When Did God Become America’s Concierge?

Major league baseball has more great stories than any other sport about the delightfully odd assortment of characters that played the game across the past 175 or so years.

Watching a video yesterday of Sarah Palin in her Wasilla church beseeching God to get her pipeline proposal approved reminded me one such story, supposedly involving Hall of Fame catcher Johnny Bench.

Just before stepping into the batter’s box one afternoon, an opposing player mouthed a silent prayer, crossed himself and pointed to the skies, asking for divine intervention so he could get on base. Bench called time, rose from his crouch behind home plate and went through the same cross-my-heart-and-point-to-God routine. As he settled back into position, Bench reportedly told the hitter, “OK, we’re all even with God. Let’s play ball.”

Ever since the early days of the evangelical movement in the late 1970s, it seems as if a growing number of Americans are relying on God to be their personal concierge, rushing in to take care of life’s big and little issues, annoyances and aggravations.

It’s everywhere.

In pro sports, opponents in the same game do a quick prayer before a play begins. No way can God take care of opponents on the same play.

Stump politicians entreat the heavens to bless America and whatever position they were touting that particular day. But across town, the other party’s candidate just did the same thing. What does God do? Flip a coin? Grant one side’s request one day and the other side’s the next?

Pentagon generals are quoted as saying they pray for divine help in battle even though I’m not sure we ought to be asking God to pick sides in the killing fields; I’d think he’d find the whole thing disgusting.

I have an acquaintance who asks God – sometimes Jesus, but usually God – for the really important things in his life, such as a great discount on a Caribbean holiday. He also told me that God truly blessed him by getting him a new, high paying job as a VP of a major bank. Oh.

Meanwhile, in Iraq Sunni’s praise Allah as they blow themselves to martyrdom and their 70 waiting virgins, taking as many of the infidel Shi’a with them as they can. But on the next block, Shi’a are doing the same thing to Sunni in the name of the same Allah. It strikes me that if Allah has a sense of humor, then the 70 virgins awaiting the martyrs will be clones of Ann Coulter or Michelle Malkin.

And here, a candidate for Vice President of the United States of America is praying for a pipeline. Not just any pipeline, mind you, but the specific pipeline Sarah Palin wants built.

If there is a God or Allah or even a Great Pumpkin, it strikes me that He, She or It is far too busy with the real problems of the cosmos to worry about the route of a pipeline. Or finding my friend a cut-rate deal to St. Bart’s.

Just to be crystal clear, I have no problem with anyone following a faith, kooky or not, or having no religious beliefs at all.

When my sister and I were quite young, mother marched us from one house of worship to another, week after week. We sat in quiet awe of the Catholic Bishop and his tall hat. We were scared to death by a fire and brimstone Protestant preacher. We clapped along, singing and jumping with glee as a black Baptist choir and preacher shouted “Hallelujah!” We tried to figure out what odd language a Rabbi was speaking. A Unitarian speaker – I don’t think they have ministers – sounded like a wise uncle giving a little chat. She even hauled us off to a B’hai Temple and if there had been a Mosque within 100 miles of where we lived, she would have taken us there, as well.

It wasn’t to give us religion – mother had none herself – nor was it to teach us that religions make people different. Rather, it was to show us that people are all the same, regardless of what religion they practice or if they practice none at all.

So, thanks to my upbringing, if someone finds divine inspiration in worshipping a fire hydrant, well, good for them. Someone’s faith (or lack of it) is their own damn business. Period. But I do have a problem with candidates for any office – Vice President of the United States or Mosquito Control District board – who pray not for guidance but for specifics. And, as a result, I have a burning need to find out their views on separation of church and state.

In the case of Sarah Palin, I wonder if she understands that the Constitution not only protects religion from state interference but it also protects citizens from religious interference.

ABC News’ Charley Gibson has landed an interview with Palin. I’d like him to ask her some questions about religion, separation of church and state, and why she feels God is her personal concierge. But given the ground rules insisted upon by her handlers, I doubt he’ll have a chance.

Too bad. Enquiring minds need to know.

Sarah Palin And Me

Anonymous sources are the bane of a reporter’s existence, and have been at least since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein used them extensively to unmask Watergate and topple Richard Nixon.

Frankly, writing as someone who has been covering news since the late 1960s for everything from local newspapers to major market TV and radio stations, to a major business newsweekly, journalists don’t like citing anonymous sources any more than much of the public likes reading pieces that quote people without attribution. Alas, more often than not, the reality is that in a highly-explosive story such as my piece about Sarah Palin I posted, granting anonymity may be the only way to get a source to agree to be interviewed.

So I am not surprised that a number of readers who wrote comments about the article raised questions about my sources. It has happened before, especially when I tackled a subject that raises a lot of dust, and it will happen again. Although I won’t reveal any sources – I honor promises of anonymity – let me explain how the story unfolded and sources came to my attention as I did the reporting.

Desperately Seeking Lucille

When Palin’s name began leaking out the morning of Aug. 30, I sent an e-mail to an old friend from childhood who has been teaching in Alaska since he finished far too much graduate school, basically asking, “Who is Sarah Palin when it’s not raining and what was she before?”

He wrote back with not just a lengthy, invective-filled diatribe against her and the horse she rode in on but also a link to a 63-page vetting report (http://mudflats.files.wordpress.com/2008/09/palin-2006-vetting.pdf) on Palin he said was done up some time ago by Alaska Democrats. After reading it – information in the dossier goes all the way back to 2002 – I wrote again asking if he knew people I could contact for a possible article. A short list of names was provided, including Lucille the Waitress, the much-discussed and oft-doubted woman who seems to have drawn the largest number of questions from commentators on the article.

And how does he know her? Well, like many people living on minimum wage and tips, Lucille holds a second job which, in this case, includes cleaning my friend’s family home every other week.

Lucille was the first person I interviewed. In her late 50s or early 60s, she was nervous even though I provided her with my friend’s name and suggested she call him first to verify who I am. She decided to proceed with the interview, which lasted about 10 minutes. Assuming she knew nothing about having to put an interview “off the record” or on a “not for attribution” basis before the interview starts. I asked Lucille if I could use her name in my article. She let me use her first name but not her last because she said she was afraid she might be fired.

I called my friend after the interview and, relating what’d said, asked if she was trustworthy. I was assured that, “It’d be easier for Lucille to hunt bears bare handed than to tell a lie.”

My old pal’s role in the article ends at this point.

Doing Legwork - Well, Dialling

Starting with the small handful of other possible sources provided to me, I began dialling. Some people would talk, others wouldn’t; some would refer me on to other possible interview subjects, others told me to go forth, be fruitful and multiply, in much coarser language before slamming the phone in my ear.

In other words, I relied on what reporters have always relied upon to unearth a story: Legwork, or what it was called about a hundred lifetimes ago when I was first starting out. More accurately, I used my phone. To answer one person who penned a comment to the original piece, this is how someone who grew up in Middle America, visited Alaska once in his life and now lives in Canada could do reporting on a story based up there. Flat rate long distance plans have worked wonders for journalism.

As I’ve been doing for 40 years, when I’d finish interviewing one source I’d ask them if they knew anyone else I might call. Thus, one source frequently begat a second which, often, begat a third. Thus, a picture of Sarah Palin began to emerge and the result was Alaskans Speak.

Do I wish more people would have spoken to me on the record and for attribution? Absolutely. Do I regret writing a piece that relied upon so many anonymous sources? Not one bit.

Interview Sarah? “Not In The Campaign’s Interest.”

OK, so like every other major, minor, would-be and never was journalist in the world, I want to interview Sarah Palin. Yet when I called McCain’s campaign headquarters in McLean, Virginia, I was told “She’ll be made available for interviews when it is in the best interests of the campaign.”

Excuse me?

“She’ll be made available for interviews when it is in the best interests of the campaign.”

A woman no one outside of Alaska ever heard of before last week is running for Vice President of the United States of America, purportedly the second-most important job in the country if not the world, yet reporters are being told the overarching consideration of the McCain organization is “the best interests of the campaign.”

What happened to the best interests of the United States? Isn’t that what presidential elections are all about?

So why are the boys and girls on the bus – excuse me, reporters on the McCain-Palin campaign plane – sitting quietly in back with their hands folded instead of throwing food over the top of the bulkhead, demanding she be made available to them? Why aren’t they shouting “Give us Sarah! Give us Sarah!” out loud every time the charter takes off, every time Palin comes out of hiding to stand next to McCain at some carefully orchestrated photo op, whenever a campaign official pops out of his or her hotel room in the morning.

Drown out McCain when he’s giving a speech, if necessary; shout questions out to her with a bullhorn if that’s what it takes; refuse to cover any of the campaign if the Republican media machine stands in your way.

Do your bloody job, you whimpering band of so-called professionals. What are you afraid of? Being denied “access?” You’re not getting access now so there’s nothing to lose.

You didn’t do your job and the country was lied into in Iraq. For God’s sake, do it now.

Alaskans Speak (In A Frightened Whisper): Palin Is “Racist, Sexist, Vindictive And Mean.”

“So Sambo beat the bitch!”

This is how Republican Vice Presidential nominee Sarah Palin described Barack Obama’s win over Hillary Clinton to political colleagues in a restaurant a few days after Obama locked up the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

According to Lucille, the waitress serving her table at the time and who asked that her last name not be used, Gov. Palin was eating lunch with five or six people when the subject of the Democrat’s primary battle came up. The governor, seemingly not caring that people at nearby tables would likely hear her, uttered the slur and then laughed loudly as her meal mates joined in appreciatively.

“It was kind of disgusting,” Lucille, who is part Aboriginal, said in a phone interview after admitting that she is frightened of being discovered telling folks in the “lower 48” about life near the North Pole.

Then, almost with a sigh, she added, “But that’s just Alaska.”

Racial and ethnic slurs may be “just Alaska” and, clearly, they are common, everyday chatter for Palin.

Besides insulting Obama with a Step-N’-Fetch-It, “darkie musical” swipe, people who know her say she refers regularly to Alaska’s aboriginal people as “Artic Arabs” – how efficient, lumping two apparently undesirable groups into one ugly description – as well as the more colourful “mukluks” along with the totally unimaginative “fucking Eskimo’s,” according to a number of Alaskans and Wasillians interviewed for this article.

But being openly racist is only the tip of the Palin iceberg. According to Alaskans interviewed for this article, she is also vindictive and mean. We’re talking Rove mean and Nixon vindictive.

No wonder the vast sea of white, cheering faces at the Republican Convention went wild for Sarah: They adore the type, it’s in their genetic code. So much for McCain’s pledge of a “high road” campaign; Palin is incapable of being part of one.

< –––– >

It’s not easy getting people in the 49th state to speak critically about Palin – especially people in Wasilla, where she was mayor. For one thing, with every journalist in the world calling, phone lines into Alaska have been mostly jammed since Friday; as often as not, a recording told me that “all circuits are busy” or numbers just wouldn’t ring. I should think a state that’s been made richer than God by oil could afford telephone lines and cell towers for everyone.

On a more practical level, many people in Alaska, and particularly Wasilla, are reluctant to speak or be quoted by name because they’re afraid of her as well as the state Republican Party machine. Apparently, the power elite are as mean as the winters.

“The GOP is kind of like organized crime up here,” an insurance agent in Anchorage who knows the Palin family, explained. “It’s corrupt and arrogant. They’re all rich because they do private sweetheart deals with the oil companies, and they can destroy anyone. And they will, if they have to.

“Once Palin became mayor,” he continued, “She became part of that inner circle.”

Like most other people interviewed, he didn’t want his name used out of fear of retribution. Maybe it’s the long winter nights where you don’t see the sun for months that makes people feel as if they’re under constant danger from “the authorities.” As I interviewed residents it began sounding as if living in Alaska controlled by the state Republican Party is like living in the old Soviet Union: See nothing that’s happening, say nothing offensive, and the political commissars leave you alone. But speak out and you get disappeared into a gulag north of the Arctic Circle for who-knows-how-long.

Alright, that’s an exaggeration brought on by my getting too little sleep and building too much anger as I worked this article. But there’s ample evidence of Palin’s vindictive willingness to destroy people she sees as opponents. Just ask the Wasilla town administrator she hired before firing him because he rebelled against the way Palin demanded he do his job, or the town librarian who refused to hold the book burning Walpurgisnach Mayor Palin demanded.

Ironically, Palin was pushed into hiring the administrator by the party poo-bah’s who helped get her elected after she got herself into trouble over a number of precipitous firings which gave rise to a recall campaign.

“People who fought her attempt to oust the librarian are on her enemies list to this day,” states Anne Kilkenny, a Wasilla resident and one of the few Alaskans willing to speak on-the-record, for attribution, about Palin. In fact, Kilkenny actually circulated an e-mail letter about Palin that was verified and printed by The Nation.

For good measure, Palin booted the Wasilla police chief from office because, she told a local newspaper, he “intimidated” her.

< –––– >

Sarah Palin drew early attention from state GOP apparatchiks when, during her first mayoral campaign, she ran on an anti-abortion platform. Normally, political parties do not get involved in Alaskan municipal elections because they are non-partisan. But once word of her extreme fringe evangelical views made its way to Juneau, the state capitol, state Republicans tossed some money behind her campaign.

Once in office, Palin set out to build a machine that chewed up anyone who got in her way. The good, Godly Christian turns out to be anything but.

“She's doesn’t like different opinions and she refuses to compromise,” Kilkenny notes. “When she was Mayor, she fought ideas that weren't hers. Worse, ideas weren't evaluated on their merits but on the basis of who proposed them.”

Sound familiar? Palin may well be Dick Cheney’s reincarnate.

Something else has a familiar Republican ring to it: Her tax policies, and a “refund surpluses but borrow for the future” attitude.

According to Kilkenny and others in Wasilla as well as Juneau, Palin reduced progressive property taxes for businesses while mayor and increased a regressive sales tax which even hits necessities such as food. The tax cuts she promoted in her St. Paul speech actually benefited large corporate property owners far more than they benefited residents. Indeed, Kilkenny insists that many Wasilla home owners actually saw their tax bill skyrocket to make up for the shortfall. Two other Wasillian’s with whom I spoke said property taxes on their modest, three bedroom homes rose during the Palin regime.

To an outsider, it would seem hard to do, but an oil-rich town with zero debt on the day she was inaugurated mayor was left saddled with $22-million of debt by the time she moved away to become governor – especially since nothing was spent on things such as improving the city’s infrastructure or building a much-needed sewage treatment plant. So what did Mayor Palin spend the taxpayer’s money on, if not fixing streets and scrubbing sewage?

For starters, she modelled her office. Several times over, as a matter of fact.

Then Palin spent $1-million on an unnecessary, new park that no one other than the contractors and Palin seemed to want. Next, Sarah doled out more than $15-million of taxpayer money for a sports complex that she shoved through even though the city did not own clear title to the land; now, seven years later, the matter is still in litigation and lawyer fees are said to be close to at least half of the original estimated price of the facility.

She also worked hard to get voters approval of a $5.5-million bond proposal for roads that could have been built without borrowing. Anchorage may not be the center of the financial universe but, like good Republicans everywhere, Sarah Palin knows how to please Alaskan bankers and bond dealers.

For good measure, she turned Wasilla into a wasteland of big box stores and disconnected parking lots.

< –––– >

En route to the governor’s igloo, Palin managed to land what Anne Kilkenny says is the plumb political appointment in the state: Chair of Alaska’s Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (OGCC), a $122,400 per year patronage slot with no real authority to do anything other than hold meetings. She took the job despite having no background in energy issues and, as it turned out, not liking the work.

“She hated the job,” an OGCC staff member who is not authorized to speak with the news media told me. “She hated the hours and she hated what little work there was to do. But she couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the thing without offending Gov. Murkowski” and the state Republican Party regulars, some of whom were pissed off they didn’t get appointed.

But ever the opportunist, Palin quickly concocted a way. First, she waged a campaign with the local news media claiming that the position was overpaid and should be abolished – despite the fact that she lobbied Murkowski hard to get it. Then, mounting what she saw as a white horse, Palin raised a cloud of dust by resigning from the OGCC and riding away with an undeserved reputation as a “reformer.”

But when a local reporter dared to suggest that the reformer Empress has no clothes, Palin tried to get her fired.

“She came at me like I was trying to steal her kids,” said the targeted reporter, who now works for an oil company in Anchorage. “I heard she had a wild temper and vicious mean streak but it’s nothing like you can imagine until she turns it on you.”

Not surprising since some of her high school classmates still openly call her “Sarah Barracuda,” Kilkenny insists.

Still, as a Republican Party hack Palin managed to get herself elected running under the false flag of a “reformer.”

And what did she bring to the job? No legislative experience other than a city council of a village of 5,000 people, which is smaller than some high schools in Chicago. Little hands-on supervisory or managerial experience; after all, she needed to hire a city administrator to run Wasilla. No executive experience, except for almost being recalled as mayor. A philosophy of setting public policy based on one word: No.

And what has she done since winning the job?

According to Kilkenny, nothing. Well, nothing other than suggesting the state’s multi-multi-million dollar, oil-generated surplus be distributed to residents and finance future state needs by borrowing money. Gee, doesn’t that sound precisely what George Bush did with the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton in 2001 and we all know in what great shape Bush’s economic policies left the nation.

It may explain why, when asked by reporters including me what she thought about Palin being picked to be McCain’s running mate, her mother-in-law replied with a sardonic, “What has Sarah done to qualify her to be vice president?” Of course, when the woman – said by many I spoke with to be well-respected in Wasilla – was running to succeed Palin as mayor, Sarah refused to endorse her so that may explain the family tension.

As Governor, Palin gave the legislature no direction and budget guidelines, according to the chair of a legislative committee. But then she staged a huge grandstand play of line-item vetoing countless projects, calling them pork. “They were restored because of public outcry and legislative action,” the aide said. “She vetoed them mostly because she had no idea what they were or why they were important.”

But it was enough to get the McCain, who is mostly unobservant of the world around him anyway, to think Palin has a reputation as being "anti-pork".

In fact, Juneau observers note that Palin kept her hand stuck out as far as anyone for pork ladled out by indicted Sen. Ted Stevens. She only opposed the "bridge to nowhere" after it became clear that it would be politically unwise to keep supporting it, these same insiders assert. Then, Palin fell back on her old habits and publicly humiliated him for pork-barrel politics.

As for being “ready on day one” to be commander in chief, despite the repeated public claims she’s made, the Alaska National Guard commander said that, “she has made no command decisions, other than sending some troops to help fight a few brush fires and march in parades at county fairs.”

< –––– >

“Palin is a conniving, manipulative, asshole,” someone who thinks these are positive traits in a governor told me, summing up Palin’s tenure in Alaska state and local politics.

“She’s a bigot, a racist and a liar,” is the more blunt assessment of Arnold Gerstheimer who lived in Alaska until two years ago and is now a businessman in Idaho.

“Juneau is a small town, everybody knows everyone else,” he adds. “These stories about what she calls blacks and Eskimos, well, anyone not white and good looking actually, were around long before she became a glint in John McCain’s rheumy eyes. Why do I know they’re true? Because everyone who isn’t aboriginal or Indian in Alaska talks that way.”

“Sambo beat the bitch” may be everyday language up in the bush. Whether it – and the outlook, politics and worldview Palin reflects when she says such things in public – should be part of a presidential campaign is another thing altogether. The comment says as much about McCain as it does about Palin, and it says a lot of things about Americans who overlook such statements (as well as her record) and vote anyway for McCain.

To Borrow A Title: What's The Matter With Minnesota?

Tens of thousands of protesters rallied against the Iraq War at the Republican National Convention in St. Paul yesterday, and all but a tiny handful of them were peaceful. I had cable news on all day and never saw anything about the protests on any network.

Instead, what the bloviators talked about was some pregnant teenager, which is neither their business nor mine. Protesting the Republican Party's war-mongering and lethal corruption for the past eight years – a record that made it impolitick for George W. Bush to attend the convention of the party he still technically leads – was unworthy of public comment.

A few at the rally were accused of breaking windows or throwing bottles but 284 arrests were made. Press accounts state that in many instances police acted overly aggressively – read unconstitutionally – by tear-gassing and arresting protesters who were peaceful.

Over the past week, police seized printed materials and protest plans from some of the organizers and arrested a handful, charging them with conspiracy to commit civil disorder, an illegal act of prior restraint that the US Supreme Court has said repeatedly government cannot do. Anyone remember United States v. New York Times, Washington Post, et al, the Pentagon Papers case? The same principle applies here. Hell, cops could have arrested Martin Luther King on that charge every day of the week he was alive.

The arrest and manhandling of radio and television journalist Amy Goodman and two of her staff proves something is very wrong with the police in St. Paul. Amy and her staff were there as legitimate, credentialed journalists. They were not throwing anything, they were not breaking windows, they were not doing anything other than their job. I've known Amy and her Democracy Now! journalists for a decade and they are honest, committed people. If they say they were wrongly treated, they were.

Maybe it happened because Democracy Now! is one of the few news and public affairs programs delivering real news, not the pap that passes as reporting in so-called mainstream media. In our Bushwellian State, Amy and her staff were arrested for committing News. Ever since Bush and his gang came to power, there has been a concerted attempt to destroy the 1st Amendment right to press freedom and peaceful assembly.

I hope St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman is ready to open the city’s coffers to most of those arrested yesterday and in the week leading up to the convention, as lawsuits are filed and settled. Coleman and his police chief, neither of whom apparently have read the Constitution, apparently forgot that it cost New York City more than $2-million to settle suits brought by people arrested illegally during the 2004 Republican convention; it is likely to cost St. Paul taxpayers as much.

Ever since 2003, I’ve been ashamed to tell people I am an American after Iraq was invaded based on 935 lies; now, for the first time, I am ashamed to tell people I grew up in the Twin Cities.

What's the matter with Minnesota?

A "Loyal American" Just Hit Me!

Only an American would visit a foreign country and even think of doing what three Yanks just did to me. Here's the skinny:

I was walking my dog along the lake front boardwalk in my 'hood a while ago when I got hit in anger for the first time in my life.

I was wearing my Bush Lied / They Died t-shirt with the names of all of the service people killed in Iraq through Aug 2007, when I bought the shirt on-line. Three 20-something louts, half-drunk at noon - probably because Americans don't realise that Canadian beer is real beer, not the watered down mother's milk that Bud and Miller and Coors sells in the States so they get drunk much faster - were walking towards me.

One of the three stopped and shouted square in my face, "You Canucks really piss me off. I'm an American, pal, and I fucking resent you assholes telling our president how to run America!"

Looking back at him as squarely in the eye as I could - in his semi-inebriated stage, his gaze kept shifting so it was hard to know where to look - I replied, "Well, I'm an American too, pal, and I resent Bush being president and resent him telling me 935 lies to stage a phony war."

With that, the guy slugged me, aiming for my head but sort of hitting my shoulder mostly by accident; I wasn't hit hard enough to lose my balance let alone fall. As I stood there in stunned amazement, his two buddies pulled him away and headed into the park.

I wasn't hurt, just surprised. This being Canada, strangers immediately crowded around to see if I was OK and two lifeguards on the beach who saw the incident happen went chasing after the trio. Not sure if they caught them.

My dog was no help at all, being much more interested in a bag of chips one of the three was holding than in the fact that I was a victim of grevious bodily harm.

UPDATE: Grandpa And The Beauty Queen

Jon Stewart had fun Friday night with a shot of Grandpa McCain leering at Sarah Palin's ass while toying with his wedding ring. Now, at www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RN5xbWtNSU, someone has done a three minute video of McCain staring down the front of her dress and ogling her bottom, all set to Julie Andrews singing Getting To Know You.

Placid Lake Woebegon Begets A Nasty Police State

I grew up in the Twin Cities, a prosperous and bucolic community hard on the banks of the Mississippi, the last major metropolitan area until you Lewis-and-Clark yourself over the Rockies.

Minneapolis and St. Paul are filled with wide, tree-lined streets, good schools, close-knit families, a welcoming spirit, pride in a deep civic commitment, home of the Guthrie Theatre and Walker Art Centre, and a keen, congenital sense of justice and equality. It’s a place where even wealthy, fourth and fifth generation families like the Dayton’s (Target), the Rawlings’ (General Mills), the Pillsbury’s (of Dough Boy fame, tee-hee), the McKnight’s (3M) and the Hill’s (19th century railroad tycoons) still believe in and practice a gentle, Midwestern kind of mild social democracy. Example: Most CEOs of Fortune 100 companies based here actually drive themselves to work, often parking in the lot alongside cars belonging to the woman who brings the mail around or the guy working in the cafeteria line. About the only time you see limo’s crawling the streets is prom night or for a funeral.

After all, the characters and settings in Garrison Keillor’s Lake Woebegon stories are based on his life growing up in a working class suburb of the Twin Cities. There is more truth than fiction in his recounting of the goings-on of the three Norwegian bachelor farmers, the Buttermilk Biscuit Co., and all the other good folks he turned into cultural icons.

I haven’t lived in either Minneapolis or St. Paul for nearly 20 years, and last visited when my sister died in 1999, but I’ve always thought warmly of my hometown. So I was astonished when e-mails began trickling in during the week from confused, frightened and oft-times angry friends and acquaintances back home. They wrote chilling accounts of police conducting wholesale, warrantless raids on people whose only crime is that the Secret Service and Dept. of Homeland (In)Security, aided by local police goon squads dressed in riot gear, thought they might, possibly, somewhere, somehow, exercise their 1st Amendment right to protest during the Republican National Convention.

The first inkling of what was unfolding came late Thursday morning from Nancy, my fifth grade love who grew up to become a physician and soccer mom in an upper-upper middle class suburb called Edina – a place so conservative and rich I suspect there’s a local ordinance requiring residents to vote Republican before being allowed to move in:

There’s a story this ayem about St Paul police raiding a home and arresting people who were going to protest at the convention. OK, so you know me: I voted for Bush twice and I’m no lefty loonie. But this scares me. According to ‘CCO radio, police in riot gear raided a house early this morning, arresting nine people who said they were in town to protest at the convention. But they were charged with … are you ready? … having too many people live in a residential home! What the hell?

By mid-afternoon, I’d heard from two more friends.

Mike, who has three teen-aged kids and owns a store in a mixed St. Paul neighborhood, wrote, “I don’t know what’s going on but unmarked cop cars with sirens screaming are chasing all over hell and back.” Almost simultaneously, an e-mail arrived from Ivar, a playwright, declaring, “Jesus Christ! A bunch of cops dressed like the Road Warrior just broke into a home down the street and hauled out a bunch of people in handcuffs and hoods. As they were being thrown into police vehicles, cops arrested a guy across the street taking a home video of the bust. My street looks like Burma.” He meant Myanmar but Ivar’s showing his age these days like the rest of us boomers.

By Saturday, the trickle of messages became a torrent.

To verify what friends were writing, I called the St. Paul Mayor’s Office (615.266.8510) where I was directed to the police (651.291.1111). A PR woman for the cops said I had to talk to the Secret Service (612.348.1800), which refused to answer any questions but asked for the spelling of my name before telling me to call Homeland Security (202.282.8000) where repeated calls were not returned. I tracked down the cell phone number of the St. Paul convention office of the Republican National Committee where the man who answered claimed to have no idea what I was talking about, helpfully suggesting I call the police before suddenly asking how I got the number. Ring around the rosy.

It was like trying to get an answer from Dick Cheney’s office. Translation: The e-mails were accurate.

The unending barrage has continued all weekend.

From Carrie, a late 50-something who still lives in a mostly-student district near the University of Minnesota: “I saw 25 officers barge into a house wearing masks and black swat gear. They had large semi-automatic rifles. After, somebody told me the pigs (I haven’t used that word for decades) ordered everyone on the floor. Rifles pointing at their heads, they were handcuffed and ordered not to move. The cops refused to show a search warrant. They were forced to remain on the floor for 45 minutes while the officers took away computers and political stuff kept in the house.”

From Rick: “Remember Summit Avenue? Mansions, clubs, cronies, old money? A few blocks away from the Governor’s Mansion, the police just burst into a house looking for ‘photographs and maps of St. Paul.’ Shit! I have photos and maps of St. Paul! Better throw ‘em out or I’ll be next.”

From Robyn and Brent, two independents who decided this morning to vote straight a Democratic ticket: “Never thought we’d see this in America. Enya (their adopted teenage daughter) and a bunch of her friends from school were taking pictures of the convention center this morning when cops grabbed and handcuffed them, shoved them into a squad car and threatened them with arrest if they didn’t hand over the digital camera they were using to take tourist photos! She’s hysterical and we called (their lawyer). Obama and Franken just got two more votes and by the time this is over Enya’s college will be paid for with a large check from the city. Assholes.”

And so it goes.

Bucolic Lake Woebegon has turned itself into a brutal police state, intent on arresting everyone including the three Norwegian bachelor farmers, just in case.

Apparently, civil liberties and the Bill of Rights got tossed into the Mississippi mud like the remains of a once-great bridge that used to span the river. Oh wait. We're talking about the party of George Bush, who once said of the Constitution, "It's just a goddamned piece of paper!" Guess I - along with people back in the Twin Cities - shouldn't be surprised.

Grandpa And The Beauty Queen

Watching John McCain hug Sarah Palin – who has an uncanny resemblance to SNL’s Tina Fey – yesterday was almost creepy: It was like seeing an old man copping a feel off a woman roughly half his age. Eerily, it all happened on the day after McCain turned 72 and the day before Michael Jackson turned 50.

Alright, that’s out of my system.

While McCain’s choice for vice president may energise the Republican Party’s shrinking base and shore up his credentials with the one issue evangelicals and creationists who drive the party’s platform, his Hail Mary pass is the best indication yet that John McCain will do and say anything to win the election. (Of course, in a way it’s not surprising since many of his fellow Hanoi Hilton residents still insist he did and said anything to get better treatment as a POW.) So much for McCain’s remaining shards of integrity.

As Gail Collins points out in today’s New York Times, McCain’s blatant pandering to women is an insult to their intelligence. Yet Janice Shaw Crouse of the far right group Concerned Women for America insists, "How refreshing that now we have a woman who reflects the values of mainstream American women.''

Oh, really? How mainstream can Palin be when polling reveals her positions are the exact opposite of “mainstream American women?”

The vast majority of American women want the freedom of choice over what happens to their bodies.

Mainstream American women are deeply concerned about the environment, which Palin – like McCain – doesn’t believe is under any serious threat as she urges intense ANWAR drilling, claims climate change is a fiction and doesn’t think the shrinking population of Polar Bears need protecting.

Mainstream women want the troops – their sons and daughters – out of Iraq, right now.

Mainstream women are concerned about gun violence.

Mainstream women want their children taught science, not flights of fancy about “creationism.”

Mainstream women want to be paid the same as men and have the same opportunities, something Palin has never said she supports.

Mainstream women are terrified that Social Security won’t be there at retirement because, the way things are going, IRA’s and 401(k) plans will be completely devalued and private pensions washed away in a tide of corporate bankruptcies while Palin has never uttered a word about the economic insecurity choking the country.

Mainstream women want the federal government to spend money on health care and schools while Palin supported spending hundreds of millions on the “Bridge to Nowhere” before she opposed it.

No wonder McCain picked Palin: She’s able to alter positions on a dime, depending on which way the political winds are blowing. Would that the Exxon-Valdize been that maneuverable.

Mainstream American women don’t want a vice president whose experience is 20 years as a self-described hockey mom, a few years as a semi-full time mayor of a tiny Alaskan wilderness town and not quite 18 months as governor of a state whose population is less than that of many Congressional districts in the “lower 48.” And a marginal, hot-headed governor at that, according to the Anchorage Daily News.

The risk Democrats face with Palin is three-fold: Underestimating her (which isn’t hard to do), dismissing her as a Dan Quayle joke (which she is) or thinking that simply exposing negatives about her (of which there are plenty) and her lack of depth, experience, knowledge or understanding of the world will influence the way people vote. Democrats can’t forget that people vote on emotion as much as on facts.

What can be of use is that she’s made plenty of trouble for herself back in Alaska. In a state rife with Republican corruption, she brushes against it. And she has a short fuse with a stubborn streak straight out of the Bush mould. For example, in August Alaska's largest newspaper wrote that Palin “revealed her ugly side” during the Troopergate scandal, adding “… Sarah Palin is not handling pressure well.”

The paper notes that she reacted to sharp criticism of her attempt to get a state trooper, a former sort-of relative, fired, by “Portray(ing) the brave men and women of the Alaska State Troopers as weak because they are afraid of losing their jobs and their ability to feed their families. What's wrong with these guys?”

Sound familiar? We’ve heard the same insults from the Bush-Cheney White House and Republicans in Congress for years.

Meanwhile, a bi-partisan committee of the Alaska legislature is spending $100,000 for an independent counsel to investigate the many charges of improper conduct that have been levelled against her by both Democrats and Republicans.

Contrary to what talking heads on the right say, Sarah Palin is not a “fresh face.” She’s simply another version of the same old same old the GOP and Bush White House has given us for eight years.

Watching Obama, Remembering My Family Shopping For Its First House

In Ken Burns’ landmark documentary The Civil War, the first episode opened with writer Shelby Foote saying, “You can’t understand America without understanding the Civil War and the role race has played throughout our history.” In watching Barack Obama’s acceptance speech in Denver last night, my mind drifted back to my childhood when I first experienced the role race plays in our nation’s history.

In the summer of my fifth year, when my sister was a new-born infant, my parents set out to buy their first home. Every Sunday, Janice was left with Papa and Grandma while mother, dad and I climbed into our recently-purchased, green, two-door Nash coupe and drove around Milwaukee, Wisconsin, going from one open house to another.

At the time, Milwaukee was a prosperous city, growing in size as the industrial might of Allis-Chalmers and Johnson Motors and Harley-Davidson shifted back to consumer production, drawing tens of thousands of people from Midwestern farms and the rural South to well-paying jobs in the endless factories sprouting up and dotting the city’s south side.

As a result, the face of Milwaukee was changing.

Once dominated by the stern, round, white faces of Germans and Poles, the city was drawing a steady stream of southern black faces – people who were called “Negro’s” back then – that came from dirt poor counties of Alabama and Mississippi and Kentucky where they had no chance for a life, moving to a city where they could find a real job, not have to fear every sound in the night because lynching was still a law enforcement tool down South, and where they could send their kids to a decent school.

A combination of the country’s post-war, Eisenhower prosperity coupled with the huge number of new families being formed and new people moving into the city meant sub-divisions were sprouting up everywhere, like tulips in the warm spring sun. So, we spent Sunday after Sunday going from one new suburb to another. Some developments mother dismissed because the houses were “cracker boxes,” whatever that meant; some were too expensive, even with dad’s GI mortgage requiring only 5% down and a 2% interest rate waiting to be signed. Some had tiny kitchens; some had only one bathroom; others just two bedrooms.

But on one such Sunday outing, we found the perfect house: Four bedrooms, a big yard to play in and a basement for when it rained, a new school with a huge playground only three blocks away, and a Halen’s – the local grocery chain – within walking distance. I was very excited.

Suddenly, mother gave the real estate agent a curt “thank you” and hustled dad and me out to the car. As we drove away, I stood up to lean on the back of the front seat with its sticky, green, nylon upholstery to ask why we weren’t going to buy that neat house. Mother’s answer gave me my first introduction to the real world.

“Because the man said they won’t let Negroes buy houses here,” she explained, swivelling around to look at me. “That’s not right. Everyone should be able to live wherever they want.”

I had no idea what a radical family I’d been born into five years earlier, or what a political activist my mother was en route to becoming. Yet a short 10 years later, I wasn’t surprised when she flew to Washington to be part of the march and hear Dr. King’s speech. And 10 years after that, when she and father ended up on one of Nixon’s “enemies lists,” not only was I not surprised but took it as a complement.

As Obama spoke at Mile High Stadium, tears welled up in my eyes as I remembered that Sunday afternoon and compared it to what was happening last night. When I was a child, there were still lynchings in the south yet also neighbourhoods in Milwaukee, a northern city, where African-Americans were not allowed to live. But I lived long enough to see an African-American accept the Democratic Party’s nomination to be President of the United States – not because of his color but despite it.

The skinny black kid with big ears and funny name – how Obama described himself four years ago when he keynoted the party’s convention – is one step away from becoming the leader of the free world. And America took one huge step towards putting its racist past behind it. The most remarkable thing is that he won because of his ideas.

We are a better people this morning that we were yesterday. And if Obama wins, we will be a better, safer and prouder nation when we go to sleep the night of Jan. 20, 2009.

Make It 936 Lies ...

It was established last winter by a non-partisan think tank that the Bush-Cheney-McCain regime concoted 935 specific lies to sell the Iraq war. Harry Shearer even put the lies to music on his recent CD, Songs of the Bushmen.

Well, now you can make it 936 lies.

A report published on Friday and totally ignored by the news meida sheds even more light on the premeditated lying and deception that took the United States to war in Iraq. The findings are based on new evidence compiled by Dr. John Prados and published by the National Security Archive.

Most notably, Dr. Prados shows the depth of the deception perpetrated against citizens and Congress regarding the alleged threat to U.S. security posed by Iraq. He discovered that the White House rewrote the Oct. 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate and then issued a doctored report to Congress on Oct. 4, 2002 – which few in Congress even bothered to read. In fact, Prados found evidence that the Oct. 4 White Paper was written in July 2002, and altered only slightly after the final NIE arrived. The White Paper served as the basis for the war.

His conclusion is that the Bush-Cheney White Paper "justifying" the invasion was developed a full three months in advance of the intelligence data and analysis that should have served as the basis for that justification:

"The U.S. intelligence community buckled sooner in 2002 than previously reported to Bush administration pressure for data justifying an invasion of Iraq.

"The documents suggest that the public relations push for war came before the intelligence analysis, which then conformed to public positions taken by Pentagon and White House officials. For example, a July 2002 draft of the "White Paper" ultimately issued by the CIA in October 2002 actually pre-dated the National Intelligence Estimate that the paper purportedly summarized, but which Congress did not insist on until September 2002."

Ultimately, the White House had what it wanted by July 2002.

When the National Intelligence Estimate arrived from a totally intimidated intelligence community, there was still one hope of a rational outcome on the rush to war. The NIE delivered to the White House on Oct. 1, 2002 noted that the only scenario in which Iraq would attack the United States involved a U.S. attack on Iraq that threatened Saddam Hussein's survival.

It was brutally simple. The one way to cause the phony claims of Hussein's intent to attack the United States is to go to war and threaten his regime.

Therefore, refraining from war was the best way to protect the United States, according to the NIE.

"Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States, fearing that exposure of Iraqi involvement would provide Washington a stronger cause for making war.”

In the most supreme of tragic ironies, few members of Congress even bothered to review the distorted White Paper before voting overwhelmingly to approve the invasion.

The seemingly endless war in Iraq has become a total disaster on multiple levels for all involved.

The awful toll in human deaths and casualties is largely ignored but real nevertheless. Over 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been lost in battle and tens of thousands injured. In excess of one million Iraqi civilians are dead due to civil strife unleashed by the invasion. The U.S. Treasury is drained and the steep decline in respect for the United States around the world is just beginning to be seen. The United States political establishment responds with collective denial on a scale that's incomprehensible.

Yet John "The War Mongerer" McCain continues makes the bizarre yet unchallenged claim that U.S. is "surrendering" with victory in clear sight.

McCain touts the surge without ever mentioning that 4-million Iraqis are "displaced from their homes." Some 10% of Iraq's pre-war population is dead or injured and there are 5-million Iraqi orphans. This pathological view of victory claims the "surge' is a success flies in the face of a devastated population in an obliterated nation lacking in the most essential supplies and services. Iraq is a nation where death continues on a shopping spree.

Will anyone ever be held to account for this series of premeditated deceptions?

MI5 To Mukasey: Profiling Doesn’t Work So Don’t Bother

With the frightening but not unsurprising news that Bush’s lickspittle Attorney General Michael Mukasey plans to spy on everyone for no legitimate reason other than collecting an enormous data base on every American’s activities, beliefs, spending, bowel movements and who knows what else just to be able to spot a terrorist, comes saner advice from Britain’s MI5: Don’t bother; profiling doesn’t work.

Given the comparative track records of MI5 and the FBI in catching real terrorists – the FBI seems to opt for goofballs who usually turn out to be extortionists or, like the Miami group, a bunch of scam artists who really only wanted new boots – I’m willing to take the work of the Brits over Washington’s.

Unlike the operating assumption of the FBI, MI5’s study concludes there is no easy way to identify those who become involved in terrorism, according to a classified internal research document.

The sophisticated analysis, based on hundreds of case studies by the security service, says there is no single pathway to violent extremism. It concludes that it is not possible to draw up a typical profile of a "terrorist" as most are "demographically unremarkable" and simply reflect the communities in which they live. The MI5 report takes apart many of the common stereotypes about those involved in terrorism and de-bunks the myth pushed by the Republicans and other right wingnuts that there’s a terrorist under every bed.

In fact, MI5 reports, would-be terrorists living in the West are mostly native born, not illegal immigrants and, far from being Islamist fundamentalists, most are religious novices. Nor are they "mad and bad." Those over 30 are just as likely to have a wife and children as to be loners with no ties. The security service also plays down the importance of extremist clerics, saying their influence in radicalising Western terrorists has into the background over recent years.

The main findings include:

 The majority are native born and the remainder, with a few exceptions, are here legally. Some immigrants fled traumatic experiences and oppressive regimes and claimed asylum, but more came West to study, or for family or economic reasons, and became radicalised many years after arriving.
 Far from being religious zealots, a large number of those involved in terrorism do not practise their faith regularly. Many lack religious literacy and could actually be regarded as religious novices. Some are involved in drug-taking, drinking alcohol and visiting prostitutes. MI5 says there is evidence that a well-established religious identity actually protects against violent radicalisation.
 The "mad and bad" theory to explain why people turn to terrorism does not stand up, with no more evidence of mental illness or pathological personality traits found among terrorism suspects than is found in the general population.
 British-based terrorists are as ethnically diverse as the UK Muslim population, with individuals from Pakistani, Middle Eastern and Caucasian backgrounds. MI5 says assumptions cannot be made about suspects based on skin colour, ethnic heritage or nationality.
 Most UK terrorists are male, but women also play an important role. Sometimes they are aware of the activities of husbands, brothers or sons, but do not object or try to stop them.
 While the majority are in their early to mid-20s when they become radicalised, a small but not insignificant minority first become involved in violent extremism at over the age of 30.
 Far from being lone individuals with no ties, the majority of those over 30 have steady relationships, and most have children. MI5 says this challenges the idea that terrorists lured to "martyrdom" by the promise of beautiful virgins waiting for them in paradise. It is wrong to assume that someone with a wife and children is less likely to commit acts of terrorism.
 Those involved in British terrorism are not unintelligent or gullible, and nor are they more likely to be well-educated; their educational achievement ranges from total lack of qualifications to degree-level education. However, they are almost all employed in low-grade jobs.

The researchers conclude that the results of their work "challenge many of the stereotypes that are held about who becomes a terrorist and why."

Crucially, the research has revealed that those who become terrorists "are a diverse collection of individuals, fitting no single demographic profile, nor do they all follow a typical pathway to violent extremism."

The security service believes the terrorist groups operating in Britain today are different in many important respects both from Islamist extremist activity in other parts of the world and from historical terrorist movements such as the IRA or the Red Army Faction.

The MI5 "operational briefing note" warns that, unless they understand the varied backgrounds of those drawn to terrorism, the security services will fail to counter their activities in the short term and fail to prevent violent radicalisation continuing in the long term.

It also concludes that the research results have important lessons for the government's programme to tackle the spread of violent extremism, underlining the need for "attractive alternatives" to terrorist involvement but also warning that traditional law enforcement tactics could backfire if handled badly or used against people who are not seen as legitimate targets, such as those who simply hold politically extreme views.

I doubt anyone inside the FBI or Justice Dept., let alone the White House, read the MI5 study; sometimes I wonder if anyone in those particular Washington bunkers know how to read, period, and even if they do MI5 so contradicts their perverted view of “justice” that they won’t pay heed anyway. But as Bush, Cheney, McCain and Mukasey try setting up one more permanent violation of the law before they’re kicked out of town still wearing the brown shirts and jackboots they seem to love, it behoves Congress to put a stop to this nonsense when it reconvenes in September.

As if it will.

A Brilliant Choice!

Although I’ve supported Barack Obama since he announced his candidacy, I've always been impressed with Joe Biden – as a candidate and as a Senator. I could not be happier that he’ll be the next Vice President of the United States of America.

I grew up in Minnesota where Hubert Humphrey was our summer neighbor for many years. As he often did on a Sunday afternoon when he was home while serving as LBJ’s vice president, he and Muriel invited our family and several others living nearby on the lake to a Sunday BBQ. Humphrey had read a lot about the vice presidency after taking office and when he, my Dad and I were talking with him one Sunday about the office he said (andI am paraphrasing; after all, it was 40+ years ago), “the best vice presidents have been the ones with the guts to say to the president, ‘That’s nuts! Don’t do it.’”

I am confident that Biden will be a superb complement and addition to the Obama White House, partly because I’m certain that there will be times when he will have the guts to say to Pres. Obama, “That’s nuts! Don’t do it.”

A Brief Word Of Caution To Hilary Die-Hards

John McCain is sneaking past on Barack Obama in the latest still-too-early-to-mean-much polls. What is meaningful is that around 30% of former Clinton supporters are still declaring themselves as undecided or supporting McCain.

To those people, I have three words to think about as the convention convenes in Denver: Supreme Court appointments.

If you sit out this election or vote for McCain and he wins, he will appoint at least one and possibly two people to Supreme Court of the United States during his first term. Think about it: I guarantee you he won’t be nominating people like Hillary or Barack. Instead, picture another Alioto or Scalia or Roberts sitting up there on the First Monday in October. And for 10 or 20 years thereafter.

This means a lot to everyone, but it should have special meaning to women.

It will mean Roe v. Wade and a woman’s control over her own body will be gone, probably within two years.

It means that the growing backlog of lower court decisions on women’s rights in the workplace, especially those involving pay, promotion, discrimination and harassment will go against women in favor of corporate interests.

It means conservatives dominating the court will successfully dissemble the Bill of Rights as narrow minorities on the bench tried and failed to do – usually by one vote – in the Gitmo cases over the past two years.

Essentially, it means all of the gains in women’s rights over the past half-century will be at risk as a lop-sided, right wing court recasts the face of America into something not just you but your daughters and their daughters will be forced to live.

I understand you’re disappointed that your candidate lost, and sympathize with your angst; been there, done that myself. But more often than not, politics – like life itself – is disappointing. Had Hilary run a better campaign, had she better senior advisors, had Mark Penn not gone public with every internal dispute he was losing to Terry McAuliffe (and vice versa), if Penn and McCauliffe not suffered hubris and developed a post-Super Tuesday plan, if her staff with all of its pre-primary polling had understood that change trumped experience this time around, had she been a better candidate, had Bill stayed on message and not tossed out subtle racial smears, things might have been different.

Might-a. Could-a. Should-a.

Simply put, Obama was a better candidate with a better run, better organized, better funded campaign. Party insiders did not give Obama the nomination. Chris Mathews did not up-end Clinton. The news media did not have it in for her. It wasn’t sexism among voters; I promise you that people who would not vote for a woman would not vote for a black man, either.

I have covered state and national campaigns since Nixon beat Humphrey way back in 1968. I’ve learned in watching the best (and, more often, the worst) politicians is they remember the old saw about “politics makes strange bedfellows.” When they lose, they lick their wounds and then close ranks to win an election.

If you truly think John McCain would be better for America than Barack Obama, then vote for him. But if you’re voting for him out of spite, or not voting at all as an ill-advised and, frankly, churlish and petulant protest, keep another old adage in mind: Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face.

You won’t like explaining why you did that to your daughters and granddaughters and all the daughters after them.

A Sunny Summer Day, Aug. 2009

One sunny day in the summer of 2009 an old man approached the north gate of the White House from the park across Pennsylvania Avenue where he'd been sitting on a bench. He spoke to the uniformed Secret Service officer standing guard, saying, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The guard looked at the man and said, "Sir, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."

The old man replied, "Okay" and walked away.

The following day, the same man approached the White House and said to the same officer, "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The guard again told the man, "Sir, as I said yesterday, Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here."

The man thanked him and, again, walked away.

The third day, the same man approached the White House and spoke to the very same uniformed officer, saying "I would like to go in and meet with President Bush."

The guard, somewhat agitated at this point, looked at the man and said, "Sir, this is the third day in a row you have been here asking to speak to Mr. Bush. I've told you already that Mr. Bush is no longer president and no longer resides here. Don't you understand?"

The old man looked at the officer and with a wry smile said, "Oh, I understand. I just love hearing it."

The guard snapped to attention, saluted, and replied, "See you tomorrow!"

Hat Tip To Anner1

Fox Hoisted On Its Own Petard By American Trapped In Ossetia

WHOOPS!

Yesterday, Fox Noise interviewed an Ossetian-American 12-year old girl who was caught in the disputed region at the start of Georgia's war. She and her aunt, who was also caught, thanks Russian troops for saving her from Georgian aggression.

The squirming Fox anchor was not happy the way the interview was going because the child didn’t follow the McCain-Bush talking points about who is the aggressor. Finally, he cut the girl and her aunt off. Clearly, the girl forgot the master narrative being spewed by the McCain-Bush military-information complex.

The video is at www.youtube.com/watch?v=H8XI2Chc6uQ

How The CIA Helped Make The “Obama Nation” Smear Book A Best-Seller

When Jerome Corsi’s newest distortion-and lie-packed smear book, Obama Nation, hit the best seller lists this week, Corsi and his Republican Party hack publisher can thank a precedent established by the CIA in the early 1950s.

Obama Nation owes its hit status to what The New York Times says are “bulk purchases” of the tome. In other words, right wing groups from the Republican National Committee to 501(C)(3) organisations to who-knows-which group of wingnuts bought boxes of Corsi’s deranged musings. What they do with the volumes is anyone’s guess: Hand them out to fellow travellers, distribute them to delegates in “welcome packages” at the Republican convention in St. Paul, or just stack the boxes in closets.

This is precisely how then-CIA director Allan Dulles made a national best seller out Darkness at Noon, Arthur Koestler’s sombre, brooding, anti-Communist fictional rant, in the early 1950s. The unintended consequence was to force millions of junior and senior high school students in the US to read the monstrosity.

How the CIA came to be a factor in the book publishing business in the America is a fascinating story, a historical footnote that shows Langley was interfering in domestic politics long before the Church Commission exposed Richard Nixon’s use of the agency to spy on anti-war activists during Viet Nam. In fact, the ploy traces its roots to the end of World War II.

When William “Wild Bill” Donaldson established and ran the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during the war, he worked closely with both Dulles and Koestler. Dr. Mark Levine, an English professor at the University of Toronto and noted Koestler scholar, has told me that after the war as Donaldson and Koestler shared a long boat ride home from Europe they talked about their belief that an OSS-like organisation should continue to play a role in intelligence gathering. By the time the ship docked in New York, they had conceived the structure, organization, duties and responsibilities of what would become the CIA. Donaldson presented Pres. Truman with his idea who sent a bill to Congress which quickly passed the measure into law. Dulles became its first director.

Spurred by the Soviet’s blockage of Berlin, by the late 1940s and extending into the Fifties the United States was gripped with Communist paranoia. The Red Menace everywhere: Politicians, statesmen, screenwriters and directors, maybe even grocery store bag boys all were suspected of being Commies or Communist “sympathizers” and countless Congressional committees obsessed on uprooting and exposing them.

In the middle of this national psychosis, Koestler – a long-time anti Communist who was imprisoned briefly by the French in 1941 – showed Donaldson a copy of Darkness at Noon, which he’d written in 1941. Wild Bill thought it ought to be one of those “must read” books and handed a copy on to Dulles, now ensconced as the CIA’s director. Dulles, no slouch himself in spotting the Reds In Every Bed, decided the best way to bring the 10-year old, inconsequential novel to America’s attention was to make it a best seller.

It was easy enough for Dulles to it pull off. With the CIA’s many secret operating funds, he sent agents fanning out across New York to order – it was barely in print in the States at the time – and buy up all of the copies of the book they could lay their hands on. The books were sent back to Dulles who ordered them stored in CIA vaults.

Because the CIA refused repeatedly over the years to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests about its role in making Darkness at Noon a cultural phenomenon in the 1950s, it’s not known whether Koestler’s books are still collecting dust in the Company’s storage bins a half-century later. The University of Toronto’s Dr. Levine believes they remain buried at Langley.

So read the best-seller listing this week of Obama Nation with scepticism. Its sudden prominence owes a debt of gratitude to the CIA, Bill Donaldson and Allan Dulles.

Iraq Escalation Called A "Failure"

This won't make John McCain or Joe Lieberman very happy and the folks over at the White House must be positively fuming.

Colin Kahl from the Centre for a New American Security told a press briefing this week that things are not nearly as rosy as John McCain is portraying them on the campaign stump or Bush is saying in the Rose Garden.

Kahl reports that US civilian and military officials in Baghdad are genuinely worried that Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has become "over-confident" about his military capabilities, explaining his demands to the US over the proposed status of forces agreement on the rules governing US troops in Iraq. Al-Maliki appears to have won some internal battles in the Iraqi government in the past six months, so he now firmly controls the intelligence apparatus and has military operation centres under his authority throughout the country.

Even worse, Al-Maliki is not only refusing to incorporate the Sunni Arab Awakening Councils or "Sons of Iraq" into the Iraqi security forces, he seems to be planning to fight them. These are Sunni Arab militias, many former Salafi or nationalist guerrillas, who act as US mercenaries by fighting Qutbist vigilantes who call themselves “al-Qaeda in Iraq.”

Kahl said of the 103,000 Sunnis belonging to those militias, the Iraqi government had promised to take only about 16,000into the security forces. But in fact, it has approved only 600 applicants thus far, and most of these turned out to be Shi’a, not Sunni militiamen.

The Awakening Councils are the biggest threat Baghdad faces and that after Americans are drawn down in Iraqi, al-Malaki’s allies say it will be necessary to "take care of them.”

Bush is so mad at al-Malaki’s stance on US troop restrictions and his demand for a withdrawal timetable that he sharply warned al-Maliki that without a SOFA he would have to pull out US troops by Jan. 1, 2009. US troops operating in Iraq with no agreed legal framework would be constantly open to murder and other serious legal charges.

Muqtada al-Sadr is turning his Mahdi Army into a civilian social-work force under strong Iranian pressure. The Iranians seem to be convinced that the Mahdi Army was becoming a pretext for the US to stay in Iraq – understandable since the Bushies are blaming Iran for everything Muqtada did. In fact, Iran is mainly allied with Abdul Aziz al-Hakim and his Badr corps paramilitary, which has become the backbone of al-Maliki's security forces; Iran thus has multiple reasons for trying to get rid of the Mahdi Army as a military force.

But there may be a third reason Iran pressured al-Sadr. Reports – rumours, mostly – keep circulating that there is a secret, informal agreement between Bush and Khamenei that if the Mahdi Army quietens down, the US will talk to Iran, refrain from bombing the nuclear facilities at Natanz and will forestall an Israeli attack, as well.

Kahl's information is another challenge to the propaganda that the Bush’s escalation "worked." Among the things that "worked" were Iran becoming even more influential in Iraq and al-Maliki getting hold of his own government.

Meanwhile, the Los Angeles Times reports that Georgia and other allies with relatively large troop contingents in Iraq are leaving, making it difficult for the US to draw down its troops at the rate Petraeus originally envisioned for this year. US forces will likely have to step in to replace Georgian troops in Kut and British soldiers in Basra.

At the same time, the newspaper reports that the al-Anbar desert is still very dangerous and full of seedy operators including insurgents, thieves, highjackers and smugglers. This is one reason why a Marine was killed Thursday in al-Anbar. The mostly unreported return of violence in the big, dangerous province has delayed the planned turn-over of security duties to Iraqi security forces there by the US military.

Another GOP Voter Switches To Obama

When I logged into my e-mail this morning, I found a note from a friend who has voted Republican for years:

OK, so you got me to change my mind.

I changed my voter registration yesterday and am voting for Obama on Nov. 4.

Why? Because of two reasons.

First, I saw a truly reprehensible McCain ad on television that is nothing more than a carefully disguised racist smear. I don't remember if it was done by the McCain campaign or some outside group but it was disgusting.

Secondly, I read an excerpt from Obama Nation by the guy who started the whole Swift Boat shit back in 04. I didn't believe that crap then and now that what was once called The Grand Old Party is doing it again, I've had enough.

Between this stuff and what my kids have been telling me ... not kids, really, since one is at university and the other has her degree, and really thinking about what has happened to America under the GOP, I have no choice but to vote Obama.

Figured this will make you happy.

Grace

Obviously, it does make me happy but, more important, it shows the tiniest beginning of a trend of so-called "staunch" Republicans fleeing in horror from McCain and the Republican party. Maybe America is starting to wake itself up.