"People would just come up to me and say, 'How'd you lose your arm?' " Mr. Acosta said. "And I'd say, 'In the war.' And they would be like, 'What war?' "
--Robert Acosta, who lost his hand when a grenade was thrown into his truck in Iraq.

Morbo at The Carpetbaggers Report reacts to last weeks NYT Mag piece by Roger Lowenstein (unfortunately no longer available online unless you pay for it) with the passion of someone whose scales have finally fallen. Lowenstein made quite plain about SocSec what some of us have been trying to say for years about the whole radical right-wing: they don't care about facts or policy; they're ideologues.

We've had an enormously difficult time getting that through much of the left's collective head. Lefties have misunderstood the problem for a solid 20 years, and, remarkably, many of us still do. We insist on trying to parse David Brooks, Bill Safire, Condi Rice, and the Emperor Himself as if they were rational beings who just had their facts wrong. Morbo, who gets it now, forcefully eviscerates this sad illusion.

In 1935, some Republicans screamed that the plan was socialism. They've kept up that drumbeat ever since. He notes that throughout the 1970s, Ronald Reagan attacked Social Security as a "sure loser" of a program. Amazingly, after 60 years of Social Security success, the right wing is still singing this same tired tune.

An understanding of this historical context is extremely important. Progressives need to understand what they are up against. "Reforming" Social Security isn't something that just popped into Bush's head one day. Rather, his scheme is part of a long-running attack on that system that has been under way since it was created.

Too many progressives forget or refuse to believe that for most "Beltway" conservatives, ideology trumps everything -- including facts, real-world experience and common sense. The more honest ones admit this to Lowenstein. They essentially say that it does not matter that Social Security works, it does not matter that it has enabled millions to live with dignity and it does not matter that Americans support it. The program must be scrapped because it's a Big Government Program and Big Government Programs are always bad. How do we know Big Government Programs are always bad? Ayn Rand said they were. Conservatives believe it. End of discussion.

There you go.

Stop and ask yourself, those of you who try to fight with facts and always lose, how many times have you heard radcons especially, but conservatives of all kinds, excoriate the left because we 'don't believe in anything'? Who take every compromise we make as further proof that we have no beliefs, no ethics, no standards, and no guts? Liberal ideology is largely fact-based and tends to shift to accommodate those facts. Conservative ideology is faith-based. Facts are irrelevant, even frightening--feeble, changeable, fly-by-night outlaws that trick you into belief and then alter unrecognizably a few years/months/weeks later. Faith, on the other hand, never changes. It's a comfortable old lounge chair you can relax into and know exactly what it's going to do: conform to your body rather than make your body conform to it.

Conservatism, which sees itself as a profoundly optimistic philosophy, is in fact none of the three, yet it has clung successfully to that illusion for generations and each new generation has been more adamant, more extreme, and blinder in its fanatacism than the last. We have now reached the stage when, in Morbo's phrase, 'Ideology trumps everything,' and we are moving toward the final, cataclysmic stage, which might be summarized as 'Fear trumps everything.'

You can't fight the emotionalism of a Cult of Personality like the one around Bush by pointing out how obviously wrong he is about everything and has been his whole life, reciting reams of facts to back up your contention. Conservatives 'know' facts aren't trustworthy, and they know it because they manipulate them all the time. They make things up to support their position and claim their made-up numbers are 'factual'; obviously, we must be doing the same thing. Spin is everything to conservatives--as Lee Atwater recognized--because spin isn't just putting the best face you can on your policies, it's telling people what you believe; most importantly, what you believe in spite of any facts that might contradict that belief.

Liberals think it's important to ferret out the actual facts and develop strategies to deal with them. Conservatives most revere those who blatantly, openly and proudly ignore facts in the name of Belief. The closed-minded stubborness of absolute denial in the face of repeated assaults by 'facts' is what they think 'strength' is, and they worship strength.

Is it beginning to percolate through? The reasons we can't talk to these people? They live in different world, a world where it's a sign of your commitment to purity of purpose to insist that white is black and up is down even though everybody--including you--knows it isn't true. Because it isn't the facts themselves that matter (facts change, remember?), it's your refusal to knuckle under to them that proves your worth, that makes you a hero. Conservatives are always fighting the Tyranny of Facts with the Freedom of Belief, and he who dies with the most illusions intact, wins.

This nonsense comes from the particularly virulent form of relentlessly conformist Midwestern Xtianity that Sinclair Lewis satirized in Babbitt and that after the Second World War dumped Dale Carnegie on an unsuspecting society--Carnegie, the man whose idiotic book spawned 50 years of motivational speakers and writers who specialized in preaching the Carnegie Gospel of 'Positive Thinking' to three generations of American business. The pinnacle of denial conservatives have lusted after and finally achieved in the new milennium is a testament to Carnegie's 'philosophy', the underpinnings of which were always 'Ignore any reality that hampers your pursuit of success.'

Beneath all the Happy Talk about maintaining a 'positive outlook' and concentrating on success no matter what--or who--gets in your way was a fundamental fear and an unvarnished appeal to greed and arrogance: 'You deserve to be No 1, and don't let anybody tell you otherwise. You have a right to be successful, but you better seize your moment or else somebody who does will come along and take it away from you.'

Under the disguise of a 'motivational guide' beats the heart of a Machiavellian manual for the modern corporate-shark wanna-be, and now three generations have been indoctrinated into his system of deny, deny, deny--to deny reality is 'Positive Thinking'; to persist in your goals even if the Real World says they're impossible is 'Courage'; to believe in yourself and your goals despite any and all evidence to the contrary is 'Optimism'.

To Carnegie, the goals themselves didn't matter and he never talked about their quality or offered advice for examining them for worthiness or even latent insanity. He wasn't concerned with what your goals are--that's a individual decision; he was only concerned with telling you how to get what you wanted. His assumption was that you wanted to achieve success in corporate America (he was writing in the 50's when the Corner Office and a Key to the Executive Washroom were the twin Holy Grails in the lives of the men he was talking to). You didn't have to think about goals because a) the Company did it for you, and b) they were involved primarily with getting ahead in the Company.

It's not that conservatives weren't single-minded before Carnegie but that Carnegie gave them a particular product to sell that people--especially people in what are now known as Red States--were emotionally and sociologically highly vulnerable to: pie in the sky. He promised that enormous wealth and happiness beyond measure could be the reward of anyone who just believed hard enough, and to a generation that had been born in an economic collapse, raised during the Great Depression, and come of age in a world war, his promises were what they had been waiting to hear all their lives: Things Can Be Better Than Everything You've Known Up to Now.

It was their stubborn refusal--even after all that had happened in the previous 30 years, or maybe because of it--to give up their naivete, their native American Innocence, that fueled their easy acceptance of Carnegie's simplistic solution, and they were rewarded for their belief with more than twenty years of economic growth and, for most, the life they had only imagined as a sort of impossible Paradise before 1945. They left the cynical innocence of the WWI generation behind and embraced instead an innocence that was militant, proud, and disingenuous when it wasn't just a little bit arrogant and insular: the Americans had just saved the world's bacon; surely they had earned the right to stand before Europe as the first among equals (at least).

So they bought the denial, the simplistic solutions, and the mindless optimism as if it were their birthright; they made Dale Carnegie a wealthy man and a cultural icon; and they foisted on America an angry sense of entitlement that was almost Southern in the crippling insecurity that lay just below its shining surface of glittering rhinestones and faux gold leaf. Conservatives seized on that simplicity like an old friend--simplicity was their ally, complexity their enemy. They used positivism to undercut the ancient American distrust of people with too much money, and sell them instead on their bedrock belief that making money was the holiest of endeavors--anybody could be rich if they just tried hard enough and wanted it bad enough.

It was a two-edged sword, this pissed-off positivism. On the one hand it threatened to drown American exuberance under a suffocating blanket of conformity and turn the whole society into a national gathering of greedy fortune-hunters; on the other, the sense that we could do anything if we just set our minds to it leaked over into our idealism and made us think that inhuman traditions of sexism, racism, poverty, war, and cruelty to anybody who was different didn't have to stand just because 'that's the way it's always been'.

Which is what happened in the 60's. Conservatives--who had controlled America during the 50's by using anti-Communist paranoia as bait--were stymied for a short time by the infection of idealism that had suddenly invaded the carefully-constructed, fear-based optimism on which they had built their social supremacy. 'You can do anything' was never intended to extend to the disruption and idealistic re-making of the society they had successfully been running quietly but steadily for their own benefit. It was dangerous, unreliable, flaky, and it threatened to overturn the fragile balance of elements that--precisely arranged and cultivated--maintained their prosperity...and their control.

But in the militantly innocent Heartland, the siren lure of simple solutions and the promise of riches for the righteous never really lost its appeal, and conservatives furious over the changes they had been powerless to prevent--feminism, integration, diversity, pacifism--found fertile ground for their message there and went back at it with renewed vigor. As the last election sort of showed, it would seem that Dale has won after all.

Here's what worries me:

Term II is under way. The vicious Republican PR machine is of such potent talent that Bush could now walk up to a live TV camera and jam his thumbs in his big monkey ears and wiggle his fingers and stick out his tongue and say Ppppbbbtthhtt, ha ha America, it's my gul-dang war and I knew all along Saddam was an easy mark, a pip-squeak tyrant, never had WMDs, and I lied to the whole stupid nation to make me look manly and to help my buddies in Big Oil, and in the military industry, and in my daddy's Carlyle Group, and for my rich Saudi pals.

And he could say: Too bad about all those dead 'Murkin soldiers. Too bad about all those soldiers who will be dying very soon. Too bad they can't go AWOL and skip out on the war like I did. Too bad they're dying for reasons no one can justify, and never could. Okey doke, I'm off to the ranch for even more vacation, the most of any president in American history. Bye now. Oh, yes, one more thing: ppppbbbtthhtt!

And most of America would apparently sit there and watch him, and sigh, and go, oh that Dubya, such an honest and God-loving man, so simple and plainspoken and not all that bright. Just like the rest of us. He's a Good Man, isn't he? He's sturdy and stalwart and on the side of righteousness. I mean, isn't he, Lord? Hello?

He really could, couldn't he? And the Kool-Ade drinkers would say, 'What a charming man. What a funny joke.' and send him more money.

NOTICE OF REVOCATION OF INDEPENDENCE
by Basil Fawlty (aka John Cleese)

To the citizens of the United States of America, in the light of your failure to elect a competent President of the USA and thus to govern yourselves, we hereby give notice of the revocation of your independence, effective today. Her Sovereign Majesty Queen Elizabeth II will resume monarchical duties over all states, commonwealths and other territories. Except Utah, which she does not fancy. Your new prime minister (The Right Honourable Tony Blair, MP for the 97.85% of you who have until now been unaware that there is a world outside your borders) will appoint a minister for America without the need for further elections. Congress and the Senate will be disbanded. A questionnaire will be circulated next year to determine whether any of you noticed. To aid in the transition to a British Crown Dependency, the following rules are introduced with immediate effect:

1. You should look up "revocation" in the Oxford English Dictionary. Then look up "aluminum." Check the pronunciation guide. You will be Amazed at just how wrongly you have been pronouncing it. The letter 'U' will be reinstated in words such as 'favour' and 'neighbour'; skipping the letter 'U' is nothing more than laziness on your part. Likewise, you will learn to spell 'doughnut' without skipping half the letters. You will end your love affair with the letter 'Z' (pronounced 'zed' not 'zee') and the suffix "ize" will be replaced by the suffix "ise." You will learn that the suffix 'burgh' is pronounced 'burra' e.g. Edinburgh. You are welcome to respell Pittsburgh as 'Pittsberg' if you can't cope with correct pronunciation. Generally, you should raise your vocabulary to acceptable levels. Look up "vocabulary." Using the same twenty seven words interspersed with filler noises such as "like" and "you know" is an unacceptable and inefficient form of communication. Look up "interspersed." There will be no more 'bleeps' in the Jerry Springer show. If you're not old enough to cope with bad language then you shouldn't have chat shows. When you learn to develop your vocabulary then you won't have to use bad language as often.

2. There is no such thing as "US English." We will let Microsoft know on your behalf. The Microsoft spell-checker will be adjusted to take account of the reinstated letter 'u' and the elimination of "-ize."

3. You should learn to distinguish the English and Australian accents. It really isn't that hard. English accents are not limited to cockney, upper-class twit or Mancunian (Daphne in Frasier). You will also have to learn how to understand regional accents- Scottish dramas such as "Taggart" will no longer be broadcast with subtitles. While we're talking about regions, you must learn that there is no such place as Devonshire in England. The name of the county is "Devon." If you persist in calling it Devonshire, all American States will become "shires" e.g. Texasshire, Floridashire, Louisianashire.

4. Hollywood will be required occasionally to cast English actors as the good guys. Hollywood will be required to cast English actors to play English characters. British sit-coms such as "Men Behaving Badly" or "Red Dwarf" will not be re-cast and watered down for a wishy-washy American audience who can't cope with the humour of occasional political incorrectness.

5. You should relearn your original national anthem, "God Save The Queen", but only after fully carrying out task 1. We would not want you to get confused and give up halfway through.

6. You should stop playing American "football." There is only one kind of football. What you refer to as American "football" is not a very good game. The 2.15% of you who are aware that there is a world outside your borders may have noticed that no one else plays "American" football. You will no longer be allowed to play it, and should instead play proper football. Initially, it would be best if you played with the girls. It is a difficult game. Those of you brave enough will, in time, be allowed to play rugby (which is similar to American "football", but does not involve stopping for a rest every twenty seconds or wearing full kevlar body armour like nancies). We are hoping to get together at least a US Rugby sevens side by 2005. You should stop playing baseball. It is not reasonable to host an event called the 'World Series' for a game which is not played outside of America. Since only 2.15% of you are aware that there is a world beyond your borders, your error is understandable. Instead of baseball, you will be allowed to play a girls' game called "rounders," which is baseball without fancy team strip, oversized gloves, collector cards or hotdogs.

7. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry guns. You will no longer be allowed to own or carry anything more dangerous in public than a vegetable peeler. Because we don't believe you are sensible enough to handle potentially dangerous items, you will require a permit if you wish to carry a vegetable peeler in public.

8. July 4th is no longer a public holiday. November 2nd will be a new national holiday, but only in England. It will be called "Indecisive Day."

9. All American cars are hereby banned. They are crap and it is for your own good. When we show you German cars, you will understand what we mean. All road intersections will be replaced with roundabouts. You will start driving on the left with immediate effect. At the same time, you will go metric with immediate effect and without the benefit of conversion tables. Roundabouts and metrication will help you understand the British sense of humour.

10. You will learn to make real chips. Those things you call French fries are not real chips. Fries aren't even French, they are Belgian though 97.85% of you (including the guy who discovered fries while in Europe) are not aware of a country called Belgium. Those things you insist on calling potato chips are properly called "crisps." Real chips are thick cut and fried in animal fat. The traditional accompaniment to chips is beer which should be served warm and flat. Waitresses will be trained to be more aggressive with customers.

11. As a sign of penance, 5 grams of sea salt per cup will be added to all tea made within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, this quantity to be doubled for tea made within the city of Boston itself.

12. The cold tasteless stuff you insist on calling beer is not actually beer at all, it is lager. From November 1st only proper British Bitter will be referred to as "beer," and European brews of known and accepted provenance will be referred to as "Lager." The substances formerly known as "American Beer" will henceforth be referred to as "Near-Frozen Knat's Urine," with the exception of the product of the American Budweiser company whose product will be referred to as "Weak Near-Frozen Knat's Urine." This will allow true Budweiser (as manufactured for the last 1000 years in Pilsen, Czech Republic) to be sold without risk of confusion.

13. From November 10th the UK will harmonise petrol (or "Gasoline," as you will be permitted to keep calling it until April 1st 2005) prices with the former USA. The UK will harmonise its prices to those of the former USA and the Former USA will, in return, adopt UK petrol prices (roughly $6/US gallon - get used to it).

14. You will learn to resolve personal issues without using guns, lawyers or therapists. The fact that you need so many lawyers and therapists shows that you're not adult enough to be independent. Guns should only be handled by adults. If you're not adult enough to sort things out without suing someone or speaking to a therapist then you're not grown up enough to handle a gun.

15. Please tell us who killed JFK. It's been driving us crazy.

16. Tax collectors from Her Majesty's Government will be with you shortly to ensure the acquisition of all revenues due (backdated to
1776).

Thank you for your co-operation.

I've taken the Democrats to task many a time for acting like whipped puppies and showing their bellies whenever the Pubs look at them cross-eyed so it's only fair that I give them credit when they actually manage--as they did for three years filibustering the worst of the Emperor's judicial appointments (the reason the Pub leadership wants to change the rules to outlaw filibusters)--to act like an actual opposition party.

It isn't much but they're doing what they can, delaying the Rice and Gonzales nominations for a few days to try to force a floor debate where they can register their opposition and the reasons for it.

WASHINGTON — Voicing displeasure with the Bush administration over prisoner abuse and the Iraq war, Senate Democrats on Wednesday delayed the expected confirmations of Atty. Gen.-designate Alberto R. Gonzales and Secretary of State nominee Condoleezza Rice.

Republicans had hoped in particular that Rice, whose nomination was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Wednesday, would be confirmed and sworn in today in time for President Bush's inauguration. But Democrats — critical of her advocacy of the Iraq invasion, as well as Gonzales' answers on prisoner abuse and torture — acted to postpone final votes by at least a day for Rice and possibly more than a week for Gonzales.

The maneuver underscored the limits Democrats intended to try to place on the new, larger Senate Republican majority as Bush pushed an ambitious legislative agenda and a lengthy roster of nominees. Although their numbers in Congress dwindled after November's elections, Democrats have indicated they plan to challenge the president.

One reason they can do so is that Senate Democrats have the procedural power to snarl work if Republicans try to deny them the right to debate. Thus, while Democrats know they lack the votes to defeat Rice or Gonzales, they can influence when a vote is scheduled.

"There are a number of Democrats … that want to have a chance to debate [Rice's] nomination for a couple of hours," said James Manley, a spokesman for Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).

Although Rice was approved on a 16-2 committee vote, Democratic leadership aides said they wanted to make a point: They should not be considered a rubber stamp.

"A little bit of debate never hurt anybody," Manley said.

It won't change anything as far as the vote goes but it will at least put the Pubs on notice that the Dems aren't going to roll over every time a Pub snarls at them, and that has to be a good thing. But the Dems don't have the numbers to prevent the Pubs from turning the Congress into a rubber stamp, which is exactly what they intend to do. Whether they succeed or not depends not on the Dems but on dissident Republicans concerned over what they see as an Admin that is consistently violating core conservative principles.

Note to the DLC: Get your heads out of your asses and do some exploiting of potential allies here, you pro-corporate weenies.

From the AJC, this short oddity:

It appeared, however, that there would be little chance for a reconciliation between the Bush administration and former Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice Roy Moore.

Moore's relationship with the White House soured after he refused a federal order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state courts building. He will be the speaker Saturday at the First Ladies Inaugural Tea, but Laura Bush's spokesman said she will not attend and was not invited. (emphasis added)

Excuse me? The First Lady wasn't invited to and won't attend the First Ladies Inaugural Tea? So who the hell invited Roy?

1. Hillary
   I don't think so.


2. Nancy
   Not likely that Nancy will be within 3000 miles of a coronation ceremony celebrating the victory of a man she hates, much less arrange the speaker at the FLIT.


3. Rosalind
   Not if the Emperor himself asked her to.

Who does that leave?

So Barbara dissed Her Boy's better half, did she? Interesting.

Those of us who noticed a few years ago that PBS had developed an unfortunate tendency to kowtow to conservative bias in its news reporting, often parroting FoxNews' Right-friendly illusions and orienting its format toward less 'hard news' and more non-controversial feature fluff, can only be saddened by the latest proof that whatever courage Public Broadcasting once had has been thoroughly undermined by its ex-corporate managers' determination to attract more corporate underwriting.

Bowing again to the specter of government censure, the Public Broadcasting Service has decided to edit out the scene of a nude woman in the upcoming television movie "Dirty War" rather than expose its member stations to complaints of indecency and FCC fines.

The film, co-produced by HBO and BBC Films, depicts a fictional terrorist attack on central London. The scene in question shows a woman being scrubbed down after exposure to a chemical "dirty bomb." The original version will debut next Monday on HBO, a pay cable station that, unlike PBS stations, is not obliged to meet government indecency standards.

Pat Mitchell, the PBS president and CEO, said Saturday that the movie was edited before it was sent to member stations. PBS stations are scheduled to air the edited version Feb. 23.

PBS also announced a new partnership arrangement with HBO at the winter gathering of the Television Critics Assn. (TCA) in Universal City. Mitchell said editing out the nude scene in "Dirty War" was necessary "to protect our stations."

Would the nudity be less of an issue if it was a man instead of a woman, one wonders?

This isn't the first time PBS has altered elements of its programming to suit Michael Powell's power and prudery.

Last year, PBS cut three instances of street language from the debut of its series "Cop Shop" to the dismay of production and cast members. At the television critics' last meeting in July, series star Richard Dreyfuss and executive producer and writer David Black protested the cuts as censorship. Dreyfuss said he agreed to them only after hearing KCET would have been subject to "intimidating fines in the hundreds of thousands of dollars." The series was dropped after one show.

PBS had also excised an expletive from the British import "Prime Suspect."

The fines are certainly intimidating, and Powell's Puritanism worrying, especially given his lackey-style obeisance to far-right conservative wing-nuts and would-be censors like Focus on the Family, but let's not lose sight of the real threat here: PBS is increasingly funded by corporate money. Not only does that money almost always come with strings attached determining what kind of programming it can or cannot be used for (we've probably seen the last Frontline report on corporate skullduggery), it also carries with it corporate expectations that 'community values' won't be 'violated' by the programming it funds.

In other words, 'public' broadcasting is slowly being privatized as a consequence of its quest for corporate $$bucks$$.

Newt Gingrinch, in his attempt to zero out government funding for public broadcasting ten years ago, said at one point that Rush Limbaugh was 'true' public broadcasting because he had a bigger audience. Since Rush is totally a creature of corporate sponsorship and promotion who would never have survived the dismal ratings of his first few years if he hadn't been backed by corporate right-wing tycoons who wanted his vitriol against their enemies to be as widely disseminated as possible, we are left with the spectre of a PBS that, gutless as the Democratic Party, incrementally allows itself over the next decade or so to be turned into Rush-lite in order to get the same kind of corporate support.

Expect to see more corporate-friendly documentaries from Ken Burns, endless nature specials, and mindless entertainment extravaganzas virtually indistinguishable from standard commercial dreck while real news programming, the kind PBS used to excel at, goes the way of the dodo. And on the rare occasions when they attempt something different, expect them to de-fang it lest it offend a corporate sponsor.

Public broadcasting: yet another great liberal idea bought out by corporate money.

Requiescat in pace, public broadcasting. We hardly knew ye.

If y'all thought the Cobb County School Board had been put out of the business of making a fool of itself by the recent Federal court ruling against its placement of Xtian religious advertising on biology textbooks, y'all're wrong. They're still in that business and they aim to make it grow.

As if taking a federal judge's ruling against them as fighting words, the Cobb County school board voted Monday to appeal a court order to remove evolution disclaimers from textbooks.

In a 5-2 vote, board members said U.S. District Judge Clarence Cooper's decision "amounts to unnecessary judicial intrusion into local control of schools," according to a statement they released immediately after the vote.

The decision came after members met with lawyers for three hours in closed session.

"We have to make our best judgment based on the facts," said Curt Johnston, a member who was chairman when the board adopted the disclaimers in 2002. He said the board believes the facts show the judge erred when ruling that the disclaimers — which call evolution "a theory, not a fact" — convey an unconstitutional endorsement of religion.

In their statement, the board said it felt "condemned . . . for taking a reasonable approach to address the concerns of [Cobb] citizens on a controversial issue."

Yeah, those day-amn activist judges cain't tell us-all how we oughten to run ar schyools.

Future AJC article on a pending Cobb County School Board decision:

COBB COUNTY, GA--Rev Clarence Wildman and an angry group of four Cobb County parents stormed the Cobb County School Board last night, demanding that stickers be placed in physics textbooks warning that 'Relativity is just a theory'.

Citing a new study from the Institute to Promote Biblical Science, Wildman characterized the Theory of Relativity as "secular hogwash" and referred to Albert Einstein as "an atheistic foreigner", probably French, who had come out of who-knows-which worthless Communist Party indoctrination center calling itself a "university" armed with a scheme to destroy Xtianity by claiming that science was all relative and the universe was finite.

Wildman pointed to the story of how Joshua made the sun stand still in the sky. "Einstein's theory would have you believe that that couldn't have happened without the Earth crashing into the Sun. Since the earth did NOT crash into the Sun, that's evidence enough for me that Einstein was full of it." The IPBS study, he said, contains all kinds of new scientific information that would tend to disprove Einstein's "baseless speculations", though he declined to mention what that information might be.

"All we're asking," he concluded in a fiery oration that visibly moved three of the four parents he brought with him and scared the bejeezus out of everybody else, especially when he began foaming at the mouth, "is that you make students aware that there is a controversy. Relativity is just a theory, not a fact, and they have a right to know that there is a competing theory which explains the universe in a much more believable way--from God's own mouth." Then he warned the Board that if they didn't put the stickers in the books, they'd go straight to Eternal Damnation. "God Is Watching You!" he bellowed, standing on a rickety stack of Bibles as proof that he had "God's approval".

A noisy crowd of one thousand parents who had gathered outside the meeting to protest the placing of the stickers in school textbooks was not allowed into the meeting "for security reasons", the School Board said.

The Emperor Georgius has Big Plans for his next two speeches, the upcoming Inaugural and this year's SOTU. He's thinking about his legacy.

He wants to be remembered as a public servant who promoted political freedom abroad and economic freedom at home....

Oh. Well, as the man who stole two national elections in a row and is the new owner/operator of Iraq, our 51st State, I don't suppose he could claim to be supporting political freedom at home and economic freedom abroad with a straight face. Still, even at that it's a stretch.

On Iraq, Bush indicated that he would stay the course despite the continuing violence. "I hope that 50 years from now people will look back and say, 'Thank goodness old George W. stuck to his beliefs that freedom is an agent for change, to make the world more peaceful.' "

They might be saying that, a few of them, as they toddle around the nursing home, also under the impression that Britney Spears was a great artiste, Joe Stalin was a quarterback for the Green Bay Packers, the moon is made of Swiss cheese, and they themselves are the products of an illicit union between Marilyn Monroe and Pervez Mushareff, who they will insist is the man that invented Milk Duds. Other than that....

But not to worry. The Emperor--who sees himself as a Great Man when he isn't staring into a mirror trying to work out which facial expressions best suit God's Chosen Messenger--is a man who believes whatever he says, even when it pops unbidden off the top of his cavernous head.

Peggy Noonan, who wrote speeches for President Reagan and now writes a column for the Wall Street Journal online, [said,] "A first inaugural asserts intention; a second inaugural speaks of what has happened the past four years and what is intended for the next four."

[Chief Speechwriter Mike] Gerson said that described Bush's intentions exactly.

Brilliant. Absolutely brilliant, these people. The cliches pearls of wisdom and superficial slogans deep insights roll off their tongues like burnt egg off an iron skillet, don't they? One looks at the past, one looks at the future. Who woulda thunk it? Such perceptions would have escaped me completely. But now that I know how it's done, I bet I can summarize both speeches in 25 words or less.

1. Everything has been Great.


2. Everything is going to be Great.

There. Can we go home now?

I wondered, during the recent Ukrainian uprising, why Yushchenko didn't use troops to put the demonstrators down like a good little ex-Soviet normally would have been expected to do. Or as George Bush, their spiritual sister, undoubtedly would do should the zombie-ish US public ever wake up to what he's actually perpetrating on them. A fascinating piece in the NYT--just the kind of in-depth, detailed reporting they don't dare to do any more about the inside game around the Emperor--reveals that the troops were ready to go, shields, gas masks, and all. Some even had guns and they weren't loaded with rubber bullets. The Ukraine Interior Ministry had ordered a crackdown with the first disturbances, and the Army had responded.

Then, in a move that has to make Americans nostalgic for a by-gone era, the sloviviki--senior intelligence officers in the SBU, the Ukrainian version of the CIA (that's 'spooks' to you and me)--began a concerted campaign inside Yushchenko's govt to convince the Interior Ministry that such a crackdown was illegal. Mr Tenet must have--at least, should have--blushed furously when he read it.

Kiev was tilting toward a terrible clash, a Soviet-style crackdown that could have brought civil war. And then, inside Ukraine's clandestine security apparatus, strange events began to unfold.

While wet snow fell on the rally in Independence Square, an undercover colonel from the Security Service of Ukraine, or S.B.U., moved among the protesters' tents. He represented the successor agency to the K.G.B., but his mission, he said, was not against the protesters. It was to thwart the mobilizing troops. He warned opposition leaders that a crackdown was afoot.

Simultaneously, senior intelligence officials were madly working their secure telephones, in one instance cooperating with an army general to persuade the Interior Ministry to turn back.

The officials issued warnings, saying that using force against peaceful rallies was illegal and could lead to prosecution and that if ministry troops came to Kiev, the army and security services would defend civilians, said an opposition leader who witnessed some of the exchanges and Oleksander Galaka, head of the military's intelligence service, the G.U.R., who made some of the calls.

Far behind the scenes, Col. Gen. Ihor P. Smeshko, the S.B.U. chief, was coordinating several of the contacts, according to Maj. Gen. Vitaly Romanchenko, leader of the military counterintelligence department, who said that on the spy chief's orders he warned General Popkov to stop. The Interior Ministry called off its alarm.

Can you imagine what would have happened if Tenet had backed his intelligence analysts' report that Iraq had no WMD and co-ordinated efforts behind the scenes with Powell's State Intel--who had reached the same conclusion--to convince the non-hard-core-neocons in the govt that Chalabi was full of it and the WMD's were a myth? If, instead of surrendering to the Bush/Cheney faith-based intuition of Feith & Co and after lamely trying to counter all that bogus C-TEG 'intel' from Ahmad finally told the Emperor what he demanded to hear ('It's a slam-dunk, Mr President.'), he and Powell had pointed out forcefully that the threat was illusory and the Emperor's war almost certainly illegal? In other words, if he had done his goddam job?

Kind of makes you wish you lived in the Ukraine, don't it?

It's a long report but worth reading for the 'How It Should Have Been' picture of the way a reality-based govt operates, just in case it's been so long you've forgotten.