files on the case....They could crush their prisoner with work, give him the vilest food and shelter, force him to repeat hated slogans or sing songs. They could torture him...No court would ever find the case in its files. No court had the right to interfere...

"The emergency decree for the protection of the people and the state supplemented by another decrees "against betrayal of the German people and treasonous machinations" issued that same day proved to be the decisive legal basis for Nazi rule and undoutefly the most important law every laid down in the Third Reich. The decrees replaced a constitutional government with a permanent state of emergency....The decrees provided the sham of a legal basis for persecution, totalitarian terorism, and the repression of the German resistance right up to July 20, 1944. At the same time, one of its side effects was that the Nazi's authority stood or fell on the thesis that the Communists had set the Reichstag fire. "

When Hitler was asked if rumors of a planned massacre of his enemies were true, he scoffed, "I need no St. Bartholomew's night. Byt he decrees issued legally, we have appointed tribunals which will try enemies of the State legally and deal with them legally in a way which will put an end to these conspiracies. "

As to just who set the Reichstag fire, or allowed it to happen - that was never really resolved, says Fest: "The Communists always passionately denied any connection with the fire, and in fact they had no motive whatsoever for it. For this very reason, it was possible to paint a convnincing picutre of Nazi responsibility, since the fire fitted so neatly into the pattern of Hitler's strategy.

Seems the Communists were not creating enough of a "threat" to push Hitler into the role of "protector," which he hoped to use rally the German people behind him. Writes Fest: " As a matter of fact, Nazi propaganda had to work hard to create the necessary bogey man. The revelation about the tons of seditious material found in Communist Party headquarters {substitute Al Queda caves] served this purpose, along with a flock of rumors, obviously inspired by the Nazis themselves from the middle of February on....

Bob Erhlich: Bush's Test 'State Nazi'

It should be obvious to all Marylanders by now (those whose IQs hover at least above room temperature), that Bob Ehrlich is Bush's "test Nazi." Ehrlich is a mini-Bush. He gained his office illegally via the most corrupt election in Maryland since Edgar Allan Poe's day (Ehrlich is actually more like someone Poe would write about!). He is vengeful and mean-spirited, punishing anyone he feels has "crossed" him and flagrantly rewarding supporters, however incompetent or unfit for appointments and other favors they may be.

Now he is testing to see how far the Reich can be instituted on a state level. In "Maryland Notebook," a local section of the "Washington Post," it is revealed that Ehrlich has ordered all state workers to inform superiors if they are involved in any legal proceedings, from bankruptcy to divorce cases to parking tickets.I Ehrlich's excuse? He wants to find out if there is evidence of "unethical behavior". (You want evidence of unethical behavior Bob? Got a mirror handy?). The real reason Ehrlich is trying to engineer this new trampling of privacy is to trump up excuses to start purging people from the State employee rosters. That is exactly what Bush is doing in Washington. His operatives in every office of the U.S. government are reported to be finding excuses to fire anyone with the "incorrect" philosophical viewpoint, replacing them, of course, with those with the "right (and we do mean RIGHT) viewpoint." Candidates for jobs at the National Institutes of Health report being asked questions on philosophical/political stances. As I reported in this site earlier, at the Bush EPA, hundreds of employees in the EPA's research division were given a questionnaire as part of a "survey" that asked questions like "Have you ever fantasized about having sex with a coworker?" (The outcry killed this scheme!). Ehrlich's scheme is so the same thing, different modus operandi. So far, the Maryland Democrats have been standing firm against the Nazi assault. They owe it to the other 49 states to hold that line. I have no doubt that the Bush Machine stands ready to help rig gubernatorial elections across the country in 2004 if Ehrlich succeeds in transforming Maryland into the "first Reich state."

They Can’t Find Osama Bin Laden or Saddam Hussein, But By God, They’ll Nail Those Texas Democrats!

You know how they have National Secretaries Day or National Black History Month? Well they should have declared this past week “National Bush Administration Makes a Show of Doing Something Constructive Week.” First we have the $16-million dollar “preparedness drill” in which a dirty bomb and other nasty things are simulated and responded to – at least as well as they could be whilst falling over the camera crews, reporters, sound equipment, guys holding the cue cards, and having to refresh their make-up frequently. Of course, just giving the nation’s embattled mayors the $16 million to divvy up and spend on security would have gone a lot further toward protecting Americans than a high-profile, low-benefit drill (somehow I doubt terrorists will follow a script or wait around for film crews).. But the photo ops presented by filling out requisitions few hazmat suits or hiring a few more cops just didn’t cut the Bush mustard. At the very least, the $16 million might have been spent on to better advantage by rehiring at least some of the 3,000 airport security people recently fired by the Bush administration a few weeks back (after spending millions to train them).

Next we have John Ashcroft and Robert “Tell me to Jump and I’ll Ask How High on the Way Up” Mueller announcing how they are now indicting two Swarthy Muslim Guys they are SURE were responsible for the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole. These alleged terrorists were being held in a prison in Yemen until a month ago, when they mysteriously “escaped” into the ether. How convenient! Now they can be indicted and tried without the awkwardness of having them testify or present evidence. I bet you a bagel and a cup of coffee the escapees were helped on their way, complete with one-way plane tickets to South America - and not by the Yemeni government. The whole plan would, of course, be to APPEAR to finally be getting around to seriously working the USS Cole murder case – a case that would likely have been solved in 2001, very possibly averting 9/11, if Bush and his pals had not blocked the investigation – which, up until July 2001 was focused on Osama Bin Laden. Mueller DARED to invoke John O’Neill’s name in a press conference. That is like having Ma Barker invoke Mother Teresa! Except that Ma Barker was an honest crook – not a pandering phony like Mueller, whose most significant job qualification was his role in covering up the Iran Contra scandal for Ronald Reagan.

So the Bush Corporazi brigade can’t find Osama Bin Laden, can’t find Saddam Hussein, and can’t even manage to produce living, breathing, bodily present people for trials, they have decided to go all out and round up Texas Democrats! (In case you hadn’t heard, dozens of Texas Democrats from the State government walked out of session to protest a bid by Tom Delay to Gerrymander the State into districts shaped like pretzels in order to further stack Congress with rightwing Corporazi Republicans like himself. The “rebels” were last seen headed for the state line). Yep, Tom “Boiler Room” Delay called in his request to his ole buddy Tom Ridge’s Homeland Security office: Declare a code red, send the National Guard, FBI, and CIA to Oklahoma (where the Dems were reportedly holed up in motels) and round those terrorists up! So what did Delay plan to charge the “fugitives” with? Stealing those little hotel soaps?

Tom Delay is one of those people who make your skin crawl just looking a photo. He has these mean, piggy little eyes and this slithery smirk that set my teeth on edge. It doesn’t help his case any to know that he raises his campaign funds by running a boiler room scam in which he bilks doctors and teachers out of hundreds by telling them they have been “appointed” to special advisory panels (which don’t exist). To “secure their positions,” they discover, a minimum donation of, say, $500 to the Tom Delay campaign is required. The thing that really has me bewildered is: Who the hell votes for these people? Tom Delay, Dennis Hastert, Trent Lott, Bill Thomas, James Inhofe and the rest of the cast of pontificating, mean-spirited, narrow-minded, undereducated, self-righteous, greedy, bigoted, sorry excuses for human beings are the type that usually appear as villains in comic books or grade C movies – the kind you can’t WAIT to see get their come uppance. I often ponder what sort of deep-rooted unresolved father issues would drive a person to actually go out to the polls and VOTE for someone like Tom Delay. Scary.

Line Between Science and Politics Turning Into a Muddy Smudge



They say that a nation’s quality can be inferred by the way the society treats its youngest and oldest citizens. In a modern society dependent on technology, scientists can be added to this test: If a nation’s scientists are treated with respect and held to a high standard of ethics, science will more likely be used for the benefit of society. If scientists are treated with no respect and encouraged to place personal gain above general good, this society will probably be doomed to a Lorax-like existence.. The Lorax was the Dr. Seuss critter who figured out how to make a nifty, though worthless product that everyone wanted. By the time he was through, his beautiful forest had been reduced to a lunar landscape surmounted by a smog-belching factory. He lived alone, a haunted little being trying to warn the unwary against his awful fate.

Under G. W. Bush, there can be no doubt: we are headed for Lorax land. He has no use for scientists – unless it’s to use them to trump up just the “science” he needs by crossing the right scientists’ hands with the right amount of silver. Thus the Bush administration will throw out three decades of scientific work built by hundreds of peer-reviewed papers on climate change in favor of a few hastily slapped together studies by a handful of paid off researchers whose “results” support his stand on Kyoto. Bush is also “renovating” every scientific panel designed to provide meaningful oversight over key areas such as drug research. His renovation? Boot out every scientist with a backbone and conscience and keep and hire only those willing to promote his personal agenda: easing restrictions on the pharamaceutical industry, overturning environmental regulations, redefining wetlands, outlawing abortion, etc., etc.

On April Fool’s Day, the new Bush rep in charge of research and development at the Veterans Health Administration of the Dept. of Veterans Affairs, a Karl Rovish-looking woman named Nelda Wray, who is from – what a shock (ahem) – TEXAS – pulled the plug on 17 research projects that had ALREADY BEEN FUNDED. Some of the researchers were informed of their “termination” the day they started their projects. Wray is using a typical corporate approach: do not reward the most dedicated or experience – reward the ones who know how to play the game best. So it isn’t how many hours you spent with veterans and in the field on your research – it’s how many articles you got published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), etc. While cutting funds to research on areas like gastric acid disorders (rampant in stress-ridden PTSD cases) and thyroid disorders (rampant in veterans who were exposed to nuclear materials such as 1950s bomb testing, “spent uranium,” or leaky nuclear submarine reactors), Wray is channeling the money into what she considers her highest priority: “studying organizational structure and performance” at VA hospitals. This is corporatese for “pre-privatization feasibility study.” Welcome to Bush Science World.

The Bush tentacles are pushing their way into every area of science and pulling down any walls that remain between science and pure politics – a wall that should be as sturdy as the wall between church and state. (If Nazi Germany did not teach us that, then what proof do we need? The annhiliation of the planet by politically harnessed researchers?) In the first year following the stolen election, at least half a dozen major technical publications including “Power Engineering” removed the existing editors and replaced them with what can only be described as “corporate wonks.” The focus of material changed in many cases from the best science to the best science to promote the Bush agenda (never couched in just those terms, of course). In “Power Engineering” I saw a shift toward more material on coal burning technologies and less on serious alternative energy strategies. ( I am in an unusual position, as an abstractor, to be able to track trends in a several publications week to week.) In recent months I have noticed that even the once reasonably principled “Science” magazine is being molded in the Bush image. Here’s a prime example: Not too many weeks back, “Science” actually ran, as a “research paper” a study that “proved” that families bumped off welfare are just fine and dandy, and in fact, thrive. The research protocols consisted of extremely subjective observations and survey results – and thus hardly qualify as rigorous science by most research standards. And this in a publication where even the most rigorous psychiatric research – let alone sociological “surveys” of dubious merit - may have a tough time just getting a reading and the world’s top scientists in other areas may compete for years to make the cut, from among what amounts to stacks of thousands of candidate papers each and every month! This article wouldn’t even have made the cut in JAMA (Journal of American Medical Association), I bet, where the standards have been pretty sketchy in recent years.

. Not long after that, another “research article” appeared that could only be described as “religious” in tone: an article by Israeli researchers on using carbon dating techniques to reconcile the archaeological record to the Old Testament chronology! Although this may be fascinating material and valid in its own right – it belongs in one of the archaeological or historical magazines – not in a hardcore science journal such as Science. At the very least, they could have put the article in the general, lighter reading section up front – but no, it was in the highly coveted “Research Articles” section. This inclusion seemed calculated to appease the Judeo-Christian religious right, just as the “research article” on welfare reform seemed like an offering to the Bush administration and the rightwingers in Congress.

Contrast this sad state of affairs with what was beginning to happen back before 9/11, when the editors of 13 medical journals signed a statement condemning the fudging and massaging of research results by pharmaceutical companies. democrats.com/view.cfm

Now it’s 2003, nearly 28 months into the Bush Administration, and my guess is, if you are a young scientist with few principles, a greedy streak, and a research proposal for a study designed to prove that dissenters are psychopaths who would benefit from being kept drugged up on thorazine, then there is probably a bright future for you in the Bush administration.