Mother Mary Rants

Speaking at the signing of the "Secure Fence" act on October 26 (yet another GOP oxymoron!), George W. Bush alleged, not for the first time, that illegal immigrants do jobs that Americans don't want to do. This is nonsense. Americans DO want those jobs; they just don't want to work for slave wages. Illegal immigrants, lacking the necessary documentation, almost invariably have no other choice.

The Republican Congress has demonstrated repeatedly over the last 12 years that it believes American workers can attain the American dream for $5.15 per hour. A forty-hour work week at minimum wage would pay the worker $206 — before taxes. That's probably less than a typical Republican congressman's lunch costs his lobbyist. And it's almost certainly far more than an illegal immigrant could ever hope to earn.

"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free" . . . and I'll supply enough money to build 300 miles of a 700-mile fence to protect a 1,300-mile border against this dire threat to another tax cut for the wealthy. And I'll call myself a patriot while doing so. That's the GOP's message, less than two weeks before election day. Is anyone paying attention?

So on Saturday, Jeb Bush was in Pennsylvania to support the reelection bid of a Pennsylvania senator who resides in northern Virginia, when a group of protesters started chanting "Jeb, go home." His security detail thought it appropriate to attack the activists with stun guns while Jeb hid in a nearby supply closet.

This is so startling it bears repeating: The governor of one of the largest states in the Union, the brother of the president of the United States, hid in a supply closet from protesters of a war policy he ostensibly endorses. On a day when most Republicans were hiding from citizens who want to know why the GOP prefers protecting incumbent politicians over protecting innocent children.

Wouldn't it have been a million times better for the GOP if Gov. Bush had engaged with the activists? — had supported his brother, had endorsed his brother's "strategy" in Iraq, had stood up for what he ostensibly believes in? Jeb is, after all, considerably more popular than his brother is, especially in states that do not know him as well as they know his brother.

Jeb missed a golden opportunity to support his brother and further his brother's goals. Instead, he cravenly hid in a supply closet. I guess the nation can infer how Jeb truly feels about the disaster in Iraq....

There's a famous anecdote, variously attributed to George Bernard Shaw or Winston Churchill, in which the protagonist asks his dinner partner whether she will sleep with him for one million pounds. She agrees. He next asks her whether she will sleep with him for five pounds. "Certainly not!" she exclaims. "What kind of woman do you think I am?" "We've settled that," our hero replies. "Now we're just haggling over the price."

For most of September, "moderate" Republican senators stood by their principles, refusing to allow President Bush to demolish habeas corpus, to detain and torture whomever he chooses, for however long he chooses, and to junk those pesky, "outdated" Geneva Conventions affirming those high moral values. Then on Sept. 21, a "compromise" was struck. The Senate agreed to allow Mr. Bush to secretly detain and abuse (with "alternate," rose-by-any-other-name methods of torture) whomever he chooses, for however long he chooses — as long as he declares his detainees to be terrorism suspects, and as long as he eventually gets around to putting on a show trial using a kangaroo tribunal and hearsay evidence. They also agreed to immunize the Bush Administration and its designees against prosecution for war crimes under the Geneva Conventions.

And of course, any language in the bill Congress finally passes that the president doesn't like will be nullified through his 800th-or-so signing statement, rendering the whole charade meaningless.

How nice for the nation. We now know exactly what kind of people "moderate" Republicans really are, and the president doesn't even have to haggle over the price!

Contraceptives work to prevent the creation of an embryo. Despite this indisputable fact, the anti-choice movement can talk only about "embryonic death" and "murder," usually "wanton."

George W. Bush insists that a blastocyst, a set of two to a few dozen cells too small to be seen without a powerful microscope, is "fully human." Well, of course it is! A human sperm meets a human ovum and becomes a human blastula, which MAY become a human embryo, which MAY become a human fetus, which (with a LOT of help from mother, family, and society) MAY become a person some day. What did he think each microscopic collection of cells was, "fully banana"?

A 2002 article by "U.S. Pharmacist," a trade publication, notes that 98 percent of sexually active women in the U.S. use some form of birth control, even if merely the rhythm method. Nevertheless, there are an estimated 3.6 million unplanned pregnancies each year in the U.S. alone, less than a fourth of them legally aborted. In addition, the National Institutes of Health tell us that "up to 50% of all fertilized eggs die and are lost (aborted) spontaneously, usually before the woman knows she is pregnant."

In other words, if we do the math (and remember, sexually active women can produce several "fully human" blastocysts each year), we see that there are approximately 2.8 trillion "embryonic deaths" each year in the United States alone. Each one of these was "fully human," and therefore their mothers and their mothers' physicians must be prosecuted for "murder."

Or maybe, just maybe, the anti-choice movement could learn to accept that there is a difference between a collection of a few dozen cells and a PERSON. A blastocyst cannot laugh, love, dream, think, or vote Republican. (Of course, thinking and voting Republican is a contradiction in terms!) It is far more appropriate to think of an embryo as a uterine parasite than as having a greater "right to life" than its hostess — who, UNlike her parasite, has a brain that contains more than a few dozen neurons.

By the anti-choicers' definition, hundreds of thousands of "embryonic deaths" take place in the world every minute of every day. Perhaps the anti-choicers should think up some better pretext for demanding that they and they alone be allowed to control female sexual behavior, instead of allowing adult women the autonomy that adult men take for granted.

These days, the Republicans with their usual hypnotized chant accuse Democrats of two grave sins: they "undermine our troops" and they encourage enemies of the United States to "believe America has no political backbone."

First: I am trying to imagine how criticism of an unjust, unwise, and unnecessary war of aggression could "undermine" the troops unfortunate enough to have been sent to Iraq to pursue neocon ideological fantasies. Are they going to curl up and suck their thumbs in the face of danger because 8,000 miles away, someone mentioned that Emperor Bush has no clothes? Will they flee the enemy if someone breaks the secret that the false connection between Saddam and al Qaeda was known to be false from the start, and the neocons knowingly lied? Will they collapse into sobbing girlie-men if someone mentions the fact that both Bush and Cheney entered office on January 20, 2001 already determined to prosecute their war of aggression against Iraq, and lacked only a semi-plausible pretext?

No! Our fighting men and women are considerably more courageous, heroic, patriotic, and intelligent than "At Least One Deferment" Rumsfeld, "Five Deferments" Cheney, and "AWOL During a Time of War (a Felony)" Bush.

As to the second charge, encouraging America's enemies to believe us to be politically spineless: Isn't deluding our enemies a good thing? An overconfident enemy is a stupid enemy. Just ask anyone who seriously believed that the Iraqis would greet American troops by throwing flowers and singing hymns of gratitude. . . .

The Republicans are trying to frame the debate on Iraq with two extremes: "cut and run" and "stay the course." The Democrats cannot accept this; the implication from zero is that all Democrats are cowards. I suggest that starting today, the Democrats adopt this third alternative: "Clean up Bush's mess."

If the current U.S. Supreme Court thinks that abiding strictly by foundational precedents is prudent and necessary, it should take to heart "Ex Parte Milligan," a case the Supreme Court decided in 1866. A Southern-sympathizing civilian attorney named Lambdin (really!) P. Milligan was arrested by the Union army in 1864 for trying to release rebel prisoners of war; he was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death by a military tribunal. The Supreme Court freed Milligan, and wrote:

"No graver question was ever considered by this court, nor one which more nearly concerns the rights of the whole people. ... By the protection of the law human rights are secured; withdraw that protection, and they are at the mercy of wicked rulers, or the clamor of an excited people. ...

"The Constitution of the United States is a law for rulers and people, equally in war and in peace, and covers with the shield of its protection all classes of [people], at all times, and under all circumstances. No doctrine, involving more pernicious consequences, was ever invented by the wit of [humanity] than that any of [the Constitution's] provisions can be suspended during any of the great exigencies of government. Such a doctrine leads directly to anarchy or despotism....

"This nation, as experience has proved, cannot always remain at peace, and has no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attached to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, ambitious of power, with hatred of liberty and contempt of law, may fill the place once occupied by Washington and Lincoln; and if [the right to suspend any part of the Constitution during a time of war] is conceded, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate. ... For this, and other equally weighty reasons, they secured the inheritance they had fought to maintain, by incorporating in a written constitution the safeguards which time had proved were essential to its preservation. Not one of these safeguards can the President, or Congress, or the Judiciary disturb....

"In every war, there are men of previously good character, wicked enough to counsel their fellow-citizens to resist the measures deemed necessary by a good government to sustain its just authority and overthrow its enemies; and their influence may lead to dangerous combinations." For example, handing over Congress's power to the President; allowing the President to annul all or parts of new laws through "signing statements" (including his announced decision to imprison and torture whomever he pleases, at any time he pleases, for whatever reason can be passed off as national security); attempting to annul the First Amendment (the Flag Desecration Act); attempting to deprive whole classes of citizens of their inalienable rights (homosexuals, would-be immigrants); and handing out tax cuts outrageously tilted in favor of the top 0.1 percent, and then claiming that anyone who notices is engaging in "class warfare."

In a different case, judge Learned Hand wrote, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women. When it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it." Driven by assiduously whipped up fears, have we already given up too much of our liberty to the imperial presidency?

In his remarks on May 16 about The Da Vinci Code, Howard Troxler unfairly dismisses the book as "patent nonsense," most of its allegations either sheer invention or "totally twisted" distortion. He writes good-humoredly about how all good Christians must "debunk" the upcoming movie, which his ESP tells him is going to be "half-baked."

My goodness me, how the gentleman doth protest! As a professional theologian, I found the novel far from nonsensical. I found many, many mistakes and distortions, but I found nothing "totally twisted," except perhaps the author's portrayal of his villains.

The Da Vinci Code is fiction, but one of its underlying premises is quite sound: Starting within the first decades of the Jesus Movement, the male leaders of Christianity have systematically stripped the religion of the proto-feminism of Jesus and Paul of Tarsus. For example, Mary Magdalene was falsely alleged to be a prostitute by Pope Gregory in 691 CE; non-Roman Catholic groups were consecrating female priests and even female bishops, the horror!

Human beings worshipped a female Creator for millennia; it was obvious that only a female could bring forth life and nurture it out of her own substance. Despite howls of protest from such Yahweh partisans as Jeremiah, the goddess Asherah was worshiped up until about 600 BCE, when she was transformed into Hokmah, Wisdom. Some theologians, including Marcus Borg, believe that Hokmah was transformed into Jesus of Nazareth.

But ever since the priests of Yahweh began insisting that God is exclusively male, the Sacred Feminine has been overshadowed by the sacralized masculinity of the Father and the Son. Women who want a deity with whom they can identify as men do are bleep out of luck, and feminity is relegated to second-class status, an afterthought created to serve and submit to the sacralized masculine.

The Da Vinci Code is fiction. It was published as a novel, an entertainment. Although the author claims that every fact is accurate, that claim is made in a work of fiction. He also claims that there are fewer than 70 words that can be found in the letters "PLANETS"; I found more than 300 before I stopped looking.

But even though it is full of mistakes and distortions, the book is not "patent nonsense," or it would not appeal to so many people who yearn for the Sacred Feminine — and the gentlemen who are quite happy with females as second-class citizens would not be protesting nearly so much.

On April 19, 2006, Ed Helms, Senior White House Correspondent for "The Daily Show," explained why Scott McClellan, who had just resigned his position as White House press secretary, was going to need detoxification (note: Ed did NOT use the euphemism "Bushwah." He said "Bushit," pronouncing the two Ls after the U.):

President Bush and his administration "read the poll numbers, they know most Americans think their policies are failing, and they've responded . . . by changing the person who tells us about those failures. . . . Every house-cleaning begins by changing the doormat.

"[Detoxification is] part of the standard exit protocol for any outgoing press secretary. Their job is to filter the hundreds of pounds of Bushwah produced by the Administration on a daily basis — lies, half-truths, errors of omission, commission, emission. The press secretary must transform these noxious toxins into pleasant-smelling oral excretions. Biologists know it as the Fleischer Cycle. The problem is, over time these toxins saturate the press secretary's internal organs, which clog, slow, and finally fail, allowing huge chunks of unfiltered Bushwah into the public sphere. . . . I gotta tell you, it's a tough gig. These guys have a shelf life somewhere between an orchid and unrefrigerated seafood. Thankfully, the detox cleans them up a little bit.

"But nothing can undo the irrevocable damage to their souls."

I am profoundly disappointed with the outcome of "Dancing With the Stars" last night!

It was bad enough that "Master P," a rap artist, survived to the fourth round of the competition. I would call "Master P" a clodhopper, but that would be an insult to clodhoppers everywhere. "Master P" did not respect the competition; where everyone else averaged 31 hours a week of practice time, "Master P" averaged less than five hours a week. "Master P" was churlish; his professional partner presented him with the gift of a pair of decent dancing shoes, and he spurned the gift, preferring his "lucky" sneakers, which looked to be the size and weight of ski boots. "Master P" could not, in my opinion, dance his way out of a paper bag. On a scale of one to 10, the professional judges gave him an average score of four, and I believe that to have been a "pity score"; if I had been a judge, his average score with me would have been 0.5 — out of pity. He was, after all, a last-minute replacement for a qualified participant.

Why did "Master P" survive so long in the competition, when infinitely better dancers did not? I believe it is because the producers made the mistake of giving audience votes equal weight with the scores of the professional judges. "Master P" is apparently a popular rap artist. (I wouldn't know; I prefer music.) And "Master P" is black.

Three people survived to the final night of the competition: Stacy Kiebler, Drew Lachey, and Jerry Rice. All three judges called Stacy Kiebler the best dancer they had seen in five seasons of "Dancing With the Stars." One judge said that if DWTS went on for fifty seasons, Stacy would remain the best dancer of all.

Stacy is beautiful, 5'11", and talented. Drew Lachey is almost as fine a dancer, and he is short and has no neck to speak of. I was prepared for him to win the competition, as he in fact did — everyone loves an underdog.

And then there is Jerry Rice, who apparently is some sort of former football player; I believe he was MVP at some Stupid-Bowl or other. Jerry Rice's dancing improved as the competition went along, but he ought to have lost to a better dancer at least four weeks ago. But Jerry Rice is black, and popular.

And here's what makes me so angry — Jerry Rice, whose scores averaged about 6.1, beat Stacy Kiebler, whose scores averaged about 9.5. Where is the justice in that?

If I could track down an e-mail address for Izzie Pick, supervising producer of DWTS, I would strongly suggest a change in the rules of scoring: Make the judges' votes cumulative, while the audience's remain per-show. I have not kept track of every score over the last two months, but I believe that Stacy's cumulative score would be approximately 284, Drew's would be approximately 278, and Jerry's would be approximately 224.

Another possibility would be to decrease the percentage allotted to audience voting. It is ridiculous that a churlish, superstitious oaf like "Master P" could have beaten out dancers of FAR higher caliber, merely because he is black. It is the height of injustice that the best competitor of at least 50 seasons of "DWTS" (if not of all time!) was beaten out by an over-the-hill football player, merely because he is black.

On February 6, in an op-ed article about September 11, 2001, historian Joseph J. Ellis wrote that that dreadful day "does not threaten the survival of the American republic."

Oh, really? As a result of Sept. 11, we now have a president who, a year after signing a secret executive order authorizing torture of political prisoners, signed a law forbidding such torture with the announcement that he intended to disobey that law whenever he chose "in the context of his broader powers" as commander in chief.

Mr. Bush has also felt free to ignore the law of the land in order to spy on American citizens who might be in contact with al Qaeda, or who might be protesters of his war in Iraq. His rationalization is that Congress, in giving him the power to declare war as a last resort, in the process elevated him above the law.

Mr. Bush has also announced that, as commander in chief, he has the power to arrest and imprison American citizens indefinitely, on secret charges. He has also inserted a "wedge" into the Constitution by having compliant Republicans in Congress suspend habeas corpus for non-citizens.

Umberto Eco recently compiled a set of axioms upon which all fascist states agree. Among these are:

—The truth is revealed once and only once.

—Doctrine outweighs reason, and science is always suspect.

—Dissent is treason.

—Perpetually at war, the state must govern through fear.

—Critical, analytical thought is for degenerate intellectuals, whose only wish is to subvert traditional "family values."

Less than four and a half years after Sept. 11, the United States resembles a fascist dictatorship far more than it does a republic. In the 2004 election, NO Republican incumbent was beaten in his/her quest for re-election. The Greedy Old Pigs have such a stranglehold on Congress that Democrats are frequently excluded from important meetings and votes. Hearings that are important to the nation must be held in the Capitol basement. The nation's judiciary is being well packed with ultraconservatives who are all in favor of a presidency more imperial than in Nixon's wettest dreams.

Two thousand years ago, the Roman Empire executed a Jewish carpenter on the charge of sedition. That act did not "threaten the survival" of the Roman Empire — in the short term. After all, it was a non-citizen, far from the capital of the empire, who did not have the right of habeas corpus; and he got what the Bush Administration would call a fair trial before he was tortured to death as an act of State policy in the Empire's reign of terror. . . .

Following is a verbatim transcript of President Bush explaining Medicare Part D:

WOMAN IN AUDIENCE: I don't really understand. How is it the new plan going to fix the problem?

PRESIDENT BUSH (verbatim): Because the — all which is on the table begins to address the big cost drivers. For example, how benefits are calculated, for example, is on the table. Whether or not benefits rise based upon wage increases or price increases. There's a series of parts of the formula that are being considered. And when you couple that, those different cost drivers, affecting those — changing those with personal accounts, the idea is to get what has been promised more likely to be — or closer delivered to that has been promised. Does that make any sense to you? It's kind of muddled. Look, there's a series of things that cause the — like, for example, benefits are calculated based upon the increase of wages, as opposed to the increase of prices. Some have suggested that we calculate — the benefits will rise based upon inflation, supposed to wage increases. There is a reform that would help solve the red if that were put into effect. In other words, how fast benefits grow, how fast the promised benefits grow, if those — if that growth is affected, it will help on the red.

. . . Remember the olden days when people voted for a man whom they thought would be intelligent enough to be President of the United States? . . .

Ellen Smith writes on today's Washington Post op-ed page, "Why not make the pre-Bush MSHA the model for freedom of information? A return to the former practice would be healthy and would keep the government in check through greater public scrutiny." She is right — and that is why the government will never return to the former practice while Mr. Bush is in office, or indeed any admiring successor. If the Bush administration were to receive greater public scrutiny, it might indeed be kept in check.

It is a matter of public record that the New York Times learned of Mr. Bush's spying on American citizens in summer 2004. It is a matter of public record that New York Times editors were summoned to a high-level White House meeting in summer 2004. It is a fact that the public did not learn about Mr. Bush's spying until after Times editors learned that the information was contained in a forthcoming book by one of their reporters. To me, it is easy to infer that during the presidential campaign of 2004, the White House had no interest in greater public scrutiny of its conduct. It might have been kept in check....

At his first confirmation hearing, Samuel Alito included in his opening remarks the statement, “No person in this country, no matter how high or powerful, is above the law, and no person in this country is beneath the law.” This statement is either stupid or frightening. If everyone is on the same plane as the law, then no one is subject to the law; the law becomes irrelevant.

Presumably, Judge Alito meant to convey the idea that, despite Emperor Bush's frequent assertions to the contrary, even he does not have the right to suspend any law he chooses in the name of fighting “terrorism” — particularly when the Pentagon is redefining “terrorism” to include nonviolent protests of the war in Iraq.

But he may have meant that, since everyone is on the same plane as the law, everyone IS the law. Meaning that, just like Mr. “l'état, c'est moi” Bush, I too have the right to ignore any law I choose, so long as I claim to be fighting terrorism or evil. I too have the right to imprison anyone I choose, without habeas corpus or even access to the law. I too may torture with impunity, as long as I find a good Newspeak euphemism. After all, I am neither above nor subordinate to the law — just like Mr. Bush.

Is this the season of "peace on earth, good will to all"? On December 10, a fundamentalist megachurch published a full-page advertisement in the St. Petersburg Times that began "To HELL with 'Happy Holidays,'" and went on evilly from there. They spent almost $4,500 to promise strife on earth and ill-will to all who refuse to commercialize the birth of their lord and savior. Imagine how many Christmas presents that money could have bought for the needy!

"Christian" fundamentalists are waging a campaign in which they present themselves as the victims of a liberal conspiracy against them. Poor, pitiful victims! They have only the White House, Congress, the judiciary, and virtually all state and local governments on their side. However will they manage to turn the United States into a fundamentalist theocracy with all these forces against them?

To everyone who believes that being wished peace and joy at this time of year is evidence of a terrible threat to your religion: By all means, drop desperately ill.

I had a passing thought recently: The so-called "theory" called "intelligent design" (it's actually a hypothesis, and not even a scientific one) ought to contain the seeds of its own destruction, since it EVOLVED out of creationism.

The fact of the matter is that the word "theory" has a special definition in science. In science, evolution is a theory the same way GRAVITY is a theory. Doubtless once proponents of ID have succeeded in wedging their religious dogma into the nation's science classes, they plan to introduce the "theory" of "intelligent gravitation." Not to mention introducing the "fact" that pi equals three (1 Kings 7:23) into math classes, or the "fact" that hares and rock badgers chew their cud like cows (Lev. 11:6, Deut. 14:7), despite not being ruminants, into biology classes. (See "The Errant Bible" for a partial list of the errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions in this supposedly God-written and perfect collection.)

It is true that both raisins and watermelons are fruit. But if "intelligent design" were a raisin, evolution would be a watermelon the size of Mount Everest. It is also true that three-fourths of the Bible was inscribed onto tanned animal skins during the Bronze Age, when the highest level of technological achievement was the war chariot. Proponents of ID need to stop trying to drag the United States back to the 19th century and realize that if God created the Universe (as I believe), God also created evolution.

A letter to the editor of the St. Petersburg Times claims that on the subject of torture, the United States has only one choice: We can trust President Bush's leadership and "authorize torture," OR we allow "the destruction of our nation."

Leave aside the fact that torture does not work. Any evidence extracted by torture tends to be extremely unreliable. Just ask any of the millions of women whom the Inquisition tortured into admitting that they were witches before burning them at the stake. Just ask any of the employees of the CIA, the State Department, and the Pentagon whom the Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal psychologically tortured into providing false "information" to justify invading Iraq.

Torture is both inhumane and immoral. The use of torture corrupts any institution that tolerates it. In a private e-mail to me, the letter-writer recommended that I be put into the sort of cage from which rats could eat my face; that way, I would grow to love Elder Brother, um, President Bush, as much as every good American ought to love him. George Orwell's 1984 appears to be required reading among neocons — not as a cautionary tale, but as an instruction manual.

Leave aside the fact that torture is deeply unethical — as unethical as many of the neocons' favorite tactics (duplicity, fear, corruption, propaganda, and government by libel are also big favorites).

Also leave aside the letter-writer's breathtaking faith in Mr. Bush's ability to avert disasters before they happen. (Doesn't anyone else remember an August 6, 2001 memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike Inside the U.S."? This was the first instance in which Mr. Bush preferred vacationing over governing the nation — alas, if only it were the last.)

The point of torture is to destroy the victim's belief that he or she has certain inalienable rights — privacy, intimacy, inviolability. The torturer invades and destroys the victim's physical and ultimately mental independence. Usually agonizing physical pain and the fear of death are accompanied by public humiliation, incessant repetition, depersonalization, and of course sadistic glee. Did it work at abu Ghraib? Has it worked for any of the minimum-of-two-dozen INNOCENT men who have been imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay or one of our "black sites" for up to four years, with no end in sight? If you are reading this — do YOU feel any safer?

Torture is the interrogation technique of choice for totalitarian régimes, terrorist groups, and organized crime. Worse, the main point of torture is not to gain information (which is unreliable at best); the point of torture is to force acquiescence, and to spread terror among the Winston Smiths of our modern world.

The moral question is simple: Is the United States to be the only nation in the world that officially approves of cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment of human beings? Do we really want to be numbered among totalitarian régimes, terrorist groups, and organized crime?

Do we really want the rest of the world to see no moral difference between the United States and al Qaeda, the Mafia, or the Nazis?

Mr. Bush likes to strut around in the emperor's clothing of Christian competence, so it becomes fair to ask: Whom would Jesus degrade, abuse, and torture?

I can almost find it in me to feel sorry for President Bush. Morally required to find a nominee for the Supreme Court who is impartial, unbiassed, and unobjectionable to the rabid partisans he has created on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Bush chose his crony and "office wife" Harriet Miers. Ms. Miers has stated that she believes Mr. Bush to be "the most brilliant man [she] ever met."

Now Mr. Bush's far-right conservative base is frothing at the mouth with rage, because there is not enough of a paper trail on Ms. Miers; they cannot be absolutely certain that the future judgments of Justice Miers will be partisan, biassed, and objectionable enough to suit them. Why, she might not vote to deprive women of the right to control their own bodies! She might not vote to turn homosexuals into second-class citizens! She might not vote to enlarge the powers of the imperial presidency!

Poor Mr. Bush. His far-right supporters are gibbering with fury because they cannot be guaranteed bias on the bench. And if Mr. Bush is compelled to withdraw Ms. Miers's name in favor of the ideologue his base demands, every sane U.S. citizen will gibber with fury at the idea of a nakedly partisan ideologue on the bench.

But I don't pity Mr. Bush too much. After all, he has told the nation, "Trust me" to know Ms. Miers's heart — that she will be biassed enough in her judgments to please his far-right conservative base.

We trusted Mr. Bush when he said he was a compassionate conservative. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that Saddam was behind 9/11. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that Iraq was an "imminent threat." We trusted Mr. Bush when he said we had to spend the budget surplus. We trusted Mr. Bush when he said that lots and lots of tax cuts for the wealthy would lower the deficit. Since the end of 2000, Mr. Bush has added $2.3 TRILLION to our nation's deficit. In case you were wondering, 2.3 trillion seconds of time amounts to slightly less than 78,000 years.

I trust Mr. Bush, all right — to do whatever it takes to turn the United States into a neo-fascist dictatorship in which the Party controls all facets of every citizen's life. $10 a gallon for gasoline? No problem! — not in the United States of Halliburton. . . .

Annus horribilus is Latin for, you guessed it, “horrible year.” It’s a pun on annus mirabilus, or “year of wonders.” Queen Elizabeth used the term to describe 1992, the year that her sons Charles and Andrew both divorced and Windsor Castle caught fire. And Kofi Annan used the phrase on December 21, 2004, to describe last year (silly boy).

The ongoing debacle in Iraq. The Terri Schiavo political posture-athon. The bombings in London. The obscene, $286.5-billion porkfest that was July’s transportation bill. Hurricanes Dennis, Katrina, and Rita. The insistence of the Republicans in Congress that they can have their pork — even the $223-million bridge to nowhere in Alaska — and pay for hurricane recovery too, not to mention the in-all-but-name civil war in Iraq and still more tax cuts for wealthy Republicans. A national debt that has gone from $5.6-trillion at the end of 2000 to $7.9-trillion as of Sept. 22, and the Republicans apparently assume that we can continue to borrow money from Communist China, Saudi Arabia, Russia, and similar lenders indefinitely, and no debt will ever come due. (Incidentally, 2.3 trillion seconds equals close to 73,000 years.) Gasoline prices that have pretty much doubled since 2000. As I write, the possibility of 13 named storms still to come before the end of the hurricane season.

With all due respect for her majesty, if 1992 was an annus horribilus, then I nominate 2005 as the annus horribilissimus. It’s just never going to get any worse . . . or if it is, I don’t want to be here when it does. Wake me when it’s 2006.

It is clear that the devastation caused by hurricanes Katrina and Rita is going to require a new New Deal. We are going to need a Gulf Coast Regional Redevelopment Authority, similar to the Tennessee Valley Authority. We are going to need a gigantic new jobs program modeled on the Works Progress Administration and the Civilian Conservation Corps. We are going to need to revive the Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

And what does George W. Bush propose? He has already awarded no-bid reconstruction contracts to such favored corporations as Halliburton, Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root, the Shaw Group, and Bechtel. His "Gulf Opportunity Zone" deals with our national crisis by offering tax incentives for investment but not for job creation. These tax credits are being offered to businesses across the board, including the casinos. Even Harrah's is astonished, according to the Washington Post.

I recently realized the true motto of the Bush Administration: "Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for Halliburton."

It is horrifying to realize that the Bush administration was better prepared to deal with the aftermath of its headlong rush into a fiction-based war of choice than it has been to deal with the aftermath of hurricane Katrina.

On Sept. 4, several Bush defenders rushed to announce that the catastrophe would only cost $26-billion to recover from. Ha! Multiply that low-ball figure by fifty and you'll be a lot closer to reality. Meanwhile, get ready for shortages of gas, oil, coffee, tea, sugar, rice and all other grains, concrete, and especially coal. Get ready for $5- to $10-billion in U.S. agricultural exports rotting where they sit, unable to leave the country. Get ready for an era in which everyone but wealthy Bush partisans will suffer.

Get ready for Bush to give the Medal of Freedom to FEMA director Michael "Brownie" Brown for the "good progress" he made in preparing for and responding to this calamity.

To President Bush: We demand that you repeal every single one of your tax cuts for the wealthy, and use the money to establish a cabinet-level Department of Reconstruction. For the same purpose, repeal the obscene porkfest that Congress passed right before it joined you in "getting on with your life." Alaska does not need a superhighway from nowhere to nowhere more than the Gulf Coast needs your atonement.

And if you refuse, let's take a lesson from Great Britain and demand the resignation of your entire administration, en masse. Starting with our Vacationer/Fitness Buff in Chief.

It's really beginning to grate on me when voice after voice tells me that Hurricane Katrina is one of the worst natural disasters ever to strike the United States. "One of"? "ONE OF"?? Show me one that's worse! Show me one that has elicited the second outpouring of international sympathy in four years. Heck, I'll be generous — show me one that even comes CLOSE to being as bad.

Do not belittle this tragedy by comparing it to such relatively minor disasters as the San Francisco earthquake or the Johnstown flood, or even the great fire of Chicago (not, technically, a natural disaster). Hurricane Katrina is the worst natural disaster to befall the United States by several orders of magnitude. It's not “one of.” It's the Real McCoy.

Because New Orleans was a hotbed of democracy — both liberal and the GOP's worst pejorative, “liberal” — I live in fear that some neocon crazy like Pat Robertson is going to declare that, just like the terrorist attacks of 2001, Hurricane Katrina was the fault of women, liberals, pagans, atheists, abortionists, the ACLU, and People for the American Way: the new Sodom and Gomorrah.

To which I reply: George W. Bush was installed in office by the future Vice President's close personal friend Antonin Scalia, who persuaded the four other Republican-appointed justices to go along with him. He has turned out to be the worst president in United States history — like Katrina, worst by several orders of magnitude.

Bush in turn presided over the worst terrorist attack on the U.S. in our nation's history; the worst spending spree by any presidential administration or Congress; the worst redefinition of “democracy” to mean neo-Stalinism; the worst corruption in U.S. political history; the worst attempt to establish fundangelicalism as our national religion; and now the worst natural disaster that our nation will (I devoutly hope) ever undergo.

The fire-and-brimstone preachers may be right if and when they start in preaching about the vengeance of a wrathful God upon our nation. But I can almost guarantee you they will blame it on women, liberals, gays, and abortionists. To those fire-and-brimstone preachers (which I actually hope will exist only in my fevered imagination), I reply: George W. Bush is a worse leader than King Manasseh of Israel, who ruled in the seventh century BCE (2 Kings 21). If God is punishing our nation for anything (as the God of love so frequently does), God is punishing us for installing George W. Bush in office and keeping him there, both times unjustly.

How charming of George F. Will to spend an entire column (the one in my local newspaper was entitled "A Closer Look at the Constitution," Aug. 14, 2005) setting up a straw man, labeling it "liberal," and knocking it down for the amusement of troglodytes.

Will is right in cherishing the U.S. Constitution as a jewel. He is correct that the Constitution embodies the philosophy that individual citizens have the right to property and self-government.

And Will is one hundred percent wrong about which of today's political parties wants to rewrite the Constitution to deprive U.S. citizens of those rights. It is Republicans who recently decided that government may take citizens' property to give to more profitable businesses. It is Republicans who want to deprive women of the right to control their own bodies. It is Republicans who want to deprive citizens of the right to love and marry whomever they choose, if they disapprove of those citizens. It is a Republican president who wants his religion's dogma taught in science classes as if it were equivalent to science, and it is Republicans who want that same religious dogma displayed on stone monuments on public property.

Self-government? Don't make me laugh. What do fabulously wealthy Republican incumbents combined with gerrymandering have to do with self-government?

So, the president thinks that religion, disguised as "intelligent design," ought to be taught in science classes. How droll.

For those of you who are just as poorly educated, let us recap: Scientists observe reality and develop theories to explain what they see. They test their theories as rigorously as they can, evolving newer theories as necessary. They are open to collegial input and review. They are impartial.

By way of contrasts, religious bigots limit their "research" to one 3,000-year-old text. They ignore, dismiss, misrepresent, or mock any fact that contradicts their prejudgment. They are not open to rational input or review. They privilege their dogma over honest, fair, and logical debate.

"Intelligent design" claims that the Universe is so complex that it must have a Designer. But good design is simple. A drinking straw is proof of intelligent design. So is a pane of glass. Because "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" (take a science class!), your DNA looks a lot more like a Rube Goldberg design than it does a drinking straw.

But of course, the ancient writers of the Bible never heard of DNA, so therefore it does not exist.

The Bible teaches us that the Earth is a flat disk that rests upon mountain pillars (e.g., Job 37-38). A metal dome, the "firmament," separates the sky from the chaos waters beyond (Gen. 1:6-7, 8:2). Holes in the dome let rain in. In other words, the sky is a giant, upside-down colander. Rabbits chew their cuds like cows (Lev. 11:6). Grasshoppers have four legs, like horses (Lev. 11:20-23). The sun revolves around the flat Earth (Eccl. 1:5-6). People think with their hearts (Gen. 6:5, Lk. 6:45) and feel emotions with their kidneys (Jer. 31:20, 2 Cor. 6:12). [All citations in this entry are representative — there are dozens of corroborations.]

Even if the Bible were inerrant (Zechariah and Jeremiah were NOT the same person, Matthew 27:9-10 to the contrary), it was never intended to be a science textbook. The Bible is THEOLOGY. To privilege one denomination's crackpot theology by teaching it as if it were a valid alternative to science is to open the door to theocracy.

Of course, George W. Bush sincerely believes that God installed him in the presidency, rather than Dick Cheney's close personal friend Antonin Scalia. What do you want to bet that science classes in Kansas are teaching that he's the Second Coming?

And second, the ranters also don't have the slightest problem with senators and representatives adjudicating from Congress — as long as it's far-right adjudication, as in the Terri Schiavo fiasco. Poverty, hunger, miseducation, soaring health costs, injustice, torture? The only conceivable answer is another tax cut for the already wealthy!

With two of our three branches of government safely under the thumbs of "fair and balanced" non-partisans like Karl Rove and Grover Nordquist, and with the remaining third already about halfway under the neocons' thumbs, I think we can safely say that democracy is dead in the United States. All hail Emperor Cheney!

I have a question for self-described Christians who support the war in Iraq: Where in the Bible does it say that the God of love wants you to hate your enemies? (I can name MANY places where the Bible says we are to love our enemies.) Where in the Bible does it say that the Prince of Peace is all in favor of preemptive war?

And here's a second question, for Muslims who refuse to denounce the hateful acts of some of their co-religionists: If Islam is a religion of peace, why do we never hear about Quaker suicide bombers, or Buddhist militants terrorizing Amish farmers (or vice versa)?

• George W. Bush, on his 103rd day of vacation since his swearing-in 197 days earlier, ignored an Aug. 6, 2001 memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the U.S." — and ended up being re-selected anyway.
• George Tenet assured Bush that the invasion of Iraq would be a "cake walk" and received the Medal of Freedom.
• While in Afghanistan, Gen. Tommy Franks allowed Osama bin Laden to escape, and received the Medal of Freedom.
• As administrator of Iraq, L. Paul Bremer disbanded the army (who needs to fight insurgents, anyway?), fired thousands of schoolteachers, and removed Iraqis unfriendly to Bush from political office, and also received the Medal of Freedom.
• Alberto Gonzales expressed a fierce interest in defying the Geneva Conventions, repeatedly asking whether the U.S. is being pro-torture "enough," and was made Attorney General.
• A promotion is in the works for Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, who on Sept. 14, 2003 personally authorized the use of coercive interrogation techniques outlawed by the Geneva Convention.

Poor Annabel. Morning after morning she would get into the box and strain to pee, forcing me to watch her as I waited to clean the box of its overnight deposits. I thought she had cystitis, a female problem in which you “gotta go, gotta go, gotta go right now,” even when there's nothing inside to go. I had cystitis when I was ten years old; it's no fun, but it goes away.

The remainder of this post has been moved to my website. If you're interested, click here to read the whole story of “How We Adopted Miranda.”

The pharmacist refused to fill my prescription for contraceptives because allowing women to control their own sex lives is immoral in his religion.

After I was raped by my uncle, the pharmacist refused to fill my prescription for the morning-after drug, because making any distinction between the rights of an adult woman and the rights of a collection of living cells smaller than the point of a pin is immoral in his religion. (Then he cheerfully gave my rapist more Viagra.)

Then my gynecologist refused to perform an abortion, because making any distinction between the rights of an adult woman and the rights of a collection of living cells smaller than a grain of rice is immoral in her religion.

Then when I wanted to get baptized, the preacher refused, because being an unwed mother is immoral in his religion.

Then the cops and the military refused to protect me from criminals and terrorists, because my lewd, liberal, Jesus-hating lifestyle is immoral in their religion.

Then the ticker-taker at the multimegaplex refused to honor my ticket for "Bambi," because movies that involve the death of animals are immoral in her religion. . . .

In 1864, Abraham Lincoln wrote, "I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. As the result of the War, corporations have been enthroned. . . . An era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people . . . until wealth is aggregated in a few hands . . . and the Republic is destroyed." [From p. 18 of William H. Boyer, Myth America: Democracy Vs. Capitalism (Apex Press, 2003).]

Enron. World-com. Tyco. Global Crossing. And so many more. Fact: Halliburton has made more than $7-billion in profits in slightly more than two years, thanks to all its no-bid contracts with the Bush Administration. Fact: Because Dick Cheney was Halliburton's CEO before he became Vice President, Halliburton has the legal right to give Mr. Cheney up to a million dollars a year, just because they like the color of his eyes.

Fact: The U.S. Supreme Court decided Bush v. Gore because five of the justices were appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Fact: Antonin Scalia, George W. Bush's favorite justice, is and in 2000 was a close personal friend of Dick Cheney.

Opinion: Mr. Lincoln may have been a Republican, but that was because he cared about a Republic that was free — not one that was purchased, gerrymandered, Newspeak-ed, spin-doctored, fat-catted, and Patriot Act-ed into submission.

I think today Abraham Lincoln would not be trembling for the safety of his country, but weeping.

A Stalinist regime can be distingished by the following:

(a) Only one political party is allowed to exert power; if any other party is allowed to exist, it is ignored, disrespected, or abused.

(b) The ruling regime exerts an iron control over the dissemination of information. There is a Fox News-like media, but the country's rulers are so secretive they even classify their fathers' old to-do lists. When negative information MUST be disseminated, for example about the empire's philosophy on torture or the emperor's irresponsible behavior as a young adult, the rulers arrange for the blame for its misbehavior to be laid on another — for example, Newsweek or Dan Rather.

(c) The regime is dedicated to its ideology, to the point of attempting to change or obfuscate the facts that contradict its ideology. An example might be Tom Delay's characterization of flushing a few cells out of a Petri dish as "dismemberment."

(d) Rigid authoritarianism, as in the arrests last fall of a husband and wife who were wearing anti-Bush T-shirts while walking down a public street that wasn't close enough to their "free speech zone."

(e) Government ownership of all goods and of the production and distribution of those goods. Failing that, transfer of as much ownership as possible to cronies of the Stalinist ruler or to Halliburton.

Perhaps neither Guantanamo Bay nor Abu Ghraib was a true gulag in the strictest sense of the word. But I'm sure that the Bush Administration will put its first residential "free speech zone" in Georgia. It will be called the "Georgia United Liberty Appreciation Group."

There is a large cult whose members delude themselves that they are Christians. They worship the Bible, usually the 1611 translation, as if it were as infallible as God is, including such hilarious passages as Exodus 17:8-13. They act as though God is a vending machine and prosperity equals righteousness. Their heretical and blasphemous "Rapture," in which billions who do not belong to their cult will be gruesomely murdered by Jesus, is sure proof that they are anything but Christian. Through their behavior they demonstrate their belief in the righteousness of capital punishment; preemptive warfare (just like Jesus!); harassment and murder of abortion clinic staff members; depriving homosexuals, women, and liberals of their human rights, if not their lives; and impoverishing the poor while enriching the wealthy. Their earnest desire is to do away with modern science in favor of "intelligent design" and to transform modern jurisprudence into an Inquisition-like mechanism of fascism. They are literally the Pharisees of the modern world.

These arrogant, biased heretics called themselves fundamentalists or evangelicals until those terms became synonymous with "ignorant bigots." They then called themselves born-again Christians until that term became synonymous with "ignorant bigots." Today they oxymoronically call themselves the Moral Majority, the Religious Right, and the Christian Right. They remain ignorant bigots.

Now they are busily attempting to subvert democracy in the United States by making a state religion out of their Taliban-like cult. With the ongoing, enthusiastic help of the Bush administration, they are well on their way to succeeding.

For the last few weeks, our Republican leaders have been in a swivet. Tom Delay, that master of honor and probity, calls our courts "unaccountable" and "out of control." And now on April 24, the Family Research Council plans "Justice Sunday," which it calls "a live simulcast to engage values voters" — code for "members of the 'Christian' far right" — "in the all-important issue of reining in our out-of-control courts." The group claims that President Bush's judicial nominees "are being blocked because they are people of faith and moral conviction" and says, "We must stop this unprecedented filibuster of people of faith." What is most frightening is that Senate Majority leader Bill Frist plans to be the guest of honor at the FRC's "Justice" Sunday.

First, roughly 4 percent of Bush's judicial nominees have been and/or will be blocked (he has resubmitted the names of many of the most objectionable) because they are judicial activists — they are simply promoting the neocons' ideology and agenda. One has stated that she considers FDR a "socialist" and that Social Security is "unconstitutional." Another has been practicing law without a license for six years. Perfect Supreme Court material, right?

Second, it is slander to blame the Bush Republicans' attempted coup d'etat on demonic, evil Democrats. Many, perhaps most Democrats are people of faith and moral conviction, just like the dupes of the ultra-right. The difference is that they do not worship Mammon ("let's have more tax cuts for the wealthy!"), and their moral convictions include the odd notion that everyone deserves justice and compassion, not merely powerful and wealthy Republicans.

But neither of these facts is the point. The point is, our judiciary is SUPPOSED to be "unaccountable" and "out of control." This is called DEMOCRACY. Josef Stalin's judiciary was under state control; so was Saddam's; so is Putin's. Look at how well a judiciary that is firmly under politicians' control works out — for the politicians.

The Republican-controlled Congress itself acts as a rubber-stamp for the Republican-controlled White House, deliberately limiting anyone who dissents to the role of spectator. Now they seek to control our judiciary, too. If they are allowed to succeed, the United States will become indistinguishable from any other Stalinist regime. (We are already ruled through state-controlled media, rigid authoritarianism, and fear, just like the USSR.)

Tom Delay apologized for his remarks by calling them "inartful," as if he had merely called an earth-moving tool a spade. They were not. They were perilously close to being evidence of a treasonable conspiracy to overthrow democracy in the United States and replace it with a system in which our judges obey the orders of their Republican masters or get impeached for the crime of disobedience.

Wouldn't it be nice if the principles of liberty and democracy were valued in Washington, DC as much as they are valued in — oh, say, the Ukraine? If the Republicans adopt the "nuclear" option to end those pesky filibusters, and thereby get the court system firmly under neocon control, in 2009 schoolchildren will be chanting daily, "I pledge allegiance to the flag of the Republican States of America, and to the neocon ideology for which it stands: one nation, under Bush forever, with liberty and justice only for Republican true believers."

If you took an MRI of Terri Schiavo's brain today, it would reveal that all the parts that used to make her a functioning human adult have died and been replaced by water. This is a fact.

This makes the whole controversy surrounding Terri's "rights" as nonsensical as the debate over abortion. Should Terri, or a fetus, vote in the next presidential election? Drive a car? Drink alcohol? Marry? If they are "innocent" victims, does that mean that they are able to understand what wickedness is, much less to engage in wicked acts?

Those who most earnestly agitate for the "rights" of these former or imaginable adults refuse to acknowledge any distinction whatsoever between actual and potential humanity. Indeed, murders have been committed because the murderers believe that the "rights" of maybe-someday human beings outweigh the actual rights of their actual human mothers.

The fact that those who are fighting for the "rights" of Terri Schiavo and of fetuses refuse to recognize any distinction between the imaginable and the real reveals that the agitators are either disgustingly disingenuous — certain members of Congress spring irresistibly to mind — or they are almost as little able, or willing, to use their brains as those they fight for.

Jesus said, "Allow the little children [who show affection for me] to come to me, for of such is the kingdom of heaven." He did not say, allow fetuses to come to me. He did not say, do not hinder Terri Schiavo from coming to me. Terri Schiavo has been with him since 1990.

And in fact, if God's Perfect World consisted only of those who have no brains and those who refuse to use their brains — Tom Delay, for example — why on earth would you or I want to live there?

Speaking on behalf of those who believe Terri Schiavo's empty husk ought to be kept alive for the next fifty or so years, many decades after her soul was welcomed home by God, Howard Troxler wrote, "Human life is sacred, and it is not up to us to say when it should end."

I would retort to these well-meaning but deluded people, unless human beings are as divine as the Deity, ALL life is sacred — so unless they are Buddhist vegetarians, they have no right to speak on God's behalf.

If they believe that the Bible was written by God and is as perfect and inerrant as God is, I would add that by that very token they ought to reject all forms of modern technology not specifically endorsed by the Bible, including feeding tubes — not to mention electricity, capital punishment ("Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord"; "Love thy neighbor" saith another Lord), flu shots, firearms, and democracy.

(Of course, most of these people have already rejected democracy, unless democracy has magically turned into rule of the sheeplike, by the hypocritical, and for the already wealthy. . . .)

Promise: That President Bush would be a uniter, not a divider. Fact: The nation is more bitterly divided today than it has been since the Civil War.

Promise: That we would catch Osama bin Laden, "dead or alive," and bring him to justice. Fact: Osama who?

Promise: That Saddam Hussein was the real mastermind behind 9/11. Fact: He had nothing to do with it.

Promise: That it was urgent to rush off to war half-cocked because Iraq was bristling with weapons of mass destruction. Fact: Not one WMD has ever been found, not even after two years of searching.

Promise: That five massive tax cuts for the wealthy would assure abundance for all. Fact: A $5-trillion surplus has turned by magic into a $13-trillion deficit. Promise: the only thing that could possibly fix this problem is to make those tax cuts permanent and throw in a few more tax cuts for the wealthy for good measure. Fact: only insane people believe that doing the same thing over and over will lead to a different outcome next time.

Promise: That the Bush prescription drug plan would cost no more than $400-billion. Fact: The Bush administration threatened the career of the man who could have told the truth to Congress: that this plan, so wonderfully beneficial to wealthy drug manufacturers, will cost well over $550-billion. And the Bush administration knew this all along while promising otherwise.

And now comes the latest promise: That there is a terrible, terrible "crisis" in Social Security, and only dismantling the program, successful for longer than President Bush has been alive, will "save" it.

Will the American people wake up to the fact that repealing even one of Bush's five tax cuts for the wealthy would make Social Security secure forever? Or will we allow Bush and his toadies to add another $2-trillion to the national debt? Our grandchildren will live lives of grinding poverty already, Mr. Bush, merely trying to pay the interest on the debts you have run up in only four years. You don't need to turn that into debt slavery.

The U.S. is paying roughly $1-billion in interest on our national debt every single day, people! What happens if China or Saudi Arabia decides to demand immediate payment of the trillions Bush has borrowed from these wonderfully democratic partners in the war on terrorism?

Fool the American people once, shame on you. Fool us over and over again . . . how I wish the rest of that old saying were, "Fool m— uh, can't get fooled again."

But it sure looks like we are Charlie Brown, and President Bush is Lucy with her football. "You must kick this football!" he urges us. "It's a terrible crisis! Kick it, or 9/11 9/11 9/11!!" And invariably, we find ourselves lying on our backs, staring at the sky, and listening to Lucy laugh and laugh. . . 

Re: No evidence of criminal conduct in Plame case, Jan. 13

How entertaining — Republican apologists Victoria Toensing and Bruce W. Sanford can find no Republican wrongdoing in Robert D. Novak's "outing" of a CIA agent, based on information provided by someone from high in Vice President Cheney's staff. The fact that the vice president rules his office with a rod of iron, and his staff takes no step without at least his knowledge, if not his direct order, was not mentioned — in fact, the involvement of the vice president's office was not mentioned. The authors' mockery was reserved for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which wrote that the revelation of the name of the CIA agent was "perilously close to treason" — only the authors wrote that that newspaper's "allegations" were what was treasonable, rather than the crime itself.

The Republican apologists also wrote that "Congress had no intention of prosecuting a reporter who wanted to expose wrongdoing" — as though the crime in question were the CIA agent's — and that "if it were known on the Washington cocktail circuit, as has been alleged [by Republican apologists], that Wilson's wife is with the agency," there is no wrongdoing. The authors conveniently omit the fact that this allegation is false, as anyone who bothers to do some fact-checking may easily confirm. The authors are comfortably aware that few people fact-check what they read in the newspapers or hear in other media; most assume some editor (Rush Limbaugh, for example) has done that for them.

Along with the other blunders and dangerously ideological missteps of the Bush administration, this controversy will be swept under the carpet again and again until it is finally forgotten in the next scandal of incompetence and ultra-right-wing fanaticism.

And so it bears repeating that the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is correct: Providing the enemy with the name(s) of CIA agents during a time of war is TREASON. Through the one name that Novak revealed, our nation's enemies were able to discover the names of literally dozens of other CIA agents — her coworkers and their associates, and their coworkers and associates, and so on, and so on.

Through the actions of (a) some anonymous individual high in Vice President Cheney's tightly-run ship and (b) Robert Novak, our nation's ability to gather intelligence has been seriously damaged. (And Republican apologists are anxious for you to believe it wasn't exactly great to begin with!)

If you want "evidence of criminal conduct," how about the fact that President Bush took at least 140 days of vacation in 2001? (The average American gets 13 days of vacation a year, and not when the employee has been on the job for only days.) How about the fact that Bush ignored numerous warnings that al Qaeda was planning something big, including the August 6 briefing entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack within the United States"? Yes, surely yet another month-long vacation was more important than that!

In his latest defense of George W. Bush's vanity war in Iraq, Charles Krauthammer writes that the international community acted rightly in "rejecting a fraudulent election [in the Ukraine] run by a corrupt oligarchy." Why did the international community not reject our Nov. 2 election, which relied on machinery supplied by a Republican company called "despicable" by the California Supreme Court and which reinstalled a Republican oligarchy known as corrupt by everyone but itself and its dupes?

Mr. Krauthammer appears not to have seen the 102-page report by the Defense Science Board, a federal advisory committee composed of academic, think tank, and private-sector representatives who provide independent advice to the secretary of defense. Entitled "Strategic Communications," this report contains these conclusions, as reported on Dec. 5 by The Washington Post:

• "American direct intervention in the Muslim world has paradoxically elevated the stature of and support for radical Islamists, while diminishing support for the U.S. to single digits in some Arab societies."

• "Muslims do not 'hate our freedom,' but rather, they hate our policies. The overwhelming majority voice their objections to what they see as one-sided support in favor of Israel and against Palestinian rights, and the longstanding, even increasing support for what Muslims collectively see as tyrannies, most notably Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Pakistan, and the Gulf states."

• Since Sept. 11, 2001, "American actions and the flow of events have elevated the authority of the Jihadi insurgents and tended to ratify their legitimacy among Muslims. What was a marginal network," the report said, is now a community-wide "movement of fighting groups."

• "Muslims," the board says, "see Americans as strangely narcissistic — namely, that the war is all about us . . . no more than an extension of American domestic politics and its great game." Our worst imbroglio is "a fundamental problem of credibility. Simply, there is none — the United States today is without a working channel of communication to the world of Muslims and of Islam."

I consider it almost inexcusable that my local newspaper has not run a story about this Pentagon report, especially since The New York Times broke the story on Nov. 24. It certainly contradicts Mr. Bush's often-repeated insistence that the Muslims who oppose the Bush League do so solely because they "hate our freedom."

Mr. Krauthammer to the contrary, we are not in Iraq because we want to establish a democracy in the Middle East — if that were even possible, much less feasible. We are in Iraq because Mr. Bush entered office determined to avenge his father's honor and prove to the world that he is more manly than his father, by returning the U.S. to Iraq and deposing Saddam Hussein.

During the 2000 travesty, Mr. Bush insisted repeatedly that he was opposed to "nation-building." Having been unable to find weapons of mass destruction that our oligarchs insisted were there — over the objections of the CIA and other sane professionals — all of a sudden our motivation has been changed retroactively, and we are, guess what, nation-building. Because "they hate our freedom." I think it is Charles Krauthammer who is "terminally naive."

During the four days before the election, I kept an informal log of political ads for two hours a day. Since I live in Florida, some half-hours' ads were 100 percent political. I counted 8 ads that were pro-Kerry, 9 ads that presented selected facts about George Bush (e.g., his snuggly relationships with Saudi Arabia and Big Oil), 5 ads that were pro-Bush, and 33 ads that provided proven falsehoods smearing a Democratic candidate (e.g., a Christian university president was called a burqa-wearing supporter of Hamas), 19 of which slandered Kerry.

The Republican "values" that won the day on Nov. 2 included libel, slander, self-righteousness, demonization of the enemies they are enjoined by their state religion to love, secretiveness, arrogance, greed, and anger. "Let's blow them all away in the name of the Lord!" proclaimed Jerry Falwell, while James Dobson, asked whether he should apologize to a Democrat he had slandered repeatedly, implied that his slanders were also in the name of Jesus.

I believe that the Republicans won this year for three very simple reasons. First, an incumbent president always has an advantage. An incumbent president during a time of war has an enormous advantage, unless a significant part of the electorate views it as an unjust war. Thanks to Republican gerrymandering, approximately 96 percent of all incumbents won reelection this year.

Second, Mr. Bush not only enjoys the services of Karl Rove, who is not called a genius for nothing; he controls what is variously called "the Republican attack machine," "the Republican smear machine," or what Stalin called "the media." The day after the selection of John Edwards was announced, The Daily Show ran a hilarious compilation of Republican talking heads all dutifully parroting the party line, word for word. Controlling the media, or at least the news — viz. the amazing success of the Swiftboat lies — is a huge advantage.

This has been going on day after day for four years now. Does anyone remember that between Jan. 20, 2001 and Sep. 1, 2001, Mr. Bush spent roughly 40 percent of his time on vacation? Does anyone remember Aug. 6, 2001, the day Mr. Bush ignored yet another warning that Osama was planning a major attack? Why has no one been indicted for treason in the matter of providing our enemies with the names of dozens of CIA agents? Why has Mr. Bush not been impeached for instructing Alberto Gonzales to find a way to ignore the Geneva Conventions? Why has Mr. Cheney not been impeached for inviting Enron and Halliburton to devise U.S. energy policy? Why was Mr. Rumsfeld not fired for abu Ghraib? Why was Mr. Ashcroft allowed to remain Attorney General after the first time he betrayed his oath to uphold the Constitution? The Republicans' control not just of the media but of the terms of the national debate is so iron that all bad news is sucked into a black hole and declared non-news.

Third, Mr. Bush never let an hour of his campaign go by without bringing up 9/11 — not the famous seven minutes he spent staring into space, nor even his panic flight from no enemy, but rather the upswell of patriotism that, lacking anything better, found its focus on him. For a few shining weeks, most of America approved of the image of Mr. Bush as presidential. Then, at the urging of the Republican-controlled Wall Street Journal, the Republicans began using 9/11 shamelessly to push their extremist agenda, such as huge tax cuts for the wealthy and turning as much of the prison system as possible over to fundamentalists, while the nation still saw Mr. Bush as presidential and the Democrats could be accused of "borking." The Republicans used 9/11 shamelessly in 2002 and even more shamelessly in 2004 — and now have the gall to proclaim that what they would call chicanery in a Democrat gives their "values" moral authority.

With these three huge advantages, it is no surprise that Mr. Bush won the 2004 election. What is surprising is that he did not win it by a landslide that would make Kim Jong Il blush. I do not believe that Nov. 2 was either a realignment or a tilt. I think that the demonstrated incompetence and corruption of the Bush Administration came close to wiping out Mr. Bush's three huge advantages, and voter suppression, electronic election-rigging, and chicanery had to "save" the day.

I also think that within two years, there is going to be a scandal that will be, as John Dean says, worse than Watergate — a scandal so huge that no one tainted by any connection to the Bush League will ever again even be elected dogcatcher. I don't just think so — I pray so.

Realignment, tilt, usurpation — what does it matter which word is used, when the plain fact is that our nation's ruling junta claims that its use of unethical behavior endows its membership with moral authority over the nation? When depriving gay Americans of their rights as citizens or depriving female citizens of their right to control their own bodies are more important "values" than feeding the hungry, caring for the sick, protecting the helpless, nurturing our children, or providing for the future?

But, just for the record, I vote for "usurpation."

In her Nov. 20 column, Anne Applebaum defended electronic voting machines that do not provide paper trails. Against those who believe that such machines are only as reliable as their programming, she scoffed, "Are you really sure that your bank isn't using secret software to steal $9.72 from your retirement account each week?"

For decades, yes, banks have been "stealing" money from depositors, all perfectly legally. Say that through the magic of compounded interest you are owed a deposit of $567.8901234. You receive $567.89 in your bank account, and your bank gets to keep $0.0001234. One ten-thousandth of a penny means nothing to you — but multiply that by millions of transactions every single day, and we're talking serious money.

Here are some facts: Ohio used Diebold voting machines on Nov. 2. The president of Diebold stated publicly, many times, that he would do "anything" to see George W. Bush reinstalled as president. The Diebold company, whose donations to the Republican Party amount to more than ten times its donations to any other party, was recently called "despicable" by the California Supreme Court. Diebold machines have no paper trail — that is, no way to verify the integrity of their programming.

On Nov. 2, roughly 5.5 million people voted in Ohio. According to the "final" count, which is being disputed, Ohio voted 50 percent Bush, 46 percent Kerry, and 3 percent Nader.

Because Diebold machines were used, we have no way of knowing whether there was any "secret software" to change the vote in Ohio — but think how easy it would be. All the nakedly partisan folks who work for Diebold would have had to do is change its software so that one vote for a Republican counts as 1.028, while one vote for any non-Republican counts as .972. If 2,600,840 people voted for Kerry in Ohio, 2,597,540 people voted for Bush, and the remainder for "other," and if the Diebold machines were "rigged" by this 0.028 percentage — voila, it's Kerry 46 percent, Bush 50 percent, and four percent "other."

Suppose you opened a bank account with $1,234, and your bank told you you would be earning interest on it compounded at the generous rate of 2 percent a year. (I can remember the days when a Democrat was president and my bank paid me 8 percent a year or more, but never mind.) That would come to $1,258.68 after the first year. If your bank statement said that your final balance was $1,257.99 (.028 percent less than 2 percent), would you do the math, or would you trust your bank's computers? What about if you had no way of knowing the exact percentage to be paid?

Here are two more facts to consider: In at least two races in 2002 in which Diebold machines were used, Gallup polls conducted three days before the election showed the Republican candidate behind by a margin of two percent or more — and in the actual election, each Diebold candidate won by an on-the-face-of-it plausible percentage. Fact: In one of those elections, the Republican in question had been the president of Diebold a few months before he ran for office in a Diebold election, was predicted to lose, and won. As a famous comedian used to say, what a co-inky-dink.

Anne Applebaum scoffed at those who call for at least a paper trail, calling their fear "irrational." It is not. It is the fear of a party that sees nothing wrong with such immorality as smearing a Vietnam war hero with charges proven to be false, smearing a man who made a great achievement for children with the false charge that he is a pedophile, smearing a woman who obeyed the law with the false charge that by doing so she proved herself a burqa-wearing friend of terrorism. In Florida, it is a party that sees nothing wrong with airing commercials falsely smearing the opponent of Saint Katherine Harris not just in her own Congressional district but throughout the entire state.

It is the fear of a party that sees nothing wrong with relaxing its rules so that if one of its leaders is indicted for several felonies, which is quite likely, he may continue in his position of power and privilege until he enters prison.

It is the fear of a party that sees nothing wrong with treasonably supplying our nation's enemies with the names of dozens of undercover CIA agents.

It is the fear of a party that sees nothing wrong with lobbyist-written laws and with energy policy decided upon by representatives of Big Oil, including Kenneth Lay.

It is the fear of a party that sees nothing wrong with reducing benefits to the poor, the elderly, the sick, and the disabled, while putting the U.S. $2.4 trillion dollars in debt with enormous gifts to the wealthy, which are called "tax relief."

It is the fear of a party that sees nothing wrong with sneaking anti-abortion law into a totally irrelevant omnibus spending bill that must be passed.

The language of Congress is Newspeak, and George W. Bush, eldest of five siblings, is truly Big Brother. I must be irrational to be so afraid, mustn't I?

If it is irrational to fear the motives of people who call corruption, libel, slander, coercion, duplicity, and treason "values," then I am irrational — and I pray to God that millions of other Americans are irrational too, or we really will find ourselves living in the United States of Halliburton.

What a wonderful time for democracy we're living in!

First, President Bush announces that by "reaching out" to the almost half of the United States who voted against him, he actually meant only those who already "share our values." These values include duplicity, slander and libel, secretiveness, and the belief that George W. Bush was anointed by God to bring about Armageddon, but never mind.

Next, Mr. Bush purged his cabinet of its one remaining voice of sanity, not to mention the only cabinet-level or higher member of his Administration who has actually served in the armed forces in a time of war. (No, getting drunk in Alabama or Wyoming does not count as serving in Viet Nam.) Poor Colin Powell, alternately dissed and ignored, must be so relieved!

Next, the White House ordered the CIA to be purged of all employees who disagree with Mr. Bush's politics, whether or not they were, like Colin Powell, right all along. We can't have any more intelligent, patriotic people like "Anonymous" revealing that the Emperor's clothes are made of finest Invis-ulon^TM — perish forbid!

The marching morons of fundamentalism have their shorts in an uproar because the man who ought to become head of the Senate Judiciary Committee is not slavishly obedient to the Party Line, but instead has shown evidence of the ability to think independently. Perish forbid that a judge be allowed (or, gasp!, even encouraged) to be judicious. If we can't trust our judges to decide their cases on strict adherence to the Party Line, why, the next thing you know they'll be deciding cases based on each case's merits under the law — we can't have that.

And now we hear that Congress is hell-bent (literally) on changing its own rules, so that a man who has been accused of numerous felonies can retain his position of power and privilege right up until the moment he enters prison. "We slapped his wrist! That's punishment enough!" Yes, they slapped Tom DeLay's wrist — for crimes for which they would have crucified him had he not been so loyal to his Emperor and his Party. Blackmail and coercion. Illegal collection and use of corporate donations. Gerrymandering. Instructing the FAA to break the law. Vote trading. Accepting illegal contributions. Bribery and fundraising violations.

Stalin is largely remembered now for ruling through terror ("A Democrat might get the truth out — Orange Alert!!"); for seizing imperial powers for himself and his loyal band of thugs; for getting away with crime after crime (take responsibility for abu Ghraib, anyone? how about the treasonous "outing" of several dozen CIA operatives?); for state control of opinion (most viewers of Fox and other Sinclair-controlled stations still believe in the proven-false direct link between Saddam and 9/11); and for overwhelming commitment to the Party Line, including getting rid of anyone who dares to indulge in "reality-based thinking."

Here's the reality: In a year or two, dissenters like me are going to be compelled to move to and live in "free speech zones," where our reality-based thinking can be safely ignored, while all parties laud their devotion to Big Brother and his far-right partisan ideology, as well as the God he and his Party worship: Mammon. I expect that I will end up in the Georgia United Liberty Appreciation Group, if not the one in Guantanamo Bay.

And here's a question for the Emperor and his attack dogs: Since no member of the Bush League ever utters or writes a falsehood, the stated reason for Mr. Ashcroft's resignation must be true: "The objective of securing the safety of Americans from crime and terror has been achieved." So exactly why do we need a Justice Department at all, much less to install yet another Bush lapdog as its head?

On Nov. 3, George W. Bush promised to "reach out" to the close-to-half of the population who voted against him.

On Nov. 4, he explained that this meant that he would reach out to those who "share our values." In other words, if an opponent comes crawling on hands and knees and promises to convert to Bushism, Dubya will be gracious; otherwise, go Cheney yourself.

Then, with an arrogant sneer that he made no effort to hide, Bush made it clear that with no chance for a third term, he felt no further need to be even slightly conciliatory. His agenda, he promised, includes:

— Dismantling Social Security and looting its coffers, while imposing a gigantic financial burden on future retirees.

— Protecting large corporations from being sued for damaging "the little guy."

— Packing the judiciary with extremist ideologues like himself.

— Alienating what few international friends the United States has left.

— Installing a regressive tax system, with most of the burden on the poor and middle class.

— Making all five enormous tax cuts for the wealthy permanent, while at the same time cutting the staggering deficit Bush created. This can only be done by imposing enormous new taxes on, you guessed it, the poor and middle class.

"Clean air" means polluted air. "Healthy forests" mean stumps and golf courses. "No Child Left Behind" means millions of children left behind. "Tort reform" means screwing the individual while protecting the corporation. "Tax simplification" means a regressive tax system in which the honest wealthy will pay about five percent, and the dishonest wealthy will make even more of a profit than they do today.

Bush, in other words, made it clear that he is Elder Brother and Newspeak is his language. What Bush said on Nov. 4, in plain English, is: "What I am about to do to the nation is inevitable, so relax and enjoy it."

Welcome to the United States of Halliburton — one nation under the fundies' image of God, with liberty and justice for none but the Bush League.

Once upon a time, a wolf raided a village. The wolf stole and ate a baby. The village was devastated by grief.

"I'll get that wolf, dead or alive!" declared George. Everyone in the world was on the side of the village, except for a few wolves from other forests.

But the wolf was born in the same wolf pack as George's best friend, his dog Bandar ibn Sultan (known as "Bandar Bush" in many circles). So the wolf got away. With George's help, 140 of the wolf's relatives and fellow wolf-pack members got away too, on September 13, 2001. "They were innocent," George proclaimed. Maybe they were — who can know now? Is it a coincidence that the money that bailed George out of his first three bankruptcies came via intermediaries from the wolf's brother, Salem bin Laden?

"All in all, 2001 has been a fabulous year for Laura and me," George said that December. Wouldn't it be wonderful if 2001 had been a fabulous year for the rest of the village? Especially the ones who did not get a chance to sit and pretend to listen to My Pet Goat while their world came to an end.

When he was asked about how he let the wolf escape, "I'm not all that concerned," said George. "But I am deeply concerned about Iraq. . . . all people who love freedom should be concerned about Iraq" (March 13, 2002).

"Iraq" was the name of a hive of killer bees. More than a decade earlier, the queen bee had said she wanted to sting George's father, because George's father had stopped her from stinging someone else. George's father had not attacked the killer bees because he knew they would sting and sting, and in the end no one would win the conflict except the bees. George wants everyone in the world to think that he is a manlier man than his father had been.

After the wolf escaped George — because, George said, the wolf's friends and sympathizers could catch the wolf without any help from him — George appeared to forget about the wolf altogether. All he could talk about was the killer bees. "The killer bees are evil, just like the wolves and the jackals and the snakes," George said. "The killer bees are a gathering threat. The queen bee wants to kill us. When we go to 'liberate' the hive, the other bees will be grateful. They'll throw flowers at our feet and give us all their honey in gratitude. The queen bee has been helping the wolves. All killer bees are wolves. I have proof of this, it is an absolute fact that killer bees are actually wolves! Our intelligence is good! We must capture or kill the queen bee, or the village will never be safe."

So George sent the young men (and some women) of the village to attack the killer bees, even though it is a well-proven fact the killer bees had no plan to attack the village, had never threatened to attack the village, and did not even want to attack the village. The killer bees had lots of delicious honey that George wanted to give to his wealthy friends. After he declared "Mission Accomplished," when less than 10 percent of the village's casualties (up to 10/29/04) had been incurred, George's top priority was starting to dole out the honey — especially to his chief henchman's "former" company, Halliburton, and its subsidiaries. (Aren't no-bid contracts wonderful?)

George did eventually manage to capture the queen bee. But other killer bees started to sting and sting and sting. "Freedom is on the march!" George exclaimed. "Things are going well!" George's chief henchman, Dick, still to this day says that everything is going just peachy. More than 1,112 villagers have died, and a minimum of 23,847 innocent civilians have died, there is a growing number of places where no American soldier dares to go, and attacks against the village's soldiers have been increasing each and every month — but "freedom is on the march." (It's just marching away, is the problem.)

Most of the village's military strength is tied up with fighting the killer bees, which sting and sting and cannot be subdued. Some killer bees have declared their allegiance to the wolf. The "evil" land of the jackals, called "Iran," is all in favor of George staying in power (10/20/04). The "evil" land of the snakes, called "North Korea," is all in favor of George staying in power (9/23/04). Only the village's friends, both neighboring villages and villagers who genuinely love freedom, hope that George does not stay in power.

George did not send enough soldiers to attack the killer bees. There were not enough soldiers to guard a munitions dump that contained 386 tons of high explosives used to detonate nuclear weapons. Inadequately guarded, the weapons were stolen by killer bees, jackals, or wolves. George said, "If John had been president, the queen bee would still be queen. She could have given the weapons to our enemies!" But George — there is no "could have." The weapons were given to the village's enemies — by YOU.

If John had been the president AND if the queen bee had been a threat (gathering or otherwise) AND if the queen bee could have given away her weapons without fear of U.N. weapons inspectors AND if the queen bee would have given her weapons away AND if the wolves didn't despise the queen bee as a secularist — the 386 tons of high explosives would still be less dangerous to the village than they are in today's reality.

And George imposed a pay cut on the soldiers who are fighting the killer bees (fall 2003). George has given his wealthy friends five enormous tax cuts, gifts of hundreds of thousands of dollars each — per year. Now, thanks to George, 90 percent of the wealth of the United States is controlled by the top one percent, most of them close friends of George's such as Kenneth Lay.

Tax cuts for the wealthy are much more important than supporting the men (and some women) George sent to die killing bees. What does it matter if our fighters are insufficiently armed, insufficiently armored, fighting a people and a culture whose very language they can't understand? What does it matter if many military families need welfare just to survive? George is planning lots more tax cuts for the wealthy for when he is re-selected. He has already boasted about them, often.

With all his tax cuts for the wealthy and other wild spending, George took the village from a $5 trillion projected surplus to a factual deficit today of $2.86 trillion, with another $3 trillion projected deficit for 2005-08. George does not worry about where the money will come from. George has bankrupted three businesses and one state. George's smartest business decision of all time (aside from the slasher movies he helped make from 1986 to 1993) was giving Sammy Sosa away long before he became lucrative. "My daddy's wealthy friends always come to my rescue when I go bankrupt," George says. "Especially Salem bin Laden. All I have to do is keep Poppy's and my wealthy friends happy. As for the rest of the village — let them eat Tasty-kake."

(Ever wonder what all these gigantic numbers mean? One billion seconds comes to 31.69 years. Five trillion seconds comes to 158,440.44 years — approximately as long as homo sapiens has been sapiens.)

And meanwhile, what about the wolf? George never talks about the wolf any more. But some killer bees now say they follow the wolf. Many jackals, dingoes, and coyotes have begun following the wolf. Virtually all Muslims say that they trust the wolf more than they trust George. (BBC News; Pew Research)

And, thanks solely to George, the wolf pack is ten times the size it used to be. Thanks solely to George, the wolf pack claims the allegiance of wolves in 60 nations. In the last three years, the wolf pack has trained more than 100,000 wolves to fight against George. The wolves would be glad if George stole the leadership of the village a second time — George is their best recruitment officer.

But George said, "I'm not all that concerned." George says, "Freedom is on the march! Stay the course of four more years of more tax-cutting for the wealthy, less health insurance for the poor and middle class, less security in old age, fewer and lousier jobs, more pollution, less accountability for Republican criminals, less freedom for all but the wealthy! Who needs to respect the U.S. Constitution when freedom is on the march?!"

George and Dick are afraid of John, because John earned three Purple Hearts, a Silver Star, and a Bronze Star while George and Dick and most of their friends were hiding from the enemy like cowards. So they spread lies claiming that John did not deserve the honors bestowed on him by a grateful village. They spread lies claiming that draft dodgers like themselves are manlier men than war heroes like John.

"John is the most liberal man in the world!" George shouts. "He's so liberal, he can't make up his mind about anything at all, even being the most liberal man in the Universe! His mind is so open, my brain fell out!

"I, on the other hand, have never made a mistake in my entire life — not even getting rid of the counselors who said, 'You're making a mistake,' like Richard Clarke, Paul O'Neill, George Tenet, Richard Perle, Gen. Eric Shinseki, Gen. Anthony Zinni, Gen. Jay Garner, and many, many others. Stay the course! Freedom is on the march!"

George claims, over and over, that he has captured or killed 70 percent of the wolf pack (up from two-thirds, another invented number). Since in fact George has captured or killed exactly three out of 22 wolf leaders (13.6 percent), someone should explain to him what mathematics is and how he could benefit from it. (Maybe that's how he bankrupted Arbusto Oil, Spectrum 7, and Harken Energy — poor math skills.)

Now, thanks to George, wolves and jackals and dingoes and coyotes all hate the village and want to do it harm. Only one of the village's firm friends supports George, and that friend has apologized to his own village for having been misled into misleading them. George, who believes that God, rather than Dick's best buddy Antonin, selected him to lead the village, has frequently said that God speaks through George's mouth. Therefore God, not George, misled the village into war. What's to apologize for? Apologies are not manly.

And Dick continues to insist that the killer bees were in cahoots with the wolf all along, even though he was proven wrong many months ago. And George continues to insist that attacking the killer bees, without the help or even the approval of 99 percent of the international community, was the right thing for the village to do after it had been attacked by the wolf.

And the bees are angry, and other bees are coming to join the stingfest. . . . And the wolf pack continues to grow. . . .

And Osama still bin Forgotten. . . .

On August 6, 2001, after 197 less than grueling days on the job (54 vacation days between 1/20 and 8/1!), George W. Bush decided that having yet another vacation was more important than an urgent CIA warning entitled "Osama bin Laden Determined to Strike in the U.S."

On October 18, 2004, Mr. Bush accused Senator John Kerry of having "a September 10" attitude.

To me, a September 10 attitude is better than an August 6 attitude any day of the year.

What on earth has Charles Krauthammer been smoking?

In his most recent column, Krauthammer claims that of course Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda want Sen. Kerry to win, because they are, like so many millions of patriotic Americans, in favor of "Anybody But Bush." The terrorists are afraid of Mr. Bush, Krauthammer suggests, because Mr. Bush is "aggressive, preemptive, and often unilateral." A manly man, a real cowboy, the Gipper Part Deux. (Considering Mr. Bush's legendary verbal skills, let's make that Part D'oh.)

To use a word I shout often at the TV these days: Bushwah!

Because Mr. Bush entered office trying to rationalize an invasion of Iraq, he ignored dozens of warnings that bin Laden was planning to attack inside the United States — several warnings from President Clinton, dozens of warnings from Richard Clarke, many dozens of warnings from the CIA. (Source: the 9/11 Commission report.) Thanks to Mr. Bush's obsession with showing the world that he was a better president than his Poppy, al Qaeda could plan its 9/11 operation and carry it out with only perfunctory opposition from security workers at Dulles Airport. The 9/11 attackers had none of the weapons of mass destruction that Mr. Bush brandished as evidence of Saddam's iniquity; they had box cutters.

In a speech in Cincinnati in 2002 in which he stated flatly that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction and intended to use them against the U.S., both falsehoods, Mr. Bush said, "We will plan carefully. We will proceed cautiously. We will not make war inevitable. We will go with our allies." When he spoke these words, he had already asked Gen. Tommy Franks to begin preparing to go to war in Iraq, more than a year before he asked Congress for the power as a last resort. Once Congress voted him that power, Mr. Bush immediately used it as a carte blanche. There is no evidence that either Mr. Bush or his cabal of neocons envisioned any reaction to their invasion but grateful hosannas, the tossing of flowers, and unlimited access to Iraq's oil fields.

Colin Powell apologized to the member nations of the United Nations for misleading them when he told them what Mr. Bush ordered him to tell them. Tony Blair apologized to Great Britain for unwittingly misleading them by relying on "facts" provided by George W. Bush. When specifically asked on Oct. 8, however, Mr. Bush could thing of no mistakes he had made, except for "a few appointments" — like whistleblower Paul O'Neill, whistleblower Richard Clarke, or whistleblower Gen. John Shalikashvili, no doubt. All of whom tried in vain to warn Mr. Bush that his plans were at best misguided.

Of course Osama bin Laden wants George W. Bush to continue in office! Consider the following facts:

* At the beginning of 2001, the Bush Administration gave $43-million to the Taliban to thank them for ending the opium trade. Today Afghanistan supplies 75 percent of the world's opium — five percent more than it did in 2001. Today the Taliban is enjoying a resurgence of power and popularity, thanks to Mr. Bush's preoccupation with Iraq. Score one for Osama, since before Mr. Bush began his vanity war, only the Taliban would harbor him.

* Swift and decisive action would have resulted in Osama dead and al Qaeda no longer a threat by the end of September 2001. After that famous seven minutes of Mr. Bush staring blankly into space (the lastest claim is that he was attempting to "look presidential"), we all know that swift and decisive action comes from this Administration only when its extremist ideological agenda is on the line. Score another one for Osama.

* Al Qaeda has gone from a little-known organization with approximately 3,000 followers in 2001 to an internationally respected political movement with followers in 60 nations. Approximately 100,000 fighters have been trained by al Qaeda worldwide, which now has at least 18,000 warriors in its own army. All thanks to George W. Bush and his vanity war in Iraq. Score another one for Osama.

* In the days immediately following 9/11, most of the world was on America's side — including Muslim nations that believe that social and cultural progress did not end in the seventh century. Today much of the world may like Americans as individuals, but most of the world is angry with the arrogance, the peremptoriness, and the unilateralism of the Bush Administration — in short, its incompetence. Score another one for Osama.

* In 2000, Osama bin Laden was little respected by the Muslim world. Today hundreds of millions of people admire Osama bin Laden and detest George W. Bush. Score a really big one for Osama.

Mr. Bush accuses Sen. Kerry of being a "tax-and-spend liberal." To me, that's far, far better than being a "spend and borrow and spend even more conservative." Mr. Bush has spent close to $10-trillion dollars in the last four years. Approximately 20 percent of this amount can be attributed to the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; Mr. Bush appears to believe that only our military and their families should have to contribute to the war effort, and certainly not anyone who is wealthy. Much or most of the remainder of Mr. Bush's profligacy can be attributed to giveaways to the top five percent wealthiest individuals and corporations in the United States. Mr. Bush justified his first tax cut by pointing to the surplus that a responsible prior administration had handed him. All subsequent tax cuts have been justified with the claim that they will lower his deficits and create jobs. Our grandchildren will live lives of squalor and desperation, but what cares Mr. Bush, if only he can stay in office? Let them eat Tastykake.

Sen. Everett Dirksen once said, "A billion here, a billion there, soon you're talking serious money." Let me clarify Mr. Bush's $10-trillion for you: If a dollar were a second, a billion dollars would amount to almost 32 years. The $10-trillion dollars that Mr. Bush has spent virtually single-handedly, never once vetoing any bill (even the egregious ones), comes to 316,881 years.

Which may be how long it will take to pay down Mr. Bush's deficits and repay the national debt.

Unable to find oil in Texas, Mr. Bush bankrupted Arbusto Oil. Next Mr. Bush bankrupted Spectrum 7, and, through insider trading (according to U.S. News and World Report), made a tidy profit out of Harken Energy just before it too went bankrupt. Next he came close to bankrupting Texas, enacting tax cuts for the wealthy and earning an F on taxes from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Now he has come close to bankrupting the United States of Halliburton, sorry, America. Score another one for Osama.

Osama bin Laden represents millions of Muslims who have legitimate grievances against the U.S. They believe that our unthinking and unilateral support for Israel, the 14 permanent bases we are building in Iraq, our support for the corrupt Saudi Arabian ruling family, and our repeated attempts to gain control of Iraq's oil are evidence that George W. Bush has declared war on Islam. Mr. Bush can only repeat the party line, that "they hate our freedom." Doubtless that's the freedom to lawfully assemble, to engage in free speech outside of special "free speech zone" holding pens, to have both a lawyer and speedy justice, or to read a library book without arousing the interest of John Ashcroft. Right, Mr. Bush?

Score: Osama bin Laden 7, United States of America -7. Why on earth would Osama not want George W. Bush to remain in power?

In the July/August issue of the Atlantic Monthly, author James Fallows, in an article about Senator John Kerry's debating skills, noted in passing "the striking decline in [George W. Bush's] sentence-by-sentence speaking skills," and speculated that perhaps Mr. Bush is suffering from some problem similar to dyslexia or a learning disability. "The main problem with these theories," Fallows concluded, "is that through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate."

The problems that Fallows listed are familiar to us all:

— Up until about ten years ago, Bush was an excellent debater, "artful indeed in steering questions and challenges to his desired subjects." Up until 2004, Bush had never lost a debate. This year, he was listless, defensive, and ill-prepared, and many of his statements and reactions during the debate have been characterized as "odd." For example, in response to a question about whether he thought that his preemptive war in Iraq was worth the deaths of 1,052 Americans as of Sept. 29 (not to mention approximately 40,000 innocent civilian Iraqis, not to mention Guantanamo Bay and abu Ghraib). Mr. Bush went off into an extended and ultimately pointless anecdote about comforting a war widow. "All life is precious," he concluded, and then he made a statement that can be summarized as, "I'm a strong president. Kerry is a flip-flopper. Free Iraq, free Afghanistan. Being president is hard work." That must be why Mr. Bush has been unable to attend even one funeral of an American who died at Mr. Bush's bidding, but had plenty of time to attend 43 re-selection fundraisers.

— Frequently Mr. Bush pauses before he tries to use a "big" word, and frequently either he misuses words (such as wanting to avert the "vulcanization," rather than "balkanization," of the Middle East), or he invents mangled new words and phrases, such as "subliminable," "misunderestimate," or "the cufflinks of federalization."

— Mr. Bush's intelligence is frequently impugned by political opponents and detractors. It is a fact that the dean of students at Phillips Andover, a prestigious prep school, was certain that even as the son of a wealthy and powerful alumnus, Mr. Bush was intellectually unqualified to get into Yale. It is a fact that Yale University relaxed the standards it applied to the applicant sons of alumni shortly before Mr. Bush was accepted as a student, and it is a fact that Yale tightened its standards again shortly thereafter. It is a fact that Mr. Bush, the son and grandson of wealthy, famous, and powerful men, obtained a "gentleman's C" average at Yale. It is also a fact that Yale is a prestigious university with stringent standards for most or, today (perhaps), all of its students. If Mr. Bush had been "technically retarded," as was recently joked on "The Daily Show," he would have been incapable of obtaining even a "gentleman's C," much less of going on to Harvard Business School. (BTW, one of his Harvard professors clearly remembers Mr. Bush volunteering that poor people are poor because they're lazy.)

— Mr. Bush strenuously avoids press conferences, or indeed any unscripted events, especially informal question-and-answer sessions.

— When put on the spot, Mr. Bush adopts a "stalling, defensive pose."

— Mr. Bush's speech has slowed noticeably and has become noticeably "less graceful."

In the October 2004 issue of the Atlantic Monthly, a physician named Joseph M. Price wrote a response to James Fallows's observations about Mr. Bush's mental decline. Dr. Price is an expert on toxicology and the primate brain. He wrote in part,

"Not being a professional medical researcher and clinician, Fallows cannot be faulted for not putting two and two together. ... Slowly developing cognitive deficits, as demonstrated so clearly by the President, can represent only one diagnosis, and that is 'presenile dementia'!

"Presenile dementia is best described to nonmedical persons as a fairly typical Alzheimer's situation that develops significantly earlier in life, well before what is usually considered old age. It runs about the same course as typical senile dementia, such as classical Alzheimer's — to incapacitation and, eventually, death, as with President Ronald Reagan, but at a relatively earlier age.

"President Bush's 'mangled' words are a demonstration of what physicians call 'confabulation,' and are almost specific to the diagnosis of a true dementia. Bush should immediately be given the advantage of a considered professional diagnosis, and started on drugs that offer the possibility of retarding the slow but inexorable course of the disease."

Jerry Mazza, a writer who lives in New York City, adds, "As the son of an Alzheimer's victim who passed at 80, I might add that my father exhibited ... Bush's recently reported explosive behaviors, starting at least 15 years earlier."

Mr. Mazza reported another symptom of dementia unaddressed by either Fallows or Dr. Price: "an inflexibility of opinion and attitude, a kind of relentless insistence that he was on the right side (not just the Republican right) of every issue we discussed. [My father's dementia] was a set of behaviors that eventually made it almost impossible to speak with him, and led to his wife [my stepmother] leaving him, leaving myself as his sole caregiver. Ironically, it was only in this state of aloneness and incapacitation that he had some recognition of a very deep problem and that his survival depended on accepting medical care, accepting the medication that ameliorated some of his behaviors, and accepting me as a friend not the enemy.

"As a layman and admittedly a liberal, I see in Bush ... an eerie echo of my own father's behavior. As a writer, not a psychologist or psychiatrist, I see in each case the need to control, generated by some deeper fear, anxiety, or insecurity. In my father's case that need was generated largely by my father's father, who was an alcoholic, and kept the family in a state of agitated imbalance for decades."

My husband is a lay expert on alcoholism and the effects of alcohol on the brain. It is my husband's opinion that George W. Bush's cognitive deficiencies are a delayed reaction to at least 20 years of pickling his brain with alcohol. (A one-minute Quicktime movie that can be found at http://www.thesmokinggun.com/graphics/packageart/bush/bush_tsg.mov that shows Mr. Bush apparently drunk at a wedding in 1992, which would bring it up to at least 26 years of pickling.) Alcohol destroys brain cells. My own mother drank heavily for approximately 40 years, and then, after my father died, got blackout drunk every day for 11 years. She is now clean and sober (usually), but she has lost at least 30 IQ points.

I believe that it is vitally important to George W. Bush's health that, as Dr. Price urges, Mr. Bush obtains a professional diagnosis and gets started immediately on therapy to slow his mental deterioration. I also believe there isn't a chance in hell of this happening before he is out of office — indeed, before the symptoms are indisputable. He and his cabal of neocon groupthinkers have surely dismissed Dr. Price as a wild-eyed liberal Bush-hater.

Dick Cheney, our de-facto prime minister, is 63 years old, and has had at least four heart attacks. George W. Bush, who was unable to meet with the 9/11 Commission without Mr. Cheney to answer his questions for him, is showing many or most of the signs of cognitive dementia.

Does the United States of America really want Dennis Hastert to be our next president? Mr. Hastert is in the habit of making baseless accusations against people the neocons don't like (e.g., "George Soros is in favor of legalizing [illegal] drugs," and he obtained his money from "shady sources," possibly an international drug cartel (August and September 2004) and "al Qaeda wants Senator Kerry to win" (9/20/04) — as if any American had the slightest idea what is in the mind of Osama or any other member of al Qaeda!). Dennis Hastert accused New Yorkers who wanted reconstruction help after 9/11 as making "an unseemly scramble" for federal assistance. (New York City, arguably among the most vulnerable cities in the nation to another terrorist attack, has received only a tiny fraction of the monies it needs to fight terrorism, while cities in, e.g., North Dakota have no idea how to spend their largesse.)

Dennis Hastert has been compared unfavorably with Lyndon LaRouche. Before entering politics, he worked for 16 years as a high-school football coach — doubtless a noble profession, but perhaps not best suited to international diplomacy or other requirements of high office. Hastert was one of the people principally responsible for torpedoing President Clinton's 1996 health care reform bill, which he himself helped write — a fact that no one ever hears about any more. He is also one of the authors of Patriot Act II, which the Center for Public Integrity says is "one of the most horrifying documents ever to come out of a city numbed to horrifying documents. Read it, and get angry ... while it's still not a crime [to read]...."

If George W. Bush manages to steal the presidency a second time, he and his neocon cabal of extremists will take it as a validation of the anti-American tactics they have been using for the last two years. They have already reduced the Congress to a rubberstamp of the neocons' radical agenda, severely eviscerated the Constitution they swore to preserve, protect, and defend, relaxed pollution standards inexcusably, reduced public health and public health programs, taken the nation from a $5-trillion surplus to a $4-trillion deficit, and left millions of children behind, to name but a few of their anti-American activities.

What happens if the evidence of Mr. Bush's cognitive decline becomes incontrovertible? What happens if de-facto president Dick Cheney becomes president "for real" and has a heart attack before an equally neocon vice president can enter office? What happens if, a year from now, President Hastert declares war on North Korea, Iran, Syria, or George Soros?

And what about "Osama bin Forgotten"?

In the first debate between George W. Bush and John F. Kerry, Sen. Kerry presented a detailed indictment of the many failures of the Bush Administration in Afghanistan, Iraq, North Korea, Iran, Syria, and the Sudan, to name but a few. He applauded the decision of President George H.W. Bush not to invade Iraq, for fear of becoming mired in a quagmire, and he questioned George W. Bush's obsession with Iraq, to the detriment of the fight against terrorism.

Mr. Bush, in contrast, could not answer fact with fact — the facts are way too dismal for his fantasy world of spin — and so he stayed "on message." By my count, which I admit is imperfect, Mr. Bush stuck with these themes:

(1) Kerry is a "flip-flopper." Although he never used the precise term, Mr. Bush made this false allegation 26 times in approximately 44 minutes of speaking time.

(2) I am the President. 23 times. Disagreeing with your President and his neocon groupthinkers is identical to treason. 8 times.

(3) Free Iraq, free Afghanistan. Freedom free free free free freedom. At least 16 times. If you count the use of the word "liberty," which Mr. Bush seems to think is the same word as "freedom," double that. If only the status were as easy to achieve as the noise!

(4) Saddam Hussein is evil, that's why we invaded Iraq. 12 times. Funny, Mr. Bush used to proclaim that he needed to rush headlong into war because (a) Saddam was behind 9/11 and (b) Saddam's many, many WMDs were an imminent threat — or as Mr. Bush said, a "gathering" threat — to the United States. I wonder why he has flip-flopped to the insistence that the world is a better place without Saddam? — an unarguable statement that has nothing to do with why Mr. Bush rushed to war.

(5) Stay the course. 9 times. Translates to "more of the same" in reality-speak. More unnecessary American deaths to secure an oil pipeline that will never be as much benefit to Halliburton as the Bush League imagines.

(6) I'm a macho, macho man (and my opponent is, by implication, a "girlie man"). 8 times. Or 17 times, if you count, "I work hard. It's a hard job, being President. Hard. Hard. Terribly difficult." Since Mr. Bush spent 45 percent of his first nine months in office on vacation, and since most of the actual work of the presidency is being done by Dick Cheney (aren't vice presidents always more powerful than their bosses?), I think poor Mr. Bush ought to be relieved of his terrible hardships, and the burdens of office given to someone capable of handling them without a nanny.

I am happy to say I watched the debate on CSPAN, which allowed me to see not only Senator Kerry's "subliminable" smiles of disbelief, but also Mr. Bush's frequent lip-biting and looks of incomprehension. (No, you'd best not "misunderestimate" Mr. Bush!) I found it fascinating that no matter what question was asked of him, Mr. Bush answered "on message." Do you regret the loss of 1,052 American lives? (Not to mention approximately 30,000 innocent Iraqi civilians?) "All lives are precious. I'm a strong leader. Kerry is a flip-flopping girlie-man." Can you tell the difference between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden? "Of course I know that Sadda— Osama bin Laden attacked the United States." "Sadda-ama." That pretty much characterizes the enemy Mr. Bush tried to persuade us was behind 9/11.

If you had paid attention to what your advisers told you, Mr. Bush — that there was no connection between Saddam and 9/11, that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction, that there was no imminent threat — would you still have gone to war with Iraq? Oh, yes. Saddam is evil. I am the President. Kerry is a flip-flopper. Don't change horses in mid-stream, even though I got you into the wadi to begin with. I got us into this mess, and only giving more money to big corporations and wealthy individuals, killing more Americans, and fomenting more terrorism can get us out again. Stay the course, no matter how quagmire-like. (At one point, Mr. Bush even implied that he had a secret plan to get out of Iraq, just like Nixon's secret plan to get out of Viet Nam. I wish Mr. Kerry had called him on it!)

Can you, the reader, do better than Mr. Bush at telling the difference between an evil, corrupt dictator, like Saddam, and a religious fanatic, like Osama? Hint: There's a religious fanatic wielding enormous power in an ongoing campaign to deny citizens their unalienable rights who has the word "Ashcroft" in his name. There's a man who would love to be named Emperor of the United States in 2008 — who wants to repeal the Bill of Rights and to amend the U.S. Constitution to deny equal rights to approximately 10 percent of our population. This man does not have the word "Osama" in his name, although his enemies allege that "ibn Saud" might be there. Someone at the very, very highest levels of the White House helped 140 Saudis to leave the country on September 12, 2001, most of them named either "bin Laden" or "ibn Saud," when no loyal American was allowed to fly. Do you suppose it could be the close personal friend of Saudi Prince Bandar (with whom Bush/41 was hunting game on 9/11)?

At one point during the debate, Sen. Kerry commented that Osama bin Laden enjoys using Mr. Bush's vanity war in Iraq as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda. This is the plain truth. Because of George W. Bush, al Qaeda is stronger than Osama's wildest dreams ever envisioned. Because of George W. Bush, more than 100,000 fighters have been trained by al Qaeda in the last 18 months. Because of George W. Bush, millions of Muslims around the world admire Osama bin Laden and detest the United States of America. Millions of Muslims who were on OUR side immediately after 9/11!

Mr. Bush countered Sen. Kerry's statement of the plain truth by claiming that he was amazed that Sen. Kerry would imply that Osama bin Laden has power over the Pentagon, and he would never say such a dreadful thing. But, Mr. Bush: You are the only one who did say such a dreadful thing!

* A member of Vice President Cheney's rigidly controlled staff committed treason by making public the name of a CIA operative, and therefore her "cover" agency and coworkers. No member of the Bush Administration has been held accountable for a crime that would have resulted in lengthy prison time if a Democrat had committed it.

* Credible evidence exists that high-ranking members of the Bush Administration, including Douglas Feith, deliberately passed U.S. state secrets to Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon. Not only has no member of the Bush Administration been held accountable, but in fact the White House is pressuring the FBI into not issuing indictments until after November 2.

* The disgrace at Abu Ghraib has tarnished the image of the U.S. irrevocably. New York Times author Seymour Hersch says that the conditions at Guantanamo Bay are, to the everlasting shame of the United States, much, much worse than at abu Ghraib. No member of the Bush Administration has been held accountable — not even Donald Rumsfeld, who is almost as culpable as Mr. Bush himself.

* New York Times reporter Seymour Hersch also offers detailed evidence that Mr. Bush deliberately misled the nation on the matters of the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda and began planning his vanity war late in 2000. Mr. Bush was informed of the dangers of Osama bin Laden al Qaeda many, many times before 9/11, by President Clinton, by anti-terrorism czar Richard Clarke, and by literally dozens of CIA briefings, most of them with titles similar to the famous August 6 briefing that Mr. Bush called "historical" ("Bin Laden Determined to Strike Within U.S."). Mr. Bush informed the 9/11 commission that he had no memory of any warnings, and that if he had had any warnings, his staff would have taken care of it for him. (Perish forbid that the boss's attention be diverted from planning his attack on Iraq for a petty reason like Osama planning an attack within the U.S. that involved terrorist sleeper cells and hijacking airplanes!) Many employees, frustrated by Mr. Bush's pre-9/11 obsession with Iraq, ended up resigning their positions in disgust.

Which is better? A detailed plan for getting the U.S. out of a disastrous misadventure with a few small shreds of honor (what little Mr. Bush has left us), or "Out of the frying pan, into the fire"? -- with absolutely no acknowledgement whatsoever that Mr. Bush started the very fire that he imagines he can put out by giving the wealthy yet another large tax cut.

Antonin Scalia has never explained why he did not recuse himself from the Supreme Court case in which he made one of his closest friends into the Vice President of the United States. Nor has Mr. Scalia explained why he bullied the other Republican-appointed justices into perverting justice, instead cutting the process short 24 days early. George W. Bush entered his fraudulently obtained office determined that in the eyes of history, he would outshine his father, President George H.W. Bush. In a sense, he has succeeded. Bush/41 was in no way as truly terrible a president as Bush/43 has turned out to be.

George W. Bush is destined to go down in history not just as the worst president of the 21st century or the worst president of the modern age, but as the worst president, period. No matter how many thousands of years the United States will endure as a political entity, George W. Bush will remain the worst president of all time. Yes, he has indeed outshone his father in that regard.

Sen. Kerry quoted anti-terrorism expert Richard Clarke — who worked for Mr. Bush until Mr. Bush couldn't stand his insistence on fighting terrorism a moment longer — as saying, "Declaring war on Iraq as a response to 9/11 is like declaring war on Mexico as a response to Pearl Harbor." Yes, but that's not exactly right. Declaring war on Iraq as a response to 9/11 is like declaring war on Burma as a response to Pearl Harbor.

If Mr. Bush manages to re-steal the presidency, there's going to be a scandal that will make Watergate look like a tempest in a teapot. Or he will succeed in his often-stated Stalinist goal of reducing the U.S. to one political party (his own), with one ideology (that of Elder Brother and his neocon groupthinkers), under his version of God (whom would Jesus attack preemptively?), with liberty and justice for none. (Except Mr. Bush's wealthy friends, of course, and even they don't get justice — or several of them would be in prison right now.)

The Republicans are demanding to know who supplied the true but clumsily forged memos documenting George W. Bush's absence without leave during a time of war, a felony. (The truth of the memos' contents is never mentioned, of course.)

As I understand this story, CBS relied on the word of several individuals who have first-hand knowledge of the time and place in question, and on the word of one (one) "expert" who turns out to be no expert at all.

This second fact makes it obvious who the source of the memos is: Karl Rove.

Think about it. Dan Bartlett, White House communications director, gets to admit that the charges against then-Lt. Bush are true ("these charges are made every time Mr. Bush runs" for office — because they remain true every time Mr. Bush runs for office), and the truth about Mr. Bush's preference for working for the Senate campaign of Winton Blount over serving his country is completely forgotten in the blizzard of Bush League falsehoods against Sen. Kerry. And the reputation of CBS News, long detested by the Bush Administration for its repeated questioning of the official Party Line, um, Bush talking points, is damaged irrevocably.

It's diabolically brilliant, and I do mean diabolically.

Completely forgotten in the vilification of anyone who dares to challenge the Party Line is that former speaker of the Texas House Ben Barnes; Robert Strong, a close friend and colleague of Jerry Killian, the man who may have written the memos; and Marian Carr Knox, at the time in question secretary to Lt. Col. Killian (and whose name Lt. Bush could never remember; he should have given her one of his patronizing little nicknames), all of whom have first-hand knowledge of events 30-plus years ago, all agree that the allegations contained in the memos are true. According to these three eyewitnesses and others, Lt. Bush did disobey at least one direct order. Lt. Col. Killian did believe that Lt. Bush was jumped to the head of the line to get out of going to Viet Nam as a favor to his wealthy and powerful Poppy. Lt. Col. Killian did believe that Lt. Bush failed to perform his sworn duty. Lt. Col. Killian did believe that Lt. Bush was absent without leave during a time of war. Lt. Col. Killian did believe that Mr. Bush's father purchased his "honorable" discharge.

What a sweet deal! The truth about Mr. Bush's absence without leave during a time of war is forgotten, Sen. Kerry is slandered yet again, and CBS News, long detested by the Bush Administration, receives a black eye from which it may never recover. All thanks to memos whose forgery was so obvious that they did not stand for 24 hours without challenge, memos that were vouched for by a former librarian who became an "expert" by mail.

Where did this "expert" come from? Could it be . . . [cue the Church Lady's echo] Satan?

On Sept. 22, George F. Will sneered at Senator John F. Kerry's "dreamy belief that even with a war raging he [can] campaign on domestic issues."

How dare Sen. Kerry make a campaign issue out of millions of jobs lost and millions of Americans without health care? How dare Sen. Kerry make a campaign issue out of Mr. Bush's virtually single-handed transformation of a $5 trillion surplus into a $4 trillion deficit? How dare Sen. Kerry discuss the massive transfer of wealth from the pockets of ordinary Americans into the pockets of wealthy corporate sponsors of the Bush League? Doesn't he know there's a war raging?

George W. Bush has responded to a wave of corporate crime with repeated calls for less regulation and for diminishing the ranks of those who fight corporate crime. Mustn't discuss that; there's a war raging.

George W. Bush has signed at least two (arguably more) blatantly unconstitutional laws into effect, while his Attorney General has consistently sought to eviscerate the Constitution he swore to uphold. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war raging.

To secure the approval of Bibliolaters and other cultural troglodytes, George W. Bush sponsored an amendment to the Constitution that would make second-class citizens out of approximately 10 percent of all adults. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war raging.

The prescription drug benefit plan that George W. Bush forced into law by having his flunkies in Congress use untruths (knowingly proffering a 26 percent lower estimate of cost), coercion ("Your son will never work again!"), and other unethical tactics is a bonanza only for drug manufacturers; the Americans whom he claimed the bill would help are paying more than ever. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war raging.

Mr. Bush's vaunted No Child Left Behind Act in fact leaves most children behind. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war raging.

Mr. Bush and his Administration have consistently given us new laws written by polluters, oil lobbyists, and executives of Enron and Halliburton, while politicizing and distorting basic scientific research to "prove" that there is no global warming, the world's supply of oil and gas will never run dry, red-blooded teenagers don't want to have sex, and the Earth is flat. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war raging.

The Bush Administration has deliberately suppressed studies by the Department of Health and Human Services (Medicare costs), by the Department of Defense ( bioterrorism), and by the International Panel on Climate Change — and the NIH, and the EPA, and many others — because the facts do not gibe with Mr. Bush's preconceptions. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war on.

Mr. Cheney, who receives up to a million dollars a year from Halliburton solely because Halliburton likes the color of its former chief executive's eyes, has admitted to "facilitating" no-bid contracts between Halliburton and the U.S. government. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war on.

To punish a Democrat for telling the truth about Mr. Bush's vanity war, a high-ranking member of Dick Cheney's rigidly controlled staff committed treason by destroying the covers and then the careers of not just one but through her dozens of CIA officers — people on our side. Mustn't discuss that, there's a war raging.

So let's discuss the war that is raging, Mr. Will — raging despite the fact that Mr. Bush declared "Mission Accomplished" in May 2003. Mr. Bush misled the United States into this war. Every sane citizen of the modern world knew that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda despised Saddam Hussein as a secular Muslim; how could there possibly be coordination between them? There was never any connection between the two outside of Bush League groupthink. There were never any weapons of mass destruction. Mr. Bush and his Administration have consistently misjudged the people of Iraq and their resistance to Mr. Bush's version of nation-building. (Flip-flop! In 2000, Mr. Bush derided the very idea of nation-building. Considering the quality of his performance, he should have stuck with his 2000 opinion.)

Mr. Bush asked the Justice Department to provide him with a rationalization for ignoring the Geneva Conventions. The result has been the injustices at Guantanamo Bay and the horrors of abu Ghraib. Mustn't discuss that, even though it is part of the raging war: Senior members of the Bush Administration might have to be held accountable. Maybe, just maybe, Mr. Rumsfeld didn't do such a "superb" job after all.

Mr. Bush is currently doing everything in his power to suppress his own Administration's 50-page National Intelligence Estimate, which in July 2004 foresaw three gloomy possibilities for Iraq's future: a tenuous stability based on the insurgency not worsening any further (as it has), political instability, or civil war. Why did it take until September for news of this Bush-commissioned report to reach the citizenry of the United States? Why was it the BBC that broke the news? Why are the proven untruths of the Drunken Overprivileged Frat-Boy Draft Dodgers for Plausible Deniability more important to the Bush re-selection campaign?

(When the members of the Supreme Court appointed by Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush stopped the recount in Florida and handed the presidency to George W. Bush, why did Antonin Scalia not recuse himself, on the grounds of being close personal friends with the man he made Vice President?)

The Bush Administration is also doing everything in its power to suppress knowledge of the fact that Mr. Bush's inaccuracy-laden Sept. 22 plea to the United Nations for assistance was met with stony, highly embarrassing silence. Instead, Mr. Bush and his supporters are still basically campaigning on the "Out of the frying pan, into the fire" theme — with absolutely no admission that Mr. Bush started the fire to begin with.

If the Bush Administration had acted swiftly and decisively during the week following September 11, Osama bin Laden would be dead and al Qaeda would be forgotten. This is a fact. Instead, thanks solely to Mr. Bush, millions and possibly billions of people around the world admire Osama bin Laden and distrust Mr. Bush. Al Qaeda has trained approximately 100,000 more warriors who have sworn vengeance on the U.S. There are more than ten times as many terrorist attacks per month now than there were in May 2003, and there are more than 100 times as many terrorist attacks per month than there were in August 2001 — the month that Mr. Bush was too busy vacationing to read the memo entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

Mr. Bush's dream of outshining his father in office has turned into a nightmare for the citizens of the United States. Musn't discuss that; Mr. Bush's vanity war is still raging.

Islamic terrorism cannot be defeated by military might. The "war" on terrorism is doomed to failure, a failure as or more abysmal than the "war" on drugs or a "war" on kudzu.

Terrorism is born not from poverty — many terrorists come from wealthy or prosperous families, as Osama does (and Osama has a personal fortune in the millions even today) — but rather from powerlessness, repression, and rage. Terrorists identify their political opinions as moral virtue, and those of their opponents as blasphemy or idolatry. Just ask Robespierre. Or George W. Bush.

In his disastrous vanity war in Iraq, which has succeeded only in inciting anger at and contempt for the U.S. in the entire Muslim world, George W. Bush has demonstrated that military machismo, the John Wayne approach, will never prevail over terrorism. On September 12, 2001, most of the Muslim world condemned the acts of al Qaeda without hesitation; even the Qu'ran, which in at least two verses (9:4-5) advocates betrayal, ambush, enslavement, and murder, condemns the wanton slaughter of the innocent. In June 2004, most of the Muslim world told pollsters that they had far more confidence in the leadership abilities of Osama bin Laden than in George W. Bush or even Tony Blair.

Terrorism is hydra-headed. Thanks partly to the U.S. incursion into Afghanistan and largely to Mr. Bush's preemptive invasion of Iraq, al Qaeda is stronger than ever before. Rather than a small "camp" of Islamist extremists, al Qaeda has become an international movement with thousands of new recruits, even before the Bush- and Rumsfeld-generated fiasco in the abu Graib prison. At least, the Congressional Research Service thinks so. Many of the insurgents in Iraq today are not Iraqis frustrated by U.S. hegemony, but Muslims obeying the call to jihad against "the Great Satan." Against you and me.

The Christian answer to social conflict — although not much practiced by soi-disant Christians through the centuries — has always been compassion, forgiveness, repentance, and reconciliation. Jesus told us to love our enemies, do good to those who hate us, and bless those who curse us. As St. Luke wrote in verse 6:36, "Become compassionate, just as God is compassionate (oiktirmwn)." Or as St. Paul wrote to the Romans (12:19-20), "Beloved, never avenge yourselves. . . . if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink."

We will never resolve the conflicts that give rise to terrorism until we take the terrorists' grievances seriously. These are not nameless, faceless, angry young men who kill and die for the joy of killing and dying. These are men, and a few women, who have families, hopes, a dream of a better world for themselves and the ones they love. These humans created in God's image are the fruit of oppression, exploitation, and disrespect. They will never repent of the lives they have taken and the damage they have done if all they receive at the hands of the West is yet more oppression, exploitation, and disrespect. Would you?

And yet, according to Episcopal priest Fleming Rutledge, in a sermon preached at Duke University Chapel on Trinity Sunday 2004 (it can be found at www.cfba.info), although many of us pray for our own armed combatants, the Christian congregation that prays for innocent Muslim civilians in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Syria, Pakistan, and other "hot spots" is rare indeed — and even rarer is the congregation that prays for enemy combatants, for terrorists, for al Qaeda or the Taliban.

What does it say about someone that he professes to be a Christian but practices killing rather than healing, torture instead of compassion, great shows of strutting machismo rather than the far more difficult task of finding out what hurts and making the hurt go away? Or, to parody a recent popular saying, exactly what kind of preemptive war would Jesus wage?

In April 2004, a close relative of George W. Bush said that Mr. Bush considers the U.S. invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as "a religious war" and described Mr. Bush's attitude toward Middle-East Muslims this way: "They are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know." Jesus being well known as a forceful and ferocious warrior. (Oh, didn't you know that "turn the other cheek" was code for "strike back with force and ferocity"?)

Mr. Bush's actions since taking office prove that his close relative had an accurate understanding. Both Mr. Bush and his most devoted followers have frequently stated that Mr. Bush's political machine did not "steal" the 2000 election with the collusion of Dick Cheney's close personal friend Antonin Scalia, but rather that Mr. Bush was "appointed by God" to the presidency. In short, that Mr. Bush is the Second Coming.

(But exactly which maschiach of God (the Hebrew word translated as "messiah" meant personal representative or stand-in) do Mr. Bush and his admirers believe he is? Where exactly is the verse in the Christian Testament that says, "Conduct pre-emptive war on the innocent subjects of him whom you declare supported and abetted those who hurt you, do evil to those who hate you, curse those who curse you, hate your enemies and attempt their violent overthrow"? Particularly when subsequent events prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that those upon whom you declared war did not hurt you and neither supported nor abetted those who did?)

Ah, you say, but how can we forgive when they keep killing and killing, bombing, shooting, even chopping off heads? If we turn the other cheek, they'll just keep right on attacking and hurting us. If we forgive them, they'll just up the ante until finally they have done something that — say the warmongers — even God finds unforgivable.

They might even try to crucify you. How can you be expected to let them get away with that? What are you, a man or a mouse? (Or "a pussy," masculine code for "a woman"? And why exactly is it that the more manly a man considers himself, the more likely he is to denigrate femininity or feminine sexual orifices?)

News flash: If you call yourself a Christian, you are to forgive your enemies, bless them, do good to them, and above all, love them — until there is no "them," only us. Do this even if they destroy something ancient and beautiful, or kill a child, or kill your best friend. Or call you a criminal and nail you up to a tree.

Remember, hatred corrodes. Rage shortens your life span. Resentment shrivels the soul. Rancor corrupts. What they do does not matter, be they terrorists or supporters of the Bush Administration, Islamists or fundangelicals or liberal do-gooders, Caucasian or Celtic or Semitic or Mediterranean or Negroid or Asian. It is you who must forgive and forgive and forgive, seventy times seven and more. Because it is your soul that is in danger of corrosion, corruption, or vanishing altogether if you don't.

From this moment on, I swear, to God and before God, that when my enemies — and even the best of Christians has enemies, as Jesus acknowledged — do something that makes me angry or frightened, I will pray for them. I will bless them. I will seek to do good that will somehow get back to them, even if only as a ripple from thousands of miles away. I will try my best, if not to love them, then to act as if I loved them, and wait for the feeling to follow.

But I won't vote for them. Jesus told us to love our enemies, not to become one with them.

Late in the afternoon on Friday, July 23 (what conveeeeeeenient timing!), the Pentagon released payroll records from George W. Bush's 1972 service in the Alabama National Guard. The records clearly show that then-Lt. Bush, who had qualified to serve as a pilot not much earlier, was not paid for July, August, and September of 1972, a period during which it is known that Bush, instead of honoring his military obligation, in fact was working for the Senate campaign of an Alabama Republican, Winton Blount.

Unsurprisingly, the Republicans, who assiduously investigated every Clinton action that could conceivably be called wrongdoing (spitting on the sidewalk, stepping on a crack), have shown a complete lack of interest in Republican criminal behavior — to offer just one example out of many, the treason committed by a "senior member" of Mr. Cheney's tightly-run staff in the matter of the revelation of the identity of a CIA operative as a punishment for her husband's having said that Saddam had no weapons of mass destruction when Bush Administration groupthink wanted desperately to believe otherwise. (The nerve of some people, contradicting their president like that!)

Consistent with the concerted Republican effort to stay "on message," the official Party Line is that these records "do not give any new information about Bush's National Guard training." Of course they don't! — he had completed his training by that time. These records do provide new information about Mr. Bush's whereabouts during the period when, having completed his training, he was supposed to be serving his country. Wherever he was and whatever he was doing, Mr. Bush was not honoring the oath he had sworn, or he would have been paid.

It would behoove voters this fall to forget the Republican Party Line and remember that being absent without leave during a time of war — 1972 for example — is a felony.

Following is a list of "Things You Must Believe to Be a Republican." Most of this list arrived in a much-forwarded e-mail, but some items I added myself.

• Being a drug addict is a moral failing and a crime, unless you are a famous conservative radio host. Then it is an illness and you need our prayers.
• The United States has no need of the United Nations, those big wussies, since our highest priority in 2003 was claimed to be enforcing U.N. sanctions against Iraq.
• Government should relax all constraints on the ethical standards currently required of Big Business (especially Halliburton) and Big Money, but should crack down on individuals who use marijuana for the relief of pain and nausea.
• Logging, polluting, and killing off thousands and thousands of fish count as "environmental protection."
• "Standing Tall for America" means firing your U.S. workers and outsourcing their jobs to India.
• Women can't be trusted to make decisions about their own bodies, but multinational corporations can make decisions that affect the entire planet with no government oversight at all, much less regulation.
• Jesus loves you — and just like you, Jesus hates homosexuals and Hilary Clinton.
• Christianity may say "Love Thy Neighbor," but what this means is "[Muslim extremists] are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will fight back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."
• The best way to improve the U.S. military is to praise our forces in speeches, while acting to cut back veterans' benefits, family benefits for those in active service, and combat pay.
• Group sex and drug use are degenerate sins unless you later run for office as a Republican, for example, for governor of California.
• If condoms are kept out of schools, adolescents will not have sex.
• If rescue agencies are forbidden to discuss anything other than abstinence, women and children in the Third World will be safe from AIDS.
• A good way to battle terrorism is to belittle our international allies, and then demand their money and their obedience to our dictates.
• Drug prices are way too high unless you're trying to coerce a big giveaway package through Congress, in which case a "no price negotiations" law is imperative.
• Providing adequate health care to all Iraqis is imperative. Providing adequate health care to all U.S. citizens is socialism.
• Global warming and tobacco's proven link to cancer are junk science, but creationism should be taught in school.
• Saddam was a good guy when Reagan did business with him; a bad guy when Dubya's daddy went to war with him; a good guy when Cheney did business with him; and a bad guy when Dubya wanted a distraction from his own reluctance to do anything to harm Saudi Arabia, like catch Osama.
• A president lying about a few blow jobs is an impeachable offense. A president lying to drum up support for his own groupthink about what a "slam dunk" going to war with Iraq will be is sound public policy.
• A president's past is of total, obsessional importance when it comes to failed business deals like Whitewater. When it comes to failed business deals like Arbusto Oil (it is SO difficult to find oil in Texas!) and Harken Energy, a president's past is of no importance at all. Such crimes as vandalism and theft (1968), convictions for drunk driving (1976, 1978), concaine use (1972), admitted perjury (1978, 1996, 1999), government corruption while governor of Texas, insider trading (1980s), and being absent without leave during a time of war (a felony committed in 1972) are of no possible interest to any loyal American. (Mr. Bush remains the only president in U.S. history who has been convicted of a crime by a court of law, and Mr. Cheney is the only vice-president (convicted of drunk driving in 1962 and 1963).)
• Government should limit itself to matters discussed in the U.S. Constitution, such as regulating the Internet and protecting the U.S. from allowing two people who love each other to proclaim that love publicly.
• The public has the right to know every detail of a first lady's financial past, such as Hilary Clinton's stock trading in the 1980s. But the public has no right to know about George W. Bush's driving record, his military record, his court convictions, his insider trading, or his educational records.
• The definition of "states' rights" is "whatever John Ashcroft believes is right." If a state adopts a law that Mr. Ashcroft personally disapproves of, the government has the right to supersede the states.
• What Bill Clinton did in the 1960s is of vital national interest, but what George W. Bush did in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s is of no interest at all.
• Trade with Cuba, a Communist country, is wrong and will discourage democracy there. Trade with the People's Republic of China and North Vietnam, both Communist countries, is vital to the spirit of international harmony, and will encourage democracy there.
• The "No Child Left Behind Act," which requires schools to adhere to an irrelevant standard administered by a poorly constructed multiple-choice test, will work great if it's merely passed but shortchanged by billions of dollars in underfunding.
• The only way to address the fact that the Bush Administration is pushing the federal deficit into the stratosphere by more than a billion dollars A DAY is to enact permanent tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans, thus shifting the tax burden to the poorest 20 percent — who don't give nearly as much in campaign contributions to the Bush League.

I just learned that the ancient Greek word for "dildo" was olisbos. Since the island of Lesbos was so pro-feminist that homosexual women are still known as lesbians, and since the words would seem to be related (L-S-B) — wouldn't it be cool if the original name were "Dildo Island"?

Following is an e-mail exchange between me and an Internet acquaintance I have never met — a man whose political opinions are diametrically opposed to me, but who still sends me the occasional rant on how perfect the world would be if all people who took the phrase "liberal democracy" seriously would just go away. My acquaintance's words appear in the gray boxes.

It was called the Spanking Machine and it was kept in the principal’s office or the school basement depending on whom you spoke with, but they all had seen it. The Spanking Machine was a marvelous tool, which subdued our youthful exuberance to a point where we could get a quality education, and when a cherry bomb flushed down a commode ruptured the sewer line over the teachers lounge, effective threats of the “Machine” quickly led to the suspects.

I was educated in the state of Maryland beginning in the 1950s. There was no corporeal punishment anywhere in the state that I am aware of. I received a quality education (at least by today's abysmal standards) with neither threats nor coercion.

Dozens of psychological studies have proven that learning is impeded by fear -- such as by fear of your Spanking Machine. But how does student discipline compare to the despicable actions sanctioned by the highest levels of the Bush Administration at what Mr. Bush, apparently pretending to be above noticing the controversy, calls the "Abu Ga-reff ... situation"? (No, you'd best not misunderestimate President Subliminable, he might ask you to unificate -- or to explain what he meant when he talked about "the cufflinks of federalization"!)

When you were a student, did your teachers threaten to kill you by drowning, and then hold your head under water until you were certain they were about to succeed? Did they perform moral indecencies on your naked, bound person? Did they allow killer dogs to menace your life, starting with your naked genitalia? Did they do much more, much worse than that?

Torture one of those vague and arbitrary words, which can be applied to anything from an overly long homework assignment to grisly death. While I oppose any torture that leads to severe pain, physical injury, or death, I do not oppose using the threat of physical violence or death to get the information we need to prevent even greater levels of death and destruction.

Fine. I now declare you a potential terrorist by virtue of my position as Commander in Chief of the forces of rationality. According to the Bush Administration's interpretation of the law, I now have the right to incarcerate you in Guantanamo Bay for any indefinite period I choose, up to the rest of your life, without access to (a) a lawyer or (b) your loved ones or friends, and I have the right to inflict any torture or threat I choose upon you, whether or not you are even guilty of the crime I suspect you of. Don't be surprised if you never see your loved ones again -- or your former life and livelihood, for that matter.

The left in their unceasing desire to destroy George Bush and turn our Iraq expedition into failure

Neither of those allegations is true. As a member of "the left," I do not wish to "destroy" George W. Bush, who is indisputably the worst president in United States history -- however many millennia the U.S. may continue to exist. I merely wish him to go back to mismanaging small businesses like Arbusto, where he belongs, and engaging in insider trading, as the U.S. News and World Report has shown he did with Harken Energy. Or getting drunk, as thesmokinggun.com's video shows him doing in 1991 or '92.

Being absent without leave during a time of war, as Dubya was, is a FELONY. Maybe if he had served his country in the early 1970s, Bush would have learned firsthand of the horrors and evils of war -- evils that four-star general and president Dwight D. Eisenhower spoke plainly about, but that "my priorities are more important" Dubya can't even bring himself to acknowledge. He doesn't even want to do honor to the soldiers who were killed or seriously injured supporting his little ego-trip, in case acknowledging their existence might have an adverse effect on his poll numbers! -- although he has no trouble at all reducing benefits to the soldiers and their families who are suffering on behalf of his ego.

I do not wish to turn George W. Bush's ego-trip "expedition" into Iraq into failure. Mr. Bush has alienated millions of Americans, dozens of millions of Europeans and Asians, and hundreds of millions of Muslims. If the United States does not quickly provide clear proof that we understand words like "honor" and "integrity," the U.S.'s dominance in world politics is doomed. For the Bush-Cheney disaster in Iraq to become total would also doom us.

Documents released to the public in July 2003 provide clear proof that Bush and Cheney began planning the invasion of Iraq in March 2001, if not even before Mr. Bush was SElected by Mr. Cheney's close personal friend Mr. Scalia and the rest of the Gipper-Poppy Five. The weapons of mass destruction that Bush supporters hysterically insisted were about to be used on the U.S. turn out to be as fictional as I thought they were all along. The link between Iraq and Saddam turns out to be as fictional as most sane people thought it was all along. Exactly why are we in Iraq, if not to prove to the world that Bush/43 is a manlier man than Bush/41?

We galloped into Iraq so that de-facto president Cheney and figurehead president Bush could tell themselves that they are better men than Bush Senior -- "cleaning up his mess" is one sound bite I've heard directly from Dubya's own mouth. Forgive me if I do not agree that massaging Dubya's ego in his little father-son rivalry is worth a billion dollars a DAY, not to mention thousands of lives lost, most of them innocent ones. (If you're so in favor of the "expedition," how much money have you voluntarily given to the federal government to help pay for it? Or are you in favor of yet another tax cut for the wealthy, so that our great-grandchildren will pay for it all? -- or, more likely, go as bankrupt as Arbusto, Harken Energy, and the company belonging to Mr. Bush's close personal friend Kenneth Lay?)

has redundantly run the Iraqi prison photos for weeks, they now demand the President and his Administration publicly renounce the use of torture. Are we to publicly assure brutal murderers of woman and children a comfortable bed, 3 square meals, a mint on their pillow, and no torture?

Where are your moral values, Ronnie? YES. We are to publicly assure brutal murderers of women, children, and even men that we are not as evil and depraved as they are. We are to publicly assure brutal murderers, fascist terrorists, and even members of the Bush Administration that we will not stoop to their depths. To murder is a crime. To torture is a crime. To rape is a crime, and that includes both physically and psychically. To debase and to corrupt are crimes. To sell your soul for the sake of wealth, patronage, and glory is a crime, whether or not you even believe in souls.

I believe that most Americans do not murder, rape, torture, or abuse. I believe that no decent human being would approve of any of those crimes. I believe that it is mere hair-splitting to say, "Oh, but it's not *torture* if it doesn't cause any organ failure or death" -- as the Bush Administration did early in 2002. I believe that such hair-splitting is in the same class as the rapist who says, "Well, yes, she kicked and fought and screamed and said 'NO!' a hundred times, but she really wanted it. She was a slut anyway, she deserved the pain and humiliation that she asked me for." Rape is rape, whether or not the victim "relaxes and enjoys it." Murder is murder. Torture is torture, and no, the definition is NOT "vague" or "arbitrary" -- unless you're a supporter of the Bush Administration who is having trouble quieting his conscience.

The point is NOT whether the victim deserves what the criminal does to her or him. The point is whether what the criminal does is or is not morally reprehensible. If it would be wrong for a U.S. soldier to commit certain acts on the person you love most in all the world, it is wrong for him or her to commit identical acts on Osama bin Laden, Idi Amin, or Ranavalona III of Madagascar. Even on brutal murderers. (And incidentally, as far as I am aware NO prisoner at "Abu Ga-reff" was tried and convicted in a court of law of any crime at all. Is it all right with you to commit crimes on the presumed-innocent-until-proven-guilty, as long as you or your superior officer sincerely believe they are guilty? What about if you're just pretty sure they're guilty? What about if you're pretty sure their only crime was being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but your superior is pretty sure you're wrong?)

President Bush pretends he is a Christian. Jesus of Nazareth taught his followers to turn the other cheek, to return good for evil, to allow themselves to be murdered, as he was, rather than fight back. In my opinion, Mahatma Mohandas Gandhi was a better Christian than George W. Bush is -- and total nonviolence is the only way to prove you are a genuine Christian. No killing, no torture, no rape, no humiliation, no spanking. According to the truth taught by Jesus (and in fact by every religion-founder except Muhammad), if you would not do it to the person you love most in all the world, you MAY NOT do it to anyone else. Even Osama. Even Hitler. Even Dubya.

On June 23, President George W. Bush referred to arguably the worst scandal of his administration — the systemic approval of torture summed up by the shorthand "Abu Ghraib" — as "the Abu Ga-reff . . . situation."

Despite the mountains of evidence to the contrary, Mr. Bush is nowhere near as stupid as he is content to allow the world to believe he is. His mispronunciation of "Abu Ghraib," which he must have heard correctly pronounced hundreds of times in the last month alone, could not possibly be evidence of his complete indifference to the burgeoning scandal, nor the self-satisfaction of his belief that he has been anointed by the god he worships as the Second Coming, the Scourge of Terrorism (or at least the scourge of Saddam). Nor should his mispronunciation be shelved alongside "subliminable," "unificate," or "the cufflinks of federalization." No, we shouldn't "misunderestimate" Mr. Bush.

It is obvious that we, rather than Mr. Bush, have been mispronouncing this word all along. And so I offer the proper pronunciation of the first verse of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky":

"'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimbal in thd wa-reff.
All mimsy were the borogoves,
And the mome raths outga-reff."

It was 1988 when Jamaica made history by entering a team into the Winter Olympics bobsledding competition. None of the men on the team had ever seen snow before. They did not win. But as Dr. Johnson famously remarked in a misogynistic context, it is like seeing a dog walk on its hind legs — even though it is not done well, "you are surprised to see it done at all."

The 1993 movie Cool Runnings had a happy ending. Now the Lightning has provided the Tampa Bay area with our very own happy ending. If we are surprised to see ice hockey played at all in a state that rarely even sees snow (when was the last time, 1989?), how much more amazed must the world be today!

The best part is, now supporters of the Calgary Flames have absolutely no chance to make any remarks about "a snowball's chance in Florida." . . .

How charming. The London Daily Telegraph just printed a raving right-wing attack on the left wing and labeled it an editorial, so that they didn't have to worry about anything as inconvenient as facts.

Fact: Calling applause for Michael Moore "gruesome" and labeling him "self-regarding" and the "portly archpriest of the anti-Bush cult" does nothing but signal that the editorial writer is a bigot.

Fact: None of the claims made in Bowling for Columbine has "unraveled spectacularly under scrutiny," as the no-doubt portly archpriest of conservativism alleged. The non-lunatic-fringe attacks on Bowling for Columbine have come from (a) a contributor to Gun Week Magazine who has made a life-work out of opposing any form of gun control and (b) John Lofton, who is such an extremist that he believes the Bush Administration to be "too liberal." (!) Mr. Lofton worked on Pat Buchanan's presidential campaign and was a direct-mail writer for Jesse Helms. The allegations made by the contributor to Gun Week Magazine and by Mr. Lofton are easily demonstrated to be falsehoods.

Fact: Michael Moore does live in New York City. He lives above a "Baby Gap" store. The editorial's other allegations about Mr. Moore's supposedly profligate lifestyle are as baseless as the hilarious allegation that even America's left wing find him embarrassing, crude, and unreliable. Mr. Moore researches his movies thoroughly and meticulously. Every fact can be substantiated by multiple sources — unlike the allegations made by the Daily Telegraph's editorial writer and trumpeted by the St. Petersburg Times.

The Bush Administration has made a habit of ignoring or discrediting facts that it finds uncongenial, or relying on "research" that contradicts the facts provided by reputable scientists. To take just one example, the Bush Administration commissioned the National Academy of Sciences to do a study on whether human activity contributes to global warming. When the NAS study agreed with every other scientific study made on the subject, the Bush Administration suppressed the work and had it repeated by scientists working for the American Petroleum Institute — who amazingly enough told the Bush Administration exactly what it wanted to hear. Today no scientist who wants to keep her job dares even to cite the NAS study that the Bush Administration commissioned.

This has happened over and over again during the last three years. According to the Bush Administration, collecting less tax from the wealthy will result in more money for the government; Saddam Hussein had ties to al Qaeda; Saddam had an active nuclear weapons program that was imminent enough a threat to take us to war; the citizens of Iraq would greet American troops with hosannas and showers of rose petals; two human beings expressing their love for one another in a concrete way will destroy human civilization; drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Reserve is the only conceivable answer to any energy-related problem; stem-cell research murders babies; factories don't get closed if the government doesn't issue any report of their closing; and on and on and on.

The Bush Administration has made consistent use of one nifty technique: If you can't prove a fact to be false, discredit the person offering that fact. To take just one example, secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill had to be compelled to resign not because he advocated fiscal sanity, and not even because during 23 months on the National Security Council he knew from first-hand experience that Saddam had no WMDs, but because he was "unreliable."

Surely the Daily Telegraph's editorial writer, an obvious fan of the Bush Adminisration, has made use of this tactic. If Michael Moore can't be stopped any other way, discredit him personally. And be sure to publish your falsehoods as an editorial, so that you don't have to answer to any pesky fact-checkers.

I do not know when Fahrenheit 9/11 will come to the Tampa Bay area or where it will be shown. The writer of "Just can't take any Moore" has ensured, however, that whenever and wherever Mr. Moore's new movie is shown, I will be among the first in line to see it. With an attack as blistering as the load of falsehoods the Times saw fit to run as an editorial, this new movie ought to be as terrific as the Washington Post says it is.

Now, let me get this straight: In the alternate universe in which George W. Bush lives, secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been doing a "superb" job, while admirable public servants Eric Shinseki, Paul O'Neill, and Larry Lindsey had to be fired for the crime of telling truths that Mr. Bush did not want to hear. (And in fact, by his actions, has shown he has not managed to hear even now.)

The horror and shame of the U.S. tortures of Abu Ghraib are not, as Mr. Bush and Mr. Rumsfeld keep insisting, the result of the actions of a few low-ranking loose cannons. They are systemic. The only proper response by any president with the moral fiber of a bowl of Jello would have been to fire Mr. Rumsfeld, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Richard Myers, Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, who was in charge of interrogation at Abu Ghraib, and, just to be thorough, Wolfowitz, Feith, Rove, Rice, and every other member of the cabal of groupthinkers who got the U.S. into what The Daily Show calls this "Giant Mess o'Potamia."

I have a dream. I know it will never happen, but it is all that sustains me in this dark hour: that Congress will impeach, try, and convict Mr. Bush, vice president and acting president for foreign policy Dick Cheney, and speaker of the House J. Dennis Hastert. Secretary of State Colin Powell would then become our first African-American President of the United States.

Mr. Powell is a man of honor and integrity. He would inarguably be the best U.S. president of the 21st century so far. (Of course, the same could also be said of Bozo the Clown and that cute little dog in the Taco Bell commercials. . . .)

In her April 29 column, Maureen Dowd quotes a relative of George W. Bush. According to this relative, President Bush views his war on Iraq as part and parcel of the war on terrorism and as "a religious war." According to this relative, Bush "doesn't have a P.C. view of this war. His view . . . is that they are trying to kill the Christians. And we the Christians will strike back with more force and more ferocity than they will ever know."

As a horrified long-time observer of President Bush's consistent attempts over the past three years to transform the United States into a "faith-based" nation governed by those who share his and Mr. Ashcroft's somewhat unorthodox faith, I believe that Mr. Bush's relative was speaking honestly and with accuracy. Many columnists have written of their perception that since Sept. 11, Mr. Bush sees himself as divinely anointed by God — whom he appears to have confused with the five Republican-appointed members of the U.S. Supreme Court.

I am deeply impressed by the description that Mr. Bush's relative gave of the fundamental precept of Mr. Bush's religious beliefs: that it is Christian to "strike back" with "more force and more ferocity than they will ever know." And since the dichotomy in Mr. Bush's mind is between Christians and "them," it seems likely that "they" refers to (a) Muslims, (b) non-Christians, and (c) any self-avowed Christian who does not share Mr. Bush's inability to distinguish between church and state.

Having the supreme misfortune of living in a "battleground state," I have been subjected to falsehood after falsehood about John Kerry, Mr. Bush's presumptive opponent this fall in Mr. Bush's quest for a second coronation — more than $50-million worth so far. I have seen more than one television program in which the Bushies behind these advertisements cheerfully admit that they are falsehoods. One of the most egregious, for example, portrays approximately 14 attempts to rein in Mr. Bush's extravagant spending as 350 votes to raise taxes. Another advertisement portrays Mr. Kerry's attempts to persuade Mr. Bush that one cannot raise $200-billion to fight in Iraq by lowering the taxes of the wealthy as disloyalty to the war effort, and especially to the men and women who are fighting and dying so that Mr. Bush can find the weapons of mass destruction that are an imminent threat to the security of the U.S. mainland. To me, such cyncism coming from the re-selection campaign of a man who cannot prove that he did not commit a felony by being absent without leave during a time of war is nauseating.

Mr. Bush is portrayed in every advertisement as approving of these deliberate falsehoods. Apparently, "Thou shalt not give false witness" is as little a part of Mr. Bush's definition of Christianity as "thou shalt not kill" and "turn the other cheek." But the $50-million spent so far to smear Mr. Kerry's reputation with statements even their promulgators acknowledge to be false seems clearly to lump Mr. Kerry in with the "them" whom Mr. Bush must attack with nuclear force and Cheney-like ferocity in order to be godly.

Yes, Jesus certainly recommended striking back with super-force and super-ferocity whenever one of "them" injures a Christian. Mr. Bush's image of Jesus seems to me to dovetail closely with my own image of Rambo. But I'm sure that Mr. Bush's image of Jesus is in the Bible somewhere — perhaps in the book of Dalmatians. . . .

When a really big graphic goes up on the Internet, a considerate designer uses a technique called interlacing. The first thing a Web surfer sees is the entire picture, but only every eighth line or so. The closes analogy to the way this first picture looks is a blur. You get the overall idea, but none of the details. Showly the lines fill in — lines 2, 9, 17, etc., then lines 3, 10, 18, etc., then lines 4, 11, 19, etc. — until finally the whole image is filled in and every detail is clear.

This is the way that many subjects ought to be taught — and especially history. Imagine how much easier students would find a subject if they first had an overall idea of what they were studying and why.

For example, the first lesson of a course in world history could cover the entire vast sweep of history, from 4 billion BCE to today — from the moment Earth began, through amoebas, ferns, dinosaurs, mammals, humanity, etc.

The second lesson might cover the period between 3.6 BCE (roughly when Lucy, our oldest known hominid, may have lived) and today. This lesson would focus more on the evolution of humanity, but would also cover ice ages and other climactic changes.

The third lesson might cover the period between 100,000 BCE (roughly when homo sapiens sapiens first appeared) to today. This lesson would focus more on the major stages of human development — men's invention of hunting, women's invention of agriculture, the Stone Age, the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, etc.

The fourth lesson might cover the period between approximately 3200 BCE (the invention of writing) to today. The focus might be of the impact of literacy on the human mind. (The Alphabet versus the Goddess, by Leonard Shlain, would be a great text for this week's lesson. I highly recommend this fascinating and insightful work.)

And so on, with each lesson "filling in the blanks" that were left in the lesson before.

Using the pedagogic equivalent of interlacing would mean that students would have a better chance of understanding the meaning what they are studying. Asking students to memorize a bunch of data without making them understand why they are memorizing a particular fact or factoid is to receive back answers regurgitated on a final exam and forgotten days later. Explain the bloodly horror of the Holocaust and learners will have a better chance of remembering V-E Day.

I had a totally nutty idea over the weekend!

First, some background: it has long been my opinion that to call God Lord and King is wholly the opposite of what Jesus had in mind. It is a sacralization of both misogyny AND hierarchy, and it contributes to the fact that most Christians are NOT proclaiming the Gospel of Jesus to all the world; we are proclaiming the Gospel of Paul and Constantine.

In support of my theory are the following facts:

• Jesus was born a Jew during an era when almost as many nations looked down on Jews as do today.
• Jesus was born a Jew during an era when Jerusalem, to which all pious Jews were supposed to travel three times a year, was the heart of Judea, a slave-state of the Roman Empire — and Israel wasn't all that much better off.
• Jesus was born a tektwn, a profession lower than peasant (tektwns owned no property) — in fact, just high enough to be respectable.
• Very probably the child and boy Jesus was whispered to be a momser, a bastard, "the excrement of the community." In the early decades of the first century scurrilous stories were told about Mary and the Roman soldier Panthera. Mark 6:3 calls Jesus "son of Mary" in an era when men were invariably "son of Man's Name" unless the identity of the father was unknown. And in John 8:41, Jesus's enemies taunt him by saying, "WE [humeis] are not bastards [like some people we could mention, Jesus son of Mary]." If he were reared in a village that believed he was "the excrement of the community," it would have taught Jesus his compassion and his identification with the other outcasts of society — people with skin diseases, women compelled to work in the sex trade, tax-collection goons, etc. It would have also taught the child and boy Jesus an indelible lesson about how the victims of injustice suffer.
• He died a death reserved for the dregs of society — slaves, murderers, rapists, and opponents of the Roman Empire.

In other words, Jesus was born as far down the totem pole as it's possible to get and still be respectable. If he had been a leper or a collaborator, no one would have listened to him.

More background: the Hebrew word "magdalene" could refer to a resident of Magdala/Tarichea. But the word also meant "great, magnificent." It's closely related to the word for "tower," and we see something similar in English with "the towering inferno" or "in greatness he towered above the rest." I wrote my master's thesis on "Mary the Great."

Here's my wacky idea: The only way Jesus could have gotten any lower down the social totem pole would be if he had been born a woman. What if the TRUE Messiah was MARY of Nazareth and Jesus was her "front man" or figurehead? And further, what if Mary the Great and Mary of Nazareth were the SAME PERSON?!?!

Ah, but what about John 19, you say, in which Jesus hands over the care of his mother to the beloved disciple? How could she be the same person as Mary the Great? All four canonical gospels were written many decades after it all happened, in (my best guess) Philippi Caesarea, Antioch, Antioch, and Ephesus. No gospel writer would ever believe that a mere woman would be called "the Great," and all took for granted that her title really meant "of Tarichea." And the author of the fourth gospel had his own agenda about the Messianic Bridegroom, and needed an actress for the Dying King scene.

I find it very entertaining to consider the possibility that it was MARY of Nazareth who thought up all that cool stuff for Jesus to say, that it was MARY'S vision of God's Perfect World that inspired first her son and then us. And it certainly makes some people's mariolatry more acceptable to me!

Mind you, I'm not talking about a ventriloquist/dummy relationship here — possibly something closer to the relationship between Cheney and Dubya. It can easily be inferred from the canonical gospels that Jesus was a great genius. Intelligence is carried on the X chromosome. (And incidentally, if Jesus was truly the product of a virgin birth, he could have gotten his DNA from only one source. I have read a theory that Joan of Ark was an XXY. Maybe Jesus was an XXY too, but Mary got more testosterone in her diet in her first three months of pregnancy!)

Okay, I've given you your laugh for the day — now go and sin no more.

God has been "imaged" in a lot of ways — stern father, nurturing parent, mother hen, she-bear, rock, fortress, wind, etc. The fact is that since God must by definition be both transcendent and infinite, virtually any image anyone cares to use must by definition be infinitely wrong.

The best way to "image" God is to imagine that you, the Earth, the solar system, the Milky Way, the Universe — all of it — is a fetus in its mother's womb. All we can see is a limited darkness. We have some vague awareness that Mama exists, but there is no possible way we can know what Mama "looks" like, or thinks about, or likes to do when she's not obsessing about us — any more than a fetus could understand his mother's doctoral thesis in quantum physics. Repeat after me: Whatever any religious leader tells us about God's nature, character, and intentions is with few exceptions guaranteed to be infinitely wrong.

We can have no idea whether there is in fact a "larger" reality that exists "beyond" the Universe — but God is the God of all realities, even if "all realities" turn out to be like a matryoshka, one of those Russian "little mother" dolls where many dolls nest inside each other, each smaller than the last, and the Universe is its chewy, delicious center.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: Asked why the United States should NOT invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein, the U.S. Secretary of Defense replied: "Once you've got Baghdad, it's not clear what you do with it. It's not clear what kind of government you would put in place of the one that's currently there. . . . How much credibility is that government going to have if it's set up by the United States military when it's there? . . . I think to have American military forces engaged in a civil war inside Iraq would fit the definition of quagmire, and we have absolutely no desire to get bogged down in that fashion."

The Secretary of Defense in question was Dick Cheney, speaking in 1991 as he explained the first Bush Administration's decision to end the Gulf War after Kuwait was freed.

Documents released to the public in July 2003 make it clear that Mr. Cheney and his Energy Task Force were planning on how to exploit Iraq's oil and gas resources in March 2001. This fact gives rise to the obvious inference: that Mr. Cheney and Mr. Bush began planning the invasion of Iraq in late 2000. The question in my mind is, with well over two years to make plans, why were these plans made so badly? What happened to Mr. Cheney's common sense during the decade between the above, prescient comments, and the fulfillment of Mr. Cheney's prophecy today?

Here's my idea for a swell commercial for the Kerry campaign. A songwriter named John McCutcheon has written an entire song using nothing both quotations from Dubya — "make the pie higher," "I will not retort to personal attacks" (har!), etc. Let the commercial makers just string together a whole bunch of Dubya's malapropisms — calling himself chief executive officer of the U.S., delivering the "State of the Budget" address, subliminable, misunderestimate, a "foreign-handed foreign policy," etc., etc., etc. Et my-God-will-he-never-learn-English cetera. This commercial ought to end with an inspiring quotation from Thomas Jefferson (or equivalent) about how the president of the United States is supposed to be (a) educated and (b) literate. I could even see Bush's voice delivering the malapropisms while the video focused on shot after shot after shot of Dubya looking like a bewildered chimpanzee.

A second commercial could start with Bush's deer-in-the-headlights look upon learning about 9/11. It could point out that after he was told about the first attack, Bush WENT ON READING for several minutes. Then the commercial could retrace the movements of Air Force One that day, as it meandered around the country, while Karl Rove (or whoever) explained that the bad guys wanted to attack Air Force One. This commercial could end with the PROOF that Rove (or whoever) was lying through his teeth.

A third commercial: On the left, President Bush last May, posing in his flight suit in front of the "Mission Accomplished" sign that he now claims was the Navy's idea. Yes, the White House bought and paid for the sign and delivered it to the battleship and paid for hanging the sign — but it was all the Navy's idea. (Right!) On the right, an old photo of Senator Kerry the legitimate war hero. The captions: "Mr. Dress-Up" and "A Genuine Hero."

A folk singer named John McCutcheon is in the habit of co-writing songs. In the case of the following song, McCutcheon used a famous collaborator: George W. Bush. The following lyrics are verbatim, merely reassembled so that they rhyme. The song can be found on a CD entitled "Fish Out of Water 3," a promotion of WMNF-FM community radio in the Tampa Bay area.

 
Well, I was born in west Texas, pretty near California,
Far away from Dad’s home in D.C.
Well, I’m talking about myself, and they’re talking about myself,
All of us are talking about me.

Now, some may retort to personal attacks.
Take the high horse and claim the low road.
But I am not a revengeful person;
I’ll simply respond with this ode.

When I delivered the State of the Budget address,
I offered up a question or two.
How can a man still put food on his family?
Will the toll booth to the middle class become more few?

No, it’s time to make the pie higher.
This idea is sure to resignate.
This is no time to be subliminable —
It’s time to unificate.

You see, when there’s more trade, there’s more commerce,
And we’ll bring this solution to an end —
Even if your business is hispanically owned,
Whether you speak French or Mexican.

We’re working for a hopefuller country,
No longer vulcanized.
Where humans and fish can coexist,
And each act civilized.

I think we can all agree that the past is over,
But still we’re held hostile everywhere.
These days we don’t know who they are,
But we certainly know that they’re there.

No longer inoculated by the mistakes of the past,
With a foreign-handed foreign policy,
We’ll keep good relations with Kosovoans and Grecians,
And avoid emotionality.

Now, we all know that reading is the basics of learning,
And learning . . . well, I forget the rest.
But teach a child to read and he or her
Will pass a literacy test.

So I ask you, is our children learning?
Will we tolerate failed subsidization?
Or will this be where wings take dream
And not a cufflink of federalization?

So if you’re tired of the politics of polls and principles,
It’s time that you joined his campaign.
See, we’re looking for women who will serve this country,
And never the House will they stain.

With our basics as the faith of our faith,
Where a troop can house his family,
We’ll find power to power the power of the power plants.
No, you’d best not misunderestimate me.

With every word and every breath
Our language dies a slow, sad death.
Hail to the chief, let’s give him hail —
Part Yogi Berra, part Dan Quayle.

Yes, I know that on March 30, George W. Bush threw Condoleezza Rice to the wolves, politically speaking, and will now graciously allow her to stop spreading lies and scurrilous half-truths assassinating the character of yet another Bush Administration alumnus to every news program in the world, and tell her version of the truth to the 9/11 commission under penalty of perjury.

But I'm still stuck with Dr. Rice's statement on the March 28 edition of "60 Minutes" that her refusal to comply with the 9/11 commission was a matter of principle. What principle is that? According to Dr. Rice, the high moral and ethical principle is (and this is a direct quotation), "It is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress."

I'm sorry, Dr. Rice. In the sense that you were using the word, a principle is a fundamental truth, law, axiomatic doctrine, or motivating force, upon which other truths, laws, doctrines, and motivators are based.

"Sandy Berger didn't have to, so I shouldn't have to" is NOT a principle. "The national security advisor should be above the law" may be a  principle, but it is not a fundamental truth, law, or axiomatic doctrine. Dr. Rice's motivating force was either fear of exposing President Bush for the partisan political hack in way over his head that he is, and was in 2001, or the natural secretiveness for which the Bush Administration is world-renowned. Neither one is a fundamental truth or moral law.

Since Dr. Rice appears to be principles-challenged, let me offer her a few: "Good government is open and honest." "Spitting into the wind is stupid." "No human being is above the law, not even Dubya." "Defaming the messenger does not change the message. It reveals the defamer as morally bankrupt."

And, finally, "CYA [cover your behind] is not  a principle."

Here is the problem with Christianity — with virtually all Christianity. Jesus told his disciples and apostles to tell the message of Jesus to all the world, to make disciples of Jesus out of everyone they could.

And for almost two thousand years now, virtually all evangelists have been taking the message of PAUL to all the world, in order to make disciples of PAUL out of everyone they could.

Jesus's vision was of God's Perfect World, where there is no poverty, no oppression, no marginalization, no abuse, no despair, no sickness, no imprisonment, no hunger, no homelessness, no injustice, no lack of compassion — a world where everyone believes that we are all brothers and sisters.

Paul's vision was of the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, "God in a man-suit." Paul cared far less about what Jesus taught than he did about explaining how a demigod died the death of a common criminal, a slave.

Mel Gibson's vision of the last 12 hours of Jesus's life might be the best movie ever made. (It's not.) It might be the most historically accurate depiction of first-century Jerusalem ever made. (It's not.) It claims to be the most faithful portrayal of the message of the canonical gospels ever made. (Not even close.)

Mel Gibson's movie might be the best movie ever made — but it has virtually nothing to do with the message of Jesus, and everything to do with the message of Paul, as misconstrued for centuries by the Roman Catholic Church, and as wildly misconstrued by Mel Gibson's father and his co-religionists.

The message of Jesus is simple: Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and love everything that God has created — your fellow human beings, other animals, the Earth, the solar system, the galaxy, the Universe — as much as you love yourself. The message of Jesus is that the ruling principle that guides the entire cosmos is love.

The message of Paul as it is interpreted by most Christians today is much more complex. Believe that Jesus was "God in a man-suit" or burn in hell for all eternity. Believe that the Bible is a history textbook and that every word in it reflects literal historical fact, even the myths and poetry, even the novellas. Believe that because Jesus lived during the first-century, the social values of the Roman Empire of the first century are meant by God to apply to all human cultures for all eternity, and therefore women should "graciously submit" to being second-class humans for all eternity. Believe that the Bible, a collection of books written between 1,900 and 3,500 years ago for an audience who spoke foreign languages, who lived in a wholly alien culture, who had totally different societal expectations and norms, was written in 1611 CE, in King James English, and was written out of a society and culture identical to those of the 21st-century United States.

It's bull manure. It's pernicious bull manure.

The fact is, Christianity started to go bad when the opinions of Paul became more important than the opinions of Jesus. Christianity's downfall came early in the fourth century of the Common Era, when the Roman Emperor Constantine converted to his own strange interpretation of Christianity — the one where the "prince of peace" provides military victories for his followers — and the Church Fathers, delighted that the centuries of persecution were at an end, fell all over themselves to change Christianity to suit the convenience of the emperor. Give away all you possess to the poor? Oh, surely the emperor is exempt from that one. Learn humility and egalitarianism? Oh, surely the emperor is exempt from that one. Practice justice, compassion, and forgiveness? That's no way to run an empire!

It sounds harsh and extreme, but the best thing for Christianity at this point would be to dump every doctrine that is based on Paul's teachings rather than Jesus's. Dump the doctrine of Original Sin, which is bullbleep anyway. Dump the doctrine of the Atonement, which is based on the doctrine of Original Sin, and therefore also bullbleep. Jesus did NOT die for our sins. We are NOT all going to Hell unless the God of Love can be propitiated by our superstitious little dances of propitiation. If "God is love," as the Christian Testament says, then Hell cannot possibly exist. No God of love would send even an enemy of God to Hell.

Ignore every teaching connected with Easter that can be traced to Paul rather than to Jesus — meaning, ignore Jesus's death, resurrection, and alleged divinity.

There's an old English proverb, "The proof [test] is in the pudding," meaning that you can't know how good something tastes without actually tasting it. In other words, don't judge a modern religion by what it claims of itself. Judge the religion by how well its followers do at following the precepts of its founder. For example, Muhammad was an illiterate camel-trader who committed dozens of murders over the course of his life, and called for or approved of many more, including several massacres and at least one murder of a nursing mother for the crime of disagreeing with Muhammad's teachings. The predisposition of modern Islamism to large-scale murder should surprise no one.

Modern Christianity claims to be a religion of peace, love, compassion, and forgiveness. Most modern Christians are told by their leaders to believe that unless they jump through the doctrinal hoops prescribed by the leaders, they will be unloved and unforgiven for all eternity, with excruciating agony every second of every minute for trillions upon trillions of aeons.

Bullbleep.

The message of Jesus is simple. Ignore everything a person claiming to be a religious leader tells you unless it conforms to the following commandments:

Love God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength.

Love everything that God has created as much as you love yourself.

Let your imagination be fired by Jesus's vision of God's Perfect World — in which everyone loves everyone else as much as a sister loves her brother, as much as a brother loves his sister. In which there is no poverty, no disease, no hopelessness, no abuse, no oppression, no injustice, no cruelty, no sickness, no revenge, no terrorism — no terror.

Forget all this bullbleep about "My religion is the only right one, so you are by definition wrong, deluded, disgusting, evil." If someone says to you, "God told me to tell you [fill in the blank]," ignore that person. God is perfectly capable of speaking for Godself, and does so every moment of every day. If someone says to you, "Unless you believe the same things I do, you'll fry in Hell for all eternity," forgive that person. He or she is an idiot who would rather obey his religion's rules than love God.

Do your part to make God's Perfect World a reality in the present, not just a beautiful dream of "pie in the sky." Practice forgiveness. Act with justice and honor. Live with compassion.

And remember that hate cannot create; hate can only destroy, pervert, corrupt, or debauch. The fundamental principle of all creation is love.

The Republicans are trying to make a big deal out of John Kerry's muttered comments, when he thought his microphone was off, about how many members of the current administration are crooks and liars. It is regrettably indiscreet, but Mr. Kerry at least has the defense of honesty.

What about a candidate for the presidency standing in front of a microphone that the candidate KNEW was open, slandering an individual person — say, Adam Clymer? In my opinion, such a candidate is "a major-league [epithet]." "Big time."

Re: “The Passion of the Christ”

Mel Gibson is on the record as defending his anti-Semitic interpretation of the gospel story with the claim that it is as historically accurate as possible. This is not true, on several counts. First, as many critics have already pointed out, the four canonical gospels contradict each other on numerous points — where and when Jesus was born, whether he spent one year or three in his public ministry, whether his arresting party was a “mob” of Jews or 600 Roman soldiers (John 18:3), whether Good Friday was also the first day of Passover, etc.

Second, Mel Gibson’s Passion is not historically accurate even in the “real world.” The most dramatic of Mel’s mistakes may be the frequently advertised image of Jesus carrying his own cross, both upright and horizontal. In the “real world,” condemned prisoners carried only the horizontal beam. The uprights were firmly fixed in the ground, where they could not be dislodged by, for example, rocking, or the victim’s friends.

Third, and perhaps most important — the canonical gospels are NOT HISTORY. History as we understand the idea today was invented in the eighteenth century, by Edward Gibbon (Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire). First-century “historians” frequently ignored or manipulated the facts to teach moral lessons, and no one thought they were doing wrong.

And the four evangelists of the Christian Testament are not historians — they’re theologians. The canonical gospels connect Jesus with the Hebrew Scriptures and the Jewish liturgy, proving to the satisfaction of their first-century audience (or second-century, for the Gospel of John) that Jesus is the long-awaited Messiah. Matthew and Mark say that Jesus quoted Psalm 22:1 as his last words. Luke says he quoted Psalm 31:5. John portrays him as the stock “dying king” character in one of the Greek novels that were popular in the first and second century.

A retired Episcopal bishop, Jack Spong, has pointed out that Gibson's "Passion" is not so much faithful to the canon as it is faithful to pre-Vatican II Roman Catholic dogma. For example, not only does Satan put in several appearances (wholly noncanonical!), but so does St. Veronica, another Roman Catholic invention. The name “Claudia” is bestowed on Pilate’s anonymous wife (who was mentioned only by Matthew, only for theological reasons). And so on, and so on.

The only facts we can know with certainty about Yeshua bar Maryam are (1) he lived and (2) he was crucified by the Roman Empire for the crime of sedition. The crucifixion could have taken place as early as 27 CE or as late as 36 CE. Jesus was just one among thousands who were executed for attempting to overthrow the Roman Empire, and most of those thousands had no trial at all or only the most cursory trial. IF Jesus had a trial, it was most likely at 6 a.m. on some other day than Good Friday. Jesus’s entire “trial” almost certainly consisted of Pilate saying, "Guilty, execute him — and bring me my breakfast." (It was against Jewish law to hold either a trial or an execution on the first day of Passover, which the first three gospels say is what happened. The Jews — the genuine Jews of the "real world" — would have gone ballistic over the sacrilege.)

The chances are roughly a thousand to one that "the Jews" were not involved at all with Jesus’s execution for sedition against the Roman Empire — even the Sanhedrin. Pontius Pilate had all the love and tender concern for the Jews that today's average Taliban terrorist does. The Roman Emperor heard more than one complaint from neighboring rulers about Pilate's "nonstop executions without verdicts." In 36 CE, Pilate's final atrocity was too much even for the depraved emperor Tiberius (!!!), and Tiberius summoned him back to Rome. He would probably have been executed for his many crimes, but luckily for Pilate, Tiberius died while Pilate was en route home.

The gospel of Mark was written around 70 CE, shortly after the great fire of Rome in 64 CE — the one during which Tacitus said Nero fiddled. Christianity became Nero's scapegoat; in retribution for the great fire, Nero rounded up every Christian he could find and fed them to the lions in a series of spectacular executions in the city's one surviving amphitheater. The gospels of Matthew and Luke were written between 80 and 90 CE, during the reign of the emperor Domitian, arguably the worst persecution Christianity ever faced. Merely to survive as a cult, Christianity HAD to blame "the Jews" for the sins of their Roman overlords. (The fourth canonical gospel, John, is a Christological treatise, even less interested in Gibbon-type history than the other three. In John, Jesus is "God in a man-suit." The Jesus portrayed in John would have been stoned to death for blasphemy before he gave his second sermon.)

It is barbarous to emphasize the monstrous canards of the biblical gospels — especially Matthew's "blame us Jews!" — on the grounds that one is being faithful to the story, when Mel in fact was being faithful to the dogma he learned at his Holocaust-denying father's knee, not the truth of the gospel. If the anguish so graphically depicted by Mel Gibson were theologically important, why did St. Paul, inventor of Christianity (and a devout Jew, like Jesus), never once mention it?

The "good news" is a message of love, compassion, and forgiveness. To promote any other message in the name of Jesus is to pervert his teachings. Very BAD news, in my Book!

Following is the text of an e-mail I sent to family members.

Dear loved ones:

The last time I wrote to you, our cat Biscuit had just died unexpectedly of cancer at the age of six.

It gets worse.

Three days after Biscuit died, it was time for two-year-old Hobbes to make his second trip to the vet. Everything was fine until we got to the vet's parking lot. There, the door to Hobbes's cat-carrier suddenly sprang open, and Hobbes jumped out, raced across a busy city street, and then, terrorized by a well-meaning passer-by, disappeared in the direction of Crescent Lake. We've been searching for six weeks now — but Hobbes was less than a mile from home as the human walks. We remain devastated.

It gets worse.

Our cat Abby came to us in 1992. She had been the pet of a housebound invalid who died a few days after we adopted Abby. Abby spent her first few days with us underneath the love seat in the living room. For years, she ran away from Jerry and indeed from all men — our theory was that Abby had never encountered a "testosterone zone" before she met Jerry.

After he retired and we moved to Florida, Jerry made winning Abby's affections his top priority. He succeeded. Jerry and Abby spent hours together each day, telling each other deep secrets and enjoying much petting, stroking, and caressing — especially Jerry. "Abby's petting stool" may have to be moved to somewhere else in the house if the memories prove too painful.

When we got her, the invalid's first cousin told us she thought Abby was about two. We think she was several years older than that. Abby was frail for several months. This morning, at 8:47 a.m., Abby was gathered to her Maker at the age of approximately 17 human years — about 84 in cat-years.

I'm sure all of you agreed with us when we declared that it was demented for two people to have eight cats (some more bluntly than others, right, Tom? ). But now we have only five cats, and we would both give almost anything to have Biscuit, Hobbes, and Abby with us once more.

Re: "Bush: Ban Gay Marriage,"
St. Petersburg Times, February 25, 2004

What a hullabaloo over what ought to be a strictly private contract between individuals!

This article quotes the president of the Christian Coalition of America and the Family Research Council as saying, “Nothing short of an amendment [to the U.S. Constitution] will protect the institution of marriage from an out-of-control judiciary.” It is only in totalitarian regimes that the judiciary is under the control of other branches of the government. Our Founders very wisely set up our system of government to ensure that the judiciary is and indeed must be “out of control.” Only when our judicial system is independent can we hope to ensure the blessings of liberty for ourselves and our posterity.

The judges who are currently under fire are NOT “forcing their arbitrary will upon the people,” as unthinking people allege. They are upholding the laws of the United States of America. If you don’t like the laws, change them. Oh, wait a minute — the Defense of Marriage Act did just that, didn’t it?

I can understand monkeying around with the Constitution to abolish slavery, acknowledge the humanity of African-Americans and women, and protect the United States from too many years under one potentially dangerous president. I cannot understand monkeying around with the Constitution to sanctify bigotry and discrimination.

The fact of the matter is, when two individuals want to publicly promise to love, honor, and cherish each other forever, we should applaud rather that discriminate against them. Unless you believe that the 55-hour marriage of Britney Spears is somehow more sacred than the 14-year committed union of the bishop of New Hampshire, I suppose.

Biscuit was the smartest cat we ever had. We called him our Mensa puss.

On May 6, 1998, I was two days away from graduating from seminary. My dear cat Sybil Fawlty had died of old age several months before. For a graduation present, Jerry took me to the local PETsMART, where the humane society was holding an adoption event.

Biscuit was about five months old, and the bright lights and loud voices of dozens of humans nearby terrified him so much that all he could do was crouch in his litter pan and tremble. He had been born in the wild, we were told, and had been bounced around “about 20” foster homes since being rescued. There was never any doubt about the outcome in either Jerry’s mind or mine: Biscuit needed rescuing from the chaos around him. He nestled into my bosom, and when it was time for him to be put into his cat carrier, he clung to me.

Our vets in Maryland were specialists: cats only, no other species need apply. It was they who diagnosed Biscuit’s heart ailment when he was seven months old. He spent the rest of his life taking Atenolol, the same medication my husband was put on for his own heart ailment.

Biscuit’s mitral valve dysplasia meant frequent visits both to our regular vet and to a nearby veterinary cardiologist, and the poor little boy hated every departure from the house. The little devil was SO smart! — every strategy I thought up for capturing him worked exactly once. I grew quite accustomed to rescheduling appointments while I tried to think up yet another new plan. It’s very, very difficult to take a Mensapuss by surprise.

At home, Biscuit spent hours and hours sitting on my lap, purring. He was a very pretty puss, with a cute little snub nose and big eyes. His fur was biscuit-colored, although we mostly named him after the quirky genius on “Ally McBeal.” Biscuit hero-worshipped our cat Phineas Finn, who was a year older than he, and followed Finny around like Mary’s little lamb. (He was my little lamb!)

Along with his lifelong heart problem, Biscuit had some sort of congenital condition that caused bad problems with his mouth and a scary conjunctivitis. Whatever the condition was, it would respond for a while to antibiotics, and then it would come back again. We never did know whether the cause was an allergy or something more sinister. Today, of course, I suspect the latter. Today Biscuit is dead.

Last week, Biscuit was off his feed. On Wednesday, he came to supper with a nasty scrape on the nape of his neck, as if he’d been in a fight. He also refused his supper. He didn’t even come to the kitchen on Thursday, and he showed no interest in food whenever I tracked him down. He hid under the guest room bed when we tried to give him his medicine.

On Friday, we took him to the vet. His fever was 104.9 (normal is about 101). The vet took some blood, and when the report came back, told us that Biscuit was seriously ill. His red blood cell count was down a little, but his white blood cell and platelet counts were both down significantly. The vet thought he probably had feline AIDS, feline leukemia, or cancer. Since Biscuit was never outside of the house except to go to the vet’s, we think it was either cancer or something he caught in his first five months of life.

But what does it matter? Biscuit died in the night sometime between Sunday, January 18 and Monday, January 19. He was approximately six years and six weeks old — if he’d been a human, about 40 years old.

Jerry and I have done our weeping, and we’ll do more. (In my case, lots more.) We wanted Biscuit to die at home, in our arms, not alone at the veterinary hospital. As a theologian, I know that God suffered as Biscuit suffered, that nothing whatsoever now separates Biscuit from the love of God, that God understands our sorrow and our pain as no living creature ever could. I know that the flip side of love is heartbreak, and I know that love, any sort of love, is worth the risk of heartbreak. Jesus proved to us that if God exists, there is no death — our sorrow is “merely” the pain of loss.

But I can still understand why Jesus is said to have cried out, quoting Psalm 22, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Psalm 22, like so many psalms, shows that the Chosen People were not afraid to take God to task for falling down on the job.

Psalm 22 concludes, “Everyone and everything that dies shall bow down before God, and I shall live for God.” I know that Biscuit lives in God now, and I like to imagine him sitting on Jesus’s lap and being petted.

Not to mention letting Jesus know in no uncertain terms exactly which one is smarter.

At his press conference announcing his wish that the U.S. return to sending people to the moon and then begin sending human beings to Mars, President George W. Bush referred to astronauts as "spatial entrepreneurs."

Since George W. Bush completed only six months of his two-year tour of duty flying an outmoded airplane for the Texas National Guard, preferring instead to go AWOL during a time of war (a felony he has never been penalized for committing), in a sense that makes him still a "spatial cadet," doesn't it?

The evening news informed me a day or two ago that a Shi’ite mosque in a predominantly Sunni neighborhood had been bombed. Six were dead and dozens were injured.

I have no very clear idea of why the mosque was bombed (and I'll bet the residents of Baquba, Iraq don't either). The principal difference between Shi’ite Muslims (roughly 10 percent) and Sunni Muslims (roughly 90 percent) is that the Sunnis used to elect their caliphs, or supreme rulers, while the Shi’ites believe their caliphs should be divinely chosen, i.e., be direct descendants of Muhammad's son-in-law Ali. (The word “caliph” means “successor [to Muhammad].”)

That’s it. That’s the big difference.

Under what circumstances can you imagine a Lutheran church in a predominantly Episcopalian neighborhood getting bombed over a fine point of doctrine?

Under what circumstances can you imagine a Conservative temple in a predominantly Hasidic neighborhood getting bombed?

Do you think it at all likely that a Zen Buddhist temple in a predominantly Shinto neighborhood would get bombed, with six dead and dozens injured?

How about a Mennonite meeting house in a predominantly Amish neighborhood? Their differences are similar to the differences between Sunni and Shi’ite, after all. And they are both self-proclaimed religions of peace.

There’s a song out on my local community radio station whose refrain goes, “I’m not afraid of your Yahweh, / I’m not afraid of your Jesus, / I’m not afraid of your Allah, / I’m afraid of what you’ll do in the name of your god.”

The proof is in the pudding. The Jews get persecuted by virtually every faith in the Western hemisphere. The Christians squabble among themselves about the infallibility of the Magisterium and whether or not homosexuals deserve basic human rights. And Muslims murder each other, and non-Muslims, all to the greater glory of Allah.

Six dead. Dozens injured. I'll believe that Islam is truly a religion of peace when you show me a news report about a Christian Science reading room in a predominantly Quaker neighborhood getting bombed.

I had a brilliant idea last night, or at least I think it's brilliant.

As I understand it, today when a woman has a mastectomy, they just scoop out everything, leave her flat, and stitch her up again. I've seen photos of women with startling scars. Also as I understand it, sometimes the patient is not allowed reconstructive surgery and a breast implant, and sometimes even when she is, it's not always wholly satisfactory.

Here's my idea: a two-part breast implant that the surgeon doing the mastectomy would insert after all the cancer had been scooped out. The inner core of the breast implant would be your ordinary bag of saline solution, shaped to be the same size and shape as the breast that was removed. This inner core would be encased by a covering, most of which is the same material as the inner covering (which looks like plastic in photos). BUT, the part of the casing that's directly over where the cancer used to be would be made of a slowly permeable substance. Between the two casings would be chemotherapy, and the chemo would slowly leach out of the implant for whatever months or years are necessary.

The patient would be left with minimal scarring, I would think — the surgeon would make an incision below the breast, where the wires go in a bra, and peel the skin up. The patient's new breast would look as much like the old one as possible, so she wouldn't feel like a freak. And the medication would slowly leach out of the implant and go DIRECTLY to where it's supposed to go, meaning that the dosage would be considerably lower and the bad side-effects considerably less awful.

What do you think? Brilliant idea, or am I forgetting something obvious, like, she'd need ten times more chemo than the implant could provide, or what if the outer shell ruptured in an accident and she got a skadillion times more chemo than she needed all at once? If you agree it's a brilliant idea, whom should I contact to pass it on?

My husband came up with a great new locution last night — the word "cringe" used as a transitive. As in "The TV show 'Frasier' often cringes me," or "The TV show 'The Office' cringes me in every episode." It's SO much easier than saying, "This show (or person, or event) causes me to cringe, to cower before the horrible humiliation that a character on the show (or whatever) is about to incur." Good work, Jerry!

I've been wondering for years now — if a vampire cannot be seen in a mirror's reflection, how can that same vampire's image be captured on photographic or movie film? It seems to me that if you're invisible to a mirror, which is basically glass with a backing of silver nitrate, you also ought to be invisible to anything that relies on silver nitrate as one of its ingredients.

Here's a possibility: Werewolves are vulnerable to silver; a silver bullet will kill a werewolf. According to the 1931 movie "Dracula," the one with Bela Lugosi, vampires can transform themselves into both bats and wolves — in other words, a vampire is both a werebat and a werewolf. (The Old English word for "man" was "wer." The Old English word for "woman" was "wif." The Old English word for "person" was "man." Sexism through the ages!)

In other words, maybe vampires can't be seen in mirrors because silver is antithetical to vampires, just as it is to "ordinary" werewolves. I found a rather silly website that said it's because of silver's "nuclear resinance [sic]," whatever that's supposed to mean. I think it's more likely to do with the role of silver in the collective unconscious of humanity.

(I also found a website that says, "Silver is a deadly poison to vampires," without further explanation, and advises silver bullets as the safest and most effective way to kill vampires. On the other hand, the proprietor of this particular website sincerely believes that vampires do exist.)

It is generally believed that the symbol of someone's faith, such as the crucifix (not the cross) or a star of David, is repugnant to vampires in proportion to the strength of belief of the person wielding the symbol. In the hands of an atheist, such symbols have no power over the vampire. Vampires supposedly have psychic powers, particularly of mesmerization and mind control. That being the case, it seems only fair that vampires be influenced in turn by the minds of their victims.

In the collective unconscious, silver symbolizes purity, healing, redemption, eternity, the soul, moonlight, and good luck. (In the Hebrew Scriptures, silver was used to redeem captives, and usually symbolizes money.) For many of us, silver represents feminine power in our unconscious, with the gold of sunlight representing masculine power. And of course it symbolizes "the silvery moon."

Vampires, of course, are the ultimate predators — and, at least in the case of Dracula, vampires seem to prefer preying on the physically weaker and more vulnerable. In other words, vampires seem to prefer female victims. Part of what made "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" so popular was its portrayal of the empowerment of a small and at-first-glance vulnerable young woman.

And women, of course, are also symbolized by the moon and by silver.

So maybe vampires' reflections can't be seen in mirrors because the silver in the silver nitrate of mirrors' backing rejects the vampire. And maybe that's why silver can kill vampires. The symbol of purity, healing, and redemption rejects the mythic creature who symbolizes corruption, degradation, and enslavement (to the vampire's psychic power or, if one actually is a vampire, to the need to murder, corrupt, and degrade — not to mention the need to stay out of the sun and away from silver.)

All this hullaballoo about homosexuality and the Bible. Doesn't anyone understand that the Bible was written anywhere from 3,200 to 1,900 years ago — the Bronze Age and the Iron Age? Doesn't anyone understand that they didn't think out of anywhere the same terms, concepts, or zeitgeist as we moderns do? For heaven's sake, toilet paper wasn't invented until 1867!

There are exactly SIX verses in the entire Bible that appear to condemn homosexuality. Here they are:

• Genesis 19:1-3. In this passage, two angels arrive in Sodom in the evening. Our hero Lot, knowing that life is dangerous in Sodom, insists on sheltering them for the evening. But every man in Sodom, both heterosexual and homosexual, surrounds Lot's house. The gang demands that the angels come out for a little homosexual gang rape. Lot offers his virgin daughters for the gang-rape, but the men insist on the angels, so the men closest to the door are stricken blind. The angels announce that they, the angels, are about to destroy Sodom, empowered by YHWH. The sins that are condemned are inhospitality and gang-rape, and the gang-rape is planned by a gang that is composed of primarily heterosexual men — husbands and fathers. (Heterosexuals, like left-handed people, comprise approximately 90 percent of humanity, both now and then.)
• Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13. Both of these verses prohibit a physical impossibility, a man lying with a male as if with a woman. The priestly writers, writing down in about 530 BCE oral tradition dating from perhaps a thousand years earlier, make no mention of love between men or women of the same gender, much less fellatio, cunnilingus, or other ways of exchanging pleasure.
        Remember, now, these verses date from at least 2,500 years ago, and the original oral tradition may be up to a thousand years older. There were only a few million human beings on the face of the planet; life was “nasty, brutish, and short.” People took seriously God's command to be fruitful and multiply. Indeed, if Jesus had been a bachelor, no one would have listened to a word he had to say, commandment-breaker that he would have been seen as.
        Remember also that these are not the only two verses in Leviticus. If you're going to claim that homosexuals are sinners based on these two verses, you must also:
• keep kosher (ch. 11) — as part of keeping kosher, you may eat no fat and no blood (3:16-17, 7:22, 17:10-16), meaning no potato chips, no French fries, no rare steak, etc., you may eat no lobsters, clams, oysters, octopus, shrimp, or crawfish (11:12), no tuna casserole (mixes "meat" and milk), and no ostrich (11:16) or crocodile meat (11:30).
• You may wear no cotton-polyester blends, or any other kind of blend of fabrics (19:19).
• You shall not "defer to the great," making President Bush's pandering to the rich explicitly sinful (19:15).
• You must observe Rosh Hoshanah, Yom Kippur, and the festival of Booths (23:23-43).
• If an insect or lizard crawls across your cookpot, you must break your cookpot into pieces and throw it away. (11:30) When this rule was written, cookpots were molded out of clay by the lady of the house. Today most cookpots are stainless steel or aluminum — but if you're going to insist on 18:22 and 20:13, you must also insist on 11:30.
• You may not cross-breed animals (19:19). There's nothing in the Bible against cloning, however.
• You must stone Lance Burton and all other "wizards" to death; ditto for all astrologers and all mediums (19:26-27, 19:31, 20:6, 20:27).
• You may not have a tattoo (19:28).
• You must put Jenna Bush and her sister Barbara to death for the sin of sex outside of wedlock (20:10-16). Also most other citizens of the U.S. over the age of about 16 — there's no statute of limitations in the Bible.
• A God-fearing man may not marry a divorcee or a rape victim (21:7). (Most of the rules in Leviticus pertain only to men, since women are considered subhuman by many of the authors the Bible.)
• If the daughter of a priest becomes a prostitute, she must be burned to death (21:9). How compassionate the priestly authors of Leviticus were!
• You will be exiled if you see a close relative naked, even accidentally (20:17-22).
• No priest may have acne or any other kind of blemish or physical imperfection (21:16-23).
• Anyone who blasphemes — Marilyn Manson for example — must be stoned to death (24:13-23).
• When a prisoner is executed in a capital punishment case, the executioner must also be put to death. Ditto for whoever puts the executioner to death. And so on, ad infinitum. (24:17, 21)
• It's perfectly all right with YHWH if you want to own slaves, but they may not be of the same nationality as yourself. Leviticus recommends that the U.S. obtain its slaves from Canada and Mexico. (25:44-46)
•       If you do not follow these rules, and many others, as scrupulously as you insist on applying these two verses of Leviticus, you are a hypocrite, and may safely be ignored.
• Romans 1:18-22. According to this passage, hardened idolaters are given up to lust and impurity. Heterosexual women commit "unnatural" acts, as do heterosexual men. Moreover, these idolaters are filled with every kind of wickedness and evil, from murder to gossip. The crime is idolatry, not homosexuality.
• 1 Cor. 6:9-10 and 1 Tim. 1:8-11. The first passage says, and this is an exact translation into modern colloquial English, "Do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit God's Perfect World? Do not be deceived! Fornicaters, idolaters, adulterers, softies, manf—kers, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, robbers — none of these will inherit God's Perfect World." The second passage says, in modern English, The law is not for the innocent, but rather for the lawless, the ungodly, and unholy, "for those who kill their father or mother, for murderers, fornicaters, manf—kers, slave traders, liars, perjurers," etc.
        St. Paul probably coined the word "manf—kers." The fact that these people are lumped in with serious criminals — murderers, slave traders, perjurers, etc. — shows that St. Paul did NOT mean to include all heterosexual women among the "manf—kers." Nor did St. Paul include as serious criminals people who ingest a little marijuana (a common weed in his part of the world and era), sass their parents, or read other people's mail. "Softies" was probably meant to refer to the receiving partner in anal sex, but once again, no one brings up fellatio, cunnilingus, or other ways to exchange pleasure. I believe that with the word "manf—kers," St. Paul was once again invoking rape — the first-century equivalent of the abuses that go on in men's prisons, NOT the first-century equivalent of mutual love and commitment.

So there we have it — a condemnation of homosexual gang rape; two prohibitions of a physical impossibility (and by the way, Lev. 11:6 says very clearly that hares chew their cud!); a scare-tactics announcement of what happens to heterosexual men and women who engage in idolatry; and two condemnations of homosexual rape.

The verse in Genesis dates from approximately 915 B.C.E., although it is probably older. The verses in Leviticus probably date from around the same time, or a little earlier, but were probably written down around 500 B.C.E. The verses in Romans and 1 Corinthians date from approximately 60 C.E. The verses in 1 Timothy probably date from approximately 90-120 C.E.

Anyone who claims to be a Christian, however, is compelled to ignore these verses altogether, since they are superseded by the two Great Commandments: to love God with all one's heart and mind and soul and strength, and to love other human beings as much as you love yourself. Period. No exceptions. Jesus did NOT say, "except black people, except women, except homosexuals, except left-handed people, except children, except Romans (or Roman Catholics), except feminists, except liberals." Jesus said EVERYONE.

If you just said, "Yes, but—", stop right there. "Yes, but" is NOT Christian.

Scientists have long been mystified by "dark matter." It must exist, for the Universe to behave as it does, but what is it? Where is it? How will we know it when we finally find it?

We also know that light and other energies have a "weight." If Einstein's famous theory is right, energy is equivalent to matter traveling at the speed of light squared. I find it at least plausible that "dark matter" is the "weight" of light, gravity, x-rays, gamma rays, ultraviolet, infrared, and all the other energies there are.

And what about souls? Studies have been done that show bodies to weigh very slightly less after death than before. Billions upon billions of life forms have existed on Earth during the last few million years alone. There are roughly a hundred billion stars per galaxy, and roughly a hundred billion galaxies in the Universe. Assuming that the Universe has existed for 12 to 15 billion years so far, that's surely a googleplex of life forms.

Do you see what I'm saying? Suppose that when you die, your body loses a millionth of an ounce in weight, or whatever the magic number is. Multiply that by a googleplex, and you get a whole sh-tload of gigatons. Maybe that's what "dark matter" is — the accumulated gigatonnage of all those souls.

Maybe, when enough souls accumulate, the pressure of all that weight is enough to cause the Big Bang. Maybe the stars you see in the night sky used to be human souls, five hundred trillion years ago or more. . . .

Some of you may remember a great fake commercial in the earliest days of Saturday Night Live, for mental health care for your canine companion — Puppy Uppers and Doggie Downers.

A news show in the middle of October told the world that Pope John Paul II, who had been in failing health for several months, suddenly seemed more vigorous. I turned to my husband and said, “He must be on Pope-y Uppers, so that he can feel better and issue some more Dogma Downers.”